Travelling in the Western Hunting Grounds. 7 



actually a trifle further east that is, nearer the fringe of civilisation 

 than the point where the Prince had first set eyes on this, the 

 noblest of America's game. To-day steamers and railways take 

 you to that spot in less time than it took me to cross the ocean. 

 But the bighorn where are they ? 



A curious similarity is noticeable in the old and new sporting 

 literature of the West, written at periods as wide, or wider, apart 

 than are the localities to which they refer. With no exception 

 that I know of, writers on Western sport bewail the extermination 

 of big game in North America, forgetting, it would seem to me, 

 that their travels have, in nine cases out of ten, been limited to an 

 insignificant portion of the trans-Missourian West. Prince Wied, 

 writing sixty-five years ago, and only of the country in the 

 immediate vicinity of the Missouri, which was then the highway 

 into the Indian country, leaving quite untouched the great bulk 

 of the West, deplores the disappearance of bighorn and wapiti. 

 Lord Dunraven, writing more than twenty years ago, declares the 

 West as " shot out." Here is what he says in his " Great 

 Divide " : " An Englishman going to the States or to British 

 American territory for big game shooting, and for nothing else, is 

 sure nowadays to be disappointed." Both were right so far as the 

 country they passed through was concerned, both were wrong in 

 their generalisation. There are even to-day countries, the size of 

 small kingdoms, in British North America, into which no hunting 

 party has ever penetrated, and where the frying pan's capacity of a 

 few isolated prospectors has, so far, measured the destruction of 

 game; countries where moose, caribou, and antelope -goat are still 

 unfamiliar with the sight of white-skinned human beings. It is not 

 quite correct, therefore, to speak of a total extermination of the 

 larger species of North America's ferae naturae, except in relation 

 to the bison, and even then only partially so, for a few small bands 

 are reported to still roam the Peace River country. I enjoyed 

 unrivalled sport in years subsequent to the period when the author 

 of the " Great Divide " expressed such a pessimistic view, and that 

 concerning localities not a hundred miles west of the country 



