AN ENGLISH SPORTSMAN ON THE PRAIRIES. 303 



yet both are most right, most reasonable, most impossi- 

 ble to obey ! Our only consolation lay in the delight 

 shown by the farmers at the havoc we made among the 

 enemies of their grain crops. 



In more than one lonely log hut, when driven thereto 

 for food or shelter, we found young and strikingly 

 pretty women, spinning or cooking, whilst the good man 

 worked in the fields ; and although they seemed some- 

 times a little startled by the unwonted appearance of a 

 "gentleman sportsman," their cheese, milk, and buck- 

 wheat bread, were always most liberally offered; nor 

 could they be persuaded to receive payment. Marryat, 

 in awarding to the American fair the title of the "pret- 

 tiest women in the world," (the epithet guardedly chosen, 

 no doubt) does not, so far as I have had occasion of 

 judging, give them more than their due. On these 

 savage prairies, even, I noted more than one " western 

 flower," that, transplanted to more civilized regions, 

 would not have disgraced. the choicest parterre. 



I have named the waste of game as a serious draw- 

 back to the prairie shooter ; but in the opposite scale, I 

 must throw the delightful sense of independence and 

 freedom with which he treads the springy sod of the 

 prairie, and inhales its healthful breezes. He shoots 

 without leave or " license." He feels himself lord of 

 Nature's manor, the sporting inheritance of the "younger 

 son." He flatters no muir-owning laird, he fees no 

 peculative keeper, and should he see a couple of strap- 

 ping young fellows, marching straight upon his position, 

 he expects no rough warning to quit the property ; on 

 the contrary, one of them (so it happened to me) per- 



