they see its beauties, and feel its rugged strength, merely in the tourist's superficial attitude? However that may be, it is certain that to the backwoodsmen we owe the conception of an America extending throughout the continent, and even beyond, the ideal of a nation, strong, united, able to lead in the affairs of the world, and ready to assume such leadership when the opportunity offers, without timid deference to foreign objections. The generation which conceived this ideal passed away just as its realization was made possible by the new nation's baptism of fire, the Civil War; and as if it had been the special aim of Providence to set up a conspicuous mark at the end of the period when the forest-born generation had accomplished its task, the President who guided us through the tremendous struggle was the very personification of that class of men,—the backwoodsman glorified. In Abraham Lincoln all the repulsive characteristics of the type, its coarseness, its brutality, its self-will, had become gradually subdued through a long, steadfast career of ever-widening responsibilities. When, finally, the greatest responsibility was cast upon this man that can fall to the lot of an American, all the dross had disappeared, and nothing remained but the pure metal-strong, keen, tempered to perfection, and yet at other times as soft and pliable as gold without alloy. When from the lips. of that man, already under the shadow of death,although the throng that drank in his words knew it not, came those sentences of the Second

Inaugural, which will ever remain among the most cherished words of human speech, who can tell how much of the pathos, devotion, strength, faith, and love dwelling therein had its birth from the forest influences that surrounded the youth in his father's cabin? Who will say that we exaggerate in maintaining that to the primeval woods, to the manner in which their strength and ruggedness, as well as their silent, tender workings, were mirrored in the minds and hearts of the men growing up in their shade, we owe that which makes us a people standing unique in the world's eyes, with an individuality and character all our own, for good and evil, not a mere feeble counterfeit of European models? Surely, if there were no reasons of practical utility and worldly prudence to make us care assiduously for what remains of our forest inheritance, it would behoove an American to give his best skill and endeavor to its protection out of gratitude for having moulded the men who first cast off the shackles of sectional narrowness and dependence on colonial tradition.

The task of opening the wilderness to white settlement, which had been the work of two generations of backwoodsmen, had, in effect, been accomplished when, after the second British war, the power of the Indians was broken. Henceforth it was no longer necessary for the adventurous settler to have his rifle in readiness while he wielded the axe. The hearts of the women in their lonely cabins no longer trembled at every noise which

their imagination transformed into the warwhoop of the murderous red man. From time to time an outbreak like Blackhawk's ill-fated enterprise still sent a tremor of dread through the western country, but these were like the dying reverberations of thunder when the clouds are sinking below the horizon. The throngs of immigrants now increased apace, and quickly the clearings multiplied; towns and villages sprang up, and the forests began to show the effects of human labors. But so strongly had the character of the first invaders been impressed by the forest life, and so closely was the resultant type adapted to the conditions, even aside from the exigencies of Indian warfare, that for one more generation the backwoods type remained dominant in the West. After all, though settlement increased fast, the western people still lived in lonesome, self-dependent isolation, between miles and miles of forest almost as untouched by civilization as when the first white man descended the western slope of the Alleghanies. The few clearings scattered here and there lay mostly on the uplands bordering the navigable watercourses, and had to be reached from the river by narrow trails across the tangled forests of the river bottom. It was out of the question to transport heavy goods over these trails, nor were the means of communication such that they encouraged frequent trips to town. Consequently, the settlers, during the slow process of hewing their farms out of the forest, lived almost in the same isolation as

the first invaders of the wilderness, and were compelled to rely for many necessaries on their own skill with the axe. From the forests they obtained all the material for the construction of their cabins, from the puncheon floor to the shingles on the roof, and the moss that calked the crevices of the wall. All this, together with the rude furniture, they cut themselves from the trees on their homesteads. The forests also supplied them with meat to vary the monotony of salt pork, itself made from hogs that found every bit of nutriment in the spontaneous products of the forest. When the first highways, or "plank roads," were laid out, they were hailed with delight. Yet what poor substitutes for real roads these were; rough, sometimes studded with sharp rocks, as they ascended a steep hillside, or, again, composed of equally rough logs laid crosswise, called corduroy, where a wet place had to be passed. Yet these were superior accommodations of travel, and most of the journeying through the woods had to be done by boat or on Indian trails.

A correct conception of what is meant by a trail in the forest has largely been lost by the descendants of those who a hundred years ago toiled along them into the western country. The fact that trails are laid down on some maps issued in pioneer days is apt to give the inexperienced an idea that they were some sort of rude attempts at roads, made artificially by the Indians. They were far from that. In places more than ordinarily frequented a faint trace of foot-path worn into the ground might be

discoverable, but generally the trail was nothing but a succession of landmarks. A spring, a natural meadow, a striking rock, a peculiarly shaped tree, these were the things which from time to time proved to the wanderer that he had not "lost the trail." Often it took all the skill and experience of the woodsman to find these marks, which sometimes were nothing but the faintest evidences showing that people had passed here before-evidences which by the novice in woodcraft could not be discerned at all. Far as these trails were even from the simplest idea of a road, they were by no means useless; for they generally led through the portions of the wilderness most easily traversed, avoiding as far as possible the impenetrable swamps and windfalls, and crossing the rivers at the best fordable. places. Of more importance was the trail by proving to the traveller from time to time that he was not lost, but walking in the right direction. To those unacquainted with travel in the forest it is sometimes hard to understand the fear the natives have of getting lost in the woods, but a little experience soon convinces them and often throws them into the opposite extreme of an unreasonable horror of leaving the beaten path. It is frequently said that it would be an easy matter to get lost in a fortyacre piece of forest, and there is some truth in the statement. On account of the many fallen trunks one has to climb over or go around, and in places the dense underbrush, it is very difficult to keep one's direction. An experienced woodsman, of