George outdid himself in glowing descriptions of the region in his diary, but from the moment when real work began there is not a trace of such descriptions to be found in the book. From that time he lived only for his work. As it was seldom that the little company chanced upon the hut of a squatter, George and his companions spent most of their nights around a campfire in the forest. Their food consisted, for the most part, of wild turkeys. A fork-shaped stick was the spit and a chip of wood the plate. Of course George had to expect and be prepared to meet with Indians, so that he and his companions had armed themselves. It was natural that the Indians should not be very friendly to the settlers. They looked upon the country as their property and upon the white squatters as interlopers and robbers. There was much cruelty practised on both sides. Fairly considered, one must admit that the Indians had shown themselves incapable of any kind of communal development, and it would have been a pity for such an enormous territory, immensely rich in some portions, to have remained in the sole possession of a race which was incapable of civilization and which probably never numbered over one hundred thousand people. In contrast to the Indians, the increase of the Europeans was extraordinary. In his own peculiar but essentially just manner, this was once commented upon by an Indian chief, called by the Americans “Little Turtle,” in a speech to the whites. It is a strange and incomprehensible thing about the white people. Scarcely two generations have passed since you set foot on our soil, and already you cover it like a swarm of insects, while we aborigines, who have lived here no one knows how long, are almost as few in number as the deer which we hunt. To be sure, you palefaces know how to make use of a piece not much bigger than my hand. On a patch only fifteen or twenty times as great as this room, a white man will raise enough food to keep him for a full year. He takes another bit of land grown with grass and herbs and raises his cattle upon it, which supply him with milk and meat. We red men, on the contrary, need immense territories, for the deer which we kill and which scarce provides us with food for two days, needs a great region in which to attain its proper growth. And when we have killed two or three hundred deer, it is the same as though we had destroyed all the grass and woods on which they subsisted. The white men spread out like oil on a blanket, while we melt away like snow in the spring sunshine, and if we do not soon adopt new ways, it will be impossible for the race of red men long to survive. But the Indians showed themselves incapable of learning “new ways.”