i63 ROYAL ROCK BEAGLE HUNT. 



Victorious William to more decent rules 

 Subdu'd our Saxon fathers, taught to speak 

 The proper dialect, with horn and voice 

 To cheer the busj- hound, whose well-known cry 

 His list'ning peers approve with joint acclaim. 

 From him, successive huntsmen learn'd to join, 

 In bloody social leagues, the multitude 

 Dispers'd, to size, to sort, their various tribes. 

 To rear, feed, hunt, and discipline the pack. 

 Hail, happy Britain ! highly favour'd Isle, 

 In thee alone, fair land of libeii}-, 

 Is bred the perfect hound, in scent and speed 

 As yet imrivall'd ; while in other climes 

 Their virtue fails, a weak dcgen'rate race. 



Sotiicrvilc. 



The following letter about the hounds, sent out in the spring of 1889, 

 gives us a notion of the difRculties of hunting in a tropical climate :^ 



Rangoon, 6th July, i88g. 



Dear Mr. Stevenson, — Rowett has handed me your letter, and has asked 

 me to write to tell you the fate of the pack of hounds j'ou last sent out. You 

 and Mr. Macfie will be astonished and sorry to hear that they have all died 

 except one, and that we have had to close our kennels, dismiss the staff, and 

 do without a drag hunt this season. 



After all your trouble and care, and all the money expended, it seems a 

 cruel fate that we should not have had a single run with them. They were 

 landed looking as fit as we usually get them after the long voyage, and we all 

 liked the look of them. The weather was simply infernal when they arrived ; 

 and instead of getting rain about that time, and the cool weather we generally 

 look for about the middle of May, the rain held off and people suffered greatly, 

 and the hounds very soon showed symptoms of disease. 



A few days after landing, Majestic, Rummager, and Ringwood sickened ; 

 the two latter recovered, but Majestic succumbed. Then in about a fortnight 

 they all began to sicken, and from the 20th May on, we had one or two deaths 

 every day or two. We had post-moriems on them, and all were found similarly 

 diseased — livers and kidneys rotten, spleens greatly enlarged, and the blood 

 white and fibrous. We tried every remedy, had a European soldier, who had 

 been in kennels at home, specially engaged to look after them, and they were 

 dieted and nursed like children, but all to no purpose. Rhapsody, a bitch, is 

 the only survivor of the new lot of eight and a half couples shipped, and she 

 is a shadow, and looks like snuffing out at any moment ; lint a lady is nursing it 

 carefully and hopes to bring it round. 



The Vet. says we chose the wrong time of year to bring them out, and I 

 think we must accept th"at for a fact now, as so many of our animals have died. 

 His theory is that they contract liver disease on the voyage, and if the weather 

 is as intensely dry and hot as it was when they arrived, they must suffer. After 

 the winter's work at home, instead of getting good food and gentle exercise to 

 strengthen and build up their constitutions, they are put on board a steamer 

 where they can get no exercise, and, perhaps, are not too carefully fed, and are 

 quickly brought out from the cold of an English March to the intense heat of a 

 Burmese May, and the change is too great for any but the strongest animals 

 to bear. 



