his brief sketches:
A land of grass and green shade inset with bright waters, where deer
and domestic cattle herded together along the banks; a circling group
of houses, their white-clayed walls sparkling under the sun's rays, and,
within and without, the movement of "a friendly and sagacious people,"
who "kindly treated and watchfully guarded" their white brother in peace
and war, and who conversed daily with him in the Old Beloved Speech
learned first of Nature. "Like towers in cities beyond the common size
of those of the Indians" rose the winter and summer houses and the huge
trading house which the tribe had built for their best beloved friend in
the town's center, because there he would be safest from attack. On the
rafters hung the smoked and barbecued delicacies taken in the hunt and
prepared for him by his red servants, who were also his comrades at home
and on the dangerous trail. "Beloved old women" kept an eye on his small
sons, put to drowse on panther skins so that they might grow up brave
warriors. Nothing was there of artifice or pretense, only "the needful
things to make a reasonable life happy." All was as primitive, naive,
and contented as the woman whose outline is given once in a few strokes,
proudly and gayly penciled: "I have the pleasure of writing this by the
side of a Chikkasah female, as great a princess as ever lived among the
ancient Peruvians or Mexicans, and she bids me be sure not to mark the
paper wrong after the manner of most of the traders; otherwise it will
spoil the making good bread or homony!"

His final chapter is the last news of James Adair, type of the earliest
trader. Did his bold attacks on corrupt officials and rum peddlers--made
publicly before Assemblies and in print--raise for him a dense cloud of
enmity that dropped oblivion on his memory? Perhaps. But, in truth, his
own book is all the history of him we need. It is the record of a man.
He lived a full life and served his day; and it matters not that a mist
envelops the place where unafraid he met the Last Enemy, was "weighed on
the path and made light."

Chapter IV. The Passing Of The French Peril

The great pile of the Appalachian peaks was not the only barrier which
held back the settler with his plough and his rifle from following the
trader's tinkling caravans into the valleys beyond. Over the hills the
French were lords of the land. The frontiersman had already felt their
enmity through the torch and tomahaw