Early on the next morning we reached Kansas, about five hundred miles from the mouth of the Missouri.
Francis ParkmanFaithfulness 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.
Francis ParkmanHere society is reduced to its original elements, the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck rudely to pieces, and men find themselves suddenly brought back to the wants and resources of their original natures.
Francis ParkmanFrance built its best colony on a principle of exclusion, and failed; England reversed the system, and succeeded.
Francis Parkman