Macaulay's vision of the New Zealander
standing amid the ruins of London and overlooking the mastless Thames
seems to have some realization in the succeeding of a city, founded in the
path of a wood runner, out on the borders of civilization, to one of
London's distinctions among the cities of the world.
"This class of men is not extinct," said Parkman twenty or thirty years
ago; "in the cheerless wilds beyond the northern lakes, or among the
solitudes of the distant west they may still be found, unchanged in life
and character since the day when Louis the Great claimed sovereignty over
the desert empire."
But their mission, if any survive till now, is past. The paths, surveyed
of the beasts and opened by these pioneers to the feet of priests,
explorers, and traders, have let in the influences that in time destroyed
all these forest lovers braved the solitude for. The trace has become the
railroad, and the smell of the gasolene motor is even on the once wild
Oregon trail; for, in general, it has been said of the forest part of the
valley, "where there is a railway to-day there was a path a century and a
quarter ago" (and that means longer ago); and it may be added that where
there was a French trading-post, or fort, or portage, there is a city to-
day, not because of the attraction of the populations of those places for
the prospecting railroad, but because of their natural highway advantage,
learned even by the buffaloes.
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