A wilderness still, but not unexplored; for that railroad of the
future which is to make of British America a garden of roses, and turn
the wild trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company into gently smiling
congressmen, has it not sent its missionaries thither, to the
astonishment and joy of the beasts that dwelt therein? According to
tradition, these men surveyed the territory, and then crossed over
(those of them at least whom the beasts had spared) to the lower
peninsula, where, the pleasing variety of swamps being added to the
labyrinth of pines and sand-hills, they soon lost themselves, and to
this day have never found what they lost. As the gleam of a camp-fire
is occasionally seen, and now and then a distant shout heard by the
hunter passing along the outskirts, it is supposed, that they are in
there somewhere surveying still.
Not long ago, however, no white man's foot had penetrated within our
curve. Across the great river and over the deadly plains, down to the
burning clime of Mexico and up to the arctic darkness, journeyed our
countrymen, gold to gather and strange countries to see; but this
little pocket of land and water passed they by without a glance,
inasmuch as no iron mountains rose among its pines, no copper lay
hidden in its sand ridges, no harbors dented its shores.
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