details of the great western wilds
and their motley inhabitants.

We here close our picturings of the Rocky Mountains and their wild
inhabitants, and of the wild life that prevails there; which we have
been anxious to fix on record, because we are aware that this singular
state of things is full of mutation, and must soon undergo great
changes, if not entirely pass away. The fur trade itself, which has
given life to all this portraiture, is essentially evanescent.
Rival parties of trappers soon exhaust the streams, especially when
competition renders them heedless and wasteful of the beaver. The
furbearing animals extinct, a complete change will come over the scene;
the gay free trapper and his steed, decked out in wild array, and
tinkling with bells and trinketry; the savage war chief, plumed and
painted and ever on the prowl; the traders' cavalcade, winding through
defiles or over naked plains, with the stealthy war party lurking on its
trail; the buffalo chase, the hunting camp, the mad carouse in the
midst of danger, the night attack, the stampede, the scamper, the fierce
skirmish among rocks and cliffs--all this romance of savage life, which
yet exists among the mountains, will then exist but in frontier story,
and seem like the fictions of chivalry or fairy tale.

Some new system of things, or rather some new modification, will succeed
among the roving people of this vast wilderness; but just as opposite,
perhaps, to the inhabitants of civilization. The great Chippewyan chain
of mountains, and the sandy and volcanic plains which extend on either
side, are represented as incapable of cultivation. The pasturage which
prevails there during a certain portion of the year, soon withers under
the aridity of the atmosphere, and leaves nothing but dreary wastes.
An immense belt of rocky mountains and volcanic plains, several
hundred miles in width, must ever remain an irreclaimable wilderness,
intervening between the abodes of civilization, and affording a last
refuge to the Indian. Here roving tribes of hunters, living in tents
or lodges, and following the migrations of the game, may lead a life of
savage independence, where there is nothing to tempt the cupidity of the
white man. The amalgamation of various tribes, and of white men of every
nation, will in time produce hybrid races like the mountain Tartars of
the Caucasus. Possessed as they are of immense droves of horses should
they continue their present predatory a