'With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
“One must needs be a dweller among the adventurers in America in order to understand in its fulness how terrible a monster those backwoods are thought to be. There it stretched, that awful mass--that monstrous mother of that venomous brood--the huge snakes that lurk in the undergrowth, the fierce lynx, the terrible panther, the wolf and the wildcat. I have heard, too, of a certain dragon and the vampire--a huge bat that fans a poor wretch asleep by the gentle winnowing of its leather wings only to drain his life's blood. These are but a few of the brood of the backwoods. Who can name them all? The poisonous plants that shoot out seeds with the noise of the discharge of a musket, the swamps made up of the decay of a thousand years--breathing fevers and agues--the spectre of starvation lurks there unless you have weapons and the skill to use them--fire--they told me of the prairie fires--a blast of flame five miles broad--sometimes twenty miles broad--rushing along driving before it beasts and birds until they drop in sheer exhaustion and become cinders in a minute--these are some of the terrors that dwell in the backwoods, but worst of all--most fierce--inexorable, is the Red Indian. Tongue of man cannot tell the story of their treachery--their torturings. Our settlers do not fear to face the beasts of the backwoods--the rattlesnakes--the pestilence of the swamps--the most cruel of these is more merciful than the Indian.”
They listened as children listen to a fairy tale, and they knew that they were hearing the truth. There was not one of them that had not heard something of the story of the founding of the settlement along the coast of the new Continent, from the Bay Colonies and Plymouth Rock in the North to Carolina in the South. The spirit of adventure which had given Drake and Raleigh their crews from the men of the West country gave no signs of dying out among their descendants. They listened and were held in thrall while this man, who had come among them with something of the reputation of a pioneer--a man boldly striking out a new track for himself, told them of the perils faced by their countrymen on the other side of that sea which almost rolled to their very doors. He carried them away with him. They breathed with him the perfume of the backwoods and became imbued with the spirit of mystery pervading them. He carried them away simply because he himself was carried away. He felt all that he spoke about; this was the secret of his power. He could not have made them feel strongly unless by feeling strongly himself.