decide, for a thousandth time, that I will walk into the
southwest or west. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go
free. Thither no business leads me. It is hard for me to believe
that I shall find fair landscapes or sufficient wildness and
freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not excited by the
prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest which I
see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward the
setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in it of enough
consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I will, on this side
is the city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the
city more and more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. I should
not lay so much stress on this fact, if I did not believe that
something like this is the prevailing tendency of my countrymen.
I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way
the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from
east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed the phenomenon
of a southeastward migration, in the settlement of Australia; but
this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging from the
moral and physical character of the first generation of
Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The
eastern Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet.
"The world ends there," say they; "beyond there is nothing but a
shoreless sea." It is unmitigated East where they live.

We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and
literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as
into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The
Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have
had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions.
If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance