UP STREAM: OX THE RED RIVER. 381 



They live the whole year through in the steppes, 

 savannahs, prairies, and forests of the Arkansas, 

 Missouri, and Oregon territories districts which 

 comprise enormous deserts of sand and rock, and, 

 at the same time, the most luxuriant and beautiful 

 plains, teeming with verdure and vegetation. Snow 

 and frost, heat and cold, rain and storm, and hard- 

 ships of all kinds, render the limbs of the trapper 

 as hard, and his skin as thick, as those of the buffalo 

 that he hunts ; the constant necessity in which he 

 finds himself of trusting entirely to his bodily strength 

 and energy, creates a self-confidence that no peril can 

 shake a quickness of sight, thought, and action, of 

 which man in a civilised state can form no concep- 

 tions. His hardships are often terrible ; and I have 

 seen trappers who had endured sufferings, compared 

 to which the fabled adventures of Robinson Crusoe 

 are mere child's play, and whose skin had converted 

 itself into a sort of leather, impervious to everything 

 except lead and steel. In a moral point of view, 

 these men may be considered a psychological curios- 

 ity : in the wild state of nature in which they live, 

 their mental faculties frequently develop themselves 

 in a most extraordinary manner; and in the con- 

 versation of some of them may be found proofs of a 

 sagacity and largeness of views, of which the greatest 

 philosophers of ancient or modern times would have 

 no cause to be ashamed. 



The daily and hourly dangers incurred by these 



