chap. I. ENCHANTING MOMENTS. $ 



a rifle. Often have I pitied Gordon dimming 

 when I have heard him talked of as a palpable 

 Munchausen, by men who never fired a rifle, or saw a 

 wild beast, except in a cage ; and still these men 

 form the greater proportion of the ' readers ' of these 

 works. 



Men who have not seen, cannot understand the 

 grandeur of wild sports in a wild country. There is 

 an indescribable feeling of supremacy in a man who 

 understands his game thoroughly, when he stands 

 upon some elevated point and gazes over the wild 

 territory of savage beasts. He feels himself an in- 

 vader upon the solitudes of nature. The very stillness 

 of the scene is his delight. There is a mournful 

 silence in the calmness of the evening, when the 

 tropical sun sinks upon the horizon— a conviction 

 that man has left this region undisturbed to its wild 

 tenants. No hum of distant voices, no rumbling of 

 busy wheels, no cries of domestic animals meet the 

 ear. He stands upon a wilderness, pathless and un- 

 trodden by the foot of civilisation, where no sound is 

 ever heard but that of the elements, when the thunder 

 rolls among the towering forests or the wind howls 

 along the plains. He gazes far, far into the distance, 

 where the blue mountains melt into an indefinite 

 haze ; he looks above him to the rocky pinnacles 

 which spring from the level plain, their swarthy cliffs 

 glistening from the recent shower, and patches of rich 



