BIRD, BEAST AND HUNTER. 29 



around them, mtli hundreds of retainers at their heels — and 

 those stern conflicts in the mde wilderness of our forests to 

 which the single hunter went forth with his rifle and knife ; 

 and in which he had not only to meet in awful solitudes the 

 bear, the bison, the panther and the moose, but as well, the 

 still creeping, deadly subtlety of an Indian foe ! 



The latter had all the aid of numbers, and a common pur- 

 pose, which, even under imperfect discipline, may convert a 

 physical coward into the hero. The former, shorn of all 

 these associations, was compelled to push his way alone into 

 the grim surrounding of the "howling waste," and single- 

 handed cope with aU its dangers. He came with nerves of 

 steel and heart of rock, to subdue the bleak wilderness, and 

 he accomplished it — though "dark and bloody grounds" may 

 have marked each arena of his stern and struggling progress ! 

 His own quick senses, and his prompt right arm were his 

 only dependences for the preservation of "dear life !" It is 

 not at all astonishing, then, that from the nurturings of such 

 scenes and habitudes, that bold and strong individuality, that 

 untamable self-reliance, which constitutes the basis of self- 

 government and a free republic, should have come forth 

 cap-a-pie, to assert its claim to national character, in the 

 eight, or even had it been necessary, the eighteen years' war 

 of a revolution. The war of the Revolution, and every one 

 that has occurred since, proves, that however deficient in 

 discipline, the North Americans are the best individual sol- 

 diers that the world has ever known. The remarkable skill in 

 rifle shooting, and the constant familiarity with sudden exi- 

 gencies of the ruder sports of hunting, which the every-day 

 habitudes of their wild life has given them, has fitted almost 

 every common soldier for the station of an officer, so far as 

 skill, coolness, promptness and self-dependence can go. 



All the impulsion of our national character — aU of the 

 hardy, stern, resolute and generous that may be native, we 

 take through the noble blood of our hunter ancestors. That 



