... I am
persuaded that excuse may be found in the simple fact that all
these peoples of my description--men, conditions of life, races
of
aboriginal inhabitants and adventurous hunters and pioneers--are
passing away. A few years more and the prairie will be
transformed into farms. The mountain ravines will be the abodes
of busy manufacturers, and the gigantic power of American
civilization will have taken possession of the land from the
great river of the West to the very shores of the Pacific....
The world is fast filling up. I trust I am not in error when I
venture to place some value, however small, on everything which
goes to form the truthful history of a condition of men incident
to the advances of civilization over the continent--a condition
which forms peculiar types of character, breeds remarkable
developments of human nature--a condition also which can hardly
again exist on this or any other continent, and which has,
therefore, a special value in the sum of human history."
Such words as the foregoing bespeak a large and dignified point
of view. No one who follows Marcy's pages can close them with
anything but respect and admiration.
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