Jack the Young Trapper

Excerpt from Jack the Young Trapper: An Eastern Boy's Fur Hunting in the Rocky Mountains

A century ago the western half of the American Continent was unknown. Vast herds of buffalo and antelope swarmed over its rolling plains; elk and deer fed along its rivers; wild sheep and white goats clambered over its rocky heights; bears prowled through its forests; beavers built their dams and houses along every stream. Occasionally a group of Indians passed over the plains or threaded the defiles of the mountain ranges.

A few years later the white man began to penetrate this wilderness. Beaver were growing scarcer, and men were forced to go further for them. So the trapper entered these unknown fastnesses and began his work. He followed up stream after stream, sought out remote valleys, crossed deserts. With rifle in one hand and trap in the other, he endured every hardship and exposed himself to every danger. He swam rivers, climbed mountains, fought Indians, and risked life in his struggle for fur.

They were men of firm courage and stern resolution, those trappers of the early days. About their life and their work there is a romance and a charm that appeal powerfully to the imagination. Jack Danvers was fortunate in that the man who taught him some of the secrets of that now forgotten life was one who had borne a part in the work of subduing the wild west, and in laying the foundations upon which its present civilization is built.

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