6316 Reason and Instinct. 



against danger, and the provision of necessary food. Keen observers 

 of Nature, they rival the beasts of prey in discovering the haunts and 

 habits of game, and in their skill and cunning in capturing it. Con- 

 stantly exposed to perils of all kinds, they become callous to any 

 feeling of danger, and destroy human as well as animal life with as 

 little scruple and as freely as they expose their own. Of laws, human 

 or Divine, they neither know nor care to know. Their wish is their 

 law, and to attain it they do not scruple as to ways and means. They 

 may have good qualities, but they are those of the animal ; and people 

 fond of giving hard names call them revengeful, bloodthirsty, drunkards, 

 gamblers, regardless of the laws of meum and tuum, — in fact, White 

 Indians. Their animal qualities, however, are undeniable. Strong, 

 active, hardy as bears, daring, expert in the use of their weapons, they 

 are just what uncivilized white man might be supposed to be in a 

 brute state, depending upon his Instinct for the support of life. During 

 the hunt the Trapper's nerves must ever be in a state of tension, and 

 his mind ever present at his call. His eagle eye sweeps round the 

 country, and in an instant detects any foreign appearance. A turned 

 leaf, a blade of grass pressed down, the uneasiness of the wild animals, 

 the flight of birds, are all paragraphs to him written in Nature's legible 

 hand and plainest language. All the wits of the subtle savage are 

 called into play to gain an advantage over the wily woodsman ; but 

 with the natural Instinct of primitive man, the white hunter has the 

 advantages of a civilised mind, and, thus provided, seldom fails to out- 

 wit, under equal advantages, the cunning savage." — ^Adventures in 

 Mexico, 241, 244). And this character, in a variety of delineations of 

 great force and breadth, and to the general accuracy of which the 

 writer pledges himself, is shown to be anything but a mere ideal. The 

 mountain man is seen to be no insufficient match for the Indian in any 

 of the peculiar qualifications for maintaining a savage existence pos- 

 sessed by the latter, and even to a degree, often a considerable degree, 

 acquires the peculiar keenness of vision and intuitive perception of 

 locality and direction, which, in their full development, are found only 

 in the savage. But at the same time, out of that peculiar line in which 

 their faculties are wontedly exercised, the higher portions of man's 

 intellectual nature are as little apparently employed as possessed. 

 Eager for collision with the Indian, who is instinctively — it may with 

 the utmost truth be said — regarded as their natural foe; gratifying 

 their thirst for his blood — if the chances of the contest so permit — 

 with a savage, inextinguishable lust ; planning their attack and 

 executing it as stealthily and remorselessly as the lion or the bear; or 



