"
The scope, to be sure, is a restricted one. He has two great wildernesses
to cover, but it is a century and a half after the epic narrative begins
before enough people enter to prevent one from keeping track of all of
them. It is as if he were writing the history of man, from the last day of
creation forward, starting with a few transmigrant souls still under the
control of their oversea existence. He begins at the beginning, with not
even a twilight zone of tradition and with a stage "far more primitive
than that which is depicted in the Odyssey or even Genesis." Cartier's
route is as well known as that of the steamship that sailed yesterday
through the "Square Gulf," if the ice permitted, and the incidents of his
first days beyond the gates of the first wilderness have been as
accurately recorded, to say the least, as are yesterday's events yonder in
the morning's papers here. And when his story ends, there are not as many
people in the two great valleys along the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi
as in a good-sized city to-day.
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