|
|
As apropos to this subject, I cannot refrain from quoting a paragraph from the Memoirs of De Tocqueville, of his tour through northern Michigan in 1881: "The wilderness was before us just as, six thousand years ago, it showed itself to the fathers of mankind. These are not more or less probable speculations of philosophy; the facts are as certain as if they had already taken place. In a few years these impenetrable forests will have been fallen; the sons of civilization and industry will break the silence of the Siganaw; its echoes will cease; the banks will be imprisoned by quays; its current, which now flows on unnoticed and tranquil through a nameless waste, will be stemmed by the prows of vessels. More than one hundred miles sever this solitude from the great European settlements; and we were perhaps the last travelers allowed to see its primitive grandeur, so strong is the impetus that urges the white man to the entire conquest of the new world.
|
|
|
|
|
|
