The things we do!

" [Footnote: "American Commonwealth," 1913 ed.,
2:892.] The French may dispute the implied claim of the second of these
comparisons, but even they will have a satisfaction in admitting that
their particular part of the United States is to the rest, which was not
touched by their priests and explorers, what "Europe is to Asia." And here
is my particular justification for asking the imaginations of the people
of France to occupy and hold that to which the preface has given them the
best of titles.
Meanwhile, that migration, heralded, as we have seen, just before the
Revolution, by huntsmen and traders, meagre by reason of Indian hostility
and the need of soldiers on the Atlantic side of the mountains till
independence had been won, became appreciable at the end of the century
and grew to an inundating stream after the War of 1812 had made the
Mississippi secure to the new republic beyond all question.
"Old America," said an observing English traveller in 1817, "seems to be
breaking up and moving westward.


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