222 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
fleeing from persecution, continually met us ; 
and we sometimes saw parties of wandering 
Sioux, or passed their great irregular huts and 
houses of worship. I remember one desolate 
prairie summit on which an Indian boy sat mo- 
tionless on horseback ; his bare red legs clung 
closely to the white sides of his horse ; a gor- 
geous sunset was unrolled behind him, and he 
might have seemed the last of his race, just 
departing for the hunting-grounds of the blest. 
More often the horizon showed no human out- 
line, and the sun set cloudless, and elongated 
into pear-shaped outlines, as behind ocean 
waves. But I remember best the excitement 
that filled our breasts when we approached 
spots where the contest for a free soil had 
already been sealed with blood. In those days, 
as one went to Pennsylvania to study coal for- 
mations, or to Lake Superior for copper, so one 
went to Kansas for men. “Every footpath on 
this planet,” said a rare thinker, “may lead to 
the door of a hero,” and that trail into Kansas 
ended rightly at the tent door of John Brown. 
And later, who that knew them can forget 
the picket-paths that were worn throughout the 
Sea Islands of South Carolina, — paths that 
wound along the shores of creeks or through 
the depths of woods, where the great wild roses 
tossed their airy festoons above your head, and 
