disturb him; for he is goaded
onwards by a passion more intense than the love of life. Before him lies
a boundless continent, and he urges onwards as if time pressed, and he
was afraid of finding no room for his exertions. I have spoken of the
emigration from the older States, but how shall I describe that which
takes place from the more recent ones? Fifty years have scarcely elapsed
since that of Ohio was founded; the greater part of its inhabitants were
not born within its confines; its capital has only been built thirty
years, and its territory is still covered by an immense extent of
uncultivated fields; nevertheless the population of Ohio is already
proceeding westward, and most of the settlers who descend to the fertile
savannahs of Illinois are citizens of Ohio. These men left their first
country to improve their condition; they quit their resting-place to
ameliorate it still more; fortune awaits them everywhere, but happiness
they cannot attain. The desire of prosperity is become an ardent and
restless passion in their minds which grows by what it gains. They early
broke the ties which bound them to their natal earth, and they have
contracted no fresh ones on their way. Emigration was at first necessary
to them as a means of subsistence; and it soon becomes a sort of game of
chance, which they pursue for the emotions it excites as much as for the
gain it procures.

Sometimes the progress of man is so rapid that the desert reappears
behind him. The woods stoop to give him a passage, and spring up again
when he has passed. It is not uncommon in crossing the new States of
the West to meet with deserted dwellings in the midst of the wilds; the
traveller frequently discovers the vestiges of a log house in the most
solitary retreats, which bear witness to the power, and no less to the
inconstancy of man. In these abandoned fields, and over these ruins of
a day, the primeval forest soon scatters a fresh vegetation, the beasts
resume the haunts which were once their own, and Nature covers the
traces of man's path with branches and with flowers, which obliterate
his evanescent track.

I remember that, in crossing one of the woodland districts which still
cover the State of New York, I reached the shores of a lake embosomed in
forests coeval with the world. A small island, covered with woods whose
thick foliage concealed its banks, rose from the centre of the waters.
Upon the shores of the lake no object attested the pre