With the Wilderness, however, I can claim some degree of familiarity, for I may be said to have been "in at the death," as I was one of Powell's companions down the Colorado on his second voyage, 1871-72, and have been over portions of almost every one of the principal historical trails. I have travelled there on foot, on horseback, by boat, by waggon, and by railway,—even by Pullman "Palace" car. I have lived under its open sky through summers and through winters; its snows, its rains, its burning heat, have baptised me one of its children. In some cases my footsteps have been among the first of our race to break the surface; and if I have not visited every nook and corner of it during the last thirty four years it is the fault of my purse, not of my spirit. My remarks on supplying whiskey to the natives may by some be deemed too severe, but in my own opinion there is no expression of condemnation adequate to denounce the debauchment of the American tribes by this foul means. It was a crime against civilisation, against humanity; a cruel, dastardly outrage against these people who by its means largely have been reduced to the lowest degree and are sneered at by those who have profited by their debasement. In the final chapter I have thought it desirable to add a footnote to the effect that I am neither a teetotaler nor a prohibitionist for the reason that my condemnatory remarks might otherwise be attributed to the prejudice of zeal, rather than to indignation at the low devices resorted to by white men to work the Amerinds for their own profit. A great deal that is base and mean is now excused on the ground that this is a commercial age, but I can only remark that if there is to be no standard for measuring modern conduct but financial profit, the white man's footsteps are surely on the wrong trail. The reader in following these pages must remember that comfort is generally relative, and that what appears hard from the chimney corner may have been comparative luxury. I have never slept more comfortably anywhere than under a foot of snow.