PIONEERS OF CIVILIZATION. 13 



bulky volumes, it is one which nevertheless yet waits 

 to have full justice done to it, until some great writer 

 shall arise who, inspired by the majesty of the subject, 

 shall be found capable of drawing with a master hand 

 the picturesque details of this strange romantic history 

 in all its dramatic completeness. 



Few of us indeed at the present day at all realize 

 how great an achievement the colonization of America 

 was. Like that of all new countries, however, its 

 early annals consist, almost entirely, of the history of 

 the Traveller, the Explorer, and the Hunter; and if 

 we study the circumstances attending the march of 

 human progress, we shall find these sturdy adventurers 

 have formed the vanguard of all great forward move- 

 ments of the sort. 



In these days a policy of foreign conquest is regarded 

 as an unwarrantable outrage upon human liberty. 

 That is as may be: but here it may be well to call 

 attention to a remarkable feature characteristic of lands 

 inhabited by savage races. Though everything points 

 to the conclusion that these countries have been peopled 

 by human beings from periods of enormous antiquity, 

 no advance, as a rule, has ever been made in civiliz- 

 ation until after the advent of the invader. The 

 aboriginal tribes remained exactly what they had been 

 for thousands of years during the past, and what, if 

 left to themselves, they would in all probability have 

 continued for thousands of years to come: thereby 

 affording one more illustration of this strange yet 

 undeniable fact, that in almost every part of the world 

 the primeval races of the human family have proved 

 to be deficient in some essential qualification which is 

 necessary to enable them to raise themselves in the 



