m
in the wilderness: and you recognise one of the members from California,
or from Oregon, whose influence in the house, though he is as yet a very
young man, is already quite considerable. If you are successful in your
application for a "place," it may be that the casual meeting in the
forest or on the prairie was the seed which, germinating through long
years of obscurity, finally sprung up _thus_, and bore a crop of high
official honors!

The next time you meet a family of emigrants on the frontier, you will
probably observe them a little more closely.

Not a few of those who bear a prominent part in the government of our
country--more than one of the first men of the nation--men whose names
are now heard in connection with the highest office of the
people--twenty years ago, occupied a place as humble in the scale of
influence, as that flaxen-haired son of the stoop-shouldered emigrant.
Such are the elements of our civilization--such the spirit of our
institutions!

We have hitherto been speaking only of the American pioneer, and we have
devoted more space to him, than we shall give to his contemporaries,
because he has exerted more influence, both in the settlement of the
country, and in the formation of sectional character and social
peculiarities, than all the rest combined.

The French emigrant was quite a different being. Even at this day, there
are no two classes--not the eastern and western, or the northern and
southern--between whom the distinction is more marked, than it has
always been between the Saxon and the Frank. The advent of the latter
was much earlier than that of the former; and to him, therefore, must be
ascribed the credit of the first settlement of the country. But, for all
purposes of lasting impression, he must yield to his successor. It was,
in fact, the American who penetrated and cleared the forest--who subdued
and drove out the Indian--who, in a word, reclaimed the country.

In nothing was the distinction between the two races broader, than in
the feelings with which they approached the savage. We have seen that
the hatred, borne by the American toward his red enemy, was to be
traced to a long series of mutual hostilities and wrongs. But the
Frenchman had no such injuries to avenge, no hereditary feud to
prosecute. The first of his nation who had entered the country were
non-combatants--they came to convert the savage, not to conquer him,
or deprive him of his lands. Even as earl