SMOKER AND THE STAG AT BAY. 39 



they did very well. Smoker, my famous deer-dog 

 and retriever, whose equal I have never known, and 

 whose full-length portrait I have by Ballinger, was 

 the only dog I ever saw who was singly a match for 

 any stag. It was from Hampstead Park that he 

 forced a large stag he was set to catch over the park 

 pales and into the river, and thence some way across 

 the moor. I went up to the park pales when they 

 went over to see what happened on the other side ; 

 but my servant, Benjamin Eary, whose discharge 

 from the Guards I had purchased when I left them, 

 made at once for the park gate, and got round sooner 

 than I did. The stag, with his threatening antlers, 

 had turned to bay, in a shallow stream, where he 

 had ample footing, but wherein Smoker was forced 

 to swim. Landseer's beautiful picture of the stag 

 brought to bay by two gaze hounds in the lake, 

 with the eagle in the distance coming to see what 

 will be left for him, gives the depth of the water 

 exactly in which the occurrence took place. Just as 

 I came near, I beheld the stag bury the dog in the 

 water on the points of his brow antlers ; and as I got 

 nearer, I saw the dog, with a dreadful wound in the 

 back and the stream discoloured with his blood, wildly 

 rise, and, shaking his confusion off, he was swimming 

 at the stag again, for the stream being strong luckily, 

 he had been carried some few yards away. Ben 

 was off his horse, and evidently looking at the con- 

 dition of Smoker, when, as I came up, I called out 

 " to get the dog up or he would be killed." I do not 

 think then that there was more than three yards be- 

 tween the dog and the stag, as the dog came on to the 

 fight much exhausted against the stream. The deer's 



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