BATTLING THE WILDERNESS 
Being, in Epitome, a Refutation of the Muck-Rakers’ 
Latest Lament* 
BY ERNEST RUSSELL 
HE development of new 
territory follows ever 
along certain evolu- 
tionary lines which in 
essentials vary little. 
First upon the scene is 
the explorer, restless, 
resolute, summoned by 
the charm of an un- 
charted caunity, stirred by the spirit of 
discovery and adventure. In the footsteps 
of the pathfinder follows the trapper, 
equally at home in the vast solitudes but 
led thither by the instinct of trade and the 
promise of riches. Last to appear is the 
settler, the home builder, seeking only 
liberty and a living, a betterment of his lot, 
in a new environment. 
Of these three types of sturdy manhood, 
it is the settler who makes the strongest, the 
most direct appeal to our fancy. He has 
neither the egoism nor the caprice of the 
explorer, he is not gripped by the spirit of 
selfish gain that marks the trapper; he holds 
to simple ideals of home and personal 
independence, labors heroically for them 
both and cherishes always an exquisite 
patriotism. 
Such in brief was the pioneer type that 
made possible the civilization we of the 
thickly peopled sections enjoy to-day. Such 
was the manner of man who gave us a 
history and a tradition that is of the deepest 
significance in the formation of a national 
character and national ideals. 
In possession of such a heritage it is not 
strange that the chronicle of ‘‘the good old 
times” has perennial fascination for us all. 
We love to get back into the spirit that ani- 
mated the pioneer, to live with him his life, 
*Conditions in America have suddenly changed. The 
continent has been subdued and a prone? There are no longer 
vast “‘unman-stifled places,” offering homesteads to Young 
America. 2 he world’s business i is done in our great 
cities, and there lie the young man’s hopes of success.— 
Froy AN ARTICLE IN THE PUBLIC PRINTS. 

primitive, adventurous and independent, 
to meet in picture or in story the unspoiled 
types of character who, toiling and glorying 
in their toil, wrought the beginnings of a 
nation. We may see the hardship of it all, 
in sympathy share the privations and dis- 
appointments, feel the thrill of the conflict 
and glory in the hard-won victory—but it 
must be through the haze and dim_per- 
spective of more than two hundred years. 
It is not necessary, however, to put our 
imaginations to the test of this distant 
retrospect'to- witness every essential feature 
of the struggle of our forbears reenacted 
under the same insistent call of a nation’ s 
destiny. 
“Across the line,” in Canada, this 
stirring spectacle of man in conflict with the 
wilderness is to-day unfolding itself in all 
the quick transitions of a veritable motion- 
picture film. The setting of this drama of 
the wilds is not among those level prairies of 
the Northwest which beckon so alluringly 
to the wheat raiser and the stockman, but 
in the elevated table-land of “New 
Ontario,” north of lakes Huron and 
Superior, west of the upper Ottawa River 
and south of Hudson Bay. Here in this 
vast province of Ontario, itself comprising 
an area larger than either France or 
Germany, a great tide of immigration is 
sweeping in upon the wilderness, dotting 
with the rough dwellings of the home- 
steader half a dozen widely separated 
districts and pressing ever onward to 
remoter regions, powerful, insistent, 
victorious. 
The very names of these settlements carry 
with them the tang and flavor of the wild— 
Rainy River Valley, Wabigoon, Thunder 
Bay, Temiskaming. How close to the 
aboriginal, how adequate to our conception 
of ‘“‘new land” they sound! 
In the autumn of 1904 the writer decided 
