"Beloved old women"
kept an eye on his small sons, put to drowse on panther skins so
that they might grow up brave warriors. Nothing was there of
artifice or pretense, only "the needful things to make a
reasonable life happy." All was as primitive, naive, and
contented as the woman whose outline is given once in a few
strokes, proudly and gayly penciled: "I have the pleasure of
writing this by the side of a Chikkasah female, as great a
princess as ever lived among the ancient Peruvians or Mexicans,
and she bids me be sure not to mark the paper wrong after the
manner of most of the traders; otherwise it will spoil the making
good bread or homony!"
His final chapter is the last news of James Adair, type of the
earliest trader. Did his bold attacks on corrupt officials and
rum peddlers--made publicly before Assemblies and in print--raise
for him a dense cloud of enmity that dropped oblivion on his
memory? Perhaps. But, in truth, his own book is all the history
of him we need. It is the record of a man. He lived a full life
and served his day; and it matters not that a mist envelops the
place where unafraid he met the Last Enemy, was "weighed on the
path and made light."
Chapter IV. The Passing Of The French Peril
The great pile of the Appalachian peaks was not the only barrier
which held back the settler with his plough and his rifle from
following the trader's tinkling caravans into the valleys beyond.
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