Preface 13 



manifold shortcomings, nor yet am I ignorant of 

 their many strong and good qualities. For a num- 

 ber of years I spent most of my time on the fron- 

 tier, and lived and worked like any other frontiers- 

 man. The wild country in which we dwelt and 

 across which we wandered was in the far West ; and 

 there were of course many features in which the 

 life of a cattleman on the Great Plains and among 

 the Rockies differed from that led by a backwoods- 

 man in the Alleghany forests a century before. 

 Yet the points of resemblance were far more nu- 

 merous and striking. We guarded our herds of 

 branded cattle and shaggy horses, hunted bear, 

 bison, elk, and deer, established civil government, 

 and put down evil-doers, white and red, on the 

 banks of the Little Missouri and among the wooded, 

 precipitous foothills of the Bighorn, exactly as did 

 the pioneers who a hundred years previously built 

 their log-cabins beside the Kentucky or in the val- 

 leys of the Great Smokies. The men who have 

 shared in the fast vanishing frontier life of the pres- 

 ent feel a peculiar sympathy with the already long- 

 vanished frontier life of the past. 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



SAGAMORE HILL, May, 1889 



