enterprise, and who are concerned in the fur and peltry business.
Expeditions for one, two, or three years, are fitted out from St. Louis,
or some commercial point, consisting of companies, who ascend the rivers
to the regions of fur. The hunters and trappers, receive a proportion of
the profits of the expedition. Some become so enamored with this
wandering and exposed life as to lose all desire of returning to the
abodes of civilization, and remain for the rest of their lives in the
American deserts. There are individuals, who are graduates of colleges,
and who once stood high in the circles of refinement and taste, that
have passed more than twenty years amongst the roaming tribes of the
Rocky mountains, or on the western slope, till they have apparently lost
all feelings towards civilized life. They have afforded an interesting
but melancholy example of the tendencies of human nature towards the
degraded state of savages. The improvement of the species is a slow and
laborious process,--the deterioration is rapid, and requires only to be
divested of restraint, and left to its own unaided tendencies. Many
others have returned to the habits of civilization, and some with
fortunes made from the woods and prairies.

_Boatmen._ These are the fresh water sailors of the West, with much of
the light hearted, reckless character of the sons of the Ocean,
including peculiar shades of their own. Before the introduction of
Steamboats on the western waters, its immense commerce was carried on by
means of _keel boats_, and _barges_. The former is much in the shape of
a canal boat, long, slim-built, sharp at each end, and propelled by
setting poles and the cordelle or long rope. The barge is longer, and
has a bow and stern. Both are calculated to ascend streams but by a very
slow process. Each boat would require from ten to thirty hands,
according to its size. A number of these boats frequently sailed in
company. The boatmen were proverbially lawless at every town and
landing, and indulged without restraint in every species of dissipation,
debauchery and excess. But this race has become reformed, or nearly
extinct;--yes, reformed by the mighty power of steam. A steamboat, with
half the crew of a barge or keel, will carry ten times the burden, and
perform six or eight trips in the time it took a keel boat to make one
voyage. Thousands of flat boats, or "broad horns," as they are called,
pass _down_ the rivers with the produce of the co