CHAPTER II. 



OF THE STAG AND HIS NATURE. 



Captain and leader and lord of the herd, 

 Bold and alert when his mettle is stirred, 

 Lithe as a lion and light as a bird. 

 Royal in crest. — Whyte Melville. 



Beautiful beyond description as is the scenery of 

 West Somerset and North Devon, it is not to look 

 at scenery that sportsmen assemble there every 

 autumn in hundreds ; it is to go stag-hunting, to see 

 this wild sport carried on, if not with all the ceremony, 

 at all events with all the essential peculiarities 

 which characterised it five hundred or a thousand 

 years ago. 



What is it that draws people of all descriptions, 

 in vehicles of all descriptions, drags, carriages, carts, 

 motors, bicycles, to every meet of the Devon and 

 Somerset Staghounds ? The large majority know 

 nothing about hunting and care less, hounds, horses, 

 and even riders are but a spectacle of passing 

 interest, but they have come to " see the stag," a 

 fixed resolve, pursued with a determination which, 

 however laudable at the end of the hunt, is some- 

 times rather out of place at the beginning. This 



