In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but ill understood, – the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth.

We were now, as I before mentioned, upon this St. Joseph’s trail. It was evident, by the traces, that large parties were a few days in advance of us; and as we too supposed them to be Mormons, we had some apprehension of interruption.

We were now arrived at the close of our solitary journeyings along the St. Joseph’s trail.

It was a rich and gorgeous sunset – an American sunset; and the ruddy glow of the sky was reflected from some extensive pools of water among the shadowy copses in the meadow below.

Spanish civilization crushed the Indian. English civilization scorned and neglected him. French civilization embraced and cherished him.

Art, industry, and commerce, so long crushed and overborne, were stirring into renewed life, and a crowd of adventurous men, nurtured in war and incapable of repose, must seek employment for their restless energies in fields of peaceful enterprise.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

America was still a land of wonder. The ancient spell still hung unbroken over the wild, vast world of mystery beyond the sea,-a land of romance, adventure, and gold.

If any pale student, glued to his desk, here seek an apology for a way of life whose natural fruits is that pallid and emasculate scholarship of which New England has had too many examples, it will be far better that this sketch had not been written. For the student there is, in its season, no better place than the saddle, and no better companion than the rifle or the oar.

France built its best colony on a principle of exclusion, and failed; England reversed the system, and succeeded.