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of Winter, underlies the literary work of Laurence Hutton (1843-1904), his companion in the field of dramatic criticism and along the byways of foreign travel. Among collectors Hutton is remembered for the treasures he amassed, especially books relating to the theatre and play-bills. The corollary of this enthusiasm is found in his papers and addresses on the drama, wherefrom arises winningly the human note. He wrote, also, a series of volumes describing literary pilgrimages in England, Italy, and many another land,-volumes that place him graciously in the large company of American essayists whose theme has been that of travel; and with him our own journey fittingly ends.

The scope of present-day essayists is far wider than that of the men of the preceding century. The tendency is away from the traditionary essay of morals or of literary culture, partially because the classics are no longer part and parcel of our education, and largely because science and social economics are more and more requisitioning the pens of many of our most brilliant contemporary essayists. We have, however, many writers, of course, whose work continues the literary tradition; and to name Howells, Woodberry, Santayana, Woodrow Wilson, Henry Van Dyke, Brander Matthews, Paul Elmer More, Agnes Repplier, and John Burroughs-foremost among nature writers were yet to omit others well deserving of inclusion lest too long a catalogue of ships should still overlook some bark of letters already worthily launched. Our grateful task has been to write of the men who have gone by, a group of noble gentlemen, whose attitude towards life was that of the idealist, and whose courtesy of spirit and courtesy of phrase are permeating traits of their work. Not even in the harshest days of the Civil War is there a brow-beating epithet or sneering causticity. If the American essayists and critics owe a debt to the English writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-as indeed they do they have removed from their inheritance all taint of bitterness and cruel satire, and our critical literature has (with the exception of Poe in his uninspired moments) no mean, no biassed, no tyrannical—and no fulsome appraiser of literary values or of the motives of men's actions. If, however, we turn to our group of later essayists See also Book III, Chap. XVIII.

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as a whole, we are soon aware that they leave something to be desired, and that we must have recourse to European essays for the supplying of this want. As our fiction has refused to portray life with full verity, to dissect with searching candour the hidden motives in individual life, so, too, have our essay writers abstained from the subtle workings of the mind in the field of personal emotions and desires. There is, however, a distinction to be made when we seek to explain these limitations in American fiction and American essays. In the first case is preponderantly involved the purpose of popular appeal along the lines of least resistance, with financial success as the writer's reward. In the second case, the purpose of educating the mind of a nation not yet ready to appreciate art in all its ramifications, has, whether directly or unconsciously, led our essayists to refrain from themes which Continental writers have made luminous to peoples inheriting the Renaissance rather than the Puritan traditions. The group of essayists that we are leaving may indeed have theoretically subscribed to the French dictum that style is the man, yet they wrote, rather, under the propulsion of the idea that mankind is more than style.

CHAPTER XIV

Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

HE central world-belt of human progress up to the

TH

present era lies along the fortieth parallel of north

latitude with general limits ten degrees on each side. That the region now the United States falls almost entirely within this belt explains the instinctive drift of Europeans westward to, and across, this particular untrodden field. The Anglo-Saxon branch, attaining a dominance of power therein, halted briefly at the obstacle of the Appalachian mountain system, passed that barrier, and marched on its predestined course to the western ocean with a development of accompanying literature described up to 1846 in a former chapter—and continued in this to the year 1900, with a slight extension at each end.

A new order of events developed speedily with the triumph of the Texans over Santa Anna and the creation of the Lone Star Republic in 1841 with its premeditated intention of annexation to the United States. This intention the Mexican Republic declared would be, if consummated, a cause of war, but the movement was not halted. The constant influx of pioneers from the "States" made annexation a foregone conclusion, while books that now appeared like Colonel Edward Stiff's The Texan Emigrant (1840) aided and abetted the prospective addition to the American republic. He offers for a frontispiece a map of Texas which has small consideration for the expansive Texan idea that the new republic's western limits were where the Texan pleased to place them, quite regardless of Mexican contention, for the Colonel draws the I Book II, Chap. I.

western boundary at the Nueces River exactly where the Mexicans declared it must be.

The ambitious Texans, however, were not of his mind. They wanted territory and they understood that far beyond the world of intervening desert unknown to them flowed the Rio Grande del Norte, whose valley was productive and for some two centuries had been cultivated by a Spanish population with the attractive city of Santa Fé a trade centre worth owning. The story of The Spanish Conquest of New Mexico (1869) by W. W. H. Davis and El Gringo, or New Mexico and her People (1857) by the same author, who spent some years in the region, show that the Spaniards in entering and building up New Mexico had no thought of the Texans that were to be. Samuel Cozzens in The Marvellous Country or Three Years in Arizona and New Mexico (1873) gives more of the story, with modern additions, and Historical Sketches of New Mexico (1883) by ex-Governor L. Bradford Prince, who still lives in Santa Fé, is another important volume on this subject.

Although the Rio Grande settlements and the capital city of Santa Fé were so far from the outermost fringe of Texan life that the Texans actually knew little about them, these had fixed their minds on extending Texas to the Rio Grande, and to the Rio Grande it must go. Therefore they decided to march across the unknown and formally annex the old-time towns and villages, whose inhabitants were supposed to be eager to become Texans. A grand caravan accordingly was organized, partly military, partly mercantile, to proceed to the conquest. The expedition moved off into the wilderness with far rosier expectations than facts warranted. Disaster was not long in falling upon the party, and worse disaster awaited their straggling remnant at the hands of the tyrannical, cruel, and unruly governor of New Mexico, Armijo.

Probably the most interesting and valuable book on this phase of Texan enterprise, and withal one having considerable literary charm, is The Narrative of the Texan Santa Fé Expedition (1844) by George Wilkins Kendall. Kendall was one of the survivors. He was finally released from the wretched prison in Mexico into which he was cast with others who had not succumbed to the desert, or to the brutality of Armijo, at the request of the United States Minister, Waddy Thompson,

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whose Recollections of Mexico (1846) mentions this release of Kendall and his companions in misery, as well as the release of the prisoners taken by the Mexicans at Mier in 1842. The capture, sufferings, and release of these latter unfortunates are told by William Preston Stapp in his book The Prisoners of Perote (1845). It is interesting to note that Waddy Thompson was no longer a United States official when he requested the freedom of the captives; General Santa Anna granted the request as a personal favour. Thompson gives an estimate of Santa Anna's character which is not so black as the usual descriptions.

Kendall printed a map, which he compiled, to give such information as was possible of the wilderness the caravan had struggled through, and in this he was aided by notes from Josiah Gregg, then living and doing business as a merchant at Santa Fé. In the year of the appearance of Kendall's book, Gregg alone published the now famous volumes Commerce of the Prairies (1844). This is the classic of the Plains, in which he describes the Santa Fé Trail and its history. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railway approximately follows the route of the Santa Fé Trail, and the latter almost paralleled the great Kaw Indian trail which ran about four or five miles farther south. Everywhere the possible highways had long ago been traced out by the Indians, and the main routes of the white men usually followed, with more or less exactness, according to method of transportation, these roads of the natives.

Colonel Henry Inman, who had early experience on the Plains, wrote The Old Santa Fé Trail (1897). Some of his historical data are not quite correct, but there is much of value derived from his own knowledge, and he gives accounts of the frontiersmen he had met. With W. F. Cody, the last of the "Buffalo Bills," he wrote The Great Salt Lake Trail (1898), the trail being the one from Omaha up the Platte and to Salt Lake by way of Echo Canyon. The Santa Fé Trail has also been perpetuated in poetry, by Sharlot M. Hall with a vivid poem of that title in Out West (1903), and the modern route for automobiles by Vachel Lindsay, with a more original poem, also of that title, in The Congo and Other Poems (1914).

Many of the early travellers and explorers kept no records,