RAPPING IN NORTH DAKOTA 1871.) 119 
Without special event other than the tediousness of 
tae voyage incident to snallow water andsandbars, the 
steamer reached Point Preparation, in the Painted Woods 
region, and discharged its cargo of trappers, traps and 
supplies upon the bai, facing the ruins of the stockade 
that had been buraed by an incendiary fire during our 
several months absence. 
About sundewn on Seprember 16, we reached the 
prairie shore of Painted Woods Lake and made ready 
to camp. The site was in a buach of bushes facing the 
water which was a good view ofthe greater part of it. With 
the going down of the sun on that autumn day we looked 
around upon scenes that fortune favored us but the once 
to see—a perfect earthly paradise for wild animals and 
birds. 
The slanting rays of the setting sun shone full upon 
the numerous, freshly piastered houses of the industrious 
the thrifty beaver, whose snowy and glistening structures 
stood out likethe famed castles of watery Venice in the 
past days of its commercial glory. 
Otter were swimming in plain sight, and without fear. 
Viid geese, brants, ducks and mud hens were proudly 
cresting the diminutive waves, fanned up by an evening 
breez2. Ovr presence were unnoted or gave them no 
concern. Even the antelope lost their timidity and faced 
us in a soldierly line, on the bluffs near by, and watched 
in curious wonderment our movements about fire and 
smoke. 
In fact, geaerations of animals and fowls had been 
born and reared here, since the last trapper, white or 
red, had put out trap and toggle around this lake’s shore. 
Peter Buchaump, old and descripit,—like Cooper’s hero 
in his Prairie story, closing out his remaining days in the 
