Elk-Hunting. 37 



paw the ground : their owners hardly know them by 

 the change. 



We have frequently mustered as many as thirty horses 

 at a meet ; but on these occasions a picked spot is chosen 

 where the sport may be easily witnessed by those who 

 are unaccustomed to it. The horses may, in these in- 

 stances, be available, but as a rule they are perfectly 

 useless in elk-hunting, as the plains are so boggy that 

 they would be hock-deep every quarter of a mile. 

 Thus no person can thoroughly enjoy elk-hunting who 

 is not well accustomed to it, as it is a sport conducted 

 entirely on foot, and the thinness of the air in this ele- 

 vated region is very trying to the lungs in hard exercise. 

 Thoroughly sound in wind and limb, with no super- 

 fluous flesh, must be the man who would follow the 

 hounds in this wild country — through jungles, rivers, 

 plains and deep ravines, sometimes from sunrise to sun- 

 set without tasting food since the previous evening, with 

 the exception of a cup of coffee and piece of toast before 

 starting. It is trying work, but it is a noble sport: no 

 weapon but the hunting-knife ; no certainty as to the 

 character of the game that may be found ; it may be 

 either an elk, or a boar, or a leopard, and yet the knift 

 and the good hounds are all that can be trusted in. 



It is a glorious sport certainly to a man who thoroughly 

 understands it ; the voice of every hound familiar to his 

 ear, the particular kind of game that is found is at once 

 known to him long before he is in view by the style of 

 the hunting. If an elk is found, the hounds follow with 

 a burst straight as a line, and at a killing pace, directly 

 up the hill, till he at length turns and bends his head- 

 long course for some stronghold in a deep river to bay. 

 Listening to the hounds till certain of their course, a 



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