238 A Century of Science 



sers or muffled in a tawdry shirt, is an Indian 

 still, but an Indian shorn of the picturesqueness 

 which was his most conspicuous merit. The moun- 

 tain trapper is no more, and the grim romance of 

 his wild, hard life is a memory of the past." 



This first of Parkman's books, "The Oregon 

 Trail," was published in 1847, as a series of arti- 

 cles in the " Knickerbocker Magazine." Its pages 

 reveal such supreme courage, such physical hardi- 

 ness, such rapturous enjoyment of life, that one 

 finds it hard to realize that even in setting out 

 upon this bold expedition the writer was something 

 of an invalid. A weakness of sight whether 

 caused by some direct injury, or a result of wide- 

 spread nervous disturbance, is not quite clear 

 had already become serious and somewhat alarm- 

 ing. On arriving at the Indian camp, near the 

 Medicine Bow range of the Rocky Mountains, he 

 was suffering from a complication of disorders. 

 " I was so reduced by illness," he says, " that I 

 could seldom walk without reeling like a drunken 

 man ; and when I rose from my seat upon the 

 ground the landscape suddenly grew dim before 

 my eyes, the trees and lodges seemed to sway to 

 and fro, and the prairie to rise and fall like the 

 swells of the ocean. Such a state of things is not 

 enviable anywhere. In a country where a man's 



