not tell his children of the medicine of the white man? Is our father
dumb that he does not speak to us of these things?"

Then the old chief took his calumet from his lips, and replied, "'If
Karkakonias told his children of the medicines of the white man--of his
war-canoes moving by fire, and making thunder as they move, of his
warriors more numerous than the buffalo in the days of our fathers, of
all the wonderful things he has looked upon-his children would point and
say, Behold! Karkakonias has become in his old age a maker of lies! No,
my children, Karkakonias has seen many wonderful things, and his tongue
is still able to speak; but, until your eyes have travelled as far as has
his tongue, he will sit silent and smoke the calumet, thinking only of
what he has looked upon."

Perhaps I too should have followed the example of the old Chippeway
chief, not because of any wonders I have looked upon; but rather because
of that well-known prejudice against travellers tales, and of that
terribly terse adjuration-".O that mine enemy might write a book!" Be
that as it may, the book has been written; and it only remains to say a
few words about its title and its theories.

The "Great Lone Land" is no sensational name. The North-west fulfils, at
the present time, every essential of that title. There is no other
portion of the globe in which travel is possible where loneliness can be
said to live so thoroughly. One may wander 500 miles in a direct line
without seeing a human being, or an animal larger than a wolf. And if
vastness of plain, and magnitude of lake, mountain, and river can mark a
land as great, then no region possesses higher claims to that
distinction.