THE INDIAN TRAPPER 131 



like a sack of wool, with hands of dried parchment, 

 and moccasins some five months too odoriferous. Her 

 version ran that Heaven would be full of the music of 

 running waters and south winds; that there would al 

 ways be warm gold sunlight like a midsummer after 

 noon, with purple shadows, where tired women could 

 rest; that the trees would be covered with blossoms, 

 and all the pebbles of the shore like dewdrops. 



Pushed from the Atlantic seaboard back over the 

 mountains, from the mountains to the Mississippi, 

 west to the Rockies, north to the Great Lakes, all that 

 was to be seen of nature in America the Indian trapper 

 has seen; though he has not understood. 



But now he holds only a fringe of hunting-grounds, 

 in the timber lands of the Great Lakes, in the canons 

 of the Rockies, and across that northern land which 

 converges to Hudson Bay, reaching west to Athabasca, 

 east to Labrador. It is in the basin of Hudson Bay 

 regions that the Indian trapper will find his last hunt 

 ing-grounds. Here climate excludes the white man, 

 and game is plentiful. Here Indian trappers were 

 snaring before Columbus opened the doors of the New 

 World to the hordes of the Old; and here Indian trap 

 pers will hunt as long as the race lasts. When there 

 is no more game, the Indian s doom is sealed ; but that 

 day is far distant for the Hudson Bay region. 



The Indian trapper has set few large traps. It is 

 midwinter; and by December there is a curious lull 

 in the hunting. All the streams are frozen like rock; 

 but the otter and pekan and mink and marten have not 

 yet begun to forage at random across open field. Some 

 foolish fish always dilly-dally up-stream till the ice 



