30 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
terrible soldiery which devastated Mexico, was composed of 
hunters almost to a man; the eagle they carried before them 
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 with 
all their moods, in view of the facilities for capture, 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 thty 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 
bunters, 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 
