"His medical advisers shared his opinion that he had sustained internal injury from this ugly fall; and it is not improbable that it was the remote, but real cause of his dissolution. From whatsoever this ensued, it will be a source of deep and lasting regret to all who ever enjoyed opportunities of appreciating the high and sterling qualities of George Frederick Ruxton. Few men, so prepossessing on first acquaintance, gained so much by being better known. With great natural abilities and the most dauntless bravery, he united a modesty and gentleness peculiarly pleasing.
"Had he lived, and resisted his friends' repeated solicitations to abandon a roving life and settle down in England, there can be little doubt that he would have made his name eminent on the lists of those daring and persevering men, whose travels in distant and dangerous lands have accumulated for England, and for the world, so rich a store of scientific and general information. And although the few words it has been thought right and becoming here to devote to his memory, will doubtless be more particularly welcome to his personal friends, we are persuaded that none will peruse without interest this brief tribute to the merits of a gallant soldier and accomplished English gentleman."
In the present edition no liberties have been taken with the text except by correcting a few obvious errors, and making the spelling conform to American usage. Footnotes by the present editor are marked (Ed); those unsigned are by Ruxton himself.
One useful purpose that this book may serve is to give professional hunters and trappers their due as hard working men. From time immemorial it has been the fashion to look down upon their ilk as lazy vagabonds "too trifling to work for a living." Such is the almost universal opinion of people who never have taken a big game hunt themselves, never even have seen hunters at work in the wilderness, but know them only as they take their well-earned ease after an exhausting chase.
"The lazy hunter" is the most misjudged of men; for really there is no harder labor than the pursuit of wild animals for a livelihood. The libelous epithet perhaps came in vogue from the fact that hunting and trapping are apt to unfit a man for settled habits of industry. Or it may have come from observing the whole-souled enjoyment with which the hunter pursues his occupation. We have not yet got rid of the Puritan notion that no effort is worthy unless it is painful to the spirit. The freeman of the woods calls his labor sport, and he laughs, in retrospect, at all the cruel toil, the starving and freezing and broken bones. Being utterly independent he seldom does things that "go against the grain," save as he is driven by necessity. But how sharp was the lash of that necessity, how often it stung body and soul, how many a hunter "went under," even in the old days when game was in the greatest abundance, is shown with perfect fidelity to truth in this picture of "Life in the Far West."
Horace Kephart.