The Bloodhound. 53 



and certainly the colour is admirably adapted to a dog used for night 

 work, as he was ; and this reminds me that Dr Caius tells us these dogs 

 were kept in dark kennels, that they might better do night work. The 

 practice would assuredly defeat its object. 



When the bloodhound was first used to track fugitives I have never 

 been able to discover ; the first written notice of such a thing I am 

 acquainted with occurs in " Blind Harry's Life of William Wallace," the 

 Scottish patriot, as the following lines, which have been so frequently 

 quoted by writers on the bloodhound, show : 



About the groud they set on breid ani length 

 A hundreth men, chairgit in arms strang, 

 To keep a hunde that they had them amang, 

 In G'illisland there wab that Brachall bred, 

 Sikyr of scen% to follow them that fled . 

 Sae was she used in Eske and Liddesdale, 

 Quhile she gat bluid nae fleeing might avail. 



And again : 



But this sleuth brache, quilke sekyr w as and keen, 

 On Wallace fute followit sae felloune fast 

 Quilk in thar sicht thai prochit at the last. 



In the traditions of the peasantry of the west of Scotland many stirring 

 stories of the " hair-breadth 'scapes " of Wallace and Bruce from blood- 

 hounds still live, and some of them at the present moment come up fresh 

 to the writer's mind, although they have lain buried for many years. 



In the wars in Ireland bloodhounds were used in a manner reflecting 

 little credit on the dominant power, and their scenting powers and 

 ferocity have, in later times, been used to hunt down the unfortunate 

 slaves in Cuba and elsewhere. For a stirring account of the employment 

 of over a hundred of these dogs in hunting down revolted negroes in 

 Jamaica, I refer the reader to the ' Sportman's Cabinet." 



In our own country they were long bred and trained to track border 

 raiders, and a most exciting chase it must have been through those wild 

 moorlands, as all who have read Scott, even without having visited the 

 scenes he so wall depicts, will say. The words of eulogy on the dead 

 Eichard Musgrave, pronounced by "the stark moss -trooping Scott," 

 William of Deloraine, who, 



By wily turns and desperate bounds, 

 Had baffled Percy's best bloodhounds, 



