round the crop-such being, except on occasions, considered the properest place for this, with us considered indispensable, instrument in the hand of a huntsman, or whipper-in, by reason of its being inconvenient to carry it, when the horn is to be played upon, in chase. The horses these men rode-especially one in a crupper-appeared not the sort to go "the pace," but they looked fat and sleek, and the condition of their riders was in keeping with them. The duke and his brother were in dress and accoutrements, fac-similies of these two men; and as the party of six, with the hounds, rode away from the crowd, to begin their day's work, their appearance was not only highly respectable, but sportsman-like. The day likewise was favourable to effect, inasmuch as the rays of a meridian sun added greatly to the glitter of the heavilylaced coats and hats which the two huntsmen wore, as well as being reflected brightly in the well-polished French horns which they carried. A stag having been harboured, we were not long before he was roused; and, nearly at the same moment, another stag, which must have couched near to him in his lair, was on foot! From him the hounds were quickly stopped by the prickers, and laid on to the harboured deer, who went away as if he intended to run. The sight was a most interesting one to those who witnessed it, as I, myself, did; although deprived of much of its grandeur, by the absence of the branching antlers which ornament the "stately monarch of the forest"-this being the period at which he generally casts his head. However, according to the fable, stag's horns, though beautiful, being an impediment to flight, may be dispensed with by the sportsmen; and a fine chase of three hours and twelve minutes, with death at the end of it, was the final result of this day's sport, a short description of which, I will endeavour to give. We went off at a very good pace, so good, indeed, as at the end of somewhere about an hour to have shaken off the crowd. "The field is becoming select, as Mr. Alken would say," exclaimed the Duke of Orleans to me, with a smile, as we came to a momentary check; "I am glad to see you well up." "It is, sir," I replied, "and it will be more so, presently, if we continue at this pace, for the day is very hot." (The cuckoo was singing merrily, and close to us at the moment.) Away we went again, however, with apparently a breast-high scent, for about half an hour, when rather a singular occurrence took place. Many of those who were with the hounds at the check I have just alluded to—and amongst them the duke and his royal brother, the former on a fresh horse —were well up with them also at a certain point of the chase, when they all at once disappeared, and, strange to say, had it not been for one fortunate circumstance, no one but myself and two more horsemen would It may be almost needless to state, that this is the sporting term for a deer shedding his old horns, which are about to be replaced by new ones. have seen the hounds again, that day. The state of the case was this: Up to this time, we had not quitted the forest in which our game was found, but perceiving we were approaching the extremity of it, and the hounds on good terms with their stag, I quitted the road, or the "ride," as we call it in our country, and, brushing through the cover, got close to them. The ground was rough and uneven, and the pace good, but finding the mare I rode knew how to take care of herself, I clapped to her in right earnest, and, in about ten minutes, found myself in the open country with the hounds, who were streaming away with a good scent. It being seldom any man's lot, and still less mine of late years, to be a a-head of such a numerous field as this, I turned myself round in my saddle, after a short time, to see who was coming, and what part of the field had got away. To my surprise, not a soul was to be seen, excepting Edgar Pavis, the duke's jockey, on a thorough-bred one; Mr. Corringham, his royal highness's trainer; and one French gentleman, on a cleverish grey horse. Having, I knew, travelled pretty straight up to this point, I began to speculate as to whither the chase would lead us, for a champaign country was before us, and the hound's heads were put straight for it. I was also aware that our game was not far a head by the fact of their carrying the scent, best pace, over a sand bank, on which it soon gets cold, and I ventured to cheer them with a holloa, but which, of course, they would not understand. Soon after this, however, an awkward accident occurred. Pavis and myself, who were leading, and nearly abreast of each other, at the moment, found ourselves all at once amidst rabbit holes, which the duke had so kindly cautioned me against, although luckily for us, our horses avoided getting into them. But turning my head around, to see how the others had gotten over them, I saw the French gentleman stretched, apparently lifeless, on the ground. "Hold hard," said I, to Mr. Corringham, who was not aware of the accident, "I fear the gentleman is hurt ;" and when we raised him from the ground, he was quite insensible to his situation. We should have bled him had we had a lancet; but, as it proved, he was only stunned by the fall; Pavis and I followed the hounds, and got up to them at the first check. Here, as they were feeling for the scent, a second, to me, novel occurrence presented itself. Seeing some woodmen at work, on the skirts of a large wood, Pavis asked them if they had seen the stag, when they replied, they had not, but they had seen two wolves, which probably the cry of our hounds had disturbed! The hounds recovered the chase, which led straight into this wood, Pavis and myself accompanying them; and Corringham to be seen making his way towards us, in the distance. And here two things were apparent. First, it was evident from the manner in which hounds took up the scent, at this point, that their game was not far before them; secondly, that, having been turning to the right and towards home, for about three miles before we came to it, he was afraid to face the open country, after the rattling he had had in the forest, and the pace he had been travelling at afterwards-added to the fact of his having been, at this time, at least ten miles in a direct line from where he was roused. This turn to the right, however, was just what we wished, for who would be so selfish as to desire others to be shut out from the enjoyment of sport which should be common to all, and particularly so, as there had been no superior horsemanship displayed in our case, neither of us having as yet been over a single fence? Again, we were without any one belonging to the hounds, to assist them when they wanted assistance, and we were not only in a country in which we had never before been, but on the point of entering, what we believed to be, a forest, in which we had a very fair chance of being lost. However, enter it we did, and guided by "the cheering cry," we endeavoured to keep within hearing of it, lead us whithersoever it might. How long we pursued our course by ourselves, it is not in my power to determine, but as it was evident we were bearing towards, rather than from, Chantilly, we hoped to fall in with some of the field, and at length we encountered some stragglers, amongst whom was a servant of the Prince of Wagram, one of the two clad in green. He arrived just at the right time, for the stag was beating us; and although one of the huntsmen, with some more of the field (having heard the horn), soon afterwards came up, he would have beat us altogether, had it not been for the science displayed by one man, in the stag-hunting art. In fact, he was fairly lost, and I question his having been recovered, had not this person (an old servant of the late Duke de Bourbon's, I was told,) found him again by the slot, and on very difficult ground. We then renewed the chase, picking up a few more stragglers on our way; but it was not till after we had forced him again into the open country, that the royal dukes, and from forty to fifty more horsemen, joined us, having been heretofore seeking for us, in vain. The rest of this numerous field, indeed, never saw us at all, unless it were those, the Prince of Wagram himself amongst the number, whom we found mustered at La Table, on our return home. From this time to the finish it was all slow hunting. The chase was all over ploughed land, with much naked fallow, and under a very warm sun; and the stag, having had rest, was now a good bit a-head of us; and we not only wanted a greater body of hounds, but those we had began to get slack. To do them justice, however, they hunted, or rather picked their way, well up to their game, over about five miles of country, when he waited for us in a small cover, and we re-found him. The finish was most satisfactory. We viewed him three times in this In cover; and when he did break, it was only to conclude the scene. endeavouring to leap a wall, close to a gentleman's house, called St. Martin, he fell backwards, and died. Although I had seen wild stag-hunting in England (in Devonshire), I had never seen it accompanied by music, that custom having been discontinued before my time. There was something very cheering, I thought, in the notes of the French horn on this day, which, as it were, responded to those of the hounds, when they threw their tongues on the scent, over the open, after having occasionally lost it; and no doubt it is cheering to hounds as well. The mort blown at his death has likewise an animating effect, although not quite without its alloy in seeing one of the noblest animals in the creation with his eyes glazed by death, and that death created by somewhat protracted sufferings--for doubtless this deer's heart was broken. After the mort was blown, one of the huntsmen having stripped off the skin of the fore-legs, from the knees downwards, and cut off the slots, they were presented to the master of the pack, as is the general custom in France; and the carcase, after being brought to the Chateau, was given, with some ceremony, to the hounds. The late Duke de Bourbon, I was told, always gave it to them in the field. The extent, or boundary, of the Duke de Bourbon's country, I have reason to believe, was interminable. The town of Chantilly is in the centre of sixty miles of forest; and I have heard that, with certain intermissions, there is a chain of forests extending to the Black-forest, in Germany. After experiencing one of the highest sensual gratifications of which human nature is capable of receiving-namely, a glass of something sharp and cold to lips parched by heat, and a body exhausted by fatigue, but what to call it I know not*, we remounted our horses and proceeded towards Chantilly, from which place we were said to be distant just six leagues, or about fifteen English miles. As nearly as I could judge, there were present at the death, about a third of the number of horsemen that started in the morning with the hounds, and we fell in with about a score more who were waiting for us at La Table, the owner of the pack and his brother being of the number. We bad likewise now a full chorus of horns, on which the mort was played to great advantage on our approach to the Chateau; and thus ended, making allowance for the time of the year, and one or two other matters, which I may touch upon hereafter, a very fair day's sport, but which might have been rendered better, as I may also hereafter make appear. * On my asking Mr. Charles Lafitte to give it a name, he said, it was cider or wine, but he could not say which. "Not Lafitte, certainly," I replied. NO. LXIV. -VOL. XI. 2 L FIELD SPORTS IN SOUTHERN INDIA. By JUNGLICUS. THE FISH PAGODA AND CONSERVATORY OF SACRED BRAHMINY FISH-INDIAN FISHING-ANGLING BY STEALTH-AND EXCURSIONS IN THE "GREAT WYNAUD JUNGLE," &c. "To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold, Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean; This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.—” BYRON. THE rapidity of Old Father Time's flight has been often the subject of remark in the society of congenial minds, and in no case within the scope of my own observation, was it more apparent than when seated at the mahogany of my highly-esteemed friend and brother sportsman, Captain Bevan, of the Madras army*, enjoying at the same time his well-chilled Cos Destournel, Rose de Medoc, and Chateau La Fitte, and his vivid descriptions of the soul-inspiring, glorious sport, he had so frequently partaken of among those "Primæval woods and forests, vast and rude, Where reigns a deep, unbroken solitude; Eternal teaks, who've wider stretched their arms, so common at one season of the year, in the vast and almost impenetrable forests, called "The Great Wynaud Jungle." His animated recitals of hair-breadth escapes, and perilous encounters with the grim monsters ranging the deeply wooded glens in the district surrounding Manantoddy, invariably rivetted the attention of his auditors, and at the same time had the effect of exciting the courage of all true sportsmen who chanced to hear his narrations. In the beginning of the year 1831, he was entertaining some three or four kindred spirits with his Oriental Sporting Anecdotes, when my willing ear was particularly drawn to his account of a species of immense carp, which he stated was obtainable in the neighbourhood, but from the jealous watchfulness of the Brahmins, who hold the fish in a sacred point of view, and daily feed them with undeviating precision, it Commanding for many years the corps of Wynaud Rangers at Manantoddy, where open house was kept for all European travellers. |