h for
a man to die upon, provided that he be a man.

The American frontier was Elizabethan in its quality--childlike, simple,
and savage. It has not entirely passed; for both Elizabethan folk and
Elizabethan customs are yet to be found in the United States. While
the half-savage civilization of the farther West was roaring on its
way across the continent--while the day of the keelboatman and the
plainsman, of the Indian-fighter and the miner, even the day of the
cowboy, was dawning and setting--there still was a frontier left far
behind in the East, near the top of the mountain range which made the
first great barrier across our pathway to the West. That frontier, the
frontier of Boone and Kenton, of Robertson and Sevier, still exists and
may be seen in the Cumberland--the only remaining part of America which
is all American. There we may find trace of the Elizabethan Age--idioms
lost from English literature and American speech long ago. There we may
see the American home life as it went on more than a hundred years
ago. We may see hanging on the wall the long muzzle-loading rifle of an
earlier day. We may see the spinning-wheel and the loom. The women still
make in part the clothing for their families, and the men still make
their own household furniture, their own farming implements, their own
boots.

This overhanging frontier of America is a true survival of the days of
Drake as well as of the days of Boone. The people are at once godly and
savage. They breed freely; they love their homes; they are ever ready
for adventure; they are frugal, abstemious, but violent and strong.
They carry on still the half-religious blood feuds of the old Scotch
Highlands or the North of Ireland, whence they came. They reverence
good women. They care little for material accumulations. They believe in
personal ease and personal independence. With them life goes on not in
the slow monotony of reiterated performance, but in ragged profile, with
large exertions followed by large repose. Now that has been the fashion
of the frontier in every age and every land of all the world. And so,
by studying these people, we may even yet arrive at a just and
comprehensive notion of what we might call the "feel" of the old
frontier.

There exists, too, yet another Saxon frontier in a far-off portion
of the world. In that strange country, Australia, tremendous unknown
regions still remain, and the wild pastoral life of such regions bids
fair to exis