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THE LIBRARY

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THE UNIVERSITY OF
BRITISH COLUMBIA

Harry Hawthorn Foundation

for the

Inculcation & Propagation

of the Principles & Ethics

of Fly-Fishing

SPORT.

SPORT.

By W. BROMLEY-DAVENPORT,

Late M.P. for North Warwickshire.

FOX-HUNTING. j COVERT-SHOOTING.

SALMON-FISHING. | DEER-STALKING.

Willi Twcnly-oue Full- Page and Twenty-four smaller Iliuslrations by
Lieut. -General Henry Hote Crealocke, C.B.

From " THE TIMES."

" We have read the late Mr. Bromley-Pavenport's book on ' Sport ' with mingled pleasure and
regret. We are s^rry to think that we shall have nothing m jre from a man who might certainly have
made himself a reputation as a writer. A better ' all-ri^und ' sp rtsman never Kved, and a brighter
volume has seldom been written on sp>rtaig subjects. Everywhere we red guise genuine literary
talent— a light t uch ; vividly picturesque descr.ptins— the g. ft cf describing everyday inc.denls
dramatically, with a humorous insight into the natures both of men and beasts. There is a racy
freshness in every page, and the practxal knowledge brought to the work is unimpeachable. If
Mr. Davenport ever loses the temper which never failed him in the m. st ti-ying circumstances in
the field or on the r.ver, it is when he is exposing the absurdities of the Cockney scribes who
denounce sp rts of which they are lud.crously ign )rant ; or when his wrath is stirred by poLLcians
kg.slating to set classs by the ears. For himself he was a country gentleman of the best type,
who had always lived on kindly terms with the tenantry among wh m his ancestors had been
settled f .r some 900 years. Yet Mr. Davenp )rt"s literary work, e.xcellent as it is, is run hard by
General Crcnl cke's illustrati'-ns. Each of the sketches, while strikingly real.stic, is a study tf
the p'-ietry, the ,athos, or the humour of wild animal l.fe. Thus noth.ng can be more inspiriting
than the noble group of Highland stags on the front. spiece, voluptu usly sniffing the fresh breeze
on th- r native hills, with far-gazing eyes and distended nostnU. Nothing can be more pathetic
than the magnificently-antlered rci.ideer stag, towards the end of the volume, limping painfully
over the snowficld in the wake of his coiiipan.ons, as he carries away the deadly bullet in his
vitals. There is a simiUr contrast between the strong, swift, sm iith-furred fox guing away at a
gallop, ou the title-page, to the tally-h:>, and the same animal, jaded and breathless, dragging his
nii'd-be^pattered bru^h in the 'shadow of death.' But General CreaLcke's hounds, hares,
phea- ants, &c , are all equally gOud ; and perh.aps the m st spir.ted and original of all are his
salmon, seen through the transparent med.um of their native element."

THE ORIGINAL EDITION CAN ALSO BE HAD,

In a handsome Crown 4to Volume, 2ij.

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010 with funding from

University of British Columbia Library

http://www.archive.org/details/sportbroOObrom

SPORT

W. BROMLEY-DAVENPORT

7 -^0 '

ILLUSTRATED BY

LT.-GEN. H. HOPE CREALOCKE, C.B., C.M.G.

NEW EDITION

LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limited

iS88

Richard Clay and Son>,
london and bunoay.

PiiiiUti, Fdruary, iSSS.

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.

The success which has followed the pubKcation ot
the two first editions of " Sport " encourages the
hope that a new and less costly edition will be even
more widely read and appreciated. The book may
be regarded as a defence and justification of the
amusements of an English country gentleman, an
exposition of the ignorance and misstatements of
many who have treated the same subject without
knowledge or experience, and a condemnation of
some few who have written with the direct intention
of throwing discredit upon those " Sports " in which
the English people have always excelled, and which
are still in some degree open to all who care to
enjoy them. If the Author has succeeded in proving
that these " Sports " are each in its different way
deservedly popular— not necessarily cruel nor in any
want of legislative interference — the main object
with which he wrote has been attained.

December 14, 18S5.

PREFACE.

In publishing the following descriptions of the
various forms of " Sport " some apology or ex-
planation may be necessary for the last of the series —
'•'Deer-stalking" — the concluding sentences of which
were written only a few days before the author's
sudden death. It has, therefore, not had the
advantage of his personal revision and correction, and
may be, to some extent, deficient in the finished style
and neatness of expression which were characteristics
of his writings. My grateful thanks are due to
General Crealocke for his kindness in undertaking
the illustration of the book — a work which he
began out of regard for an old friend, and which
he has completed as a tribute to his memory.

Augusta Bromley Davenport.

CONTENTS.

TACK

FOX-IIUNTINC I

SALMON-FISIIIXG 57

COVERT-SHOOTING IC5

DEER-STALKING-

Bryce's Bill 161

Chapter I. — The Rkai 165

Chapter II. — The Artificiai 201

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Illustrated Title Frontlspkce.

"Tally Ho!" Vigndte {Title-page)

Fox-HuNTiNG xvi

A Good Fox 4

Forward ! J"or\vard Away ! 5

A Burning Scent 7

Taking the Oxer in IIis Stride 9

Ridge and Furrow and Up Hill 13

" He puts his horse at it in a steady hnnd canter" 17

Going at the Brook 21

Come to Grief 24

Flying the Brook 25

The Shadow of Death 28

A Final Crash of "Hound Clamour" 30

Worry ! Worry ! Worry ! 32

Salmon-Fishing 55

A Norwegian House 60

Head of a Salmon 66

He Comes at Me, and Misses the Fly 72

" My line taut and my rod bent to a delicious curve " 73

Sulking , 76

" With rod high held and panting lungs, I blunder along the stony and

uneven bank " Si

xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

TAOE

Towing the Vanquished Hull into Porr SS

Ole's Finishing Stroke 9°

" The rod springs strai^hl ng-iin, and the fly dangles useless in the air " . . 97

CoVERT-SlIOOTING I03

A ROCKETEII 136

Rocketers 13S

An Active PEnESTRiAN 140

Caution 141

Confidence 142

Confidence Misplaced 142

" Tearing them Down " 143

A Feathered Lump 145

Retrieved 146

Deer-Stalking 159

He is very, very Sicic 1S4

" Han Falder" 194

The Meet up the Glen 214

Clubfoot is Found 222

Donald Reconnoitres 229

A Dwakf Forest of Horns Appears 231

An Old Stalker Waiting for His Dinner while Donald

Terforms the Last Rites on Ci.uhfoot 239

Archie Fulls Down the Rovai 241

SPORT.

FOX-HUNTING.

Perhaps no greater anomaly — no more palpable
anachronism — exists than fox-hunting in England. Yet
it has been called, and is, the " national sport." Why ?
Population increases ; the island is filling up fast.
The limited area unoccupied by human dwellings,
machineries, and locomotive facilities of all kinds is
still, in spite of bad seasons, as a rule fertile enough
to supply some considerable proportion of the
increasing wants of the nation. Every acre worth
cultivating, let waste land reclaimers say what they
will, is cultivated ; and impoverished landlords and
tenants alike are less than ever able to bear the losses
inflicted by broken fences, unhinged gates, and over-

D

2 SPORT.

ridden wheat, which are the result of the inroads of
constantly increasing multitudes of ignorant riders
unable to distinguish seeds from squitch or turnips
from tares, and which have already caused the masters
of several packs of hounds to discontinue the public
advertisement of their meets. Why, then, is fox-
hunting, which is generally regarded as the rich
man's or country squire's (by no means synonymous
terms) amusement, still the popular sport of the
nation ?

The reason is to be found, first, in the manly pre-
dilection inherent to our Anglo-Saxon nature for a sport
into which the element of danger conspicuously enters ;
and, secondly, in that it is essentially a democratic
sport, wherein the favourite socialistic ideal, " The
greatest happiness for the greatest number," is in
some sort realised. The red coat — and not it alone,
but the top-boot, or any outward and visible sign of a
fox-hunter — covers a multitude of sins. The law of
trespass is abolished for the day. The lands of the
most exclusive aristocrat are open to the public,

FOX-HUNTING. 3

whether mounted or pedestrian ; and the latter
have for some years past shown a keenness for and
appreciation of the sport which, though it sometimes
does not conduce to its advancement or consummation,
is not only remarkable, but also a healthy sign of its
continuance in the future.

But the fact is that fox-hunting — from the cream
of the cream of sportsmen described by " Nimrod,"
to the humbler class immortalised by ** Jorrocks " —
spreads a vast amount of pleasure, satisfaction with
self, and goodwill towards others over a wide surface
of humanity. All classes enjoy it. The "good man
across country," proud of his skill — prouder still of
his reputation, and anxious, sometimes too anxious, to
retain it — perhaps derives the keenest enjoyment of
all, so long as all goes well ; but this important proviso
shows that his position is not so secure, as regards
happiness, as that of his humbler, less ambitious, or
less proficient brethren. A slight accident, a bad
start, a sudden turn of the hounds — especially if in
favour of some distinguished rival on the other flank

b 2

4 SPORT.

— will send him home with a bitterness of soul
unknown to and incapable of realisation by those
whose hopes are centred on a lesser pinnacle of fame
or bliss, with whom to be absolutely first is not a sine
qua non for the enjoyment of a run.

A GOOD FOX.

But supposing all does go well. There Is a burnincr
scent, " a good fox," a good country ; he is on a
good horse, and has got a good start ; then for the
next twenty or thirty minutes (Elysium on earth
can scarcely ever last longer) he absorbs as much

FOX-HUNTING. 7

happiness into his mental and physical organisation
as human nature is capable of containing at one time.
Such a man, so launched on his career, is difficult to
catch. Impossible to lead, and not very safe to follow ;
but I will try to do the latter for a page or two on

A BURNING SCENT.

paper. He is riding on the left or right of the
hounds (say the left for present purposes), about
parallel with their centre, or a little in rear of them,
if they run evenly and d.o not tail, and about fifty
yards wide of them. The fields are chiefly grass,
and of o;ood size. The hounds are "racinof," heads

S SPORT.

Up and sterns down, with very little cry or music-
indicative of a scent rarely bequeathed by modern
foxes. The fences are, as a rule, strong, but not high
—the "-take and bound" of the grazing countries;
but ever and anon a low but strong rail on the
nearer, or the glimmer of a post on the further
side, makes our friend communicate silently and mys-
teriously with his horse — a fine-shouldered, strong-
quartered animal, almost, if not quite, thoroughbred
— as he approaches the obstacle, on the necessity of
extra care or increased exertion. It is, as the rider
knows, an "oxer," i.e. a strongly-laid fence, a wide
ditch, and at an interval of about three or four feet
from the former a strong single oak rail secured
between stout oak posts. Better for him if the ditch
is on the nearer and this rail on the further side,
as, if his horse jumps short, his descending impetus
will probably break it, provided it is not very
strong and new, in which case a calamity will
probably occur ; but a collision with such a rail on
the nearer side may lead to risky complications of

FOX-HUNTING. 1 1

horse and rider in the wide ditch and fence above
alluded to

Our friend, however, has an electric or telephonic
system of intercourse with his horse (no w^hip or spur,
mind you) which secures him from such disasters, and
he sails onwards smoothly — his gallant horse taking
the fences in his stride — and now, the crowd being
long ago disposed of, and his course truly laid for two
or three fields ahead, he has leisure to inspect his
company. Right and left of him (no true sportsman
ever looks back) are some half-a-dozen good men and
true going their own line ; those on the right perhaps
two hundred yards wide of him, as none but a tailor
will ride the line of the hounds, and they on their side
allow the same lateral space or interval that he does
on his. Those on his left are nearer to him, and so
far have done their devoir gallantly in the front wuth
himself; but this cannot last. His is the post of
advantao^e as well as of honour, and a sliQ;-ht turn to
the right occurring simultaneously with the apparition
of a strong " bullfinch," or grown-up unpleached thorn

12 SPORT.

fence, black as Erebus, with only one weak place
possible to bore through, which is luckily just in his
line, turns these left hand competitors into humble
followers, for at the pace hounds are going they
cannot regain their parallel positions. As time
goes on, similar accidents occur to the riders on
the right, and these, with a fall or two and a refusal,
reduce the front line to two men only, our friend
on the left and one rival on the right. A ploughed
field, followed by a grass one, ridge-and-furrow
and uphill, makes our friend take a pull at his
horse, for the ridges are "against" or across him;
they are high and old-fashioned, and covered with
molehills, while the furrows are very deep and
"sticky," causing even our skilled friend to roll
about rather like a ship at sea, and less practised
riders to broach-to altoeether. As he labours
across this trying ground, "hugging the wind," so
to speak, as closely as he can, keeping the sails
of his equine craft just full and no more — with a
tight hold of his head, his anxious eye earnestly

. .w

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fr#

i

FOX-HUNTING. 15

scans the sky line, where looms out an obstacle,
the most formidable yet encountered — a strong
staken-bound fence leaning toivards him, which he
instinctively knows to be garnished on the other
side with a very wide ditch, whether or not further
provided with an ox-rall beyond that, he cannot
tell. What he sees is enough — considering the
ground he has just traversed, and that he must go
at the fence uphill— to make him wish himself safe
over. However, with a sense of relief, he sees a
gleam of daylight In it, which he at first half hopes
Is a gap, but which turns out to be a good stiff bit
of timber nailed between two ash trees. It is
strong and high, but lower than the fence ; the
"take off" is good, and there is apparently no
width of ditch beyond. So, thanking his stars or
favourite saint that " timber " Is his horse's special
accomplishment, he " goes for it." It don't improve
on acquaintance. Now is the time for hands.
Often — oh, how often ! — have hands saved the
head or the neck ! and fortunately his are faultless.

i6 SPORT.

Without hurry, just restraining his impatience (he
has the eagerness of youth), yet leaving him much
to himself, he puts his horse at it in a steady hand
canter, dropping his hand at the instant the sensible
beast takes off to an inch in the right place, and
he is safe over without even a rap.

A glorious sea of sfra-ss is now before him.

Quocunque adspicias, nihil est nisi gramen et aer !

A smooth and gradual slope with comparatively
small fences leads down to the conventional line of
willows which foreshadows the inevitable brook,
without which neither in fact nor story can a good
run with hounds occur. Now it is that our hero
shows himself a consummate master of his art.
The ploughed and ridge-and-furrow fields, above
alluded to, followed by the extra exertion of the
timber jump at the top ot the hill, have rather
taken the " puff" out of his gallant young horse,
and besides, from the same causes the hounds by
this time have eot rather the better of him. In

J

FOX-HUNTING. 19

short, they are a good field ahead of him, and going
as fast as ever. This would the eager and excitable
novice — ay, not only he, but some who ought to
know better — think the riijht time to recover the
lost ground, and "put the steam on" down the hill.
O fool ! Does the engine-driver " put the steam on "
at the top of Shap Fell ? He shuts it off — saves it :
the incline does the work for him without it. Our
friend does the same ; pulls his horse together, and
for some distance goes no faster than the natural
stride of his horse takes him down the hill. Conse-
quently the lungs, with nothing to do, refill with air
and the horse is himself again ; whereas, if he had
been hurried just at that moment, he would have
" gone to pieces " in two fields. Half a mile or so
further on, having by increase of pace and careful
observation of the leading hounds, resulting in
judicious nicks, recovered his position on the flank
of the pack, he finds himself approaching the brook.
He may know it to be a big place, or be ignorant
of its proportions ; but, in either case, his tactics

C 2

,?o SPORT.

are the same. He picks out a spot where no broken
banks appear, and the grass is visible on the other
side, and where, if any, there may be a stunted bush
or two on his side of it ; there he knows the bank
is sound, for there is nothing more depressing than
•what may happen, though mounted on the best water
jumper in your stable, to find yourself and him,
through the breaking down of a treacherous under-
mined bank in the very act of jumping the brook
subsiding quietly into the water. The bush at least
secures him from such a fate. About one hundred
yards from the place he " steadies " his horse almost
to a hand canter till within half a dozen strides of
the brook, when he sits down in his saddle, and lets
him go at it full speed. The gallant beast knows
what this means, and also by cocking his ears,
snatching at the bridle, and snorting impatiently,
shows his master that he is aware of what is before
him. Through the combination of his own accurate
judgment and his master's fine handling, he takes
off exactly at the right distance, describes an

o 6

i I

FOX-HUNTING. 23

entrancing parabola in the air, communicating- to his
rider as near an approach to the sensation of flying
as mortal man can experience, and lands with a foot
to spare on the other side of the most dreaded
and historically disastrous impediment in the whole
country — a good eighteen feet of open water.

And now, perhaps, our friend realises the full
measure of his condensed happiness, not unmixed
with selfishness ; as perhaps he would own, while he
gallops along the flat meadow, not forgetting to pat
his horse, especially as he hears a faint " swish " from
the water, already one hundred yards in his rear ;
the result, as he knows, of the total immersion of
his nearest follower, which, as he also knows, will
probably bar the way to many more, for a " brook
with a man in it " is a frightful example, an ob-
jectionable and fear-inspiring spectacle to men and
horses alike, and there is not a bridge for miles.
As for proffering assistance, I fear it never enters
his head. He don't know who it is, and mortal
and imminent peril on the part of a dear friend

24 SPORT.

would alone induce him to forego the advantage of
his present position, and he knows there are plenty
behind too glad of the opportunity, as occasionally
with soldiers in a battle, of retiring from the fray

COME TO GRIEF.

in aid of a disabled comrade. So he sails on in
glory, the hounds running, if anything, straighter
and faster than ever. That very morning, per-
chance, he was full of care, worried by letters from
lawyers and stewards, duns, announcements of farms

' '1

1 I \ \ I' I

o -2

FOX-HUNTING. 27

thrown upon his hands; and, if an M.P., of a
certain contest at the coming election. Where are
all these now ? Ask of the winds ! They are
vanished. His whole system is steeped in delight;
there is not space in it for the absorption of an-
other sensation. Talk of opium ? of hashish ? they
cannot supply such voluptuous entrancement as a
run like this !

" Taking stock " again of his company, he is
rather glad to see (for he is not an utterly selfish
fellow) that the man on the right has also got
safely over the big brook, and is going well ; but
there is absolutely no one else in sight. It is clear
that unless a " check " of some duration occurs,
or the scent should die away, or the fox should
deviate from his hitherto straight course, these two
cannot be overtaken, or even approached. No such
calamity — for in this case it would be a calamity —
takes place ; and the hounds, now evincing that
peculiar savage eagerness which denotes the vin-
dictive mood known as " running for blood," hold

28

SPORT.

on their way across a splendid grass country for
some two miles further with undiminished speed.
Then an excited rustic is seen waving his hat as
he runs to open a gate for our friend on the lelt

THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

exclaiming, as the latter gallops through with
hurried but sincere thanks, " He's close afore 'em :
they'll have him soon!" And sure enough, a field
or two further the sight of a dark brown object
slowly toiling up a long pasture-field by the side

^ 3

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S "5

t

•7;/ -i ^/ii- '-'i k '-h ^ " -

FOX-HUNTING. 31

of a high stragghng thorn fence causes our now
beaming rider to rise in his stirrups and shout, for
the information and encouragement of his companion
on the right, " Yonder he goes ! " The hounds,
though apparently too intent on their work to
notice this ejaculation, seem nevertheless to some-
what appreciate its import, for their leaders appear
to press forward with a panting, bloodshot im-
patience ominous of tlie end. Yet a i^w more fields,
and over the crown of the hill the dark brown
object is to be seen in slow rolling progression close
before them. And now " from scent to view," with
a final crash of hound-clamour followed by dead
silence, as fox and hounds toQ^ether involve them-
selves in a confused entangled ball or heap in the
middle of a splendid pasture only two fields from
the wood which had been the fox's point from the
first ; and many a violated henroost and widowed
gander is avenged !

Our friend is off his horse in an instant, and leaving
him with outstretched legs and quivering tail (no fear

SPOKT.

of his running away — he had been jumping the last
few fences rather "short"), is soon occupied in laying
about the hounds' backs with his whip gently and
judiciously (it don't do for a stranger to be too

energetic or disciplinarian on these rare occasions),
and with the help of his friend, who arrives only an
instant later, and acts with similar promptitude and
judgment, succeeds in clearing a small ring round the
dead fox. " Whoohoop ! " they both shout alternately,

FOX-HUNTING. . 33

but rather breathlessly, as Ravager and Ruthless
make occasional recaptures of the fox, requiring
strong coercive measures before they yield posses-
sion. " Who has a knife ? " They can hardly hear
themselves speak ; and a fumbling in the pocket,
rather than the voice, conveys the inquiry. Our
fri-end has ; and placing his foot on the fox's neck
contrives to cut off the brush pretty artistically.
He hands it to his companion, and wisely deciding
to make no post-mortem surgical efforts on the head,
holds the stiff corpse aloft for one moment only —
the hounds are bounding and snapping, and the
situation is getting serious — and hurls it with a
final " Whoohoop ! " and '* Tear him ! " which latter
exhortation is instantly and literally followed, among
the now absolutely uncontrollable canine mob. And
now both, rather happy to find themselves unbitten,
form themselves on the spot, and deservedly, into a
small Mutual Admiration Society, for they are the
sole survivors out of perhaps three hundred people,
and ecstatically compare notes on this long-to-be-

D

34 SPORT.

remembered run. Meanwhile the huntsman first, and
the rest of the field by degrees and at long intervals,
come straggling up from remote bridges and roads.
It has not been a run favourable to the " point rider,"
who sometimes arrives at the " point " before the
fox himself, for it has been quite straight, measuring
on the map six miles from point to point, and the
time, from the " holloa away " to the kill, exactly
thirty minutes.

And here, leaving our two friends to receive the
congratulations (not all of them quite sincere) of an
'admiring and envious field, and to apologise to the
huntsman for the hurried obsequies of the fox, whereby
his brush and head — the latter still contended foi
by some of the more insatiable hounds, and a half-
gnawed pad or two — are by this time the only
evidence of his past existence, I will leave the record
of deeds of high renown, and, having shown the
extreme of delight attainable by the first-class men
or senior wranglers of fox-hunting, proceed to de-
monstrate how happiness likewise attends those

FOX-HUNTING. 35

who don't go in for honours — who are only too
happy with a " pass," and what endless sources
of joy the hunting-field supplies to all classes of
riders. In short, to paraphrase a line of Pope, to

See some strange comfort every sort supply.

From the very first I will go to the very last ;
and among these, strange to say, the very hardest
riding often occurs. When I have found myself, as
I often have — and as may happen through com-
binations of circumstances to the best of us — among
the very last in a gallop, I have observed a touching
spectacle. Men, miles in the rear, seeing nothing
of the hounds, caring nothing for the hounds, riding
possibly in an exactly opposite direction to the hounds,
yet with firm determination in their faces, racing at
the fences, crossing each other, jostling and cramming
in gateways and gaps. Th se men, I say, are enjoy-
ing themselves after their manner, as thoroughly as
the front rank. These men neither give nor take

D 2

36 SPORT.

quarter, but ride over and are ridden over with equal
complacency, without a hound in sight or apparent
cause for their violent exertions and daring enterprises.
For though the post of honour may be in front, the
post of danger is in the mel(fe of the rear. Honour
to the brave, then, here as in the front. Here, as
in the front, there is perfect equality. Here, also, as
everywhere in the field, there are the self-assertion,
independence, communistic contempt for private
property, and complete freedom of action, which
constitute the main charm of the sport. No questions
of precedence here ; every man is free to ride where
he likes. The chimney sweep can go before the
duke, and very often does so. Here, as in the front,
precedence at a fence, gap, or gate is settled on the
lines of the

Good old plan,
That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can.

The late INIr. Surtees, whose "Jorrocks," "Sponge,"

FOX-HUNTING. 37

and " Facey Romford " are immortal characters,
used to say that the tail of a run, where he himself
almost always rode, was the place for sport ; that, in
addition to the ludicrous incidents there occurring
so frequently for his entertainment, human nature
could be studied with the greatest advantage from
that position. And indeed he was right, for there
is more to study from. And with what varieties.
The half hard, the wholly soft, the turbulent, the
quiescent, the practical, the geographical and the
political or digestion-seeking rider, these men are to
be studied from the rear, because few of them are
ever seen in front ; and nevertheless they return to
their homes justified fully as much In their own
opinion as he who has in point of fact, and un-
doubtedly, " had the best of it " all through the run.
This merciful arrangement or dispensation makes
every rider contented and happy in his own way.

Among these Is to be found the " hard " rider who
devotes his attention entirely to fences, and never
looks at the hounds at all. Consequently, he never

38 SP0R7\

sees a run, but is quite satisfied if he jumps a certain
number of large fences, and gets a corresponding
average of falls in the day. The late Lord Alvanley
seeing one of these gentlemen riding furiously at a
fence not in the direction of the hounds, shouted to
him " Hi ! hi ! " and when the surprised and somewhat
indignant sportsman stopped his horse, and turned to
know what was the matter, pointed to another part of
the fence and added calmly, " There's a much bigger
place here ! " This man, too, thoroughly enjoys him-
self, gets plenty of exercise, and at the same time
provides good means of livelihood for the local surgeon.
Then there is the violent rider, who would be annoyed
if he knew that he was generally called the " Squirter,"
who gallops, but doesn't jump ; though from his
severely cut order of clothing, general horsiness of
appearance, and energetic behaviour in the saddle,
he is apt to impose on those who don't know how
quiescent and harmless the first fence will immediately
render him. His favourite field of operations is a
muddy lane, where he gallops past with squared

FOX-HUNTING. 39

elbows and defiant aspect, scattering more mud behind
him than any one horse and man ever before projected
or cast back upon an astonished and angered pubHc.
Through the gate, if any, at the end he crams his way,
regardless ahke of such expressions as " Take care ! "
" Where are you coming to ? " — an absurd question,
decidedly, the object being evident — and also very
properly disregarding and treating with utter contempt
the man (always to be found in a gateway) who says
" There is no hurry ! " a gratuitous falsehood, as his
own conduct sufficiently proves. In the open field
be^^ond he rushes like a whirlwind past any one who
may be. in front, and, so long as gates or only small
gaps are in his line, pursues a triumphant course.
But he has no root, and in time of temptation is apt
to fall away : that is, the moment a fence of the
slightest magnitude presents itself. Then he fades
away — disappears, and is no more seen ; yet he, like
the ephemera, has had his day, though a short one, and
returns to his well-earned rest contented and happy.
Then there is a character for whom I have always

40 SPORT.

had a sincere respect and sympathy — the " hard
funker." Than he no man has a more cruel lot.
He is the victim of a reputation. On some occasion
his horse ran away with him, or some combination
of circumstances occurred, resultinof in his "ofoincr"
brilliantly in a run, or being carried safely over some
impossible place which, though he subsequently, like
Mr. Winkle in his duel, had presence of mind enough
to speak of and treat as nothing out of the way,
and to have jumped which was to him an ordinary
occurrence, he could not in any unguarded moment
contemplate, allude to, or even think of without
shuddering. By nature nervous and timid — weak-
nesses reacted upon as a sort of antidote by a love
of notoriety and a secret craving for admiration and
applause — this heavy calamity had occurred to him,
from which he could never shake himself free.

The burden of an honour
Unto which he was not born,

clung to him wheresoever he went. Greatness was

FOX-HUNTING. 41

thrust upon him. He must ride ; it was expected
from him. Noblesse oblige I he hates it, but he must
do it. It embitters his hfe, but he dare not sacrifice
the reputation. The eyes of Europe are upon him,
as he thinks ; and so, though in mortal fear during
the most part of every hunting day, he endures it.
He suffers, and is strong. Each day requires from
him some feat of daring for the edification of the
field ; and he does it, usually executing it in sight of
the whole field, when hounds are running slowly,
charging some big fence, which there is no real
necessity for jumping, at full speed, and shutting his
eyes as he goes over. The county analyst, if called
upon to examine the contents of the various flasks
carried by the field, would pronounce this gentleman's
sherry or brandy to be less diluted with water than
any one else's. Honour to him ! If you feel no fear,
what credit to ride boldly ? But if you really "funk,"
and ride boldly, this is to be brave indeed.

Then among the more passive class of riders
comes the man who goes in entirely for " a sporting

42 SPORT.

get-up," especially for a faultless boot, which is
generally regarded as a sure indication of riding
power. The old Sir Richard Sutton, when asked,
during his mastership of the Quorn Hounds, whether
So-and-so, recently arrived from the country, could
ride, replied ; ** I don't know — I have not seen him
go ; but I should think he could, for he hangs a good
boot.'" To arrive, however, at this rarely attained
perfection of sporting exterior, I grieve to say that
an almost total absence of calf is indispensable ; but
with this physical advantage in his favour, if he can
otherwise " dress up to it," very little more is re-
quired from him. He expends all his energies on
his " get-up," and when he Is ** got-up " he Is done
and exhausted for the day, and Is seldom seen out
of a trot or a lane. Then there Is the man " who
can tell you all about It." He will describe the whole
run, with fervent and florid descriptions of this
awkward fence, or that wide brook, not positively
asserting, but leaving you to infer, that he was in the
front rank all the way ; but somehow no one else will

FOX-HUNTING. 43

have ever seen him in any part of the run. This
rider is gifted with a vivid imagination and vast
powers of invention, and, as a rule, never leaves the
road. Then there is the politician who button-holes
you at every possible opportunity on the subject of
the Affirmation Bill, extracting from you probably, as
your attention is most likely not intent on this matter
just then, some " oaths " not required by the statute.
Then there is, finally, the honest man who comes out,
without disguise or pretence, solely for the benefit
of his digestion ; who never intends to jump, and
never does jump.

All these varied classes are happy, and not a few
of them go home under the firm impression that
they have distinguished themselves ; and some even
comfort themselves with the reflection that they have
" cut down " certain persons, who are probably quite
unaware of this operation having been performed
upon them, or may possibly be of opinion that they
themselves have performed it on the very individuals
who are thus rejoicing in this reversed belief

U SPOUT.

With all this there is throuijhout these varied
classes of riders, although occasional bickerings may
arise, a general tone of good humour and tolerance
rarely to be found in other congregations of mankind.
Landlords and tenant farmers — whose natural re-
lation to each other has recently been described by
political agitators (with their usual accuracy) as one
of mutual coldness, distrust, and antagonism — here
meet with smiling countenances and jovial greetings,
and the only question of " tenant right " here is the
right of the tenant to ride over his landlord, or of
the landlord to take a similar liberty w^ith his tenant.
Rivals in business, opponents in politics, debtors
and creditors — all by common consent seem to wipe
off old scores, and, for the day at least, to be at peace
and charity with their neighbours.

One man only may perhaps be sometimes excluded
from the benefits arising out of this approximation
to the millennium, and he, to whom I have not yet
alluded, is the most important of all — the master.
No position, except perhaps a member of Par-

FOX-HUNTING. 45

liament's, entails so much hard work, accompanied
with so little thanks, as that of a master of fox-hounds.
A " fierce light," inseparable from his semi-regality,
beats on him ; his every act is scrutinised and dis-
cussed by eyes and tongues ever ready to mark and
proclaim what is done amiss. Very difficult is it
for him to do right. There are many people to
please, and often what pleases one offends another.
Anything going wrong, any small annoyance, arriving
too late at the meet, getting a bad start, drawing
away from, and not towards, the grumbler's home
(and grumblers, like the poor, must always be among
us) — all these things are apt to be somehow visited
on the unhappy master.

Upon the King ! let us our lives — our souls,
Our debts, . . . our sins, lay on the King I

Then there is the anxiety for his hounds' safety
among wild riders and kicking three-year olds.
He knows each hound, and has a special affection
for some, which makes him in gateways or narrow

46 SPORT.

passes, as they thread their way among the horses
feet, shudder to his inmost core. Sir Richard Sutton
was once overheard, when arriving at the meet,
putting the following questions to his second-horse
man : " Many people out ? " *' A great many, Sir
Richard." "Ugh! Is Colonel F. out?" "Yes,
Sir Richard." "Ugh, ugh! Is Mr. B. out.?"
"Yes, Sir Richard." "Ugh, ugh, ugh! Then
couple up ' Valiant ' and ' Dauntless,' and send them
both home in the bi'oiighavi ! "

This same master in my hearing called aside at
one of his meets a gentleman, who was supposed
by him to be not very particular as to how near he
rode to the hounds, and, pointing out one particular
hound, said : " Please kindly take notice of that
hound. He is the most valuable animal in the
pack, and I would not have him ridden over for
anything." The gentleman promptly and courteously
replied : " I would do anything to oblige you. Sir
Richard ; but I have a shocking bad memory for
hounds, and Tin afraid he zuill have to take his

FOX-HUNTING. 47

chance with the rest I " All these things are agon-
ising to a master, and other anxieties perplex him.
He knows how much of his sport depends on the
good will of the tenant farmers, and he sees with
pain rails needlessly broken, crops needlessly ridden
over, gates unhinged or left open, perhaps fronting
a road alonsf which the liberated cattle or horses
may stray for miles, giving their angry proprietors
possibly days of trouble to recover them. Second-
horsemen too are often careless in this respect.
But I must here remark as to the tenant farmers,
that, as a rule, their tolerance is beyond all praise,
especially when, as unfortunately is the case in
many countries, the mischievous trespassers above
alluded to have no connection with the county
or hunt, do not subscribe to the hounds, or
spend a shilling directly or indirectly in the
neighbourhood.

Time was when the oats, the straw, and the hay
were bought and consumed by the stranger in the
land, who thus brought some advantage to the

48 SPORT.

farmer, and In other matters to the small trader.
But now he arrives by train and so departs
leaving broken fences and damaged crops as the
only trace of his visit. These are the evils which
may lead to the decadence of fox-hunting. But
Mr. Oakeley, master of the Atherstone, an especially
and deservedly popular man, it is true, had a mag-
nificent proof of an opposite conclusion the other
day, when over a thousand tenant farmers, on the
bare rumour of the hounds being given up, got up,
and siofned in a few davs, a testimonial or memorial
to beg him to continue them, and pledging themselves
to do all they could to promote the sport in every
way. This is the bright side of a " master's " life.

But not to all is it given to bask in such sunshine.
Earnest labour is required to attain this or any other
success. And the following rules, I believe, always
guided Mr. Oakeley's conduct as a master : —

1. To buy his horses as much as possible from the
farmers themselves — not from dealers.

2. To buy his forage in the country.

FOX-HUNTING. 49

3. To keep stallions for use of farmers at a low fee,
and to give prizes for young horses bred in the dis-
trict. (In both these objects many are of opinion that
the master ought to be helped by the State, as nothing
would encourage the breeding of horses so much, or
at such small cost.)

4. To give prizes, and create rivalry as to the
" walked " puppies, by asking the farmers over to
see them when they return to headquarters, and
giving them luncheon.

5. To draw all coverts in their turn, and not to cut
up any particular portion unduly because it may be a
better country with more favourite coverts.

Lastly. To get farmers to act for themselves as
much as possible in the management of poultry
claims, &c., which they will then have a pride in
keeping low. And above all, ever to recognise and
acknowledge that tenant farmers have, to say the least,
an equal voice with the landowners as to the general
management of the hunting.

But I have done. I have shown, I hope, that, on

E

50 SP0R7\

the whole, fox-hunting brings happiness to all — the
fox, when killed or hard run excepted — but I cannot
go into the larger question of humanitarian sentiment ;
he is ofcen nol killed ; and till he is, leads a jovial life,
feasting on the best, and thief, villain, and murderer
as he is, protected even by the ruthless gamekeeper.
In return for this his day of atonement must come.
But for the sport, he would not have existed ; and
when he dies gallantly in the open, as in the run above
depicted, his sufferings are short. I myself like not
the last scene of some hunts, when, his limbs haviuQ:
failed him, the poor fox is driven to depend on the
resources of his vulpine brain alone. Often have I
turned aside, declininof to witness the little stratao^^ems
of his then piteous cunning ; nay, more, I confess,
when I alone have come across the hiding-place of a
" beaten fox," and he has, so to speak, confided his
secret to me with his upturned and indescribably
appealing eye, it has been sacred with me ; I have
retired softly, and rejoiced with huge joy when the
huntsman at last called away his baflled pack.

FOX-nUNTlNG. 5t

Altogether, I maintain that, with such exceptions,
at small cost of animal suffering, great enjoyment is
compassed by all. There are miseries of course even
out hunting ; there are rainy days, bad scenting days,
and inconvenient mounts. The celebrated Jem Mason,
a splendid rider and quaint compounder of expressions,
used to say that the height of human misery was to be
out hunting on a " ewe-necked horse, galloping over a
molehilly field, down hill, with bad shoulders, a snaffle
bridle, one foot out of the stirrup, and a fly in your
eye." But he dealt in figurative extremes. He replied
to some one who asked him as to the nature of a big-
looking fence in front : ** Certain death on this side,
my lord, and eternal misery on the other ! " Such
sorrows as these are not much to balance against the
weight of happiness in the other scale. So I myself in
my old age still preserve the follies of my youth, and
counsel others to do the same. " Laugh and be fat/
says some modern advertisement. " Hunt and be
happy," say I still. But who shall pierce the veil of
the future ? As with the individual, so I think it is

E 2

52 SPORT.

with nations. They, too, when they grow old should
preserve, or at least, not too remorselessly extinguish,
their follies, I fear lest in grasping at the shadow of
national perfection we only attain the reality of a
saturnalia of prigs — an apotheosis of claptrap. Legis-
lation has performed such queer antics lately that the
angels must be beginning to weep. And ugly visions
sometimes haunt me of a time comino:, which shall be
a good time to no man, at least to no Englishman^
when an impossible standard of pseudo-philanthropy
and humanitarian morality shall be attempted ; when
the butcher shall lie down with the lamb, the alderman
with the turtle, and the oyster shall not be eaten
without anaesthetics ; when nature itself shall be under
the eye of the police, and detectives watch the stoat's
pursuit of the rabbit and keep guard over spiders'
webs ; when all p-roj^erty (and not in land alone, my
advanced friend !) save that of Hardware magnates,
who have made a monopoly and called it peace,
shall be confiscated as an " unearned increment " to
the State ; when we have by legislative enactment

FOX-HUNTING. S3

forbidden the prevention and sanctioned the admission
of loathsome diseases, and antl-fox-hunting may be as
loud a cry as antl-vacclnatlon ; when there Is a Par-
liament on College Green ; when the " languishing
nobleman " of Dartmoor Is free, and repossessed of
his broad acres, which, In his case alone, because they
so clearly belong to some one else, shall escape con-
fiscation ; when, as a final climax to our national
madness, we have employed science to dig a hole
under the sea, and, by connecting us with the Con-
tinent, deprive us of the grand advantage which nature
has given us, and which has conferred on us centuries
of envied stability, while thrones were rocking and
constitutions sinking all around us ; when, having
already passed laws not only to prohibit our children
being educated with the knowledge and fear of God
before their eyes, but even to forbid His very name
to be mentioned In our schools, we deliberately and
scornfully abandon our ancient religion and admit
proclaimed Infidelity and public blasphemy to the
sanction, recognition, and approval of Parliament ; —

54 SPORT.

then indeed we need not wonder if we lose not only
our national sports, but our national existence ; and
if Divine Providence, giving practical effect to the
old quotation,

Quos Dcus vult perdcre prius dementat,

allows England, after passing through the phases of
insanity which she has already begun to display, to
be blotted out from the nations of the world.

SALMON-FISHING.

It is the unknown which constitutes the main charm
and dehght of every adult human creature's life from
very childhood ; which life from the beginning to
the end is, I maintain, one continued gamble. Un-
certainty is the salt of existence. I once emptied
a large fish-pond, which, from my youth up, I had
held in supreme veneration and angled in with awe,
lest some of the monsters with which it was supposed
to abound, especially one fer6cious and gigantic pike,
which a six-foot gamekeeper gravely asserted to be
as big as himself, and to have consumed endless
broods of young ducks, should encounter me un-
awares, and the result was a great haul of small
and medium sized fish of all kinds, a few obese
fat-headed carp, and the conspicuous absence of
the monster pike.

5S SPORT.

I refilled the pond but never fished in it again ;
I knew what was in it, and also what was not in
it. Its mystery, and with it its glory, had departed.
So it is with shooting — I hate to know how many
pheasants there are in a wood, how many coveys
in a partridge beat, how many birds in a covey.
So it is, of course, with everything else in iife.
Whatever is reduced to a certainty ceases to charm,
and, but for the element of risk or chance — uncer-
tainty in short — not only every sport or amusement,
but even every operation and transaction of this
world, would be tame and irksome. If we fore-
knew the result we would seldom do anything,
and would eventually be reduced to the condition
of the bald, toothless, toeless, timid, sedentary, and
incombative " man of the future " foreshadowed re-
cently by a very advanced writer. How few would
even marry a wife if the recesses of her mind were
previously laid as bare as my fish-pond ! And how
few women would accept a husband under similar
circumstances ! So that the elimination of the

SALMON-FISHING. 59

element of uncertainty would perhaps lead to uni-
versal celibacy. Still possessing it however, and
far from any approximation to this latter result, let
me sing the praises of that sport which ranks next
to fox-hunting in its utter absence of certainty —
the prince and king of all the angling domain —
salmon-fishing. Delightful in itself, this regal sport
conducts its worshippers into the grandest and wildest
scenes of nature, to one of which I will at once
ask my reader to accompany me.

We will imagine that it is the middle of June, and
that London has befjun to be as intolerable as it
usually becomes at that season, and that he is willing
to fly with me across the sea and to settle down for a
space in a Norwegian valley, and, surrounded by
scenery unsurpassed in its abrupt wildness by any-
thing to be seen even in that wildest of wild countries,
survey salmon-fishing from an Anglo- Norwegian
sportsman's point of view. Having with more or
less discomfort safely run the gauntlet of that most
uncertain and restless of oceans, the North Sea, we

6o

SPORT.

'Mk.

]^^'f77^^777\^X' ''/ '^rr/ '•!

7^^7m^&73^c^' ^ /'/\

A NORWEGIAN HOUSE.

land at the head of the Romsdal Fjord, and after
about an hour's carriole drive are dejoosited, stunned

SALMON-FISHING. 6i

and bewildered by the eccentricities which stupendous
and impossible Nature has erected all around us, at
the door of a clean, pine-built, white-painted house,
in the midst of what looks like the happy valley of
Rasselas ; surrounded by bright green meadows,
walled in by frowning impracticable precipices 2,000
feet high at their lowest elevation, and over 4,000 at
their highest, at the top of which, opposite the
windows to the south-west, even as exclusive mortals
garnish their walls with broken bottles, so Nature
appears to have wished to throw difficulties in the
way of some gigantic trespasser by placing a fearful
chevaux-de-frise of strange, sharp, jagged, uncouth
and fantastic peaks, which baffle all description in
their dreamy grotesqueness. The?e are called by
the natives " Troll tinderne," i.e. " witch peaks," or
" sorcerers' seats." A stone dropped from the top
would touch nothing for 1,500 feet, and thence to
the bottom would lose but little velocity, so near the
perpendicular is the rest of the descent. Below the
steepest portion is a long stony slope having the

62 SPORT.

appearance of a landslip, formed by some of the
broken and pulverised ddbi'is of many a colossal crag,
whose granite foundations Time havinof besieged
ever since the Flood, has at length succeeded in
undermining, and which has then toppled over with a
report like a salvo of 10,000 80-pounders, filling the
valley — here two miles wide — with a cloud of fine
dust resembling thick smoke, and yet, after scattering
huge splinters far and v/ide, has still retained sufficient
of its original and gigantic self to roll quietly through
the dwarf birch and sycamore wood at the bottom,
crushing flat and obliterating trees thick as a man's
body in girth, and leaving a gravel walk behind it
broad as a turnpike road, till it subsides into some
sequestered hollow, where, surrounded by trees no
taller than itself, it will reclothe itself with moss and
grow grey again for another 4,000 years or so. The
prevailing opinion among the peasants is that this
wall being very narrow, and its other side equally
precipitous, some day or other the whole precipice
will fall bodily into the valley ; and in this theory they

SALMON-FISHING. 63

are strengthened by the fact, or tradition, that at a
certain time during the winter the moon can be seen
to shine through an orifice situated half-way up its
face, undiscernible save when Hghted up in this
manner. This is a pretty behef, and I am sorry that
my telescope, with which I have narrowly scanned
every cranny, does not confirm it. The fact is
possible all the same ; but the convulsion of nature
which they anticipate does not follow as a matter of
course, and in my opinion the "trolls" will sit un-
disturbed on their uncomfortable seats till some
general crash occurs, which will convolve other
valleys than this, and higher peaks than theirs.

However

Mountains have fallen,
Leaving a gap in the clouds,

and it is possible that this accident may occur. I
only hope that I may be non-resident at my Norway
home when it does Here and there in nooks and
crannies rest large patches of drift-snow which, when
loosened and released by the summer heat, fall down

64 SPORT.

the sides in grand thunderous cascades, bringing with
them rocks and stones, with occasional fatal results to
the cattle and sheep feeding in apparent security in
the woods below. Opposite the Troll tinderne on
the north-eastern side of the valley the Romsdal Horn
rears its untrodden head. It falls so sheer and smooth
towards the river that it affords no resting-place for
the snow, consequently no avalanches fall on this
side ; but occasionally, as from the Troll tinderne, a
huge rock is dislodged by time and weather ; and
sometimes I have seen one of these come down from
the very top, and marked its progress by the slight
puffs of smoke which long before the report reaches
the ear are plainly to be seen, as in its successive
leaps it comes in contact with the mountain side ; and
the length of time which elapses between the first
reverberation that makes one look up when the solid
mass takes its first spring from the summit, and the
last grape-shot clatter of its fragments at the foot of
the Morn, gives me some idea of the terrific pro-
portions of this wonderful rock. Sometimes I can

SALMON-FISIIING. 65

hardly help, as I look up at its awful sides, giving it
personal identity and the attributes of life — regarding
it with a sort of terror, and with a humble desire
somehow to propitiate it, as a merciful giant who
respects and pities my minute life, and disdains to
put his foot upon me or crush me with one of his
eranite thunderbolts.

In my youth I tried to gain its summit, where
tradition says there is a lake on which floats a golden
bowl. I failed miserably ; but have no doubt that
with proper appliances, which I had not, some skilled
Alpine climber would succeed. One such, alas ! came
out some two years ago with such appliances, and
the strong resolve of youth and abounding strength,
steadfastly purposed to solve the mystery. He only
attained the deeper mystery of death ; not in the
attempt, but drov/ned deplorably by the upsetting of
a boat which he had engaged to cross the L'jord
(being unwilling, in his eager haste to reach the scene
of his proposed adventure, to wait even a day for
the regular steamer which would have conveyed him

F

66

SPORT.

safely) close to the shore at the very mouth of the
" Rauma" river. It is this river Rauma out of which
I want my reader to catch a salmon, or see me catch
one. It flows down the middle of the valley, not as

HEAD OF A SALMON.

Scotch rivers, London or Dublin porter-hued, but
clear, bright, and translucent as crystal.

Here, amid such scenes, with this glorious stream
rushing tumultuously in a sort of semicircle round
me, thus giving me some half-a-dozen salmon
pools, each within about 200 yards from the house,

SALMON-FISH J NG. 67

have I provided myself with a dwelhng and an
estate — partly for sake of the sport, and partly
to have another string to my bow — some refuge
even in republican Norway from the possible legis-
lation of constitutional England, where inability to
pay the heavy bill for " unearned increment," which
has In my case been running for some 900 years,
may cause my family estates to be handed over to
somebody else. It Is too late to-night — we will
fish to-morrow — we are tired. The wooden walls
and floors of the house still heave and sway with
recollections of the German Ocean. W^e will sleep
the sleep of Tories and the just.

'* Klokken Fem i morgcn, Ole!" "Five o'clock
to-morrow morning, Ole ! " was my last instruction
to my faithful boatman and gaffer yesterday evening,
and, sure enough, as I jump up instinctively a
quarter of an hour before the appointed time, I see
him outside my window busying himself with my

F 2

63 SPORT.

rod, while my reel gives out short periodical sounds
like the call of a corn-crake, as he passes the line
through each successive ring. One glance at the
sky is enough — clear blue and cloudless, fresh and
cool, but no wind — a slight mist hangs half- way up
the Troll tinderne ; below it all is clear, though
heavily laden with moisture, and in dark contrast
with the bright sun above, which is already, and
has been for some hours, playing among the top-
most peaks, and gladdening the stony-hearted rocks
themselves.

Brief — oh, brief is the process of adornment and
ablution in the india-rubber bath, for my soul is
very eager for the fray ; and the day will evidently
be a hot one, rendering it impossible to fish after
nine o'clock, when the sun will be on the river.
A hot cup of coffee — made as Norwegians can
make it and we can't — and a scrap of biscuit
occupies about one minute of time in consump-
tion, and the next I am striding away towards
"Aarnehoe," my upper and best pool, brushing

SALMON-FISHING, 69

away the heavy dew from the grass and dwarf
juniper bushes, and drinking in Hfe and health
from every inspiration of the fresh morning air.
My Httle boat tosses hke a nutshell among the
high waves of the turbulent stream as it Is swept
across to the other side of the river, where a ro-
mantic glade conducts me to the wooden bridge, two
planks wide, which crosses a divergent stream and
leads me to the now almost dreaded pool. A keen
salmon-fisher will understand me and forgive me if
I fail to do justice to the impressions, the hopes,
and the fears of the hour. The field of battle is
before me, white and tumultuous at the head,
smooth and black in the middle, full of surging
bubbles, like the ebullitions of millions of soda-
water bottles from the bottom, clear, swift, and
transparent at the tail.

In spite of the roar of the foss in my ears, I
am under the impression of perfect stillness and
silence in the objects round me, so wild, solitary,
jmd secluded is tlie spot ; no habitation or trace of

70 SPORT.

man, save my boatman's presence, desecrates the
scene. ]\Iy eyes are fixed with a sort of fascina-
tion on the water, whose swift but cahiily flowing
surface remains unruffled, unbroken as yet by the
dorsal hn of any scaly giant, and gives no evidence
of the life it contains. It is the Unknown ! and as
Ole unmoors the boat I confess that a feeling of
trepidation seizes me — a feeling difficult to define —
of anticipated pleasure mingled with respect for the
power and strength of the unseen and uni<:nown
antagonist with whom I am about to grapple, and
making me entertain no boastful confidence in the
result of the strufjcrle which will forthwith com-
mence between us. But all is prepared. Ole,
smiling and expectant, holds the boat, which
dances a little in the swell, steady for me to enter ;
and, with his cheerful but invariable platitude :
" Nu skal ve har store fisken " (" Now we will
have a big fish "), takes his place and rows me up
under the very breakers of the foss. A few short
preliminary throws give me the requisite length of

SA LMON-FISHING. 7 1

line to reach the smooth black water, full of sub-
merged eddies, beyond the influence of the force of
the torrent, and I begin ; once — twice — thrice does
the fly perform its allotted circuit and return to me
unmolested ; but the fourth time, just as I am in
the act of withdrawinq: it from the water for another
cast, the bowels of the deep are agitated, and,
preceded by a wave impelled and displaced by
his own bulk, flounders heavily and half out of
the water a mighty salmon. Broad was he,
and long to boot, if I may trust an eye not
unaccustomed to such apparitions ; his white and
silvery side betokening his recent arrival from the
German Ocean, the slightly roseate hues of his
back and shoulders giving unfailing evidence, if
corroborative evidence were wanting, after one
glimpse of that spade-like tail, of a " salmo salar "
of no common weight and dimensions. My heart
— I confess it leaped up to my very mouth — but
he has missed the fly, and an anxious palpitating
five minutes which I always reluctantly allow

72

SPORT.

must elapse before I try liim again. They are
gone, and in trembling hope— with exactly the same
length of line, and the boat exactly in the same
place, Ole having fixed the spot to an inch by
some mysterious landmarks on the shore — I com-
mence my second trial. Flounce! There he is!

HE COMES AT ME, AND MISSES THE FEY.

not so demonstrative this time — a boil in the water
and a slight plash, as the back fin cuts the s)jrface,
that's all ; but something tells me this is the true
attack. A slight, but sharp turn of the wrist cer-
tifies the fact, and brings — oh, moment of delight !
my line taut and my rod bent to a delicious curve.

A /

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> 'v

^r;

-^:\.;->-:^

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->';^^-^ B*Sl!i; ,

mm

^'^,^.."4;

SALMON-FISHING. 75

Habet ! he has it! Now, Ole ! steadily and
slowly to the shore ! He is quite quiet as yet, and
has scarcely discovered the singular nature and pro-
perties of the insect he has appropriated, but swims
quietly round and round in short circles, wondering
no doubt, but so far unalarmed. I am only too
thankful for the momentary respite, and treat him
with the most respectful gentleness, but a growing
though scarcely perceptible increase of the strain
on my rod bends it gradually lower and lower until
the reel begins to give out its first slow music.
My fingers are on the line to give it the slight
resistance of friction, but the speed increases too
rapidly for me to bear them there long, and I
withdraw them just in time to save their being
cut to the bone in the tremendous rush which
follows. Whizz-z-z ! up the pool he goes ! the line
scattering the spray from the surface in a small
fountain, like the cut-water of a Thames steamer.
And now a thousand fears assail me — should there
be one defective strand in my casting-line, one

76

SPOILT

SULKING.

doubtful or rotten portion of my hcad-Hne should
anything /cink or foul, should the hook itself (as

SA LMON-FISHING. 7 7

sometimes happens) be a bad one — farewell, oh,

giant of the deep, for ever ! Absit omen ! all is

well as yet, that rush Is over. He has a terrible

length of my line out, but he is in a safe part of

the pool and rather disposed to come back to me,

which gives me the opportunity, which I seize

eagerly, of reeling up my line. The good-tempered,

reasonable monster ! But steady ! there is a limit

to his concessions. No further will he obey the

rod's gentle dictation. Two rebellious opiniative

kicks nearly jerk my arms out of the shoulder

joints, and then down he goes to the bottom.

Deep in the middle of the pool he lies, obdurate,

immovable as a stone. There must he not remain !

That savage strength must not be husbanded. I

re-enter the boat, and am gently rowed towards

him, reeling up as I advance. He approves not

this, as I expected. He is away again into the

very midst of the white water, till I think he means

to ascend the foss itself — hesitates irresolute there

a moment, then back again down the middle of the

78 SPORT.

Stream like a telegraphic message. " Row ashore,
Ole ! Row for life! for now he means mischief!"
Once in the swift water at the tail of the pool he
will try not only m^y reel, but my own wind and
condition to boot ; for down he untsi go now,
weighed he but a poor five pounds ; once out of
this pool and there is nothing to stop him for
300 yards. We near the shore, and I spring into
the shallow water and prance and bound after him
with extravagant action, blinding myself with the
spray which I dash around me. Ah ! well I
know and much I fear this rapid ! The deep water
being on the other side of the river, the fish in-
variably descend there, and from the wide space
intervening, too deep for man to wade in, too
shallow for fish to swim in, and too rou^h for
boat to live in, the perturbed fisherman must always
find an awful length of line between him and his
fish, which, however, he can in no way diminish
till he arrives considerably lower down, where the
river is narrower. Many a gallant fish has by

SALMON-FISHING. 79

combination of strength and wile escaped me here.
Many a time has my heart stood stil) to find that
my line and reel have suddenly done the same —
what means it? In the strength of that mighty
torrent can mortal fish rest ? Surely, but he must
have found a shelter somewhere ? Some rock behind
which to lie protected from the current ! I must
try and move him ! Try and move the world !
A rock is indeed there and the line is round it,
glued to it immovably by weight of water. It is
drozvned. But he, the fish 1 seaward may he now
swim half a league av/ay, or at the bottom of the
next pool may be rubbing some favourite fly against
the stones. Nay — but see ! the line runs out still,
with jerks and lifelike signs. Hurrah ! we have not
lost him yet. Oh, dreamer, ever hoping to the last,
no more life there than in a galvanised corpse
whose spasmodic actions the line is imitating ! It
is bellying deep in the stream, quivering and
jerking, slacking and pulling as the current dictates,
creating-movements which, through the glamour of

8o SPORT.

a heated imagination, seem as the struggles of a
mighty fish.

That fish, that fly, and perhaps that casting-Hne
shall that fisherman never see again ? Such doom
and such a result may the gods now avert ! My
plungings and prancings have brought me to the
foot of my wooden bridge — made very high on
purpose to avoid the perils above described (and
for the same purpose I keep well behind or up-
stream of my fish) — which I hurry over with long
strides, and many an anxious glance at my ninety or
lOO yards of line waving and tossing through the
angry breakers encompassed by a hundred dangers.
With rod high held and panting lungs I spring
from the bridge, and blunder as I best may along
the stony and uneven bank for another loo
yards with unabated speed. I am saved ! Safe
floats the line in the deep but still rapid and stormy
water beyond the extremest breaker, and here, for-
tunately for me, my antagonist slackens his speed,
having felt the influence of a back-water which

///?

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■MMm

■;! A-' ^p?Jr■■

rU'l

SALMON-FISHING. 83

guides him rather back to me, and I advance in
a more rational manner, and in short sobs again
^le breath of Hfe ; but one aching arm must still
sustain the rod on high while the other reels
up as for very existence. Forward, brave Ole !
and have the next boat ready in case the self-
willed monster continues his reckless course,
which he most surely will ; for, lo ! in one fiery
whizz out goes all the line which that tired
right hand had so laboriously reclaimed from the
deep, and down, proudly sailing mid-stream, my
temporary tyrant recommences his hitherto all
triumphant progress. I follow as I best may,
but now, having gained the refuge of the boat,
a few strokes of Ole's vigorous boat-compelling
oars recover me the line I had lost, and land
me on the opposite bank, where, with open water
before me for some distance, I begin for the
first time to realise the possibility of victory.
However —

Aluch hath been done, but more remains to do,

G 2

84 SPORT.

but of a less active, more ponderous, painstaking,
patience-trying' description. The long deep stream
of Lanc^hole is before me in which he will hancr —
does hang, will sulk — does sulk, and has to be
roused by stones cast in above, below, and around
him. As yet, I have never seen him since his
first rise, but Ole, who has climbed the bank above
me, and from thence can see far into the clear bright
water, informs me that he gets an occasional glimpse
of him, and that he is " meget meget store," or
very very big. My heart — worn and weary as it
is with the alternations of hope and fear — re-tlutters
at this intelligence, for I know that Ole is usually
a fish-decrier or weight-diminisher. All down the
length of Langhole, 250 yards by the tale, does
he sullenly bore, now and then taking alarming
excursions far away to the opposite shore, oftener
burying himself deep in the deepest water close
at my feet ; but at length he resolves on more
active operations, and, stimulated by the rapid
stream at the tail of Langhole, takes advantage

SALMON-FISHING. »5

thereof and goes down bodily to the next pool,
Tofte. I have no objection to this, even if I
had a voice in the matter ; I have a flat smooth
meadow to race over, the stream has no hidden
rocky dangers, so, like swift Camilla, I scour the
plain till the deeper and quieter recesses of Tofte
afford an asylum for the fish and breathing time
to myself. Here, I hope, but hope in vain, to
decide the combat ; occasionally I contrive to gain
the advantage of a short line, but the instant he
perceives the water shoaling away he bores in-
dignant, and spurns the shallow. The engagement
has now lasted more than an hour, and my
shoulders are beginning to ache, and yet no
symptoms of submission on the part of my adver-
sary ; on the contrary, he suddenly reassumes the
offensive, and with a rush which imparts such rotatory
motion to my reel as to render the handle not
only Intangible but actually invisible, he forsakes
the delights of Tofte, and continues his course down
the river. I must take to the boat again (I have

86 SPORT.

one on every pool) and follow, like a harpooner
towed by a whale. The riv^er widens below Tofte,
and a short swift shallow leads to the next pool,
Langholmen, or Long Island. I have a momentary
doubt whether to land on the island or on the opposite
side where there is a deeper but swifter pool, towards
which the fish is evidently making. I decide at once,
but decide wrong — which is better, however, than
not deciding at all — and I land on Langholmen, into
whose calm flowing water I had fondly hoped that
incipient fatigue would have enticed my fish, and
find him far over in the opposite pool with an irre-
concilable length of line doubtfully connecting us.
It is an awful moment ! If he goes up stream now,
I am lost — that is to say, my fish is — which in my
present frame of mind is the same thing ; no line or
hook would ever stand the strain of that weight of
water. But, no, mighty as he is, he is mortal, and but
a fish after all, and even his giant strength is failing
him, and inch by inch and foot by foot he drops
down the stream, and as he does so the reel gradually

SALMON-FISHING. 89

gains on him, till at the tail of Langholmen I have
the delight of getting, for the first time since he rose,
a fair sight of his broad and shining bulk, as he lies
drifting sulkily and indolently down the clear shallows.
I exult with the savage joy which the gladiator may
have felt when he perceived for the first time the
growing weakness of his antagonist, and I set no
bounds to my estimate of his size. Fifty pounds at
least ! I proclaim loudly to Ole, is the very minimum
of the weight I give him. Ole smiles and shakes
his head detractingly. The phlegmatic, unsympa-
thetic, realistic wretch ! On I go, however, wading
knee-deep over the glancing shingle. The lowest
pool, and my last hope before impassable rapids,
La^rneset, is before me, and after wading waist-deep
across the conlluent stream at the end of the island
I gain the commanding bank and compel my now
amenable monster into the deep, still water, out of
the influence of the current. And now, feebler and
feebler grow his rushes, shorter and shorter grows
the line, till mysterious whirlpools agitate the caln\

9°

SPOR T.

surface, and at last, with a heavy, weary plunge,
upheaves the spent giant, and passive, helpless, huge,
' lies floating many a rood.'

Still even nov/ his vis i:ierlicB is formidable, and

OLE S FINISHING STROKE.

much caution and skill have to be exercised In towing
that vanquished hull into port, lest with one awkward
heavy roll, or one feeble Hop of that broad, spreading
tail, he may tear away hook or hold, and so rob me

SALMON-FISHING. 91

at last of my hardly- earned victory. No such heart-
breaking disaster awaits me. Ole, creeping and
crouching hke a deer-stalker, extends the fatal gaff,
buries it deep in the broad side, and drags him, for
he is, in very sooth, too heavy to lift, unwilling and
gasping to the shore, where, crushing flat the long
grass, he flops and flounders till a merciful thwack
on the head from the miniature policeman's staff,
which I always carry for this purpose, renders him
alike oblivious and insensible to past suffering or
present indignity. And now I may calmly survey
his vast proportions and speculate on the possibility
of his proving too much for my weighing machine,
which only gives information up to fifty pounds.
To a reasonable-sized fish I can always assign an
approximate weight, but this one takes me out of
the bounds of my calculation, and being as sanguine
as Ole is the reverse, I anxiously watch the deflection
of the index as Ole, by exercising his utmost
strength, raises him by a hook through his under
jaw from the ground, with a wild sort of hope still

92 SPORT.

possessing me (foolish though I inwardly feel it to
be) that the machine won't weigh him.

Forty-five anyhow he must be ! Yes, he is ! no, he
ain't ! Alas ! after a few oscillations it settles finally
at forty-three pounds, with which decision I must
rest content, and 1 aiJi content. I give way to
senseless manifestations of extravagant joy, and even
Ole relaxes. Early as it is, it is not too early for
a Norwegian to drink spirits, and I serve him out
a stiff dram of whisky on the spot, which he tosses
down raw without winking, while I dilute mine from
the river for this ceremony, on such occasions, must
never be neglected. " Now, Ole, shoulder the prey
as you best can, and home to breakfast ; " for now,
behold, from behind the giant shoulder of the Horn
bursts forth the mighty sun himself! illuminating the
very depths of the river, sucking up the moisture
from the glittering grass, and drying the tears of
the blue bells and the dog violets, and calling into
life the myriads whose threescore years and ten are to
be compressed into the next twelve hours. Yet how

SALMON-FISHING. 93

they rejoice ! Their songs of praise and enjoyment
positively din in my ears as I walk home, rejoicing, too,
after my Anglo-Saxon manner, at having killed some-
thing fighting, the battle over again in extravagantly
bad Norse to Ole, v/ho patiently toils on under the
double burden of the big fish and my illiterate garrulity.
In short I am thoroughly happy — self-satisfied and at
peace with all mankind. I have succeeded, and suc-
cess usually brings happiness ; everything looks bright
around me, and I thankfully compare my lot with that
of certain pallid, flaccid beings, whom my mind's eye
presents to me stewing in London, and gasping in
midsummer torment in the House of Commons. A
breakfast of Homeric proportions (my friend and I
once ate a seven-pound grilse and left nothing even
for a dog) follows this morning performance. Will my
reader be content to rest after it, smoke a pipe, bask
in the sun (he won't stand that long, for the Norway
sun is like the kitchen fire of the gods), and possibly
after Norwegian custom, take a mid-day nap ?

94 SPORT.

Five o'clock p.m. — we have eaten the best portion
of a Norwegian sheep, not much bigger than a good
hare, for our dinner, and the lower water awaits us.
Here the valley is wider the pools larger and less
violent. It is here that I have always wished to
hook the real monster of the river — the sixty or
seventy-pounder of tradition — as I can follow him
to the sea if he don't yield sooner, which from the
upper water I can't, because impossible rapids divide
my upper and lower water , and if I had not killed
this morning's fish where I did I should have lost
him, as it was the last pool above the rapids. We
take ship again in Nedre Fiva, a splendid pool,
about a mile from my house, subject only to the
objection which old Sir Hyde Parker, one of the
early inventors of Norway fishing, used to bring
against the whole country : — " Too much water and
too few fish ! " I have great faith in myself to-day,
and feel that great things are still in store for me.
I recommence operations, and with some success,
for I land a twelve and a sixteen pounder in a very

SALMON-FISHING. 95

short space of time ; after which, towards the tail
of this great pool, I hook something very heavy
and strong, which runs out my line in one rush
almost to t-lie last turn of the reel before Ole can
get way on the boat to follow him, and then springs
out of the water a full yard high ; this feat being
performed some 120 yards off me, and the fish looking
even at that distance enormous. I have no doubt
that I have at last got fast to my ideal monster —
the seventy-pounder of my dreams. Even the
apathetic Ole grunts loudly his " Gud bevarr ! " of
astonishment. I will spare the reader all the details
of the struggle which ensues, and take him at once
to the final scene, some two miles down below where
1 hooked him, and which has taken me about three
hours to reach — a still back-water, into which I have
with extraordinary luck contrived to guide him, dead-
beat. No question now about his size. We see him
plainly close to us, a very porpoise. I can see that
Ole is demoralised and unnerved at the sight of
him. He had twice told me, during our long fight

96 SPORT

with him, that the forty-three pounder of this morning
was "Hke a small piece of this one" — the largest
salmon he had ever seen in his fifty years' experience;
and to my horror I see him, after utterly neglecting
one or two splendid chances, making hurried and
feeble pokes at him with the gaff — with the only
effect of frightening him by splashing the water
about his nose. In a fever of agony I bring him
once again within easy reach of the gaff, and regard
him as my own. He is mine now! he innsi be!
" Now's your time, Ole — can't miss him ! — now —
now!" He does though! and in one instant a
deadly sickness comes over me as the rod springs
straight again, and the fly dangles useless in the
air. The hold has broken ! Still the fish is so
beat that he lies there yet on his side. He knov/s
not he is free! "Ouick, cfaff him as he lies. Quick!
do you hear ? You can have him still ! " Oh, for
a Scotch gillie ! Alas for the Norwegian immovable
nature! Ole looks up at me with lack-lustre eyes
turns an enormous quid in his cheek, and does

II

SALMON-FISHING. 99

nothinof. I cast down the useless rod, and dashinof at
him wrest the gaff from his hand, but it is too late.
The huge fins begin to move gently, like a steamer's
first motion of her paddles, and he disappears slowly
into the deep ! Yes — yes, he is gone ! For a moment
I glare at Ole with a bitter hatred. I should like to
slay him where he stands, but have no weapon
handy, and also doubt how far Norwegian law
would justify the proceeding, great as is the pro-
vocation. But the fit passes, and a sorrow too deep
for words gains possession of me, and I throw away
the gaff and sit down, gazing in blank despair at
the water. Is it possible ? Is it not a hideous
nightmare } But two minutes ago blessed beyond
the lot of angling man — on the topmost pinnacle
of angling fame ! The practical possessor of the
largest salmon ever taken with a rod ! And now,
deeper than ever plummet sounded, in the depths
of dejection ! Tears might relieve me ; but my
sorrow is too great, and I am doubtful how Ole
mis:ht take it. I look at him ao^ain. The same

II 2

loo SPORT.

Utterly blank face, save a projection of unusual size
in his cheek, which makes me conjecture that an
additional quid has been secretly thrust in to supple-
ment the one already in possession. He has said
not a word since the catastrophe, but abundant
expectoration testifies to the deep and tumultuous
workings of his soul. I bear in mind that I am a
man and a Christian, and I mutely offer him my
flask. But, no ; with a delicacy which does him
honour, and touches me to the heart, he declines
it ; and with a deep sigh and in scarcely audible
accents repeating — " The largest salmon I ever saw
in my life ! " — picks up my rod and prepares to depart.
Why am I not a Stoic, and treat this incident with
contempt ? Yes ; but why am I human ? Do what
I will, the vision is still before my eyes. I hear
the " never, never " can the chance recur again !
Shut my eyes, stop my ears as I will, it is the
same. If I had only known his actual weight !
Had he but consented to be weighed and returned
into the stream ! How gladly would I now make

SALMON-FISHING. loi

that bargain with him ! But the opportunity of
even that compromise is past. It's intolerable. I
don't beheve the Stoics ever existed ; if they did
they must have suffered more than even I do in
botthng up their miseries. They did feel ; they
must have felt — why pretend they didn't ? Zeno
was a humbug ! Anyhow, none of the sect ever
lost a salmon like that ! What ! " A small sorrow ?
Only a fish!" Ah, try it yourself! An old lady,
inconsolable for the loss of her dog, Vi'as once referred
for example of resignation to a mother who had lost
her child, and she replied, " Oh, yes ! but children are
not dogs I'' And I, in some sort, understand her.
So, in silent gloom I follow Ole homewards.

Not darkness, nor twilight, but the solemn yellow
hues of northern midnight gather over the scene ;
black and forbidding frown the precipices on either
side, save where on the top of the awful Horn —
inaccessible as happiness — far, far beyond the reach
of mortal footstep, still glows, like sacred fire, the
sleepless sun ! Hoarser murmurs seem to arise from

I02 SPORT.

the depths of the foss — like the groans of Imprisoned
demons — to which a slight but increasing wind
steah'ng up the valley from the sea adds its melan-
choly note. My mind, already deeply depressed,
yields helplessly to the influence of the hour and
sinks to zero at once ; and despondency — the hated
spirit — descends from her " foggy cloud " and is my
inseparable companion all the way home.

\

COVERT-SHOOTING.

No subject has of modern days given birth to more
ignorant writers than shooting, so much so that to
write with any real knowledge or understanding of
it seems out of place and disrespectful to the public.
Besides this, I feel the full difficulty of the task.
How, out of such a sow's ear, can I make a silk
purse ? how kindle enthusiasm about it ? how invest
with romance the mere taking away the lives of
Qfreat numbers of defenceless animals ? Marwood
or Calcraft would have produced a more interesting
paper, for their victims were human. The subject
too, is not a popular one just now, and the special
branch of it to which I intend to direct the reader's
attention is the object of bitter public hostility —
why, I could never quite make out, but the fact is

io6 SPORT.

SO ; and I myself shall be exposed to some animad-
version, I doubt not, for venturing to say a word
in defence or excuse of it. Admitting, however,
its unromantic, tame, and utterly artificial character
in the abstract, it is nevertheless in practice a sport,
and one in which scientific arrangement and skill
are requisite to insure success, although, unlike
fox-hunting or salmon-fishing, it is capable, as
regards its raw material, of being reduced to a
certainty.

A friend of mine whose pheasants had bred badly,
but who was nevertheless anxious to show sport to
the guests whom he had previously invited to shoot,
purchased 500 live pheasants in London and turned
them down in his coverts. They happened to be
nearly all cocks, which are usually sold cheaper than
hens, and on one of his guests remarking on the
singular preponderance of the male bird, the host,
being a man of readiness and resource, promptly
replied, " Yes ; lYs a great cock ycar^ But these
birds flew well, and looked just as wild as if they

COVERT-SHOOTING. 107

had been conscientiously bred on the estate. To
him and his keepers there was no romance ; they
knew that when 400 had been killed exactly 100
remained, representing so much outlay unaccounted
for, or capital bearing no interest save such sport
as could be derived from missing, or, alas ! wound-
ing a certain percentage of them. But from his
guests these things were hidden. They, in their
ignorance, were happy, as Othello says he would
have been, however vile the Inconstancy and
incontinence of Desdemona — -

"So he had nothing known,"

They knew not, and there was nothing in the flight
of the birds to tell them, that most of the tallest
" rocketers " had come straiq-ht from Leadenhall
Market. But the proper production of the
rocketer is a matter of arrangement and manage-
ment— knowledge and study of the ground and
placing of the guns. It is only by the hated

io3 SPOUT.

" battue " system, the unpopularity of which is, I
believe, principally derived from its French name, that
this conversion of the tame bird into the wild, this
creation of that most delectable of all shots to those
who know how to handle a gun, and the most
impossible to those who don't, the rocketer, can
be effected. The rocketer is the reverse of the
poet — he is not born, he is made. The gun cannot
drive him, he must be driven to the gun. To do
this there must be men to drive, and it is merely
the combination and due arrangement of men to
drive, game to be driven, and guns to shoot it,
that constitute the battue of such evil repute and
the subject of such violent execration among those
who never saw one, and don't know what it means.
Here is an example of cockney censure on the
thing as he, according to his cockney lights,
assumes it to be done, combined with cockney
advice as to how it should be done, which, in spite
of its Wonderland English, terse and concentrated
ignorance, soaring bathos, attempted sublime and

CO VER T-S HOOTING. 109

realised ridiculous, is copied verbatim from a
leading article in a leading London journal only
some two or three years ago. After denouncing
the effeminacy of the modern pheasant shooter,
this sporting instructor to the multitude says :
"Sportsmen of tougher calibre, and more capable
of exertion, unnerved by misty weather {sic), will
seek out the ' rocketer ' for themselves, and Vv^ill
decline to try their skill upon him when he is
driven past them, ducking, calling, and chattering,
and as helpless as a young duckling making its
way to the water." These are feats which no one
ever saw the rocketer perform. But on another
occasion my risibility was likewise gladdened to its
Inmost core by a fierce reprobation, possibly by the
same hand, of the cruelty of " partridge driving,"
which process v/as described as hemming the
unhappy birds with multitudinous beaters into the
corner of a field, there to be '* butchered ' in a mass
without skill on the part of the shooters or chance
of escape for the game ; winding up with a

no SPORT.

savage denunciation of those tyrannical landowners
who not only did not permit their tenants to kill
the ground game on their farms, but even forced
them, under heavy penalties, to preserve their eggi>.
In the instructive passage above given, however,
the impossible is pointed out as the legitimate aim of
the manly shooter. But alone — manly or unmanly —
he may as well try for the lost tribes as the rocketer,
which I may at once define as a bird flying fast and
high in the air towards the shooter. His only chance
would be a pheasant that flusters up at his feet and
flies straight and low away from him : a tame and
stupid shot even if he kills him dead, which he
probably will not do unless he "plasters " hini, but will
have to run after him and massacre him, winged, on
the ground. Much in the same strain, though not
so grossly ignorant, is the advice to the partridge-
shooter to range the stubbles with his pointer, and
kill his birds in the good old-fashioned style, not
walk them up or drive them with beaters out of
turnips, the main difficulty of following such advice

COVERT-SHOOTING. in

being that there are no stubbles to range over which
would shelter a lark.

Happy the man, no doubt, who lived in those days
when the hand-reaped stubble was knee-deep, and the
pointer beat the held for him with mathematical
precision. He could go out any fine afternoon, ac-
companied only by a keeper with a bag, and return
in a couple of hours with eight or ten brace of
partridges and an appetite ; or he could with the
same personal attendance, and in the same space of
time, substituting only a steady spaniel for the pointer,
bring home three or four brace of wild pheasants, and
perhaps a rabbit or two flushed and driven from
shaggy hedgerows as broad as lanes. But for us no
such joy remains. The stubbles are close shaven as
a monk's pate. The pointer's occupation is gone, and
to the spaniel, the straight, narrow, knife-like ridges
of economical modern fences afford no opportunities
for research or discovery. We must make a business
of our sport, and systematically organise the day's
proceedings. We can do no good alone. We must

112 SPORT.

have two or three shooters at least ; beaters must be
told off to walk the bare stubbles where the gun is
a useless encumbrance, and the birds must be
manoeuvred into the turnips or potatoes, when a line
must be formed, and the game walked up by or driven
to the dogless sportsmen. And if the latter is done,
as often is done, and as must be done when birds get
wild — why not ? Quid vetat ? Why should large
circulations so furiously rage, and comic papers and
" penny dreadfuls " imagine a vain thing in the shape
of descriptions and illustrations of fat young men
seated in arm-chairs at the end of a field or covert,
with pots of beer by their sides, languidly shooting
at pheasants and partridges feeding on the ground ?
Making every allowance for the humour and paradox
of the pencil, these critics and caricaturists are either
grossly ignorant themselves, or, as is most probable,
feel obliged to pander to the ignorance of others, by
the dissemination of a fallacy, first promulgated by
jealousy and the class hatred of ultra-democratic
political agitation. Let the critic or caricaturist, keen

CO VER T-SHOO TING. \ 1 3

sportsman, or even athlete as he may be, try con-
clusions with one of these obese young men in either
shooting or walking ; let him try to hit one of these
tame pheasants, theoretically feeding at his feet, but
practically swinging over the tall tree tops with the
wind, and see how many feathers he can eliminate
from his tail — for no other hurt w^ill he probably
inflict. Yet the obese young man kills him dead ;
and will likewise walk the critic speechless and
inanimate over stubble, moor, or alp. The "dandies"
of old used sometimes to give people these surprises,
and even the ** INIasher " of this period may do so
a^ain.

It may not be quite safe to count too confidently on
the effeminacy of " Childe Chappie." Such a one I
can remember in my youth. Pale, slim, delicate,
and even cadaverous in appearance, with the voice
of a woman ; the gentlest, shyest, and most unassuming
manners, and an almost irritating lisp, he one night
accompanied some roystering companions to one of
the not over-respectable night-haunts of the period

I

114 SPORT.

— some ** shades " or " finish," such as the well-known
Lord Waterford used to delight in frequenting — and
there became the butt of a huge, bruiser-looking fellow,
who resented his white tie and ultra-aristocratic ap-
pearance. He bore the giant's rude banter and coarse
raillery with consummate good-humour for some
time, till at last something was said or done
which went beyond his power of endurance, when he
walked up to the burly ruffian, and in his sweet,
womanly tones said, to the astonishment of all
present : " Look here, sir, if you behave like this,
Lm afraid I shall have to beat yoii^ " Beat me!"
roared the pugilist, and he filled the vaulted den
with derisive lauirhter, in which all but a few who

y

knew, or suspected they knew, who the diaphanous
looking young man was, loudly joined. " Yes," with still
lower and gentler tones, and a more decided lisp,
replied the latter, *' becase you've inthulted me."
And now, as the matter began to look grave, by-
standers on both sides interfered, and tried to settle
the quarrel ; some telling the young '' swell " not to

CO VER T-SHOO TING. 1 1 5

be foolish. " Take care, Captain," said one, who
partially recognised him, and knew he was not quite
what he seemed ; " it's the Birmingham Bone-
Crusher ! '' But the young dandy would hear of no
compromise or interference. He had been " z;^^/^///^^c/,"
he again said, and, unless the " gentleman " apologised,
he should " beat- him!' After the manner of those
times a "ring" was at once formed, seconds appointed,
and the Ill-matched pair, amidst wonder and laughter,
began to " strip " for a regular fight, which was to be
conducted under the accustomed and strict rules of
the P.R. The brawny pugilist was first in the ring,
nude to the waist ; his enormous limbs and body
looking perhaps too enormous, too full of beef and
beer, no doubt, for an encounter with a worthier
antagonist ; but against such a one as now stood
before him none doubted the result. Calmly and
deliberately, as he did everything, the dandy " peeled "
to the skin, and as he drew the finely-embroidered
dress-shirt over his head, one who was present told
me the " Bone-Crusher " suddenly gave a start, and

I 2

irS SPORT.

changed countenance, turning Avith a puzzled and
almost alarmed expression to his second, as he saw
all around the slender body of his opponent the
similitude of a large serpent, tattooed with most
artistic skill in varied colours on his white skin, with
its many convolutions ending in the flat head skilfully
depicted as biting into his heart, or half-buried in his
breast. The " Crusher's " friends afterwards confided
to my informant that the spectacle seemed to " double
him up." What manner of man was this ? Young
as he was, though not so young as he seemed, the
" dandy " had been in many and strange lands, where
he had experienced many and strange vicissitudes,
and this was a somewhat startlino- niemorial of one
of them. Anyhow, if it did not make the giant forget
his "swashing blows," they fell harmless on his lithe
opponent, who, being a perfect master of the art of
self-defence, twisted about and evaded tli^m as if
endowed with the sinuous tortuosity of the reptile
emblazoned on him, till at last, substituting attack for
defence, he dealt the exhausted giant such a blow

CO VERT-SHOOTING. 1 1 7

from one of his long, slight, but wiry arms as made
him utterly oblivious to the call of " Time." This
was the long-remembered deed of a dandy of the
period, and this digression is to warn the loud censors
of to-day against the under-estimation of his scorned
representative, the modern " Masher," the derided
" Chappie."

To return to the theme, I protest against the in-
discriminate abuse of the battue. It is the result
of our civilisation, as we are pleased to term it.
Besides the difficulties above alluded to, in the way of
pursuing the sport after the manner of our fathers,
recent legislation has placed many more obstacles in
the path of such pursuit. No longer, after the
passing of the Rabbits and Hares Bill, can we say,
if I may be allowed to paraphrase and desecrate with
so vile a pun Pope's earliest lines : —

" Happy the man whose only care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to shoot his native hare
On his own ground,"

ii8 SPORT.

The hare is no longer his to shoot, and the ground
itself, we are being taught to believe, is no longer his
own either. No legislation has ev^er been so mis-
chievous and so useless as the above Act. It is bad
for landlord and tenant alike. Bad for the landlord,
as it takes away from him one of the inducements,
small though it may seem, to reside on his estate, and
from this very cause it has depreciated the value of
his land, just at a time, too, when land was sufficiently
depreciated already.

I was myself informed by one of the chief auc-
tioneers and land salesmen in London, that this cause
more than the bad seasons, had made land unsaleable,
because, after the dangerous principle which the Act
established that no contracts between man and man
should hold good by law on this subject, purchasers
feared the extension of the principle to other matters.
He added that one of the main objects and ambitions
of those who had made fortunes in trade used to be
to buy a landed estate, with all the concomitant
sporting amenities which to many of them formed

CO VER T-SHO 0 TING. 1 1 9

its principal attraction. Suddenly all this was changed.
A privilege, which by long-established custom belonged
to the landlord, was transferred to the tenant by Act
of Parliament, with the malicious provision that no
special agreement to the contrary, no matter how
heavily the landlord may be prepared to pay for it,
or may have actually paid for it already in the shape
of low rents, should be binding on the tenant. So
when the capitalist saw this thing done, and also saw
what was done in Ireland in regard to the land itself,
he put his purse back in his pocket, saying, " No !
if what I buy is not to be my own, if Government
is to step in and prevent me from deriving either rent
or amusement from the land which I have fairly bought
and paid for, I will put my money somewhere else
where, besides the advantage of receiving double the
interest for it, if I like to give it away to another
person, I can do so myself, and not have the operation
performed for me by Parliament."

It is bad for the tenant, as it encourages him or his
son to neglect the real work of the farm, and to loaf

no SPORT.

about with a gun which he is apt to leave about loaded
in odd corners inside the house, till his youngest
brother, Jack, who combines a playful disposition with
a keen sense of humour, finds it and cannot resist the
performance of the time-honoured jest of full cocking
it, pointing it at the head of his little sister, pulling the
trigger, and scattering her brains against the wall.
Anyhow, no one has been bold enough to assert that
this Act has benefited or could ever benefit the tenant.
It has, as was possibly intended, injured the landlord,
and created a bad feeling here and there, no doubt,
between him and his tenant, as was possibly, for
political reasons, also intended ; but that it has ever
done, or ever can do, good to either class is, as is now
well known, an impossibility.

The Farmers' Alliance, a political organisation in
which real farmers are not represented at all — the
three points of whose charter seem to be, i, farms rent
free ; 2, landlord to do the repairs ; 3, tenant to have
the shooting — may possibly approve of it, but only on
account of the political and actual injury which it may

CO VER T-SHOOTING. 1 2 1

inflict upon the landlords. The proposed sentimental
pigeon-shooting legislation, too, happily thrown out in
the Lords, was not only foolish but injurious. It would
have interfered with a certain amount of trade and a
certain amount of food supply, for the pigeon, like the
fox, pheasant, and many other animals, would not exist
but for the sport he affords ; and to " 'Arry " — who
owns no broad acres, nor is asked to battues — he
affords the only possible recreation with the gun. Of
the heart-rending stories of half-plucked, maimed, and
blinded birds put into traps at the low public-house
matches which " 'Arry " frequents, only a small per-
centage need be swallowed as truth — and that not
without salt. But, even if comparatively true, is it
only at pigeon matches that such barbarous rascalities
occur ? Look behind the scenes, magnates of the
turf! What caused the "Flying Potboy's" swelled
back sinew the day before the Derby .'* and what took
away Sigismunda's appetite and gave her that dull
glazed eye on the morning of the Oaks ? Is any
notice taken of such atrocities ? Does Parliament in

122 SPORT.

consequence pass an Act to close that hot-bed of
immoraHty, Tattersall's betting-rooms, and declare all
horse-raclnof illeo-al ?

Once more to mv theme. Battue shootlnfj and
grouse and partridge driving are as a rule the only
modes by which game can be satisfactorily killed in
England in these days. Space will not admit of my
dealing with more than the first of these three, one
word only I will say for the two latter. They are not
only productive of the prettiest and most difficult shots,
but they tend positively to increase the stock on moor
or stubble. When shooting over dogs or walking up
birds in line, the young birds get killed, the old ones,
especially the cocks, escape, a very bad result for the
prospects of next year's breeding ; whereas, when
driven, these jealous and pugnacious old reprobates
lead the way, and are the first killed, to the great
advantacje of moor or manor.

Now, of battues there are two kinds, the object
being the same in each, but in the execution they are
widely different, all depending on the knowledge and

COVERT-SHOOTING. 123

SO to speak, generalship of the org-aniser or manager,
be he proprietor or keeper; and, indeed, many of the
quahties of a good general are requisite for the due
carrying out of a successful battue. One plan of
operation must be decided on and adhered to. No
detail must be neglected : one " stop " forgotten, or
one gun misplaced, will sometimes entirely spoil the
day's proceedings. Besides, there are two kinds of
hosts — the one who knows his business, limits the
number of his guns according to the capacities of his
coverts, and selects these quests with care, wishinor to
give them an enjoyable day's shooting, and also to
have his game properly killed. The other, who is not
a sportsman, asks twice as many guns as his coverts
will hold, and asks them indiscriminately — "doing the
civil" all round, without res^ard to their shooting-
qualifications — with the result of spoiling what might
have been a good day's sport, a great deal of game
wounded and lost, some of it so " plastered " as to be
useless, and perhaps one of the party returning home
minus an eye. And, indeed, at such an incongruous

124 SPORT.

gathering, comprising, perhaps, youths from college,
Oxford dons, professors, and a foreign count or so,
there is sure to be danger. Out of a large country-
house party, when all are asked to shoot, some will
know their own incapacity and decline, but others,
especially the professors, will scorn the idea of any
disability, and accept with glee the unaccustomed
chance.

I once asked one of these guests of doubtful sporting
character whether he cared to shoot. " Oh, yes," he
replied with avidity. " I'm a wretched bad shot, but
Vwwery fond of shooting.'' With a heavy heart — for
I had not the nerve to tell him what I ought to have
told him at once — to stay at home — I took the field
with him, and I believe it was some years before that
beat recovered the desolation which he dealt around
him. There happened to be a good many hares on it,
and he shot at all he saw, irrespective of distance. I
never saw him kill one, but he Iiit a great many, as he
himself with conscious pride informed me. I j^laccd
this v;retch at the end of a covert, where, being myself

COVERT-SHOOTING. 125

with the beaters, I heard him blazing away freely ;
and when I came up to him I looked round the open
field in which he was standing, and seeing no sign of
the slain turned an inquiring glance towards him.
" Oh, yes !" he eagerly answered, " I've killed a lot of
them. But it's very odd, they all went on ; but they'll
find them in the next field. Look here ! and here !
fancy going on after that ! " he cried, as he gathered
up a handful of fur from the grass and held it up in
triumph. I said nothing, but silence is eloquent
sometimes ; I was overwhelmed with horror. For
myself, if I wound a hare and do not recover it, I am
wretched all that day. And here he was, calm and
even exultant, either unaware of the hideous cruelty
he had been committing, or else utterly callous to the
sufferings he had inflicted. It was revolting. This
monster, against whose name in the game book I put
the blackest of marks, was otherwise a kindly-disposed
and apparently civilised being, sane and reasonable in
behaviour except out shooting, where he never ought
to be allowed to go, and where, I maintain, no one

126 SPORT,

should be allowed to go till he has passed an examina-
tion— not competitive, but which should exclude all
who fail to reach a certain standard, or until he can
hit a mechanical rabbit or " runninof hare" in the head
and shoulders, instead of the tail and hind lees.

In such a party, too, will probably be found the
" plasterer," who prides himself on quick shooting, and
in cutting down the birds before they get well on the
wing — a valuable accomplishment when walking after
wild partridges in the open, but most objectionable
when applied to the pheasant, whether in or outside a
covert. The plasterer, whose plastering often arises
from jealousy, will plaster — i.e. blow the pheasant into
a pulp — the moment he rises above the trees of a low
larch plantation, when walking in line with the beaters,
rather than let the forward guns, for whose safety he
shows small regard, have the fine rocketer which
the same pheasant would have become by the time he
reached them had his life been then spared. It should
be a fixed rule in covert-shootino- that the q-uns inside
should only shoot at ground game, and at such

CO VER T-SIfO 0 TING. 1 27

pheasants as go back over their heads, leaving the
low-flying pheasants in front of them to be dealt with
by the guns outside. This rule is invariable at pro-
perly-conducted shootings, and, if made universal,
would greatly increase sport and save many lives and
eyes. And, while on the subject of danger, I will add
these golden rules, which, though they may not insure
safety — because " accidents will happen " from glance
shots or other contingencies, even at the best-regulated
shootings — will, if observed strictly, minimise the
danger —

1. Regard the gun as what it is — an enemy to life ;
carry it loaded or unloaded, with the muzzle vertical
to earth or sky.

2. When loading, after inserting the cartridges,
close the breech by raising the butt of the gun, not
the barrel.

3. In covert, with guns or stops forward, never
shoot at a low pheasant, woodcock, or any bird.

4. Never shoot long shots at ground game.

5. Never shoot ground game on the sky line, or on

128 COVERT-SHOOTING.

the brow of any hilly or undulating ground in a
covert.

6. Never " follow on " to any bird or beast crossing
the line or level of any human being or domestic
animal.

It is no excuse to say, as I have heard men say
when remonstrated with for " following on," " Oh, I
was not going to shoot till it had passed you." While
aiming at bird or beast he cannot tell when he may
shoot. His eye is on the object to be killed, and he
cannot see two things at once. He may " pull " at
any moment. He must both aim and shoot in front
of, or behind him ; when the object gets near the line
of shooters or beaters he should " recover " his gun
and not put It up again till the game has passed it.
This rule is to be specially observed in grouse or
partridge driving.

I wonder to find myself now writing with unim-
paired sight and uncrippled limbs after assisting at
some of the battues of my youth. At the recollection
of one of these I even now shudder. The party

COVERT-SHOOTING. 129

consisted principally of the host, a statesman of some
distinction, and his sons and sons-in-law. Rules there
were none, all seemed to go where they liked. The
guns were like the flaming swords at the gate of Eden,
and pointed every way ; three or four shots went at
every pheasant as soon as he got a yard from the
ground, the numerous family firing indiscriminately,
and apparently, like French soldiers or young recruits
when excited, from the hip. At one point all the
game seemed to be going back, and on my calling the
keeper's attention to this, he said, "Yes, I'm most
afear'd Mr Edmund has o-ot a-talkinsf." Mr. Edmund
was the youngest son, who had gone forward with a
college companion to a point where hares were ex-
pected to cross, I knew him well, a sharp youth,
with very advanced views, and as he never did any-
thing else biU talk, this result did not surprise me ; but
even I was unprepared for what I saw when we came
up to him. He and the college friend were standing
about thirty yards apart, with their guns laid aside
against trees, carrying on an animated argument in

K

130 SPORT.

loud tones and with profuse gesticulation on the
question of the nature and attributes of the Trinity,
which discussion, whatever convincinof result it mioht
have had on either of their minds, had effectually-
turned all the hares, for which reason, unmindful of
the cause, they had abandoned their guns. A merci-
ful Providence guarded the party ; though death with
levelled dart stalked beside us all day, no one fell.
The host, who especially bore a charmed life, used
to vanish occasionally, only to reappear suddenly at
unexpected places in front of the line and in the
direction of the hottest fire. He never spoke or gave
a warning signal of his whereabouts, but crept about
silently, like a red Indian ; and I myself, if I had not
even then observed the " sky line " rule as to ground
game above mentioned, should Inevitably have slain
him on our way home on a little eminence on a gravel
walk in his own garden. He, however, did not err
from ignorance ; he knew his own risk, but was so
impervious to fear that he seemed to be a fatalist :
" Never mind ;,7t'," he used to say, when even one of

COVERT-SHOOTING. 131

his reckless and excitable offspring, for whom he had
posted himself as a target at intervals all day, had
been almost shocked and sobered by having fired at
his parent's gaiter in mistake for a hare on one of
these sudden appearances in front of the line, and was
only indebted to his own want of skill for escape from
possible parricide. "' Never mind me, I can take care
of myself" (the cleverest men have their delusions) ;
" but don't shoot each oiher ! " Then he would
disappear again, make one of his mysterious flank
marches, and calmly court death in some other
locality.

Dangerous as these excitable youths were, I have
seen others more dangerous. Their excitability
was natural, the result of too active and mercurial
a temperament, and the danger arising out of it,
though grave enough, was not quite so formidable
as that caused by the artificially produced excitement
of habitual over-indul<jence in stimulants. One
young man who had contracted this fatal habit,
and consequently was haunted on occasions by

K 2

133 SPORT.

visions of black beetles and crawling reptiles, who
once was heard to say, as he pushed back his
chair after a breakfast consisting of a peach, a
bottle of champagne, and a glass of brandy, " There,
I haven't eaten a heartier hi'eakfast than that for
a long time," had been shooting at a neighbour's
of a host of mine, who recounted this story of his
doin-^s. This young man while out shooting, and
being, as he himself described it, "awfully jumpy'
that morning, happened to be about thirty yards
from a hollow lane along which a beater was pro-
ceeding carrying three or four hares on his back.
They wobbled about as he walked, and the jumpy
youth, catching sight of their movements just above
the fence, instantly hred a snap shot, with the
effect of putting several pellets into the unhappy
beater's back. Fortunately, however, such deplor-
able examples are rare.

The "jealous shot" above alluded to, is, even
if he be not a plasterer, an objectionable character,
whether you meet him at such a party as I have

COVERT-SHOOTING. 133

described or in better-conducted field-days, where,
as he often shoots well, he may be also found.
His object all day seems to be less to enjoy him-
self than to spoil the enjoynient of others, and he
will always prefer his neighbour's bird to his own.
Without being at all siii profusus, he is alieni appetens.
He is ravenous for the best place, and often unsatisfied
when he has got it. He often keeps a score of
what he kills, which usually amounts to two-thirds
of the whole bag, generously leaving the remainder
to be divided amonci^ the other four or five oruns.
He is, in short, a conceited and selfish animal out
shooting, and is not always asked a second time,
yet in private life sometimes he is not a bad
fellow.

But we will imagine a scientifically-organised and
faultless shoot, with none of the above drawbacks,
but with six good guns and coverts full of game,
a kindly and courteous host, a fine morning in the
latter half of November, a slioht frost havino: now
(ten A.M.) given way to a bright sun and gentle

134 SPORT.

westerly breeze. We proceed to the first covert, a
small clump in the park in sight of the windows
of the mansion — which is not necessarily of the
"fine old Elizabethan type." Hazel slips stuck
in the ground .about eighty or a hundred yards from
the covert, v/ith a small piece of paper in a cleft at
the top,- mark the several positions of the four forward
guns, whom the host now numbers off to occupy,
takinsf the other with himself to walk in line with
the beaters. For a time not a sound save the gentle
tapping of the beaters' sticks is heard ; there is no
shouting, no "Hi, cock!" or wild yelling, which is
deemed so indispensable at uncultivated battues.
The host will not allow such barbarous customs (for
be it known, as he well kiiows, that the more noise
the less sport ; that shouting, instead of driving game
forward, especially as regards ground game, drives
it back). Then a shot or two, followed by several
more from the inside guns, who are now warmly
engaged with the rabbits, then the first pheasant —
an old cock — is seen by the forward guns sailing

CO VER T-S HOOTING. 135

silently along just over the tree tops towards them.
His outspread wings do not move, he had attained
his requisite elevation and impetus when he rose
before the beaters to clear the trees at the further
end of the clump. He is lowering nov.^ and ap-
parently thinking of a descent to earth just outside
the covert, but catching sight of the guns forward
he re-agitates his wings and ascends again, as though
not fancying a too close proximity to these four
suspicious little groups of beings. These groups
(of three persons each, i.e., the shooter, loader, and
cartridge carrier) on their part are watching him
anxiously. Wliom will he come to ^ Whom will he
honour with the responsibility of properly and
becomingly taking away his already doomed life "^ —
"first of that fatal day" to his tribe. Has he an
inkling of his fate } It seems so, for he soars
higher and higher; but high indeed must he go to
be safe from guns like these, and tall as he is when
he rockets over the right centre, number two fires,
and catching him exacdy at the right angle he

136

SPORT.

collapses. His wings clap to as if by machinery,
like those of a mechanical bird when he has finished
his song outside a musical snuff-box. A very small
bunch of feathers floats lightly in the blue sky

A ROCIiETKR.

where late he flew ; he " leaves his life midway in
air," and his body falls with a heavy thud just behind
his favoured executioner, who, being the youngest
of the party, with a certain interest in the host's
family which made him very nervous when this

^^^

ROCKETEKP.

CO VER T-SHO 0 TING. 1 39

first "gallery shot" came to his share, knowing
perhaps who was watching at the window — not with-
out an opera-glass — felt great relief and satisfaction
in his fall.

It is a great thing to kill your first shot properly,
for knocking down your game and killing it are two
very different matters. There should be no flustering
or spinning in the air, or easily inclined descents,
followed by, oh, horror ! active pedestrianism on the
ground. Too many feathers left in the air indicate
too great proximity to his tail ; they should be few
and small, struck from the head, neck, and breast
only. So should the " rocketer " fall ; as straight to
earth as the velocity of his previous flight or the
force of the wind will allow, and, falling, never move
so much as a feather. This done with your first
pheasant gives you confidence; you have "got the
range ; " you know that nothing is wrong with di-
gestion or sight, and you feel that for that day you
are sure to do your duty. Then follow a few more
birds equally distributed among the four professionals,

I40

SPORT.

and disposed of v.-Ith equal science. Then a few
hares come cantering out midway between the guns,
offering fair broadside shots, and are rolled over
stone dead by well-laid, forward-aimed guns ; no

AN ACTIVE PEDESTRIAN'.

piteous screams or erect heads as they drag their
broken hind legs after them, no coursing b)' retrievers,
as would occur when a "muff" is " behind the gun."
They turn head over heels and never move again.

CO VER T-SHO 0 TING .

141

And now the pheasants come quicker, and the firing
becomes fast and furious, till behind each gun lie many-
little feathered lumps of varied hues on the smooth
turf. Now and then, though very rarely, in the

hurry and heat of the action, even these professors
shoot a little behind a bird, and he carries on sorely
wounded, but is usually marked down and gathered
by watchful keepers, who stand with retrievers far
behind the guns. Sometimes, too, though still more

142 SPORT.

rarely, the very best professor among them, with an

-^L

CONFIDENCE.

almost world-wide reputation, will "clean miss" an
easy shot, for the man who never misses has yet to

CONFIDENCE MISPLACED.

be born. And now many of the pheasants will no

CO VER T-SHOOTJNG.

lonofer face the forward
guns, and curl back over
the beaters' heads only to
meet their doom from the
two ei-ins who are now
standinof back in the covert.
As the beaters close in a
semicircle at the end of
the clump, the laggard
birds only rise just at the
fence, and give lower,
nearer, and less interest-
ing chances. These seem
the easiest shots of all
but they are not so ; no-
thing, I don't know why,
is more difficult than a
low broadside shot at a
pheasant, perhaps because
he looks so common-place,
obvious, and easy, and

"TEARING TIIE.VI DJWN."

144 SPORT.

perhaps because the shooter has to look all round
him to see that no stray keeper or retriever is in the
way before he fires.

But there are very few of these, and now all is over
with this prolific "clump," as it is called; but it is
really a little oval -shaped wood of some four to six
acres. The host and his companion emerge from it,
hopes his friends have had good sport, pays a well-
placed compliment or two to those whom he has
especially observed " tearing them down," as he says,
"out of the skies." The keepers and beaters collect
the slain, and they all hurry on to the next covert.
Fear not, reader ! I will not repeat the dose.
Although *' Ex uno disce omnes" by no means
applies to shooting — for it has many varieties — space,
if not humanity, forbids my following the party
further. Enough to say that, as was inevitable with
fine weather, plenty of game, good management, and
first-class guns, the head keeper at the end of the
day, with a face radiant with satisfaction, hands a
card to the host, who enumerates large totals to his

CO VER T- SHO 0 TING. 1 4S

gratified guests. The result is that the keeper is
pleased ; his birds, so long carefully tended, have been
" clean killed ; " nothing is so mortifying to him as to
see them missed or wounded. " Shoot, sir, shoot 1 "
said a keeper once to me who was generally known,
from the character of his language, as "the Blas-

A FEATHERED LUMP.

phemer," when I was walking with the beaters in a
covert and sparing the pheasants that went forward.
I told him that I left them for the guns outside.
" But they can't hit 'em ! " he cried in agony. *' Over,
forward ! There — there again ! look at that 1 " he
yelled, with a numerous escort of unnameable ex-
pletives as four barrels were again discharged outside

L

146

SPORT.

without result, " what's the use of driving pheasants
to the like of them ?" " them" being two gentlemen
of ancient family and of social distinction in the

,^i^^^-.^^

RETRIEVED.

neighbourhood (for the Blasphemer was no respecter
of persons), and these observations not having been
delivered soilo voce, my host, I remember, was not
pleased.

COVERT-SHOOTING. 147

On this occasion the host is pleased, for the totals
are even more than he expected, and if these amounted
to even four figures, what harm? who is injured by it ?
Not the tenant-farmers, many of whom are out beat-
ino;- or lookinof on with smi'lInQf faces, and taking as
much pride and interest as the host himself in the
successful proceedings, and who, with half the neigh-
bourhood round, receive handsome presents of game,
and what else can it hurt but the proprietor's own
pocket ? for these battues are costly. Still, if he
likes to spend his money thus, employing as he does
a great number of persons, what harm ?

Why, 1 repeat, should the Camberwell Daily
Calinnniator wax so wroth as it records these totals ?
And if, after a wide distribution of gifts, the surplus
be sold, what harm again ? There is a large demand
for game. The rich merchants and manufacturers,
whose smart villas fringe the adjacent town, im-
peratively require it for their dinner parties. They
have no manors of their own to supply it ; they must
buy it, and if landed proprietors won't sell it, so

L 2

Ijl8 • SPORT.

much the better for Allan -a- dale, who can thus
monopolise and command the market. Instead of a
crime, I hold it to be a duty in the game-preserving
landowner to sell a certain portion of his game, for
the double purpose of supplying a recognised want
and of underselling the poacher.

Why is there a sympathy with the poacher ? for there
is, especially among some borough magistrates. First,
because he is the general game supplier of the district ;
secondly, because a sort of romance is attached to
him. The poacher of theory and penny literature is
a young, manly, athletic agricultural labourer, who
cannot control the sporting tastes which are so deeply
implanted in his Anglo-Saxon nature, and who, with
gun or wire, occasionally goes out to bring home a
pheasant or hare to a sick wife or starving family.
The real, practical poacher is the idle, dirty, drunken
blackguard of the town, who will never work, who, if he
has not already kicked his wife to death, neglects or
forsakes her, and, in company with no less than twelve
(with fewer he dare not go out), and often thirty or

CO VER T-SHO O TING. 1 49

forty similar characters, sallies forth at night with long
nets and scours the country round, breaking fences,
leaving gates open, harassing the farmer in many ways,
and when game fails, helping himself to poultry or
anvthine else that is not his. He is as a rule a
wretched coward, and the whole gang will run if met
by anything like half its number ; but if, with a
sufticient number of his gallant associates, he meets
an unhappy keeper alone, he will half-murder him ;
and he has the consoling reflection that if he wholly
does so, he has sympathisers in high places, and
will probably escape the extreme penalty of the law,
because his victim is only a gamekeeper, whereas if
the gamekeeper kills hiin he is sure to be hanged.
These large gangs only exist through the non-
enforcement of the law, arising out of the above-
mentioned sympathy with the poacher. They can be
and are suppressed wherever the Night- Poaching Act
is rigidly enforced. For this reason chiefly in Liverpool
there is not, I believe, a single poacher. The
authorities order the police to stop his spoils coming

ISO SPORT.

into market, so he cannot carry on his trade. But
in many towns he can walk in with his gang, loaded with
game in broad daylight. No one says a word, and
the police dare not interfere for fear of a snub from
the Bench. Which is right, Liverpool or the other
towns ? One must be wrong, and I do not think it is
Liverpool. It seems to me that any town will be the
better for relief from a population of hereditary Idlers,
even if they are not also drunkards and thieves, of
which the poaching community largely consists.

I return to our host and his party. It must not
be supposed that there are no intermediate stages
between the perfection of his battue and the family
scramble I have tried to depict further back ; this
host w^as a model in every respect, and chiefly for that
reason all went well at his battues. He knew his
business ; every detail was arranged beforehand ;
everyone knew his place. His temper was perfect;
there was no noise, confusion, or rating of keepers,
as sometimes occurs to the detriment of everybody's
pleasure. Even the large crowds, amounting to

COVERT-SHOOTING. 151

hundreds, who often assembled to see the shooting,
seemed to be influenced by the atmosphere of rule,
method, and orderly behaviour which prevailed
around ; and, indeed, as a rule, the conduct of these
large assemblies at " big shoots " in the manufacturing
and mining districts is beyond all praise. To a
nervous man it may be trying to have an enormous
gallery behind him, commenting, he feels sure, even if
he does not hear them, 'as he probably will, on each
shot ; but these comments are made as decently as
possible, and with a kindly regard to the shooter's
feelings. " Oh, it was a very difficult shot ! " when he
missed, and "■ Well done ! " when he killed, is often
the line of criticism.

I did once hear of a nervous young man at one
of these popular shootings whose lot did not fall in
pleasant places. It was in a mining district, and a
small "tail" of miners attached itself to each gun at
the commencement of the beat, the number increasing
and growing out of the bowels of the earth as the day
proceeded ; each " tail " betting freely with the next

152 SPORT.

" tail " on each shot, and backing their particular gun to
have the laro^est number when the orame was counted
at the end of each beat. The young man in question
was not shooting well, and after two or three egregious
misses a Herculean miner came up to him, and gently
but firmly informed him that he, the miner, had
backed him, had already lost a good deal of money,
and that if he did not improve his shooting, " he had
a moind " to eive him a " hoidincr." Here was a con-
tingency totally unexpected. This was adding the
"element of uncertainty" before mentioned as so
desirable, in a very unpleasant shape, and with a
vengeance. But I never heard how it ended. It is
anyhow difficult to conceive that the intimation could
have encouraged the nervous youth, or improved his
shootincf.

On another occasion a noble lord, a distinguished
cavalry officer, and an awful martinet, had a large
shooting party, when, in spite of endless loudly-given
orders, marchings, and counter-marchings of beaters,
everything seemed to go wrong, pheasants included.

COVERT-SHOOTING. 153

So at the end of a covert in which httle had been
found, and that Httle not properly " brought to the
gun," the head keeper was summoned, and, all
resplendent in green and gold as he was, advanced
with abject mien, faltering some trembling excuses to
his now almost rabid master, who, cutting these
sternly short, asked : "Shall we find more in the next
covert?" "I hope so, my lord." "Hope, sir!"
roared the peer, with terrific emphasis on the verb,
"Do you think I give you ^100 a year to hopef
Now, go and beat that wood this way, and I'll post
the guns." "Your lordship means this wood?" said
the terrified functionary, pointing to another. " No,

I don't." " But, my lord " expostulated the man,

now more alarmed than ever. " Not a word, sir ; obey
orders!" Irresolute, and evidently much perplexed,
the wretched man marched off with his army and beat
the wood, in which there was absolutely nothing.
Terrible then to see Vv^as the wrath of the baffled
so. dier, till the miserable keeper, seeing he was about
to be dismissed on the spot, cried out in heart-rending

154 SPORT.

accents : " It's not your wood, my lord. It belongs to
Lord \V." (his neighbour) ; " and he shot it last
Friday ! " All the keepers and beaters knew this,
yet not one had dared to gainsay Achilles in his ire.

Another host, who combined a highly religious
temperament with an uncontrollable temper, on
something going wrong with the beat, burst into
paroxysms of fury with his keeper, to whom he
used most unpa.rliamentary language. A minute or
two afterwards, having cooled down again, he called
the man up to him, and asked in subdued and
penitent accents, " What did I call you just now,
Smith ? " *•■ Well, sir," Smith replied, not without
a tone of pardonable soreness, " you called me a
d— d infernal fool!" "Did I, Smith, did I really.?
I'm very sorry. Oh ! to think that one Christian
man should use such language as that to another!
Heaven forgive me ! But," he shouted in stentorian
tones, as his rage suddenly returned, " it's God's
truth all the same ! "

Such incidents don't improve a day's sport, and

CO VER T-SHOOThSG. 1 5 5

happily they are rare, but their record has unduly
lengthened this paper. Let me conclude by giving
a word of advice to all neophytes in shooting.
Shooting is cruel ; so are many other things in this
world. Don't make it more cruel than necessary.
Shoot humanely. How ? First of all learn to
shoot. Practise at projected plates, bottles, glass-
balls, turnips, or any inanimate thing that moves,
before you shoot at living creatures. And then, I
implore you, shoot before, not at the latter, unless
sitting. Never mind if you miss, don't wound.
By shooting before the object (and you will soon
learn how much or how little before it you ought to
aim), you will, when you hit it, kill it dead, and so
spare suffering to the animal and your own feelings,
if you have any. Don't shoot very long shots at
any game ; and never, pray never ! at hares going
straight away from you, unless very close to you,
and you can aim at the back of their heads.
Broadside, if you shoot icclt I)cfore them, you can
kill them dead a good way off, but going straight

156 SPORT.

away you are certain only to wound them. The
"monster" described earlier, when I asked him why
he shot at a hare eighty or ico yards off,
seeing there was no possibihty of kilhng it, rephed :
" Oh, I don't know that. A chance pellet might
enter the eye and so penetrate the brain and cause
death " (this was his ghastly idea of humour) ;
"besides, I wanted to try these new guns!"
Avoid, humane reader, any such cold-blooded ex-
periments, and when there is much doubt, give the
poor animal the benefit of it, and forbear to press
the torture-dealing trigger.

And you, critics on shooting and censors of
country gentlemen's habits, try to be charitable, nor,
because you cannot understand it, think a sport
common and unclean, and condemn a class with
which you are totally unacquainted. W'e all have
our faults, and the battue giver and frequenter
have no claim to infallibility, being human like
yourselves. But, as a rule, they will be found, if
a Royal Commission was appointed to examine

CO VER T-SHO 0 TING. 1 57

ihe details of their discharge of the every-day duties
of Hfe, to compare favourably with any other
section of mankind.

I have spoken my mind freely and without fear
on an unpopular subject, of which I have taken
the especially unpopular side. Battues are against
the " spirit of the age," it is said ; so, again, it
is said, is the private ownership of land ; so, it
may be urged in the future, is the private owner-
ship of a watch. Alter our laws if you will. Let
all possession of property be illegal, and curtail its
rights to the limits of the clothing we have on
our backs. Annul all contracts, forbid buying and
selling, abolish trade. Take from those who have
and give to those who have not, but at least
let all who have be tarred with the same brush ;
and until our laws be so altered, cease from the
hypocrisy and spite which attacks not only the
worldly possessions but even the amusements of
one class alone.

DEER-STALKING

ERYCE S BILL

I HAVE alluded, in my remarks on covert shoot-
ing, to the spiteful character of the recently-
passed "Ground Game" or "Hares and Rabbits
Act," which was known before it passed, and has
proved since its passing, to be of no real benefit
whatever to tenant farmers, although very injurious
in the interests of landowners. But that Act had
at all events the pretence of being introduced in
the interest of the tenant farmers, and anyhow there
was a clear motive — political though it was — on
the part of Government in passing it, viz., the
placing ihi tenant farmer under an obligation to
the Government by their gift to him of certain

M

i62 SPOBT

rights and privileges which had by almost im-
memorial custom belonged to his landlord. But
now a strange Bill with a strange title is presented
to Parliament, called the "Access to Mountains
Bill," but which might with more accuracy of de-
finition have been termed the " Destruction to
Deer-stalking," " Ebullition of Envy," " Indulgence
of Ill-nature," "Irritation of Owners," or "Spoiling
of Sport " Bill, which has no pretence, or outward
visible sign of benefit to anybody, not even a
possible political end to serve ; but is simply an
open and undisguised attempt to injure Highland
proprietors, and so reduce the value of their estates
as to make them almost worthless. Eor who
would hire a deer forest or a grouse moor if
he were liable at any time, at the conclusion of a
long stalk perhaps, to see the hideous apparition
of " 'Arry " in appalling checks on the sky-line
in full view of the deer ? Or on a windy day
with the grouse rather wild, to see the same estim-
able being, with more or less kindred spirits.

DEER-STALKING. 163

whooping and holloaing across the sheltered flat
on to which the luckless sportsman had driven the
bulk of his birds, expecting there to " make up
his bag " in the afternoon, and where now he sees
them wheeling off in affrighted packs from the
unaccustomed sigfhts and discordant sounds ? And
what redress has he ? Says the Bill : "In case
of any action of interdict, etc., etc., founded on
alleged trespass, it shall be a sufficient defence
that the lands referred to were uncultivated moun-
tain or moor lands, and that the respondent
entered thereon only for the purposes of recrea-
tion, or of scientific or artistic study." So '"Arry,"
when challenged as to his business on the sky-line
of the deer forest, has only to pull out an old
betting-book, which for the nonce he turns into a
sketch-book, and proudly proclaim himself to be a
" Hartis ; " and when questioned on his proceed-
ings on the grouse moor, he replies that he's " a
recreating of himself." True he is not allowed
to carry a gun, and a " blooming shame " that

M 2

1 64 SPORT.

is, but he'll take care that no one else shall do
so to any effect. The law allows him to go where
he likes for the purposes of scientific study. His
special study just now is ornithology, and he is
here seeking knowledge of the habits, and especially
the flight, of grouse ; or, of course, if these resources
fail, geology will furnish him with endless "de-
fences," so that eventually, after resorting to the
weak and futile expedient of bribing this particular
" 'Arry " to go away and pursue his scientific re-
searches, or study art elsewhere, with the only
effect of multiplying the artistic or scientific breed
to an alarming extent in that district, the wretched
proprietor or lessee will have to give up, the one
his profit, the other his pleasure, at the bidding
of the senseless sentimentality of fanatical socialims,
and at the sacrifice of hundreds of honest thousands
of pounds sterling which Scotland now annually
receives from English sporting enterprise.

CHAPTER I.

THE REAL.

There are two distinct kinds of deer-stalking,
the real and the artificial. The first, and of course
the most delectable, to be enjoyed, alas ! only by
the young, the strong, the active. The second, more
or less available to men of all ages short of de-
crepitude, but, at its best, only the poor parody of
the hrst. By the real, I mean the pursuit of
the perfectly wild animal on its own primaeval
and ancestral ground, as yet unannexed and un-
appropriated in any shape or way by man ; where,
therefore, no permission can be asked, granted or
refused ; where the wild illiniitable expanse is free
to all, human or animal, and the first come is
the first served. These portions of the earth's

i66 SPORT.

surface, nature's own commons, are becoming more
and more circumscribed and curtailed by increasing
pojDulation, and especially by the restless locomo-
tive energy of the Anglo-Saxon in conjunction with
his incurable addiction to sport. The demand is
greater than the supply. Norway is used up already,
India, America, and even Africa are all more or
less dwindling in their big-game-prcducing powers ;
greater and greater must be the sacrifices, further
and further afield the wanderings of those who
would find really at home and unsophisticated
the wild animal of the forest and hill. But even
amidst the crowded deserts of population and
civilisation in this over-cultivated earth such a
peaceful oasis is still here and there to be found.
When you have found it, and above all, have found
3-ourself at that delightful period of life which com-
bines all the activity of youth with the stamina of
sturdy manhood, alone or with one companion in
possession of it ; when you breathe the free pure
air which for perhaps hundreds of miles has never

DEER-STALKING. 167

entered human lungs, and which seems to fill
you with the concentrated strength of a dozen
giants ; when all the beasts of the forest are
yours, and you have the cattle on a thousand
hills to pick and choose from, at the mercy of
your double-barrelled rifle ; when you feel — and
here is the chief charm of the situation — that the
whole responsibility of your success, personal safety,
and life even depends upon yourself alone — then
you will have realised one of the highest orders
of physical enjoyment known among men. Except
in a very limited degree it has never been my
lot to taste this superlative of life, but I will give,
if the reader will bear with me, one or two
examples of my brief experience.

Very many years ago, long before " 'Arry " had
extended his rambles as far as Norway, I found
myself, with two natives of the district, on one of
the wildest and most unfrequented fjelds of that
wild and stern countrv. I had sfone there that
day to try to gain the summit of a precipitous

i68 SrORT.

mountain or crag supposed to be inaccessible to
man, and which, so far as I was concerned, proved
and remained so. After chmbing walls of rock-
creeping and sidling along narrow ledges over-
hanging dizzy precipices, so narrow in places that
part of the sole of the shoe was ozttside the rock
or overlapping the precipice, encouraged to the
passage of these inazivais pas by the confident
statement of one of my guides that a few steps
further, round the next corner, the ledge would be
found wider, and leading to a spot whence the
summit could be easily attained ; I sustained the
blood-curdling disappointment of finding, when the
next corner was reached at last, that the ledge,
instead of widening, absolutely disappeared and
became absorbed in the sheer precipitous horrors
of the mountain side, necessitating- a retro^^rade
movement of the most gruesome description — a
twistinof round on the axis of the heels or toes.
I don't know which is the most agonising, whether
to turn your face to the rock v;all or to the fathom-

DEER-STALKING. 169

less chasm, and clawing at and clinging to the stony
rock closer than ever babe clung to its mother's
breast, to have to retrace without the spur of vanity
or ambition, but for dear life itself, all the afore-
said mauvais pas, none the less objectionable and
nasty because the course was downward instead of
upward.

When, after all these hideous experiences v/hich
had lasted at intervals for some hours, we had
regained the blessed comfort of a few feet of com-
paratively level ground, and were there in the act
of holding a council of Vv^ar, v/hether to attempt a
new route or abandon the enterprise altogether, I
suddenly saw a sight which turned my thoughts
into entirely new channels, and caused me, as leader
of the expedition, to decide unhesitatingly in favour
of the latter course. Down, far below us on a
snow-field, three moving objects caught my eye.
They were reindeer. Recourse to my glass showed
them to be all stags — one of them a very big one,
with a splendid head furnished with the countless

I/O SPORT.

points with which nature has so lavishly adorned
the palmated horns of these ungraceful, but venison-
furnishing animals. All my sporting instincts were
roused, and not these alone, but also my grosser
natural appetite for fat flesh, to which my larder
had long been a stranger, became powerfully ex-
cited, as I gloated through my telescope on his
deep broad side and round haunches ; two inches
of fat, no less, I prophesy, will cover these, and,
looking upwards again at the black, horrid, and
inhospitable rock, have no difficulty in at once
resigning the fame and honour of the possibly suc-
cessful ascent in favour of the mess of pottage
suddenly and unexpectedly tempting me below.

Barren honour — the possible reward of imminent
risk of life — is over my head. But I am some-
what weary of wooing that rugged, frowning face
which ever seems to repel me, and of battling,
like Lucifer on a cloud, against being forced back-
ward over the few inches' width of its stony wrinkles,
on which I depend for security from a fall into

DEER-STALKING. 17 1

unfathomable space. Beneath my feet is sweet
sunny h'fe and all its enjoyments. Between it and
the shadow of death above me, who should hesitate ?
I satisfy my conscience by despatching my two
natives to ascertain whether the new route proposed
is practicable, while I remain watching the deer.
Not long are they absent ; one of them is an old
hunter, and his heart has warmed at the sight of
the game, and they report that not for loo dollars
— ^22 I05., and their ideal of inexhaustible wealth —
would they attempt it ! and so, employer and
employed equally relieved, we seek a lower level
and regain the spot where we had left our super-
fluous clothing and, alas ! my only weapon, a small
rook or rabbit rifle, which for its lightness I took
with me, never dreaming of deer, which were hardly
ever seen in that region, but for the purpose of
killing ptarmigan when sitting in confiding tameness
or stupidity on the stones, I am sorely troubled.
Am I justified in trying for the big stag with such
a boy's weapon ? I commune with the old hunter,

173 SPORT.

who shakes his head, but I remember that small
as is the bullet there Is a heavy charge of powder
behind it, and up to eighty or ninety yards it will
shoot to an Inch, so, like David, I make myself
ready for battle.

The deer are still below us, lying In the middle
of the snowficld In the position of a triangle — a
formation favourable to keeping a sharp look-out
■ — and utterly unapproachable. I have no difficulty
in gaining the shelter of some rocks which fringe
the snow watliin about 600 yards of them, but not
a yard further can I advance. I must wait their
pleasure. So, the wind being all right, and the
rocks forming a complete screen, I post one
man as sentinel or vedette, and with the other
overhaul our slender stock of provisions. It is
scantier than I thought. There Is one fair —
scarcely square — meal for each of us, but only
one. Human habitations are a long way off.
But it is now mid-day. We are all very hungry,
having breakfasted about 3 a.m., so v/e recklessly

DEER-STALKING. 173

resolve not to make two bites at our cherry, and
calling in our outpost, we silently consume our
supply, reserving only a crust or a biscuit each for
some extreme contingency — I remarking with a
sanguine glee that we would sup on the fry of
the big stag, from which anticipation the ex-hunter
gravely dissents. That stag, he solemnly asseverates,
was not born to die by such a toy as my pea-
rifie ! But, he sardonically adds, I might try. I
might get a shot, w^hich would amuse me, and not
hurt the stag ; and that w^e should have tim.e after-
wards to get down to a scrtcr or mountain dairy,
if not home to supper.

After keeping us waiting and -watching several
irksome hours, the deer moved at last, getting up
and stretching themselves, and finally trotting down
the slope of the snow to the lower fringe of rocks
opposite us, where they disappeared over the ridge.
" Good feeding ground below," whispered the old
hunter, who now began really to warm with excite-
ment ; and vv-e hurry on over the snovv^ with rapid

174 SPORT.

Strides. Arrived at the lower ledge of rocks, extreme

caution is of course necessary, as we cannot tell how

short a distance they may have run down before

stopping, and they may be close to us. Armed

with my toy, I go first, avoiding every loose stone

as if it were a red-hot iron, and raising my head

by slow inches over each successive ridge ; at last

my outspread hand, extended backv^ards, warns my

followers that I have them in sight. I remain

motionless, but taking in at a glance, and vvith

rapid intuition, all the surroundings. Then I lower

my head as gradually as I had raised it and beckon

up the old hunter, show him the deer, and indicate

by a motion of the hand the course I mean to

pursue. He, after grave contemplation, and testing

the \vind by tearing out recklessly a ic\\f of his

scanty hairs, assents to my plan, and after retiring

a short distance we make a flank march, wliich,

avoiding an exposed jDlaln in our front, brings us

to a lower cluster of rocks towards which the

deer had seemed to be feedincr. It is rather close

DEER-STALKING. 175

shaving as regards the wind, and more of the old
hunter's hair is sacrificed quite unnecessarily, for
some of the dry grass or reindeer moss will do
just as well, but he seems to prefer to denude himself
in this fashion.

All, however, is safe so far. The stags have
reached apparently the good feeding-ground men-
tioned by my old prophet, whom, by the Vv^ay, I
have called old, not because he was so, but because
I then, in the plenitude and arrogance of my
youth, so deemed him — he was about forty-five ; — •
they are quite quiet, and, for reindeer, unsuspicious,
and inclined to remain there, which rather vexes
me, for they are too far off for a safe shot even
with a worthier instrument than mine. Time, how-
ever, will not admit of my waiting, so, leaving my
men under cover of the rocks, I commence a
somewhat risky stalk. Stalking among stones, un-
less the ground is much broken, is a more difficult
and irksome matter than stalking on moss, peat
or grass ; and here, unfortunately, I have an ugly

176 SPORT.

bare flat of about lOO yards to cross before I can
" cret in " at them, i.e. o-ain Qfround from whence
I have a fair chance of a quiet shot at a sportinq^
distance. Crav/Hng on such ground is both difficult
and painful ; loose stones roll and make a noise,
fast ones tear the clothes and abrade the skin. The
only plan is to make oneself as short as possible,
and creep along in a humpbacked, doubled-up posi-
tion at such times as the deer are feeding or looking
the other way, and prepared, if one of them should
*' catck^' you, i.e. happen to turn his head your
way while you are moving, instantly to become a
stone. In such a case don't move, or even wink.
The deer will try and stare you into motion again,
but you must continue to be a stone, and try to
stare him back into the belief that you are one,
and that when he saw you move he was the victim
of an optical delusion. When he has satisfied
himself of this, as he will do if you keep quite
still, he will begin to feed again, and you can
alter your form, which you will fmd a great relief,

DEER- S TA LKING. i n

for there is nothing- more fatiguing than petrifaction
of this kind. When he next looks at you, he
won't find out the difference in your shape provided
only you anticipate the turn of his head, and are
not too late in becoming stone again. With clothes
of the right colour I have sat or lain in the open
within twenty yards of deer in this way for some
minutes, undetected. I have several of these anxious
and muscle-trying dissimulations to go through
during this irksome trial. The big stag seems to
have no care for himself, and hardly ever takes
the trouble to look up from his feeding, but his
younger and smaller friends — one especially — how
I hated him ! — were constantly turning suspicious
glances in my direction before I at last gained the
longed-for shelter of some rocky broken ground,
whence if I could only reach it, I felt sure of a
good chance.

After the luxury of " taking the kink out of
my back," by changing the prone velnti pecora
attitude for that iiatural to dignified man, 1

N

178 SPORT.

reconnoitre on the other side of the rocks, and to
my deh'ght find that I can advance to within fifty
or sixty yards of the deer without even a stoop ;
so, silently cocking my " child's gun " as the old
hunter contemptuously termed it, I take up my
position, place my cap and handkerchief on a
convenient rock, and resting it on these, wait with
my heart thumping at my ribs with such vehemence
that I fear the deer may hear it, till the big
stag, who has his haunches to me at present, shall
turn and grive me a broadside shot. He will not
do so for a long time, and when at last he does
turn and the sight of my rifle is steady just
behind his shoulder, the small stag, my old enemy,
moves up and plants himself exactly in the way.
This occurs again and again ; in vain does the big
brother move to and fro, offering the most tempting
chances ; whenever he does so, so surely does this
provoking imp interpose his worthless carcase, till
I am almost inclined to shoot him out of revenge.
At last, however, I get a clear aim at the big,

DEER-STALKING. 179

broadside not more than fifty yards distant, and
full of confidence I pull the trigger.

A start, and a swerve on the part of the sta^-,
follow the report, and after standing still for a
few seconds, making one regret that my " toy "
has no second barrel, away all three go at a fast
gallop. Is it possible I can have missed ? Common
sense says, no ! At that distance, and with such
a target, impossible ! But even with my glass,
although he is certainly the last of the three as
they canter up the snow brae above us, I can
detect no sign of w^ound or weakness. My men
join me now, and on the old hunter's face is un-
mistakably the " I told you so " expression, not
only that, but even a look of contempt, and surely
enough he gives it w^ords.

"You have missed him," he says.

" Wait a minute," I retort scornfully and con-
fidently, but with all confidence fast waning from
my heart, "keep your eye on him up the hill!"
Mine are both on him through my "binocular,"

N 2

i8o SPORT.

but a sort . of gloomy conviction is just stealing
on me that after all some touch of " stag fever "
must have possessed me, and that I really had
missed him ; when a huge reaction of hope and
joy welled up within me as I saw him lag behind
the others up the hill, slower and slower grow his
steps, till the others stop and wait for him. When
he overtakes them they start again, but he cannot
follow far. He lies down on the snow. I turn a
triumphant glance on the old prophet of evil, whose
face, though less self-confident, has not lost its old
pessimist expression. The two young stags seem
puzzled, but they loyally detail themselves on vedette
duty while their chief rests. He himself, wounded
as he evidently is, keeps a sharp look-out clown
the slope in our direction, and the old hunter,
while admitting that I have not missed, tells me
we have no chance of getting him.

*' They may stay there to-night," he growled, it
was getting dusk, " but they'll be miles away m
the mornin2"."

DEER-STALKING. i8i

** Then I'll go at them at once," I reply, whereat
he shakes his head more gravely than ever.

" No chance to-night," he says. " You can't reach
him where he is, and we've no time to wait, no
food ; we had better get down to a scvter before
dusk, many bad places to cross."

This is true, but I signify to him that I must
try for him again notwithstanding ; he reluctantly
assents, gloomily reverting to the " no food " fact,
and darkly alluding to two hunters once lost and
starved to death on the fjeld under similar cir-
cumstances. We start, however, and after a con-
siderable detour reach a point where, in contradiction
to the old hunter's opinion, I thought I should
get within range of him, but to my great dis-
appointment, I find not only that the distance is
too far for a shot, but that he has got up again
and is slowly following his companions higher up
the mountain side.

And now a very serious consultation takes place,
with grave division of opinion. The old hunter

1 82 SPORT.

Strongly urging our Immediate retreat, pointing out
the danger of remaining out all night, the risk of
finding ourselves enveloped in mist at daybreak,
the impossibility, in his view, of coming up again
yi\i\i the stag ; which he declares can only be slightly
wounded, or he would not have got up again after
he had once lain down, and playing finally his trump
card of " no food." I, on the other hand, ridicule
the "danger" argument. The night is not cold,
and it is short ; we have each a plaid or blanket ;
as to mist, I have a compass. The stag, I assert
with solemn adjurations, is mortally wounded, and
it would be cruelty, as well as folly, to leave him
on the hill ; as to " no food," there Is the stag
himself, whose liver we would certainly fry for
an early breakfast to-morrow. But the old hunter
will not agree, and he reinforces his past arguments
by pointing out what had till then escaped my
observation, certain disquieting indications in the
weather. My other native, by name " Ole," an
old and devoted adherent of mine, will do just

DEER-STALKING. 183

as "Bromley" — no courtesy titles or prefixes in
Norway — pleases, but his opinion is with the old
prophet's— he is for home.

Thus out-voted and unable to face the responsi-
bility should evil befall either of them, even if none
did me, I silently bow my head and give the signal
to descend. We have actually proceeded some
distance on our downward course Avhen, in one of
my many lingering looks behind, I see something
on the sky-line which makes me stop suddenly,
pull out my glass and level it in the direction where
we last saw the deer. Yes 1 I was not deceived !
I distinctly see the horns of the big stag on the
sky-line — not moving forwards, but tindulating up
and doivn. A cry of savage joy escapes me, for
I well know what this means, and I sternly inform
my companions that they may do as they like, but
that I shall remain where I am, or seek such
shelter as I can find till daylight, when I will go
and put an end to the sufferings of the poor beast,
who was dying above us. The old hunter also looks

i84

SPORT

through my glass, and his ferocity — exceeding mine
— rather shocks me, as he exclaims with a truculence

HE IS VERY, VERY SICK.

which I cannot describe, " Han er meget, meget
syg — Bromley er ret " — " He is very, very sick —
Bromley is right." With his newly-born belief that we

DEER-STALKING, 185

shall get the deer, his nervous anxiety about weather,
mist, and food has quite vanished, and he cheerfully
sets to work to select a camp for the night.

Before long, he informs me that he has found a
splendid " night-quarter " for mxC, and takes me to
a large boulder rock with a hole under it, into
which, by close imitation of the movements of a
snake, I can contrive to crawl, and where, lying
on my back, the end of my nose just touches the
roof. There is an uncomfortable affinity to sepul-
ture in this, but as it has now, alas ! begun to rain
outside, I must not be particular. My men tear
up heavy mats of dwarf juniper and reindeer moss,
with which they almost totally cover themselves,
and we sleep or doze as best we can. It is but
a very few hours ; very slowly, though, do they
pass. At last, however, they do pass.

" Night wancp, the mists around the mountain curled
Melt into morn, and light awakes the world.'

With the earliest dawn we emerge from our graves,

i86 SPORT.

with appropriate corpse-like complexions, and shiver-
ing with cold. Vain thouo;hts of hot coffee fruit-
lessly agitate our minds as we peer despairingly
into the thick blanket of mist, which verifies the
old kill-joy's overnight prediction, and which, break-
fastless, save the slender crust preserved from yes-
terday's reckless mid-day meal, we must wait the
chance of the sun's power to dispel.

It is weary work. The fog being too dense
for us to venture far from the ground we know,
for there are ugly precipices about us, we stamp
backwards and forwards to warm ourselves, and,
in default of food, smoke many pipes, till at last
more genial prognostications from the old prophet
cheer us. He sees signs, he says, of the almost
immediate lifting of the fog, and in a few minutes,
as if by magic, its whole chilly burden is removed,
and we are almost dazzled by the clear brilliancy
of the morning. My glass is out in an instant,
and I sweep the spot where I had last seen the
stag, but he is no longer there, nor can I make

DEER-S TA LKING. 1 87

him out elsewhere ; so we start at once for a
better view from the realms above. We have a
severe climb, attended by an incident which might
have spared the reader of these pages some trouble.
We have to go some distance round to avoid a
very steep snowfield, the labour of climbing which
would have been very heavy, even if we were
sure of its safe condition, which we are not. We
ascend on the left of it, which is better going, al-
ihouQ^h our true course is on the rioht. Towards
the top of it cliffs of rocks overhanging it, and ex-
tending for some distance to our left, make it
necessary for us to cross the snow to gain the
now easier ascent to our right. The angle of the
slope is rather severe, but the snow is of the right
consistency — soft enough to allow us to dig steps
with our feet — and so long as we proceed cautiously
in this manner there is no danger ; but when we
near the other side I grow very impatient at the
slowness of our progress, and disregarding, in the
impetuosity of my youth, the old hunter's grave

i88 SPORT.

warnings, I rush forwards, like Gladstone's trade
prosperity, with " leaps and bounds." For a time,
like him, I succeed admirably, and am a long way-
ahead of my dull-sailing consorts, when suddenly I
come upon one of the dangers against which the
** old man " had so often warned me — a place where
only a thin covering of snow concealed a surface of
hard smooth ice — the frozen overflow of some
hidden spring or water-course. In an instant my
feet fly from under me, and, falling heavily on my
left side, I hear a cry of alarm from my two com-
panions as I begin to slide down the slope. I
know what that means, and also what to do. I
turn on my back, and dig my elbows and heels
into the snow, but it is too hard just here for such
a drag or break to act sufficiently ; and, gradually
at first, but with fast increasing velocity as soon as
the first frantic efforts to stop myself have failed, I
plunge downwards till all steerage power is gone,
almost all breath is gone — all will is gone — and I
am a mere fortuitous atom shootinof over the

DEER-STALKING. 189

snow surface at the sole mercy of the law of
ofravitation.

Reader, were you ever f^ce to face with death,
and that too of an awful and violent nature ? It
looks horrible on paper, but it is not so bad. The
moment all power of self-control was gone I re-
membered that at the bottom of this snow slide
was a hideous precipice, over which, unless some
miracle intervened, I should be projected in a few
seconds. I have heard tell that persons in some-
what similar positions have had the whole of their
past lives presented to them by an instantaneous
process of mental photography. Nothing of the
kind occurred to me. I am not aware that I was
even frightened. I don't say this boastfully. On
occasion I can "funk" as freely as anybody. Prob-
ably there was no time for it ; but I repeat that
I, knowing this ghastly gulf to be then below me,
and that I was travelling towards it with the speed
of a meteor, somehow felt small, if any, anxiety
as to the result. I had had some narrow escapes

igo SPORT.

in my life — and whether I believed in my "star,"
or disbelieved in the precipice, or had suddenly
become a fatalist, or my faculties had been be-
numbed and paralysed by horror, I cannot say.
But the fact remains that though in my mind —
or what remained of it during this cannon-shot
trajectory of the body — there might be wonder or
curiosity as to how it would all end, there was no
fear, no regret, no thought of " England, home,
and beauty," no farewell to life, even as I actually
shot over the brink ; and instead of being dashed
to pieces, rolled over and over, finally subsiding,
half smothered by the miniature avalanche which
accompanied me, after falling about eight or ten
feet on to an almost flat ledge about thirty or forty
feet broad, invisible from above, and immediately
overhanging a precipice of something like 1,000
feet sheer fall.

Not till I had extricated myself from the snow-
bed in which I was almost buried, and shaken
myself well together again, ascertained that no

DEER-STALKING. 191

bones were broken, and looked, hot and out of
breath as I was, with an icy shiver in my very
marrow at the awful void below me, when also
out of invisible depths arose angry mutterings and
deep-mouthed thunderings — the result of displace-
ments caused by the concussion of myself and
attendant avalanche on the ledcre — do I recoo-nise
the fact that a very ancient family has just had
a narrow escape of total extinction in its direct
male line. Turning from these serious reflections
to immediate action, I, after sending back a re-
assuring holloa, " Alt ret ! " (" all-right "), in reply
to kind and anxious inquiries conveyed in stentorian
yells from above, commence the Sisyphus business
of regaining the altitude from which I had rolled
down ; and a long business it is. I stick to the
rocks, for I dare not trust myself again on the
snow, and it takes me nearly an hour to recover
the ground lost in less than half a minute. My
natives come three parts of the way down to meet
me, and are profuse and energetic in unmistakably

192 SPORT.

sincere congratulations on my escape ; though the
old hunter, who professes to know every Inch of
the ground, and does know most of It, declares
that he knew of the ledge before, but had feared
for my safety even from that height of fall, con-
sidering the pace I was travelling.

No time, however, Is to be lost. There Is a
gaunt look in his face and a craving depression
in my own interior which commands immediate
search for our still somewhat apocryphal breakfast
on deer's fry. I anxiously examine the *' toy,"
which, fortunately, was In charge of the old hunter
when I made my "terrific descent," which, if it
could only have been transferred to the Aquarium,
would have made the fortune of that establishment,
to the ruin of Zazel or Leotard, and, after taking
the precaution of recapping it, I resume stalking
operations.

Not more than half an hour's hard work from
the latitude of my slip gains us a position whence
a good view Is attained of the ground on some

DEERSTALKING 193

portion of which I feel sure the stag is to be
found, and to my great joy we discover him on
the edge of a snowfield about 300 yards above us.
He is lying down, but not dead, as I half-expected
to find him, and, most favourable sign of all, for
us, deserted by his escort. Still, as I cannot tell
how far he may be incapacitated from the use of
his locomotive powers, and as there is nothing so
watchful — poor brute ! — as a wounded deer, extreme
caution is necessary to " get in " at him. The
ground, however, is favourable, and I contrive to
get within 100 yards of him, when I unfortunately
dislodge a loose stone, which clatters with horrid
disturbance of the stillness down the steep below
me, when he rises and walks languidly across the
snow, turning his head towards me. Ah me ! I
can see the sort of piteous look now, as if con-
scious of my presence and purpose. The distance
is full far for the "toy," as he passes about 130
yards off, but he offers a fair broadside shot, in
full relief against the white background, and I am

o

194

SPORT.

toe eager to refuse it, though the old hunter begs
me to wait; and, taking a full sight behind the
shoulder — he is far above me — I fire, and plainly

" IIAN FALDER.

hear the crack of the bullet against his side. He
i:eems to take no notice of this, beyond quietly
movin<T on aoain, without even a start or swerve.

DEER-STALKING. 195

I am puzzled and vexed. " Load quick," whispers
the old hunter, and I hurriedly do so ; but as
I am in the act of ramminsf down the bullet — it
was long before the days of the blessed breech-
loader— he — the old hunter — utterly abandoning the
'' sotto voce'' of the hills, shouts aloud, "Han
falder ! " "He falls!" — which, indeed, looking up
from my task I see him doing, tumbling forward
on his knees, and breaking, alas ! one of his splendid
horns the while — and is off full-speed over the
snow, up-hill and steep as it is ; and, old as he is,
he has reached the stag, and, with butcherous and
uneducated violence, has cut a great hole in his
throat, through which he pulls and completely severs
the windpipe, before I, young as I am, can get
up to him with my reloaded weapon. He is a
grand beast, the dimensions of his feet alone, the
deep impressions of which in moss and snow had
so filled me with awe during yesterday's stalk,
testify to his unusual size and weight, and I count
no less than forty-seven points on his horns.

o 2

196 SPORT.

And now a strange alteration takes place in the
usually grave, reserved, and reverend demeanour
of the old hunter. After surveying the stag for
some moments with a curious expression, a com-
pound of wonder and admiration, on his face, he
snatches my little rifle from me, looks it all over,
then again at the stag, weighs it in his hand, and,
finally, after a rapid file-firing ejaculation of the
word " Nej, nej, nej, nej, nej," he bursts into loud
and boisterous laughter, waves his greasy old cap
in the air, his thin locks wavins: in the wind,
slaps me violently on the back, pointing to the
stag and my despised " child's gun " alternately,
and finally executes a series of pedal contortions
which I believe he intended to be understood
as a dance. When my astonishment at this utter
metamorphosis has subsided, I produce my knife,
and make Ole, who now arrives breathless and in
a state of equal, though less demonstrative, glee,
help to shift the stag's quarters upwards, bleed
him scientifically, and slide him easily down to

DEER-STALKING. 197

where an ice-cold stream issues from the snow-
field. The old hunter now commences, and I
superintend the gralloch, while Ole casts about for
any moss or juniper roots which may possibly be
found dry enough to burn. This is at last suffi-
ciently collected, and slices of the liver, skewered
on a stick, are presented to the very first flames
which we succeed in producing. Very difficult
indeed do we find it to wait till they are even
" underdone." The " savoury smell " is too ex-
asperating to our pinched and neglected interiors,
as each morsel crackles and sputters on the spit.
Talk of self-denial 1 Here we did exercise it with
a vengeance, for, horrible as it may be to say it, I
was quite prepared — and if I had been alone should
possibly have done so — to have "gone in" for the
very first slice of liver blocd-raw. Let any one who
turns with disgust from this confession first try the
experiment of living for thirty consecutive hours, with
a considerable amount of hard work in the keenest
mountain air without food, before they condemn me.

198 SPORT.

I will not follow Homer's example and describe
our feast ; enough to say that craving nature was
appeased without bread, salt, vegetable, or condi-
ment of any kind, and that after a draught of
deliciously iced water — my brandy flask had been
exhausted long ago — we drag the stag into a
hollow between two upright rocks, and pile huge
stones on his carcase to preserve it from the
powerful and ravenous " glutton," who will wind
and hunt up to him for miles, tying my white
pocket handkerchief on his horn, the only portion
of him left protruding, to keep off equally intru-
sive and destructive birds of prey from his head
and eyes.

There we leave him alone in his glory " to be
called for " to-morrow, when the old hunter will
arrange for a couple of ponies to be waiting at
the nearest point practicable for cavalry, to receive
him, piecemeal, alas ! for, even with the two or
three sturdy auxiliaries whom he proposes to take
with him, he will be unable to convey him over

DEER-STALKING. 199

such ground as a whole. Then we commence our
descent towards the comparative civih'zation of a
sa:ter, where the prospect of a draught of fresh
milk fires our imagination, not without some minor
adventures, of which one, perhaps, may, from its
grotesqueness, be worth recording.

The old hunter, crawling first over an awkward
ridge of rock, which, he says, will save us a long
detour to avoid one of the many precipices between
us and the brushwood-covered mountain-side below,
suddenly utters a cry of alarm, rage, or pain, and
rushes back as fast as his all-fours formation will
allow, snatching and tearing at his hair and buffet-
ing his face, yelling out, " Tilbage ! tilbage ! slem
fluge ! slem fluge ! " "Go back! go back! bad flies!
bad flies ! " We, then, who had at first thought
him seized with a sudden madness, on seeino-
the cause — some enormous wasps clinging to his
hair and clothes — retired precipitately, and when
with our help he had killed or rid himself of these
angry assailants he explained that just in the

200 SPORT.

middle of the narrow rocky face which formed
our only practicable path, and which could only
be traversed in a crawling position, was a large
wasps' or hornets' nest. He was severely stung
already, and we, after vainly searching for a safe
passage past this formidable and unexpected obstacle,
actually have to turn back and retrace our steps,
for an hour's climb up the hill again, to out-
flank a steep cliff and arrive at a longer but
easier and safer descent. Then, having at last
reached the shaggy brushwood with many jeers
from "Ole" at the old hunter, for being turned
so far out of his course, as he puts it, with scath-
ing and somewhat unjust irony, "by a fly," wc
realize our draught of milk, and I finally reach
home late in the evening, tired but triumphant.

CHAPTER II.

THE ARTIFICIAL.

Now I hope no one will suppose that, in de-
scribing this second branch of my subject — the
stalking of what are, practically, preserved deer
on private property — as the "poor parody" of the
first I mean that it is, so far as actual and legiti-
mate stalking goes, at all easier than the first in
its accomplishment ; for though in my own ex-
perience I have never found much difference between
the two, I believe that, if anything, the second is
the more difficult. These deer, being more con-
stantly disturbed than they are likely to be in
localities more remote from human habitations,
being perhaps almost daily accustomed to see men
and to hear shots, have their watchful faculties

202 SPORT.

kept more alert by constant training, and are con-
sequently perhaps more difficult to approach than
those who possibly are only stalked once or twice
in a season, if at all. One difference, however, I
have observed ; if you miss or frighten a deer in
the wild country, there is no finding him in the
next corrie, as you often may do on " preserved "
ground ; he will make a ten-mile point or so, and
you will probably not see him again that day.
What I mean is that the whole thing is a make-
believe and a sham. You may be to all appearance
on a wild hill-top, surrounded by nature not yet
clothed by man, in her original and naked beauty,
and you may compare yourself, in the exuberant
arrogance of your sporting imagination, to the
savage hunter of the desert, but, as I say, it is
all a sham.

Nature, it is true, is left nude, but only because
she is not worth dressing, and instead of a desert
you are really in a reserved seat in a stall or private
box, at your sporting opera, as much so as if you

I

DEER-STALKING. 203

were occupying one of the posts of honour at a
" corner " in a battue. Here, as there, protection
hedges you round, and not only that, but hedges
round with still more exclusive barriers the splendid
Royal, whom you have vainly pursued all day, and
regard as the lie plies iiltra of animated vv^ildness.
Your host draws round him a cordon of privacy,
or he would not be here ; he even, perhaps, feeds
him in the winter, though this is now, I believe,
admitted to be a mistake, unless you are prepared
always to continue such "rate in aid"; for deer,
like their human fellows, become demoralised and
pauperised by this system, and will in future years,
whenever the least pinch occurs, always look to
you for help, and never attempt to help themselves ;
so that practically you both of you

He-

" Feed on one vain patron and enjoy
Th' extensive blessing of his luxury."

"Feasts the animal he dooms his feast,
And, tin he ends the being, makes it blest"

204 SPORT.

And 3'ou, his favoured guest, are appointed and
requested by him to " end his being." Let us
hope that you will do this in such accomplished
fashion that he, to continue the quotation —

"Sees no more the strolce, or feels the pain,
Than favoured man by touch ethereal slain."

At any rate, for the present at least, there is no
one to do it but yourself, no human form dare
venture on that sacred ground or come between
the wind and your nobility, or what is much more
important, the sensitive olfactory organs of your
quarry. This, in itself, detracts from the wildness
of the sport.

Then again you are " cribbed and confined " by
the *' march ; " beyond a certain point you dare not
pursue your quarry lest you drive him on to the
ground of some watchful neighbour, and often, oh,
how often ! for the very same reason, your host is
very sorry, Init he dare not send you into the forest

DEER-STALKING. 205

at all with the wind where it is; or even, if the
forest is your own, you yourself have to remain
at home for the same reason. All this takes away
from the "romance of the thing"; all this, too, is
the self-created obstacle to general sport caused
by indulgence in the luxury of unneighbourly
jealousy. It is the same feeling which prompts
a game preserver to " work his outsides." It is
pitiable, but perhaps natural. It is a mistake, too,
for if men were all generous in such matters and
worked their ground fairly, they would all have
much better sport ; but human nature varying as it
does, one mean and selfish rogue amid a whole
fraternity of generous men would reap all the ad-
vantage and contribute nothing to the general
good. So we go on, in true Christian fashion
spiting ourselves and spoiling our own sport for
fear of benefiting our neighbour.

But who shall tell, besides this difficulty, the
countless pitfalls which surround the young and
inexperienced deer-stalker ?

2o6 SPORT.

"Alas, unconscious of his doom,
The youthful victim climbs ! "

A friend of mine who ripened Into a grand
deer-stalker and sportsman, in his very earliest
years went, full of ardour, to the castle of a Scotch
grandee, the lord of many glens and corrles, to
visit whom and to be free of whose forest had
been the dream of his life. There, after a night
sleepless from excitement and full of the visions
of the stag-glories of the morrow, he chanced, as
he passed through some room or passage on his
way to breakfast on the eventful morning, to over-
hear his host's voice in the next room, and though
not accordlnof to his wont some fascination induced
him to stop and listen, and this is the appalling
dialogue which he heard.

The Dnke. — " Donald ! young Lord — (himself)
will go on the hill to-day."

Donald. — " Yes, your Grace."

The Dtike. — " Where will you take him ? "

DEER-STALKING. 207

Donald. — Well, your Grace, is he to kill a stao-
or have a shot, or only see deer, or just go for
a wa-a-lk ? "

Long and terrible was the pause, and painfully
excited the interest of the listener, before, in grave
measured tones, the evidently well-weighed and
thought-out decision reached his ear, — "Well, Donald,
you may just take him a walk!" I never heard,
or forget, the sequel — possibly there was none. The
story always ended there, and being one of extreme
antiquity perhaps is not altogether to be depended
on, but if true this young man was, at least, fore-
warned of his doom, and easily learned the tricks
of the deer-stalking trade, of which many old and
young remain long, and perhaps for ever, ignorant.

What an adamantine, unrelenting heart must he
have who issues such an edict ! and of what pitiless
and vile materials must his be composed who
executes it ! How can he walk all day beside a
young bright being, who in his innocence confides
to him all his sanguine hopes and aspirations, not

2o8 SPORT.

one of which he knows can possibly be reaHsed ;
who trusts him impHcitly, who does his bidding, no
matter what, without doubt or hesitation, who
follows him like a dog, and, as Scrope describes it,
"lies down to hand like a pointer"? How can he
watch him panting up the steep brae, or straining
his eyes to see the deer, which, if seen at all
he is never destined to approach ! Cruel as all
this sounds, it has existed, and so long as selfish-
ness and duplicity remain among men — and when
will they depart ? — it will exist.

One safeguard, and that only against a repeti-
tion of the offence, has the hapless guest in such
cases, — never revisit the proprietor, and pay the
stalker by results, " No stag, no tip,"' is a good
rule. But if you miss ? some may say, how hard
to mulct the stalker for your own want of skill ;
"No shot, no tip," would be fairer? No! I'll
tell you why. I was once taken for a " walk " by
a stalker, but not being quite such a fool as he
thought me — though there was plenty of margin,

DEER-STALKING. 209

— I detected his treachery at once, and at once
came to an understanding with him. " There," I
said, " are the deer." The lazy hound had been
lying on his back "spying" them and some others
miles oft' for hours. I had selected my stag long
ago, and seeing the day slipping away, I had at
last roused him up to try for him, when he started
on a course which was obviously the wTong one.
" Here, you see, is the wind. If you go that way
you will not 'get in,' you will have a dangerous
wind and exposed ground to cross. If you go this
way you will have a good wind and shelter -all
the way up to the final stalk, and as I believe your
employer wishes me to get a stag, whatever you
may do, I mean to go this way, and if you don't
mean to help me, say so, and I shall either try
them alone or ^0 straight home."

Then he altered his tone completely, but I
marked and afterwards remembered a vindictive
look in his eye. *' Of course that seemed the best
way, but the wind blew quite differently below,"

p

2IO SPORT.

&c., &c., " however, he would try it." The wind
did not blow differently below ; without the least
difficulty "we got in and crawled up to a mossy
knoll not fifty yards below which I knew the stag
was feeding. Then before I could stop him or
quite get up to his side — he was crawling first —
he raised his head over the top of the knoll, and
after a good look bobbed it suddenly down, and
beckoning me up handed me the rille, making
gestures with the other hand signifying that the
stag was immediately below. " Noo's your time,"
he whispered, as I silently cocked the rifle and
slowly raised my head above the knoll. Horror!
There was the stag in the middle of half a dozen
deer galloping down the hill as hard as he could
o-o. I sprang to my feet with, I fear, an expletive
which I can't reproduce here, and his haunches being
well towards me I let fly a snap shot at the back
of his neck as he was disappearing over the next
ridoe, and though the distance was well under
eighty yards, of course I missed him. Never can

DEER-STALKING. 211

I forget the expression of affected surprise, mingled
with gratified animosity and triumphant low cunning
which burned with an evil gleam on the usually
blank face of the traitor as he almost chzicklcd
out, " Well, you haf missed him, but he was ferry
near ! "

It is almost Incredible, but I kept my temper.
I did not strike him, or even call him one of
the wicked names which crowded In such tumultuous
numbers to my lips. I was quite quiet, and only
said, " How clumsily you did that ; you might easily
have frightened him without showing yourself up to
me as you did. Please show me the nearest way
home ! " Not one other word did I utter, except
to request the villain to keep silent, when he, with
lloods of lies, called upon his Maker — his Maker !
— to witness that he had not put the deer off,
that my cap was the wrong colour, that I had
coughed, that they had got the wind which he had
warned me was queer thereabouts, that I had fired
too quick, that I should have fired sooner, that

P 2

212 SPORT.

he had been thirty years on the hill and that
such a thing had never happened before, that he
would, even with his large family, have given ^i
out of his own pocket for me to have got that
stag, — till the genius of Ananias himself, or even
the Government front bench answering questions
about Gordon, would have paled before the perennial
flow of his exuberant falsehoods. Sternly silent
all the way home I trudged, and next day, never
to return, left that ill-omened glen and its unfee'd
stalker, whom, on the " no shot, no tip " principle,
I should have had to pay.

But, ineliora canamus, few, thank Heaven, are
even as this man. I will start, if the reader will
consent to embody himself in me, and not object
to be put forward or back, as the case may be — ■
let me hope for his sake it will be forward, — to
the age of thirty or thereabouts, on a serene morn-
ing in the middle of September, from a real High-
land lodge, a small but very solidly-built square
edifice, flanked by round towers with extinguisher

' :f'i(\\\ - ^ / '

, \

DEER-STALKING. 215

tops, an imitation of the old Scotch castle so much
affected by the last and some of the present generation
of Highland proprietors, for a day's stalking on the
best ground of a celebrated forest.

I eat the breakfast of health and o-ood con-
science, giving the preference to porridge and milk
over tea and coffee, fried eggs and hashed venison
over finnon haddocks and ham, winding up with a
glass of the splendid water, with, perhaps, a slight
dash of Iron In It, which wells up close above the
house, and then jump Into the dog-cart and drive
up the glen to the place appointed, where Dcnald
and Archie are sitting In the heather above the
road, spying, of course, the face of the hill opposite
with an Interest which, considering we are not
going on that side at all to-day, seems a waste of
research. On the roadside, too. Is a long-limbed
laddie with a couple of ponies duly caparisoned
with deer-saddles, from whence hang Infinite straps.
At the age, dear reader, which we have both
agreed shall be ours during this day's stalk, and

2i6 SPORT.

as we are both of us in fair condition, I shall
probably decline on your account and my own the
offer now made me of a mount on one of these,
and when my rifle, luncheon-bag, and waterproof
overcoat have been transferred from the vehicle to
the hands and shoulders of my now smiling and
assiduous attendants, I join Donald, and commence
the ascent of the hill along a skilfully engineered
path, the steep zigzags of which we can trace far
above us.

Later in life we shall not be so proud or so
humane, and the poor pony will have to pant up
with some twelve stone extra on hie oack. A
deer-saddle is not an easy-chair, and where the
path is at all steep it is rather harder work to hang
on it than to walk ; but when mid-life is past, if
you still affect the hill, you will not despise it.
Although, as I said, in fair condition, I am not
quite willing to go Donald's pace up the hill. Slowly
and easily as his long legs seem to move, they get
somehow over the ground In a fashion which. In a

DEER-STALKING. 217

certain degree, keeps me " extended," and I want
to be quite fresh for the ample work which I know
awaits me when we reach the " tops." So, being
a httle too proud to ask him to stop, I now and
then affect an interest in the view which I really
do not feel, and spare my legs and lungs without
wound to my feelings, although in my heart I have
a shrewd conviction that he is not taken in by this
very old manoeuvre. There is something very irritat-
ing in seeing your companion calmly striding on,
with not even a dew of perspiration on his brow,
and hardly a heave of his chest, when you are
raining with it and panting audibly ; and a friend
of mine, a statesman of distinction and middle age,
told me that on one occasion he felt this so strongly
that he positively conceived a bitter hatred towards
the young gillie — who, poor fellow, was going as
slow as he could to accommodate him — and vainly
racked his brains in search of some one physical
feat which he could chillenge his young tormentor
to perform in which he — my friend — would have a

2i8 SPORT.

fair chance of victory. At last the brilhant idea
occurred to him that he would take him up to
London, and there dare him to cross Piccadilly a
dozen times in the very height of the season.
" At about the second crossing," he concluded with
a malignant smile, " he would probably be killed."
However, about half way up, where the ascent
is at its very steepest, Donald stops of his own
accord, and both he and Archie proceed with
solemn gravity to slice a few shreds from what
looks like a short stick of liquorice, but which
purports to be tobacco. After rolling these in the
palms of their hands, they insert them into black
clay pipes which, after a sharp contest Avith the
wind and a lucifer match, they succeed in lighting,
producing however, as neither of the pipes will
draw properly, a very inadequate amount of smoke,
in spite of most violent suction ; but nevertheless
they both appear to derive great comfort and
gratification from their exertions, and recommence
the climb with renewed vigour. Why, by the way.

DEER-S TA LKING . 219

does a Highlander's pipe never draw ? and why
does he always light it just before going up a
steep hill ?

At last, after several of my fraudulent admira-
tions of distant scenery, we reach the top, or such
an elevation as eives us command of a wide extent
of deer-frequented territory, and our sticks being
stuck In the ground, and our glasses unslung, we
settle down to a deliberate spy. I am very
anxious to fmd the deer for myself, and eagerly
sweep the plains far and w^de with a glass which
I have high Bond Street authority for esteeming
as the best ever made ; but whether Donald's is
still better, or from his knowing better where to
look for them, or from his own superior keenness
of vision, his telescope first remains steady on
one spot, and he informs me, after some previous
low mutterings to Archie, that he " has them."
Guided by him, I make out some small red-brown
specks against a distant hill-side, but whether they
are stags or hinds, good as my glass is, I cannot

2 20 SPORT.

make out. Donald, however, says they are mostly
staofs, and that there are some " shootable beasts "
among them " whatever," and after long scrutiny
and more dissertations in Gaelic with Archie, which
makes me feel rather jealous and " out of it,"
he shuts up his glass, and with a long expira-
tion, something between a sigh and a grunt, which
always proceeds from him when his mind is made
up, rises and says, " We will just be getting a bit
nearer to them, sir." Keeping under the sky-line,
we make a lone semi-circular march alono^ the
" tops " till we reach a more favourable post of
observation. Here I have no difficulty in making
them out, and in verifying Donald's assertion that
there are some " shootable beasts " among them.
There are, indeed ! and only too many ; some with
such grand heads and deep girths that the very
sight of them even from that distance through
my glass causes my heart to beat quicker.

A sudden perturbation now possesses Donald,
several times monosyllables in the unknown tongue

V

.A-

^' i:\\~^ ^ >

DEER-STALKING. 223

escape him, to all appearance involuntarily, in alternate
tones of surprise, doubt, incredulity, astonishment,
and finally of awe-stricken certainty. Then, after
some unintelligible confidences to Archie, he turns
to me, and in deep, reverential tones, a sort of con-
versational *' dim religious light," he almost falters
out — Highlander as he is and unaccustomed to
bad grammar — the illiterate exclamation, " It's him !"
"Who?" "What?" I inquire more with my
eyes than my tongue, for I am utterly at a
loss for the cause of this sudden change from
his usual calmness. "It's 'Clubfoot' himself!" he
tremulously replies.

And then a sudden fierce joy, not without a
sharp pang of anxiety, nearly akin to fear, seized
on my heart, seme such feeling as might have
been experienced by some subordinate or second-
class commander in one of the old campaigns at
suddenly discovering that the force opposed to
him was led by Napoleon himself. For " Club-
foot," so called from a peculiar formation disclosed

224 SPORT.

by the impress of his feet, was, I knew, an historical
stag, of unknown age, of whom tradition alternately
reported that he was both supernatural and
invulnerable ; the hitherto unexplained survivor
of many supposedly deadly wounds inflicted by
sportsmen whom I recognised and acknowledged
as infinitely my superiors in the craft. And here
was I, face to face with him and all his long
antecedents of history and mystery ! He is a
mythology in himself. Seldom has he been re-
vealed to mortal ken ; yet to me, to-day, he is
present in the flesh ; to me to-day has fallen the
lot of an encounter which shall either swell the
ample roll of his previous victories over sporting
man, or raise me at one spring to an elevation
of sporting glory far beyond my ambition's wildest
dreams or my own self-conscious deserts. I must
not quail — I do not. I accept the position, and,
outwardly at all events, calm, I address myself to
the comprehension of how Donald, who now like-
wise seems to have mastered his emotion, proposes

DEER-STALKING. 225

to conduct the stalk. Having pointed him out to
me — still with bated breath and deferential tone as
one who speaks of a superior being- — he explains
that, " only for that beastly hind " — indicating some
half a dozen of these watchful pests on the hill-
side opposite to that on which the stags are feeding
— we could easily " get in " down a burn below us.

Having reconnoitred as far as we dared in this
direction and waited in vain some time for the
chance of these obstructors moving, we sadly re-
linquish the hope of gaining the longed-for shelter
of the burn v/hich would have led us in below them,
and turn back for a weary march round the hill
to come in above them, — " A much more ticklish
job!" as Donald remarks with his usual pride
when he produces what he considers a real English
expression ; and indeed, when the march round is
accomplished, so it proves.

The stags are lying down, just on the top of a
ridge below us, separated from the higher ridge
from which we are now spying them by a wide,

Q

226 SPORT.

flat, mossy and marshy expanse, in which save a
few peat bogs, there is hardly any shelter ; and
devoutly does Donald pray that they may rise
and feed over the ridge, for, as he says, we shall
have to " cra-a-1 " nearly all the way if they remain
where they are, adding, "It is far to cra-a-1!"
It is indeed, as I presently discover. " Clubfoot,"
however, is not among them, and after waiting
some time in the hope of their either moving
down to him or his moving up to them, Donald
decides to send Archie back again to try to move
the rest of the deer up towards those in sight of us.
Meanwhile we descend the slope below us, partly
protected by natural trenches and rifts in the peat
bog, till we reach the edge of the flat exposed
ground above mentioned. There, after long cogita-
tion, Donald informs me that we must "just cra-a-l"
till we can get under the shelter of some rather
more uneven ground, which he shows me at what
appears to me an awful distance off, considering
the mode of progression we are forced to adopt ;

DEER-STALKING. 227

where he says we shall have a much better chance,
whether Archie succeeds in moving the deer up-
wards or not. Rather less resigned than despondent,
for I hate a long crawl, I follow Donald's lead,
with close imitation of his movements, first on
all fours and then down flat, as though the primeval
curse of the serpent had descended on me — " Upon
thy belly shalt thou go " ! I worm myself along
through wet moss and black peat slime, hugging
and affectionately muzzling into the bosom of
mother earth, filthy as it is just here, and drawing
myself forward by the roots of heather or tufts of
coarse grass, without daring to bend a limb save
horizontally, for a distance which seems to be miles,
but is really only a few hundred yards ; now and
then stopping and remaining immovable in obedi-
ence to the warning of Donald's back-turned hand.
For I place implicit confidence in him and will
not attempt to raise my head an inch to see what
is going on, this being one of the exceptions to
the proverb, " Two heads are better than one."

Q 2

223 SPORT.

On one of these occasions, however, I cant help
seeing the cause of the cessation of our slow pro-
gress ; the head of a hind appears from above a
low mossy knoll on our right, followed, to my
horror, by her whole body, looking so dreadfully
big and near that I consider our detection certain,
as indeed it would have been had she advanced
but a few more steps. As it is, she stops on the
top of the knoll, looking beyond and over us, and
after a long and careful scrutiny of the safe dis-
tance, apparently disregarding the dangerous fore-
ground, she calmly turns her head, scratches her
ear with her hind foot, and walks out of sight again.
Then after Donald has slowly raised himself a foot
or so, and as slowly subsided, his long limbs re-
commence their mysterious gliding motion, and I
follow like a tender to his engine.

At last — oh, how long it was ! — we reach the
more uneven ground, and can actually assume a
sitting posture, a blessed relief, and Donald lays
down my rifle against the bank and whispers his

BEERS TA LKING. 229

request that I shall stop there " for a whilie." He
wishes to reconnoitre alone. I assent, as I do to

^o-^v^v"" ""' 'if'^'^

DONALD RECOXNOITRES.

everything he proposes. It may be humiliating —
and I rather feel that it is so — to abnegate all

230 SPORT.

one's rights and Independent action in this way; to
become a dummy, a machine, a mere component
part of General Donald's attacking force, a piece
of artillery to be kept in rear or hidden, and only
to be used when he chooses to call me into action.
I feel all this, but the stake is so large ; I am
playing for " Clubfoot," and I dare not take the
game out of Donald's hands, knowing as I do how
skilfully he plays it; otherwise in an ordinary stalk
I require to see the cards a good deal more plainly
than I am doing here. So he departs, and is absent
about twenty minutes, while I, with the aid of a
silent match, indulge in a pipe.

On his return, which he accomplishes so noise-
lessly that he Is within three yards of me before
I hear him, he informs me that there are some
very fine stags below that we could " get in " at,
but that "Clubfoot" is not amonof them. He how-
ever is, no doubt, below the ridge, out of sight,
and when Archie, who he can tell by the move-
ments of the lowest deer has already commenced

DEER-S TALKING.

211

operations, shows himself a little more, he will
move up to us. Anyhow, we must now be going ;
so, taking up the rifle, he brings my heart into
my mouth by drawing it half out of its cover
and then as soon as v/e emerge from my shelter

/

,/

,H^'^^^^,

N,

a=3^

A DWARF FOREST OF HORNS APPEARS,

we assume the all-fours' formation and half crawl,
half slide down a gentle slope for some distance,
till a dwarf forest of horns appears, as though
stuck in the ground, in our front.

After some consideration, and looking v/cll all

232 SFOKT.

round him, Donald inclines a little to his right and
reaches a very slight undulation, in which we are
rather better concealed, and with a gentle forward
beckon of his finger summons me to his side, and
— oh, moment of anxious delight ! — hands me the
rifle, for which I clear away a sort of embrasure
out of the coarse grass and moss before me, and
with eyes intently fixed on the tips of the horns
which are less than lOO yards away from me, I
await my chance. " Tak time when they rise, sir,"
whispers Donald, with his mouth close to my ear ;
" don't fire till I show him." I nod assent and
then we wait, and wait ; often do we gently and
imperceptibly shift the pressure of our bodies from
one side to the other to gain relief from the crampy
sensation which a long continuance in the attitude
of prone recumbency is apt to create, and we are
just beginning to wonder whether Archie has made
a mistake, when at last the long-expected move
occurs ; head after head, broadside after broadside
stand revealed. They are all looking down the

DEER-STALKING. 233

hill-Side, evidently watching the disturbed deer below,
all but one — a grand stag with a royal head, who
is standing and looking towards us — a most tempting
three-quarters' broadside shot, not eighty yards off.
'* Shall I take him ? " I whisper to Donald, with
the sight of my rifle steady on the right place.
" Well," he slowly replies, with the tail of his eye,
as I feel sure, anxiously searching for the appear-
ance of "Clubfoot" on the scene, "that's a splendid
stag ! " As the last word leaves his lips my finger
presses the trigger, and, with a start and a bound,
he gallops frantically past us up the hill. Of the
rest of the herd, some scamper along the ridge,
apparently in doubt whether to go up or down ;
some stand still, and while I am hurriedly asking
Donald as to the effect of my shot, he interrupts
me with the excited exclamation, " Quick, sir,
quick ! the other barrel ! There he is ! That's
' Clubfoot ' I " and sure enough, in all his broadside
bulk and wide-spread dignity of horn, easily dis-
tinguishable, exalted above his fellows, this preter-

234 SPORT.

natural hero passes before me on the edge of the
ridge at a steady trot, giving me an easy chance
within the lOO yards. I fire, but miss, of course —
who can prevail against enchantment ? " Load
quickly, sir ! " says Donald in a frenzy of excite-
ment, and with his aid two cartridges are soon in
the rifle, which he then snatches from my hand.
" This way ! we must run for it, but we'll have
another chance yet ! " and we do run ! first along
the ridge to the left, keeping just above it, " Club-
foot" having run below it. Then Donald suddenly
halts and plunges back at me. " Tur-r-n back ! this
way ! this way ! " and darts down the brae in a
slantinof direction to the riy^ht. I follow as I best
can, a rough descent enough, sliding, not to say
tumbling, down the heather, jumping over ugly
chasms, progressing at full speed over ground difficult
at ordinary times to traverse at a walk — of course,
it is all or most of it down hill — still I can hardly
understand my own activity and fleetness. The
wings of IMcrcury seem attached to my feet, and

DEER-STALKING. 235

I fly over the ground as one does in a dream.
My blood is up now, and I thoroughly understand
Donald's tactics, for I can see the deer travelling
below us on our left, cleverly headed back by
Archie from crossing to the opposite side of the
corrie, and I see the point Donald is making for
— a knoll below us which will command the spot
where the foremost deer have already crossed a
small burn, and where, consequently, " Clubfoot,"
who is well in the rear, is sure to cross to.

Panting, I reach the knoll and throw myself
down on the soft moss beside the ride which
Donald has already placed ready for me, with the
barrel protruding down the steep hill-side. ** Tak
time — Tak time, sir ! " he exhorts. " That's not
him ! " he almost shrieks, as I seem about to shoot
at one of the minor deer, but I am only judging
the distance by the sight of the rifle on the beasts
as they pass. " He's last but one ! " — No fear !
I know him well — and although a galloping shot
at about iSo yards is not quite so easy as one

236 SPORT.

trotting at under loo, under which circumstances
I had just missed him, I have a sort of bloodthirsty
confidence in myself this time, and as he comes by
at last, lolloping along through the burn at an easy
canter with his great broadside full to me, I fire —
and miss again ! " Behind and over him ! " mutters
Donald in a tone of despair — but I heed him not ;
I knew it, he had just dipped downwards going
into the burn as I pulled, and I take the sight just
before his shoulder and fire the second barrel as
he mounts the bank out of it, and when he appears
— as galloping deer will do sometimes — to be
almost standing still. "That's in him!" shouts
Donald in a very different tone ; another stride and
he reels half backwards. " He's down ! " follows
as a comparative, and when the next moment I
see the renowned " Clubfoot " with his heels kick-
ing in the air, a thunderous " He's dead ! " comes
as a superlative from the now frantic Donald, who
exhorting me to load again and follow him, " in
case," darts down the hill-side with prodigious bounds.

DEER-STALKING. 237

griping for his knife as he goes. I load and follow,
but my services are not needed ; no *' in case "
occurs. Before I get half-way down I see Donald
savagely occupied with his knife at the veteran's
chest, and the grand historic head at rest on the
mossy ground. When I arrive on the spot, Donald's
face positively glows and effervesces with delioht
and pride, and I am conscious of an increased
deference in his demeanour towards myself, which,
though there never was any previous lack of respect
on his part, is on the whole, I cannot deny it,
rather pleasant to me.

There is no doubt of the fact that a certain
personal aggrandisement has accrued to me.
Throughout this glen and forest, and the whole
deer-stalking district around, the " man who
killed ' Clubfoot ' " will enjoy a certain celebrity,
deserved or not. I try not to exhibit undue
exaltation, and I shower praises on Donald for his
skill in the stalk, and especially on Archie, who
now comes panting up from the opposite side.

233 SPORT.

more radiant, if anything, than Donald himself,
for his wonderful tact and sagacity in turning the
deer. Then we all th.ee admire and expatiate
on the thickness and breadth of the dead hero's
horns, which had eleven points, and examine the
mysterious foot, the malformation of which — a de-
ficiency of length in one of the toes — had given
him his name. " Ah, many's the top it has gone
over ! " ejaculates Donald in a sudden access of
poetical emotion, as he reverently lifts the re-
nowned member. After many conjectures as to
his probable weight, I produce my flask, and serve
out a mighty dram to both, not forgetting my-
self, or neglecting to join in the somewhat
barbarous toast or sentiment : " Here's more
blood ! "

Then first my mind reverts to the other stag
of whose fate I was still ignorant, and of whom
indeed, so absorbed had I been in the superior
attractions of ".Clubfoot," I had not even thought
since I fired the shot, which I knew must or

DEER-S TA L KING.

239

ought to have been a deadly one — and I ask
Donald's opinion. *' Oh, he's dead," says he
rather contemptuously. " Did you see him down ? "
I ask, being rather surprised at the assured

AN 01 D STALKEK WAITING FOR HIS DINNER WHILE DONALD PERFORMS THE LAST RITES ON

CLUBFOOT.

certainty of his assertion. " No, I never looked
at him again after I saw him start. I knew he
had it in the right place, and couldn't go fifty
yards. It's a long way up, sir, but maybe you'll

240 SPORT.

go up with Archie and look after him while I
stay and grallach ' Clubfoot,' or Archie can go alone,
for there'll be no need for the rifle."

I decide, however, to accompany Archie ; and after
a long climb we find, as Donald had predicted, my
first stag dead as a stone, about fifty or sixty yards
from the spot where I shot at him. He was a very
fine beast, fully as heavy as " Clubfoot," if not
heavier, as the latter, from age, had been "going
back" for some years. He likewise had a royal
head, but not of the same substance or width as
" Clubfoot's," a rather narrow and upright head, never
very picturesque, but he was in splendid condition.
" Indeed it is not every gentleman coming to
Scotland," suddenly discourses Archie in a mor-
alising tone as he surveys him, while turning up his
sleeves for the grallach, " that will kill two such
stags as these in one day." I modestly assent to
this, and attribute my success to extraordinary luck,
secretly, in the bottom of my heart, fishing for a
compliment, which, however, don't come, whether

DEER-STALKING.

i\\

in consequence of Archie's keenness of percep-
tion or the intentness of his researches into the
stag's interior I can't say ; but I feel rightly served

ARCHIE rULLS DOWN THE ROYAL,

by the miss-fire, and rather ashamed of myself, as
indeed I ought to be. When his bloody work is

R

242 SPORT.

ended I help him to drag the beast down the
hill, he taking the horns and I steering, plough
fashion, with his hind legs to avoid collisions with
rocks and stones and subsidences into inconvenient
dips and hollows.

So, eventually, we got him down to Donald, who
had likewise concluded his sanguinary rites in regard
to Clubfoot ; and the lad with the ponies having, with
the sort of instinct which never seems to fail him
on these occasions, turned up at a handy distance,
the two stags are soon mounted and scientifically
strapped on the ponies, and after a few struggles
with soft ground we attain the comparative solidity
of the springy hill path, and " down the shaggy
side," we " wind with joyous march our glad array."
I know of no more comfortable sensation or posi-
tion than after a good day's work with a happy
result, to quietly stroll down the hill, smoking the
pipe of contentment, following your spoil, v/hose
branching heads your eye hardly ever bears to
leave, as they undulate from side to side with

DEER-STALKING. 243

the motion of the ponies that carry them. This is,
I say, deh'ght enough on ordinary occasions, but on
this one — with the story I have to tell when I get
home! — and how much has this to do with all our
sport ! — I am in that often quoted, but rather
vague locality, the " Seventh Heaven," and there,
if the reader can imagine and consent to occupy
such a position, I will leave him.

THE END.

Richard Clay and Sons,
london and bungay.

5obn 1Riob^ d Co.,

GUN AND RIFLE MAKERS

C ' J 1b.1R.1b. prince of Males,

>4at; . ESTABLISHED 1760.

PATENTEES OF VARIOUS IMPROVEMENTS IN

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BRECKNELL'S

SADDLE
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Tiger-Shooting in the Doon and Ulwar^ and Life in India.

By LiEUTESAMT-CoLOXEL J. C. FIFE-COOK>>OX. Willi luiiueror.s Ilhistnitiou.s by K.
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London: CHAP.MAX &. HALL, Limited.

ALEXANDER HENRY,

(5un anb IRitle flDanufacturcr,

By Special Appontment to their
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Manufactures every kind of Sporting Rifles and Guns, also
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Speciality : The " Henry " Rifle, so long noted for its
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power. Telescopic Sights, &c, *

PRICE LISTS FREE BY POST.

12 South Saint Andrew Street, Edinburgh, and 31 Cockspur Street,

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TliK

WESTLEY RICHARDS'
PATENT EJECTOR GUN,

WITH OUR PATENT TOP LEVER FASTENHG AND DOUBLE
UNDER GRIP.

Is the STROXGEST aii<i MOST PERFECT OUN YET INVENTED. A great ininiber are in
\ise in England and tli<! Colonies. Tlie ease and rapidity with whicli it can be ro-loaded makes
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There is no difficuHy in handling the Gun. It can 6e put together and tnben apart with just
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The Hon. W. F. Oody (Buft'ulo Bill) writes as follows :

"Jan. 17, ISSS, Jlnnchester.
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'■' W. F. CODY (BuflaloBill)."
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Good Second-hand Guns, which have been taken in exchange for

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•300, -320, and -360 bore, £5 5,5., £6 6s., £8 8s.

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MAGNUM AND EXPRESS DOUBLE-BARREL B.L RIFLES,

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SPRATT'S PATENT LIMITED

PATENT MEAT "FIBRINE" VEGETABLE

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We regret to find, hy the numerous complaints ice receive
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SPORTING TE

ALUMINIUM TELESCOPES, One-third the Ordinary Weight.

aighest Quality & Finish.

No.

DESCRIPTION.

Magnif5'ing
Power.

Aperture
in Inches.

Area of
L.ght.

No of
Draws.

Leng h.

Price

1 )pen.

Clo-;ed.

Brass.

Alumin-
ium

Times.

£ s.

£ s

I

/Watcher's Telescope, \
\ with loops and sling /

15

li

I '227

2

23i

loj

2 IS

1.1

(Watcher's Telescope,!
\ in sling case . . . ./

15

li

l'227

2

231

loi

3 10

2

(Reconnoitring Telf.-|
\ SCOPE, in sling case . ./

20

Ig

1-484

3

21

8

4 0

10 0

2a

lRECONNOITRING(orLovat)\

\ Tklescope, in sling case)

20

l|

1-484

4

21

ei

4 10

II 0

3

/Deek-Stalking '1ele-|
\ SCOPE, in sl.ng case . ./

20

1*

1-767

3

3oi

loi

5 0

12 0

4

/Stalking PancraticI
1 TELEscoPE,in sling easel

20, 25 & 30

ih

1-767

3

3oi

loi

6 0

4C

/DEHR-SrALKING TeLE-|

i SCOPE, in sling case . ./

"

li

2'4C'5

3

30

.oi

6 15

14 0

^

/Stalking PancraticI
( Telescope, in sling case/

20, 25 & 30

li

2405

3

30

io|

7 7

IS 0

6

/Deer -Stai king Tele-|
\ scope, in sling case . ./

20

2i

3546

3

30I

loj

9 °

20 0

POCKET A^NEROIDS

AND

HIGH-POWER

Binocular Glasses.

Two-Draw (Extra Power) Glass, Bronzed and Covered, £7 Os. £8 Os. £9 lOs.
Two-Draw Aluminium Glass, Extremely Light, 14 0 15 10 17 0

Fl II rAKTK rLAi:S «.\ .4I«I»M« A'm>X,

ROSS & CO,, ^S'pticinne,

112, NEW BOND STREET, LONDON, W. ESTABLISHED 1830.

A D VER TISEMENTS.

SPORTS AND ANECDOTES OF BYGONE DAYS.

In England, Scotland, Ireland. Italy, and the Sunny South.

]5y C. T. S. BIRCH EEYNAEDSON,

Author of " Dovvu the Road." With Illustrations in Colour. Second Edition.
Large crown bvo. 12«.

'' Blight .ond entertaining and brimming over with pithy stories such as sportsmen love. .
A delightfLil book of reminiscences. . . . The author is a famous liandat telling stories— that is
to say, anecdotes as distiiiguisht-d from untruths— ami no nutter what their subject may be, he
i:)rovi<les them witli a lavi.sh hand, the quality equalling the quantity. . . . Although it may be
expecUng too much to wish that he may, at his present ripe age, write many more books.it is
e.nrnestly to be hoped that Air. Birch Reynardson may give the world a further" taste of his power
as a story-teller at no distant period " — Morning Post.

■' We can unhesitatingly advise those who have not read this book to do so at once. A more
amusing collection of reminiscences of hunting and (to the author) more congenial topics of
wild-fowl shooting and lisliing, has seldom been offered to the yuhVic."— Illustrated Sporting and
Dramatic Ncivs.

DOWN THE ROAD: REMINISCENCES
OF A GENTLEMAN COACHMAN.

By C. T. S. BIRCH REYXARDSON,

Author of " Sports and Anecdotes of Bygone Days." With Coloured Illustrations. DemySvo. V2t.

" No one, coachman or no coachman, who has a spark of sentiment for the past, can take i:p
Mr. Birch Reynardson's Bemiuiscences without deriving a great pleasure from their perusal." —
Broad Arrow.

LO:N^DON : CHAPMAN & HALL, Limited.

" Fascinating and charmingly written." — Land and Water.

RECORDS OF STAG-HUNTING ON EXMOOR.

By the Hon. JOHN FORTESQUE.

With 14 full-page Hlustratious by Edgar Gibeune. Large cro-\vu 8vo, 16s.

From the PALL MALL GAZETTE.
"Few men are better qualified to write the history of Eii.;lisli stasc-hunting, or to describe
with the authority of experience this noble chase, th in tlie present author. The volume will be
read with lively intere.st both by those who feel a pride in tlie continued survival in England of
the red deer— the hist of our larger ' beasts of chase ' — and by the more numerous class who
delight in our national sport of hunting. . . . The volume is ornamented liy some spirited illus-
trations, which add greatly to its attractiveness."

From the ILLUSTRATED SPORTING AND DRAMATIC NEWS.

"An excellent descriptiou of Exmoor and the sport ihhiu it, as it was and is. . . The style of
the book is easy, unaffected, and agreeable, and Mr. 6iberne"s illustrations are well done."

"A capital little book." — Vanity Fair.

DEER-STALKING.

By AUGUSTUS GRIMBLE. Witli 6 Full-page Illustrations. Large cm. 8vo, 6s.

From the SCOTSMAN.
"He has written the book as a practical deer-stalker, who ardently loves the sport. He has
obviously a keen eye and great ))ower of observation, and he has had regard to all the details nf
the sport down to the proper luncheon that the stalker ought to carry. To our thinking, such
a book is extremely useful, bportsmen are very much in the habit, when they write a book on
sport, of assuming that they are only appealing to sportsmen. They forget that a sportsman is
made and not born. lie may have an inclination to sport ingrafted in liim by nature, but be
must learn what may be called the process of sport ; and if it be assumed that all this is known
to the reader, practically the book shuts off a large number of young men who would otherwise
find it a useful guide. Mr. Grinible has fallen into no such mistuke. His book is at once an
eiilo};y of deer-stalking and a guide to the practice of it. He writes in a cheerfid, bright manner ;
he is fertile in practical suggestions, and he sums them up with apt anecdote. It is, in short, a
good ivadable book."

London-: CHAPMAN & HALL, Limited.

AD VER TISEMENTS.

CHAMBERLIN'S

PHEASANTS' FOOD.

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OBTAIXED THE

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The great and increasing yearly demand for the AROMATIC SPANISH
MEAL and CAYCAR EXCELSIOR is the best proof that the use of these
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Supplies constantly forwarded to the Royal Parks; H.R. H. the Prince of Wales,
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No connection with any other House, Beware of Imitations.

" Belle Vue, Kirkby Lonsdale, February 7th.
" Mr. James Chamberlin,

"Sir, — I beg to say that, as usual, your Food gave me great satisfaction,
both for the birds in the pens and for rearing the young ones, I having reared last
season nearly 4,000 birds. All being well, I expect to rear quite as many this
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fur my penned birds in a few days.

" JOPIN HARROD, Head Keeper to the Earl of Bective, M.P."

KALYDE, a volatile Powder, the only infallible cure for Gapes in
Pheasants and Poultry, 2s. per tin, post free, 2s. 6d.

Write for the New Book of Prices, with Treatise on Pheasant Rearing,
and a lot of informatiofi about Game, free by post.

JAMES CHAMBERLIN & SMITH,

(Late JAMES CHAMBERLIN,)

GAME, POULTRY, AND DOG FOOD WAREHOUSE,

NORWICH.

9

A D VER TISEMENTS.

SCOTT

The Royal Scotcli

ADIE

Warehouse.

Rugs.

Mauds.

Shawls and

Plaids.

Travelling

Wraps.

Ulsters.

REGENT
STREET,

%5^.

ITclecirapbic B^^rc5S— " SCOTT

Harris and
Shetland
Homespuns.
Hand-knit
Stockings and
Socks for
Shooting and
Fishing.

VIGO 8T,
LONDON.

A.D1E, LONDON."

JS. IV[. I^EIT.T.^y <sc CO.

GOLD AND SILVER MEDALS Awarded at

International and Inventions Exhibition 1884— 1885.
Self-Ejector, Hainmeiless Guns £,'lb to £42.
Hammerless Guns. From £12 \Qs. to £40.
Hammer Guns. Low Hammers, top Levers, Skeleton Bodies,

best quality, £30 and £40.
Hammer Guns. Solid Bar Action, from £1") to £25.
Hammer Guns. Plain quality, from £5 to £12.
Express Double and Single Rifles for all kinds of Game.
Rook Rifles from 70s. Magazine Rifles and Shot Guns.
Self-Ejector Revolvers. Best patterns from GOs. to 100s.
Revolvers for house protection, from 21s.

Gun Ciises, Covers, Cartridge Bags, Game Bags, Game Carriers, &c.

Guns Coiivcrteil and Exchanged.

Illustrated Price Lists.

E:. 3VI. X«,EIII-I-^K^ &; CO.,

Gun and Kille Makrrs,
16 New Oxford Street, and 277 Oxford Street, Loudou.

AD VER TISEMENTS.

If you desire really Well-
polistied Boots, Use

E. BROWN & SON'S

Eoyal Meltonian Blacking. It renders tliem bennti-
f Lilly soft, durable, and waterproof, while its lustre
equals the most brilliant patent leather.

E. BROWN & SON'S Nonpareil de Guiche

Parisian Polish, for Dress Boots and Shoes, is
more elastic and less difficult in its use than any
other.

E. BROWN & SON'S Waterproof Varnish, for

Hunting, Shooting, and Fishing Boots, is strongly
recommended to all Sportsmen.

E. BROWN & SON'S Brown Boot-Top Fluid and

Polish, and Powders of all Colours.

E. BROWN & SON'S Meltonian Cream, for re-
novating all kinds of Patent and llusset Leather,
Polo Boots, &c.

E. BROWN & SONS Eoyal Kid Reviver, for all

kinds of Black Kid Leather, &c.

E. BROWN & SON'S Waterproof Harness Polish,

is far superior to all others ; it rerpiires neither
Oil nor Dye.

E. BROWN & SON, Purveyors to the Queen,
WERE AWARDED THE PRIZE MEDAL, 1862.

Maiiufactory : 7 Garrick St., Covent Garden, London, W.C.
And at 26 Rue Bergere, Paris.

RETAIL EYERYWEERE. Telephone No.— 3765

A D VER TISEMENTS.

FOR

Puddings, Blanc -Mange, Custards,

CHILDREN'S AND INVALIDS' DIET,
AND ALL THE USES OF ARROWROOT,

BROWN & POLSON'S
CORN FLOUR

Has a World-wide Reputation,

And is Disfhigiiished for

Dniformly Superior Quality.

»♦♦♦♦»»♦♦•♦♦♦

NOTE. — Purchasers should insist
on being supplied ^with BROWN
AND POLSON'S CORN FLOUR.

Inferior qualities, asserting ficti-
tious claims, are being offered.

ViFiCfUniversity of British Columbia Library

J«oks DUE DATE

FORM 310

AGRICULTURE
FORESTRY

LIBRARY

/

V-

JTiv