Day after day waned by, still we lingered in the white-washed cottages of Leavenworth. Urgent preparations were making for our departure to the western wilds, but as yet they were unfinished. To the commissioner who had charge of the expedition every moment was fraught with interest and anxiety, but to several of us who had accompanied him from curiosity alone, there was but little occupation. Still there was a feeling of dreamy pleasure in wandering through the tall moss-grown groves which surrounded the garrison. There was a calm quiet pervading them, which stole soothingly over the mind, drawing it away from dwelling upon things present, and wrapping it up in its own wild musings. The thick arches of overhanging trees threw a dark and night-like shade over the ground. Here and there a solitary ray of sunshine, like a pilgrim in a strange land, strayed through some crevice in the thick foliage, playing in a bright hazy streak through the gloom, and casting a golden spot upon the dark creeping plants beneath. There was a vastness in the size of the mighty trunks that seized forcibly upon the imagination. What was America when those veteran trees were but saplings? Who were her children? Where are they? The tale is a sad one, and fraught with little that reflects credit upon the white man. The forest is full of ruins. It gives many a touching memento of the work of time. Hundreds of gigantic trees, which have weathered the storms of ages, and for centuries have kept their silent watch, have yielded to its power; have been hurled from their stands, and their lumbering wrecks are decaying upon the ground—the green moss is their covering, the wild ivy their shroud. Thousands of dead trees are still standing, shooting up their tall gray forms, stripped of bark, of foliage, and of branches; still, they cling with a lingering tenacity to their old abiding places, as if loath to resign themselves to the ruin which is every where reigning around them, and although despoiled of foliage, as if they still loved to linger on the spot which once bore witness to their magnificence. Occasionally in our rambles we would fall upon a solitary Indian, roaming through the woods, or seated in deep meditation upon the wreck of some prostrate tree. It was the place for him. Let him look upon the forests and read his own fate; they are united—their destinies are the same; alike they have lived and flourished in the wildness of nature, and alike they are disappearing before the approach of civilisation. Let the Indian grieve at the sound of the woodman’s axe; for at the fall of every tree the hour of his own ruin draws nearer.