ardened, his sensitive nervous organization began to
give way. It was not merely because he led an active outdoor life. He
himself protests against any such conclusion, and says that "if any pale
student glued to his desk here seek an apology for a way of life whose
natural fruit is that pallid and emasculate scholarship, of which New
England has had too many examples, it will be far better that this
sketch had not been written. For the student there is, in its season, no
better place than the saddle, and no better companion than the rifle or
the oar."

The evil that was done was due to Parkman's highly irritable organism,
which spurred him to excess in everything he undertook. The first
special sign of the mischief he was doing to himself and his health
appeared in a weakness of sight. It was essential to his plan of
historical work to study not only books and records but Indian life from
the inside. Therefore, having graduated from college and the law-school,
he felt that the time had come for this investigation, which would
enable him to gather material for his history and at the same time
to rest his eyes. He went to the Rocky Mountains, and after great
hardships, living in the saddle, as he said, with weakness and pain, he
joined a band of Ogallalla Indians. With them he remained despite his
physical suffering, and from them he learned, as he could not have
learned in any other way, what Indian life really was.

The immediate result of the journey was his first book, instinct with
the freshness and wildness of the mountains and the prairies, and called
by him "The Oregon Trail." Unfortunately, the book was not the only
outcome. The illness incurred during his journey from fatigue and
exposure was followed by other disorders. The light of the sun became
insupportable, and his nervous system was entirely deranged. His
sight was now so impaired that he was almost blind, and could neither
read nor write. It was a terrible prospect for a brilliant and ambitious
man, but Parkman faced it unflinchingly. He devised a frame by which
he could write with closed eyes, and books and manuscripts were read to
him. In this way he began the history of "The Conspiracy of Pontiac,"
and for the first half-year the rate of composition covered about six
lines a day. His courage was rewarded by an improvement in his health,
and a little more quiet in nerves and brain. In two and a half years he
managed to complete the book. He then ente