164 BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



preached the Gospel for forty years; but I felt, as I heard 

 the awful tale, that, laying law and Gospel aside — or, 

 rather, carrying both with me — I would have been glad to 

 be one of a company to strip this creature of his arms, pile 

 them and him into his wagon, guard them to the nearest 

 railway station, and start him East, with the assurance that 

 if he showed himself in the mountains again, there would 

 be one hunting-season, at least, in which he would not be 

 fit to shoot game for the crows, nor laugh oyer the pains he 

 had inflicted on a dying doe. I have since seen this state- 

 ment in print; and I am only sorry that the ruffian's name 

 could not have been secured and sent to the London Times 

 and London Field, to be posted over England; * for, after 

 all, at the bottom, Englishmen are, as a class, humane, and 

 love fair play for man and beast. 



Even a fair-minded man becomes vindictive over this 

 thing, in spite of himself; so that, in reminiscences, a scene 

 like the one referred to from "Coqnina ? s" book stirs the 

 blood, and wakens all the disgust and the anger over again. 

 Hunting Mountain Sheep, one day we came on a skin- 

 hunter's cabin of the year before. There, lying in a fester- 

 ing heap, were forty carcasses of this beautiful and rare 

 animal, from -which nothing but the pelt had been taken. 

 I felt, on the moment, that if I should see a monarch ram 

 butt the creature from a precipice, I should hardly feel 

 regret that a human being had been killed. 



Laws ! We make laws when the game is gone. We 

 leave the laws to enforce themselves, as if they were sen- 

 tient, active beings. We leave execution of the law to 

 private complaint, where it may lose one his neighbor, or a 

 vote at a coming election. ftave lived, to see my beautiful 

 prairies of Iowa denuded of their grouse, for the accursed 

 greed of Eastern game-dealers and the glutton maws of 

 those they break laws for, and throw conscience, honor, 

 citizenship, to the winds. I have lived to see the prairies 



* From the circumstances named, I am of the opinion that the butcher referred to here is 

 one Jamison. I have often heard of him before, from guides who have hunted with him, 

 and have taken a great deal of satisfaction in exposing and denouncing his inhuman con- 

 duct in the columns of the American Meld. — Editor. 



