A new novel of the Far West published under the double signature of Gustave Aimard and Jules Berlioz d'Auriac. Civilization is animated by an immense force which pushes it to an unlimited expansion; like the impatient vapor raised by an ardent flame, it is always boiling, ready to spread beyond the known limits. Civilization is the perpetual movement of humanity, always in search of the infinite. But, in its path, it leaves traces, often miserable or bloody, wrecks tossed on the ocean of destiny; it destroys while creating; it makes ruins while consolidating its edifice; it engulfs whoever wants to fight with it. Only two centuries ago, people called Savages, why savages?... They were projecting in the virgin forests of the New World their free indolence, their solitary freedom, their carefree ignorance of the rest of the universe. Civilization has fallen upon these happy regions, like an avalanche, it has swept before it the woods, their wandering hosts, Indians, buffaloes, gazelles or leopards; it has suppressed the desert and its deep mysteries; it has absorbed everything.