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.

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

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.

Early on the next morning we reached Kansas, about five hundred miles from the mouth of the Missouri.

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

Many of the Iroquois and Huron houses were of similar construction, the partitions being at the sides only, leaving a wide passage down the middle of the house.

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