g one or two hundred
pack horses, entered the valley over the distant eminences, there were two
scenes presented to the eye, each peculiar in many aspects of sublimity
and beauty.

It was midsummer. The smooth meadow upon which the encampment was held was
rich, verdant and blooming, a beautiful stream flowing along its western
border. A fine grove fringed the stream as far as the eye could reach up
and down. Not a tree, stump, or stone was to be seen upon the smooth,
lawn-like expanse. Its edge, near the grove, was lined with a great
variety of lodges, constructed of skins or bark, or of forest boughs.
Horses and mules in great numbers were feeding on the rich herbage, while
groups of trappers, Canadians, Frenchmen, Americans and Indians, were
scattered around, some cooking at their fires, some engaged in eager
traffic, and some amusing themselves in athletic sports. It was a peaceful
scene, where, so far as the eye could discern, man's fraternity was
combined with nature's loveliness to make this a happy world. Such was the
spectacle presented to the trappers as they descended into the valley.

On the other hand, the trappers themselves contributed a very important
addition to the picturesqueness of the view. Half a mile from the
encampment, in the northeast, the land rose in a gentle, gradual swell,
smooth, verdant and treeless, perhaps to the height of a hundred and fifty
feet. Down this declivity they were descending, with their horses and
their pack mules, in a long line of single file. They were way-worn
pilgrims, and the grotesqueness of their attire, and their unshaven,
uncut, and almost uncombed locks, added to their weird-like aspect.

Here the party met with two gentlemen, such as were rarely, perhaps never
before, seen on such an occasion. One was a Christian missionary, Father
De Smidt, who, in obedience to the Saviour's commission, "Go ye into all
the world and preach my Gospel to every creature," had abandoned the
comforts of civilization, to cast in his lot with the savages, that he
might teach them that religion of the Bible which would redeem the world
by leading all men to repentance, to faith in an atoning Saviour, and to
endeavor "to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God."

The other stranger was an English nobleman, a gentleman of high character,
of refinement and culture. In his ancestral home he had heard of the
sublimities of the wilderness; the wide-spread prairies; the gloomy