From both sides came the Wanderlust of the blood, the fever to be moving, to be pushing on to the edge of things.

In the first year of his life, ere he had learned the way of his legs, Jacob Welse had wandered a-horse through a thousand miles of wilderness, and wintered in a hunting-lodge on the head-waters of the Red River of the North.

His first foot-gear was moccasins, his first taffy the tallow from a moose.

His first generalizations were that the world was composed of great wastes and white vastnesses, and populated with Indians and white hunters like his father.

A town was a cluster of deer-skin lodges; a trading-post a seat of civilization; and a factor God Almighty Himself.