272 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



to a knot upon the side of its trunk, up which he ran, and 

 entered a hollow in the top where it had been broken off, near 

 thirty feet from the ground, in some storm. I respected the 

 astuteness of the trick too much to betray its author, since I 

 was now personally satisfied; and he continued for a long 

 time yet, while I kept his secret, to be the wonder and the 

 topic of neighboring fox-hunters, until at last one of them 

 happened to take the same idea into his head, and found out 

 the mystery. He avenged himself by cutting down the tree, 

 and capturing the smart fox. 



The tree stood at such a distance from the fence, that no 

 one of us, who had examined the ground, ever dreamed of the 

 possibility that the fox would leap to it ; it seemed a physical 

 impossibility ; but practice and the convenient knot had enabled 

 cunning Reynard to overcome it, with assured ease. I quote 

 an incident from the Quadrupeds of America of nearly the 

 same class. 



Shortly after the rail road from Charleston to Hamburg, 

 South Carolina, had been constructed, the rails, a portion of 

 the distance, having been laid upon timbers at a considerable 

 height from the ground, supported by strong posts, we ob- 

 served a fox which was hard pressed by a pack of hounds, 

 mounting the rails, upon which he ran several hundred yards ; 

 the dogs were unable to pursue him, and thus he crossed a 

 deep cypress swamp, over which the rail road was in this 

 singular manner carried, and made his escape on the opposite 

 side. 



The late Benjamin C. Yancy, Esq., an eminent lawyer, 

 who in his youth was very fond of fox hunting, related the 

 following: A fox had been pursued, near his residence in 

 Edgefield, several times, but the hounds always lost the track 

 at a place where there was a foot-path leading down a steep 

 hill. He, therefore, determined to conceal himself near this 

 declivity the next time the fox was started, in order to dis- 

 cover his mode of baffling the dogs at this place. The animal 



