86 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



dinner. Not a grand dinner of cold fowl and claret, sandwiches and 

 cakes, with which upon the Scottish moors the sportsmen regale their 

 inner man, but a dinner that consisted simply of a large square of 

 corn-bread, and an equally large square of venison steak, but so 

 hungry were we that no rich repast, even though spread at Verey's, 

 at Paris, would have been more highly honoured, and surely no table, 

 even on the Santa Lucia, with the broad bay of Naples, and the 

 flaming spire of Vesuvius before the door, could have been spread 

 in a more graceful place, or with a more characteristic view. The 

 deep well-spring with its seething sands at the bottom churned 

 into a constant motion, the trees that for ages had guarded that 

 source, the rippling murmur of the brook, the soughing of the pine 

 leaves, the broad perspective of meadow, with the distant belt of 

 river beyond, so far away that its gleam was like the horizon, the 

 nearer scamper of the squirrel, or the flap of the heron's wing as 

 disturbed by our presence he rose from the flags, all gave a land- 

 scape to the eye, or a sense of solitude to the mind, and occupied 

 us in contemplation for an hour or more after the dinner was 

 ended. 



"Do you think you ever saw that panther before to-day ?" I 

 asked of Mike, as I tossed him over the tobacco-pouch. 



" I 'm not over sartin, but I reether spect. Yer see thar ain't 

 many on 'em heyar bout, and it was jist two years ago when that 

 ere painter cub I guv Colonel Brown, at Tampa, vamosed, and then 

 he was two years old. This one, you see, would be nigh on to 

 four, and that would jist make it." A long puff or two followed 

 from his short pipe, when he said in a musing manner, " That air 

 cub left bekase of a fight he got in with a soldier at the fort Yer 

 see he guv the soldier a slap, when the soldier struck him with his 

 bay'nit, and then the painter jist chawed him up and sloped. 

 Wall, now look a heyar, do you see that mark on his cheek ?" 

 There was a triangular scar on the animal's cheek, just under the 

 eye. " That, I calkelate, is that ere bay'nit dig. This is the last 

 o' that settlement. Grey Wolf's band got the old painter, and the 

 cub I left thar in my coat, so I 've heern ; the t'other cub, the one 

 I toted to Tampa Bay, is this heyar, and that 's all the painters 

 thar is round these diggins." 



