As used here, the term "Mountain Men" applies to those trappers and traders who went into the Rocky Mountains before emigrants had even sought a pass through them to the west or cattle had beat out a trail on the plains east of them. Beaver fur was the lodestar for the Mountain Men. Their span of activity was brief, their number insignificant. Yet hardly any other distinct class of men, irrespective of number or permanence, has called forth so many excellent books as the Mountain Men. The books are not nearly so numerous as those connected with range life, but when one considers the writings of Stanley Vestal, Sabin, Ruxton, Fer gusson, Chittenden, Favour, Garrard, Inman, Irving, Reid, and White in this Seld, one doubts whether any other form of American life at all has been so well covered in ballad, fiction, biography, history.

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