48 North American Forests and Forestry 



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 coun- 

 try, but these were like the dying reverberations of 

 thunder when the clouds are sinking below the hori- 

 zon. 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 im- 

 pressed 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 settle- 

 ment 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 bot- 

 tom. It was out of the question to transport 

 heavy goods over these trails, nor were the means 

 of communication such that they encouraged fre- 

 quent 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 



