THUS far our heroes have, with few exceptions, been pioneers rather of Christianity, emigration or commerce, than of discovery properly so called. Early colonization in America was not, as in Africa, preceded by scientific exploration. We have no trans-Atlantic Park or Bruce, no Lander Oudney, or Clapperton; the white martyrs who baptized the soil of the New World with their blood fell, not in the cause of geography, but in that of their homes or their religion. Only in the extreme North have we any romance in American travel which can at all compare with that so inseparably connected with the winning of each of the secrets of that sister continent so aptly named the Dark. The great lakes, rivers, and mountains of America, which we will in our turn call the “Fair Continent,” were rather found than discovered. The emigrant, seeking water for his cattle, or timber for his log hut and his fire, pitched his tent by some vast inland sea or rushing stream, unconscious that he had done more than choose well for his immediate temporal needs. Other log huts rose beside his own; the neighboring lake or river or forest received the name of the first person who turned its resources to account, or retained a corrupted form of its original Indian denomination. Peculiarities in the manners, customs, or appearance of the natives, which would have been full of significance to men such as Park or Bruce, Livingstone or Stanley, passed unnoticed by the lonely squatter of the woods, and whole chapters of discovery were left unwritten by the unconscious agents in the opening up of new tracks. Not until the beginning of the present century can we be said to have possessed a literature of inland North American discovery, and our narrative has hitherto been culled little by little from piles of volumes dealing with other subjects than ours, and referring _en passant_ only to geographical problems. The young states forming the infant republic had too much to do in welding into one whole the varied and often incongruous elements of which they were themselves composed, to be able to pay much attention to the enterprising spirits who went forth from among them to found new homes in the wilderness. But when the turbulent infancy was over, and what we may call the young manhood of America began under the enlightened guidance of the great Washington, first President of the United States, a new era of discovery was ushered in. The republic, no longer content with its ignorance of the course of its rivers, the height of its mountains, and the resources of its vast tracts of prairie and forest lands, began the organization of exploring expeditions. The first of these was that sent out, under Major Pike, in 1805, with instructions “to explore the Upper Mississippi, to inquire into the nature and extent of the fur-trade, with the residence and population of the several Indian nations, and to make every effort to conciliate their friendship.”