UP STREAM: ON THE RED EIVEB. 379 



countries knows nothing, and which could only 

 spring up in a land where liberty is found in its 

 greatest development. These trappers are for the 

 most part outcasts, criminals who have fled from 

 the chastisement of the law, or else unruly spirits 

 to Avhoni even the rational degree of freedom enjoyed 

 in the United States has appeared cramping and 

 insufficient. It is perhaps fortunate for the States 

 that they possess the sort of fag-end to their territory 

 comprised between the Mississippi and the Eocky 

 Mountains; for much mischief might be caused by 

 these violent and restless men, were they compelled 

 to remain in the bosom of social life. If, for example, 

 la belle France had had such a fag-end or outlet 

 during the various crises that she has passed through 

 in the course of the last fifty years, how many of 

 her great warriors and equally great tyrants might 

 have lived and died trappers ! And truly, neither 

 Europe nor mankind in general would have been 

 much the worse off, if those instruments of the 

 greatest despotism that ever disguised itself under 

 the mask of freedom the Massenas, and Murats, 

 and Davousts, and scores more of suchlike laced 

 and decorated gentry had never been heard of. 



One finds these trappers or hunters in all the 

 districts extending from the sources of the Columbia 

 and Missouri, to those of the Arkansas and Eed 

 rivers, and on the tributary streams of the Missis- 

 sippi which run eastward from the Eocky Mouu- 



