WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. in 



Sunk brand and spear, and bended bow, 

 In osiers pale and copses low ; 

 It seemed as if their mother Earth 

 Had swallowed up her warlike birth." 



The disappearance of the peasants was almost immediately 

 followed by that of their natural enemy the gendarmes, who, 

 having been successful on the previous day in capturing a 

 musket, made a show at least of doing their duty on the present 

 occasion, and pursued the peasants' track with the pertinacity 

 of two sleuth-hounds. Already had the piqueurs, at break of 

 day, ascertained with the Lymers that several boars had entered 

 the cover, and that one of unusual size had gone singly to his 

 lair in a pile of rocks overhanging the river. This, in Louis 

 Trefarreg's opinion, was the great boar of Laz, the terror of 

 the peasantry for miles around. The ferocious brute had 

 probably, he thought, taken alarm at the din of war that had 

 disturbed his "ancient solitary reign" in that cover, and had 

 shifted his quarters to this stronghold in Kcenig; and, if so, 

 the piqueur predicted serious danger to men and hounds in 

 forcing him to break away from this granite fortress. However, 

 M. de Kergoolas did not hesitate a moment, but, treating the 

 vaticination as emanating from an over-careful servant, rather than 

 an experienced hunter, he ordered his men to uncouple a lot of 

 old hounds, and to clap them at once on the track of the boar. 



I had again, with M. de Kerjeguz's kind permission, sent my 

 horse to his stables ; so, with no other impedimenta beyond the 

 necessary ammunition, I shouldered my smooth-bore and dashed 

 after the cry. No one, who has not followed a deep-mouthed 

 pack of hounds in rocky and woodland glens, can form an 

 adequate conception of the grand volume of music produced in 

 such places by the united choir of echo and hounds ; nor can I do 

 better than describe it in the language of the million-minded Poet, 

 who, in his " Midsummer Night's Dream," could not have painted 



