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We Here Close Our Picturings Of The Rocky Mountains And Their
Wild Inhabitants, And Of The Wild Life That Prevails
There; which
we have been anxious to fix on record, because we are aware that
this singular state of things
Is full of mutation, and must soon
undergo great changes, if not entirely pass away. The fur trade
itself, which has given life to all this portraiture, is
essentially evanescent. Rival parties of trappers soon exhaust
the streams, especially when competition renders them heedless
and wasteful of the beaver. The furbearing animals extinct, a
complete change will come over the scene; the gay free trapper
and his steed, decked out in wild array, and tinkling with bells
and trinketry; the savage war chief, plumed and painted and ever
on the prowl; the traders' cavalcade, winding through defiles or
over naked plains, with the stealthy war party lurking on its
trail; the buffalo chase, the hunting camp, the mad carouse in
the midst of danger, the night attack, the stampede, the scamper,
the fierce skirmish among rocks and cliffs - all this romance
of savage life, which yet exists among the mountains, will then
exist but in frontier story, and seem like the fictions of
chivalry or fairy tale.
Some new system of things, or rather some new modification, will
succeed among the roving people of this vast wilderness; but just
as opposite, perhaps, to the inhabitants of civilization. The
great Chippewyan chain of mountains, and the sandy and volcanic
plains which extend on either side, are represented as incapable
of cultivation.
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