ing tends to develop rather more than fox-hunting
proper. In the mere hunting itself the continental sportsman is often
unsurpassed.

Once, beyond the Missouri, I met an expatriated German baron, an
unfortunate who had failed utterly in the rough life of the frontier.
He was living in a squalid little hut, almost unfurnished, but studded
around with the diminutive horns of the European roebuck. These were the
only treasures he had taken with him to remind him of his former life,
and he was never tired of describing what fun it was to shoot roebucks
when driven by the little crooked-legged _dachshunds_. There were plenty
of deer and antelope roundabout, yielding good sport to any rifleman,
but this exile cared nothing for them; they were not roebucks, and
they could not be chased with his beloved _dachshunds_. So, among my
neighbors in the cattle country, is a gentleman from France, a very
successful ranchman and a thoroughly good fellow; he cares nothing for
hunting big game, and will not go after it, but is devoted to shooting
cotton-tails in the snow, this being a pastime having much resemblance
to one of the recognized sports of his own land.

However, our own people afford precisely similar instances. I have
met plenty of men accustomed to killing wild turkeys and deer with
small-bore rifles in the southern forests who, when they got on the
plains and in the Rockies, were absolutely helpless. They not only
failed to become proficient in the art of killing big game at long
ranges with the large-bore rifle, at the cost of fatiguing tramps, but
they had a positive distaste of the sport and would never allow that it
equalled their own stealthy hunts in eastern forests. So I know plenty
of men, experts with the shot-gun, who honestly prefer shooting quail in
the East over well-trained setters or pointers, to the hardier, manlier
sports of the wilderness.

As it is with hunting, so it is with riding. The cowboy's scorn of every
method of riding save his own is as profound and as ignorant as is that
of the school rider, jockey, or fox-hunter. The truth is that each of
these is best in his own sphere and is at a disadvantage when made to do
the work of any of the others. For all-around riding and horsemanship, I
think the West Point graduate is somewhat ahead of any of them. Taken as
a class, however, and compared with other classes as numerous, and not
with a few exceptional individuals, the cowboy, like the Rocky Mounta