202 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



the oddest ways of showing her attachment I ever saw. The 

 hops she gave and the faces she made, with a prolonged 

 "Oh" at the end of them, her sea-green eyes, brilliant with 

 affection when she came to me on the lawn, were, though un- 

 couth, very entertaining. Her games at play with the graceful 

 gazelle were extraordinary, and it was not possible to see more 

 different creatures joining in one common sport than those two 

 pets presented in their happy hours. The gazelle bounding all- 

 fours around and over the cormorant, and the cormorant utter- 

 ing short hoarse notes and trying to peck her, and waddling 

 after the deer in the hope of a closer meeting. Then the gazelle 

 would threaten to butt with her horns, which always made the 

 cormorant get very upright and thin, the plumage drawn closely 

 to the body, as if well aware of the danger ; when if the gazelle 

 did charge, the cormorant was obliged to shuffle and dodge out 

 of the way ; but if she succeeded to meet the soft nose of the 

 gazelle with her powerfully sharp beak, the gazelle would bound 

 yards into the air, and relinquish the mimic battle. Poor Zellie 

 lies in a little wood adjacent to the lawn at Beacon, beneath a 

 stone, near the last home of other favourites, on which is the 

 following inscription from the pen of her sorrowing owner : 



' c To the Memory of a Gazelle brought home from Syria by Captain 

 the Honourable M. F. F. Berkeley, of H.M.S. the Thunderer, after the 

 fall of Acre. She died in December, 1845." 



e e The warmth of summer's sun may trace 

 The tend'rest wild-flower here, 

 May brighten in this lonely place 

 The night-wept dewy tear. 

 But Syria's beam cannot relume 

 Her daughter's lustrous eyes, 

 Nor reawaken from the tomb 

 An innocence that dies. 

 Then, stranger ! thus once more I crave 

 Thy pity to retain ; 

 Thou wilt not injure Zellie's grave, 

 Nor break her rest again ? " 



While writing these Memoirs, almost every day adds to the 



