Book Excerpt: d bolder Europeans; and they moved westward, norcould have helped that had they tried. They lived largely andblithely, and died handsomely, those old Elizabethan adventurers,and they lie today in thousands of unrecorded graves upon twocontinents, each having found out that any place is good enoughfor a man to die upon, provided that he be a man.The American frontier was Elizabethan in its quality--childlike,simple, and savage. It has not entirely passed; for bothElizabethan folk and Elizabethan customs are yet to be found inthe United States. While the half-savage civilization of thefarther West was roaring on its way across the continent--whilethe day of the keelboatman and the plainsman, of theIndian-fighter and the miner, even the day of the cowboy, wasdawning and setting--there still was a frontier left far behindin the East, near the top of the mountain range which made thefirst great barrier across our pathway to the West. Thatfrontier, the frontier of Boone and Kenton, of Robertson aRead More