the swift and graceful deer, the soft-footed panther, the shambling
black bear, the wild hog, the wolf, all manner of furred creatures,
great store of noble wild fowl--all these thriving after the fecund
fashion of this brooding land. It was a kingdom, this wild world, a
realm in the wilderness; a kingdom fit for a bold man to govern, a
man such as might have ruled in days long gone by. And indeed the Big
House and its scarcely measured acres kept well their master as they
had for many years. The table of this Delta baron was almost
exclusively fed from these acres; scarce any item needful in his life
required to be imported from the outer world. The government of
America might have fallen; anarchy might have prevailed; a dozen
states might have been taken over by a foreign foe; a score of states
might have been overwhelmed by national calamity, and it all had
scarce made a ripple here in this land, apart, rich, self-supporting
and content. It had always been thus here.

But if this were a kingdom apart and self-sufficient, what meant this
thing which, crossed the head of the plantation--this double line,
tenacious and continuous, which shone upon the one hand dark, and
upon the other, where the sun touched it, a cold gray in color? What
meant this squat little building at the side of these rails which
reached out straight as the flight of a bird across the clearing and
vanished keenly in the forest wall? This was the road of the iron
rails, the white man's perpetual path across the land. It clung close
to the ground, at times almost sinking into the embankment now grown
scarcely discernible among the concealing grass and weeds, although
the track itself had been built but recently. This railroad sought to
efface itself, even as the land sought to aid in its effacement, as
though neither believed that this was lawful spot for the path of the
iron rails. None the less, here was the railroad, ineradicable,