American Big-Game Hunting 
ing legendary lore of the border. They stand for 
all time as types of the pioneer settlers who won 
our land: the bridge-builders, the road-makers, the 
forest-fellers, the explorers, the land-tillers, the 
mighty men of their hands, who laid the founda- 
tions of this great commonwealth. 
Moreover, the class of men who follow hunting 
not as a business, but as the most exhilarating and 
health-giving of all pastimes, has always existed in 
this country from the very foundation of the repub- 
lic. Washington was himself fond of the rifle and 
shot-gun, and a skilled backwoodsman ; and he was 
also, when at his Mount Vernon home, devoted to 
the chase of the gray fox with horse, horn, and 
hound. From that time to this the sport-loving 
planters of the South have relished hunting deer, 
bear, fox, and wildcat with their packs of old- 
fashioned hounds; while many of the bolder spirits 
in the new West have always been fond of getting 
time for a hunt on the great plains or in the 
Rockies. In the Northeastern States there was 
formerly much less heed paid to, or love felt for, 
the wilder kind of sports; but the feeling in their 
favor has grown steadily, and indeed has never 
been extinct. Even in this part of the country, 
many men of note have been, like Webster, devo- 
tees of the fishing-rod, the shot-gun, or the rifle; 
and of late years there has been a constantly in- 
creasing number of those who have gone back to 
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