Beyond the Black River

Conan on the Pictish frontier, in the story Howard cared most about: a wilderness stockade, settlers who should not be there, a shaman across the river, and a retreat that saves almost nobody. Howard grew up on Texas frontier talk from men who remembered it, and put the whole argument in one line — barbarism is the natural state of mankind, and civilisation is an accident. Fifty-eight plates of forest and frontier painting by George Catlin and Gustave Courbet carry the wilderness that surrounds Howard's stockade.