230 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



Supper over, a trap or two may be set in likely places. The 

 men may take a plunge ; for in spite of their tawny skins, these 

 earth-colored fellows have closer acquaintance with water than 

 their appearance would indicate. The man-smell is as acute to 

 the beast's nose as the rank fur-animal-smell is to the man's nose ; 

 and the first thing that an Indian who has had a long run of ill- 

 luck does is to get a native "sweating-bath" and make himself 

 clean. 



On the ripple of the flowing river are the red bars of the camp 

 fire. Among the willows, perhaps, the bole of some birch stands 

 out white and spectral. Though there is no wind, the poplars 

 shiver with a fall of wan, faded leaves like snow-flakes on the grave 

 of summer. Red bills and whiskey-jacks and lonely phcebe-birds 

 come fluttering and pecking at the crumbs. Out from the gray 

 thicket bounds a cottontail to jerk up on his hind legs with surprise 

 at the camp fire. A blink of his long ear, and he has bounded 

 back to tell the news to his hare family. Overhead, with shrill 

 clangor, single file and in long wavering V lines, wing geese mi- 

 grating southward for the season. The children's hour, has a 

 great poet called a certain time of day ? Then this is the hour of 

 the wilderness hunter, the hour when "the Mountains of the Setting 

 Sun" are flooded in fiery lights from zone to zenith with the snowy 

 heights overtopping the far rolling prairie like clouds of opal at 

 poise in mid-heaven, the hour when the camp fire lies on the russet 

 autumn-tinged earth like a red jewel, and the far line of the prairie 

 fire billows against the darkening east in a tide of vermilion flame. 



Unless it is raining, the voyageurs do not erect their tent; for 

 they will sleep in the open, feet to the fire, or under the canoes, 

 close to the great earth, into whose very fibre their beings seem to 

 be rooted. And now is the time when the hunters spin their yarns 

 and exchange notes of all they have seen in the long silent day. 

 There was the prairie chicken with a late brood of half-grown 

 clumsy clucking chicks amply able to take care of themselves, but 

 still clinging to the old mother's care. When the hunter came 



