4 WOLF-HUNTING. 



favourable to the vagrants, but they find means to evade them in 

 England, and would doubtless do so in Finisterre, if the gaunt 

 wolves, hungry and devastating, and coming as they do in the 

 gloom and darkness of night, did not strike terror to their 

 souls. 



For many a league round the city of Carhaix the poorer pea- 

 sants occupy but one wretched cabin in company, if they are 

 lucky enough to have them, with their pig and cow. A child of 

 the tender age of five or six years is deemed, and is, I am con- 

 vinced, a sufficient protection to the flock by day ; for it was by 

 no means an uncommon thing for me, in my hunting excursions, 

 suddenly to come upon a mere infant in charge of a little black 

 sheep or dwarf cow, in the deepest recesses of a forest or wild 

 broom field, and at the next moment to start and reassure myself 

 on seeing the fresh and unmistakable print of a huge wolfs foot 

 impressed on the clay before me. So long as daylight lasts the 

 child is safe, and so is the flock, for the cowardly villain will not 

 venture to approach them ; but the moment the sun sets he 

 skulks from his lair, and at once becomes a daring and destructive 

 enemy ; the very houses of the peasantry are not then secure from 

 his attack. 



The family of a peasant, consisting of his wife and frequently 

 several children, live huddled together in one dark cabin in a 

 state of indescribable filth and misery. The cabin is built with 

 mud or stone and thatched with broom ; a small aperture is left 

 in the upper part of the door to admit air and light ; while, the 

 fire being kindled, the smoke oozes out as it can through all parts 

 of the roof, and the whole cabin resembles at a distance a huge 

 charcoal heap in an active state of combustion. In nooks of the 

 wall, as high up as the building will admit, rude berths are con- 

 structed, which serve the purpose of beds, the means of access to 

 which, from their lofty position and square contracted entrance, 

 rather resemble the contrivance of a jackdaw's brain than that of 



