HUNTING WITH HOUNDS. 17 1 



that it is artificial ; so are all sports in long- 

 civilized countries, from lacrosse to ice yacht- 

 ing. 



It is amusing to see how natural it is for 

 each man to glorify the sport to which he has 

 been accustomed at the expense of any other. 

 The old-school French sportsman, for instance, 

 who followed the boar, stag, and hare with his 

 hounds, always looked down upon the chase 

 of the fox ; whereas the average Englishman 

 not only asserts but seriously believes that no 

 other kind of chase can compare with it, al- 

 though in actual fact the very points in which 

 the Englishman is superior to the continental 

 sportsman that is, in hard and straight riding 

 and jumping are those which drag-hunting 

 tends to develop rather more than fox-hunt- 

 ing proper. In the mere hunting itself the 

 continental sportsman is often unsurpassed. 



Once, beyond the Missouri, I met an ex- 

 patriated German baron, an unfortunate who 

 "had failed utterly in the rough life of the 

 frontier. He was living in a squalid little 

 hut, almost unfurnished, but studded around 

 with the diminutive horns of the European 

 roebuck. These were the only treasures he 

 had taken with him to remind him of his 

 former life, and he was never tired of describ- 

 ing what fun it was to shoot roebucks when 

 driven by the little crooked-legged dachshunds. 

 There were plenty of deer and antelope round- 

 about, yielding good sport to any rifleman, 

 but this exile cared nothing for them ; they 

 were not roebucks, and they could not be 



