282 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



six, or seven in the afternoon. One of these chases lasted seven 

 hours, many of them two, three, four, and five hours ; and out 

 of these forty-eight deer so hunted, I have been up at the end 

 to shoot the deer in forty-two instances. In two other instances 

 the hound drove the deer from the forest, and killed one of 

 them in the manors by himself I lost his tongue owing to the 

 wind ; the other he hunted into the manor near Ringwood, and 

 was followed by two of my men, who having Baron the gaze- 

 hound in a leash, slipped him at a view, and he pulled down 

 the deer. Thus I accounted for forty-four out of forty-eight 

 deer; and when it is considered that the forest consists of 

 upwards of sixty thousand acres, and that the deer have a 

 power to range the whole of it if they please, and that I 

 followed the hound on foot, my brother sportsmen in the high- 

 lands and old friend Mr. Horatio Ross, whom I am sorry to say 

 I have not seen for years, will admit that, as portrayed by 

 Landseer in one of his pictures, " There was life in the old dog 

 yet " there still is a step or two left in me. 



In concluding these Reminiscences, I cannot do so without 

 a short notice of bonnie Scotland ; that region of mist and 

 mystery, mountain and moving flood. Though its sports on 

 forest, loch, and river have often been eulogised by writers well 

 versed in their wild variety, yet it is not unbecoming in me to 

 glance at scenes in which I have shared with so much pleasure. 

 In the Lowlands of Stranraer, on Lord Stair's domains, I have 

 killed the moor game, pheasant and partridge, and the perch, 

 pike, and trout of its lakes and streams. At Dall, in the 

 western Highlands, on the banks of Loch Rannoch, and in the 

 Black Wood, I have done the same ; and though last not least, 

 with Lord Malmsbury I have trod the magnificent mountains of 

 Lochiel, stalked the wild stag, or waited for him in the passes 

 of the forest. 



It is the fashion of the English tourist to roam abroad, to 

 rush down the Rhine, " going foreign " in search of sights and 

 scenery, and to rave of the picturesque ; while at the same time 

 those very pleasure- seekers, in all probability, have never seen 



