Seizing upon the minutest detail affecting them they mastered 

 as if by intuition all difficult handiwork, making with but few 

 tools everything they required from a windmill to a horseshoe. 



Their real education was in scenes of travel or adventure 

 in the great unbroken regions sought out by the fur trade, their 

 retentive memories reproducing by the winter fireside or sum- 

 mer camp pictures so graphic as to commend themselves to 

 every ear. 



The tender heart and true of the brave old knight, Sir 

 Thomas More, put a ban upon hunting in his Utopia. Alas 

 and alack for the wayward proclivities of our Utopians, pre- 

 daceous creatures all, hunting was to them as the breath of 

 their nostrils, for to them, unlike the sons of Adam, it was 

 given — with their brothers resting upon the tranquil river — 

 to lay upon the altar of their homes alike the fruits of the 

 earth and the spoils of the chase. 



What pen can paint the life of these " Chasseurs of the 

 Great Plains," tell of the gathering of the mighty Half-Breed 

 clan going forth — each Spring and Fall — in a tumult of carts 

 and horsemen to their boundless preserves, the home of the 

 buffaloes, whose outrangers were the grizzly bear, the branch- 

 ing elk, the flying antelope that skirted the great columns, 

 the last relieving the heavy rolling gait of the herds by a speed 

 and airy flight that mocked the eye to follow them, scouting 

 the dull trot of the prowling wolves — attent upon the motions 

 of their best purveyor — man. 



What a going forth was theirs ! this array of Hunters, 

 with their wives and little ones ; this new tribe clad in semi- 

 savage garniture, streaming across the plains with cries of 

 glee and joyance ; the riders in their " traverie " of arms 

 and horse equipment — the vast " brigade " of carts and bands 

 of following horses, kept to the cavalcade by those reckless, 

 jnbilants — the boys — seeming a part of the creatures they be- 

 strode. The sunshine and the flying fleecy clouds, emulous in 

 motion with the troop below : what life was in it all ; what 

 freedom and what breadth ! 



