D O 



<>ld times, when possessions were insecure, the blood- 

 hound was employed to trace out the thief, and 

 recover the stolen goods ; so that he would swim a river 

 in course of the pursuit, and immediately recover the 

 footsteps of the culprit on the other side, never ceasing 

 to follow him. until he was taken. Thus this animal 

 is put under the protection of the most ancient laws, 

 which enact, " that no person should stop or disturb 

 a bloodhound or man passing with him, to follow 

 thieves, or take malefactors." Theft was also so 

 common in this island, that a person denying access 

 to the hound was held participant in the crime. 

 There is little doubt that it was known on the conti- 

 nent, and also in England ; but the Scottish blood- 

 hound, which is said to have been of large size and 

 elegant proportions, was the most celebrated of all. 

 Conrad Gcsner, who wrote nearly three hundred years 

 ago, has preserved a figure of the Scottish blood- 

 hound, which, he says, was transmitted to him by 

 Henry Sinclair, Dean of Glasgow, a distinguished 

 character of his era ; and Hector Boyce affirms, that 

 it was of a red colour, or black with small spots. 

 There was some difference between it and the English 

 .bloodhound, though the properties of the latter were 

 also eminent. 



Of the atrocities which were committed in ancient 

 times by using bloodhounds against the human race, 

 no accounts have come down to us ; but unfortunately 

 we have specimen enough of what can be perpetrated 

 in this way, in perhaps the blackest page in a volume 

 of human history, no part of which is very bright. 

 This is the history of the conduct of the Christian 

 white men of Europe toward the unoffending red men 

 of some parts of America, and, more so, to few of 

 the hapless sons of Africa who had been captured and 

 carried away to endure all the miseries of colonial 

 slavery. Even the great Col u in bus himself, in order 

 more completely to subdue the lawful owners of the 

 island of Hayti or St. Domingo, carried out with him 

 twenty-four bloodhounds as auxiliaries in his unjusti- 

 fiable war upon the harmless and newly discovered 

 natives. It is possible that all the occasions upon 

 which bloodhounds have been used against negro 

 slaves which have taken refuge in the mountains have 

 not been recorded ; but a single specimen of their 

 use by the French, some time previous to the island 

 being wrested from their power, will suffice. In the 

 last war carried on against the revolted negroes, or 

 Maroons as they were called, they employed blood- 

 hounds regularly trained against them, and they are 

 even said to have had the barbarity of throwing their 

 captives to the dogs to be devoured alive. In train- 

 ing the hounds to this inhuman pursuit, we are told 

 that they were confined in a kennel sparred like a 

 caue, and sparingly supplied with the blood of other 

 animals. The fit: lire of a negro in wicker work, stuffed 

 with blood and entrails, was next provided as they 

 grew a little older, and occasionally exhibited in the 

 upper part of the cage : the dogs ferociously struggled 

 against their confinement, and as their impatience 

 increased, the effigy was brought nearer and nearer, 

 while their usual subsistence underwent still greater 

 diminution. At length it was resigned to them, and 

 while voraciously tearing it up, and devouring the 

 contents, the caresses of the keepers encouraged their 

 perseverance. Thus their animosity to black men 

 was excited in proportion to their attachment to the 

 whites ; and they were sent out to the chase when 

 their training was considered complete. The miscr- 



G - 309 



able negro had no means of escape : he was either 

 hunted down and torn to pieces, his wife and children 

 sharing perhaps his calamity, or, if taking refuge 

 on a tree, he was betrayed by the yelping of the 

 bloodhounds into the power of his more savage pur- 

 suers. This, however, was not the full extent of the 

 evil. " But, indifferently kept in the neighbourhood 

 of Cape Frai^ois, the dogs frequently broke loose, 

 and infants were devoured in an instant from the 

 public way. At other times they proceeded to the 

 neighbouring woods, and surprising a harmless family 

 of labourers at their simple meal, tore the babe from 

 the breast of its mother, or devoured the whole party, 

 and returned with their horrid jaws drenched in tiie 

 gore of those who were acknowledged, even in the 

 eyes of the French army, as innocent, and therefore 

 permitted to furnish them with the produce of their 

 labours." 



The stages of cruelty are progressive ; and those 

 who delight in the torture of animals, w ill soon be in- 

 different to the sufferings of mankind. Accordingly, 

 the ruder nations universally enjoy ferocious contests, 

 and are gratified with the sight of blood. Lions, 

 tigers, and elephants, have been encouraged to tear 

 each other in pieces, where mutual antipathies ceased 

 to operate ; but to make use of that quality in the 

 dog, which fits him especially for being the servant of 

 man to make use of that quality as an instrument of 

 the most inhuman torture upon those who were already 

 suffering misery enough, is beyond a parallel in the 

 annals of atrocity. 



In hunting, which was his legitimate work in those 

 days, when much of the country was in the condition 

 of forest and chace, deer numerous, oxen few, and 

 sheep not introduced in many places, the proper func- 

 tion of the bloodhound was to find the game rather 

 than to run it down ; and it was because he could find 

 the scent or slot,<is well as keep it till he came on the 

 game, that he was called the slot-hound or sleuth-hound. 

 He was also called the slow-hound, in which the 

 epithet slow may have in part been a corruption of 

 sleuth, though it also related to the rate of his follow- 

 ing as compared to that of the deerhounds, which, as 

 keeping more on the view than on the slot, run with 

 much more velocity. The staunch perseverance and 

 continued following of the bloodhound compensated 

 for his inferior swiftness, as without him the deer could 

 not, in many cases, have been found ; and if the deer 

 threw the staghounds out, the bloodhound was ready to 

 find him again. The perfection to which he could be 

 trained for the slot was very wonderful, and forms a 

 very curious portion of the doctrine of the sense of 

 smell. To prepare him for his labour, his no.*e was 

 either rubbed against the kind of animal in quest of 

 which he was to go, or with the hand of a man which 

 had been so rubbed. This being done, the hound was 

 let slip ; when he instantly began beating for a slot ; 

 and, though the scents of ever so many animals luy 

 on his beat, he never followed except on the right one. 

 It was in this that the great superiority of the blood- 

 hound consisted. Many other dogs of the chase can 

 be trained to one kind of game; but there were none 

 who could be trained to any kind in a summary 

 manner like the bloodhound. 



It would be very desirable to know upon what this 

 capacity of being able to distinguish species in scents 

 depends ; but the question is, we fear, beyond the 

 possiblity of solution. 



THE STAG-HOUND is now the largest variety of 



