And now all things are ready, and the trapper has actually entered upon his winter avocation. He has reconnoitered the valley in which he finds himself, and, having ascertained the localities of the beaver, with their houses and dams, he forthwith manages to shoot a single male beaver, and having obtained from his glandulous pouch a substance called _castoreum_, he mixes it with a number of aromatics, and in three or four days he is supplied with a suitable bait and proceeds to set his traps. As the senses of the beaver are exceedingly keen, the business of the trapper requires experience and great caution, and he glides through the forests almost with the silence of a ghost; but, when a master of his calling, he seldom leaves a beaver village until, by his cunning arts, it has become depopulated. The war of extermination, as already intimated, begins at the mouth of the river, and with our friend will only cease when he has reached the fountain-head, or the season for trapping comes to an end. The coldest of winds may blow and the woods may be completely blocked with snow, but the trapper has mounted his snow-shoes, and day after day does he revisit and rearrange his traps. If night overtake him when far removed from his shanty (which may be the case more than half the time), he digs himself a hole in some sheltered snow bank, and, wrapped up in his blanket by the side of his solitary fire, spends a strangely comfortable night. When not engaged with his traps, he employs his time in drying and dressing his furs; or, as fancy may dictate, he shoulders his gun and starts out for the purpose of capturing a deer, a bear, or some of the beasts which are wont to howl him to sleep at the midnight hour. Venison and bear meat constitute his principal food, but he is particularly partial to the tail of his favorite beaver. The only human beings with which he has any social intercourse during the long winter are the poor wandering Indians who chance to visit him in his cabin; and at such times many are the wild adventures and strange legends which they relate to each other around the huge fire of the trapper. And he now enjoys to perfection the companionship of his dogs. Companions, it is true, of another sort sometimes gather around his lonely habitation to relieve his solitude, for the snowy owl hoots and screams at night from the huge pine branch that reaches over his cabin, or perhaps an unmolested deer manifests its love of companionship by browsing the twigs in broad daylight almost at his very threshold. But now fair weather cometh out of the north, and the trapper begins to think that he has secured such a supply of furs as will guarantee him a comfortable support during the coming summer, and one by one he gathers in his traps. The crack of his rifle is now heard more frequently echoing through the woods, for he cares not to obtain more beaver skins even if he could, and he would obtain a sufficient