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Show 238 Early Western Travels [ VoL rf XX " There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes-" CkUde Harold. " The sun in all his broad career Ne'er looked upon a fairer land, Or brighter skies or sweeter scenes." EVER since the days of that king of vagabonds, the mighty Nimrod of sacred story, and, for aught to the contrary, as long before, there has existed a certain roving, tameless race of wights, whose chief delight has consisted in wandering up and down upon the face of the earth, with no definite object of pursuit, and with no motive of peregrination save a kind of restless, unsatisfied craving after change; in its results much like the migratory instinct of passage-birds, but, unlike that periodical instinct, incessant in exercise. Now, whether it so be that a tincture of this same vagrant, Bohemian spirit is coursing my veins under the name of " Yankee enterprise,' 1 or whether, in my wanderings through these wild, unsettled regions, I have imbibed a portion thereof, is not for me to decide. Nevertheless, sure it is, not unfrequently are its promptings detected as I journey through this beautiful land. It is evening now, and, after the fatigues of a pleasant day's ride, I am seated beneath the piazza [ 222] of a neat farmhouse in the edge of a forest, through which, for the last hour, my path has conducted, and looking out upon a broad landscape of prairie. My landlord, a high- minded, haughty Virginia emigrant, bitterly complains because, forsooth, in the absence of slave- labour, he is forced to cultivate his own farm; and though, by the aid of a Dutchman, he has made a pretty place of it, yet he vows by all he loves |