Parkman states in the preface to a later edition of his work (1872): “We knew that a few fanatical outcasts were groping their way across the plains to seek an asylum from Gentile persecution, but we did not dream that the polygamous hordes of Mormon would rear a swarming Jerusalem in the bosom of solitude itself. We knew that, more and more, year after year, the trains of the emigrant wagons would creep in slow procession toward barbarous Oregon or wild California, but we did not dream, how Commerce and Gold would breed nations along the Pacific, the disenchanting screech of locomotives break the spell of weird mysterious mountains. . . . The wild cavalcade that defiled with me down the gorges of the Black Hills, with its paint and war plumes, fluttering trophies and savage embroidery, bows, arrows, lances and shields, will never be seen again.” In no way could Parkman have been more just or thoughtful than in one of his chance statements. “All things are relative,” said he. “The West is either very old or very new, according as we look at it.” From the one point of view he might feel a superiority of his own, for as he traveled over the country a few days’ march west of Leavenworth he saw many antlers of elk and skulls of buffalo, “reminders of the animals once swarming over this now deserted region.” This intervening country between the Missouri River and the plains proper he considers to serve the popular notion of the “prairie.” “For this it is,” he writes, “from which tourists, painters, poets and novelists, who have seldom penetrated farther, derived their conception of the whole region.” There was fell stroke of unwitting justice! Even to-day there are artists and novelists that deal with the West, but have “seldom penetrated farther” than the edge of the real West.