It is of course nothing against either that it is artificial; so are all sports in long-civilized countries, from lacrosse to ice yachting.
It is amusing to see how natural it is for each man to glorify the sport to which he has been accustomed at the expense of any other.

The old-school French sportsman, for instance, who followed the bear, stag, and hare with his hounds, always looked down upon the chase of the fox; whereas the average Englishman not only asserts but seriously believes that no other kind of chase can compare with it, although in actual fact the very points in which the Englishman is superior to the continental sportsman--that is, in hard and straight-riding and jumping--are those which drag-hunting 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_.