158 THE WILDERNESS AND ITS TENANTS. [1760-1763. 



instruments of ruin. They soon become necessi- 

 ties, and the unhappy hunter, forgetting the wea- 

 pons of his fathers, must thenceforth depend on the 

 white man for ease, happiness, and life itself. 



Those rude and hardy men, hunters and traders, 

 scouts and guides, who ranged the woods beyond 

 the English borders, and formed a connecting link 

 between barbarism and civilization, have been 

 touched upon already. They were a distinct, 

 peculiar class, marked with striking contrasts of 

 good and evil. Many, though by no means all, 

 were coarse, audacious, and unscrupulous ; yet, 

 even in the worst, one might often have found a 

 vigorous growth of warlike virtues, an iron endur- 

 ance, an undespairing courage, a wondrous sagacity, 

 and singular fertility of resource. In them was 

 renewed, with all its ancient energy, that wild and 

 daring spirit, that force and hardihood of mind, 

 which marked our barbarous ancestors of Germany 

 and Norway. These sons of the wilderness still 

 survive. We may find them to this day, not in the 

 valley of the Ohio, nor on the shores of the lakes, 

 but far westward on the desert range of the buffalo, 

 and among the solitudes of Oregon. Even now, 

 while I write, some lonely trapper is climbing the 

 perilous defiles of the Rocky Mountains, his strong 

 frame cased in time-worn buck-skin, his rifle griped 

 in his sinewy hand. Keenly he peers from side to 

 side, lest Blackfoot or Arapahoe should ambuscade 

 his path. The rough earth is his bed, a morsel of 

 dried meat and a draught of water are his food and 

 drink, and death and danger his companions. No 



