ndered them more successful
hunters, but at the same time, more formidable foes; some of them,
incorrigibly savage and warlike in their nature, have found the
expeditions of the fur traders grand objects of profitable adventure.
To waylay and harass a band of trappers with their pack-horses, when
embarrassed in the rugged defiles of the mountains, has become as
favorite an exploit with these Indians as the plunder of a caravan to
the Arab of the desert. The Crows and Blackfeet, who were such terrors
in the path of the early adventurers to Astoria, still continue their
predatory habits, but seem to have brought them to greater system. They
know the routes and resorts of the trappers; where to waylay them on
their journeys; where to find them in the hunting seasons, and where to
hover about them in winter quarters. The life of a trapper, therefore,
is a perpetual state militant, and he must sleep with his weapons in his
hands.

A new order of trappers and traders, also, has grown out of this system
of things. In the old times of the great Northwest Company, when the
trade in furs was pursued chiefly about the lakes and rivers, the
expeditions were carried on in batteaux and canoes. The voyageurs or
boatmen were the rank and file in the service of the trader, and even
the hardy "men of the north," those great rufflers and game birds, were
fain to be paddled from point to point of their migrations.

A totally different class has now sprung up:--"the Mountaineers," the
traders and trappers that scale the vast mountain chains, and pursue
their hazardous vocations amidst their wild recesses. They move from
place to place on horseback. The equestrian exercises, therefore, in
which they are engaged, the nature of the countries they traverse, vast
plains and mountains, pure and exhilarating in atmospheric qualities,
seem to make them physically and mentally a more lively and mercurial
race than the fur traders and trappers of former days, the self-vaunting
"men of the north." A man who bestrides a horse must be essentially
different from a man who cowers in a canoe. We find them, accordingly,
hardy, lithe, vigorous, and active; extravagant in word, and thought,
and deed; heedless of hardship; daring of danger; prodigal of the
present, and thoughtless of the future.

A difference is to be perceived even between these mountain hunters and
those of the lower regions along the waters of the Missouri. The latter,
generally French c