OUTLYING DEER 31 



called bloodhounds, from the keeper at Lord Aylesbury's, 

 Adams, who had been a servant at Berkeley Castle under my 

 father. I remember drawing with these one day till all were 

 impatient, from the want of a find, when suddenly I heard 

 what was like the rush of a roused stag, and the hounds then in 

 full cry. I knew nothing of my pack, but deeming that it must 

 be right, I cheered them, and, hearing the cry nearing me, I 

 strained my eyes to see what aged deer they were on. Crash, 

 crash went bough after bough, and I said to myself, " a royal 

 hart!" when out it came, a low-bred, vulgar -looking half- 

 starved heifer, with her tail on end, and evidently not about to 

 last long. We rode, we cracked our whips, we rated, but all in 

 vain, till the heifer got cast in the bushes and the hounds all 

 hold of her, when, by dint of thrashing and coupling up the 

 hounds, we saved her life. I found the deer with these hounds 

 afterwards, and 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 Hamp- 

 stead 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 gazehounds 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 



