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In this quarter, gentlemen of the Tory interest were already in motion, mustering men and horses, while the Whigs assembled themselves in the principal towns, armed the inhabitants, and prepared for civil war. We narrowly escaped being stopped on more occasions than one, and were often compelled to take circuitous routes to avoid the points where forces were assembling.

Recent studies, and especially those of David Quinn, a British scholar, argue strongly that the earlier ventures of Gilbert and Raleigh had been inspired very largely by the desire to establish some base on the North American coast that would be useful in attacks upon Spanish possessions and the trade routes which joined them to Spain.

In the evenings, round the tables or on the sofas of the salons, they would sometimes sit poring over the pages of their guide-books, considering distances and the best routes, and the cost of travelling and board. Any man who would have travelled without a guide-book, or who, having one, neglected to use it, would have been considered weak-minded at the least.

Many streams that intersect the different routes across our continent are broad and shallow, and flow over beds of quicksand, which, in seasons of high water, become boggy and unstable, and are then exceedingly difficult of crossing.

Naturally the slaves who dared the perils of escape were either the most energetic or the most wronged, and sympathy for them at the North was active and resourceful. Along their most frequented routes of flight were systematic provisions of shelter and help, known as "the underground railroad."

They rejoined their comrades, and all were soon again in the saddle horses and men alike refreshed by the halt; with great knowledge of the country their guide led them by unfrequented routes towards the fenny country; in the distance they beheld the newly rising castles, and heard from time to time an occasional trumpet; more frequently they passed ruined villages, burnt houses and farms, and saw on every side the evidence of the ferocity of their conquerors.

A strong man cannot be made to quit his work by sticking pins in him, or by bruising his shins or blacking his eyes; he must be hit in a vital part, or have a bone broken, to be laid up. The weaknesses of commerce the fatally vulnerable parts of its system are the commercial routes over which ships pass. They are the bones, the skeleton, the framework of the organism.

Such study of the commercial routes and of their relations to the Hawaiian Islands, taken together with the other strategic considerations previously set forth, completes the synopsis of facts which determine the value of the group for conferring either commercial or naval control.

As the steam man would in all probability attract an attention that might prove exceedingly perilous to the gold in their possession, the trapper concluded it prudent to avoid the regular emigrant routes. Accordingly they turned well to the northward, it being their purpose to strike the Missouri, where they would be pretty sure of intercepting some steamer.

The southernmost of these three routes was distinguished by being a sea-route in all except its very latest stages.