Hunting with Hounds. 379 



in the one case more than compensates for the fact that in 

 the other the riding is apt to be harder and the jumping 

 higher ; but both sports are really artificial, and in their 

 essentials alike. To any man who has hunted big game 

 in a wild country the stress laid on the differences between 

 them seems a little absurd, in fact cockney. It is of course 

 nothing against either that it is artificial ; so are all sports 

 in long-civilized countries, from lacrosse to ice yachting. 



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, although 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 expatriated 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 diminu- 

 tive 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 describing what fun 

 it was to shoot roebucks when driven by the little crooked- 

 legged dachshunds. There were plenty of deer and ante- 



