His costume consists of a hunting shirt of the soft and pliable deerskin, ornamented with long fringes and often dyed with bright vermilion.  Pantaloons of the same material are also ornamented with fringes and porcupine’s quills of various colors.  Many a tranquil hour has been beguiled, in the long evenings and when the storm has beaten upon the hut, in fashioning these garments with artistic taste, learned of the Indians.  A flexible cap, often of rich fur, covers his head, and moccasins, upon which all the resources of barbaric embroidery have been expended, cover his feet.

His rifle is borne on his left shoulder.  His powder horn and bullet pouch hang under his right arm.  In his bullet pouch he also carries spare flints, steel and various odds and ends.  Beneath the broad belt which encircles his waist there is a large butcher knife in a sheath of buffalo hide.  There is a whetstone in a buckskin case made fast to the belt, and also a small hatchet or tomahawk.

Thus accoutred, our young hunter and trapper sets out in search of the most lonely ravine which he can find among the mountains.  He would reach if possible, some solitary stream which no white man’s eye had ever beheld.  He has no road, no trail to guide him.  He rides his pony and leads his mule.  Over the prairie, through the forest, across the streams, in silence and in a solitude which to him is not lonely, he passes on his way.

Night comes.  If pleasant, he unburdens his horse and mule; drives his iron pickets into the ground, to which his animals are attached by ropes about thirty feet long, generally in pastures of rich grass or wild oats; builds a fire, cooks his supper, rolls himself in his blanket and sleeps soundly till morning.  If the weather is unpleasant it makes but little difference.  He knows exactly what to do.  In a short time he constructs a frail but ample shelter; and then, with his feet towards the fire, sleeps sweetly regardless of the storm.  His animals have no more need of shelter than have the bears and the buffaloes.

This is the ordinary life of the hunter.  There are, of course, exceptions when calamity and woe come.  A joint may be sprained, a limb broken.  Fire may burn, or Indians may come, bringing captivity and torture.  But the ordinary life of the hunter, gratifying his natural taste, has many fascinations.  This is evidenced by the eagerness with which our annual tourists leave their ceiled chambers, in the luxurious cities, to encamp in the wilderness of the Adirondacks or the Rocky mountains.  There is not a restaurant in the Palais Royal, or on the Boulevards which can furnish such a repast as these men often find, from trout which they have taken from the brook, and game which their own rifles shot, have cooked at the fires which their own hands have kindled.  A gentleman who spent a winter in this way, in the green and sheltered valleys of the Rocky mountains, writes: