between one
and five hundred thousand souls. Most of them inhabit the country west of the
Mississippi. At the period of the tale, they dwelt in open hostility; national
feuds passing from generation to generation. The power of the republic has done
much to restore peace to these wild scenes, and it is now possible to travel in
security, where civilized man did not dare to pass unprotected five-and-twenty
years ago.
    The reader, who has perused the two former works, of which this is the
natural successor, will recognise an old acquaintance in the principal character
of the story. We have here brought him to his end, and we trust he will be
permitted to slumber in the peace of the just.
 
- Paris, June, 1832
 

                                   Chapter I

 »I pray thee, shepherd, if that love or gold
 Can in this desert place buy entertainment,
 Bring us where we may rest ourselves and feed.«
                                                    As You Like It, II.iv.71-73.
 
Much was said and written, at the time, concerning the policy of adding the vast
regions of Louisiana, to the already immense, and but half-tenanted territories
of the United-States. As the warmth of the controversy however subsided, and
party considerations gave place to more liberal views, the wisdom of the measure
began to be generally conceded. It soon became apparent, to the meanest
capacity, that, while nature had placed a barrier of desert to the extension of
our population in the west, the measure had made us the masters of a belt of
fertile country, which, in the revolutions of the day, might have become the
property of a rival nation. It gave us the sole command of the great
thoroughfare of the interior, and placed the countless tribes of savages, who
lay along our borders, entirely within our controul; it reconciled conflicting
rights, and quieted national distrusts; it opened a thousand avenues to the
inland trade, and to the waters of the Pacific; and, if ever time or necessity
shall require a peaceful division of this vast empire, it assures us a neighbour
that will possess our language, our religion, our institutions, and it is also
to be hoped, our sense of political justice.
    Although the purchase was made in 1803, the spring of the succeeding year
was permitted to open, before the official prudence of the Spaniard, who held
the province for his European master, admitted the authority, or even of the
entrance, of its new proprietors. But the forms of the transfer were no sooner
completed, and the new government acknowledged,