Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 99 



favored beyond measure by the nature of their 

 ground, of which their whole system of warfare en- 

 abled them to take the utmost possible benefit. Much 

 has been written and sung of the advantages pos- 

 sessed by the mountaineer when striving in his own 

 home against invaders from the plains; but these 

 advantages are as nothing when weighed with those 

 which make the warlike dweller in forests uncon- 

 querable by men who have not his training. A 

 hardy soldier, accustomed only to war in the open, 

 will become a good cragsman in fewer weeks than 

 it will take him years to learn to be so much as a 

 fair woodsman ; for it is beyond all comparison more 

 difficult to attain proficiency in woodcraft than in 

 mountaineering. 1 3 



The Wyandots,, and the Algonquins who sur- 

 rounded them, dwelt in a region of sunless, tangled 

 forests; and all the wars we waged for the posses- 

 sion of the country between the Alleghanies and the 

 Mississippi were carried on in the never-ending 



13 Any one who is fond of the chase can test the truth of 

 this proposition for himself, by trying how long it will take 

 him to learn to kill a bighorn on the mountains, and how 

 long it will take him to learn to kill white-tail deer in a 

 dense forest, by fair still-hunting, the game being equally 

 plenty. I have known many novices learn to equal the best 

 old hunters, red or white, in killing mountain game ; I have 

 never met one who could begin to do as well as an Indian in 

 the dense forest, unless brought up to it and rarely even 

 then. Yet, though woodcraft is harder to learn, it does not 

 imply the possession of such valuable qualities as mountain- 

 eering; and when cragsman and woodman meet on neutral 

 ground, the former is apt to be the better man. 



