206 A Century of Science 



the smoke of the battle hovering about him and its 

 fierce light glowing in his eyes. Such realism is 

 usually the prerogative of the novelist rather than 

 of the historian, and in one of his prefaces Park- 

 man recognizes that the reader may feel this and 

 suspect him. " If at times," he says, " it may 

 seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is 

 so in appearance only, since the minutest details 

 of narrative or description rest on authentic docu- 

 ments or on personal observation." 



This kind of personal observation Parkman car- 

 ried so far as to visit all the important localities, 

 indeed well-nigh all the localities, that form the 

 scenery of his story, and study them with the patience 

 of a surveyor and the discerning eye of a landscape 

 painter. His strong love of nature added keen 

 zest to this sort of work. From boyhood he was a 

 trapper and hunter ; in later years he became emi- 

 nent as a horticulturist, originating new varieties 

 of flowers. To sleep under the open sky was his 

 delight. His books fairly reek with the fragrance 

 of pine woods. I open one of them at random, and 

 my eye falls upon such a sentence as this : " There 

 is softness in the mellow air, the warm sunshine, 

 and the budding leaves of spring ; and in the forest 

 flower, which, more delicate than the pampered off- 

 spring of gardens, lifts its tender head through the 



