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Moreover, the tendency towards specialization first began to undermine the very corner-stone of the pioneer's democratic edifice. If private interest and public weal were to be as harmonious as the pioneer assumed, every economic producer must be a practical politician, and there must be no deep-lying division between these primary activities.
What but lifetime schooling in disappointment; what but the pioneer's self-reliance and freedom from prejudice; what but the patient faith, the clear perceptions of natural right, the unwarped sympathy and unbounding charity of this man with spirit so humble and soul so great, could have carried him through the labors he wrought to the victory he attained?
The muzzle-loading rifle and it was the pioneer's gun with its long barrel and its fine sights, gave confidence to the American soldier who carried it, for he trusted the weapon in his hands. Progressive inventions finally displaced this rifle in military use, but for the accuracy of the shot it has never been surpassed, and it is to-day a loved relic and a valued hunting-piece.
The explorers could not discover one suspicious trace. It was evident that the woodman's axe had never touched these trees, that the pioneer's knife had never severed the creepers hanging from one trunk to another in the midst of tangled brushwood and long grass.
The pioneer, then, has not derived it from his eastern fathers: it is the growth of the woods and prairies an embellishment to a character which might otherwise appear naked and severe. Another characteristic, traceable to the same source, the stern reality of his life, is the pioneer's gravity. The agricultural population of this country are, at the best, not a cheerful race.
Wattles interlaced on stakes make first-rate protection, but they can only be used with economy when the supply of them is close handy. The fence most commonly seen on new farms, and that may fairly be termed the pioneer's mainstay, is a simple one of stakes. This is the kind we went in for, as we had the material for it in any quantity upon our own land.
Through stone archways breaths of dead, vault-chilled air coughed upon him; his feet struck jingling iron rings in staples stone-buried for half a cycle. Along these paltry avenues had swaggered the arrogant Don, had caracoled and serenaded and blustered while the tomahawk and the pioneer's rifle were already uplifted to expel him from a continent.
Year by year the sunlight was let into the dense forests, and fertile meadows soon stretched far and wide in the once untrodden wilderness. Despite all the difficulties of a pioneer's life, industry reaped its adequate rewards in the fruitful lands of the west, bread was easily raised in abundance, and animals of all kinds thrived.
Setchem looked after him for a long time; she had refused to bid him farewell, and now she implored the Gods to turn his heart, and to preserve him from malice and crime. Three days had passed since the pioneer's departure, and although it was still early, busy occupation was astir in Bent-Anat's work-rooms.
It is not a borough of yesterday, where the hum of commerce and the echo of the pioneer's axe mingle together, as in many of our great western cities of the Arabian Nights: Winchester has recollections about it, and holds to the past to its Indian combats, and strange experiences of clashing arms, and border revelries, and various scenes of wild frontier life, which live for us now only in the chronicles; to its memories of Colonel Washington, the noble young soldier, who afterwards became, as we all have heard, so distinguished upon a larger field; to Thomas Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron, who came there often when the deer and the wolves of his vast possessions would permit him and to Daniel Morgan, who emptied many fair cups on Loudoun-street, and one day passed, with trumpets sounding, going to Québec; again on his way to debate questions of importance with Tarleton, at the Cowpens lastly, to crush the Tory rising on Lost River, about the time when "it pleased heaven so to order things, that the large army of Cornwallis should be entrapped and captured at Yorktown, in Virginia," as the chronicles inform us.
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