ON THE FKONTIEK. 



CHAPTER I. 



Opinion v. Experience Seeking Advice "Jack" Our Outfit The Stove 

 Captain John Connor His views regarding Wives The Start The 

 Grand Prairie Coffee and how to make it Camping out. 



WHEN quite a small boy, I was for a short period much 

 in company with Mr. George Catlin, the American 

 traveller, then on a short visit to my father. I listened 

 with delighted attention to his anecdotes of Western 

 life, and spent hours poring over his folio of drawings ; 

 amongst these, certain sketches of buffalo hunts (the 

 finished paintings from which, by the way, now hang in 

 the Ethnological Room at the Luxembourg) most strongly 

 impressed my imagination. It seemed to the ardent 

 young mind of a born sportsman, that to become a 

 buffalo hunter was a wild and glorious, if most unattain- 

 able ambition. Catlin and buffaloes were, however, soon 

 supplanted in my childhood's reveries by other youthful 

 vagaries, and for many years I thought neither of him nor 

 them. 



