Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/277

Rh 1843 and 1860, when mining began to be developed—the discoveries being made by old mountain men who still lingered on the borders of former hunting grounds—many of these unsung heroes had become settlers among immigrants of the coast region, and in this new life of members of orderly communities had proven themselves patriotic and law-abiding citizens. They were the "hearts of oak" on whose firm loyalty the young empire when in peril always depended.

I have not space without monopolizing too many pages of this magazine to express my conception of the country's debt to the hunters and trappers as well as to leaders in the fur companies. Such, I believe, is the sentiment under whose influence Captain Chittenden wrote his History of the Fur Trade; and for the faithful pen pictures he has given us of all sides of the subject he deserves our praises.

As a narrative the book is a storehouse of adventure and biography. Dates and descriptions of forts is another interesting feature, these "ancient" structures being among those first things which always seem of so much greater importance than any that follow. But it is in the men who built, occupied, and defended them that we find the chief interest. Their lives and their aims are a problem; but then, so are all lives.

Let me not omit to mention the part played in the history of the fur trade by that demoralizing fluid which, taking possession of a man's stomach, "steals away his brains." A century ago the fathers of our republic, patterning after their British sires, thought no ill of a wine cellar or a sideboard with a variety of liquors upon it. Whether it was climate or science or the Indian question or experience whatever it was a change in sentiment was developed, and the bottle in the closet was considered more in the light of a questionable indulgence than a so-