Francis ParJcman 207 



refuse and decay of the wilderness." Looking at 

 the context, I find that this sentence comes in a 

 remarkable passage suggested by Colonel Henry 

 Bouquet's western expedition of 1764, when he 

 compelled the Indians to set free so many French 

 and English prisoners. Some of these captives 

 were unwilling to leave the society of the red men ; 

 some positively refused to accept the boon of what 

 was called freedom. In this strange conduct, ex- 

 claims Parkman, there was no unaccountable per- 

 versity ; and he breaks out with two pages of noble 

 dithyrambics in praise of savage life. " To him 

 who has once tasted the reckless independence, the 

 haughty self-reliance, the sense of irresponsible 

 freedom, which the forest life engenders, civiliza- 

 tion thenceforth seems flat and stale. . . . The 

 entrapped wanderer grows fierce and restless, and 

 pants for breathing room. His path, it is true, 

 was choked with difficulties, but his body and soul 

 were hardened to meet them ; it was beset with 

 dangers, but these were the very spice of his life, 

 gladdening his heart with exulting self-confidence, 

 and sending the blood through his veins with 

 a livelier current. The wilderness, rough, harsh, 

 and inexorable, has charms more potent in their 

 seductive influence than all the lures of luxury 

 and sloth. And often he on whom it has cast its 



