BIG GAME.*
MR. PARKER GJLLMORE is not an elegant writer; indeed, it may be said at once that he has not a style ; he just puts what he has to say down anyhow, regardless of such trifles as grammar and euphony, the proportion of subjects, or the mix- ing of metaphors. On the latter point he is very funny. Long acquaintance with the honest, enthusiastic, and not cruel sports- man of the Prairies prevents our feeling surprised when we find an Indian whom he meets unexpectedly described as "evidently a big bug, quite conscious of his divinity." To enjoy this book, one must throw over every notion of literary art and propriety, and simply turn out in imagination with the writer on the prairie, where the horses are your intelligent, docile, and sympathising companions, where perfect health is your physical condition, where "each day you perform your allotted work, and no cares are sufficiently weighty to be dwelt upon or procrastinated until they return with double force,"—a phrase by which the author, no doubt, means that one is usually in good-spirits when on the Buffalo-runs. You are not to suppose that all prairies are monotonous grass oceans, where the horizon and the sky meet. The great prairies of the Yellowstone Valley and in the Rocky-Mountains region are rolling hills, ranging one above the other, until they reach the frowning mountains, interspersed with belts of trees upon the margin of the streams which feed the great rivers of the continent. You look upwards towards these hills, and think it must be impossible to get through their passes ; but you do get through them, by gulch and dark, winding cation, until a beautiful "park," thousands of acres in extent, opens upon you ; its grasses, count- less in variety, and exquisite in colouring, are beneath your horse's feet, while the slopes which shut in these marvellous meadows are thick-set with the stateliest and most beautiful trees.
" Such spots as these," says the writer, " are the naturalist's elysium, for game of every variety select them for retreats. The buffalo-cow comes to them frequently to calve ; the worn-out, fierce-looking-bull, over whose head so many years have passed that he has no longer strength to keep pace with the migratory herd, retires to them to spend in abundance the winter of life ; while the graceful deer, the timid hare, and the sagacious beaver here pass their lives in peaceful, happy con- tentment, except some adventurous white man or snake-visioned red- skin should pay it a visit, destroying, as man ever does, the serenity that reigned previous to his advent."
In such a scene, the migration of a herd of buffalo many thousands in number, bulls, cows, and calves, all heading in the same direc- tion, and feeding as they progress, must be a fine sight. The hunted and persecuted creatures which once roamed, in their lordly, unmolested might, over the whole of the Northern continent in countless millions, are now to be found only within compara- tively narrow limits. The writer has found the bleached bones of buffalo on the eastern limit of the Grand Prairie in Indiana, but they are not to be met with under 1,200 miles westward of that prairie now. Their southern limits are Northern Texas and New Mexico, but their northern range has increased. Their Indian enemies, who used to travel four hundred miles for their buffalo-meat, find it ready for their murderous guns and knives on the home hunting-grounds, whither the herds have been driven by their persecutors in lower latitudes, and where new dangers, and causes of the decline of the noble, fast-vanishing race await them, in the intense cold, the scanty sustenance—the great bulk of the buffalo demanding a large amount of food—and the enemy next to man in deadliness and unrelenting pursuit, the wolf, who watches day and night for accident, sickness, or loss of strength by starvation, which will give him his dastardly, robber-chance. Here is a scene, witnessed by Mr. Parker Gillmore from a safe position behind a boulder, which has true tragedy in it :— "An old bull was pretending to feed, while four prairie-wolves were lying around him in the sparsely-covered soil, tongues out, and evi- dently short of breath from some excessive exertion. Presently one of the quartette got up and shook himself. This was a signal to the others to get upon their pins. Prairie-wolf number one walked quietly towards the bull, occasionally stopping, then, with a sudden spring, made a feint at the buffalo's head. The bull lowered his head, and advanced to meet him, and the rest of the fraternity rushed up. Another took the post of teaser, while number one dropped in the rear, and when a second feint at the head was made by his comrade, number one, watching his chance, left a deep scar over the bull's hock. Each wolf had his allotted work. The rear assault was the most dangerous, for a kick, well directed, would unquestionably have caused death to the assailant ; but the most expert had selected the post of honour and danger. The flashing eyes and foaming mouth of the bull told plainly the result, so I stepped from my concealment. However, all were so occupied, that until I wakened the echoes with a loud war-whoop,' I was unseen ; but man's voice always has its effect in cases of this kind. The vermin, with startled stare, plainly asking what the deuce right I had to interfere, sulkily • Prairie and Forest: a Description of the Game of North America, with Personal Adventures in their Pursuit. By Parker Gilmore ("Ubique"). London: Chapman and Hall.
trotted off as I advanced, while the bull lowered his head and pushed
rapidly for me, compelling me to seek safety in flight Awsoon as a safe distance intervened between us, the wolves returned, and as I rode homewards, occasionally turning and halting to watch the gradu- ally indistinct belligerents, the victim was still battling for his life.'
Mr. Parker Gillmore does not altogether hate and despise wolves. He has even accustomed some of them to take scraps of food from his camp, civilly, and allowed them to sit round the comforting blaze of his fire. A chapter on " Wolves " is very interesting. It is followed by one on " Foxes," in which the writer tells us, in his queer style, that "those fond of fox-hunting can have it to repletion in North America." But we follow him with the greatest interest as he goes northward from the buffalo-runs- where the hunter has to face many kinds of danger, from the break-neck burrows of the nimble prairie-dogs to the savage onslaught of braves' on the hunting-trail, like himself—to the vast steppes of barren land that stretch from the 60th degree of latitude to the Arctic circle, where the musk-sheep lives in such peace as hardly any other animal in the world enjoys. His favourite haunts are about the Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes ; his country is rough and dreary, and he is wary and shy ; only an exceptionally brave and hardy sportsman can get a chance of molesting him. The writer is justly indignant that this unmistakable sheep should be called an ox, and yields unwilling assent to Audubon's classi- fication of the animal as "genus ovibos," which he calls "a shuffling pretext to prevent controversy." The huge, unwieldy, harmless creatures have gentle, intelligent faces, with beautiful eyes ; their soft, long, dense wool so protects them, that the severest frost and snow do not disturb their comfort ; and they are wonderfully nimble, " leaping with agility from rock to rock, and scaling the faces of slopes so perpendicular, that the hunter, with hands and feet brought into play, finds it almost impossible to follow." Their habits are singularly interesting, the solicitude of the mothers for their young is excessive, and their organisation, in their large herds far North, admirable :— " Their hearing and sight are very acute ; at the same time, so suspicious and cautious are they that, although always assembled in little parties of from ten to twenty, sentinels are regularly told-off for duty, which place themselves in the most commanding positions, ready to whistle the signal of alarm on the slightest suspicion of danger, accompanied by the usual sheep-like stamp of displeasure, which sum- mons the herd to assist in inspecting the supposed intruder, before they shift their feeding-grounds for haunts that previous experience has taught them are more secure."
Captain Parry classes the musk-sheep among the dwellers north of the Arctic circle ; and Mr. Parker Gillmore discusses their domestication, which he considers might be effected without much difficulty, and would be attended with great benefit, from the introduction of their long, fine, and elastic wool into our markets. It is, however, not easy to understand how these creatures could live in milder climates, for which they seem as little fitted as the cariboo of the " barrens." The giant moose-deer, which is now generally admitted to be identical with the elk, is declining even more rapidly than the buffalo. Mr. Parker Gillmore protests quite pathetically on this point, and calls upon the States of which tic: huge, clumsy, ass-headed beast, magnificent in strength, and of curious acuteness of instinct and senses, is still an inhabitant (he has vanished from several) to pass and enforce laws against his annihilation. Among the pine-clad hills and wood-margined lakes of Maine, this long-lingering creature of a past age in the earth's history is still found ; but he chiefly abounds in the neighbourhood of Lake Winnipeg, where the white hunter pursues him with Indian companions, adepts in the use of the treacherous reed, through which, in the still autumn evenings, they send the alluring " call " over the face of the water or through the pine-glades. In the spring, the wood-giant must be followed on snow-shoes, after a heavy crust has been formed on the snow, through the burning sun of the day and the bitter frost of the night. Though the moose is undeniably ugly, especially when compared with the beautiful Virginian, Wapiti, and Red-deer, all perfect in shape, and graceful in movement, be must be a picturesque object in the still, solemn, snow-clad landscapes of his forest home, beneath the sky where the streaks fall from the Northern Lights ; and in the tributary streams which feed the Moosehead Lake, his splendid antlers reared above the water, as he floats among the spreading water- lilies, gathering their long, succulent limbs and leaves with his soft moufle. He has but one brief interval of security against his merciless pursuers. It is when winter is at hand, and the moose-deer leave the morass and river-banks for higher ground, where "they collect in families, previous to yarding, which takes place as soon as the lands of these northern wilds have received
their pure white covering." Mr. Parker Gillmore holds the eariboo, though-easily domesticated, and then as easy to herd as sheep, to be the most difficult of all game to approach, or even to obtain sight of. He gives a very interesting description of this valuable animal, which the New World has never attempted to atilise, though, as he points out, the reindeer has been domesti- cated for ages in Europe and Asia, and the territory lately acquired by the United States from Russia literally swarms with earihoo. There is no more fascinating description in the book than that of the stealing-away of large herds of these animals from within almost arm's-reach of the hunter.
The chapters on Deer are perhaps the most valuable in the book, as contributions to popular knowledge of natural history, and they have a distinct interest for the sportsman, because they contain precise instructions, founded on long and, we should sup- pose, unsurpassed experience ; but the general reader will, we are sure, agree with us that the chapters on Bears are especially delightful. The " grizzly " has a peculiar fascination for the imagination of everybody who likes, as everybody ought to like, to read about wild beasts ; and bears in general have an attrac- tion, half-terrible, half-humorous, peculiar to themselves. When they are peaceful they are ponderously foolish ; when they are fierce there is something funny in their fluffy, fat ferocity. They are associated with mankind in fact and in fiction more closely than any of the " wild-beast " category ; their head and chief, the grizzly, is a hero of the romance of sport and danger ; and the polar variety has always impressed us as a mysterious beast, full of knowledge of that ice-kingdom, with its splendour of light and its terror of darkness, which defies us throughout the ages. All Mr. Parker Gillmore's friends among the bears are interesting, but we should have especially liked to know that happy family of the black-bear species, whose chief,—far from being the restless beast familiar to us at the bottom of his merciless pit in cruel captivity,—roves the forest, luxuriously lazy, feeding on nuts and luscious fruits, playing in the sun with his comrades, and rarely quarrelling with his brethren. His consort is the best of mothers to her soft, happy little cubs, who are very small at their birth, but ruu about with her at six weeks' old, while she hauls the fallen logs in the forest on one side that the delicate feeders may get at the succulent grubs and larva underneath, or pulls down the fruit-laden branches within reach of their eager young mouths ; or, if need be, dies to rescue them from danger or defend them from attack.
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