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CHAPTER III.

TRAPPERS AND VOYAGEURS.

ALTHOUGH there has been always a prestige in favour of the sailor whose adventurous prow has first tracked the waters and penetrated the harbours of strange lands,-though imagination warms with the delights of the sunny sea, scarce dimpled by the soft breath of the zephyr,-while the gallant vessel, spreading her white canvass to the balmy air, glides swiftly under its influence towards the wished for shores, already beginning to cast their varied and picturesque shadows in the ocean's glassy mirror, while sea and sky are vocal with the notes of their feathered tenants, and dolphins sport their thousand hues before the stranger's eyes, the beaux of the deep waters, so that at the thought we exclaim with the poet

"He who hath sailed upon the deep blue sea,

Hath seen at times, I ween, a full fair sight;"

or recurring to the horrors of the lee-shore and midnight gale, the surf-covered reefs and ironbound coast, or the still more terrific tornado of the tropics, the vessel on her beam-ends, and masts bending like bulrushes and snapping by the board; the sea, boiling like a whirlpool, making a clear breach over all, and yet by "hairbreadth 'scapes they live to tell the tale, how the wind changing, or the over-strained vessel righting, or perchance in

open boats they get safe to land, and there in valleys breathing perfume, amid groves loaded with fruit and gladdened with the song of birds, they recruit their wearied bodies, and refit or rebuild their ocean home, to proceed to new dangers and new escapes: although such scenes have thrown a halo round maritime discovery, and led many an ardent spirit to "tempt the briny foam," yet, if the labours and dangers be considered, the traveller may well claim an equal share of glory and admiration with the sailor, although it be not heightened by the poetry of the ocean. Not less are his fatigues, not less his dangers; nay, he carries not with him, snail like, his home and its comparative comforts; nor has he the means of escape from dangers when imminent, nor under difficulty and discouragement so many comrades to assist and assure him; strong in himself alone, he must proceed, independent of circumstances, and prepared to find in the course of his travels those necessaries of life which he is unable to carry with him.

Such ideas naturally suggest themselves to the mind when about to review the series of journeys by which the interior, and more especially of the north-west part of America, was opened to the knowledge of the civilized world, and which display not only the dangers and difficulties, but the courage and endurance necessary to meet them in the brightest colours; and numerous are the "moving accidents by flood and field" which the narration of these record.

Previous, however, to entering on the series, it is necessary to advert to the causes which led to such undertakings in North-West America. They

may be stated briefly as springing from the desire to discover a north-west passage, but with respect to the Oregon territory, more especially from the rivalry of the British and American fur traders, which has been continued in that of nations.

Canada having been transferred to the former nation, and the United States having become independent, peace let loose the active spirits for which war had found employment; many of them sought excitement in the life of wild adventure which the woods, plains, and mountains afforded, and to which sufficient zest was given by the danger arising from wild beasts, and the natural marauding propensities of the savages, who inhabit them. Inured by such a life to toil and danger, and to such a habit of self-denial as would reduce the sum even of the necessaries of life to a very comparatively trifling amount, the hunters and trappers, into which the soldiers of the war had been converted, spread themselves over the north and west frontiers, and while, in many cases, enriching themselves at the expense of the Indian, and causing fearful scenes of oppression on the one hand, and retaliation on the other, scenes grateful only to the novelist, who had rather paint the conquest of man over his fellow men than over himselfwere nevertheless the pioneers of civilization and science; and, to use an expression familiar at least to them, "broke ground" for their successors; whose united efforts completed what their individual strength and energy had begun. Such men have been in all cases the guides of the exploring parties; their unsettled life, consequent on the pursuit of game, giving them the necessary local knowledge, and their self-dependent existence en

abling them to meet and overcome the difficulties and dangers incident to such expeditions. Of these America produces three classes-the hunter of eastern forests and lakes, the voyageur of the northern rivers, and the trapper of the western mountains and prairies; yet to all these perhaps equally belong the characteristics of the borderer, unblenching courage, untiring energy, and unerring precision of judgment in case of uncertainty; the characteristics of the borderer not only in the West, but universally, whether, as in days of yore, when, on our own borders, they

"Cheered the dark bloodhound on his way

Or with the bugle roused the fray;"

or, as at present, on the shores of the Baltic, the plains of Africa, or the ghauts of India, modified only by local circumstances and the influence of climate; in short, a development of the animal faculties resulting from constant cultivation, to the exclusion of all mental, excepting such as are necessary to the cultivation of the other, or, from want of knowledge are evidenced only in morbid affections like superstition, the natural result of the solitude and silence which during a great part of their time surround them, and the sources of natural sublimity among which they pass their days. Another century, and their place will know them no more; they will exist but in the pages of history and romance; in productions of the imagination too strange for truth, and truth stranger than fiction.

It will not appear strange that superstition is one characteristic of the borderer, even to paralyzing his courage, weakening his perception, and abridging his powers of endurance.

Who

that has passed, if but one night, amid the solitudes of the primeval forests, and seen the shades gathering slowly around the stately pillars that support their ribbed roofs of Nature's vaulting, but must have acknowledged his own insignificance, and the presence of superior intelligences, whose aspirations might befit so mighty a temple, and rise accepted by its maker,-who, that has listened till his sense of hearing, travelling the deep profound, hath in the lowest depth attained a lower still, until consciousness, tuned to the highest pitch, responds to the rustle of a leaf, or the slightest breath which gives it motion; whose eye, fathoming the gloom, grows conversant with shades of darkness, and measures its depths until imagination peoples its immensity, and establishes a kingdom of shadows, but must have felt the chill power of that undefined fear which acknowledges the connexion of matter with mind, and body with spirit, the visible with the invisible; and even if rebuked by reason and education, his mind rebels; yet still he feels the icy chain wrapped close around him, paralyzing his attempts at resistance, till he confesses that what is called superstition is inherent in human nature. Who that has felt this, but must acknowledge the mighty influence she must exert over those whose house is of Nature's building, whose associates are her productions, whose communings are of the lessons she teaches.

Who that has watched the broad expanse of a transatlantic lake flinging back from the transparent emeralds which deck her sunny bosom the "level light" of the declining orb of day, till the rosy hues of the autumnal woods deepen into purple, and the hoarse croak of the frog and night