Backcountry

“ We endeavored to calm the old campaigner of the prairies, by suggesting that his horse might have strayed into the neighboring woods; but he had the frontier propensity to charge everything to the Indians, and nothing could dissuade him from carrying fire and sword into the swamp.
After riding a few miles farther we lost the trail of the main body of rangers, and became perplexed by a variety of tracks made by the Indians and settlers. At length coming to a log house, inhabited by a white man, the very last on the frontier we found that we, had wandered from our true course. ”

“ Now we were indeed in the wilderness, fronting the vast unknown country of the West, with every league of travel leaving behind all trace of civilization. There was nothing before us save a few scattered missions, presided over by ragged priests, and an occasional fur trader’s station, the headquarters of wandering couriers du bois. On every side were the vast prairies, and stormy lakes, roamed over by savage men and beasts through whom we must make our way in hardship, danger, and toil. ”

“ There were men from the mines in their flannel shirts and corduroys, their Stetsons and high boots. There were men from the trail in sweaters and mackinaws, German socks and caps with ear-flaps. But all were bronzed and bearded, fleshless and clean-limbed. I marvelled at the seriousness of their faces, till I remembered that here was no problem of a languorous sunland, but one of grim emergency. It was a man's game up here in the North, a man's game in a man's land, where the sunlight of the long, long day is ever haunted by the shadow of the long, long night. ”

“ The men who went out to the North-west as voyageurs and servants in the employment of the rival companies from Canada and from Scotland hardly ever returned to their native lands. The wild roving life in the great prairie or the trackless pine forest, the vast solitudes of inland lakes and rivers, the chase, and the camp-fire had too much of excitement in them to allow the voyageur to return again to the narrow limits of civilization. ”

“ The widely-famed Far West is not to be compared with even the tamest portions of Scotland or Wales. You stand upon the prairie, and see the unbroken horizon all round you. You are on a great plain, which is like a sea without water. I am exceedingly fond of wild and lonely scenery, and believe that I have the faculty of being as much impressed by it as any man living. But the prairie fell, by far, short of my preconceived idea. I felt no such emotions as I do in crossing Salisbury Plain. ”

“ Once a week, or possibly oftener, a cattleman or prospector rides across, or a little band of tourists plod up or down,—thinking they are penetrating to the heart of the Rockies,—but for the most part the trail is passing swiftly to the unremembered twilight of the tragic past. ”

“ One would scarce have known within its walls that one had come out to North America, nor that savage wilderness surrounded one on every hand. Indeed I was surprised to learn that we were quite at the edge of the rough Western frontier, for in but one night's journey we were to reach the American mountains to visit some people who inhabited a camp in their dense wilds.
A bit of romantic thrill I felt in this adventure, for we should encounter, I inferred, people of the hardy pioneer stock that has pushed the American civilization, such as it is, ever westward. ”

“ An excursion into the west made me fall in love with the forest, the mountains, solitude and independence. I've always taken enough furs for a good living, and I'm absolutely my own master. Moreover, I'm an explorer and it gives me a keen pleasure to find a new river or a new mountain. And this northwest is filled with wonders. After we find the gold and my beaver colony, I'm going to write a book of a thousand pages about the wonders I've seen. ”

“ Behind were the long stretches of the great plains, and still beyond the civilization of the continent, the hope of the Christian world; while before was the wilderness in all its wildness, reaching to the Pacific.
The Rockies towered about them, glittering in the sunshine! The craggy peaks of the Wind River mountains loomed up in the north, with the Coast Range visible, like floating clouds in the far west. The luxurious grass, the towering pines, and flowers that perfumed the air, made the spot beautiful, while the history of the event is a fit theme for a grand national epic or painting. ”

“ It's so discouraging to think that there's nothing more for explorers to do in this country. What fun it must have been for La Salle and Pere Marquette and Lewis and Clark to find those big rivers that no white man had ever seen before, and go poking about in the wilderness. ”

“ Of the travellers who marched westward over the arid plains, during the period which intervened between the return of Lewis and Clark and the establishment of the old California trail, and of the earlier northmen who trafficked for the beaver in Canada, a few left records of their journeys; and of these records many are most interesting reading, for they are simple, faithful narratives of the every-day life of travellers through unknown regions. To Americans they are of especial interest, for they tell of a time when one-half of the continent which now teems with population had no inhabitants. ”

“ Encumbered with their arms, accoutrements, baggage, and provisions, at the very outskirts of a wild and untravelled forest, two hundred miles of the rockiest and sternest country imaginable stretching between them and the French settlements on the frontier, with fierce river currents and precipitous torrents offering their obstacles to their daily progress, it would not have been very much to be wondered at, if many of them had given out at the first appearance of such astounding difficulties and dangers. ”

“ Second only to the scenic grandeur and the highly diverting sport of running the rapids of this incomparable stream, was the discovery that the supposedly long-quenched flame of frontier kindliness and hospitality still flickered in the West, that there were still a few folk in existence to whom the wayfarer was neither a bird to be plucked nor a lemon to be squeezed. ”

“ The Emigrant Trail struck the Platte at Grand Island. From the bluffs that walled in the river valley the pioneers could look down on the great waterway, a wide, thin current, hardly more than a glistening veil, stretched over the sandy bottom. ”

“ Every one of us—the least imaginative, even—will associate the strangeness of a foreign scene with something of that adventure of which he has read in his childhood; and we people vacancy, as we go, with images to suit the spot in our own country. The little pathway along the river side suggests the lovers' walk at sunset as surely as the dark grove speaks of a woodman's hut or a gypsy camp. But abroad, the scene evokes different dwellers: the Sierra suggests the brigand; the thick jungle, the jaguar or the rattlesnake; the heavy plash in the muddy river is the sound of the cayman ”

“ Upon starting for the coast our young adventurers found that the natives were conducting them step by step over the very route which they had traversed from the island.
“They’re terrible good trackers,” said Mat, who had been watching them; “I thought I knew something about it, but I’d often have lost the trail here. Why, their eyes are everywhere, staring into the trees, and looking into the tops of them too. Whatever can they be after?” ”

“ And if the Border Country, with its enchanted places and memories, delights a landscape-painter, it is equally attractive to students of architecture, to lovers of folk-lore and literary history, to writers of romance in search of traditions and local colour, and to those of us also who indulge a passion for collecting either as botanists or as geologists. The rivers and streams have a rare fascination, and anglers, having made their choice, can come by all the sport which they desire. ”

“ As illustrations of the picturesque nomadic life of the frontiersman, these works are unique and unrivaled. They represent vividly the wild romance of the prairies, enchanting barbarism of hunter and trapper life, and the glowing scenery with which the West abounds. ”

“ They extend for about a hundred miles only, but no other hundred miles of the great West are so full of interest and romance. The natural features of the country combine the beauties of prairie and of mountain scenery. There are valleys so wide that the farther side melts into the horizon, and uplands so vast as to suggest the unbroken prairie. Nearer the mountains the valleys dip deep and ever deeper till they narrow into canyons through which mountain torrents pour their blue-gray waters from glaciers that lie glistening between the white peaks far away. ”

“ Elias. Having never followed a guide in the mountains, I am not able to judge of their efficiency, but it must be remembered that no one can guide in a region that has never been traversed. The "guide" as understood in Europe is unknown in America. In the exploration of this country by engineers, geologists, etc., the camp hands have followed their leaders and have not shown them the way. In every frontier town there are hunters, trappers, miners, prospectors, cow-boys, voyageurs, etc.—men who have passed their lives on the plains or among "the hills" and are enured to hardship and danger. ”

“ Every boy, perhaps every man, loves to read about the days of Indian fights, the camping along the trails, the crossing of the plains in prairie schooners, and the wild life that belonged to what was once called the Great American Desert—which now contains thousands of farms and hundreds of cities. ”

“ As the canoes were heavily loaded the men who were not needed to paddle them walked along the shore. The country here was very picturesque. At times they climbed hills that gave them wide views of open country never explored by white men; again they waded through fields of wild rye, reminding them of the farm lands of the East; sometimes their path wound through forests of redwood trees, and always they could see the high mountains, still snow-capped. The glistening light on the mountain tops told the explorers why they were called the Shining Mountains. ”

“ A few minutes after the rising of the sun a traveller, mounted on a magnificent horse, wearing the costume of a prairie hunter, and whose general appearance indicated a white man, emerged at a walking pace from a high thicket, and entered upon a vast prairie, at that day almost unknown to the trappers themselves, those hardy explorers of the desert—and which was not far from the Rocky Mountains, in the centre of the Indian country, and nearly two thousand miles from any settlement. ”

“ We were now in the bosom of the Highlands, with full leisure to contemplate the appearance and properties of mountainous regions, such as have been, in many countries, the last shelters of national distress, and are every where the scenes of adventures, stratagems, surprises and escapes.
Mountainous countries are not passed but with difficulty, not merely from the labour of climbing; for to climb is not always necessary: but because that which is not mountain is commonly bog, through which the way must be picked with caution. ”

“ It was a serious enterprise, at the commencement of winter, to undertake the traverse of such a region, and with a party consisting only of twenty- five persons, and they of many nations--American, French, German, Canadian, Indian, and colored--and most of those young, several being under twenty-one years of age. All knew that a strange country was to be explored, and dangers and hardships to be encountered ”

“ It doesn't take you back in imagination to “the airly days,” when folks came over the mountains in covered wagons, and settled in the Western Reserve, leaving behind them all the civilization of their day, and its comforts, parting from relatives and friends, knowing full well that in this life they never more should look upon their faces—leaving everything behind to make a new home in the western wilds. ”

“ Here we were to take leave of the settlements, and to pursue the remainder of our journey through the wilderness; after dining in the cabin of a settler, we crossed Grand river, and betook ourselves to the course we thought proper to pursue, through a tangled and pathless forest. This brought us, after a few hours, to the border of an extensive plain. Our horses, somewhat unaccustomed to travelling in woods, and particularly the pack-horse, being young and untutored, gave us much trouble. ”

“ The inhabitants of the backwoods towns were in general the less bold spirits. Deeper in the forest wilderness were found more daring souls, scattered along the mountain border that divided the colonies from the Indian territory. They lived face to face and in constant touch with the fierce savages, and acted as a buffer to their countrymen behind them. ”

“ And now it only remained for us to make our farewell to these desolate and confiding people. I gathered them round me on the ice-beach, and talked to them as brothers for whose kindness I had still a return to make. I told them what I knew of the tribes from which they were separated by the glacier and the sea, of the resources that « 209 » abounded in those less ungenial regions not very far off to the south, the greater duration of daylight, the less intensity of the cold, the facilities of the hunt, the frequent drift-wood, the kayack, and the fishing-net. ”