Trail and Camp-Fire 



Since then multitudes of books have been written 

 about big game hunting. Most of them are bad, of 

 course, just as most novels and most poems are bad ; 

 but some of them are very good indeed, while a few are 

 entitled to rank high in literature though it cannot be 

 said that as yet big game hunters as a whole have pro- 

 duced such writers as those who dwell on the homelier 

 and less grandiose side of nature. They have not pro- 

 duced a White or Burroughs, for instance. What could 

 not Burroughs have done if only he had cared for adven- 

 ture and for the rifle, and had roamed across the Great 

 Plains and the Rockies, and through the dim forests, as 

 he has wandered along the banks of the Hudson and the 

 Potomac ! Thoreau, it is true, did go to the Maine 

 Woods ; but then Thoreau was a transcendentalist, and, 

 therefore, slightly anaemic. A man must feel the beat of 

 hardy life in his veins before he can be a good big game 

 hunter. Fortunately, Richard Jefferies has written an 

 altogether charming little volume on the Red Deer, so 

 that there is, at least, one game animal which has been 

 fully described by a man of letters, who was also both a 

 naturalist and a sportsman ; but it is irritating to think 

 that no one has done as much for the lordlier game of 

 the wilderness. Not only should the hunter be able to 

 describe vividly the chase, and the life habits of the 

 quarry, but he should also draw the wilderness itself, 

 and the life of those who dwell or sojourn therein. We 

 wish to see before us the cautious stalk and the headlong 

 gallop ; the great beasts as they feed or rest or run or 

 fight ; the wild hunting camps ; the endless plains shim- 

 mering in the sunlight ; the vast solemn forests ; the 

 desert and the marsh and the mountain chain ; and all 



324 



