YIII 



THE Indians were not long in finding out that peltries 

 were a ready means of getting the guns and calico and 

 fire-water of the white man, and the white trapper was 

 not many years alone in the business. The Indian trap- 

 per whom Remington's clever eye and hand have depicted 

 may be a Cree or perhaps a Blackfoot, whom one was 

 apt to run across in the Selkirk Mountains or elsewhere 

 on the plains of the British Territory, or well up north in 

 the Rockies, somewhat antedating the outbreak of the 

 Civil War. He was tributary to the Hudson Bay Com- 

 pany, whose badge he wore in his blanket coat of English 

 manufacture, which he had got in trade. Wherever you 

 met this coat, you might place its wearer. He had bear- 

 skin leggings, with surface cleverly seared into ornament- 

 al patterns, and for the rest the usual Indian outfit. He 

 rode a pony which had nothing to distinguish it from the 

 plains pony, except that in winter its coat grew to so re- 

 markable a length as almost to conceal the identity of the 

 animal. Unless you saw it in motion you might take it 

 for a huge species of bear with a tail. 



Such long coats are not uncommon among any breed 

 of horses. We are wont to imagine that the Arabian 

 always has a bright, glossy coat ; but during the chill 

 rainy season of the regions north of the Arabian desert 

 and it can be as bleak and cold on those treeless wastes as 

 heart can desire the Arabian puts on a coat all but as 

 long and rough as a sheep. Unlike the Indian's pony, he 



