turous, alluring. To only one of these allied subjects will I refer before I conclude, and that is the influence of Frontier expansion upon national character, as illustrated in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race.
We may observe two very distinct types of this influence on the eastern and western sides of the Atlantic. A modern school of historians in America has devoted itself with patriotic ardour to tracing the evolution of the national character as determined by its western march across the continent. In no land and upon no people are the evidences more plainly stamped. Not till the mountains were left behind and the American pioneers began to push across the trackless plains, did America cease to be English and become American. In the forests and on the trails of the Frontier, amid the savagery of conflict, the labour of reclamation, and the ardours of the chase, the American nation was born. There that wonderful and virile democracy, imbued with the courage and tenacity of its forefathers, but fired with an eager and passionate exaltation, sprang into being. The panorama of characters and incidents, already becoming ancient history, passes in vivid procession before our eyes. First comes the trapper and the fur trader tracking his way into the Indian hunting-grounds and the virgin sanctuaries of animal life. Then the backwoodsman clears away the forests and plants his log hut in the clearings. There follow him in swift succession the rancher with his live-stock, the miner with his pick, the farmer with plough and seeds, and finally the urban dweller, the manufacturer, and the artisan. On the top of the advancing wave floats a scum of rascality that is ultimately deposited in the mining camps of California
