244 FRANK forester's FIELD SPORTS. 



lation against the rival crew, that rapture of pursuit and strife, 

 that triumph of success, which constitutes the chiefest pleasure 

 of the hunter's toilsome life. 



Then nothing is lovelier in nature than the lone passes of the 

 Adirondach highlands, with all their pomp of many-colored 

 autumn woods, piled tier above tier into the pale clear skies of 

 Indian summei", with all their grandeur of rock-crowned peaks, 

 almost inaccessible. Tahawus, Nodonevo, or Oukorlah, names 

 exquisitely significant, as grandly sonorous in the old native 

 tongue, but now degraded and vulgarized into the Mount 

 Marcy, Mount Seward, and Mount Emmons — names equally 

 unmeaning, and small-sounding, of political surveyors — and all 

 their broad and bright expanses of island-studded lakes, reful- 

 gent to the hazy sunshine. 



Here there is no work for the feather-bed city hunter, the 

 curled darling of soft dames. Here the true foot, the stout arm, 

 the keen eye, and the instinctive prescience of the forester and 

 mountaineer, are needed ; here it will be seen who is, and who 

 is not the woodsman, by the surest test of all — the only sure test 

 — of true sportsmanship and lore in venerie, who can best set 

 a-foot the wild Deer of the hills, who bring him to bay or to soil 

 most speedily, who ring aloud his death halloo, and bear the 

 spoils in triumph to his shanty, to feast on the rich loin, while 

 weakly and unskillful rivals slink supperless to beat. 



For those who would read stirring sketches of these things 

 and places, given apart from instruction in the most spirited and 

 graphic tone, whether of prose or verse, I cannot do better than 

 refer to the works of my friend, C F. Hoffman, whose Sacon- 

 DAGA Deer Hunt, and Lays of the Hudson, bespeak at once 

 the accomplished woodman, and the almost inspired poet. 



I now come to the still-hunting of Pennsylvania and the West, 

 a sport, which though entirely divested of the fascination derived 

 from the music of the hounds, or the melody of the horn, from 

 the excitement of swift pursuit, or the thrilling eagerness of a 

 chace in view, has yet its own peculiar charm, from the wild 

 nesa and solitary nature of the haunts into which it leads you 



