Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/60

40 Tom McKay, for instance, who always started his stories with "It rained, it rained and it blew, it blew" and sometimes for additional emphasis added, "and, my God, how it did snow." Part of the recreation of the trappers was telling their own stories and listening to the stories of others; and a man who could spin a good yarn and tell a tall tale, with picturesque embroidery, was accorded thereby a social advantage. Hubert Howe Bancroft tells how two men of the fur-trade might meet in camp, hear a story from a third and then go their separate ways to repeat the tale as their own. Specially good yarns might thus secure a wide word-of-mouth currency in which the teller would be the principal actor. Washington Irving in his Anventures of Captain Bonneville repeats some of these classical or bromidic episodes.

These trappers did not come west primarily to seek new conquests and find greater glory for their country, but for their own personal gain from the fur-bearing animals of the Pacific. Their ambition was to get rich quick and then return to their homelands and relax in idleness and reminiscence. Many of the trappers allied themselves with companies. Thus grew up the powerful Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company. There were also many free-lancers who, like Nathaniel Wyeth, were willing to face the dangers and vicissitudes of this wilderness country on their own.

We must read the diaries and journals of these daring adventurers for a complete understanding and appreciation not only of their tremendous courage and stamina but of the zealous spirit which moved them to