made them steal time from sleep or combine with a brief period of rest the opportunity to write down what they had been through, not only objectively but subjectively.
The literature they produced throbbed with the activity, the adventure, the suffering, the frustration, the fortitude, the tragedy, that had only ceased before they took up their pencils or that was still in process. It had all the immediacy of modern journalism but all the intimacy of literature. It contained no heroics; it was without pose and without embroidery. It was often eloquent with the outbursting of a sensitive but starved appreciation; it reflected the vividness of vivid lives; it was the most democratic of all literatures because hundreds wrote it and in writing it told of physical and psychological reactions that were true and personal but fascinating and universal.
A statement of the literary contribution of the pioneers should not close without mention that they read as well as wrote, a fact with cultural significance. Such intellectual occupations as the trappers had at their remote posts, consisted of their own long thoughts or the stories of one another. If the Hudson's Bay Company sold books there is no evidence of it in several lists of purchases that have been examined, and it was not until about the middle thirties—ten years after the beginners of Fort Vancouver—that Manson and Dr. Tolmie, who was bookish himself, started a circulating library at their posts farther north. In contrast to the scant references to reading in the accounts of the trappers are the frequent glimpses we get of books in the chronicles of the pioneers.
