Germain).
It has been said by a chemist of some repute that man came, in his
evolution, out of the sea; that he has in his veins certain elements--
potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium--in the same ratio in which they
appeared in the water of the Pre-Cambrian ocean. Whether this be true or
not, one stage of human development carries marks of the forest, and from
that period "having nothing but forest knowledge, forest dreams, forest
fancies, forest faith," as an American writer has said, man emerges upon
the plains of history.
So, though the French civilization still smells and sounds of the sea, and
followed the streams that kept its first men in touch with it, it had
finally, in its pioneering, to take to the trails and the forests. And
these runners of the woods were the amphibious ambassadors from this
kingdom of the sea to the kingdom of the land. They were, as Etienne Brule
of Champlain's time, the pioneers of pioneers who, often in unrecorded
advance of priest and explorer, pushed their adventurous traffic in French
guns and hatchets, French beads and cloth, French tobacco and brandy, till
they knew and were known to the aboriginal habitants, "from where the
stunted Esquimaux burrowed in their snow caves to where the Comanches
scoured the plains of the south with their banditti cavalry.
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