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THE HOME OF HISTORY AND HEROISM.

In concluding this sketch of the poineer, military and managerial career of Colonel W. F. Cody, and of the historic characters and salient features with which Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World has made mankind familiar, it is worthy of note that their present and seventeenth annual tour will be signalized by a magnitude, interest, value and perfection programme of performances, the result is such an historical, martial and equestrian triumph as but one man could organize and but one country produce.

It is at once a colossal Object School of living lessons and an entertainment radically and exceptionally differing from all other exhibitions, in that it is actually a part of the romantic past it perpetuates, and vitalized by the presence of some of the most noted makers of the frontier history they illustrate. There is no "make believe" about it ; nothing that seems to say, "We will now give you an imitation of somebody doing something," and it does not in any degree rely for its success upon the display of sensational feats that have no other utility than mere spectacular exhibition. The men who participated in it are, in absolute verity, just what they are represented to be, and the things they do are such as they have been accustomed to in war and military life, or in the struggle for existence in their serveral vocations and conditions. Himself the acknowledged master horseman of his generation, Colonel Cody is a critical judge of the individual, the collective and comparitive merits of the cavalry, Indian, Cossack, Cowboy, Bedouin, Mexican, Cuban, Argentine and other riders he has secured. As an expert he knows just how to most brilliantly and effectively mass these hundreds of representative riders and their horses in grand review, cosmographic pageant and kaleidoscope maneuvers. Himself a famous participant in many fierce battles, pursuits, rescues, and even deadly single combats, he knows how to plan and direct the spectacles of dreadful war and carnage, and of savage ambush and foray, in comparison with which the conflicts in the Coliseur of the Caesars were but spiritless and insignificant affrays.

(Picture)
JOHN M. BURKE.

To those who have followed the march of civilization from the Alleghenies to the Pacific, this exposition is like an illustrated reproduction of events which transpired during the long and bloody struggle between the white man and the Indian, in the former's effort to extend his empire and the latter's heroic but hopeless defense of his hunting grounds. The singular and savage characters of the Leather Stocking Tales become striking, electrifying realities. The admirers of Lewis and Clarke, the explorers ; of Daniel Boone, the pioneer ; of Kit Carson, the scout, and of Fremont, Crook, Custer, Sherman, and Miles, the fighters, readily recognize in the exhibition how courage, indomitable grit, altertness, sagacity accuracy of aim, acuteness of perception and physical endurance won for them the name so enviably identified with the history of the fierce and prolonged frontier struggles, wherein every piece of ground was disputed inch by inch.

And now, to all that has made this unique entertainment the public's favorite in the past, there is this season added the Battle of Tien-Tsin, the Rescue of the Legations in China last year, participated in by Marines of the Navies of all the world powers; the picturesque "Gourkas" and "Sikhs" and Japanese Soldiers, and an Exhibition Drill of United States Life-Saving Service men by real life-saving crew ; a band of Boers directly from De Wet's Army ; a squad of the "Strathcona Horse." Canada's crack regiment, directly from the South African War, and a squad of Northwest Mounted Police, the pride of the Canadian frontier.

COPYRIGHTED BY JOHN M. BURKE.
CODY & SALSBURY,
NEW YORK, 1901.