Vlll OPIXIOXS OF THE PRESS. 



shoe, and tarns them adrift into the forest. The ascent of the El-Bruz, 

 which follows, deserves the attention of the Alpine Club, especially as the 

 higher summit was after all left unsealed, being cut off, like the peak of 

 Chimborazo, from the accessible side by an impassable chasm. 



Most pursuits, ardently followed out, contain in themselves the ele- 

 ments of an education. The " Old Shekarry " writes like a man whose 

 character owes much to forest-life. A sincere devotion to his art elevates 

 him into a kind of troubadour of hunting crusades ; gives true eloquence to 

 his pictures of forest-scenery, and no mean grace to the improvisoed songs 

 with which he was wont to beguile the evenings after a day's sport. The 

 associations of the tournament predominate over those of the shambles. 

 We can forgive a little egotism, a little unnecessary dialogue, and a little 

 Byronic affectation, for the sake of the great literary merits of the work. 

 It shows us what the life of Mr. Assheton Smith confirms, that a consum- 

 mate sportsman is made of no ordinary stuff. But it presumes, as a 

 condition of success, a degree of labour and patience amounting almost to 

 self-sacrifice. " M. Jules Gerard spent upwards of six hundred nights in 

 the forest before he killed his twenty-sixth lion." The " Old Shekarry " 

 himself was engaged for days together under an Indian sun in following 

 some one quarry, resolutely abstaining from all inferior game. In the 

 valuable hints on rifle-shooting which close the volume he betrays no 

 leaning to short cuts and empirical expedients. " Constant practice," 

 " intense study," and close attention to the regulation system of instruc- 

 tion, are the only secrets of his method. At the same time he declares for 

 the breech-loading principle, and the reasons by which he justifies this 

 preference in the case of fowHag-pieces (pp. 488-96) seem to us un- 

 answerable. The man who can knock over an ibex at 400 yards, and meets 

 the fiercest animals single-handed and on foot, has a right to speak on these 

 points. 



The " Old Shekarry" represents a class of men with which a country 

 that owns a hundred colonies cannot afford to dispense. The race of 

 "mighty hunters" is not extinct; their descendants are the pioneers of 

 many an enterprise of commercial or scientific discovery. Nor is the most 

 ancient of human occupations robbed of its dignity when it is associated 

 with the tastes of a scholar and the feelings of a gentleman. 



