152 EEMINISCEJfCES OF A SPOETSMAN. 



snipe, or wild fowl, far more than killing a great head 

 of game without working for it, and all true sportsmen 

 will, I doubt not, say that with health and strength 

 there is much more pleasure in killing six or seven 

 brace of birds over a leash of well ranging dogs in a 

 wild country, than by bagging thirty or forty brace in a 

 Norfolk or Suffolk turnip field."* This is a sportsman 

 after my own heart. 



In 1833 I joined the army of the Emperor Don 

 Pedro, in the island of Terceira, one of the Azores, as 

 an amateur, receiving neither rations nor pay. Whilst 

 there I got acquainted with an English gentleman who 

 had resided several years in a retired part of the 

 island. He was very fond of shooting, and he told me 

 that he went to a mountain which was well wooded 

 every year in the month of September ; and in these 

 woods and adjoining hedgerows he usually had a fort- 

 night's very good woodcock shooting, the greater pro- 

 portion being full-grown young birds which had been 

 bred in the island. I sailed with this expedition to the 

 coast of Portugal, and was at the capture of Oporto. 

 An English merchant's wife displayed much courage 

 and presence of mind on the day we took the place. 

 I called on her about purchasing the horse of an 

 English captain who commanded a frigate. On enter- 

 ing the room she remarked, " Sir, we must go to this 

 corner, as the enemy from the other side of the Douro 

 have fired several shots in a diagonal direction through 

 the windows of this room, but in this part we shall be 

 safe." And whilst with her two balls actually passed 

 through the apartment in the direction she mentioned. 



* Eemiuiscences of Shooting N, and S. Woies. 



