ve been in these pictures of the mind--when I beheld
that old, grey, castled city, high throned above the firth, with the
flag of Britain flying, and the red-coat sentry pacing over all; and the
man in the next car to me would conjure up some junks and a pagoda and a
fort of porcelain, and call it, with the same affection, home.

Another race shared among my fellow-passengers in the disfavour of the
Chinese; and that, it is hardly necessary to say, was the noble red man
of old story--he over whose own hereditary continent we had been
steaming all these days. I saw no wild or independent Indian; indeed, I
hear that such avoid the neighbourhood of the train; but now and again
at way stations, a husband and wife and a few children, disgracefully
dressed out with the sweepings of civilisation, came forth and stared
upon the emigrants. The silent stoicism of their conduct, and the
pathetic degradation of their appearance, would have touched any
thinking creature, but my fellow-passengers danced and jested round them
with a truly Cockney baseness. I was ashamed for the thing we call
civilisation. We shall carry upon our consciences so much, at least, of
our forefathers' misconduct as we continue to profit by ourselves.

If oppression drives a wise man mad, what should be raging in the hearts
of these poor tribes, who have been driven back and back, step after
step, their promised reservations torn from them one after another as
the States extended westward, until at length they are shut up into
these hideous mountain deserts of the centre--and even there find
themselves invaded, insulted, and hunted out by ruffianly diggers? The
eviction of the Cherokees (to name but an instance), the extortion of
Indian agents, the outrages of the wicked, the ill-faith of all, nay,
down to the ridicule of such poor beings as were here with me upon the
train, make up a chapter of injustice and indignity such as a man must
be in some ways base if his heart will suffer him to pardon or forget.
These old, well-founded, historical hatreds have a savour of nobility
for the independent. That the Jew should not love the Christian, nor the
Irishman love the English, nor the Indian brave tolerate the thought of
the American, is not disgraceful to the nature of man; rather, indeed,
honourable, since it depends on wrongs ancient like the race, and not
personal to him who cherishes the indignation.

TO THE GOLDEN GATES