HUNTING WITH HOUNDS. 173 



somewhat ahead of any of them. Taken as 

 a class, however, and compared with other 

 classes as numerous, and not with a few ex- 

 ceptional individuals, the cowboy, like the 

 Rocky Mountain stage-driver, has no supe- 

 riors anywhere for his own work ; and they 

 are fine fellows, these iron-nerved reinsmen 

 and rough-riders. 



When Buffalo Bill took his cowboys to 

 Europe they made a practice in England, 

 France, Germany, and Italy of offering to 

 break and ride, in their own fashion, any horse 

 given them. They were frequently given 

 spoiled animals from the cavalry services in 

 the different countries through which they 

 passed, animals with which the trained horse- 

 breakers of the European armies could do 

 nothing ; and yet in almost all cases the cow- 

 punchers and bronco-busters with Buffalo Bill 

 mastered these beasts as readily as they did 

 their own western horses. At their own work 

 of mastering and riding rough horses they 

 could not be matched by their more civilized 

 rivals ; but I have great doubts whether they 

 in turn would not have been beaten if they 

 had essayed kinds of horsemanship utterly 

 alien to their past experience, such as riding 

 mettled thoroughbreds in a steeple-chase, or 

 the like. Other things being equal (which, 

 however, they generally are not), a bad, big 

 horse fed on oats offers a rather more diffi- 

 cult problem than a bad little horse fed on 

 grass. After Buffalo Bill's men had returned, 

 I occasionally heard it said that they had 



