Next season they would venture farther, and again farther, meanwhile growing rapidly wilder, getting acquainted with the Indian tribes, and usually marrying among them.  Thenceforward no danger could stay them in their exciting pursuit.  Wherever there were beaver they would go, however far or wild,—­the wilder the better, provided their scalps could be saved.  Oftentimes they were compelled to set their traps and visit them by night and lie hid during the day, when operating in the neighborhood of hostile Indians.  Not then venturing to make a fire or shoot game, they lived on the raw flesh of the beaver, perhaps seasoned with wild cresses or berries.  Then, returning to the trading stations, they would spend their hard earnings in a few weeks of dissipation and “good time,” and go again to the bears and beavers, until at length a bullet or arrow would end all.  One after another would be missed by some friend or trader at the autumn rendezvous, reported killed by the Indians, and—­forgotten.  Some men of this class have, from superior skill or fortune, escaped every danger, lived to a good old age, and earned fame, and, by their knowledge of the topography of the vast West then unexplored, have been able to render important service to the country; but most of them laid their bones in the wilderness after a few short, keen seasons.  So great were the perils that beset them, the average length of the life of a “free trapper” has been estimated at less than five years.  From the Columbia waters beaver and beaver men have almost wholly passed away, and the men once so striking a part of the view have left scarcely the faintest sign of their existence.  On the other hand, a thousand meadows on the mountains tell the story of the beavers, to remain fresh and green for many a century, monuments of their happy, industrious lives.

But there is a little airy, elfin animal in these woods, and in all the evergreen woods of the Pacific Coast, that is more influential and interesting than even the beaver.  This is the Douglas squirrel (Sciurus Douglasi).  Go where you will throughout all these noble forests, you everywhere find this little squirrel the master-existence.  Though only a few inches long, so intense is his fiery vigor and restlessness, he stirs every grove with wild life, and makes himself more important than the great bears that shuffle through the berry tangles beneath him.  Every tree feels the sting of his sharp feet.  Nature has made him master-forester, and committed the greater part of the coniferous crops to his management.  Probably over half of all the ripe cones of the spruces, firs, and pines are cut off and handled by this busy harvester.  Most of them are stored away for food through the winter and spring, but a part are pushed into shallow pits and covered loosely, where some of the seeds are no doubt left to germinate and grow up.  All the tree squirrels are more or less birdlike in voice and movements, but the Douglas is