378 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



bouring cotton-tree. Fortunately, out of the two 

 thousand acres, there really were fifty in a state of 

 cultivation, and that helped us. I planted and kept 

 house as well as I could : in the daytime I ploughed 

 and sowed ; and in the evening I mended the harness 

 and the holes in my inexpressibles. With society 

 I was little troubled, seeing that my nearest neigh- 

 bour lived five - and - twenty miles off. The first 

 summer passed in this manner; the second was a 

 little better ; and the third better still until at 

 last the way of life became endurable. There is 

 nothing in the world impracticable; and Napoleon 

 never spoke a truer word than when he said, " Im- 

 possible ! O'est le mot d'un fou ! " 



And then a hunting-party in the savannahs of 

 Louisiana or Arkansas ! 



There is a something in those endless and gigantic 

 wildernesses which seems to elevate the soul, and 

 to give to it, as well as to the body, an increase 

 of strength and energy. There reign, in countless 

 multitudes, the wild horse and the bison ; the wolf, 

 the bear, and the snake ; and, above all, the trapper, 

 surpassing the very beasts of the desert in Avildness 

 not the old trapper described by Cooper, who 

 never saw a trapper in his life, but the real trapper, 

 whose adventures and mode of existence would fur- 

 nish the richest materials for scores of romances. 



Our American civilisation has engendered certain 

 corrupt offshoots, of which the civilisation of other 



