

A WOODMAN'S NOTION OF AMERICA. 129 



I've been told to one quarter of the earth, and may be 

 more, should have lain here all alone for so many hun- 

 dreds and thousands of years, and the people of the 

 great world know nothing about it. I say the people 

 of the great world, for I don't reckon the Ingens as 

 people. There were many, very many tribes scattered 

 all over, having their own hunting grounds, and livin' 

 in the woods ; but they were wild like other animals, 

 and savage as any other beasts of prey. They 

 couldn't be called people, because, tho' may be they 

 were human, yet they were wild men and women of 

 the woods, having no knowledge of human ways, and 

 no notion of improvin.' They hunted as the painter 

 and the wolf hunts, only to supply nater, and while 

 they lived together in tribes, in that they did no 

 more than the wolves do, they lived in huts, and so 

 did the beaver. I've often thought I'd like to have 

 seen this great country, when it was all wild and 

 nateral like ; when from the shores of the old Bay 

 State to the Mississippi, and from the cold north, 

 away down to the Gulf of Mexico, the old forest 

 stretched away, and in all this, not one civilized man 

 could be found, before any axe had broken the still- 

 ness of the woods, when no city or town, church or 



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