12 THE TRAVELLER AS A HUNTER. 



wishes to save his pocket, and at the same time obtain 

 better sport, the most thickly populated country in the 

 world is hardly the place to look for it; and though 

 " the great hunting days" are gone for ever, there can 

 be no doubt that if a man desires to enjoy fairly good 

 sport without having to pay extravagantly for it, he 

 will do better abroad. 



The careers of the traveller and sportsman are in 

 fact so closely intermingled that it would be impossible 

 to dissociate them. Whatever may be the intent with 

 which a traveller may penetrate into the remoter and 

 more thinly populated territories, he can hardly go 

 far without having many opportunities of exercising 

 his skill as a sportsman ; and in the unpeopled wilder- 

 ness, of course, he will be to a great extent dependent 

 upon the produce of the chase for his daily sustenance. 

 An indifferent hunter, in fact, is lacking one of the 

 first qualifications requisite for a successful explorer. 



Many of the most successful settlers in the " Far 

 West," for instance, were adventurers, who began life 

 as trappers, fur-hunters, or Indian traders. In fact, it 

 was these hardy pioneers who gradually opened up 

 those vast and fertile regions to the settlement of 

 civilized man; and as we know, every one of this 

 gallant band of daring spirits was a skilled hunter, 

 and all were dead shots with the rifle, and tho- 

 roughly experienced in all the tricks and artifices of 

 Indian warfare. 



There is hardly a page of early American history 

 that is not replete with exciting narratives of the daring 

 courage of such men, and though the story of the 

 white conquest of the Western World has been written 

 upon by many, and has formed the subject of numerous 



