THE LOCAL POPULATION. 207 



atlons will not be saved. I am intimately acquainted 

 with the people I speak of, by moonlight in their boats 

 on the October and November as well as the calmer 

 summer sea, in the mackerel as well as the herring- 

 season. The Xew Forest men, the same who used to 

 " run the tubs " and to resist their capture, will talk 

 to me and make me acquainted with the general 

 feeling. They know I give them peaceful advice, 

 and they are aware that I do my best to uphold each 

 law, and that in any personal strife I am or have been 

 a match for any of them, always, on the other hand, 

 to the best of the little means I have, rewarding 

 those who please me with a constrained though a 

 liberally intending purse ; and these facts united put 

 us on a very good footing. There is always something- 

 better than tea to drink when I join in any sport, 

 and they are very glad when I come among them. 

 I am not injured by their society, and I hope that 

 I have served, placed, and promoted many a good 

 man who might otherwise have been lost. One of 

 these men, not nmch more than a year ago, had 

 made a little money, — start not, reader, when I say 

 that he is sternly regarded by the coast guard, — 

 and he took a farm near my house. The first act 

 of possession was, unasked, to offer me the exclusive 

 right to kill or preserve any game there might be on 

 it, which 1 accepted. If my hybrids, the birds be- 

 tween bantam and pheasant, stray away, as they 

 are apt to do, they are always safe if in the hands 

 of men indigenous to the soil, and are brought back 

 without injury to a feather. I cannot say so much 

 for a man who, I believe, was once a tallow-chandler 

 at Bath, one of Mr. Ross's importations by way of a 

 tenant under Lady Stuart De Kothesay, who sows 



