The project at last under way in 1864-1865, as Davis graphically pictures it, "was thoroughly saturated and fairly dripping with the elements of adventure and romance." But he overstates his case when he goes on to remark that, "Before the building of the Pacific railway most of the wide expanse of territory west of the Missouri was _terra incognita_ to the mass of Americans." For twenty years the railway had been under agitation; during the whole period population had crossed the great desert in increasing thousands; new states had banked up around its circumference, east, west, and south, while Kansas had been thrust into its middle; new camps had dotted its interior. The great West was by no means unknown, but with the construction of the railway the American frontier entered upon its final phase. CHAPTER XIV THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR That the fate of the outlying colonies of the United States should have aroused grave concerns at the beginning of the Civil War is not surprising. California and Oregon, Carson City, Denver, and the other mining camps were indeed on the same continent with the contending factions, but the degree of their isolation was so great that they might as well have been separated by an ocean. Their inhabitants were more mixed than those of any portion of the older states, while in several of the communities the parties were so evenly divided as to raise doubts of the loyalty of the whole. "The malignant secession element of this Territory," wrote Governor Gilpin of Colorado, in October, 1861, "has numbered 7,500. It has been ably and secretly organized from November last, and requires extreme and extraordinary measures to meet and control its onslaught." At best, the western population was scanty and scattered over a frontier that still possessed its virgin character in most respects, though hovering at the edge of a period of transition. An English observer, hopeful for the worst, announced in the middle of the war that "When that 'late lamented institution,' the once United States, shall have passed away, and when, after this detestable and fratricidal war--the most disgraceful to human nature that civilization ever witnessed--the New World shall be restored to order and tranquility, our shikaris will not forget, that a single fortnight of comfortable travel suffices to transport them from fallow deer and pheasant shooting to the haunts of the bison and the grizzly bear. There is little chance of these animals being 'improved off' the Prairies, or even of their becoming rare during the lifetime of the present generation." The factors of most consequence in shaping the course of the great plains during the Civil War were those of mixed population, of ever present Indian danger, and of isolation. Though the plains had no effect upon the outcome of the war, the war furthered the work already under way of making known the West, clearing off the Indians, and preparing for future settlement.