DEER HUNTING. 257 



while his son, or a servant, mounts the other, with the 

 frying-pan and the pine-knots. Thus accoutred, they 

 proceed towards the interior of the forest. When they 

 have arrived at the spot where the hunt is to begin, they 

 strike fire with a flint and steel, and kindle the resinous 

 wood. The person who carries the fire moves in the 

 direction judged to be the best. The blaze illuminates 

 the near objects, but the distant parts seem involved in 

 deepest obscurity. The hunter who bears the gun keeps 

 immediately in front, and after a while discovers before 

 him two feeble lights, which are procured by the reflec- 

 tion of the pine fire from the eyes of an animal of the 

 deer or wolf kind. The animal stands quite still. To 

 one unacquainted with this strange mode of hunting, the 

 glare from its eyes might bring to his imagination some 

 lost hobgoblin that had strayed from its usual haunts. 

 The hunter, however, nowise intimidated, approaches the 

 object, sometimes so near as to discern its form, when 

 raising the rifle to his shoulder, he fires and kills it on 

 the spot. He then dismounts, secures the skin and such 

 portions of the flesh as he may want, in the manner al- 

 ready described, and continues his search through the 

 greater part of the night, sometimes until the dawn of 

 day, shooting from five to ten deer, should these animals 

 be plentiful. This kind of hunting proves fatal, not to 

 the deer alone, but also sometimes to wolves, and now 

 and then to a horse or a cow, which may have straggled 

 far into the woods. 



Now, reader, prepare to mount a generous, full blood 

 Virginian Hunter. See that your gun is in complete 



order, for, hark to the sound of the bugle and horn, and 

 17 



