f^ ^ftaMMM mmmmmttmammmtmmmmmmmm mmtmaimimimmmmmmmam MtMMHftMtt&MlMMHMMMMWMaMM f^^ JOHNA.SEAVERNS Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine Cummings School of Veterinary Medicina tX T'jfts University ^ ^- o U4 ^ ^ S SPORTING SKETCHES AT J)m\t aii^ %ku)!i. v.v THE OLD I^USIIMAN. ^t /■z^y/if^^ ^"^ M- WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BY G. BOWERS. LONDON: FREDERICK WARNE AND CO., liLDFORD STREET, STRAND. lON'DOX: BR^DBr-RY, AGNVAV, & X»., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARA. PREFACE. The following Sketches have already for the most part appeared in the columns of The Field newspaper 3 the one entitled " Lost in the Bush/' in the Intellectual Observer. Bv the kindness of the editors of that newspaper and journal, the author has now gathered them together into a volume, and presents tliem to his friends as old acquaintances. He thinks it right to observe, that every chapter in this book is strictly matter of fact, except the sketches entitled '' My First Steeple Chaser," " The Trotter," " The Jibber," "The Best Fourteen Hander in England," and "The Poacher j" in which — (although events took place much as read, and in which every character is drawn from life) — the author has, for obvious reasons, deemed himself justified in mystifying names and localities, and colouring plain facts. PUBLISHER'S PREFACE, MEMOIR OF THE ^^ OLD BUSHMAN." We sincerely regret to inform our readers that during the time arrangements were being made for the publication of " Sporting Sketches/' an accident fatal in its results deprived the Author of his life, and so prevented his anticipated pleasure of revising this work through the press. It fell, however, into sympathetic hands, and it is hoped that the public will kindly excuse under the circumstances any shortcomings. By the kind permission of the proprietors of the "Field" Newspaper, we insert a Memoir of the "Old Bush- man." Horace William Wheelwright, known as a constant con- tributor to the columns of this journal under the nom deplume of the "Old Bushman," was the second son of the Rev. C. A. Wheelwright, rector of Tansor, Northamptonshire, and of Castle and Little Bytham, in Lincolnshire, and prebend of Lincoln Cathe- dral. He was born at Tansor on January 5th, 18 15, and died on November i6th, 1865, in the fiftieth year of his age. He was educated at the Reading Grammar School, under Dr. Valpy. He was brought up to the profession of the law, and practised as a solicitor at Thrapston, Northamptonshire, between 1843 and 1847. From a boy, however, he expressed a strong disinclination to "settle" vi Tuhlishefs Preface^ and in the quiet work of a profession. He was fond of all kinds of field sports, and had a yearning for a life of wild adventure -, we therefore find him, in 1847, ^^ ^^i^^ from his native land and a wanderer among the wild mountains, woods, and lakes of Sweden and Norway. The details of this part of his life are entirely wanting. In 1851 he went to Australia, and lived some years on the banks of the Murray, as a wandering sportsman in the bush. After his return to Europe he wrote and published his first work — ■ a small book entitled "Bush Wanderings of a Naturalist 3 or. Notes on the Field Sports and Fauna of Australia Felix, by an Old Bushman," a new edition of which is now issued.* From the introduction of this interestmg little book we copy the following : — '' Six years' rambling over the forests and fells of Northern Europe had totally unfitted me for any settled life. I had no luck in the diggings. The town was out of the question ; and to keep the wolf from the door there were but two alternatives — to seek work in a situation, or face the bush on my own account. I chose the latter, and never regretted that choice. I luckily fell in with a mate in the same circumstances as myself. The gun had often brought both of us * to grief in the Old World, so we agreed that for once it should help us out in the New. Our tastes were similar. The sphere of life in which we had both moved at home had been the same, and therefore all those little disagreements and collisions which are the inevitable consequences when men of dif- ferent education, training, and tastes are shut up together in the close companionship of a bush tent, were avoided. For nearly four years did we rough it under the same canvas, with scarcely a single dispute, and very rarely even 'a growl.' We had, it is true, hardships to contend with, but we never met troubles half way. * London : Frederick W^irne and Co. Memoir of the ^' Old Bushman.'" vii We took the rough with the smooth, and whether game was plen- tiful or scarce, generally had a fair share of it. Many a happy day did we pass together in the forest. Many a good bag of game we brought home j and often, though thousands of miles now separate us, do my thoughts fly back to the old bush tent and the old com- rades left behind me ; and the chequered scenes of a wild forest life crowd upon my mind like the vision of yesterday." This yearning after the wild bush life of Australia is characteristic of that love of adventure which formed a strong feature in the *' Old Bushman's " character. Oftentimes during the last four years, in his letters to the writer of this notice, has he expressed a strong desire to go back again and " leave his bones " in the Australian bush. To the details of his Australian life there are several references in one of his other works 3 but the ''Bush Wanderings" is an interesting w^ork, w^hich all naturalists should possess. In 1856 the " Old Bushman " returned to Sweden, and took up his residence at Gardsjo, near Carlstadt, w^here he devoted himself to the life of a working naturalist, and there is no doubt that by his perseverance and enterprise he has added some valuable facts to natural history. In i860 he commenced his connexion w^th The Field, and con- tinued one of its most w^elcome contributors to the day of his death. In 1S62 he passed a spring and summer in Lapland for the pur- poses of natural history. Of the nature of this journey he writes ? " Lulea, Lap., April 14, 1862. — We have safely reached this place ^fter a cold, tedious, troublesome, and expensive journey of nearly three weeks, being about 1000 English miles, in open sledges. It certainly has been the most laborious trip I ever took in my life, but I hope it will lead to some good results, although I cannot expect it will pay me after poor Wolley. I am just otF to Quickiock. viii Publisher's Preface^ and The country looks gloomy enough to make one shudder — gloomy pine woods and snow-covered plains j but I saw two swans yester- day, and as the reindeer are getting very restless, and the Laps are moving up to the fells, spring will soon break upon us." The result of this visit was, on the whole, very satisfactory. " I have collected," he writes (Quickiock, Aug. 4, 1862), ''550 bird- skins, 800 eggs, 1000 lemmings, and above 1000 insects, and a I0I of other odds and ends — not bad work for two of us in less than four months." Among the scientific facts worked out during the journey, the same letter above quoted contains the following : " Contrary to all our naturalists' dicta, the lesser European sparrow owl (Strix passerina, Linn.) does breed here, and I have got the eggs. More- over, I shot three flyers the other day, one of which I have saved for you." The life of a working naturalist within the Arctic circle, is not, however, all pleasure — for a little further on he remarks : " I long to be back once more among my books, for my life now is that of a savage. I have never seen a book for four months — nothing but the slavery of, day after day, first shooting and then skinning." We in England do not sufBciently value specimens obtained by such personal sacrifice as this. In 1864 the '•' Old Bushman" brought out his largest and most im- portant work, entitled "TenYearsin Sweden," a thick octavo volume,* llie first half of the work consists of a description of the habits and customs of the Swedes, their agriculture, universities, nobles, clergy, &:c. J and also contains the fullest instructions to those who wish to enjoy the sports of the field, loch, and river in that country. The re- mainder of the work is a valuable compilation of the vertebrate fauna of Scandinavia, interspersed here and there with original remarks. * London : Groombrid^e and Sons. Memoir of the " Old Bushman.'' Ix It is a very valuable list to those who do not read the Swedish language. The letters received from Mr. Wheelwright during the past summer, express the pleasure he anticipated from an intended visit to England in the autumn. With the exception of one or two short and flying trips, he had not seen the land of his birth for nearly twenty years ; and his heart, in his wild northern solitude, warmed with affection towards the good old country where his boyish and happiest days had been passed. How that visit termi- nated we all know too well. It is hardly necessary to dwell upon particulars. A little circumstance occurred, however, prior to his fatal accident, which illustrates forcibly the apparently trifling grounds upon which our life or death depends. Mr. Wheelwright was at The Field office on the afternoon of the 7th of November, and seemed anxious to get down that evening to his brother's at Crowhurst. One of the gentlemen connected with the office pointed out to him that he had three-quarters of an hour to spare, that he might jump into a cab, get round for his luggage, and still be in time for the train. The poor '' Old Bushman " hesitated, and, thinking he should not be able to accomplish it, decided to pass the night in London. Next morning, hearing of the arrival of his natural history specimens from Sweden, he resolved to stay until they were unpacked. When on his way to see about this, he slipped down in the street, and a hernia, from which he had suffered for years, thereby became strangulated. In this condition he went to his brother's house, was obliged to submit to the operation for its relief, and sank three days afterwards. It is needless to dwell upon the character and literary qualifica- tions of our deceased friend 3 all who are familiar with his writings possess the same means of judging. He was less a scientific naturalist than one of those pioneers who, by their adventure and X Publisher's Prefacey and Memoir, daring, clear up points which would otherwise remain doubtful. He was not an accomplished scholar, but he was an apt observer, and had powers of description possessed by very few. The sunrise in Lapland, the details of his being lost in the snow, and the lifelike descriptions contained in his " Sporting Sketches," can hardly, we ^vill venture to say, be surpassed. Readers, we think, will be most iiDiused by his "Bush Wanderings '" and " Summer in Lapland," ju-.t as they will be most instructed by the perusal of his " Ten Years in Sweden j" but in none of his works will they find more cr>ginality — more, in fact, of those qualities which mark the man of genius — than in his "Sporting Sketches." But the "Old Bushman" was more than we have described him. He was a kind-hearted, highly principled, honourable, manly fellow, beloved by all who knew him, and long to be held in cherished remembrance. Peace to his ashes ! He is buried in Crowhurst Churchyard, beneath an ancient yew, one of the few that have become historical by their antiquity. Decandolle and others have reckoned it to be fourteen hundred years oldj and under its venerable shadows we must feel that our departed friend, who loved nature so well, has found a worthy resting-place. CONTENTS. Page A BEAR HUNT IN NORDLAND. WITH A DESCRIPTION OF BEAR HUNTING { SWEDEN. A SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE LANDSCAPE, FAUNA, AGRICULTURE, AND FIELD SPORTS OF THAT COUNTRY. WITH A FEW NOTES ON THE ICHTHYOLOGY OF THE GREAT LAKE WENERN, AND SOME REMARKS ON THE NORTHERN SALMON RIVEhs 6 DUCK-SHOOTING IN WERMLAND, SWEDEN ^6 MY FIRST STEEPLE-CHASER Jl THE TROTTER II5 THE FISHING DAY I76 THE BEST FOURTEEN-HANDER IN ENGLAND 185 THE keeper's TREE , 2I9 THE RABBIT BATTUE ,, 23O MY LAST DAY IN THE FEN 243 DID YOU EVER DRIVE A JIBBER DOWN TO A FIGHT ? . , , 2^7 THE LEATHER PLATER * 275 THE POACHER 334 xii Contents. Pa^e GUN ACCIDENTS 363 ON THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MANLY AND ATHLETIC EXER- CISES, SUCH AS SPARRING ; AND A lEW WORDS IN DEFENCE OF THE MUCH-ABUSED CUSTOM OF BRITISH BOXING 377 THE WRECK ... 392 THE AUSTRALIAN BUSH • • . . 4II SPORTING SKETCHES. A BEAR HUNT IN NORDLAND. WITH A DESCRIPTION OF BEAR HUNTING. The following description of a bear hunt in Nordland, in the winter of 1864, extracted from the Hernosand Post, will show that the chase of the Swedish bear is not altogether unattended with danger. The writer says : Time after time has the Hernosaiid Post alluded to the damage which has been suffered by the cattle in the Shelleftea and the neighbouring parishes through the attacks of bears, and of the various bear hunts which have taken place in this district ; and the following little history will prove what adventures the bear-hunter will occasionally suffer, especially when he goes out to attack the bear single-handed, or accompanied only by one or two comrades. The narrator, a good old bear-hunter himself, was wont to call this " a bear-dance," and a lively dance it must have been. On the 17th Dec, 1863, six hunters, peasants in the neighbour- hood (more daring than prudent, although tolerably well armed with guns and spears, and accompanied by two hounds coupled up), set off to attack a she-bear, which, after having been hunted from one fell to another, had eight days previously been "ringed in"'^ on Graininge Fell, not far from Shelleftea. They seemed to have apprehended little danger, and having * "Ringing" a bear is making a large circle round the place where the animal was last seen, and proving that it must be somewhere within theciicle. — Ed. B 2, A Bear Hunt in Nordland, separated, they wandered carelessly within the circle of the ring to endeavour to find out the bear's winter-quarters ; but one of the peasants, who had unconsciously come within a gunshot of her "ide," woke the bear up, and she suddenly rushed out upon him, seized him, and inflicted three deep wounds on his body — one on the thigh, another on the arm, just above the wrist, and a third on tlie face, which completely scalped his forehead, the skin hanging down over his eyes. During the struggle one of the hunters ran up and shot at the bear 5 but his gun missed fire, which was probably lucky, for in the melee he was just as likely to have shot his comrade as the bear. She immediately left the wounded man, rushed upon the other hunter like lightning, gave him a deep gash on one thigh, and mangled his head so that the hair and skin were torn off for a width of four inches. This man was so injured, that he was obliged to be carried home on a sledge, before they got his wounds dressed. A third hunter, who had by this time come up, attacked the bear with his spear ; but in the hurry and confusion of the moment he planted it so badly that the steel point glanced off the thick hide of the bear. Suddenly the head of the hunter dashed against that of the bear, and he immediately shoved one hand down her throat and seized fast hold of the roots of her tongue, and with the other belaboured her lustily about the nose and head. The bear, now more than ever irritated by the punish- ment she was receiving at this man's hands, rose upon her hind legs and challenged him to a wrestling bout. The peasant, who, like many others of these peasants, was a good and strong wrestler, closed in with the bear and gave her a very clean back fall. Astonished more than ever at such unlooked-for treatment, the bear became nearly mad with rage, and uttering a tremendous growl, she at once sprung up and rushed upon the fourth hunter. He was, however, an old hand, and planting the butt of his spear firmly on the ground, with the head slanting out towards the bear, he waited quietly for her attack. Blind with rage she came carelessly on, the sharp blade of the spear went right through lier heart, and she fell dead without a groin. The two hounds, of A Bear Hunt in Nordland. 3 whom the hunters thought a great deal, kept at a respectful distance till the bear fell dead. The old bear was followed by three young cubs about a year old, which of course shared the fate of the mother, but without giving the hunters so much trouble. The old she-bear was a very large specimen, yielding not less than loolb. of fat, and a skin about eight feet long. It is not, however, that we often hear of an accident happening in a bear hunt, especially unless the bear is wounded. It is a common idea here that in attacking a man the bear never uses his paw to strike with like a lion or tiger, which, however, is always the case when it falls upon horses or cattle. Moreover, it is not always the bear's custom when rushing on a man to raise himself on his hind legs, as is generally supposed j but he more often comes in end on end like a fierce dog. There is not much danger incurred from the bear itself in the '' skalls," as they are carried on in the mid- land districts, when a couple of hundred or more men assemble and drive the forests up to the beaters 5 but much more to be appre- hended from the shooters themselves. In the northern forests and fells, however, where men are scarce, the hunters often attack the bear single-handed, or with, at most, one comrade, and the chase of the bear then becomes a hazardous and exciting sport. It is princi- pally in the autumn when the bears lay up in their '^ ide," or winter quarters, or in the spring, when they wake up from their winter's sleep, that they are killed. Two of these northern peasants, on skiddor (or snow skates), will sally out in pursuit of a bear, whose footsteps have been tracked in the snow, armed, perhaps, with a small pea rifle of the most primitive make, and which carries a ball of about forty to the pound (and yet a bear has often been known to fall dead from one shot, if hit in the right place), but also with a spear, upon which the hunter places his chief reliance, and which to my idea is a far more formidable weapon. This spear consists of a tough pole about ten feet long, armed at the top with a four- cornered steel spike, nearly a foot long, the point and edges as keen as a razor (which is always, when not in use, kept in a sheath), and p. 2 4 A Bear Hunt in Nordland. a strong cross-bar of iron, about eighteen inches long, across the shaft, just under the steel spear. They follow the bear till they bring it to bav, and then attack it. They always try to force the spear into its breast or under the shoulder, right through the heart. As soon as the spear is well in, the hunter plants the end of the shaft firmly into the ground, and holds the spear strongly in an upright slanting position, the bear all the while pressing more and more on to the spear, endeavouring to grapple with the man, but prevented by the cross-bar. As long as the spear stands there is little danger, but the life of the hunter now entirely depends upon his good spear. His comrade, if he has one, now attacks the bear also with his rifle or spear, but if the hunter is alone — and they will always, if possible, be alone, because then there is no other to share the spoil — he finishes the bear as well as he can. I have generally seen the shafts in Lapland made of mountain ash. It must, how- ever, be rather a nervous time for a man, face to face with an en- raged monster, and only a slight shaft, and then a steel bar, between himself and eternity^ and a man must be possessed of a pretty good share of personal courage who dares to attack a bear single-handed with such a weapon ; and yet these northern settlers and little Lap- landers often do so. I used to be much amused at seeing the old parish clerk up at Quickiock, a noted bear-hunter, rehearse the pantomime of a bear hunt, with myself as bear. He was a very little, active old fellow, of about sixty, and he used to hop round me brandishing his spear, the shaft of which was covered with scratches and bites, till he would at times become so excited that I used to beg him to con- clude the performance, lest by chance he might forget that he was only rehearsing a play, and had a man instead of a living bear before him. These rehearsals used to remind me much of some other re- hearsals of a rather different sort, when I used to have to stand up in quite another character, the reader will be puzzled to guess — Molyneux, the black prizefighter, and before poor old Tom Cribb. I first knew this veteran when he kept a public-house in Panton- street, but things went wrong with the old boy , and missing him A Bear Hunt in Nordland. 5 froni his parlour in Panton-street, I traced him to obscure lodgings somewhere in Soho, where I used often to pay him a visit. He was confined to his room with rheumatic gout, or something of the sort, but still could hobble about. It seemed as if he was deserted by all his friends, and very hard-up 3 but his room was filled with trophies of the past, and among them I recollect a silver cup which the old man would fill with ginger-wine, of which he was very fond j and I u>ed to drink this wine out of the champion's cup, and listen to his description of past scenes in which he had been so stirring an actor. Till his great battle with Molyneux came upon the carpet, old Tom would sit quietly enough in his easy chair, only now and then flourishing, and making occasional passes into empty space at some unseen and imaginary opponent. His defeat by one Nicholls he dismissed very summarily, by the trite but energetic observation, that if he had only been in condition, " he could have pumped thunder on fifty NichoUs'sj" but when he came to Moly- neux, nothing but a tableau vivant would suffice. I had to repre- sent the black, and after I had been placed in approved position by old Tom (with my head thrown forward, my left arm straight out, my left fist almost level with my chin), the old man would throw himself into attitude before me, and, despite his bandaged legs and rheumatics, would show me how he dashed the black's left arm aside, and inflicted that tremendous jaw-breaker which won the fight. " Gently, Tom, play light," I used to sing out as the old man became excited 5 and his fist used to come in dangerous proximity with my head, as he showed me how he finished oflf his formidable opponent with his favourite one, two. It was a rich play, but one which I was always prudent enough to rehearse upon ginger-wine. "When I go into that question, sir," observed a pompous old stump orator once to me in Australia, who was for closing all the ports, and leaving the colonists to depend solely on their own resources, " I become excited, but I could argue it for hours, sir, upon coftee." And so it was with me. I hardly know which might have been most dangerous, the old Lapland bear- hunter's spear, or old Tom Cribb's fist, if either play had been re- nearsed upon anything stronger than ginger-wine or coffee. SWEDEN. A SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE LANDSCAPE, FAUNA, AGPx-ICULTURE, AND FIELD SPORTS OF THAT COUNTRY. With a few Notes on the Ichthyology of the Great Lake Wenern^ and some Remarks on the Northern Salmon Rivers. It is no easy task to endeavour to give a good general description of the climate, scenery, or fauna of a country like Scandinavia, which extends from r^^ to 71° N. lat., and occupies an area of nearly 300,000 square English miles, diversified with every descrip- tion of landscape, from the low flat sandy plains and open turf mosses of the south, and the dense pine forests of the midland dis- tricts, to the barren fells of the north, whose snow-capped summits afford a scanty sustenance to nothing but the wild reindeer and the ptarmigan. Over so wide a surface we must expect to find soil of every description 3 and it is the diversity of landscape that adds the great charm to travelling through these northern climes. Still, rich as it is in natural productions, rich as it is in every branch of its fauna, it is a land comparatively little known to the English traveller, while almost every other part of the Continent, whose natural beauties can scarcely surpass this country in the summer, are as well known to the British tourist as the woods and glades of merry England. Before proceeding into more minute details respecting the agri- culture and natural productions of the land, it will be as we/ 1 to cast a slight glance at tlie fauna of this interesting country , and the Sweden, 7 general reader can then be enabled to form an idea of the character of this wide-stretched land of "flood and fell." Scarcely another country in Europe possesses so many attractions to the naturahst as this 5 for tlie varied nature of the landscape, with so few inhabitants scattered over its surface, mark it as a fitting home for such of the rarer species of quadruped and bird as delight in solitude and retirement 3 whilst its vast extent of coast, its mag- nificent rivers, and innumerable inland lakes, must render it one of the greatest interest to the ichthyologist. Most of tlie larger and wilder species of the European mammalia are to be met with in one part or another of this immense continent. The elk finds shelter in the midland forests, the reindeer on the northern fells j the bear, the lynx, the glutton, and the wolf are no strangers in the northern and midland districts 5 and the marten-cat, the fox, and the squirrel abound in every part of the country. Unfortunately the beaver is now nearly extinct, and the only memento we have of this interest- ing animal consists in an occasional deserted beaver-dam in some of the wildest of the northern forests. Strange to say, the wild cat is unknown here. It is on account of the country having so wide and varied a sur- face that we find so manifest a difi^erence in its fauna j and this is still furtlier supported when we consider the nature of the land — open downs, deep forests, sandy flats, ironbound rocks, and, in the very north, snow-covered fells. These last must exercise a great in- fluence on the fauna of the north, for every species of animal must have its limit from the region of perpetual snow. Nilsson, with his usual acumen, divides Scandinavia into separate regions for different animals and plants. Beginning from the very top of the fells, and following by degrees in a southerly direction the tracts which lie below them, we shall find that certain species of animal as well as plant are only to be met with on the highest fells, among perpetua snow-drifts j and also that other species are met with only in those tracts far removed from the fells themselves 3 and this will hold good whether we divide these regions in a vertical or horizontal direction — with this difterence, that the regions in the latter are 3 Sweden, much broader than in the former. After these remarks, we wiD divide the land into the following regions for plants and animals : — 1. The perpetual snow region, which extends from the tops ol the highest snow-fells down to the first bushes. In this region the only vegetation are a few ice-plants, lichens, and mosses j and the animals ^\'hich belong to them are the glutton, the white fox, the northern hare {Lepus horcalis), the reindeer, and the common weasel. 2. In the willow and birch region, the lemming, two or three lield-mice, the fox, the wolf, the bear, the stoat, the common field- mouse, the little shrew {Sorex pygmo'us), and one bat {Vespertilio iorealis). 3. Pine and fir region : long-eared bat, parti-coloured bat, the water-shrew, the lynx, the martin, the otter, the long-tailed field- mouse, the common mouse, three or four species of lemming, the squirrel, the elk, and the red deer. 4. The oak region, reckoning from that tract where the oak first grows : the great bat, the hedgehog, the common rat, the grey hare {Lepus canescens), the polecat, and the badger. 5. The beech region: Barbastell bat, mole, dormouse, and roe-deer. 6. In such tracts where the black mulberry can ripen (Skania) : Here they find fossil remains of the wild boar {Ursus spelceus)^ beaver, the southern species of reindeer. Bos Urus, B.frojitosus, B. lonfr'ifroiis, and B. bison. And, as regards the ornithology of the country, we shall see the haunts of the several species of birds just as clearly defined : 1. In the snow region we find the snow bunting, Bufibn's skua, the wheatear, the raven, the rough-legged buzzard, the snowy owl, the short-eared owl, the ptarmigan, the white-fronted goose, the golden plover, the redshank, the dunliri, the purple sandpiper, the common gull, and the herring gull (by the fell lakes), and four or five species of diving duck. Nilsson takes his fell tract in West Norway, 60° N. lat. 2. In the willow and birch region, the meadow pipit, the blue- throated warbler, the brambling, the mealy redpole, the black- Suae den, 9 headed bunting, yellow wagtail, willow wren, redwing, ring ouzel, redstart, marsh titmouse, Siberian titmouse, water ouzel, willow grouse, common sandpiper, common snipe, hooper, bean goose, wild duck, and teal. 3. In the pine and fir region, the fieldfare, the Siberian jay, the greenfinch, siskin, chafhnch, crested tit, coletit, great black wood- pecker, three-toed woodpecker, gold-crest, wren, the crossbills, the redbreast, garden warbler, song thrush, tree pipit, capercailzie, black grouse and hazel hen. 4. In the cultivated districts, the hooded crow, ortolan bunting, yellow bunting, white wagtail, common sparrow, magpie, and swallow. Thus we shall see that the vegetation as well as the fauna of this country has its defined limits 3 for, beginning with the cultivated districts in the bottom of the fells, where many of the trees and bushes peculiar to Britain are met with, we come (ascending the fell sides) first to the fir district and then to the pine. Above these we find tlie birch, and, higher up, the willow and fell birch. Above this we come to the district where nothing but lichen and moss can grow • and, above all, lies the region of perpetual snow. The botanist can judge for himself what a field is here open to him ; and it is no \^onder that Sweden is able to boast of many well versed in this science, and the study of the entomologist goes hand-in-hand with it. But, to the geologist and lover of antiquarian lore, Scandinavia possesses still richer attractions. Judging from the fossil remains preserved in the museums of the country, many animals, now extinct, in former days inhabited the south of Sweden ; and the bones of antediluvian monsters, which are yearly dug up in the turf mosses of Skania, are evidences of bygone ages. It is easy to carry the reflecting mind back to the period before man appeared on the face of the globe, when probably the waves rolled over the greater part of this land, and we can figure to ourselves monstrous fishes then peopling the waters, and reptiles of misshapen and hideous growth, drawing their slow length along the slimy oozes of the fens. Pass we on to a later date, when the vvhole lace of the countrv 10 Sweden. gradually changed; the wild bull tossed his mane in these then secluded forests, the wild sow farrowed in security in regions un- trodden by the foot of man, and thousands of gigantic elk and red deer roamed at will over the oak forests and wide prairies of southern Sweden. ''Whatever," obser\^es Dr. Johnson — ''whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings;" and whoever takes an interest in the history of the early ages of mankind, \\\\\ here find much to occupy his attention and his thoughts. The rude implements of the chase, and the barbarous weapons of war, carry the mind back to ages when the battle and the chase formed man's constant and only employments. Huge barrows and cairns, and rude but stupendous monuments of stone, mark the site of many an ancient battle-field, or the last resting- place of the old Scandinavian warrior and king; and the rude hieroglyphics cut in the rocks on many parts of the coast, are rnementoes at the present day of those savage barbarians who, in the early days of Christianity, spread fire and desolation over so great a portion of Europe; when the "viking's" bark spread her sails before the wind, and bore the dreaded sea-pirate to the opposite shores of Britain. Our task, however, is with the present, and not with the past ; and it only remains for us to add that, let his taste be what it may, whetlier he be a sportsman, naturalist, or merely a traveller in search of the beauties of nature, the wanderer here will find full employment; and perhaps there is scarcely another country in Europe where a stranger, during the summer months, can travel with so much cheapness, security, and freedom, as in this. But to return to our more immediate subject. As regards the mammalia of Sweden, two hypotheses will hold good as to their introduction into this land. It is supposed, and with good grounds, that this continent at an early period was landlocked with the rest of Europe, before the Baltic and the Bothnia formed a dividing line Sweden, II of sea. Most of the southern species came over the dry land where the Baltic now flows, and the more northern species, such as the glutton, arctic fox, reindeer, fiying squirrel, and some others, came from the tracts lying on the north-east of the Bothnia. Be this as it may, each species seems to be pretty well confined to the limii assigned to it, and only makes occasional migrations to other districts, guided by an instinct which it baffles man's ingenuity to account for. Not so, however, with the ornithology of the north. The migra- tions of the feathered race are much more regular and certain j but it may be remarked that many individuals of the different famihes which, as a general rule, are only summer migrants to the north of the country, remain stationary in the south of Sweden during the winter, especially if the weather is open 3 and many ducks (although the majority leave the country) are to be seen off the southern coast, and even on the midland open waters during that season. Some other species are only partial migrants in the winter from the northern and midland districts to the south of the country, where they remain during the coldest season, and return to their more northerly breeding haunts in the spring. Among these we may mention the hooded crow, an occasional hawk, the jackdaw, nuthatch, mealy redpole, greenfinch, siskin, goldfinch, mountain linnet, chaffinch, purple sandpiper, spotted crake, dabchick, and one or other of the diving ducks and gulls. The few that are to be met with in the north and middle of the country throughout the whole winter are the eagles, Iceland falcons, goshawk, all the owls peculiar to the country (with the exception of the short-eared owl), the raven, magpie, all the wood- peckers except the P'lcus medius, which is confined at all seasons to the south of the country 3 the crossbills, pine grosbeak, jay, Siberian jay, the waxwing, titmice, yellow bunting, sparrow, bull- finch, occasional flocks of redwing and fieldfare, and a diving duck or two, if there is any open water ; and we may notice three others, whose slender frames appear but ill-fitted to withstand the rigours of a northern winter, but which I have seen in the Wermland li Sweden, forests during the severest weather — the tree-creeper, the wren, and the gold-crest. Why these Uttle stragglers should remain behind after all their glad companions of summer have flitted to warmer climes has always been a mystery to me. Some few species, such as the hen harrier, the grey plover, the pigmy curlew, knot, sanderling, and bernicle goose, have not as yet, to my knowledge, been detected breeding in Sweden, but are only seen during their migrations to and from their breeding haunts, as is supposed, in more north-easterly latitudes. With the exception of an occasional rare seafowl, whose peculiar home is in the polar seas, there are no regular winter migrants to Scandinavia. Some birds are yearly becoming more scarce in the north, for instance, the shieldrake, bittern, ruff, lapwing, blacktern, black- headed gull, and golden plover j and, on the contrar}% one or two other species are gradually spreading themselves more widely over the face of the country, such as the shore lark, Siberian titmouse, &c. Many of the summer migrants do not appear in the same numbers on each succeeding year. The nutcracker is a striking instance of this fact 5 and I could never account for this — it cer tainly is not altogether owing to a scanty supply of food. That the British fauna is far richer in accidental varieties than that of Scandinavia may be easily accounted for by the fact of the former country being so densely populated and so closely examined, that it is next to impossible for a strange bird to show itself on the British shores without being at once noticed 5 whereas, such is the wild nature of the Scandinavian landscape, and so thinly are the habitations of man scattered over its surface, that a rare bird may come and go year after year without being observ^ed by any one. But that Scandinavia is much richer than Britain both in species and individuals duriy.g the breeding season may be easily supposed when we consider the vast extent of wild uninhabited country abounding in suitable localities for the wilder, and to the British fauna, rarer species of birds, whose shy and retired habits lead them to seek more secluded and secure breeding haunts tlian any part of Great Britain can atibrd. We find, therefore, that out Sweden. i'^ of nearly 360 species known in Britain, scarce 170 breed in tht^ country, whereas, out of 300 Scandinavian species, above 230 breed in the north. AVith regard to the Danish fauna, it may be regarded as inter- mediate between that of Great Britain and the nortli of Europe ; but fewer birds breed there in proportion than in either Sweden or Norway or Great Britain. The climate and general appearance of the country, both in landscape and vegetation, much resemble the British Isles ; and I thought I never gazed upon a quieter, richer, or lovelier landscape than when passing through tlie Belts one summer a few years ago. The country is well adapted to the habits of the southern warblers and many of the waders, and, lying in a direct line, as it were, between Sweden and England, it is more frequently visited by the rarer northern birds than the latter country. The south of Denmark is highly cultivated, and the whole country has a far more pastoral appearance than the opposite shores of Sx^^eden. In the north of Zealand, however, are miles of barren moorland, which, \\ithout possessing the rich appearance of the bonnie purple heather of Scotland, are well adapted to the habits of the curlew, golden plover, and many other birds which frequent tlie British moors. The country, however, is level, and we never, therefore, meet with either species of a ptarmigan peculiar to the northern fells 3 and the absence of tlie Swedish pine-forests renders it an unfitting residence for the larger owls and such other species of birds as are peculiar to the forest tracks of Sweden and Norway. That noblest of all game birds, the capercailzie, is unknown in Denmark, and the blackcock is rare 3 otherwise the Danish fauna much resembles that of the south of Sweden, from which it is only separated by the Sound, a channel some few English miles broad. There are no rivers to speak of in Denmark, but large ponds, well stocked with the common fresh-water lish. However much the agriculturist may long to linger among the neat pastures of the Danish farmers, it is no country for the naturalist or sportman, who will eagerly hasten on to wilder and jess-inhabited districts. 14 Sweden. I consider the British coasts, generally speaking, to be much richer in the common sea birds than the southern coasts of Sweden j but the wild " skargord," or rocky clusters of isles which skirt the northern coasts, are the peculiar home of the seafowl, and the immense swamps and morasses, and the countless inland lakes with which the interior of Sweden is studded, afford secure shelter and breeding places for every species of inland aquatic fowl. In the very south of Sweden, where the oak, the beech, and the hazel, usurp the place of the pine and fir kings of the northern forest, the different species of warblers find a home as congenial to their habits as the groves and plantations of England 5 and as regards the general fauna of this part of the country, it differs but little from that of Britain. The severity of the northern winter is here little felt, and the spring migrants make their appearance nearly as early as in England, and generally a fortnight before they are to be seen farther up the country, where the snow frequently covers the ground in the end of April. In the midland districts, wiiere pine and fir forests of boundless extent rise on high stony ranges (intersected with plains and valleys of meadow and cultivated land, and dells where the birch, the juniper, and the alder vegetate in rank luxuriance), nearly every species of land bird finds a congenial home ; whilst vast morasses, many of which can never be traversed by the human foot, rivers, and inland lagoons of every size, fringed with the reed, the bulrush, and the candock, abound in every species of wader and aquatic bird, which resort to the north in thousands at the breeding season. It is now that the British naturalist begins to meet with rare and new specimens, and it is now that the eye of the traveller first gazes on the true scenery of the north — and more beautiful scenery than Sweden displays during the summer months it would be hard to find. I have wandered over many lands, and have scarcely ever seen a European landscape to vie with this. In the very north the appearance of the whole country becomes gradually wilder and more rugged, and high mountains and barren fells, covered with perennial snow, rising above the limits of vegeta- Sweden, j 5 tion, and towering over the pine forests which skirt their sides, are tAe home of some few of the very rarer and wilder species, whose habits are but httle known to us. Having now given a short description of the landscape and general features of the country, we will say a few words on the climate, natural products, agriculture, and field-sports of Scandinavia. It is easy to guess that, from the causes above-named, the tempera- ture of this country is subject to great variations — so much so, in fact, that a man may here reside in three climates. It will not be within our present limits to enter upon any description of Lapland ; suffice it to say, that in the far north, where the Laplander leads a wandering life, the reindeer are his only riches, and the culture of the soil is not heeded. We may perhaps take the province of Norbotten, lying in 65° N. latitude, as our northern agricultural limit, and here the farmer has just three months to prepare his ground, sow his corn, let it grow, and gather it into his barn. The summer here is of short duration y but there is no night, and everything springs up by magic, as if to make up for the long winter sleep. The best barley, however, grows up at Calix, in 66° N., and the celebrated alsike clover comes from a parish of that name near Upsala. The real Swedish turnip, or, as it is called here, *^ Rotabaga," from a place in Dalecarlia, is principally grown here in gardens for culinary purposes. Turnip- growing for agriculture is as yet in its infancy here, and the prin- cipal sorts which are grown for the cattle are the old-fashioned white globe and yellow bullock ; but they are neither by any means extensively cultivated. Of course in a country of such extent and diversity of landscape we may expect as much change in the climate as in the scenery 3 and the south, the middle, and the north of Sweden have each a climate peculiar to itself. In the very south it diifers little from that of the north of Scotland 3 the cold is rarely very severe in winter ; the spring comes on at least a month earlier than in the midland districts, and by the beginning of April all the spring sowing is finished. The country is generally open, and the woods have a true English character. The soil is often 1 6 Sweden, rich and good, but there are many sandy plains and deep turf mosses. Along the coasts of the Baltic and Cattegat are some of the best farming tracts in Sweden. The farming here is not amiss j but no attention is ever paid to cleansing the land, and much ground is lost by the wide stone and mud banks and broad ditches that separate the fields. Land is perhaps taken at, throughout the country, ten shillings per acre, and this, I consider, as too dear. The winters in the south are, however, always colder than in England, and the cattle are all kept up in byres throughout that season ; but the southern farmer can work his land nearly a month earlier and later than we can in Wermland, and as a proof of the variability of the clime I may mention that in the Christmas week, i860, our thermometer, up at Carlstad, was as low as 25° cold Celsius, while at Gothenburg, perhaps 200 miles south, it hardly exceeded 9°. As to the farming in the very north, the reader may be able to form his own idea if he reads what I have written above as to the length of the season j and, merely remarking that Wermland is certainly not one of the best districts for farming in the middle of the country, and very much inferior to the south, I shall neverthe- less give a description of the farming in that province, because I know more of it than any other ; and, moreover, my short notices being as it were general ones, will pretty well apply to the Swedish farming throughout the country, allowing for heavier crops in the most favoured districts. In the middle of Sweden the winter is long and severe, the spring delightful, and the summer generally hot and dry. When the thermometer falls as law as 20° Celsius it is considered cold, but is not unfrequently as low as 25° to 30^3 farther north 40° is not rare 3 and the heat in summer is occasionally, but not often, as high as 25° Celsius. The snow generally covers the ground deeply from the beginning of November till April, and this is a long, dull, monotonous season 3 about six hours' daylight to eighteen of dark. Beautiful as is a winter's landscape, it loses half its charms when we have to gaze upon it for five months 3 and at this season a man can reckon upon getting little outdoor exercise on foot, and often for Sweden, .17 tv/o months you can hardly even get into the fores>.w, lor the snow is generally too deep 3 but the sledging is then first-rate. Bleak a» the prospect, however, is without, there is m/thing cold within ; every country house is thrown open — glad reunions of families a:id social meetings of friends celebrate this festive season. The tinkling of the sledge-bells ring cheerily through the frosty ai • ; and nowhere are the hospitable rights of old Father Christmas more strictly observed than in these northern climes. Now is the time for getting the timber out of trie forests and the iron down from the mines. Driving out dung and peat-earth on to the fallows, thrashing and delivering corn, keep the farmer in full occupation during this season. The cattle are all >jnug in the byres, gates thrown off the hinges, the tops of the fences scarcely apparent above the snow 3 high roads are now little heeded, and short cuts across the country are made for sledging over the snow and frozen lakes as straight as the crow can fly. Nearly all the birds have left for more genial climes, and all nature seems wrapped in a still deep sleep. But sudden as was the change when the cold north wind, drifting over the dreary deserts of tlie North Cape, buried the landscape beneatli its icy mantle, it is no less sudden when the mild west wind of April comes with "healing on its wings," and the first summer migrant appears as the glad harbinger of spring. A few dull misty days, witli rain and warm wind, and tlie whole face of the country changes as if by magic. The trees suddenly burst into leaf, the green rye appears from under the snow, and no one who had looked upon the country a few days back could believe that so much beauty lay hidden beneath the waste of snow. Now all is bustle out of doors — animal as well as vegetable life seems suddenly to wake up, and the farmer has not a day to spare in making preparation against anotlier winter, which he knows will surely come again in due season. Although the principal riches of the north are the forests and tlie iron mines, the country is much dependent upon agriculture 3 and to prove that great improvements are yearly taking place, we may judge from the fact that twelve or fifteen years since 36,000 tunna c i8 Sweden. of corn were yearly imported into the province of Wermland, whereas now the export exceeds the import by 6000 tunna. Every Swedish country gentleman is something of a farmer, living upon and cultivating his own estate. The principal part of his produce goes to the support of his household, and the sale of his surplus corn and timber from his forests covers incidental expenses. Thus he passes his time quietly and happily in the bosom of his family — a country gentleman or squire in every sense of tlie word, with just enough employment to keep his time occupied ; and if he is not rich compared to the British landowner, his expenses are much lessj and his estate supplies him and his family with all the real necessaries of life. But do not let the reader suppose that the gentleman farmer works here as in England. An inspector or bailiff is kept on every estate 5 and, as to the farmer himself, his knowledge is principally theoretical, as no one above the class of a peasant understands much about the practical jjart of the affair. It is not to be wondered at that we see true pictures of domestic happiness in the Swedish homes, where the members are so much more closely thrown together than in England. Hospitable and kind-hearted, a stranger is treated as " a friend and a brother" wherever he comes. It is much to be regretted that the youth of this country take little or no interest in athletic games, such as cricket, rowing, &:c., and the many other outdoor manly exercises in which young England delights (and which, whatever your soft-hearted carpet- knights may say, have tended more than anything else to bring England to the high position she now holds), for a finer, hand- somer race of men than the upper classes in Sweden, take them altogether, it would be hard to find — generally large grown, and the average standard certainly above that of the English. And, as Xo the females, it is without the slightest flattery when I say that I have certainly seen more fine women, in proportion to their numbers, in this country than in any other j and the proud beauties ■of En2:land would find it hard to " hold their own " when brous^ht side by side with the fresh, healthy beauty of the north. And, Sweden, i^ rough and uncouth as the Swedish peasants may be, they are as "hard as nails j" and the thought struck me, as I saw about loo of these hardy foresters marshalled together at an elk " skall," that it must be a bold enemy wdio w^ould attack such men in their native woods. The Swedish peasant is an original. It has been observed that "3. Yorkshireman was the hardest study of man, not even barring a Scotchman J but a Yorkshire yar777er out-Heroded even Herod." For the Yorkshire farmer substitute 2. " Swedish peasanty You need never try to drive him out of his way. If you want anything done for you, you must let him do it after his own fashion ; but on one thing you may depend, it luill he done. There is something, to my fancy, very sterling and good in the character of the true *'bondes" of the north j always civil and friendly, hard-working, cheerful, and honest, he generally farms his own little estate, and nearly always contrives to lay by a little money. He is proverbially inquisitive, and covetous after money ; and it is wonderful, for a trifle, how far he will go to serve you. But the real key to his heart is a glass of corn-brandy. And I may here remark that the principal drink of the country is a fiery kind of spirit distilled from potatoes or rye, about half the strength of our gin. This is called linkel or branvin, and can be bought for about is. 6d. the Swedish kanna or gallon, which contains four English bottlee. This is the nectar of the Swedish peasant 5 and it has one grt-at advantage in his eye, that he can manage to get comfortably drunk on it for yl. The Sv\ti!i^h peasant is often a heavy drinker and a heavy swearer. It is singular that, although a drunken peasant is no uncommon sight, it is a very unusual circumstance to see any one of the better class in Sweden intoxicated : they like their social glass, but they do not drink in the business-like manner of the English j and, moreover, somehow or other, they all seem to have found out the secret which an old friend of mine used to say he had been sixty years trying to discover, which was, 'Svhen he had had just enough." c 2 •20 Sweden, For hard work commend me to a Swedish female servant. Her wages will probably not exceed 30^. per year and a few clothes, and yet on this she contrives to dress well, often to look very smart and pretty ; and it is a pleasure to see the cheerful way she goes about her work. Besides the peasant who farms his own land, and who represents the British yeoman, we have still another class, the '' torpare," who is, as it were, attached to the estate, and does the principal work of the farm. Every large estate has so many of these "torpare" on it. They have a house and a bit of land on the estate ; and, in consideration, are bound to work so many days in the year for their landlord. This I consider a most objectionable system, for these *' torpare" never have a shilling to enter upon their little holding, which is too often in wretched condition. It is generally let far too high, and their day's wages are proportionably low 3 they have little time to work their own farm, and as they must buy everything from their landlord, because they scarcely ever are able to go elsewhere, they live completely on the tally system. They are almost alv^^ays in debt. A poor ''torpare" once in debt is never able ro work himself out again. The system is certainly good for the landlord, for he gets a hard-working man in return for a wretched house and a poor little patch of land ; but I am certain the day labourer would be far more independent and better off here if he received his wages weekly, and hired a small cottage to live in. But labour every year in Sweden is becoming of a higher value. That t\\& Swedish labourer is just now in a better condition than the English labourer, is proved by the fact that in the winter of 1864 and 1865, the labourers round us, who were free and not tied down by this " torpare" system, were earning from S-?. to 95. per week. Rye was not above i/. 105. per quarter, and pork not 55. for 2olb. The religion of Sweden is strictly Lutheran ; and the Swedish priests exemplary, hard-working, and too often ill-paid men. There are no religious schisms or dissensions in this country, and the priests are far more respected among the peasants than at home. The education of the poor is much better looked after, and no one can Sweden. 21 take the sacrament without having first read with the priest. The consequence is, that nearly every peasant can read and write — all can read ; and this, I think, is rather a clincher against the argu- ment that it is not prudent to teach the working classes too much. Nowhere do we see a more honest, Lard-working, quiet race of men, taking them in general, than the peasants here. Even " in his cups " he is pleasant and good-natured ; and there certainly is not in this country one-third of the crime in proportion to tlie number of inhabitants, which we hear of in England. It is very difficult to give any idea of the value of property here. Very little is rented ; almost every Swedish proprietor farms his own land. Estates are, however, always in the market ; and a man with capital has no trouble to suit himself, and often at his own price. I have seen a 2000 acre farm, in Wermland, sold for 2000/., and many others, not half the size, for double the sum. I should say, however, that 5/. per acre would buy most of the estates in Wermland J and ^s. to los. per acre (when lands are let) is, perhaps, the standard rent 3 and, in my opinion, this is their full value, considering the present state of the land. There is a perfect mania in S\^^eden for buying estates, and I do not believe there is a landed proprietor heie who would not part with his estate, if the price tempted him. Not one estate in tooo is entailed ; and, as most of the estates are fully mortgaged, and half of them bought on speculation, to be parted with again directly land rises in the market, the landed proprietor in the north does not feel an interest in his land equal to that of the British landowner, whose estate has been in his family for centuries. This is the true secret why the farms are made so little of in the north. Scarcely any gentleman thinks of renting a farm — his great object is to become a landed proprietory therefore, if he possesses 1000/. or 2000/., instead of renting just as much land as he can well manage, and throwing his capital into his farm, where he would be sure to get a safe return, he at once buys an estate for from 2000/. to 4000/., puts what money he has into the purchase, and borrows the remainder at 6 per cent. He has therefore nothing left to 22 Sweden, come in with and improve his farm when he has once entered; and hampered \\'ith a debt which keeps him poor, he is unable to make any improvements on his farm which would increase his yearly returns. Of course this is not always the case ; many clear- sighted men will make a good thing of it j but it is the general rule. If every man (unless, indeed, he saw it was a safe specula- tion) would limit his purchase to half his capital, or rent his land upon a long lease, we should then see agriculture flourish in this land, and not till then. When a man can help his farm, and stick 1o it, it is sure to give a good return ; and this is proved by the peasants, who, notwithstanding their generally slovenly state of cultivation, by careful living and industry always contrive to lay by something. Do not, however, misunderstand me. I do not in the least blame a man for buying a farm, if he sees he can make more out of it as interest for his capital than he can get elsewhere. But this speculation is carried on almost to gambhng ; and many a man who buys an estate knows very little how to cultivate it to the best advantage. There is a loan society here which will always advance one-half of the purchase-money, but they have the first claim on the estate, and the mortgagees who lend the other half (for very often land is mortgaged up to the whole of the sum that it costs) have, I should fancy, a very poor security for tlie remainder. There are more ways of entering a farm here than one. Very often the cattle and implements go with the estate, and, in the case of renting, the whole stock is taken at an inventory, to be replaced at tlie expiration of the term, by which means it is possible for a man to come into his farm witli scarcely a shilling. But I think that a tenant who really means to start right, and stock his farm properly, should enter it with about il. or iL los. capital per acre, and in this case, if he understood his business, he would be sure of a good and certain return. One great advantage a good working farmer would have in taking a farm here is this — he would pay only for the cultivated landj and as' there is generally nearly as much waste land on each estate as that which is under the plough, but equally ^ood (wanting only working), he could if he got a long lease Sweden, 23 (which eveiy British farmer would of course insist upon) in a few years double the area of his cultivated land. Of course, throughout this wide land, there is as much variety in the soil as in the climate, and there are few estates of any size upon which you will not find nearly every variety of soil which the farmer requires ; but of course, like England, Sweden has its rich and its poor districts. Taking the land in general, I should say it was a stiff, useful, but poor and hungry, soil, with much deep good land by the sides of the river and lakes everywhere capable of great improvement by ground drainage and care. The standard crops of the country — rye, oats, clover, and artificial grasses — appear to grow well on every farm. Rye is the principal corn grown in Sweden. In Wermland it should, if possible, be in the ground by the beginning of August, and the harvest will generally fall in that month. The measure in use here is the tunna, and on a rough calculation we may reckon this as equal to four English bushels, or half a quarter. The land is measured by the tunreland, which is rather more than an English acre. It is next to impossible to give a general average of the crops in the midland districts, for so much depends upon the weather and the seasons -, and most of the land is in such bad heart, that, unlike the farmer in England, who can generally calculate upon his return with some certainty, the Swedish farmer can hardly ever reckon, when he sows his corn, how much he hiay get back. I know no country which wants it more, or which could be more improved by ground-draining than this, and the expense of ground-draining here is not dear — about 2/. to 2/. los. per acre. Artificial manures are coming much into fashion, although the peasants stick to "muck," and muck only. Guano answers well for an autumn dressing, but the summers are generaiTy too dry to use it in the spring. I wonder, considering how muc^i they are wanted at home, at the quantity of bones that are annually exported from Sweden. A tuiina of good rye will weigh from 26olb. to 3oolb.3 and its market price is always i^s., and sometimes as high as iL 24 Sweden. When properly done by, I have seen some rattlhig crops of wheat in many places, which proves that, with care, the land might soon be adapted to its culture 3 and I wonder it is not more attended to. An average crop will probably be about eight tunna, or four quarters, to the acre ; it should weigh 3oolb. per tunna, and average 25^. in the market. Red wheat is generally sown three- quarters of a tunna seed to the tunneland ; and spring wheat, if they can get it in early enough, generally does well. Wermland is not a barley province, but by good draining it might be made to carry good crops. It is impossible to give an average of this crop, which varies from six to twelve tunna per tunneland, and will average about 12?. per tunna, weight 26olb. Oats, however, appear to be peculiarly adapted to this soil and climate. They are generally sown three years in succession on the same land, in many places six, and sometimes ten — just cast into the land, without any manure ; and, notwithstanding this lazy-bed culture, the return will sometimes be six tunna to the acre ; but we see often wretched crops, and it is not to be wondered at, con- sidering what state the land must be in after such close cropping. The principal oats grown here are both white and black, and potato oats. They will weigh from i6clb. to 20olb. the tunna, and the price varies from 85. to 1 2s. Potatoes will average 3^. to 6s., and turnips (Swedish) 4^. per tunna. The land seems well adapted to potatoes. On Gardsjo they generally plant fifteen tunna on three tunneland, and get back seldom less than 150 tunna. On good ground, carrots grow w^ell up here, and occasionally the crop will yield 200 tunna to the tunneland. Beans are but little grow^n, nor do I think the country adapted to them — certainly not at present. Peas, however, grow well in many places. The clover crops are excellent ; and as there is in this country no rich old natural meadow-grass, hke the English meadow^s. it is the standard hay crop here, and very heavy crops they get. The seed is white clover, alsike clover, and timothy grass, mixed, 3olb. to Sweden, 25 the tunneland, sown always on rye or wheat early hi the sprhif]^, often on the top of the snow, seldom on oats. A good crop will often yield as much as fifteen loads to the tunneland, and the price of a load of such hay weighing 40olb., will be 8^. to lo^., some- times more. The general price of oat-straw is 5,9., of rye-straw 3.9. per 4oolb. The natural meadow-grass is coarse and rough, growing by the sides of the lakes and swamps, and there is no old swarth for pasture such as we see in England. As I said before, the growth of turnips is but yet in its infancy; and, till the land is in a better state by drainage and manure, I do not expect they will make much head. The general rotation of crops here is : ist, A dead summer- fallow, followed by rye or wheat sown in August ; 2nd, Grass and clover seeds in the spring, and this will stand two to four years ; 3rd, Oats; 4th, Oats or barley; 5th, Oats or tares 3 and then a fallow and rye again. I will now proceed to make a few remarks on the live stock of the farm, and wind up with some observations on the subject generally. The beef is but poor, and little wonder, seeing that the principal' cattle which are slaughtered are either worn-out oxen or cows past milking. Such beef costs about 2\d. per pound. The calves are killed when a few hours old, and such veal is worth 2d. per pound. It is a nasty sight to any one who has been accustomed to the neat, clean ap- pearance of the meat in the London butchers' shops, to see the carcases brought into the market here in the peasants' carts. The pork and mutton are, however, excellent. They seem to have a curious idea, however, here, that " pigs will not pay for fatting." A good pig will generally weigh, when slaughtered, 40olb. ; and the sheep often yolb., when of English race. Mutton is worth yl per pound, and pork about 6s. for the 2olb. In the country every family kill their own meat, and October and November are the slaughtering months. It is strange, considering butter and milk are the two staple com- 26 Sweden, moditles here, that the co^v3 are not better looked sifter. The cow- byres are in general low, dark, and dirty, and the cows scarcely ever well done by. In the middle of Sweden they come in about the beginning of October, and hardly ever leave the byre again till May. During the summer they pasture in the forest and grass lands ; and during winter their food is often little more than rye- straw, A^ith a small proportion of hay. The race of cows pecuhar to the country are small, hardy little animals, and the general yield of milk is 300 kanna (one kanna is equal to two-thirds of an English gallon) per year 5 but when taken care of they will often double that. About 3/. to 4/. is tlie price of an in-calver here. Milk with the cream in the country may be averaged at 3^. per kanna ; butter 6d. to c^d. per pound, and cheese at all prices from 2d. to gd. They say the annual yield of every cow is 5/. I confess I can hardly see it. And in general they seem to think nmch more of the produce of their cows than of their crops. Many shorthorns are imported from England to improve the breed, and I have no doubt, with care, the desired end will be effected. But these fine-bred English cattle will require a little different treatment from the rough Swedish cows, or, to use a horsedealer's phrase, they will soon "fly all to pieces j" and were I going to stock a farm here to-morrow, I should stick to the native breed, feed and tend them better, and I am very doubtful in the long run whether they would not be found to answer best. As long as milk is the principal desideratum, I am convinced, with the keep they now get, the little Swedish cows are the best ; but when they get the land to carry better crops, and commence stall-feeding, tlie large English breed will, of course, improve the meat. The sheep, however, have been much improved by crosses with our Cheviots and Leicesters ; and considering the price of wool, and the immense quantity that is annually required for warm winter clothing, I wonder that sheep-farming is not more attended to. I don't suppose that in the very north they could live ; and in the midland districts they will sometimes be under cover for six months out of the twelve. Their principal food at this time is hay and O'Wecieu. 27 birch branches gathered and stacked in the autumn j and in the summer they find excellent picking in the woods and plantations, and on the heather. The Swedish horses are compact, docile, hardy little fellowS; showing no great breeding, but well adapted for this climate and these roads, and, like the cows, can rough it upon any pasture and in any quarters. They average about 14 to 15 hands. The carts they draw are small, and doubtless, if tlie larger English cart-horses and our common carts could be introduced into tlie country, tlie farmers would get through their work quicker and easier. But I don't believe they would stand either the climate or roads, except, perhaps, in tlie very south ; and instead of trusting too much to foreign aid to improve their breed of cattle, or system of farming, I should recommend the Swedish farmer to do more justice to his own breed, and modify his own style of farming, which is best suited to the country, without introducing fashions and cattle from other countries, which probably would be very unsuited to this. Much as we must applaud the spirit of enterprise and im- provement, we should ah^'ays bear in mind that there are cer- tain laws of nature which man cannot overstep witliout paying tlie penalty. Horses are dear here ; about ij/. is the price of a useful country nag, such as we should see in a butcher's or grocer's light cart in England, but without the style. Riding on horseback is not fashionable here, and, except the military, you rarely see a Swedish gentleman '^ outside a horse." The military seat is in vogue here, and, as there is no racing or cross-country work, when you do see a man riding he seems as if he was trying to take as much out of his horse as he can. Our English cross-country seat, and our style of riding, where the rider tries to ease his horse as much as he can, not being understood, is laughed at here. There is not much work for the veterinary surgeon in the country-stables, for the horses being more naturally treated are much healtliier than in England. I believe the Norwesrian horses are considered the best, and though they boast of some rattling trotters in that country, I don't believe aS Sweden, they could find many to do the English mile within the three minutes. Domestic poultry is but little attended to, although eggs will occasionally fetch is. 6d. per score. In my opinion, both poultry and tame rabbits would pay well in the south and midland districts. They have very much improved lately in the fashion of their agricultural implements, as they get all their models from Eng- land. Wood and work are cheaper here j and a Scotch plough, in every respect equal to one made at home, can be bought for 40^., and other implements in proportion. Timber is cheap, and houses and outhouses cost but little putting up in comparison to England. The taxes are moderate 3 all the relief of the poor in our district was out-door, and the poor-rates are levied in grain, after this fashion. Early in spring an auction was held, to which all aged and helpless paupers are brought in order to be let for the year. Each pauper is put up to bidding, to see who will take and keep him or her for one year at the lowest price, and a good deal of speculation goes ou among the assembled farmers. A helpless old pauper out of whom they can get no work \^^ill perhaps be rented out for the year at ten tunna of oats j while one who appears to have a little work left in him will be taken perhaps for tliree. This annual quota of grain is levied among the farmers of the district. I have heard this practice much condemned, and it certainly does appear to be a kind of traffic in human flesh. But I cannot see what other plan could be adopted in this thinly-populated country, where the houses lie so wide apart j and I really believe that the Swedish peasant is always kindly disposed towards the unfortunate, and these poor old bodies are perhaps as well treated as the paupers in any of our parish unions, and are certainly much freer. But there is something melancholy in the reflection that one can live long enough to be of no use to any one, and to be hawked about at the end of one's "journey," and let out to the man who will undertake to keep you for the lowest price. I recollect two or three old gentlemen who were rented out in our neighbourhood, and they appeared cheerful enough ; all they seemed to want was tobacco, and the poor old Kiweaen, 29 boys used regularly to waylay me in the woods when [ was out, tm beg for a little bit. They at length became regular pensioners, and many a time in after years, when I have been out of tobacco in the Australian bush, have I thought of these old men, and become a beggar in my turn of any stock-rider who might casually canter by. It is a pity, in most places, to see how badly the forests are looked after, and how much waste yearly takes place. In many of the more populous districts even firewood is becoming scarce, and most of the forests in the midland districts are becoming sadly tliinned by the woodman's axe, especially where water-carriage is near. Timber is consequently rising yearly in value. The fences in the midland districts are a kind of light snake-fence, composed of split palings stuck obliquely in the ground one above another. It is one of the ugliest fences imaginable, and has notliing to recom-- mend it 3 and, to form a mile of such fencing, many hundreds of valuable young trees are sacrificed. Hov/ever, in many places tliey are substituting neat single posts and rails. That agriculture is every year making head in Sweden, is certain. Farming associations are held in every town, and a farming school is established by Government in every district, where a dozen or so- young men are sent every year to work on the farm, and go through a course of agricultural study. But at present theory is more ia fashion than practice. As the Swedes, however, are peculiarly gifted with that most inestimable quahty, common sense, things wilt be sure to come right in tlie end. Few countries in Europe have greater natural capabilities than Sweden as an agricultural land, and although the two great drawbacks are want of capital, and the severity and uncertainty of the climate, that farming must pay is proved by the fact that more than two-thirds of the gentlemen's families are brought up by it. But a stranger settling on a farm in this country would at first have much to contend with. A total ignorance of the language and habits of the people, the severity of the climate, and the very different manner in which the farms arft managed here to what he has been accustomed, would sorely try a 30 ' Sweden, British farmer. A young working farmer, however, coming over here with a small capital, and really setting his mind to acquire a know- ledge of the language and the habits of the people, which he could do in a twelvemonth by living for that time on a farm where the ov/ner spoke English (and there are many such places m here he could live very cheaply), would soon find an opening. Happily, however, no men are more averse to leaving England than the farmers, and no wonder at it. I spent my early days much among them, and since then I have mixed much with farmers of other nations ; but in no other country under the sun have I Jbund a class of men who lead such truly happy lives as the farmers of England. No matter whatever new country he may seek, the British farmer is sure to leave behind him home comforts which he can never replace abroad. Whatever faults he may find with Old England, and however much he may grumble at her taxes, her institutions, and the imaginary ruin which too often stares him in the face, he loves her at heart perhaps better than any other of her sons. He is as it were peculiarly a part and parcel of her soil, and transplanting him to a foreign land is like lopping a branch off the old British oak. His native village church, in which so many quiet Sabbath morn- ings have been spent — the innocent occupations of his early rural life — the neat homestead, the well-tilled fields, the cattle which it was his just pride to gaze upon, the social meetings at the market or the covert side — will haunt his memory to the last, and every one of these must be relinquished the moment he turns his back upon Old England. The adventurer or man of business leaves his native home with scarce a sigh of regret, and, in the thrill of adventure or the all-engrossing pursuit of money-making, v/ill soon forget the land of his birth, and, like a true citizen of the world, accommodate himself at once to the manners and customs of the strangers among whom he is thrown j but not so the farmer. Still, there must be many young farmers in our overstocked country who, through necessity (not, we will trust, through choice), yearly leave the British shores to seek their fortune in foreign climes, and to such men I will fairly say, that of all countries in Europe, Sweden, 31 I know of none that presents a fairer opening to a farmer pos- sessed of a small capital, but with a good knowledge of his business and a hearty will, than Sweden. There exists, over all, a good feel- ing between the Swedes and English. There is scarcely a farm in the country which could not be improved doubly with a little capital and a few years' proper management j and when he once acquired a knowledge of the language and manners of the people, the emigrant would have no trouble to get on. I have endeavoured above, as far as I am able (for I must fairly confess to the reader, that, like old Jorrocks's boy Benjamin, " I don't profess to be a farmer,") to give a general insight into the agriculture of the country, and I have been careful rather to be under the mark than over it in my farming statistics. All I can say is, if this should meet the eye of anyone who is about to emigrate to more distant climes, I think it might be worth his while to turn his attention nearer home j and I can only add, that Sweden just now offers a good opening for a practical, hard-working farmer, with small capital 3 but I should never recommend a man to invest one shilling in land here in any way until he had spent a year in one of the numerous farming schools which exist in the country, for it would not be the slightest use a man commencing farming opera- tions in Sweden till he understood somethino;' of the lano^uas^e and habits of the people among whom he intended to settle — that is, if he means to conduct his l^rm like an English farmer, and manage it himself. We will now turn to another subject, and say a few words on the ichthyology of this land, which is as rich in "flood" as it is in ** fell j" and as I resided for some time in its neighbourhood, I will commence with a short description of the Lake Wenern. The Wenern is, next to Ladoga, the second largest inland lake in Europe, lying between 58"" and 60° north latitude, and about sixty English miles from the North Sea, into which it empties itself through the Gotha river, running into the Cattegat at Gothen- burg. The length of this magnificent lake is about seventy English miles, its breadth in places about forty, and it is computed 4 2 Sweden, So cover a surface of 360 English square miles. It lies about i<0 feet higher than the sea, is fed by twenty-four tributary streams, although its only outlet is through the Gotha, a river not so wide .IS the Thames at Kingston. Its greatest depth is 360 feet, and slups of a fair tonnage ply on its surface in the summer, bringing down from the northern districts of Wermland and the Dalecar- ran forests iron, timber, and corn to Gothenburg for export. The Wenern lies also on the summer high road from Gothenburg to Stockholm, and at this season a line of communication is open through the middle of Sweden by means of lakes and canals, and travelters may run from one town to the other in about four days, passing through a picturesque and beautiful country in small steamers, which, for appointments, cleanliness, and cheapness are second to none in the world 3 their captains, being all " old salts," speak and understand English well, so that on such an excursion the tourist may dispense with the nuisance and charge of a courier. The small but remarkably neat town of Wenersborg lies at the southern extremity of the Wenern, and the clean, well-built little town of Carlstad at the north 3 and here die Clar, one of the largest rivers in the middle of Sweden, empties itself into the Wenern. The Clar rises far up in the Norwegian fells, and runs through the wild forest districts of Dalecarlia and North Wermland. A little distance to the north-east of Carlstad is another smaller town— Christineham J Marit^stad and Lidkoping stand on its eastern shores, and Amal on its western. At any one of these towns cheap and good accommodation may be had 5 but, as a fishing station, I should recommend Christineham or Amal. In addition to these towns, the margin of the lake is studded with small villages and farms, while gentlemen's seats, peeping out of avenues of lime and birch extending down to the very margin of the lake, form pretty objects for the traveller's eye as he glide* over the glassy waters of the Wenern on a fine summer's morning. As is always the case in the north, the land just round the lake is of a far better quality than elsewhere 3 and if it was only made the rcost of. the farmers round the Wenern might soon be rich men j Sweden, .33 but the land of course lies low, and as the farmers are as slovenly with their dyking and banking as they are with their other farm operations, thousands of acres of land are wasted, and thousands of bushels of corn lost by sudden rises of the Wenern, though they might be all saved by a little management and judicious applica- tion of capital. The edges of the lake are bounded with large flats of coarse meadow land, beyond which rocky forests, rising all around, form a grand natural panorama. Just out of Wenersborg, to the right, are two singular mountains, Halle and Huimebcrg, rich in old Scandinavian lore, while half way up the Wenern the beautiful mountain of Kinnekulle, rising about 800 feet above the surface of the lake, forms an imposing object in the distant land- scape. In many places the Wenern is studded with little rocky isles, some of them well timbered, which, as well as the extensive reed-beds on the sides of the lake, afford safe and undisturbed haunts for the numerous waerfowl that visit these regions in the spring for the purpose of breeding. We have said that the Wenern is considerably higher than the sea, and at Trolhattan, about six English miles below Wenersborg, the Goiha dashes over a pre- cipice about 120 feet high, divided into five falls, through a narrow channel between the massy rocks which beetle over the foaming waters of the falls themselves, and the dark pools that lie at the bottom of each. Of course these falls proved a stopper to the navigation of the Wenern ; but the difficulty was at length sur- mounted, and a canal was hewed out of the solid rock parallel with the river, and fitted with sluices, up which the ships gradually " walk " from the bottom to the top, and vice versa. The scenery around the falls is picturesque in the extreme, but I have no doubt we have much grander falls in the north than these. The canal is, however, a stupendous undertaking, and t\ great triumph of art over nature. Of course not even the gamest salmon can come up tJie Trolhattan falls, consequently we never take a real sea-salmon {Sal/no salar) in the Wenern, although the sea-salmon, as well as the bull-trout (5. Eriox) and the salmon trout (5. Trulla), all come up from the sea to the very bottom of the falls. A few 34 Sweden, miles farther down the river are some smaller falls, and the same "dodge" of the sluices on a smaller scale is again called into requisition. Parallel to the Wenern lies another lake, the Vettern, at a dis- tance of about thirty miles, through which a canal runs between the two lakes. The Vettern is nearly as long as the Venern, but not half so broad, and its area is little more than 120 square English miles. The water of the Wettern (for it is immaterial whether we spell these lakes with a V or a W) is clearer and deeper than that of the Wenern — in many places above 400 feet — and I should fancy the bottom must be ditferent, for no charr are taken in the Wenern, whereas the largest charr in Sweden are met with in the Wettern j otherwise I should fancy the fish fauna of the two lakes ditFers but little. Having now slightly sketched the locality, let us proceed to its fauna j and, first, I will notice such species of birds as to my own knowledge breed on and around the Wenern. Of the gulls, they have the common gull {Larus canus, Lin.) in all parts J the lesser black-backed gull (L.fuscus, Lin.) commonj and the greater black-backed (L. viarinus, Lin.) by no means rare in some places. Of the terns, I never could identify more than two species breeding here — the common tern {Sterna hirundo, L.), and the large Caspian tern {S. Caspia, Pall.), although in the fall of the year I have met with the black tern {S. nigra, Briss.) evidently bred in the neighbourhood, and Richardson's skua (Lestris Richard- sonii, Sw.) shot on the Wenern. Of the divers, we had both the black-throated {Colymlus arct'icus, L.) and the red-throated {C. septentrionalis, L.) ; and, as far as my observation goes, the black-throated diver is the most common in the north of the Wenern. I never heard of a wild swan or any of the wild geese breeding here, although we had plenty of both during the seasons of migration. Indented as the shores of the Wenern are with small shallow Sweden. 35 bays or inlets, choked with bulrashes and reeds, edged with low, swampy, undrained, sedgy meadow flats, the wildfowl shooter in Uie autumn, if he only understood his business, could reap a good harvest here, even at the price that wild ducks fetch (under one shilling per couple) ; and as for snipe-shooting, I do not believe the far-famed bogs of Ireland can beat (in a good season) some of these marshy meadows in September. No one here cares a pin for killing a snipe 3 but, unfortunately, every duck-shooter goes for the "pot" not for the sport 3 and as the duck season commences in July, the young- birds are cleared off by "family shots" before they are more than half-grown — in fact, as soon as they can rise above the rushes, most of the sportsmen here shut up duck-shooting. But then for a few weeks a man who can shoot may get some rattling sport, if he has only a good fellow to sprit his punt quietly through the reeds. I have more than once known twelve couple of full-grown ducks killed in one morning's shooting as they rose snugly from a patch of reeds of no great extent ; and although about fifteen couple of snipe is the most I have ever myself bagged in a day, I am certain I have been out some days here when two good men might have picked up their fifty couple and been home to an early dinner. And the reader will bear in mind that this is on unpreser\''ed ground, where a stranger who has not the character of a pot-hunter, has only to ask leave, and obtain permission to shoot. But by November all the sport with a shoulder-gun is over. The snipes have left, the ducks are packed and as wild as hawks ; they leave the rushes, and congregate in the open waters by hundreds — wild-duck, widgeon, teal, golden-eye, all mixed ; sailing about in perfect security, well out of gun-shot. Now would be the time for a punt-gun — a thing that never was seen on these waters. The only ducks that commonly bred round the Wenern, to my knowledge, were the common wild duck {Anas boschas, L., as they are called here, the grass-duck), the widgeon (A. Penelope, L.), and the teal {A. crecca, L.) The golden eye {A. cLangula, L.) breeds in holes of trees in the forests on the north-east of the Wenern, and the goosander {Mergus merganser^ L.), and the merganser {M. D 2 36 Sweden, serrator, L.) sparingly over all. Of course in the spring and autumn we had the scoters, pintail, and some others, on their way to their northern breeding haunts. Of the grebes I could never identify more than one species on the Wenern, namely, the great-crested grebe {Podiceps cristatus, Lath.), and this was by no means rare. It is a curious fact that, in such a locality, so admirably suited to the habits of these birds, the coot Fulica atra, L.) is only very rarely killed on the Wenern j and as to the water-hen {GaUinula chloropus, Lath.), it is unknown here. I never myself (nor can I hear of anyone else who has) killed the water-rail {Rallus aqimticus, L.) here 3 but the spotted crake {Gal- I'lnula porzani, Lath.) was common in all the rushy meadows throughout the summer. I once shot a red-necked phalarope (Phalaropus hyperloreus, Lath.) on the banks of the Wenern in (uU summer plumage, but they don't breed here. I have shot Temminck's stint {Tringa Temmmchii, Leisl.), and the greenshank {Totanus glottis, Bechst.) more than once in the summertime, although I never obtained the eggs of either from these parts. The peewit {Vanellus cristatus, Mey.), the golden plover {Charadrius pluvialis, L.), the curlew {Nuvienius arqiiata, L.), and the common snipe {Scolopax gallinago, L.) are all common breeders here 3 but I never yet took the nest of the dunlin {Tringa alpina, L.) As to the great snipe (5. major, Gm.) and the jack snipe {S. gaUimda, L.), although I never took the eggs of either here, I feel pretty con- fident that they both bred somewhere in the neighbourhood, for I have shot the young of both far too small to have travelled down any distance. The little ring dotterel {C/iaradrius minor, Mey.) was, in my opinion, more common on the northern banks of the Wenern than its congener the ring dotterel {C. Iiiaticida, L.), although both bred here j but I never detected the Kentish plover {C. Cantianus, Lath.) breeding anywhere in Sweden on the margin of the freshwater lakes, although common on the southern coasts. The common sandpiper {Totanus Jiypoleucus, Tem.), the redshank {1\ calidris, Bechst.), the green sandpiper (7^ ochropus, Tem.), the Sweden. 37 wood sandpiper {T. glareola, Tern.), all bred commonly with us ; and I think this completes my hst of the waders — at least, if I have omitted any, they must be looked upon as accidental and notregulai visitors. The crane (Grus cinerea, Bechst.) occasionally bred in the neigh- bourhood, but this is not a favourite district, for the mosses are hardly large enough here. I never heard of a bittern being killed in the middle of Sweden ; and although a few specimens of both the stork {Ciconia alba, Briss,), the black stork (C. 7/ /'orcr, Briss.), and the heron {Ardea cinerea. Lath.) have been shot here, none of them can be considered as indigenous to these districts. I once saw the common guillemot on the south of the lake close to my boat while lake trout-fishing, and one specimen of the black guillemot was once picked up on the banks of the Wenern in a state of decomposition. It fell into the hands of a friend of mine, a keen collector, who immediately added it to his list as new to th t fauna of the Wenern. I had my doubts about such a bird having been ever brought up here by wings ; and with that characteristic jealousy which prompts every collector to sift out all particulars respecting a rare species which falls into any other hands but his own, I felt it my duty to make inquiries as to how such a bird ever could get up here. The consequence was, I discovered that the speci- men in question had been brought up from the southern coast of the Baltic in a schooner along with a lot of gulls and such like rub- bish, as sea-stores, but having been kept too long, the cook cast it overboard, and it was picked up on the beach by the peasant who carried it in triumph to my friend. Oh, the jealousy of collectors ! I do not consider myself particularly maliciously or evil-disposed towards any man, but I cannot help owning that I felt much grati- fication in undeceiving my friend respecting this black guillemot j however, this circumstance, trifling as it is, might bear with it good results, for there was certainly very good ground for his supposing that the bird in question had by some means or other found its way up to the Wenern while living ; and it is not improbable that other rare birds which are added <-o local faunas from specimens being 38 Sweden, picked up on beaches, &c., may have been transpoited there by other means than through tlie air. However, two specimens of the little auk {Mergulus alle, Nob.) a bird which I should have as little dreamt of seeing up here as the black guillemot, were killed during one winter (and both I believe on the ice) on the Clar, a little north of Carlstad. How these birds came here, and which way they were steering, is a mystery to me ; one thing is certain, however, they came without the aid of man. Of land birds we had every species inhabiting the middle of Sweden, and one bird peculiar to the south, whose northern limits end here, the melodious willow warbler {Sylvia hippola'is, Lath.). It is superfluous, therefore, to go through the list. I will only add that the rarest nests which I have obtained in this neighbourhood have been those of the osprey {Pandion haiiaetus, Sw.) ; honey buzzard {Pernis apivorus, Cu.) ; goshawk {Astur palumlarius, Bechst.)j peregrine falcon {Falco peregrinus, L.) 5 kite (Falcomil- vus, L.) J eagle owl {Strix luho, L.) ; Tengmalm's owl {Strix Teng- walmi, Gm.) ; great black woodpecker {Pkus vmrtius, L.) -, nut- cracker {Caryocatactes graculus, Nills.) ; crested tit {Parus cristatus, L.) ; parrot crossbill (Loxia pytiopsittacus, Bechst.) ; common crossbill {Loxia curvirostra, L.) I never took an eagle's nest by the side of the Wenern, although I know that the white-tailed eagle {A. alticiUa, Cuv.) breeds there. Till the last three severe winters and heavy snowstorms swept oif all the partridges in Wermland, excellent partridge as well as black- game shooting might have been obtained in many places on the shores of the Wenern. The capercailie and hazel grouse are also pretty common in many parts, and lots of foxes and hares, both on the fast land and the little islands in the lake. Now let us proceed to the Ichthyology of this magnificent lake j but, as a preface, let me say that the same pot-hunting spirit pre- vails among the fishermen as among the shooters out here, and the fish are so persecuted, swept off when they come up from the deeps of the lake on to the spawning-grounds — taken ^\•holesa]e in nets Sweden. 39 the meshes of which are so fine that fry of three inches long cannot escape — in fact, exterminated by every possible device that the in- genuity of man can invent, that, as a natural sequence, the fish are every year becoming scarcer in the Wenern, and more diflScidt to catch J and miles of valuable water are, as it were, lying fallow, only for want of a little common prudence in keeping up a breed- ing stock of fish. How sad it is that man is ever too eager to kill the goose that lays the golden e Ronnum water is not now what it was in his day. But, to mv fancy, there are stiU many places on the north-east of the Wenern quite as good as Ronnum ever was. And as I do not in the least doubt that every pound of the Namsen salmon cost at least six tines 48 Sweden. the money to kill that Mr. Lloyd's fish did, I will leave the reader to judge for himself, looking at both sides of the question, which water he would prefer to visit. I will conclude this chapter with a few remarks on the northern salmon-rivers, which may not be uninteresting to the British angler. One of the most curious facts connected with the ichthyology of the north (if it is proved to be a fact) is this : that whereas all the Nor- wegian rivers flowing into tlie North and Polar Seas, on the north and west coasts of Scandinavia, from Christiana Fjord to the North Cape, are full of salmon, which will rise readily at the fly, I can never hear of any salmon-fisher who has had sport with the rod in any of the hundred magnificent streams on the east coast of Sweden, which empty themselves into the Bothnia, between Stockholm and Tornea. Now, no one denies that there are plenty of salmon in the Bothnia, and precisely of the same habits as the North Sea salmon, yet we seem to have an extent of nearly a thousand miles of coast, through which, perhaps, a hundred salmon rivers flow into the sea, lying, as it were, waste and dormant to the salmon-fisher. And as we are told that nearly every mile of water on the Norwegian coast is taken up by some rich Englishman or another, it will be seen that it is apparently of very little use for any stranger to visit either Sweden or Norway now for tlie purpose of salmon-fishing. I believe it is quite true that, although many good salmon-fishers have tried these Bothnian streams, all declare that they could get no sport in them, either with the fly or the bait 5 and yet all say that the Bothnian salmon run quite as large, although inferior in taste, to those taken in either the Cattegat or North Sea. This may probably be owing to the water of the Bothnia having so much less salt in it than that of the North Sea. But the difference of the water would, we should imagine, make no other difference in the feeding habits of the fish than that there might be diflferenl Crustacea and insects on these coasts, and the fish might require a different bait. Mr. Lloyd obser\'es that the only solution of the mystery which he has heard is — that the fish in the rivers in question may not bu' Sweden. ^c^ the genuine salmo salar, " but a huge trout, exactly resembhng it in appearance." Even if this were tlie case, why should not these large trout take a bait as freely here as in other parts of Sweden: But it is not the case ; because, although I believe that far up in most of these Bothnian rivers they have both species of large lake trout ]>eculiar to the Wenern, I also know, from my own observa- tion, that both in the Tornea and Lulea rivers, the true sea-salmon, as w^ell as the salmon-trout, are taken every year in very great quantities when they come up to spawn, so we must seek for some other cause for the solution of a mystery which, I must confess, has puzzled me more than anything else in the ichthyology of Scandi- navia. When in Lulea Lapland, I made many inquiries into the habits of the salmon in the great Lulea river, and doubtless they are the same in the other rivers along the coast, as well on the Swedish as on the Finnish sides. Both the salmon and the salmon- trout begin to ascend the large Lulea river soon after the middle of June, and the spawning season in this river is about the middle of October. They ascend the river as far as Lockmock, perhaps 120 Enghsh miles from Lulea, and between Lockmock and the sea there are eight falls, but none prettier or more fitting for the habits of the salmon than the Leclel fail close to Lockmock, which, however, apparently they cannot ascend, for the true sea-salmon never comes up as far as Quickiock, above eighty miles farther up, although I believe there is water communication so far, but broken probably with lakes and tracks. I never myself wetted my line here, but I was told at Lockmock that salmon are taken by a rod and line under this fall during the summer. As far as I could learn, the salmon fishing in this magnificent river is much spoilt by the large salmon traps set across the stream at Ederforss, a little distance from Lulea, and the salmon taken here belong to the town of Lulea. At six of the other salmon traps on this river, tlie yearly catch of salmon, I was told, would average as follows : — At Sands, 40 tunna, Dr about 160 bushels 3 Luarts, 50 tunnaj Gaddock, 705 Balinge, 50 5 Lunnerley, 303 Annan, 40. The value of the salmon fishing '.n ti'*' Lower Tornea river is averaged at about 3500/., reckoning 5© Sweden. the average value of the sahiion at 4/. for the four bushels. I do not exactly know how far the sea salmon run up the great Tornea river, but I think as far at least as Munro. According to Widigren, the bed of the Lulea river consists of sandstone and clay, without any vegetation — only in two places are to be found one species of pond weed {Potomogeton gramineus), and the banks are lined with dilTerent species of willow and hedge, which are of very little advantage for the spawning of any of the members of the carp genus, because it is only at very high tides that they are under water, and on this account but few of our commoner species of white lish are met with in the Lap rivers, especially far up. The medium temperature of Lake Saggat, near Quick iock, mostly may betaken at about 50° Fahr. in an ordinary season. The stream is filled with falls and still water ; the depth is considerable, and but very few different species of Crustacea, except Entomostraca, Porcellcuiidcs and Lernece are met with 5 but these, however, abound in such quanti- ties, that these streams are peculiarly rich in all the species of salmon and gwynniad. In the great Tornea river tlie inferior water animals are met with in prodigious quantities, affording even a readier supply of food for the fish. The temperature of the water in the Tornea river is considerably higher than in the Lulea river, and this may probably be accounted for by the fact of the springs in the Tornea river being lower than in the Lulea river, and that the Lulea is much the deepest. The consequence of this is that the supply of fish in the Tornea river is double that in the Lulea river. Although the individuals of each may be numerous, not a very great many species of fish are met with in the Lap rivers running into the Bothnia, and at their outlets. Widigren's list includes the perch, the ruffe, the pike-perch, four species of bullhead, two species of stickleback (G. aculeatus, Lin., and G. Pungitius, L.), the vivi- parous blenny, the dobule roach {C. Erislagine, L.), stamher, which goes up the Tornea river as far as Munco, but not far up the Lulea river J the ide, the roach, the minnow, the winnow {Cvinelio, L.), tlie bream, the bleak, the pike, the salmon^ the bull-trout, the Sweden, 51 salmon-trout, the great lake trout, the common trout, the charr (5. alpinus, L.), only in the fell lakes, the smelt, the grayling, the gwyn- iiiad {C. oxyrrliinchus, L.), the vendace, the herring (striJmjnirig), he burbot, the flounder, the sturgeon, the eel, and the lamprey. Thus we see that thirty-two normal species of fish are met with in the waters of Norhotten and Lapmark, of which three (the pike-perch, the ruffe, and the smelt) belong exclusivelyto fresh water. Twenty- four are fresh-water species, but are met with also in the brackish waters on the coasts. Two species (the salmon and tlie ell) are met with both in fresh and salt water. Of the true salt-water fish only two species are met with in tlie very north of the Baltic — namely, the herring and the viviparous blennyj while on the Stockholm coasts fourteen species of salt-water fish are normal,by which we may judge that the Bothnia has more the character of a large Arctic lake than a true sea. It may be very probable that the food of the salmon in these Bothnian rivers is different to that in the Norwe- gian streams. Yet it seems singular that they will not in both rivers rise to the salmon fly, which certainly in general is a resem- blance of no insect that ever crawled or flew -, and even if the fly failed, it does seem strange that these Bothnian salmon, which certainly are precisely the same species as those taken in the rivers running into the Cattegat and the North Sea, should not be tempted to take a small herring-bleak or vendace (the most killing of all baits for large lake trout), if neatly spun. Now, from a perusal of the above, it will be seen that as far as regards the true sea-salmon, the Swedish waters, except just three or four rivers running into the Cattegat in the south of Sweden (and which I believe are all taken up by some of the rich " timber lords" in Gothenburg) offer not the slightest attraction to the salmon fisher ; and as we are told that all the Norwegian waters are rented (but of this more by-and-by), the whole of the Scan- dinavian continent, whose waters the salmon fisher at home is foolishly led to believe offer the finest and freest sport in Europe, and, as it were, a complete dead letter, save to a very few ; for there seems to be an opinion that all along the Eastern coast tliere 53 Sweden. are no means of taking the fish, which are to be met wiiii in abundance, while the whole of the fishing for hundreds and hun- dreds of miles along tlie Western coast are monopolized by a few rich Englishmen, wlio perhaps never see the country except during a month or two in the summer, who never spend a shilling among the poor inhabitants, except just at the fishing season ; who have not the slightest interest in the land further than as a means of gratifying their love for sport, and yet have assumed a power to warn otlier older residents in the country off water (a good deal of vhich, if the matter was looked into, has really no private owner), which surely in their wild tracts, at least, we should have imagined, would have been as free at least to one stranger as another. Is it possible that such can really be the case ? And now for a word or two on the practice of monopohzing fishing in this wild land. I obser\^ed in 1864 some letters in the Field, in which we were told that the River Alten up near the North Cape from the Lea to tlie Fors, is leased by the Duke of Roxburgh, the Hansen by Sir Charles Taylor and his friends, and that there is not a river of note in Norway that is not now protected by English lessees. This is a wide statement j and without for one moment denying the full right of any man in any country to let his fishings or his shootings to whoever he chooses, or for any other man to rent them j but when we are told that not a river of note n Norway but what is protected, it naturally leads us to ask, " What is meant by this protection ?" I do not exactly know how the law stands in Norway as regards fishing ; I fancy, however, much the same as in Sweden. Now in Sweden no man has the least right to interfere with the middle of the stream. Every proprietor has the sole right of fishing in one- third of tlie water — that which abuts upon his own land. Thus two-thirds of the river can be preserved — one-third on each side ; but Jhe middle-third, which is here called tiie king's highway, is open to /ll. It must, moreover, always be kept open not solely for the purposes of navigation, but for the sake of the fish passing up and down. Not a stake, net, or ***"" obstacle, may be placed Sweden, 53 across it, under a heavy penalty j moreover, many of these Lapland and Norrland nvers (and I should not \\'onder if this is the case with the greater part of the Alten) are altogether crown property, and no one, save a crown bailiff, has a right to interfere with any man fishing there, and this no crown bailiff would do, if he met a foreigner fishing with a rod and line. In fact, I am pretty certain that half of their northern rentings are a mere myth, and other fishermen are only kept off because they are told by the London fishing-tackle makers, or others that know nothing about it, that Lord So-and-So has hired the water, and has the exclusive right to fish. Fancy the whole of the water in such a land as Norway being all taken up by about half a score of men. Why, the statement is too absurd on the very face of it to be believed for a moment. I am not a salmon-fisher myself. I have neither the time or the money to throw away upon it ; but I well know if I was, tliat I would soon see how many of their rentings would stand good ; and even if I wished to fish on so-called preserved water (unless it was strictly preserved by a native for his own fishing, and then I could always obtain leave by paying) I would do so without asking any one's leave. It is perfectly absurd to talk about preserving either shooting or fishing through the agency of a nortliern peasant. All I should require to fish the best water in Norway would be a good interpreter to parley with the i)easants — and there are plenty such to be found in Christiania who \\'ould like the job — a good guide or ( uo who knew the river and the peasants well, a nine-gallon cask of Bianvie (on which I should place by far the greatest reliance), and just an "inkling," as the Scotch say, of the sun. The lessee, whoever he was, paid in rent for his water. Moreover, if a trespasser is caught, the peasant or owner of the land will always accept the fine at the time (the owner or guardian of field or water has a right to seize a man's gun or fishing-tackle, and hold it till the fine is paid) ; but I should trust entirely to my nine-gallon cask and the "soft sawder" of my guide, and I never yet knew a Northern peasant able to U'ilhstand these. ^Moreover, the middle of the stream is always open ta me, and it would be very odd if, with a couple of good rowers^ 54 Sweden. I could not dodge in and out when I liked on to any preserved water on the sides of the stream. I never, however, set foot on any gentleman's or peasant's grouna in Sweden without first asking leave, and the proprietor was always welcome to a liberal share of the game or fish which I might kill ; and I recommend every foreigner in a strange country to do the same as regards the real oivner of the soil. But somehow or other I regard a proprietor who preserves his own land on which he is residing, in a very different light from a rich Englishman, who probably owns hundreds of acres of good sporting at home, but not content with this, comes over to a land of which he know^s nothing and cares less, when I, a poorer man, but quite as good a sportsman as himself, have settled among the people, have become, as it were, one of them, and am hoping to enjoy a little sport in freedom which, on account of my means, is denied me at home. If such is to be the case, a dozen or two rich lords will have it in their power to monopolize the whole sporting in Northern Europe. This nuisance is now becoming rather too much of a good thing, and I would seriously advise any sportsman before he leaves England, never mind for what out-of-the-way country he may be bound, first to advertise in the columns of the Field, and beg to know, not whether the inhabitants of the country he is about to visit have any objection to his doing so, but whether any countryman of his own objects. Now, I therefore advise every man who has the dream or inclina- tion to try a little salmon-fishing in Norway, not to be the least deterred or frightened by the interested reports he may hear in England of all these northern waters being taken up. I am certain that there are lots of places where he will find open water, if he only has a good guide ; and even on the preserved waters he will, I fancy, always get fishing, if he is willing to pay for it. These peasants have not the least conscience or sense of honour in a bargain like this. Moreover, most of this fishing and shooting is paid for by a very nominal rent, and so badly looked after that — althougli it may sound all very grand when a man tells you in England that he rents S'^joeden. 53 so many thousand acres, or so many miles of water in Norway — yet ■t would not appear such a great renting if he told you the rent he paid, and how many keepers were employed to look after it. Moreover, I cannot yet believe that the Bothnia salmon altogether refuse to look at a fly or a bait ; and I feel certain that if a good salmon-fisher were to come to Stockholm properly equipped, hire a good guide in that town, and fish his way up to Tornea, he would not be altogether disappointed. Anyhow, he would probably gather some interesting facts and information relative to the habit of the salmon on that coast, and throw some light upon an enigma which has hitherto puzzled our best ichthyologists and fishermen. There seems, however, to be a very erroneous opinion in England respecting the cheapness of travelling in these Northern countries. I think I can safely say that there is no country in Europe w^here a man can enjoy a little sport so cheaply and freely as in Sweden, when he once gets used to the country. To the casual traveller, I believe, Norway will be found quite, and Sweden pretty nearly, as dear now as any other European country ; and wherever the English have found their way, prices have risen loo per cent., and are every year rising, and good fishing and shooting are both hard to obtain by the stranger, for the simple reason that he does not know the right locality to pitch upon. No man can be more covetous after money than the Northern peasant, and, as he has now begun to find out that the English are always willing to pay for their sport, in Norway he is every year becoming more and more extortionate. It seems a great question to me now whether the English salmon- fisher would not be able to obtain nearly as good sport in many parts of Great Britain as in Norway; for although, doubtless, some men who know and are used to the waters do occasionally kill a great ma r.y fish here, I hardly believe a stranger would find tlie sport compensate him for his trouble and expense — certainly not without a good guide and interpreter, and such a man will be foiiiid a very expensive companion. DUCK-SHOOTING IN WERMLAND, SWEDEN. I HAVE, I think, already observed, that in the part of Sweden where I reside w^e have none of what the English game-shooter would call open shooting. Our partridges were all destroyed by two severe winters a few years since, and the breed has never been got up again. The capercailly and hazel grouse, as in all other parts of Sweden, are confined exclusively to the forests, and here, at least, I only occasionally find the blackgame lying out in the open, although we have some tolerable ground, and the hares are always in woods or plantations. The forests are so much thicker than in England, that one rarely gets a fair flying shot. It ;s_, therefore, impossible to make a heavy bag in any of the woods round us, and the English sportsman would find but little amusement in a day's covert-shoot- ing in S^^den, except, perhaps, just in the very south, at woodcocks. But although, as I have said, we have no open shooting at game, we have round us some of the finest duck and snipe grounds that any man would wish to shoot over, and I will describe two localities in my own neighbourhood over which I have full right to shoot, and these will give the English sportsman a pretty good idea of hundreds — I may say thousands — of places in Sweden of the same description. As a word of preface, I may as well say at starting that, except just for duck and snipe, my game-book would show a very poor return when compared with that of most English sportsmen ; but then we must remember that I do not pay one shilling rent for either my fishing or shooting, and exactly that sum per day is the cost of my man, who rows and attends me in all my little trips. Duck-shocting in IFermland, Sweden, 57 The two places to which I have alluded lie at equal distances from where 1 live, about live English miles j and as this is almost too far to shoot the grounds properly in one day, I have a boat a each place. We drive over in the morning (the horse and cart cost me ninepence), take our things with us, shoot all day, camp out at night, shoot next day, and home in the evening. I enjoy these little outings greatly — not so much for the sake of the shooting we get, but because they are the nearest approach to the dear old bush life that we can make in these civilized countries. The ground to the right (excuse the bull) is a bight of the Lake Wenern, studded with islands, and there are several small inlets fringed with reed-beds, in every one of which we are sure to pick up a pair or two of ducks j but the best bit of all is a large plain of bulrush flags, and the great water horse-tail grass (in which the ducks are sure to be in the early season), of about a couple of hundred acres in extent. It is impossible to wade this, although the water is not deep, for the bottom is spongy — in fact, a kind of shaking bog ; and in many places the reeds are so thick and high that it is next to impossible to get the boat through them. Of course, this place being almost tabooed ground, is the resort of all the ducks in the neighbourhood. There is much luck in shooting this reed-bed ; but it does so happen fhat if we find the ducks out in the horse-tail grass (and this often happens if we are on the ground a little after daylight) we do gel some rattling shooting. There is a capital snipe country round here, and six couple of snipe and four to five couple of ducks is my average day's work on this ground. I have done more, and I have done less. I have got a capital camping-place here on a little island ; plenty of wood and good water at hand 5 no rent or taxes to pay, and no questions asked j and I have often wondered — as I have lain out on a warm night on a bed of dry grass under the lee of an old stack of dry bulrushes (wherefore it was put here I never can tell, because I have known it here as long as I have known the place), with my face turned up to the heavens, watching one little star after another twinkling in the clear blue sk) — why the 58 T)uck~shooting in Wermlandy Six: e den. whole tenor of our lives should not flow on as smoothly as the hours we spend in these lonely, out-of-the-way spots. When we shoot this ground we have a goodish deal of water to row over j so, as we ah^-ays hang a swivel out behind f he boat, we are certain of a dish of fried pike or perch, or, it may happen, even a pike-perch (the sander) — respecting which there was a discussion some short time back — to our suppers. However, as this is uncer- tain ground, and very heavy work both to get to if, as well as shoot it, I do not go here half so often as to my other more favourite place, which I will now try and describe. Imagine a river about 200 yards across, backed by magnificent forest scenery on either hand, on one side of which the ground is partly cultivated, but on the other one unbroken swampy meadow, an English mile broad, stretches for about four English miles, bounded towards the river by a bed of flags and bulrushes, along its whole extent, in many places three-quarters of an English mile across, and some idea will be formed of a Swedish duck and snipe ground. I can fancy an old fen-man standing on the deck of one of the litde steamers which ply up and down this river, catching sight of this swamp, and if his first exclamation was not, " What a magnificent place for a decoy !" I'll never again place faith in early association. And he would not be far wrong either, for if you can only get a windy day and highish water, so that you can sprit your punt quietly through the reeds witliout the birds hearing you too soon, I'll back a good man to have such a day's sport here on duck in the middle of August as he wont forget in a hurry. He can wade in many parts of this ground 5 and the man who wades will always beat the man in a boat. Water-boots are of little use far out in the rushes, for the bottom is uneven, and I don't think I ever remember a single day on this ground, when I really waded, even in good boots, that I came out of the rushes dry. Still, if a man only keeps on the edges whert he can see and feel the bottom well, a pair of water-boots towards the end of September, when the water gets cold and the evenings chilly, are very comfortable, especially in flight-shooting j and if Duck-shooting in Wermland^ Sweden, 59 you could get a pair of boots to come right up to the fork, and fit the thigh tight, they might be useful. I never, however, had /I pair of water-boots even that came high over the knee, which did not, after a few hours' wading, wrinkle down, so that every step you took, the water flew up behind into the bend of the knee, and ran down the leg till the feet were soon as wet inside the boots as they would have been had you waded barefooted ind much more uncomfortable. However, as our best duck and snipe and shooting is in August and September, when the water is warm, a pair of flannel trousers, low shoes, and a change in the boat, if one means camping out, is the very best dress ; for one never feels chilly after wading in flannel. I don't care to boast of my own performances, for I never do make a very heavy bag. I once killed in these rushes twenty-three strong flyers in one day, and eleven snipe, but I saw a friend of mine knock down twenty-eight full-grown ducks one after the other. I did not shoot that day, for I wanted him to have the sport. I fancy, however, if a man were to beat these rushes every day (and a good duck-shooter should, because it makes no matter to the birds in such a tract of rushes as this how much they are shot at in the beginning of the season — they never leave them- and, strangest of all is, that they do not become wild till about the end of September, when, all at once they pack, and as soon as ever a gun is fired, they rise in clouds and go right away), he might average, with flight-shooting, twenty couples of ducks a week throughout August and September 3 and that's no bad work for one gun. He w^ould, however, kill most of his birds at flight, especially in tlie end of the season. At this time the ducks all appear to leave the swamp in the day — where ihey go to I never could make out ; but, I fancy, to the large open waters. But they come back in hundreds at night to feed, and tliis is the time I nail 'em. I poach the holes in the reeds with floating irimmers in the day, and, as soon as I have got my night-lines all out, and just before I can see the evening star, I go to a favourite place, right in the line of flight, and set myself high and d-v. and 6o Buck-s/iooting in JVermland, Sweden. ** wait the coming storm." And I have not to wait long. First a flight of teal dash by as pioneers, and I know I have not long (o wait now. The first intimation of the approach of the general flight is the " whish, whish, whish, whish " of wings high in the air overhead. Scouts, I suppose, on the look-out, for I invariably re- nark that, as soon as I have heard this, the birds begin to drop down. Backwards and forwards they dash by sometimes singly, sometimes .n twos and threes j and for about an hour the shooting is first-rate — especially if you are well in the line of flight ; and it takes some little knowledge of the swamp to get this. No doubt the birds drop down into the rushes in many places, but there is one high road, and the man who can find this out may lie on his bunk and smoke his pipe all day while his mates are beating the swamp ; but as soon as he sees the sun go down he will take his stand, and in two hours' time will probably come back with as many birds as it would take another a whole day to kill. This flight-shooting lasts, perhaps, not more than an hour, and you can follow it any evening. And, mind, I do not mean, when I use the term *' flight-shooting," shooting the birds on the water as they pitch to feed. For this work you must have a moon, and the light is so uncertain when a man is sitting low on a large swamp, which is bounded on both sides by high ground, that perhaps scarcely ten nights in the month will do for it. However, if you can find a good place where tlie birds feed really well, you will kill double the quantity you can in flight, for you may get two or three at a shot ; and shoot as you may, it seems next to impossible, here at least, to drive the birds from a favourite feeding-ground. However, this sport is over by about ten or eleven, and you may then go home. And I will now tell the reader how I got home one night from this very swamp. It was in the third week of this last month of September, just at the new moon, and although of course the moon gave no light, still the twilight is always clearer just at this time, and after the fiight was over I went down to a good bit of feeding-ground, and, sitting with my face to the west, I managed to see the birds tolerably clear, if they came in pretty close, and, although I had but little sport. I was Duck-shooting in Wermland^ Sweden. 6 » lotJi to leave the ground till the birds had done feeding. There i* to me a kind of fascination in this quiet, solitary sport, which I never find in any other. The dead silence v^^hich reigns over all, unbroken; save by the calls of the different night-birds as they pass over (and these are real music to the naturalist's ear), the consciousness that no prymg observ-er is "touting you through the hedge," and the excitement of the sport, all give it pecuhar charms in my eye ; and if a man gave me the choice of the best day's covert-shooting, or a good night on duck-shooting on a favourite feeding-ground, I should vithout he^itation choose the latter. There is a singular httle island butting into the river in the middle of this swamp. It is not a natural island, but evidently a large heap of gravel rising hke a pinnacle, perhaps loo feet high, several hundred acres in extent. It has evidently partly been tlirown up by the hand, and many sup- pose that in the early days an old cloister stood here, which suppo- sition is doubtless correct, for the village church stands on another height not far distant, and this valley was probably peopled when all the neighbouring district was one wild unbroken forest. Be this as it may, this immense mound is now all grown over with fir and juniper, and this is my camping-place when I shoot the swamp — and a more picturesque camping-place it would be hard to find. I had drawn my punt up on to the strand of this island when I rowed over, but unfortunately had not pulled it high enough up, and while I was in the swamp it had drifted away, and when I came down to row myself back over the river I found no boat. This was pleasant j I did not much care to camp out, for a jolly friend on the other side of the river was waiting up for me, and I much preferred a glass of his hot brandy-and-water and a cigar to a *' night out " on " the dismal swamp." Moreover, it was dark, and some heavy drops of rain were just beginning to fall. I could see the light twinkling 'n his window about half a mile down the river, on the other side, as if to tantalize me. However, I was not going to be beaten just like this. There was a stand of boats about 500 yards down the river on the other side, which the peasants used for rowing over the river to church and for fishing ; so I stripped (for tlie stream was 6a Duck-shooting in Wermland^ Sweden, strong, and I durst not try to swim over in my long boots and shooting- coat), and slipped in to swim over to these boats, and row back for my clothes. It was a stiffish swim, for tlie current was powerful. However, I got well over. We have a plan here of locking up the oars on an iron bar, which comes out at the back of the punt j and, as every boat was locked, I had to break a pair of oars off with a stone. This was a longish job, as Swedish iron is proverbially tough, and tliese peasants do their work pretty strong. The night was not too warm, and it was rather chilly work, as I stood in purls natura- lilms for about a quarter of an hour tinkering away at this old iron bar. But I got the oars free at last, soon rowed over for my clotlies, dressed, and was at my friend's house by midnight. He belonged to the ** Peep-o'-day Club," so we had a couple of my ducks roasted, and made a very jolly night of it. I walked home next morning, and thought no more of my little adventure j but I had not seen the end of it yet. Three nights after I came home from shooting, and all at once my head began to throb as if it would split, and every ioint in my body ached. I knew what was up, for I had felt this before. I turned in directly, took a hot cup of coffee and brandy, and in half an hour was shivering like an aspen leaf, my teeth chat- tering like castanets. I had a touch of our Swedish " frossa," or ague — one of the nastiest sicknesses I think it is possible for a man to have, and one against the attacks of which not the strongest is proof. The fit lasted two hours. I was all right next morning, and had only to wait to see whether the fit w^as to come on every day, or every second, third, or fourth. My next fit did not come on t;ll the third night, so now I knew that it was the tertian ague, and as the fit always comes on precisely at the same hour, I knew when to look out for it -, and as, luckily, my first fit came on at night, it does not cause me much inconvenience, for I just turn in an hour Defore I know it will come on, take a good dose of coffee and brandy, and wait for the shivering fit. It is a horrid complaint, for X pulls a man down so j and although, except just when the fit is on you, you can work as usual, a kind of low, listless feeling hangs over a man the wdiole while the aa^ie is on him. It often hangs Duck-shooting in JVermland, Sweden. 6^ about people here for years. The spring ague is always the worst. Lucki'y, mine is not a very severe attack j and as each fit appears to become weaker, I hope in a short time to be all right again. The sport upon the swamp I have described, depends in a great measure on the state of the water. If the water is high we have not only more ducks, but we can shove the boat along better j and if the water is low, the contrary is the case. In a dry season we have scarcely any snipe, and I have remarked one thing as curious regarding the snipe here. As I said before, it is one line of snipe- ground along the whole extent of this meadow, perhaps four English miles long, every yard of which appears to be good lying for snipe ; and yet I only know live places on tlie whole swamp that are wortli beating. In these places the snipe lie in wisps, and often far out in the water, and if they would only lie well, a man would have little trouble in killing five or six couples in each place 5 but as soon as ever you flush your first bird, his " scape, scape" puts all his comrades on the qui vive, and all at once they keep rising round you, till I am certain that I have seen considerably above a hundred in the air at one time, flying round and round, rising higher and higher, a sure sign — as every old snipe-shooter knows — that he is pretty certain never to see those birds again that day. Still, when the wind has been blowing fresh, I have had some capital shooting on this swamp, and one day this very September I ought to have bagged twenty couple, for I had forty-five shots, but only picked up hirty-one birds. In fact, I begin to fear very much that I am fast going off my shooting. There is always something wrong now, either with the gun or the ammunition. The powder is bad, or the shot IS either one size too large, or one size too small. It never used to be so -, and depend upon it when a man begins to make all sorts of excuses when he misses, he is either a pottering shot, or his nerves are not in tune. I would rather by half see a man miss ten shots clean running and never say a word about it, than see another man kill five out of ten, and bother you with a hundred reasons and excuses why he missed the other five. However, on this day I had some little excuse, for half a gale was blowing from 64 Duck-shooting in Wermlandy SiJoeden, the south, and as of course T shot against the wind, I often really had trouble to get my gun up and hold it steady. I never saw so many snipe in one day in my life, nor did 1 ever see them lie so well. I had a rare steady retriever wdth me, and never lost a bird. And now a word or two about this aforesaid retriever. Some few years since I recollect reading in the Field the following remarks from, I think, the Hon. G. Berkeley, " That if he had a dog to break, he would trust it to no one's hands but those of Anthony Savage." I always had the greatest ambition to become possessed of a first-rate retriever. Luckily, chance brought me in correspondence wdth this \-ery Mr. A. Savage (who, by the way, is a very good ornithologist). I w^as therefore very much pleased when I came in correspondence with Mr. Savage on ornithological matters, and tnore pleased still when the result of that correspondence led to his sending me over last May a fawn-coloured retriever bitch, which, as far as I can see, is a perfect retriever both by land and water. I have not lost a single duck or snipe this year, and that is saying something in this country, wdiere the reeds are so thick. Our season begins early, long before the birds are strong flyers, and altliough such a thing would not do in England, when we are at Rome we do as they do at Rome ; and as I argued upon the principle, if I don't get the birds now, some one else will, and, moreover, as all our duck-shooting parties among the gentlemen take place just at the commencement of the season, I joined many parties before the ist of August, and it was a caution to see Sutt (as w^e call her) catch the young birds about three-quarters grow^n, and bring 'em alive to me one after the other. This just suited the Swedes, wdio, so long as they get the game, hardly care much how they do get it. This, however, was not likely nmch to improve my lady's steadiness, and she got worse when the old birds were losing neir pinion feathers, and, though they could not fly, could scuttle along the w\iter at a good pace. I once heard the late Bill Scott remark, in his usual energetic manner, in reference to a horse who some one said would "walk over" for the Derby, — "Will he ? well, he must walk quick to w^alk out of my way, that's Duck-shooting in JVetmland, S-iveden. 6^ all." So it was with the poor ducks — they could not even walk away from Sutt, A^ho, I am certain, I have seen chase a mallard for an English mile, and bring it back alive to me. I fancy, if Savage sees this, he will say, " Well, if I had known how she would be used, I should have thought twice before I sent such a dog over there 5" and I must confess I began to won- der myself how it would be \^'hen the snipe season came on, and I wanted her to hunt within shot. But as soon as ever the birds became strong flyers, and the snipe came down, she forgot all these tricks, and settled down to one of the steadiest dogs I ever shot over, and never ranged out of shot. It was a real treat to see her huggle up a rail or a httle bothering jack out of a bit of thick grass ; and she retrieved so tenderly, that I never saw her rumple a feather, except the first lark I shot to her when I tried her. I suppose this was new to her, for she mauled it terribly, and I began to fear she was hard-mouthed, but she soon proved the contrar}^. She became quite a noted character round here, and I am certain I could have shot over half Wermland only for the sake of my dog. I once recollect coming down Fleet Street, when I was accosted by a cork- screw-curled gipsy-looking fellow, carrying a pretty little Skye terrier, who asked me if I wanted to buy '' a nice little toy tarrier dawg," adding, as a recommendation, **^ sweet as a nut — clean in the 'ouse, and wonderful tricky.'' And I soon found out that this was the case with my new retriever. I soon taught her to do almost anything — fetch a cap off a person's head in a moment, if I only pointed to it, drop my powder-flask in the reeds and send her back for it 3 hide my handkerchief in a room full of people (often in another person's pocket), and set her to find it 3 all which, and a dozen other such tricks, made her a general favourite, but on two occasions nearly brought me into serious disgrace. On one occasion, in a httle party was an old gentleman who wore a skull-cap, as old gentlemen often do here. Sutt was in the room. The old gentle- man was leaning back in a chair, talking to a friend. I had occa- sion to cross the room by the back of his chair, and in so doing laid Qiy hand on his shoulder. Whether Sutt took this as a signal or F 66 Duck-shooting in Wermland^ Sweden, not I cannot say, but in less than half a minute after she sprang up behind the chair, dragged off the old gentleman's thatch, and triumphantly brought it to me, amid roars of laughter from all the company, save the old gentleman, who clapped his hands to his head, wondering what the deuce was up. On another occasion, in the same house we had a little music, and a celebrated violin player, whose fiddle was a real old Cremona of a fabulous date, electrified las with his fiddle. He laid his old fiddle on the piano, and walked to the other end of the room to talk to a friend. Two little boys were larking with Sutt, and one or other of them managed to pull the cover off the piano, and the old Cremona fell. Judge my dismay, as well as that of the whole room, when Sutt sprang forward, seized the old fiddle by the handle, and brought it up to me, as proud as a peacock. I jumped up, and took it out of her mouth as tenderly as I could, and put it into the old professor's hands, who stood tlie very picture of misery and dismay. There was no laughing on this occasion. No one spoke a word, for if the old fiddle had been destroyed, I really think the good old owner would have scarcely deemed life worth living for. He never said a word, but walked out of the room with the fiddle under his arm. As soon as he got into the passage we could hear him run through the gamut in all directions, backwards and forwards. I never did hear such extraordinary music in my life. But in five minutes he returned with a smile on his good-humoured old face to tell us it was all right, and patting Sutt on the head, told her in Swedish that she had frightened him more than he had ever been frightened in his life. I would not have had that old fiddle injured by my dog for a hundred pounds. I said that we were in the habit of dropping a floating trimmer here and there in the open places among these bulrushes, and now I want Mr. Francis to read this. At the back of the island I have mentioned above is an open place in the bulrushes considerably deeper than the water in any other part of the swamp 3 it is probably between four and five hun- dred yards long, and less than one hundred broad, and has all the Duck-shooting in JVermland, Sweden, 67 appearance of having originally been a fish stew 3 and this f\ivours the supposition that a cloister originally stood on this mound, foi we know that the old monks in all ages were desperately fond of fish. This hole is now fringed with reeds all round higher than a man's head, and choked up in all parts, save the bottom, with thick cow-docks and waterlilics. It is, in fact, the very place of all others where a large pike would lie ; and my poaching experience in the still waters of our midland British streams told me so the very first time I saw it. No one had ever thought of wetting a line here; I was at once determined to try it, and the first night I had thirteen hues out with nice lively bait, and the result next morning was three pike, the one eight pounds, the other two about five pounds. This looked very promising. The next night I got another of eight pounds, and a smaller one about two pounds. The latter was dead on the hook, and when I took it oif I saw its sides were mutilated, and scored here and there as if cut through to the bone with a razor. I knew "my gentleman" was now at home, and the very next night I baited witli the largest and liveliest roach I could get, and went next morning to take my lines up with every anticipation of great success. However, it was a blank — one fish of about 51b. was all we got. I did not visit the swamp again for a week, and on that day, strange to say, although we fished for some time, we could not catch a bait longer than three inches. These I fancied were no use, and thought it hardly worth trying, but luckily a fellow rowed up in a boat who had been taking up a long chain line which had been out all night, and in the bottom of the boat lay five or six half-rotten roach of three-quarters of a pound to one pound each. I got a few of these, and laid out seven lines. In the morning as soon as we spritted into the hole I saw one of the trimmer-sticks drawn fast into the candocks ; and whilst I was thinking whether I had laid out a line in that spot, I was startled by a splash close to the stick, just as if you had thrown a dog in. We got to the place as soon as we could, and then I saw such a pike standing in the water, with his head to the boat (the trimmer hook just in the side bone of tlie jaw, and the line wrapt round the candocks), as I 68 Duck-shooting in Wermland^ Sweden, never fancied I should live to see. I was fairly startled^ and hardly knew what to do, for I could plainly see (he was not two feet below tlie surface) how slightly he was hooked. I pulled up the candocks and loosed him, and he ran out into the middle of the hole, and aofain grot fast. I will not tire the reader witli all the chases we had backwards and forwards after that pike. I suppose it w^as at least half an hour before I got the landing-net under him, and lugged him into the boat. I never saw such a monster of a pike -, he was not so very long, but so broad in the back, and darker-coloured than any pike I ever saw before. He was as fat as butter, and just weighed thirty-nine pounds Swedish, which would be some- where about thirty-eight pounds English. I dried his head as a trophy, and I hope to have the pleasure in autumn of showing it myself to Mr. Francis, along with tlie hook that took the fish. I don't mean to say that he was put into the stew by the monks that owned the old cloister, but there was something very wicked and monkish in his appearance, and, judging from the length and size of his tusks (I can hardly call them teeth), might have been of any age you pleased. We often have a night leistering in the shallow water on the open places where the reeds have been cut. We get nothing but pike ; plenty of them, however, for the last night 1 was out I stuck twenty-seven pike. They were, however, not very large, the lot weighing together about seventy pounds. I have, however, often killed one cwt. here in the night. This is a sport (groans from the opposition) which I greatly delight in 5 and let me say that it takes some little skill to guide tlie boat single-handed, attend to the fire, and strike the fish well. No other ducks breeds with us, as far as I can see, save the wild duck, the widgeon, and the teal 3 and of these the former is by far the most common. No wild geese breed with us, and, strange to say, I never even saw a flock pitch during their migrations. Towards the middle of September, the ducks get very strong and wild, the old mallards are then assuming the full plumage again, and when a shot is fired the birds rise from all parts of the reeds. About the Buck-shooting in Wermland^ Sweden, 69 end of September they leave the reeds, and large flocks assemble by day in the wide open water, but returning every night to the swamps to feed. It is now almost impossible to approach them without 3 punt-gun, and even this would hardly be safe in our wide waters. Towards the middle of the month the golden-eye come down, and the common wild duck begin to travel coastwise. A few golden- eyes remain in the open water during the winter, but no wild duck. The weather now begins to get chilly and inclement, the duck- shooting season in Sweden may be considered at an end, and with it the shooting season in all the midland districts, except an odd shot at a hare or other forest game. I never could make out which way the scoters, scaup, or geese come down from Lapland. It must be along the coast, for they certainly do not pass through the midland districts, and tlie same remarks will apply to the principal part of the waders. I have only seen one double snipe this year, and that I could not kill. I do not know what is the cause, but the double snipe seem to be gradually disappearing in this country. When I first came into Wermland I killed seventeen double snipe in one afternoon in a rough, dry tussock meadow at the top of this ver}'- swamp. This was, however, a very exceptional case. The double snipe comes down to us the earliest of all the snipes, and leaves the soonest. I generally expect to find the first about the middle of August, and never kill one after the third week in September. The common snipe begin to draw down early in September, the jack towards tlie end of the montli, although you may flush a few jacks up to the middle, even up to the end of October. The cream of the snipe- shooting here ends by the middle of October. Take it altogether, I consider with us the past has been an excel- lent season for all forest game, especially capercailie ^ and altliough I never do much this way, I have killed more this year than ever I did before. My new retriever is an excellent bitch for the forest, where a pointer would be little use, and where a close-hunting, well-broken dog is the very thing, for it is wonderful how close both the capercailie and black grouse lie in the cranberry and 7© Duck-shooting in Werinland^ Szveden. bleaberry bushes, which form the undergrov.'th cf the Swedish forests. Everything now warns us that tlie Northern winter is approaching. The winter migrants are fast coming down from Lapland. ]Many of our summer birds have left. The night frosts have set in, and, as I sit and look out of my ^^■indow on a forest tableau, painted in every shade of red, yellow, and green, I think of the beautiful lines of the American poet — "It is brilliant autumn time, the most brilliant time of all. When the gorgeous woods are gleaming as the leaves begin to fall — When the maple boughs are crimson, and the hickory shines like gold^ When the noons are sultry hot, and the nights are frosty cold; When the country has no green save the sword-grass by the rill. And the willows in the valleys, and the pine upon the hill; And the pippin leaves the bough, and the sumach fruit is red. And the quail is piping loud from the buckwheat where he fed; When the sky is blue as steel, and the river clear as glass. When the mist is on the mountain, and the network on the grass; When the harvest is all housed, and the farmer's work is done, A::d the woodlands are resounding with the spaniel and the gun.** 71 MY FIRST STEEPLE-CHASER. • The merry men of Lincolnshire were foremost in the fray, "VNhen 'Walker* rode the 'Gaylad/ and 'Skipworth' steered the grey; Over any line of country ' Old Discount ' was a trump. And only felt at discount in * the mare's' rear round the clump." I oxcE heard an old gentleman, when complaining bitterly of his son's extravagances at Oxford, wind up a long tirade against picture-dealers, dog-dealers, horse-dealers, and all otlier dealers, by declaring energetically that he thanked God he had never possessed a taste of any kind in his life. Now I have no doubt, on an abstract view of the case, he was right, for doubtless to indulge in any taste (unless it is that of money-making) dips sadly into a man's pockets, and perhaps, after all, those men will rub through life tlie easier who have not a single taste to gratify. It is true, nevertheless, that such men must be looked upon as mere automatons in tlie great drama of hfe, and as such are certainly more to be pitied tlian envied. Now I will suppose that scarcely one of my readers agrees with this old gentleman, but I will, nevertheless, ask him one question, which is — Has he ever indulged in a taste for screw deahng ? If he does so, I wiU candidly ask such a one whether he has not taken more interest in watching tlie progress of that one screw (for, screw as he may be, the owner always fondly believes tliat there is a hidden value in him) than in all the rest of his stud, whose capa- bilities he knows to a pound ? There is a sort of mystery attached to the screw which is truly delightful. His greatest charm hes in his very imsoundness, and, " Oh ! if I could but only get this one right, what a plater or hurdle-racer he would make !" is tlie ownei's constant theme. 72 My First Steeple-chaser, It is certainly now many years since I had anything to do with this class of horse, but I must confess that once on a time I never grumbled to give 15/. or 20/. for a good-looking "screw," when I should have thought twice about 35/. or 40/. for a horse which I knew was all right. This dealing in screws is, however, after all, a dangerous and expensive taste to indulge in, for I really do think that it brings a man into fellowship with more of the pariahs and outcasts of the sporting world than any other. No one can deny that it is the very lowest step in the horse-dealer's ladder. Sporting butchers, broken-down dealers, rough-riders, even the very cads of the stable, can all meet on an equality in this game, and all distinc- tions are levelled by the talismanic go-between of the screw. Now mind, by screws, I do not mean old, worn-out rips, which have gradually passed through every phase in a horse's existence, worked hard in all, and at length become worn out in the service — ■ nor the horrid screw you see in the hands of a blackgTiard coper at a country fair, but I mean the real " casualty horse " (and I do think no name can be more appropriate than this for the class of horse which I am describing), still in his prime, who shows good points and good breeding, but who has been disabled or blemished in his youth 3 perhaps has broken down in training, or been thrown up on account of his temper, or some unlucky accident or latent disease, which has baffled the keenest of the faculty, yet being too good or too handsome to be knocked on the head, he has been sold out of the stud probably for a 10/. note, with all his faults, and found his way into the hands of a man of whom there are dozens in every hunt, who having but little money, yet rare eyes to the good points of a horse, and who, with an intuitive love for a screw, always prefers seeing the beginning of a run in a good place, on a raking, showy, unsound bit of blood, than the finish of it, on a steady, sound old hunter. The great ambition of such a man is to •endeavour to find out where the fault really lies which has baffled so much veterinary lore, and his waking and sleeping thoughts are concentrated upon his screw- no matter if the horse has only three legs to go upon, the hidden nugget lies in the fourth; and visions of My First Steeple-chaser, 73 county cups, hurdle-races, and it may be even a heavy steeple-chase, loom in the future — if his screw can only be once got right. I really do not know, as such a man hustles his screw up to the three or four first fences (which he is sure to clear gallantly), whether he envies a single man in the field, let him be mounted how he may. The screw can probably beat the most of them, even in his present state, ridden in the reckless manner of a man who only cares to see the first mile ; and there is no saying \\'hat he may do after he is once got right, for the owner of a screw invariably feels confident that this day must come, sooner or later. I have but to cast my mind's eye back tlirough the dark vista of years that have fled — choose any good hunting morning in the season, by the side of a well-known covert, and tlie very man and horse I am describing stand revealed. A little apart from the crowd, on the grass by the roadside, a small knot of grooms and sporting, hard-riding young farmers, are gathered round a man and horse, whose prototype was to be met with in my day at ev^ery covert side in the kingdom. A rare-topped, blood-looking nag, a little queer on his pins, whose neat head is set off to advantage by a heavy snaffle-bridle, is standing in the middle of the ring, undergoing the strict scrutiny of the "horsey" crowd by whom he is surrounded. It is certainly hard to detect a flaw in the horse, except upon a very close examination, as he stands there quietly champing his bit, and swishing his long thin tail backwards and forwards, as a warning to the crowd that they had better keep clear of his heels ; and, save that he looks rather more ragged and staring in his coat, we can see but little (as far as good points and breeding go) to choose between this screw (for, good as his looks are, we can tell at the first glance that he is a screw) and that magnificent satin-coated 200-guinea chestnut which has just been walked by in charge of the groom with a cockade in his hat. The rider is apparently well known to all J has a joke for one man, a quiet bit of chafi:'with another, and the knowing wink and careless, but meaning, nod of the head with which he answers the inquiry of a jovial-looking farmer as to "What have you got there now, Tom ?" tell the horse's history plainer than 74 My First Steeple-chaser, words can speak. A few strokes of our pen can describe the rider after a fashion as we have already attempted with the horse, but it would require the pencil of poor Leech to do tlie whole picture justice. There he sits, as I have seen him scores of times before, the very personification of " the right man in the right place." He is certainly not one of the upper ten thousand, but there is a con- fident, determined look about him which strikes the eye at once, and a quiet sporting cut about the whole /nan which must be bred in the possessor if he will wear it properly. Every member of the hunt, from the noble owner downwards, has a cheery word to say to him, and the quiet respectful manner which he assumes to his betters proves that he knows his place as well as his business. Originally a small farmer, but a far keener judge of the points of a horse than a bullock, a constant attendant at every race meeting and steeple-chase for miles round, his farm became neglected, and Tom was perforce obliged to look to horses as a means of gaining a living, instead of aflbrding him a noble amusement. A reckless, devil- may-care, open-handed, open-hearted sort of a fellow, of whom the worst that could be said was that he was nobody's enemy but his own, he was a general favourite j and as he always rode as if he had a spare neck in his pocket, and possessed a cool head, a firm seat, and a fine though strong hand on a horse — tlie three best qualifica- tions of a cross-country rider — he won the affections of a rich old uncle, who had already made a fortune at the very trade which Tom was only just commencing, who took him into his employ to show oif his *' casualty nags," and occasionally to ride steeple-chases and hurdle-races for him. And no one better fitted for tlie task j for if he only did mean going — which was not, however, always the case — no one harder to shake otf than Tom, however he might be mounted. He was truly one of that sort immortalized in the old hunting song, who, " Spite of falls and bad horses, undauntedly still. Rode up to this motto, ' Be with them I will.' '* The whole appointments of both man and horse may perhaps My First Sieeple-chaser, 75 appear a little shabby when scruthiised through the eye-glass of a swell, but they are all good. The neat lolb. hunting saddle may have seen some service, but the model and the fit are perfect j and the side loop on each flap for the surcingle to pass through prove that it is not only in the hunting field where that saddle is required to do battle. We all know that nothing sets off a screw so well as a neat-fitting saddle. A plain dark hunting martingall, and a heavy snafifle with broad reins, which look as if they would hold an elephant, complete about as workmanlike a turn-out as is to be met with at that covert side. The dress of the man is in perfect keeping with the rest of the picture. The broad, baggy, brown cords, meet a pair of long, plain, faultless jack-boots 3 a tight pepper-and-salt surtout, buttoned close up to the throat, reveals in front a few inches of a long, striped groom's waistcoat J a head, which seems as if made expressly for charging through a bullfinch, is "tied on" by a neat check scarf 5 while a strong napless hat shades ahandsom.e, close-shaved, weather- beaten face, in which sturdy resolution and good-nature strive for the mastery. His riding weight may be about eleven stone 3 and his broad shoulders, sinewy arms, and hard brown gloveless hands, added to the firm short seat, all form tlie very beau-ideal of a cross-country jock ; and although there are perhaps scores of better- mounted men in that field, many a scrutinising eye is turned towards him as he quietly wends his way to that corner of the covert where he expects the fox to break ; and more than one hard rider inwardly wonders where the deuce Tom picked up that " goodish-like horse, what he gave for him, and where his fault lies " — for the very fact of being in such hands condemns him at once. And well may they scrutinise this nag, for he is destined ere long to be a sharp thorn in many of their sides ; as on tliis occasion Tom is mounted on "^ my First Steeple-chaser." For the first few fields after they have gone away the screw leads them, and the way in which he came over that ox fence in the corner of tlie field leading from the woods is in the mouth of every one. However, it does not suit his rider, on this first appearance with a new performer, to let all the field see where ;& My First Steeple-chaser, tlie screw is loose; so at the first check he quid 17 turns his horse's head homewards ; and, as he gently walks him home towards his uncle's stables, picking all the soft places hj the roadside, he keeps continually asking himself the oft-repeated question, but for which he has never yet been able to find an answer — ^What this horse really would be worth if he was not such a confounded screw? Having introduced the nephew to the reader, w^e will now say a few words about the uncle. He was a small but independent gen- tleman-farmer, living in the same village as ourselves, well-to-do, but a very saving card ; and it used to be a standing joke in our hunt when he appeared at the covert side — always showingly if not perhaps well mounted — that it was even betting which was the greatest screw, the horse or the rider. He was a pleasant, merry little fellow, and considered to be the best judge of a horse in our county : and this was saying no little, for every farmer round us was a breeder, and the names of Lottery, Gaylad, and Peter Simple were a few samples of the many nuggets that were turned up at our "^ diggings," where everything was dated from the year when so-and-so won the Leger or the Brockelsby. He was a beautiful light weight, with the finest seat and hands on a horse in the world; but he had imfortunately been lamed for hfe by a tremendous fall. His left leg had been not only broken, but perfectly shattered ; and although the doctors saved it by a miracle, they could never get it straight again ; and from that day he was a cripple for life, and ever after walked wlih. a stick. I do not know, however, whetlier this misfortune had not its advantages ; for " Pray take care of my poor leg, sir," was a rare password when the old fellow was working through a crowd up to a horse of which he particularly \^^^nted to take stock. I sometimes used to drive him to Lincoln fair, for he bought many a sound horse on commission, though never for himself, and one of his dodges amused me much. We used to seat ourselves upon the bridge, and whenever a horse was led by which he fancied, I was started off to stop him and keep him in price, and thus give the old boy time to hop up and look the horse well over, while I was apparently attempting a deal. And it was worth My First Steeple-chaser. 77 something to see the pohte way in which he addressed me, as I turned away, just as if he had never seen me before : " If you're quite done, sir, perhaps I can try and deal." His lameness cer- tainly did not interfere with his equestrian powers, when once he was firm in his saddle, and although he was obliged to ride two holes shorter on his left stirrup-leather than his right, and used only a single spur, with which he was continually higgling at his horse's side, he had such a marvellous knack, to use poor old Dick Chris- tian's words, "of catching 'em up and putting "em at it," that he was generally in his place. I may mention that Dick Christian was a perfect oracle with the old man 5 and " if Christian only had that horse for twenty minutes from Ashby pastures, he'd sell him to a swell for a little fortune," was constantly in his mouth. Not that he used to risk his neck upon every " casualty hoss " that passed through his hands : the nephew did the rough work, and when he had taken the sharp edge off the screw, the uncle drove it home. He could probably have atforded to ride as good a nag as any man in the hunt 3 but the love for a screw was born in him, and he owned candidly that he never cared to buy a horse whose value every dealer could tell to 5/. Always chopping and changing, swopping and higgling, he was never seen half a dozen times on the same horse 3 and I once heard him lament, when he was completing a little chop, after his old principle of drawing as much to boot as both the screws were worth, '' It's very hard : I never get a horse that suits me but some one comes and takes a fancy to him, and I'm fool enough always to part with him." Of course the word "warranty " was not to be found in his vocabulary, for, as he told me, he never but once in his life warranted a horse sound, and that was returned on his hands j so what was the use of a man's word in horse-dealing? Still there was nothing of the low dealer or coper about him. Scrupulously neat and clean in his dress and appear- ance, his manners, whenever he could sink the shop, fitted him for any company. I never heard an oath or a coarse word pass his lips J his pew in the little village church was never vacant on the Sunday morning; and, strange as it may appear in one of his trade. 78 My First Steeple-chaser, I do not believe he'd have told a lie to save his life. Mind, I don't always mean to say that he " told the whole truth " on all occasions 5 but whatever he did tell you was a fact ; his style of dealing did not require to be pushed by the aid of lies and crooked prevarications. No one ever dreamt that a horse was sound when he had one to sell, and he never wished anyone to think so j but he never was known to deceive a man Avhen he bought a horse for him on com- mission. He was strict enough then about the warranty, which he handed over to the purchaser with the receipt, charged his com- mission, and, as far as he was concerned, the matter was at an end , and I never once heard a man find fault with a horse which had been bought through him. When he had, however, a horse of his own to sell, his style of doing business was this : — '^ I had him of so-and-so, but he's wonderfully improved since I got him" (which was generally the case). "I know nothing about him, mind 3 but it's my opinion, if he only gets into the right hands, and shakes off that lameness, he'll make such a horse as we have not had in our county for many a day. Now you know as much about him as I do. They do tell me he's got by so-and-so, and that looks likely enough. Thirty pounds is his price, with all his faults j if he was sound, I should ask you 100/. Why, his very looks would sell him, if he were lame all round." And he was considered such a rare judge of what a horse really was and might be made, tliat I don't know whether many a man did not rather prefer buying one that was a little screwy out of his hands in preference to a sound one from a regular dealer. Blood and bone were what he most looked at. i^.i was his lowest height, and 20/. the highest price that he gave, except on extraordinary occasions. He had a perfect horror of a fast trotter j his pace was always a sling canter along the green turf by tlie roadside, and although no one was fonder of setting a parcel of young farmers larking across his own farm, he detested it in the field, unless a horse was sure to be sold by it ; and his standing motto to the young ones used to be, that he never knew a horse have one jump too many left in him at the end of a long run. A country racecourse was his delight, especially when, as was generally My First Steeple-chaser, 79 the case, he had some rip or other to run. And although he had never missed a Leger since he was twenty, he rarely laid a shilling on a race. He was a perfect walking racing calendar, knew the pedigree of every stallion out, and the fund of turf information he possessed was extraordinary. Like all good judges, however, he was shy of giving an opinion 5 and ^'I'm told, mind you, although I know nothing myself, that such a horse will see a better day," was his quiet way of "" putting a friend on 5" and it generally turned out well for those that took the hint. Now, after all this long rambling preface, I fancy it is about time that I told tlie reader something about my first steeple-chase horse. Well, it was, as near as I can recollect, in the end of July, 1 84 — that I had to go down from our place to York upon some business. I met the night coach on the North-road, and as there was plenty of room, I got the box-seat alongside of tlie coachman. At our first stage, the coachman — who, like the rest of the craft, dabbled in horses a little himself, and, of course, knew my old friend — begged me to look at his near leader, when we got down to change, for he fancied he was just the sort of nag to suit him, '' for, although," added the man, *' he certainly is a little groggy, I'll eat my hat, if he only got into the right hands, a pot of money might not be made out of him." At the next change we stopped to supper, and I then had lots of time to examine the horse in whom lay such hidden treasures. His looks certainly did not behe the coachman's words. Apparently as thorough-bred as Eclipse, sixteen hands high, with lots of bone, and a nose which, as his owner observed, might be got into a quart pot, while rather drooping quarters and a long thin swish tail gave him quite a varmint appearance. Indeed, I think I never set my eyes on a much more taking horse than this — his very poverty only brought out his good points into bolder relief 3 and were it not for an unfortunate twitch apparently in the near hind leg as he limped towards the stable, he would have been perfect. But the secret of his being in this team was accounted for by this very lameness, which had baffled all the best veterinary surcreons in the North, and was destined to remain incurable till the So My First Steeple-chaser, patient underwent a course of charges and ^' inflammable iles'* under the hands of a queer, eccentric, but very clever country horse- doctor, who was attached to the stables. I could well believe the coachman when he told me his horse's pedigree : how he had gone lame in training, and no one could find out the seat of the disease j and after the usual vicissitudes in such a horse's career, he had come down to leader in a night coach, where he seemed likely to end his days, unless by some lucky accident his enthusiastic driver should suc- ceed to some property, when he was at once to be released from slavery, and again put into training j " and if only that hind leg would stand, he was to win the Liverpool in a canter." I may add, that amongst his other accomplishments he had carried a whip, was a perfect fencer, and could be ridden by a lady in a packthread. There is one good thing when one buys a horse with all his faults — it saves a deal of trouble in examination and no end of lies. This examination is often great humbug, for two-thirds of the buyers who look into a horse's mouth, punch his ribs, pass their hands down the legs, do so only because they have seen others do the same — but as for any idea of how old the horse is, or whether he is sound or not, after such a scrutiny, they are just as wise as they were before. It however gives them an importance in their own eyes at least, for to be considered "horsey" is the height of many a young man's ambition. But don't let any of these unfortunates fancy that the real dealer is deceived by all this : he knows at once the sort of man he has to deal with by the very way in which he walks up to a horse, just as surely as a gunmaker knows at a glance only, by the manner in which a man handles a gun in his shop, whether or not he is a customer with whom he can take liberties. There is only one point to be settled when buying a screw, and that is the price j and as the coachman did not open his mouth too wide (he had given, he told me, ij/. to his brother, who was stud-groom to Lord , for the horse, and as he wanted to get a box-coat and a new hat out of him, he thought 23 Z. would not be too much) after about five minutes' chafi' — for of all bargains none is so prolific in the latter commodity as one like the present — the bargain was struck. My First Steeple chaser, '6\ and the horse that was to win the Liverpool in a canter Ix^came mine, at the nominal price (according to the seller's idea) of 23/, In this instance there was a little more chaff than usual, for every strapper and horse-keeper in the stable (which, perhaps, turned out some sixty coach-horses in the day) seemed to be particularly interested in this bargain, and everyone had some remarks to make on my new purchase. I am sorry to say that these remarks in general, direc'-ly the bargain was closed (for, of course, no one opened before) were anything but compli- mentary to old " Dot-and-Go-One," as the horse had been facetiously christened in this stable j and one ugly old fellow, who answered to the characteristic name of '' Ginger," and who was evidently the wit of the stable, was particularly annoying. '' So you've bought our steeple-chase boss, have you, sir ? well, he's a rare bred 'un — got by Golumpus, dam by Highflyer, I should say, for he's quite old enough. You'll want a stud-groom, sir, when he goes down to Liverpool : better take me along with him." This was a specimen of the badinage in which he indulged, as soon as the coachman had bustled away to see after his way-bill. And, as I left the stable, I just caught his last remark — '^ Ah, he looks like a steeple-chaser, he do ! Should not wonder if that swell means to ride him hisself 3" which was the signal for a hearty guffaw from the assembled strappers. However, old Dot-and-Go-One had now become my property 3 and as I went towards the bar to look after the coachman and settle for my new purchase, I walked with a dignity befitting the owner of the winner of the Liverpool in prospective. After I had paid for him, I was determined that he should never again look through a collar in my possession, so 1 bargained with the landlord to keep him till I returned 3 and I deemed it prudent to make friends with old " Ginger" before I left, as most probably he w^ould have charge of the horse during my absence. This was very soon effected by the gift of a gallon of ale, and the promise of half-a- crown more when I returned, if I found the horse well cared for. The man now became very civil, but he could not altogether drop (7 Sz My First Steeple-chaser. his chaft'. Such an opportunity for the display of his wit had not occurred for a long time, and he was determined to make the most of it. As he drank success to my new bargain, he confidentially asked me to let him ^' stand a fiver in the first race I ran him for," and he kept continually following me about for orders as to how he was to treat the horse during my absence — what bandages he should put on ; whether I would have his mane plaited, or his tail banged j in fact, it was quite evident he regarded me as " a muff," and nothing else. This, however, I cared little for at that time — the days had long passed by when the slightest imputations on my pretensions to be a sportsman would have been regarded as a personal insult ; and although I never went so far as the old betting-man \\q read of, who declared that he would willingly give loo/. to be taken once again for a flat at Newmarket, I had much rather, when having anything to do with horses^ be regarded as a fool than not. On a lovely August morning, about a week after making the bargain as already narrated, I again pulled up at the door of the little roadside inn, to take possession of my new purchase. A week's rest had done wonders for the old cripple — he did not appear to go a bit lame as he walked out of the stable ; and even the landlord, of whom I borrowed a bridle and saddle (for I intended to ride the horse home myself), seemed struck with his good looks, as he was led to the door. I must say, screw as he was, I was much pleased with my new bargain. He cantered so corkily along the grass by the roadside, that I was tempted to have a shy at some rails by the side of a gate, which we so often see across a country lane, and he popped over them like a bird. There Mas not much in this leap, it is true, but there was a good deal in the style he jumped it, which sbowed that he could do twice as much, if it was asked of him. It was early when I reached my friend's house ; but laziness was never one of his faults, and he stood on his lawn to welcome me, in company with the very two men of all others to whom I wished to show the new nag — his nephew, the rough-rider and the vet. I pulled up close to the trio, and the two questions, '■ What have you ^ot there?" and "Well, what do you think of this one?" passed My First Steeple-chaser, 83 each other, as it were, on the road. I was soon out of my saddle, and Tom in my place. The old gentleman hopped two or three times round the horse to look him well over, but never spoke a word 3 he hardly cared to look into his mouth. His quick eye soon detected where the screw was loose, directly Tom walked him round him, down the gravel walk, and "There, take him round to the stable, and come in and have some breakfast," was the only sen- tence he uttered till we got into the snug little parlour, which I so well remember, with the sporting pictures arranged round the walls, the bookshelves filled with odd volumes of the sporting magazines, and the perfect museum of hunting-whips, jockey- whips, and other sporting paraphernalia in the different corners. And then the cheer- ing, substantial breakfast ! I soon told the history of the horse j and although I had rather exceeded the regulation price, the old man did not seem to think that I had done wrong. We all visited the stable after breakfast, and had a careful examination of the horse, who, I was sorry to observe, was now pulled out as lame as ever. Not- withstanding all their knowledge, not one of the three could decide exactly where the horse was lame. The vet. fancied the lameness laid in the pastern, and was for firing at once 5 the nephew fancied it was in the hock 3 while the old man declared he was lame all round. Still they all agreed that he was a very likely horse, and the vet. quite deemed that it lay within the powers of his science to bring him round. Now, it so happened that in our hunt we had an annual steeple- chase every March, of 5/. entrance, with 50/. added, and it was the ambition of every hard-riding member of the hunt to win this steeple-chase. The old man had attempted it twice and failed, not- withstanding all the powerful assistance of his nephew, who was certainly by far the best cross-country race-rider in the hunt. He fancied that he saw in this horse the very thing he had long been looking for J and without aspiring quite so high as the coachman, his late owner, he still thought him good enough to win this race, if he only once came right 3 and the old man was not deceived. One of the conditions of this i2st. steeple-chase was, that every G Q. 84 My First Steeple-chaser. horse must have been hunted one season with the hounds, and be ridden by a member of the hunt. J^ow, here was just the thing to hand. We had certainly the services of the best jockey. It wanted full three months to the beginning of the hunting season to try and bring the horse round. The risk was not great j so a bargain was struck at once. The old gentleman was to take half the horse, and we were to be part-owners j share the expenses and the winnings. He was to have the sole management of the affair ,- I was only to be a sort of sleeping partner, and not to interfere in the least with the training. Tom was to ride, and have a share in the stakes, if he won, and we agreed to put the Vet. on at 25/. to no- thing in his first race, if only he could get the horse right to the post. Certainly if our hunt steeple-chase was destined ever to be won by a screw, it did seem as if old Dot-and-Go-One was to be the lucky horse, considering the hands he had now got into. Of course we were all bound to secrecy : the horse was to have a run in one of the old man's meadows, and then to be brought up and got into hunting condition. Although part owner, I knew no more what mysterious operations that horse went through than the very coach- man of whom I had bought him, but I believe both the old man and the vet. had an anxious time of it. Sometimes the horse would come limping out of the stable at a pace which the old man, with the aid of his stick, could have beaten, down the gravel-walk ; some- times he seemed to go lame on one leg, sometimes on the other,, and sometimes all round j at others he would come bounding oat of the stable as if he had never been lame in his life. Scores of times did the old man declare he would give treble the value of the horse if he could only discover where the lameness really did lie, and many an anxious hour did he spend in watching him and think- ing what a triumph it would be if he only could carry off this much- coveted prize with a screw, of whose existence no one in the hunt had the least idea. But, wherever the disease lay, or whatever remedies were applied, the horse certainly did get better, and by the middle of November he was seen at the covert-side. The winter passed over, and the old horse kept much about the My First Steeple-chaser. 85 came. On liis sound days nothing could beat liim, when Tom chose to send him along — for he was riding to orders, and never took the horse through a whole runj and sometimes he would ap- pear at the covert-side so lame that chaps began to wonder what reason Tom had for persevering with such a screw. Still he was now in rare condition, and as the stable had found out the secret that, however lame he might start, he always managed to shake off his lameness in about the first mile, and as he was a splendid fencer and had a great turn of speed (for Tom had managed to get the length with him of some of the best horses in the hunt), it began to look quite on the cards that the much wished-for prize would come home to these stables at last. Although part owner, I had never got on the horse since the day I rode him home, but I now and then saw him out with the hounds 3 and one morning when I rode home by his side, Tom informed me confidentially that he had the cracks safe enough, and if the race was to be won by an outsider, old Dot-and-Go-One would have it. In these hunt steeple-chases there is usually very little mystery, and it is pretty well known months beforehand what horses will be entered. In fact, the owners are generally proud of their horses, and boast of what they are able to do, and, as they know they have to meet nothing but what they have seen out many times before, they have more confidence than in a great open race j in fact, these steeple-chases used to difier not in the least from a usual run, save that the men wore jackets instead of coats, and instead of choosing their own hue had to ride over a certain number of ordinary hunting-fences between two flags. There was, however, on this occasion, one horse which puzzled all the hunt, and this was the screw. Of course Tom was as close as wax about him, and all that his nearest friends could get out of him, when they tried to work the pump, was, "I can't think whatever the old fool (his uncle) means, by sticking to this screw for so long. I never can see the end of a run on him, and if he goes ever so sound for the first mile, he's sure to shut up before the end of the second." But there were a few old hands who had watched 85 l^ly First Steeple- chaser. Master Tom ver}'- closely, and had seen him pull up and leave the field, when old Dot-and-Go-One was fall of running. They, moreover, knew very well that the old man (his uncle) had always some good reason for what he was doing, and it did not surprise them in the least when the entries for the Findon Steeple Chase " came out" in the county paper a fortnight before the race to see in the list of fifteen entries Mr. 's br. g. Dot-and- Go-One, aged, blue body, white sleeves and black cap. The mystery of the brown screw was partly cleared up, but no one was a bit the wiser as to his capabilities. He was never seen out in the field again after the entries were published, for his owner declared in the words of the old Yorkshire trainer that, save a little gentle exercise on his own farm, " the old horse should never sweat again till he sweated for the brass." However, it was nothing new for the old man to run a screw and get beaten 5 and the two cracks of the hunt — the one a magnificent chestnut gelding by Priam, belonging to a farmer who had won this steeple-chase in the two previous years, and the other a wiry little bay mare, nearly thorough-bred, the property of a half-pay captain — were made hot favourites, and backed at very short odds against the field. 12 to i could be had about any other, and two or three who placed unlimited confidence in the old man's judgment went about quietly picking up these odds wherever they could get them about the screw ; and although it was never a very heavy betting race, one young fellow, *'just out," who had taken great liberties with the horse, in consequence of a trifling dispute he had with Tom about a favourite hunter which he rode, and which Tom had declared to be nothing better than a pig, found himself upon the eve of the race to stand to win 500/. on either of the favourites, but to lose about i^ooZ. if Dot-and-Go-One pulled through, of which 300/. would find its way into Tom's pocket. The little village of Findon lay in the best and stifFest-enclosed part of our hunt, about twelve miles from us. The village itself stood on a gentle rise, and the old ivy-covered church-tower was a landmark for miles. The snug parsonage, embedded in a clump of large elms, where the rooks had held undisputed sway for centuries. My First Steeple-chaser, 87 stood close into the church, while neat farmhouses \nd well-filled itack-yards scattered around, bespoke the agricultural wealth of the district. The village, of course, boasted its blacksm'th's shop, its pound, and its one public-house, the " Rutland Arms," where good accommodation was to be obtained for man and horse, and whose excellent loose boxes never stood empty on the night before a Findon Toll-bar meet. As a man gazed from the hillside by the church upon the valley below, his eye wandered over a panorama such as few countries could display — a panorama such as is never seen out of merry England, and which stretched for miles over perhaps tlie best agricultural as well as the best hunting country in the world. The little river Swift — which here dwindled to a brook, but a brook of formidable dimensions — wound its tortuous course through rich meadows, which bounded it on either side j while ploughed fields of stifl:^ useful clay-land, and large enclosures of old swarth, which had never been turned up by the plough within the memory of man, separated by bull-finches, ox-fences, strong post- and-rails, and splashed stake-and-bound growing blackthorn hedges, w^ith a ditch on each side, all formed the heau-ideal of a stiff hunt- nig-country. The start for the steeple-chase was m a meadow close to the village, and the brook, or river as it was called, which was the third fence from the first flag, was here, perhaps, eighteen feet wide, and eight to ten feet deep. After this the line went on over large enclosures of grass and plough, with some excellent galloping ground up to the flag, placed in a grass field about two miles distant, round which the horses had to come ; and then back again over much the same line of country, down to the brook again — which, however, was not nearly so wide on returning ; and then on to the finish be- tween two flags placed in the starting meadow, giving a straight run-in of about four hundred yards from the last fence. The whole line, including twenty-seven good hunting fences, and the brook twice, was beautifully chosen ; and as almost every man and horse who went for the race knew the country well, and had crossed the line some time or another with the hounds, it was a far more 88 My First Steeple-chaser, open race than many of the crack steeple-chases, where horse and rider, perhaps, never see the country before the morning of the race. Our friend Tom, who had ridden in this steeple-chase twice before, and knew the line to an inch, was very confident this time, for the country was deep, and he considered old Dot-and-Go-One just the sort of horse to pull off the race. The old horse had certainly wonderfully improved, and, although he still went at times a little lame, such was his strength and bottom that it seemed scarcely to interfere with his going, especially in deep ground 3 added to that, he rarely made a mistake at his fences, and had a good turn of speed over the flat. Of course, as in most steeple-chases, the brook was the centre of attraction, for it was pretty certain that on this day more than one nag and rider would have a cold bath ; but the fence which all the old hands considered the most dangerous in the race was the fourth fence from home coming back, leading out of a ploughed field into the meadow where the brook had to be crossed for the second time. This was a new, strong, splashed blackthorn hedge, above four feet high, with growers and binders thicker than a man's arm, on a bank, with a wide ditch on both sides. If a horse made the least mistake here he must be thrown out of the race, for it would neither bend nor break. It was well known to all the hard riders in the hunt, and more than one had come down a tremendous cropper at this very fence. Not one place in it was weaker than another, so it must be taken in the line j and as the horses before they came back to it would be naturally distressed, it was clear that more than one would come to grief at this stake-and- bound rise — as the country people here called it. A lane ran parallel with the side fence of the meadow where the right hand flag was j)laced ; and here all who had the most interest in the horses stationed themselves, for it was pretty certain that at this point it would be decided who had the race in hand. It is needless to dwell upon the bustle and excitement that pre- vailed throughout the little village on the evening before the steeple- chase. It would be tedious as a thrice-told tale. Ten horses had arrived 3 and as two horses from the village were sure to go, and one My First Steeple-chaser, 89 rr two more were expected in the morning, the probable starters were calculated at thirteen or fourteen. Every farmhouse was filled on this evening, and even the parsonage had its mild coterie of hard-ridinor black coats, each of whom had some interest, althou2:h he did not care to show it, in watching how young So-and-so (a farmer's son, probably from his own parish) would perform on this memorable occasion. The Rutland Arms was full of grooms, horse- dealers, and hard-riding outsiders, who had not exactly the entry of the better houses, and here the fun was fast and furious 3 while ■each jovial farmer and comely farmer's wife and daughter did the honours of the table to a company as jovial and as truly British as themselves. Not much talk about agricultural distress on this ■evening ! The prices of wheat or oats were never once quoted j and if £ s. d. were ever touched upon, it was merely to inquire the price of such and such a horse for the next day's race. The little village was in a perfect blaze — lights streamed from every window and open door, the stable lanterns flitted across the dilferent yards like meteors, as anxious grooms or owners visited their favourites, to see if all was comfortable for the night j while every now and then the stentorian chorus of some orood old huntinor sons: would break upon the ear, disturbing the stillness of the usually quiet street. Oh, these happy reunions of jovial manly spirits ! the remembrance of which no distance of time can ever obliterate ! By midnight, however, every light was extinguished, every voice hushed. Young jockeys were restlessly tossing in their beds, won- dering what luck the morrow had in store for them 5 while the older ones were riding the race over mentally, and weighino- their own chances against those of other good rivals whom they were so soon to meet. A loose box had been engaged for our horse at the Rutland Arms 3 but night closed in. and, to the sur- prise of many, he had not made his appearance. Not that I was a bit surprised, for there was something mysterious about all that my old friend did, and I, moreover, well knew that the horse was standing comfortably bedded up at a farmhouse about four miles distant. "They'll see us quite early enough in the morning. 9© My First Steeple-chaser, depend upon it," was the old man's remark to Tom as he locked the stable-door for the last thne that night — a remark which even elicited a grim smile from old Sam, who was stud groom on this occasion. About eleven next morning the little cavalcade walked up the village street, " the observed of all observers." The old horse in neat blue and white body-clothing, with all the accompaniments, in true sporting marching order, led by Sam 3 Tom (in full jockey costume, his colours, however, hidden by a blue pilot cloth pea- jacket, his silk cap stutfed into his hat), and the old uncle, following on their ponies. I never remember seeing old Sam look so respect- able or so pleasant as he did on this eventful morning. He never once contradicted his old master, never interfered with orders, and the only remark I heard him make to Tom as he gave him a lift-up in the stable-yard of the inn was, '^ There, God bless you ! the old man's told you what to do. I don't want to see you again till you come back to weigh in 3" and Sam kept his word, for he never moved from the public-house parlour, where he sat stoically ruminating over his pipe, till an ostler breathlessly rushed in with, *^Your horse has won !" And then, "I knew he would," was the only comment he made, as he bustled out to lead the winner back to scale. There was no denying it, that as Tom rode down to the starting- meadow, he and old Dot-and-Go-One looked a very dangerous couple, and the jockey of the favourite hurriedly whispered to hi? owner, as they passed him, " I should not see a bit of fear if we only had that fellow and his screw safe in the brook." However, the last jockey's hand had been shaken, the last instructions had been given, and thirteen horses, ridden by thirteen of the best riders in our hunt, were all drawn up in a line, anxiously waiting for the signal to start : " All good 'uns to look at, and good 'uns to go. And if put at the pound-wall of Ballinasloc, There was not one among them would ever turn — no.** H-l "-I CJ U w ^ hJ o 0- "yj y „ bj j^ H > c/2 O U( -^ -/: o r^ ri Uh O >, > 1) My First Steeple-chaser. 91 The day was fine, and country people mustered strong, every hard rider for miles around was there, and a cheer burst from the crowd as the clear manly voice of one of the stewards (over whose farm the principal part of the line ran) shouted '' Are you all ready, gentlemen? Then off you go." And away the lot went, like a flock of pigeons floating over a dovecote top. The three fences leading down to the brook were cleared by all in their stride with- out a mistake 5 but directly they got into the meadow, three or four of the older jockeys were seen to take a pull at their horses as if to steady them for what was coming. ''^ I'll give you a lead over," shouted Tom, as he came through his horses, and old Dot-and-Go- One skimmed over the brook like a swallow on a summer evening. As he turned in his saddle after he had landed, to see who had followed him, five horses and riders were struggling in the brook, while seven were in the meadow with himself. As soon as he had seen our horse well over, my old friend and myself, with a crowd of well-mounted farmers, galloped across to the lane to watch them come back over what the old man called the '''^ casualty fence" in the race 3 and we, therefore, did not see much of the horses again till they had turned the middle flag. Only two of those that got in the brook came again into the race, and they did not catch the other horses till they were half way round. One of the Findon horses — a great, strong, fine-looking hunter — had rushed to the front, after crossing the brook, and made the pace tremendous, closely followed by the favourite and two others. Tom lay about fifth, the whole time inwardly wondering how long it would be after they had rounded the flag before the leaders came back to him. Strange to say, there was hardly one of the front division that he was the least afraid of 3 but there was a great raking chestnut mare who had lain close to him throughout the race, taking every fence just behind him as surely and safely as himself, but who never tried to pass him, which he began now to consider dangerous. Tom had taken no notice of this chestnut at starting, nor could he for the life of him call to mind either the mare or her ^2 My First Steeple-chaser, rider. The young farmer who steered her was eNidently riding to orders, and those orders clearly were to let Tom lead, and keep dose behind him. No matter whatever fence he went at, the chestnut took it exactly in the same place j and if he tried a bit of a spurt, it was all the same, she stuck as close to him as his shadow. As soon as he rounded the flag, the horses began to change places. Two of the leaders fell back, while Tom gradually crept to the front, followed closely by the mysterious chestnut ; and when we saw them again, within three fields of the great fence, Tom was leading, the chestnut and four others well up, but nothing else in the race. In the field leading down to this fence the favourite and one of the Findon horses drew up to the two leaders, and the four came down to the hedge together. The rider of the chestnut now changed his tactics, and, instead of following Tom over, charged the fence in a line with him. Probably he was afraid of Tom coming down right before him j in fact, it was a very awkward place either to lead or to follow over, and one which had much better be taken alone. The Findon horse got down to it first, but swerved at the crowd in the lane, and had to be turned and put at it again before he cleared it. Tom and the chestnut went over beautifully side by side 3 the favourite fell a burster. The Findon horse could not be got over till the leaders were nearly down to the brook, and only two of the other horses came on to the fence, one of whom fell, the other scrambled over. The race was now left to Tom and the chestnut : they cleared the brook so near together that their knees almost touched on landing. Tom took a pull at his horse, and the chestnut passed him and went on with the running. This was bad policy, and just what Tom wanted. Whether the young farmer thought he had the screw safe, or whether he now fancied that he could win as he liked, and wished his friends at the wuining flags to see by how far he could win, there is no telling j but he pressed his mare on over the fence into the straight run-in, and then set to work with her 3 Tom all the while lying close to him, but so straight behind him that the jockey on the chestnut could not see him till they were within a hundred My First Steeple-chaser, 93. yards of the winning flags. It was now Tom's turn, and rouslno- up old Dot-and-Go-One with three overhand cuts that might have been heard all over the meadow, he closed in with the mare and won on the post by a short length. "A magnificent finish!" shouted the bystanders, but there were a few in the crowd who saw but little in the finish except a splendid waiting race on Tom's part,, who, they felt confident, could have won by twenty lengths if he had pleased ; and directly I heard the old uncle's remark, as he shook his hand upon winning, " You did that monstrous well, my lad," and saw the nephew's quiet smile, I was of the same opinion- myself. Every -one cheers a winning jockey, and of course Tom came in. for his share ; in fact, he was a pretty general favourite with all, and many who had no pecuniary interest in the race were really glad that he had won. The old uncle was in a state of great ex- citement, and it was a treat to see him as he rode by Tom's side back to scale in a barn, belonging to one of the stewards, gracefully bowing right and left, in acknowledgment of the cheers, which he understood quite as much for himself as for the old horse and its plucky rider. As for Tom, he bore his honours very meekly^ the expression of his countenance rarely displayed the workings of his. mind 3 but I observed him suddenly change colour as he approached a little pony-carriage, standing close to the gate leading out of the winning-field. My eye involuntarily followed his, and, on looking m that direction, I saw a respectable but very surly old gentleman, sitting in that little carriage, who stared at our party, but without taking the least notice of any one of us, and by his side a dark-eyed,, dark-haired girl, apparently his daughter. The girl was pale as- death, but her black eye flashed fire as it caught Tom's, and a deep red flush mantled over her cheek and forehead as she slightly waved a white handkerchief which she held carelessly in her hand. No one observed this dumb show save Tom, myself, and, of course, the lynx-eyed old uncle, whose eagle glance nothing escaped ; and as we rode together up to the scales he confided to me that this girl, the daughter of one of the richest farmers in the county, mi^ht have 94 -My First Steeple-chaser, been Tom's wife long ago, if he had only been tolerably steady j but the old man her father not exaetly approving of Master Tom's goings-on, had peremptorily forbidden him his house, and threatened his daughter with penalties far worse than those of a convent, if she ever spoke to him again. The girl obeyed her lather at the price of a broken heart, but she silently registered a vow in heaven, that if she could not become Tom's wife she would never become the wife of another man j and this vow she solemnly kept, perhaps living on in hope, but gradually dying of despair. The old uncle wound up his little history with *' Mind you, her father's an old fool, for if the girl had married Tom she might have kept him straight 3 anyhow, she could never have been more miserable than she is now. There's many worse-looking fellows than Tom 5 and if he is a httle wild, all I can say is, there is not a more straightforward chap or a better rider in our hunt." The old gentleman evidently thought it impossible to say more in his favour. After the steeple-chase came a hurdle-race, but although two of the steeple-chase horses went for it, one of them winning, the old gentleman would not enter our horse, as he had a better plan in his head, wliich he brought about in the evening. All left the course well pleased with their day's fun. Many went home that night, but we all stayed j and Sam had strict injunctions to see after the old horse, as he might be wanted again in the morning. The owner of the chestnut was not half satislied with his defeat, and his son, the jockey, was very sore at having been out-ridden by Tom. In the course of the evening party-feeling waxed high, for both horses had their supporters, and after a great deal of personal chaii a match was made for 50/. a-side, to come off next morning at eleven, over the steeple-chase course. As Tom quietly closed a 10/. bet with his rival rider, his sarcastic remark of "Just see what an example I'll make of you in the morning, young man. You shall ride a waiting race to-morrow, whether you like it or not," raised the hopes of our party j and he kept his word. The match came off as agreed. Tom jumped away with the lead, and kept it the whole way round, gradually improving it up My First Steeple-chaser. 95 to the big fence, where the el)e.stnut fell^ and the screw cantered in by himself. At three o'clock we left the village for the farmhouse, where we meant to stay the night ; and as old Sam led our horse in triumph out of the inn yard, he pithily obser\-ed to a group of stable-men and grooms who had gathered round to see him start, " There, I don't fancy you'll want us again at Findon for a twelvemonth." Just as the old horse was leaving the yard, Tom walked up to his head and pinned on each side of the head-stall a blue and white rosette, which the old uncle mysteriously whispered to me had been sent him in the morning by " that party." There was certainly some value attached to these little cockades, for on going into Tom's bachelor apartments a short time after the race, I observed them pinned up over che bracket where his whips hung 5 and when- ever afterwards he left home to ride the old horse in a race, they accompanied him as surely as his whip and spurs, and generally decorated the horse's head as he returned iiome a winner. After lunch the stakes for both the steeple-chase and the match were handed over to my old friend, who generously left 10/. behind him for the poor of the parish {" Reads well in the country paper, don't you see r")^ and after deducting 25/. for the Vet., according to promise, and 5/. for old Sam, he divided the rest into three parts, for himself, Tom, and me. He had now gained the long coveted prize — he had won "the Findon," and that with a screw, which he flattered himself no one could have doctored but himself. Tom had made a very good day's work j his share in the stakes, and about 300/. in bets, came to enough^ as the old man observed, to stock a little farm with. But " if you'll be a little more steady, you may marry that girl yet, and do well," only met with a sad shake of the head from Tom, as he tossed off a bumper of sherry and left the room. As for myself, not a word of praise fell to my share for having been the original purchaser of the horse — in fact, I was a real sleeping partner, in every sense of the word, and had no more to say in regard to the management of the old screw than tlie coachman of whom I bought him. g6 My First Steeple-chaser. As soon as we got home, an important ceremony took place- that of re-christening our horse. He had now distinguished him- self j i^o/. had been bid for him, in two places, as the auctioneers say, before we left Findon, and we considered he was fully entitled to a less plebeian name than Dot-and-Go-One. Now the christening of a horse who has three or four masters is not an easy matter j. each one of us had a fancy name of his own. I thought " Splinter Bar" appropriate, on account of his having been bought out of a coach. Tom leant to " Rory O'More," or ^'^ Donald Caird," probably from having some kindred feehng with these worthies. The Vet. had hardly a mind on the subject, so long as he was con- sulting physician, and Tom was jockey. He fancied the old horse good enough to win under any name, so we just left the choice ta the old man, who, to our great surprise, went at once into the classics, and thouglit Hercules would " look very well on paper." I fancy it would have puzzled him to tell us who Hercules was,, for, as old Baron Alderson observed to one of the witnesses in the noted Running Rein case, when the counsel asked him where they got the name of Maccabeus from, '' Oh ! that name comes out of a book which your party very seldom look into." However^ Hercules it was, and three weeks after Mr. 's br. g. Hercules (late Dot-and-Go-One) figured in the entries for a steeple-chase in. Warwickshire. This time, however, Hercules came home without the cockades, for he was beaten cleverly by Powell on the Grey (1 believe, candidly, through jockeyship, though none of us told Tom so, as we did not much mind, for we had httle or nothing on the race, and saved our stake). His work, however, now began in. earnest. It did not suit my old friend when he had a good bit of stuff to work upon to let him stand idle, and throughout the whole summer Hercules and Tom had a merry time of it, flitting about the country like two Will-o'-the-Wisps, from one little race meeting to another ; and wherever there was a small plate or hurdle-race to be run for, they were sure to make their appearance on the morning of the race, sweeping off everything before them till they became almost as notorious i" our district as old Isaac and Sam Darling My First Steeple-chaser, 97 used to be on the Warwickshire side. As he never went for any- very great stake, the old horse rarely met with company to make him gallop 3 and although the stakes he won were generally small, they paid expenses and a little over, and gained my old friend a kind of notoriety which he had so long aimed at. Yellow-leaved autumn, however, came round again at last, and the old horse, who now scarcely ever went lame, but who, strange to say, notwithstanding all his knocking about, seemed to keep as fresh on his legs as ever, and who was always, to use a favourite expression of old Sam's, " A rare doer," made his appearance for the last time at Findon gorse, early in November, just to show him- self to his old friends once again, previous to his going down into a remote western county — which my old friend, whose knowledge of geography was limited to " the sheers," as he called them, fancied was altogether out of England — to run for the great event of his life, the Grand Annual Aristocratic Bideford Steeple-chase (this was not exactly the name, but it is near enough for our purpose), of 20 sovs. entrance, with 100 added, and in which Vanguard, Peter Simple, Gaylad, and a host of other cracks, were to meet as competitors. Hercules was now in a racing stable, for, as my old friend observed, the horse was public property, and the responsibility of bringing him out for this great race was more than he dare undertake himself, so he was placed for about six weeks with one Mr. Snaffle, to put the linal polish on him. The weekly bulletins were favourable 3 and when it became generally known that he was meant for the race, every member of our hunt felt interested in the old horse's success, and many a quiet commission was sent up to London to back him by men who rarely hazarded a shilling on a race. Now, although old Hercules was well known as a good horse among a limited circle, his fame had hardly spread beyond that circle, and however good he might be among platers, with country jockeys on their backs, it was quite a different thing when he had to meet the best steeple-chasers in England, with regular professional jockeys up, and twelve or fifteen to one could be easily obtained about him. But the stable-money was on him, Tom declared himself equal to H 98 My First Steeple-chaser, the task of steering him, and, as the journey was long, the old horse started about ten days before the race, in charge of Mr. Snaffle's head lad on a mule, for we had no railroad conveyance direct at that time, and we could hardly stand the expense of a van with posters. He reached the little town about three days before the race, and when he took gentle exercise on the racecourse the morn- ing after hi:; arrival, was observed by more than one lynx-eye, who was watching him, to go a little lame. The race was fixed for the Wednesday, and it was agreed that our party should take the night coach up to London on the Satur- day night, and reach Bidefordcomfortably by the Tuesday morning. The old horse travelled across the country, and in less than half the distance. On the Saturday our hounds met at Waverley Wood, and Tom rode over to meet them on another ^''casualty nag,'* which my old friend had lately picked up cheap. He was not a bad topped horse, and perhaps less of a screw than the generality of horses that came into these stables, but he was a vicious, hard- mouthed brute, a regular "mistechst" devil, as old Sam used to observe (I never could define this mysterious word), who could do almost anything he liked when in the humour, but, if he were not, was just as likely to take the bit between his teeth and walk through a gate, or flight of rails, without rising at them. We were to start at eight to meet the up night-coach on the north road, and Tom promised not to do more than just to show the horse the hounds and be home to dinner (which always on hunting days consisted of a beef- steak pudding) by two. I never saw him in such high spirits before. He was in rare condition, and just the steeple-chase weight to a pound. He quite longed to meet some of the cracks, and inwardly hoped that he might be able to turn the tables on the Grey this time. During my connexion with this steeple-chase horse, I had been brought much into contact with Tom. I had come to know him better, and the more I knew him the more I liked him. Under a rough exterior and the veil of wild reckless manner, there was a vein of simple, warm-hearted kindness running through his character which atoned for marvy a faulty and when, in his calm moments, I could draw My First Steeple-chaser, 99 him away from the only subjects he cared much to talk about, I was struck with the justice and soundness of the remarks which fell from his lips. He was, in fact, but one specimen of a class unfor- tunately too common — a class of men who have been well brought Ep in their youth, but having abandoned all to the fascinations of a sporting life, find themselves m a few years drawn into a vortex from which they can never extricate themselves, and linked in irrevocably with associates whom tliey can never shake off. Study the private history of a hundred such men, and we shall find that in ninety cases a woman has accelerated the fall. So it was with Tom. The morning was dull and mild 5 a heavy dew hung on the hedges, and little globes of water, pure and clear as crystal, stood on every turnip-top. The old uncle prophesied that it would be very nasty riding in the deep woodlands this day, and thought Tom was as well at home 3 but he wanted to see a friend or two before he started for the race, and he left the house at nine as gay as a lark. I was to spend the day and dine with the old man, and to while away the time I took up my gun and strolled over his farm. But the turnips were like a river, the birds were as wild as hawks, and in an hour or two I came back with an empty bag. The old man was a little nervous and fidgety the whole day 3 and old Sam did not mend matters, for he went croaking about, abusing his old master for buying horses which were fit for nobody to ride, and prophesying that the new nag, which he hated the sight of, would be the death of some one or other, before they had done with him. There's more truth than we are aware of in the old saying, that "coming events cast their shadows before 5" and the dulness of this morning was a fitting prelude to the melancholy finish of the day. Two o'clock came, without Tom making his appearance, and after half an hour's grace we sat down to dinner without him. Just before we sat down, however, a red-coat pulled up to tell us that the hounds had found in Waverley Wood a ringing fox, who hung about it the whole morning, and as he did not see much chance of their getting him away, he had left them in the wood. Soon after two more red-coats pulled up to tell us that the hounds had whipped H 2 100 My First Steeple -chaser, off and gone to another small gorse about twelve miles distant. They casually observed that they had seen Tom j that the new- horse seemed to give him a good deal of trouble, and then they rode off. Our dinner this day was a dullish affair, and it was not till we had got fairly settled to our pipes that the old man began to cheer up. He was just proposing to me that after this race, win or lose, he would buy my share in the steeple-chaser, and settle, give him to Tom, when a man, whom we both knew well, cantered up, and, throwing himself out of the saddle, begged to see some of us directly. We could tell by the expression of his face when he entered the room that something was wrong. He was luckily a man of few words, and did not keep us long in suspense by use- less preface j he said a bad accident had happened to Tom 3 his norse had fallen at a flight of rails and broken his back j Tom had been picked up insensible, and was now lying at a farm-lodge, which was luckily close to where he fell, and that we had better run over to him as soon as possible. It did not take us much time to get ready, and, although the lodge was about eight miles distant, we reached it well within the hour. I hardly think we exchanged twenty sentences during the whole of that ride j and the only observation the old man kept making aloud to himself was, *^ Strange that they should have taken him in there ^ And strange, indeed, it was, for the accident had happened close to the lodge where the old gentleman lived whom I had noticed at the steeple- chase with his daughter, and Tom's lifeless body had been carried into the very house in which he had so strictly been forbidden evei to enter while alive. His horse had rushed at a small flii^ht ol rails leading out of this very farm into a lane which ran in front of the house j they both rolled into the ditch beyond 3 the horse broke his neck, and poor Tom, who fell under him, was dragged out on to the bank a corpse ! (Strange, I have seen three fatal accidents in the hunting field, and every one of them has been at a small fence which the rider has taken carelessly and heedlessly, when the hounds were not running, but going from one covert to another.) They placed the body on a gate, and carried it up to the house. My First Steeple-chaser, loj The girl, who might have been Tom's wife, stood at the window and saw him fall, and the stern old father met them at the door with their lifeless burden. No time now for any display of passionate feelings. The faults of the dead man were all forgotten in his sudden and violent death, and the old man, with a faltering voice, bade them carry the body upstairs, and hurried back into the parlour to endeavour to console his only daughter, but wdth a heart nearly as heavy as her own. What his feelings were at this moment it would be hard to say. Did his thoughts recur to that fearful passionate scene, when with a dreadful oath he bade the young man leave his house, and prayed that God would strike his daughter dead before his very face, sooner than see her become the wnfe of a man whom he designated as a reprobate and an outcast ? Did he think of all the bitter anguish, of the many sorrowful days and nights which the poor girl had suffered since that fearful oath was recorded ? Or did he feel that now the fatal curse had come home to him ? His only daughter lying on the sofa insensible before him 3 the man upon whom her sole affections w^ere placed, a corpse in the room above his head ; himself a pow^erless, sorrows-stricken, grey-haired old man, w^ho had tried to measure his strength, as it w^ere, against the Almighty One^ and had failed. But we will draw the veil over this sad scene. As the old uncle and myself galloped up to the door, the groom who took our horses whispered to us that Tom was dead, and, as the old father met us in the passage, he grasped our hands, and led us upstairs without saying a word. On a bed, in the best room, lay poor Tom, just as he had fallen. His death had been instantaneous, and, apparently, painless ; at least the expression of his features was unaltered, and his face wore the same determined look of resolution which so well became it when living. A little blood had oozed from his nose and mouth, but this had been carefully wiped away j and no one who gazed upon that calm and quiet face, could have guessed that he had died by a violent death some tw^o hours before. Tt was painful to watch the countenances of the two old men as they 102 My I'irst Steeple-chaser. stood in silence by that bedside, and more painful still to think what feelings were working in their breasts at that solemn moment. It was a relief to leave the chamber of death, and go down into the parlour. The daughter had been carried to her bed-room in a swoon, and the little parlour was filled with men who had seen the accident, and who had stopped at the lodge till our arrival. From them we learnt the full particulars. The old uncle was now anxious to get home and make arrangements about the removal of the body. So, after leaving particular instructions for them to cut off a hoof of the horse before they buried him, we rode home. There was but little outward exhibition of grief during the whole of this sad scene — the principal actors in it were made of sterner stuff than to show the sorrow which struck inwardly, but deeply, into their breasts ; and as for the poor girl, she lay, during the whole time, happily unconscious of all that was taking place around her. What was to be done about the steeple-chase now that poor Tom was killed ? Of course the old uncle could not go down to the meeting j but the horse was there, heavily backed by many of his friends. And when the old man asked the company in the parlour how he should act, the unanimous reply " Just as if Tom was alive," decided him, and at ten o'clock the Vet. and myself took our places in the night-coach to go down to Bideford, engage another jockey, run the horse, and do our best to win. "We reached London by twelve o'clock next day, and Bideford by the Tuesday morning. The journey was a dreary one, far diffe- rent from what we had expected it would be. Just before starting I went up into Tom's room for the jacket and cap , but I had not the heart to take down the two little rosettes which hung up over them, now that he who had so fondly cherished these valued remembrances would never see them again. The coach was filled, outside and in, with steeple-chase riders and betting-men, and the conversation the whole way down was slangy and turfy When we entered the little town of Bideford the place was in a bustle, and as we pulled up at the Woolpack in My First Steeple-chaser. 103 the market-square (the principal sporting inn), the coach-office and the steps outside were thronged with a group of knowing sporting- looking characters of every grade and description. Our horse was standing at this inn stables, attended by the lad who had brought him down, who was anxiously waiting our arrival. Great was the lad's distress when he saw only two of our party alight from the coach, and greater still when he heard of poor Tom's sad accident, for he had backed the old horse up to nearly the whole of his year's wages, more on the strength of Tom's jockeyship than anything else. His spirits sank within him when he heard that we had come down to seek a strange jockey in a strange town, where, as the lad said, they did not speak even in the same language as ourselves. However, the first thing was to see after lodgings, and then try and engage a jockey for the morrow. As I picked my way to the bar through a crowd of sporting-men to engage beds for the night, " our Jem," as neatly go t-up and looking as hand- some as ever, was chaffing the pretty barmaid on the very same subject. She was trying to persuade him that for one night he must put up with the inconvenience of a double bed with a friend. To which Jem strongly objected, adding something in an undertone to the girl, which caused her to laugh heartily and turn away quickly (evidently, however, not displeased), under pretence of serving some other customer. I was quite prepared for her reply of " all engaged," when I asked if I codd procure beds for myself and the Vet. ; but I thought she need not have regarded us quite so contemptuously as she did, although we might both look a little travel-soiled and seedy after our twenty-four hours' journey outside a night coach. She treated us, however, very differently next day, when the race was over — ^but not to anticipate. We considered ourselves lucky in procuring the loan of a bed-room for half-an-hour to put ourselves a little straight, and to this we at once retired — my friend, the Vet., anxious to arange a toilette with which he was bent upon astonishing the good people of Bideford, and the sporting part of the community in particular. And it certainly was a magnificent '^ get-up," built expressly for the 104 ^y Fir^t Steeple-chaser, occasion, of which none of us had the least idea. A bright-green, long-waisted cutaway, with gilt buttons as big as half-crown pieces, a very staring red plaid waistcoat in the long -approved grooms' style, a pair of bran new white cords and mahogany tops, a yellow belcher neckerchief, and new white hat, which he had decorated in London with a black crape band out of respect to poor Tom, completed a costume which would have shone brilliantly at a country fair. But when I noticed how his clothes hung about him, as if they had been thrown on with a pitchfork, and looked at his broad freckled face, sandy hair and whiskers, and brown, gloveless hands, I fairly groaned in spirit when I reflected that I should have to be leader to such a bear among men who of all others, perhaps, aim at a neat and quiet costume. There was, however, no help for it now, so I just made the best of it, and affected not to hear the remarks which greeted us as we made our appearance again in the passage before the bar. " Halloa, Jennings !'* asked one man ; " whose colours are bright green and tartan ?" " Why, the gentleman has made a mistake, the race does not come off tiU to-morrow," added another. "Devilish neat style of tiling, and by no manes gaudy," drawled out the prince of the Irish steeple-chase jockeys to a friend, as he eyed the burly figure of the Vet. from top to toe. Such were among some of the compliments which fell on my ear. But when I heard one fellow whisper to another " It's the other one's the jockey -, him in the green coat's a rich Yorkshire fiirmer, owner of that lame brown horse standing in No. 10," I took my cue directly, and determined to play second fiddle myself, leaving to the Vet. all the arrangements of what promised to be rather an intricate affair. He was immensely gratified when I told him this, and it was quite pleasing to hear him order an ostler to send to him directly the lad who looked after tho, Hrown horse in No. lo, and to watch the deferential manner in which the man obeyed him. The old horse seemed to know him again as soon as he entered the box, and testified by a faint neigh his pleasure at seeing him ; but there was evidently one other he missed out of the little group, and that was his favourite My First Steeple -chaser, 105 jockey who had so often steered him to victory, for, after we had carefully locked the door and began to strip him, the old fellow kept turning his head every now and then in that direction, as though he expected to see it open every minute and poor Tom walk in. However much he might be out of place in the crowd that thronged the bar-passage, the Vet. was " all there" in that loose box, as he threw oiF the "bright-green cutaway," and proceeded carefully to examine the horse. More than a dozen times was his hand slowly passed down that treacherous hind leg, and severe was the cross-examination which the lad underwent as to how the horse fed, how he galloped, &c. The examination was apparently satis- fa'ltory, for, after he had given some directions about fresh bandages, al. J to have the horse ready for gentle exercise at three in the after- noon on the race-course, he remarked, on leaving the stable, " If we had but poor Tom here to ride him, we should be very near pulling through." When we returned to the inn to lunch we were regarded as objects of curiosity by the assembled crowd. Our horse had been standing there for three days, and beyond his being the property of a midland farmer, and that a country jock was coming down expressly to ride him, nothing was known about him. Nothing could be got out of the lad who looked after him — he was too well tutored. The idea of sending a lame horse (for he was most decidedly a little lame, although it was hardly perceptible) to run for such a stake and in such company, added to the mystery, which was in no degree lessened by the countryfied appearance of his owner and jockey, as we were taken to be. When we sat down to lunch, however, a little of the mystery was cleared up, for one or two jockeys had now arrived who had seen the horse run in Warwickshire j and it was whispered about that notwithstanding all his lameness, he would prove to be a very dan- gerous outsider. But the strangest thing was nobody had yet seen his old jockey. It was well known that the man who rode him in Warwickshire was always in the habit of riding him, and Tom was personally known to man^' of the jockevs^ which we were io5 My First Steeple-chaser. not. It is true I knew every professional jockey in that room by sight, and many to speak or nod to, but I was not on what might be called friendly terms with any one of them 5 and as not one of them was likely yet to have heard of Tom's accident, I did not care to tell how it was that we had come down alone and had not even yet engaged a jockey to ride the horse. I knew very well that all the crack jockeys were sure to be taken up, and moreover I did not fancy that any one of them would care for such a mount as this, unless to suit some purpose of his own. But where were we to find a jockey at the eleventh hour, in a distant town, where we scarcely knew a soul to speak to ? This was the question which spoilt my lunch. The Vet., of course, was out of the question, for I suppose he walked fourteen stone. There was but myself and the stable lad. Now I certainly could hold my own across country, and had even once ridden in the Findon race, where, as an old York- shire trainer observed, *'I made a very poor tew of itj" and I did not therefore much fancy measuring lances with such men as Oliver, Mason, and some others whom I saw taking lunch with us, and chaffing each other across the table with that quiet, self-satisfied air which proved that they were perfectly at home here, and that the coming event to which I was so nervously looking forward was an every-day matter to them. I did not see one of the " Lincolnshire division" present, or I might have found a friend. It is true that both *^01d Peter" and Gaylad were expected to run, but they had long since passed into other hands than those who bred them, and Lincolnshire knew them no more. As to the stable-lad, he had never ridden a steeple-chase in his life. Besides, he was probably three stone too light. Moreover, as he told me afterwards, he had come down to look after, not to ride, the horse, and he did not know how Mr. Snaffle might take it if he got the mount. That worthy had sent word down that he would be there on the morning of the race, if possible j but as he placed implicit reliance on the lad to see after the horse, and of course concluded that Tom would be there to ride him, he gave the matter very little further tliought, and it was hardly likely that he would leave his business My First Steeple-chaser, 107 and come down so far to see a horse run in which he had only a temporary interest. How different were my feehngs on the afternoon when I rode into Findon before that steeple-chase, to what they were on the present occasion ! Then, every second man I met was a friend. I knew our horse would be properly and fairly ridden, and we were all of us very confident in his success. But now, we were in a strange country without a friend. It wanted but twenty-four hours to the race, and we had not even engaged a jockey for the horse. Poor Tom's recent death sat heavily on my mind, and if it had not been that others at home were anxiously waiting for the result of the old horse's performance, I declare I would have sent him back that afternoon by the lad, and left the town by the night coach, without even staying to see the race in which, strange to say, I had now lost all interest. The Vet., bold as he might be at home, was a very different man here 3 and I could plainly see, notwithstanding the brightness of the new green coat, he sat very ill at ease at that table, among men whose deeds of daring he had so often seen recorded in the Life, and whose chaff and inuendoes he could plainly see were covertly directed against himself. He was by no means desti- tute of pluck, and had proved himself an awkward customer on more than one occasion ; and as I saw that he was burning to get into a row with some one, I was right glad when lunch was over, and he proposed a stroll through the old town to buy a new ash stick. I thought this would be a good opportunity of getting the correct weight of the lad and myself, and as we passed a butcher's shop, at the door of which a very jovial, good-humoured looking man was standing, I asked him if we might just step into his scales. The request was at once granted, and after we had got our weights, the butcher, who was evidently a sporting man, civilly asked us into his little back parlour, to have a glass of ale, and on following him in we saw two other men sitting there smoking their cigars, evidently talking over the coming race. One was a fat, jolly-looking fellow, apparently a country farmer j the other was the very counterpart of poor Tom, save that his hair and whiskers were sandy, and his face io8 My First Steeple-chaser. pock-marked and freckled. His clothes fitted him as tight as if he had grown in them. Coat, waistcoat, and trousers were cut in the approved sporting style, back-stitched, double-stitched, and strapped. It seemed as if nothing could tear them ; and upon the Vet., who was by no means shy, requesting if he might feel the thickness of those fine trousers, and remarking upon the apparent excellence of the quality, the man good-humouredly remarked, "You're in the west of England now!" His low-crowned hat and a formidable cutting whip lay on the table, and I felt certain, at first sight, that the man was a jockey. The whole performance of weighing had been watched from the back parlour by these two men through the little window which commanded the shop, and they were now eager to get at the bottom of what they began to consider a mystery. They soon told us all they knew about the coming race, how many horses were likely to start, who would ride them j and in the course of conversation, the brown screw came upon the carpet, but about him they were' quite in the dark 5 they had all seen him, and watched him at exercise j knew that he had come from a distance, and as they could well see that his slight lameness was of old standing, they naturally thought that he would not have been sent so far, if it was hkely to interfere much with his going. Great was ;he jolly butcher's surprise when I told him this was our horse, that we had no jockey for him, and that I had come into his shop casually to weigh, in case the forlorn hope of steering him should fall to my lot. Words can hardly express my delight when I heard him remark, "This mount would just suit you, Jem j" and when the young man replied, "I should very much like it," I felt as if luck had turned right in our favour. It is true, I knew nothing of either men, but I felt relieved of an immense responsibility. Any- how, Jem could hardly be a worse jockey than myself. There was something honest and straightforward about both men -, and the very fact of their being ensconced in that little back parlour, instead of joining the noisy crowd which were assembled at the Woolpack, proved that, like ourselves, they were outsiders. We soon learnt lem's history. He was indeed a second Tom — a farmer, living My First Steeple-chaser, 109 about ten miles from the town, a capital rider, had hgured in one or two previous steeple-chases on this course, but never in a crack one, and had come down to Bideford on this occasion expressly on the off chance of getting a mount. He gave the old horse a rattling spin for half a mile on the race- course in the afternoon, and his remark of "he'll do," as he got off him, satisfied me that there was no mistake about our new jockey. The jolly butcher himself was bursting with importance. Such a strange thing to happen in his little back parlour j it seemed just as if it was to be ! And although we all agreed to keep the thing as dark as possible till next morning, he could not help confiding the secret to a few friends, and when I went into the long room at the Woolpack in the evening, I heard "What'll any one lay a^ira jFfarcules ?" and observed two or three men quietly booking the long odds against the old horse, who could hardly be said to have come into the betting. The Vet. and myself walked over part of the steeple-chase course that afternoon j there was not a fence in it to compare with Findon, but as the country was pretty heavy, we fancied it would suit our old horse, whose forte was in deep ground j but then the same remark would apply to some other of the cracks, especially "old Peter," who was a familiar acquaintance, and we were far from confident about the result of the race. We got beds at the civil butcher's, and, as all anxiety was now off my mind, I slept well that night. About eight next morning we sat down to certainly the most substantial breakfast I ever saw. Of course the chops and kidneys were perfection — we were in the right shop for them ; but I cer- tainly never expected to taste such ale — for we all fancied the Findon tap was not to be equalled in England. All were in high spirits. Jem had tried on the blue-and-white jacket and cap, and liked the colours. The Vet. had been about the horse ever since five, and his broad, good-humoured Yorkshire face beamed with dehght as he entered the little room and saw a breakfast laid out, to which he was quite prepared to do ample justice. The jolly butcher and myself had become very friendly. He was a little bit of no My First Steeple-chaser. screw dealer himself, but his hne lay among the trotters, and he had taken me into his stable to show me three nags, either of which, he declared, coiild trot the two miles under the six minutes ; and when I told him I fancied I had one at home who could beat either of them, he swore that he would travel all the way to Findon to see her, which he did. It was a lovely morning, as mild as May, and the sun shone brightly out of an unclouded sky j the jackdaws were cawing high in air round the old church tower, whose bells were ringing out a cheery peel, and over whose battlements floated " the red-white-and blue," in honour of this day. The steeple-chase was evidently a gala-day in tlie old town of Bideford. A brass band paraded the streets as on an election day. The county famiUes were flocking into the town (for there was to be a grand ball in the evening), well-mounted men on strong usefid hunters rode up the high street towards the course, and the town was crowded with country people, who had come miles to see the race. All was in a bustle. Every one you met seemed full of importance 5 but it was easy to distin- guish who were the real actors in the play about to be performed. The race was fixed for two ; the horses were to saddle in the inn- yard, parade through the market-place, and then proceed to the racecourse, where the start was, about a mile out of the town. It was a pretty and a national sight to see eleven of the best steeple-horses in England, ridden by the crack jockeys of the day, meet in that market-place ; and old Hercules, with his new jockey on his back, walked every bit as proudly through the crowd as the best of them. They were marshalled to the racecourse by the clerk of the course, in a bran new pink and leathers, and the whole affair was very well arranged. The racecourse was very prettily situate, and from the top of the grand stand the eye wandered over a wide tract of cham- paign country, with very httle plough, through which the silvery Wye wound its placid course, while the dim blue outhne of the Welsh mountains could be distinctly traced in the distant horizon. Nearly the whole of the steeple-chase course, dotted out with white flags, could be seen from the standi and though there were as many My First Steeple-chaser, iij fences as at Findon, and a fair brook twice, the fences were of a very different description j there was much more grass than I had expected, and I was fearful tliat some hght- weighted thorough-bred (for tlie days of handicapping had just commenced in steeple-chas- ing) would gaUop away from the rest, for this course was just suited to such a horse. I paid my half sov. and took a place on the stand 3 but not so the Vet. — with his usual Yorkshire caution he stationed himself at the brook, and invested his ten shillings, at twelve to one, as the old horse came down to it pulling double. The start was very pretty. The only orders Jem received were, to follow one or other of the favourites — and these he obeyed to the letter, never leading himself, but sticking to the leaders as close as wax. It was a ver}^ fast run race ; and at a mile from home only seven horses were left in it. These soon dwindled down to five, and only three of them came up, with anything like a chance, to the large brushed hurdle across the racecourse, the last fence in the race. But the blue-and- white colours were there. They all three rose together at the hurdles, and when they landed safely the struggle began. " Van- guard wins !" "Peter wins!" "Hercules wins!" were shouted by a thousand voices. Half way up the run in, however, the gameness of the old horse told 3 he struggled manfully to the front, and as they shot by the grand stand, close to which the winning flags were placed, he was two lengths ahead, Jem hard at work with whip and spurs, and the judge's fiat was — Hercules by three lengths. What a curious thing is popular favour ! Here was a strange horse, which but few on this course had backed for a shilling, and which scarcely a dozen men knew, and yet a hundred cheers greeted him and his jockey as they came back to scale 3 and a score of burly-looking squires and country farmers slapped me on the back, and shook me by the hand, as they congratulated me on the old horse's success. There were very few there who knew how little chance old Hercules stood of winning twenty-four hours before ; and I met the good old butcher with a thoroughly cordial handshake below the stand, for without him the race would pro- £ 1 2 My First Steeple-chaser. bably never have been ours. The Vet. was in a high state of excitement, and his bright-green coat and white hat could be seen strugghng through the thickest of the crowd to get up to the horse's head 3 and he eyed tlie curious gazers with a fierce glance as they crowded round the winner, and pertinently asked them, "What they thought of the lame horse now ?" It was singular that on this very afternoon they buried poor Tom, and as the shouts at the success of his old favourite were rending the air on that racecourse, the solemn, measured knell of the passing bell from a quiet little village church, nearly 300 miles distant, tolled the last requiem of one who, a short week before, had fondly hoped that those cheers would have been lavished on himself instead of a stranger. Of course we attended the race ordinary at the Woolpack. The chair was taken by one of the head men in the county, the dinner was excellent, and all passed off capitally. We had lots of health- drinking and speechifying. The Vet. broke down in returning thanks to the winner, but came again further on in the evening and astonished the company with a tremendous Yorkshire hunting song, which was loudly applauded, and which I was very fearful would be encored. The owner of the second horse, who had already been beaten in Warwickshire by Tom, declared that the old horse had won that day upon his merits, and that he always feared him, although he did not say so. Not much money was lost. Our horse was a good one for the bookmakers. The old butcher and his friends stood well on him. I had not backed him for a shilling ; but the Vet. had managed to win fifty pounds, and as a good deal of it was in pounds and fivers, it took him some trouble to collect. But he carried away with him a trophy from Bideford, which he valued even more than all the money, and this was a large roll of the celebrated west of England drab, the identical stuff from which Jem's trousers were built. He had ingratiated himself much in the good butcher's favour, who gave him the cloth in return for the receipt of the noted " inflammable iles." The stakes were paid over to us next moining. We gave Jem a My First Steeple-chaser, 113 very good present for his excellent riding, and 10/. to the lad for having so manfully stuck to the old horse throughout. Just before we left, the pretty barmaid presented me with two grand blue-and- white rosettes to decorate old " Hercules' s " head, declaring that these were her favourite colours — a pretty good hint, as my friend the butcher observed, that she would hke a silk dress of the same. And as I thought that in all probability we should never see the old town again — certainly never take away so much out of it — I went out and bought her the richest blue silk piece that I could find j and I'll do her the justice to say, that I felt certain she would well become it. About an hour before we left, old Hercules was led out of the town in triumph. We had a parting bottle of champagne with the civil butcher and Jem, without whose aid we should have left Bideford "'unhonoured and unknown," and after promising Jem that he should have the mount if our horse went for any other good race while I had anything to do with him, we mounted the outside of tlie up-coach, and left Bideford in very different spirits to those in which we had entered the old town. There were no telegraphs down to our remote county in those days 3 and as we lost no time on our journey, we had the pleasure of bringing the news of the old horse's victory home ourselves. Her- cules came back from his training-quarters as soon as he got home,, and I took him to meet the hounds a few days after (my first mounts by the way, on a horse which I had now owned about eighteen months), to receive the congratulations of his friends. We ran him for one more steeple-chase in our county, with the odds of ten to one on him 3 but the hawbuck of a country jockey who rode him managed to go on the wrong side of a flag, and lost us the race* We were all of opinion that he sold us. My old friend became quite an altered man after poor Tom's death 5 he had lost his right hand, as it were, and he cared little now to bring a horse to the post under the pilotage of a jockey whom he could not trust. Grief shows itself in various forms, but the old man's sorrow took a very disagreeable one 3 he became ill-natured 114 ^y First Steeple-chaser, and snappish, and could scarcely bear a word to be spoken to him, and old Sam and the lads had a weary time of it. I have no doubt Tom's death affected him deeply, for he had the hoof of the horse that killed him mounted in silver, which, with the whip and spurs he used in l>Is last race, together with the little Findon cockades, hung up ever after over his mantelpiece till he died. The Vet., moreover, took to bad ways 3 to use a favourite phrase of his own, he could not " carry corn 5" the little money he had won during his connexion with the old horse, and the excitement of the racecourse, upset him, and he took to company and drinking. He still, however, stuck to his favourite "inflammable iles," and one night a tremendous explosion was heard in his little back shop, and when the neighbours rushed in he was found lying insensible on the floor, with a candlestick grasped tightly in his hand, and a two- gallon jar, which had doubtless contained some dangerous ingre- dient or other used by him in his mysterious mixtures, shattered into a thousand pieces at his feet. The window of the little room was blown out, and every jar and bottle on his shelves broken. He never recovered that smash. My share in the horse I sold to my old friend, who kept him through the summer without once running him, and sold him again for a hunter the next season. The old gentleman died shortly after — it was quite clear that his silent but deep-rooted grief wore him out 3 and his little farm and stables passed into other hands. The poor girl, who should have been Tom's wife, never looked up after the sad accident ; she lingered on through the winter, but the next spring saw another little head- stone in the village churchyard, not far from where Tom lay, and the simple initials, "J. H., aetat. 25," was alltliat told the sad his- ♦/9iy of many years' patient suflfering. "5 THE TROTTER. ** Oh ! he's such a one to bend his knee and tuck his haunches in, And to throw the dirt in flats' eyes, he never thinks a sin." — Old Song. "If there is one thing I hen du,'' a Yankee captain once drawled out to me, "it is, sing our almighty national song, 'Yankee Doodle 3' " and if there was one thing I flattered myself, when a young' un, I could du better than anything else, it was, sing the then popular (at least among my set) song of "The Trotting Horse," two lines of which head this chapter 3 and the way I learnt it is worth telling. I took my singing lessons on the coach-box, by the side of one of the patriarchs of the road, when a journey to London from our remote parts occupied the whole day, thus affording me ample time to practise my singing lessons — my pre- ceptor being a Jehu of the true old school, and after his fashion the neatest dandy on our road. The old boy had once possessed a beautifiil voice, now, however, grown rather husky through age and constant exposure to the weather. StiU there were few to beat him at this song ; and when the chairman at the little " free and easies " which the members of his craft were wont to hold on the Wednesday evening at the old Magpie and Stump, gave the order — " Attention, gentlemen ; Mr. Jarvis will oblige us with the 'Trotting Horse,' " the applause was, to use a popular phrase, "unbounded." Unlike many selfish men, who, if they possess a better knowledge of anything than their fellows, or a secret of any kind, are only desirous of carrying it with them to the grave, nothing seemed to give this old man greater pleasure than to find that I improved under his tuition. He even tried to get me up in " A southerly wind and a cloudy sky 3" but, according to his quaint I 2 ii6 T/ie 'Trotter, phraseology, I could never " come the dog language right," and he gave up the task in despair. Poor old boy ! I dare say he has dropped off his perch this many a year since. The box which he last mounted when alive was a melancholy one to him, for the old Regulator was driven off the road by the rail, and the last time I spied my quondam tutor he was perched on the box of a 'bus near the Mansion House. " Bank, Paddington — jump in, sir," shouted the cad. There was room on the box, so I clambered up, and was by the old man's side before he recognised me. I made four journeys over the stones that day alongside the veteran, who was still as great a swell as ever, although a shade seedier than when last I saw him ; and we agreed at night to look in at the old Magpie and Stump for the last time. My old tutor's name was Jarvis — Frank Jarvis — but he was known at that day all down the road as old Joliffe, on account of the pecu- liar boat-shape build of his hat j and a neater, cleaner, little old man never mounted the box. Although I always style him the old man, he was not so very old, but he had one of those faces which always look old and thoughtful, and never guide one as to the age of the man j and men considerably older tlian himself, when alluding to him, always used the term " old," although, perhaps, they would have repudiated it themselves. He was invariably scrupulously clean and neat in his dress, and his manners might have gained him ad^ mission into the B. D. C. His clothes were always of the same cut and pattern, only the style varied a trifle with the seasons. The neat, hard, close-napped Joliffe was white in the summer, black in the winter (the former he generally managed to win on the Derby,, the latter on the Leger). The neckcloth at all seasons was spotless white, as pure as snow. A long brown Newmarket coat, very wide-- in the skirt, and with pockets very low down, reached to his "hocks," as he would have termed themj and a long striped black-and« white stuff waistcoat came down below his hip bones. His breeches, were always the same, light drab kerseys 3 and the neatest, best- fitting pair of brown top-boots — the creases of which natty little Arthur Pavis himself might have envied, but which in winter he ^he 1 rotter, 117 encased in fustian overhauls — completed the attire of one of the neatest-dressed, most obliging, and gentlemanly old coachmen of his day in England. When his well-shaped buckskin glove was off, a plain black and gold mourning ring gave an aristocratic finish to .a hand as clean, as white, and as well-shaped as a lady's. I never heard his early history, nor did anyone in our part know it, but I gathered from occasional slips in his conversation that he was born to fill a higher station than the box of a coach 3 and his manners, with all the true genuine poHsh of the old school — and two or three exquisite Httle studies of hounds, and one favourite hunter, done in oils, which graced the walls of his little parlour — all bespoke the fact. He had come down to our little town from London some ten years previously, and started the old ^^ Regulator" on his own account. He drove the whole journey up and down himself, on each alternate day j and as " three wheels and the hind boot of the coach *' belonged to him, and as he was an accommodating ola fellow, wiUing to obhge anyone, and a great favourite with all the gentry and farmers round us, his coach was always fuU j and it was wonderful to witness what a miscellaneous freight the old Regulator used to carry. She was truly and Hterally speaking a family coach. Anxious mothers would trust their children up and down to school with old Johffe, and feel quite satisfied that the old man would treat them as a father ^ and jolly country farmers would hand over their wives and daughters to his charge with every confidence that they would be well looked after on their journey. The jovial squire would stop the coach himself at the park gates with, "Well, Frank, you have not forgotten that little bit of fish j" and the pretty barmaid of the Cross Keys would exclaim with her sweetest smile, as he handed over to her across the bar counter a mysterious-looking brown paper parcel (not, however, a crinoline then), " AVell, now, that is kind of you," and bustle away to fill him a glass of the best pale sherry, the only liquor the old boy ever tasted. Everybody on the road seemed to know him, ^nd everybody respected him. This sort ii8 The Trotter. of thing has all gone by now ; but I dare say many of my readers can remember the day when one solitary coach drove up three times a week to London from tlie neighbourhood, and there was no way of getting any commission done in town save through the coachman. What an important personage that coachman used to be, and what a general favourite he was with all ! Accommodating, however^ as she might be, and useful as a luggage van, the old Regulator still had her faults ; and perhaps the one which would have been looked upon as the greatest in this go- ahead age was tliat she was always behind her time. In the winter, no one could tell at what hour she might come in 5 and if I happened to go down to the booking-office at seven (she was due at six), I hardly cared to ask if the Regulator was in, but my commonplace question as to what time do you expect her to- night was always met by the same stereotyped answer, " Impossible to say, sir." And this may be accounted for in many ways. In the first place, she was a hea\y coach in every sense of the word, and over her best ground was never timed at more than eight miles in the hour. Moreover, her old driver had many little private ventures of his own, and had often to pull up by the roadside three or four times in one stage, to transact a little business on his own account. He was a kind of country general dealer, and nothing which he could by any possibility stow away in the old drag came amiss to him. I have known him buy a plough which was standing at a blacksmith's shop by the roadside. It was hoisted on to the roof of the coach and carried twenty miles down the road to an old friend of his, who had long been looking out for such a pattern. I believe we should have had a pair of harrows also, but to find room for them beat even the old boy. He did fancy he could lash them on under the coach, if he only had time. As for live stock, this coach often resembled a menagerie on wheels—geese, poidtry, pigeons, nothing came amiss. In fact, there was not an article in general use which, to use a phrase of his own, he did not know '^ where to plant if he could only buy it right." He was fond of asking your opinion as ne T^r otter, 119 to what you thought of his purchases 3 and now and then, if I happened " to beggar my looks, and hint something not very com- pHmentary," he always had his answer ready, "Well, I dare say I was a fool to buy it 5 but I think I know a bigger fool to whom I think I can sell it again." He did not, however, confine his little speculations alone to such things as he could carry on his coach. If he by a chance saw a promising colt or a likely-looking heifer grazing by the road side, he never forgot it, and if it was for sale he generally, sooner or later, managed to find a customer for it. Many a time have I known him pall up at the gate of a field by the roadside, hand me over the ribbons, and leisurely walk down the field to inspect some animal or other he fancied would suit him. We never passed through a toll-bar but some rough rider was waiting to show him a raw colt, some farmer to talk to him about a bullock, or some old woman with a basket of geese, poultry, or eggs. He was a great horse dealer in a small way 5 and as he worked best part of the ground himself, was always shoving some new purchase or other into the team, which certainly had no business there. He was always chopping out and in 5 and not a team on. tlie whole journey, except the first two and the two last, could be said to be properly matched. In vain did strange passengers grumble at all this (as for his regular passengers, we all knew the old man's little foibles too well ever to say a word) 3 he was incorrigible, and this I think the reader will admit, when I mention two circumstances which fell under my own observation. We were coming up one day after a large Midland fair, and for half the journey, when we had a team which he dare trust in my hands, the old boy gave me the reins while he got inside to have a little bit of loo with three horse-dealing friends. And on another occasion, when some leather plating stakes were being run for in a park which we had to pass by, he coolly drew his coach into the park, saw one race run, then drove out again, and resumed his journey. There was a standing joke against him, that he once bought three live pigs somewhere down the road, shoved them into the I20 The Trotter, hind boot (which, wonderful to say, was empty on this journey), and sold them to a pork butcher near Islington. He dare hardly bring them into London. Unfortunately, a little of the straw left in the bottom of the boot told its own tale. I should never have known this had I not been standing at tlie Peacock one evening about Christmas to see the old man come up. He was, as usual, two hours behind his time. A group of cads and rough fellows, whom we always see hanging about such places, were gathered close to my elbow. When the lamps of the old Regulator bore in sight, one of the roughest of the lot was the first to notice it, and he communicated the fact to his fellows in the following com- plimentary sentence, growled out in a voice husky with gin and London fog, '' Here comes the old Slow and Dirty. I wonder whether old Boat Tiles got any more pigs up to-night !" However, with all her faults, the old Regulator was a safe coach, and, notwithstanding all the " bokickers " which helped to swell her team, very little went wrong on the road. Moreover, she paid well j and as most of her customers and passengers were regular ones, who all knew and liked her old driver, if a complaint from an outsider did reach head-quarters, it was taken very little notice of by the coach-masters, who worked the old coach the two first stages out of London. Well, as I said before, it was on tlie box of this old coach that I took my first lessons in singing, and, I may add, in driving also ; for as soon as we were well clear of the place where we changed, it generally used to be this : " Here, catch hold of 'em j we'U change places now and have a little harmony." Our first song, as soon as I got the horses well together, was the *' Trotting Horse," and the driving and singing-lesson commenced after this wise : '' Now, keep that off'-side leader well in hand." Old Boy sings : ** I ride as good a trotting-horse." "There, don't you see that near wheeler's doing all the work ?" — " as any man in town." "Have you got that right?" "He'll trot you sixteen miles an nour." "Keep that oft- wheeler up to his collar." "I'll bet a hundred pound," and so on 3 and the " Trotting Horse " usually T!he I'rotter, 121 lasted us over the best part of the stage. The next on the pro- gramme generally was, "A southerly wind and a cloudy sky," and here the old man had the whole performance to himself, and many a gaping rustic would leave off his work and stare at us in stupid astonishment as we drove by him, the old man waving his whip in all the ecstacies of " Have at him," " hi, wind him," " my steady good hounds." I recollect one evening at tliis very part of the performance we happened to meet the hounds coming home from hunting. They turned down a by-lane into the turnpike. Just as we drove by, a scream from the huntsman, which seemed to rend the skies, caused the old bokicker to start and nearly pull the reins out of my hands, and a poor old lady, who was sitting just behind me, almost jumped off her seat as she screamed out, "La', let me get down, I think you're all mad." We pulled up, not, however, to let the old lady down, but to allow the old man to give us one whole verse of the song ; and as he had now the huntsman and two whips to help him find his fox he soon got away with him, and the ratthng view-halloa which the second whip hurled after us as we drove off, rings in my ears to this very day. "There's dog music for you," exclaimed the old boy, in his seventh heaven, as he waved his black JolifFe triumphantly. This was a standing joke down our road for years after. " Tom Moody" used to come next on our list, and here I was allowed to join in chorus ; and there was something rather novel in the way we used to get through " Harry Bluff" as a duet. The old man's fund of songs appeared to be inexhaustible, and he never seemed happy except when singing them. They were chiefly, however, of the sporting order ^ and, except a few old national English baUads, such as "The Death of Nelson," " Harry Bluff," and a few others of that sort, he did not care much to sing any one which had not a little dog language in it. Thus the milestones were merrily passed, and thus our journeys used merrily to roll on. Oh, those were happy days and happy journeys, deny it who can ; and although we certainly did not get over our ground quite so quickly as in these days of steam, we had 122 '^he 'Trotter, a deal more fun on our road ; and a drive on the old Regulator did not wear the uniform monotony of railway travelling, for in those days a journey up and down to London furnished us simple rustics with incidents and matter to talk over for weeks after. I was very young and very green when I took my first singing- lessons, and at that time did not even possess a horse of my own j it is true I had often been at the covert side on one of the old carriage horses, and had been once or twice weU up on an old pony, who had a perfectly marvellous knack of scrambhng and tlirusting through places which no horse in the world could get over. But I had never seen the hounds on anything like a real hunter. How- ever, the lucky day came at length, and, through the kindness of the old coachman, I became the fortunate possessor of a little flea- bitten grey, w^all-eyed Irish mare, which the old man swore could leap over anything on which she could lay her chin, and for whom, as he emphatically concluded his little chaunt, no hounds were too fast, no day too long, and no country too heavy ! She was standing at a public-house by the roadside, and one afternoon we pulled up the coach to look at her. She was brought out into the yard by a bare-headed, coatless, rough-riding lad, who looked after her. A gate was set up in the yard, over which the boy rode her bare-backed three or four times, much to the satisfac- tion of the old man and a group of assembled horsekeepers. This only caused us a delay of some ten minutes, but that was nothing on our road. However, it made about our tenth stoppage that day, with which the business of the coach had not the slightest concern j and some of the passengers were " exceeding wroth," for they could see our whole performance from the coach. There was only one objection to my buying the mare, or I would have done so at once, and this was, I had no money. I knew where I could borrow a lo/. note, but the price of the mare was 45/. On stating this difficulty to the old man, he generously agreed to let me have the mare on receipt of this 10/., when I got it, and to trust me for the rest. I was a nice weight then j and although I had, I fear, but little The trotter. 123 j udgmer. t, I rode with plenty of pluck ; and I su])pose this just suited the hot Irish blood of my new purchase. I hunted her for two months, and never was carried better in my life. I rode to a leader, and this leader was one of the best men with the hounds, though I did not at first know it, for I was a perfect stranger as yet in that field. I well recollect that first run 3 we had as sharp a forty- five minutes as I ever rode to ; and though I got three falls, I was one of the nine who saw the fox pulled down. This was on the Monday, and on the Saturday I was out again. I soon recognised my leader, a hard-riding farmer, in a green coat, this day mounted on a powerful black horse, with strength enough to carry a church. As soon as we found I "at him again," and in a very merry burst of twenty minutes, in which I only got one fall, he left me but a field behind. On my third appearance he good-naturedly noticed me, told me to stick to him as close as I could — he was not afraid of my riding over him 3 and seeing I was but a young performer in the saddle, he gave me a few hints as to riding at my fences. A third good run, and the wall-eyed Irish mare again in a good place. I rode home with the farmer to his house that night, where I slept, and, through the instrumentality of the Irish mare, formed a friend- ship which remained unbroken for years. I hunted her for two months, when I had to leave the country. The last day we were out the farmer bid me 60I. for the mare, which I took. The old coachman and I shared the ''''boots," as he called it, and I may reckon I got my first two months' hunting for nothing. But this was not aU : I did not require to buy a horse the next season 3 with tiie old coachman on one side of the country, and the hard-riding farmer on the other, I had a mount whenever I wanted it. I don't say I got the pick of the stud j but, as I was riding to sell for them, they never put me on a very bad one. That was a merry winter for me J and I enjoyed that season much, and not the less because I rode cheaper and better than ever I did in my life, other men's horses with my own spurs. I know not whether it was that the constant repetition of the old song of the " Trotting Horse " gave a bias to my tastes, but this I 124 '^^he I rotter, do know, that from the time I first heard it, I have always dearly- loved a fast trotter j and for some few years in my early life I gene- rally owned one which could hold its own among our country nags. I don't mean to say that I ever possessed a Peerless or a Flying Cloud, but I once had a Welsh mare (whom I shall presently intro- duce to the reader) who did her two two-mile heats in five min. iifty-three sees, and five min. fifty-seven sees., and pulled up "neither sick nor sorry J " and it must be acknowledged that this was not bad travelling. I can truly say with Sam Slick, " I must confess I am fond of a horse. I have made no great progress in the world myself 5 I feel, therefore, doubly the pleasure of not being surpassed on the road. I never feel so well or so cheerful as on horseback, for there is something exhilarating in quick motion j and, old as I am, I feel a pleasure in making any person whom I meet on the way put his horse to the full gallop to keep pace with my trotter." This taste for trotters might have been an inherent one, and, probably, like most other tastes, would have developed itself in due time 3 but I question much if it would ever have taken so strong a hold upon me, had I never heard that rollicking free-and-easy old song, the "Trotting Horse." If such is the case, all I can say is that old Jarvis has much to answer for, because of all kinds of racing, trotting matches are certainly the lowest j and the possession of a fast trotter is sure to keep its owner in a continual state of excite- ment, squabbles, and disputes -, and it used to appear to me that " to win, tie, or wrangle " was the sole motto that must continually be borne in mind in bringing a trotting match to a satisfactory result. On the afternoon of the last day of the fair, the owner of the drove, who spoke and understood English well, and who had probably heard of my taste for trotting horses, asked me whether I would buy the mare he rode, which he thought, if in condition, could trot fast enough to beat most that she met. She was not for pubhc sale, so was not with the drove, but standing at a little public- house in the town. When we went to look at her I could see The 'Trotter, 125 nothing very striking in her appearance, and certainly very little that betokened the fast trotter. She stood about fifteen hands, was eight years old, of a rusty-black colour with a blaze down her face, a beautiful blood-like head, and sweet fore-hand, but ugly drooping hind quarters, and a swish tail very low set on j she had rare good flat legs, as hard as iron, big knees, and large open feet, and, save her poverty, was without a blemish or a fault. The man said he was sure she could trot a mile in three minutes, and he wanted 30/. for her. I liked the looks of the mare much, and bid 25Z. at once. After a little wrangling he proposed to take her out of the town next morning, ride her himself, and, if she trotted the mile to my satisfaction, I was to give him all he asked. To this I agreed. No one knew anything about the matter, and next morning, at five, the Welshman, who certainly walked over eleven stone, and rode in a saddle the like of which I never saw before or since, was mounted, and all ready for the start. We rode gently about two miles out of the town, and I sent a friend on with him to the third milestone to start him, and stand myself at the second to see him come in. Very few were astir at that early hour, and we had the course to ourselves. I waited some little time rather anxiously, for the appearance of the mare at my end, when at length an unearthly screech broke upon my ear, to which the shrill *'coo'ee" of an Austrahan stock- rider would have been as nothing. This was followed at intervals by another and another, gradually drawing nearer 3 then the clatter of hoofs became more distinct, till at length the mare came flying by me (followed by my friend at top speed, both enveloped in a cloud of dust), pulling double, at a pace which I thought I never saw bettered in a trotter. It was not,, however, a clattering hammer-and-pincers trot, nor a high-actioned trot with the knee doubled up to the chin, but just a lengthy, low,, stealing pace — much after old Alice Hawthorn's st}4e of galloping. As the man pulled up I could not help thinking of "Old Jolifte," and how much he must have admired the way this Welsh mare " tucked her haunches in" as she shot by the milestone. We made the mile two seconds under the three minutes, but I will not say we were right 126 'The T: rotter. to a second. This, however, I did not care a pin for. If she could travel at that pace with twelve stone on her back (for I am certain the old saddle weighed a stone), and in her present state, I fancied that, with about ten stone on her, and in top condition, she would be *^hard to hold." I gave the man the price he asked, and a pound for his trouble, and led the mare back to town, the proudest man in it. I was forty miles from home. Not a soul but myself and friend knew anything of the trial j and " Now, my boys," I thought, '^ I'll drop on some of you when I get home. You little think what's coming." Before parting the man told me that they fancied she was by a tliorough-bred horse, out of a Welsh pony ; that she had never been caught up tiU six years old j that he never found out she could trot till the previous autumn 3 and that he had christened her ''^ Patty Morgan." He, moreover, gave me the following instructions which I was im- phcitly to follow : always to ride her in a snaffle ; never use a whip or spur, but get all out of her I could by shouting. I could, of course, not catch her scream exactly, but after a few lessons, I man- aged to make a pretty good imitation of it, and we parted. I have had a good many horses through my hands, but never one about which I felt so anxious as this mare. I saw in her something better than common, and I was rather at low water just then, not having a trotter which was worth backing for a shilling. It is true I had a tidy little punchy cob, a fair second-rater, but he had been lately beaten so often that they had facetiously christened him *' The Drum," which is never heard except when it is beaten — so they ex- plained the pun. I dare say it was a very stale one j that it was a very poor one, I think the reader will allow j anyhow, of course I never could see the wit of it. However, " The Drum " might be put out of commission now, and my new mare come forward to the sound of kettledrums and trumpets. I think I visited her in her stable a dozen times before I left the town, and I hired a man expressly to lead her gently home, where she arrived on the evening of the next day. The fellow had particular injunctions not to come up with her till after dark j and depend on it I was waiting for him on the road when he did lead her up. By ten, Patty Morgan was The Trotter, 127 comfortably suppered up in a loose box, and the relish with which, she turned to her corn, after indulging herself in one hearty roll, proved that Enghsh air had by no means destroyed her Welsh appetite. I did not sleep much that night ; I was tormented with all sorts of fears concerning my new purchase. However, she was all right when I went up to the stable next morning, and greeted me with a kind of whinny which asked for breakfast as plainly as her language could speak. We gave her a double measure of corn to make up past shortcomings. I think I never did see so greedy a feeder 3 she "went into her corn," as the groom observed, "'just like a terrier into a rat." The Welshman had told me that nothing- in this world would hurt her but scarcity. After breakfast we had her and the Drum out 3 I rode the mare and put the groom up on the cob. We took them to our favourite " try sting-place," a mile on the turnpike-road which ran by the top of our village, as straight as a two-foot rule and as level as a bowling-green. The mare did just as she liked with the cob, and I sold him that afternoon to a sporting butcher who had long been nibbling at him, under the plea that I rather fancied I should have nothing more to do with trotters. We soon changed Patty Morgan's looks. Her long rough coat was just coming off in patches 3 and when I bought her, her colour rather resembled that of a very old rusty black bombazine gown, such as you will occasionally see on decayed old ladies, or, more often still, on London lodging-house keepers en deshabille. In a short time, however, she " moulted out " into a beautiful black, glossy and soft as velvet 5 and good keep and gentle exercise wrought such a change in her, that at the end of two months her old owner would never have known her again. She soon became a general favourite with all. I think I never saw so quiet a horse 3 you could do anything you pleased with her, except ill-treat her 3 but if you did that, then ''look out for squalls." One of the lads cleaning out the loose box once struck her rather sharply with the handle of his fork, to make her turn round. My lady's Welsh blood was then up. She rushed at him like a bull-dog, seized him 128 "the Trotter, by the shoulder, and worried him as a terrier would a cat. The groom, who was luckily in the stable, hearing the boy scream, rushed to his help, and it was just in time, for she had got the lad down, and was kneeling on him. The groom afterwards said he never in his whole life saw such a picture of savage rage as she then presented. However, strange to say, directly he halloed to her, her passion seemed to subside in an instant. She rose from the boy, and the groom dragged the lad out with a shoulder not only broken, but literally crushed. This was a warning to us all. She had far more the manners of a dog than a horse, and soon got to know me so well that I believe she would have followed me any^^here, espe- cially if I carried an apple in my hand or pocket. The reader must not think that during my first two months* possession of that mare my bed was a bed of roses. I felt like one who is in possession of a momentous secret, which a slip of his tongue may reveal at any moment. One great object was to keep this mare as dark as possible till the proper moment, and this was no easy task. By some means or other it got whispered about that a new trotter had come home to our stable, and my parting with the cob just at the time looked very suspicious. Miss Morgan's early habits of life had not been those of idleness, and she required a deal more exercise to keep her from breaking out than our other horses. She had, I believe, never looked through a collar in her life, but this did not seem to make a pin's head difference to her. The first time we put her into a dung-cart to try, she walked away with it like the steadiest old team-horse on the farm, and after her first lesson in harness gave us no further trouble. I took a contract to lead gravel from a pit, about two miles off, on to the turnpike- road 5 and often and often, when she has been standing quietly by the side of the gravel-pit — all her best points hidden by blinkers, collar,, and breeching — looking as rough and dirty as the men who were shovelling in the gravel, have passers-by — members of *' the prying^ inquisitive clan" — pulled up, attracted by the name on the cart,, and tried, by pumping the labourers, to see if they could not glean a little information about the new trotter, which so many had heard 'The Trotter, 129 of, so few seen. Little did they think that " Patty Morgan," whose name they were often to see afterwards at the top of the poll, was then and there standing quietly in the shafts under their very noses. But we did not neglect her education for all this. Twice a week we had her out on our " convincing ground j" and often in the grey twilight of morning, or in the deep, full, quiet moonlight, the labourer going out to his day's work, or the jolly farmer on his way home from the neighbouring market, would be startled by the thundering clatter of hoofs as Miss Morgan and her schoolmaster came rattling by him at a pace which hardly gave him time to pull up and turn round before we were out of sight. I was not quite certain on what stage the new actress should make her dthut, and this, like many otlier more important events in our lives, was decided by accident. I very rarely rode the mare out by daylight, and if perchance I did, I took good care that no one should ever fancy she could trot -, and notwithstanding all their sus- picions that I had something or other a little better than common, not one, even of my oldest associates, knew anything about the capa- bilities of my new mare. But my whole life, during the first three months I owned that mare, was one of prevarication 3 and glad enough was I when the day arrived that all further secrec;y was un- necessary, and Miss Patty Morgan was brought out at the tenth milestone on the Nottingham road, and her colours — Lincoln green and white sleeves — hoisted in defiance of all comers. I had ridden her over one day to see a friend who resided at a few miles' distance, and I did not leave his house till latish in the evening. There was no moon, still it was not dark 5 but it was towards the end of September, and the twilight bore that haziness which is so peculiar to an English autumn evening. I was riding very gently along the crown of the road, for I had it all to myself, when I presently heard the rattle of wheels, and the clatter of hoofs be- hind me. The mare pricked up her ears, and with a sharp " Hi !"^ there shot by me a gig (in which sat two men), drawn by a horse which, as far as I could then observe, appeared to be one of the most magnificent steppers I had ever seen. They came upon me 130 The Trotter. so suddenly, that if I had been a believer in the supernatural I might almost have thought they had sprung out of the very earth ; but there was something perfectly natural in the jovial laugh of one of the men just as they passed me, and something completely human in the whifi' of cigar smoke which the night air wafted to me after they had driven on. I think I should have taken no notice of them, but the mare began to get very fidgety, so I gave her her head and rattled after them. I dare say they had full a hun- dred yards' start, but I was soon close behind them ; and as the mare was now on her mettle, I shot alongside of the gig almost before they had heard me come up. I was on the oft-side 5 the man who was driving saw me at once, and the defiant manner in which he threw away his cigar, rose a little higher in his seat, and pulled his horse together, with a " Hi ! Morgan, go along, old boy !" proved that he was fully prepared to accept the challenge I had so presumptuously thrown out. The horse made a magnificent spurt, and the gig drew clear of me in an instant, but it only needed a very slight pressure of my knee, and one ''Hold up, Patty !" to bring her alongside of him again. This time I reached the horse's head, and here I kept for about a mile 3 once, indeed, I shot ahead, and I daresay I had got a clear length, but he soon overhauled me, and for a mile and a half we were head-and-head. I don't know whether the horse was doing his best — I fancied he was ; and I fancied, moreover, that I could have gone by him when I liked. But I did not think much of this- for in the first place I was not sure that he was doing his best, and moreover, he was drawing a gig, which, as far as I could see, contained two heavy men. Now there was a toll-bar about a mile ahead, and, above all things, I did not want to keep their company so far, for at this gate I knew we must stop, and anxious as I was to find out all about my unknown opponent, I did not yet want the secret of my mare to be '' blown." Luckily, how- ever, a lane led up to a farm lodge out of the high road on my side, and when we came to tliis I pulled up, and politely bidding them good-night, I turned up it. I waited quietly under the hedge till the sound of the'r wheels "l^he Trotter. 131 had died away in the distance, and then walked the mare gently up the grass by the roadside to the turnpike-gate. The gig had, I should fancy, driven by about ten minutes, and the old pikeman had turned in for another snoose j but I soon pulled him out again, and when I asked him who it was that had just gone through, his answer was, " Sam West and Morgan Rattler, sir." " Did he ask you any questions ?" '' Well, sir, he did ask me who lived up at Maple Lodge -, and when I told him Mr. Johnson, he asked if he had not got a fast trotter, and I told him, ' Not as I knew on.' " " And what did he say then ?" '''Why, he just d d my eyes for a stupid, know-nothing old fool, and drove on." Sam West and Morgan Rattler have now to be introduced to the reader ; but to do the subject justice will require a chapter to themselves. Mr. Samuel West, or, as he was always called, " Sam West,'* was a character, and, if report spoke true, a very bad character too j and when it is added that his old dun horse, Morgan Rattler, had been the partner in one-half of his scrapes and escapades, we may conclude that the old saying, *' Like master like man," would have held as good in their case as in any other. Before, however, we touch upon their histories, they may as well both of them give us one brief sitting for their portraits. Sam West at this time was a fine, handsome, gentlemanly- looking man of about fifty, stood six feet high, had a commanding figure, witli a very broad chest, and arms that indicated immense muscular strength. His face bore a manly, open expression, and his bronze cheek was tinted with the florid glow of rude health. His features were regular, and, had it not been for a slight indenta- tion of the bridge of the nose and the loss of two front teeth, would have been faultless 5 and no one who looked at that mild blue eye, and quiet, generally thoughtful countenance, could ever have guessed that so much devilry lurked under so handsome a mask. His whole dress and appearance, clean and strict to the letter, without a shade K 2 132 "The 'Trotter, of dandyism, all bespoke the English country squire. The low- crowned hat covered a head as white as snow, and the tight-fitting- drab trousers sat close to a tliigh and leg which a sculptor would have longed to model. His old horse, Morgan Rattler, was a wonder — a great raking, upstanding brute, fully sixteen hands high, of a light dun-colour^ and though eighteen years old (for Sam had bred him) as quick on his legs as ever he had been. A more savage, vicious horse was, perhaps, never foaled 3 yet in his old master's hands (but in no one else's) he was as quiet as a lamb. " There was nothing that old! horse could not do," as Sam used to observe, *' except pay the turn- pike-gates." He could live with the best horses in the hunt across the stifFest country, could jump a gate standing, was a splendid gig horse, and, stranger than all, was the fastest trotter in our county. I have said that the old dun had been partner in many of his. old master's scrapes, and so he had j and I dare say the Sandford Lock, the Wooton toll-bar and the six-barred gate with the chevaux de frise out of Norbury Wood, are still standing to bear witness. to this very day of some of the desperate leaps which the old dun. had carried his daring master over. He was a fine, handsome- shaped horse, but had a drooping off ear 3 and the way he got this. was curious. He was bringing his old master home in the gig one night from) a neighbouring fair. As usual, Sam w.as "market merry," and, as was his accustomed wont, was sitting on the low cushion on the near side of the gig, as being the easiest seat, and half asleep.. When in this state he always placed implicit reliance on the old horse, who never made a mistake with him. Within about five- miles from Sam's house was a steepish hill, and here the old dun. pulled up into a walk. Luckily the stoppage woke up Sam, and they were going gently up the rise, when, by the hazy indistinct light of the young moon, he saw a man on the near side of tlie road,, apparently getting over a gap in the hedge. Sam took no notice of this, for poachers abounded in those parts j but on reaching the crown of the hill, he saw another man a little ahead of him standing; The 'Trotter, 133 in the middle of the road. His suspicions were now excited. He had a goodish sum of money about him 3 and he never travelled without a pistol stuck in between the cushion and the rail of the gig on the off-side, to be ready to hand at a moment's notice. It did not take him many seconds now to shift into the driving seat, and he was just waking up old Morgan, when the second man sprang at tlie old horse's head, to which he clung like a bull-dog, shouting all the while to his comrade, who was running up the hill after the gig, to come on. Sam was an excellent pistol-shot : his pistol was levelled straight at the man's head in an instant, and he fired. The man fell like a log of wood 3 old Morgan sprang up into the air with a bound as though he was going to fly away with the gig, and then set off at a full gallop, which he kept till he pulled up short at a turnpike-gate, about two miles distant. Just as Sam had fired the pistol, the man behind, who was now within a few yards of the gig, hurled a hedge stake after him, which struck him across the back of the head, and knocked his hat off, fortunately without stunning him. When he got to the gate, Sam, as usual, began to abuse the turnpike man for keeping him waiting, when the old fellow, hap- pening to look down, saw that the horse was standing -"ith his off fore-hoof in a little pool of blood. The old man called Sam's attention to this, and, on jumping out, he found that the pistol- bullet had passed clean through the root of the old horse's ear. Sam fancied he must have missed the man altogether, who fell through the horse giving so violent a plunge 3 but this they never could make out, for no body was ever found. It was a lesson to Sam, however, never to trust again to a single pistol 3 for, as he truly observed, had he chanced to have shot the old horse dead he would have been left unarmed at the mercy of two ruffians, who would, doubtless, have knocked his brains out before he could have cleared himself from the gig. Sam could never make out how he missed that man, for he always boasted, and with good reason, of his skill as a pistol shot. Sam West lived about fifteen miles from us, on his own estate, called Ashby Grange. The estate was a good one, and the old 134 "^h^ Trotter. house. In other hands, might have been one of the finest in the country. No saying what traditions were connected with that old building, or what historical lore was attached to Ashby Grange. At the time of our tale, however, it was little better than a domestic ruin, and the iron finger of decay was fast completing a wreck which neglect had commenced. Built some centuries back, the old house presented a glorious specimen of the architecture of that day, but now fast crumbling to decay. How preferable (as some anti- quarian has observed) is the aspect of the fragments of some once great edifice to tliat which such a house as we are now describing presents to our view. There the tall gable reaches its chimney-stack bleakly to tlie sky, and the green banks scarcely mark out the obliterated gardens. Time has done his worst there, and the death struggle is over. One can trace the terraces of the gardens restored to grazing land again with the calmness with which one walks over the grass-grown grave of a friend long dead 3 but here we see the very action of decomposition going on — the crumbling stucco of the ceiling in all (save the few rooms which are still kept inhabited), feeding the vampire ivy, the tattered tapestry yet hanging on the walls, the picture flapping in its broken frame, the machinery of tlie clock fallen through the roof into the chapel, and the fresh ferns sprouting out in the choked gutters, and yet the masonry in all its firmness, witliout a stone displaced, the sculpture as sharp as the first day it was carved, the solid oak staircase yet entire — this is a melancholy without a redeeming touch of hope or comfort ; and yet, desolate as it appears now, within fifty years Ashby Grange was a habitable and comfortable house, and a moderate outlay a few years ago would have saved all the time-honoured associations con- nected with the old building, and preserved a house that thousands could not now restore. Such was Ashby Grange when I first saw itj but there were old labourers living in the parish who could remember the days when it wore a very different aspect. The estate had been in the family for generations, and the house of West was as old, and at one time as honourable, as any in the county. Sam's grandfather was a true 'The 'Trotter, 135 specimen of the old Sir Roger de Coverley school, and in his day the Grange was the resort of the best county families. A justice of the peace, a kind landlord, a good neighbour, and in every sense of the word a pattern of the true old English country gentleman, the old squire was beloved and respected by all 3 and when the hatch- ment frowned over the massive gothic doorway of the Grange, many an eye was wet and many a heart was heavy, for it told the rich, in mute but eloquent language, that they had lost a true friend and kind companion, and the poor, a charitable and generous protector. Sam's father was a soldier, a greater portion of whose early life had been spent abroad, and his tastes possessed little in common with the old country families among whom he now came to reside. He was profligate and dissipated, deeply addicted to play, and his habits were just such as those which quiet country gentlemen would detest and despise. Very changed was the aspect of affairs at the old hall during the time he reigned over it to what they were in the days of the good old squire. The country gentlemen of the oldest and best families gradually withdrew themselves from his companion- ship, and tlie prestige of the old Grange was fast waning. But there was a certain set who still associated with the colonel. Men whose standing in society was tarnished but not utterly blemished, and for whom the loose, free-and-easy habits which had now full licence at the Grange possessed abundant attractions. They were, however, gentlevien, and the nightly orgies in the colonel's day had not yet sunk to the gross debauchery of those that characterized the reign of his son. The colonel was a widower, with one son — our hero. He was killed by a fall from his horse, after having lived at the Grange for nearly a quarter of a century, and Sam, at the age of twenty-five, succeeded to an encumbered estate worth about 2000/. per year. Sam might have commenced life with the fairest prospects in view 3 but the school in which he had been brought up was a bad one, and quiet country gentlemen shook their heads when they h^ard of his accession to the property. Ever since the day he was 136 l^he Trotter, expelled from Oxford, he had been running wild down at Ashby amidsc scenes of riot and dissipation, and it could hardly be expected that the son of such a father could turn out any other than a profli- gate and a spendthrift. And so he did. But had he strictly fol- lowed that father's example things might not have been so bad j for, with all his wild, licentious habits, that father was a man of sense, and though extravagant and fond of play, was still an excel- lent manager. It is true he might have been looked coldly upon by the country gentlemen, and many declined his invitations, alleging that the boisterous merriment of the Grange was too much for them. Still no one actually cut him, and he met his neighbours upon neutral ground as an equal, and with a show of friendship on either side. He was a perfect gentleman when he chose it ; and although strange tales of the nightly doings up at the old hall got whispered about, he never shocked propriety by any outward breach of decorum. Surely, he argued, if he gave away a dinner, he had a right to ask whom he pleased to eat it ; and if old Squire Langley or the Hon. Mr. Compton did not choose to accept his invitations, they could stop away. But Sam's bane was a decided and innate taste for low company, and he followed his father's footsteps to the shadow, but among associates ten times lower and more degraded. Even the few country gentlemen who had, as it were, tacitly acknowledged the father, and occasionally visited the Grange, could not but view with repugnance the low tastes of the son. They gradually fell away from Sam, and in a few years none but the outcasts of society would associate with him. Broken-down horse-dealers, gamblers, the lowest hangers-on of the racing-stables, prize-fighters, touts and black-legs, were now the only company that were met at Ashby Grange ; and If those old steel-clad, corsletted knights and warriors, or ruffed dames of high degree, former proprietors of the estate, who looked down grimly out of the canvas from the walls of the ancient banqueting-room, could but have started into life and joined one of Sam's nocturnal revels, they would have been rather struck with the altered aspect of affairs. But for all this Sam had a kind heart ne 'Trotter, 137 and generous disposition, was a first-rate sportsman, and possessed a spirit of daring and energy which would have been invaluable if directed in a good cause. He was positively afraid of nothing 5 had immense strength, and a power of endurance such as few could boast. Scarcely a month passed without some fresh lawless or daring exploit, in which he had figured, being recorded in the county paper 3 and he was being continually bound over to keep the peace for some assault or another. Up to the age of thirty-five he was unmarried, but suddenly a new actress came upon the stage to reign as queen over Ashby Grange. Where he picked her up, who she was, or what she had been, no one at the time knew -, but she was one of the most beautiful women that had entered those old portals for many a year, and her grace and manners might have adorned a Court. There was a good deal of '^ the tragedy queen " about her ; her manners were quiet, composed, and lady-like, her carriage dignified and graceful, and she was altogether the very last sort of woman that any man who knew Sam West would have dreamt of his taking as a wife. Her age might be about twenty-five ; she was above the middle height, superbly formed, and her long glossy ringlets, black as jet, clustered round a brow and over a neck and shoulders as white and pure as alabaster. It turned out that she had been a second-rate actress in a low London theatre, which Sam had happened to visit in one of his nights about town. Whatever he did was generally off-hand. He rarely gave up much time to reflection. If he liked a horse he bought him at once without further parley ; and fancying he saw something about this woman a little better than the generaHty of his female associates, he procured an introduction to her, and after trying her with proposals which she indignantly scouted, he married her at once, and brought her down to be the mistress of Ashby Grange. And he did right 3 for if any mortal hand could save him from the ruin which was just then hanging over him, it was hers. What- ever her antecedents, she was well fitted to fill the post to which 138 The Trotter. Blie was now elevated. She soon found that she had given her hand to a man who, as his friends pleasantly used to observe among them- selves, "could not live another mile at the pace he was then going," and had come down to an estate heavily encumbered, to preside over a house which was now the resort of all the spendthrifts and broken-down sporting men in the county. But she never quailed • — the greater the perils which menaced her husband, the greater pride did she feel in helping to extricate him from them j and, like a true woman, her courage rose as fresh difficulty after difficulty stared her in the face. It was nothing to her that not a lady in the neighbourhood ever noticed or called upon her 3 it was nothing to her that when in her visits to the little neighbouring market-town the county ladies whom she met crossed over the road, or gave her the path with a chilling politeness and a cold haughty stare such as only high-bred ladies can assume — God help them ! Judged fairly by their intrinsic merits, there was hardly one among them who could hold a candle to her. Kind and generous in her disposition, warm-hearted almost to a fault, with a character as stainless as her brow, grateful to her husband for having rescued her from the pollu- tion of low London life, and dragged her from an existence which she detested and abhorred, she loved him with all the fervour of a woman's passion, and she had now but one sole aim in life, to endeavour to render herself worthy of the position to which he had raised her. She soon saw his faults, but she never blamed him. She had been brought up in a hard school, but a school in which she had good opportunities of reading the human heart 5 and if but few gleams of sunshine had hitherto illuminated her rugged path, she had studied the dark side of life in all its phases. She saw at once that it was in vain to endeavour to clean the '^Augean stable " at a single sweep. She knew that complaints and remonstrances would avail her nothing. She saw that her only chance of accomplishing the task was by kindness, affection, and patience, and she set about that task with a tact peculiarly her own. She never reproached her husband for excesses which she had not the power to stem. She never looked coldly upon his dissolute and abandoned friends 3 she received The Trotter. 139 them with a courteous grace that was bred in her, and although in her inmost heart she might have despised them, she never gave the shghtest outward indication of the fact. But, courteous as her manners were towards them, they all saw at once that she knew and read them thoroughly, and not one of them ever felt at his ease when that black eye flashed upon him. One by one they became less frequent visitors at the Grange, and the old house began to wear a quieter and a more respectable aspect than it had done for years. '' Can't stand the missus, Sam," was the answer of Tom Wood- croft, the steeple-chase rider — who always rode for Sam, and who, although a wild, harum-scarum fellow, was by far the best and least dangerous of all his acquaintances — in reply to Sam's question as to why he saw so little of him up at the Grange now. " She's always too civil for me 3 and yet I know that she reads us all like a book." " Sorry for you, Sam 5 sorry for you," observed Captain Morris, who was Sam's most intimate friend, and had lived on him, riding his horses, winning or borrowing his money, for the last six years ; " but, excuse me, old fellow, you've quite lost your position in society by bringing that woman home." This friendly and disinterested Httle speech was made on the evening of the day in which Sam had introduced the captain to his wife. The captain was a keen hand, and in one hour had read her character, just as truly as she had read his own, and he saw plainly if that woman was allowed to have the upper hand he would soon be obliged to look out for lodgings elsewhere. "Tell you what it is, master," growled out Jemmy the tout one day to Sam, on leaving the stable-yard, '' if you don't soon get rid of that filly " (jerking his thumb knowingly in the direction of the house) "you'll be losing all your old friends." And even Tom G r-, the prize-fighter, who used occasionally to run down to Ashby to blow the London fog off him, as he called it, candidly remarked : " She is a stunner. I've no fault to find with her, in the least 3 but my name's Walker. I never yet met the 140 ^he 1. rotter. man that I was afraid of looking in the face j but as for that woman, I could not stand her eye full upon me for half a minute if you'd make me champion of England." Sam was a little worried by these remarks at first, but her unlibrm kind and affectionate manner towards him soon put him right 3 and when blunt, honest farmer Jones met him for the first time after his marriage, driving his new wife round to show her the parish, and shook his hand, with "Well, Sam, my boy, you've done the best thing now you ever did in your life," his face beamed with inward satisfaction, and he looked down upon the beautiful creature that sat by his side as a kind of protector, and felt that, if only she was true to him, he could well afford to make any sacrifice for her sake. He never cared when, by chance, he heard of any of the spiteful reports which were spread round the neighbourhood respecting her. However they might sneer at her, however they might scandalize her out of hearing, no one in the neighbourhood could help allowing that she seemed born for the station which she filled j and as Sam proudly walked by her side for the first time through the little market-town near him, all agreed that it would be hard to find so handsome a couple, pick the whole county through J and bold indeed must have been the man who would have dared to breatlie a word of scandal against her fair fame in the hearing of the stalwart protector who now walked by her side. Things soon began to wear an altered aspect at the Grange, and the simple villagers one and all agreed that, if there was an angel on earth, it was the Squire's lady. It is true that, except the good clergyman's wife (who had read and appreciated her character from the first) and some of the neighbouring farmers' wives, sdie had but few female friends 3 still she was never dull or lonely. Her whole time when her husband was at home was occupied in amusing him, and when he was absent the cares of the poor villagers were her sole conce.'ij. So matters went on for a few years, and Sam's wife was a happy woman. She gloried as she marked the change for the better, for she well knew it was owing to herself. But darker days were in store for her. Whether Sam began to tire of the The Trotter. 143 monotony of the respectable life he was then leading, or whether he became weary of a submission which was yielded to him without an effort to gain it, it is hard to say, but he gradually grew restless and uneasy 3 and although it was very rarely now that any of his old associates came home to him, he by degrees got into the habit of meeting them at neighbouring public-houses and taverns, till at length he scarcely passed at home, in his wife's company, one evening out of the seven. The poor woman saw the change, but she never repined. She had now other cares and anxieties to Eontend against. They had no children until five years after their marriage, when a little son was born. The poor child was sickly from its cradle, and by degrees sank into a helpless idiot. One would have thought that such an affliction would have bound any father closer to a wife, whose fondest earthly hopes were thus rudely dashed away ; but it had a contrary effect on Sam. He loathed the very sight of that child, and as for the poor mother who bore it, he appeared to regard her as the sole cause of the calamity. He now seemed to shun a home into which she had brought the only ray of pure sunshine which had entered it for years, and he took again to drinking deeply — a vice which for some time he hadi abandoned. "Cuss them bad shillin's," says Sam Slick, *'they are always coming back to you 3" and now, as his poor wife, whose spirits were gradually becoming broken, was nearly always confined to her room in charge of her idiot boy, and was rarely seen by any one, his old acquaintances one by one returned j and on the night when I had my first spin with Morgan Rattler on the turnpike-road,. Sam West, though past the age of fifty, was a v/ilder and more reckless man than ever, without the excuse of youth to palliate his excesses. Such was the history of Sam West and Morgan Rattler 3 and I only hope I have not tired out the reader, for I have got a little more to say about both of them yet. On reaching home, after the chance contest between my new mare and Sam West's well-known favourite, I told my groom Jem of my little adventure. Now this groom had lived at Ashby Grange 142 57?^ 'Trotter, for a year before he came to me, and knew " Old Morgan " well, for he had both ridden and driven him, and he also knew by this what the mare could do. The name of Morgan Rattler was a name of dread around us, and although there were doubtless many trotters in England to beat him, there was not one in our country-side could live with him ; and as surely as ever a little cup or trotting sweep- stakes was advertised in our district, so surely did old Morgan put in an appearance and carry it o^. ** And so you think you could have gone by him, sir?" asked the man, after I had finished. " Yes, Jem ; but then I don't think much of that, because I'm not so sure that he was doing all he knew." *^ Ah, but you may depend on it he was," answered the shrewd fellow. "You may take your oath Sam was half drunk, or he'd never have let a stranger on the high road get the length of old Morgan for a mile for nothing. I know what Sam is when he's on the spree j and the old horse is as bad as he is just then. He'd never have let you get to his head if he could have helped it. I wonder he did not try and savage you when you came by his side. I've ridden both horses, now, and I know there's not a deal of difference between them. At catch weights I'd even back the mare j for there's not a boy in the country can ride or drive old Morgan, and a child could hold Patty. If we can only keep this dark, we shall make something of it yet." But we could not keep it dark from such a wily old fox as Sam West. By noon the next day he was back again to the turnpike- gate, found out from the old man who kept it who it was that had passed through just after him on the preceding night, and obtained a pretty accurate description of my marv3. Now, Sam was a man of decision, and drove at once down to our village ; he did not come straight up to me, but put up at the little public-house. I was in the stables, when a message was brought to me that two gentlemen wished to speak to me up at the Rising Sun directly. I went down at once. A light cane-bodied gig with remarkably "The 'Trotter, M3 high wheels and straight shafts, the corduroy-covered driving cushion nearly level with the rail, was standing at the door without a horsej and I walked straight into tlie little parlour, where Sam West and his friend Captain Morris sat discussing a large dish of eggs and bacon. Nothing could be more polite than the manner in which Mr. West greeted me. He apologized for thus troubling me, but said, as he had just learnt that it was I who had ridden by his side the night before, he had a great curiosity to see my mare, and hoped it would not be asking too much if he begged me to show her to him. I now saw that the plot was thickening, and that the time would soon come when all secrecy must be laid aside. I therefore cheer- fully complied with his request, and took him to my stables to show him the mare. Keen was the scrutiny to which Patty Morgan was subjected on that mornings and, although he said but little, I could see that Mr. West regarded her with more interest than he cared to show. He merely asked if she was for sale, and, when I answered "No," left the stable. He recognised his old helper, and, as he tossed him a half-crown, observed to me, " You've got one of the best men in the county there, if you can only keep him sober." We went in and had a glass of sherry, and he gave me a most cordial invitation to come over to the Grange, and take pot luck with him any day I had nothing better to do. About a fortnight after this, the following conversation took place between Jem and myself: " I think I shall ride over and see Mr. West to-day, Jem." " Do you, sir ? Well, mind what you're about, that's all. You know I've lived there, and am up to all their tricks." '' I'll take care ; so just put the saddle on tlie new mare, and bring her round in twenty minutes." " Not if I know it, sir," answered the fellow. I looked at him in blank astonishment. " What do you mean by that?" I asked. 144 T^he Trotter. " Why, you don't mean to say you're ever going to take the mare over there, sir ! As sure as ever she gets to the Grange, they'll either do you out of her, or else get a fair trial out of old Morgan. I know what Sam meant when he asked if our mare was for sale. No, sir, no 3 take my advice, and ride the pony over, but leave the mare at home. I should like to see her meet old Morgan dearly, but not till tlie money's down." There was good sense in the man's advice, though not given very respectfully, and I took it. Now, I had a great curiosity to see Mr. Sam West '' at home,'* for although, in common with every one in the neighbourhood, I could not but know him, I was not intimately acquainted with him, and had never once set my foot in Ashby Grange. I wanted to see the old house of which I had heard so much j I wanted to see his wife J and, abov^e all, I wanted to try if I could not get a match on between old Morgan Rattler and my new mare. I was confident now that she would take some beating. I must begin with her somewhere, and why not as well with old Morgan as any other horse ? If she was beaten by a horse whose name was in every one's mouth, she would not be disgraced, for I was sure she would run well up. I mentioned my project to the groom, and he approved of it. He was certain old Morgan must be getting stale, and he felt quite con- vinced that nobody would drive him but his master. So he ad- vised me, if we did make a match, to be sure and have it at catch weights, and to make it two-mile heats. As I rode oif, he added, *'I shan't feel easy till you come back, for I know where you are going. Keep your eye on the captain — he's a bad 'un j and be sure and remember me very kindly to the missus." I reached the Grange about eleven j and when I first caught sight of the old house through a long avenue of elms more than two cen- turies old, I was not a bit surprised at all I had heard in praise of it. There was something truly imposing about that venerable building, seen from a little distance (for I was not near enough to detect the ravages which the hand of neglect and time had committed), as ii The Trotter, H5 burst suddenly upon my view, a glorious memento of past ages, in all the grandeur of ancient British architecture, its outline clearly defined in a cloudless blue October sky, which formed the back- ground of the picture. It needed now very little stretch of the imagination to fill the tableau with, living forms — the bold crusader, the stalwart knight armed for the tournament, and the lady of high degree with falcon on her fist — all seemed to meet me as I rode over the old bridge that spanned the moat which encircled the house and gardens. But as I approached nearer to the building, the signs of dilapidation became more apparent ; the place seemed deserted, the clatter of my pony's hoofs, as I rode across the large, empty, grass -grown court-yard, struck a chill to the very heart 3 and the only living actor in the scene, save some poultry and pigeons, ap- peared to be my pony, myself, and a purblind old mastiif, who was chained under a horse block by the stable-door, and who greeted me with a deep-mouthed bay, the echoes of which fairly startled me. This brought out a helper from the stable-yard, who took my pony, and I followed him to the stables, anxious to see what they were like, and how they were filled. However much tlie house and the rest of the premises might be neglected, this was not the case witli the stables. They were new, capitally arranged, and kept in the greatest order. Four hunters, which had just been straightened up after their morning's exercise, in first-rate condition, every one of them up to sixteen stone, were standing in clothes and bandages 3 and a perfect model of a gig- horse occupied a fifth stall, while, on the door of a loose box at the end of the stable, I read the redoubtable name "Morgan Rattler," written in gold letters under one of his plates. One of the prettiest little fox-terriers I ever saw came bustling down the ladder from the loft above (where he was very busy hunting after rats) to welcome a strangerj and under the manger of the gig-horse lay a favourite ver make mis- takes. As wi' wi-re walkln;; to the stahles, the eaptain asketl me whether 1 had hrou'dit liie little mare t)\'er ; aiul t)n m\' answering '• No," " rity," he remarkeil ; " we mii;ht have had a mile spin with t)ld Mor!;an ; il wouhl have amuseil Sam. lie clt)es nt)t seem in good sj)irits." Anil many others had made the same remark during the last ten ilays ; lor siiiee the day on whiih he hail haiuled over that hill t)f sale to the eaplain, giving him the jiower to seize e\tTy liorsi> he had at a tla\'s notice, the stpiire had heen an altereil man, though no one, not e\en his wile, knew the exact eause, although many guessetl it. 1 lis larms were well let; ami although the tvstate, over which he hail unlimited control, was mortgaged, there w as alwa\'s sutlicient lilt lo maintain him. aiul rcspcclahly, loo, with cari\ alter the interest was paid. MorcoM'r, the railroad was ahout to run right ihroiijdi the heart ot his estate. liis compensation w tmld have l»t>en sonu'thing handsome, and he eoulil have struggled on against !iis just tlid)ts till this compiMisation money wouKl liavi> set him tree, liis principal trcilitor was the captain, aiul the griMtiM' [lart ol' the 'I'lii 'Viiiticr. »55 nioiicv owimI Io liim was Inr iiKHirv In,! ;il cjrds ;il S;im'.s ou n lihic, not one sirilliiii; ol w Ii'k li ((niM ever li,i\c hccn rccoviTcd in a <-()tlll "I I.IW. Ill Mil 111I;MI,|I.I(iI liioiuclll, llic CMJ)!;!!!! |)(M"SU;l(lc'(l liiin Io sijMi ;i Mil ot s.ilc Io liiin ol' :ill his person. il |)io|)crly ;is a S('( iiiil\- " iiificl\' :is ,1 III. liter oT (oiiii;" and Ironi lli.il nioineiil lu' had pl.ieed hiiiisell ill ihe power oT as nii'.eiiipidons a sharper as e\ er e\i .led. Al (i\c \\f s.il down Io an e\eelleiil dinner, S.iiii (hd lh>' honours of ihe l.ihK- wilh ihe ni.iniieis ol" a line s^cnlle- niHii, which all ihe colli, iniinal ion ol' low hahils ,ind low a.sso- ' I. lies li.id liol ell. iced. I lis wile seeiiied lar more ch(>errul, and her iii. inner was huh h iiioie coidi.il louards ine thai) when I h.id lirsl met her in the ('.irdeii. Sporliiij'; .snbjeel.s seemed a\(»ided hy lacit conseiil, and dinner p.issed oil" amid a desnlloiy ( oiu cis.ition on