THE NEW WORLD Franklin crossed the Missouri River, that dividing stream known to a generation of Western men simply as "the River," and acknowledged as the boundary between the old and the new, the known and the untried.

He passed on through well-settled farming regions, dotted with prosperous towns.

He moved still with the rolling wheels over a country which showed only here and there the smoke of a rancher's home.

Not even yet did the daring flight of the railway cease.

It came into a land wide, unbounded, apparently untracked by man, and seemingly set beyond the limit of man's wanderings.