Travelling in the Western Hunting Grounds. 



hospitality and readiness to further your object ; you were 

 supplied with stores, waggons, horses, and escort everything you 

 required. The American officers, notwithstanding the weary 

 loneliness of their desolate posts, hundreds of miles from the 

 nearest companionable being, are as a rule no sportsmen, but they 

 will nevertheless enter with zest into your plans ; and if they see 

 that their presence is not unwelcome, one or the other of them will 

 accompany you on your little shooting expeditions, and will make 

 a very welcome addition to the number of mouths to be fed with 

 venison, and hence also to the number of wapiti or bighorn you can 

 legitimately kill. There will be plenty of whiskey indeed, very 

 often its supply is far too abundant ; for on returning to camp from 

 a long day's stalk, you now and again find the cook, or the other 

 underling troopers, in a state not conducive to good cooking or 

 handy help. 



The third was the cheapest, the freest, the most pleasant 

 manner, provided its rough side has no terrors for you. It was to 

 eschew the usual run of western guides, who take their parties 

 year after year over the same well-beaten ground, and to choose 

 for your companions professional trappers. 



I have tried all three ways. My first trip, on which I was 

 accompanied by a friend, partook of the " top-shelfer's" outfit. 

 We were laden down with unnecessary camp luxuries, stored away 

 on two waggons. I shot very little game, I saw the people as they 

 are not, and, owing to the very bad habit of asking questions, 

 I'was told more tall stories than the proverbial Colonel from Texas 

 could invent in a year, for, as the frontiersman will himself tell you, 

 the West is a country where " talk is cheap, and lies worth 

 nothing." Had it not been that on this trip I made the casual 

 acquaintance of my future companion, genial Port, there would not 

 have been a single redeeming feature about my first experience. 

 The second manner had never very great attractions for me ; 

 though at a considerably later period I had occasion to be one of 

 the party of three Englishmen, who had every cause to remember 

 the remarkable hospitality of the commanding officers in a certain 



