10 You say that you read with pleasure my little tales of missionary adventure among the Indian tribes. A new volume (the fifth) is soon to go to press in New York; I will make it my business to send you a copy as soon as it appears. I am working in my leisure moments on the history of the Potawatomi tribe, which will appear probably in the course of the next year and which shall likewise be sent you.
You speak with enthusiasm of all that you hear and read of America and express a great desire to visit this beautiful region some day. Really, I do not think your travelers can give you any proper idea of what is going on in this country, nor of its progress toward grandeur and toward the lofty position which it must occupy one day among the na
tions of the earth. The starry banner of the United States bears above it the emblem of grandeur, the American eagle, the same that the ancient Romans put upon their military standards. I have seen an old geographical chart, which shows the eagle soaring in the air above the great extent of North America, with the numerous islands adjacent to both coasts. He is casting a penetrating and greedy look over the vast Canada and all its dependencies, and his open beak seems ready to snatch them up. All those immense regions of which the United States occupy the centre rest under his shadow. His fine widespread tail covers all of Mexico and the adjoining regions as far as the Gulf of Darien and the
Bay of Panama. And the two tips of his wings are dipped in the two oceans beyond San Domingo and the Sandwich Islands. And that is the grand future, perhaps not far off, to which the great American republic aspires, and which she will attain if she is wise. In Mexico, where the Emperor Napoleon improvised his celebrated comedy at a time when
to Extract from letter in French to Henri and Clemence, November 3, 1866.