s but so much
plastic material which it shapes to its own inscrutable ends. For the
man whose lot is cast in the heart of these wilds, the drama of life
usually moves with a tremendous simplicity toward the sudden and sombre
tragedy of the last act. The titanic world in which he lives closes in
upon him and makes him its own. For him, among the ancient watch-towers
of the earth, the innumerable interests and activities of swarming
cities, the restless tides and currents of an eager civilization, take
on the remoteness of a dream. The peace or war of nations is less to him
than the battles of Wing and Fur. His interests are all in that world
over which he seeks to rule by the law of trap and gun, and in the war
of defence which he wages against the aggression of the elements. He
returns insensibly to the type of the primitive man, strong, patient,
and enduring.

High up on the mountainside, overlooking a valley so deep and wide as to
daze the brain of the gazing human, stands a squat building. It seems to
have been crushed into the slope by the driving force of the vicious
mountain storms to which it is open on three sides. There is no shelter
for it. It stands out bravely to sunshine and storm alike with the
contemptuous indifference of familiarity. It is a dugout, and, as its
name implies, is built half in the ground. Its solitary door and single
parchment-covered window overlook the valley, and the white path in
front where the snow is packed hard by the tramp of dogs and men, and
the runners of the dog-sled. Below the slope bears away to the
woodlands. Above the hut the overshadowing mountain rises to dazzling
heights; and a further, but thin, belt of primeval forest extends up,
up, until the eternal snows are reached and the air will no longer
support life. Even to the hardy hunters, whose home this is, those upper
forests are sealed chapters in Nature's story.

Below the dugout, and beyond the valley, lie countless lesser hills, set
so closely that their divisions are lost in one smooth, dark expanse of
forest. Blackened rifts are visible here and there, but they have little
meaning, and only help to materialize what would otherwise wear an
utterly ghostly appearance. The valley in front is so vast that its
contemplation from the hillside sends a shudder of fear through the
heart. It is dark, dreadfully dark and gloomy, although the great
stretch of pine forest, which reaches to its uttermost confines, bears
upon