PRAIRIE LIFE. 415 



who is as it were in training for the reception of passing- 

 impressions. All the poetry is out of such a man. His finer 

 faculties are necessarily dormant. To put it plainly, his mind 

 is for the time brutalised ; and for a while he is on a level with 

 a beast of burden, overtaxed, spiritless, joyless save at the sight 

 of his food. 



But such crushed condition of the mental powers under 

 physical strain is happily only occasional, accidental, and 

 temporary. There are other times when the contemplation 

 of Nature, in its prairie aspect — the most inartificial of all 

 its guises — is not only solacing, but invigorating : when the 

 heart beats all the happier, the mind is refreshed, and thought 

 becomes lighter, even sanguine. The .cool sweet breeze, the 

 rough but picturesque mountains, the fresh green foliage of 

 the wooded valleys, and the bright verdure of the grassy slopes, 

 act as a positive tonic to sense and manhood and to apprecia- 

 tion of life. The grasp of the rifle and the grip of the saddle 

 then intuitively tighten, and lend themselves naturally to an 

 Englishman's instinct. 



Now, no one would kill a stag in May. The code of the 

 country forbids it, we are aware : and the conscience of a 

 sportsman rebels against such an act, you will say. Ah, yes ! 

 but " this is a free country " wherein no man may starve ; 

 and as for a sportsman's conscience, wait till that is dulled 

 by a week on salt pork. Bacon, as we know too well, is never 

 ■out of season — though we playfully vary its denomination, 

 now as " chicken," now as " meat," now as " hog." Why then 

 fresh -meat ? I fancy you have no close time for beeves or 

 even for muttons, have you, my gallant gentlemen who sit 

 at home at ease, and wash down your juicy steak with Perrier 

 Jouet, or your cutlet with Lafitte, while we aggravate our 

 thirst with alkali water or commingle our salted rations with 

 muddy coffee ? 



With some such thoughts and in some such frame of mind, 

 I saddled old Smoke for a saunter, in the sunny afternoon 

 of yesterday — soon to find myself crossing familiar ground, while 



