hing is small
at the fountain. A mighty river usually begins in a bubbling spring or
a tiny rivulet. So the trapper's initial acts are delicate. He handles
the tinder gently, and guards it from damp. He fosters the spark, when
caught, and blows upon it softly, and wraps it up in dry grass, and
watches it intently as a mother might watch the life-spark of her
new-born babe. But when once the flame has caught, and the bundle of
little dry twigs has been placed above it, and the pile of broken sticks
has been superadded, the trapper's character is changed. He grasps the
ponderous hatchet, and, Homerically speaking--

"Now toils the hero: trees on trees o'erthrown,
Fall crackling round him, and the forests groan."

These, "lopp'd and lighten'd of their branchy load," he assaults singly.
Heaving the huge axe with lusty sweeping blows, he brings it down.
Great wedgy splinters fly and strew the plain like autumn leaves. Then,
with massive logs, full six feet long, he feeds the hungry fire until it
leaps and roars in might, and glows full red and hot and huge enough to
roast him a bison bull for supper, an he should feel so disposed.

Descending now from the abstract to the concrete, we would remark that,
whether the reader does or does not admit the general proposition, that
western trappers are pre-eminently up to fire (not to mention smoke or
snuff), he cannot deny the fact that Big Waller, the Yankee trapper, was
peculiarly gifted in that way. On the evening of the day on which
occurred the memorable encounter with the grisly bear, as related in the
last chapter, that stalwart individual heaved his ponderous axe and
felled the trees around him in a way that would have paled the
ineffectual fires of Ulysses himself, and would probably have induced
that hero not only to cease cutting trees, but to commence cutting his
stick thenceforth from the field of competition! March Marston
meanwhile kindled the spark and nursed the infant flame. The others
busied themselves in the various occupations of the camp. Some cut down
pine-branches, and strewed them a foot deep in front of the fire, and
trod them down until a soft elastic couch was formed on which to spread
their blankets. Others cut steaks of venison and portions of the grisly
bear, and set them up on the end of sticks before the fire to roast, and
others made fast and secured the canoe and her lading.

The artist, seating himself beside the fire, just near