WHAT THE TRAPPER STANDS FOR 277 



bars, or in haunts where long-range rifles have put the 

 fear of man in the animal heart. 



Now the trapper studies animal life where there is 

 neither a pen to keep the animal from doing what it 

 wants to do, nor any rifle hut his own to teach wild 

 creatures fear. Knowing nothing of science and senti 

 ment, he never clips facts to suit his theory. On the 

 truthfulness of his eyes depends his own life, so that 

 he never blinks his eyes to disagreeable facts. 



Looking out on the life of the wilds clear-visioned 

 as his mountain air, the trapper sees a world beautiful 

 as a dream but cruel as death. He sees a world where 

 to be weak, to be stupid, to be dull, to be slow, to be 

 simple, to be rash are the unpardonable crimes; where 

 the weak must grow strong, keen of eye and ear and 

 instinct, sharp, wary, swift, wise, and cautious; where 

 in a word the weak must grow fit to survive or perish ! 



The slow worm fills the hungry maw of the gaping 

 bird. Into the soft fur of the rabbit that has strayed 

 too far from cover clutch the swooping talons of an 

 eagle. The beaver that exposes himself overland risks 

 bringing lynx or wolverine or wolf on his home colony. 

 Bird preys on worm, mink on bird, lynx on mink, wolf 

 on lynx, and bear on all creatures that live from men 

 and moose down to the ant and the embryo life in the 

 ant s egg. But the vision of ravening destruction does 

 not lead the trapper to morbid conclusions on life as it 

 leads so many housed thinkers in the walled cities; for 

 the same world that reveals to him such ravening 

 slaughter shows him that every creature, the weakest 

 and the strongest, has some faculty, some instinct, 

 some endowment of cunning, or dexterity or caution, 

 some gift of concealment, of flight, of semblance, of 



