Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/280

260 and sojourn, in the vast wilderness, — on lake, river, and cataract, — and in the interpretation and description of Indian character, habits, and experience, which have never before left such marks in our literature of Nature and barbarism. And with equal facility he can pass from these wild scenes and men to interpret for us the passions and the intrigues, the schemes and the rivalries, of courtiers and politicians, the lofty motives of heroic and dauntless spirits who on equally unknown seas and lands could seek glory and empire for their monarch without other ambition for themselves; and also to penetrate to the deep workings of spiritual exaltation which moved the soldiers of the Company of Jesus, of gentle nurture and of scholarly training, in utter self-abnegation to bury themselves in the woods that they might circumvent the Enemy of souls in his sweeping claim for the hordes of heathenism.

The fruits of Mr. Parkman's labors appear at present — as they are happily not closed — in a series of seven volumes, distinct in subordinate titles, but comprehensive of one vast subject, dramatic and tragic in its sweep of destiny, but with brilliant, thrilling, romantic, and even lightsome episodes to break its sombreness of rehearsal. The meditation and the toil, the trained judgment and the conscience which have gone into those volumes that they might be critically faithful in their narrations, just to the patrons and actors in their enterprises, and attractive and instructive to the readers, must be left to the estimate of appreciative and grateful students.

Mr. Parkman's full theme extends through just two centuries of time, and relates to historical incidents covering the whole of this northern continent between Florida and Canada. The whole region, when he takes up the story, was called, by the Spanish discoverers and claimants under monarch and pope, New Spain, or Spanish Florida. Mr. Parkman deals with the region as New France. His stint of task and purpose was to rehearse in its completeness