clutching after gold, and see the steps by which many a respected man has climbed to fortune, wet with the tears of ruined men and women; could he appreciate the meanness of those who consider no sacrifice of self-respect too great provided it helps them to the end and object of their lives, and pushes them a little higher, as they are pleased to call it, in society; could he but glance at the millions of existences spent in almost chronic wretchedness, lives that it makes one shudder to think of, years spent in close alleys and back slums, up dismal, rotting courts, — without sun, ray, air, grass, flower, of beautiful Nature, — with surroundings sordid, dismal, debasing; if he could note how we have blackened and disfigured the face of Nature, and how we have polluted our streams and fountains so that we drink sewage instead of water; could he but see that our rivers are turned to drains and flow reeking with filth, and how our manufactures have so impregnated the air we breathe that grass will not grow exposed to the unhealthy atmosphere, — could he but take all this in and be told that such is the outcome of our civilization, he would strike his open palm upon his naked chest and thank God that he was a savage, uneducated and untutored, but with air to breathe and water to drink; ignorant, but independent; a wild but a free man”[1]
Another sympathizer with the Indian mode of life
expresses himself thus: —
“I saw so much harmless fun and amusement among these Indians
[a fishing party], and they evidently find so much enjoyment
in hunting and fishing, that I could only wish they might never
see much of the white man, and never learn the baneful habits and
customs he is sure to
introduce.”[2]
A scientific English gentleman who had passed a year of
wild life near the Rocky Mountains thus describes his
disinclination to return to civilized restraints. Reaching St.
Louis, he says: —
“I that night, for the first time for nearly ten months, slept
upon a bed, much to the astonishment of my limbs and body,