APPENDIX. 



HISTORY OF THE NEVVHOUSE TRAP. 



By G. W. NOYES. 



Mount with me, friendly reader, the winged horse of imag- 

 ination for a tfip towards the sunset. Away we speed, by the 

 hustling towns and cities of the West, by the gulfvvard-rolling 

 Mississippi, by the fertile prairies of Iowa and the plains of 

 Nebraska, by the fringe of squatter settlements that bound 

 dvilization in that direction, and by the final hunter's cabin 

 that projects, a foint landmark of repose, into the encircling 

 wilderness. On again five hundred miles further. We are 

 now among the buffaloes ; and yet another five hundred in a 

 northwesterly direction places us somewhere in the region of 

 the head waters of three, or perhaps four, great river systems, 

 those of tlie Missouri, tlie Columbia, the Saskatchewan, and 

 Mackenzie's River; having their several outlets in the Gulf of 

 Mexico, the Pacific Ocean, the Nortli Atlantic, and the Polar 

 Sea : a wild and solitary place. On one side, snow-capped 

 mountains rise in desolate grandeur to a heiglit of 15,000 feet. 

 Dark forests belt the landscape, where streams, issuing from 

 deep gorges in the hills, break to tlie level of the plains below. 

 Follow this rocky canon to where its stream and bed widen 

 into a marsh. We are now among the haunts of the l)eaver, 

 ntter, and mink. We deem ourselves the only human visitants 

 of this remote place. But look ! a moccasin track in the sand 

 tells us that some one has been here before us. Its course is 

 toward the margin of yondei- sluggish pool ; and, as we yet 



