THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 435 



sum of hai)i)incss belougiug to civilized society, Las long been a subject of mucli 

 doubt, and one •which I cannot undertake to decide at this time. I would say thus 

 much, however, that if the thirst for knowledge has entailed everlasting miseries on 

 mankind from the beginning of the world, if refined and intellectual pains increase 

 in j)roportion to our intellectual pleasures, I do not see that we gain much advantage 

 over them on that score, and judging from the full-toned enjoyment which beams 

 from their happy faces, I should give it as my opinion that their lives were much 

 more happy than ours — that is, if the word happiness is properly applied to the enjoy- 

 ments of those who have not experienced the light of the Christian religion. I have 

 long looked with the eye of a critic into the jovial faces of these sons of the forest, 

 unfurrowed with cares, Avhere the agonizing feeling of poverty had never stamped 

 distress upon the brow. I have watched the bold, intrepid step, the proud, yet dig- 

 nified, deportment of nature's man, in fearless freedom, with a soul unalloyed by mer- 

 cenary lusts, too great to yield to laws or power except from God. As these inde- 

 pendent fellows are all joint-tenants of the soil, they are all rich, and none of the 

 isteepiugs of comparative poverty can strangle their just claims to renown. Who, I 

 would ask, can look, without admiring, into a society where peace and harmony pre- 

 vail, where virtue is cherished, where rights are protected, and wrongs are redressed, 

 with no laws but the laws of honor, which are the supreme laws of their land. Trust 

 the boasted virtues of civilized society for awhile, with all its intellectual refine- 

 ments, to such a tribunal, and then write down the degradation of the ' ' lawless sav- 

 age " and our transcendent virtues. 



As these people have no laws, the sovereign right of summary redress lies in the 

 breast of the party (or friends of the party) aggrieved ; and infinitely more dreaded is 

 the certainty of cruel revenge from the licensed hands of an offended savage than the 

 slow and uncertain vengeance of the law. 



If you think me enthusiast, be it so, for I deny it not. It has ever been the j)redomi- 

 naut passion of my soul to seek nature's wildest haunts, and give my hand to nature's 

 men. Legends of these and visits to those filled the earliest page of my juvenile im- 

 pressions. 



The tablet has stood, and I am an enthusiast for God's works as He left them. 



The sad tale of my native valley* has been beautifully sung, and from the flight 

 of Gertrude's soul my young imagination closely traced the savage to his deep retreats, 

 and gazed upon him in dreadful horror, until pity pleaded and admiration worked a 

 charm. 



A journey of 4,000 miles from the Atlantic shore, regularly receding from the center 

 of civilized society to the extreme wilderness of nature's original work and back again, 

 opens a book for many an interesting tale to be sketched, and the mind which lives but 

 to relish the works of nature reaps a reward on such a tour of a much higher order than 

 can arise from the selfish expectations of pecuniary emolument. Notwithstanding all 

 that has been written and said, there is scarcely any subject on which the knowing peo- 

 ple of the East are yet less informed and instructed than on the character and amuse- 

 ments of the West. By this I mean the " Far West," the country whose fascinations 

 spread a charm over the mind almost dangerous to civilized pursuits. Few i)eople 

 even know the true definition of the term West; and where is its location ? Phantom- 

 like it flies before us as we travel, and on our way is continually gilded before us as we 

 approach the setting sun. 



In the commencement of my tour, several of my traveling companions from the city 

 of Now York found themselves at a frightful distance to the West when wo arrived at 

 Niagara Falls, and hastened back to amuse their friends with tales and scenes of the 

 West. At Bufl'alo a steamboat was landing with four hundred passengers, and twelve 

 days out. "Where from?" "From the West." In the rich State of Ohio hundreds 

 were selling their farms and going to the West. In the beautiful city of Cincinnati 

 people said to mo : " Our town has passed the days of its most rapid growth, it is not 



* Wyoming. 



