282 The Wilderness Hunter 



by those who make sport, not a manly pastime, but 

 the one serious business of their lives. 



The entries in the diaries are short, and are 

 couched in the homely vigorous English, so famil- 

 iar to the readers of Washington's journals and pri- 

 vate letters. Sometimes they are brief jottings in 

 reference to shooting trips ; such as : "Rid out with 

 my gun"; "went pheasant hunting"; "went duck- 

 ing," and "went a-gunning up the Creek." But far 

 more often they are: "Rid out with my hounds," 

 "went a fox hunting," or "went a hunting." In 

 their perfect simplicity and good faith they are 

 strongly characteristic of the man. He enters his 

 blank days and failures as conscientiously as his red- 

 letter days of success : recording with equal care on 

 one day, "Fox hunting with Captain Posey catch 

 a Fox," and another, "Went a hunting with Lord 

 Fairfax . . . catched nothing." 



Occasionally he began as early as August and 

 continued until April ; and while he sometimes made 

 but eight or ten hunts in a season, at others he made 

 as many in a month. Often he hunted from Mt. 

 Vernon, going out once or twice a week, either alone 

 or with a party of his friends and neighbors; and 

 again he would meet with these same neighbors at 

 one of their houses, and devote several days solely 

 to the chase. The country was still very wild, and 

 now and then game was encountered with which the 



