Here and there on the banks of the great waterway--an imperial road that
would have delighted Cæsar--many forts were built. These were the
ganglia of that tremendous organism of which Astor was the brain. The
bourgeois of one of these posts was virtually proconsul with absolute
power in his territory. Mackenzie at Union--which might be called the
capital of the Upper Missouri country--was called "King of the
Missouri." He had an eye for seeing purple. At one time he ordered a
complete suit of armor from England; and even went so far as to have
medals struck, in true imperial fashion, to be distributed among his
loyal followers.

Far and wide these Western American kings flung the trappers, their
subjects, into the wilderness. Verily, in the unwritten "Missouriad"
there is no lack of regal glamour.

The ancients had a way of making vast things small enough to be
familiar. They make gods of the elements, and natural phenomena became
to them the awful acts of the gods.

These moderns made no gods of the elements--they merely conquered them!
The ancients idealized the material. These moderns materialized the
ideal. The latter method is much more appealing to me--an American--than
the former. I love the ancient stories; but it is for the modern
marvellous facts that I reserve my admiration.

When one looks upon his own country as from a height of years, old tales
lose something of their wonder for him. It is owing to this attitude
that the prospect of descending the great river in a power canoe from
the head of navigation gave me delight.