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Show but nonetheless successor in efforts to entice settlers to homesteads in the Escalante. This phase of colonization followed naturally from the newspaper ads and colored folders the land-locaters sprinkled over Southern California. Persons stimulated by that publicity came "on their own" because they thriftily decided they could do their own locating of free public land without paying fees to a promoter. So on that first promotional puffery we built our own amateur boosteries. This is the way it went all over the vast Submarginal Frontier: with intense advertising the land-locaters would lure the land-hungry to a c^hosen wilderness via train. The western railroads gave encouragement in a variety of ways, reduced group fares, and publicity primarily, for they benefited from settlement through increased traffic. The land-locaters tried to time their climax of promotion with spring when the soil looked rich, dark with moisture, the grass was green, desert flowers bloomed, the slim new mist-gray feathers of the sage breathed forth fragrance to the sun. Ah, that spring aroma of the sage!-at once heady and medicinal. We'd been told, "High sage means high fertility." Promise of fertility was the essence of beauty in a young land, in a young woman. The ancient earth goddesses needed no other beauty. We of the Escalante drank the wild perfume at every breath, felt it sparkle in our blood, rejoiced as though we were already winners. Yet we sought not only to destroy the sage and sow the soil but to infect others with our fever so that more virgin expanses would be stripped and sown. So we were thrilled that the land-hungry continued to arrive on the Local. But there was a gap between the coming of a homeseeker and our welcome. |