110 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



But the type of a true hound being the Sleuch, 

 Slot, or Blood-hound, although it may have been 

 found in Umbria, and there is little doubt that it 

 existed in Gaul before the introduction of Christi- 

 anity, we owe to the East the great and improved 

 breeds which constitute the present race. The 

 blood-hound, so remarkable for his tracking sagacity, 

 was used in the ferocious wars between our Edwards 

 and the Scottish Bruces ; by Henry VIII. in France ; 

 and still more inhumanly by the Spaniards in Peru ; 

 and by Elizabeth, in the Irish wars, where the Earl 

 of Essex had no less than 800 of them in his army.* 

 Even so late as the Maroon rebellion in Jamaica, 

 and Bonaparte's attempt to recover St. Domingo, 

 blood-hounds were trained to hunt human beings 

 like wild beasts. A black race of hounds was 

 already established in the Ardennes in the sixth 

 century, having been brought thither, according 

 to legends, by St. Hubert, from the south of Gaul ; 

 we may surmise that it was derived from the East, 

 for Christian pilgrims of rank, on their return from 

 Palestine, before the crusades, brought from Con- 

 stantinople a white race, which they offered at the 

 shrine of St. Roch, because he was the patron under 

 whose invocation persons suffering in fear of hydro- 

 phobia were supposed to receive protection; but 

 the breed was no less called after St. Hubert, the 

 patron of hunting. The black and the white were 

 most likely soon regarded as types of the Pagan and 

 the Christian conditions of existence ; and although 

 * Camerarius, C. 104, centur. 12. 



