The Blazed Trail

When history has granted him the justice of perspective, we shall know the AmericanPioneer as one of the most picturesque of her many figures. Resourceful, self-reliant, bold;adapting himself with fluidity to diverse circumstances and conditions; meeting with equalcheerfulness of confidence and completeness of capability both unknown dangers and theperils by which he has been educated; seizing the useful in the lives of the beasts and mennearest him, and assimilating it with marvellous rapidity; he presents to the world apicture of complete adequacy which it would be difficult to match in any other walk of life. He is a strong man, with a strong man's virtues and a strong man's vices. In him thepassions are elemental, the dramas epic, for he lives in the age when men are close tonature, and draw from her their forces. He satisfies his needs direct from the earth. Stripped of all the towns can give him, he merely resorts to a facile substitution. It becomesan affair of rawhide for leather, buckskin for cloth, venison for canned tomatoes. We feelthat his steps are planted on solid earth, for civilizations may crumble without disturbinghis magnificent self-poise. In him we perceive dimly his environment. He has somethingabout him which other men do not possess-a frank clearness of the eye, a swing of theshoulder, a carriage of the hips, a tilt of the hat, an air of muscular well-being which markshim as belonging to the advance guard, whether he wears buckskin, mackinaw, sombrero, or broadcloth. The woods are there, the plains, the rivers. Snow is there, and the line of theprairie. Mountain peaks and still pine forests have impressed themselves subtly; so thatwhen we turn to admire his unconsciously graceful swing, we seem to hear the ax bitingthe pine, or the prospector's pick tapping the rock. And in his eye is the capability of quiethumor, which is just the quality that the surmounting of many difficulties will give a man. Like the nature he has fought until he understands, his disposition is at once kindly andterrible. Outside the subtleties of his calling, he sees only red. Relieved of the strenuousnessof his occupation, he turns all the force of the wonderful energies that have carried him farwhere other men would have halted, to channels in which a gentle current makes floodenough. It is the mountain torrent and the canal. Instead of pleasure, he seeks orgies. Heruns to wild excesses of drinking, fighting, and carousing-which would frighten most mento sobriety-with a happy, reckless spirit that carries him beyond the limits of even hisextraordinary forces. This is not the moment to judge him. And yet one cannot help admiring the magnificentlypicturesque spectacle of such energies running riot. The power is still in evidence, thoughbeyond its proper application