can look without admiring, into a society where peace and harmony prevail—where virtue is cherished—where rights are protected, and wrongs are redressed—with no laws, but the laws of honour, which are the supreme laws of their land. Trust the boasted virtues of civilized society for awhile, with all its intellectual refinements, to such a tribunal, and then write down the degradation of the “lawless savage,” and our trancendent virtues. As these people have no laws, the sovereign right of summary redress lies in the breast of the party (or friends of the party) aggrieved; and infinitely more dreaded is the certainty of cruel revenge from the licensed hands of an offended savage, than the slow and uncertain vengeance of the law. If you think me _enthusiast_, be it so; for I deny it not. It has ever been the predominant passion of my soul to seek Nature’s wildest haunts, and give my hand to Nature’s men. Legends of _these_, and visits to _those_, filled the earliest page of my juvenile impressions. The tablet has stood, and I am an enthusiast for God’s works as He left them. The sad tale of my native “valley,”[2] has been beautifully sung; and from the flight of “Gertrude’s” soul, my young imagination closely traced the savage to his deep retreats, and gazed upon him in dreadful horror, until pity pleaded, and admiration worked a charm. A journey of 4000 miles from the Atlantic shore, regularly receding from the centre of civilized society to the extreme wilderness of Nature’s original work, and back again, opens a book for many an interesting tale to be sketched; and the mind which lives, but to relish the works of Nature, reaps a reward on such a tour of a much higher order than can arise from the selfish expectations of pecuniary emolument. Notwithstanding all that has been written and said, there is scarcely any subject on which the _knowing_ people of the East, are yet less informed and instructed than on the character and amusements of the West: by this I mean the “Far West;”—the country whose fascinations spread a charm over the mind almost dangerous to civilized pursuits. Few people even know the true definition of the term “West;” and where is its location?—phantom-like it flies before us as we travel, and on our way is continually gilded, before us, as we approach the setting sun.