Let us picture for ourselves this first restless American, this
West-bound man. We must remember that there had been two or three full
American generations to produce him, this man who first dared turn
away from the seaboard and set his face toward the sinking of the
sun, toward the dark and mysterious mountains and forests which then
encompassed the least remote land fairly to be called the West. Two
generations had produced a man different from the Old-World type. Free
air and good food had given him abundant brawn. He was tall. Little
fat cloyed the free play of his muscles, and there belonged to him the
heritage of that courage which comes of good heart and lungs. He was
a splendid man to have for an ancestor, this tall and florid athlete
who never heard of athletics. His face was thin and aquiline, his look
high and confident, his eye blue, his speech reserved. You may see this
same man yet in those restricted parts of this country which remain fit
to be called America. You may see him sometimes in the mountains of
Tennessee, the brakes of Arkansas or Missouri, where the old strain has
remained most pure. You might have seen him over all the West in the
generation preceding our own.