BIRD, BEAST AND HUNTER. 29 
around them, with hundreds of retainers at their heels-—and 
those stern conflicts in the wide wilderness of our forests tc 
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 all 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 straggling 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 hasever 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—all of the 
hardy, stern, resolute and generous that may be native, we 
take through the noble blood of our hunter ancestors. That 
