340 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



Rocky Mountains ; and Montana now promises to be the finest 

 horsebreeding section of the American Continent. 



A cowboy, unlike a poet, becomes so by force of circum- 

 stances is not born to the trade. His birth may date back to- 

 some abode of wealth in New York, to a log hut in Colorado or 

 Wyoming, to a granger's farmstead in Missouri, or even ta 

 some aristocratic home in England. But a man's past history 

 has nothing to do with his status here, and will have little or 

 no bearing upon his cowboy life. If he has once joined that 

 cheery, devil-may-care fraternity, he will probably do as the 

 rest viz., work and ride like a tiger when, necessary on a 

 teetotal diet, then off to town to burn up his earnings as 

 quickly as whisky and the spirit of devilment can prompt him. 

 Varied as his origin, so of course is the disposition of the 

 cowboy ; but, taking the majority to prove the rule, you will 

 find him almost invariably a genial, warm-hearted comrade, 

 ready of help and ungrudging of trouble. And to none does 

 he evince the good qualities of his disposition more readily 

 than to the newcomer, to whom he is never by any chance 

 churlish or unfriendly. His life is necessarily a vigorous 

 rather than an intellectual one ; as a very slight acquaintance 

 with the social intercourse and style of converse in vogue 

 among an outfit of cowboys living alone at a cow-ranche will 

 suffice to demonstrate. Nor can it be said that either their 

 employers or they themselves make much effort towards pro- 

 viding desirable food for the soul of the cowboy during those 

 long months when he must spend much of his time within 

 doors. On the contrary, the fare in this direction is quite as 

 crude, scarcely as wholesome, and certainly not as plentiful as 

 is forthcoming for his bodily wants. Two or three old numbers 

 of the Police News, as many dog-eared and half-destroyed 

 novels, and perhaps the illustrated catalogue of a dry goods 

 store, form scarcely a feast of literature, to last half a dozen 

 men through a whole winter. With these scanty advantages 

 and no communion whatever with the outer world for so 

 prolonged a period, it is scarcely to be wondered at that 



