Therefore I wrote at once both to my fiancee and to my
mother that it would be impossible for me to return at the time, nor at
any positive future time then determinable. I bade a hasty good-by to my
host and hostess, and before noon was off for the city. That night I
took passage on the _River Belle_, a boat bound up the Missouri.
Thus, somewhat against my will, I found myself a part of that motley
throng of keen-faced, fearless American life then pushing out over the
frontiers. About me were men bound for Oregon, for California, for the
Plains, and not a few whose purpose I took to be partisanship in the
border fighting between slavery and free soil. It was in the West, and
on the new soils, that the question of slavery was really to be debated
and settled finally.
The intenseness, the eagerness, the compelling confidence of all this
west-bound population did not fail to make the utmost impression upon my
own heart, hitherto limited by the horizon of our Virginia hills. I say
that I had entered upon this journey against my will. Our churning
wheels had hardly reached the turbid flood of the Missouri before the
spell of the frontier had caught me. In spite of sadness, trouble,
doubt, I would now only with reluctance have resigned my advance into
that country which offered to all men, young and old, a zest of deeds
bold enough to banish sadness, doubt and grief.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124