Page:Handbook for Boys.djvu/208

 CHAPTER IV TRACKS, TAILING AND SIGNALING By Ernest Thompson Seton, Chief Scout

"I wish I could go West and join the Indians so that I should have no lessons to learn," said' an unhappy small boy who could discover no atom of sense or purpose in any one of the three R's.

"You never made a greater mistake," said the scribe. "For the young Indians have many hard lessons from their earliest days—hard lessons and hard punishments. With them the dread penalty of failure is 'go hungry till you win,' and no harder task have they than their reading lesson. Not twenty-six characters are 'to be learned in this exercise, but one thousand; not clear straight print are they, but dim, washed-out, crooked traces; not in-doors on comfortable chairs, with a patient teacher always near, but out in the forest, often alone and in every kind of weather, they slowly decipher their letters and read sentences of the oldest writing on earth—a style so old that the hieroglyphs of Egypt, the cylinders of Nippur, and the drawings of the cave men are as things of to-day in comparison—the one universal script—the tracks in the dust, mud, or snow.

"These are the inscriptions that every hunter must learn to read infallibly, and be they strong or faint, straight or crooked, simple or overwritten with many a puzzling, diverse phrase, he must decipher and follow them swiftly, unerringly if there is to be a successful ending to the hunt which provides his daily food.

"This is the reading lesson of the young Indians, and it is a style that will never become out of date. The naturalist also must acquire some measure of proficiency in the ancient art. Its usefulness is unending to the student of wild life; without it he would know little of the people of the wood."

There Are Still Many Wild Animals It is a remarkable fact that there are always more wild animals about than any but the expert has an idea of. For 187