The Trapper's Lament

Every ringing sledge-hammer blow had sung out the death-knell of the trapper's calling. This railroad spelled the end of the wilderness. What one group of greedy men had accomplished others would imitate; and the grass of the plains would be burned, the forests blackened, the fountains dried up in the valleys, and the wild creatures of the mountains driven and hunted and exterminated. The end of the buffalo had come -- the end of the Indian was in sight -- and that of the fur-bearing animal and his hunter must follow soon with the hurrying years.

from The U. P. Trail by Zane Grey