His idea was clear before him, yet
attended with unpleasant doubts as to his ability to realize it to his own
satisfaction.... The task, as he then reckoned it, would require about
twenty years. The time allowed was ample; but here he fell into a fatal
error, entering upon this long pilgrimage with all the vehemence of one
starting on a mile heat. His reliance, however, was less on books than on
such personal experience as should intimately identify him with his theme.
Let me here say that I have found traces of his steps at nearly every site
that I have visited. He had been at Fort St. Louis, at the most important
portages, and at the places where the French forts once stood. His natural
inclinations urged him in the same direction, his thoughts were constantly
in the forest, whose features, not unmixed with softer images, possessed
his waking and sleeping dreams; he was as fond of hardships as he was vain
of enduring them, cherishing a sovereign scorn for every physical weakness
or defect.
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