Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/162

152 sistently, and finally asked the Doctor what they should do, sistently, and, finally asked the Doctor what they should do. He replied in a loud voice: "Go to work! go to work! go to work!" Meek said that was just the thing they did not wish to do.

The romancing Rocky Mountain trapper would exercise his inventive talent to its utmost extent in telling the most extraordinary stories of what he claimed he had seen, and he that could form the most extravagant fiction, with a spice of plausibility in it, was considered the greatest wit among them. The love of fame is inherent in the breast of man; and the first man in a village is just as proud of his position at the first man in a city or in an empire.

I knew, in Missouri, the celebrated Black Harris, as he was familiarly called, and was frequently in his company. He, perhaps, invented the most extraordinary stories of them all, and thenceforward he had no rival. He said that on one occasion he was hunting in the Rocky Mountains alone, and came in sight of what he supposed to be a beautiful grove of green timber; but, when he approached it, he found it to be a perified forest; and, so sudden had been the process of petrification, that the green leaves were all petrified, and the very birds that were then singing in the grove were also petrified in the act of singing, because their mouths were still open in the petrified state. This story I did not myself hear from Harris, but I learned it from good authority.

From these Rocky Mountain trappers I learned something in regard to that interesting animal, the beaver. Many persons suppose, from the fact that the beaver is always found along the streams, that he lives, like the otter, on fish. This is a mistake. The beaver lives entirely upon vegetable food, and for this reason its flesh is esteemed a great delicacy. The animal feeds mainly upon the bark of the willow tree, which grows in abundance along the rich, moist margins of the streams, and is a very soft wood, easily cut by the beaver, with his large, sharp teeth. In countries where the streams freeze over in winter, the beaver makes his dam across the