But Fremont could write; and the story which he set down of his first expedition inflamed the zeal of all.

Men began to head out for that far-away country beyond the Rockies.

Not a few scattered bands, but very many, passed up the valley of the Platte.
There began a tremendous trek of thousands of men who wanted homes somewhere out beyond the frontier.

And that was more than ten years before the Civil War.

The cow trade was not dreamed of; the coming cow country was overleaped and ignored.
Our national horizon extended immeasurably along that dusty way.