"I was asking myself," said Smith, as we sat looking out over the
water, in the evening, or gazing down into the glowing depths, and
listening to the night voices, faint and far off in the old forests,
as they came floating over the lake, "I was asking myself, as we
journeyed around the falls to-day, and as we stood on the rock where
the river comes leaping down and plunging into the lake, whether the
march of improvement would ever spread a Lowell around those falls, or
subject those wild waters to the uses of civilization. Whether
progress would ever invade those mountain regions; or the ingenuity of
man ever discover uses for these rocks and boulders, or coin wealth
from the sterile and sandy soil of this old wilderness? Hitherto a
country like this has been regarded of no value, save for the timber
which it grows; and when that is exhausted, as fit only to be
abandoned to sterility and desolation. But who can tell whether there
may not be in these boulders, these rocks, this sandy and unproductive
soil, unknown wealth, held in reserve to reward the researches of
science in its utilitarian explorations. I am not now speaking of
gold, or silver, or any other dross, which men have hitherto wasted
their toil to accumulate; but of new discoveries, and new purposes to
which these now useless things may be applied; discoveries which may
send the tide of emigration surging up from the valleys to mountain
regions like these.
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