TWENTY YEARS IN THE ROCKIES. 299 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



CONCLUSION. 



Those days are gone and my retrospect is now ended. 

 "Ye have lived my life, ye have heard my tale," and I must 

 say farewell. And yet I linger. The new days are so unlike 

 the old. The free, wild life of nature and of nature studies 

 has been so changed by the circumscribing influence of civi- 

 lization, so measured by metes and bounds, that we are now 

 living the life of another world. I cling to the memories of 

 the past with the warmth and tenacity of the ardent lover, 

 and the reader will bear me if I indulge in a closing remi- 

 niscence. I can still see, by the clear mountain streams, the 

 busy beavers of the olden time, cutting trees and building 

 dams to provide the water in which they can build their 

 houses and be protected from the intrusions of their brothers 

 of the wild. By their extermination one large element of the 

 purchasing power of the Indian has passed away. All 

 things of that loved period have passed. 



Link after link has dropped off from the chain of prim- 

 itive existence. The deer have been killed, their skins taken 

 to the East and made into gloves, while the remnants of the 

 once great tribes of Indians must now resort to other means 

 to secure their footwear. Their moccasined feet no longer 

 sound noiselessly on plain and mountain. The juicy veni- 

 son is no longer an article of staple food. The agile red and 



