[Footnote 43:  A prominent clergyman of the Methodist church.  His History of Methodism is a work of great research and value.  A native of Pennsylvania.]

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=_Francis Parkman, 1823-._= (Manual, pp. 496, 505.)

From “The Conspiracy of Pontiac.”

=_145._= HUNTERS AND TRAPPERS.

These rude and hardy men, hunters and traders, scouts and guides, who ranged the woods beyond the English borders, and formed a connecting link between barbarism and civilization, have been touched upon already.  They were a distinct, peculiar class, marked with striking contrasts of good and evil.  Many, though by no means all, were coarse, audacious, and unscrupulous; yet, even in the worst, one might often have found a vigorous growth of warlike virtues, an iron endurance, an undespairing courage, a wondrous sagacity, and singular fertility of resource.  In them was renewed, with all its ancient energy, that wild and daring spirit, that force and hardihood of mind, which marked our barbarous ancestors of Germany and Norway.  These sons of the wilderness still survive.  We may find them to this day, not in the valley of the Ohio, nor on the shores of the lakes, but far westward on the desert range of the buffalo, and among the solitudes of Oregon.  Even now, while I write, some lonely trapper is climbing the perilous defiles of the Rocky Mountains, his strong frame cased in time-worn buck-skin, his rifle griped in his sinewy hand.  Keenly he peers from side to side, lest Blackfoot or Arapahoe should ambuscade his path.  The rough earth is his bed, a morsel of dried meat and a draught of water are his food and drink, and death and danger his companions.  No anchorite could fare worse, no hero could dare more; yet his wild, hard life has resistless charms; and while he can wield a rifle, he will never leave it.  Go with him to the rendezvous, and he is a stoic no more.  Here, rioting among his comrades, his native appetites break loose in mad excess, in deep carouse, and desperate gaming.  Then follow close the quarrel, the challenge, the fight,—­two rusty rifles and fifty yards of prairie.

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From “The Discovery of the Great West.”

=_146._= EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

The river twisted among the lakes and marshes choked with wild rice; and, but for their guides, they could scarcely have followed the perplexed and narrow channel.  It brought them at last to the portage; where, after carrying their canoes a mile and a half over the prairie and through the marsh, they launched them on the Wisconsin, bade farewell to the waters that flowed to the St. Lawrence, and committed themselves to the current that was to bear them they knew not whither,—­perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the South Sea or the Gulf of California.  They glided calmly down the tranquil stream, by islands choked with trees