80 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTEES. 



terrible soldiery -wliicli devastated Mexico, was composed of 

 Kunters almost to a man ; tke eagle they' carried before tbem 

 was a hunting bird — the fierce-eyed king of the winged hunters ! 



To me, the wild and peculiar sports of our country, are 

 as noble and ennobling subjects of curiosity, as I feel our 

 science should be of jealous accuracy, and philosophy of 

 liberal breadth. Our physical character has been quite as 

 much developed by the first, as our intellectual or moral by 

 the second, and our spiritual by the last. 



Here, the civilized man, the savage and the brute have 

 been brought into extraordinary relations. Nor is this all. 

 It is through this remarkable collision^ that a more intimate 

 knowledge of the habits of all the forms of animal life has 

 been obtained in the New World than has come through 

 any other source. The savage was the earliest and most 

 accurate student of their habits, from the necessities of his 

 condition^ which compelled him to familiarize himself vrith 

 all their moods, in view of the facilities for captm-e, which 

 the want of food and raiment entailed. His familiarity with 

 such themes was then purely compulsory, while that of 

 our American pioneers has been nearly quite as much 

 so. They, too, were bound to be naturalists. They came 

 to the unbroken solitudes to cope with the savage in the 

 conditions of his own life. Though they had more science, 

 and a better architecture, yet were they equally dependant 

 for subsistence upon personal prowess. They were com- 

 pelled to learn from their savage antagonist — as they could, 

 through their manner of taking them — ^the nature and habits 

 of the new animal races amongst which they found them- 

 selves. What they could not acquire from such sources, 

 their own intelligent observation furnished them ; so that, 

 in reality, the first American Naturalists were our pioneer 

 hunters, who learned through starvation, and all the perils of 

 savage warfare, and the inconstant seasons, to know more 

 accurately the habits, passions, transitions and localities of 



