“I’ll help you, if I know how, Armstrong.  I ha’n’t seen no two in my life, Old Country or New Country, Saints or Gentiles, as I’d do more for ’n you and your brother.  I’ve olluz said, ef the world was chock full of Armstrongs, Paradise wouldn’t pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mout just as well blow out their candle and go under a bushel-basket,—­unless a half-bushel would kiver ’em.”

But the true hero of the book is the horse Don Fulano.  It is easy to see that Winthrop was a first-rate horseman, from the loving manner in which he describes and dwells on the perfections of the matchless stallion.  None but one who knew every point of a horse, none but one of the Centaur breed, could have drawn Don Fulano,—­just as none but a born skater could have written those inimitable skating-scenes in his story of “Love and Skates.”

“He was an American horse,—­so they distinguish in California one brought from the old States,—­A SUPERB YOUNG STALLION, PERFECTLY BLACK, WITHOUT MARK.  It was magnificent to see him, as he circled about me, fire in his eye, pride in his nostril, tail flying like a banner, power and grace from tip to tip.  No one would ever mount him, or ride him, unless it was his royal pleasure.  He was conscious of his representative position, and showed his paces handsomely.”

This is the creature who takes the lead in that stirring and matchless “Gallop of Three” to the Luggernel Spring, to quote from which would be to spoil it.  It must be read entire.

In the “Canoe and Saddle” is recorded Winthrop’s long ride across the continent.  Setting out in a canoe, from Port Townsend, in Vancouver’s Island, he journeyed, without company of other white men, to the Salt Lake City and thence to “the States,”—­a tedious and barbarous experience, heightened, in this account of it, by the traveller’s cheery spirits, his ardent love of Nature, and capacity to describe the grand natural scenery, of the effect of which upon himself he says, at the end,—­

“And in all that period, while I was so near to Nature, the great lessons of the wilderness deepened into my heart day by day, the hedges of conventionalism withered away from my horizon, and all the pedantries of scholastic thought perished out of my mind forever.”

He bore hardships with the courage and imperturbable good-nature of a born gentleman.  It is when men are starving, when the plating of romance is worn off by the chafe of severe and continued suffering,—­it is then that “blood tells.”  Winthrop had evidently that keen relish for rough life which the gently nurtured and highly cultivated man has oftener than his rude neighbor, partly because, in his case, contrast lends a zest to the experience.  Thus, when he camps with a gang of “road-makers,” in the farthest Western wilderness,—­a part of Captain McClellan’s Pacific Railroad Expedition,—­how thoroughly he enjoys the rough hospitality and rude wit of these pioneers!