242 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



law, and one of their exclamations is, " What have we got by 

 the utter destruction of the deer, and why, if they are so killed, 

 are we not to enjoy the pasturage vacated by them ? Instead 

 of getting more in fuel and pasturage we now have less, though 

 there are no deer to eat it." If the feeling remains in the 

 forest such as it is, instead of reducing the woodmen and 

 keepers, if the plantations are to be kept from fire, the staff of 

 watchers must not only be amended by the introduction of more 

 active men, but the Crown will have yearly to expend a heavy 

 sum of money in keeping down the gorse and preventing its 

 being accessible to fire, or the plantations 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 New Forest men, the same who used to " run the 

 tubs " 1 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 much 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 I accepted. If my hybrids, the birds 

 between bantam and pheasant, stray away, as they are apt to 

 do, they are always safe in the hands of men indigenous to the 

 1 Smuggle liquor. ED. 



