"The West is
preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of
the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their crop, it
remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Platte, the
Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce.
Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become
a fiction of the past,-as it is to some extent a fiction of the
present,-the poets of the world will be inspired by American
mythology....".