64 EEMINISCEXCES OF A SPORTSMAN. 



when tliey were steering their course to the park, 

 and we saw at the same time a gamekeeper watching 

 us through the park paling. This anecdote shows that 

 to retain pheasants in your wood and pla,ntations you 

 must not be niggardly of food, and nothing attains this 

 object so well as giving them occasionally in troughs, 

 placed in the covers, white peas, of which pheasants are 

 immoderately fond. By the combined exertions of the 



late Greneral C , Captain K , and myself, all keen 



sportsmen, our regimental mess was well supplied with 

 royal pheasants, snipes, and occasionally woodcocks and 

 hares. The snipes we shot on the swampy parts of 

 Bagshot Heath, the hares and woodcocks on a small 

 property belonging to a friend of mine near Windsor, on 

 which there were two or three small covers, but no 

 pheasants. 



Just nineteen years from this period, I had been 

 encamped on Bagshot Heath with the Gre3^s (1798) in 

 which corps I was then a lieutenant. We had a force 

 of from 8000 to 10,000 cavalry under the command of 

 the late Sir D. Dundas, who was then in high favour 

 with George the Third, and at that time looked up to 

 as the most skilful general in the movement of a large 

 body of cavalry. But, as in the case of the great Duke of 

 Marlborough, that vile passion, avarice, made him con- 

 temptible, which was carried so far as even to have 

 patches of scarlet sown on old uniforms. 



An anecdote which I know to be true is related of 

 him, which occasioned much disgust at the time. In 

 one of the charges of cavalry, made at Bagshot Heath, 

 the horse of a private of the 7th Light Dragoons fell, and 

 the rider sustained a compound fracture in one of his 

 legs. Whilst the surgeon of the regiment was giving 



