Fifty Years in Oregon - Experiences, Observations, and Commentaries Ries Upon Men, Measures, and Customs in Pioneer Days and Later Times #246083

For that is the Spirit which for thousands of years has controlled the movements of wandering mankind. Human history does not record a single great movement of people to the eastward in any country. Instinct appears to have driven them with the sun in its daily travels. Of course, there may be a more philosophical and better solution of the fact, but, if so, it has not yet been discovered. Besides, as a general rule, instinct in the average man or woman is a safer guide many times than are the results of prolonged investigation. The first emigration mentioned in either profane or sacred history is an account of how Cain, after slaying his brother Abel, moved to the Land of Nod, East of Eden. This so thoroughly disgusted people that from that day to this everybody else has been going West.