284 FRANK foi;ester's field sports. 



and of pluck enough, to occupy his attention, is to reload your 

 liHe as (juietly and as deliberately as possible, and then step- 

 ping up to him, to give him the charge in a vital jilace delibe- 

 rately. 



Bears, if they are long run, and can outrun the hounds, which 

 in dense coverts an old lean one will often do, are very apt to 

 run in circles, and return to the lair from which they were first 

 started : the drivers, therefore, when the game is afoot and the 

 hounds have gone away on a hot scent, can hardly do better 

 than take post on the paths by which he is likely to return, and 

 await his coming patiently. 



In crossing bayous, or streams, these sagacious brutes will 

 always take advantage of a log or tree which may have fallen 

 across it, if there be one in the vicinity of their course, and for 

 it they will frequently shape their path, so that it is a common 

 and by no means unwise manoeuvre, when the cry of the hounds 

 betokens that the quarry is heading for a kno\vn stream, to 

 dash forward and take post at any crossing log of which the 

 hunter may be aware, remembering always the old rule to keep 

 well to leeward. As a general rule, no wild animal, not even 

 wild fowl, can be approached certainly down wind, although 1 

 believe it is the ears and not the noses of the latter, to which 

 our presence is obnoxious. 



There is another noble animal peculiar to these regions, fiercer 

 and more dangerous than any, but he is rare, and of his habits 

 and whereabouts little is known — I mean the Wild Bull. I 

 do not mean the Bison, nor a Domestic Bull which may have 

 broken bounds and taken to the forest accidentally, bvit the 

 descendant of the cattle turned out by the earliest Spanish 

 settlers, to increase and multiply in the wilderness, the progeny 

 perhaps of the far-famed Bulls of Andalusia, which were the 

 pride and terror of the plazas di toro, at Grenada, or Madrid, 

 for the delight of Moorish kings, or prouder Spanish nobles. 

 Of these tremendous animals, 1 know nothing except an anec- 

 dote of the late General Floyd, who it is said used to encounter 

 them and kill them single-handed, on horseback, with the lance. 



