CHAPTER XII. 



THE TEAPPEK. 



I SUPPOSE there is no man who has more pity wasted 

 upon him than the solitary trapper. In the opinion of 

 those who are uninitiated in the mysteries of woodcraft 

 he is the most wretched of mortals. For months and 

 months, often for a whole year, he lives either quite alone 

 in the forest or else with one comrade only. He does 

 without the comforts of civilized life and the pleasures of 

 society. He has no church to go to on a Sunday ; no 

 doctor to prescribe for him if he is ill. In fact, in the 

 opinion of the gregarious city man, his condition 'of life is 

 little if at all better than that of a prisoner in a dungeon. 

 But there are two ways of looking at most subjects, and 

 the trapper's life is no exception to the rule. The forest is 

 the trapper's home ; there are all his friends, not human 

 ones, but not less dear on that account. He thinks, and I who 

 have tried the life fully enter into his feelings, that there 

 is no mode of existence so enjoyable as that of the trapper 

 in the Canadian forest. He has no church near him it is 

 true, but it by no means follows that he has no religion. 

 On the contrary, there is a religion in the pine forest, 

 which appeals most strongly to a man's best nature. 

 Nowhere else does he feel so utterly and entirely depen- 

 dent upon the Giver of all good. Nowhere else can 

 he so fully enter into the feelings of the writer of the 



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