The rifle is, in its simplest form, a more complex instrument than the
smooth-bored piece, and will always require superior intelligence to
manage it. The army which naturally possesses this requisite in the
highest degree will best handle this decisive weapon, and be, other
things equal, the strongest army. This consideration operates in favor
of our people, among whom the rifle has always been in so much more
constant and familiar use than with those of other countries. Our
broad forests will have to be cleared and our mountain-chains,
east and west, more densely settled than Switzerland, before the
distinction of a nation of marksmen can be lost to us. So far, there
is little evidence of this change. The deer and the wild-turkey are
nearly as abundant on the Atlantic slope of the Alleghanies as they
ever were. Probably there are more of both in Virginia than at the
time of the settlement of Jamestown. Like the quail and the bee, they
are favored by a certain advance of population and cultivation.

Another species of aborigine does not similarly thrive in the path of
the rifle. The Indian of the Plains is still troublesome occasionally,
but far less so than when blue-coats and blunderbusses joined forces
against him. The odds then were often on his side, for many of the red
men were armed with the rifle, while the troops had but the musket and
carbine. The appearance of the breech-loading rifle in the hands of
the United States dragoons on the frontier just fifteen years ago let
in new light upon the Camanche and Apache mind. Up to that period the
badgering of a detachment of "heavies" was a favorite pastime with
these gentry. They got up their "spring fights" with as much coolness
and regularity as the early patriarchs of Texas are related to have
done, and not merely, as in the case of the latter, in utter contempt,
but directly at the expense, of the constituted authorities. Tying
a bag of dried mule-meat and pounded corn to the peak of his saddle,