28 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
out fairly. The New World was discovered by a bold in- 
auisition of science, which the newly released thought— 
exulting in its freedom—could only have attempted; and 
was conquered by the proud daring of a chivalry, which was 
first sublime to undertake and strong enough to accomplish, 
all that its fiery dreams had conceived. Then the Matador 
knights of Southern Europe, possessed themselves of gold-bear- 
ing, gorgeous Mexico; and the cut-and-thrust agility—the fero- 
cious cowardice of their national show, “the bull-fight”—has 
been well perpetuated in the assassin’s skill with the assassin’s 
blade; and the brutal thirst for blood, wreaking itself the more 
mercilessly as the victim is more helpless—which has distin- 
guished the modern Mexico of that conquest ! 
But another people—from the hardy North of ihe Old 
World, which has always preserved the physical integrity of 
its races—went across to possess the, to them, congenial 
North of the New. 
The elemental war—the thundering of wind-driven waves 
upon “the rock-bound coast’”—the white desolation of snows 
crowning the cliffs and bowing the gnarled tangles of scrubby 
forests, had no formidable terrors to them—whose manhood 
had been cultivated amidst the out-door hardships of those 
gallant feudal sports to which we have alluded. They had 
been cradled by the tempestuous North, and knew how to 
match all its moods in self-defence. They could wrench the 
fire from dead trees by friction, and even when this resource 
failed, knew how to strip the warm skin from the newly slain 
beast to wrap around them in their slumbers, and defy the 
winter. They were not appalled by the savage red man with 
his scalp lock, for they had conquered brutes as savage in 
the wild fastnesses of their mutual home. Though certainly 
there is a wide difference between the rough boar hunts, 
through which some of our pilgrim fathers may be supposed 
to have been habituated to “inminent perils by flood and 
field” —to which the knights went forth with their peers 
