INTRODUCTION 



WHAT young man of our race would not gladly give 

 a year of his life to roll backward the scroll of time for 

 five decades and live that year in the romantic by- 

 gone days of the Wild West; to see the great Missouri 

 while the Buffalo pastured on its banks, while big game 

 teemed in sight and the red man roamed and hunted, 

 unchecked by fence or hint of white man's rule; or, 

 when that rule was represented only by scattered trad- 

 ing-posts, hundreds of miles apart, and at best the 

 traders could exchange the news by horse or canoe 

 and months of lonely travel? 



I, for one, would have rejoiced in tenfold payment 

 for the privilege of this backward look in our age, and 

 had reached middle life before I realised that, at a 

 much less heavy cost, the miracle was possible to-day. 



For the uncivilised Indian still roams the far reaches 

 of absolutely unchanged, unbroken forest and prairie 

 leagues, and has knowledge of white men only in bar- 

 tering furs at the scattered trading-posts, where loco- 

 motive and telegraph are unknown; still the wild 

 Buffalo elude the hunters, fight the Wolves, wallow, 

 wander, and breed; and still there is hoofed game by 

 the million to be found where the Saxon is as seldom 

 seen as on the Missouri in the times of Lewis and 

 Clarke. Only we must seek it all, not in the West, 



XV 



