ectness of action, in destructiveness.

To the pioneer the forest was no friendly resource for posterity, no
object of careful economy. He must wage a hand-to-hand war upon it,
cutting and burning a little space to let in the light upon a dozen
acres of hard-won soil, and year after year expanding the clearing into
new woodlands against the stubborn resistance of primeval trunks and
matted roots. He made war against the rank fertility of the soil. While
new worlds of virgin land lay ever just beyond, it was idle to expect
the pioneer to stay his hand and turn to scientific farming. Indeed, as
Secretary Wilson has said, the pioneer would, in that case, have raised
wheat that no one wanted to eat, corn to store on the farm, and cotton
not worth the picking.

Thus, fired with the ideal of subduing the wilderness, the destroying
pioneer fought his way across the continent, masterful and wasteful,
preparing the way by seeking the immediate thing, rejoicing in rude
strength and wilful achievement.

But even this backwoodsman was more than a mere destroyer. He had
visions. He was finder as well as fighter--the trail-maker for
civilization, the inventor of new ways. Although Rudyard Kipling's
"Foreloper"[270:1] deals with the English pioneer in lands beneath the
Southern Cross, yet the poem portrays American traits as well:

"The gull shall whistle in his wake, the blind wave break in fire,
He shall fulfill God's utmost will, unknowing his desire;
And he shall see old planets pass and alien stars arise,
And give the gale his reckless sail in shadow of new skies.

"Strong lust of gear shall drive him out and hunger arm his hand
To wring food from desert nude, his foothold from the sand.
His neighbors' smoke shall vex his eyes, their voices break his
rest;
He shall go forth till south is north, sullen and dispossessed;
He shall desire loneliness and his desire shall bring
Hard on his heels, a thousand wheels, a people and a king.

"He shall come back on his own track, and by his scarce cool camp,
There shall he meet the roaring street, the derrick and the stamp;
For he must blaze a nation's way with hatchet and with brand,
Till on his last won wilderness an empire's bulwarks stand."

This quest after the unknown, this yearning "beyond the sky line, where
the strange roads go down," is of the very essence of the backwoods
pioneer, even though he