United States or Timor-Leste ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Still, there was a limit to his indulgence; and he certainly did not intend to allow this thirsty crowd of skin-hunters to become regulation camp-followers; his supply of coffee would not long stand the strain, even if his patience did.
When the trader had exchanged his goods for the peltries of these red and white skin-hunters, he returned to his home, having been absent perhaps a year or eighteen months.
Yet there was no snow. There had been none the winter before. The trappers and skin-hunters said that the winter was rarely severe. The railroad men had ranged west all the winter, throats exposed and coats left at the wagons. It was a mild country, a gentle, tender country. In this laughing sky who could see any cynicism?
Lounsbury spread out his hands before the blaze. "I wish I lived on a quarter, like you folks," he said. "I hate the dickering in a store. Been at it ten years. Was in the fur business, at first bought from the Indians and the skin-hunters up and down. Well, the country got into my blood. You get the West, you know, and it's the only disease out here that you can't shake.
Can any wilderness government on earth make it possible? Therefore, in time, even the great wilderness will be denuded of big game. This is absolutely fixed and certain; for within much less than another century, every square rod of it will have been gone over by prospectors, lumbermen, trappers and skin-hunters, and raked again and again with fine-toothed combs.
The land was passing into severalty, coming into the hands of the people who had subdued it, who had driven out those who once had been its occupants. The Indians were now cleared away, not only about Ellisville but far to the north and west. The skin-hunters had wiped out the last of the great herds of the buffalo. The face of Nature was changing.
After making a few leagues with difficulty, he found he could go no farther, and they held a council. They were already suffering from want of food, but their guide estimated that by a forced march overland they might reach a place where some skin-hunters were supposed to be camped. There was a Hudson Bay post farther away.
Before the oncoming white men these great animals were now rapidly passing away, from month to month withdrawing farther back from the settlements. Reports from the returning skin-hunters set the distance of the main herd at three to five days' journey.
The skin-hunting still went on. Great wagons, loaded with parties of rough men, passed on out, bound for the inner haunts, where they might still find their prey. The wagons came creaking back loaded with bales of the shaggy brown robes, which gave the skin-hunters money with which to join the cowmen at the drinking places.
Some of the skin-hunters, some of the railroad men, some of the cowmen, some of the home-seekers, remained in the eddy at Ellisville, this womanless beginning of a permanent society. Not sinless was this society at its incipiency. In any social atmosphere good and evil are necessary concomitants. Sinless men would form a community at best but perishable.
Word Of The Day