34 Sport and Life. 



an absurd jealousy of English sportsmen which was far less 

 noticeable in the territories south of the line.* Some funny tales 

 could be told about the men who framed Western game laws, 

 also about the arguments one heard. But to give the devil his 

 due, no Wyoming, Montana, or Idaho legislator gave vent to such 

 preposterous opinions about English sportsmen, or gave expression to 

 such gross slanders about their doings as were to be heard in the 

 British Columbian House of Assembly when the annual tinkering 

 of the game laws of the province afforded an opportunity. The 

 Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho legislatures, composed as they were, 

 too, of some rough elements, were sensible enough to recognise the 

 true cause of the evil, no less than the fact patent to every ranch- 

 man and frontiersman from the Platte to the Snake river, that the 

 Englishmen visiting for sport their mountain fastnesses belonged to 

 a class that did not seek to gain pecuniary profits from their 

 hunting expeditions. They knew only too well that the visitors 

 were men to whom it was wise to extend open arms. To speak of 

 my own experience, no welcome could be heartier than that which 

 greeted me throughout the American West. In British Columbia, 

 on the other hand, where game was never exposed to the same 

 danger of extermination, for the density of the woods, which 

 makes pursuit such a matter of difficulty there, is the best possible 

 protection against slaughter, a very different feeling towards 

 English sportsmen visiting the province for sport was often 

 manifested. Not so much by the up-country settlers, who knew too 

 well what such visits meant to them, but by certain professional 



* The British Columbian game laws at present in force compel the non- 

 resident sportsmen, under threats of heavy fine or imprisonment, to obtain a 

 licence costing 5odol. (^io),and limit his bag of wapiti to two stags; while 

 the Indians, on the other hand, are under -no sort of control to prevent them 

 from hide hunting (indeed they are not even told that they must not do so), and 

 settlers may kill as much as they desire, as they quite rightly should, for their 

 own use ; so that practically the only persons against whom the game laws 

 of British Columbia, so far as big game is concerned, are directed, are the 

 visiting sportsmen, whose knickerbockered presence appears to be decidedly 

 unwelcome to the professional legislators who framed these laws. 



