Such naked light does wilderness life shed over our
drawing-room philosophies of the triumphantly strong being the highest
type of manhood.
[3] Again the wilderness plunges us back to the primordial: if man be
but the supreme beast of prey, whence this consciousness of blood guilt
in these unschooled children of the wilds?
PART IV
1780-1793
FIRST ACROSS THE ROCKIES--HOW MACKENZIE
CROSSED THE NORTHERN ROCKIES AND LEWIS
AND CLARK WERE FIRST TO CROSS FROM
MISSOURI TO COLUMBIA
CHAPTER X
1780-1793
FIRST ACROSS THE ROCKIES
How Mackenzie found the Great River named after him and then pushed
across the Mountains to the Pacific, forever settling the question of a
Northwest Passage
There is an old saying that if a man has the right mettle in him, you
may stick him a thousand leagues in the wilderness on a barren rock and
he will plant pennies and grow dollar bills. In other words, no matter
where or how, success will succeed. No class illustrates this better
than a type that has almost passed away--the old fur traders who were
lords of the wilderness. Cut off from all comfort, from all
encouragement, from all restraint, what set of men ever had fewer
incentives to go up, more temptations to go down? Yet from the fur
traders sprang the pioneer heroes of America. When young Donald Smith
came out--a raw lad--to America, he was packed off to eighteen years'
exile on the desert coast of Labrador.
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