10 HUNTING ADVENTURES 



lished it as a law, that as the natural right of things which have 

 no master belongs to the first possessor, wild beasts, birds, and 

 fishes, are the property of those who can take them first. But 

 the northern barbarians, A'ho over-ran the Roman empire, bringing 

 with them a stronger taste for the diversion, and the people being 

 now possessed of other and more easy means of subsistence, from 

 the lands' and possessions of these they had vanquished, their chiefs 

 began to appropriate the right of hunting, and, instead of a 

 natural right, to make it a royal one. Thus rt continues to this 

 day ; the right of hunting in the Old World belonging only to the 

 king, an 1 those who derive it from him. In America we have a 

 better fashion. 



The hunting used by the ancients was much like that now 

 practised for the reindeer, which is seldom hunted at force, or 

 with hounds ; but only drawn with a blood hound, and taken with 

 nets and engines. Thus did they with all beasts ; whence a dog 

 was never commended by them for opening, before he has dis- 

 covered where the beast lies. Hence, they were not curious as 

 to the music of their hounds, or the composition of their pack, for 

 deepness, loudness, or sweetness of cry, which are principal points 

 in trodern hunting. Their huntsmen, indeed, were accustomed 

 to shout and make a great noise, as Virgil observes in his third 

 book of Georgics, verse 413. 



" Ingentem clamore premes ad retia cervum." 



But that confusion was only to bring the deer to the nets laid foi 

 him. The Sicilian mode of hunting had something in it very ex- 

 traordinary. The gentry being informed which way a herd of deer 

 passed, gave notice to one another, and appointed a meeting ; every 

 one bringing with him a cross-bow or long-bow, and a bundle of 

 staves shod with iron, the heads bored, with a cord passing througD 

 them all : thus provided, they come to the herd, and casting them- 

 selves about in a large ring, surrounded the deer; Then each 

 taking his stand, unbound his fagot, set up his stake, and tie ' 

 .he end of the cord to that of his next neighbor, ten feet fron : 

 each other. Then taking feathers, dyed in crimson, and fastened 

 on a thread, they tied them to the cord ; so that with the least 



