CHAPTER XXI 



THE LIFE OF THE TRAPPER, 



THE MAN FOR WHOM COLD WEATHER IS A 

 SOURCE OF LIVELIHOOD 



OF all the means by which man makes his 

 livelihood there is probably none that appeals 

 more strongly to the imagination, especially of the 

 growing boy, than the life of the trapper. Most 

 boys at some time or other in their lives decide to 

 throw off the yoke of civilisation and devote them- 

 selves to the life of trapping. They usually know 

 absolutely nothing about it, nothing of the hard- 

 ships, of the disappointments, of the years of 

 training necessary, and of the inborn skill of wood- 

 craft, without which success is not to be found. All 

 they know is that the trapper is one who lives in a 

 wide world of freedom, and whose life is surrounded 

 by a veil of picturesque uncertainty. To be 

 enveloped in this veil is the keenest desire of the 

 boy gifted with that most precious of gifts a 

 healthy imagination. But the trapper's life is not 

 all beer and skittles, not one long round of pleasure 

 and success. Every pelt sold or exchanged is 

 procured only after a vast expenditure of work, 

 work that would make the ordinary labourer 

 shudder. How little does the fashionable lady 

 realise when she selects some fur that suits her 

 fastidious fancy what that fur cost the man whose 



