122 DESTRUCTION OF GAME IN AMERICA. 



everything with hair or feather was shot and slaughtered 

 wholesale, at all seasons; and North America, which 

 within living memory was one of the finest all-round 

 sporting countries in the world, has in consequence 

 now become probably the poorest of any of the great 

 continents in this respect. 



These things have long been viewed with mingled 

 feelings of shame and sorrow by every true American 

 sportsman. Poor old " Nessmuk " for instance, * the 

 well-known American wood-poet and writer on matters 

 of forest shooting and wood-craft (who has but recently 

 passed away), as he every year beheld fresh scenes 

 of devastation and ruin, wrought upon the sylvan 

 beauties of some beloved haunt of his youthful days, 

 where he was wont to hunt the wild deer, or angle 

 for the speckled trout, while encamped in some secluded 

 nook upon the borders of the woodland streams was 

 full of indignation at this wicked and senseless waste 

 of the treasures which should have been the heritage 

 of posterity; and before he died, gave vent to the 

 bitterness of his spirit in his book upon Woodcraft, 

 in which with ironical scorn he rebukes the covetous 

 folly of the age, which was ready to sacrifice everything 

 to the lust for gain. 



"Of course this is progress" (he says) " but whether back- 

 ward or forward had better be decided sixty years hence! 

 It is the same old story of grab and greed. Let us go out" 

 (he continues) " on ' the make ' to-day, and ' whack up ' to- 

 morrow; cheating each other as villainously as we may: and 



posterity be d d; 'What's all the w-u-u-rld to a man 



when his wife's a widdy.'"f \ 



* Mr. George W. Sears (the word " Nessmuk " signifies wood-duck 

 in the Indian language of the Narraganset tribe). 

 j- Woodcraft, by Nessmuck, p. 90. 



