Thus there were wide deserts as well as regions of humidity; an immense range in climate with a corresponding range in life zones, till the biologist discovered in this area specimens ranging from the boreal to the tropical. The animals were of all kinds found on the North American continent. There were scorpions, tarantulas, snakes (many varieties of rattlesnakes) in the south; there and elsewhere beaver, bison, panthers, bears, wolves, deer, elk, mountain sheep, and small game of various kinds, all adjusted to altitude or latitude. Bears were particularly numerous. The bison (buffalo) roamed the east in countless numbers, crossing the Rocky Mountains and pushing westward to the Pecos, to Green River, and to the Columbia. As a wild animal the bison now is extinct, and it is difficult to imagine the enormous herds that so short a time ago at will traversed the face of the wilderness. The beaver existed in vast numbers also, and this fact was the first incentive to exploration of the immense tract by Americans. Deer and antelope grazed everywhere and scarcely a day could pass without the traveller sighting some of these animals. All furnished subsistence to the man who was there, the Amerind. Because this person was not a European he has often been regarded as hardly worth consideration, but he was a good specimen of mankind in the hunter state. Physically and mentally he had few superiors. He knew the country as well as we know it to-day. He knew every pass in the mountains, every buffalo trail. Each tribe knew its own land limits, as well as those of its neighbours, and each defended its home with unsurpassed daring and bravery. This was the wilderness when the hordes of Europe descended upon it and claimed it for their own. Well did they fight their way into it, and equally well did the native oppose the invasion and fight to preserve his ancestral home in all its freedom and pristine glory. But the Europeans were stronger and wrested it from him, from the animals, and from Nature; yet it was never fully theirs till the sledge drove home that last spike of gold that pinned the East and the West together and tacked the skirts of Europe to those of Cathay. [Illustration] FOOTNOTE: [1] See also Sulte (Benjamin), _Découverte du Mississippi en 1659_. In _Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada_, Second Series, vol. ix., (1903), section i., pp. 3-44. Radisson's veracity is not unquestioned. [Illustration] CHAPTER II The Intelligent Beaver, Chief of the Rodents—A Four-Footed Engineer—A Builder of Houses, Artificial Canals, Dams, Ponds, and Lakes—Beaver Meadows—A Masterful Woodchopper—A Tail for the Epicure—Muskbogs—The Fatal Trap.