156 IN A MARSHY HOLLOW. 



operation of flaying was terminated, when the dogs had 

 devoured the animal's smoking entrails, the body hang- 

 ing suspended to a branch of a tree, I folded up the 

 skin, which the huntsman thrust into a canvas bag made 

 for the purpose, and, each remounting his horse, we con- 

 tinued the chase, firing here and there at a moorfowl or 

 a snipe in the swamps which we were traversing. 



At length we arrived in a marshy hollow, overgrown 

 with thick and intertangled shrubs, through which we 

 forced our steeds with the greatest difficulty. 



Our dogs resumed their barking ; each of us took up 

 the most favourable post he could select, and from time 

 to time we rose in our stirrups to gain a good view of 

 the neighbourhood, and discover, if we could, what ani- 

 mal had been started by our pack. But the copse was as 

 thick as a wall, and we could see nothing. Our dogs 

 howled, with eyes starting out of their heads, and sprang 

 round and round in front of us, on the borders of the 

 wood, which was as impenetrable to our feet as to our 

 eyes. It was a combination of shifting sand and water, 

 in whose midst the brambles and briers had woven their 

 branches round birches as straight as reeds. A complete 

 fastness rose before us ; impregnable as that of Cronstadt. 



At length the dogs stopped ; their short, abrupt barks, 

 and the efforts they made to enter into the thicket, 

 proved that they had discovered the retreat of the animal, 

 whatever it was, and were pressing close upon it. 



Our host the planter, Mr. Potter, took aim, loosed the 

 trigger, and when the commotion produced by the dis- 

 charge was over, we distinctly heard a noise of broken 

 branches, followed by the fall of a body into a pool of 

 water. 



