Youngs, "Precision and Poetry" (Mullan Essay)

“Precision and Poetry:

The Utility and Elegance of the Mullan Report”

J. William T. Youngs

Eastern Washington University

(Note: this essay is scheduled to be in print this spring as part of a new volume of essays on the Mullan Road published by Mountain Press.)

In his life and in his writing, John Mullan displayed two traits not always combined in one person. As a West-Point-educated engineer he mastered the many details of building a military road, including determining routes, assigning tasks, arranging supplies, and seeking funding. If you add to these abilities his hard-driving commitment to building a highway through seemingly impassable terrain, you have the soldier-engineer who would complete the first wagon road across the northern Rockies. But if you look at a photograph of John Mullan in his later years, with his long flowing beard, and a far-away look in his eyes, you see another person–a philosopher or a mystic, someone who realizes that there is more to life than carving a side cut through the mountains.

His 1863 report on the military road from Fort Benton to Walla Walla– soon to be known as the Mullan Road–is enriched by both qualities. It is the work of a precise reporter and also of a literary craftsman.[1] Mullan begins his account with a cogent explanation of the national policies that led to work in 1853 on several military roads in the West. In one of his characteristically long, but precise sentences he explains:

The necessity felt by the government for a more thorough and satisfactory knowledge in detail of the geographical and topographical character of the country that lay between the Mississippi river and the Pacific ocean, looking especially towards the location and construction of a Pacific railroad, called into the field, in the spring of 1853, under authority from Congress, several corps of engineers and explorers, whose mission it was to supply this desired information within certain limits of time and means.[2]

During the summer of 1853 an army corps, directed by Isaac Stevens and including John Mullan, moved rapidly from St. Paul to the Rocky Mountains. With ease the terrain was “accurately and rapidly explored.” But then, like Lewis and Clark almost fifty years before, the Stevens party ran into the Bitterroot Mountains, and in Mullan’s suggestive phrase: “the late autumn of 1853 found our labors of exploration truly only begun.”[3] Governor Stevens decided to return to “the States”–as the East was then known–leaving John Mullan with a small party of men charged with exploring this rugged terrain. Mullan’s description of the situation displays his ability to write prose that is evocative as well as precise:

We now entered the more difficult section of the Bitter Root range of the Rocky Mountains, where the lateness of the season, the difficulty of the country, the importance of our mission, the scarcity of our supplies, the meagerness of the information we then possessed, and the necessity felt for a more detailed and thorough exploration of the Rocky Mountain section, since proved to be the key of the work, together with other equally cogent reasons existing at the time, all conspired to influence Governor Stevens to leave in the mountains a small party for the winter of 1853, for further explorations, and thus supply that information which a lack of time did not allow him to collect at an earlier period.[4]

John Mullan was left in charge of that winter party. As we can see in this passage, he strengthens his description of the challenge he and his men faced with a strong narrative line. The obstacles and imperatives, he tells us, included lateness, difficulty, importance, scarcity, meagerness, and necessity. Reading along, one is drawn to ask, “What will happen next?” And as both report and as literature, the account does not disappoint.

In a simple but suggestive phrase, Mullan tells us that he and his men erected for their 1853-54 winter camp, “comfortable, though rude, log huts.”[5] They had already been driven by “necessity” to abandon their wagons in favor of “pack trains.”[6] Mullan provides a pithy overview of the task at hand: “My mission in the winter of 1853 was to solve the problem of a proper connection, through a practicable mountain pass, of the plains of the Missouri with the plains of the Columbia, between the 45th and 48th degrees of north latitude, for either wagon road or railroad lines, and to make my reports thereon.”[7] Beyond describing the situation, Mullan evokes the scene. They were working in a region “whence flow the sources of the Columbia and Missouri rivers in a network of babbling brooks.”[8] Mullan might simply have written that they were traveling at the headwaters of those great rivers; that would have been accurate but abstract, and so instead he has painted for the imagination of his readers a more vivid scene. “Headwaters” is a geographer’s term; “babbling brooks” is a poet’s.

John Mullan reminds his readers that the route would be determined in part by the work of steamboat captains in driving their craft far up the Missouri and Columbia Rivers. The road would take up the cross-country journey from the points where the steamboats could no longer climb the rivers. With precision, Mullan summarizes the challenge:

The question of the navigation by stream of the upper Columbia and Missouri rivers was, at that date, in the infancy of its discussion, but was deemed of such importance that its practical solution was looked upon by the friends and advocates of the railroad line as the sine qua non to the full and speedy settlement of the country between them, as well as the all-important aids in the construction of a Pacific railroad via a northern route[9].

In his next paragraph Mullan turns to the actual craft then at work on those waters, underscoring the fact that steam navigation on both rivers was in its infancy. On the Columbia several smaller “steam-craft” carried cargo and passengers as far as The Dalles. As for the Missouri, Mullan reports in a colorful phrase: there was only “a solitary steamer, engaged in the fur trade, that made its annual trips from St. Louis till it crept along the waters of the Missouri to a region where the red man alone walked.”[10]

Speaking as the engineer, Mullan underscores the challenge of  “testing by steam the further practicability of each of these rivers.... in order to attain the minimum land transit.” His task was to determine “a continuous practicable wagon-road line” between the heads of steam navigation on the Missouri and the Columbia “be those heads where they may.”[11]

The winter party needed, of course, to operate as geographers, exploring possible routes for a wagon road across the mountains to join the heads of navigation on the two great rivers. In that regard, information was scarce. Their only map was “left us by Lewis and Clark” in 1805; and beyond that, they had only a few “addenda” provided by members of the Hudson’s Bay Company and “scraps of information which the chance traveler or sojourner in the country felt disposed to offer.”  Later in his report Mullan mentions that they gathered information from “hunters and trappers and those familiar with the country from a long residence in the mountains.”[12] The presence of these few wanderers underscores the fact that this was a frontier far from government agencies. These early “sojourners” carried their goods on pack animals, and so they were not accustomed to contemplating locations for wagon roads “in their thoughts or discussions.”[13] Thus, they could only provide hints about the terrain, leaving the army to consider more carefully where a road could be built.

“During the winter of 1853,” Mullan writes, “many were the conversations held with whomsoever could give us information of the geography of the country.” One senses that any stranger passing the army’s little log encampment during the winter of 1853-54—or any person found in the mountains—was greeted warmly and questioned on possible routes.

Some of Mullan’s best information came from “an old Iroquois Indian called Æneas, now resident in the Bitter Root valley, whose wanderings amid the mountains had often thrown him with parties traveling with wagons at the southward.” This experience was valuable, “rendering him capable of judging of the requisites for a wagon road.” Aeneas told the soldiers that “a line could be had through a gorge-like pass in the Coeur d'Aléne mountains.”[14] Much work lay ahead in testing this route, but the Indian’s information helped focus the army’s investigations on a region that might allow the passage of the wagon road.

Mullan’s report continues with an overview of the various routes tested when warmer weather returned during the spring and summer of 1854. But further work on the road was then delayed by the outbreak of Indian war in 1855 and 1856. The hostilities, Mullan writes, “converted each man's home in Oregon and Washington into a block-house, caused the portals of the upper Columbia to be opened awide, and brought especially to the attention of the people a hitherto neglected and little known region.”[15] At first the hostilities occurred east of the Cascades, but then came warfare in the interior including the defeat of Colonel Steptoe in what came to be known as the battle of Steptoe Butte (1858). Mullan describes the change brought about by the war at the western terminus of the incipient road. “A military occupation of the Walla-Walla valley became necessary,” he writes, “and the rude mud walls of old Walla-Walla, that year after year had listened to nought but the jargon of Indians and traders, caught a new sound in the tramp of the march of civilization.”[16]

For a time, the business of road-building gave way to the work of defeating the Indians, accomplished in 1858 under the leadership of Col. George Wright. Mullan then began the actual construction of a road across eastern Washington. Along the way he got to know the pioneer homesteads of the region: “Already have each and all these valleys become the comfortable homes of the pioneer farmer and grazier, where the hand of industry, adding daily to the wealth and prosperity of the country, gives a new beauty, by the erection of school-houses and churches, those barometers of the intelligence and morality of a people.”[17] He also describes historical landmarks along the way. At one point he over-nighted at the site of one of the most notorious events of the Indian wars in the Northwest. For Mullan this was not simply a place to rest his men, but a site evocative of the complex relationship between Indians and whites on the frontier.  “We encamped this day on the banks of the Nedlwhuald,” he writes, “and at the same point where General Wright hung Qualtian [sic], the noted Yakima chief, and several other Indians; from which fact the stream is known to many as Hangman's creek. Poor creatures! their doom, although in this instance a just one, is, nevertheless, pitiable; had the white man been to them more just, fate had proved less harsh.”[18] Here, as in many other places in his report, Mullan goes beyond the necessity of providing a routine account, to reflect on the broader course of history.

The road-building across eastern Washington was comparatively easy, with little grading required and few rivers to cross. But negotiating with the Indians provided a continuing challenge, as indicated in this engaging description:

It was on this day that we met, for the first time, a band of the Coeur d'Aléne Indians, under Pierre, a few miles from our camp; they were well mounted, anxious to learn our mission, our line of direction, and plied us with many questions as to our ultimate ends and objects. A few of these Indians were also met by Mr. Sohon in his exploration toward the head of the Palouse. Discretion and prudence directed that our course towards them should be both frank and honest. I invited them to accompany me to my camp, gave them to eat and to smoke, and afterwards explained to them in detail our mission and object; they left, apparently satisfied, and with a promise to preserve friendly relations in future[19].

As with other descriptions by John Mullan, this one provides colorful details and dramatic elements that go beyond the necessities of a “mere report.” We learn how the Indians were mounted, how Mullan entertained them, and how he practiced diplomacy. Additionally, although he refers to the possibility of “friendly relations in the future,” he concludes this account with the notation: “They are wily fellows, and great caution is necessary in all intercourse with them.”[20]

Passages such as these are recurrent in the early pages of the Mullan Report. The first thirty-five pages provides his narrative of the building to the road. The next forty-eight pages, the remainder of his personal account, consists of entries organized under thirty sub-headings. Half of these consist of his observations, looking forward, about the special challenges of building a transcontinental railway and various branch lines through the Northwest. The other entries constitute a well-organized compendium on a variety of topics on the character of the land traversed along the Fort Benton to Walla Walla wagon road. The topics range from geographical information to observations on settlers along the route.

The first four subdivisions provide information about traveling the Mullan Road. “General Division of the Route” provides a brief overview of the terrain crossed by the completed road. “Itinerary of the Route” is a day-by-day guidebook, including information on forage for livestock. “Recommendations for Travelers” provides advice on equipment to take along. And “Advice to Emigrants by this Route” is a brief description of other trails joining the Mullan Road. Together these sections provide useful information for anyone in those days considering a journey along the route. Most of the information is straight-forward, with none of the stylistic flourishes that appear elsewhere in the report. But, none the less, they go beyond simple reporting and help us to imagine the route and its travelers.

The section “General Division of the Route” gives us a bird’s eye view of the terrain through which the Mullan Road passed.  The first 180 miles eastward from Walla Walla are mainly level “open, level, or rolling priarie,” and the final 324 miles consist of “open timbered plateaus, with long stretches of prairie.” The road through much of this country was constructed at almost the rate of march of the party as a whole. But the middle of the journey was another matter. This section, Mullan writes, “involved one hundred and twenty miles of difficult timber-cutting, twenty-five feet broad, and thirty measured miles of excavation, fifteen to twenty feet wide.”[21] While placing the road across the prairie posed “slight obstructions” for the builders, in mountains “sterner engineering problems” were involved.[22] After reading the other parts of Mullan’s report, we know just how “stern” those problems could be, involving frostbite, injury by explosion, and one man’s drowning at a river crossing. Even on days without drama or tragedy, there was for Mullan’s men, the burden of felling timber, building bridges, and driving themselves and their animals from camp to camp.

With the completion of the road, the journey would be far easier for immigrants who later made the trip. In his report, Mullan provides a day by day “Itinerary of the Route” carefully setting forth goals for each day’s travel and providing information on suggested camping sites along the way. In this section he is “all business” doing little to describe the various campsites, but providing useful information about what to expect on each day of the journey. The pace was determined in part by the terrain between camps and partly by the availability of wood and water at each stop.  The first day out from Walla Walla, Mullan suggests traveling only 7.5 miles, perhaps to allow time to break in men, livestock, and equipment at the beginning of the journey, but also because the deliberate pace brought the travelers to the crossing of Dry Creek, where there was “wood, water, and grass at camp.”[23]

A modern guide for tourists in recreational vehicles provides information on the availability of “hook ups” (notably, water and electricity) at various sites, along with such modern necessities as showers and wifi. Mullan was equally solicitous of the necessities of those times, especially indicating the locations of wood, water, and grass.  At Touchet Bridge, on the second day out from Walla Walla, for example, travelers should stock up on wood—useful advice since none would be available for the next two days.[24] Soon afterwards they should gather driftwood on the banks of the Snake River to be prepared for another treeless section.

In such ways, John Mullan’s “General Division” of the route, while designed as a kind of “How To” pamphlet on traveling the road, enables us today to picture life on the trail. He frequently tells the reader about how to make the best of each camp site. One site, he reports, is favored with a spring three hundred yards to the north of the road. At another travellers should “graze animals on hills on the left bank” of the river. Realizing that any party could be only as strong as its animals, Mullan often suggests places to “rest animals for a day if required.”[25] On the fourteenth day Mullan envisions travelers arriving at the Coeur d’Aléne Mission, which after two weeks on the road must have seemed indeed like “a St. Bernard in the Coeur d’Aléne mountains”—his phrase. Up to this point travellers would have seen a handful of compatriots at ferry crossings on the Snake and Spokane Rivers, but otherwise no signs of settlement. Writing of the mission, Mullan advises: “Good place to rest animals for a day or two, and which is by all means advisable, as you now enter the timber, where camp-grounds have to be specially selected, and the animals should be well rested. Vegetables may be had at the mission.”[26]

While exploring and building the military road, John Mullan stopped often at the Coeur d’Alene mission and came to admire the Jesuit missionaries. Mullan praised the Jesuit fathers by name for their work among the Indians, complimenting especially Father de Smet: “for he truly is the great father of all Rocky Mountain missionaries.” With a few well-chosen words, in a section on the missions, he evokes the long years prior to the his road-building that the Jesuit Fathers were at work in region, reminding the reader of “their zeal and toil amid the fastnesses and solitudes of the Rocky Mountains.”[27]  He compares the missions favorably with the government bureaucracies that squandered millions of dollars that was intended for the Indians, but seldom reached them. In contrast, the Missionaries lived and traveled among them and “actually take care of the Indians when sick and educate them when well.”[28]

One of the more interesting pieces of information for the modern reader in Mullan’s “Itinerary” is the cost of crossing the Snake, Spokane, and Bitter Root Rivers by boat. One early form of entrepreneurship in the West was the building of ferries at difficult river-crossings.  On each of these ferries the charge was four dollars per wagon and fifty cents per passenger or “loose stock”—cattle, horses, mules, and oxen not loaded aboard the ferry with a wagon in tow.[29] In 2010s dollars these prices convert to about $160 per wagon and $20 per passenger or animal. Many travellers must have swum their “loose stock,” as Mullan advised, and the more daring might consider fording to avoid the charges. But, as Mullan suggests in the case of the Bitter Root: “The stream is fordable in very low water, but I would advise all strangers to cross in the ferry-boats, as the ford is a dangerous one, except to those who know it well.”[30]

Finally after four weeks on the road, travellers would come to a welcome site in modern-day Montana. Mullan writes: “Move to Higgin's & Worden's store,… distance twelve and a half miles; road excellent; wood, water, and grass here; good place to rest animals for a day or two; blacksmith's shop at Van Dorn's, and supplies of all kinds can be obtained, dry goods, groceries, beef, vegetables, and fresh animals, if needed.” Six days later, after more camping in the wilderness, the posts of “civilization” became more plentiful. On the thirty-fourth day, a 13.5 mile journey brought one to “Gold creek or American Fork of Hell's Gate river; road excellent; wood, water, and grass at camp; supplies of all kinds to be had here, dry goods, groceries, fresh beef, animals, and possibly vegetables.” Only one day later, at Deer Lodge, as Mullan reports, “fresh beef to be had here from settlers.”[31] There followed more days with nothing to cheer a voyager but more of the essentials provided by the land, notably wood, grass, and water. Then, finally, on day forty-seven, if they had followed the itinerary without delays, the travellers would arrive at Fort Benton after completing 624 miles on the road.

The “Itinerary,” while devoid of picturesque passages, none the less suggests to the imagination the long journey of men and livestock through a region that was still principally a wilderness. Mullan adds depth to this picture with his next topic, “Recommendations for Travelers.”  He envisions the voyagers beginning in St. Louis, purchasing a wagon and harnesses, and shipping these up the Missouri by steamboat to Fort Benton. There the emigrant would purchase horses, mules, or oxen for the journey on up the road. In St. Louis travellers should also purchase a complete outfit for camping. For “mess furniture” Mullan recommends tin or iron “kettles” [pots] to fit “one inside the other”—an arrangement familiar to any modern camper—as well as “tin plates and cups and strong knives and forks.” For cooking the traveller should have a “covered oven,” which Mullan refers to also by the modern name, a “Dutch oven.” As food for the journey he suggests: “brown sugar, coffee, or tea, bacon, flour, salt, beans, sardines, and a few jars of pickles and preserved fruits.” These “will constitute a perfect outfit in this department.”[32]  In particular among the fruits he recommends dried apples, and to the food stores he later adds vinegar and yeast powder.  The core of the traveler’s diet, following Mullan’s advice, would be one pound of flour and one pound of bacon per day, a diet as consistent as the grass for the animals.

Mullan’s picture of the camper en route brings into focus the animals and the wagons. He gives advice on saddles, saddle blankets, and bridles. Each animal should be provided with a picket rope “from thirty-five to forty feet long.” These should be hefty, “one inch in diameter.” For loads, Mullan recommended a Mexican device known as an apperajo for loading supplies on a mule’s back. “Starting at dawn and camping not later than 2 p. m.,” Mullan writes, “I have always found the best plan in marching. Animals should not go out of a walk or a slow trot, and after being unloaded in camp they should always be allowed to stand with their saddles on and girths loose, for at least fifteen minutes, as the sudden exposure of their warm backs to the air tends to scald them.”[33] The loads should not exceed 200 pounds. In his one flight of fancy, in what is otherwise a cut and dried set of recommendations, Mullan provides some advice with an comparison more acceptable, perhaps, in the nineteenth century than the twenty-first. On getting the most out of beasts of burden, he writes: “They should be regularly watered, morning, noon, and night. Never maltreat them, but govern them as you would a woman, with kindness, affection, and caresses, and you will be repaid by their docility and easy management.”[34]

In his Report Mullan then turns to advice on the wagons. “If you travel with a wagon, provide yourself with a jackscrew, extra tongue, and coupling pole; also, axle grease, a hatchet and nails, auger, rope, twine, and one or two chains for wheel locking, and one or two extra whippletrees, as well as such other articles as in your own judgment may be deemed necessary.”[35] That passage suggests the hard work required to keep a wagon fit for travel, as does this: “If your wagon tires become loose on the road, caulk them with old gunny sacks, or in lieu thereof, with any other sacking; also, soak the wheels well in water whenever an opportunity occurs.”[36]

Mullan completes his description of travelers en route with advice on camping equipment. He suggests a “light canvas tent, with poles that fold in the middle by a hinge,” something he has “always found most convenient.”[37] You do not really need tables and chairs on route, he writes, “but if deemed absolutely necessary, the old army camp stool, and a table with a lid that removes and legs that fold under, I have found to best subserve all camp requisites.” Mullan concludes the section on  “Recommendations for Travelers” with this sage advice, as relevant today as then: “Never take anything not absolutely necessary. This is a rule of all experienced voyageurs.”[38]

From his description of travel on the road, Mullan moved to the terrain itself with sections on “Agricultural Lands,” “Grazing Capabilities,” Mineral Wealth,” Building Materials,” “Rivers and Water-Courses,” and the “Mountain System.” These sections called upon John Mullan’s aptitude for precise descriptions, but they also led him to write an evocative account of the restless miners who would soon be using the road to reach camps in Idaho and Montana. His description of these men and their deserves to be quoted at length as a prime example of Mullan’s blending precision and poetry:

            It has been only during the last three years that sanguine expectations have existed of mineral wealth to any great extent being found east of the Cascade mountains or even in the northern portion of the Rocky Mountains proper. As soon as the Frazier river mines in British Columbia were discovered and the question of route by which to reach them in the shortest time and cheapest means was discussed, we found the eastern portion of Washington Territory ramified by hundreds of gold seekers in quest of this new Eldorado. This was in 1858. Gold was soon after discovered in the Wenatchee, Nachees, Okinagen, Simalkameen, and Clark's Fork, and worked till the Indians drove the miners from the country. In the succeeding year Captain Pierce, with a boldness and a judgment worthy every commendation, explored the Bitter Root mountains, and the discovery of the Nez Percés gold mines was the result. The wanderings of the miners in this region southward led to the Salmon river discoveries. But the gold miner, who is the most restless of mortals, did not rest content until he had crossed Snake river and discovered the Powder river mines; and not even then content, he opened up the Grand Ronde, Boisé, and Burnt river mines, in East Oregon, and elated at his success returns to his friends in West Oregon, taking the head of John Day's river in his route only to discover the richest quartz leads to be found outside of California. His companions on Frazier's river heard of this new gold field and they too must visit it, taking on their route the mouth of Clark's Fork and Spokane river, only there to discover gold which has since been taken out by the pound. This news spreads and the Powder river miner tracks it to the latter point, and thence to the Kootenay, where he is amply repaid for his toil and travel. While this is being done the Salmon river miner is not content with making twenty dollars per day, but he too must follow the Salmon river till it becomes a silvery thread in the mountains and crosses the range to discover the wealth of the Deer Lodge mines. As the weary emigrant crossing the plains hears of this Eldorado so near himself, he too must journey thither only to discover the rich gold mines in Big Hole and Beaver Head valleys. Nor does it stop here, but the restless adventurer in St. Louis contracts the gold fever and threads the Missouri to Fort Benton in quest of the Deer Lodge mines, and while en route discovers the Prickly Pear gold mines. Thus, working like beavers, have the miners and emigrants crossed and recrossed the mountains during the last three years, ramifying in every direction until they have opened a gold region which, to-day, is sending to our mints a wealth equal to that of all California in her palmiest days.

            Wonderful have been the effects of this great alchemist in that quarter. It has transmuted sluggishness into activity, has brightened the dullest vision, elevated the industrious and frugal laborer, silenced the sceptic and caviller, and struck a new blow in behalf of a northern Pacific railroad route. The trade and travel along the upper Columbia, where several steamers now ply between busy marts, of themselves attest what magical effects three years have wrought.[39]

Of course, along with his ruminations on “the march of civilization” and his penchant for colorful prose, John Mullan wrote many passages that simply describe the day-to-day tasks of building a wagon road. So he writes, for example, of one river crossing: “We immediately set the whip-sawyers in the timber to get out the necessary lumber, and some men to burning tar, and, being provided with the necessary oakum, we built two flat-boats, forty-two feet long, twelve feet broad, and two feet deep-one for the St Joseph's and the other for the Coeur d'Aléne. The later, when completed, was rowed down into the lake, and thence up the Coeur d'Aléne river to the point selected for its crossing. While this was being accomplished, the divide between the two streams was examined, the road marked out, and several parties placed at work upon it.”[40]

In this passage we see Mullan recording “nothing but the facts.” But his writing often reveals a poetic, even a whimsical side. In a letter, included with the report, he writes: “In winter it is snowing frequently by quarter inches as a whole day's labor, to be destroyed the following day by a warm sun. If any snow should remain, the temperature of the air near zero, or even sometimes 40º below zero, the freezing point of mercury, the result of an excessive clear and calm night will freeze the snow to an ice crust for the deer to walk on without snow-shoes, and, on the morrow, to enjoy the bright sun with a temperature of 70° and more.”[41] One can imagine the smile on his face as he wrote about deer and snow-shoes!

John Mullan’s talents as engineer and leader are manifest in the building of the road which came to bear his name; and his taste for precision is apparent in much of his report. But what of that other quality, apparent in his writing his famous report? What is the source of his capacity for appreciating beauty, commenting on broad historical movements, and indulging now and then in whimsical descriptions of phenomena? Ryan Shaw, an expert on the railroad surveys of Mullan’s time, argues that many important explorers of the time were influenced by the great German scholar, Alexander von Humboldt, many of whose followers, including John Fremont and Isaac Stevens as well as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, were influenced by Humboldt’s fusion of science and romanticism.  “The philosophical study of nature rises above the requirements of mere delineation,” wrote Humboldt, “and does not consist in the sterile accumulation of isolated facts.” Mullan’s writing, which moves so gracefully between precision and poetry, thus exemplifies Ryan Shaw’s argument about the scientific and romantic mind-set of the early explorers and builders of the West.[42]