Where is the
forest-covered country and its savage race, its skin-clad
warriors and their frail coracles?
There, where the forest stood, from north to south and from east
to west, spreads a wide field of rich fertility. There, on those
rivers where the basket-boats once sailed, rise the taut spars of
England's navy. Where the rude hamlet rested on its banks in
rural solitude, the never-weary din of commerce rolls through the
city of the world. The locomotive rushes like a thunder-clap
upon the rail; the steamer ploughs against the adverse wind, and,
rapid as the lightning, the telegraph cripples time. The once
savage land is the nucleus of the arts and civilization. The
nation that from time to time was oppressed, invaded, conquered,
but never subjected, still pressed against the weight of
adversity, and, as age after age rolled on, and mightier woes and
civil strife gathered upon her, still the germ of her destiny, as
it expanded, threw off her load, until she at length became a
nation envied and feared.
It was then that the powers of the world were armed against her,
and all Europe joined to tear the laurels from her crown, and
fleets and armies thronged from all points against the devoted
land, and her old enemy, the Gaul, hovered like his own eagle
over the expected prey.
The thunder of the cannon shook the world, and blood tinged the
waves around the land, and war and tumult shrieked like a tempest
over the fair face of Nature; the din of battle smothered all
sounds of peace, and years passed on and thicker grew the gloom.
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