56 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



Aunty Blaze, after seeing the table was spread, and the meat 

 cooked, brought out an immense corn-cake, on a wooden turner, 

 and with a commendable feeling of pride threw it down on the 

 table, right side up, steaming hot, and brown as rosewood. Turn- 

 ing to go, she stumbles against a little black girl coming with the 

 sugar-bowl; a smart slap applied with the cake-turner propels the 

 child forward a yard, and elicits a yell of disapprobation, and the 

 sugar-bowl is dropped to the floor. 



The Doctor loads his double-barrelled gun, and explains its 

 new-fashioned lock to Miss Jackson, who comes out arrayed in a 

 tight-fitting cap and bodice, and her eyes lit up with the anticipa- 

 tion of the chase. Mike slowly and methodically wipes out his 

 rifle with dry flax, and every moment is seen eating some hidden 

 remains of last night's meal, which he has stowed away on his 

 person, and which are to form more than half his breakfast. We 

 eat our hurried meal — it might be called a passover, as no one 

 takes time to sit — and then ride off down the woods. 



Jackson and Mike are leading the van, Lou and the Doctor 

 still side by side, and there goes a negro on a marsh tackey, the 

 pony of the south, and there a neighbour that has come over for 

 the hunt, mounted on a vicious mare as thin as a crane. The 

 hounds, of a dozen different colours and sizes, go along in couples, 

 led by the negroes on foot, and on ahead to a given rendezvous 

 shuffles Pompey Duffield, the oldest negro on the place, driving 

 a mule laden with two baskets of provisions intended for the 

 dinner of the party, and the mist comes up from the river in golden 

 clouds, for the sun is just rising. Down along the bank we went 

 with call and laughter, and the bittern arose from the sedge with 

 a guttural cry, and the alligator sank into the water with a heavy 

 splash, as our cavalcade moved onward to the lower pine lands 

 that skirted the big swamp. The trees were all white pine ; there 

 was no underbrush, and we could see down the long arcades they 

 formed for nearly a mile. Now and then a flaunting flower would 

 rear its crimson cheek to the wind, or a vine could be seen clasp- 

 ing a trunk, and drooping from branch to branch in long festoons, 

 but generally the ground was covered only with the yellow siftings 

 of the pine, and free from all vegetation. The horses trod without 



