Deo. 8, 1894.] 
489 
If there is on earth anywhere a more prosaic, unpic- 
turesque, unbeautiful city than Chicago it is this same 
prototype, this miniature Chicago, Butte, the red-hot 
town of the mountains. It has not in it or about it one 
thing beautiful in landscape or environment. The great 
naked butte which gave the town its name stretches up 
cheerless and desolate, without the first inviting feature 
to commend it. The smote of the smelters has killed all 
the feeble vegetation of the hill side, and the too ener- 
getic axe men bave denuded the mountains absolutely of 
their forests. The town is naked, bald, prosaic, but full 
of energy and go, and full of wealth and possibilities of 
wealth to an extent unequaled in any community less 
unique. The city lies in a deep dip or valley of the moun- 
tains. You go up into the high place, which the sight- 
seer first of all searches out, and as you look out over, or 
rather up to the surrounding country you see the range 
of the great Continental Divide sweeping about you in a 
great letter S. The climbing Northern Pacific breaks 
away from the valley for the east. The Montana Union 
finds an easier trail back up the valley to Garrisons. The 
Great Northern forces its way through a canon so black 
and narrow that you wonder again at the audacity of 
the men who built the iron trail. And then you wonder 
of the world, as I have said, with nothing but his pickax 
and his nerve, and maybe a pipeful of tobacco. Other 
men have dug in all sorts of places in the mountains, and 
Marcus himself could have taken his pickax a mile from 
where he employed it and used it to such effect that he 
might still be working at $1.50 a day. But Marcus didn't 
do that. He sunk his pickax where the mineral was, and 
dug up gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, race horses, 
houses, lands and even, they do say, State officials. He 
owned first his pickax, then the entire mine, then the 
smelters, then a city of his own (Anaconda), and now 
they say he owns Montana. UnleBS something be done to 
Marcus I fear he will own the earth. 
The Sportsmanship is Modern. 
We should naturally expect to find the sportsmanship 
of Butte latter day, modern and up to date in every re- 
spect. Butte has no frontier history and bears no sugges- 
tion of the days of the mountain men. There are big- 
game hunters in Butte and small-game hunters and 
anglers, but they need to go some distance from the city 
to practice their craft, and the city itself suggests no 
worse possibilities in that fine than does any big manufac- 
turing town in the East. Butte has reached the stage of 
he stands a good show for at least temporary ownership 
of the new live bird medal which will be offered by the 
young Montana State Sportsman's Association from year 
to year henceforth. Mr. Cowan, as has already been 
announced in these columns, was chosen president of the 
State Association for the first year, and a better man 
could not have been selected. Mr. Cowan is not alto- 
gether unknown as a shooter in the East, and Chicago 
sportsmen will remember to have met him at the traps in 
this city on several occasions in the past, when he left his 
Western home for a short visit in the East. Mr. Cowan 
is a college graduate of Princeton. He was bow oar in 
the college crew of '81 and on his office wall there hangs 
a fine photograph of the Princeton crew which naturally 
Mr. Cowan prizes very much. Mr. Deveraux, who was 
coach for the Princeton crew that year, is one of the 
group in that photograph. Mr. Deveraux also sought his 
fortune in the West, and becoming a part owner in the 
famous Molly Gibson mine at Aspen, Colorado, became a 
very wealthy man. 
There is no West. 
There is one very pleasant feature of the Butte Rod 
and Gun Club which might well be emulated by other 
THE LAST GENERATION. 
why they should ever built these trails at all into this ' 
desolate and forbidding angle of the Continental Range. 
The citizen of Butte does not concern himself over such 
impolite questioning as this. He pities you. He points 
to the awful suffocating columns of smoke coming from 
the colossal chimneys on the mountain side above the 
town, and he talks to you in millions with a glibness 
sufficient to give you swimming of the head. For Butte 
is built on a solid mass of rich mineral which extends no- 
body knows how far and deep and wide into the secret 
subterranean chambers of the hills. Butte couldn't help 
being wealthy if she tried. Like Chicago, she is the child 
of destiny, and the children of destiny cannot be re- 
pressed, neither can their clothing be measured for them 
for many years in advance. 
The Rise of Marcus. 
The Jason of this town is one Marcus Daly, who came 
to these regions, so goes the story, with nothing but his 
pickax and his nerve. The history of Marcus reads like a 
piece of romance of the Monte Cristo order. He seems 
to have been a man of simple, ordinary habits at first, but 
blessed above all with that most desirable of all qualities, 
the faculty of "getting there." You cannot eliminate 
from the character of the mountain man the blind con- 
viction that there is such a thing as "luck," and indeed 
he is a man of very limited experience who inflates him- 
self with the idea that there is no such thing as luck, and 
who ascribes his own success to his own excellence in 
energy and judgment. Marcus might have been all kinds 
of a man, but without his luck he could never have gotten 
where he is. A few years ago he dawned on this corner 
From "Hoofs, Claws and Antlers." 
development in sporting matters instanced by the trap 
club and the duck preserve. One would hardly think of 
finding duck shooting out here in the mountains, but it is 
a fact that the Red Rock Club preserve, on Red Rock 
Lake, where the sportsmen go for their wildfowl shooting, 
is one of the best fowling grounds in the West, and ex- 
ceptionally good bags are often made there. The mem- 
bership of the club is pretty well scattered over the State 
and the shooting privileges are much valued by the lovers 
of the shotgun in that region. It is something of a run 
from Butte down to Red Rock Lake, but the reward iB 
ample when the trip is made. Butte sportsmen are obliged 
to go thirty miles for their trout fishing, too, but they 
think nothing of that. 
The Butte Rod and Gun Club is a vigorous association 
of trap-shooters, as modern in its ideas and methods as 
any in the country, and including in its numbers some 
exceptionally good shots. The leading shooter in this 
body and perhaps the most prominent man in Montana 
in what we may call the modern sportsmanship, the 
sportsmanship of protection and preservation, is Mr. John 
F. Cowan, whom all the Montana men have delighted to 
honor with positions of trust and responsibility. Mr. Cowan 
is a gentleman of singular reticence and modesty, but his 
record, both in business and sportsmanship, is one of 
energy and success. Closely identified with some of the 
largest business enterprises in the city, he yet has time to 
shoot in a match or sweepstakes, and always time to 
spend in furthering the better interests of the sportsman- 
ship of to-day. Mr. Cowan has won and successfully 
defended in five shoots the old Hight and Fairfield medal, 
indicative of the live bird championship of Montana, and 
associations of that nature. The club has very nicely 
fitted up social club rooms, which serve as headquarters 
for the sportsmen of the town. Here are displayed the 
trophies, etc., of the club, including the handsome cup 
indicating the State clay-bird championship, which was 
won by the Butte Club in 1887. 
There is a very good gun store at Butte and run by a 
very good and accommodating owner, Mr. A. Wehl, who 
is numbered as one of the fixtures in all the meetings and 
doings of the Butte Rod and Gun Club. The stranger 
within the walls of this mountain city can secure all the 
latest wrinkles in guns and ammunition at Mr. Wehl's 
place, and there are few recent ideas known to the craft 
in any section of the country which cannot be found in 
full evidence here. Verily, the old days are past, and the 
new days are upon us. The shotgun replaces the rifle 
and is now used for the destruction of the artificial sub- 
stitutes for the game which once inhabited these dis- 
tricts. In the middle of the Continental Range there 
is no longer' any West. It is past and gone. Butte is 
only geographically in the West. In its methods, its 
business fife, its customs, its sportsmanship, Butte is the 
same as San Francisco, Chicago, New York. The modern 
day is at hand. For a better exhibition of the modern 
sportsmanship, or for a more kindly or hospitable recep- 
tion at the hands of the ancient and honorable craft of 
sportsmen, whose fundamental principles do not change 
with the years, you will search in vain to find better ex- 
emplification than in this busy, bustling, prosperous, 
mountain Chicago, held in the crooked arm of the Con- 
tinental Range. E, Hough, 
909 SECtmm Pmwf Chicago. 
