the disintegrating bodies of troops which scattered over the country,
and in course of time found himself in the only portion of America
which seemed to him congenial. Indeed, all the population was adrift,
all the anchors of established things torn loose. In the distracted
South whole families, detesting the new ways of life now thrust upon
them, and seeing no way of retrieving their fortunes in the country
which had borne them, broke away entirely from old associations and
started on in the strange, vague American fashion of that day, in a
hope of finding a newer and perhaps a better country. They moved by
rail, by boat, by wagon, in such way as they could. The old Mountain
Road from Virginia was trodden by many a disheartened family who found
Kentucky also smitten, Missouri and Arkansas no better. The West, the
then unknown and fascinating West, still remained beyond, a land of
hope, perhaps a land of refuge. The men of the lower South, also
stirred and unsettled, moved in long columns to the West and Southwest,
following the ancient immigration into Texas. The men of Texas,
citizens of a crude empire of unproved resources, likewise cast about
them restlessly. Their cattle must some day find a market. To the
north of them, still unknown and alluring, lay the new upper country
known as the West.

In the North the story was the same. The young men, taken from the
fields and marts to the camps and marches of the war, could not easily
return to the staid ways of their earlier life. From New England to
Michigan, from Michigan to Minnesota, many Northern families began to
move also toward that West which offered at least opportunity for
change. Thus there poured into the West from many different
directions, but chiefly from two right-angling directions which
intersected on the Plains, a diverse population whose integers were
later with phenomenal swiftness to merge and blend. As in the war the