interior of Africa as an impenetrable mystery, we lose sight of a
locality in our own country that once surpassed all these in
virgin grandeur, in majestic solitude, and in all the attributes
of a tremendous wilderness.

The story of the Old Santa Fe Trail, so truthfully recalled by
Colonel Henry Inman, ex-officer of the old Regular Army, in these pages,
is a most thrilling one. The vast area through which the famous
highway ran is still imperfectly known to most people as "The West";
a designation once appropriate, but hardly applicable now; for in
these days of easy communication the real trail region is not
so far removed from New York as Buffalo was seventy years ago.

At the commencement of the "commerce of the prairies," in the early
portion of the century, the Old Trail was the arena of almost constant
sanguinary struggles between the wily nomads of the desert and the
hardy white pioneers, whose eventful lives made the civilization
of the vast interior region of our continent possible. Their daring
compelled its development, which has resulted in the genesis of
great states and large cities. Their hardships gave birth to the
American homestead; their determined will was the factor of possible
achievements, the most remarkable and important of modern times.

When the famous highway was established across the great plains
as a line of communication to the shores of the blue Pacific,
the only method of travel was by the slow freight caravan drawn by
patient oxen, or the lumbering stage coach with its complement of
four or six mules. There was ever to be feared an attack by those
devils of the desert, the Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas.
Along its whole route the remains of men, animals, and the wrecks of