They were men who labored as if the judgment fires were
about to break out on the world, and time to end with their day. They
were precisely the men whom the moral wants of the new world at the time
demanded.
[Footnote 43: A prominent clergyman of the Methodist church. His History
of Methodism is a work of great research and value. A native of
Pennsylvania.]
* * * * *
=_Francis Parkman, 1823-._= (Manual, pp. 496, 505.)
From "The Conspiracy of Pontiac."
=_145._= HUNTERS AND TRAPPERS.
These rude and hardy men, hunters and traders, scouts and guides, who
ranged the woods beyond the English borders, and formed a connecting
link between barbarism and civilization, have been touched upon already.
They were a distinct, peculiar class, marked with striking contrasts of
good and evil. Many, though by no means all, were coarse, audacious,
and unscrupulous; yet, even in the worst, one might often have found a
vigorous growth of warlike virtues, an iron endurance, an undespairing
courage, a wondrous sagacity, and singular fertility of resource. In
them was renewed, with all its ancient energy, that wild and daring
spirit, that force and hardihood of mind, which marked our barbarous
ancestors of Germany and Norway.
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