Border Rifles: A Tale of the Texan War

Excerpt: The immense virgin forests which once covered the soil of North America are more and more disappearing before the busy axes of the squatters and pioneers, whose insatiable activity removes the desert frontier further and further to the west. Flourishing towns, well tilled and carefully-sown fields, now occupy regions where, scarce ten years ago, rose impenetrable forests, whose dense foliage hardly allowed the sunbeams to penetrate, and whose unexplored depths sheltered animals of every description, and served as a retreat for hordes of nomadic Indians, who, in their martial ardour, frequently caused these majestic domes of verdure to re-echo with their war-yell. Now that the forests have fallen, their gloomy denizens, gradually repulsed by the civilisation that incessantly pursues them, have fled step by step before it, and have sought far away other and safer retreats, to which they have borne the bones of their fathers with them, lest they might be dug up and desecrated by the inexorable ploughshare of the white men, as it traces its long and productive furrow over their old hunting-grounds. Is this constant disafforesting and clearing of the American continent a misfortune?