means of moving many a young and adventurous couple from their
homes in the East to the frontier, and of firing the ambition of many
a lad and lass to seek their fortune west of the Mississippi. Since
California was settled and the Pacific Coast occupied even at
scattered points, our frontiers, strange as it may seem, have not been
at the eastern or western ends, but on the middle of the country.

After this campaign of correspondence, Carleton returned home and
wrote that little book which has been so widely read, both in the East
and in the West, entitled "The Seat of Empire." It was published in
1870 by Fields & Co., of Boston. It had eight pages of introduction,
with a map of the territory yet to be settled. It was a volume of 232
pages, 16mo, and was illustrated. For many years afterwards, amid the
hundreds of letters received from grateful readers of his books, none
seemed to give Carleton more pleasure than those from readers who had
become settlers. This little book had indeed come to many as a
revelation of the promised land. The contagion reached even to Mrs.
Coffin's brothers, one of whom, with a nephew of Carleton, became a
pioneer farmer in the Red River Valley in Dakota.

Another pathfinder, a literary as well as military pioneer in opening
this noble region to civilization, was the warm friend of Carleton and
of the writer, General Henry B. Carrington, of the United States
regular army, and author of that standard authority, "Battles of the
American Revolution." During the Civil War, General Carrington had
been stationed in Indiana, where he was the potent agent in spoiling
the treasonable schemes of the Knights of the Golden Circle, and in
nobly seconding Governor Morton in holding the State true to the
Union. The war over, he served on the Western plains until 1868, and
then wrote "Absaraka, the Home of the Crows," which was a score of
years afterwards republished under the title of "Absaraka, the Land of
Massacre." General Carrington was afterwards one of the active members
of Shawmut Church. With his fine scholarly and literary tastes, he
made a delightful companion.

Any well-told narrative of the exploration, conquest, and civilization
of a country, with a history which has helped to make the pageant and
procession of human achievement so rich, is, when fully known, of
thrilling interest. How grand is the story of the Aryans in India, of
the first historic invaders of Japan, of the Roman advance