could have helped that had they tried. They lived largely and
blithely, and died handsomely, those old Elizabethan adventurers,
and they lie today in thousands of unrecorded graves upon two
continents, each having found out that any place is good enough
for a man to die upon, provided that he be a man.

The American frontier was Elizabethan in its quality--childlike,
simple, and savage. It has not entirely passed; for both
Elizabethan folk and Elizabethan customs are yet to be found in
the United States. While the half-savage civilization of the
farther West was roaring on its way across the continent--while
the day of the keelboatman and the plainsman, of the
Indian-fighter and the miner, even the day of the cowboy, was
dawning and setting--there still was a frontier left far behind
in the East, near the top of the mountain range which made the
first great barrier across our pathway to the West. That
frontier, the frontier of Boone and Kenton, of Robertson and
Sevier, still exists and may be seen in the Cumberland--the only
remaining part of America which is all American. There we may
find trace of the Elizabethan Age--idioms lost from English
literature and American speech long ago. There we may see the
American home life as it went on more than a hundred years ago.
We may see hanging on the wall the long muzzle-loading rifle of
an earlier day. We may see the spinning-wheel and the loom. The
women still make in part the clothing for their families, and the
men still make their own household furniture, their own farming
implements, their own boots.

This overhanging frontier of America is a true survival of the
days of Drake as well as of the days of Boone. The people are at