It is needless to repeat here the oft-told story of Dakota's marvelous growth. Time was when it was capable of being wrought up into a mosaic of wondrous interest and beauty; but, with the multiplication of agencies for giving it publicity, its charm, for the present generation at least, has passed away. It will, nevertheless, afford the historian of the nineteenth century material for one of the most interesting and instructive chapters of his work. Writing, in 1828, his "Principles of Population," the great historian of Europe said: "The gradual and continuous progress of the European race toward the Rocky Mountains has the solemnity of a providential event: it is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and daily driven onward by the hand of God." But at that time the State of Illinois, but half way toward the Rocky Mountains and one-third of the way to the Pacific Ocean, was almost the limit of its mighty flow. Wisconsin, with no noteworthy settlements of its own, formed part of the Territory of Michigan; Iowa was an altogether vacant region, without any form of organized government; while other great States of to-day were still either mere parts of the Louisiana purchase, with as yet no separate identity, or were comprised within the then far-extending territory of the republic of Mexico. The traveler to the Northwest, by the Northern Pacific Railroad, traverses that section of the far-extending dominion of the American people that was the last to be overspread by that great tide of civilization. He sees its evidences in the happy and prosperous homesteads that dot the fertile plains of Dakota, and nestle under the sheltering bluffs of the winding valleys of Montana; he is able to bear witness, also, to its having penetrated the fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains, and converted the hillsides of Eastern Washington and the fair lands of Oregon into smiling wheat fields and fruitful orchards. But, notwithstanding the hundreds of flourishing settlements scattered along the great highway of travel, with here and there a goodly town or city, he can not but wonder at the apparent sparseness of population when he remembers that one and a half millions of people have their homes between the Great Lakes and Puget Sound. But let him consider the vast extent of the country; let him call to mind that Dakota, with her 415,664 inhabitants, has yet 230 acres of land to every man, woman and child within her borders, her population averaging less than three to the square mile; that the density of population in Oregon and Washington is but two and one-half and two to the square mile, respectively; while both Montana and Idaho have considerably more square miles than they have inhabitants.