the tree-tops; the marten, the black fox, and the wolf prowled in the woods; sheep and goats browsed on the rocky ridges; and badgers peeped from their holes.
Here, too, the wild horse sprang, snorting and dishevelled, from his mountain retreats, with flourishing mane and tail, spanking step, and questioning gaze, and thundered away over the plains and valleys, while the rocks echoed back his shrill neigh. The huge, heavy, ungainly elk, or moose-deer, trotted away from the travellers with speed equal to that of the mustang: elks seldom gallop; their best speed is attained at the trot. Bears, too, black, and brown, and grizzly, roamed everywhere.
So numerous were all these creatures that on one occasion the hunters of the party brought in six wild horses, three bears, four elks, and thirty red-deer, having shot them all a short distance ahead of the main body, and almost without diverging from the line of march. And this was a matter of everyday occurrence—as it had need to be, considering the number that had to be fed.
The feathered tribes were not less numerous. Chief among these were eagles and vultures of uncommon size, the wild goose, wild duck, and the majestic swan.
In the midst of such profusion the trappers spent a happy time of it, but they frequently lost a horse or two in consequence of the expertness of the savages. They often wandered, however, for days at a time without seeing an Indian, and at such times they enjoyed to the full the luxuries with which a bountiful God had blessed these regions.
Dick Varley was almost wild with delight. It was his first excursion into the remote wilderness; he was young, healthy, strong, and romantic. It would have been perfection, had it not been for annoyance by the Indians.
Alas! alas! that we who write and read about those wondrous scenes should have to condemn our own species as the most degraded of all the works of the Creator there! Yet so it is. Man, exercising his reason and conscience in the path of love and duty which his Creator points out, is God’s noblest work; but man, left to the freedom of his own fallen will, sinks morally lower than the beasts that perish. Well may every Christian wish and pray that the name and the gospel of the blessed Jesus may be sent speedily to the dark places of the earth; for you may read of, but you cannot conceive the fiendish wickedness
