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MOUNTAIN 
 STREAM AND COVERT 
 
 SKETCHES 
 
 OF COUNTRT LIFE AND SPORT 
 IN ENGLAND 6f SCOTLAND 
 
 ALEXANDER INNES SHAND 
 
 With Illustrations 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED 
 
 38, GREAT RUSSELL STREET 
 1897 
 
(-PH- 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 T AM greatly indebted to the proprietors of Elack- 
 A wood's and the Cornhill Magazines ', of the old 
 Pall Mall Gazette, and of the Saturday Review for 
 permission to reprint these articles, which attempt 
 sketches of sport and rural life in Great Britain in 
 bygone years. Some have been rearranged in chapters, 
 and slightly remodelled. The most recent is the 
 article on " Coverts," which Messrs. Longman very 
 kindly allow me to use, although it appeared only 
 the other day in the Badminton Magazine. Of the 
 other chapters, i-vii, x-xiii, xvii-xix, xxiii-xxvii, 
 are from Black wood's Magazine ; viii, xx, xxii, from 
 the Pall Mall Gazette ; ix, from the Saturday Review ; 
 and xiv xvi, from the Cornhill Magazine. 
 
 ALEX. INNES SHAND. 
 OAKDALE, 
 
 EDENBRIDGE, KENT. 
 
 M85618 
 
TO MY OLD FRIEND, DONALD MACPHERSON 
 GAMEKEEPER AT STRALOCH AND BARRA 
 
 ABERDEENSHIRE 
 
 IN MEMORY OF CLOSE COMPANIONSHIP 
 AND MANY DELIGHTFUL DAYS. 
 
 , 
 , 
 , 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. COUNTRY LIFE IN LITERATURE . . I 
 
 II. A HIGHLAND LAIRD ... 28 
 
 III. AN ENGLISH SQUIRE . . . 4 2 
 
 IV. A KENTISH PARISH . . . 60 
 V. A KENTISH PARISH: HOP-GARDENS AND FARMS J I 
 
 VI. A KENTISH PARISH : SPORT AND BIRD-LIFE . 85 
 
 VII. A KENTISH PARISH I THE RESIDENTS . . 92 
 
 VIII. THE DOWNS . . . . HO 
 
 IX. TRAMPS . . . . .119 
 
 X. THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND . 133 
 
 XI. THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN SCOTLAND . . 147 
 
 XII. FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH . 155 
 
 XIII. SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT . 1 77 
 
 XIV. AUGUST ON THE MOORS I A SHOOTING LODGE 197 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XV. AUGUST ON THE MOORS : THE MORNING START 2O5 
 
 XVI. AUGUST ON THE MOORS : THE DAY'S WORK 213 
 
 XVII. " THE MOOR AND THE LOCH " : THE NESTOR 
 
 OF SCOTTISH SPORTSMEN . . 225 
 
 XVIII. AMONG THE WILD FOWL . . . 238 
 
 XIX. IN FOREST AND ON HILL . . 243 
 
 XX. AFTER DEER ..... 256 
 
 XXI. THE COVERTS .... 265 
 
 XXII. CURLING ..... 283 
 
 XXIII. THE ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 2QI 
 
 XXIV. WINTER IN THE NORTH . . . 305 
 XXV. WINTER FERRETING . . . 316 
 
 XXVI. WINTER FOWLING .... 322 
 
 XXVII. WINTER IN THE SHIRES . . . 329 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 WILD SWANS ON LOCH SPYNIE 
 
 Archibald Thorburn Frontispiece 
 
 OTTER AND SALMON. Sir E. Landseer To face page 16 
 
 PTARMIGAN MOTIONLESS AMONG THE 
 LICHEN-COVERED STONES 
 
 Archibald Thorium 32 
 
 HOUNDS LEAVING THE COVERT 
 
 F. C. Turner 50 
 
 A KENTISH HOP-GARDEN. George Morrow 72 
 
 HUNTERS AT GRASS. Sir E. Landseer 104 
 
 THE TRAMP. George Morrow 126 
 
 GROUSE FIGHTING ON THE MOORS 
 
 F. C. Turner 148 
 SALMON FISHING. Lancelot Speed 164 
 
 THE SETTER ON THE GROUSE MOOR. 
 
 A. Cooper, R.A. 210 
 
viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 GROUSE-SHOOTING. A. Cooper^ R.A. To face page 220 
 
 DEER DISTURBED BY GROUSE. Sydney Steel 244 
 
 THE STAG AND HIS FRIENDS. Sydney Steel 262 
 
 BLACKCOCK AND SETTER. A. Cooper, R.A. 2/4 
 
 CURLING. Lancelot Speed ,, 286 
 
 DEAD PTARMIGAN. A. Cooper, R.A. 312 
 
MOUNTAIN, STREAM 
 AND COVERT 
 
 CHAPTER I '-' 
 
 Country Life in Literature 
 
 T3ECAUSE of the climate we so naturally abuse, 
 -^ there is no place like England for the pleasures 
 of the country rain and sunshine, snow and frost, 
 bring out a world of beauties in an enchanting variety 
 of landscape. There are lakes and streams that are 
 swarming with fish, in spite of the growth of manu- 
 facturing industries ; game abounds in field, fell, 
 and wood, notwithstanding occasional indifference to 
 preserving it ; and a succession of invigorating sports 
 falls in with the several seasons. It is no amour prof re 
 of patriotism that makes us believe that in these 
 matters we are far better off than our neighbours ; and 
 indeed they are ready to acknowledge it themselves, by 
 cultivating the tastes that are instincts with Englishmen. 
 You have only to cross the Channel to be conscious at 
 once of a change. There is as charming scenery 
 among the orchards of Normandy as any to be found 
 in the hop-gardens of Kent. The granite precipices of 
 
2 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 Penmarch, and the Pointe de Raz on the Breton coast 
 are nearly as wild as anything in Devon or Cornwall. 
 Where the line of railway from Liege to Cologne is 
 carried along the slopes of the valley of the Vesdre, 
 you look down on meadows and rushing streams that 
 remind you of the pastoral picturesqueness of Hereford- 
 shire^ / But {everywhere you are struck by the sharp 
 lines 1 v of v demarcation that are drawn between the 
 ; country 1 ancf He l J:owns. Here and there you may 
 come upon an isolated chateau that looks as if it had 
 been transplanted from some neighbouring boulevard, 
 and then adapted to its rural site by being fitted with 
 turrets and bartizans. If there is a park, it is shut in 
 from plebeian intrusion by forbidding walls of stone ; 
 and the highest praise you can possibly bestow on such 
 a place is, that there are turf and flower-beds remind- 
 ing you of England. No thought of coveting it ever 
 comes across your mind, except in so far as it may 
 be the sign of an easy fortune. On the contrary, you 
 are inclined to pity the owner, and to wonder what in 
 the world he does when he goes there. Doubtless he 
 has the means of amusing himself indoors, so far as the 
 cellar, salle-a-manger, and a billiard-room can help him. 
 The ladies, in toilets of affected simplicity, may saunter 
 on the terrace of an evening, and sip their coffee in a 
 frescoed temple covered with creepers, looking down 
 on the water-lilies in a formal fish-pond. But theirs, 
 after all, is only the life of the town, with all that is 
 dullest in the country superadded. The brand-new 
 stucco of the facade that formidable wall, with its 
 
IN LITERATURE 3 
 
 gilded grills and its bolted posterns are disagreeably 
 suggestive of antipathies of class, and the absence of 
 those kindly feelings that are insensibly fostered in the 
 course of generations by a neighbourly intercourse 
 between the landlord and his people. The foreign 
 proprietor can seldom hunt, and there is little for him 
 to shoot. The fields look all that is desirable for 
 partridges, but they are cut up in infinitesimal patches 
 among a society of jealous little owners, who would 
 open full cry on their more wealthy neighbour if he 
 followed a pack over their patrimonies. His woods 
 may be attractive to the artist, but they have none of 
 the undergrowth that shelters ground-game ; and if he 
 went in for pheasant-breeding, he would have to bring 
 up his birds by hand in wired-in aviaries like those of 
 the Jardin d'Acclimatation. 
 
 Go where you will abroad, there are the same signs 
 of conspicuous segregation between the men of the 
 country and those of the town ; and the exceptions 
 only prove the rule. In Brittany and some other of 
 the more wild and woodland provinces of France, there 
 are still seigneurs who live in their ancestral chateaux, 
 devoting themselves to the chase of the wolf, and 
 having ofT-days among the hares, the wild fowl, and 
 the partridges. But they are a class by themselves, and 
 the wolf-hunting is supposed to be mattter of necessity, 
 so that the dignity of master of the hounds is frequently 
 an official appointment. Volunteers flock to the 
 rendezvous clad in garments of sheep-skin and armed 
 with antiquated weapons, heavily loaded with slugs and 
 
4 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 B.B. No authority can repress the excitement or keep 
 the vociferous field in check, when the game is fairly 
 afoot ; and fatal accidents are of frequent occurrence 
 when a hail of shot is drifting through the covers. It is 
 much the same in Germany ; and there things have been 
 getting worse than they were, since the peasants swept 
 the country of game in the civil troubles of 1848. 
 Some great land-owners in Bohemia, Northern Bavaria, 
 and elsewhere, have wonderful quantities of hares and 
 pheasants. In the neighbourhood of their vast wood- 
 land preserves you see each outlying patch of grain 
 protected from the ravages of deer and wild boars by 
 chevaux de frise of stacked thorn-bushes. But even 
 there sport is the monopoly of an aristocratic few, who 
 seclude themselves in their domains for a short hunting 
 season ; as the Kings of Bavaria or Italy, the Emperor 
 of Austria, and the Arch Dukes, enjoy the chase of 
 the chamois or izzard in the magnificent solitudes of 
 their mountain hunting-grounds. Elsewhere you have 
 occasional grand days among the game with com- 
 paratively pitiful results ; but there is little of those 
 everyday country sports which are so keenly appreciated 
 by thousands of Englishmen. Indeed the evidences of 
 life of any kind are few and far between. Nothing can 
 be more beautiful than the Black Forest, for example : 
 you may walk on day after day from Baden-Baden 
 towards Stuttgart, through noble woods of feathering 
 beech-trees, or grand glades of clean-stemmed pines ; 
 that, with the light falling in streams through their 
 boughs on the bilberry carpet beneath them, remind 
 
IN LITERATURE 5 
 
 you of the labyrinths of long-drawn aisles in the most 
 superb of Gothic cathedrals. Every here and there 
 you come out on some sequestered valley with fields 
 that are waving with the hay-crops and the ripening 
 grain, sloping down to the sides of some murmuring 
 brook that babbles along between its banks in a series 
 of rushes and cascades. But you may walk onwards 
 day after day, and seldom raise a hare or flush a covey. 
 Game there must be, no doubt, for you find it 
 frequently figuring on the dinner-table. But it has 
 a perverse knack of keeping out of your way, and 
 cannot in any case be very abundant. The roes and 
 the foxes that lurk in the recesses of the woods either 
 see or scent you as you approach through the open ; 
 for naturally, in the absence of undergrowth, they get 
 preternaturally shy and suspicious. 
 
 As for human habitations, the country is fairly 
 populous, and human habitations there are ; but there 
 is scarcely a trace of the existence of a squirearchy or 
 of a comfortable class of gentleman farmers. Here and 
 there in the depths of the forest you come on the pic- 
 turesque huts of the charcoal-burners or woodmen ; 
 now and again you stumble out upon a clearing with 
 some sylvan lodge, the dwelling of the forester, whose 
 duty is to keep an eye on them, and whom you have 
 possibly come across in the course of the morning with 
 a dachshund or two at his heels. Generally, however, 
 the people are huddled together, and each of the greater 
 valleys has its village. Nothing can be more quaint 
 than the many-gabled houses with their rustic wood- 
 
6 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 work interlaced through the rough lime walls, hanging 
 along the slope in the single street that leads down to 
 the little place, with the village inn and the post-house. 
 There is a pleasant odour of fresh hay and newly-milked 
 cows ; everybody seems in easy circumstances, and the 
 local authorities look after the poor ; but it is plain 
 that they must labour hard to live, and that life shows 
 its serious side to all of them. Not a man of them 
 who does not place the summum bonum of recreation in 
 a Sunday or saint's day that is celebrated by free indul- 
 gence in beer and tobacco, or a longer chat on local 
 politics. Naturally that marked feature is brought out 
 conspicuously in those writers of the nations who are 
 the most keen to appreciate all that is most enchanting 
 in the scenery of their respective countries. Our 
 remarks on the Schwarzwald, though the results of a 
 long familiarity with it, might have been borrowed 
 almost verbatim from the pages of Hacklaader, who 
 narrates in his " Pictures of Travel " the very excursion 
 we have been imagining. Perhaps no French novelist 
 of our own time or of any other excelled more abso- 
 lutely in delicate landscape drawing than George Sand, 
 and at the same time she had made herself the un- 
 rivalled mistress of the subtle refinements of rustic 
 character. Her whole heart went out in her writings ; 
 she made her enchanting studies either from memory or 
 observation of scenes endeared to her by happy associa- 
 tions ; and her dreams of the most perfect lot on earth 
 were closely linked with a life in the country. In 
 " Flamarande," one of her latest works, her love for 
 
IN LITERATURE 7 
 
 nature is as fresh, and her pen as forcible, as in <c Le 
 Meunier d'Angibault " or " La Petite Fadette." Yet 
 even George Sand in her inimitable descriptions gives 
 us the idea of an enthusiastic and emotional amateur 
 looking at the beauties of nature through an aesthetic 
 medium, as she might admire them on the canvas of a 
 Corot or Jules Breton. You see the old chateau lost 
 among the woods and rocks, tenanted now by the 
 family of the farmer who has succeeded to its ancient 
 lords. You see the lonely mill among the meadows 
 and the water-courses, among osier-beds and clumps of 
 the drooping alders and sedges, swarming with the 
 water-hens. You are wrought insensibly into easy 
 sympathy with the hopes and hardships, the griefs and 
 the joys, of the hard-working people who have their 
 homes there. You are made to fancy that retreat 
 among such soothing influences would be more tran- 
 quillising to the jaded spirit, and quite as satisfactory 
 in the long run to the blase hermit, as the gloom and 
 asceticism of the mediaeval convent ; and that a short 
 sojourn in summer would be no disagreeable variety 
 even to men and women of the world, though the fare 
 might be simple and the post irregular. But the very 
 longings with which you are inspired must arise from 
 some passing impulse of misanthropy. You are to 
 court solitude from an ephemeral passion for it, and 
 you are to woo peaceful nature in a dead calm of 
 seclusion. You are to change your every habit, and 
 divorce yourself from your every-day routine. You 
 are to abandon the congenial but demoralising society 
 
8 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 of your equals for the improving company of virtuous 
 and unsophisticated peasants, as you might give up your 
 Bordeaux or Burgundy for a course of goat's milk. 
 Such books are idylls and pastorals in prose, and there 
 seems a dash of the artificial and theatrical in them. 
 But there is, and there is not. They are only artificial 
 and theatrical in so far as they are true to foreign facts, 
 and founded on an intimate though idealised knowledge 
 of the feelings and habits and social relations of our 
 good friends on the Continent. 
 
 Nothing can more forcibly illustrate our meaning 
 than a comparison of the fascinating books we have 
 been referring to with the inexhaustible rural literature 
 of England. What a variety of volumes come crowd- 
 ing together on our memory, written by men who have 
 lived in the English country, and loved it, although 
 many of them had to quit it for more serious pursuits 
 for the best part of the year ! What an infinity of 
 friends they have made themselves among folks they 
 have never met in the flesh ; and what an endearing 
 popularity they have attained, because they have struck 
 the sympathetic chords in the bosoms of so many thou- 
 sands of their country-people ! If they have been read 
 and read again by successive generations, it is because 
 they have expressed with unstudied and instinctive 
 eloquence those feelings that are universally struggling 
 for utterance ; because by the force and minute fidelity 
 of their descriptions they have recalled to us some of 
 the brightest associations of our lives. Not only when 
 they have written with that definite purpose, but inci- 
 
IN LITERATURE 9 
 
 dentally as essayists, biographers, and romancers ; and 
 even when their passion for the country has run away 
 with their pens, their rural digressions are most readily 
 forgiven them. The country is become a stock theme 
 with literary professionals although their individual 
 experiences may have lain among bricks and mortar ; 
 although their ornithological observations may have 
 been mainly confined to the street sparrows ; and 
 although they would be sorely puzzled by the call 
 of the partridge, and mystified by the cry of the land- 
 rail. They have practised writing of these things 
 because they know they take ; and if they write with 
 talent, Cockneys as they may be, their country episodes 
 may be far from unsuccessful. Take Dickens, for 
 example. Is there anything much better in the inimit- 
 able " Pickwick Papers " than the day with the part- 
 ridges on Sir Geoffrey's land, when Mr. Pickwick 
 followed the sport in the wheelbarrow, though the 
 author's evident inexperience crops out everywhere ? 
 or the spring morning among the rooks, at the bright 
 Kentish homestead, where Mr. Winkle so nearly 
 " does for old Tupman " ? But the standard books 
 are of course by men who have taken naturally to 
 themes with which they are familiar, or by men who 
 have been driven to change the gun for the pen by the 
 depth and intensity of their own enjoyment ; who in 
 the geniality of their natures have felt irresistibly im- 
 pelled to communicate the pleasures that came so keenly 
 home to them. 
 
 We might go to work on an interminable catalogue 
 
io COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 of authors of what may be termed the rural school. 
 But we may be satisfied with passing allusion to a few 
 that ought to be familiar to everybody. There is old 
 Izaak Walton, whose name, so long as our world exists, 
 seems likely to pass current as a household word among 
 generations of anglers who have never read a word of 
 him. Old Izaak was a Cockney himself, so far as living 
 in a city can make a Cockney. But in Izaak's days 
 even London had its limits : we fancy there was really 
 a green at Clerkenwell and a bubbling fountain ; and 
 a brisk morning walk from the bustle of Cheapside 
 brought you out among trees and brooks and meadows. 
 What can be more exhilarating than your sympathetic 
 sense of the sharpness of the change from the smoke 
 and noise of the streets he has left behind, to the 
 freshness and silence of the fields towards Hoddesdon ? 
 The pictures of rustic felicity are the more perfect that 
 the smoke of the capital is hanging on the horizon, and 
 that a faint hum of traffic is borne to their ears from 
 the neighbouring high road, as the anglers listen to the 
 carolling of the milkmaids, while casting their lines in 
 the slow-flowing stream, or sitting in the sanded 
 parlour of the little hostelry discussing their fish and 
 the details of catching and cooking them. We find 
 the fresh and quaint simplicity that is the charm of 
 Walton's style reproduced in the " Natural History 
 of Selborne," if we make due allowance for the lapse 
 of time and advances in the literary art and general 
 enlightenment. Devoted as we are to Gilbert White, 
 the extraordinary attraction he has for his readers must 
 
IN LITERATURE n 
 
 always remain something of a mystery to us ; and it is 
 only to be explained in any plausible way by those 
 inborn tastes to which he addresses himself instinctively. 
 No one would have been more astonished than the 
 retiring Sussex parson, had it been predicted to him 
 that in jotting down his everyday notes, or in penning 
 his letters to Pennant and Barrington, he was raising 
 himself an imperishable monument, and bringing his 
 parish into undying notoriety. There are scores and 
 hundreds of villages in England to the full as attrac- 
 tive as Selborne, which enjoy no greater reputation than 
 can be given them by a county gazetteer. But as for 
 Selborne, how many of us there are who seem to know 
 the place, as if they had passed their days under the 
 Hanger ! White happened to possess a natural literary 
 gift, which has done all the more for his fame and his 
 parish that he exercised it in absolute unconsciousness, 
 and never dreamed of cultivating it. He had a pas- 
 sionate attachment for nature, which made him inde- 
 fatigable in his observation of her ; and a variety of 
 unconsidered touches in his desultory correspondence 
 and his diaries have worked a thousand details indelibly 
 into our memories. How many of us there are who 
 owe such lights on natural history as we possess almost 
 entirely to the interest that was excited by that un- 
 pretending and antiquated volume ! Since then we 
 have had such fanciful theories exploded as the general 
 hibernation of swallows in the depths of the Sussex 
 ponds or the rifts of the chalk cliffs ; but it was White 
 who taught us to distinguish the black swifts screaming 
 
12 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 and circling round the church tower from their more 
 numerous congeners who build under the house eaves, 
 and the martins who flit about the face of the sand- 
 banks. We may smile at the innocence of his un- 
 travelled raptures on " that magnificent range of 
 mountains, the Sussex Downs" ; but as we ride over 
 the ranges that have inspired the pens of such accom- 
 plished admirers of nature as Mr. Blackmore, and our 
 older acquaintance Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, it is the 
 recollections we owe to the " Natural History " that 
 give a zest to the ride by awakening our observation. 
 We remember what White had to tell about the cur- 
 lews and the wheat-ears, and those restless red-legged 
 choughs that are fluttering about the fissures in the 
 precipices. He could even warm us into a feeling of 
 personal regard for a misanthropic reptile like " the old 
 Sussex tortoise " ; and he has left particular pollards as 
 landmarks in the memory, which you begin anxiously 
 to inquire after on a visit to Selborne. 
 
 That White made his book what it is, is the more 
 remarkable when we remember that it is merely natural 
 history. How many men there are who pass months of 
 each autumn in the country, unconsciously enjoying it 
 in absence of knowledge, and never deigning to confess 
 to an interest in anything that falls beneath the category 
 of game ! White was a clergyman of the old school 
 and could handle the gun on occasion, but he was very 
 little of a sportsman ; and so gentlemen of inferior 
 genius to his ought to write with a good many points 
 in their favour, when they are not only naturalists but 
 
IN LITERATURE 13 
 
 sportsmen to boot. Among the most popular of his 
 successors in kindred fields, Scrope, Colquhoun, and 
 St. John, will naturally suggest themselves. No one of 
 the three falls very far short of him in ardent admira- 
 tion of nature, while the range of their several ex- 
 periences was infinitely broader and more exciting. 
 Nothing can be more exhilarating than the buoyant sea 
 air on the Sussex Downs, laden with the land-scents 
 from the thyme and the furze-blossom : nothing more 
 picturesque in the way of lowland landscape than the 
 deep woodland lanes worn out in the Selborne chalk, 
 or the lonely ponds in Woolmer and Alice Holt forests. 
 But what is life among them after all, with their tamer 
 partridge and wild-fowl shooting, to that of the sports- 
 man who has the run of the Scotch deer-forests or of 
 the broad waters of the Tweed or the Tay ? Scrope's 
 stories of his adventures in the forest of Atholl, where 
 he was made welcome year after year by the princely 
 hospitality of " the Duke," read with a flavour of 
 Cooper's Indian romances, although far grander scenery 
 is thrown in for a background. Pedantic he may be 
 occasionally ; and the formal dialogues with his pupil 
 which blend instruction with entertainment sound 
 somewhat like those of Sir Humphry Davy in " Sal- 
 monia," or chapters from " Sandford and Merton." 
 But there is not a taint of the oil of the study lamp 
 when he is really fired with the spirit of the sport. 
 When he describes the rough stalk and the deadly shot ; 
 the slipping of the deer-hounds on some wounded 
 animal, or the hart turned to bay under the waterfall 
 
i 4 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 we can feel the throb of his pulses and hear the 
 beating of his heart. There were heads in the land, 
 too, in those days heads of ten, with brow, brae, and 
 trae antlers in perfection, such as are seldom to be seen 
 nowadays save hanging upon the walls of the shooting- 
 lodges. Deer have increased with over-preserving, 
 but rifles of precision and improved practice have 
 been doing their work, and the harts that promise 
 to be the pride of the forest are seldom suffered to 
 attain maturity. " Life has little better to offer than 
 this," Dr. Johnson observed on one occasion, when 
 thoroughly enjoying himself in the Highlands, devoted 
 as he was to Fleet Street. The deer-stalker might say 
 as much with far more reason when following his solitary 
 sport in the valleys of the Tilt and the Bruar, and 
 about the skirts of the witch-haunted hill of Ben-y- 
 gloe, while he had the refinements and luxuries of 
 society within his reach at the Castle of Blair or the 
 lodge in Glen Tilt. 
 
 Talking of the deterioration in the heads of deer, 
 and apropos to general changes for the worse in the 
 wild life of the moors and mountains, in consequence 
 of the ever-increasing demand for shooting-quarters, 
 we may refer to a delightful little brochure by Mr. 
 Colquhoun on the Fer<e nature of the British Isles. 
 For keepers have been increasing too, and persecuting 
 everything they are pleased to call vermin with a 
 zeal that is born of ignorance and prejudice. There 
 are beasts and birds for which we have nothing to 
 say. Kill down hooded crows and magpies as fast 
 
IN LITERATURE 15 
 
 as you will ; there will always be enough of these 
 scourges left, and their mischievous hunger for eggs 
 places them beyond the pale of toleration. Weasels 
 and polecats, and id genus omne, are only too well 
 able to take care of themselves, and should be trapped 
 without scruple or mercy. Hill-foxes are altogether 
 out of place, seeing that they fly so far in the face of 
 their nature as to burrow like rabbits in impracticable 
 cairns, and that there is no possibility of putting them 
 to their legitimate purpose. But every one who has a 
 soul above sheer slaughter must regret the disappear- 
 ance of those magnificent birds of prey that lend so 
 characteristic a charm to mountain scenery as they float 
 like specks in the air against a cloudless sky, or stoop 
 down over the heather in lessening circles. The eagle 
 and peregrine falcon may take toll of the game, but, so 
 far as we are concerned, they should be welcome to 
 what they can capture. After all, the hares are their 
 great resource, and the blue hares are positive nuisances ; 
 nor can there be any objection to their disputing with 
 the shepherds the "braxy" to which they occasionally 
 condescend. Unhappily the protesting against their 
 being put to the ban, can literally be nothing but the 
 voice of one crying in the wilderness, so long as 
 ornithologists offer fancy prices for specimens and 
 an eagle's egg will fetch a sovereign. Were we driven 
 to make a choice, we could more easily spare the 
 ravens ; and yet there is something romantically ap- 
 propriate in the hoarse croak and the uncanny antics 
 of a lonely pair of these demon-like birds in the 
 
16 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 recesses of some sombre glen that is seldom illuminated 
 by the sunbeams. We should never grudge the otter 
 his fish, though his habits of feeding are decidedly 
 wasteful, so long as we had the pleasure of seeing him 
 slip silently off the bank of the stream and dive oilily 
 into the water, leaving a trail of bubbles behind him. 
 Nor can anything be more weird of an autumn night, 
 when the moon is shining fitfully through a grey drift 
 of clouds, than the long, mournful cry of the wild 
 cat from the loose boulders among the fir-trees on 
 the banks of some lonely loch. We delight to see 
 the grey forms of the badgers rooting like spectral 
 pigs in the dusk, when the screech-owls are just begin- 
 ning their music. So we respond heartily to the 
 lament of Mr. Colquhoun when he tells us how 
 hawks and eagles, otters and wild cats, marten-cats 
 and badgers, have been disappearing from the Luss 
 country on the banks of Loch Lomond and elsewhere, 
 since he used to shoot as a boy over his father's 
 domains. 
 
 Take them all in all, however, the books on High- 
 land shooting and Scotch natural history that please 
 us the most are decidedly those of Mr. St. John. 
 An Englishman by birth, he was long domiciled in 
 Scotland, because it was there that he could indulge 
 his bent to the uttermost. Fond of society, and formed 
 to live in it, he gave it up for the greater attractions 
 of the wilds. For long he would persist in asserting 
 that he had no vocation for the pen. Yet no man 
 has written better on his favourite subjects, with the 
 
IN LITERATURE 17 
 
 single exception of Gilbert White. A keen sportsman 
 and devoted admirer of nature, he was the most 
 practical and observant of naturalists. Nothing can 
 be more vivid or sympathetic than his first work, 
 "The Wild Sports of the Highlands" ; but in point 
 of method and accuracy he surpassed it afterwards 
 in his " Natural History and Sport in Moray -" and 
 his " Tour in Southerlandshire." In his choice of 
 residences he found admirable head-quarters for a man 
 of his particular tastes. At one time he rented 
 Invererne, on the Morayshire coast, a house lying 
 between the cultivated country and an unfrequented 
 waste of woods and sandhills ; and then he removed 
 to a mansion with a great old-fashioned garden in 
 the outskirts of the town of Elgin. Now he was 
 off on expeditions into the neighbouring mountains, 
 as when he made that famous stalk of his on the 
 " muckle hart of Benmore," or when he narrowly 
 escaped being buried under an avalanche when look- 
 ing for ptarmigan in their winter plumage. Now 
 he was filling a mixed bag nearer home with a mis- 
 cellaneous variety of lowland game, picked up in 
 the course of a hard day's walking. Now he was 
 stalking swans or geese on the Loch of Spynie or the 
 shores of the bay, creatures even harder to come at 
 than the wary red deer ; now he was watching for 
 wild duck in the dusk, as they streamed over his 
 lurking-place in their flight from the sea to their 
 feeding-grounds. He carried a gun in the season, 
 and was a deadly shot ; but the number of head 
 
 3 
 
1 8 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 he killed was quite a secondary consideration with 
 him. By preference he would turn his steps towards 
 that waste of sandhills where the foxes, left to forage 
 undisturbed, grew to be " as large as wolves " ; where 
 the rabbits they fattened on had gnawed the furze- 
 bushes they gambolled among into all manner of 
 fantastic shapes ; where, in fact, wild creatures of every 
 kind had it all their own way, and where the cautious 
 observer could study their habits as they followed 
 the promptings of their instincts, unconscious of the 
 presence of man. Or he would break off from so- 
 called sports altogether, to stroll along the -sea-shore 
 when the tide was out, where the seals were basking 
 on the rocks, or disporting themselves among the 
 waves, and crowds of clamorous sea-fowl and water- 
 fowl were picking up their living among the pools, 
 the sand-eels, and the sea-weed. He was always on 
 the look-out to welcome the earliest arrivals from 
 foreign latitudes, to see the swans come trumpeting 
 into the bay to settle down in a stately fleet upon its 
 waters, or to mark the streaming flight of the grey 
 or lag geese as they headed for some well-known haunt 
 away among the inland lochs. It was most unlikely 
 that any unfamiliar stranger would escape his wakeful 
 attention ; he marked each peculiarity in the form or 
 plumage, and never rested till he established its 
 identity. We cannot answer for other people, but 
 to us he has given an infinity of new ideas on the 
 birds that frequent these northern counties. Nearer 
 his home, too, about his doors, and in his " policies/' 
 
IN LITERATURE 19 
 
 he was Gilbert White over again. The birds that 
 were happy enough to settle under his wing enjoyed 
 the immunities of absolute sanctuary. He went about 
 poking after their nests as ardently as any of those 
 boys of his who were brought up in his tastes. He 
 can tell you almost to a day when it is their habit 
 to set about nest-making. He can detect the presence 
 of the shyest of them by their note ; and should any 
 stranger turn up unexpectedly his voice betrays his 
 incognito, although he should keep himself modestly 
 concealed. In short, we could expatiate for ever on 
 St. John, but we have recalled enough of him to show 
 what an enjoyable life may be led by a man of his 
 fortunate turn of mind. 
 
 Nor have we time to linger with Stoddart and 
 Stewart among the Scottish lochs and salmon-rivers, or 
 the silvery trouting-streams of the Highlands and 
 Border. But we cannot come southward again without 
 an allusion to the veteran Christopher North in his 
 Recreations. All accomplished as he was politician and 
 philosopher, essayist, romance-writer, and poet Pro- 
 fessor Wilson was a born sportsman, if ever there was 
 one. In spite of their joyous and humorous exaggera- 
 tion, nothing in the " Noctes Ambrosianas " is so 
 piquant as the passages where the merry party warms 
 up to the recollection of some grand day with the gun 
 or the rod. As when the Shepherd gives the reins to 
 his glowing imagination in recounting his exploits on 
 the way from Mount Benger to Tibbie Shiels', where 
 he found the water everywhere in such magnificent 
 
20 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 cast and the fish in so grand a humour for taking. 
 Or the scene at Tibbie's, a la Sneyders or Landseer, 
 when the gillies come in and shoot out their loads of 
 feathered game in unstudied studies of colour, at the 
 corners of the little parlour. But it is in his Sporting 
 Jacket in those Recreations of his that Christopher is 
 simply perfect, beginning with the boyish reminiscences 
 of the moorland parish where he was under the roof of 
 the manse ; where such game as he cared for then 
 swarmed like the midges on some mountain tarn, and 
 you could not throw a stone into hedge or cornyard 
 without sending a cloud of sparrows into the air. How 
 humorous is the description of the exploits of himself 
 and his comrades with the rusty pistol that was their 
 common property we think we remember something 
 of the same kind in the introduction to the " Old 
 Forest Ranger," also written by a Scotchman or with 
 the ancient single-barrel of portentous length and 
 recoil that used to be supported along the shoulders of 
 two of the party, while a third volunteered for the 
 duty of discharging it ! So he leads us on through 
 such feats of irregular shooting as his stealing in upon 
 the heron struggling with the eel, since " we too can 
 crawl silent as the sinuous serpent," to the finished 
 exploits of the full-grown youth who drops his birds 
 almost unfailingly to the fatal double-barrel, as he 
 strides over the heather behind his highly-trained dogs, 
 and who can throw a fly that falls light as thistle-down. 
 There is nothing North touches that he does not adorn, 
 even when the touch is a mere passing allusion. How 
 
IN LITERATURE 21 
 
 one chuckles over the match he rode on Colonsay, 
 when he cleared the impossible leap, or got jammed up 
 among the north-country nowt ; or over the coursing 
 of the old hare that is the pet and playmate of the 
 cottar's family, although she is more than suspected 
 of being a witch a suspicion that gains additional 
 confirmation each time she shakes her fud at " the lang 
 dogs," as she sets herself to breast the braes in earnest ! 
 Scotland is far excellence the land of sport and 
 scenery, in spite of a rough climate and treacherous 
 temperature. Yet we can understand that there must 
 be many who may prefer for a permanence the softer 
 and richer beauties of the landscapes of merry England. 
 It is the southern part of our islands we would 
 naturally contrast with the half-inhabited aspect of 
 continental Europe, as we have attempted to describe 
 it. Go where you will in countries that are most 
 essentially English in their character, there is the same 
 sense of home-like enjoyment in a wide variety of easy 
 existences among classes that shade insensibly into each 
 other ; nor does the enjoyment appear to be diminished 
 very perceptibly even when united to great wealth and 
 to grandeur, It may possibly be sour grapes, but we 
 believe it on searching self-examination to be our 
 sincere persuasion that we are grateful for not having 
 been destined to dwell in mansions so magnificent as 
 Chatsworth or Blenheim. Yet to say nothing of the 
 enchanting country that generally surrounds them, the 
 lords of such princely seats are not altogether to be 
 pitied. Country gentlemen like their neighbours, in 
 
22 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 spite of the length of their rent-rolls, the plurality of 
 their mansions, and a certain formal state that is the 
 inevitable adjunct of their great positions, they manage 
 to divert themselves with much the same pursuits as 
 the more moderately-acred squire. To appreciate the 
 attractions of their historic homes, and the sylvan 
 beauties of their parks with the masses of secular 
 timber, one ought to read Howitt. We own to having 
 been early prejudiced in his favour, for his " Boy's 
 Country Book " was one of our boyish delights ; but 
 seeing how his " Book of the Seasons " and his " Visits 
 to Remarkable Places " have asserted their influence on 
 us in our maturity, we cannot believe that we admire 
 him unduly. It is not only his bewitching panoramas 
 of scenery, wonderfully true to nature as they are, 
 when he invites you to an excursion across the brown 
 moors of the Cheviots, or plunges with your waist- 
 deep into the luxuriant bracken under the boughs 
 of the oaks in some deer-park in the Midlands ; or 
 when he leads you away to some deserted and half- 
 forgotten old hall like Compton Wyniates to some 
 spectre-haunted Norman hold that looks grimly for- 
 bidding in the gloaming, like the ancient castle of the 
 Lumleys ; or when he takes you on a brisk walk 
 through the Black Country to the humble birthplace 
 of an artist like Bewick, on the beautiful banks of the 
 Tyne, past grim rows of colliers' cottages. But he 
 thoroughly enters into the life of the English country- 
 people of all ranks, reflecting their feelings with 
 unfailing fidelity ; he sympathises with the pursuits 
 
IN LITERATURE 23 
 
 of the squire and the farmer ; bred a Quaker as he 
 was, he has a friendly word for the worthy parson 
 whose lines have fallen in these pleasant places ; and, 
 above all, he has a kindly feeling for the peasant and 
 the working-man. It is writers like Howitt and 
 Thomas Miller who love to bring out the home-like 
 features of our rural life in their most attractive 
 aspects ; who make it a sacred sentiment to cherish 
 the little that remains to us of old English manners 
 and customs. Howitt is the more loth to see England 
 stripped of its traditional poetry and romance, that he 
 is so heartily alive to the benefits of our material 
 progress, and the vast development of our manu- 
 facturing industries. Because the sea-breeze is tainted 
 with the fumes of the chemical works, he abstracts 
 himself all the more devoutly at the shrine of the 
 Venerable Bede at Jarrow ; and his fancy is the more 
 lively among the ruins of Tynemouth, that he is 
 looking down on the smoke of grimy Shields and on 
 the shipping that crowds the river. And it is 
 wonderful how much of rude romance he contrives to 
 find among people you might set down as essentially 
 prosaic ; making no ostentatious exhibition of the 
 interest he so evidently feels, he wins the confidence 
 of the most reserved : whether he may have dropped 
 into casual conversation with some dusty wayfarer, or 
 have turned aside to ask his way of a cottager, or is 
 gossiping pleasantly with some prim old lady, the 
 chatelaine of some ancestral show-place. And as 
 Providence helps those who help themselves, he is 
 
24 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 always in luck in his especial objects. He is perpetu- 
 ally stumbling in the course of his wanderings on 
 feasts or fairs, or anniversaries or border games, and 
 he is sure to make friends among garrulous merry- 
 makers, storing his memory with their old-world tales. 
 
 If we desired to do the honours of England to a 
 foreign friend, whether he came over the Channel or 
 across the Atlantic, after giving him a glance at the 
 immensity of London or the bustling prosperity of the 
 port of Liverpool, we should invite him to accompany 
 us on such a driving tour as Mr. Black describes in his 
 u Adventures of a Phaeton." He might growl at the 
 climate on the days when it was wet or windy ; but 
 he would have to confess in candour, in any average 
 summer, that our watery atmosphere was not with- 
 out its advantages. We have often revelled in the 
 marvellous transparency of the air in districts like the 
 upper valleys of the Alps, or even the higher plateaux 
 of central Germany. Sitting before the door of your 
 mountain inn, in the Engadine or the Oberland, you 
 fancy you might distinguish the chamois at their 
 gambols on the opposite snow-slopes ; while in the 
 German uplands you can almost count the buttons on 
 the coat of the bauer who is driving the waggon with 
 the team of oxen against the distant sky-line. But 
 there is a wearisome monotony of effect in the 
 brilliancy of that extreme limpidity. It cannot com- 
 pare with the rich variety of lights among the softened 
 shadows and changing colours of an English landscape, 
 as you look down over waving crops, verdant meadow, 
 
IN LITERATURE 25 
 
 and rolling woodland, through a faint transparency of 
 haze and under a shimmering of fleecy clouds, from 
 such a height as Richmond Hill or the terraces of the 
 Crystal Palace. The stray showers and the heavy 
 night dews keep everything fairly fresh and green, 
 even in the dryer seasons. The very high-roads wind 
 and dip as they are engineered in accordance with the 
 undulations of the ground, in place of unrolling them- 
 selves straight on end like so many kilometres of sad- 
 coloured ribbon, between their regular borderings of 
 dust-peppered poplars. As to the labyrinths of wood- 
 land lanes in the home counties, you had better take 
 your bearings before you commit yourself to them, if 
 you have not chartered an experienced pilot. Now 
 they have hidden themselves out of sight and well-nigh 
 out of sound between deep banks that are watered by 
 bubbling land-springs, and under the cool shade of the 
 boughs that interweave themselves thickly overhead. 
 The wheels grate lightly over gravel that reminds you 
 of a gentleman's approach, although here and there you 
 go jolting over the gnarled roots. Before you have 
 wearied of the dim religious light, and begin to long 
 for a glimpse of the glorious sunshine, you are emerg- 
 ing on some stretch of purple heath, or are breasting the 
 slopes of some breezy down. The crest of each eminence 
 and each turn of your road opens up a new infinity of 
 prospect, as the eye travels along the lines of leafy 
 undulations to some range of hills that hangs dimly in 
 the distance. Nor are the broad pastures of the 
 Midlands, or the wilder and more open landscapes of 
 
26 COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 the Yorkshire Ridings, less lively in their way. You 
 may miss the tangled luxuriance of hedgerow, the rich 
 flowers or the fruit in the apple and cherry orchards, 
 the hop-plants twining themselves from pole to pole, 
 like the trellised vines of the plains of Italy ; but you 
 have an exhilarating sense of life and freedom among 
 those wide stretches of glorious galloping-ground divided 
 by their stiff ox-fences and bull-finches, with the halls 
 and manor-houses sheltering among their covers, and 
 the willow-bordered streams meandering peacefully 
 along the bottoms. 
 
 If there was little in the formal French chateau 
 to excite any emotion of envy, we must own it is 
 altogether a different thing when you are out on 
 your wanderings in rural England. It must be a 
 contented spirit indeed that is not being perpetually 
 tempted by the hall or the rectory house, by the 
 luxurious cottage or the comfortable homestead. 
 Wedded as you may be to the ways of the town 
 inspired by some devouring ambition, or hotly 
 excited in the fever of money-getting you fancy, 
 for the moment at least, that you might be perfectly 
 happy if you were settled in one of those seductive 
 abodes. It may be partly that the simpler and sounder 
 part of our nature is asserting its instincts ; and it 
 seems so easy to take kindly to a country life when 
 a soothing languor has settled down on the smiling 
 landscape, and you see everything around you in its 
 rosiest colours. Of course it is long odds that you are 
 altogether deceiving yourself, as a little cool reflection 
 reminds you. You are like the veteran winebibber who 
 
IN LITERATURE 27 
 
 tries to take to water-drinking : you have spoiled your- 
 self for the calm of bucolic enjoyment all the year round. 
 You would be perpetually sighing for the familiar 
 excitement, and ennui might haunt you the more that 
 you were relieved from the worst of your worries. 
 But to those who have been bred and born to it there 
 is assuredly nothing like a life in the country, at all 
 events when that country is in the British Isles. You 
 have but to look at your country friends and be con- 
 vinced. Their ruddy faces and elastic or comfortable 
 figures are the signs of light hearts and well-preserved 
 health ; and if there are exceptions they only prove the 
 rule. It can hardly be otherwise. Fresh air and good 
 digestion, with the habit of exercise in the open air, 
 make them strong to support or cast aside the sorrows 
 that eat away the springs of a more artificial existence. 
 The occcupations by which they get their living would 
 be the recreations of other men ; and while they harm- 
 lessly excite themselves over sports and trifles they are 
 apt to attain a serenity of temperament that almost 
 borders on stolidity. So it comes about that farmers 
 can slumber peacefully, and know no abatement of 
 their vigorous appetites, while the rain is beating down 
 on the hay or the wheat, while the drought is playing 
 the mischief with the root-crops, or the foot-and-mouth 
 disease has broken loose among the flocks of their 
 neighbours. So landed proprietors sit lightly under 
 mortgages and settlements, and easily console them- 
 selves with a growl or a grumble under unwelcome 
 shortcomings on the rent-day, or even in a bad season 
 for the birds. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Highland Laird 
 
 WE have run over some of our favourite books 
 on the country, and now we are tempted to 
 try some random sketches of one or two of our 
 familiar country friends. Take the Highland laird 
 to begin with. His ancestors down to his grandfather 
 were always hard up for cash, though they were lords 
 of a wide extent of barren acres. His lands lie along 
 one of the most lovely of the winding sea-arms on 
 the western coast ; and fifty years ago, or even less, 
 the wreaths of blue peat-smoke might have been seen 
 curling up from the hamlets or clachans in half a score 
 of glens. The people who eked out the scanty produce 
 of their crops by the profits of " the fishing " sat at 
 small rents for the best of reasons. A considerable 
 portion of the rent was paid " in kind " in chickens, 
 in peat-cutting, and other services ; and in an un- 
 favourable year, when the crops had failed, or the 
 fishing, the pecuniary transactions were chiefly the 
 other way. The laird had not only to forgive his 
 
 people what they owed, but to feed them into the 
 
 28 
 
A HIGHLAND LAIRD 29 
 
 bargain. So there was a good deal to soften the 
 separation to him when emigration came into fashion 
 among his neighbours, and he decided to try the 
 experiment. He was reluctant to part with the 
 Donalds and the Duncans and their families, whose 
 fathers had sat under his, and followed them to the 
 field in clan feuds and civil broils from time im- 
 memorial. But it was clearly for the good of both 
 parties ; and he was bound to consider the prospects 
 of his children as well as the feelings of his clansmen. 
 Sheep-farmers from the south were shifting northwards, 
 and there was a great and growing demand for grazing. 
 Highland shootings were coming into favour with 
 southern millionaires, and lands where leave to shoot 
 used to be had for the asking were fetching rising 
 rents in the market. So droves of the aboriginal 
 Celts were consigned to the good offices of a shipping 
 agent on the Broomielaw, and sent forth from the 
 Clyde to try their fortunes in the Canadas. To this 
 day you may trace the foundations of their houses in 
 valleys, by the sides of the mountain brooks, and 
 along the loch and the salmon-stream that winds 
 through the haughs of the strath. 
 
 Doubtless this emigration to another continent was 
 for the best. At all events, the present laird has no 
 reason to regret it from a pecuniary point of view. 
 He draws 1,500 a year from the sheep-grazings in 
 Strathernan and Strathbran ; and the grouse-shooting 
 over the same ground is worth about as much more to 
 him. He has 1,800 on a long lease for his deer-forest 
 
30 A HIGHLAND LAIRD 
 
 of Auchnaclosky ; the landlord of the inn at the mouth 
 of the Ernan pays him a handsome price for the salmon 
 and sea-trout fishing there ; while he disposed of some 
 outlying hills at what was then deemed a fabulous 
 price, although already he regrets his precipitation in 
 parting with them. In fact, for his many square 
 leagues of rock, heath, and bog, interspersed with 
 patches of mountain grazing, he draws the income 
 of a fine property in the most fertile of the English 
 counties. But with all that he has not stinted himself 
 and his friends in the amusements to which he is 
 keenly devoted. He has kept in his own hands an 
 ample range of the woods and the heather that stretch 
 away from immediately around the house ; and he 
 can boast of as pretty a shooting in every sense as 
 any gentleman of his means in the Highlands. 
 Probably rather by chance than from design the 
 house was set down in a charming situation ; and, 
 thanks to the modern additions he has made, it is 
 as roomy and comfortable as he could wish, though 
 by no means architecturally attractive. It stands in 
 the middle of feathering birches on the romantic banks 
 of Lochlyle ; and out of the broken ground that 
 extends behind it rises a range of bold, heathery 
 uplands that lose themselves high overhead in a 
 mountainous jumble of rocks and precipices. In a 
 creek below you may see the masts of the little cutter 
 that transports him easily to his more distant beats ; 
 while half a dozen of broad-bottomed boats in the 
 boat-house are eloquent of excellent fishing. Although 
 
A HIGHLAND LAIRD 31 
 
 his seat is pretty much at the back of the world ; 
 although his precarious posts are delivered to him 
 by boat and steamer, and the landscape is wild enough 
 in all conscience yet the climate on the lower levels 
 is anything but ungenial, as is shown by the shrubs 
 that thrive in luxuriance in his wife's romantic little 
 flower-garden. As for the game, in point of variety, 
 he has nearly everything that man need desire. You 
 have magnificent roe-drives in the woods and the 
 rough ground that lie along the shores of the loch. 
 You may walk up the graceful animals like hares 
 among the bracken under the birches ; and many 
 a merry day the laird has there in autumn, when he 
 has them running in rings round his post among the 
 tree-trunks to the music of his lively little beagles. 
 Along the scattered corn-fields in the strath at the 
 loch-head, there are plenty of coveys of the small 
 hill-partridges, where you may amuse yourself pleasantly 
 enough when the weather is wet and the grouse are 
 wild ; while as you wade through the marshy ground 
 that is overflowed from time to time by the river, you 
 have the snipe getting up in wisps all about you. As 
 for the grouse, of these there are any reasonable 
 quantity. The beats are long it is nothing to walk 
 six or eight miles before you think of uncoupling the 
 dogs and the walking is rough ; but then you can get 
 fair shooting till late in the year, for the coveys are 
 in no hurry to pack. And such shooting as it is, for a 
 man who has the soul of a poet or the eye of an artist ! 
 As you gradually mount higher and higher the views 
 
32 A HIGHLAND LAIRD 
 
 become grander and more extensive. Lochlyle, with 
 its sheltered bays and wooded islands, unfolds itself 
 in all its length beneath you, running out and in 
 among the purple hills, and losing itself from your 
 sight in land-locked little harbours. Inland you follow 
 the course of the strath, with here and there a solitary 
 house or a shepherd's shieling ; while as you ascend 
 higher still into the zones of the ptarmigan you open 
 up rocky vistas through the surrounding heights, 
 through which you get glimpses of the carse-lands in 
 the distant Lowlands. The mountain air has a per- 
 ceptible scent of the brine and the sea-weed, as well 
 it may have, for it is salt water you are looking down 
 upon in Lochlyle ; and the surge of the Atlantic is 
 breaking at the back of those splintered peaks that 
 hem in the horizon away to the westward. 
 
 More exciting, perhaps, than the best of the grouse- 
 shooting, is a day up there among the ptarmigan in 
 the late autumn, when they are beginning to change 
 to their winter plumage. Not that the shooting them 
 is difficult, for the birds are always in extremes. At 
 first they get up wild enough, and go circling round 
 the mountain-tops high in the air like swift flights 
 of carrier-pigeons ; but when you have flushed them 
 several times they will cower down motionless among 
 the lichen-covered stones, from which their mottled 
 feathers are scarcely to be distinguished. But there 
 is a strange pleasure in the crisp keenness of the air, 
 the magnificence of the bird's-eye views over the 
 panoramas that unfold themselves around you, and 
 
A HIGHLAND LAIRD 33 
 
 the glimpses of solitude-loving beasts and birds that 
 you are likely to get if you are in luck. In spite of 
 the persecutions of the agents of ornithologists, more 
 than one pair of golden eagles have their eyries in the 
 hills that overhang Lochlyle ; and they may often be 
 seen sweeping round overhead, as if they felt them- 
 selves monarchs of all they surveyed, although they 
 prudently keep themselves well out of rifle-shot. 
 There are sea-eagles, too, among the rocks that hang 
 over the ocean, and a pair of peregrine falcons have 
 built since the memory of man in an inaccessible cliff 
 in the laird's deer-forest. Ten to one you may catch 
 sight of a sleek though sinewy old mountain-fox, 
 taking himself leisurely off in the broad daylight to 
 his quarters in one of the many cairns around you. 
 You have startled him probably from his slumbers in 
 the heather where he laid himself up after a heavy 
 meal and a long night of successful foraging. There 
 is a handsome price set upon his head, and it is hard 
 to say whether the shepherds or the keepers hate him 
 with a more perfect hatred ; nor is there any better 
 fun, by the by, to be had on an off-day than drawing 
 one of these stone-heaps for a vixen and her litter, with 
 a few frantic couples of varmint-terriers. Before you 
 get to the crest of the lower hills, the mountain-hares 
 have been lolloping up before you by dozens, like 
 rabbits disturbed at feeding-time on the skirts of a 
 low-country warren. Troublesome as they are to the 
 best-broken dogs, you feel you could very easily spare 
 them ; yet they make capital subjects for a Highland 
 
 4 
 
34 A HIGHLAND LAIRD 
 
 battue^ when you have, the lower grounds driven in a 
 narrowing circle of beaters towards the guns that are 
 stationed on the heights above. You may roll them 
 over then by hundreds, or even by thousands ; and it 
 must be owned they come as a godsend to the High- 
 land kitchen, where the soup is made on the liberal 
 receipt of the Ettrick Shepherd half a dozen hares to 
 each tureen. 
 
 Walking over the grouse-ground you come upon 
 sheep in each grassy hollow ; and although they may 
 be sufficiently picturesque objects, with their shaggy 
 fleeces and their curling horns, yet they are decided 
 nuisances in many ways. The shepherds may be on 
 bad terms with the gillies, and may revenge themselves 
 on the grouse-eggs and the young broods, which they 
 naturally come across in the course of their peregrina- 
 tions. The collies in any case are always disturbing 
 the ground ; and on the very day you have devoted 
 to a favourite beat you find that the herds of sheep are 
 being driven in, and gathered in flocks to be numbered. 
 In the solitudes of the forest of Auchnaclosky there is 
 no nuisance of the kind. There you are absolutely 
 alone with nature, and the red deer, and the " vermin " 
 that are carefully kept up in order to keep down the 
 grouse. Auchnaclosky consists of a conglomeration of 
 half-inaccessible hills, split up by the deep precipitous 
 valleys that lead to nowhere in particular. Unless you 
 were as much at home in these as the laird himself, or 
 the keepers who have charge of that portion of his 
 grounds, you would be perpetually landing yourself in 
 
A HIGHLAND LAIRD 35 
 
 culs-de-saC) and being lured on into ugly scrambles 
 where retreat is difficult and advance impossible. The 
 forest is " grand ground," as any connoisseur will tell 
 you. Although by no means large, it is amply stocked, 
 for there are famous preserves on three sides of it ; 
 and in the depths of its valleys there is splendid feeding 
 that seduces the deer from extraordinary distances. 
 But the stalking is as difficult as well may be. In the 
 first place, you may sweep your range of vision with 
 the telescope, overlooking, after all, a number of 
 animals hidden out of sight, who will be sure to spoil 
 the stalk on the victim you have selected. Then 
 unless you have the head and foot of a chamois-hunter 
 you are not at all unlikely to come to grief : while the 
 actual exercise toiling up rocky heights, only to come 
 down again ; hanging on to ledges of rocks by the eye- 
 lids ; dragging yourself along stony water-courses at a 
 frightful expenditure of skin and homespun is safe to 
 try the temper and to test the stamina of the strongest. 
 Finally, it is difficult for the most experienced of 
 stalkers to make due allowance for the caprices of the 
 wind. It twists and turns in the most tantalising 
 fashion in the folds of the hills and the recesses of 
 the corries ; and just as you are crawling up wind, as 
 you fondly imagine, and congratulating yourself on a 
 highly successful cast, you are disagreeably conscious 
 of a side puff on your cheek that must infallibly carry 
 the alarm to the quarry. But all the difficulties that 
 would be insurmountable drawbacks to many people 
 are only additional attractions to the laird. Many is 
 
36 A HIGHLAND LAIRD 
 
 the night he has lain out under the " Shelter Stone " 
 with a bundle of heather for a pillow, his plaid for 
 bed-clothes, and a sandwich and his whisky-flask for 
 sole refreshments ; although now, chiefly in deference 
 to the sybaritism of his friends, he has set up a tiny 
 lodge in the wilderness, where they can be tolerably 
 comfortable on occasion. 
 
 Though the laird in these latter days occasionally 
 takes his family to town for a month or so in the 
 season, his habits are very different from those of the 
 gentlemen who make a dash at the moors or the forests 
 for a few weeks in the autumn. He lives on his 
 territory all the year round ; sport in its different 
 shapes is pretty much his sole avocation ; and he is 
 most hospitable in filling his house with guests who 
 take his annual invitations almost as a matter of course. 
 It is odd indeed if they cannot find plenty to do ; and 
 even if they should be kept close prisoners by the 
 weather, there are a library and an excellent billiard- 
 table and agreeable young women within doors. There 
 is capital mixed shooting on the lower ground, or what 
 may be called the lower ground by comparison. The 
 birch-woods that come feathering down to Lochlyle are 
 famous places for black-game and woodcocks ; and 
 when a flight of woodcocks arrives with the first frost, 
 the laird sends expresses forthwith to his neighbours, 
 who are looking out in keen expectation. These 
 gentlemen gather in fast with their attendant gillies, 
 and. the party sets out in line after breakfast from the 
 very door of the house. Now it is a hare that gets up, 
 
A HIGHLAND LAIRD 37 
 
 now a couple of roe who have been crouching in their 
 lair with ears laid back and heads buried in the heather, 
 hoping in vain that the vacarme would go by. Now 
 they stumble among some partridges that rise only to 
 scatter and drop again ; and then in the corner of some 
 thicker patch of cover they possibly have the agreeable 
 distraction of a brilliant little bouquet of pheasants. A 
 little farther, and they are in the best of the woodcock 
 ground. Small streamlets, half choked with the frost, 
 come trickling down among rime-covered rushes ; the 
 cry of " mark-cock " makes itself heard more and more 
 frequently in every variety of Gaelic gutturals ; and 
 then follows the shot or the succession of shots, as 
 the crescent-winged bird goes zigzagging softly away 
 among the scattered tree-stems in some clearing in the 
 copsewood. Or there is a whir and a loud rustle 
 through the trees, and the heavy blackcock is brought 
 up in his rapid flight, to come down with a crash 
 among the branches that interlace themselves over the 
 brook below. 
 
 In winter, when there is little else to be had, there 
 is duck and wild-fowl shooting ; and that in spring 
 and early summer is followed by the salmon-fishing. 
 The laird prides himself on his skill with the rod 
 rather more than on his prowess with the rifle ; and 
 he is as well off for water as he ought to be, con- 
 sidering the variety of it that there is on his domains. 
 Trout swarm everywhere ; and though the little yellow- 
 bellied fellows in the brooks and rivulets seldom run 
 more than four to the pound, they are wonderfully 
 
38 A HIGHLAND LAIRD 
 
 strong for their size. As a rule, however, except for 
 an occasional dish for breakfast, very little attention is 
 paid to these, although now and then the boys will 
 condescend to ply the otter among the shoals of still 
 smaller fry in one of the mountain tarns. But there is 
 unrivalled sea-trout fishing at the head of the loch, 
 where the tide runs into the river ; and the lower pools 
 of the Ernan are famed far and wide for salmon. 
 Where the hills have closed in on the level strath, the 
 Ernan winds along among the rocks and the birch- 
 woods, now tumbling over half-submerged shelves in 
 an infinity of white tiny cataracts now rushing along 
 in a narrowed bed in a succession of black, bubbling 
 swirls now eddying fretfully under the bank, beneath 
 the overhanging roots and the heather. It is no easy 
 matter to make a cast in some of these pools, where 
 you have to balance yourself in fishing-boots on a 
 slippery shelf, with the branches of the trees behind 
 bending down over your shoulder ; and you dare not 
 cut them away, for fear of the salmon resenting it. 
 But the laird handles his heavy rod in these circum- 
 stances as if he had been born and bred up to the 
 calling of an acrobat : he casts a long line out under- 
 hand, with the skill that has been born of much 
 experience ; and the sober-coloured fly is pitched, 
 with miraculous dexterity, right into the very ripple 
 it is meant for. But when the fish does come at it 
 with a resolute rush, and the long line runs out with 
 a rattle, the situation of the angler may be critical, 
 not to say positively perilous. Fighting every yard 
 
A HIGHLAND LAIRD 39 
 
 of the water on a system of tactics that changes with 
 the necessities of the case, it is a question when to 
 humour the salmon, when to force him, and when to 
 head him up the stream by dint of firm persuasion. 
 Instinct suggests the most dangerous dodges to him, 
 and he seems to be thoroughly aware how awkwardly 
 his enemy is hampered. " Show him the butt " may 
 be an excellent maxim ; but how are you to do it 
 when you are doubled up among the trees, with the top 
 of the rod rustling against the branches ? He makes 
 a dash straight for the sea, as if he had no idea of 
 stopping till he got there ; and if you are too brusque 
 in your hints that he had better not hurry, it is a 
 sovereign to a shilling that something gives way with 
 you. He is doing everything he knows to test the 
 soundness of your tackle, if he is foiled in that 
 determined rush. He is winding the line about among 
 the stones, grazing it against their sharp edges, or else 
 he is down with his nose in the gravel, grinding at the 
 hook for dear life. Possibly he takes to sulking a 
 sore trial to the temper when he absolutely declines to 
 pay any attention to the stones that are hailed down in 
 his direction. And it is worse still when he will insist 
 upon your following him, although the track along the 
 banks is well-nigh impracticable, even when the scrambler 
 has both hands at his disposal. But the trials and 
 anxieties increase the value of the triumph, when at 
 last he begins to own himself beaten, and when you 
 can see the scales of silver glancing to the light as 
 you guide him gently within reach of the gaff. Not 
 
40 A HIGHLAND LAIRD 
 
 a pennyweight less than sixteen pounds, in prime con- 
 dition, clean run from the sea, and covered still with 
 the sea-lice he has brought with him. A fish like that 
 deserves a dram ; and the laird takes a hearty pull at 
 his flask before passing it on to his gillie. Nor has he 
 seen the last of him, as he is happy to think, when the 
 salmon is sent promptly off to the kitchen ; and the 
 well-spread table of a well-conducted Highland mansion 
 is far from being one of its least agreeable features. 
 The cook is something of a cordon bleu> and never at a 
 loss for materials. What haunches and necks of hill- 
 flavoured venison ! and to our mind, the red deer, with 
 the sauce of a Highland appetite, is no whit inferior to 
 the park-fed fallow deer. At all events, there is no 
 saying a word in detraction of the saddles and cutlets 
 of the mountain mutton. We have adverted already 
 to the tureens of hare-soup, that should be delicately 
 flavoured with port or Madeira ; and then there are 
 the grouse of the season, that have just been sufficiently 
 hung, without sacrificing the piquancy of the bitter of 
 the backs grouse en salmi, and in pies, and split and 
 " brandered " ; the woodcocks fat as butter, with their 
 melting trails ; the black-game, that make an agreeable 
 variety ; the snipe and the ducks ; the salmon, served 
 in the sublime simplicity of the water that boiled him, 
 and in cutlets, and in curry, and in kipper ; the pink- 
 coloured sea-trout and the white little burn-trout by no 
 means bad in their way as a pis aller for breakfast ; 
 herrings from the loch, delicate as those of Loch Fyne ; 
 and fresh haddocks from the neighbouring ocean that 
 
A HIGHLAND LAIRD 41 
 
 might hold their own with those of Dublin Bay. Con- 
 sidering that the laird has an excellent cellar, and that 
 the family has always prided itself on its claret in 
 especial, since his grandsire and forebears were in the 
 habit of smuggling it, it must be owned that a man 
 might find worse quarters, although Lochlyle may be 
 scarcely a paradise, so far as its climate is concerned. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 An English Squire 
 
 T)ERHAPS the Highlands have most fascination for 
 * a man with a dash of the adventurer in him, who 
 is hard and sound in mind and body ; who loves to 
 brace his sinews in exposure and with severe exercise ; 
 who does not object to an occasional touch of hardship ; 
 who can make himself happy among well-chosen books 
 as the companions of his leisure hours, when he is not 
 living in a house that is filled with congenial company. 
 But there is much to be said, on the other hand, for the 
 life of the English squire. It is true that, so far from 
 being monarch of all he surveys, and a good deal more, 
 he is rather " crowded up," as the Yankees would say. 
 The lands of his neighbours cut here and there into his 
 own ; and when he flushes birds upon farms not very 
 far from his house, they are apt to drop beyond his 
 boundaries. But then he has plenty of pleasant society 
 in a neighbourhood that is full of quiet, domestic 
 beauties, if it has not the grandeur of the shores of 
 Lochlyle. The hall may stand a trifle low. Those 
 
AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 43 
 
 who built the oldest part of it, in the days of the 
 Tudors, had a habit of coming down like rats to the 
 water. But the suspicion of damp that hangs about 
 the little river and the lake fosters timber and shrub- 
 beries into the richer luxuriance, and gives a brilliant 
 freshness to the grass and the foliage. The house is 
 a long and rather rambling building, where you have 
 never far to mount to your room, though you may 
 have a long way to walk along the corridors and up 
 the quaint oak staircases ; and the mullioned windows, 
 with their lozenged lattices, are embowered in their 
 masses of roses and creepers. The doors open on a 
 broad terrace looking over the velvet lawns and varie- 
 gated flower-beds to the undulations of the beautifully 
 timbered park, that seems to shade away imperceptibly 
 into the woodlands beyond. Scattered clumps of 
 venerable trees throw out their gnarled boughs over 
 great beds of bracken and bramble, where the fallow 
 deer stand buried to their heads and horns ; while 
 there are groups of cattle that are scarcely less orna- 
 mental. Everything bears evidence of careful over- 
 looking and liberal expenditure. The oaken fences of 
 the park are kept up to perfection ; and there is hardly 
 a weed or a rut on the broad gravel drives, which pro- 
 vide easy and well-paid employment for half the old 
 people in the village. The village itself is a show one. 
 A low-aisled Norman church, with ivy-grown tower 
 and moss-covered lich-gate, and superannuated yews 
 all rent and torn by time, scattered about among the 
 simple tombstones ; a rectory half hidden out of sight 
 
44 AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 
 
 among great shrubberies of laurel ; quaint-gabled 
 cottages in blooming gardens cottages that are either 
 as old as they seem or else admirable modern imita- 
 tions ; an old-fashioned inn, with a great bow-window 
 and a broad gravelled space before the door, where 
 the sign is swinging from an overshadowing elm 
 tree ; and better than all, a general look of content- 
 ment and cheerful comfort, which tells of confidence 
 in kindly friends and happy relations with generous 
 landlords. 
 
 The estate is a model of good English farming of 
 the olden time, with just so many modern improve- 
 ments introduced as may be compatible with preserving 
 its picturesque appearance. Farm houses with spacious 
 kitchens, and with sumptuous parlours that are only 
 used upon state occasions; rambling steadings round 
 great straw-yards, where the cattle are ruminating up 
 to their bellies in litter, and where pigs, constrained to 
 cleanliness in spite of themselves, are grunting and 
 gorging themselves in supreme felicity ; a shady horse- 
 pond well stocked with ducks and geese, flocks of fat 
 poultry picking up a leisurely living among the wheat- 
 stacks, and flights of pigeons cooing on the tiles. 
 There has been little grubbing of hedgerows or 
 straightening of roads. The lanes meander about 
 among thorn-bushes, matted with the wild clematis 
 and overgrown with the wild hop and honeysuckle. 
 There is turf enough between the hedges and the cart- 
 way to pasture the horses of whole caravans of tramps 
 and gipsies ; and, in fact, you may often see them 
 
AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 45 
 
 hobbled there, while the kettles are slung before the 
 tents in some nook out of the wind or the sunshine. 
 The fields are cut up in all manner of waving lines 
 and fantastic patterns, by copses and hangers and out- 
 lying spinneys, linked together by lines of trees growing 
 out of the straggling hedges. It is scarcely what you 
 would call a partridge country. There is more grass 
 than wheat ; and the root-crops on the higher lands, 
 especially in a dry season, would seem mere spectres of 
 profitable cultivation to a gentleman who farms in the 
 Lothians. With so much that is primitive, even in the 
 way of woods and furze and hedgerows, it is impossible 
 to lay your hand on the birds at the precise moment 
 you are looking for them ; and when you do find them 
 it is long odds that you fail to mark them in their 
 longer flights. Yet they are there in plenty, as you 
 may be very sure ; for there are a wealth of breeding- 
 places, and endless corners where they can bask, and 
 delightfully dry elevations where they can take refuge 
 from the rains in the spring. The fields are carefully 
 bushed as you may see, and there is an ample strength 
 of keepers ; though the villagers, who have lived like 
 their fathers on the estate, are but little addicted to 
 poaching. 
 
 But the feature in such a south-country shooting is 
 the pheasants ; and the land looks as if it had been laid 
 out with a special eye to their delectation. Till they 
 come to a sudden and violent death, the wild broods 
 have pleasant times of it, with the dense undergrowth 
 of bramble, where nothing but a fox or some prowler 
 
46 AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 
 
 of the weasel species can make its way ; with the gorse 
 covers where the foxes are carefully preserved, in the 
 hope that they may stick pretty much to the rabbits ; 
 with the great patches of bracken in the park and 
 along the lanes ; with the long, dry, grassy-covered 
 ways, that run under the roots of the hedges. And 
 then the numbers that are brought up under fowls. 
 The head-keeper is hand-in-glove with the farmers, 
 and their good-wives are always willing and eager to 
 supply him with sitting-hens. Spring after spring he 
 shifts his breeding-ground, but it is always on some 
 sunny, sheltered aspect in the immediate neighbourhood 
 of his cottage and the kennels. There the long lines of 
 coops are set out in the rank grass that is carefully 
 mown immediately in front of them ; and he or one of 
 his subordinates is always on sentry duty to guard 
 against the descent of hawks or jackdaws. How he 
 has gone questing about in search of the early eggs 
 before the voracious rooks and magpies have had time 
 to anticipate him ! What a pretty sight it is, when the 
 young ones are hatched and come running out of the 
 grass to his call ! And later, before the first of 
 October, when their plumage is in its bloom, and they 
 begin to take a conscious pride in it, how ornamental 
 they are in the stubbles and on the cover-side ! How 
 he can reconcile it to his feelings to see these pets of 
 his shot down is a question between himself and his 
 conscience on the same principle, we suppose, as the 
 motherly poultry-woman cherishes her ducklings to 
 come in with the peas. But it is certain that there is a 
 
AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 47 
 
 great charm in pheasant-shooting, however one may 
 abuse the battues^ for which we have no great love our- 
 selves. There are few things pleasanter on a fresh 
 autumn day, when the foliage has been thinned by rain, 
 and the frosts have opened daylight through the 
 broken-down undergrowth, and when the leaves that 
 are still hanging on the trees are glowing in their 
 gorgeous autumnal tints. Nor can anything be more 
 lively than working quietly behind a couple or so of 
 spaniels, when they are forcing the wandering birds out 
 of the hedges and running them through the outlying 
 covers. 
 
 Rabbits may be a curse to the farmer when they 
 are suffered to breed to excess, but we know no better 
 fun than rabbit-shooting, over spaniels or terriers. So 
 the squire thinks, who lets his land at easy rents to 
 the tenants, making no secret of his tastes, and is 
 liberal in distributing what he kills among the farmers 
 and the poor people in his cottages. And when a 
 frost in the winter keeps the hounds at home, he is 
 often to be seen, with keepers and ferrets, a terrier or 
 two, and a retriever, bending his steps towards some 
 well-known burrow. Many of the gravelly banks 
 that enclose his plantations are mined and counter- 
 mined in all directions. The difficulty is to persuade 
 the rabbits to bolt, when they have so many oppor- 
 tunities of dodging their pursuers. But a couple of 
 ferrets or more are put in, at the risk of having the 
 rabbit taken in front and flank, and compelled to 
 succumb to the blood-suckers below ground. You 
 
48 AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 
 
 hear a subterraneous rumbling and rattling and scramb- 
 ling that now seems to draw near the mouth of some 
 hole, and the next moment rapidly recedes from it. 
 At last the persecuted victim takes heart of grace, and 
 shoots out of some unsuspected bolting-hole, altogether 
 hidden among the grass and the fallen leaves. The 
 terriers who have been watching for him with cocked 
 ears, cannon up against each other in their eager rush, 
 and you have to shoot clear of them, and shoot 
 quickly, before the nimble game disappears under 
 some convenient branches. There is an extreme 
 satisfaction in a rabbit rolled over by a clean shot, 
 more especially when his impetus has carried him out 
 of sight, and you are at a loss to know whether you 
 have killed or missed him. In the open park the 
 sport is comparatively simple. The rabbits burrow 
 in the mounds of turf under the roots of the venerable 
 thorns ; while on occasion they even scramble up the 
 hollow trunks, and come tumbling out of unsuspected 
 orifices on high, to the extreme astonishment and 
 disgust of the jackdaws. 
 
 Whatever our individual opinion may be, it is 
 certain the squire would never hesitate between his 
 English home and a principality in the Highlands. 
 His heart may be in the Highlands, among the deer 
 in the season, and possibly his person too ; but if he 
 were sent to the Highlands to settle he would have 
 to leave his horses behind him to begin with. Except 
 a pair for his lady's carriage, and the serviceable beast 
 he drives in his dogcart, the laird keeps nothing but 
 
AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 49 
 
 the " shelties " that run loose in his " parks," and 
 bear him out to his remoter beats, or bring home 
 his deer or the heavy game-hampers. The squire's 
 stables, so far as they go, are among the most complete 
 in the county, and the horses that fill their stalls are 
 as the very apples of his eyes. He does not live 
 in the " shires," as may be surmised from our descrip- 
 tions of the scenery. He does not profess to have 
 an interminable string, the half of them on the sick- 
 list or eating their heads off, so that he may hunt 
 himself with second horses five days in the week, allow 
 for casualties and the caprices of a stud-groom, and 
 mount a friend or two on occasion. But the best 
 part of his neighbourhood may be described as "a 
 fair hunting country," though it is a trifle cramped 
 about his own domains ; and he takes care to mount 
 himself that he may be carried comfortably with a 
 stone or a couple of stones to spare, though prices 
 are high enough in any case, and go up in arithmetical 
 progression for every pound above a certain point. 
 He does a little in the breeding way himself. One 
 of his largest tenants is regularly in that line of 
 business ; and more than one dealer makes a point 
 of breaking his journey at the neighbouring inn on 
 his way homewards from Horncastle or elsewhere. 
 There are worse places to smoke a cigar in of a 
 winter morning, when the hounds are frozen up hard 
 and fast in their kennels, than the warmed and well- 
 ventilated seven-stall stable, when the old head-groom 
 goes stripping the clothing, passing his hand along 
 
 5 
 
50 AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 
 
 the muscular thighs and hocks, the well-ribbed-up 
 barrels, and the powerful loins and quarters. The 
 squire has seldom to pay excessive prices for his 
 horses, considering their looks, because, rather than 
 not, he would have something that wants riding ; but 
 with his light hand and firm yet flexible seat, they 
 soon fall into his ways, and seldom dream of refusing. 
 If there is a fault in his style of going, it is that he 
 goes a trifle too straight, and takes it out of the 
 animals he rides instead of trying to save them. 
 Enthusiastic pheasant-preserver as he is, Gorhambury 
 Gorse and the Hazeldean woods are among the surest 
 draws in the country, and the squire's well-deserved 
 reputation for hospitality makes his mansion one of 
 the most popular meets. Then the grand entrance- 
 hall, the great dining-room, and the breakfast-room, 
 are all laid out with tables en suite^ and every one 
 with the slightest pretensions to admission is made 
 welcome to cut and come again among the viands 
 that load the side-tables and buffets. Then the home- 
 brewed, that reminds one of Trinity audit, is broached 
 for those who are kicking their heels outside, and the 
 gardener must endure as best he may the inroads that 
 are made on his turf and his shrubberies. There is 
 nothing that borders on the riotous or boisterous, for 
 with all his hospitality and frank good -humour, the 
 squire has a strong sense of decorum ; yet nothing 
 can be more jovial than the mixed multitude that 
 files off at the tail of the pack when it follows the 
 huntsmen to the nearest fox-cover. 
 
MHUHIiBt 
 
AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 51 
 
 The taste for horseflesh has been in the family for 
 generations. Our friend's grandfather was a famous 
 gentleman-whip in the days of the Regency ; and the 
 walls of the billiard and smoking rooms are hung at 
 this present moment with a variety of portraits of 
 himself and his horses. In drab driving-coat, curl- 
 brimmed hat, and belcher scarf, he is springing his 
 team of bays over Five Mile Bottom ; he is doing 
 the Park behind Trojan and Traveller, the grey and 
 the chesnut, in his mail phaeton ; he is sending along 
 Marigold, his wonderful trotting mare, in a cloud of 
 dust before a mob of spectators, from a perch between 
 a pair of gigantic yellow wheels. That light of old 
 coaching-days, as well as his son who came after him, 
 used to help to horse the Highflyer, and drive it too. 
 Eheit) fugaces ! these times are gone. The great 
 posting-house of the u Wheatsheaf," half a mile from 
 the lodge gates, where a dozen of coaches used to 
 change horses daily, and which had stabling for a 
 hundred pair and more, has been tenanted for long 
 by an ordinary farmer, and the racks and mangers 
 have gone to wreck and ruin. The surrounding 
 agriculturists have to consign to more distant markets 
 the oats they used to shoot into its well-stored bins, 
 and the hay that was weekly delivered by the waggon- 
 load. But the present man does something to keep 
 up the family tradition. When he takes his carriage- 
 horses to town, connoisseurs will still turn to look at 
 them. His park hack is a model of symmetry, and 
 cost him considerably more than the best of his weight- 
 
52 AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 
 
 carriers ; while necessarily he is an eminent member 
 of the coaching club, and the critics are hard put to 
 it when they set to picking faults in his turn-out. 
 Consequently there is always something worth looking 
 at in his paddocks ; and nothing can be prettier in 
 the way of pets than the colts and the fillies of 
 illustrious race that come whinnying at their master's 
 heels, seeking to rub their silken muzzles on his 
 shoulder, and hunting after apples or sugar in the 
 broad pockets of his shooting-coat. 
 
 Except, perhaps, the occupants of the kennels. At 
 the hall they still shoot over dogs, for the country 
 is little adapted to walking in line. And the squire's 
 setters are so many pictures. What action they show 
 when you see them out ! what dash and fire, and yet 
 what perfect training ! They are rather dearer to the 
 keeper than his own children, and yet he is a most 
 affectionate parent. Broken by gentleness and not 
 brutality, in their wildest swing they always keep their 
 eye on their master, answering to the slightest wave 
 of his hand. " Handsome is as handsome does " ; but 
 their steadiness and splendid action are as admirable as 
 their animated eyes and silken coats, their sinewy loins 
 and feathering sterns. Then there are the Sussex 
 spaniels, that make such merry melody after the 
 pheasants and rabbits ; and the lively little terriers, 
 with their prick ears and game limp ; and, last but 
 not least, the curly retrievers, with a staid demeanour 
 beyond their years, and a world of sagacity in their 
 thoughtful faqes. And everybody and everything about 
 
AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 53 
 
 the place farmers and cottagers ; servants, from the 
 bailiff, the forester, and the chief butler, down to the 
 smallest helper in the stable-yard ; horses and dogs, 
 pigeons and ornamental water-fowl are all devoted 
 to the master ; so if his lot is not an enviable one, 
 we should like to know a lot that is. 
 
 But after all, and without so many worldly advant- 
 ages, there are others of our country acquaintances who 
 are at least as happy as either the squire or the laird. 
 The rector, for instance, who holds the lucrative little 
 family living, and ministers to the spiritual and temporal 
 wants of a small and scattered population, who have 
 known him and whom he has known from his childhood. 
 He discourses to them out of the pulpit with an inti- 
 mate personal knowledge of their necessities. In time 
 of health, as in seasons of sickness, he has always a warm 
 greeting everywhere. If there is a bit of a tift in 
 a family, or a difference between master and servants, 
 it is the parson who, of course, is called in to settle 
 matters ; and if all the parishes were ministered to like 
 his, the lawyers might starve for lack of litigation. Off 
 go the hats in the length of the village street when the 
 broad-brimmed, black wideawake and the pepper-and- 
 salt suit are seen coming down the causeway. The 
 women are bobbing and ducking in their doors, in- 
 wardly hoping that the rector may turn aside to them ; 
 and the children are for ever getting in his way, looking 
 out for a kindly word or a caress. The young men 
 regard him with mingled love and veneration, for there 
 is not a bat among them that can hold its own against 
 
54 AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 
 
 his round-hand bowling ; and when his eye is in, and 
 he takes to judgmatical cutting and driving, he teaches 
 the panting field the secret of perpetual motion. He 
 is not only the leading member of the club, but its very 
 generous patron, though his kinsman, the squire, is 
 hereditary president. He is the life and soul of the 
 cricketing suppers and the other entertainments he gets 
 up for those who do not care for the willow. He would 
 be the last to rob a poor man of his beer, and is on the 
 best of terms with the village landlord, though he sets 
 his face against anything like excess, and takes care 
 that the merriment of these social meetings shall never 
 degenerate into anything unseemly. He used to shoot 
 at one time, but he has given it up ; and now he con- 
 tents himself with the fishing, to which he is devoutly 
 attached. Not a man in his own or the adjoining 
 parishes can come near him in the delicate skill with 
 which he lures the wary fish out of these still and 
 pellucid waters. But with all his healthy activity and 
 delight in the open air, not the least pleasant of his 
 hours are those he passes in his library. The little 
 room with the great bay-window looking out on the 
 brilliant flower-beds is a marvel of quiet literary luxury, 
 with the well-chosen volumes assorted in the cases and 
 the periodicals and journals that litter the tables. For 
 the rector was a scholar, and took creditable honours, 
 in spite of an early attachment to the cricket-field ; and 
 he was a Fellow of a distinguished college to boot 
 before he was fortunate enough to fall in with his wife. 
 Simply eloquent and pointed as his sermons are, it is 
 
AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 55 
 
 only as matter of good sense that he does not make 
 them more learned and more elaborately ornate. For 
 when he takes pen in hand to address himself to a 
 cultivated circle in the pages of one of the leading 
 quarterlies or monthlies, it travels over the pages in 
 a rush of inspiration, and wins him admiration from 
 the most fastidious critics. It only rests with himself 
 to remove to more sensational spheres of usefulness ; 
 nor is there any reason, with his piety and his gifts, his 
 manners and his excellent family connections, why he 
 should not legitimately aspire to the highest places 
 in the Church. But he has the sense to know when 
 he is happy and serviceable, and is very reluctant to 
 change. In all human probability he will live and die 
 in the parish he was born in, and be gathered peacefully 
 to his fathers in the family burying-ground under the 
 aged yew tree at the end of the chancel. 
 
 Nor may the life of a well-to-do farmer be less 
 desirable in its way, allowing for differences in edu- 
 cation and station. Cares and anxieties he has, of 
 course, but, as we observed already, he comes to carry 
 them lightly ; for if he sits at a reasonable rent, has 
 a snug sum put away in some safe investment, and 
 has credit or a floating balance at the county bank, 
 experience tells him that things will come right in the 
 end, on the average of a succession of fluctuating 
 seasons. Early to bed and early to rise, eating largely, 
 and knowing nothing of nerves or digestion, passing 
 the livelong day in the open air among the up-turned 
 furrows and breezy fallows, his health is robust and 
 
56 AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 
 
 his spirits equable. Unless matters go very badly 
 indeed, he acquires a happy knack of regarding 
 everything as all for the best. If the rain does 
 harm to the hay, it is just what he wants for the 
 roots or the shooting corn-crops ; and if prolonged 
 drought is parching his herbage and forcing him to 
 make premature inroads on his hayricks, at least it is 
 ripening the wheat in perfection. If the length and 
 the breadth of the islands were before us to choose, 
 we scarcely know where we should prefer to farm. 
 Though the weight of the winter snowdrifts might 
 lie somewhat heavy on our mind, we fancy we 
 might be happy as a Dandie Dinmont in the dales 
 of the Scotch border or among the moorlands on 
 the Cheviots. We can imagine the pleasure of the 
 early walk among our flocks over the grassy hills 
 or the heathery uplands, with the silence only broken 
 by the bleating of sheep, the whistle of the plover, or 
 the cry of the curlew. We can conceive the intense 
 excitement of lambing-time, when hopes are blossoming 
 into fruition, and the young ones are dropping into the 
 folds by pairs ; the lively scenes of the washing and 
 shearing ; the drafting off the surplus stock for despatch 
 to the Falkirk Tryst or some other of the markets. 
 But then for a skilled and scientific agriculturist, whose 
 soul is in his pursuits, we know there can be nothing 
 like a great farm in the fertile Lothians or the Carse of 
 Gowrie, lying round its superb steading. Everything 
 that can be done is done by steam-power ; everything is 
 ingeniously made the most of; the latest discoveries in 
 
AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 57 
 
 agricultural chemistry have been pressed into the 
 capitalist's service ; and in the course of a walk over 
 his ground you may study the best and most practical 
 of modern mechanical inventions. Yet the introduction 
 of steam would not seem to have materially reduced the 
 number of hands in the farmer's employment, nor those 
 teams of sleek and powerful horses whose work appears 
 to agree with them so well, But steam and skill and 
 science have conspired to bring the land to the highest 
 pitch of cultivation ; the waving fields of golden grain 
 are a sight to gladden the eye and heart, as is the straw 
 in the bulging stack-yard, when the best of them have 
 been cut and carried ; and as for the turnips and 
 mangels, as compared to what you see in the southern 
 counties, they are as Indian jungle to an English 
 pheasant-cover. Notwithstanding which, in point of 
 picturesqueness and climate, and cheery surroundings, a 
 man of aesthetic temperament might not unnaturally 
 prefer the south ; but as we have already passed some 
 time there with the parson and the squire, we must not 
 go back on a visit to the farmers. 
 
 Nor, after all we have been saying of farming and 
 shooting, do we care to loiter among shepherds and 
 keepers. Yet the men who have betaken themselves 
 to such healthy occupations are much to be envied, 
 since their tastes and the manner of their bringing up 
 has kept them below disturbing ambitions. Contrast 
 their happy circumstances with those of the most highly 
 paid labourers and mechanics the colliers who may be 
 in the habit of working all day and sleeping all night ; 
 
58 AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 
 
 who seldom except of a Sunday have a look at the 
 noonday sun ; with their chances of being crushed, or 
 imprisoned alive, or scorched and stifled in an explosion of 
 choke-damp, and the certainty of having to breathe in 
 foul air at a suffocating temperature, while hewing and 
 picking with unnatural contortions. Or with the fate 
 of the Sheffield cutler, or the Manchester cotton-spinner, 
 or the Spitalfields silk-weaver ; or even with that of the 
 men whose occupations are not absolutely unhealthy, 
 but who have to huddle up their families in a small 
 room or two in some crowded court, and who are 
 almost driven to drink as an antidote to the noxious 
 atmosphere. If the keeper does not live near the black 
 countries or some great manufacturing town, where the 
 poachers go abroad in gangs and do not shrink from 
 bloodshed on occasion, the worst hardship he has to put 
 up with is a healthy midnight walk to see that all is 
 right in the covers, with the possibility, perhaps, of a 
 chase and a round at single-stick should he chance to 
 come across some trespasser. He is paid for taking the 
 pleasures that cost his employer dear, and on the whole 
 he has a greater variety of amusement. For he rarely 
 goes on his rounds without his gun, ready to knock 
 over a hawk, or a magpie, or a hooded crow, or to 
 take a snap-shot at a stoat or a weasel. He has never 
 been taught that trapping may be cruel, and we are 
 sorry to think it would be next to impossible to 
 persuade him of it ; and, cruelty apart, it must be 
 confessed that there is a good deal of interest in 
 circumventing the different wild animals, whose in- 
 
AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 59 
 
 stincts make them portentously distrustful. As for 
 the mountain shepherd, his avocation is as innocent as 
 poetic ; and the morbidly sentimental Cockneys who set 
 their faces against all manner of field-sports, can have 
 nothing in the world to say against him. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 A Kentish Parish 
 
 YV7HAT an infinite variety of pictures may be 
 suggested by a single word ! A parish may 
 lie anywhere between Cape Wrath and Beachy Head, 
 the Land's End and the lights of Cromer. It may be 
 wild moorland, and forty miles long, with a cottage 
 kirk a world too wide for a scattered congregation 
 of shepherds and keepers. It may be bleak corn- 
 land, painfully reclaimed from a shivering waste of 
 dreary peat-bogs, where the farm-steadings, though 
 substantial, are all built for use, and the nearest 
 approach to ornamental landscape-gardening is the 
 belt of firs or the clump of " bourtree " bushes. It 
 may embrace a smiling strath in the Lowlands, or a 
 range of rich green hills on the Border, watered by a 
 thousand streams and rills, and peopled in each lap of 
 the landscape by its bleating flocks. It may be over- 
 crowded with grimy colliers, who have honeycombed it 
 with their mines and defaced its natural beauties with 
 the smokes of their countless fires, It may be in the 
 soft green Midlands, where the broad stretches of 
 
A KENTISH PARISH 61 
 
 pasture, shut in by their ox-fences and blind bull- 
 finches, are associated with fields of magnificently- 
 mounted men following the streaming pack at flying 
 speed ; where each cover and gorse thicket may have 
 its litter of foxes, and every mansion of any pretension 
 its grand ranges of hunting stables. It may lie among 
 the wheat-stubbles and mangel-wurzels of the eastern 
 counties, where countless coveys are basking on the 
 sunny banks, and each corner of wood and spinney in 
 the season sends up its constellation of rocketing 
 pheasants ; or it may be down among the meres and 
 decoys of the fens, where fogs envelop everything in a 
 vapoury mantle, and the amphibious inhabitants are 
 happily half fever-proof. Or among the tors and 
 moors of Devon, where herds of shaggy ponies run 
 wild with the sheep and the red deer ; or among the 
 rocks and blasted heaths of Cornwall, where one half 
 the parishioners hazard their lives underground, while 
 the other half are tempting Providence on the surges 
 of the tempest-driven ocean. It may be half hidden out 
 of sight in woodlands and hedgerow timber, with lanes 
 winding like covered ways under masses of impenetrable 
 foliage ; or it may be a wide expanse of featureless plain, 
 the horror of mountaineers and the paradise of coursers. 
 Or if you turn from the country to the town, the 
 fancy takes a fresh departure. Man and his handiwork 
 have come to the front, and nature is only existing on 
 sufferance. Here you have forests of masts, and there 
 you have stacks of factory-chimneys. There are great 
 blocks of warehouses and offices where there is bustle 
 
62 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 through the day, and silent solitude in the night-time ; 
 fashionable quarters frequented by the wealthiest 
 aristocracy in the world, that are as gay in the season 
 as they are depressing out of it ; modern suburbs, with 
 their flimsy villas ; rookeries where the morals and 
 misery of the wretched inmates sadden the souls of 
 hard-working curates ; river-side districts where dock- 
 labourers, watermen, and water-thieves are lounging 
 loosely by dozens about the doors of the public-houses ; 
 cathedral towns, where luxurious orthodoxy reposes in 
 cloistered shades among the lawns and gardens of the 
 close ; county towns, where the purity of the peaceful 
 streets is only soiled by the invasion of agriculturists on 
 the market-day ; watering-places, where the flower of 
 the incumbent's flock is here to-day and gone to- 
 morrow. In short, the sketches of types might be 
 multiplied indefinitely were we to set memory and 
 imagination to work instead of dashing off these random 
 suggestions ; and there is scarcely a parish where the 
 story would not be worth the sketching, however un- 
 assuming the pretensions of the artist. 
 
 But we flatter ourselves that this particular parish 
 in Kent is decidedly more characteristic than the 
 average, not merely because it is not swamped in any 
 speciality, but because it numbers amongst its residents 
 people of many sorts. It can boast neither of mines 
 nor manufactures, and it is miles away from the sea, 
 though within scent of the briny breezes. It is 
 thoroughly rural, though within reach of the town, 
 and not only of a town, but of the city of London. 
 
A KENTISH PARISH 63 
 
 So that its population is getting to be somewhat mixed, 
 and yet in its outlying nooks and corners there are 
 worthies who go jogging from the cradle to the grave, 
 just as their fathers and their grandfathers did before 
 them. Oakenhurst is scarcely more than a score of 
 miles, as the crow flies, from London Stone or St. 
 Paul's Churchyard ; occasionally we come within the 
 radius of the city smoke, though far more often we 
 are fanned by those Channel breezes ; and forty years 
 ago, to all intents and purposes, it must have been 
 well-nigh as much out of the world as if it had lain in 
 the Cumberland dales or down in the fen country. A 
 venerable gentleman of fine though decayed physique, 
 who is now laid up in lavender in the almshouses, will 
 babble to you by the hour, if you will only listen, of 
 the days when he used to work the Pig -and Whistle. 
 Of course there were no railways in those good old 
 times even now they come no nearer than four miles 
 on the one side and half a dozen on the other and his 
 Pig and Whistle maintained communications with the 
 coaches at the great posting-station of Lowbeech. But 
 at Lowbeech your Highflyers, Comets, and Eclipses 
 never condescended to pick up casual passengers, being 
 invariably filled outside and in. And accommodation, 
 even in the heavy coaches, was always precarious, so 
 that it was altogether a toss-up how or when the towns- 
 folk of Oakenhurst were forwarded to the metropolis. 
 Thus, as the journey was an affair of doubt and time, 
 most of them wisely stuck to their homes, transacting 
 their business by post or carrier. As for the gentry, 
 
64 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 of course they drove up in their own carriages, baiting 
 half-way at the " Bull " at Brackenbury. The " Red 
 Lion " at Oakenhurst, and the " Godwin Arms " did 
 but an insignificant business in post-chaises ; but post- 
 chaises were always to be had in profusion at the 
 famous establishment of the " Hop Pole " at Low- 
 beech, where the sixty coaches changed horses in the 
 twenty-four hours, and relays of postilions were per- 
 petually on duty. The " Red Lion " and the 
 <c Godwin Arms " had tolerably lively times on the 
 market-days, when the farmers were talking hops or 
 wheat while their good wives were laying in haber- 
 dashery or groceries. Otherwise the place must have 
 stagnated in a comfortable sort of fashion. Most men 
 managed to pay their way, and few cared to press a 
 neighbour ; indeed, where everybody was gossiping on 
 everybody's affairs, credit could rarely be granted 
 recklessly. And to say nothing of the neighbouring 
 squires, who made a point of dealing with the local 
 shopkeepers, the prosperous residents in certain solid 
 brick mansions set a good deal of money quietly in 
 circulation. Now the approach of the railways has 
 changed all that, without carrying the place off its legs 
 in a rush of traffic, and Oakenhurst, though it still 
 affects airs of prosperity, has rather been slipping 
 down between two stools. 
 
 Should it succeed in raising the requisite capital for 
 the branch line from Lowbeech which it has latterly 
 begun to sigh for, it is probable that there may be 
 brighter days in store for it. For the parish only needs 
 
A KENTISH PARISH 65 
 
 to be more accessible, and to become more generally 
 known, to be a favourite resort of jaded Londoners. 
 Nothing can possibly be more lovely than the rich 
 variety of its scenery ; and among its many attrac- 
 tions of hill and dale, park and farm-land, waste and 
 wood, the only thing that perhaps is lacking is water. 
 Not that it has not a river of its own, which rises in 
 the springs above the town ; but the Flete runs away 
 into the bottom of the Lowbeech valley, where its 
 infant water-power turns the wheels of some paper- 
 mills ; and elsewhere there is little but rush-grown 
 pools stagnating in hollows among the hanging woods. 
 Oakenhurst is but twenty miles from town, and yet 
 its landscapes are as wild, and its surface as broken, as 
 in ever a parish in the English lowlands. The land 
 is held on short leases ; nobody has any idea of high- 
 farming ; and it is but here and there that there are 
 fields flat enough or big enough to make it worth one's 
 while to employ the steam-plough. Generally speaking, 
 the enclosures follow the rolling outlines of a jumble of 
 bluffs and wooded eminences, running in and out of the 
 charts and copses, and cut up into the most irregular 
 and fantastic patterns. Never was such a country for 
 hedgerows. There are snaky, sinuous jungles of thorn 
 and ash, holly and hazel, interlaced with bramble of 
 the most luxuriant growth, and festooned with honey- 
 suckle, dog-roses, and briony. The birds build in 
 them by myriads, while rabbits and ground vermin 
 multiply among their roots. In many places, with 
 their natural chevaux de frise, they set the inroads of 
 
 6 
 
66 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 the most resolute bird-nesters at defiance ; and when 
 you are out with the gun you must make many a 
 tedious detour, since there is no struggling through 
 them save at the regular " gaps." And through these 
 labyrinths of savage shrubbery the narrow lanes wind 
 their tortuous courses, seldom seeming to trespass on 
 the continuity of a hedge, and never turning aside from 
 the steep of a hill. Now you are ascending a sharp, 
 gravelly incline that makes deadly wear and tear of 
 horse-flesh ; now you are descending the opposite slope, 
 where the most reckless expenditure of drags and sabots 
 scarcely suffices to lock the waggon-wheels. Every 
 here and there from some crest, if you are in luck, you 
 have a peep of some enchanting prospect from under 
 the boughs of the oaks or the beeches. Now on the 
 hill the drooping branches of the trees are brushing the 
 waggon-tilt on either side ; and then again in the flat 
 farm-land in the bottom, hedges and ditches run back 
 into the fields, leaving broad margins of rich green 
 sward, where caravans of gipsies picket their cattle in 
 plenty. 
 
 Then as to the timber. Oakenhurst is bounded on 
 the north by a bare ridge of chalk hills that ought to 
 be downs, but which, for the most part are cultivated. 
 It is to be hoped that the crops repay the farmers, but 
 it is certain that the oat-fields in their rankest luxuriance 
 give but scanty covert to the coveys of partridges ; 
 while the turnips are a trifle smaller than Portugal 
 onions, and the mangel are as moderate-sized garden 
 carrots. In the shelter of these chalk hills is a wooded 
 
A KENTISH PARISH 67 
 
 flat surrounding the little town ; to the south of the 
 town there rises abruptly a precipitous line of wooded 
 heights ; while away from these stretches the whole 
 width of the Weald, studded with the spires of 
 innumerable churches. Everywhere on the lower 
 ground, as on the lower slopes of each eminence, the 
 oaks are flourishing in all their grandeur ; the hedges 
 are full of them, as they throw their limbs across the 
 lanes, and cast the great breadth of their shadows far 
 into the neighbouring pastures ; while in the parks 
 that lie locked in the folds of the hills are stately clumps 
 of magnificent beeches. As for the numerous ridges, 
 when they are not crowned by the charts a purely 
 Kentish feature, of which we shall speak by and by 
 they are broken by black groups of Scotch firs, which 
 remind the traveller of Italian stone-pines. There are 
 dense thickets of spruce, straggling with their self-sown 
 seedlings into the skirts of the heather ; and each nook 
 of the fields and each dip of the ground is lined with 
 a copse or a matted spinney. Much of the wood is 
 regularly cut every seven years or so to serve for hop- 
 poles, wattles, and hurdles. The great knotted roots, 
 shooting out in a dozen or more of tapering saplings, 
 look as if they had held their own in the soil from time 
 immemorial. And each second spring after the 
 periodical cutting a flush of primroses covers the 
 ground, while legions of fairies might play hide-and- 
 seek in the beds of anemones, daffodils, and bluebells. 
 
 But although the sylvan scenery is as enchanting as 
 could be desired, with glades as tempting to dryads and 
 
68 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 fauns as those asphodel beds to English-bred fairies, 
 and groves of oak trees festooned in mistletoe, where 
 Druids might have celebrated their mystic rites, it is 
 the charts that are the speciality of the parish, and 
 indeed of that side of the county. The Kentish chart 
 is a thing per se ; it is something between the Highland 
 moor and the common, with a dash of such scenery 
 betwixt Highland and Lowland as you come upon in 
 the middle course of the Spey. Oakenhurst chart 
 forms a bare plateau on the brow of the southern range 
 of wooded hills ; but bare only in the single sense that, 
 looking up to it and across it, you see the daylight 
 lying lower there than everywhere else upon the sky- 
 line, between a broken and jagged palisade of firs. In 
 reality, although it stands high and exposed, though it 
 is swept by the winds from every quarter, it grows the 
 more hardy forms of vegetation in the very richest 
 luxuriance. The seedling firs are shooting up thickly 
 around its borders, growing sparser and still more 
 sparse as they push forward their unprotected outposts. 
 And in the midst there are sheets of the purple 
 heather, broken here and there by patches of bracken, 
 and by thickets of bramble that are loaded with black- 
 berries when the summer has been followed by a warm 
 autumn. 
 
 The chart is common land and public property, so 
 far as pasturing, fuel-cutting, and the other servitudes 
 are concerned ; though the lord of the manor has the 
 right of sport, with some minor privileges that are very 
 generally ignored. We presume that, properly speak- 
 
A KENTISH PARISH 69, 
 
 ing, nobody can have been entitled to settle there in 
 permanent habitation. But as matter of fact, around 
 its somewhat indefinite boundaries there are a variety 
 of singularly picturesque cottages, which must date 
 from a tolerably remote antiquity, notwithstanding 
 their rude and slight materials. The inmates have 
 comparatively easy times of it. They have their little 
 gardens and their beehives, and the bees that are 
 swarming among the foxgloves and heather bloom 
 make honey as fragrant as any from Hymettus. They 
 have the pigs they either feed on the refuse of their 
 vegetables or turn out to grub and forage for them- 
 selves should there be breaks in the fences of the 
 adjoining beech-woods ; and they may keep half a 
 dozen of sheep or a cow, which take the free run of 
 the common. They have their tiny orchards of apple 
 and plum trees that seem to have run half wild, though 
 they bear heavy crops all the same ; and these spots 
 that culture has reclaimed and embellished make a 
 pretty contrast to the savage surroundings. 
 
 Then in the middle of the chart there stands the 
 weather-beaten windmill with its skeleton arms or great 
 brown sails a conspicuous object from half a score of 
 the surrounding parishes ; and the miller's view must 
 be almost worth his rent if he chance to be an amateur 
 of the beauties of nature. Far away to the south 
 stretches the rolling expanse of the weald, till the eye, 
 as it travels in sky and space over the slopes swelling 
 against the horizon opposite, catches the faint outline of 
 the southernmost downs. And wherever the eye can 
 
;o A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 reach it embraces a natural garden, crowded with the 
 peaceful signs of a happy and prosperous population. 
 Through the green of the woods in the middle distance 
 rise the white cowls of the hop-kilns ; the wreaths and 
 threads of light-grey smoke are curling up from the 
 hamlets and scattered farmhouses. Here and there, 
 beneath a somewhat thicker cloud, you mark the roofs 
 and chimneys of a considerable village. On the highest 
 ground, far away to the left, are the glistening villas of 
 a fashionable watering-place ; and everywhere you dis- 
 tinguish more or less distinctly the spires or towers of 
 the parish churches. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 A Kentish Parish : Hop-gardens and Farming 
 
 UT what charms you the-most in the foreground are 
 the hop-gardens for, next to our charts, our hops 
 are our speciality ; in fact, it is only the dispassionate 
 admirer of the picturesque who would be disposed, as 
 we say in Scotland, " to even the one to the other." 
 Unfortunately the days are gone by when the hop-grower 
 could make a fortune. When a heavy import duty 
 gave the home counties and Worcestershire a monopoly 
 of this speculative crop, a single happy hit put the 
 grower in clover for some seasons. It was by no means 
 his best time when a generally good year had been 
 raising prices all round. On the contrary, he drew his 
 prizes in the lottery when his garden was the exception 
 to almost universal failure, and then he would make his 
 own terms with the brewer. But now the English hops 
 have gone the way of the English wheat, and free 
 admission from South Germany and America depresses 
 the prices to a moderate level. Moreover, we have heard 
 it whispered that the keenness of competition has made 
 the brewers less scrupulous, and when hops are dear 
 
72 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 they are said to balance their budgets by simply putting 
 a weaker infusion into their vats. Be that as it may, 
 and whatever be the position of the growers, the hops 
 are still the blessing of the gatherers. Go through a 
 Kentish parish in the hopping time, and the roads and 
 the dwellings are alike deserted. Each cottage door is 
 carefully secured, and neither for love nor money will 
 you find a soul to deliver a message or do an odd bit of 
 work. Every man, woman, and child, from failing age to 
 helpless infancy, is about and busy in the gardens. The 
 bedridden have to do the best they can ; and even the 
 dying, should they choose to be lingering perversely, 
 may be left to smooth their pillows for themselves. 
 Only the other day we heard a story very much to the 
 point. A friend's bailiff was riding quietly across the 
 chart, when he pulled up to a feeble appeal from a 
 solitary cottage. A poor woman had dragged herself 
 to the window, and was supporting herself with an 
 effort against the sill. She had known that morning 
 that she was on the eve of her confinement, but neither 
 relations nor friends could be prevailed upon to stay by 
 her ; and now, having been taken in labour for we 
 cannot say she was surprised she addressed herself to 
 the bailiff as a family man, and implored him in charity 
 to send some one to her assistance. Each family goes 
 forth with the infants packed in perambulators, and 
 gathers round its separate bin. The result of the day's 
 picking is weighed and paid for by the measure. For 
 once the smaller children in an overflowing household 
 are made profitable, since each may clear a couple of 
 
HOP-GARDENS AND FARMING 73 
 
 shillings a day. But it is not the profit alone that 
 makes the hopping so pleasant. The annual outing is 
 looked forward to as a holiday, and townsfolk and 
 tradesmen of comparatively good position are wending 
 their way to the gardens with the rest. Nothing can 
 be gayer than the scene when the sun is shining brightly. 
 Each bit of colour in the motley groups throws its 
 light on the landscape with telling effect. A mile away 
 you may hear the merry voices, for the tongues go even 
 faster than the fingers ; and the very babes, who are 
 laid out in shawls under the hedge, are clapping their 
 hands and crowing in chorus. 
 
 But though all the world turns out to the hopping, 
 and although our parish is more populous than most, 
 the supply of labour comes short of the demand for it. 
 Hence it is that in many a sheltered nook, where there 
 is wood and water, shade and sun, you stumble in 
 upon some gipsy-like encampment. Generally speaking, 
 though our visitors come from eastern London, they are 
 very decent people on the whole. Year after year they 
 return to the same employers to take up their quarters 
 on the familiar ground. Some amount of exposure they 
 must submit to, but there is little overcrowding, and few 
 temptations to immorality, as is too often the case else- 
 where. You may meet their messengers late of a 
 Saturday evening carrying home the provisions from 
 some village shop ; but it is probably a long walk to the 
 nearest public-house, so the people prefer to rest after 
 the toils of the day. Many of them take a pride, 
 besides, in encroaching on their wages as little as 
 
74 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 possible. They make their fire in the open, and boil 
 the kettle on the sticks they had gathered in the lanes 
 or dragged from the hedgerows and a cheery family 
 they seem as they gather round the common platter. 
 Their clothes may be ragged enough, and the hair of 
 the mother and her daughters is wofully unkempt ; but 
 it is pleasant to see the thin faces of the children filling 
 up and bronzing with their country outing. Indeed we 
 believe that, on the whole, these wandering hop-pickers 
 are a greatly maligned race. Last season, for example, 
 owing to miscalculations as to the opening time, the 
 South-Eastern Railway Company ran its Sunday hop- 
 ping-train a week too soon. For a whole week a body 
 of impecunious vagabonds and adventurers were loung- 
 ing about the streets of Maidstone, which is of course 
 one of the great capitals of the hop-districts. Yet there 
 were few complaints of their behaviour, and fewer 
 charges before the magistrates. 
 
 We said that aesthetic amateurs of nature might place 
 the charts before the hop-gardens, but on second 
 thoughts we are by no means sure of that. For there 
 is no more graceful climber than the hop ; though the 
 exuberant suckers may be nipped from the roots, other- 
 wise it is suffered to grow in untrained luxuriance ; and 
 then in admiring it you have the arriere pensfo that it is 
 not only ornamental but eminently useful. The very 
 scent of the hop is suggestive of mighty home-brewed, 
 and the invigorating pale ales of our skilled pro- 
 fessionals. The hop is a genuinely English plant, and it 
 is hard to say how much of our national glory and 
 
HOP-GARDENS AND FARMING 75 
 
 prosperity may be attributed to its successful cultivation. 
 It puzzles us to surmise how the sturdy heroes of the 
 Armada days and the Spanish and Low Country wars 
 fought so well as they did, considering that we are told 
 by the Rev. Mr. Harrington, who wrote his lively 
 memoirs in Queen Elizabeth's time, that England then 
 produced 25,000 tuns of wine annually and such wine 
 as it must have been ! And the choicest of these hop- 
 gardens are in the most enchanting situations, on the 
 steeps of hills, yet in the middle of woods that break 
 the winds which are so fatal to the bines. Often flinty, 
 the soil would seem unfit to grow even thistles ; and the 
 more laboriously it is tilled and manured the more do 
 the flints come to the surface. After all, however, that 
 is the less astonishing, since it is the same with some of 
 the rarest vineyards that yield the world-famed vintages 
 of the Gironde. And from these picturesque eminences, 
 looking down through the natural vistas, you get a series 
 of panoramic glimpses of the glories of the Weald 
 framed in a long succession of flowery archways, 
 
 But we have lingered long enough in the hop- 
 gardens, so by way of changing the scene we may take 
 a look at the cottages and farmhouses. If the farming 
 is picturesque, with the irregular fields and copsy hedge- 
 rows, with the crops of thistle and yellow ragweed, and 
 the ditches overgrown with grass and bindweed, so are 
 the farmhouses. They have nothing in common with 
 the bare, neat, substantial steading of stone and lime 
 that you see in the Carse of Gowrie or the north- 
 eastern Scotch counties. Almost invariably they are 
 
76 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 embowered in orchards, and unpleasantly buried among 
 venerable trees, if the tenants are at all susceptible to 
 damp. Wherever you can struggle out into the open 
 anywhere on the surrounding heights, you get a glimpse 
 of tall, angular stacks of chimneys of Elizabethan 
 character. Ten to one, it is not till you are turning 
 the corner of the nearest lane that you catch the 
 curving lines of the eccentric gables. The steep-pitched 
 roof is yielding under the weight of years, and possibly 
 of great masses of the ivy that clutches at the tiles with 
 its knotted fingers, and forces its tendrils through the 
 interstices to twine them round the rafters of the attics. 
 Where roof and walls are free from the parasite, they 
 are covered with a growth of mosses and lichens in 
 the most mellow tints of yellow and orange. The 
 upper half of the walls is in weather-tiling, the lower 
 is blackened brick that begins to shows signs of crumb- 
 ling. The glass in the lozenged casements dates from 
 days when the art of the manufacture was in its 
 infancy. You ascend to the entrance-door by a flight 
 of much-worn steps, to find yourself landed in a 
 spacious passage that very frequently is groined 
 and arched. To the right is the capacious kitchen, 
 with its whitewashed walls and vast cupboards, and 
 great smoked beams overhead. There is plenty of 
 room for an easy chair on either side of the dais in the 
 chimney-place ; you might roast a sheep, if not an ox, 
 at the logs that might be piled upon the old-fashioned 
 dogs ; and looking up past the flitches suspended in 
 the funnel-shaped opening, you may get a glimpse of 
 
HOP-GARDENS AND FARMING 77 
 
 the blue vault of heaven overhead, where the stars are 
 faintly sparkling at noonday. A door behind opens 
 into the dairy, with its fragrant odours of butter and 
 cream ; opposite is the living-room, so called, lucus a 
 non lucendo, because it is only occupied on state occa- 
 sions, when christenings, weddings, or funerals are 
 going forward. Another straight, easy flight of steps 
 slopes gently down to the cellar accommodation, where 
 hogsheads of home-brewed may be stowed away by the 
 score ; and it is not impossible that the staircase which 
 leads to the upper storeys may be an absolute master- 
 piece of quaintly-carved oak. Indeed, not a few of 
 these farms have been manor-houses in their time ; and 
 even on those that never had loftier pretensions than at 
 present, you read dates that carry them back to the 
 civil wars, or possibly to the times of the Tudors. 
 
 Without, there is an air of ease and plenty, although 
 sometimes, on more narrow inspection, it proves falla- 
 cious. But usually there are well-conditioned cattle 
 placidly ruminating up to the hocks in the loose layers 
 of bright yellow wheat-straw. Sleek calves are penned 
 behind hurdles in the corners of the surrounding sheds ; 
 fat black Hampshire hogs are grunting and grubbing 
 among the fodder, or are reposing their corpulent 
 forms in a sublime luxury of laziness. Great flocks of 
 plump poultry and waddling troops of white Aylesbury 
 ducks come crowding forward to your footfall in hopes 
 of a shower of grain ; while the flights of pigeons are 
 circling in the air, or settling down upon the shelves 
 before their holes in the barn gable. Behind are 
 
78 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 ranged barn upon barn, with the rows of cattle-stalls 
 and the stables ; and the whole is backed up by the 
 inevitable oast-house. 
 
 It would be hard to find a fairer or more refreshing 
 scene, whatever be the season you view it in. Whether 
 in spring, when the foliage is fresh and green, and the 
 trees in the orchard are flecked with the white and pink 
 blossoms. Or in summer, when the fruit has been 
 setting and swelling, and the canopies of leaves cast 
 cooling shadows. Or in autumn, when the barns and 
 stackyards have been filled, and the waggons are 
 rumbling homeward with their load of hops. Or 
 even in winter, when the glare of the fires within casts 
 its cheerful reflection on the panes in the casements, 
 and the still fat though frozen-out fowls are huddling 
 together under the lee of the house, beneath eaves that 
 are fringed with their draperies of icicles. 
 
 The Kentish farmer is of many a class. The sub- 
 stantial small proprietor still survives, half thane half 
 yeoman, sitting snugly on the soil transmitted to him 
 by his ancestors, and proud, as Lord Lytton says in 
 " Harold," of his five hydes of land : the yeoman who, 
 according to the old local rhyme, could buy out with 
 his yearly rent the citizen of Cales, the gentleman of 
 Wales, and the knight or the north countree : the 
 yeoman who figured as the immortal Mr. Warden 
 of the Manor Farm in the pages of the " Pickwick 
 Papers." Although in these days, when everybody is 
 scrambling upwards, the Kentish yeoman has been 
 changing into the squire, and consequently the race is 
 
HOP-GARDENS AND FARMING 79 
 
 rarer than it used to be. Then there is the tenant- 
 farmer of comfortable means, who sinks his spare 
 capital in the hazardous hops, in preference to ex- 
 tending his holding or going in for a higher style of 
 farming ; who sends his daughters to boarding-schools 
 and buys them second-hand pianos, and decks them 
 out of a Sunday, with their mother, like the blooming 
 lilies of the field. And there is the struggling holder 
 who starves his land if he is not driven to retrench on 
 personal necessaries. But whatever his means, or the 
 balance at his bankers, or the state of his current 
 account with his landlord, his features seldom show 
 any signs of his anxieties, pecuniary or otherwise. The 
 Kentish farmers lay flesh on their solid bones like their 
 own oilcake-fed oxen, meet their neighbours half-way 
 in hearty good fellowship, and are kindly and liberal 
 masters to their dependents. 
 
 A certain " decentralisation " is a conspicuous feature 
 in the farms. Although their acreage may be of no 
 great extent, you come everywhere upon outlying 
 cattle-sheds and barns. Follow some deep-worn 
 waggon-track through the fields, and it leads you 
 perhaps to a lonely hollow, with a shallow pool half 
 overgrown with sedges, and thickly coated over with 
 duckweed. The water-hens are swimming out and in 
 of the cover, and in spring the alder copse is vocal 
 with the notes of the thrushes and blackbirds, who 
 have come to make their nests where they can bathe 
 and drink at their pleasure. And throwing its shadow 
 over the sombre pool is the great rough building of 
 
8o A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 moss-grown tiles and blackened timber, that still 
 answers its purpose somehow, although it has long 
 been half tumbling to pieces For generations it has 
 been the favourite haunt of the vociferous colony of 
 night-owls that you hear hooting from the depths of 
 the woods after nightfall. The martins have made 
 their nests under the eaves by the dozen, and there are 
 whole flying squadrons of bats hooked up by the claws 
 among the cobwebs under its rafters. The number of 
 these scattered barns tends to multiply the field-paths, 
 by which any one with the carte du pays in his head 
 may go straight as the crow flies in almost any direc- 
 tion. Such of these as lead from the hamlets to the 
 church, and in the direction of the little town, are 
 broad and well beaten, beyond possibility of mistaking. 
 But there are many that seem to have been neglected 
 or almost deserted in the course of time, although there 
 must still be some traffic to keep up the right of 
 way, or else the occupiers of the cultivated land they 
 traverse have never thought it worth while to close 
 them. You see a gap in the roots of an untrimmed 
 hedge a gap which, on closer inspection, proves to 
 be fenced with a stile. And if you care to force your 
 way, with the certainty of having your cheeks scarred 
 by the bramble sprays, you find yourself all abroad on 
 the other side. You are in a field of waving clover, 
 or in a fallow unmarked by any traces of a foot-track. 
 But if you take your bearings by the nearest farm 
 buildings you are pretty sure to find a corresponding 
 break in the bushy enclosure opposite. Seldom used 
 
HOP-GARDENS AND FARMING 81 
 
 and overgrown as they may be, these gaps and stiles 
 are invaluable to the sportsman ; otherwise, he would 
 perpetually find himself " pounded " by barriers it is 
 impossible to breach and tedious to turn. 
 
 Whatever be one's opinion of " the good old times," 
 it is certain that our forefathers made wonderful work- 
 manship. It may be nothing out of the way to see 
 farms of great antiquity scarcely showing signs of 
 decay in their solid strength. But here we have 
 cottages scattered all about the parish, to say nothing 
 of many others in the town, which must have been 
 built several hundred years ago more or less, and are 
 still as serviceable and weather-tight as ever. We are 
 happy to say that the walls bulge and the roofs bend ; 
 for their waving beauty-lines, like their time-painted 
 colours, indescribably heighten the artistic effects. And 
 there is something in a picturesque cottage you may 
 even call it a hovel if you will that strikes you more 
 poetically than a hall or a castle. Man has been 
 working humbly with nature in place of vaingloriously 
 challenging her. Like the nest of the chaffinch, woven 
 into the mossy bough, the cottage outlines and tints 
 blend themselves with the surrounding beauties the 
 copse behind overtops the roof-tree, the heathery thatch 
 has been plucked from the heath hard by, and it seems 
 natural that the shoots of the untrimmed roses should 
 struggle in where they can at the broken lattices. 
 Contrast the lot of the inmates with that of the better- 
 paid artisan and the labourer in cities ; but can there 
 be any question which is the more enviable ? The 
 
 7 
 
82 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 cottager may not always be sensible of the sources of 
 the pleasures that console him for his toils, yet he 
 realises his blessings quickly enough if misadventure 
 deprives him of them. Send him into a bare white- 
 washed ward in the parish union, stow him away in 
 the steerage of a New York or Australian liner, even 
 let him consent to take up his quarters with the well- 
 to-do son who exchanged the country for the town 
 when a boy, and the shadows of home-sickness settle 
 heavily down upon him. It is then he remembers the 
 brightness of the open prospect before his door, and 
 the fresh breath of the breezes that braced him uncon- 
 sciously against hardship and exposure. It is then his 
 wife will sigh for the cottage door where she used to 
 sit over her sewing or her spinning-wheel, listening to 
 the hum of her industrious bees, in a bower of roses, 
 wallflowers, and gilliflowers. They miss the song of 
 the birds and the friendly twitter of the sparrows, and 
 the neighbours they had known all their lives, with the 
 kindly gossip and greetings. Nor, although never 
 much given to moralising, can they recall, without 
 some pricking of conscience, the indifference, not to 
 say the ingratitude, with which they used to receive the 
 attentions of the rector, and the help in time of sick- 
 ness or distress they could count upon from the great 
 houses around them. For we are bound to say that 
 the Kentish cottager has little of the sturdy self- 
 dependence of the Scotch peasant. You need never 
 cast about for an excuse to prevail on him to accept a 
 half-crown or a shilling. Should he have any morbid 
 
HOP-GARDENS AND FARMING 83 
 
 feelings of pride, he slips them into his pocket with the 
 smallest donation, and goes off with your tip in the 
 evening to the public-house, where he probably forgets 
 to drink your health. 
 
 But if the circumstances of their surroundings con- 
 spire to make men poets, our parish ought to boast its 
 Clares and its Bloomfields, although we have never 
 heard that it prides itself on such worthies. We have 
 at least a score of cottages in our eye, each of them 
 absolutely enchanting at all events when admired from 
 a little distance ; such cottages as you see in the Under- 
 cliff of the Isle of Wight, so far as the luxuriance of 
 their simple gardens goes ; such cottages in form and 
 colouring as Birket Foster loves to paint. Here is one 
 held by the lord of the manor on a six hundred years' 
 least -granted by her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. It 
 stands opposite the finger-post at the corner of the 
 cross roads in its carefully defined boundaries between 
 the chart and the woodlands. It looks its age all over ; 
 yet its occupants, who are vain of its antiquity, not- 
 withstanding their habits of grumbling, will assure you 
 it is as good as new. There is a group of others within 
 rifle-shot, half-way down an almost precipitous hill, 
 facing the gravel-pit that is honeycombed by the sand- 
 martins. The venerable black oaken beams are form- 
 ing quaint patterns of tracery on the whitewashed walls, 
 while the lines and angles of the foundations and 
 ground-floors offer the most eccentric studies in per- 
 spective. We have already taken a look at the 
 cottages on the charts, and you come on others almost 
 
84 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 more lovely, buried away out of sight in the woods. 
 For we had forgotten to say that, on the southern 
 boundaries of Oakenhurst, there is a wood that almost 
 takes the proportions of a forest, considering that it 
 lies in one of the home counties, and is skirted by the 
 railway to Dover. Here are thickets, and there are 
 glades, with hollies overgrown with honeysuckle and 
 gnarled thorns that have been warped by time, with 
 roots as much above ground as below ; while hidden in 
 some swampy nook, like a wild-duck's nest among the 
 sedges, stands the dwelling of some squatter, who is 
 rich with his flocks of geese or the hogs he turns loose 
 under the oak trees. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 A Kentish Parish: Sport and Bird-life 
 
 A S may be imagined, there is fair shooting in Oaken- 
 -L** hurst. Pheasant-preserving pays very well in the 
 great flat covers, cut up by rectangular rides ; the cocks 
 raise a perfect chorus of crowing of an autumn even- 
 ing ; and the birds may be seen pecking about by 
 scores in the surrounding stubbles, to the temptation 
 of the indifferent characters who hang about the 
 Oakenhurst pot-houses. There is but little poaching 
 all the same : a very moderate staff of watchers is 
 found to suffice ; and it is remarkable, indeed, how 
 comparatively cheaply and bloodlessly the proprietors 
 continue to do their preserving within easy reach of 
 the London poulterers. Occasionally an astute labourer 
 may go lounging about his work with some snares or 
 wires in the pockets of his corduroys, or he may 
 stretch his limbs of an evening after his labours with 
 a gun in pieces under his smock-frock. But we never 
 hear of the gangs of truculent ruffians with blackened 
 faces, who beat up the preserves in the mining or coal 
 districts, murdering or maiming for life keepers and 
 
86 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 members of the police force. As for the * partridges, 
 we have them in plenty ; but though the grass fields 
 are bushed, there is little netting done, since neither by 
 night nor by day can you ever be sure where to find 
 a lot. The mangel and turnip crops are generally 
 meagre : here and there may be a thick strip of clover 
 or a flourishing patch of mustard ; but then the birds 
 take by preference to standing corn, or, after that is 
 cut, to the various permanent covers. Unluckily the 
 season of the hopping coincides with the September 
 shooting ; and during the hopping the sportsman is 
 more at a loss than ever ; for the pickers are swarming 
 and shouting in the gardens, and perpetually passing to 
 and fro, setting the partridges in motion. The coveys 
 learn to take long flights, skimming low over the 
 undulating ground, rising and twisting aside at an angle 
 as they come upon some fresh lot of labourers, and 
 finally dropping out of sight beyond the ken of the 
 markers. So, except on the flats in the valley beneath 
 the northern chalk hills, we seldom or never make 
 satisfactory bags, and we have long ceased to shoot 
 over pointers or setters. 
 
 All the same, the sport is none the less enjoyable 
 on that account for those who are content with a 
 moderate day and do not object to serious exercise. 
 We shoot in parties of three or so, with some keepers 
 and watchers interspersed in the line, and a steady 
 spaniel or two trained to retrieve. A sharp-sighted 
 boy is posted here and there by way of vedette on some 
 point of vantage. And though it is awkward shooting 
 
SPORT AND BIRD-LIFE 87 
 
 among the trellised poles in the hop-gardens, and 
 although the birds will rise wild from the close-shorn 
 stubbles and from among the straggling roots, yet if 
 we do mark them down in gorse or " short-cut," we 
 are very likely to make up for lost time. And there is 
 good fun on an off day among the pheasants in the 
 hedgerows, with lots of rabbits thrown in. A gun on 
 either side, and another ahead ; a couple of spaniels 
 routing in the ditches ; a rustling upwards among 
 the branches, a swishing to and fro of the topmost 
 sprays, and up goes a rocketer to be cleverly grassed, 
 if he does not play hide-and-seek with you behind the 
 spreading boughs of some hedge oak. There is heavy 
 firing, too, on a big " shoot " among the rabbits in the 
 beginning of the winter, when the frosts have thinned 
 the undergrowth and cut down the last of the leaves. 
 Now you are picketed along the rides cut in the furze 
 covers ; now you are set in stations round a copse of 
 oak and hazel saplings ; now walking in line through 
 the tree-stems in an open wood among the tufts of 
 withered bracken ; or, best of all, beating the face 
 of a down dotted over with patches of furze and 
 broom, where bunny, stopped short in his scuffle from 
 his lair, is knocked head over heels to roll down like 
 a ball, till the body is brought up of a sudden some 
 hundred feet lower down. We could wish there were 
 more snipe left ; and ancient keepers delight in dilating 
 on the flights of ducks and plumps of teals that used 
 to haunt some of the ponds in the good old days ere 
 the country was " spoiled " by ditching and draining. 
 
88 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 But we own to being sceptical as to these tales, for 
 water is the great want of the parish ; and, as may be 
 gathered from what has been said elsewhere, nobody 
 has much reason to complain of improvements. 
 
 Indeed a good third of Oakenhurst is never likely 
 to repay reclaiming, unless the day shall come when 
 speculative land-jobbers shall cut it up into lots for 
 suburban country-seats when the expanding metropolis 
 has been brought a dozen of miles nearer. We can 
 ourselves remember the time when hawks and gipsies 
 had their haunts elsewhere on sites that are covered 
 by semi-detached villas. But in the meantime, thanks 
 to our charts and copses and hedgerows, hawks and 
 owls of the more ordinary kinds are still common 
 enough with us. As you take your walks abroad, you 
 see the former sailing smoothly in circles overhead, or 
 poised on their pinions in tremulous flutter, before 
 swooping with outstretched talons on some victim ; or 
 if you chance to be strolling homewards in the dusk, 
 the great brown owls go floating silently past overhead, 
 their fine eye and ear far more intent on the move- 
 ments of their prey on the ground than on the form or 
 heavy footfall of the human intruder. The keepers 
 will tell you, of course, that we have a great superfluity 
 of vermin ; and no doubt the keepers are right. Yet 
 they would have less of our sympathy in the war that 
 they wage did we not know that they never can 
 exterminate their enemies. The foxes, of course, are 
 sacred, and we admire the hawk tribe. We like to 
 hear the harsh scream of the jay, and have a transient 
 
SPORT AND BIRD-LIFE 89 
 
 glimpse of the brilliant plumage that reminds us of 
 birds of tropical climates. We don't even object to 
 the roguish magpie, balancing himself conspicuously on 
 his perch with that jerk of his saucy tail. But there 
 is no soft spot in our heart for the hooded crow, the 
 bloodthirsty exterminator of the weak and the helpless ; 
 nor yet for the polecats, stoats, and weasels, those 
 sanguinary members of the sylvan secret societies. So 
 that, like Catherine of Medicis before the gibbets of 
 Montfaucon, we can gloat over the show on the 
 " keepers' trees," although such maligned victims as 
 the birds of Minerva had much better have been spared. 
 Conspicuous among the relics of malefactors who have 
 well deserved their fate, are the tails of the domestic 
 cats run wild, that range the woods from the cottages 
 where they harbour, and ruthlessly exercise free 
 warrenry and venerie. 
 
 Small birds and singing birds swarm, as we have 
 said ; and in the autumn, when the days are closing in 
 and the leaves are coming down, and the first of the 
 keen frosts is killing the bedding-plants in the gardens, 
 mixed multitudes of birds of passage begin to gather 
 into the hedges. There is fine feeding for any number 
 of them among the hips, haws, and holly-berries that 
 brighten the leafless twigs or the evergreens in a glow 
 of scarlet and orange. Their rush before you for 
 a score of yards at a time, if you come upon them 
 while shooting down the side of a hedgerow, makes 
 a rustle among the branches like the noise of many 
 breezes. But far the most characteristic of the 
 
90 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 migrants that have a special fancy for our parish is the 
 night-jar, who makes his haunt upon the heaths, and 
 hunts in the higher fir-woods. Jesse remarks, in a note 
 to his edition of White's Selborne, that these curious 
 birds are far more rarely to be met with nowadays than 
 in Gilbert White's time, in consequence of the great 
 extension of enclosures. That is the reason why they 
 have taken refuge and abound in parishes like Oaken- 
 hurst. Smoking the cigar on an upland lawn of a 
 summer evening, you hear that wild, long-drawn jar, 
 sounding from many directions around you. Nothing 
 is more deceptive as to distance, except, perhaps, the 
 cry of the landrail. But should you chance to be 
 driving out to dinner in the twilight, or returning in 
 the clear moonshine, as you let your horse pull you 
 leisurely up the hill, where the road is climbing between 
 the double banks in the spruce woods, you will see the 
 night-jar flitting across, ahead, and zigzagging in his 
 downy flight across the charts. Or you may catch 
 sight of him on his perch on the topmost pine-shoot, 
 his head well down and his tail in the air, while he is 
 hard at work grinding out the rattle which vibrates far 
 and wide in undulations of sound, according to the 
 stillness and the condition of the atmosphere. Like 
 the hedgehog and other harmless creatures, he is the 
 subject of absurd superstitions, and of many injurious 
 calumnies. So much may be said in extenuation of his 
 calumniators, that his nocturnal habits give occasion to 
 evil tongues ; and then, like most suspected characters, 
 he rejoices in a variety of aliases night-jar, night- 
 
SPORT AND BIRD-LIFE 91 
 
 hawk, fern-owl. They never call him the goat-sucker 
 in Oakenhurst, probably because nobody keeps a goat ; 
 but we believe that the keepers here, as everywhere else, 
 shoot him down chiefly on account of his unlucky 
 name of the night-hawk. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 A Kentish Parish : the Residents 
 
 WE have not much to brag of in the way of 
 historical or archaeological associations, although 
 the Kentish Archaeological Society once paid us a visit. 
 They say that Henry the Eighth used to visit at the 
 " Cross and Crozier," which subsequently changed its 
 sign to the " King's Head," when he had " cut the 
 Pope adrift," in the words of the " Ingoldsby Legends." 
 And there is a grey stone half sunken in the ridge of 
 Oakenhurst chart, where it is rumoured that he was 
 wont to breathe his horses in riding southward to his 
 flirtations with Anne Boleyn. It is certain, at least, 
 that the woods of Hever, and the tall, tapering spire 
 of its parish church, are full in view from that com- 
 manding eminence ; although the moated keep and 
 battlements of the Boleyn castle lie well out of view in 
 an intervening hollow. There is an old mansion of 
 the Cobhams too in Oakenhurst town, originally a 
 vicarage, which stands in its encircling ponds in a 
 blaze of flower-beds and a wilderness of flowering 
 shrubbery. Nothing can be more cheery than the 
 
THE RESIDENTS 93 
 
 bright rooms with the great bay-windows looking out 
 into the green meadows behind, yet so slightly removed 
 from the bustle of the High Street. But there are 
 rumours of secrets in the cellerage which have never 
 been disclosed, or only disclosed to some trusted in- 
 dividuals. The terrace walk is said to be mined by 
 subterranean passages, which communicated with the 
 site now covered by the brewery buildings, but 
 formerly a cloister of Carmelite nuns. And apropos 
 to the sign of the u Cross and Crozier," there were 
 reasons for the ancient hostelry of Oakenhurst adver- 
 tising itself by so markedly ecclesiastical a title. For 
 half-way up the chalk hills behind, there runs the 
 famous pilgrims' road. Chaucer's merry and motley 
 band, and many another troop combining pleasure 
 with religion, must have drawn bridle to bait at 
 Oakenhurst. Many a sin-laden sufferer like Sweyn, 
 the first-born of Earl Godwin, when he had donned 
 the pilgrim's weeds under the ban of the Witan must 
 have plodded along that lonely road. Even now the 
 road is carried wide of human life, past solitary farm- 
 houses, or under bleak downs, between thick hedges 
 covered with hazel-nuts, leaving scarcely room for two 
 vehicles to pass. Dotted about against the white chalk 
 are black, bushy yew trees, in knots or singly. Some 
 of these might be old enough to have furnished bows 
 to the archers in the wars of France and the Roses. 
 They say, too, that each yew marks a pilgrim's 
 resting-place, as the cypress in the land of the Turk 
 shades the headstone of a true believer ; though it is 
 
94 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 hard to suppose that pilgrims could have tailed off and 
 dropped so fast, in an age when few cared to carry 
 austerity to excess, and when the staff, the scrip, and 
 the scallop-shell were passports to charity everywhere. 
 
 The Established Church is in the ascendant with us, 
 although rather in virtue of its prestige than anything 
 else. The population has never been tossed on those 
 waves of revival that have ruffled the souls of Highland 
 parishes in Scotland ; and all that Dissent can do is 
 to hold on, without actually expiring of inanition. 
 The irregular pastor, who is supported by the volun- 
 tary contributions of his flock, must have lean times of 
 it, to judge by the beggarly show on the benches in 
 his tabernacle. The shoemaker who delivers soul- 
 stirring philippics of a Sunday, and who seldom lets 
 slip an opportunity of denouncing the Muggletonian 
 divine, is far better off. For he lives by the labour of 
 his hands on the week-days, and preaches in an upper 
 loft that is lent him and lighted for him by a seriously- 
 inclined corn-factor ; so that any money collected at 
 the doors is clear profit for congregational purposes. 
 Now and then, and especially in market times or about 
 the hop-picking, one or two wandering missionaries, 
 whose earnestness rather outruns their discretion, will 
 set up an al fresco. Ebenezer on the green before the 
 church. But waiving the question of good taste 
 since the shrill treble of their hymns clashes with the 
 tones of the organ they generally have a listless 
 congregation, or rather a slender gathering of spectators, 
 with hands buried in their trouser pockets. 
 
THE RESIDENTS 95 
 
 The parishioners who attend the church have no reason 
 to complain of their parson. He is exemplary in both his 
 private and his official relations ; and if his lines have 
 fallen to him in pleasant places, and if his nest in the 
 vicarage is tolerably well feathered, so much the better 
 for the members of his flock. There is little destitu- 
 tion in Oakenhurst. There is an imposing pile of 
 cottage almshouses, and the panels of the front of the 
 gallery in the church are emblazoned with inscriptions 
 recording the charitable disposition of crumbs of their 
 property by men who had quite done with it, and 
 whose dust is mouldering in the churchyard. How 
 Walter Fakenham, gentleman, bequeathed the sum of 
 ^300, 3 per cent consols, in perpetuity ; the yearly 
 proceeds to be devoted to supplementing the sustenance 
 of six impoverished widows of fair fame the selection 
 of the said widows to be at the discretion of the vicar 
 and the churchwardens for the time being, &c., &c. Still, 
 the poor in England will be always with one, whatever 
 the charitable funds they have to draw upon ; and this 
 the good vicar and his lady are never suffered to 
 forget. Every evening in the winter, and more or less 
 all the year round, there is a larger or smaller levfa of 
 applicants assembled at his kitchen door. In the hard 
 frosts, when the labourers are frozen out, the scene in 
 the stable yard reminds one of the courts of the old 
 convents in Rome or Naples, before the Italian rookeries 
 had been swept away by the stern edicts of a latitu- 
 dinarian Parliament. The vicar goes about in all 
 weather almost as indefatigably as the parish doctors, 
 
96 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 and we can hardly say more in his favour than that. 
 There is soup to be sent out to some sickly child, 
 blighted by consumption before she has bloomed. 
 There is a bottle of port for the elderly labourer, who 
 has at last " caught his death of cold " while working 
 in the ditches in all weathers. And there is quinine 
 for the old folks who are suffering from the neuralgia 
 which hangs about with the fogs in the bottom of the 
 valleys. 
 
 If the vicar is proud of anything, it is of his prize 
 Dorkings and of his church. Of the former we need 
 say nothing. Has not their fame been sounded in the 
 ears of the frequenters of the , grand poultry shows 
 everywhere between Islington and Sydenham ? But 
 the venerable church is really an interesting monument, 
 with the tracery of its windows and the quaint sculpture 
 of its gargoyles ; with the soberly-blazoned windows 
 and sculptured tablets that happily escaped the ravages 
 of the iconoclasts ; with its square grey tower domi- 
 nating the chimneyed and gabled house-tops, between 
 the downs and the woodlands the tower capped at 
 one corner by the lantern characteristic of earlier 
 Kentish church architecture. Those storied tablets 
 between the pillars of the aisles record the virtues and 
 biographies of departed Godwins, while the flags of the 
 chancel are inlaid with brasses of Godwins in chain- 
 mail, their hounds reposing at their feet ; of Godwins 
 in slashed doublets and trunk-hose ; of female God- 
 wins in ruffs and pointed stomachers. In a low, long 
 niche in one of the side aisles lies the cross-legged 
 
THE RESIDENTS 97 
 
 effigy of Ranulph de Oakenhurst, whose maternal 
 ancestor was one of the numerous brothers-in-law of 
 the mighty Conqueror ; whose banner streamed against 
 the Saracens in the crusade of Richard Cceur de Lion, 
 and who is said, by the most authentic county histories, 
 to have had excellent reason for expatriating himself in 
 his high-handed proceedings with his vassals and his 
 serfs. Although it is honourable, lying in the sacred 
 fane, yet, speaking for ourselves, we would rather 
 repose in the peaceful " God's acre " that slopes gently 
 to the southward, towards the limpid brook that 
 bubbles at the bottom. If phantoms charmed away 
 expectation by admiration of the lovely scenes they had 
 failed to appreciate when in the flesh, nowhere could 
 they find a more entrancing waiting-place. Yews that 
 were set in the soil many a century ago, have flourished 
 in the dust of innumerable generations. Some of the 
 mighty trunks are tumbling to pieces in decay, being 
 rent with the weight of their ponderous boughs. 
 They are studded, like the timbers of a dungeon-door, 
 with the clamps and fragments of rustful iron bands 
 that have burst and since been replaced by others. 
 The melancholy blackness of these venerable trees is 
 relieved by the brighter foliage of the thorns, which 
 are clothed in the freshness of spring with a bloom of 
 variegated blossoms ; and it is the pretty fashion of the 
 place to deck the grave with the flowers which grow so 
 freely in the cottage gardens, so that on an Easter 
 Sunday and some other high days, the moss-grown 
 tombstones of the forgotten forefathers of the village 
 
 8 
 
98 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 are lightened with the rosy reflection from the adorn- 
 ment of the fresher graves. 
 
 From the church to the public-houses, to the inns, 
 and to " the hotel," is a not unnatural transition, seeing 
 that the most frequented of these look out on the 
 triangular green whose base is bounded by church and 
 churchyard ; and notwithstanding the well-deserved 
 popularity of the vicar, we must add in conscience 
 that these hostelries are the most in favour. The 
 Oakenhurst tradespeople complain of the hardness of 
 the times of keen competition with shopkeepers in 
 London and they grumble over the blight of the 
 co-operative societies, which is preying like a canker- 
 worm on their modest profits. But in spite of a 
 general mutual indebtedness and rumours of bills of 
 sale over goods that are bought on credit, they continue 
 to keep a fair amount of conviviality going. There is 
 a little informal club of cronies which meets almost 
 nightly in the " Godwin Arms." The parlour set apart 
 for the use of the members looks out on the stable 
 yard behind, and summer and winter the shutters are 
 scrupulously put up at a certain hour, to screen the 
 interior from the eyes of the curious. The good ladies 
 of the members may regard the gathering with dislike, 
 but they are aware that it is distinctly de rlgueur to 
 belong to it ; and if husbands keep unholy hours, and 
 sometimes make unnecessary noise in mounting the stair- 
 case to the nuptial chamber, the wives are " squared " 
 and soothed with the finery they are fond of flaunting 
 in. The uninitiated know nothing authoritatively of 
 
THE RESIDENTS 99 
 
 the proceedings. The landlord and James the elderly 
 waiter are bound over by self-interest to extreme 
 discretion. But should you happen to be hanging 
 about in the inner lobby while your horses are putting 
 to, you recognise familiar voices exciting themselves 
 in warm disputation, while a rush of spirituous frag- 
 rance comes to your nostrils when the door is opened 
 for the execution of orders. The best of us may be 
 overtaken under the seductions of good-fellowship, 
 but the presence of Mr. Baggs, churchwarden for the 
 congregation, and of Mr. Garbett, the parish clerk, 
 ought to be a guarantee for the habitual respectability 
 of the proceedings. The general tone of politics 
 among the Oakenhurst bourgeoisie is Conservative, but 
 Knocker the coachbuilder is a red-hot Radical, who 
 never cared to conceal his sympathies with the Com- 
 mune ; and should he get to loggerheads with such 
 fiery spirits as Shortrib the butcher, and Spavin the 
 veterinary surgeon, that would sufficiently explain the 
 animation in his arguments. We have reason to fear, 
 too, that debts of honour will sometimes get awkwardly 
 mixed up with commercial transactions. For not a few 
 of the gentlemen are dead hands at loo and "vanjohn " 
 indeed round games at cards and little suppers are 
 a favourite form of entertainment in their private 
 residences ; while Spavin and the Godwin bailiff are 
 professed betting men, having their books on each 
 meeting from Croydon to Lewes. 
 
 There is a different society altogether of market- 
 days. Then the access to the bar is blocked up with 
 
too A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 bulky farmers, with jolly, hearty faces, and cheeks like 
 Kentish pippins, in broad-skirted coats with volumi- 
 nous pockets, and breeches, gaiters, and square-toed 
 boots. Though there is a sprinkling of the younger 
 generation of agriculturists and speculative corn-factors, 
 who run up to town periodically to have dealings with 
 brokers in the borough, who disport themselves in 
 smart cutaway velveteens and gorgeous neckties with 
 horseshoe pins. The talk of these younger bloods is 
 of horse-flesh and music-halls as much as of corn and 
 hops and bullocks. At the farmers' ordinary it is a 
 case of cut and come again, amidst the merry roar of 
 stentorian voices, the clink of tankards and the jingle 
 of glasses ; when Boniface, the dapper little landlord, 
 has come staggering in under some ponderous sirloin, 
 and the table would groan under its burden if it were 
 not warranted up to any weight. Then Maltby of the 
 brewery will be voted into the chair, or Grindley the 
 great miller and hop-grower, or old Mr. Pigswash 
 from the Moat farm ; while Skinner, the lean, weasel- 
 faced lawyer, will drop in from his office over the way, 
 and get value for the price of his dinner by doing some 
 strokes of business on the sly. It takes all Mr. 
 Skinner's tact to be equal to the embarrassments of the 
 situation ; but he has the knack of always looking after 
 the main chance, with an appearance of devil-may-care 
 bonhomie that imposes on people, although it scarcely 
 deceives them. The farmers, who have very good 
 reason to respect his sinister powers, eye him askance, 
 and are extraordinarily civil ; but every now and then 
 
THE RESIDENTS , , jcu 
 
 in vino veritas they will blurt out a frank" bit 6f J 
 their minds, and make him flush into vindictive anger, 
 notwithstanding his practised self-control. 
 
 There is less to say about the Red Lion, since it 
 chiefly lays itself out for a class of stranger customers. 
 There the room for commercial gentlemen has the 
 importance which is given to the market room over the 
 way. There are sure to be three or four bagmen's 
 double dog-carts drawn up under the shed in the court- 
 yard, and there is a pile of leather-strapped cases in 
 the passage. The owners of these are eating, drinking, 
 and getting cheerful, previous to going on their way 
 rejoicing, after paying their round of business visits. 
 And in summer the "Red Lion" makes the most in 
 way of advertisement of the unrivalled attractions of 
 the neighbourhood, tempting down quiet holiday- 
 makers from town by offer of fishing and reasonable 
 board. In the latter it is said to perform nearly as 
 much as it promises. As to the former, it is quite 
 marvellous how little the Cockney will be contented 
 with, when everything except the fishing is to his mind. 
 For, with the patience which should be the badge of the 
 much-enduring race, you will see the citizen fisherman 
 going by day after day to whip the few hundred yards 
 of water which the host of the " Lion " rents of Squire 
 Godwin ; and each evening you may mark his com- 
 placent return, though his basket is lighter by his 
 luncheon than when he started. 
 
 The "Royal Oak," the "Jolly Hoppers," and the 
 "Fighting Cocks," form so many successive steps in the 
 
A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 descending scale! The first is the resort of the smallest 
 tradesfolk ; the second, of the steadier labourers and 
 carriers and waggoners in transit ; the third, of all the 
 village ne'er-do-wells, of tramps, and of the travellers 
 who are under the surveillance of the police. As for the 
 " Fighting Cocks," it is an unmitigated nuisance. In 
 broad daylight, the benches before the door are often 
 crowded with roisterers who remind you of the 
 Borrachos of Velasquez or one of Jordaen's Flemish 
 pictures. There is the gross laugh and the coarse 
 language, the foul oath and sometimes the savage blow. 
 Bold women with weather-battered faces and tangled 
 hair exchange rough ribaldry with their lords and 
 masters, who pass them the pewter-pots in their more 
 generous moments, as the Bedouin throws the leavings 
 of his feast to his wives. The dingy little drinking- 
 dens within doors are the horror of the gamekeepers 
 for though, as we have said, there is but little poaching 
 in the parish, it is here that anything of the kind is 
 planned. And if the keepers were called as evidence 
 to the landlord's character, unquestionably his licence 
 would be promptly cancelled. One is familiar with 
 the aspect of these rural boozing kens. A low-browed 
 door, as repulsive to reputable customers as the similarly 
 forbidding feature in the landlord ; a dirty window, 
 with curtains of faded crimson, to screen the question- 
 able doings within doors ; with a wooden stand at the 
 corner, that bears by way of fruit clusters of battered 
 and indented beer-pots. The place does a tremendous 
 trade in the hopping-time, when messengers from all the 
 
THE RESIDENTS 103 
 
 surrounding encampments crowd to it for the nightly 
 supplies of their companies, and when occasionally an 
 adult envoy tries to take away as much as he can con- 
 veniently carry in his person. We should be sorry to 
 stake the character of English ale on the taps they 
 draw at a place like the " Fighting Cocks." There may 
 be chemicals that come cheaper than inferior hops even 
 when you are brewing in the middle of the hop dis- 
 tricts ; and at all events " The Cocks/' being a 
 " brewers' house," is a convenient channel for dis- 
 posing of the brewers' failures. When a man is 
 smoking rancid tobacco, and muddling himself in his 
 cups, his palate is even less fastidious than usual ; but 
 his stomach and his stamina must suffer all the same, 
 however strong they may have been made by nature. 
 
 Appeals have frequently been made to the Squire on 
 the subject of local public-house reform, but always 
 unsuccessfully. Were he witness himself to any act 
 that was overtly discreditable, he would speak his mind 
 freely enough, and soon put abuse down by the strong 
 hand. But whenever he rides down the High Street, 
 disorder is hushed before the sound of his horse-hoofs ; 
 and he is known to hold tale-bearing in abomination, 
 while he notoriously carries his Conservative instincts 
 to an extreme. Possibly because he is an aristocrat to 
 the backbone, he shows extreme consideration for the 
 sensibilities of his dependents ; he detests meddling in 
 their affairs save in the way of kindness, and would 
 never rob a poor man of his beer because he suspects 
 that the beer is bad. If the poor man does not like the 
 
io 4 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 tap, he can carry his custom elsewhere. At all events, 
 the Squire does his duty by him so far in showing what 
 ale ought to be, when he is invited to the hospitality of 
 Oakenhurst Place, at a harvest-home or any entertain- 
 ment of the kind. The Squire is an excellent landlord, 
 though he might be even a better one were he to attend 
 more closely to the business of his properties. Perhaps 
 he is hardly the less popular that he holds himself apart, 
 since it is from reserve and want of readiness far more 
 than from pride. He is getting on for the three- 
 score years and ten, and for the forty years since 
 he succeeded to an uncle and sold out of the Guards, 
 he has been settled in solitude in the great house. 
 As it happens, for three generations, and for 
 nearly ninety years, the Squires of Oakenhurst have 
 been bachelors. So that there is rather a depressing 
 absence of sweetness and light in the great rooms of the 
 old Elizabethan house. Here and there a modern 
 easy chair, or a luxurious lounging sofa, have been 
 introduced among the massive furniture that looks as 
 if it would last to doomsday. But the heavy Turkey 
 carpets have taken the tinge of the black oak panelling, 
 and they are never replaced till they are frayed into 
 tatters, owing simply to procrastination, not to parsi- 
 mony. 
 
 In anything that falls in with his personal tastes or 
 his stately ideas of the necessities of his position, 
 Squire Godwin is magnificent. Although he seldom 
 hunts of late years, since he has been feeling twinges of 
 rheumatism, save when the hounds are drawing his 
 
THE RESIDENTS 105 
 
 Oakenhurst covers, he has always half a dozen of made 
 hunters in his stables to mount himself or a friend. The 
 steppers he drives in his chariot or mail-phaeton are 
 matched to a hair. The pair of cobs which carry him 
 about the estate, and which can easily be persuaded to 
 take a fence on occasion, are models of breeding and 
 solid symmetry, and do credit to their Norfolk pedi- 
 grees. There is always something worth looking at to 
 be seen in the paddocks, where playful colts and fillies 
 are grazing among pensioners more or less worn out. 
 There is an unnecessary number of grooms and helpers 
 under the corpulent old coachman, who acts as master 
 of the horse ; and they have their quarters under his 
 immediate supervision, in rooms on one side of the 
 cheerful courtyard that is finished off by the great 
 clock-tower with the gilded cupola. The gardens 
 are kept up rather as a matter of state ; but the Squire 
 passes more than once in the day along the sunny 
 terrace-walks that leads to the keeper's cottage and 
 the kennels. The occupants of these last are rather 
 select than numerous ; but the Oakenhurst breed 
 of spaniels has long been famous, and the Squire 
 would sooner give away the presentation to a living 
 than part lightly with one of his ebony favourites. 
 There is no prettier spot in the park than the slope 
 below the hanging beech-wood, where the many-gabled 
 cottage stands under the walnut tree. On the one 
 side are the ranges of pheasant-coops that are shifted 
 about upon the lawns that lie beyond the garden and 
 the beehives ; on the other the kennels on the little 
 
io6 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 brook that is dammed back in a pool in the middle of 
 the exercise-yard. And there most methodically, 
 almost every tolerable morning about eleven, the 
 Squire mounts the cob that has been sent forward for 
 him, and starts upon a ride round his woods and home- 
 farm. His constitutional shyness may be confounded 
 with pride ; but he is rather the kindly companion 
 than the master with the keeper or forester or bailiff 
 who goes striding along by his stirrup. There are 
 some valued tenants, too, whose " forbears " have 
 clung for generations to the soil, who are looking out 
 anxiously for the greeting that almost invariably leads 
 on to a chat. Though there are seven-years' breaks in 
 all the leases, they know they are just as securely rooted 
 as the Godwin family itself; and should they come 
 under a passing cloud of misfortune, they count upon 
 the Squire to see them clear of it. 
 
 The grand festivity at the place is the annual hunting 
 breakfast ; so much the better if there are two or more 
 of these. Then the hounds and horses are crowded on 
 the grand gravel sweep, and the long-drawn tables in 
 the hall, the great dining-room, and the morning-room 
 are a tight fit for the squadrons of guests. These 
 meets on the Oakenhurst lawn bring men to the hunt 
 who never turn out on any other occasion ; and 
 gentlemen who are given to craning at other times are 
 apt after these to take lines of their own, in place 
 of hustling each other at gates and gaps. In another 
 style there is the harvest-home : when the bailiff has 
 instructions to stretch a point, in the way of issuing his 
 
THE RESIDENTS 107 
 
 invitations ; when the beams and rafters of the huge 
 barn disappear in the foliage of the evergreens, and 
 festoons of dahlias and sunflowers ; when the barrel of 
 home-brewed is broached ; when the oxen and fatlings 
 are killed, and poultry and pigeons are slaughtered by the 
 score ; when the Squire, though unaccustomed to public 
 speaking, takes the chair, supported by his familiar 
 friends makes half a dozen of short but sententious 
 orations amid vociferous applause, and then solemnly 
 proceeds to open the ball, which is kept up with un- 
 diminished vigour through the small hours. And then 
 there are the battues in autumn and winter ; when every 
 man who has the faintest pretension makes interest to 
 be enrolled in the regiment of beaters, when the toils of 
 the day are broken by the repast under the greenwood 
 tree, and when the triumphs of the bag are crowned in 
 the evening by a sporting supper in the servants' hall. 
 
 We need not go the round of the surrounding houses 
 that are still inhabited by families long settled in the 
 county, and of the sundry substantial mansions in the 
 town, occupied by scions of county houses, by retired 
 officers, et id genus omne. All of these have stepped 
 naturally into their places, and with all of them the 
 Squire is on friendly or cordial terms. But his betes 
 noires are the new men who have been encroaching on 
 the neighbourhood in virtue of purchase, and the anti- 
 pathies he cherishes in their regard are shared by 
 the humble classes around. More than one of them 
 have paid a heavy price for most beautiful situations 
 with most incommodious residences. They have 
 
io8 A KENTISH PARISH 
 
 either pulled down the latter or transmogrified them out 
 of knowledge, and very naturally. But the Squire 
 cannot away with these brand-new turrets and battle- 
 ments, so conspicuous in their ostentatious splendour 
 from the familiar points in the landscape. Respectful 
 admirer as he is of the fair sex, and the more so, 
 perhaps, that he has never mated with any individual, 
 he shrinks from the showy toilets which confront him 
 in his family pew. Though he has no special pride 
 in the produce of his garden, he dislikes seeing his 
 gardener run hard by rare varieties of tropical plants at 
 the Oakenhurst flower-show ; and he takes the appear- 
 ance of some pair of handsome carriage-horses, set off 
 by unknown crests on the harness, as a personal insult 
 to his stables. By nature he is really most kindly and 
 good-humoured, and it is not in him to do an unkindly 
 thing, unless under strong momentary provocation. So 
 it is a sight for the student of humanity to see him 
 when he is brought into involuntary contact with Mr. 
 Veneer, the great furniture dealer from Bloomsbury, or 
 with the respectable Mr. Solomons who is so thoroughly 
 satisfied with himself, and who conducts pawnbroking 
 operations on a stupendous scale. Both Veneer and 
 Solomons are excellent people, and in a lifetime of 
 close application to business have well earned an 
 honourable retirement. But it may be a question 
 whether they have not made a mistake in anticipating 
 the railways, and coming so far afield. Purse-pride is 
 their weakness, and certainly they get through a great 
 deal of money. Their grounds are kept like villa 
 
THE RESIDENTS 109 
 
 lawns at Fulham ; they have a wealth of pineries and 
 graperies and forcing-pits ; and the appointments of 
 their sumptuous mansions are the most showy that 
 money can procure. But they are lavish in the wrong 
 place, and often parsimonious on trifles. They have a 
 horror of seeming to be done, instead of sometimes 
 submitting to it as a matter of course ; and as their 
 conduct is regarded most critically by humble applicants 
 for their bounty, the occasional refusal of a shilling 
 often effaces a long score of charity. Then their wives 
 and daughters are in a perpetual dilemma, and have 
 either to hold themselves apart in their solitary 
 splendour, or else fall back on the society of the 
 families of the more upsetting farmers, which might 
 prejudice their social status to all time. Altogether, 
 these new arrivals are a disturbing element in the 
 parochial harmony the more so that their settlement 
 is a sign of the times, and that they excite uneasy 
 apprehensions of revolution in the immediate future. 
 For the probability is that in another generation, or 
 even less, the ancient glories of Oakenhurst will have 
 departed, although the influx of bullion and its free 
 circulation may certainly bring material compensation. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Downs 
 
 old Gilbert White goes into raptures over 
 that " magnificent range of mountains, the 
 Sussex downs," we may smile and think of making 
 mountains of molehills ; but none of us who know 
 the country half as well as he did will be much inclined 
 to quarrel with his enthusiasm. For the downs grow 
 upon one, and theirs is far more the beauty of ex- 
 pression than of form. Rarely, indeed, is it a case of 
 strong love at first sight ; rather it is a friendship 
 warming into affection as you become aware of count- 
 less lurking graces and alive to a bewitching play of 
 feature in sun, shade, and storm. Unless to the little 
 craft that run in and hug their shores, tacking and 
 twisting by each waving beauty bend of the coast, the 
 downs are a closed book to passers-by on the great 
 waterways of the Channel. The sections of white 
 cliffs show like so many blank title-pages, giving no 
 clue to all that lies behind. Wind round their inland 
 skirts by rail or road, and you look up to a rolling 
 succession of mammoth barrows, strongly suggestive 
 
THE DOWNS in 
 
 of the handiwork of gangs of mighty navigators in 
 primeval days when giants were yet in the land. But 
 once set yourself to breast their steep slopes, and your 
 heart begins to beat with appreciation, fast as it throbs 
 to the unwonted efforts. It is a sunny, sultry day, 
 when on the Dutch landscape at their feet, you leave 
 all nature gasping in the stirless air in a dreamy 
 langour. You have painfully dragged your burden of 
 melting flesh to their base, and your spirits sink as you 
 despairingly measure the distance that divides you 
 from their summit. Excelsior ! and resolution brings 
 its own reward, and a speedy one. The air grows 
 lighter, cooler, buoyant, exhilarating, as you approach 
 the ridge. After gulping it down in liberal draughts, 
 you appreciate Mark Tapley's feelings on his first 
 experience of a sherry cobbler, and become, in all 
 particulars worth mentioning, a different man. You 
 step out, casting off the dead weight you were carrying, 
 and can almost imagine that, like Christian in the 
 "Pilgrim's Progress," you ought to see a visible burden 
 of material infirmities roll down the hill behind you. 
 Nowhere else, we venture to say, does so trifling an 
 exertion bring you so near to immortality. The 
 air comes breathing round you with a strange rush 
 of old associations of kindred pleasures pleasures 
 that you bought at a far greater expenditure of toil. 
 Again you are slipping along the loftiest heather slopes 
 of some savage Highland moor, and the shots fired 
 from muzzle and breech-loader in a succession of 
 vanished Augusts are waking the slumbering echoes 
 
ii2 THE DOWNS 
 
 in your memory. Or, higher still, you are striding 
 over the short-clipped turf, picking your way through 
 piles of granite blocks and erratic boulders, your gun 
 swaying as a balancing pole, what eyes you have to 
 spare from your feet cast far ahead to catch the first 
 grey glint of the ptarmigan's pencilled wing. Or, 
 loftier yet, you have climbed the snow slopes of snow- 
 clad mountains, and are plunging over some col or joch 
 in the Alps, through some breche in the Pyrenees, 
 with glacier or desert born air winging your steps, 
 the promise of a fresh country, at least a new watershed 
 before you. On the downs your thoughts grow busy 
 enough, ranging about as free and uncertain as the 
 breezes, and were they monotonous, as they threatened 
 to be at first start, your walk would still be an enviable 
 one. 
 
 But monotony ! why, they smile to you in the play 
 of light and the colours of fountains falling among 
 fireworks. Rich floods of sunshine would seem to 
 have dyed their short brown sward with a lasting 
 tinge of yellow. The dark shadows of the clouds fall 
 trembling and flickering over the sea of light that 
 comes rolling and surging over their slopes. Golden 
 you would call the light were it not for the dazzle 
 from the wheat stubbles hard by, where cultivation in 
 its autumn dress is more gorgeous than simple nature. 
 Not a breath of moisture is rising from the chalk and 
 sand to dim the limpid purity of the air or break 
 the sharp lines of the falling shadows. Like the swan 
 floating in still St. Mary's Loch, each southdown 
 
THE DOWNS 113 
 
 seems to graze by its double ; the furze bushes, rabbit- 
 gnawed in unconscious imitation of the fantastically 
 clipped yews of some trim old pleasaunce, reflect 
 themselves with picturesque fidelity on the tawny 
 brown of the natural lawn they dot. Mowed close 
 enough it is by the cutting breeze, but the teeth of the 
 sheep must bite closer still, for they seem to pick up 
 a comfortable living somehow. Is it reality or fancy 
 that exhibits their clodhopping guardian posing himself 
 on the sky line of the cliff in an attitude that would 
 tempt a sculptor P Assuredly there is poetry that 
 harmonises with his surroundings in the floating fall 
 of his coarse grey blouse as it coquettes with the 
 playful winds. It was no admiration of the beautiful 
 that made him seek that vantage post of his, but if 
 you join him there you will say the rarest taste could 
 not have chosen better. There is a bit of sea scenery 
 that Gudin, in our idea perhaps the most effective of 
 recent sea painters, would travel leagues to paint as we 
 see it now. A bold, bluff headland strikes the eye, its 
 pure white surface throwing back with a painful inten- 
 sity of light the full flush of the noonday sun. It is flung 
 out from the deep blue background of a waveless sea, 
 that melts imperceptibly in the vague distance into a 
 sky as blue ; not the transparent southern blue of the 
 Bay of Naples or Sea of Marmora, but with a dash 
 of English grey stirred through its colouring, thereby 
 gaining in effect what it loses in brilliancy. Here and 
 there a bright bit of sail catches the sun and breaks 
 the surface the reach lies rather off the great path- 
 
 9 
 
1 1 4 THE DOWNS 
 
 ways of Channel traffic bringing the scene into a 
 sympathy with life. If you seek for animation in the 
 foreground though before a cliff so bold and a sea 
 so limitless you scarcely care to occupy yourself with 
 trifles you have it in those Cornish choughs that 
 float about the rock face far below, rising and sinking 
 in ceaseless and successless efforts to find clinging place 
 on its surface. For a pendant to this picture, and one 
 not less attractive in its way, come back when the raw 
 sea fog that steeps everything below in a briny vapour, 
 is making a luxury of the exercise that sends your 
 blood coursing through your veins. Every muscle 
 comes in for more than its fair share of work, thanks 
 to the slippery, sloppy turf, and every particle of film 
 is cleared from your eye. The sheep are grazing 
 in joyless stolidity as matter of business ; their 
 shepherd wrapped in his soaking capote is cowering 
 down behind a dripping furze bush ; his shaggy, 
 queer-bred dog draws down the curling corners of 
 his jowl, and tucks his stump of a tail away between 
 his trembling legs. Heavy grey wreaths of cloud are 
 clinging to the cliff ; the deep leaden grey of the sea 
 shades away in a light grey haze, and the grey tide 
 comes rolling in with sullen splash on the strip of 
 beach beneath. But the neutral tints are brightened 
 inimitably by the gleaming crests of the breakers at 
 sea, and the white curl of the rollers that are rattling 
 in on the red shingle you see faintly shimmering below. 
 Turner would have revelled in the effects, and probably 
 before, in his latest eccentricities of style, he left so very 
 
THE DOWNS 115 
 
 much to the imagination, would have flung his 
 brush at his canvas in sheer despair of reproducing 
 them. 
 
 Perhaps it is because our artists " fear their fates 
 too much," or modestly recognise their deserts to be 
 so small, that they do not oftener stake their chances 
 of fame against scenes like these ; when a grand 
 morsel of the sublime subordinates itself to a vague 
 expanse of distance growing out of the very foreground 
 a distance to which nothing but genius can give the 
 semblance of reality. But the downs abound in more 
 homely studies, enchanting landscapes set in natural 
 frames, fascinating nooks and " bits." Village churches, 
 farms, and cottages nestle themselves shrinkingly out 
 of sight, hidden so well away that few painters seem 
 to find them. Standing upon some grassy bluff, some 
 bastion of these uplands, glancing from yon Pisgah 
 over the monotonous ranges stretching away before 
 you, you get but slight glimpses at the promise they 
 conceal. All you see are so many ridges bare or 
 furze-crested, here a lighthouse, perhaps there a wind- 
 mill. Dip into the first valley, and, agreeably dis- 
 appointed, you brighten up to the fascinating surprises 
 awaiting you : copses and thick-leaved woods hang 
 lovingly over the brooklet that murmurs at the bottom. 
 You passed cornfields before, and ought to have augured 
 there must be farmhouses ; but where all seemed so 
 deserted that thought scarcely struck you at the time. 
 Now the farmhouses are before you, and the patriarchs 
 who own them with the flocks and herds that cover 
 
ii6 THE DOWNS 
 
 the neighbouring slopes, must live in a magnificence of 
 rural luxury. Those homes of theirs are more like 
 ancient manor houses, and, for all you can see, may 
 have stood there since the civil wars, although in their 
 bright bow-windows, opening on the beds of hardy 
 flowers, they sacrifice to modern tastes and ideas. 
 Round them, embracing perhaps an acre or more of 
 grass and gravel, runs the strong wall of cemented 
 stone, imitating, on a smaller scale, the bastioned 
 enclosure of Pevensey Keep. All looks as if they had 
 been planned to bid defiance to man and time ; as if 
 they had fought a long and successful battle with the 
 elements. The solid house, gabled and mullioned ; 
 the vast massive barns that line the quadrangle and 
 offer shelter to every sheaf of grain ; the very cart- 
 sheds and pigsties look hard and weather beaten. 
 The chimneys, low and square, and strengthened with 
 iron stanchions, give as little hold as may be to the 
 strong blasts they have to wrestle with ; the gnarled 
 stems and limbs of the trees are toned into a grey 
 in happy harmony with the colour of the buildings, 
 and their leaves all have that same yellow tint so 
 invariably characteristic of the downs. Every advantage 
 the ground can give in the way of shelter has been 
 taken. It is seldom we can suppose the winds working 
 their way down into the hollow, but, once down there, 
 it is hard to see how they ever get out again. That, 
 we fancy, is the reason why the foliage of isolated trees 
 is twisted round into the cabbage form, while their 
 stems are stripped so bare and scoured so clean. 
 
THE DOWNS 117 
 
 Everything has an air of being made snug in case of 
 the worst, all top hamper is dispensed with as far as 
 may be ; the very flocks of geese seem to be on the 
 outlook for dirty weather, and never to be happy far 
 away from home. Yet, withal, for picturesque comfort, 
 give us these farms before any we have admired else- 
 where in the British Isles. We would rather not 
 speculate on the condition of their inmates in the short 
 days of a sloppy winter, but no human lot is perfect. 
 Then there are their long, low churches, with their 
 squat, square-set towers, older, more massive, and 
 more weather-worn than the homesteads everything 
 is long-lived here, man among the rest, as you may 
 gather from the inscriptions on the bleached tomb- 
 stones the heavily buttressed little bridges, the 
 wrinkled ivy stems beaten right into the cement and 
 stone work, while where the ivy leaves would droop 
 naturally below the arch the wind has done the work 
 of the pruning knife ; the cottages cowering under the 
 bank by some deep-grooved chalk lane, finding in their 
 humility such comparative shelter, that strange species 
 of hardy creepers hang in tough masses from their 
 gables. Except for a colony of rabbits you send 
 scuttling off to their quarters in a furzy sand-bank, 
 or some wiry hare who goes lolloping up the slopes in 
 his perfect training, shaking his fud at you in light- 
 hearted defiance, anything like game is infrequent. 
 Bustards vanished generations ago, and the curlews 
 we may suppose have followed them. The rarity of 
 graceful birds of prey, so far as our observation has 
 
n8 THE DOWNS 
 
 gone, would sadden the spirit of Mr. Newton. 
 Partridges do not seem to care to follow the wheatfields 
 that came straggling up into the wastes, for cover 
 in the way of root-crops is scarce and poor. But 
 when meteorological science telegraphs a coming gale, 
 then you may see those infallible storm prophets, the 
 sea-fowl, go floating inland over your head, croaking 
 impotent defiance to the storm they fly before. In the 
 way of small birds, the downs, like their watering-places, 
 have a teeming population resident and migratory. 
 Chief of them are those captivating wheatears, the 
 favourites of Gilbert White, which, when they are 
 served to you with bread-crumbs, and the appetite 
 given by their native air, will rank to all time, with 
 ortolans and beccaficos, among sunny memories carried 
 away by the cultivated stranger. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Tramps 
 
 A MONG country sights in English spring and early 
 ^"^ summer one of the commonest is the tramp. At 
 midday, you find him reposing on banks where oxlip 
 and the nodding violet blow, in nooks overshadowed 
 with canopies of lush wood-roses and eglantine. At 
 evening the thread of smoke from his kettle fire 
 wreathes itself in with the faint damps from the 
 stream that flows past his bivouac. From early 
 morning to dewy eve, and sometimes much later, 
 our shady lanes and the rank luxuriance of our 
 hedgerows are vocal with curses as with cuckoos. 
 The tramp, although he penetrates the very sanctu- 
 aries of Nature, regards the beauties he rifles from 
 a practical rather than an aesthetic point of view. 
 Like the companion of his wanderings, she is his 
 mistress but his drudge as well. She is more com- 
 placent to him than the austere authorities of the 
 neighbouring Union, and laughingly tenders her lap to 
 be lolled in with no associated nightmares of stone- 
 breaking and oakum-picking. She pleasantly offers 
 
 119 
 
120 TRAMPS 
 
 him the key of the fields, of the woods, of some solitary 
 barn, or outlying cattle-shed. Her guests may not 
 admire the rich green of the oak copse, but they know 
 that it makes an undeniable screen against the light wind 
 that has fixed itself in the east. The masses of foliage 
 that cast their shadows on the grass from the gnarled 
 oak boughs overhead will throw off any passing 
 showers that may fall should the wind chop round to 
 the west. The slanting rays that set the brown trunks 
 all ablaze with gold are a nuisance certainly, and elicit 
 many nervous execrations on them and on the eyes they 
 dazzle ; but the sun is sloping fast to the west, and 
 they will soon see the last of him. No such luck with 
 
 those noisy nightingales and thrushes and 
 
 blackbirds that make themselves so much at home as 
 gravely to embarrass the conversation of the lords of the 
 creation. Twigs and birdlime ! what makes it more 
 aggravating is to think of them half-crowns and five 
 
 shillings hopping about among the branches just 
 
 beyond a cove's reach, and beer only fourpence a quart 
 
 too, and hard to come by at that. As it is, the 
 
 tramp is reduced to charily sprinkling his parched 
 gullet with water from the cool brook that goes 
 rippling past at his feet. It is certainly not for pur- 
 poses of ablution that he courts the vicinity of water. 
 
 We may boast of the tramp as one of those 
 peculiar institutions that are the special pride of 
 England ; and England is the genuine tramp's 
 paradise. In countries unhappily subjected to personal 
 rule, or haunted still by its tyrannical traditions, the 
 
TRAMPS i2i 
 
 myrmidons of power are much too fond of making 
 free with the liberties of the roving subject. Un- 
 pleasant perquisitions are instituted into papers, passes, 
 amateur tickets-of-leave, and promiscuous vouchers of 
 respectability. Vagrants of unimpeachable respecta- 
 bility are apt to be arbitrarily taken care of in the 
 interests of society and their own, with small regard 
 to their individual likings or opinions, and the coinci- 
 dence of a brood of chickens disappearing from a 
 neighbouring poultry-yard may provide compulsory 
 State accommodation for the houseless wanderers 
 scattered through half a dozen parishes. Germany 
 ought to be a pleasant country to tramp, but vagrancy 
 in the Fatherland is much of a class privilege, and 
 seldom goes lower than the gangs of Handelsburschen 
 the young artisans on their promotion. In Holland 
 the people are too busy, too little tolerant of inactivity ; 
 there is work for every one, and it is impossible to 
 shirk it in a country where there are no hills, and 
 nothing higher than an occasional tulip-bed, to screen 
 the skulker from observation. In Belgium there is 
 literally no elbow-room for the stroller to turn in. 
 His case is as hard as that of the negro in Barbadoes, 
 forbidden by the monopoly of the sugar patch to squat 
 at his employer's cost, like his happier brother of 
 Jamaica. Even if he turned up some pleasant valley 
 by the banks of Meuse or the skirts of Ardennes, one 
 of the rare bits of impracticable soil abandoned to 
 woodland, he would be warned back by the ring of 
 the hammer from some sequestered foundry. Fancy 
 
122 TRAMPS 
 
 tramping over the broad grain plains of Artois or 
 French Flanders, or between those interminable lines 
 of poplars along those white, powdery imperial ways 
 that radiate from the capital to its utmost boundaries ; 
 or imagine burrowing in the noonday heat among the 
 lizards on the bare glaring face of a Provence hill. It 
 might be a pleasanter lot certainly than that of the 
 pilgrim on the torrid clay plains of the Castiles, OH 
 among the savage sierras of the South, where the bitter 
 wind cuts you of a summer night like an Albacete 
 knife-blade. Moreover in both peninsulas, Italian and 
 Iberian, the tramp life would flicker down, and speedily 
 expire in inanition. Mendicity and relief are thoroughly 
 decentralised in both countries, and there are far too 
 many undeserving local objects for a stranger to have 
 much chance of making a lucrative quest. The stiletto 
 or cuchillo indeed would promptly bring such unfair 
 foreign competition to a sudden, and probably a violent, 
 end. 
 
 In England the competition is the chief drawback to 
 the profession. Otherwise it has so many attractions 
 that it is hard to see why it should not be more over- 
 stocked than it is. You are absolutely your own 
 master, free to wander whither you will, and make 
 what plans you please for the morrow, not chained by 
 the leg to some dismal den you pay to kennel in. 
 You escape rent and taxes. You have no landlords' 
 agents watching your outgoings or incomings, and 
 keeping by deputy a keen eye on the solitary table you 
 too rarely have occasion to use. You enjoy in its 
 
TRAMPS 123 
 
 wildest charm the liberty which is the birthright of 
 every Briton, although he is so often robbed of it. 
 You preserve not only freedom of movement, but to 
 a great extent freedom of action too. The police may 
 want you ever so much, but they don't know where to 
 put their hands on you when they do ; and with a fair 
 start, and so many an earth open, it is your own fault 
 if you are caught by the slow-working pack of the 
 county constabulary. You live at free quarters, and as 
 you beg, bully, or steal your way, this triple variety of 
 occupation gives a constant zest to your life. In their 
 soul-stirring appeals to charity, many of our tramps 
 take very high rank as self-taught actors, and our 
 provincial managers, and some metropolitan ones, 
 might advantageously recruit their troops from among 
 them. There is an admirable versatility in the way in 
 which the prosperous tourist of the slum droops sud- 
 denly in the languor of over-mastering famine at a 
 vision of beneficent and unprotected petticoats ; the 
 whole robust person seems to crumple up under the 
 pressure of a crushing sorrow and a blank despair, 
 while the appealing whine is rendered with profound 
 feeling certainly, but at the same time with excellent 
 taste and judgment, not at all overdone. The ludi- 
 crous, perhaps, sometimes trenches on the painful, and 
 you may be more revolted than gratified when, sharply 
 coming round a corner to the sound of strokes falling on 
 a donkey, or of blows or oaths levelled at a wife, the 
 excited operator subsides into unconscious repose, to 
 rouse himself suddenly to eloquent entreaty. But in 
 
124 TRAMPS 
 
 point of art the dramatic effect is exceedingly good, 
 and shows how native genius may answer the appeal of 
 self-interest in circumstances and natures apparently 
 the most unpromising. As for the bullying, that is 
 scarcely art in any sense of the word ; it is nature pure 
 and simple. Given a lonely farmhouse in hay harvest, 
 when the men are at work out of earshot, and a woman 
 left on solitary guard. Tired and footsore, the de- 
 jected tramp drags himself with respectful limp towards 
 the hospitable door. All the time and he gives him- 
 self plenty of it his small grey eyes are rummaging 
 out every nook and corner of the place like a terrier on 
 the quest, to satisfy himself that everything is really as 
 deserted as it seems. To hear his knock you would 
 fancy he has dragged himself to the door to die, and 
 indeed the respectable female who opens finds him 
 propping himself painfully and despondingly against 
 the door-post. It is but common humanity to invite 
 him ;to a seat on the kitchen settle, although it may 
 not be common sense to explain repentantly the dis- 
 trustful delay in receiving him. But there was no one 
 else in the house, and these simple words revive him 
 more than all the proffered attentions of the Good 
 Samaritan who speaks them. The tramp is on his 
 legs at once, master of the situation ; imposing contri- 
 butions in a voice of suppressed thunder, with the 
 appropriate gestures he has practised a thousand times 
 before on the ladies of his family. These are the 
 sunny hours of the trade, when you enjoy the honours 
 and profits of war in the midst of a peaceful country, 
 
TRAMPS 125 
 
 and taste the pleasures that tempt men to filibustering 
 without any of their accompanying dangers without 
 appreciable dangers at least. Of course if the law 
 chanced to lay its clutches upon you, and further to 
 take unhandsome advantage of your doubtful ante- 
 cedents, your summer plans might be unhappily marred, 
 and you might be forced into disagreeable exertion in 
 the holidays. But if the tramp lets himself be caught, 
 he must in fairness confess he deserves all the disagree- 
 ables in store for him. Reinvigorated with meat and 
 drink, with wallet replenished as well as the knot in his 
 necktie that serves for portemonnaie, his footsoreness 
 cured by enchantment, he strides away full four miles 
 an hour into space, and busy men working against 
 time to secure their crops are scarcely likely to lay 
 themselves down on his impalpable trail. Then with 
 the evening comes the jovial orgy, the social cup, the 
 unclean song, the stimulating slanging match, and the 
 pleasant fight, at long odds, where foul blows are freely 
 exchanged, and the victors literally trample on the 
 fallen. 
 
 In England the winter comes hard upon the profes- 
 sional tramp. But it is not his habit to take thought 
 for the morrow, and moreover experience tells him 
 that he can somehow tide through the cold. So far as 
 he is concerned our much-abused weather has a worse 
 name than it deserves. Wet he has got well accus- 
 tomed to, and severe snowstorms and prolonged frosts 
 are become the exceptions rather than the rule. Be- 
 sides, if the worst comes to the worst, he can fall back 
 
i 2 6 TRAMPS 
 
 on quarters provided by the counties. Should he be a 
 shrewd fellow, he learns that spells of enforced work 
 send him back with renewed zest to his irregularities ; 
 and he may agree with that sage member of the class 
 whom we remember to have forgathered with in the 
 pages of Dickens, that hours and the diet " which is 
 regular, mind you, freshens a cove up a bit and does 
 him good." Then in the spring, summer, and autumn 
 that is to say, for nearly nine months in the year 
 from March to November he is in his glory. To do 
 him justice, he is no mollycoddle. If he shrivels him- 
 self up and puts on a piteous face in a bitter wind in 
 March or a drenching day in November, it is only to 
 move your compassion, and invite you to the exercise 
 of melting charity. Should you chance to catch a sight 
 of him while you are invisible to his quick, restless 
 eyes, you may see him stumping along with loose coat 
 flying back a La Mark Tapley, occasionally stopping 
 short in the middle of a stentorian whistle to blow on 
 the blue hands he draws out of his ragged breeches 
 pockets. It may be as good as a scene in a farce should 
 he become aware of you in the midst of the hilarity you 
 have intruded upon. Ten to one he loses his presence 
 of mind, and forgetting that he is proclaiming himself 
 a shameless impostor, makes up at a moment's notice 
 for an ideal of abject misery. It is but occasionally 
 that, taken so unfairly by surprise, he may show the 
 highest qualities of his calling, and, recognising instan- 
 taneously that disguise is absurd, may carry himself past 
 you with surly defiance. 
 
TRAMPS 127 
 
 When the weather is really tolerably fine, that jovial 
 bearing of his is anything but forced. The world is 
 all before him where to choose, and he is in no hurry 
 about making his way through it. He has only to 
 avoid those inhospitable localities he has marked with a 
 black spot on the map which he carries in his mind, 
 where mendicity associations have introduced the un- 
 generous practice of scattering tickets to be bestowed in 
 shape of alms. Nowhere, indeed, in our wealthy and 
 charitable country, need he have any apprehension of 
 being pinched by hunger. Bread may be had almost 
 anywhere for the asking, and he turns up his nose at 
 hunches from the loaf, and even looks askance at frag- 
 ments of cold meat. He stows away about his person 
 everything that can be bartered for beer, and chucks 
 contemptuously into the nearest hedgerow the super- 
 fluity of those broken victuals that he has crammed into 
 his pockets on principle. The tramp, in fact, lives 
 exceedingly well ; and if you consider his upbringing, 
 and the circumstances of his existence, many a rich 
 gourmand might envy him. Slumbers al fresco^ early 
 hours, and gentle exercise not overdone, are perpetually 
 putting an edge on his appetite. As a boy, and before 
 he could fend for himself, he was in the receipt of many 
 more kicks than halfpence, and was kept on something 
 shorter than half-commons. Had he married and 
 become the father of a growing family like honest 
 Hodge, whom he eyes superciliously as Hodge digs in 
 the ditch or hacks at the hedgerows with his billhook, 
 he would have had a load of household cares on his 
 
128 TRAMPS 
 
 shoulders by this . time, and been thankful for a bit of 
 bacon once in the week. As it is, all through the 
 pleasant season his wandering life is a perpetual picnic. 
 It is probable that he is no great admirer of sylvan 
 beauties, preferring the bench before the ale-house door, 
 where he can listen to the echo of the laughter from the 
 bar and the trolling of the skittle-balls in the alley, to 
 the murmur of half-hidden brooks and the soft cooing 
 of the wood-pigeons. Yet even in taking his ease at 
 his inn he seems to be guided by some rude instinct of 
 the picturesque ; at all events, he has the good taste to 
 look for shade, and that cool freshness of the green 
 which weighs gently on the sinking eyelids. Sun- 
 tanned and weather-beaten, ragged and dust-stained, 
 with his open shirt-bosom and his hobnailed bluchers, 
 he might sit out the central figure in some village group 
 by a modern English imitator of the Dutch masters. 
 There is the signboard swinging in rusty chains from 
 the great gnarled bough of the old chestnut over the 
 way ; and underneath it the long water-trough, where 
 the horses cast loose from the brewer's dray are " dis- 
 tending their leathern sides with water." Overpowered 
 by heat and grateful weariness rather than by strong 
 drink- though if he is temperate it is on constraint 
 rather than on principle his heavy head is nodding on 
 his hirsute chest, and his clasp-knife, which has been 
 making play with the bread and beef, has slipped from 
 his relaxing grasp to fall rattling on the gravel at his 
 feet. 
 
 We should be inclined to define the tramp proper as 
 
TRAMPS 129 
 
 a penniless bachelor with a light pair of breeches, who 
 burdens himself at the outside with no more luggage 
 than can be tied up in the corners of a ragged coloured 
 pocket-handkerchief. But after all, the genus is wide 
 enough to comprise the gipsy, or pseudo-gipsy, who is 
 invested with some halo of romance. It is true that the 
 gipsy who has a wife, or a plurality of wives, transports 
 his family and belongings on wheels. But for himself, 
 as it is his habit to go on foot, plodding along in 
 advance of his caravan and flourishing his cudgel of 
 knotted oak, he tramps it, to all intents and purposes. 
 He is by no means scrupulous as to how he lays in his 
 supplies ; he makes no hypocritical profession of keep- 
 ing his hands from picking and stealing. On the con- 
 trary, he takes an honest pride in the dexterity with 
 which he " conveys." All the members of his miscel- 
 laneous household, from the failing grand-dame to the 
 toddling brat, keep their eyes on the country they are 
 travelling, with a view to foraging for the family 
 kettle. It is only in the last resort that he extends his 
 patronage to the village ale-house, where his room is 
 regarded as more welcome than his company. He 
 picks out his camping-place in the most picturesque 
 situations, where there are wood and water, grass and 
 shade. Or he pulls up in some sequestered dingle, in a 
 dip of the common not far from the road, where he 
 might lie perdu to the sight of the passengers were he 
 not betrayed by the swirl of the smoke from his fire. 
 He is as familiar with the face of the country as a 
 sergeant of engineers on the Ordnance Survey ; and 
 
 10 
 
130 TRAMPS 
 
 you may see him heading for the well-known resting- 
 place with deliberate purpose. As you are taking your 
 stroll abroad towards eventide you hear the sharp report 
 of a whip and the heavy rattle of wheels. Then you 
 may distinguish the weather-stained tilt of the leading 
 van emerging from among the foliage in the winding 
 lane. In due course the leisurely procession passes 
 you. Matrons, saving their legs, seated upon piles of 
 dilapidated household stuff ; babies fast asleep, curled 
 up in bundles of weather-stained rags ; spare, sun-dried 
 men, and lithe hobbledehoy lads, lolloping along by the 
 waggon-wheels in the wake of their sturdy leader ; 
 boys of the tinge of half-ripened blackberries, staring 
 out with glittering black eyes through the thatch of 
 their tangled elf-locks ; buxom girls of Egyptian type, 
 in scanty draperies of variegated colours. 
 
 Should you follow them in deed or in fancy to their 
 halting-place, you can hardly help envying the freedom 
 of their bivouac. Every one knows his work, and does 
 it ; and all is made ready with swift dexterity. The 
 vans are drawn aside out of the wind ; the ragged- 
 shouldered, pot-bellied horses are loosed, and hobbled, 
 and turned out to graze ; the low tents are stretched 
 over the poles and hoops ; the fires are kindled where 
 there is a natural draught, and the kettles are swung 
 from their hooks over the heaps of crackling sticks. 
 Even in wind and wet the hardy nomads make out 
 wonderfully well, and the venturesome traveller in 
 savage parts might take many a lesson from their camp 
 arrangements ; but in a summer evening, when the 
 
TRAMPS 131 
 
 sloping sunbeams fall dancing through the branches on 
 the grass, and each gentle breath of air comes scented 
 with fragrant perfume, their felicity would appear to be 
 perfect. No need to pry too closely into sanitary 
 details, and possibly it is just as well that you do not 
 understand their speech. To tell the truth, the bois- 
 terousness of their spirits is somewhat out of tone with 
 the peaceful charm of their surroundings. But looking 
 on from some little distance at the scene, where good 
 digestion is waiting on hungry appetite, you may easily 
 look longingly at their sylvan independence. They 
 know nothing of the refinements they dispense with. 
 Cracked earthenware and clasp-knives and horn spoons 
 are made to do duty for plate and crystal. But then 
 they have none of that dreary waiting in drawing-rooms 
 while tardy arrivals come dropping in ; no getting up 
 in white-chokered stiffness of demeanour and tight- 
 fitting suits of sombre black, to settle themselves in a 
 sweltering summer atmosphere in a billowy surge of 
 skirts whose appearance of coolness is delusive ; no 
 having to discharge the duties of small-talk by an 
 unconscionable neighbour ; no ringing the laborious 
 changes on the jangling themes of fashion, " high life " 
 and high-lived company, pictures, taste, Shakespeare, 
 and the latest concert. They know nothing of the 
 hardships that press so painfully on well-to-do society, 
 of sitting down in the daily course of heavy living, 
 after late luncheon and afternoon tea, to the same irre- 
 pressible entrees and joints that haunt one in a train of 
 familiar nightmares. In unreasonable and jaundiced 
 
132 TRAMPS 
 
 revolt against social rites and ceremonial observances 
 for your liver is touched and your nerves are unstrung 
 you contrast the Boccaccio-like licence of the tinker's 
 banquet, within those flowing tapestries of rustling 
 leaves, on those velvety carpets of grass and wild 
 thyme, and under the blue canopies of heaven, with 
 even the bachelor freedom of the club dining- hall that 
 looks out on the shadier pavement of Pall Mall to 
 say nothing of the smothering City chop-house, with 
 its unctuous vapours of cuts from the joint. Feather- 
 beds and curtains have their charms, no doubt, in a 
 climate so chilly as our own ; but when you have 
 passed the vigorous freshness of maturity, you begin 
 to find out that they are unfavourable to flirtations 
 with sleep after the long crush of the crowded drawing- 
 room even after a bout of whist and sherry in soda 
 in the more ample space of the club smoking-room. 
 And you dream that sleep would come stealing to your 
 arms unbidden, could you but throw yourself down 
 under those strips of dirty canvas, to be lulled by the 
 hooting of the owls and the droning rattle of the 
 night-jars. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 The Amateur Tramp in TLngland 
 
 VAGABONDAGE is a term of opprobrium and 
 contempt, and yet there is a meaning in the word 
 that has a charm for respectable people. Kinglake has 
 expressed the thing admirably in " Eothen " ; there 
 come times to most of us who are worth anything at 
 all, when the restraints of society chafe beyond endu- 
 rance. Our nature has passionate longings to refresh 
 itself by a relapse into the habits of our primitive 
 progenitors. We cannot precisely cast away our 
 clothes, and a loose covering of skins for summer wear 
 would fret our over-sensitive epidermis ; the acorns of 
 the golden age would vex our artificial digestions, and 
 we should pull exceedingly wry faces over draughts 
 from the limpid stream. But a little playing at that 
 free-and-easy existence, modified by some appliances 
 of luxuries in the rough, is a very actual joy for the 
 time, that leaves delightful though disturbing remin- 
 iscences behind it. Many a care-harassed spirit will 
 keep longing for the wings of the dove ; but failing 
 these, a stout pair of legs, a sound stomach, and an 
 
 133 
 
134 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 
 
 easy-going temper, are found to be very tolerable 
 substitutes. Rapid motion and swift change of scene 
 are always exhilarating in any shape. Johnson, whose 
 powerful but ungainly frame was scarcely cut .out for 
 steady toe-and-heel work, remarked complacently while 
 being hurried along in a post-chaise, that life had few 
 better things to offer. Scott, when condemned by 
 breaking health to jog along Tweedside on "a canny- 
 trotting pony," reverted with melancholy mingled with 
 pleasure to " the grand gallops he had had among these 
 braes " when thinking of his " Marmion." And many 
 a man has subscribed since then to the dicta of the 
 Fleet Street philosopher and the Great Magician of the 
 North. The revival of coaching days in the Four-in- 
 hand and Coaching Clubs is a tribute to the pleasures 
 of the box-seat behind the fiery-footed team that was 
 being sprung by some workman over the level ; and 
 what can be more exhilarating for the moment than the 
 brush after the hounds, when the scent is being carried 
 breast-high, and the melodious pack may be covered 
 with a blanket ! But on the road and in the hunting 
 field alike came the inevitable seasons of reaction and 
 depression cramped legs and tingling fingers, checks 
 and catastrophes where excitement comes to a sudden 
 collapse, dismal rides homeward in the damp and the 
 darkness, when the fires of the day have died down and 
 are smouldering in the dulness of their ashes. Perhaps 
 it is only on his own sturdy legs, with each muscle and 
 fibre in springy motion, that man feels master of his 
 animal spirits, and can assert his absolute independence 
 
THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 135 
 
 of will. There is nothing like walking for getting rid 
 of the blue-devils, or to brace you for a wrestle with 
 more formidable fiends, to whom these blue-devils are 
 mere diaboli minores. But it is no idea of such earnest 
 grapple as that last which prompts our pen at this 
 present writing. We speak of pedestrians in the prime 
 of their powers, who, as yet, should have had no more 
 than the share of worry that may be mercifully sent as 
 a blessing in disguise, to put them in training against 
 veritable calamities of the exercise that comes as near 
 unadulterated happiness as any you are likely to find on 
 earth. 
 
 Most people who may chance to read this book have 
 had their fates shaped out for them more or less. 
 Either they have been born to the happy independence 
 which has its responsibilities as well as its pleasures, and 
 have been educated more or less successfully to the 
 decent discharge of their duties ; or they have been 
 brought up to the enjoyment of certain luxuries which 
 can only be assured them by the practice of a profession. 
 In either case they have been broken into some sort of 
 harness, although occasionally they may kick over the 
 traces. Had it happened to them to have been born in 
 humble circumstances had their wants been more 
 simple, and their aspirations limited to the day they 
 might never have betaken themselves to regular employ- 
 ment, but have blossomed into full-blown tramps. 
 
 Well, it has not been our fate to be born gipsies ; 
 and, like the poet, the gipsy or the tramp nascitur, ncn 
 fit. But if vagabondage can never be our pursuit, we 
 
136 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 
 
 may still fall back upon it as a distraction. Even a 
 single good pedestrian stretch, when nothing better 
 is to be done, may act like enchantment on jaded 
 spirits. What we suppose you to be seeking is 
 temporary relief from the wearing strain of work or 
 society ; and then, if you are out of condition and 
 that, as we presume, may be taken for granted 
 the mere effort of keeping up conversation with a 
 companion may make all the difference between re- 
 freshment and the reverse. We would not insult you 
 by the suggestion that you cannot find entertainment 
 in your own thoughts, although there are people who 
 seem to shrink from their personal company, as if they 
 had a horror of having too much of a most undesirable 
 acquaintance. In reality, the natural thoughts that 
 come unforced ; the dreamy languor of mind that 
 listlessly disengages itself over trifles ; those simple 
 every-day sights and sounds that may strike you spell- 
 bound in sudden admiration ; the associations you 
 cannot take the trouble to trace, reviving the brightness 
 of boyish memories all these things in an interval of 
 sorely-needed repose, are among the most subtle forms 
 of intellectual indulgence. 
 
 And as it happens, of the mighty cities of the 
 world there most assuredly is no better head -quarters 
 for the pedestrian than London. Among the European 
 capitals it stands almost unrivalled in that respect. 
 Near Paris, the charming coteaux on the Seine, with 
 the ornamental villas in their blooming little gardens, 
 strike you as distinctly suburban, when seen from 
 
THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 137 
 
 some distance and the impression is confirmed on 
 closer acquaintance. At Copenhagen, as at Frankfort, 
 there is a monotony of beauty, with a sense of con- 
 finement, in the magnificent beech forests, whose shades 
 you may seek at no great distance. So there are 
 dreariness and dulness of a different kind in the ruin- 
 strewn desolation of the Roman Campagna ; or you 
 must depend for variety on distant views of the hills, 
 or on lights that are apt to be distressingly glaring. 
 Most capitals, like Rome, are situated on plains, 
 although without Rome's natural and archaeological 
 advantages. Near Vienna there are most charming 
 valleys running up among the spurs of the neigh- 
 bouring mountains ; but, as a rule, you can only 
 approach them painfully by tram-car, to find yourself 
 in so many paradises of the Cockney, redolent of the 
 fumes of beer and sausages, and resonant of the brass 
 bands that are discoursing popular music. While at 
 Constantinople, the foreground of its matchless views 
 is enveloped in clouds of penetrating dust, and 
 enlivened by the gloomy groves of cypresses that 
 shade the resting-places of the true believer ; and the 
 environs of Naples are all dust, clay, or chalk, accord- 
 ing to the time of year ; and Madrid is a purgatory 
 ' either of ice or fire, breathed upon from the chilly 
 blow-pipes of the Guadarrama. 
 
 London, on the other hand, because it is the biggest 
 city in the world, is brought into most intimate 
 connection with the surrounding country by the count- 
 less lines of rail that radiate from central stations. 
 
138 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 
 
 And what a country ! Possibly you may say that it 
 is not very picturesque beyond Shooter's Hill, or over 
 Plumstead marshes ; but elsewhere you can hardly go 
 wrong. Even Essex deserves a higher reputation for 
 beauty than it bears, although long encroachment has 
 been making wild work with the oak-clumps and the 
 bramble-brakes of Epping Forest. There is much 
 that is pretty in Middlesex and Hertfordshire, between 
 the Chase of Enfield and the spires of Harrow-on-the- 
 Hill, without going so far afield as Hatfield. Of 
 course the river above Teddington Lock unrolls a 
 rarely bewitching panorama ; while as to Kent and 
 Surrey on the south, they boast the most enchanting 
 scenery of the English lowlands. What is strange, too, 
 is the rural, the almost desolate, aspect of districts 
 whence you can distinguish the dome of St. Paul's, and 
 which are enveloped in the folds of the city fogs, 
 when the wind chances to set in that direction. On 
 the other hand, fashion has occupied some of the most 
 seducing positions on the suburban heights, gradually 
 spreading and annexing the environs. The gipsies 
 that were wont to haunt Norwood and Chiselhurst in 
 the memories of comparatively youthful men, have seen 
 their sequestered retreats cut up into building lots. 
 Rows of brand-new villas, detached and semi-detached, 
 have enveloped the oak-glades in the park at Knole ; 
 and a township of structures, more or less fantastic 
 and substantial, has been run up among the fir-trees 
 at Weybridge and Claremont. Yet there are other 
 spots, scarcely less attractive, that somehow have been 
 
THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 139 
 
 shunned alike by the railroad and the land-jobber, 
 though it would seem, in the mania for sleeping in 
 the country, that wealthy city people, from the banker 
 to the shopkeeper, would have settled down upon 
 them everywhere like gold-laden locusts. 
 
 No ; the lucky Londoner can hardly go far wrong 
 in his choice of a country walk. A more or less 
 moderate expense lands him at some eligible starting- 
 point ; and thence he can wander away at his own 
 sweet will, sure to find himself when he has had nearly 
 enough of it, within easy reach of a station, from 
 which he may comfortably return. Nor would we 
 carry our love of solitude or retirement to extremes. 
 A modest hostelry, of good reputation, adds a singular 
 charm to the loveliest landscapes ; and we should be 
 inclined to shape our course for the day by our 
 knowledge of the bearings of the " Hart " or the 
 u Lion." Desultory disquisition and purposeless 
 dawdling are of the very essence of this our literary 
 ramble ; so we may be forgiven if we pause to say 
 a word on the insinuating charms of the suburban 
 hostelry. In point of architecture and situation, these 
 establishments are various enough ; but it is seldom 
 that they have not a certain air of comfort, and 
 bright, hearty hospitality. The cheerful stucco of 
 the facade is by no means to be objected to in a 
 climate where the glare of the sun is rarely oppres- 
 sive. Moreover, there is sure to be abundance 
 of shade : the spreading boughs from an adjacent 
 copse throw their limbs over the roofs of the stable 
 
140 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 
 
 yard ; and opposite there stands the great elm tree, 
 which shelters the sign-post and the creaking sign. 
 Or, in place of the elm, may be a glorious horse- 
 chestnut we have more than one of these at this 
 moment in our eye with its fragrant load of snowy 
 blossom in the season ; and beyond the dusty road, an 
 enclosure of close-shaven lawn ; and beyond the lawn 
 and the bowling-green, a stream that is dear to angling 
 guests, although their perseverance may be'unfrequently 
 rewarded. Or, in place of the large white house, with 
 the big bow-windows of its dining-parlours looking out 
 upon the great horse-trough, a little mansion, in modern 
 Elizabethan, may have broken out all over in fantastic 
 angles and gables. In either case, within doors is the 
 cool bar, with the presiding naiad of the ale-barrels 
 embowered in geraniums and fuchsias a bar that in 
 sultry summer weather might shake the self-denial of 
 the most ascetic of teetotallers ; and there is the roomy 
 cupboard in the passage, with its doors of glass, through 
 which you may admire a choice selection of cold joints, 
 and salads, and cucumbers, and cheeses, and pastry, and 
 fruit-tarts. You may make a very good English dinner 
 in these places ; and a good English dinner is no bad 
 thing, since it is within the scope of the commonplace 
 cook, who would come to shame and confusion among 
 foreign-fangled entrees. Are there not the primest of 
 rounds and sirloins reared in those rich meadows hard 
 by, though the beasts that carried them may barely hold 
 their own with the best bullocks of Aberdeenshire ? 
 And there are saddles of mutton from the neighbouring 
 
THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 141 
 
 downs, albeit a trifle big in the bone and coarse in the 
 grain ; and there is the clucking of fattened poultry to 
 be heard from the yard round the corner, with the 
 cooing of the flock of pigeons that is laid under 
 contribution for the pies. The spring-cart of the fish- 
 monger from the nearest town pulls up punctually at 
 the door every morning, with the offer of anything from 
 soles to salmon. The bitter beer, it may be hoped, is 
 all that can be desired, if the house be not the property 
 of some short-sighted brewer ; for most of its patrons 
 are either connoisseurs or profess to be. And the 
 pleasures of a draught from a frothing tankard deserve 
 some dozen of pages to themselves, had we the space to 
 spare and the inspiration to pen them. As for the 
 cellar of wines, perhaps the less said the better, except 
 that they are no worse, and considerably cheaper, than 
 those to be met with in crack hotels, and that they may 
 very easily be dispensed with at the substantial repast to 
 which you sit down. Many a time a chance visit to 
 one of those houses has led to repeated sojourns later, 
 especially if there be an old-fashioned garden with 
 summer-houses, which you may turn into smoking 
 divans at the hours of digestion. 
 
 But to come back to that walk of ours, which, by the 
 by, is yet to be begun. We give up our ticket at a 
 station, where all is still enough at present, since as yet 
 it is early in the day, and the City men are away at 
 their business. Late in the afternoon there will be a 
 crowd of carriages, from the barouche and the brougham, 
 through victorias and dog-carts, down to the humble 
 
142 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 
 
 pony-chaise. Now you walk past the pleasant 
 residences of these gentlemen, slumbering languidly 
 in the summer heat. The gravel is kept to perfection ; 
 the grass is rolled to the smoothness of a well-starched 
 shirt-front ; under the cool foliage there is a blush of 
 roses or a glow of geraniums, according to the month. 
 There is just breeze enough to set the tree-shadows 
 flickering on the lawns, and to rustle the tendrils of the 
 creepers that cling to the columns of the verandas. 
 The broad bay-windows are yawning in the twilight 
 under cover of the striped sun-blinds, giving glimpses 
 of great vases of flowers upon tables loaded with books 
 and newspapers ; while the discords of the daughters 
 of the houses at piano-practice within, chime in agree- 
 ably rather than otherwise. Here and there may be 
 the signs of deplorable taste : Chinese pagodas, Italian 
 belvederes, and fantastic selections of modern statuary 
 that fall a trifle short of the glories of the Vatican. 
 But there is little that might not be easily remodelled 
 or replaced ; and, on the whole, there are few of those 
 " desirable residences " where a man might not be 
 contented to " hang up his hat." 
 
 Another turn in the road and another change of the 
 scene. You are in the street of the little village that is 
 the nucleus of this settlement of the Newcomes. There 
 are wide gravel footpaths on either side of the broad 
 causeway, and smart brick residences, with knockers, 
 and brass plates that bear the superscriptions of local 
 attorneys and doctors ; and cottages behind low wooden 
 railings in their narrow patches of garden. The whole 
 
THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 143 
 
 is interspersed with lilacs and laburnums, and though 
 the bloom may be over, the verdure remains : and 
 outside the village is the Gothic church, newly raised by 
 liberal contributions, with a spire of portentous height, 
 emblematic of transcendent High Church aspirations. 
 A mile or two further, and you are leaving villas and 
 cottages ornees behind. You are among country seats 
 that have been built generations before, although many 
 of them have changed hands of late years, as we may 
 judge by the additions that have been recently made. 
 The ground is rolling prettily ; there are clumps of 
 trees in the swelling park-land, where colonies of rooks 
 are cawing cheerily, or would be cawing if your walk 
 were early in the spring. A profusion of money has 
 been lavished on landscape-gardening, with more or less 
 taste and discretion : there are masses of laurel and 
 rhododendrons and azaleas enfolding labyrinths of 
 winding paths ; and if there be a bit of a brook its 
 bed has been widened and its waters have been carried 
 down over tiny waterfalls, among the ferneries and 
 artificial rockeries. The properties hereabouts are not 
 very big, yet you get among farms and tempting field- 
 paths which cut great angles off the dusty high-road. 
 Some of these farmhouses seem the very places for the 
 well-to-do hermit who has a fancy for cutting his 
 profession or trade, and spending his declining years in 
 losing money in agriculture. It is true that if he were 
 to take them on repairing lease, he must make up his 
 mind to considerable outlay. It is their age that lends 
 enchantment to their view : and doubtless their internal 
 
144 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 
 
 arrangements are rather quaint than commodious. The 
 venerable brick tints blend harmoniously with the dark 
 foliage of the embosoming trees. The lozenged 
 windows, half hidden in trailing roses, let in less light 
 and air than may be altogether desirable. The ivy that 
 has clambered over the roof and settled helplessly down 
 upon it in ponderous masses must be one vast museum 
 of entomology, and distil clouds of damp like a patent 
 condenser. But one must pay in some shape or other 
 for the picturesque ; and it is certain that if the tenant 
 had the soul of an artist, it would be gladdened through 
 the finest months of the year. 
 
 The ground rises more and more, and again the 
 country changes its character. You are getting up 
 towards the ridge of the downs, whose hog-back has 
 been looming against your horizon. The soil is poorer 
 and the farms more scattered, and the oaks and beeches 
 and elms are giving place to heather and fir woods. 
 Wherever the sunbeams can thread their way, they are 
 lighting up aisles of golden columns ; and the heat 
 draws forth the fragrance of the resin that is oozing in 
 bubbly and trickling streams. So far as the scents 
 go, you might be on the banks of the Adour, and for 
 solitude you might be in the glades of Rothiemurchus 
 or on the dreary moor of Rannoch. Yet London Stone 
 is within a score of miles, and you paid but half-a-crown 
 for your railway ticket. But those Surrey woods have 
 this speciality, that their beauties are embraced in a 
 reasonable compass, and you may count on coming out 
 on the other side, if only you persevere long enough. 
 
THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 145 
 
 For, blinking owl-like in the unaccustomed light, it 
 dawns upon you that you are on the skirts of an open 
 common. Brakes of holly, bound with bramble and 
 wild clematis, are scattered about here and there, tufted 
 with the wool of the sheep, who are amicably grazing 
 among the rabbits. The rabbits have mined it with 
 their burrows here and there, and a horseman must 
 keep a bright look-out and a firm bridle-hand ; but 
 what a magnificent place it is for a gallop. Were it 
 not for these foot-traps, towards sunset, or in the cool 
 of the early morning, you might come across a string 
 of thoroughbreds from the neighbouring training stable. 
 A dip into a little valley, with a stream in the bottom, 
 and then up again and still upwards. Now you are 
 breasting the steep slopes of the downs, and the breaths 
 of air that stirred fitfully below have swelled into a 
 gentle breeze. You look back on a burnished pano- 
 rama of wheat crops and grass fields lying against the 
 black masses of the woods, and flecked with the 
 shadows of those fleecy clouds that are floating aim- 
 lessly across the azure sky. And what a view there is 
 in all directions from the summit ! On the one side, 
 the fair fertility of the weald, that stretches in meadows 
 and corn-land, in orchards and hop-gardens, to that 
 blue line of gentle eminences seen faintly through the 
 heat-haze in the distance ; on the other, the broad 
 valley of the Thames, with the battlements and keeps 
 of Windsor on the sky-line. One way, were the smoke 
 canopy to thin and lift, you might distinguish the 
 square towers of Westminster and the dome and cross 
 
 ii 
 
146 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN ENGLAND 
 
 and ball of St. Paul's ; while all around you gradually 
 recognise the heights that are the glory and landmarks 
 of their respective localities. Strictly speaking, we 
 should press you into continuing the walk, for we have 
 many miles to go, and much that is beautiful to admire, 
 before we have brought our work to an end, or honour- 
 ably earned our dinner. But we would rather part 
 company before you are thoroughly bored, and prefer 
 to change the scene to Scotland. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Amateur Tramp in Scotland 
 
 A ND whither shall we bend our wandering steps in 
 -^^ the rare embarrassment of half-savage riches in the 
 shaggy land of the mountain and the flood ? Shall we 
 take our walk on the Border or in the Highlands ; or 
 if in the Highlands, shall it be in the west or in the 
 north, in the midlands, or among the highest of the 
 Grampians ? In the Highlands, we say decidedly, for 
 reasons we need hardly pause to condescend upon ; and 
 to avoid inviting invidious comparisons, we shall leave 
 identification to the reader's imagination. In the 
 Highlands, and especially on the western coast, there 
 is always an element of climatic uncertainty which you 
 are inclined to regard as a blessing when the chances 
 have turned up in your favour. The night before the 
 barometer was tending down, and the questionable 
 clouds that shrouded the sunset had cast their percep- 
 tible shadows on the faces of your fellow-tourists. 
 When, in the words of the Queen of the May, you 
 bade the boots call you early in the morning, anxiety 
 belied your ill-assumed confidence. And when his 
 
148 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN SCOTLAND 
 
 heavy knuckles interrupted your slumbers he had 
 nothing very satisfactory to say. The clouds of the 
 evening sky were a joke to the morning grimness. 
 You looked out from your window on curtains of 
 vapour that shrouded alike the loch and the mountain. 
 There was nothing reassuring in the feeling of the 
 wind, that fanned your forehead like the forerunner of 
 rain, and vexed your ear with a watery sough. But a 
 man must trust something to fate, and inaction in the 
 Highlands is immeasurably depressing. You take heart 
 of grace and start. You hear the bell of the early 
 steamer chiming somewhere out of blank space like a 
 fog-signal. For anything you can see, setting tem- 
 perature out of the question, you might as well be in 
 the innermost recesses of a double-heated Turkish bath. 
 But you have lost your road before, and as yet it is not 
 easy to mistake it ; so you set the stout heart to the 
 stey brae, and boldly burn your bridges behind you. 
 And you receive your rich reward, even sooner than 
 you had dared to hope. There are light rifts over- 
 head that quickly widen and brighten. When the sun 
 has once unlocked the wheels of his chariot he swiftly 
 follows up his advantage. The vapoury veils have not 
 a chance with him ; they shrivel up into drifting shreds 
 before his blaze, and float away into cool corners and 
 nooks. The whole resplendent prospect to the seaward 
 lies extended all of a sudden at your feet, seen through 
 a limpid transparency that throws everything into sharp- 
 edged relief. The gleaming crescent of the breaking 
 $urf and the rippling waters of the loch beyond it ; the 
 
THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN SCOTLAND 149 
 
 braes of heather and the hills of grass, with the fleecy 
 flocks that lie huddled together on them ; the steamers 
 whistling at the wharf behind, with the unlucky passen- 
 gers embarking, who are to be doomed to supine 
 inactivity ; the brown sails of the fishing-boats scarcely 
 swelling to the light cat's-paws ; the flights of stooping 
 sea-fowl ; the low verdant islands in the middle dis- 
 tance ; the clear outlines of the rocky peaks, whose base 
 is battered by the breakers of the Atlantic. 
 
 But your road leads to the landward, and there is 
 pleasure enough in the sights and sensations that beckon 
 you along it. The oak copses are glistening in showers 
 of fog-drops. The birds are twittering merrily to the 
 promise of the brilliant day ; now and then a hare hops 
 out upon your path, or you have a flying glance at the 
 white stern of a roe, as he bounds gracefully into the 
 thicker cover. Beyond the copses you emerge on the 
 moors, where you hear the shrill cry of the grouse- 
 cock, and the plaintive wail of the wary curlew. 
 The moors reach away from you on either side in 
 brown rolling stretches of heather, cut up here and 
 there by black peat-hags. There is not a human being 
 or a habitation, for the moment, within sight or hear- 
 ing ; your bed and the boots and your southern fellow- 
 tourists seem to be left long leagues and days behind 
 you. If ever you care for communing with yourself 
 quietly, with the mellowing lights of heaven falling 
 softly on your past and your future, now is one of those 
 rare opportunities that come too seldom in the course 
 of your pilgrimage. Ha ! what is that ? A sea-eagle. 
 
150 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN SCOTLAND 
 
 as we live, winging his flight towards the loch, and 
 sharp-set for his breakfast ; and the sight is far rarer 
 than it should be, now that he is so ruthlessly shot 
 down by the keepers, while fancy prices are given for 
 his eggs. It may be true that the eagle's moral quali- 
 ties have been absurdly idealised by the poets. He is a 
 fierce and truculent savage, and, like all savages, a 
 glutton to boot ; and he assuredly shows to anything 
 but advantage when, after having gorged himself on a 
 heavy meal, he crumples up into a shapeless ball of 
 feathers, resigning himself to the slow labours of diges- 
 tion. But when you come across him of a glorious 
 morning like this, soaring in the strength of his mag- 
 nificent pinions, he is as the warlike Osmanli amidst 
 the joys of battle to the same individual in peace-time 
 in the sensuous seclusion of his harem. 
 
 Leaving him behind, and his heathery hunting- 
 grounds, you cross the ridge and clear the plateau to 
 descend the watershed on the other side. You may 
 safely leave the road if you please, for the road, that 
 has been most scientifically engineered, tediously de- 
 scends by easy gradients, losing itself and alternately 
 reappearing among the copsewood. Still, you may be 
 the better of a guide ; and here you have one, 
 vociferous indeed, yet not importunate. In these dark 
 peat-bogs, under coverings of emerald duckweed, are 
 the troubled sources of the translucent stream which 
 waters the pastures of the strath below you. But 
 before it runs so smooth and shallow, stringing a 
 succession of silvery lochs on its meandering course, it 
 
THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN SCOTLAND 151 
 
 has to tumble a couple of thousand feet or so, with 
 little elbow-room to do it in. Down it goes, through 
 a series of gorges, leaping in foaming little cascades, 
 roaring with all its tiny force in scores of tempestuous 
 miniature cataracts, catching its breath in swirling pools 
 before it breaks forth again upon its headlong career. 
 Unless you could leap and light on your feet like the 
 chamois, or wear wings on your double-soled walking- 
 boots, a la Mercury, it would be sheer matter of 
 impossibility to keep close company with it through- 
 out. But, by dint of scrambling and slipping, cutting 
 off precipitous corners, and swinging yourself down- 
 wards by bending boughs, you make shift somehow to 
 rejoin it in the rocky cleft at the bottom. The path 
 you have found or forced is but seldom trodden, and 
 the pair of ravens who have their nesting-place in the 
 rocky recess greet your intrusion with discordant 
 croaks, that are meant unmistakably for malignant 
 execrations. The sun rarely touches these depths, 
 except when he takes a flying shot through the hill- 
 tops some time late in the afternoon ; and it is an 
 agreeable change from their sombre shadows into the 
 light of the widening valley below. Thence your path, 
 though it sometimes rises, on the whole leads down- 
 wards in an easy descent. Now it winds through 
 groups of Scotch firs, more or less shattered and 
 storm-beaten, throwing out their distorted limbs over 
 jungles of luxuriant bracken. Now it runs by the 
 shores of silent lakelets, their surface seldom broken by 
 the oar, and reflecting in their glassy mirror their 
 
152 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN SCOTLAND 
 
 fringe of weeping birches. Here and there the oppres- 
 sion of the solitude is relieved by a shooting-box or a 
 shepherd's cottage, and in either case the sporting dogs 
 or the collies are sure to awaken the echoes with a 
 shrill chorus of clamorous baying ; or mayhap you may 
 come on a lonely kirk, with the single-storied manse 
 within a stone's throw ; and a tiny school and a humble 
 schoolmaster's house, and a hovel that may be tenanted 
 by the minister's man. How on earth the most fervent 
 piety, or the most impassioned eloquence, can evoke 
 even the phantom of a decent congregation, is a 
 mystery you cannot profess to fathom. The prolific 
 Celts that once peopled the valley have long since been 
 swept away to give place to the sheep and the deer. 
 You saw the grass-grown foundation of one of their 
 deserted hamlets scarring the turf of the little knoll 
 that was lapped on three sides in a loop of the stream. 
 But the present population of these parts has no notion 
 of distance ; and in many a winding hill-valley that 
 runs up among the roots of the hills are the huts of 
 shepherds and keepers and gillies, whose existence one 
 never suspects till it is betrayed by the peat-reek from 
 the chimneys. 
 
 By this time, however, you must have had nearly 
 enough of it, though you did have an opportunity of 
 breaking your fast at midday on oat-cakes and ewe- 
 milk cheese, bottled ale and a caulker of whisky, 
 following up the meal with a pipe and a siesta, basking 
 on the balmy bank of the river. So that as you pass 
 the last of the milestones with a perceptible limp, you 
 
THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN SCOTLAND 153 
 
 welcome the chimneys of your place of destination, 
 where you have prudently timed yourself to anticipate 
 the advent of the cross-country mail and the tourist- 
 laden steamers. 
 
 There are people who turn up their noses at Scotland 
 as a touring country, which of course is absurd. Per- 
 haps the chief objection to it, as it appears to us, 
 besides the preponderating type of tourist, who is not 
 to be ignored, and the climate, which often is not to be 
 defended, is the tantalising character of your most 
 romantic walks. The grouse rise whirring from the 
 heather around you, skimming the knolls in their swift 
 flight, and dropping provokingly ahead ; the black 
 game may be seen towards dusk gathering in clusters 
 on the boughs of the fir trees ; the stately hart, sending 
 his hinds before him, goes trotting leisurely over the 
 forest-steeps, to show his antlered profile on the sky- 
 line before vanishing from view. The salmon are 
 leaping in their favourite pools, and the lively little 
 trout on the feed in the lochs are rippling the surface 
 in widening circles. Deer and game-birds seem to 
 show by their indifferent familiarity that they know 
 you are there upon sufferance and impotent to harm 
 them. A simple wayfarer, without gun, rifle, or rod 
 among your belongings, you are apt half to forget the 
 beauty of those mountain preserves while walking 
 through them with hands that are innocent of blood- 
 shed ; and you are envying the inmates of the shooting- 
 boxes and the lodges, whom you see abroad with their 
 rods, their dogs, and their gillies. In your walks on 
 
154 THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN SCOTLAND 
 
 the Continent, on the other hand, you are not often 
 tempted in that way. There may be game in abundance 
 in some of those great forests forests that are really 
 set thick with trees in place of being bare hillsides, 
 lucus a non lucendo but it is relatively rarely that you 
 get a glimpse of it. And the sportsmen you come 
 across, with their tasselled game-bags and fringed 
 gaiters, with their short guns slung to their shoulders, 
 and their long-backed badger-hounds following at their 
 heels, seem to belong to distinct varieties of your 
 species, and to have got themselves up artistically for 
 scenes in " Der Freyschiitz." As for those ranges of 
 the High Alps, &c., that are thrown open to the 
 admiration and pedestrian achievements of the public, 
 in these the sport is mythical. We believe in the pre- 
 sence of troops of chamois in the Royal Bavarian 
 preserves that cast the shadows of their precipitous 
 terraces over the stillness of the Konigsee, and of 
 moufflons in the Piedmontese solitudes that are kept 
 sacred to his Majesty of Italy. Nay, we have had our 
 attention called to shifting specks on the Pyrenean 
 snow-slopes that, as we were confidently informed, 
 were izzards ; and in Switzerland we have eaten over- 
 poweringly savoury meat that was served as chamois- 
 venison, and suggested goat. But in the absence of all 
 sporting distractions, save the occasional whistle of the 
 marmot from among the beds of Alpine roses and the 
 boulder-strewn rocks, you can resign yourself abso- 
 lutely to the enjoyment of the changing and dissolving 
 views, and revel in the grandeur of the glaciers and 
 snow-fields. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Fishing in River^ Stream^ and Loch 
 
 T ET those abuse the practice of field-sports who 
 -"- ' will, it is a question of the feelings, not of 
 reasoning. We believe that Providence knew what 
 it was about when it implanted an ardent devotion 
 to the chase in the bosoms of most lovers of the 
 country. The passion of hunting up wild things, 
 and following them in their haunts in woodland, 
 hedgerow, and rush-grown pool, is never more in- 
 tense than in innocent childhood ; though it is 
 confirmed into a rooted habit of life with the 
 scientific successes of youth and manhood. It would 
 be hard upon us if, in a more advanced state of 
 civilisation, we had to renounce the recreations of 
 the virtuous savage. 
 
 And although we cannot see ourselves as others 
 see us, or judge ourselves as our posterity will judge 
 us, it is our opinion that in indulgence in various 
 sports we Englishmen of this present generation 
 must have nearly hit ofF the happy mean. Some 
 of our tolerated amusements may still be open to 
 
 155 
 
156 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 objections ; but, generally speaking, a healthy senti- 
 ment draws the line between " field-sports/' properly 
 so called, and their bastard kindred, where the 
 victim had no chance and his pluck was cruelly 
 exploitee by his persecutors. 
 
 Say the fox has a mauvais quart d'heure after 
 the exhilarating edge has been taken off his first 
 burst of excitement, and he finds that he is really 
 racing for his life. Up to that time, and with the 
 exception of an occasional breather, the sly and 
 jovial freebooter has been living on the fat of the 
 land. Of what a sum of sorrows has he not been 
 the cause in the course of his maraudings on the 
 neighbouring poultry-yards and rabbit-burrows ! 
 How many melancholy bereavements have been laid 
 to his door ! His nocturnal trail has been strewn 
 with tattered plumage, and there is a very Gehenna 
 of bleaching bones round the earths where he relaxes 
 towards the gloaming among his ravenous cubs. 
 At last the hour of retribution has come and who 
 shall say that he has not been working for his fate ? 
 Had it not been for the gourmandise that had 
 sleeked his coat and thickened his wind, he might 
 have carried off his brush undraggled with all the 
 honours of the chase. As it is, the pace and scent 
 have been so good that his sufferings are at an 
 end before he has well realised them. He has died 
 the death that would have been desired by his 
 human counterparts our Scotch Highland caterans 
 and Border reivers and has breathed his last in the 
 
FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 157 
 
 throbbings of mad excitement, in place of wasting 
 away in slow inanition when his strength has failed 
 and his jaws are fangless. We have far more 
 sympathy for the harmless hare, tossed over in the 
 teeth of the remorseless greyhounds. But there too, 
 after all, the end came quick ; and up to the 
 moment when she was seen squatting in her form, 
 her hours had been gliding by in blissful uncon- 
 sciousness of the tragedy in which she was so soon 
 to play the leading part. While, on the other hand, 
 the rattling gallops after the hounds, the long days 
 on the breezy down among the coursers, have spared 
 more pain to many gentlemen of the field than 
 any amount of physic or mineral waters. Who can 
 say how many latent diseases have been indefinitely 
 stayed off, if not eradicated ? We know that that 
 gallant veteran, who groaned heavily in spirit in the 
 early morning as he painfully raised his rheumatic limb 
 towards the stirrup, swung himself from the saddle in 
 the afternoon a different creature, after the " sharp 
 sweating in his clothes." While as for fishing, to come 
 back to our moutons, the " cruelty " in fishing scarcely 
 deserves consideration. We do not go so far as to say, 
 with some enthusiasts, that a fish is the livelier for the 
 hook he carries away, and that it tickles his palate at 
 meal-times like pickles or Worcester sauce. But we 
 are persuaded that the inconvenience it causes him must 
 be infinitesimal, since the smart no more interferes with 
 his appetite than the burn of a chili on the palate of an 
 epicure. Every angler must remember cases in his 
 
158 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 personal experience when the fish he has played, having 
 broken his line, has come to a change of flies on the 
 second time of asking, as if ten minutes' tumbling on 
 the hook against the stream had merely put a keener 
 edge on his voracity. 
 
 So we cast considerations of morbid sentimentality 
 to the winds, and write of angling from the sports- 
 man's point of view. A contemplative recreation, some 
 people love to call it. Well, a contemplative recreation 
 it is ; nor is it a slight charm about it when the fish 
 are shy to be wooed, and you are wandering through 
 the woodlands by the rippling water, that you may 
 abandon yourself to reflection in the interludes of 
 working, and draw profitable inspirations from the 
 beauties of nature. Always supposing, that is to say, 
 that you do not let your wits go a-wool-gathering from 
 your immediate business ; for you should make each 
 cast as if the odds were in favour of a rise and moon- 
 struck abstraction is fatal to heavy baskets. But there 
 are anglers and anglers, as there are streams and streams, 
 from the swift-rushing Spey or the treacherous Find- 
 horn, to the waters of the Midland shires, that go softly 
 over bottoms of mud between borders of willows. A 
 contemplative recreation, you say ! We put it to any 
 man who boasts himself a good all-round sportsman. 
 What are the moments of most thrilling excitement he 
 ever experienced in his life ? He has felt the beating of 
 his heart come suddenly to a stand-still as he crawled 
 upon the antlers of a " stag of ten " showing over the 
 heather hillock in the corry, when the gusty breezes 
 
FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 159 
 
 threatened to betray him, and he was listening fearfully 
 for the warning crow of the grouse-cock. He has felt 
 his blood at the boiling-point in bitter January, as he 
 laid the broad pastures behind him in the grass counties, 
 and went clearing the ox-fences and crashing through 
 the bull-finches, as the pack that might have been 
 covered with a waggon-tilt were carrying the burning 
 scent heart-high. For aught we know, he may have 
 stood face to face with the crouching tiger ; or he may 
 have slipped " by the skin of his teeth " through the 
 hug of a " grizzly.'* But in these last situations the 
 sensations though sharp enough, must be short, and we 
 should fancy that the horror predominates over pleasure 
 in them. While in the struggle with the salmon in the 
 rapid stream, the prolonged and pleasurable excitement 
 after the first moment of rapturous assurance, goes on 
 growing in intensity through minutes that may extend 
 themselves into hours. There may be the piquancy, 
 too, of some dash of danger in the reckless gymnastics 
 you may be forced to perform between the depths of 
 the pools and the cliffs that overhang them ; while 
 faculties already strained to the uttermost are wrought 
 on by alternations of fear and hope, till the contest comes 
 to an end in one way or another. 
 
 Take a single reminiscence among the many that 
 memory lightly recalls. It was on the first day of one 
 of your fishing seasons, when, hurrying away from 
 work, worries, and late hours in town, you had gone to 
 the Highlands, brimming over with expectation, and in 
 the spirits of a schoolboy broken loose for the holidays. 
 
160 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 Had your spirits been less exuberant, they might have 
 been dashed by the news that welcomed you to your 
 lonely lodge in the wilderness. The river was running 
 low after a portentous period of drought. Some of the 
 surest pools were scarcely worth the trouble of casting 
 over ; and through the limpid waters of the soft- 
 murmuring stream you could almost " prospect " the 
 gravelly bottom for yourself, and see that the favourite 
 " seats " of the fish were untenanted. The best rods 
 had done little or nothing for a fortnight or more ; 
 even your opposite neighbour The M'Closkey, re- 
 nowned far and wide among the heroes of the angle, 
 had renounced his efforts in despair, and gone in for 
 solitary drinking. But after all, nothing venture, 
 nothing have : you had not travelled so far northwards 
 for nothing, and the mere sight of the familiar water 
 sufficed to set your fancy on the alert. Whether your 
 skill and perseverance be rewarded or no, it is pleasure 
 breathing the fresh air from the hills, and feeling your 
 muscles extend themselves to the play of the rod, as 
 you stretch your shoulders in the loose-sitting shooting- 
 coat. Whatever the condition of the water, the day is 
 all that can be desired : in the meantime there is a 
 canopy of dull, grey clouds, though there may be a 
 threatening of sunshine to disperse them later ; and the 
 breathings of the south-west wind have brought a light 
 ripple over the pools. Sticking chiefly to the stiller 
 but deeper water, you make your casts with a con- 
 scientiousness that does you credit. Persistence, and a 
 patient faith in the rise that may come to you at any 
 
FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 161 
 
 , , 
 
 moment, are the tests of the good and fortunate fisher- 
 man. But no doubt it is uphill work, that hoping on 
 against discouragement ; and you begin, in spite of 
 yourself, to take some interest in surrounding objects, 
 and a trifle less in the fly you are playing more 
 mechanically among the eddies and the back-water. 
 But here you are arrived at the famous " Fairy's Pool," 
 and compelled to pay closer attention ; for the droop- 
 ing birches that strike their roots through the clefts in 
 the rock throw their shadows over your fly-bedecked 
 wideawake, and you must cast a moderately long line 
 underhanded. You are drawing the fly with a gentle 
 twitch in artistic zigzags, behind that jutting black 
 point of rock, where you know there is a favourite 
 ".seat" of the salmon. There is a swirl and a surging 
 wave in the pool ; the reel spins round in double-quick 
 time, and the line runs out to the whirring music. 
 However long that fish may have been in the river, he 
 is clean as if he were fresh from the sea. You could 
 see the shimmer of the silver scales, as, bending himself 
 like a drawn bow in a mighty splash, he vanished again 
 in the depths from which you disturbed him. Salmon- 
 fishing a contemplative amusement, indeed ! there is 
 small time for contemplation. Nothing will ever bring 
 that fish to bank but the instincts of long scientific 
 experience, with prompt and decisive strategy. He is 
 bent upon " breaking " you, and you are bound to 
 humour him while you hold him fast ; and humouring 
 him is no such easy matter with the slippery foothold, 
 the lack of arm-room, and the canopy of drooping 
 
 12 
 
i62 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 birchen boughs. Yet the triumph of tasting blood, in 
 the circumstances, at your very first venture on the 
 water ! And already there is a spectator of your 
 prowess on the opposite shore, in the person of the 
 head-keeper of your neighbour's shootings. 
 
 Duncan is moved with envy, and sneeringly critical ; 
 and by way of calming your nerves, when so much 
 depends on coolness, your own attendant has forgotten 
 his self-restraint, and is shouting out unheeded counsels. 
 As to the fish, to all appearance he is quite capable of 
 taking care of himself. He made his rush in most 
 serious earnest, and it is to be hoped that he is securely 
 hooked. But your fly is small, and the casting-line 
 fine, both having been chosen in consideration of the 
 lowness of the river. A slack in the line, a slight 
 friction on the stones on the rugged bottom, and all 
 may be lost, honour included. And your antagonist 
 would appear to be as wily as he is powerful. After 
 that first movement of natural irritation, and the rush 
 that tested the strength of your hold, he has dived 
 calmly into the depths, where he has gone to working 
 quietly at extrication. To your gentle tightening of 
 the strain, he opposes a sturdy, passive resistance. 
 " Keep those reel-steps of yours till you next take the 
 floor to the pipes, Donald, and favour him with a stone 
 judiciously thrown." Ha ! he may be a sagacious fish, 
 but he is by no means a sullen one. He had hoped to 
 get rid of his silent sorrow without having to shift his 
 defensible quarters ; but now, as you mean fighting, 
 you shall have it. He makes a shoot like a submerged 
 
FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 163 
 
 torpedo, straight at your boots. As the hobnails slip 
 about on the moss-grown boulder, your heart jumps 
 towards your throat, and you feel for a moment that 
 all must be over. But when persistency in his strategy 
 might have saved him, he changes it ; and you can 
 straighten the rod that was hampered by the trees, and 
 haul in the line through the rings in a handful. For 
 out he goes again to mid-stream, turning the silvery 
 wheel in showers of waterworks, while in each of his 
 swift revolutions you seem to shave a catastrophe. He 
 is bent apparently on going back to the sea ; he makes 
 a resolute dart for the channel, where the pool, break- 
 ing into a stream, flows swiftly down the incline of a 
 shelving staircase. There is nothing for it but to let 
 him go or to follow. A contemplative amusement ! 
 There is little time for meditation, though you never 
 needed more the inspiration of thought. You are 
 plunging to mid-thigh in the rushing water, seeking a 
 doubtful foothold where you may doing your best 
 with your heavy rod with one hand, while clinging to 
 the slippery rocks with the other ; struggling forward 
 somehow with the shoulders uppermost, and breathing 
 hard all the time, like a hunted otter. Were you ever 
 conscious of a more blissful sensation of relief than 
 when, safely landed on the smooth sward lower down, 
 you have a reach of comparatively uncheckered water 
 before you with shelving gravel in that tiny bay ? If 
 line and hook will only hold there should be but one 
 conclusion now to the hard-fought battle, and it is on 
 that strip of yellow beach you mean to land him. A 
 
1 64 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 gallant fish he is, and makes more than one desperate 
 rally, but he can by no means avoid his destiny. 
 Answering to steady, irresistible persuasion, he is being 
 manoeuvred in easy beauty curves towards the bank, 
 with an occasional wallop of unavailing remonstrance ; 
 and Donald, bending over the stream in an attitude of 
 sanguinary expectation, has driven home the clip behind 
 his shoulder. " 'Deed, sir, she's a fine fush, whatever," 
 is his remark, as he stoops to relieve " her " lovingly of 
 the hook. And then he calls your attention to how 
 near a thing it was. For the hook has worked a fissure 
 in the lip, and merely holds by the skin ; and the line 
 has been frayed below the shank to something like 
 threads of gossamer. For a spirit so courageous, what 
 end could have been more becoming ? so that there is 
 but the faintest tinge of compassion to dash the exhila- 
 ration of the triumph. 
 
 So much for the excitements of the sport ; but there 
 are anglers and anglers, as we observed before, and we 
 may turn by way of contrast to scenes of calmer enjoy- 
 ment, when the name of the u gentle craft " becomes 
 more appropriate. For one man who has killed salmon 
 in the Scottish and Scandinavian rivers, there are hun- 
 dreds of skilful brothers of the angle who have never 
 cast a fly save in streams we might call Cockney. 
 Masters of their branch of the craft they often are, and 
 almost invariably passionate enthusiasts. No men are 
 better versed in the times and the seasons : no men 
 have more inexhaustible stores of patience ; have a 
 more intimate acquaintance with local entomology, 
 
SALMON FISHING. By LANCELOT SPEED. 
 
FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 165 
 
 natural and artificial ; can handle the rod and line 
 more deftly ; and are more fertile in ingenious devices 
 to bring suspicious victims to their lure. Yet such 
 men are often tied fast by professional pursuits, and 
 have seldom carte blanche for fishing in good water. 
 When they do go on a visit to some friend in the 
 country, or get a day's permission in some carefully- 
 preserved stretch of stream, how they do enjoy and 
 make the most of it ! all the more, however, if they 
 are at home in the neighbourhood, and have marked 
 the great fish feeding placidly of an evening on the 
 insects that tumble in from the banks and the tree- 
 roots. 
 
 It is no easy matter anywhere to beguile those sated 
 epicures, and in popular streams that are free for a 
 trifle to all comers, it is the next thing to an impossi- 
 bility. We used to know one particular river trout 
 who went far towards making the fortune of a large 
 hotel in a village some twenty miles from London. 
 It was very much a repetition of Lord Lytton's story 
 of John Burley and his one-eyed perch in " My Novel." 
 True, the situation of the hotel was charming ; with a 
 mighty horse-chestnut before the door, coming out 
 towards the middle of spring in a flush of pink and 
 white blossom, and overhanging a picturesque old 
 bridge, and a strip of miniature meadow enamelled 
 with cowslips. But the most generous patrons of the 
 establishment, of a Sunday, were the admirers of that 
 corpulent trout whose fame had spread far and near. 
 The good genius of the flourishing house, he was 
 
1 66 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 always at home in the limited domains, and yet nobody 
 knew exactly where to have him. Now he was under 
 this stone, now behind that other one ; and again he 
 would be lazily flipping his fins among the roots of 
 the alder over the way. So the banks were planted 
 thickly with respectable gentlemen of various condi- 
 tions, though all of the City. Some were in the full 
 swing of business through the week ; others had retired 
 to suburban villas, and were killing time, on a com- 
 petency. Those were usually attired in glossy broad- 
 cloth ; these in tweeds of fantastic patterns. Each had 
 an elaborate apparatus of rods, &c., with a formidable 
 basket, though the door of the inn was almost within 
 arm's length. Jealousy was out of the question ; for 
 though all of them professed to be sanguine in the 
 extreme, nobody in his heart believed in a capture. 
 On the contrary, they struck up close friendship on the 
 strength of their common failures ; they formed them- 
 selves into informal clubs for luncheon and dining 
 purposes ; they called for bottle after bottle of fruity 
 port, and bathed, metaphorically speaking, in brimmers 
 of brandy and soda-water. Some of them took a 
 rather unfair advantage, lingering on till the middle of 
 the week ; and while nobody lost by that ungenerous 
 assiduity, the landlord gained enormously. It was a 
 dark day for him when that trout mysteriously disap- 
 peared : some people said it was owing to the machina- 
 tions of a poaching ostler, who had been dismissed at 
 the request of a keeper in the neighbourhood. Yet 
 for long the suburban fishermen came back, hoping 
 
FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 167 
 
 against hope, whipping the water indefatigably as ever ; 
 and even after the conviction of their loss became 
 irresistible, the tradition of that trout continued to 
 draw through a couple of seasons while it was gradually 
 fading. 
 
 That was of course an extreme case, so far as the 
 odds against the fisherman were concerned. We may 
 picture him rather on a soft May day, when he is 
 turned loose upon the private fishing in one of the 
 beautiful English parks. The day is cloudy, and there 
 is a gentle westerly breeze ; and all nature is rejoicing 
 after some recent showers. Our friend is early afoot ; 
 and the dews and the light rain-drops lie thick upon 
 grass and bracken. He steers straight for the stream 
 by a side path under the trees, the fallow deer scarcely 
 taking the trouble to trot out of his way. The rooks 
 are clamouring and circling round the elms overhead, 
 and jackdaws and starlings are almost as vociferous, as 
 they flutter in and out of the holes in the hawthorn 
 boles. The rabbits, scared from the finish of the 
 morning meal, go scuttling into their burrows in the 
 banks, and thrushes, blackbirds, and finches, when they 
 are not singing, are busied over nest-building and 
 domestic duties. In the balmy fragrance of a morn- 
 ing like that, the mere sense of life and movement is 
 enjoyable ; but though the angler may be a lover of 
 nature in proper time and place, now his gratitude for 
 the pleasures she bestows upon him is unconscious. 
 His eyes and his thoughts are fixed on those clumps of 
 alder that mark the course of the winding stream. He 
 
1 68 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 will have more leisure to appreciate the beauties of 
 nature when the fishes shall leave off feeding towards 
 high noon. In the meantime, his hopes rise high 
 as he catches sight of the river. Both in fulness 
 and colour it seems in prime condition. His hands 
 tremble with pleasurable excitement as he puts his rod 
 together not a very long one, and somewhat stiff. 
 The tapering horsehair is a masterpiece of delicate 
 twisting ; the tough casting-line, of a tinge the colour 
 of the water, is a miracle of fineness ; the flies, tem- 
 pered of well-proved material, are something in size 
 between midges and mosquitoes. Having taken a 
 general survey of the scene of operations, he goes 
 stealthily to his work, as if he were stalking deer. 
 Standing well back from the bank, so that no line of 
 his shadow may fall on the water, he makes his quick 
 casts up the stream, letting the flies drop down like 
 thistle-down. He never cares to dwell on the cast or 
 play his flies ; for he knows well that if the trout do 
 not come at the first offer it is seldom worth while to 
 press it. Very frequently it is a most difficult and 
 delicate bit of work to touch the surface at the likely- 
 looking spot where experience tells him his friends 
 should be at home. Sometimes, to make assurance of 
 lightness doubly sure, he pitches the fly against some 
 hanging stump, letting it drop naturally back in a 
 gentle ricochet, just as its living prototype might be 
 supposed to do. And even if the trout be in a taking 
 humour, and if weather and water be all that can be 
 desired, he may have to labour on long enough without 
 
FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 169 
 
 having his patience rewarded. There is no accounting 
 in any circumstances for the caprices of fish ; though 
 in a stream like this, meandering through wormy, 
 beetley, and fly-haunted meadow-land, their coyness is 
 not difficult to account for. But then, on the other 
 hand, they may waken up of a sudden to a voracity 
 that is at least equally inexplicable. Then the alder- 
 man-like fish will make a plunge at the line, with the 
 snap of a bull-dog and the greed of starvation ; and 
 though you must make hay while the sun shines or, 
 more strictly speaking, while it is not shining you 
 may fill your basket first. For after having played 
 and killed and lost, with a fair proportion of cases of 
 " hanging up " upon the willow-boughs, and breaking 
 the line on submerged snags, the clouds are rolled aside 
 in a burst of sunshine. Then it will be the wisdom of 
 the angler to adjourn for luncheon, subsequently flirt- 
 ing with the beauties of nature through the afternoon, 
 in anticipation of fresh successes in the evening. And 
 after a light and early breakfast, and with the appetite 
 for which you have been honestly toiling, the sight of 
 those speckled prizes of yours may be the best of sauces 
 for the meal ; though, for ourselves, we should care but 
 little to see them served at it, since low-country trout 
 are apt, both in savour and complexion, to remind one 
 unpleasantly of their native mud. 
 
 It is very different with the firm-fleshed fish you take 
 from the chilly waters of lochs in the north, or from the 
 bright gravelly bottoms of the swift-rushing streams 
 fish that gladden alike the eye of the artist and the soul 
 
i yo FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 of the gourmet. The vivid tinges of colouring range 
 from delicate pink, through blushing carmine, to 
 flaming rose-colour. No need to seek the flavouring 
 in the cruets vide Mrs. Poyser. Serve simply, like 
 crimped and curdy salmon, in the water in which the 
 fish has been boiled ; add at the utmost a touch of 
 vinegar, and possibly the faintest soupfon of ketchup, 
 to elicit without stifling the native essences. Nor is it 
 the mere reminiscences of gourmandise that warm the 
 imagination in recalling the simple but exquisite ban- 
 quets at which these trout may have figured. Pink, 
 firm flesh means glorious scenery, and a strength of 
 play out of all proportion to the size. Sometimes you 
 have the strength and the size combined, as in the 
 fierce rush of the salmo ferox of Loch Awe when it 
 pleases the savage tyrant of the waters to come upon 
 the feed, somewhere between the depths and the shal- 
 lows. But then you are prepared for the best or the 
 worst ; the minnow is attached to tackle of unim- 
 peachable strength ; it is a case of " pull devil, pull 
 baker," and science is in some measure in suspension 
 when the prey has been fairly hooked. We talk rather 
 of killing what are pigmies by comparison, but who 
 afford very fair sport nevertheless, and with briefer 
 intervals of wearisome expectation ; pigmies, that is to 
 say, perhaps running on the average from three-quarters 
 of a pound to a couple of pounds. 
 
 For ourselves, we never greatly cared for loch-fish- 
 ing. There is something depressing in being cramped 
 between thwarts and benches, that reminds one of those 
 
FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 171 
 
 sufferings at sea you may have read of, in the boats of 
 the Bounty or on the rafts of the Medusa. So there is 
 in casting over the surface of a sheet of water where 
 the topography of the lower regions must be as a 
 sealed-up chart to everybody except the fisherman who 
 acts as the pilot. And yet it may be agreeable enough 
 by way of variety. We have pleasant memories of 
 cruises in the bays of Loch Awe, in the days when it 
 was far less fished than at present, and where the long 
 odds were against your rinding the fishing-ground pre- 
 occupied, even if you did not get up overnight and 
 stand out to sea in the darkness. We have pleasant 
 memories, too, of expeditions to mountain lakelets in 
 the countries of Rob Roy and Roderick Dhu ; or to 
 localities more remote from the tread of the tourist, 
 in the less hospitable wilds of Inverness-shire and 
 Ross-shire. Half the fun of those rough-and-ready 
 trips often lay in the preliminary excitement as to how 
 you were to find the means of getting afloat. Throw- 
 ing the longest line to any purpose from the shores was 
 made impracticable by the fringes of rushes that shel- 
 tered the broods of wild duck and water-hen. The 
 crazy craft you found to launch often sorely wanted 
 coopering, and you embarked yourself with your pisca- 
 tory belongings on the off-chance of a swim and a 
 shipwreck. 
 
 We used to envy the luxurious independence of a 
 friend who drove about in a boat of his own, mounted 
 break-fashion upon wheels, the light carriage being- 
 constructed of tough hickory-wood, warranted to stand 
 
172 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 any amount of trackless jolting. Until, on one occa- 
 sion, being caught by a gust down a gully, the break- 
 boat and its contents came to a sudden capsize ; and 
 the proud owner, being saved, with the sacrifice of his 
 property, by a dangerous swimming-bout across the 
 loch before the storm, condemned his craft forthwith. 
 We do not say that these carriage-boats may not be 
 constructed so as to be safe and reasonably commodious. 
 St. John made his tour in Sutherlandshire in one of 
 them. We merely record a fact which disenchanted us 
 of any special hankering after them. And to return to 
 our loch-fishing, some of our most agreeable memories 
 associate themselves with long days upon Loch Leven. 
 Now the loch is exploitee by fishing-clubs, who put 
 forth in fleets each day through the season. Then 
 there were but a couple of boats available on the water, 
 one of these belonging to the proprietor, and the other 
 to the " tacksman " of his fishings. Perhaps the pike 
 were less persistently netted down than they might 
 have been ; but the trout must have been all the 
 heavier on that account ; and surely they were less shy 
 than they have since become. We know that, wind 
 and weather permitting, we used to make highly satis- 
 factory baskets. And at the risk of being called dog- 
 in-the-mangerish, we maintain that it was a pleasure 
 to have the pick of the expanse before you. The 
 whole circuit of the loch is classic ground, and you 
 might steep your soul in romantic associations while 
 relaxing from your labours on the most exciting of the 
 fishing-ground. Now you were within easy hail of the 
 
FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 173 
 
 old castle, on the very spot where the boat with muffled 
 oars stole in under cover of the night to rescue Queen 
 Mary and her ladies. There Roland Grasme or the 
 little Douglas consigned the castle keys to the keep- 
 ing of the kelpies ; and thence you looked across to 
 the picturesque village, where the page, having broken 
 away from the Chamberlain, met Seyton at the mounte- 
 bank's, among the frolics of the fair. Now you were 
 at anchor off the islet of St. Serf; and now you were 
 drifting beneath the brow of Benarty ; while scarcely a 
 height in the sub-Highland landscape around you but 
 had been touched by the wand of the Wizard of the 
 North. And if a man have a soul above so many 
 pound weight by the weighing-machine, the romance of 
 such associations goes for much in loch-fishing. 
 
 There is the romance of scenery too, which is often 
 the romance of desolation, when the trout, though 
 many, are so small as to be a mere pretext for the 
 excursion as when you follow up some mountain-burn 
 flowing down through the moors possibly tumbling 
 in cascades over stony staircases, or growling and 
 murmuring between the banks it has mined, under leafy 
 arcades of tangled vegetation. Colquhoun, in " The 
 Moor and Loch," will tell you how you have often to 
 scramble up its course upon hands and knees how, 
 here and there, where you find tolerable footing and 
 some shoulder-room, you must still make your casts 
 have doubled up, with the shortest and stiffest of rods, 
 and a mere fag-end of casting-line. Very probably, 
 though you have rather a distaste for bait-fishing, you 
 
174 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 had better discard the fly for the worm. But the 
 yellow-bellied little fellows come leaping up so keenly, 
 in flashes of brightness, through the brown of the peat- 
 coloured fluid, that you are ceaselessly occupied in 
 pulling them out. It is a relief, no doubt, to straighten 
 your back on some tiny patch of verdant sward ; but 
 when you have got your breath again, and the aching 
 has died out of your muscles, you are only too eager to 
 go back to the work. Then there is " guddling " 
 that delight of one's happy boyhood a passion which, 
 like that of birds'-nesting, sticks to us in maturer 
 manhood. A useful art is guddling on occasions. 
 More than once have we eked out the meagre com- 
 missariat of some out-of-the-way inn by stripping off 
 coat and shoes and stockings and going to work in the 
 adjacent brook. You mark the trout shoot under the 
 stone in mid-stream, and there you circumvent him 
 with a hand on either side tickling him gently, if he 
 eludes all but your finger-tips, till you persuade him to 
 subside, in a hypnotised intoxication, into your clutch ; 
 or you have thrust your arm into the winding hole 
 under the bank, at the risk of provoking the bite of a 
 water-rat, and find you have introduced yourself to a 
 happy family of fishes, which you draw forth succes- 
 sively in assorted sizes. That is charming sport for a 
 warm summer-day when the silvery stream has shrunk 
 down in its stony bed, and the coolness of the water is 
 an agreeable relief from the oppressive temperature of 
 the thundery atmosphere. Or you may be tempted 
 to go "pot-hunting" in another form. You have 
 
FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 175 
 
 shot the moors, towards the beginning of Sep- 
 tember, somewhat hard ; or the weather has been 
 wet and windy, and the birds are packing and shy. 
 By way of variety, you may go otter-fishing in some 
 of the mountain lakelets, and a dish of fish of any 
 kind will be by no means unwelcome. A poaching 
 piece of mechanism that otter is : yet if it were more 
 freely used it would be all the better ; for the small 
 trout multiply marvellously, though it is hard to tell 
 how they feed and fatten ; and if they must sometimes 
 suffer from hunger, they enjoy absolute immunity from 
 pike. The tarn lies high among mists and clouds, and 
 far above the level of the sweet hill-pastures, among the 
 stone-strewn slopes of the straggling brown heather. 
 Insects of any kind are scarce ; you seldom hear the 
 hum of the bee, and never see the flutter of the butter- 
 fly. As you adjust the otter and unroll the lines, you 
 hear nothing but the twitter of some moorland bird, 
 the crow of the grouse-cock, or the croak of the raven. 
 You set your board afloat before the breeze, among the 
 cold shadows cast by the clouds on the dark-brown 
 ripple of the wavelets. But as the long trail of flies 
 drags slowly out, the whole finny population awakens 
 to the sense of the unwonted excitement. The phe- 
 nomenon of a flight of flies, all of them most inviting, 
 stirs it up by shoals in jealous rivalry. There is a line 
 of popples and bursting bubbles on the broken water ; 
 tiny heads come to the surface, and seem to knock 
 together ; there are conglomerations and disturbances 
 here and there. When you haul in, which you may do 
 
176 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 
 
 very speedily, you find you have made what in point of 
 numbers may be almost called a miraculous draught of 
 fishes. Hardly a hook but has attached its greedy 
 place-hunter ; and time after time you may send out 
 your snares with the full assurance of equal success. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Some Writers on the Gentle Craft 
 
 TVUT we must leave those recollections which tempt 
 U us into lingering, and turn to the experiences of 
 more eminent fishing authorities. And writing on 
 fishing in " Blackwood," one goes back almost involun- 
 tarily to old Christopher North. The Professor was 
 an expert and an enthusiast a philosopher, a practical 
 naturalist, and a poet to boot. Some of the brightest 
 passages in his " Recreations " are those connected with 
 his fishing achievements ; and never in the well-timed 
 " daffing " of the " Noctes " does the old man show 
 to much greater advantage than when bending the 
 long-bow in his merrier moods, provoked thereto by 
 the lively imagination of the Shepherd. Take the 
 " Recreations " ; and there we have an admirable bit 
 from " Our Parish/' in which old Christopher becomes 
 little Kit again, and goes back, in poetic descriptions of 
 the moorland landscapes, to his early initiation in the 
 mysteries of a craft to which he took like a Newfound- 
 land puppy to the " Brother Loch." 
 
 13 I77 
 
1 78 SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 
 
 " But few were the days ' good for the Brother Loch.' Perch 
 rarely failed you, for by perseverance you were sure to fall in with 
 one circumnatatory school or other, and to do murderous work 
 among them with the mauk, from the schoolmaster himself inclu- 
 sive down to the little booby of the lowest form. Not so with 
 trout. We have angled ten hours a day for half a week (during 
 the vacance) without ever getting a single rise, nor could even that 
 be called bad sport, for we lived in momentary expectation, mingled 
 with fear, of a monster. Better far from sunrise to sunset never to 
 move a fin, than oh ! me miserable ! to hook a huge hero with 
 shoulders like a hog play him till he comes floating side up close 
 to the shore, and then to feel the fleckless fly leave his lip and 
 begin gamboling in the air, while he wallops away back into his 
 native element, and sinks utterly and for evermore into the dark 
 profound. Life loses at such a moment all that makes life desirable 
 yet strange ! the wretch lives on and has not the heart to 
 drown himself, and he wrings his hands and curses his lot and the 
 day he was born. But, thank Heaven, that ghastly fit of fancy is 
 gone by, and we imagine one of those dark, scowling, gusty, almost 
 tempestuous days, ' prime for the Brother Loch.' No glare or 
 glitter on the water, no reflection of fleecy clouds, but a black-blue 
 undulating swell, at times turbulent with now and then a breaking 
 wave that was the weather in which the giants fed, showing their 
 backs like dolphins within a fathom of the shore, and sucking in 
 the red heckle among your very feet." 
 
 Talking of giants and monsters, we have a laughable 
 companion picture in the " Noctes," where the Shep- 
 herd, posing as a border Baron Munchausen, tells in 
 the richest Doric, and with a marvellous wealth of 
 imagery, how he hooked and killed his <c three stane 
 salmon," following him like an otter between land 
 and water in a cork jacket, and finally " gripping " and 
 landing him in his teeth. And the actual incidents of 
 the struggle are made so true to realities that we almost 
 forget we are listening to a rhapsody of the fancy. 
 
SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 179 
 
 The sporting Shepherd is in even greater force at a 
 meeting of the worthies of the " Noctes," at the appro- 
 priate "anglers' retreat" of Tibby Shiel's on St. Mary's 
 Loch. The meeting came off, by the way, in late 
 autumn, which made his piscatory feats the more 
 wonderful. Answering North's inquiry as to what 
 he had been doing, the Shepherd begins his matter- 
 of-fact narrative with a charming affectation of modesty. 
 "No muckle. I left Altrive after breakfast about 
 nine and the Douglas burn looking gey tempting, I 
 tried it with the black gnat, and sune creeled some four 
 or five dizzen the maist o' them sma' few exceeding 
 a pund." Tiring of trouting, he had changed his 
 trout-cast for a salmon-fly, and left the Douglas burn 
 for the Yarrow. " I was jist wattin my flee near the 
 edge when a new-run fish, strong as a white horse, 
 rushed at it, and then out o' the water wi' a spring 
 higher than my head." That incident ends, after 
 sundry thrilling vicissitudes in landing the heaviest 
 fish that was ever killed in the Yarrow, when the 
 fortunate captor turns for a change to the loch, and 
 tries the otter. Result two dozen, the one half the 
 size of herring, the other half the size of haddocks, 
 with one grey trout as big as a cod. Next, he pays 
 a parenthetical visit to some night lines, pulling up 
 pike and eel alternately, " wi' maist unerrin' regularity 
 of succession," till he could have fancied that " a' the 
 fishy life the water had contained was now wallopin' 
 and wrigglin' in the sudden sunshine of unexpected 
 day." 
 
i8o SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 
 
 Experiences like those have never occurred to any- 
 body save men of the Shepherd's poetic fancy, though 
 there are well-authenticated facts on record which 
 sound almost as extraordinary even to the initiated, 
 as when the present Lord Lovat killed in the river of 
 Beauly no fewer than 156 fish in five successive days. 
 And so we leave the realms of the literature of fancy 
 for those of sober fact, albeit not altogether untinged 
 by romance ; as in that delightful volume of Scrope's, 
 " The Days and Nights of Salmon-fishing/' As accom- 
 plished an artist with the rod as the rifle, no keener 
 hand ever pursued the noble sport in serene indifference 
 to weather, wettings, and the bitter caprices of the 
 northern climate. A glance over the illustrations is a 
 pleasure in itself, and eminently suggestive besides ; 
 for Scrope had enlisted the services of no smaller men 
 than Wilkie, the two Landseers, and Edward Cooke. 
 Their drawings are a panoramic epitome of sport on 
 the border river for Scrope confines himself entirely 
 to the Tweed ; and th^y embrace all forms of fishing, 
 legitimate, illegitimate, and commercial, with rod, and 
 net, and leister. Here we have a boatful of men 
 " burning the water," their faces and forms lighted up 
 by the ruddy glow of their fire ; there you have a 
 group by Wilkie working the drag-net, enthusiasm 
 and the keenest eagerness of expectation expressed in 
 each speaking body and limb, down to the bulging 
 back sinews in their sturdy calves. There a party has 
 pulled ashore after a catch, and the mighty salmon is 
 being scrupulously weighed ; and again the angler, 
 
SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 181 
 
 after a doubtful fight, under difficulties, sees his line 
 about to be " cut." In the background of all the 
 views is scenery characteristic of the river a beetling 
 crag, crowned by the ruins of its shattered keep ; a 
 snug fishing-box, showing its smoking chimney-stacks 
 over a bank of wood ; or an amphitheatre of bare, 
 bluff hills, broken with patches of furze, and backed 
 up by some well-known group like the trinity of the 
 Eildons. And the people whose acquaintance we make 
 are just as characteristic as the scenes they figure in. 
 Not to speak of the nobles and lairds, who doubtless 
 deserved the praises they receive from the best of good 
 fellows and even better sportsmen, there are the peasant 
 worthies, who might have led happy but inglorious 
 lives had they not been immortalised in the memoirs 
 of the author of " Waverley." There are Tom Purdie 
 and Rob Kerse, who often kept the author company, 
 and of the former of them he tells sundry capital 
 stories. It is one great charm of the angler's life, the 
 forming fast friendships with men of this kind, when 
 differences of station and education have been forgotten 
 in the indulgence of common tastes and the inter- 
 change of common sympathies. Among the many 
 friends Scrope made on the border river was the 
 immortal patron of the Purdies himself. The fifth 
 chapter begins with an eloquent tribute of affectionate 
 admiration to the Tweed, as he knew it before Scott 
 had made it famous, though it was endeared already to 
 the salmon-fisher and the artist. And then he goes on, 
 in a passage that has a melancholy interest still, though 
 
182 SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 
 
 doubtless the interest was fresher when it was written 
 some half-century ago : 
 
 "Since that time I have seen the cottage of Abbotsford, with its 
 rustic porch, lying peacefully in the haugh between the blue hills, 
 and have listened to the wild rush of the Tweed as it hurried 
 beneath it. As time progressed and as hopes arose, I have seen 
 that cottage converted into a picturesque mansion, with every 
 luxury and comfort attached to it, and have partaken of its hospi- 
 tality ; the unproductive hills I have viewed covered with thriving 
 plantations, and the whole aspect of the county civilised without 
 losing its romantic character. But amidst all these revolutions I 
 have never perceived any change in the mind of him who made 
 them, ' the choice and master-spirit of the age.' There he dwelt 
 in the hearts of the people, diffusing life and happiness around him ; 
 he made a home beside the border river, in a country and a nation 
 that have derived benefit from his presence and consequence from 
 his genius." 
 
 Figuring in the fictitious character of Harry Otter, 
 Scrope relates a humorous adventure that must have 
 had its counterpart in the lives of most angling novices. 
 He tells how, having turned out with a spick-and-span 
 new rod, exquisite in workmanship and resplendent in 
 varnish, he crowned sundry highly satisfactory exploits 
 by landing a 5~lb. grilse, and that with fragile trout 
 tackle. How, swelling inwardly with intense self- 
 satisfaction, he met a native who might have sat to a 
 painter for Wat Tinlinn, and whose rod, with its make- 
 shift appurtenances, were at least as uncouth as himself. 
 How, condescending graciously to this rough brother 
 of the craft, he was provoked by the nil admirari 
 manner to tantalise him with a display of his booty. 
 And how the borderer, " premeesing " carelessly that 
 
SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 183 
 
 he could "speecify" that he had no had muckle luck, 
 made the practical retort to his southern interlocutor 
 of producing a couple of seemingly interminable salmon 
 from the bag that had been half-concealed behind 
 his broad shoulders. That is the sort of irritating 
 adventure that may happen to you, to the latest day 
 of your life. Luck, of course, may always have much 
 to do with success, and you try to lay that soothing 
 unction to your vanity. Moreover, a local man must 
 know his native water, and be more familiar with the 
 flies, and all the rest of it. Nevertheless, there is no 
 getting over the fact that both luck and skill must be 
 handicapped by his clumsy apparatus, and that if your 
 indifferently equipped acquaintance has fairly beaten 
 you, it has been in spite of his having been heavily 
 overweighted in that respect. And talking of equip- 
 ment, one thing strikes us in these pictures in Scrope. 
 A better sportsman never lived, yet he is got up in 
 costume that would stamp a man now as the most 
 unmistakable of Cockneys. He fishes the Tweed in a 
 curly-brimmed beaver, in a flowing frock-coat and 
 gracefully-cut white pantaloons descending on highly 
 polished single-soled boots in a dress, in short, which 
 would have become a man who was no great dandy 
 as he took his stroll along the shady side of Pall Mall. 
 We must say that in dressing for our field-sports we 
 are become wiser in our generation ; and that coarse 
 home-spun jackets and baggy knickerbockers, deer- 
 stalking wide-awake, and hobnailed boots, are more 
 graceful u in that connection," as they are undoubtedly 
 
1 84 SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 
 
 more suitable. Mr. Scrope's hat must surely have 
 gone flying over his shoulder at each gust of wind 
 that swept down the river ; and a driving shower must 
 have soaked him to the skin, unless he were prepared 
 to envelop himself at the shortest notice in wrappings 
 carried by his attendant. Though the sportsman 
 should be made neither of sugar or salt, speedy 
 saturation on a nipping day in spring seems to us to 
 be a very gratuitous infliction ; nor do we see the 
 wisdom of laying in rheumatics and remorse by way of 
 distractions for our declining years. 
 
 If Scrope confines his reminiscences to the Tweed, 
 Mr. Colquhoun, in his excursions to river and loch, 
 carries us over the length and breadth of Scotland. 
 " Excursion," indeed, is scarcely the word to use, for 
 he has probably rented more shootings and fishings 
 in a greater number of the Scotch counties, in the 
 course of a most active life, than any man living. 
 The publication of a fifth edition of " The Moor and 
 the Loch," by the way, is a proof the more of its 
 well-deserved popularity. And we are glad to think 
 that a suggestion of our own, in a former article on 
 that delightful book, may have had its share in 
 inducing the author to prefix to this new edition a 
 very interesting bit of autobiography. It abounds in 
 lively anecdotes of his school-days and early life, 
 especially after joining his regiment the gallant jjrd 
 then quartered in the wilds of Connaught. The 
 story is everywhere impressed with the author's vigorous 
 individuality ; and the Connaught of those unsettled 
 
SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 185 
 
 times was by no means an enviable place of residence 
 for a nervous man. Of course, Colquhoun liked it. 
 Yet the young Scot, though generally popular with 
 a peasantry and gentry who delighted in sport, has 
 to tell of more than one hair-breadth escape, when 
 duels were affairs of every-day occurrence, and soldiers 
 were likely to be shot at on account of the colour of 
 their cloth. We may say of young Colquhoun, 
 
 "Alike to him . . . 
 . . . the brand, the bridle, and the oar " ; 
 
 as he was as much at home in a boat as in the saddle, 
 and has more than one memorable feat in sea-racing 
 to tell of, when he and his elder brother were pulling 
 in company. But so far as fishing goes, his auto- 
 biographical recollections are scattered broadcast over 
 the pages he has consecrated to that branch of sport. 
 We trace him through Lowlands and Highlands, from 
 fishing quarter to fishing quarter and stream to stream ; 
 from the Stinchar in Ayrshire to the Dee in Aberdeen, 
 and the smaller rivers of the more northerly Highland 
 counties ; and as for the lochs, he seems to have tried, 
 in his time, most of those that have more than local 
 reputation. A pleasanter companion no man need 
 desire ; and those stirring exploits of his, which he so 
 vividly records, have been photographed on a singularly 
 retentive memory. But the comprehensiveness and 
 clearness with which he handles his favourite subjects 
 give his volumes a very practical value. As for 
 comprehensiveness, the angler will find hints that may 
 
186 SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 
 
 help him in each and all of the localities he is likely to 
 visit, and through every season of the year ; while for 
 clearness and simplicity, Mr. Colquhoun is as little 
 given to multiply rules and instructions pharisaically 
 as to embarrass himself with an over-elaborate apparatus. 
 Two or three coils of flies wound round his hat, and 
 composed, of course, like French salad, " after the 
 season/' and according to his ample knowledge and 
 experience, serve his turn for any day's angling. He 
 is none of your brilliant theorists and connoisseurs, 
 who have collected, to their own extreme confusion, 
 whole libraries of fishing-books, stuffed with fur, 
 feathers, and tinsel ; while you are perpetually coming, 
 in his pages, upon one of those practical maxims that 
 may spare infinite disappointment to the sensible 
 novice, and set him up with the best second-hand 
 experience. Those passages might be extracted with 
 advantage, and codified, in the shape of a summary, 
 in the Appendix ; and we may select a few of them, 
 by way of example. Angling, says Mr. Colquhoun, 
 though not precisely in these words, is emphatically a 
 science that must be cultivated by thought and observa- 
 tion, and practised by the exercise of careful induction. 
 
 " It is the exact perception of the seats of fish, and where they 
 may shift about, according to the varying moods of the river, that 
 constitutes half the science of angling. As the late eminent Dr. 
 Munro used to say of medicine, ' It is but shrewd guessing after 
 all.' Nevertheless, as in physic, the shrewdest guesser is the best 
 physician ; so in angling, the shrewdest guesser, if not always the 
 ablest, will go far to be the most successful fisher. ... As to up- 
 stream trouting, many will reject it on account of the perpetual 
 
SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 187 
 
 casting it entails. There is this in its favour though, that, in trout- 
 fishing, the more casts the more rises. All good trouters are aware 
 of this, and never put off time by leading their hooks, except in 
 lochs and the still deeps of streams. . . . When the fly is dropped 
 in the centre of the ring, the instant after the trout has belled up, it is 
 ten times more likely to rise again than if the fly touched the water 
 at ever so short a distance. . . . Another hint to the young angler 
 is to mind what he is about when he approaches the still deeps of 
 the river. Many are apt to pass them by altogether. . . . Perhaps 
 the best test of a finished performer is the manner in which he 
 fishes these dead, deep places, especially if there is little wind ; 
 for they generally harbour the largest and best-fed fish, which are, 
 of course, the most suspicious and difficult to rise." 
 
 Fond as Mr. Colquhoun is of trout-fishing, he 
 maintains, what few salmon-fishers will dispute, that 
 there is no comparison between its more tranquil 
 pleasures and the excitement of the nobler sport. It 
 is " only the germ of salmon-fishing," he says ; and 
 he advises its devotees to " get out of this nursery- 
 fishing and to become salmon-anglers if they can." 
 Of course, the more costly voyage to Corinth is not 
 within the means of everybody ; and while all people 
 who have the leisure can compass an occasional week's 
 trouting, a man, to make sure of satisfactory sport 
 with salmon, must have either money or more fortunate 
 friends. As for trouting, Mr. Colquhoun comforts 
 those who seldom have access to well-protected water 
 by pointing out that they will become far more 
 accomplished workmen by fishing ordinary rivers than 
 those that are profusely stocked. He has remarked 
 that men who shoot habitually in preserves are not to 
 be compared, as steady shots, with others who have 
 
188 SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 
 
 been in the habit of making wild bags. " The one 
 blazes thoughtlessly away, committing, time after time, 
 the same errors ; while the other carefully notes every 
 miss, and endeavours to correct it next opportunity. 
 There is also no doubt that both the angler and the 
 shooter who have to work and think for their sport 
 acquire a self-command and nerve only to be obtained 
 in this school." 
 
 Among the liveliest of Mr. Colquhoun's cheery 
 reminiscences are those that associate themselves with 
 his summer quarters on the Lyon in Perthshire ; and 
 for a picture of fishing under extreme difficulties, there 
 is nothing better than a description of his to which we 
 have already referred, of working one of those High- 
 land burns that come brawling down over the rocks 
 beneath a tangle of underwood. But perhaps the most 
 dramatic adventure he has put on record is the fight 
 of one of his sons with a heavy salmon, hooked late in 
 the day in a pool of the Stinchar. The action began 
 with a " vindictive plunge " on to the hook, which 
 augured ill for the ultimate success of the fisherman. 
 For 
 
 " To my dismay, I now saw that my son had chosen, by mistake, 
 the lightest reel line in my possession, only intended for sea-trout 
 or grilse, in the clearest water of July ! Its length, however, was 
 one hundred yards ; and having perfect confidence in the skill of 
 the fisherman, I resolved not to flurry him with a warning, but to 
 wait in patience until the prize was either lost or won. 
 
 " The fish neither dashed round the pool in terror, nor refused 
 to move in sullen indifference, but with a degree of calm dignity 
 steered along the opposite bank, giving fitfully a revengeful toss 
 which made my heart flutter. Higher, higher, he rowed himself, 
 
SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 189 
 
 till he arrived within a few yards of the overhanging trees. If he 
 resolved to pass this barrier, I knew well the alternative was either 
 a broken line to the angler, or a jump to the shoulders in the rapid 
 current. At this crisis the fish was turned by wary coaxing, and 
 brought cautiously down to the deep water where he had been 
 hooked. A new danger was here threatened, for the eddy tree 
 appeared provokingly near, and it was likely the huge fish might 
 strike across the river, twisting the line round its branches. Again 
 he was foiled by the coolness of his tormentor, and the up-stream 
 march was resumed." 
 
 The daylight darkened into the gloaming, but 
 happily there were no clouds on the sky, and " to our 
 delight, the glorious red harvest moon rose ' broad ' 
 over the brow of the Ayrshire hills." The villagers 
 hearing of the sport going forward, rushed down from 
 their cottages to look on at the fun ; and young Mr. 
 Colquhoun went on playing his fish for the benefit of a 
 "gallery" of excited peasants, by the brilliant light of 
 " Macfarlane's lantern." 
 
 " It was nearly ten o'clock at night before the noble fellow began 
 to show symptoms of yielding. ' Bring a lantern, Sandy, as he can 
 never be gaffed by moonlight.' Sandy was soon ready, and eager 
 with light and steel. The salmon, however, though nearly spent, 
 refused to come within reach of his weapon, and kept lashing the 
 water into foam on the opposite shore. Quick as thought, Sandy 
 dashed across the black stream and reached the fish before he sank. 
 Then poising the lantern for a second, up to his waist in the water, 
 he struck his victim with deadly determination a pause ensued 
 the light hissed in the river and was extinguished. Then followed 
 a severe unseen struggle under the darkened bank, when Sandy 
 [plucky fellow that he was], with a grip like a bull-dog, dripping 
 from head to foot, crawled from the deep, shouting, 'I hae him 
 noo ! ' " 
 
 The weight of the fish was 25 Ibs. ; and as he was 
 
190 SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 
 
 the finest fish killed with the rod that season on the 
 Stinchar, the angler's patience and skill were amply 
 rewarded. 
 
 Many admirable books have been written on fishing, 
 with not a few songs, ballads, and idyls, good and bad, 
 indifferent and execrable. The marvel is, that we have 
 no more of them, considering how naturally a man 
 with a turn for literature seeks sympathies among the 
 reading public in a pursuit that has grown into a 
 passion with himself. We have no idea of running 
 over a roll of names, since we should infallibly make 
 invidious omissions ; but there is one that has made its 
 appearance recently, which we would notice before 
 reeling up our article, as being not only among the 
 latest, but among the best of its class. " My Life as 
 an Angler," by William Henderson, with its admirable 
 illustrations, seems scarcely to have received the 
 welcome it deserved. Many of the views on the 
 Tweed and the Northumbrian and Durham waters 
 recall some of the most picturesque features of the 
 scenery that has been immortalised in Border warfare, 
 and in the fiery old Border ballads. Great part of 
 that country, moreover, like Tweedside and Coquet- 
 dale, has been made classic in the lays of the poets of 
 the angle. Nor less attractive are the charming little 
 head-pieces and tail-pieces to the chapters, which blend 
 graceful fancy with realistic truth, while they have 
 much of that characteristic and humorous individuality 
 which distinguished the tiny masterpieces of Bewick. 
 Mr. Henderson, who is now in his sixty-second year, 
 
SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 191 
 
 was one of those boys who were born fishermen. " Of 
 all the signs of the Zodiac," as he observes in his 
 opening sentence, " undoubtedly ' the fish with glit- 
 tering scales ' ruled my horoscope." And all through 
 his life, whatever the importunate " distractions " of 
 graver business, he always returned in his ample 
 intervals of leisure with redoubled ardour to his early 
 passion. Like Kit North, he goes back with affec- 
 tionate enthusiasm to the circumstances of his first 
 becoming possessor of a rod, and the capture of his 
 first fish. How many of his readers could tell stories 
 almost similar stories defining themselves down to 
 their most minute details, as they take shape and 
 substance from the mists of memory. Prowling along 
 the river-bank in search of minnows, " I came," he 
 says, " upon two boys apparently possessing a joint- 
 interest in a fishing-rod, which was projected over a 
 willow-bush. Youth is a period of freemasonry, and 
 I was soon on good terms with the strangers, who 
 proudly exhibited the results of their sport three 
 small eels strung upon a willow twig." A not ignoble 
 envy, and the contemplation of the magnificent booty, 
 stirred his small soul to its depths ; and so he wheedled 
 a fond mother out of eighteenpence, which he invested 
 in the purchase of a two-piece rod. Nor was it long 
 after that ere he " blooded " the much-valued acquisi- 
 tion, though more by good-luck than skilful manage- 
 ment. While playing leap-frog with some companions, 
 they had baited their rods, and stuck them over the 
 stream. The cry arose of a sudden, " There's a bite at 
 
192 SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 
 
 Henderson's." " A rush to the river, an anxious 
 pause, a gentle uplifting of the rod, a loud scream of 
 wonder, and backwards I ran, far into the dusty road, 
 dragging a trout, whose weight was at least a pound." 
 Breaking ground, or rather water, with such a monster, 
 was surely an amazing piece of good fortune. The 
 first of our own early prizes must have run ten or a 
 baker's dozen to the pound ; and we well remember 
 how the first really satisfactory rise we had set us 
 whipping a bit of stagnant and brackish back-water in 
 the estuary of a northern salmon-river, through the 
 brightest and most unlikely hours of a long summer 
 afternoon. We had had ocular evidence that a 
 " whopper " had been there, and we were determined 
 to bring him up to the hook again if indomitable per- 
 severance could do it. That by the way. As for the 
 far more lucky Master Henderson, in his case, as in our 
 own, the boy became father to the man. As he had 
 whooped and danced like an Indian on the warpath 
 over the triumphs of his maiden rod and line, so in 
 riper years he settled down into the earnest enthusiasm 
 which made matter for this volume which has taken 
 our fancy. We know the city and county of Durham 
 pretty well archasologically ; we know the county of 
 Northumberland very well piscatorially ; and it is 
 delightful to revisit many a favourite haunt with a 
 guide so intensely sympathetic as Mr. Henderson. 
 The very names in his pages are eminently suggestive 
 in one way or another. The first trout of his was 
 taken on the Brancepeth Road, near the romantic 
 
SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 193 
 
 towers and park of the old fortress of the Nevilles. 
 He remembers when there were great trout in the 
 Wear under "the Bishop's Corn-mill " that was 
 before the river of St. Cuthbert had been poisoned by 
 mining industry -and one of the first expeditions he 
 describes was to " the beautifully situated village of Roth- 
 bury," and the fascinating pools of romantic Coquet, 
 where it swirls past the ruins of Brinkburn Priory. 
 Setting aside considerations of county patriotism, and 
 the pleasant memories of auld lang syne, we do not 
 wonder at Mr. Henderson's strong attachment to the 
 streams of the " north countree." Even on casual 
 visitors, with their wild variety of feature and changing 
 play of expression, they invariably exercise a lasting 
 fascination ; and the liking that may have originated in 
 legend and song ripens into affection with personal know- 
 ledge. There is the Coquet flowing downwards from 
 Brinkburn through haughs and corn-fields, between 
 hanging copses, and banks of the flowering furze and 
 broom, to the amphitheatre of woods by the hermitage 
 of Warkworth, and the sweep that is dominated by the 
 keep of the Percys ; and the Alne, that runs from the 
 brown moorlands, and steals past the ruins of its abbey, 
 over shelving ledges of rock, under sombre bowers of 
 foliage, through the deer-park and home-park and 
 fragrant shrubberies of his Grace of Northumberland. 
 As you throw the fly, you look back over your 
 shoulder at the battlements of his castle, with their 
 sentinels of stone. You come on grey farm-steadings 
 in sequestered nooks, only accessible by fords or 
 
 14 
 
194 SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 
 
 stepping-stones ; and upon mills that, if you may 
 judge by the colouring of their massive walls, must 
 have had their wheels turned by those rushes almost 
 from time immemorial. Not a ford, or pass, or bridge 
 but has been the scene of sharp fighting in the old 
 raiding days ; and at least two Scottish monarchs came 
 to sorrow with their hosts almost within an arrow-flight 
 of Alnwick Castle. The very monks, who owed com- 
 parative immunity as much to the secluded situation of 
 their convents as to their sanctity, are said to have 
 been betrayed on more than one occasion by the bells 
 they had tolled prematurely in gratitude for their 
 deliverance from the sacriligious invader. 
 
 Mr. Henderson proceeds to tell how, after con- 
 fining his sport for several years to the Wear and 
 the Coquet, he went on to wander farther afield, to 
 " the Glen, with its picturesque Bell of Yeavering ; the 
 Tweed, dear to the angler as to the poet ; the Till, 
 so deadly, for all it flows so still ; the Bowmont, slowly 
 stealing through its peaceful vale ; the Eden, tumbling 
 from the rocks of Newton Don spot blessed alike by 
 fishermen and lovers true ; the Breamish, scene of, ah ! 
 how many happy hours enshrined in my memory ! the 
 Cale, flowing beneath the Dragon's Lair ; and the 
 Whiteadder, which, from its long trailing in snake-like 
 coils, first gained its loathsome name." It was in the 
 autumn of 1839 an era m ms life tnat ^ e ^ rst began 
 his acquaintance with the Tweed. It is sadly tantalising 
 to hear of the terms on which a sportsman might get 
 the best of fishing in these unsophisticated days, in the 
 
SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 195 
 
 very water which is now the most " fashionable." Mr. 
 Henderson, on his arrival, sought out Adam Johnston, 
 who then rented the fishings of Dryburgh and Bemer- 
 side. Even then it surprised him to find Adam's 
 charges so moderate. ' ' A day's fishing, including 
 boatman and use of boat, was only 53. At the present 
 time a rent of 200 a year, and all attendant expenses, 
 are paid for the water which I was then free to roam 
 over at will." Half a dozen years later, with some 
 congenial spirits, he originated a small club, which took 
 the Edenmouth salmon-fishings on a five years' lease. 
 And these Edenmouth fishings included " the far- 
 famed Sprouston Dub, the gem not only of the water 
 but of the Tweed itself." Thenceforth his sojourns on 
 the Tweed were long and frequent, if not regular ; and 
 many are the good days' sport recorded ; though, to 
 do him justice, he is most honestly frank in commemo- 
 rating his failures as well as his successes. 
 
 The book must be to a certain extent tantalising 
 since good fishing in these parts is far harder to come 
 by than when Mr. Henderson was in the heyday of his 
 youth and vigour. Now that railways have been 
 multiplied and high-roads improved, the great land- 
 owners are necessarily become stricter in their pre- 
 serving, and more chary in giving strangers permission 
 to fish. While farther to the south, in the Durham 
 coal-fields, the miner has been playing the mischief 
 with the limpid streams. Nevertheless we believe that 
 the fishing tourist will still find himself sufficiently 
 rewarded, more especially if he goes decently accredited ; 
 
196 SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 
 
 and though he may have to look on and long at the 
 pools of the Tweed, and omit the best of the Glen or 
 the Coquet from his pilgrimage, he will, notwith- 
 standing, find angling excitements enough ; and he has 
 always the glorious landscapes to fall back upon. For 
 we have written to little purpose if we have not shown 
 that angling may be nearly as often your pretext as 
 your object ; and keenly as he may appreciate the 
 triumphs of his sport, the true fisherman can make 
 himself tolerably happy even when fortune has proved 
 persistently unpropitious. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 August on the Moors: A Shooting Lodge 
 
 IVE us the August moors for the ideal of an 
 earthly Paradise. The moors and the hills, 
 a perpetual twelfth, with the flush of vigorous excite- 
 ment or early youth, fresh as the waking breeze that 
 lifts the skirts of the mist-mantle still enveloping the 
 drowsy mountain tops ; with spirits buoyant as the air 
 that sends the light pulses of your heart bounding along 
 at the double ; with hopes of autumn sport bright as 
 the glittering dewdrops sown broadcast over grass and 
 heather. Most refined ideal of the earthly Paradise, as 
 it can shape itself to the mental eye in exaggerated 
 anticipation of realities, for it sends you to familiar 
 communing with all that is sweet and sublime in nature. 
 Sin and death must enter, of course, for the Paradise 
 is earthly, and in a sense sensual. They must enter as 
 they enter its counterpart of the Far West, the happy 
 hunting-grounds of the Indian savage. The difference 
 is, that there they reign, while here they subordinate 
 themselves on sufferance. While the brave dreams his 
 
 eternal joy in an interminable round of insatiate 
 
 197 
 
198 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 slaughter, gallops his spectre - steed, and bends his 
 phantom bow, without wasting the spirit of a sigh on 
 the dull monotony of his shadowy prairies, death 
 merely recurs incidentally in episodes, in the heaven of 
 the Highland sportsman. True, armed with breech- 
 loader for fangs or beak, he fulfills his allotted part in the 
 universal scheme of destruction. Around him, eagles, 
 ravens, hawks, grouse, foxes, wild cats, and promiscuous 
 " vermin " are all preying on their kind. But he asserts 
 the superiority of his God-like nature over rapacious 
 carnivorae and voracious insectivoras that perish, by the 
 thoughts that throb to the inmost fibres of his nobler 
 nature, by an exuberant intensity of grateful enjoyment, 
 that places him in charity with the very gor-cock that 
 finds its way with mocking crow through his bloodless 
 No. 6. 
 
 Moors and hills, we said to begin with, because we 
 talk of mountain-sport and not of slaughter. There 
 is nothing to remind one of Hurlingham in what we 
 mean no steady rattle, remorseless as the harsh grind 
 of the mitrailleuse no lawn strewed with dead and 
 dying doves in their blood-soaked plumage nothing 
 to recall the hot corner in a home cover, when inquisi- 
 tive hares pay the penalty of their confidence as they 
 prick their ears trustfully among the knickerbockers, 
 and hand-fed pheasants meet the usual fate of pets as 
 they come to untimely ends. We do not even speak 
 of the long level stretch of flat, where the heather 
 grows in rich swathes, as if it had been carefully top- 
 dressed in model-farm fashion ; where, except for an 
 
A SHOOTING LODGE 199 
 
 occasional moss-pot, you might walk blindfold for miles 
 without a trip or a stumble ; where gout itself may do 
 a fair day's work, and timid corpulence shoot quietly 
 from the well-stuffed saddle, as from the bath-chair or 
 perambulator for the matter of that. These are the 
 moors that contribute such bloody butcher-bills early 
 in the season to the columns of the local press ; and 
 they have their uses in their way, for they send 
 Leadenhall grouse down to reasonable prices. These 
 are the moors where you can saunter straight ahead 
 without straining your back-sinews or bringing your 
 breathing to a standstill when your shaking frame has 
 breasted a bluff something less than sheerly per- 
 pendicular. As you potter forward, you find work in 
 abundance for the spare breech-loaders the henchmen 
 carry at your heels, and your dogs scarcely get well into 
 their range for the constant coveys that taint each rood 
 of the heather. 
 
 For a fortnight or three weeks the slaughter is superb 
 for those who revel in it, and by that time the 
 compensatory tenderness of nature has put the survivors 
 of the massacre up to a thing or two. Your scared 
 birds seek safety in society, set their sentinels, take 
 their siestas with one eye open, feed with their shattered 
 nerves on the alert, and rise in packs a couple of rifle- 
 shots off at the vision of the human form. Unless you 
 care to charge your panniers with mountain-hares, 
 nothing more than an occasional outlying cock taken 
 napping will repay the most indomitable perseverance, 
 and perseverance is not the forte of the thick-winded 
 
200 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 gentlemen who shoot for the spit, the poulterer's stall, 
 and the paragraph. 
 
 Very different is it with our favourite moor. It lies 
 well-nigh lost in the wild heart of the mountains, 
 although a beaten high-road does skirt its pathless 
 solitudes. In these days of political miracle and 
 perpetual surprise, even in stagnant holiday-time, the 
 hermit must compromise with civilization. But it is 
 five-and-forty miles from the nearest railway-station, and 
 there is no danger of confounding the scream of the 
 hunting eagle with the distant whistle of the panting 
 engine. From the blue summits of its high land you 
 catch glimpses of the distant Atlantic down loch- 
 bottomed glens, sacred to the red deer ; too distant, 
 though, to distinguish the smoke of the tourist-laden 
 steamer from the light wreaths of the rain-clouds that 
 are always floating in the west on the sunniest of summer 
 days. Not that you don't have quite as much of the 
 tourist as your misanthrophy cares to see. You buy 
 your mutton from your neighbour the innkeeper ; but 
 the " machine " that daily drops your beef and other 
 foreign delicacies at your gates, lumbers along the road, 
 heavily laden with excursionists. Luckily, as yet, the 
 guide-books have not damned your selfish solitude to 
 fame. No embarrassed chieftain, who saw his way to 
 filling his sporran at the cost of the banished dynasty, 
 ever set up his standard in the peaceful glens, nor 
 was its easy-principled, light-fingered population ever 
 annihilated wholesale in sweeping and summary 
 vengeance. It may come to be another thing 
 
A SHOOTING LODGE 201 
 
 altogether, should the practical romancers, who draw 
 the prospectus of the proposed railway, get to sight or 
 hearing of the waterfall that at present roars out of 
 earshot of all but heedless shepherds, or learn that 
 there are sculptured stones in the lowly graveyard 
 attached to the ruined chapel by the holy well. 
 Meanwhile, let us live in the present, and be thankful. 
 After us the deluge ; and it will be all the same when 
 grouse have been proscribed and game-laws abolished ; 
 when the English Commune has enclosed the commons 
 in the name of the people, and reclaimed the moors to 
 the profit of the proletariat. 
 
 In keeping with the rough shooting, the shooting- 
 box is a rough one. No sacrifices made to the soft, and 
 few, indeed, to the beautiful. With its low, flat roof, 
 it cowers down out of the way of the elements that 
 sweep the gorge in winter and sometimes in summer 
 too as if the wild huntsman was racing his devil-bred 
 pack through the chimneys. Chimney-pots there are 
 none, of course. In the days when occupants held to 
 these vanities, they used to set down the valley in a 
 steady rush, to be picked up by wreckers lower down, 
 as driftwood is swept round the Bay of Mexico on the 
 Gulf Stream. Yet, though it bows its head, it squares 
 its broad shoulders and sturdy strength, like a man 
 who jams down his hat ere he sets his teeth to the 
 tempest. It wears a waterproof against the wind-driven 
 flood ; and, although there are two good feet of stone 
 in the weather-wall, it is cased carefully in tight-fitting 
 pine-shingles. Within, a relatively spacious hall that 
 
202 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 serves as cloak-room, gun-room, parcel-delivery office, 
 &c. leads to the more spacious sitting-room, whose 
 double windows, with their storm-gallery, command 
 the lake. To the left, kitchen and offices ; to the 
 right, the fir-panelled packing-cases, where you accom- 
 modate your wardrobe on pegs in the wall, and stow 
 yourself of nights in a compromise between the bunk 
 of the forecastle and the box-bed of the shieling. If 
 your toilette is performed in a series of adroit gymnas- 
 tics between the bath and the table, the want of 
 elbow-room within is compensated by the sense of 
 space and freedom without. The breeze, faintly 
 fragrant with the peat-reek and heather-bloom, that 
 comes breathing in at the open window, was playing 
 the moment before with the heaving or tumbling 
 waters plucking a second or two before that at the 
 stunted grass and the lichens that thatch, tant bien 
 que mal, the rocky scalps of the mountain-lake wall. 
 The place can be repelling enough, when the little 
 garden is packed with snow in a December storm from 
 palisade to palisade ; when the wreathes are heaped 
 high against the dimmed windows, tumbling in on 
 the floor by shovelfuls when you succeed in forcing 
 the frozen sashes ; when it is a work of doubt and 
 danger travelling through the blinding drift for the 
 twenty yards that divide you from the keeper's cottage ; 
 when your vain attempt to visit the yet nearer kennel 
 lands you in the peat-stack at the opposite angle of 
 the lodge. It can be sufficiently triste even in an 
 unpropitious August, when the rain, tumbling out of 
 
A SHOOTING LODGE 203 
 
 opened sluices, drops impenetrable curtains between the 
 steaming window-panes and the outer world. And 
 sometimes it feels eerie enough of a night in late 
 September, when you are reading yourself to sleep 
 by a flickering candle, to the sad symphony of winds 
 sighing and moaning in the stunted fir-plantation, like 
 scores of j^Eolian harps gone melancholy mad. But 
 see it of a sunny afternoon on the eleventh, when you 
 have travelled straight by crowded limited mail from 
 the smoky, sulphureous purgatory of St. James's, where 
 you have been doing society for months past, fevered 
 in the frame, fagged in the stomach, and, as you begin 
 shrewdly to suspect, slightly touched in the liver. You 
 have been breathing in laughing-gas for the last few 
 hours, as you dragged up by heather, and bracken, and 
 hill-locked meadow, through pine-woods and feathering 
 glades of natural birch, as you crossed and recrossed the 
 silver stream that laughed you a welcome as it came 
 leaping down the strath from the lake that filters it 
 beneath your windows. You are half beside yourself 
 with the bright intoxication that is untroubled by any 
 sinister shadow of the inevitable reaction, with just 
 sense sufficient of yesterday's weariness and boredom 
 to make you hail the idea of a peaceful sojourn in this 
 Eden. There stands your unpretending home, bloom- 
 ing in the bright paint of its gay spring hues, smiling 
 cheerily at you as if an infallible barometer were screwed 
 fast at set-fair, as if summer sunshine were eternal, and 
 there had been no such thing as winter wear and tear. 
 The peat smoke curling up cosily out of the kitchen 
 
204 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 chimney, dissipating itself deliberately in dissolving 
 rings in the flickering, stirless air, appeals at once to 
 the poetry and prose of your nature, and with blessed 
 assurance of dinner calms the jaded appetite that is 
 ravening like a famished bear after the dulling influences 
 of the London season. 
 
 See the place that evening when the pleasant memo- 
 ries of many a past season came crowding round you 
 memories from which time has evaporated the bitter, 
 and only left the sweet as you issue forth, cigar in 
 mouth, when a temperate measure of claret has washed 
 down your mountain mutton temperate, that is, for 
 the high latitude you are landed in, for circumstances 
 alter cases, and the frugal hermit of the Tartar steppes 
 or the Highland hills might be the glutton and 
 drunkard of a club in Pall Mall. After all, the 
 pleasure of the evening, profoundly all-pervading as 
 it is, is more than anything else the anticipation of 
 the coming morning. If only the mounting glass do 
 not belie its promise ; if only the weather-sage keeper 
 or the hoary shepherd have not said what they know 
 will please, to rise convicted in the morning as lying 
 oracles. Not likely, or those gorgeous clouds that are 
 fading into gloom on the mountain seaboard of the 
 Atlantic must be liars too ; and as for the martens, 
 if there is any truth in omens drawn from the flight ot 
 birds, the morrow will be a day to mark with a white 
 stone in the weather calendar. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 August on the Moors: The Morning Start 
 
 OF course for the man who means to make a heavy 
 bag on scientific principles and extreme economy 
 of exertion it is short-sighted policy to be up and 
 about with the " skriegh of day." The sluggard may 
 ask for a little more sleep with a clear conscience, 
 muttering as he turns himself over about the more 
 haste and the worse speed. To say nothing of the 
 scent and the birds, mortal flesh and blood, especially 
 when wretchedly out of condition, can't work from an 
 August dawn to a sunset dinner, and shoot as steadily 
 at the end as at the beginning. So if you go in for 
 the bag and the bare sport, you may just as well be out 
 during the orthodox hours when other Christians of 
 your hemisphere are pursuing their business or their 
 pleasure. But then there are the associations that 
 hurry you back in spirit to that twelfth of auld lang 
 syne when you were a boy. The freshness of that 
 early morning air is so exhilarating that you scarcely 
 sadden yourself with thinking of the torpor of feeling 
 
 that has grown on you these many years. It is some- 
 
 205 
 
206 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 thing to quaff the elixir of life and renew the boyish 
 enthusiasm of your youth on a single morning in the 
 three hundred and sixty-five. You are hardly less 
 excited than those couples of young setters who are 
 positively moaning and trembling with delirious joy 
 as they crouch and wriggle in their couples. A care- 
 lessly indifferent appetite for breakfast, although per- 
 haps on second thoughts the dinner of yesterday may 
 have something to do with that. No matter. There 
 is an ambulatory larder in the ample panniers slung to 
 the shaggy pony, and if we should chance to climb, as 
 may well happen, to where even those sure-footed 
 limbs of his dare hardly follow us, his burden can 
 always be transferred to the broad shoulders of the 
 gillies. Meanwhile, if you can't buttress your back 
 with a substantial meal, there is no difficulty about 
 disposing of that brimming tumbler, and you silence 
 any scruples of your slightly morbid liver by dashing 
 the creaming milk with Glenlivat or old Jamaica. 
 There is music in the snap of the locks of your 
 breech-loader such music as you have not listened to 
 for some months or more ; and yet since you listened 
 to it last you may have lolled in many an opera-stall, 
 and yawned critical approval of sublime symphonies at 
 many a classical concert. But, looking after it tenderly, 
 you part with your gun to a brawny member of your 
 Gaelic tail. You know, by long experience, the hills 
 you are condemned to mount before you begin your 
 beat hills that would try the steel and whipcord of the 
 red deer, to say nothing of those flaccid calves of yours. 
 
THE MORNING START 207 
 
 So you grasp a staff in the meantime, and the sporting 
 procession sebranle^ the old keeper marching modestly 
 half a foot or so in rear of your right flank, "cracking" 
 cheerily of old times and memorable days, talking san- 
 guinely of present prospects, although another hour 
 must bring his promises to the test. Four summers 
 now since there has been a touch of disease or a tainted 
 feather in the place, and in the seven-and-twenty 
 years he has been here he never recollects such a 
 breeding season nor so few barren birds. Behind you 
 and your friend come a couple and a half of gillies, 
 one of them retained permanently on the strength of 
 the sporting establishment, the others amphibious jacks- 
 of-all-trades, recruited for the season. Members of 
 the Ross-shire militia ; tillers on an occasion of the 
 barren acres that surround the paternal croft ; every 
 season ploughing the heaving sea with the herring 
 fleet ; now, as we perceive, taking to the hill-side as to 
 the manner born and so they have been. Poachers 
 on temptation very likely, although, to do them justice, 
 the canny Donalds and Duncans prefer getting their 
 living and their little luxuries by honest work. Yet 
 more than once have one or the other tumbled over 
 the lordly red deer with half a handful of swan-shot, 
 in the grey light of the dawn or the gloaming, as the 
 monarch of the wilds came to seek his tithes in the 
 scanty harvest of the crofter. Donald, Dougald, and 
 Duncan each lead a couple of straining setters in leash, 
 sustaining up hill and down dale without the slightest 
 effort an animated Gaelic conversation in guttural 
 
208 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 undertone. Yet by this time, so steep is the hill-face, 
 that the panniers containing your larder and cellar are 
 slipping back on the pony's cat-like crupper, and the 
 boy at his head has left that accomplished mountaineer 
 to zigzag upwards over the slippery heather-roots after 
 his own way and devices. 
 
 Tantalising work, having to plod forward toward 
 the point where you have arranged to begin the beat, 
 that you may give the dogs what wind there is of their 
 quarry. Yet you cannot afford to throw away a chance 
 in that way, for, judging by the signs of the weather, 
 there is all the promise of a sweltering day. " 'Deed, 
 sir," says the keeper, " you'll better be settling to take 
 your lunch by the well at Crohallion. We'll all of us 
 be wanting the best of wa-a-te-r-r by that time, I'm 
 thinking." Meantime, the merry crow of each out- 
 lying grouse-cock, as he dashes away upon the wing, 
 rings like a challenge in your ears, long after he has 
 carried himself and his note over the hill shoulder ; 
 and now and again you pause with irresolute foot 
 uplifted in the air, as the young brood that have lain 
 like stones flash up panic-driven round your boots, to 
 stream through the air like scattering fireworks. 
 
 I^uckily you are gifted with a soul for scenery, and, 
 with all your impatience, fill pleasantly enough the 
 pauses that the labouring ascent makes matter of simple 
 necessity. Although you have to climb even higher 
 yet, what a wealth of broken landscape lies beneath the 
 airy Pisgah you have reached already. The shooting- 
 lodge diminished to the size of one of the boxes you 
 
THE MORNING START 209 
 
 left by the kennel-doors to pack those spoils of the 
 day you mean to barter for dinners in future seasons ; 
 the rippling lake, toned by the distance into a glassy 
 mirror ; the thread of silver stream meandering 
 through the purple heather ; the fleecy patches where 
 the sheep fleck the valley and dot the hillsides ; the 
 sunlight falling full on the wrinkled chest of the 
 opposite mountain, with the morning clouds fluttering 
 in tatters from its crest and flanks. Higher still, and 
 you look over intervening ridges into distant glens, 
 down giant vistas into a remote jumble of forest, flood, 
 and fell. You are high enough, in all conscience, now ; 
 up in the zone of grey stone and barren turf ; and, 
 indeed, you have to dip sharp again down the other 
 water-shed before you draw a long sigh of grati- 
 tude and anticipation by your starting-point. Finis 
 coronat opus. At last the end, or rather the beginning 
 of the end, crowns the work. The dogs know it well 
 old Don and Carlo, at least, who are led forward to 
 the front. As for the young ones, they must yelp 
 down their disappointment as they may, confine them- 
 selves to the simple role of spectators, and make the 
 most, for the present, of the aggravating pleasures of 
 hope. 
 
 The couples are slipped by the side of a mountain 
 brook, where the brown water breaks round the mighty 
 boulders that have tumbled into it ; where the rush of 
 the floods has mined the banks at each rapid turn that 
 follows the sharp bend of the mountains, and where the 
 rank heather droops its purple fringe over a succession 
 
210 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 of gravel-floored caverns. A rush, a scramble, a 
 shower of spray and i pebbles, and from one of these 
 emerges a mighty ram in mortal panic, scaring, as he 
 tops the banks, a half dozen of the ladies of his family, 
 who have been leisurely picking their morning meal, 
 buried in a bracken-bed over their curling horns. 
 Whir-r-r-r ! Up rises a covey among the bounding 
 feet of the fugitives, the old birds having the advantage 
 of their offspring by a full dozen of seconds. For 
 yourself, you had been bending over the peat-stained 
 stream, filling the leather drinking-cup. You have 
 just time to toss it aside as you snatch at your gun. 
 Fortunately the keeper had been slipping in the 
 cartridges. All the same, in the surprise and agitation, 
 you make a clean miss of the single bird that sweeps 
 round your shoulder from the left miss him with the 
 first barrel at least, for the messengers from your second 
 do overtake him just in time. 
 
 Rather a questionable beginning, but, after all, it was 
 only a bit of bad luck, and the covey was strong on 
 the wing and wonderfully well grown : hard to tell 
 the young birds from the old ones. And while you 
 are yet speaking, there you are again: and this, time 
 with every prospect of a shot in orthodox first-day-of- 
 the-season fashion. Carlo, dropping on that knoll, as 
 if he had been shot, only there is abundance of life in 
 his eye, as he gently turns his head among the heather 
 sprays to make sure you are awake and mean action. 
 Don's stern feathering in a quiver of nervous excite- 
 ment, as he backs upon the very spot where the vision 
 
THE MORNING START 211 
 
 of Carlo has struck him motionless, precisely as he was 
 scrambling over that moss-grown stone in an attitude 
 that nothing but his native grace can redeem from 
 awkwardness. You pick your way towards Carlo, 
 rising the knoll cautiously, your gun pitched well 
 forward. But there is no especial need for over-care ; 
 the sheep flushed the last lot, it is true, but this balmy 
 morning the birds will sit like brooding-hens. At last 
 the tenseness of the situation becomes too much for the 
 nerves of the old cock, who knows something of dogs 
 and breech-loaders from vivid recollections of luckier 
 seasons. Till now his eye has been half-fascinated by 
 Carlo's, but at last -the spell is broken, and he is up and 
 away, leaving his wife to look after the chickens, with 
 the confirmed selfishness of a family man demoralised 
 by bachelor habits. His cheery crow of triumph is 
 premature. You give him law enough, and then drop 
 him with a heavy thud on the heather, in all the 
 delicate consideration for his plumage that the circum- 
 stances admit of. Nor does his widow survive a score 
 of seconds to lament her lord, and before the last pair 
 of interesting orphans have collected their faculties 
 sufficiently to leave the scene of the bloody drama, you 
 have charged with a fresh pair of cartridges and taken 
 a couple of pot-shots. Superb the old birds are, with 
 the ruddy pencillings of their delicate breasts and 
 wings, and those white-feathered knickerbockers which 
 nature has so thoughtfully drawn over their rough 
 boots. And so you go on till the sun beats down with 
 concentrated heat, and the wind drops ; until scarcely 
 
212 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 an air is stirring in the simmering hollows, and your 
 breath comes short, and molten lead seems running 
 down your aching arms into your gun-stock and 
 barrels, and the rank heather-stems, that reach to mid- 
 thigh, cling to your failing legs like coiling serpents, 
 and the tired ankles in your heavy-soled boots go 
 slipping and twisting about on the smooth moss-bedded 
 blocks. There is a certain sinking sense of vacuity 
 in your inner man beside, spite of the biscuits and 
 spirit-laced water you have been indulging in at 
 intervals, and the birds are getting decidedly the better 
 of you at your game of hide-and-seek, as they generally 
 contrive to do towards noon of a hot summer day. So, 
 although what should be an excellent stretch of ground 
 lies between you and the trysting-place for luncheon, 
 you resolve to make a short-cut of it, and bid the 
 panting dogs be coupled up forthwith. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 August on the Moors: The Days Work 
 
 HPHE diamond of the moors bubbles up in a secluded 
 * nook that you see nothing of until you stumble 
 right in. Sheltered under the hanging shoulder of the 
 mountain, from the precipice above you surmise nothing 
 of the peaceful sanctuary beneath your feet. The very 
 winds that search each cranny of the Highland corries 
 might be puzzled to find their way to it ; and the 
 worst chance of discovery lies in the streamlet that 
 trickles down from the fountain turning traitor, and 
 the streamlet keeps a quiet tongue in its head as it 
 steals down in the groove it has worn beneath the 
 hanging bracken. In the daytime the place is tranquil 
 enough ; the slumbering silence broken only by the 
 low twitter of the whinchat or the piping of the water- 
 ousel. In the night it might be otherwise were mortal 
 ever there to listen, and, doubtless, you would hear the 
 sad cry of the martin cat and wild cat from the loose- 
 heaped, bracken-thatched boulders where they kennel 
 with the mountain foxes. At present, when you make 
 your way in, the only occupants are a hoary-headed 
 raven, hopping about most perfectly at home, as if he 
 
 213 
 
2i 4 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 were the tutelary genius of the cool shades, and a 
 couple of wild-eyed ewes with crumpled horns. The 
 raven rises heavily with vindictive croak, and flaps his 
 deliberate flight resentfully upwards with hanging head 
 and drooping legs, as if he gloried in his enchanted 
 privileges, and mocked at anything short of silver shot. 
 The sheep make a frantic dash at the outlet, meet your 
 formidable party face to face, stand wildly at bay for 
 a second or two in the very extremity of agitation and 
 terror, and then escalade the precipitous sides in 
 avalanches of gravel, and a style that would do credit 
 to chamois or moufflons. Once within, the very gillies 
 draw grateful breaths of happiness, not alone at the 
 change from sun to shade, but in mute acknowledgment 
 of beauties that fmd> their way to the feelings, through 
 water-proofed suits of homespun, and skins tanned by 
 exposure to every variation of weather. That silent 
 tribute paid to sentiment, the next thought is of the 
 practical. " Just pass the baskets this way, Donald." 
 Donald is already busy disengaging them from the 
 pony, who has scrambled somehow up the treacherous 
 staircase, scenting his way with those keen nostrils of 
 his past the ugly dangers of the sunken stream. 
 
 The baskets are unpacked, and the contents spread 
 on the green turf table-cloth, that serves you for 
 couch as well. You make your breakfast-lunch 
 reclining classically, after the manner of the ancients, 
 round materials for a meal that are equally solid and 
 simple. Slices of cold beef and bread nothing of the 
 abominable sandwich, with its dyspeptic memories of 
 
THE DAY'S WORK 215 
 
 hustling crowds at railway-counters, laden with fly- 
 blown pastry, flowing with fiery Hamburg wines. 
 After to-day you may add a cold grouse or two ; on 
 the twelfth you must dispense with that luxury. You 
 feel like the Ancient Mariner travestied in mountaineer 
 " Game, game around you everywhere, and not 
 a scrap to eat." Never mind, you manage to rough 
 it somehow, with a tolerable local imitation of a York- 
 shire pie, with cheese and oatcakes, and such manly 
 fare. Your meal is somewhere half-way between a 
 breakfast given by Lucullus, and one of those Spartan 
 spreads whose frugal menus were settled by the statutes 
 of Lycurgus. With the appetite you find, after getting 
 your breath again, and sending a lightly-laced mouthful 
 of chilling water hissing over your glowing palate, the 
 repast approaches nearer the former extreme than the 
 latter. Nor has the department of the cellar been 
 unattended to. Dugald, officiating as chief butler, has 
 already, with a certain careful contempt, deposited in 
 the cooling wave the flasks that speak of shadeless 
 vineyards on the glowing gravel slopes of the Gironde. 
 With infinite love and tenderness he has immersed by 
 their side the more sturdy green glass bottle that 
 contains the sacred usquebaugh the Highlandman's 
 genuine water of life. There are metal flasks of it 
 besides ; but that is a point on which prudence counsels 
 stinting your liberality. The honest members of your 
 tail walk steady enough as a rule, and you may trust 
 them absolutely in most things ; but you can scarcely 
 complain of their tripping if you set the snare for them 
 
216 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 with your own hands. They are mortals, after all, 
 and if you tempt them beyond mortal strength, small 
 blame to them if they succumb. 
 
 You have eaten and drunk, and chassed your claret. 
 Pipes are ablaze, and the pungent clouds that wreath 
 themselves so picturesquely round the group are 
 playing the very mischief with the appetites of the 
 midges, who, up to a minute before, had it all their 
 own way. The wiry Donald, who is risen like a giant 
 refreshed although, indeed, the latent energy of his 
 frame scarcely needed refreshment is already busy 
 over the game-panniers. 
 
 " That's right, Donald : now for the bag." 
 
 Fifteen and a half brace, a mallard to boot, a couple 
 of snipe, and a mountain hare or two. We could have 
 knocked over dozens of the last, had it been worth 
 while overburdening the unlucky pony. A very fair 
 morning's work up to eleven for a man who shoots and 
 doesn't slaughter ; but how some of the millionaire 
 aristocrats in the Perthshire and Aberdeenshire flats 
 would turn up their noses ! Superb plumage the birds 
 are in, even the young ones springy as india-rubber and 
 plump as quails in season. After all, for man, beast, or 
 bird, there is nothing like the mountain air, always 
 bracing when it does not bite. 
 
 That tribute paid to the susceptibilities of the keeper, 
 who holds himself personally responsible for the 
 plumage and condition of his birds, you think of 
 imitating the undepraved instincts of the dogs, and 
 recruiting nature with a siesta. Already Ponto and 
 
THE DAY'S WORK 217 
 
 Carlo are deep in the dreamless sleep so sweetly earned 
 by honest labour ; while the young ones, who have 
 been more excited than fagged, lie tumbled promiscuous 
 in a hairy heap, ranging through worlds where there 
 are no dog-calls nor dog-whips ; standing birds in 
 dreamland, and very possibly running in and mouthing 
 them. You sink back, with eyes contemplating 
 through the warm flicker of the sunny air the light 
 fleecy clouds becalmed here and there against the deep 
 blue of the heavens. Nothing between you and them 
 to remind you your Eden is earthly after all, but 
 a troop of these bothersome midges hovering at a wary 
 distance, and a speck something larger than they, and 
 seemingly a good deal farther off. It may be your 
 acquaintance the raven you turned out so uncere- 
 moniously ; it may be the golden eagle, the secular 
 bird of the mountain, who has had his eyrie on the cliffs 
 above from time immemorial. In any case it does not 
 greatly signify, and you have no idea of taking the 
 trouble of thinking the matter out. Already your 
 eyelids grow too heavy for the strings that should hold 
 them in suspense, and midges, eagle, everything, melt 
 back into a field of vision that removes itself dreamily 
 beyond the ken of the bodily eye. Another minute 
 or two and you are gone to your dogs ; have wandered 
 after them at least, away from the world that was so 
 all-engrossing to all of you, when you made your lively 
 start that morning from the kennels. 
 
 Nothing like a siesta in the circumstances. You 
 waken from it another man, all languor gone from 
 
218 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 mind and body, or little left of it but a slight stiffness 
 in the lower extremities ; and half an hour of leisurely 
 exercise will soon loosen the knots your sinews have been 
 gathering themselves in. Besides, there is a bit of 
 a breeze sprung up, and the scent is fresher, and the 
 sport likely to be excellent ; altogether, the afternoon 
 promises at least as well as the morning. Nor is the 
 promise belied, and you are tempted to linger. The 
 sun is sloping to the west as you reach the black moss 
 that lies in the water-shed between the valley you have 
 been shooting along and the valley you are returning to. 
 You strike the sinuous path that threads its treacherous 
 flow a path very much resembling that by which 
 Bunyan's pilgrim picked his way through the Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death. You have had somewhat 
 ugly walking for some time back : among moss-holes 
 with treacherous coverings of green, when a single false 
 step may make it a case of over the ankle, over the ears. 
 But here it is altogether a different thing. The slimy 
 soil of the quaking bog may settle under your heavy 
 boots at any moment, and you may find your resting- 
 place fifty feet beneath the surface, lying peacefully 
 until future generations of improvers disinter you, 
 looking much as you look to-day, a little browner 
 perhaps, thanks to the antiseptic properties of the peat. 
 So rarely is the spot visited for the shepherd need 
 seldom come where no sheep would dream of straying 
 after pasture that the instincts of the wary red deer 
 tell him he may sleep secure when the odds are so long 
 against surprise. As a case in point, we actually catch 
 
THE DAY'S WORK 219 
 
 a pair of them napping. Two sleek hinds spring out 
 of a moss-bog within half gun-shot, but, as it would 
 be idle cruelty mangling them with No. 6, they are 
 quit for the fright. Their light bounds lift them 
 safely along where no human foot dare follow, their 
 ruddy hides smeared to the ears with the jet-black 
 mud they have been lying in. A sporting who-oop 
 from the gillie nearest, and they change their canter 
 for a startled gallop, and, taking each obstacle as it 
 conies in their frantic stride, are away at their fleetest 
 for the wild sanctuary of their forest. 
 
 There are gorgeous evening lights on the rocky 
 peaks and the heathery summits, although the valley 
 depths are disappearing in the evening gloom, as we 
 turn the shoulder above the shooting-box, and in the 
 calm satisfaction of a well-spent day drawing to a 
 pleasant close, work our way in zigzags down upon 
 the orifices of the chimneys. We shoot conscientiously 
 still ; although from time to time, as Shot or Sancho 
 conspicuously come to a stand on the heights above, 
 and compel us to retrace our steps, there is something 
 like a plaintive murmur in the depths of our hearts 
 in response to the appeal of aching back-sinews. But 
 what is pleasure without the alternation of hardship, 
 if not of pain ? the dreary monotony of a magnificent 
 summer without a cloud or a shower ? and the countless 
 steps you have made since you left that door at early 
 dawn, to return to it some fifteen hours later, have 
 all been leading on to the moment when, after bath 
 and deliberate toilette, you draw your chairs to a 
 
220 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 table where the sparkling wax-lights are reflecting 
 themselves in plate and crystal and amber wine. How 
 the talk flows as the evening goes on ! If you don't 
 hurry your memory it leisurely brings you back each 
 incident of the day in most minute detail a panorama 
 of sharp-cut impressions and photographs everything 
 on your mental retina, down to the very stones and 
 heather-tussocks where you dropped your grouse ; the 
 shallow reach of water that winged bird splashed 
 through to seek a vain concealment among the over- 
 hanging heather-roots ; the black sedge-fringed pool by 
 the grey boulder where you flushed the unsuspecting 
 mallard ; and then the well-won repose, as you nestle 
 snugly in the blankets ; for after the sunny day the 
 air that comes in through the casements feels some- 
 thing more than cool as it fans cheeks still flushed 
 with exertion and that glorious header in the 
 morning, when you leap into the lake and life, to 
 emerge dripping as a water-god in the vigour of his 
 immortal strength. 
 
 Not that the life of the moors has nothing but its 
 sunny side : very far from it indeed. The heather 
 would never grow so rank, nor the grass in the corries 
 so green, if floods did not come like familiar things 
 to the barren soil that teems in the luxuriance of its 
 wild vegetation. How it does pour when the weather 
 makes up its mind to it : Holland would be swamped 
 in its rivers and the ocean waves, if it had but a 
 single season of the weather of the western Highlands. 
 Luckily Providence arranges a perfect system of natural 
 
THE DAY'S WORK 221 
 
 drainage, and as, save in the mosses, there is not a yard 
 of absolutely level land in a circumference of fifty 
 miles, the rain is off on its way to the sea as fast as 
 it touches the land. One lovely evening as you turn 
 homewards from your sport, you see grim clouds with 
 all manner of sinister browns and sepias dashed into 
 their colouring banking up over the Atlantic. If that 
 is not sufficient for you, if you disbelieve the ominous 
 shakes of the keeper's head, reluctant experience must 
 yield conviction to the winged heralds of the coming 
 storm. The huge white sea-gulls come floating up the 
 glens with plaintive cries. The swallows are skimming 
 through the waving grass in your paddock in early 
 seasons you get in your rough hay-crop somewhere 
 towards the middle of October ; and as for the mercury 
 in the weather-glass, it has vanished clean out of sight 
 in the bulb. Next morning you can scarcely hear the 
 heavy drip from the storm-gallery for the deadening 
 plash without. Not a vision of the lake, although 
 you can hear it grinding on its gravel bank within 
 a few feet of your windows ; the only life you dis- 
 tinguish among the waste of waters is the ponies, that 
 in vain search for shelter and companionship, and with 
 streaming hides are leaning miserably against the gables. 
 So it goes on day after day, until you have a profound 
 sympathy with the uneasy impatience of Noah, when 
 he raised the window-sash and started the raven on its 
 mission. You have the Times, it is true, the Pall 
 Mall and the Saturday, and some of the magazines ; 
 a choice selection of green and yellow novels you have 
 
222 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 read before ; such light popular literature, in short, as is 
 suitable to men determined beforehand on being idle. 
 It is wearisome, there is no doubt ; and if desperation 
 drive you beyond the watery walls of your prison, you 
 are washed back again in spite of yourself. But with 
 firm faith, even then, in the doctrine of compensations, 
 you feel all your ennui will be repaid you, in the 
 burst of joy with which your bounding heart greets 
 the first outbreak of the returning sun. He has to 
 make a hard fight of it, it is true ; and before the 
 weather settles back to serenity, you have one or two 
 off-days, when you know it to be idle to risk your 
 gun-locks in the chase through plashing water and 
 pools, over sloppy, slippery mountain-sides after birds 
 as wild as hawks. But toujours grouse might become 
 as tiresome as toujours partridge, and not the least 
 pleasant of your recollections link themselves to these 
 off-days when venturing abroad in water-proofing you 
 shake off the sense of confinement as you inhale the 
 freshened air. You turn out to drag the lake for 
 trout and pike. What lights on loch and fresh-washed 
 mountain, as the suns falls on the glistening patches 
 of green ; on the red seams where a yard or two of 
 landslip has just descended into the water, on the 
 hundreds of rain-rills throwing themselves from cliff 
 to cliff in tiny cascades, till taking the final plunge 
 they waste themselves in " dustfalls," like the Staubach, 
 on the driving breeze. The men, glad to find them- 
 selves again on the element that comes so natural to 
 them, stretch their sinews and brawny arms to the oar 
 
THE DAY'S WORK 223 
 
 after their long confinement to the kennels. The cobble 
 spins over the rocking waves almost too rapidly for the 
 chances of sport, as the brown net runs swiftly out from 
 the stern and the black corks rise bobbing merrily on 
 the track. And when they have put the girdle round 
 the bay, how like children they strip off boots and 
 stockings to dash in bare-legged and drag the net to 
 the land ! What excitement over the silvery scales 
 gleaming in the shallow water among the tarry meshes ! 
 The heavier trout are tossed up walloping on the bank, 
 while the long-jawed pike grunt out their savage souls, 
 previous to being stuffed with odoriferous herbs and 
 embalmed in claret sauce. Nor is it bad fun when 
 the birds are a little wild after broken weather they 
 scorn to pack for protection in these wilder hills 
 sending the otter afloat on a mountain tarn, and 
 watching the stirring of the water in its wake, as 
 the little fishes fling themselves by dozens on to the 
 dragging flies. Ptarmigan-shooting repays you, if you 
 care to scale the very highest of your mountain peaks, 
 feast your lungs on the very purest of the mountain 
 air, and your eyes on the very finest of the mountain 
 prospects. And in its own way, a mountain fox-hunt 
 is nearly as good a thing as a fast burst with the 
 Quorn, although the find, the run, and the kill take 
 place in a few acres of country like the debris of a 
 score of pyramids of the largest size, just blown sky- 
 high by a portentous explosion of subterranean gases. 
 Were the weather more to be reckoned on, autumn 
 on the moors would be too perfect happiness for 
 
224 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 
 
 mortal man, and could you only arrange the weather 
 for your own convenience, it would not be in human 
 nature to return contented to your lot in lowland life. 
 As it is, you may be sure it is your own fault if 
 you were not happy as mortal can reasonably hope 
 to be, and you must be unreasonable if you ask 
 anything more. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 " The Moor and the Loch " : the Nestor of Scottish 
 Sportsmen 
 
 Moor and the Loch." Seldom has such 
 infinite suggestion been so happily compressed 
 in a title. It awakens a whole world of memories : 
 it presents a shifting panorama of Scottish scenes and 
 sport. We see the broad extent of blooming heather, 
 backed up by the brown ranges of mountain or by 
 the peaks sapped by the weather and shivered by 
 the storms, standing out sharp and clear against the 
 distant sky-line. We see lakes like Loch Lomond, 
 winding round bay and headland, in the shadows of 
 the mighty Ben and embosoming an archipelago of 
 islands. We see lakes like Loch Awe or Loch Leven 
 embosoming historic strongholds, where the garrisons 
 like the ospreys on their isolated pillar-rocks could 
 only be reached by swimming or reduced by starva- 
 tion. We follow the great chain of the Central Glen 
 Albyn, with many a silent nook and solitary pool 
 gently washing the shelving beach when stirred by 
 the breeze and mirroring each tremor of the weeping 
 birches. Or we are in the more stern severity of 
 
 1 6 22 s 
 
226 "THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 
 
 such lonely moorland waters as Erricht or Rannoch, 
 or in the sublimity of the land-locked sea-lochs that 
 indent the genial Western Coast, or breach the bleak 
 and barren precipices of the misty Western Islands. In 
 tranquillity or storm, everywhere we hear the rushing 
 of many waters after rain, or the roar of brawling 
 cataracts. Fed by the myriads of burns and mountain 
 rills, these inland lochs are the natural reservoirs 
 filtering brown floods to the crystal streams which 
 swell into the famous rivers, which, as Scott said, 
 the Caledonian regards with feelings approaching to 
 reverence. And all are swarming with fish, strong, 
 subtle, and vigorous, from the clean-run salmon 
 sheathed in his sea-lice to the salmo ferox of Loch 
 Awe and the lively trout of Loch Leven. So as 
 the old associations revive, the poetry of imagination 
 is translated into action, and many an epic or idyll 
 of the rod falls into the picturesque and appropriate 
 setting. We remember how playing the heavy grilse 
 in a slippery gorge had nearly landed the angler in 
 a watery grave, and we feel again those pangs of 
 bitterest anguish when the phenomenal monster, lured 
 for once from unknown depths, broke away as the 
 boatman fancying him already in the scales, bent 
 over to clique him in the shoulder. And we hear 
 other sounds besides the fall of the cataract or the 
 scream of the eagle. The report of the gun breaks 
 the stillness of the moors, and the crack of the rifle 
 reverberates in the forests, till the last faint echo dies 
 away in the distance. We hear the pack of keen 
 
"THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 227 
 
 little beagles following hot and fast on the trail of 
 the roe, and the scratch lot of rough hounds swimming 
 and diving on the track of the otter, gurgling and 
 yelping between water and wind. Our fancy has run 
 away with us, and it is time to rein up. For every- 
 where and in all things Mr, Colquhoun has antici- 
 pated us : he has emphasised and illustrated each 
 possible situation with the graphic touch of a Land- 
 seer and the knowledge and experience that are all 
 his own. 
 
 Nearly sixty years of sport by flood and felJ, in 
 field and forest have left him the Nestor of Scottish 
 sportsmen. What changes these sixty years have 
 witnessed ! We know not to what we may look 
 forward in the future. We may take to acclimating 
 the reindeer of Scandinavia in the Shetlands, the elk 
 in the Blackmount, and the izzard in Torridon or 
 Applecross. We may stock our coverts with the 
 golden pheasant and the bantam-like jungle-fowl, and 
 lay down the spawn of the sturgeon in the breeding- 
 ponds of the Highlands and the Border. But it is 
 only too certain that no future writer can rival Mr. 
 Colquhoun in reminiscences of the characteristic 
 Scotland of the olden time. No doubt we have 
 witnessed many improvements. We have reclaimed 
 an infinity of unproductive wastes ; and financially, 
 the national income has benefited. Socially, too, we 
 have made marvellous progress, and have left our 
 grandfathers leagues behind, while we can only blush 
 for their ruder progenitors. But from the artistic 
 
228 "THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 
 
 and aesthetic point of view, many of these material 
 " improvements " must remain at least an open 
 question ; and looking at them as a sportsman, they 
 are simply deplorable. We have always inclined to 
 subscribe to the sweeping condemnation by St. John's 
 old Donald, when he missed the geese from the 
 Morayshire lochs and the snipe from the bogs, and 
 saw the semi-domesticated partridge steadily creeping 
 up on the grouse-ground. 
 
 Not that there is unmingled melancholy in the 
 retrospect, and laudatores temporis acti as we may be, 
 we hope we regard with suitable gratitude the modern 
 inventions in firearms and sporting equipments. Sixty 
 years ago we fancy that the venerable flint-locked 
 single-barrel was still in fashion. The author of the 
 Oakleigh shooting code, writing many, many years 
 ago, concedes certain merits to that exploded weapon. 
 He says that it made steady and deadly shots, because 
 knowing that you had but a single chance, you were 
 constrained to dwell on your aim. Those flints and 
 single-barrels may have been sure, but they were 
 abominably slow. The woodcock would have dipped 
 under the bough and twisted away behind the tree- 
 trunks while your fingers were fumbling with the lock 
 and the charge was in course of kindling. The rabbit 
 jerking across the ride, or the grouse-cock topping the 
 crest of the brae, would have laughed at the beard of 
 the baffled shooter. No ; the single-barrel was em- 
 phatically the weapon of the old school, and, as a rule, 
 must have bred a race of potterers who would pre- 
 
"THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 229 
 
 maturely develop into fogies. A vast stride was made 
 in advance with the introduction of double-barrels 
 and percussion-locks. Then Joe Manton and his less 
 famous rival Stevens attained, according to their lights, 
 to the perfection of finished workmanship. Curtis and 
 Harvey followed with their lively " diamond-grain," 
 and Eley with his waterproof caps and wired cartridges. 
 Given tolerable weather, and but a fair sprinkling of 
 wild game, and the shooter had good reason to be 
 satisfied with the readiness of his new-fangled tools. 
 But there are occasionally dripping days to the north 
 of the Border, and then to what misery and provocation 
 that laborious muzzle-loading used to lead ! The wads 
 in your open pocket grew saturated, and bulged when 
 thrust into the barrels. The powder half choked the 
 damp measure in the mouth of the flask. The slender 
 ramrod bent and sometimes broke when you were 
 cramming down the reluctant charge in a series of 
 frantic contortions ; and it was a godsend when it was 
 replaced by the more substantial loading-rod. Above 
 all, the best barrels would hang fire, and then you 
 were placed hors de combat till you had cleaned the 
 touch-hole and replenished it with dry powder in the 
 drip of the driving rain. That, with the nuisance of 
 seeing birds getting up about you, before you had 
 reloaded and were ready to drop them, might have 
 been admirable discipline for the patience which should 
 be one of the fundamental virtues of the sportsman. 
 But too often the temper flashed up when the powder 
 refused to burn, sending you on your way sulking and 
 
230 "THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 
 
 shooting wildly ; and altogether there was great reason 
 for thankfulness in the introduction of the swift and 
 simple breech-loader. 
 
 Having said so much in favour of modern inno- 
 vations, we can go back to our grumbling with an 
 easier conscience. Sixty years ago there was genuine 
 wild sport, and a man of moderate means and agree- 
 able manners was made welcome to more shooting 
 than he could overtake, and could pick and choose 
 among his many invitations. There were no pro- 
 fessional agents in Perth and Inverness to negotiate 
 fabulous rents for the moors and the forests. Indeed, 
 strictly speaking, there were no deer-forests at all, if 
 the idea of a forest implies solitude and a sanctuary. 
 The smoke curled up in the remotest straths from the 
 straw-bound chimneys of the hovels and hamlets that 
 were teeming with human and canine life. There were 
 herds of black cattle ranging the hills, and groups of 
 sheep grazing in the corries, and hoary patriarchs and 
 witch-like old women were out with their " shelties " 
 cutting the peat or fetching it from the neighbouring 
 bogs. Here and there in some out-of-the-way den among 
 the rocks, that might have sheltered caterans in more 
 lawless times, one of the " sma' stills " was in cheerful 
 activity. The red deer had to shift as they best could, 
 and to run their chance with the other fera nature. 
 Duncan, though he might have a profound reverence 
 for the chief, would make many a quiet stalk on his 
 deer in the gloaming ; and Dugald would lie in ambush 
 for them in his patch of oats, ready to empty his charge 
 
"THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 231 
 
 of buck-shot point-blank into the shoulders of the 
 marauders. The deer did not multiply as they do 
 now. They were always on the watch as they snatched 
 at the herbage, and lay down to sleep with one eye 
 open. They were hounded about by yelping collies, 
 and got the wind of roving Highland laddies, till they 
 became preternaturally wild and restless. But then 
 there were " harts of grease " which attained enormous 
 size and carried portentous heads with wide-spreading 
 antlers that made them notorious over the range of the 
 surrounding districts. To circumvent one of these 
 suspicious veterans, you had to be versed like Donald 
 Caird in " the wiles of dun-deer stalking " ; and the 
 stalk was made more difficult by a cordon of feathered 
 sentinels who were always on the look-out to give the 
 quarry the alarm. There was no systematic killing 
 down of the grouse who keep their eye on each 
 movement of the stalker, and rise with their warning 
 note at the moment when he is counting his chickens. 
 It is not so many years ago since St. John described 
 how he spent three days on the hills of Morayshire 
 in pursuit of " the muckle hart of Benmore." Now 
 the regular forests are so many patrolled sanctuaries 
 where all profane intrusion is forbidden. The land has 
 trebled and quadrupled in value, though the grazing 
 rents have been sacrificed. The deer have increased 
 till the forests are over-stocked, and slaughtering them 
 has become comparatively a certainty ; but though well- 
 laden ponies may follow you home when you are hurry- 
 ing back to the lodge for the dinner-hour, yet the 
 
232 "THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 
 
 heads and the haunches are seldom what they used 
 to be. 
 
 Sixty years ago there was good rough shooting on 
 many a half-moorland estate that carries nothing now 
 but partridges and a hare or two. No doubt, had we 
 the good luck to be the laird, we might console our- 
 selves by a reference to the rent-roll. But not being 
 the laird, but merely his guest, we find few things more 
 depressing than revisiting one of the favourite shooting- 
 haunts of our youth in these days of accumulating 
 mortgagees and scientific farming. The yellow oats 
 are waving over the purple hillsides where the moorcock 
 used to crow so cheerily of an August morning. There 
 is a superb growth of swedes in the sunny hollow where 
 the black- game lay like stones among the bracken and 
 the cotton grass on that memorable Twentieth when we 
 made a massacre of the innocents. The bog has been 
 drained where we used to spring the snipe, as we threaded 
 our way among the weed-covered moss-pots ; and the 
 old mill-pond has been dammed and embanked where 
 we flushed the wild-duck in the rushy back-water. It 
 is but poor compensation for the loss of that sensational 
 variety that we can half fill a capacious pannier with 
 partridges ; or that the covers where we went rabbit- 
 shooting, in season and out of season, are now strictly 
 preserved for the coop-fed pheasants. And, to leave 
 the land for the water, it is worse still with the fishing. 
 A downfall of rain in the droughts of summer used to 
 secure safe sport for many days to come. The super- 
 fluous moisture trickled slowly through myriads of tiny 
 
"THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 233 
 
 runs into the burns that filled the streams that went to 
 swell the brimming river in their turn. After the first 
 rush of the flood, the water, as it gradually rose and 
 subsided again, was in grand and growing order. Now 
 the stream comes down in a sudden spate, and falls 
 even more quickly than it has swollen. The rushes 
 have disappeared from the haughs and hills under an 
 admirable system of scientific furrow-draining ; and 
 you may see the river shrinking visibly to those silvery 
 rills that meander among the pebbles in crystal trans- 
 lucency. The most finished of artists need hardly put 
 up his rod to try his luck in the sparkle of the sun- 
 shine ; and even an invisible midge on a gossamer 
 casting-line would scarcely move the monsters that are 
 lolloping in the pools. 
 
 That is of the less consequence to many of us, that 
 there is so little good fishing to be had for love. The 
 laird has let his stretches of water, only reserving him- 
 self an occasional day or two in the pools that lie most 
 convenient to his residence ; and the eminent banker in 
 town, who is his tenant, may be said to do his fishing 
 from his offices in Lombard Street. A telegram warns 
 him of the coming condition of the river, and he jumps 
 into a hansom for the night-train from King's Cross, to 
 turn up on the following morning on the platform at 
 Perth or Berwick. These railways have not only run 
 up the rents, but they have wrought a revolution in 
 everything. When you had to make your way into 
 the remote glens of the Highlands by coach, cart, or 
 " machine," you were a welcome and an honoured 
 
234 "THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 
 
 guest with the Celtic innkeepers and boatmen. 
 Strangers were as few and far between as cocks in 
 September. You had the best parlour and bedroom 
 placed at your disposal ; the fattest fowl was killed 
 for you forthwith for you were sure to find next to 
 nothing in the larder and a flask of the mellowest 
 Glenlivet came forth from the recesses of the cellar. 
 Now, unless you send warning a week beforehand, you 
 may count on being turned away from the door. One 
 of the parlours is made to do duty for a "coffee-room," 
 and you must be content with a table hustled away in 
 the corner. The house is crowded from ground-floor 
 to garret with Saxons from the Stock Exchange or the 
 Inns of Court, who have run down for a ten days' 
 fishing holiday. Capital fellows they may be in 
 ordinary circumstances, but the sentiments of jealous 
 repulsion are mutual. These first comers have the 
 best of it, for they have the most skilful of the 
 boatmen in their pay. With an et tu Brute expres- 
 sion of countenance, you learn that the most trusted 
 of your former allies have sold themselves and their 
 services for Southern gold ; nor will they show much 
 scruple as to lying on occasion, if you appeal to their 
 old friendship through the medium of the cigar-case or 
 the whisky-bottle. We will suppose you are lucky 
 enough to find a boat for next day with somebody 
 to pull you about in it. You make a start in the 
 smallest of the small hours, and are rowed round to 
 your favourite bay. A piratical craft is already in 
 occupation, skulking to and fro under shadow of the 
 
"THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 235 
 
 birches ; and the gentleman in the home-spun Norfolk 
 jacket who scowled at you over his bedroom candle is 
 trolling away for his life, as if your favourite fishing- 
 ground belonged to him. You feel inclined to for- 
 swear the land of your sires, and to seek a solitary 
 wigwam in some vast wilderness on the lonely banks 
 of the St. John River or the Saguenay. 
 
 Sixty forty nay, twenty years ago the lochs and 
 tarns were the favourite resorts of migratory water- 
 fowl. The many admirers of St. John and his 
 " Sport in Moray " will remember his fascinating 
 pictures of the flight of the wild swans as they flew 
 trumpeting into Findhorn Bay ; of his circumventing 
 the flocks of wary grey geese who had set their 
 sentinels and settled down to feed among the ditches ; 
 of his expeditions in the frosts to the Loch of Spynie. 
 We chance to know little of the neighbourhood of 
 Elgin, or of Invererne, where that most genial of 
 sportsmen and naturalists had made his home for so 
 many years ; but we suspect that there, as everywhere 
 else, things have greatly changed for the worse since 
 his time. We lament the disappearance of the noble 
 birds of prey and the picturesque ground " vermin " 
 that come in so characteristically in the foreground of 
 Mr. Colquhoun's mountain landscapes. Organised 
 corps of keepers and gillies have been waging indis- 
 criminate war against eagles and peregrine falcons ; 
 extravagant rewards have been set upon their heads ; 
 fancy prices are offered for their eggs, till each daring 
 shepherd lad is tempted to risk his neck, scrambling 
 
236 "THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 
 
 down to their eyries among almost inaccessible preci- 
 pices. The mountain-fox still holds his own among 
 the cairns and the rifts of the rocks on the summits of 
 the loftier hills ; but the wild cat and the marten have 
 well-nigh disappeared. Even the badger and the otter 
 have been dying out in the Lowlands, though happily 
 there is still sport for the shaggy water-hounds in the 
 quiet pools and among the cataracts of many a wood- 
 land stream. It is true that we have gains to set against 
 the losses. The graceful roes have increased with the 
 spreading plantations, though very greatly to the injury 
 of the woods ; and the capercailzie, introduced by the 
 late Lord Breadalbane, has spread far and wide through 
 the pine-forests of Perthshire. And Mr. Colquhoun 
 can tell how, when shooting as a boy on the Arrochar 
 hills, he made acquaintance with one of the forerunners 
 of these alpine hares which swarm now in Glenfalloch 
 and Glen Fruin, and indeed, breed rabbit-like or rat- 
 like all over the Highlands. 
 
 Few are so fortunate as the author of " The Moor 
 and the Loch " in having been brought up in a sylvan 
 paradise. The picturesque domains of his ancient 
 family stretch along the banks of Loch Lomond ; 
 within easy reach of their mansion of Rossdhu were 
 the remains of their forests of the Lennox and Ben 
 Cruachan ; and between it and the many arms of the 
 sea that wind up into the western coast from the 
 Atlantic is a jumble of hill and wood and heather. 
 Long ago, on a memorable occasion, we ourselves 
 shot along the broken banks that look across to that 
 
"THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 237 
 
 lovely inland archipelago. Though we set more store 
 in those days by shooting than scenery, we could have 
 been comparatively indifferent to the contents of the 
 bag in admiring the endless beauties of the prospect. 
 But though the shooting was rough and the ground 
 but half preserved, the bag contained a little of most 
 things, for there was a touch of the softer richness of 
 the Lowlands relieving the savagery of the Highland 
 landscape. Sixty years ago young Colquhoun could 
 follow the keepers over the broad rolling stretches of 
 the grouse-moor into the recesses of the hills ranged by 
 the red deer. There were black game in the hanging 
 coverts and roe in the thickets of bramble and bracken. 
 There was abundance of low-country shooting on the 
 lower ground, and whatever there may have been then, 
 now there is a fair sprinkling of pheasants. There 
 were trout in the loch and salmon in the streams that 
 have been poisoned since by chemical works and manu- 
 facturies ; while in the sea-lakes and out of the season, 
 there was always the rougher fishing which seems to 
 have an indefinable charm of its own. No wonder 
 that such a sportsman had become catholic in his tastes, 
 for as Laidlaw remarked of Walter Scott, after the 
 excursions in Liddesdale, "he was making himself all 
 the time " to be the author of a Scottish sporting 
 encyclopaedia. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Among the Wild Fowl 
 
 T N these chapters, which recall the picturesque 
 * reminiscences of the Nestor of Scottish sportsmen, 
 our humble experiences are interspersed with his own. 
 But to some of the more irregular sports in which 
 he specially delights we were never addicted. There 
 is wild-fowl shooting, for example. It must become 
 an absorbing passion with a man if he means to 
 follow it perseveringly with pleasure and success. 
 The keenest enthusiast on record is Colonel Hawker, 
 whose ponderous volumes are chiefly devoted to that 
 pursuit. The colonel was something of a valetudin- 
 arian, something of an epicure, and he was suffering 
 besides from old wounds received in Wellington's 
 campaigns. Yet no weather deterred him, no hard- 
 ship daunted him, and he bivouacked in bitter winter 
 on the beach of Pool Harbour in a cottage with the 
 accommodations of a squatter's log hut. As the wild- 
 fowler is bound to suffer himself, he cannot be ex- 
 pected to be over sensitive as to the sufferings of 
 his victims. Yet surely, over the claret or cigar, 
 
 he must have his moments of remorse, when he 
 
 238 
 
AMONG THE WILD FOWL 239 
 
 thinks of the cripples never picked up and of the 
 fugitives doomed to die in lingering torments after 
 a raking discharge from the scattering swivel-gun. 
 In the punt or the boat a man may wrap himself 
 up warmly and so bid tolerable defiance to the cold. 
 But ambushing himself among the sand-hills or stalk- 
 ing on foot, he dare not encumber himself with body 
 or foot hamper. Waterproof boots interfere with 
 the silent celerity of the stalk, and heavy dress with 
 the agility which may have to be displayed at a 
 moment's notice. We are told that the warmest 
 wear should be a duffel shooting-jacket, and that 
 only an excess of frost can justify a double pair of 
 stockings. In the heat of youth and the height of 
 excitement, he may plunge into the water after the 
 winged birds like his own shaggy retriever, and for 
 the sake of a leash or so of teal or mallards, risk 
 racking agonies of rheumatism in the future. In any 
 case the seasoned wild-fowl shooter should possess 
 extraordinary stamina and be an exceptionally warm- 
 blooded animal to boot. Our own experience is that 
 steady shooting must in any circumstances greatly 
 depend on bodily comfort, and if sick or sorry, 
 soaking or chilled, the aim must inevitably be pro- 
 portionately affected. When you begin by missing, 
 you are most likely to go on missing ; and when 
 you have been having stray shots at wide intervals, you 
 are apt to break down on unexpected opportunities. 
 Insensibly you become distracted and indifferent in 
 spite of yourself, and have to think about pulling 
 
2 4 o AMONG THE WILD FOWL 
 
 yourself together at the moment when you should 
 be " all there." Now the wild-fowler, above all men, 
 must be devoted in his pursuit to the entire oblivion 
 of adventitious circumstances. It needs no ordinary 
 concentration of energy to watch and wait, with each 
 faculty on the stretch, when the extremities are im- 
 mersed in an icy puddle ; when the frost is knitting 
 your moustache to your beard, and congealing the 
 tear-drops that gather beneath your eyelashes ; or 
 when the wind is whistling through that duffel 
 shooting-coat of yours and chilling the very marrow 
 in your aching bones. When the chance comes to 
 ordinary men under such highly trying conditions, 
 it is long odds that they fail to make the best of it. 
 And we know few things more trying in this world 
 of disappointment than missing the purpose of your 
 privations and your patience, when Providence has 
 brought it for a second or so within your grasp. 
 
 There is even more science in stalking ducks than 
 deer. From the nature of the broken ground in a 
 forest, you have a fair chance of making your 
 approach under cover ; but the ducks are almost 
 sure to have settled on a sheet of water in the flat. 
 You may walk up almost within arm's-length of out- 
 lying birds in the hags of a peat-moss ; but when the 
 ducks are gathered into flocks, no creatures are more 
 suspicious or more watchful. They have an extra- 
 ordinarily keen sense of sight, and they never cease 
 to be on the alert. They are a much less conspicuous 
 object to the sportsman than the sportsman is to 
 
AMONG THE WILD FOWL 241 
 
 them, as they sit floating on the rippling water, 
 which they closely resemble in colour. Their hearing, 
 too, is at least as sharp as their sight a reason for 
 not wearing substantial fishing-boots. Mr. Col- 
 quhoun's directions for stalking them are invaluable ; 
 but then it takes an expert to carry the instruc- 
 tions into practice, and an expert with the instincts 
 of an Indian. You have no friendly keeper at your 
 elbow, as in the deer-forest, to guide you passively 
 in your sinuous approaches, and whisper instructions 
 when your intelligence is at fault. To begin with, 
 you must take the bearings of the birds by con- 
 spicuous landmarks upon the shore, with others farther 
 to the inland, and then, having suppressed yourself 
 as promptly as possible, you wind round upon the 
 latter by a cautious detour. 
 
 Akin to wild-fowling is seal-shooting the deer- 
 stalking of the seas ; and while you meet with many 
 men who will tell you they have killed seals, com- 
 paratively few have the conscience to take oath to 
 having bagged them. According to popular notions, 
 the seal is a miracle of tough vitality almost as 
 hard to kill as his amphibious congener the hippo- 
 potamus and he is said to have a provoking habit 
 of sinking to the bottom with his death-wound, vin- 
 dictively entangling his corpse in the sea-weed. We 
 incline to the belief that the notion is a fallacy, and 
 may be partly explained by indifferent shooting. 
 Experts have assured us that if you hold straight for 
 the fatal spot, the seal will float and may be gaffed 
 
242 AMONG THE WILD FOWL 
 
 like a salmon. Unlike the wild-fowling, which has 
 generally to be pursued at unholy hours and in the 
 most unpropitious weather, seal -shooting may be 
 enjoyed in calm and sunshine. Nor can anything 
 be much more enchanting than a leisurely boat- 
 stalk among the islands and the weed-strewn reefs 
 of some land-locked estuary, when the rosy dawn 
 is tinging the eastern hill-tops, or when the sun in 
 a radiant kaleidoscope of colours is slowly sloping 
 towards the west. But unless you have trusted 
 yourself to practised hands, or are skilled yourself in 
 the amphibious chase, what is apparently the most 
 promising day may prove a blank, so far as even 
 powder-burning is concerned. The persecuted seal 
 and he plays the mischief with the salmon stake- 
 nets is suspicious enough in all conscience, and 
 although he goes to the shore or the reef to indulge 
 in a siesta, it is as hard to catch him asleep as the pro- 
 verbial weasel. Moreover the basking seal is scarcely 
 to be discovered among the tufts of sea-ware, nor is 
 his sprawling form to be easily distinguished from 
 the grey blocks of stone strewing the shingle. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 In Forest and on Hill 
 
 YVTTE are reminded by Mr. Colquhoun of the old 
 V* Highland apothegm, " No man has a right to 
 the hunter's badge who has not killed a red deer, an 
 eagle, a salmon, and a seal." And undoubtedly deer- 
 stalking deserves the place he assigns to it, as much for 
 the sport itself as for the wild picturesqueness of the 
 surroundings. But for its full enjoyment it must be 
 studied as an art, and followed habitually and syste- 
 matically. The stalker must pay for his own ex- 
 perience, after an ordeal of disappointments and many 
 mortifications. Should you have the offer of a day's 
 stalking once in a way, you must be content to abjure 
 your individuality if you hope to come home with a 
 head. You must place yourself unreservedly in the 
 hands of the professional stalker, whose eyes have been 
 exercised on the hills from his boyhood ; who knows 
 the lie of the hidden corries, and has an instinct for the 
 mysterious currents of the wind. But even in these 
 somewhat humiliating circumstances the excitement is 
 so intense that you are unconscious of fatigue and 
 indifferent to danger. What can be more romantically 
 
 243 
 
244 IN FOREST AND ON HILL 
 
 exhilarating than the novel sense of adventure when 
 you are plunging into a wilderness of mountain and 
 valley untrodden for the time being by any feet but 
 your own ? There is a glimpse of the savage life 
 brought in contact with advanced civilisation ; for 
 happily you have slept in luxurious quarters, and look 
 forward to returning to them to recruit from your 
 fatigues. Except perhaps the hooking and playing of 
 your first salmon, while you remember the slightness 
 of the line by which you were holding the sixteen- 
 pounder, there is nothing to equal the excitement of 
 your first vision of the red deer in his native wilds, 
 with the hope that it may be given you to make him 
 your own. What matters all you may go through 
 in the meantime ? You are not shivering off a bleak 
 storm-beaten coast in a biting snow-drift. The season 
 is summer, the weather is glorious, and prolonged 
 immersion in the mountain stream comes refreshingly, 
 rather than otherwise, to your fevered pulses. Far 
 from you be the apprehension of aches and rheumatism : 
 for once you will have lived, even if you are doomed 
 to be crippled. Should the climbing be stiff, you find 
 yourself following your leader by the shortest cut, up 
 the rugged steps of some rocky staircase that would set 
 your head swimming in your more sober moments, 
 when the croak of the raven that you have startled 
 might sound ominous. And then in the final crawl on 
 the rock or the bank of heather that should be screen- 
 ing the antlers from your straining eyes, how mar- 
 vellously lithe and supple you make yourself as you 
 
 
IN FOREST AND ON HILL 245 
 
 wriggle yourself through the heather in the convolu- 
 tions of the serpent. Yet all the time your pulse 
 seems to be beating six to the second, and your whole 
 being is throbbing with suppressed thrills ! for you 
 have a sense that nature is conspiring against you. 
 The crow of the solitary cock, the mere twitter of 
 some alarmed moor-bird, a sudden twist in the breeze, 
 the flight of a hawk or a raven may be so many sig- 
 nificant signs that will convey warning of your 
 proximity ; and the consciousness of that long and 
 anxious stalk of the concatenation of outward con- 
 tingencies that you are in course of surmounting 
 successfully all conspire to raise excitement beyond 
 control when your hopes are at last on the verge of 
 fruition. We envy and yet we compassionate the 
 novice who lies ensconced at last within easy range, 
 longing to still the fierce beating of his heart and to 
 clear away the gathering film from his eyes. His 
 mentor knows too well to flurry him, and yet the 
 worthy Gael is naturally impatient. Is the grand stalk 
 to go for nothing, as seems only too possible ? As yet 
 the deer are feeding in tranquillity, all unconscious of 
 their peril ; but it is tempting Providence to hang back 
 too long ; and it is a marvel that that lean-looking 
 hind is not sniffing the air suspiciously. But the nerves 
 are steadied in a measure by an almost superhuman 
 strain ; the aim is taken and the shot is fired. We 
 would rather drop a curtain over the scene should the 
 hart go off unharmed, or have his gallop merely 
 hastened by a flesh-wound. But should he drop in his 
 
246 IN FOREST AND ON HILL 
 
 tracks, or dash down to the brook in the corrie, there 
 to turn savagely to bay, while he is dyeing the rippling 
 water with his life-blood what a crowning moment of 
 unadulterated triumph is that ! 
 
 For those who shoot for the sport and not for the 
 fashion or the larder, Mr. Colquhoun makes the sug- 
 gestion that the chase of the wild goat might be an 
 excellent substitute for that of the red deer. The one 
 animal is at least as wary as the other, and frequents by 
 choice more break-neck country. Goat-shooting would 
 be within the reach of men of very moderate means, 
 who might cheaply rent the run of a grazing where it 
 is difficult to get up a head of grouse. And there is 
 this advantage besides, that, like the Cockney's famous 
 jack-snipe, a single cautious old billy-goat might amuse 
 his proprietor through many seasons, and carry his 
 silvery beard in peace to the grave after all. We can 
 speak from experience. Year after year it was our 
 privilege to sport over a most savage range of shootings 
 in Ross-shire, which we shall advert to again in speak- 
 ing of the ptarmigan. In that rocky wilderness were 
 a pair of secular goats, which were said to have haunted 
 the heights from time immemorial. No man, at least, 
 pretended a claim to them ; nor could anything be 
 learned of their origin or antecedents. Frequently of 
 a fine summer morning, lounging on the gravel before 
 the shooting-lodge, we contemplated them through a 
 telescope on the opposite slopes. Often of an evening 
 we made long practice at them, with rifles sighted to 
 fabulous elevations ; and they cast dust upon our beards 
 
IN FOREST AND ON HILL 247 
 
 by mocking at the misspent bullets. More than once, 
 when the grouse were shy, we broke away in impromptu 
 stalks, invariably having our trouble for our pains. 
 They never had young, for the best of reasons. The 
 female must have been some score of years past bearing, 
 and although our acquaintance with them ended a 
 dozen of seasons ago, we can well imagine that they 
 may be still be "to the fore." But more youthful 
 animals might make more hopeful practice than those 
 diabolically wily ancients ; although we are sure, from 
 what we have seen of the race, that they would be hard 
 enough of approach in any case. But for the story of 
 a goat-stalk in the most thrillingly romantic circum- 
 stances, we must send the reader to " The Moor and 
 the Loch." It came off, some sixty years ago, on 
 Crap-na-Gower, u perhaps the most fascinating spot of 
 the far-famed Loch Lomond." " The island rises per- 
 pendicularly out of the loch by an almost inaccessible 
 succession of rocks and shaggy heather, full of deep 
 holes and caverns. Seen at a distance, with its wild 
 goats grazing among the grey rocks and scaurs, shaded 
 here and there by a clump of reverend yews, a finer 
 study for the artist's pencil could not be found." 
 
 Scrope has commemorated the annual deer drives in 
 the forest of Athol, which perpetuated the historic 
 traditions of the days when Scottish monarchs on their 
 northern progresses had sylvan welcome from Highland 
 feudatories. The " tinchal " for obvious reasons has 
 fallen into disrepute ; there is great disturbance, more 
 noise than steady shooting, and a heavy bill if the 
 
248 IN FOREST AND ON HILL 
 
 maimed and wounded animals which can never be 
 even approximately reckoned up. Quiet deer-shooting 
 in dense woods is a rare experience in these islands, and 
 very few have enjoyed such opportunities of driving 
 coverts for red deer as Mr. Colquhoun dilates on 
 enthusiastically in his recollections of his residence in 
 Mull. There we are reminded rather of the skill and 
 stealthy devices brought into play by the " still-hunter" 
 after elk in Canadian woods. But the bare chance of 
 coming across the wanderers from some neighbouring 
 forest goes far to enhance the excitement of one of 
 those roe battues which Mr. Colquhoun condemns as 
 blundering and unsportsmanlike. That they are gene- 
 rally mismanaged may be very true, chiefly because the 
 covers contain hares, rabbits, and pheasants as well, and 
 partly because few of the head-keepers organising the 
 beats remember that the roe has the scent of his red 
 cousin and is even more wary and timid. So if many 
 are moved, but few are knocked over, and that, 
 sportsmen as we are, we should consider matter for 
 jubilation if the roes were not so terribly destructive. 
 No Scottish creature is so graceful and ornamental, the 
 pity being that their shrinking timidity keeps them 
 invisible through the daytime in the seclusion of the 
 woods. But no creature is more hateful to forester or 
 farmer, whether feeding at dewy daybreak towards 
 harvest time in the nearest oat-field, or delicately 
 nibbling the top shoots in the young plantations pretty 
 nearly all the year round. So from the practical point 
 of view they are justly proscribed, like the hill foxes 
 
IN FOREST AND ON HILL 249 
 
 that take ruthless toll of the lambs. With their habits, 
 in the games of hide-and-seek with the beaters, they 
 have generally much the best of it, and the strategy 
 in the autumnal battues may be lamentable, yet from 
 pleasant associations we own to a fondness for these. 
 For we remember the jovial bachelor party that used 
 to assemble for the annual week in October in the grey 
 old mansion among its wide-stretching woods woods 
 which might be driven through five hard working 
 days without ever coming to the end of them. We 
 recall those larches and silver firs of portentous girth 
 that reared their clear stems toward the skies in long- 
 drawn lines of russet-coloured columns as they flung 
 the broad shadows of their graceful boughs over the 
 velvety turf by the clear-flowing river in what is locally 
 known as " Paradise." These were the good old days 
 before Radical tenants cared to trouble themselves 
 about the game-laws ; when they held their farms at 
 the reasonable rents which made ample allowance for 
 inevitable damages ; when the surplus game, instead of 
 going to the local markets, was sent round to the home- 
 steads among the fields where it had fed ; and when 
 sundry of the laird's old friends among the farmers came 
 to make up the long line of guns that drew themselves 
 out across the breadth of the cover. But it was a right 
 merry gathering all the same, as might be seen and 
 heard at the meeting for the al fresco lunch, when 
 tongues relieved from restraint were recompensing 
 themselves for their previous silence. And then the 
 comparing notes over the events of the day, when, 
 
250 IN FOREST AND ON HILL 
 
 after indulging in the host's admirable claret, his guests 
 had adjourned to the vaulted smoking-room. For 
 there is one undeniable advantage in a roe-hunt as 
 every man has his solitary station, removed from the 
 jealous eyes of his neighbour, the narration of his 
 personal exploits is an affair between himself and his 
 conscience. He may drop a judicious veil over the 
 misses and give generous scope to the frolics of his 
 fancy. 
 
 At the same time, for a quieter kind of pleasure, to 
 say nothing of making surer and more deadly work, 
 there is nothing like shooting roe alone or with a single 
 safe companion. You slip silently and stealthily to 
 your places, sending into the cover the staunch old 
 hound, who is all the better for your purpose if he be 
 stiff in the joints. The first faint hesitating whimper 
 grows into a deep-mouthed bay as the dog gets fairly 
 on the foot of the roe, who are bounding through the 
 bushes ahead of him. You make a rush for the direc- 
 tion in which they are coming round, for the roe has a 
 suicidal habit of running in circles. And then from 
 the crest of some commanding knoll, where your 
 shooting-dress blends with the leaves and the branches, 
 you stand motionless, with 'pricked ears and half- 
 levelled piece, watching the openings within easy 
 gunshot. Nothing is more noteworthy than the ex- 
 traordinary stealthiness with which the roe will thread 
 its way through the thickest and most tangled cover. 
 You hear the dog crashing along through the under- 
 growth, and yet not a sound may have reached you 
 
IN FOREST AND ON HILL 251 
 
 from anywhere nearer, when of a sudden a phantom 
 form flits over a low-hanging branch, and lights softly 
 as a snowflake in the open, looking back and listening 
 intently with flashes of startled curiosity in the gentle 
 hazel eye. Nothing in the animal world is more 
 graceful, and we suspect that the most prosaic of 
 sportsmen must have a qualm when he sees the em- 
 bodied poetry of the pose collapse under the murderous 
 charge of buck-shot. The snap taken at the flying 
 form that merely shoots into sight to vanish again 
 instantaneously is of course a different thing altogether. 
 Then you think of nothing but the miss or the kill 
 as you rush forward to search the cover, and are too 
 pleased with your quickness to feel a touch of remorse 
 when you come upon the body of the slaughtered 
 beauty. Shooting over a little pack of lively beagles, 
 too, is more exciting, if less destructive, than turning 
 out with a single experienced hound. And we have 
 had better sport than on many a more solemn occasion, 
 when we have merely taken the roe as they came in 
 the course of a mixed day ; for they will lie like 
 rabbits till you almost set your foot upon them, under 
 the branches of the scattered trees, on the banks of the 
 beautiful West Highland lakes. The mischief is, that 
 when your main object is woodcock, and one barrel is 
 charged with small shot, while in the other there is 
 a cartridge loaded with B.B., you are apt to make a 
 mistake in the hurry of the moment, if you spring a 
 deer where you were looking out for a bird. And 
 the roe is almost as clever as the woodcock in in- 
 
252 IN FOREST AND ON HILL 
 
 terposing shot-proof screens between itself and the 
 breech-loader. 
 
 The grouse is par excellence the game-bird of Scot- 
 land, but nothing in the last sixty years has changed 
 its character so entirely as grouse-shooting. Sixty 
 years ago, it is safe to say, no gentleman dreamed of 
 renting a moor. Until then, and for half a genera- 
 tion afterwards, the grouse had to take its chance 
 among the fer<e nature that preyed upon it. The 
 Western Highlands, with their watery climate, have 
 never shown such a profusion of game as the more 
 level moors of the Midlands and north-eastern Shires. 
 Yet it sounds strange nowadays to hear of ten or 
 twelve brace being regarded as a good day's sport for 
 three crack guns on the hills of Luss, Arrochar, 
 and Glenfalloch. But since the tracts of barren waste 
 became marketable the grouse has been artifically 
 fostered. The eagles in many districts have disappeared 
 from their ancient hunting grounds ; hawks of all kinds 
 have been indiscriminately trapped and killed down ; 
 ravens and hooded crows have made practical acquain- 
 tance with the virtues of strychnine, though that is 
 a fatality which few will be disposed to regret ; while 
 ground vermin of every sort have been gathered in 
 for the open-air museum, displayed ostentatiously on 
 the gable-end of the mountain kennel. In short, the 
 balance of Nature has not only been disturbed but 
 upset, and there can be no question that Nature 
 avenges herself. Experts may differ as to the origin 
 of the grouse disease, but we believe the most reliable 
 
IN FOREST AND ON HILL 253 
 
 are agreed that it is aggravated if not caused by over- 
 crowding. As for Colquhoun, he lays it down as an 
 axiom that on no moors in Scotland can the birds be 
 increased with impunity beyond a certain point. 
 Over-stocking tends to generate disease, and contagious 
 maladies are not stamped out, as they used to be, 
 when every sickly member of a pack was sure to be 
 struck down by some hawk on the hover, or picked 
 up by the fox or the foumart on the prowl. Nor 
 does the genuine sportsman of the olden time care 
 greatly for what the advertisements style a "first-class" 
 moor. He loves to brings hill-craft and science into 
 play, and to see the dogs he has bred and broken at 
 their business. But where the coveys are lying thick 
 in the summer sunshine any novice who goes out with 
 tolerably straight powder may come home with nearly 
 as many brace as his seniors and betters and that, 
 it must be confessed, is somewhat aggravating. 
 
 Whether the game be plentiful or the reverse, 
 the subject of satisfactory relations with the sheep 
 farmers and their shepherds is all-important for the 
 occupant of shootings. If you cannot have the sheep- 
 walks in your own hands and that is a counsel of 
 perfection for all but capitalists make a point, if any 
 way possible, of keeping on terms with the shepherds. 
 There are difficulties of course. The more jealous 
 the keepers are, the more likely are they and the 
 shepherds to strive like the herdsmen of Lot and 
 Abraham ; but after all, it is the shepherds who are 
 masters of the situation. They are out early and 
 
254 IN FOREST AND ON HILL 
 
 late ; they stumble across the nests of the sitting 
 hens, and mark the basking-places of the newly- 
 hatched chickens to a nicety. They are for ever 
 followed by lean, frolicsome collies, always eager 
 for a range, a rush in, and a worry. They may 
 gratify a long-standing grudge with one wave of the 
 hand, which will seal the doom of a whole pocketful 
 of " cheepers." So it is absolutely indispensable to 
 endeavour to conciliate them. And though they may 
 be " dour " and bristly when rubbed the wrong way, 
 for the most part they are frank and manly fellows, 
 open to a kindly " crack " and a pouchful of tobacco, 
 and with no sort of objection to an occasional sovereign. 
 Once make them your friends, and they will be ready 
 enough to make amicable arrangements as to gathering 
 their flocks, burning the heather, &c., which are 
 privileges they are pretty free to exercise at their 
 discretion, whatever the covenants and restrictions in 
 their lease. 
 
 The solitary form of sport in which Mr. Colquhoun 
 has to own to limited experience is ptarmigan-shooting. 
 Naturally he has bagged ptarmigan repeatedly, but he 
 always had to work for stray specimens. He says he 
 has never shot on the mountains of Ross and Inverness, 
 which are relatively accessible, and where the birds are 
 far more numerous than elsewhere. We have been 
 more fortunate, and can confirm what he says as to the 
 abundance of the birds and the comparative ease of 
 procuring them. In those Ross-shire shootings to 
 which we alluded apropos to the wild goats, the 
 
IN FOREST AND ON HILL 255 
 
 Jodge stood high upon the stormy watershed between 
 the dips to the North Sea and to the Atlantic. It was 
 not much of a climb from the loftier of the grouse- 
 grounds, across the stony zone of the alpine hares, to 
 the lichen-stained rocks frequented by the ptarmigan ; 
 and though the walking was wild enough round slippery 
 and dizzy heights, on a clear and calm day the sport was 
 almost tame. At the outset there was no great difficulty 
 in finding the birds, for they would rise wild. Circling 
 and soaring like carrier-pigeons, they would go sweep- 
 ing round the jagged angles of the cliffs, or dipping 
 downwards to the heather flats below. But they always 
 come back towards the point from which they started, 
 or at least to the same level, and generally to the same 
 mountain. When you kept following them up, they 
 seemed to grow sullen. The second or third time they 
 would let you approach to within a half or a quarter 
 gunshot. Walking cautiously, and looking closely, the 
 graceful bend of the head and neck would disengage 
 itself from the tints of the cliff with which it harmonised 
 closely in colour. Then you might take a sitting shot 
 if you chose, or give them law with a fair probability 
 of missing them ; for, once scared from their perch, 
 they had a knack of disappearing behind it. In these 
 haunts of the ptarmigan, by the way, more than one 
 pair of golden eagles had their eyries ; and when caught 
 in the clinging folds of a fog we have felt the sough of 
 the pinion on our cheek as the mighty bird swept over 
 our shoulder, more startled and surprised than the 
 intruder on his solitude. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 After Deer 
 
 THERE may be excitement enough in hunting the 
 elk in snow-shoes through the depths of Canadian 
 pine woods, with your huge quarry ploughing away 
 before you, belly deep in the yielding snow ; still more 
 of it in shooting sambur in the Indian jungles, when 
 each passing rustle in the leaves may mean anything, 
 from a monkey to a " man-eater." But after all it is 
 questionable whether you may not find more of the 
 poetry of sport in a day's stalking at home. If you 
 care for sensations, you may feel your blood flow as 
 fast and your pulse throb as fiercely ; and as for 
 roughing it, if you find a luxury in that, you can 
 import as much of hardship as you please into the 
 romance of your sylvan campaign. You have cast 
 your lot say, in one of the islands of the Atlantic, 
 and your lodge stands on the little arm of the sea, 
 that, embayed in sheltering headlands, comes winding 
 up through the woods. There the waves gently lap 
 
 the shore, while you hear the faint roar of the ocean 
 
 256 
 
AFTER DEER 257 
 
 surf as it tumbles in on the beach without. But the 
 choice of the site was influenced by considerations 
 rather practical than sentimental, and the mansion 
 stands hard by the great water-way paddled over by 
 the coasting steamer that keeps your communications 
 open with your grocer and wine-merchant, and the 
 world in general. Behind, and to right and left, 
 forest and moors stretch away in weary leagues of hill 
 and bog, peat and heather, and in the most distant 
 glens, had you a prejudice in favour of always sleeping 
 sheltered by a roof-tree, the deer might find perpetual 
 sanctuary. The hospitable natives who dwell afar by 
 the shore would gladly welcome you to those turf- 
 built hovels of theirs, where the blue peat reek, after 
 pervading each nook and corner, escapes at last 
 through the hole that does duty as a chimney. But 
 independently of shortcomings in the architectural 
 arrangements, the well-bleached sheets that gape so 
 temptingly for you are generally teeming with vigorous 
 animal life. Should you commit yourself to them and 
 slumber, but brief time will elapse before you awake 
 again to consciousness, and then your fevered and 
 mangled frame seems to have slept in minutes an 
 uneasy sleep of hours. But it is the less needful to 
 throw yourself on native hospitality, or to bivouac 
 under flimsy canvas, that when you go out to play 
 Robinson Crusoe you find classical and appropriate 
 quarters in a comfortable cave. During long ages the 
 Atlantic has been at work fashioning you a dwelling- 
 place, and if Nature has not reared there a minster 
 
258 AFTER DEER 
 
 as stately as on the neighbouring Staffa, it must be 
 remembered that this cavern is devoted to domestic, 
 not to ecclesiastical purposes. The apartment is 
 spacious, the roof is lofty, there is soft carpeting of 
 firm, white sand, and rare thing in caves -there is 
 an infinitely better system of ventilation, and a far 
 freer draught for your smoke, than in any of the 
 neighbouring cottages. Your fuel and furniture come 
 from the drift-wood that lies tossed up everywhere 
 against the foot of the cliffs ; for those troubled seas 
 are dotted thick with black points on the wreck charts. 
 You may picture the fate of the luckless seaman, 
 struggling in the grasp of the waves, when you see 
 how the massive ironwork of the shivered rudder that 
 helps to form your table has been dragged and twisted 
 by the water as if it were a weak strand of wire. Nor, 
 if you resign yourself to melancholy reflection of the 
 sort, are the especial associations of the cavern much 
 fitted to enliven you. For it is the chosen resting- 
 place of the Hebridean dead, whom island piety or 
 superstition fondly consigns to the sacred earth of 
 Columba's blessed isle, and many a queer funeral 
 company has held grim revelry in the " cave of the 
 corpses." But, steeled by use perhaps against im- 
 pressions like these, our animated after-dinner chat 
 flows on as little disturbed by gloomy fancies as in 
 all probability was the mirth of an Egyptian banquet 
 by the familiar skeleton. And we cast ourselves 
 hopefully on our beds of bracken while the fresh 
 heaped drift-wood crackles on the blazing logs. 
 
AFTER DEER 259 
 
 The forked flames leap up towards the stalactites on 
 the ceiling, their flickering shadows rise and fall on 
 the cavern walls, while, lulled to rest by the droning 
 of the surf, in a few minutes we have consigned to 
 a temporary oblivion all our hopes and fears for the 
 morrow. 
 
 An early waking, a hurried, shuddering plunge into 
 the ocean, a deliberate breakfast, and a more deliberate 
 pipe. It is a regular Hebridean autumn morning. 
 Last evening we and the sun separated on the most 
 pleasant terms, scarcely one fleecy cloud in the sky, 
 everything below responding to his parting smiles. 
 Now a bitter north-west gale is blowing off the ocean, 
 snatching up armfuls of sand and tossing them into 
 your eyes, driving the dirty grey clouds fast over the 
 heavens, and tumbling about the cold grey water in 
 showers of drifting foam. We make our arrangements 
 stolidly, fill our flasks and sling our glasses ; but even 
 after we have corrected the rawness of the atmosphere 
 with a modest " morning " of mountain dew, it takes 
 an effort to force out a sentence or screw up a smile. 
 We half envy our rifles the warm seclusion of the 
 waterproof coverings in which we leave them for the 
 present. Roughing it, indeed ! We bear it all with 
 a subdued pleasure, and a grim gratification in 
 endurance which does us infinite credit ; but we are 
 inclined to pit our Highland hardships against any 
 chance of frost-bite in Canada or sunstroke in the 
 Wynaut jungle. And in spite of the wind that goes, 
 roaring past us as we mount a breach in the cliffs. 
 
2 6o AFTER DEER 
 
 and turn inland towards the more sheltered feeding- 
 grounds, heavy masses of mist are hanging from the 
 rocks and wrapping the hills in their dripping folds. 
 Outlying wreaths come rolling down the steeps, and 
 steal ghost-like along the bottoms of the valleys. 
 The gull that floats past overhead looms through 
 the haze large as an albatross ; and the mountain 
 hare that jerks himself by easy stages up the hill in 
 front might well pass for a roe, were it not for his 
 characteristic action. And deer there are, and not far 
 to seek ; for a roar sounds out of the gloom, and 
 fainter and fainter is bandied backwards and forwards 
 between the mountain echoes. It is also taken up by 
 some rival in flesh and blood, who desires nothing 
 better than to accept the challenge. And just then, 
 as we stop to reconcert our strategy, down drops the 
 wind ; and simultaneously, and as if they had been 
 watching their opportunity, the heavens empty them- 
 selves out upon us in a succession of falling sheets 
 of water. The sporting council adjourns in undignified 
 haste to the shelter of a convenient rock ; whereupon 
 the waterspout ceases abruptly as it commenced, having 
 converted into a brawling young torrent the modest 
 brook that, stealing from pool to pool, came trickling 
 down the mountain side. Then the sun actually comes 
 struggling out, although he looks drenched and watery 
 like everything else around. Much of the mist has 
 been washed away, although there is still a good deal 
 floating about, and we decide to mount to the col above 
 by that natural staircase where the stream is tumbling 
 
AFTER DEER 261 
 
 down. Once up there, all wet and half blown, we sink 
 down among the scattered blocks of stone, and from 
 behind a fringe of soaking heather gaze eagerly into 
 the long bare glen below. The damp lies so thick 
 on the telescope glasses that we reject them as useless ; 
 but even with the naked eye we can make out a stag 
 as he grazes quietly among some broken knolls at the 
 upper end, where there is always shelter of some kind 
 in the wildest weather. What his size may be it is 
 hard to guess, a matter of the less consequence to us, 
 as we own with a sigh that it is almost impossible to 
 stalk him. Did the brown dwarf of the moors haunt 
 the Hebrides instead of the Cheviots, he could never 
 find cover among the pebbles and stunted heather on 
 that bare hillside, or on the smooth natural meadow 
 through which the stream winds at the bottom. But 
 the wind blows from the deer to us, and, as he is 
 feeding straight away, there may be a distant chance 
 of bringing him to bag, if we only walk straight 
 forward and trust to Fortune and the mist. What 
 they might have done for us it is impossible to say ; 
 for an imp of a mountain sheep, wild and wary as the 
 deer himself, comes scrambling out of a hollow, and 
 goes bounding up the steep, clattering down the 
 pebbles behind him as he mounts. The stag accepts 
 the friendly hint, and, taking for granted the danger 
 that he neither smells nor sees, trots leisurely over 
 the ridge, showing to our longing eyes a pair of 
 antlers well worth following as he crosses the sky- 
 line. And so we do follow, the air, breathing fresh 
 
262 AFTER DEER 
 
 in our faces, setting our minds at rest on the score 
 of giving him our wind ; and we find that, scarcely 
 startled as he was, he has gone no farther than the 
 adjacent corry, the wildest and roughest of the wild 
 shooting-ground. Deep in the bottom there is rich 
 green turf, but one side and the other are a jumble 
 of grey, weather-beaten rocks, while through their 
 ragged portals at the farther end the eye rests far 
 below on the leaden rollers of the Atlantic. The stag 
 has found friends, and the half-dozen of smaller deer 
 that are grouped around him serve to set off his own 
 stately form, while a lanky meddlesome hind pricks 
 her sharp ears, and sweeps with her restless glance 
 the broken ground over which we might otherwise 
 have made our approaches. There is but one thing 
 to be done, and that is to pick one's way by the back 
 of that broken ridge to the right, which, if luck should 
 stand our friend, may possibly bring us within some 
 one hundred and twenty yards of the herd. Talk of 
 the chances of a tiger dropping on your shoulders 
 in an Indian covert more imminent peril waits you 
 here. As you leap from ledge to ledge, a sprained ankle 
 would seem inevitable if you took time to think about 
 it ; and every now and then, as you bound, you land 
 on a spot where, if you do miss your footing, you may 
 realise the hopes of the venerable raven who is croaking 
 sanguinely overhead. It is the path of the chamois or 
 bouquetin hunter ; and, although the abysses of the 
 Alps may be deeper, yet the penalty of a false step 
 is no less certain here than there. But you have 
 
AFTER DEER 263 
 
 neither eye nor thought to spare for the depths ; 
 and on you go, using your rifle as a balancing-pole, 
 until, all palpitating from your violent work, you 
 stand clinging to the rocks below the jagged pinnacle 
 that marked the end of your stalk. It is a moment 
 of deep suspense. Have the deer heard you as you 
 came scrambling along, or have they taken the raven's 
 warning ? You have the resolution to give your 
 beating heart and trembling hand a couple of minutes 
 to calm themselves. One single mouthful of whisky 
 to clear any lingering mists that still float before your 
 eyes, and then you quietly raise yourself to the edge 
 of the ridge overhead. And there is the stag, his 
 neck carelessly stooped as he ruminates in all the 
 placidity of a vigorous body and well-balanced mind. 
 You lay the fatal muzzle well behind his ample 
 shoulder, his keen eye barely catches the flash, when 
 the sound and the ball reach him together. The 
 next second, with gigantic bounds that leave his 
 companions far behind, he is descending the valley. 
 Missed ? impossible ! You knew you covered him, 
 and almost fancied you heard the thud of the bullet. 
 Yes, the effort was but the last blaze of life. The 
 next moment he stops, staggers, and falls so much 
 venison, hide, and horn in a patch of rank bracken ; 
 and there is your friend the raven, cheerfully croaking 
 the requiem, as he almost stoops on the carcass. Now 
 the sun bursts out in a flood of light, the ruddy hide 
 of the fallen deer and the ruddier tints of the withered 
 fern seeming to catch fire at the rays. Straggling up 
 
264 AFTER DEER 
 
 by more practicable paths than yours, keepers and gillies 
 chant a chorus of congratulation, and your friends 
 envy you your trophy of branching antlers. In the 
 afternoon you have sun and scenery, and sport as well ; 
 but the deer you slew in the mist is the hero not only 
 of the day but of the season. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 The Coverts 
 
 COVERT shooting is almost the sole survival of 
 the old-fashioned manner of sport, and even 
 covert shooting, especially in the Southlands, has been 
 inevitably degenerating into the battue. We use the 
 word -"degenerating " advisedly, because although the 
 battue is absurdly abused by those who know nothing 
 about it, and though it tests the skill of the marksman 
 like grouse driving or pigeon shooting, yet it cannot 
 compare for the exhilaration of excitement with wilder 
 and more irregular work. For the partridges, even in 
 September, unfortunately no man can go out nowadays 
 with the well-broken couple of pointers and the drilled 
 retriever at heel. In place of wading up to the ankle 
 in hand-shorn stubbles, the fields have been swept clean 
 as a tennis-lawn, and the straggling roots in the broad 
 drills offer no satisfactory shelter. The birds are up 
 and away before the dogs would be within drawing 
 distance. Even with the muirfowl in Yorkshire and 
 on many of the best of the Scotch moors, driving is 
 become the fashion, and with good reason. If birds 
 
 will pack before the season has well begun, they must 
 
 265 
 
2 66 THE COVERTS 
 
 take the consequences. Moreover, driving incalculably 
 increases the head of game. The old cocks who used to 
 escape scot-free, leaving the poults and cheepers to be 
 butchered, head the flights as was always their custom, 
 and are shot down in place of saving themselves to 
 spoil the next breeding season. No doubt the trim- 
 ming of the rambling hedgerows and the grubbing of 
 copses and spinneys in agricultural districts where the 
 soil is valuable tend to make the battue a matter of 
 necessity if a gentleman means to offer fair sport to 
 his friends. But even in these districts, and far more 
 elsewhere, the coverts are the glory and beauty of the 
 British Isles. We have no desire to make invidious 
 comparisons, but on the Continent you have the forest 
 rather than the covert. In our idea nothing can 
 possibly be more gloomy than the endless stretches 
 of dark pine in Scandinavia, whether they offer 
 protection from the blazing summer sun or are snow- 
 laden in the winter-time and spangled with icicles. In 
 the glorious beech-woods of Germany you are impressed 
 with a brooding sense of their solemnity, and tread 
 gingerly, as during high mass in a cathedral, upon a 
 crackling carpet of withered leaves. So you feel in 
 looking down the aisles and arching cloisters through 
 the stately columns of the clean-stemmed pines in the 
 valleys of the Schwarzwald, when the bracken beds 
 are shrivelled and collapse to the first frosts. As for 
 the French forests, where there are swamps and im- 
 penetrable thickets, they are so vast, and the dwarfed 
 timber is so overcrowded, that herds of wolves breed 
 
THE COVERTS 267 
 
 securely in their recesses, and even experienced rangers 
 lose their bearings in the mist or the dusk. 
 
 In the British Isles, on the other hand, all is lifelike 
 and homelike, for everything sylvan is on a more 
 moderate scale. Above all, the kindly damp of the 
 climate makes the vegetation of the undergrowth 
 flourish in rare luxuriance. Shakespeare, Milton, 
 Spenser, Scott, and scores of other poets have sung 
 the rich picturesqueness of the bosky bourns, with 
 their tangled wealth of natural shrubbery. Except 
 among the firs, it is seldom indeed that you get an 
 open view ahead and beneath in the British woods. 
 Nor do we know in which of the three kingdoms the 
 woodland scenes are most enchanting. Look around 
 from any eminence in England, even in the level 
 midlands or the hunting shires. There was a time 
 when the country from the Cheviots to the Channel, 
 from Bamborough Castle to Michael's Mount, was 
 almost unbroken woodland with occasional clearings 
 round town or hamlet. Everywhere the sylvan shreds 
 and patches of that prehistoric period have, latterly at 
 least, been jealously guarded. And now, in this utili- 
 tarian age, the " amenities " of romantic woodland are 
 recognised as having a market value, which is the surest 
 guarantee for their preservation. Looking out over 
 the landscapes, you see the gabled roof of the ancient 
 hall, sheltering in the foliage of ancestral woods ; the 
 towers and spires of the village churches, surrounded 
 by tall groups of trees and rising above the venerable 
 yews in the churchyards ; the chimneys of the farm- 
 
268 THE COVERTS 
 
 houses embosomed like the hall ; and the mill lying 
 low in the vale among the beds of willow and alder. 
 Even in the copses of the grassy shires and of the 
 Home Counties you may wander away into a world of 
 romance. We know nothing wilder on the Scotch 
 border or in the Yorkshire dales than some of the 
 valleys in West Kent, although it is true they are on 
 a smaller scale, and the grandeur is Lilliputian. But 
 there are dells with as steep a dip as the Derncleugh of 
 " Guy Mannering," with the brook brawling unseen 
 under matted foliage in the bottom, and but scanty 
 room for a gun on either side ; while the man in the 
 middle, as he threads his devious way, can seldom bring 
 the weapon swiftly to his shoulder. But elsewhere and 
 anywhere there may be idyllic surprises in store for 
 you. You come on the meandering streamlet that has 
 hollowed out its banks, under dense canopies of the 
 bramble and wild rose intertwined with the clematis 
 and clinging honeysuckle, where in a gloom that may 
 be said to be visible at noonday you may hear the 
 sullen plunge of the otter, or listen to the frequent 
 plashing of the water-voles as they dive to the vibration 
 of the foot-tread. Or after warning from the faint 
 earth-smell floating in the air, you come out upon the 
 swampy precincts of the sedgy pool, where the water- 
 hens have their favourite nesting-places in the reeds and 
 the pike are said to grow to portentous dimensions. 
 In the New Forest, though horribly spoiled by prosaic 
 plantation, you have still the old forest scenery on a 
 noble scale. There are farmhouses almost as solitary, 
 
THE COVERTS 269 
 
 though far more beautiful, than anything among the 
 charred stumps and snake-fences of a Canadian settle- 
 ment where the belled cattle will go astray in the 
 fenceless wilds, and where a wandering herd of shaggy 
 ponies may make irruptions into the old-fashioned 
 flower-garden. There are glades where the gipsies 
 and caravan vagabonds have their immemorial camping- 
 places, and hamlets with their bulging roofs of ragged 
 thatch, peopled by charcoal-burning aborigines, whose 
 ancestors have cursed the devastations of the Con- 
 queror or rejoiced over the corpse of the ruthless 
 Red King. 
 
 If we change the scene to the North, the beauties 
 only change their character. In Northumberland, 
 where the woods take naturally to the waters and the 
 sheltered valleys, you have the plantations skirted by 
 the beds of gorse, redolent of perfume in early summer, 
 where the small birds make their nests in safety by 
 thousands, and the foxes have their earths in the thick 
 of the rabbit warrens. Or go to the Scotch Highlands, 
 where the birches feathering down to its brink are 
 mirrored in the shallows of the sleeping loch, and the 
 gleaming white stems rise out of thickets of bracken, 
 bramble, and bilberry, of holly, honeysuckle, and wild 
 rose. Or to the genial shores of West Ireland, warmed 
 by the Gulf Stream, where the myrtles through the 
 mildness of the winter are uninjured, and the arbutus 
 flourishes as in Southern Italy, laden with the luscious 
 red berries that tempt the pheasants. And all these 
 coverts are swarming with animal life, for they are as 
 
270 THE COVERTS 
 
 inviting to migrants and birds of passage as they are 
 safe refuges for the natives. Of course the game must 
 reckon with the exigencies of the shooting season, but 
 that is in conformity with the inexorable laws of nature. 
 And game preserving presses hard on the beasts of 
 prey, and on some others that are unfairly classed as 
 vermin. But that only makes the covert a sanctuary 
 for almost everything harmless and ornamental. The 
 copses are melodious with joyous song in the spring, 
 and as full of animation in the more silent autumn. 
 We pity the man who cannot pass the time agreeably, 
 while kicking his heels at the cold corner of a lingering 
 beat, as the harbingers of the first hares and pheasants 
 pass in review before him, from the chattering jays and 
 clamorous jackdaws down to the screaming blackbird 
 and twittering willow-wren. 
 
 It must be admitted that our British coverts hold 
 nothing more formidable than the fox, or possibly a 
 badger, for the wild cat and marten cat are well-nigh 
 extinct even in the most remote districts of the High- 
 lands. You have not the excitement of a wounded 
 lynx dropping on your shoulders from the pine boughs, 
 of being hugged by the unfriendly bear you have cor- 
 nered, or of startling a sounder of wild pig from their 
 siesta with the chance of being charged and ripped by 
 the old tusker. Nor do we know that that is greatly 
 to be regretted, as it would assuredly upset the ad- 
 mirable arrangements of the battue. Acclimatation of 
 ferocities has been tried and has failed. Gilbert White 
 tells us in one of his letters that General Howe, who 
 
THE COVERTS 271 
 
 was the Crown grantee of Alice Holt Forest, turned 
 out some wild boars and a few buffalo to boot, when 
 the countryfolk rose upon them and destroyed them. 
 The Chillingham wild cattle still perpetuate the fierce 
 breed of ancient Caledonia, so dramatically commemo- 
 rated in the " Bride of Lammermoor " and the ballad 
 of " Cadyow Castle." They are ugly customers at the 
 best, and not to be lightly approached, of which we 
 once had personal experience when stalking them from 
 motives of curiosity. But there seems to be no reason 
 why covert shooting should not be varied by turning 
 out some of the sporting birds we have only half 
 domesticated. The turkey and the guinea-fowl retain 
 so much of their wild nature that they will always for 
 choice stray far from the farmsteading to make their 
 nests in the roots of a hedge or in some impenetrable 
 patch of bramble. The hens are reported missing, and 
 the disappearance is credited to the foxes, till they turn 
 up again some fine morning with the chicks trooping 
 at their heels. His Majesty George II. was as partial 
 to turkey shooting as any West American pot-hunter. 
 In his time there were flocks of turkeys in Richmond 
 Park, which are said seldom to have numbered fewer 
 than two thousand. They fattened on the acorns and 
 beechmast ; they were fed besides from stacks of barley, 
 and the cocks often grew to thirty pounds' weight. 
 There were wild turkeys in Wynnstay Park, we 
 believe, so late as the middle of the present century, 
 and likewise at Lord Ducie's seat in Gloucestershire. 
 At the same time peafowl and guinea-fowl had been 
 
272 THE COVERTS 
 
 breeding and multiplying at Aston Hall and in others 
 of the Warwickshire woods. 
 
 But, after all, in our wilder covert shooting say, on 
 the shores of Loch Fyne or the innumerable sea-arms 
 in Western Scotland no one need complain of lack of 
 variety. The keeper sends word by a swift-footed 
 gillie to the nearest telegraph office that a flight of 
 woodcock has come in with the November frosts. 
 Responding promptly to the despatch, the guns drive 
 to the ground through all the autumn beauties of a 
 Scotch Riviera, along a winding road now commanding 
 broad views of the ocean sounds and archipelagoes, and 
 now dipping into the depths of the gorge or ravine 
 where the dimness is fitfully illuminated by stray shafts 
 of the flickering sunshine. The difficulty in these 
 back-of-the-world shootings is in recruiting a sufficiency 
 of beaters ; for men or even boys in these high edu- 
 cation days are as hard to come by as for the chamois 
 drives in the highlands of Tyrol and the Salzkammer- 
 gut. But the numerical inefficiency of the force only 
 increases the excitement, for as the guns are going 
 forward in line with the natives, they do a good deal of 
 the seeking and finding for themselves. The great 
 thing is to take it leisurely and do nothing in a hurry. 
 Indeed, not unfrequently you come on a place where 
 anything but the slowest progress is impossible, and as 
 you force your way through the thicket or make the 
 detour to get across the burn, friends and attendants are 
 constrained to wait for you. The walking may be 
 toilsome, but it is singularly picturesque. The rills 
 
THE COVERTS 273 
 
 come meandering down from the moors above, in a 
 succession of deep rifts and broken clefts. In the rains 
 they are rushing streams ; now they are fast frost- 
 bound, except here and there, where the flow is too 
 swift. The hollies fretted over with the flying snow- 
 showers form so many sheltered bowers to tempt the 
 snipe and the woodcock. The intervening slopes, 
 clothed with the heather and withered bracken, are 
 studded with clumps of holly, fir, and dwarf oak, with 
 a sprinkling of hanging birches and rowan trees, bear- 
 ing their ruddy fruit. The lower boughs of the 
 spruces are weighed down with the snow and so many 
 natural blankets or tentes-abris, to make the roe com- 
 fortable in their resting-places. For there the roedeer 
 in the wintry cold appear to lose much of their natural 
 timidity, or rather it takes another form. In place of 
 stealing away ahead at the first sound of the sticks, 
 they crouch in their forms like hares, in the hope that 
 the enemy will pass them. And on these shootings 
 they are almost as numerous as the hares. So you must 
 load with moderate-sized shot and take your chance, 
 for you never know what may get up. You are ford- 
 ing a burn gingerly in fear of a slip, when a woodcock 
 is flushed from beneath one of the hollies. You tread 
 on the trailing bough of a spruce, and up springs a roe 
 from under your boots. The guns close in round 
 some likely-looking scrub of oak and mountain ash, 
 while keepers and beaters struggle in to thresh it out. 
 A rabbit or two come out as you expected, and then, 
 when it seems that all is over, there is the rush of a 
 
274 THE COVERTS 
 
 rocketing cock-pheasant, or perhaps a hen. Lord or 
 lady, it makes little difference : in those solitudes you 
 are not over-particular as to sex. Climbing one of the 
 watercourses to the broad belt of skirting upper 
 plantation, the guns are disposed in it and above it, 
 to do their best. Were you to attempt to walk the 
 lower side systematically, you would topple over into 
 the abyss. That wood is a famous haunt of the black 
 game. As the cock skims the tops of the fir trees in 
 his powerful flight, it is into that abyss he goes crash- 
 ing when stopped by the charge. For somehow the 
 black game always appeared to head to the seaward, 
 and hard work it often was to retrieve them in the 
 labyrinth of brushwood. On the upper side were the 
 heather hills and the open moors, and more than once 
 the beating has roused outlying red-deer from their 
 lairs. The close of the day's proceedings was almost 
 invariably satisfactory, nor need it be said that the 
 mixed bag made a trophy that would have gladdened 
 the soul of a Weenix. 
 
 Talking of woodcock, it is somewhat surprising that 
 killing a cock should still be considered a triumph. 
 No doubt it is partly because woodcock are really wild 
 game birds of passage, here to-day, and fled to- 
 morrow. Consequently there is a certain romance 
 about bagging them. But it comes chiefly, we believe, 
 from a surviving tradition of the primeval days when 
 the sportsman made awkward play with his single- 
 barrelled flint gun. It was no joke bringing that 
 unwieldy weapon to the present, and the flint ignited 
 
 
THE COVERTS 275 
 
 the powder so leisurely that sea-fowl had time to dive 
 to the flash. The mystery was as to how the cocks 
 were ever dropped, and we fancy that when they did 
 come down, luck had a good deal to do with it. Let a 
 woodcock get well away, and he will go winding and 
 twisting through the tree-tops like the capercailzie, for 
 both birds are well served by their instinct, and can 
 take uncommonly good care of themselves. You must 
 take a cock when you can, as you snap at a rabbit, and 
 if you shoot quick, as he generally rises in a glade or 
 an opening, the shot should be easy enough, though 
 the charge goes rather ball-like. With their congener 
 the snipe, by the way, it is different. He gets up in 
 the open, and if you coolly wait, after the preliminary 
 jerkings to right and left, which are the eccentric pro- 
 logue to a steadier performance, he usually shoots out 
 straight before beginning to soar. 
 
 It is seldom one finds such roe shooting as in the 
 circumstances we have sketched, but the roe is always a 
 great addition to the battue in the North. A chartered 
 denizen of the wastes and woods, he seeks the deepest 
 solitudes of extensive plantations. Hence he is scarcely 
 the ornament of the landscape he ought to be, for he 
 rarely shows. Strolling quietly about with the gun in 
 the woodland glades, you may occasionally catch the 
 gleam of a white stern vanishing behind a tree trunk. 
 Few creatures are more graceful, and very few more 
 destructive. The roe steals out to feed at night or in 
 the early morning, and there is no prettier sight, except 
 to the unfortunate farmer, than a family party in the 
 
276 THE COVERTS 
 
 high green corn, delicately nibbling the tender blades. 
 
 Somehow they are less shy in Germany, where you may 
 
 see them any day of an afternoon grazing with the 
 
 cattle in the sequestered valleys surrounded by woods. 
 
 With us, when they keep themselves to themselves in 
 
 their sylvan retreats, they make frightful havoc of the 
 
 young saplings. That is the best antidote to senti- 
 
 mentalism with the tender-hearted shooter who is 
 
 greatly inclined to spare them for their beauty, and 
 
 feels remorseful when he plunges the hunting-knife in 
 
 the quivering chest. Nothing keeps one up to the 
 
 mark at a Scottish battue like the , expectation of roe. 
 
 Instinctive timidity has bred intense suspicion. The 
 
 sight is as keen as the sense of smell. The crackle of 
 
 a twig, the striking of a match, or the faint whiff of a 
 
 cigarette will give timely warning, and like all deer 
 
 they will rather charge the line of the beaters than 
 
 face an unknown danger in front. The gun standing 
 
 motionless at his post has no notice of their approach. 
 
 The roe moves as if shod in velvet, as indeed he is : 
 
 silent as the shadow he throws forward in the sunshine, 
 
 he emerges phantom-like from the screen of twigs, 
 
 which has never rustled at his passage. The quick eye 
 
 in its circular glance embraces everything : he has a 
 
 glimpse of the sportsman, who may be looking the 
 
 other way, and with one bound into the air, like the 
 
 South African springbok, he clears the ride and 
 
 vanishes as he appeared. The roe is on no friendly 
 
 terms with the fox, who freely takes toll of the young 
 
 fawns when he finds them, and the fox is another 
 
THE COVERTS 277 
 
 contributor to the excitement of a Scottish field-day. 
 Though there may be no hounds within a couple of 
 counties, at first it goes against the grain of the 
 Southron to shoot him ; but as he does more mischief 
 in the preserves than in the poultry yards, he soon 
 comes to be proscribed and outlawed as the marauder 
 he is. If the roe is the incarnation of shrinking 
 timidity, the Scotch fox is the embodiment of 
 audacious impudence. Being never hunted by the 
 hounds he grows pursy and lazy in the lowlands, but 
 his wiles set the keepers and their traps at defiance. 
 He attains to enormous size and is always in sleek con- 
 dition. Like Major Dugald Dalgetty, he never misses 
 an opportunity of laying in the provant or replenishing 
 the larder. One instance of his coolness in difficulties 
 we remember. It was a party where the beaters 
 mustered strong, and having lunched freely, in defiance 
 of rule were making a most unholy noise. There was 
 a cry of " Cock ! " and a shot, a second cry of 
 " Down ! " and a pause, while unsuccessful search was 
 made for the bird. We were uncocking the gun pre- 
 paratory to leaving our station, when an old fox 
 emerged from the midst of the hullabaloo, with the 
 missing woodcock in his mouth for he had quietly 
 retrieved it. 
 
 It is a sharp descent from the roe to the rabbit, but 
 the rabbit is in every respect a most estimable animal 
 when his ravages are kept within due bounds. He is 
 unwisely neglected by fashionable cooks, for he is 
 excellent when coming from the kitchen in any shape, 
 
278 THE COVERTS 
 
 from the mulligatawny soup to the smothering in 
 onions, with a sauce a la Soubise. No animal affords 
 finer shooting practice the only drawback for novices 
 is that he gets them into the habit of snap-shooting, 
 and he is at his best and brightest among the sandhills 
 rolling down to the beach with these scattered patches 
 of the prickly gorse the rabbits have been cropping 
 into fantastic forms. The dazed rabbits emerging at 
 the end of a driven covert are mobbed and shot down 
 like sheep. The rabbits bolting across a narrow ride 
 demand as swift calculation of the chances as if you 
 were firing at a streak of lightning. Let skilful shots 
 say what they will, there must still be a large element 
 of luck there. But in the sandhills with their hollows 
 and the patches of whin, with the rank bent grass in 
 which the colonists bask through the day, and which 
 sometimes is thick enough to cover the scuttle to the 
 burrow, both the gun and the quarry have tolerably 
 fair play, though doubtless an expert would lay odds 
 on his shooting. Then there is the exhilaration of the 
 exercise, with its strain on the back sinews : the 
 innocent intoxication of the brine-laden breezes, the 
 wide views out to seaward, with the sails and the trails 
 of steamer smoke, the merry clamour of the seagulls 
 swooping overhead, the gabbling and calling of the 
 waders that are foraging below high-water mark, and 
 on the other side the complaining alarm notes of the 
 lapwings, who, though they have got rid of their 
 cherished nurslings months before, are nevertheless as 
 fussy as ever. 
 
THE COVERTS 279 
 
 We have left the grand battue to the last, because it 
 would tax the ingenuity of a sporting Macaulay to say 
 anything fresh about it. Yet we may cast a passing 
 glance at its picturesque and humorous aspects. There 
 is no more genuinely English sight than the cheery 
 muster before the doors of some great mansion on a 
 day that is expected to make a record bag. There is 
 the host, who, if he understands his duties, is the 
 strategical organiser of it all, and he should be set upon 
 making things pleasant for his guests, and seeing that 
 each man has his fair share of the shooting. He ought 
 to keep the whip hand of the important head keeper, 
 whose looks are anxiously watched by his obsequious 
 satellites in velveteen. Then there is the array of 
 long-gaitered beaters in fustian an irregular levy, who 
 have been eagerly expecting the great outing in the 
 woods. On the whole they are a well-fed and rosy- 
 faced lot, with sturdy calves and athletic forms. Some 
 of the elders may have warnings of rheumatism in the 
 near distance, and tramp about with a perceptible 
 string-halt ; but they compare favourably with the 
 pallid artisans of the towns, and you can see that their 
 lines have fallen in sanitary places. There are the 
 guns with their carriers and loaders, for the most part 
 as fine specimens of manhood as England can boast, 
 and with eyesight as sharp as their nerves are steady. 
 For at the biggest shoots they are generally picked men, 
 who will make death as pleasant as is possible under any 
 circumstances. Sentimental humanitarians mourn over 
 the butchery of hand-fed pheasants. Why, the hand- 
 
2 8o THE COVERTS 
 
 fed pheasant is one of the luckiest of living creatures. 
 He is reared from the shell in the lap of luxury, and 
 supplied with all the delicacies of the season, till he 
 chooses to vary his diet by strolling abroad. His 
 retreats are kept undisturbed, and his privacy is never 
 intruded upon, save by the raiding poacher, who must 
 make the venture at his peril. The pheasant must die 
 at last, like all of us, but even at the methodical battue 
 he has a fair chance. And when he falls to the crack 
 shot, it is a case of instantaneous collapse, and he is dead 
 before he rebounds from the grass. Then, if he were 
 grateful for all the care bestowed upon him, he should 
 rejoice to know that he may sell for a mere trifle in 
 warm weather, and furnish the cheapest of dainties for 
 the modest dinner party, as the rabbit is the luxury of 
 artisans in the manufacturing districts. So the pheasant 
 preserver who has reared his birds regardless of expense 
 is a benefactor to his species when he sends them to 
 market. 
 
 But to return from the finish to the start. There 
 is the exhilarating walk from the house to the home 
 coverts, through sights that have inspired immortal 
 painters. The skeleton boughs of the lofty trees of the 
 rookery, with the rustle of their few and faded leaves, 
 standing out Corot-like against the sky in the greyness 
 of vanishing mists ; the group of gazing cattle standing 
 fetlock-deep in the withered bracken, suggestive of 
 Cooper or Rosa Bonheur ; the sheep that have huddled 
 together at the noise of the men and the yelping of the 
 retrievers, with the gleam on the fleecy backs that 
 
THE COVERTS 281 
 
 Millet has so often given us ; or perhaps the herds of 
 half-scared but still trustful fallow-deer reminding us of 
 many a scene by Landseer. The interest changes when 
 the covert is disturbed by beaters, who should make 
 play with their sticks, and be chary of using their 
 voices. We can conceive the consternation in the 
 sanctuary caused by the unwonted inroad. The small 
 birds gathering for their migration are the first to go ; 
 there are the indignant protests of jays and magpies ; 
 the pigeons take hurried flight for the open ; the 
 squirrels scrambling up the trunks, with frequent 
 pauses, finally seek refuge in the tallest trees, whence 
 they peer down at the proceedings. As the line 
 advances, the rabbits and hares hustling together are in 
 startled motion like so many maggots in a mouldy 
 cheese ; and the pheasants are running purposelessly to 
 and fro, until one more hysterical than the rest gives 
 the signal for a simultaneous scattering. Then comes 
 the ceaseless crack of the breech-loaders, while breeches 
 are getting warm though the guns are being changed. 
 It is to be hoped that all is going smoothly and 
 pleasantly, but there is always the off-chance of two 
 disagreeables which the most considerate host cannot 
 altogether control. There is the dangerous shot, and 
 there is the jealous shot. The danger comes in chiefly 
 when an excitable man is unfortunately told off to walk 
 with the beaters. In these circumstances he should 
 shoot at nothing except ground game or sky-scrapers, 
 but he is apt to blaze at the birds flying forward breast 
 high, when he may blind a companion or bag a stop. 
 
282 THE COVERTS 
 
 More common still is the jealous shot, who is a detest- 
 able nuisance. By snatching at other men's game, and 
 claiming promiscuously what never belonged to him, he 
 is likely enough to put the coolest of his neighbours off 
 their shooting, and in any case he is pretty sure to ruffle 
 their tempers. Besides, it may be almost taken for 
 granted that he is something of a tailor, and mangles 
 even more birds than he misses. And nothing is more 
 painful to the genuine sportsman than to know that 
 crippled victims are dropping around him beyond sight 
 and search, to suffer and die in lingering torments. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Curling 
 
 FEW people in England are fond of cold. Many of 
 us hold and broach irreproachable theories as to 
 its bracing effect on our frames, but our inward convic- 
 tion is that it is disagreeable, like many other tonics. 
 We are not all of us skaters, and many of us who are 
 find ourselves condemned in a frost, by our avocations, 
 to the sufferings of Tantalus. We grumble at a mild 
 winter, and submit to it with much philanthropy. It 
 is very different with our relations north of the Tweed 
 at least, with the dwellers between Tweed and Tay. 
 There there is no sort of hypocrisy in the aspiration of 
 vigorous males after bitter winters. For what is above 
 all others the national game can only be played in 
 national weather. Golf is popular in a sense, and, 
 moreover, it can be played at all seasons, but then it 
 can be only played in certain localities and at a certain 
 cost. But there all the world are curlers : all you ask 
 for the game is water, of which there is no lack ; a 
 frost, which used to be no very rare phenomenon, to 
 make the water ice ; and a couple of heavy circular 
 
 stones, polished on both surfaces or on the lower one, 
 
 283 
 
284 CURLING 
 
 and secured to handles. The prime cost is little, some- 
 thing within the means of the humblest peasant, if he is 
 careful in saving, as he is sure to be. A couple of 
 fragments from the neighbouring quarry, a pair of 
 pebbles from the nearest brook, two bits of iron, is 
 all you want the outlay is a slight expenditure of 
 labour. Of course superior wealth may vindicate itself 
 in a pair of fierres de luxe, but the brass and the orna- 
 ments go for little, and not unfrequently it is the most 
 slovenly workman who has the most showy tools. 
 When the stones are flawless, roughly as they are 
 used, they bid long defiance to blows and wear and 
 tear. We should say there may be stones in existence 
 now that have lasted, in their degree, like the Sphynx. 
 They may become heirlooms, and be transmitted from 
 generation to generation. 
 
 We have no intention of dwelling upon curling in its 
 technical details. Nothing is duller reading than games 
 upon paper, and we should as soon think of illustrating 
 the grace and poetry of the gazelle by exhibiting the 
 skeleton of the animal. It is enough to say each player 
 has a couple of stones ; of the two sides each counts 
 there, four, or five players ; and the object of each side 
 is to leave one or more of its stones nearest to the mark 
 or " tee," which is forty-two yards distant on the ice. 
 The play is of course directed to u guarding " the good 
 stones of your own party, to removing those of your 
 opponents. But we notice the game as a very charac- 
 teristic feature in Scottish life. In the first place it 
 diffuses over the breadth of the country a great deal of 
 
CURLING 285 
 
 innocent enjoyment ; in the second, it does more to 
 blend classes, to promote kindly feeling between 
 superiors and dependents, than any amount of philan- 
 thropic speeches or any number of discourses on 
 charity. Regarded in that view, the curling-pond 
 is the English hunting-field popularised and thrown 
 open to every one, without any of the heartburnings 
 coming of trampled wheat, broken fences, vanished 
 pheasants and fowls, and trapped foxes. 
 
 A stranger visiting Scotland with preconceived con- 
 ceptions of the austerity of the national character would 
 be strangely staggered in them in coming upon a jovial 
 "rink" of curlers. Very justly do its admirers affec- 
 tionately christen it " the roaring game." In Scotland 
 every sheet of water lies, of course, in hilly ground, and 
 he must hear the players long before he sees them. 
 All lusty men in the prime and vigour of life for 
 even the old and the ailing are regenerated and re- 
 juvenated for the day they turn out prepared to be 
 uproarious. With the air so calm and crisp that a 
 child's whisper might be heard a mile away, and while 
 the faintest crack of the ice rings like a pistol-shot, it 
 is de rigueur to bellow. The " skip," or captain, who 
 stands by the mark to issue his orders to the men only 
 some forty yards removed from him, bawls as if he 
 were shouting for a life-line from the deck of a vessel 
 in the breakers. Nor is silent obedience the order of 
 the day in the ranks, and the players hail back to him 
 in equally stentorian tones. Every man is equipped 
 with a voluminous broom to sweep the path should the 
 
286 CURLING 
 
 stone show signs of dragging. The stone delivered 
 glides smoothly and more or less swiftly forward with 
 its dull, murmuring sound. On reaching the line where 
 it becomes allowable to apply the brooms, if there seems 
 an absence of powder, its watchful friends are galvanised 
 into supernatural energy, while the unnecessary chorus 
 of " soop her up" wakens the echoes in the adjoining 
 parishes and parishes are large in Scotland. 
 
 The well-pitted sides are bringing the match to a 
 close in the lengthening shadows of the surrounding 
 hills, and excitement has risen to fever height. The 
 dull roar of the curling-stones on the keen ice is 
 accompanied by the frenzied shouts of the partisans 
 as some shot of great moment is being played. Re- 
 spectable fathers of families, and kirk-elders to boot, are 
 dancing as if they were on hot " girdles " and possessed 
 by demons. The stone delivered, or, rather, barely 
 dropped, from the strong arm of Sandy the smith is 
 gliding forward on its fateful mission. " Soop her up ! 
 soop her up ! " " Na, na ; let abee ! let abee ! " The 
 brooms are being flourished over the shapely brown 
 boulder from the Burnock Water by fingers that burn 
 to lend it legs and direction. The voice of the skip 
 dominates all : " Leave alane ! leave alane, will ye ? 
 She's a' there, right eneuch ! " And suddenly, as the 
 stone has skirted the very edge of one of the enemy's 
 surest guards, a tremulous movement is to be detected 
 in the handle. The crafty player, with a dexterous 
 turn of the wrist, has communicated the hitherto 
 imperceptible " side." The stone, in a graceful para- 
 
CURLING 287 
 
 bola, curls gently inwards, takes an " inwick " off the 
 inner edge of another, and circles in to lie " a pot-lid " 
 on the very tee. What yells of applause and triumph 
 rend the air ! " Shift that if ye can, my lads ! " shouts 
 Bodencleuch in friendly mockery ; while Dreepdaily 
 chafes and rages in wild but impotent disgust. That 
 great shot of the smith's has decided the " end " and 
 the game ; for in vain does the schoolmaster with the 
 laird following to neutralise his play try to break a 
 way to that winning-stone through the advanced-guards 
 of Bodencleuch. 
 
 It is interesting to see the stiff-set Scotch features 
 gradually expand, the tight-drawn wrinkles of the 
 mouth relax, the grey eye kindle and beam ; illumi- 
 nated by the joviality within, the very cheeks dimple. 
 Had Sydney Smith ever assisted at a curling-match he 
 must have recanted that heresy of his about Scotchmen 
 being unsusceptible to humour. To be sure, a good 
 deal may pass current in the circumstances that would 
 scarcely bear subsequent criticism, as the manner of 
 Artemus Ward's lecturing eked out its matter. Yet 
 enough would remain, could it only be collected, after a 
 long winter of curling, to give Dean Ramsay materials 
 for another of his volumes. One touch of hard 
 frost in Scotland makes the whole world kin, setting 
 them all by the ears in amicable contest. Each parish 
 and village has its curling club. Challenges fly about 
 thick as snowballs round the doors of the parish 
 school, and the long - standing peaceful feuds are 
 referred to their annual arbitration. The stakes are 
 
288 CURLING 
 
 honour, and generally a subsequent banquet of beef 
 and greens. That is the regular curler's fare, and it 
 has the advantage that it taxes unduly neither the purse 
 of the loser nor the talent of the country Soyer. The 
 cookery is simple, and if it is only careful must be 
 successful. The chef is encouraged by the knowledge 
 that the men he caters for are all connoisseurs in the 
 dishes he provides. He serves strictly au naturel, for 
 in the course of the day each guest has found his own 
 sauce on the ice. They intimate approval in practical 
 fashion, and the quantity consumed is stupendous. 
 One sees rare feats of strength and capacity at southern 
 harvest-homes. But appetites seem to wax as you go 
 to the northward, and we should say a Scotch curler in 
 good form occupies the mean between an English 
 labourer at his annual assignation with the roast beef 
 and plum -pudding and an Esquimaux feasting on 
 blubber at his visitor's expense. The drink is strong 
 and simple as the meat is plain. Inebriety is 
 strictly discouraged. Indeed, those seasoned brains 
 strengthened by air, exercise, and a heavy dinner, must 
 drink deep before they reach the limits of temptation. 
 As tumbler after tumbler of strong, sweet toddy goes 
 down, you would say those respectable Calvinists ought 
 to seek their appropriate future in the Northern 
 Valhalla. The best of them would come off not 
 discreditably had they followed Thor in his long pull 
 at the ^Esirs' horn. Then they have always what 
 goes a long way to make a pleasant evening a common 
 interest and subject. Peer or peasant, every one for the 
 
CURLING 989 
 
 time being is wild over curling ; and although the 
 place of honour in the chair may be yielded to the 
 great man in the parish, yet talent asserts itself, and 
 the most skilful curler is the most respected man. 
 Very possibly he is a labourer, who wears over patched 
 corduroys the high-collared ancient black coat handed 
 down from his grandfather, and with a marked flavour 
 of the chest in which it reposes from Sabbath to 
 Sabbath. Memory is a faculty which might be 
 supposed almost dormant in the most of them from 
 lack of use, yet e.very man remembers, or swears he 
 remembers, each shot that has been played on that 
 eventful day. Then there are the matches of past 
 years to be referred to, and the weather, for once, 
 furnishes a topic equally natural and engrossing as they 
 meet season after season the " lang frosts " marked 
 with white stones, and those melancholy " Green Yules " 
 that stopped the curling and filled the neighbouring 
 kirkyard. After all, if you do somewhat exceed in the 
 boiled beef, the Islay, or the Glenlivet, to-morrow, 
 should the frost but hold, it will give you plenary 
 absolution. But that element of uncertainty which is 
 so apt to mix gall in the cup of the curler will the 
 weather last ? Matches must be concerted beforehand, 
 and your sport is likewise the sport of the capricious 
 elements. Travellers from Perth to Stirling may have 
 observed among its somewhat sad surroundings a 
 meadow stretching along the line and evidently meant 
 to be flooded on occasion. On those few acres of 
 ground are concentrated annually in Scotland for 
 
 20 
 
290 CURLING 
 
 a season the hopes and fears of half its manhood. 
 That is the battle lake where the annual matches are 
 contested between the players of the North and the 
 players of the South. It is needless to say that Nature, 
 being a woman, loves to throw over those who pin 
 their aspirations to her, and you may generally count 
 on the day fixed for the Royal Caledonian Curling 
 Club match being singularly mild and open. But 
 when she does deign to be propitious, frowning, and 
 chilling, the sight is one to repay the philanthropist or 
 the student of manners for a long journey to the North. 
 Moreover, if he number Scotchmen among his friends, 
 on that day he knows exactly where to look for them, 
 and is sure to have a most cordial welcome from men 
 in the fullest flush of health and spirits. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 The Attractions of Winter Weather 
 
 THERE is a luxury, no doubt, in life in the 
 tropics ; and when we are shivering in our 
 English damp and fogs, the islands of the South with 
 their balm-scented breezes will flit before us in 
 visions of the earthly Paradise. We are alive to the 
 charms of cloudless skies ; of the checkered shadows 
 under flowery groves in landscapes lit up by floods of 
 sunshine ; of myriads of brilliant stars reflected in 
 sleeping seas landlocked within reefs of coral. We 
 can sympathise with the feelings of the tempest-tossed 
 adventurers who, after beating in the teeth of Atlantic 
 gales into the Unknown, exchanged the decks of their 
 straining caravels for a time of blissful repose in the 
 islands of " the Indies " ; as we can imagine those 
 seductive memories of the Cytherasan Otaheite that 
 incited the mariners of the Bounty to their memorable 
 deed of violence. But the tropical Edens have their 
 shady sides for men who have been bred in more 
 bracing latitudes. It is all very well for the sensuous 
 aborigines to live in each glowing hour and take 
 little heed of the morrow ; to gather their fruits 
 
 291 
 
292 ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 
 
 from the boughs within reach of their hands ; to 
 dispense with clothing in disregard of decorum ; to 
 swing their hammocks of fibre anywhere out of the 
 sun, and dream away the days and the feverish nights. 
 The life must pall sooner or later on men with whom 
 energy is inborn ; the heat is enervating, and saps 
 the strength, which is the source of health, good 
 spirits and self-satisfaction ; and the lotus-eating 
 immigrants, after a time, might be driven to seek 
 refuge from weariness in suicide. 
 
 British folks have a happy knack of adaptability, 
 and can acquit themselves with credit under most 
 conditions. They made the fortune of our fervid 
 West Indian colonies with their own before the aboli- 
 tion of the slave trade and of the sugar duties. They 
 have conquered an empire in Asia and kept it, in 
 spite of the relaxing atmosphere of the plains of 
 Hindostan, where they must swelter through their 
 duties in baking cantonments or stifling courts of 
 justice, and struggle for a troubled sleep under pun- 
 kahs. They have settled Queenslands, and Georgias, 
 and Guianas, with many a province more or less 
 swampy and sultry ; they live, as they make up their 
 minds occasionally to droop and die among mud-banks, 
 mangroves, and malaria, at the mouths of rivers on the 
 Gold and Grain coasts. They take cheerfully by 
 battalions and batteries to scorching rocks, at such 
 stations as Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden, which might 
 be marked on an ascending atmospheric scale as hot, 
 hotter, hottest. Nevertheless, and naturally, they will 
 
ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 293 
 
 always show to more advantage in the least genial 
 of latitudes. We have nothing more thrilling in 
 the national annals though foreigners, by the way, 
 have been running us hard of late years, as the Dutch 
 and the Scandinavians did in former centuries than 
 our stories of arctic adventure. We see the hardy 
 navigator an amphibious cross between the bull-dog 
 and the sword-fish, with the tenacity of the one and 
 the dash of the other standing out into the polar 
 fogs and ice-floes in the bark that was but a cockle- 
 shell in point of tonnage. The timbers might be sea- 
 soned oak, and the rude fastenings of well-hammered 
 iron, yet a casual nip of the ice must crack its sides 
 like a walnut-shell. We see the rough skipper and his 
 crew clinging to the tiller and the frozen shrouds, in 
 seas that sweep the deck from stem to stern, and 
 weather that would tear any canvas into ribbons. In 
 the safe little sea-boat, that is slow at the best under sail, 
 they have to bide their time and possess their souls in 
 patience as they lie becalmed under the lee of the ice- 
 cliffs, or dodge the irresistible set of the ice-packs. 
 There was scarcely room to cc swing a cat " in the tiny 
 cabin that just served as a refuge. Over-tasked and 
 short-handed as they were, they had often to turn in 
 " all standing," ready to answer the boatswain's call at 
 a moment's notice ; and they expected the inevitable 
 arrival of the scurvy on salt junk, weevily ship-biscuit 
 and new rum. Preserved meats and lime-juice were as 
 yet undreamt of ; and their medicine and luxury was 
 the quid of tobacco, at once the best of sedatives and 
 
294 ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 
 
 stimulants. It is a long stride from those forlorn- 
 hopes of adventure to the well-found and strongly- 
 manned expeditions we have lately been sending out to 
 the Pole. But even with all the appliances that science 
 and experience can suggest or liberality supply, the 
 lives of arctic explorers must be trying at the best ; and 
 the soundest constitutions are strained if not shattered. 
 Yet the only difficulty in finding the crews is the pick- 
 ing and choosing in the crush of volunteers ; and 
 cheerfulness under perfect discipline does its best to 
 command success, though the sole distractions out of 
 doors through the long dark winter, are constitutionals 
 along the snow-paths kept clear to the " observatory," 
 or sledging-parties carried out with heroic resolution. 
 
 For when you change passive endurance into a 
 grapple with difficulties, the spirit will rise irrepressibly 
 to meet them. We have travellers wrapped in the 
 casings of furs and woollens they dare not cast, facing 
 the frozen blasts on the steppes of Tartary, or 
 scrambling up the highest passes in our hemisphere 
 those gutter -pipes which drain the " Roof of the 
 World." 
 
 We can recall a dozen stories of winter-travelling 
 adventures, where we may be sure that the pleasures 
 predominated over the pains, though the adventurers, 
 who were gently born and bred, must have suffered as 
 intensely as they endured doggedly. Such as Lord 
 Milton and Dr. Cheadle hewing their way, with " Mr. 
 and Mrs. Assineboine," through the precipitous forests 
 on the banks of the Fraser River ; Major Butler like- 
 
ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 295 
 
 wise setting his face to the westward across " The 
 Great Lone Land " ; Mr. Andrew Wilson carried as 
 an invalid on a litter, along slate-cornices on precipices 
 under the hanging snow-masses in the Himalayan 
 " Abode of Snow" ; or Major Burnaby, on his ride to 
 Khiva in the cold that was almost too trying for his 
 Cossack guides. What go far towards nerving the 
 men of the North to the enjoyment of their winters, or 
 of arctic weather, are the pleasures of hope and of 
 contrast. Even the employes of the Hudson Bay 
 Company have the prospect of basking through their 
 brief summer day ; and the hardiest of us would 
 scarcely care to cast in our lot for life with the 
 Esquimaux. Shaw and Forsyth, and the travellers 
 who have crossed the Hindu Kush, looked forward to a 
 welcome in the Vale of Kashmir, or in the rich vegeta- 
 tion that encircles Kashgar, sacred to the admirers of 
 the Arabian Nights ; while Burnaby, when he had 
 left the steppes behind him, drew bridle among the 
 gardens and pomegranate-groves of the Khivan 
 canals. Tourists in Europe have experienced delights 
 of the kind when, after the damp and gloom of a raw 
 Roman winter, they have taken their first spring rides 
 in the Campagna, when it was bursting almost before 
 their eyes into one vivid blush of violets ; or when, 
 after a long day and night passed in the old-fashioned 
 diligence in the frozen mud on the heights of the Morena, 
 they have rubbed their eyes, with the break of dawn, 
 among the fountains and orange-trees of sunny Cordova. 
 A balmy breath of spring in winter is soothingly re- 
 
296 ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 
 
 freshing as an oasis in the desert. But comparatively 
 very little heat goes a long way with most Englishmen ; 
 and in a really tropical climate they generally feel at 
 their worst. Even an unusually warm summer in Eng- 
 land makes the life of too many of our fellow-creatures 
 a melancholy spectacle, till they begin to pick up again 
 with the shortening days. 
 
 Very different it is in the beginnings of " our old- 
 fashioned English winter " with men who have wealth, 
 health, and strength in moderation ! We believe it is 
 the lightness of feeling, following on the first steady 
 fall of the temperature below the freezing-point, that 
 explains those effusive rhapsodies on " seasonable " 
 jollity which characterise our popular Christmas litera- 
 ture. We are really in excellent spirits, and perhaps 
 the bracing air has gone to our heads. We see every- 
 thing not precisely in couleur de rose, but in the dazzling 
 radiancy of sparkling frost, and are in the humour to 
 listen to absurdities and sentimentalities as sound 
 enough sense to be fitting to the season of the year. 
 But it is the modern school of Christmas writers who 
 are become sickly, stilted, and sentimental ; and for 
 that Dickens is chiefly responsible. He began so ad- 
 mirably in a flow of natural humour and pathos, that 
 he was encouraged to parody himself, and so -the pictu- 
 resqueness of " Pickwick " and the city idyl of the 
 "Christmas Carol" came down to the level of the latest 
 of his Christmas annuals. But the early Christmas 
 pictures by masters of genius must touch sympathetic 
 chords in every bosom, and make misery itself often 
 
ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 297 
 
 feel sadly mirthful in memory of the frolics of happier 
 times. Without going further back in our literature, 
 take Scott's famous introduction to the sixth canto of 
 " Marmion"- 
 
 " Heap on more wood ! the wind is chill ; 
 But let it whistle as it will, 
 We'll keep our Christmas merry still." 
 
 The ring of the metre sounds like the church bells to a 
 devotee, or the dinner-gong to a hungry man. What 
 a striking picture of the kindly joviality that levels 
 ranks and sets a truce to cares ! The baron's hall, 
 where the flames from the great log-fire that went roar- 
 ing and crackling up the vast chimney, flashed their light 
 on merry faces and burnished flagons. The stately 
 baron in the chimney-corner, unbending for once ; the 
 " heir with roses in his shoes," flirting with village 
 maiden with redder roses in her cheeks ; the boar's 
 head, bedecked with bays and rosemaries, grinning on 
 the festal board among sirloins and huge bickers of 
 plum-porridge, and wassail-bowls bobbing with the 
 roasted crabs ; the tales of the hunting-field by flood 
 and fell ; the stories of venerable, time-honoured 
 superstitions that made the hearers shudder even 
 in that merry crowd ; the mumming, the singing, 
 the laughing, and the dancing, while the winds 
 that howled and whistled through the trees and the 
 loopholes in the battlements, drove the smoke- 
 wreaths back again down the chimney, and scattered 
 the sparks from the blazing roots. Little recked 
 
298 ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 
 
 kinsmen, tenants, and cottagers, of trifling incon- 
 veniences like these, in those Christmas gambols that 
 
 " Could cheer 
 The poor man's heart through half the year." 
 
 Some centuries later, and in " Bracebridge Hall," we 
 see how our old English fashion of keeping Christmas 
 impressed a sympathetic American. The New Eng- 
 landers, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe shows in her <c Poganuc 
 People," have a pretty notion of perpetuating those 
 traditions that were carried over the Atlantic in the 
 Mayflower, although the early Pilgrim Fathers were 
 Puritans. But in a new country, with the go-ahead 
 energy that has grubbed the forest and split the trees 
 into shingles ; with its practically-minded men and its 
 hard utilitarianism, its brand-new buildings and its 
 bald-faced meeting-houses, the associations must be 
 lacking that give the season its solemnity. There are 
 no old squires and old Masters Simon ; no old blue- 
 coated serving-men bred under the roof-tree of the hall ; 
 no old polished mahogany dining-tables, or old family 
 portraits whose burnished frames are brightened up 
 for the occasion with mistletoe and holly-berries ; no 
 cellars of rare old wines and ales that flow at the festal 
 Christmas-tide like water ; above all, no quaint old 
 Norman Church, where the pews of oak and the 
 mediaeval monuments have been as yet undesecrated by 
 the aesthetic restorer. Then Dickens popularised the 
 Bracebridge Halls we will not say that he vulgarised 
 them in his delightful sketches of the Manor Farm. 
 
ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 299 
 
 For though we fancy u the fine old host " dropped his 
 fis, though he welcomed that very rough diamond 
 the inimitable Bob Sawyer as a familiar friend, and 
 extended his hospitalities to a seedy strolling actor like 
 Jingle nevertheless the Manor Farm must live in 
 the memories of Englishmen and their descendants 
 in specula s<eculorum. We cordially echo the hearty 
 sentiment of Mr. Weller : " Your master's a wery 
 pretty notion of keepin' everything up, my dear. I 
 never see such a sensible man as he is, or such a reg'lar 
 genTm'n " ; as we assent to the grateful utterance of 
 Mr. Pickwick, when sitting down " by the huge fire of 
 logs, to a substantial supper and a mighty bowl of 
 wassail " " this is indeed comfort." 
 
 But the whole of the winter sketches, of which that 
 supper on Christmas Eve is but one in a series, are 
 as delightful as they are characteristic of manners that 
 are departing. The drive along the frost-bound roads 
 on the outside of the Muggleton mail, after the cod- 
 fish and the barrels of oysters had been forced into 
 the gaping fore-boot ; the change of horses at the inn 
 in the market-town it was only a slow coach, we 
 must remember when Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Tupman 
 came so near being left behind, when they had run up 
 the yard to refresh themselves at the tap ; the walk 
 along the frozen lanes to the farm ; the meeting with 
 the house-party, the reception, the supper, the rubbers, 
 and the hot elder-wine to follow ; the wedding next 
 day, and the breakfast that sent the poor relations to 
 bed. Of course there is a dash of Christmas romance 
 
300 ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 
 
 in the pretty fancy that elderly gentlemen fresh from 
 town could hold out through the rustic hospitality of 
 the farm, and rise each successive morning all the 
 brisker and the brighter for it. We should surmise that 
 Mr. Pickwick must have been troubled by nightmares 
 after those late and heavy suppers ; while Mr. Tupman 
 was the very subject for flying twinges of the gout. 
 But there can be no question that, for keeping dys- 
 pepsia at bay, there is nothing like country life and 
 jovial company at a time when you feel bound to feast 
 and make merry ; and there are charmingly natural 
 touches in that scene on the ice which preceded Mr. 
 Pickwick's immersion in the pond. It is a rough 
 English translation of the hearty communion of a 
 Scottish curling-match. Old men become boys again 
 in the biting air, and take to frolicking like cart- 
 horses turned out in a meadow. " Ceremony doffs 
 her pride " at the Manor Farm as in the baronial 
 hall ; and there are old Wardle and the fat boy, Mr. 
 Pickwick and his faithful Sam, Messrs. Snodgrass, 
 Sawyer, Winkle, &c., all " keepin' the pot a-bilin'," 
 and following each other along the slide as if their 
 very lives depended on it. 
 
 Such bright winter pictures have, ot course, their 
 sombre side. You tumble out of bed to see the coun- 
 try covered with a dazzling mantle. Every twig and 
 slender spray is enveloped in icy tracery. There are 
 festoons of icicles depending from the window-sashes, 
 and the panes are interlaced with a delicate fretwork 
 that may shame those masterpieces of Moorish art that 
 
ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 301 
 
 are still the marvels of the connoisseur. -Sparkling in 
 the cold sunshine, it all looks cheerful enough as you 
 contemplate it from a comfortably warmed room, 
 unless, indeed, your soul be set upon hunting, and 
 your horses are fretting in their stalls. But even in 
 the country your pleasures may be dashed by re- 
 minders of the existence of suffering. There goes a 
 thinly-clad urchin under the windows, shrugging his 
 shoulders together, and blowing upon his frost-nipped 
 ringers. The birds are gathered into ragged balls on 
 the boughs ; the blackbirds and starlings are hopping 
 gingerly about on the lawn, like so many jackdaws of 
 Rheims, blighted under the ban of the church ; the 
 very tomtits seem limp and depressed ; while the 
 robins, pressed by the cravings of appetite, come 
 almost tapping at the windows as they ask for their 
 crumbs. After all, it may be hoped that the sufferings 
 of those country creatures are nothing worse than may 
 be endured and soon forgotten. These birds will be 
 fed from the breakfast-room windows, and there are 
 still hips and haws in the hedgerows for their fellows. 
 The boy has had a morning meal before turning out of 
 his cottage, and there are worse maladies in the world 
 than chilblains, while exercise will set youthful blood 
 in circulation. But your thoughts travel away to the 
 poor in the great towns, who must rise to fireless 
 hearths and shiver on short commons. After all, such 
 sufferings, like the poor themselves, will be always with 
 us, and in winter time the souls of the well-conditioned 
 must be exceptionally open to melting charity. If you 
 
3 02 ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 
 
 cannot help being bright and cheery yourself, you feel 
 the more bound to consider your less fortunate fellow- 
 mortals. Christopher North put it very neatly and 
 truly in one of the " Noctes " for this month of 
 December. He had been eulogising winter, more suo, 
 over a blazing fire before the well-spread board in the 
 blue parlour at Ambrose's ; and the Shepherd had been 
 chiming in with the praises of cold and curling beef 
 and greens. Tickler, sitting in moody reserve, strikes 
 a dissonant note. " This outrageous merriment grates 
 my spirits. 'Twill be a severe winter, and I think of 
 the poor." North answers, " Are not wages good and 
 work plenty, and is not charity a British virtue ? " 
 Charity is still a British virtue ; while institutions that 
 were then unthought of have been founded, and the 
 organisation of dispassionate relief has been indefinitely 
 extended. We remember, for our comfort too, as a 
 fact incontestably established by statistics, that cold is 
 far less destructive than damp to life and consequently 
 to health ; and in the fitful climates of an English 
 winter, we can have but the choice between the one 
 and the other. So let our readers be free-handed with 
 their cheque-books and their purses, and they may give 
 themselves over with easy minds to the joys and the 
 buoyancy inspired by the season. 
 
 Even in the metropolis, setting the chances of acci- 
 dents aside, a hard winter may not be altogether 
 unexciting. There is always something impressive in 
 gatherings in a great city under circumstances that are 
 at once picturesque and unfamiliar. Once we came 
 
ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 303 
 
 very near to witnessing a repetition of those grand 
 historical fetes of the Ice-king, when fairs were held 
 on the frozen Thames, and oxen roasted whole were 
 washed down from flowing hogsheads. Had it not 
 been for the works of the Thames Embankment, the 
 brackish tide might have been bound in iron fetters. 
 We missed that stirring spectacle by a hair's-breadth ; 
 but before now we have seen skating on the Serpentine 
 by torch-light, when a London feast of lanterns seemed 
 in course of celebration between Albert Gate and 
 Kensington Gardens. The wolves and hyaenas were 
 disporting themselves with the lambs or, in other 
 words, the hordes of roughs from the east were ming- 
 ling amicably with shop-lads and decent artisans and 
 gay young gentlemen from the clubs of the west. The 
 police mustered strong in case of need, but what were 
 the scattered members of the blue-coated force among 
 so many ? There were noise and horse-play, and 
 boisterous merriment ; and we do not say that pockets 
 were not lightened here and there, or some differences 
 settled by hitting from the shoulder. But on the whole 
 it was a gay and a good-humoured mob ; and even the 
 ladies who ventured out upon the side-walks could 
 admire the humours of the night without much risk of 
 insult. A whole school of Rembrandts and Schalkens 
 would have found endless subjects for their brushes. 
 The bands of skaters skimming along in open order, 
 and the hockey-players, swaying blazing torches over- 
 head, leaving the splashes of flaming resin in waving 
 beauty-lines behind them, till the air and ice seemed to 
 
3 o 4 ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 
 
 be studded with flights of Brobdingnagian fire-flies ; 
 the illuminated circles and the fiery crescents, where 
 a space had been cleared for the graceful evolutions of 
 amateurs surrounded by admiring spectators ; the 
 girdling rings of carriage-lamps along the drives ; the 
 rows of chairs and tables, with their constellations of 
 candles, where skates were being strapped on or 
 stripped ofF ; the glowing stoves of the hot-chestnut 
 sellers and baked-potato men ; the horn lanterns on 
 the roving wheelbarrows, with oranges and apples 
 and lighter refreshments ; the cracking of vesuvians 
 and kindling of pipes ; the reddening of cigar-tips 
 circulating in their myriads ; the reflection of the 
 flickering volumes of light cast faintly and fitfully 
 in the floating fogs all made up a strange carnival 
 of fire, to the crash of many kinds of Cockney music, 
 from brass bands and barrel-organs to accordions and 
 concertinas. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Winter in the North 
 
 T T is but a night ticket taken at King's Cross or 
 ^ Euston Square, and we shift the scene to the north 
 of the Border. You roll out of the berth in the 
 " Pullman," or shake yourself clear of your wrappings 
 to contemplate the December morning breaking on the 
 sea or the landward wastes. Sea blends with sky and 
 vapour with dull grey fallow, till you can hardly tell 
 where one begins or the other ends. But there are 
 bright streaks in the reddening horizon to the west, 
 which slowly break into golden bars, and then the disc 
 of the ruddy orb of light rises in all the promise of his 
 frigid glories. It is in the assurance of a life-giving 
 winter day that you hear the hoar-frost crackle under 
 your chilly feet on the railway platform. The double 
 dog-cart is in waiting with the roughed horses : strip 
 their warm clothing, and give them their heads. They 
 spring forward, rattling the pole-chains, breathing 
 smoke if not flame from their nostrils like the swifter 
 coursers of the sun overhead ; and far and near may 
 be heard the echo of their hoofs as they rattle, regard- 
 less of their back sinews, along the iron roads. For 
 
 21 3 5 
 
306 WINTER IN THE NORTH 
 
 the black frost has laid a veto on field-labour, and 
 most of mankind who work out of doors must take 
 a holiday perforce. The ploughshare is frozen fast 
 in the crisp furrow ; the ditcher might splinter the 
 point of his pickaxe before doing another yard of his 
 drain ; the farm pond must be broken to let the 
 animals drink ; and as the partridges have gathered 
 to the shelter of the rick-yards, so the snipes and 
 every species of wild-fowl have taken to the shrunken 
 rills of slow trickling water. 
 
 It is an involuntary holiday ; but is the parish to 
 stand idle on that account, or draw chairs and stools 
 into the ingle-nook to gossip and doze and keep the 
 fireplace warm ? Not a bit of it ! It is not every day 
 that the canny Scotchman has the chance of giving 
 himself over to enjoyment with a clear conscience. 
 Dreepdaily has challenged Bodencleuch to a curling- 
 match ; and already the players, with a long admiring 
 tail, are striding forward over hill and moor, from all 
 the airts, to the trysting-place. The laird, hospitable 
 as he is, somewhat hurries you, nevertheless, over a 
 hearty Scotch breakfast ; for he is to act skip or 
 headman himself for his players of Bodencleuch, while 
 the stalwart schoolmaster from over the march dis- 
 charges a similar office for the men of Dreepdaily. 
 A sharp walk through the policies and past the kirk 
 takes you to the curling-pond. It is a merry scene, 
 set in a frame of silver, that you look down upon from 
 the angle of the path that leads over the brae from the 
 kirk-stile. The pond lies in a hollow, at the foot of a 
 
WINTER IN THE NORTH 307 
 
 broomy knowe, that in the fresh fragrance of the spring 
 is covered with yellow blossoms. Now all nature is 
 as deathlike as well may be. Everything below and 
 around is clothed with a chilly winding-sheet, stretching 
 under the steel-blue glitter of an almost cloudless sky. 
 But long before, you had heard the clamour of voices 
 sounding deep and shrill in the rarified atmosphere, 
 and now you look down on such a gathering of rural 
 worthies as Burns might have sung or Wilkie painted. 
 A burst of welcome greets the laird and his friends, 
 followed by a respectful though a momentary hush. 
 Place for the kirk, and there is the parish minister, and 
 likewise his reverend brother of the Free persuasion ; 
 and there is the stout schoolmaster of Dreepdaily, 
 famed as a curler far and near, who dwarfs his 
 " shilpit " but energetic compeer of Bodencleuch. The 
 minister's man, who is likewise precentor, will soon 
 have an opportunity of showing that his sonorous bass 
 is- good for other things than pitching psalm-tunes. 
 There are farmers who cultivate and graze their five 
 hundred acres, and crofters who club with a neighbour 
 to hitch up a single " pair of horse." There are keepers 
 from the hill, and woodmen from the plantations ; 
 cottagers who get their living among the dikes and 
 the ditches ; " mason lads " who have been frozen 
 out of their work ; the tailor who has slipped from 
 his board, the shoemaker who has cast his apron 
 behind him, and the smith who has been lured away 
 from his forge, though they might all have been 
 following their indoor avocations. There are poachers 
 
308 WINTER IN THE NORTH 
 
 and village scant-o'-graces, somewhat shamefaced, and 
 in the meantime on their best behaviour, but feeling 
 that the occasion brings them temporary absolution ; 
 and herd-boys and " hafflin' callants," and id genus 
 omne. Seldom elsewhere will you see such a gathering 
 of folks of many ages and ranks and creeds and 
 callings, meeting for once on a footing of the most 
 fraternal equality, and indulging in the fullest liberty 
 of joviality, without forgetting good manners and 
 mutual regard. 
 
 From curling to cock-shooting, in the alliterative 
 point of view, is a natural transition. While the 
 curling-ponds in the east and south have been bearing 
 for many days, the fresh water in the milder climate 
 of the west coast is still rippling to each gentle breeze. 
 But while the curling sports are still in full swing, a 
 letter reaches you from Argyllshire. The frost has 
 come at last, and in earnest, and the cocks will be 
 following it in flights. Already their harbingers are 
 scattering about in many a hanging copse and many a 
 corrie on the heather braes. And one fine morning a 
 select party of friends, gaitered and shooting-booted, is 
 sitting down to an early repast in a lonely shooting- 
 lodge on the shores of Loch Fyne. A lonely lodge we 
 say ; and indeed the sole drawback to the spot is the 
 difficulty of finding beaters in that romantic wilderness. 
 However, the old keeper has done his best, and has 
 mustered, by hook or crook, half a dozen of ill- 
 matched mortals, from a leggy, shock-headed Celt, 
 who has turned out in the scantiest of tattered kilts, to 
 
WINTER IN THE NORTH 309 
 
 a short-set boy who, in an ordinary way, acts aide-de- 
 camp to any poacher, or shepherd, or gillie. A grander 
 beat than ours, in point of picturesqueness, it would be 
 difficult to find ; and it is as dear to the cocks as to 
 lovers of nature. The ground falls in a succession of 
 long tumbling slopes from the ridge of heather-covered 
 hills to the shores of the loch. From each eminence 
 the eye naturally travels down the estuary as it winds 
 away among the mountains, round promontory, creek, 
 and bay. Most beautiful of all, perhaps, is the imme- 
 diate foreground. What tempts the woodcock are the 
 multiplicity of springs, and the variety of streams that 
 come down an endless succession of parallel ravines, 
 with rocky banks that are overgrown with wood in 
 many spots. Here the water is leaping down stair- 
 cases of stone, under mossy cornices fringed with 
 icicles. Elsewhere you can barely hear it murmur as 
 it is lost to sight under the drooping firs and the 
 birchen boughs. And everywhere in those tiny valleys 
 are gushing land-springs, which convert the turf around 
 them into a tiny morass, where the mud will be 
 softened for the "long-bills" in the mid-day sun- 
 shine. Between these Scottish nullahs are patches of 
 Highland jungle the dwarf oak, and the birch, and 
 the spruce and silver-fir, interspersed with old and 
 gnarled hollies, and interwoven with matted brambles ; 
 while the open glades in the heather are dotted over 
 with outstanding trees like the Alpine wetter tannen, and 
 with beds of withered bracken, in all the winter hues of 
 their reds and yellows. 
 
3 io WINTER IN THE NORTH 
 
 Even had our force been drilled and trained to work 
 together, it would be no easy matter to handle it 
 cleverly. The very retrievers at heel sometimes 
 " come a cropper " in scrambling down the sides of 
 ravines ; and should a cock be flushed while you are 
 setting your face to the " stey brae/' the bird is sure to 
 go away unscathed. Moreover, though there is no 
 snow to speak of, each stone and root is varnished over 
 with its coating of treacherous ice, that gives hold 
 neither to foot nor hand. But there seems to be a 
 providence that saves sportsmen from sprained ankles, 
 and each fall is only a subject for merriment, though 
 the occasional plunge over mid-thigh in a " moss-pit " 
 is a more serious matter. But soon the shooting begins, 
 and the bag mounts ; the roe have been bled and hung 
 to trees to be retrieved again ; and in spite of 
 immersions, scratches, and falls, beaters and guns are 
 in the highest spirits. Brief space is given for lunch, 
 since days are short and distances are considerable. 
 And we have yet to beat out the famous oak-coppice 
 that hangs upon the side of an almost precipitous 
 valley. How the beaters are to work their way along, 
 where even monkeys with prehensile tails might be 
 puzzled, is for their consideration. They scramble 
 in somehow at the one end in faith, and we trust that 
 they will struggle out at the other. Close beating is a 
 sheer impossibility : but it is hoped that the game, being 
 seldom disturbed, may rise or go forward in place of 
 running back. It is almost worth coming all the way 
 to Loch Fyne to have a single shot at an old blackcock 
 
WINTER IN THE NORTH 311 
 
 in these circumstances. Up he rises from among the 
 rocks on powerful wing, his jetty plumage glistening in 
 the sunbeams, skimming the feathering firs with the 
 sweeping pinions that propel him like a rocket shot 
 from a mortar. Clean missed in a flurry by the first 
 gun cleverly killed by the second ; and borne ahead 
 for fifty yards or so by his acquired velocity, you hear 
 him crashing through the branches in the depths, and 
 can mark his course by the showers of ice-dust. 
 
 In the dark inclement days of the winter, the moors 
 and forests are left very much to their native denizens. 
 Even the keepers and gillies, when not under surveil- 
 lance, are inclined to fight shy of the upper hills ; and 
 the shepherds, who have to face much fearful weather, 
 strive to keep their flocks in the more sheltered valleys. 
 For there is something appalling in a Highland snow- 
 storm, when the day is darkened with feathering 
 snow-flakes and the air laden with icy drift ; when the 
 winds howl down the passes and shriek in the wildest 
 fury as they are caught in the glens and the corries ; 
 and when snow-slips and small avalanches are happening 
 everywhere, engulfing each living thing that comes 
 across the path of their descents. Then fox and wild 
 cat take refuge in their earths in the recesses of the 
 cairns, howling and moaning with cold and hunger ; 
 and the winged game cower together in the lee of the 
 braes, or scrape for a precarious subsistence on the more 
 exposed banks that have been laid bare by the storm. 
 When the snowfall is suspended and the " lift has 
 cleared," the shepherd must go abroad in fear and 
 
3 i2 WINTER IN THE NORTH 
 
 trembling. Too many of the fleecy flock so dear to his 
 memory are lost to sight, buried deep under the heaps 
 of gathering snow-wreaths ; and in many a quiet nook 
 and corner of the winding stream the backwater will be 
 choked with submerged corpses. 
 
 Death is never far from the man who is out in a 
 Highland snowstorm, and it is a risk that the sportsman 
 will not lightly encounter. But en revanche there are 
 often, in the dead season of the year, long spells of 
 settled and most exhilarating weather, when the grouse 
 sit wonderfully in the " black frosts," and a vigorous 
 walker may fill a bag satisfactorily. Then, seen in the 
 bright sunlight, the clear summits of the highest hills 
 may exercise an irresistible fascination on him, and 
 he decides for a bold dash at the ptarmigan. If he go 
 by the barometer and sage advice, he may make the 
 expedition tolerably safely. The work will be hard, of 
 course, but scarcely so severe as one might fancy. For 
 by judicious strategy the ascent may be made by the 
 slopes where the snow-sprinkling is comparatively thin, 
 and along ravines whose gravelly and slaty sides offer a 
 comparatively sure footing. And having once sur- 
 mounted the lower zone of perpetual snow, the 
 sportsman will find himself " travelling," as the 
 Scotch say, on natural causeways that have been 
 swept by the winds, and which are roughly paved 
 with what looks like the debris of a stone quarry. 
 Nor should it be so much the sport you look 
 to on those occasions, as the splendour of the sky 
 effects, the grandeur of the scenery, and the romantic 
 
WINTER IN THE NORTH 313 
 
 excitement of the whole undertaking. Down in the 
 valleys are morning mists and darkness. The bottom 
 of that deep chasm you have left to the right, and 
 where you heard the harsh voice of the raven, is rilled 
 with billowy volumes of vapour ; but already, though 
 the sun will be invisible to you for half an hour to 
 come, the tops of the " Rocky Mountains " for which 
 you are bound are glowing in all the hues of the rain- 
 bow. When the sun does burst into sight, the dazzling 
 radiance of the landscape becomes almost painful, and 
 it is a relief to rest the aching eyes on the shadows 
 thrown here and there by some boldly projecting cliff. 
 There are animated objects enough of interest as you 
 press forward, though there is no time to loiter. The 
 grouse cocks rise wild with their cheery crow. Now 
 and again, as you climb by the banks of the stream, you 
 cross the tracks of the night-hunting otter or the wild 
 cat, or almost surprise those little parties of ducks that 
 have been feeding at their ease in some sequestered pool, 
 where the steepness of the fall has kept the hill burn in 
 motion. As the snow gets thinner, and you leave the 
 region of heather for the stones, the tracks of the moun- 
 tain-hares are more frequent, and soon they are starting 
 before you each twenty yards, sitting up, kangaroo-like, 
 in their quaint curiosity, and inspecting you with com- 
 placent interest over their shoulders. Considering the 
 impossibility of carrying them away, knocking them 
 over would be wanton bloodshed.. You would gladly 
 have bestowed a barrel on that magnificent hill-fox, 
 with the sinewy body and the feathering brush, who, 
 
3 i4 WINTER IN THE NORTH 
 
 though he supplies his larder as a rule with the hares, 
 must have taken toll many a time from the firstlings of 
 the flock, judging by his size and grand condition. But 
 before you have time to snatch the gun from the gillie 
 who has relieved you of it, he has vanished round the 
 corner of the nearest ridge, to reappear by-and-by on a 
 more distant slope, going pleasantly within himself at a 
 comfortable canter. 
 
 The actual ptarmigan-shooting in itself is, it must be 
 confessed, somewhat tame. Although there is little 
 difficulty in finding the birds at first, since they are 
 pretty sure to get up shy and wild, yet they will often 
 return nearly to the spot from whence they were sprung, 
 and wait your second approach comparatively calmly. 
 And as they have a trick of dropping sharply behind 
 the rocks where they rise, you need not scruple to shoot 
 them sitting. But there is something grandly exciting 
 in the sport all the same, as you go scrambling among 
 the rocks and fallen boulders ; taking jumps that in 
 cooler blood you would eschew ; setting the serious 
 chances of fractured limbs at defiance ; and keeping 
 on your legs in shooting attitude as best you can, 
 while swaying your breech-loader in the air by way 
 of a balancing-pole. The sense of taking one's diver- 
 sion aloft in the blue empyrean, far above the normal 
 regions of a Highland cloudland, is in itself exhilarat- 
 ing enough ; and the air you inhale is light as laughing- 
 gas, without being sojrarefied as to try the lungs. Then 
 the white ptarmigan, flushed from their perch on the 
 cliffs, go circling beneath your feet round splintered 
 
WINTER IN THE NORTH 315 
 
 pinnacles and buttresses, eddying over the abyss in 
 the drift of the vapours, like a flight of storm- 
 pigeons. Plunging the eye far down into the pro- 
 found, there is nothing but those circling specks 
 for it to rest upon, between the slab on which your 
 shooting-boots are slipping and the slopes of heather 
 some couple of thousand feet below. As for the glories 
 of the prospect, you may turn your face as you will. 
 All around stretches a seemingly limitless extent of 
 trackless moor, forest, and sheep- farm, where hill and 
 valley, till they confound themselves in the snowy 
 distance, are veined by the black blotches or silvery 
 lines that mark the lakes or the rivers and burns. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Winter Ferreting 
 
 IT is a natural descent from the clouds, or where 
 the clouds ought to be, to the Lowland coverts. 
 We are in the great preserves, where hares in herds 
 and troops of home-bred pheasants invite the attention 
 of banded poachers, and provoke heartburnings in 
 parishes that ought to be peaceful. Should big battues 
 rank among winter pleasures ? Hardly, in the sense 
 in which we are writing this article ; and poetically as 
 picturesquely, there is a terrible bathos in the droop 
 from days among the ptarmigan in the upper air, to 
 the massacre of pheasants running tame between your 
 boots. Besides, anybody but an enthusiast in slaughter 
 must be ennuye by standing up to the ankles in the 
 half-frozen mud of the rides, or blowing upon numbed 
 fingers at some draughty corner, though he may com- 
 fort himself with the assurance that it will soon be a 
 " hot " one. Far more to our mind is the rough-and- 
 ready fun to be found in ferreting in a keen frost. 
 The little party are all on the qui vive from the 
 guns and the keepers with spades and ferret-boxes, to 
 the cock-eared terriers who are admitted to participate 
 
 316 
 
WINTER FERRETING 317 
 
 in the sport, and the more sober-minded retrievers who 
 form the reserve. Hardly a breath of air is stirring : 
 you may almost hear the flutter to the earth of a 
 withered leaf, and so everything is in your favour. 
 And there is something in such commonplace or vulgar 
 amusements as rabbiting and rat-hunting that recom- 
 mends itself to the vagrant instincts of humanity. For 
 ourselves, we have ferreted in all manner of circum- 
 stances, from wheat-stacks and tottering barns up- 
 wards. In the mounds under the gnarled boughs of 
 the oaks and thorns in a venerable park, where the 
 rabbits burrowed amicably in the hollow stems among 
 the jackdaws. We have shot on the face of a brae 
 sloping to a precipice dipping sheer into a lake, where 
 each rabbit, as he was rolled over, crumpled into a ball, 
 and pitching over the brink was picked up by a boat- 
 man in waiting ; in the dikes dividing fields in the 
 northern Scotch counties, where the piles of loose 
 granite that had been cleared off the land were honey- 
 combed by labyrinths of galleries where ferrets had 
 to be sent in by the half-dozen to cut the lines of 
 communication, and whence the inmates would scuttle 
 at intervals like the fragments of a bursting shell. 
 And of course we have ferreted in all weathers. But 
 to our fancy, as we said, the pleasantest form of the 
 sport is in the perfect stillness and purity of the clear 
 winter day, in the banks and hedgerows of a richly 
 wooded Lowland country. It is a very fair match, on 
 the whole, between the guns and the rabbits. Scene 
 for example under the skeleton canopy of a spreading 
 
3 i8 WINTER FERRETING 
 
 oak, the leafless twigs forming a lace work against the 
 sky, with a straggling hedge in front and a bramble- 
 grown ditch beyond. The burrow dates from days 
 immemorial ; some of the holes have been enlarged 
 by the colony of badgers that take up their quarters 
 there from time to time ; and the outlets are so many, 
 and in such unlikely spots, that any attempt at a 
 systematic blockade is impracticable. Dramatis 
 persons : a couple of guns standing back to back 
 under the oak ; two others, similarly posted in the 
 field beyond the ditch ; three keepers bending in 
 varied attitudes over the burrow, previous to rushing 
 towards the stem of the oak to bestow themselves 
 out of the way ; three ferrets who have disappeared 
 in the bowels of the earth ; a couple of veteran terriers, 
 their heads twisted on one side, almost to the disloca- 
 tion of their necks, and each nerve in their bodies 
 quivering with excitement ; with as many retrievers 
 that are scarcely less interested, though they do their 
 best to keep up some dignity of deportment. So far as 
 the mere ferreting goes, the terriers, Spice and Ginger, 
 had better have been left at home, since they are more 
 likely to tumble into the way than not. But they are 
 useful in hunting out a ditch or a hedge-bottom ; and a 
 miss here and there is of little consequence. Conticuere 
 omnes; intentique or a tenebant. The tails of the ferrets 
 have been deliberately dragged out of sight ; and all is 
 silence in the meantime. 
 
 But as we feel, it is the ominous silence that heralds 
 earthquakes and convulsions of nature. There is a faint 
 
WINTER FERRETING 319 
 
 scraping and a shuffle beneath our feet ; the shuffling is 
 succeeded by a rushing to and fro ; the scraping grows 
 into a portentous rumbling, as if a working party of 
 gnomes, with picks and wheelbarrows, were mining the 
 foundation of the ancestral oak. The grumbling echoes 
 of that subterraneous chase are now here and now there. 
 If the distracted terriers were to follow their bent, they 
 would be dancing over the surface of the ground like a 
 couple of globules of quicksilver. Even the sportsmen, 
 although they have time to think, or because they have 
 time, are conscious of something of the flutter that 
 thrills on the nerves when a covey of black-game is 
 whirring up all around one. The rabbits have realised 
 there is danger above, and are loth to be forced by any 
 amount of hunting. You can conceive the sudden 
 agitation in those peaceful tenements below, with the 
 stealthy enemies, all teeth, claw, and muscle, following 
 up the remorseless chase with slow, malignant ferocity. 
 Now some stout old buck must be standing fiercely at 
 bay, his bristling back set to the end of a burrow, and 
 his fore-paws hammering viciously at his assailant. You 
 can follow the shifting fortunes of the single combat, for 
 there seems to be but a sod between you and the lists. 
 Next there is a rush of desperation ; he has taken a 
 flying leap over the ferret, and is gone by. Then a 
 second fugitive shows his head above ground only to 
 jerk it back again ; while a third bounces out of one 
 hole, like a Jack-in-the box, to take a flying leap down 
 another. But at last the general sauve qui peut begins. 
 There a rabbit makes a rush for the ditch, and gains the 
 
3 20 
 
 WINTER FERRETING 
 
 covered-way of matted weeds and thorn, closely followed 
 up by the yelping terriers, to be hustled out again a 
 little lower down ; while a companion dares a straight 
 dash across the open, to be cleverly stopped in due 
 course. The winding-sheet of snow is rent and torn as 
 rabbits tear their way out of hidden issues, to land 
 themselves in the middle of scattering charges ; there 
 is a quick rolling fire, with sharp clicking of the barrel- 
 hinges as the smoking breech-loaders close on the cart- 
 ridges ; a shower of icy particles from the bushes, 
 falling on the curly coats of the retrievers ; a scattering 
 of floating flick, a cutting of twigs by the driving shot, 
 a crimsoning of the spotless surface. Then the shoot- 
 ing dies away and ceases, as the bolting draws to an 
 end. The terriers are come back from their mad 
 bursts of excitement, with panting tongues and heaving 
 sides : the keepers gather up the slain which the 
 retrievers had already been collecting for them ;> and 
 finally, the ferrets reappear one by one, blinking their 
 fiery eyes, and licking their encarmined jowls, to be 
 caught up by the napes of their necks and deposited 
 snugly in the boxes. The exciting melodrama is at an 
 end, so far as that burrow is concerned, when we move 
 on to another, where the scenery has changed with the 
 circumstances. In the hurry and crush of incidents ; 
 in the strained expectation, passing through quick sen- 
 sations to the sanguinary denouement^ keeping all the 
 faculties on the alert, and the blood in swift circulation, 
 there is no time to think of being chilly. And then, 
 when you feel you have had enough of it when the 
 
WINTER FERRETING 321 
 
 lights on the landscape begin to fade as the sun sinks 
 down in the cloud-bank to the westward ; when the 
 ferrets, gorging themselves on the game they have 
 grappled, begin to hang in the holes in spite of powder- 
 flashes, till the keepers have to exercise their shoulders 
 in digging among the stones and roots you have only 
 to lay down the gun and walk briskly home to the 
 library. If we desire to enjoy luxurious converse with 
 a favourite author, who will bear dozing over, since we 
 half know him by heart, we find nothing more delight- 
 ful than that time before dinner, when, after some 
 hours of moderate exertion and exposure, we mingle 
 listless reading with languid reverie, and intersperse 
 both with an occasional nap. 
 
 22 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Winter Fowling 
 
 VERY different from the dawdling over rabbiting is 
 wild-fowl shooting. The one may be enjoyed in 
 moderation as a distraction ; as an agreeable digestive 
 after a comfortable breakfast ; as a whet for indolent 
 literary by-play and for dinner, after the fashion of the 
 avant-table in Russia or Scandinavia, where spirits and 
 piquant trifles are served up as appetisers. Wild-fowl 
 shooting is a serious business, and we do not know 
 whether, any more than the battue, it ought to be 
 included among winter pleasures. For our own part, 
 we should be inclined to say no ; but it is certain that 
 it becomes a passion with those who devote themselves 
 to it. The successful wild-fowler needs something of 
 the qualities that set up a Hercules going forth upon 
 his labours. In the first place, he must have enthu- 
 siasm bordering upon an abiding frenzy. He must 
 have no ordinary endurance, with a constitution of 
 iron ; he must have keen eyes and steady nerves ; he 
 must have coolness and presence of mind to temper his 
 eagerness ; and, before all things of course, he should 
 
 332 
 
WINTER PROWLING 323 
 
 be a deadly shot. In the pursuit of ordinary game the 
 " hit and miss " man may enjoy himself as much as his 
 " crack " companion. But it is heart-breaking in wild- 
 fowling, after having intrigued, manoeuvred, and toiled 
 for a single family shot, to see the birds fly away with- 
 out a feather of their plumage being ruffled. The 
 practical wild-fowler should be as clever with his gun 
 as the juggler who goes through his feats on the slack- 
 rope. Ashore, he must shoot when he has been 
 shivering in spite of his bodily powers ; when his feet 
 have been frozen to his stockings, and his stockings 
 congealed in his boots ; when he is slipping about in 
 treacherous mud, in a pair of " mud-shoes," or boards 
 that are attached to his boots like sandals ; or when he 
 has sunk over the knee in shifting sands, or has been 
 taken aback by a chance while fording a sea-creek. 
 Ten to one, the flight he fires at may come travelling 
 down wind at something from twenty to forty knots an 
 hour. And what a weapon he has to carry ! We 
 believe that the most accomplished modern experts 
 declare by preference for a five-bore ; and none but 
 those who have been initiated can realise what it is to 
 carry so ponderous a piece of metal through a long 
 day's heavy walking in the face of blustering weather. 
 Even the most accustomed shoulder may ache, and the 
 bare recoil must often be serious. And if the fowler 
 has to contend with such difficulties ashore, what must 
 it be afloat? In loch-shooting, of course, if you can, 
 you will choose a calm day, and so your difficulties are 
 lightened in place of being aggravated. But off the 
 
WINTER FOWLING 
 
 coast, though scarcely a zephyr may be stirring, there 
 may, nevertheless, be a heavy ground-swell. And then 
 you must take aim from a dancing platform, and make 
 your flying practice by knack or instinct. Imagine a 
 man shooting grouse on a drive as he balanced himself 
 on the oscillations of a see-saw, and you have a mode 
 rate notion of the chances of sea-fowling under circum- 
 stances that are fairly favourable. 
 
 Then for the requisites in point of constitutional 
 hardihood. Mild weather saddens the fowler's heart, 
 and his spirits go up with the fall of the thermometer. 
 It is indispensable that he should dress himself warmly, 
 yet, for his own sake, he must not make his wrappings 
 too cumbersome. He will have to crawl or worm 
 himself along when making his stalk, and yet he may 
 have to lie perdu for minutes or half-hours, more or 
 less, without moving a muscle. Even in a boat he 
 must not so over-hamper himself with top gear as to 
 prevent the heavy gun coming easily to his shoulder ; 
 and yet a bitter wind blowing off the sea or the salt 
 marshes may be searching his marrow through pea- 
 jacket and jersey. Keeping the feet dry is out of the 
 question ; and his only certainty about the best pair of 
 waterproof wading-boots is, that they will infallibly 
 doom the wearer to partial immersion. Gloves, as 
 everybody knows, are sadly in the way when it comes 
 to fingering a lightly-set pair of triggers ; and half- 
 frozen feet and half-frost-nipped fingers must trouble 
 the calm pleasures of expectancy. 
 
 The successful wild-fowl shooter must necessarily 
 
WINTER FOWLING 325 
 
 be an enthusiast ; but we believe that most gentlemen 
 who take to the sport, follow it more or less in 
 dillettante fashion. That is the experience of Mr. 
 Colquhoun, the veteran author of " The Moor and the 
 Loch," who observes that the rustic who has only the 
 single barrel of an old-fashioned weapon to depend 
 upon, grudges no expenditure of patience in the attain- 
 ment of his ends. He has familiarised himself with the 
 haunts and habits of the wild-fowl, and lays himself out 
 deliberately to circumvent the birds. He watches for 
 a pot-shot, dwells deliberately on .his aim, and, for the 
 most part, does damage proportionate to the pains 
 he takes. While the gentleman, somewhat impatient 
 of delays and inconveniences, and trusting to the 
 killing powers of his tool, with the reserve of a second 
 barrel, often scares the birds in his rash approaches, or 
 fires too precipitately at an excessive range. Mr. Col- 
 quhoun's advice for wild-fowl shooting on inland 
 lakes, is as simple as it will be found to be satis- 
 factory. After expatiating on the birds' quickness of 
 hearing, &c., recording his observations as to their 
 keenness of scent, and counselling the sportsman as 
 to his equipments, he tells him how the stalk may be 
 most surely accomplished. When you have detected 
 the birds you propose to try for, take their bearings 
 exactly by marks upon the shore in relation to another 
 placed further inland. Then make a detour to come 
 unperceived behind the inner mark. From that of 
 course the final approaches have to be made, with an 
 astuteness even greater, if possible, than that which is 
 
32 6 WINTER FOWLING 
 
 indispensable in deer-stalking. Should there be divers, 
 you take advantage of their temporary disappearances 
 to run forward between times to a succession of am- 
 bushes like the " stations " of some pilgrimage to a 
 Catholic shrine. 
 
 Often, no doubt, there is excitement enough in that 
 sort of sport ; but to us, considering the suffering that 
 may be involved, too much is staked on result. As in 
 deer-stalking, through no fault of your own, you may 
 be balked even of a miss at the last moment. We like 
 better another form of the sport when questing for 
 ducks. You follow the springy drains, keeping fifteen 
 yards from them, and about forty in advance of an 
 attendant who walks close to the trench. It is deadly 
 work covering the plump, full-fed mallards and their 
 mates as they first rise in their heavy flight ; and 
 there is intense satisfaction in surprising a wild goose. 
 When gathered into flocks, as you see them generally, 
 the geese are among the most suspicious of created 
 things ; and the man who has stalked a flock with 
 its vedettes and sentinels set, may plume himself on no 
 ordinary achievement, unless some lucky accident has 
 befriended him. While a wild duck, fired at from an 
 ambush in the gloaming, as he wings his strong flight 
 overhead to his favourite feeding-grounds, is as hard 
 to hit as he is hard to kill. Even heavy pellets, 
 striking at certain angles, have an extraordinary knack 
 of rolling themselves up harmlessly in the down. 
 
 We scarcely care to diverge to long-shore shooting, 
 which, though by no means an uninteresting subject in 
 
WINTER FOWLING 327 
 
 itself, is a sport left for the most part to professionals. 
 It may be followed, by the way, with great success in 
 the Dutch polders and marshes ; in the sand-dunes of 
 the Flemish seaboard, and in some of the north- 
 western departments of France. On the mud-flats 
 and sands in our own eastern counties, and on the 
 sand-banks and bars at the mouths of the brackish 
 estuaries, among the floating sea-weed, in sharp frosts 
 at the commencement of the winter, the bag may be 
 filled with a wonderful variety. Stalking along under 
 cover of the sand-hills and sea-walls ; stealthily turning 
 along the bends of the creeks, where the waters are sink- 
 ing with the reflux of the tide ; crouching in blood- 
 thirsty expectancy as you see a flight skimming towards 
 you along the beach you may kill herons, curlews, 
 ducks, and plovers, with many a species of diver and 
 wader, of which some may be as rare as the most of 
 them are common. Nor shall we embark on board one 
 of the handy little yachting craft, of which the crew is 
 but a man, with possibly a boy, but which, neverthe- 
 less, have most elastic accommodation below, while 
 there is actually room on deck for the dingy, which is 
 often towing astern. The cabins of these are snug 
 places enough, as they are assuredly compact ; but the 
 owners, amateurs and town-bred though they may be, 
 always strike us as being among the most venturesome 
 of British mariners. We take it for granted that the 
 skipper is proof to sea-sickness, and it may be assumed 
 that he is equally confident that he was never born to 
 be drowned. For to say nothing of the notion of 
 
328 WINTER FOWLING 
 
 being capsized in a squall, which he would scout as 
 an outrageous impeachment on his seamanship, there 
 are the probabilities of his grounding upon a bank in 
 one of the fogs, which are accompaniments of the 
 weather most favourable for sea-fowling. He pursues 
 his sport on the borders of the crowded waterways, 
 where fleets of coasting craft are continually plying ; 
 and may be awakened out of the sleep he has dropped 
 into on his watch, to find his boat cut down to the 
 water-line, while he is being submerged by a strange 
 cutwater. Moreover, he may have to run in a sudden 
 gale for moorings in some river mouth or harbour of 
 refuge, by no means always easy of attainment. As 
 a set-off against these probable or problematical 
 dangers, is the " pleasure " of alternately sitting 
 up in the biting air on the deck, glass in hand, 
 behind a swivel-gun or a battery of heavy breech- 
 loaders ; and diving down into the tiny cabin to be 
 toasted before facing a fresh spell of the cold. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Winter in the Shires 
 
 have been writing of winter sports and pleasures 
 to be followed for choice among the frost and 
 snow ; but, oddly enough, the winter sport par ex- 
 cellence of the English gentleman comes to a stand-still 
 in our genuine winter weather. A frost is not un- 
 welcome to the fox-hunter in the spring and after an 
 open season, when he has well-nigh ridden his horses to 
 a standstill, and half his stud is gone on the sick-list. 
 But frost in November or December, when the winter 
 is young and hopes are fresh ! It is certainly not 
 quite so trying as it used to be in the days of the 
 mail-coaches and post-chaises, when the hunting man 
 in the Midlands was practically storm-bound in the 
 streets of a dull provincial town ; when the sole 
 resources were over-eating and hard drinking, the 
 billiards by day, the rubber by night, and smoking 
 countless cigars in the stables in dismal contemplation 
 of the hocks of the steeds. Now a man takes his ticket 
 to town by express train, and while he finds a 
 sympathetic chorus of growlers in his club in St. 
 
 329 
 
330 
 
 WINTER IN THE SHIRES 
 
 James's, is always within reach of a telegram. But 
 even comparatively fortunate as he is, that season of 
 suspense is a sore trial to him. His sweet temper is 
 fretted with hope deferred. He goes to bed restless, 
 after anxious looks at the skies, and sees his horses 
 casting themselves in their stalls in his perturbed night- 
 mares ; or wakens in disappointment from Tantalus- 
 like dreams, where he has been following the hounds 
 to the music of the horn. To make matters worse, 
 notwithstanding these worries of his, in place of losing 
 flesh he has been laying it on. When men of frugal 
 minds have been calculating weights somewhat too 
 closely in making their purchases, half a stone more is 
 a serious annoyance. But such time of probation must 
 come to an end, and at last the weather has shown 
 unmistakable signs of relenting. A tremor of expec- 
 tancy has run through the hunting counties, and the 
 first meet after the yielding frost has been advertised 
 to come off at the kennels. 
 
 And we do not know that the successors of the 
 immortal Leech could find more inspiriting subjects 
 for their pencils than in the humours of the grand 
 gathering after the involuntary rest. It has become 
 apparent that the weather has fairly broken, and there 
 is even some prospect of scent on the grass and the 
 fallows. There is a general coming up from all parts 
 of the country ; for though squires and farmers have 
 had their graver avocations to distract them, yet they 
 too have been vexing their souls over missed chances 
 of sport. Each man is on the alert, and the horses 
 
WINTER IN THE SHIRES 331 
 
 are decidedly more so than is agreeable. Even the 
 cover-hacks seem to have quicksilver in their heels, 
 which is all very well ; and the horses in the vehicles 
 of many fashions which are pressing forward to the 
 muster, are tossing the foam about their chests and 
 rattling their frothing curb-chains. Sober old hunters, 
 warranted steady when sold, and carrying certificates 
 of irreproachable character in their faces and ordinary 
 demeanour, are indulging in gay and unaccustomed 
 gambols ; while the giddier youngsters, although they 
 may " be free from vice," are showing themselves 
 playful as kittens, and as full of tricks as so many 
 monkeys. We think it is Mr. Benjamin Buckram, 
 who remarks in " Mr. Sponge's Tour," in discussing 
 the character of the redoubted Hercules, that if a 
 gentleman gets spilt, it does not much " argufy " 
 whether it is done from play or vice. And not a 
 few gentlemen now seem to be much of that way 
 of thinking, as their mounts, catching the contagion 
 of excitement in the crowd, disport themselves like 
 fresh-caught mustangs from the Texan prairies. Here 
 is a silken-coated young one on his muscular hind- 
 legs, gracefully improving on the antics of a dancing- 
 bear, and threatening to topple back upon a rider who 
 has scarcely nerve to bring him back to his bearings. 
 Another, arching his crest and tucking in his haunches, 
 shows an English edition of the Australian buck- 
 jumping trick ; while most of them are lightly laying 
 back their ears, or shooting flashes out of the corners 
 of their eyes, and not a few are unpleasantly ready 
 
332 WINTER IN THE SHIRES 
 
 with their heels. But if it is all in good temper on 
 the part of the steeds, the same can hardly be said 
 of the riders. The jostling, and the chance of a 
 humiliating accident, throw some gentlemen off their 
 mental balance, who are already uneasy as to the 
 " safety of their seats " ; and it would appear that 
 some lowering clouds are flitting across the general 
 hilarity. But the hospitality of the worthy master 
 brings incipient unkindness to a check. The meet 
 at the kennels means a meeting on the lawn, where 
 the disappearance of the frost is demonstrated con- 
 clusively by the cutting up of the turf and furrowing 
 of the gravel. The long tables are spread in the old 
 oak hall, among family portraits, under polished rafters 
 and scutcheoned panels. The genial host goes about 
 among his scarlet-coated guests, hail-fellow-well-met 
 with everybody ; and the ladies of the household, 
 as they do the honours of the tea and coffee, light up 
 the sombre old banqueting-hall with their smiles. 
 There is a pretty lively clatter of knives and forks, 
 intermingled with the clash of cups and glasses. Those 
 who do not sit down to the more substantial fare, gather 
 round the decanters on buffets and sideboards ; while 
 the liveried serving-men are busy out of doors handing 
 brimming tankards to yeomen and outsiders. If the 
 horses are full of fire and oats, their exuberant spirits 
 will soon be counterbalanced by the circulation of 
 jumping powder among the gentlemen of the hunt ; 
 and if sharp retorts were bandied a few minutes before, 
 there is a general drowning of all unpleasantness. Only, 
 
WINTER IN THE SHIRES 333 
 
 should there be a find, and should the numerous field 
 get fairly away with their fox, a wise man will do well 
 to take a line of his own, though at the chance of having 
 to face some extra fencing. A crush in a lane or a 
 cannon in a gap, may possibly entail awkward conse- 
 quences. 
 
 One of the show meets of the season is a character- 
 istically English spectacle, which must impress the 
 intelligent foreigner who desires to study our manners 
 or to pass our choicer horse-flesh in review. In a good 
 country, whether in the shires or the provinces, he will 
 see as high-bred hunters as money can procure ; while 
 some of the hacks and the pairs in phaetons and double 
 dog-carts, are models of symmetry and style after their 
 kinds. He will be struck by clean-built thoroughbreds 
 that look smaller than they are till he comes to see them 
 extending themselves over formidable fences, and laying 
 the wide-stretching enclosures behind them in their 
 stride. He will admire the serviceable animals that 
 carry those substantial farmers, who manage to see a 
 sufficiency of the sport though they stick for the most 
 part to gates and lanes ; and transfusing their intelli- 
 gence into the instinct of the fox, ride knowingly to 
 points rather than on the sterns of the pack. And he 
 will understand the universal enthusiasm for the sport 
 when he marks how the rag-tag and bobtail turn out 
 for the fun from the market-towns, the villages, and the 
 solitary hamlets, mounted upon anything, down to 
 broken-kneed ponies and ragged-coated donkeys fed on 
 furze. But our article lies rather in the snow and on 
 
334 
 
 WINTER IN THE SHIRES 
 
 the ice than in sloppy pastures and holding fallows. So 
 we shall not follow the hounds as they draw from cover 
 to cover ; and as for the tale of the run, has it not been 
 often written by men who were themselves unapproach- 
 ably in the foremost flight, but who are gone beneath 
 the turf they used to gallop over ? The shades of the 
 departed warn us to be silent, from Nimrod of the 
 Quarterly, mighty among literary hunters, to the 
 lamented Colonel Whyte-Melville, lost to us by an 
 accident in the hunting-field. The hunting-field in the 
 south, as the curling-pond in the north, brings many 
 classes together in a kindly communion of tastes and 
 sympathies ; and long may it continue to do so. The 
 greater and the more unreserved the kindly intercourse 
 of the sort, the less is it likely that revolutionary 
 legislation will sow dissensions among those who were 
 born to be friends will banish all but utilitarians from 
 rural England, and subvert the time-honoured land- 
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