Within the last year or two much has been written about Lewis and Clark, and consequently their grand exploit is well known, but its relation in the popular mind as to accomplishment and position with reference to other explorations is often quite uncertain. It therefore appeared to me that a single volume which should tell the Wilderness story in unbroken sequence, with special emphasis on the trapper and trader, would be of value. I have consequently shown the first attacks by sea and land, and the gradual closing in on all sides, through the matchless trail-breaking of the trappers and traders, down to the year when Powell practically finished this particular white man's task by his bold and romantic conquest of the Colorado,—the year when the first railway trains crossing the continent began a new era. In order that the subject might be still clearer and more comprehensive, I have gone farther and have told the story of the chief denizens of the pristine Wilderness: the beaver, the buffalo, and their close associates, those indomitable, iron-nerved people, the Amerinds; the North-Americans of yesterday. Sometimes it is difficult to describe with precision the route of an explorer without searching his original story, and, in my studies, this has not always been practicable. For example, I do not know where the journals of Hunt and Bonneville now are, if extant. Irving's interpretation seems fairly accurate, but as he was entirely unfamiliar with the region west of the Rocky Mountains, his description is not always clear. In other cases, especially in that of Verendrye, I have relied on the transcripts of others. The trail of Coronado I have long studied with special care, and I have reached the conclusions embodied in the map on page 115,—conclusions entirely at variance with all accepted authorities, but which I feel confident, nevertheless, are in the main correct. One early explorer in the Minnesota and Hudson Bay regions I have not mentioned. This is Radisson, who, it is claimed, saw the upper Mississippi before Marquette. The omission was an oversight. Miss A. C. Laut has given a convincing account of his travels in her _Pathfinders of the West_, to which I take pleasure in referring the reader for information on this point.[1] A completed book is the mirror of the writer's shortcomings. I hope the reflections which may fall to my lot in this one will not be too painful, for I have had in contemplation others to fill in a general scheme. One starts with a desire for perfection, but without the resources of a Carnegie he is apt to fall so far short of the mark that he fears to look in the glass at all.