ing, he will greatly augment the sum of his
comforts, avoid many serious losses, and enjoy a comparative exemption
from doubts and anxieties. He will feel himself a master spirit in the
wilderness he traverses, and not the victim of every _new_ combination
of circumstances which nature affords or fate allots, as if to try his
skill and prowess.

I have waited for several years, with the confident expectation that
some one more competent than myself would assume the task, and give the
public the desired information; but it seems that no one has taken
sufficient interest in the subject to disseminate the benefits of his
experience in this way. Our frontier-men, although brave in council and
action, and possessing an intelligence that quickens in the face of
danger, are apt to feel shy of the pen. They shun the atmosphere of the
student's closet; their sphere is in the free and open wilderness. It
is not to be wondered at, therefore, that to our veteran borderer the
field of literature should remain a "_terra incognita_." It is our
army that unites the chasm between the culture of civilization in the
aspect of science, art, and social refinement, and the powerful
simplicity of nature. On leaving the Military Academy, a majority of
our officers are attached to the line of the army, and forthwith
assigned to duty upon our remote and extended frontier, where the
restless and warlike habits of the nomadic tribes render the soldier's
life almost as unsettled as that of the savages themselves.

A regiment is stationed to-day on the borders of tropical Mexico;
to-morrow, the war-whoop, borne on a gale from the northwest, compels
its presence in the frozen latitudes of Puget's Sound. The very limited
numerical strength of our army, scattered as it is over a vast area of
territory, necessitates constant changes of stations, long and toilsome
marches, a promptitude of action, and a tireless energy and
self-reliance, that can only be acquired through an intimate
acquaintance with the sphere in which we act and move.

The education of our officers at the Military Academy is doubtless well
adapted to the art of civilized warfare, but can not familiarize them
with the diversified details of border service; and they often, at the
outset of their military career, find themselves compelled to improvise
new expedients to meet novel emergences.

The life of the wilderness is an _art_ as well as that of the city
or court, and every art su