The Trappers of Arkansas; or, The Loyal Heart

The publication of the present volume of Gustave Aimard's works renders the series complete. It takes its place as the first of all: and it is succeeded by the Border Rifles, Freebooters, and White Scalper. In exciting scenes and perilous adventures, this work, if possible, surpasses all those which have as yet been offered to the English reader. Moreover it enables the development of Aimard's literary talent to be distinctly traced. The critic will discover, that, at first, Gustave Aimard's brain so teemed with incidents, that he paid slight attention to plot, and hence this volume—as is indeed generally the case with works relative to Indian life and character—consists rather of a succession of exciting adventures than of a regularly developed drama. This fault our Author has corrected in his later works: his hand, at first better suited to wield the bowie knife than the pen, has regained its pliancy; and the ever increasing encouragement bestowed on his stories in England, is a gratifying proof that his efforts after artistic improvement have been fully appreciated.
L.W.
PROLOGUE.
PART I.
PART II.
The traveller who for the first time lands in the southern provinces of America involuntarily feels an undefinable sadness.
In fact, the history of the New World is nothing but a lamentable martyrology, in which fanaticism and cupidity continually go hand in hand.
The search for gold was the origin of the discovery of the New World; that gold once found, America became for its conquerors merely a storehouse, whither greedy adventurers came, a poniard in one hand and a crucifix in the other, to gather an ample harvest of the so ardently coveted metal, after which they returned to their own countries to make a display of their riches, and provoke fresh emigrations, by the boundless luxury they indulged in.
It is to this continual displacement that must be attributed, in America, the absence of those grand monuments, the foundation stones as it were of every colony which plants itself in a new country with a view of becoming perpetuated.