“In 1789 I made M. de Malesherbes acquainted with my idea of going to America; but, wishing at the same time to give a useful object to my voyage, I formed the project of discovering the overland passage so long sought after, and concerning which even Captain Cook himself had left some doubts. I started, visited the American solitudes, and returned with plans for a second voyage, which was to last nine years. I proposed to traverse the entire continent of North America, afterwards to explore the coasts to the north of California, and to return by Hudson’s Bay, rounding the pole. M. de Malesherbes undertook to submit my plans to the Government, and it was then that he listened to the first fragments of the little work I now offer to the public. The Revolution put a stop to all my projects. Covered with the blood of my only brother, of my sister-in-law, and of the illustrious old man, their father; having seen my mother and another talented sister die in consequence of the treatment they had undergone in prison, I wandered forth to foreign lands, where the only friend I had preserved stabbed himself in my arms. “Of all my manuscripts upon America, I have only saved some fragments, ‘Atala’ in particular, which was itself but an episode of ‘The Natchez.’ ‘Atala’ was written in the desert, beneath the huts of the savages. I do not know whether the public will like the story, which quits all beaten tracks, and represents a nature and manners altogether foreign to Europe. There is no adventure in ‘Atala.’ It is a sort of poem, half descriptive, half dramatic. It consists entirely in the portraiture of two lovers walking and talking together in the solitudes, and in the picture of the trials of love in the midst of the calm of the desert. I have endeavored to give to this work the most antique forms. It is divided into Prologue, Recital and Epilogue. The principal parts of the story have each a denomination, such as ‘The Hunters,’ ‘The Laborers,’ etc.; and it was thus that, in the early ages of Greece, the rhapsodists sang, under different titles, fragments of the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey.’” “The moralities I have been desirous of inculcating in ‘Atala’ are easily discoverable, and as they are summed up in the Epilogue, I need not speak of them here. I will merely say a word or two concerning Chactas, the lover of Atala. “He is a savage more than half civilized, since he knows not only the living, but also the dead languages of Europe. He can therefore express himself in a mixed style, suitable to the line upon which he stands, between society and nature. This circumstance has given me some advantages, by permitting Chactas to speak as a savage in the description of manners, and as a European in the dramatic portions of the narrative. Without that the work must have been abandoned. If I had always made use of the Indian style, ‘Atala’ would have been Hebrew for the reader.