It is curious to speculate on the infinite variety of causes which have influence in the formation of character; on the numerous diversities which are found under different circumstances; and the multiplicity of qualities, which, in their various combinations, make up each whole. What any man might have become under different training, or with different fortunes, it is vain even to conjecture. Yet we cannot refrain from _speculating_ on the change which circumstances might have made in the characters and destinies of many, who "crawl from the cradle to the grave" unregarded and unknown. Poor old Charlot Tayon! I have often puzzled myself to tell to what class of men he belonged by nature. Illiterate, uncultivated, ignorant, bred up on the outermost verge of civilized life, and spending all the prime of youth and manhood far beyond it, it was hard to tell {72} whether this rude training had encouraged or retarded the growth of those qualities which made him in my eyes a remarkable man. A native of upper Louisiana, he had entered, in early youth, into the service of the king of Spain as a private soldier. His corps was one of those whose duties condemned them to pass their days in the wild prairies, which, extending from the neighborhood of the Mississippi to the Rio del Norte, serve rather as the range than the habitation of small but numerous bands of Indians. Such a life is of course a life of toil, hardship, and danger. The qualities which fit a man to encounter these, are, under other circumstances, rewarded by fame. Even in scenes so remote, they do not always fail of a reward, which to him who receives it seems like fame. His few companions are his world, and their applause is to him the applause of the world. He perils every thing to win it, and, having fought his way to the head of a company of rangers, is as proud, and with good reason, as Wellington himself of all his honors, purchased at less expense of hardship or danger. It is thus that I account for the unequalled pride of this poor old man, associated as it was in his uncultivated mind with all that lofty courtesy which so surely accompanies a just sense of unquestioned and unquestionable merit. I have said that he began life as a common soldier. A campaign of hard service was rewarded by the rank of fourth corporal. Another gave him the third place among these humble but important officers. In eight years he rose, step by step, and year by year, to the rank of first sergeant. Three more placed him, by the like regular gradations, at the head of his company.