He was at first intended for the navy, but his unconquerable aversion to discipline proved an insurmountable obstacle, and his thoughts turned to the Church, from which, however, a conviction of his unfitness for a life of renunciation made him draw back. In the depth of his despondency he attempted to commit suicide. An irrevocable family decision put an end to his vacillation; he was given a commission as sub-lieutenant in the army, and found the life to his liking. As a cadet of a noble family he was presented to Louis XVI., at whose court he witnessed the last glimmer of the old splendour and ceremony of royalty. Two years later the Revolution broke out, and in 1790 rank, titles, and feudal rights were abolished. Chateaubriand gave up his commission, and, as no occupation offered itself under the new order, or disorder, he conceived the fantastic plan of travelling to America to discover the North-West Passage. Without any of the requisite information, without interest or money, he was inevitably soon obliged to abandon this project. But if he did not find the North-West Passage, he did discover a new race, fresh conditions, and new scenery. In his early youth, after reading Rousseau, he had conceived the idea of writing the Epic of Primitive Man, a description of the ways of the savages of whom he knew nothing. Now he was upon their own soil, in their world, and though they were not as untouched by civilisation as he had imagined, it was not difficult to reconstruct their original condition. The first impression he received of them was undeniably a strange one. On the way from Albany to Niagara, when his guide led him for the first time into the virgin forest, he was seized by one of those transports of delight in his independence which he had felt in his early youth when he went hunting in Brittany. He wandered from tree to tree, to right and left, saying to himself: "Here are no roads, no towns, no monarchies, no republics, no men." Imagining himself to be alone in the forest, he suddenly came upon a score of half-naked, painted savages with ravens' feathers in their hair and rings in their noses, who--marvellous to relate!--were dancing quadrilles to the sounds of a violin played by a little powdered and frizzed Frenchman, once kitchen-boy to a French general, now retained as dancing-master by these savages for a consideration of beaver-skins and bear-hams. What a humiliating introduction to primitive life for a pupil of Rousseau! Subsequent impressions were, fortunately, simpler and more beautiful than this. Chateaubriand purchased clothes and weapons from the Indians, and lived their life for some weeks at least. He was presented to the Sachem, or chief, of the Onondagas (as Byron at a later period was presented to Ali Pasha); he rode through the country, coming here and there upon little European houses, with their pianos and mirrors, close to the huts of the Iroquois; he saw the Falls