248 SPORTING IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. 



below. This was considered in this part of the world an 

 amusement when all other sports failed. 



My chasse lying contiguous to the mountainous part of 

 the Black Forest, above Achern, and in the vicinity of Baden- 

 Baden, where game of all kinds found an easy market, was 

 very accessible to a desperate race of poachers who inhabited 

 that part of the country, and came down at night in large 

 parties, their faces covered with black crape, and made sad 

 havoc amongst the roedeer, which was the chief object of 

 their pursuit. My head keeper was an especial object of 

 their hatred, being a most determined fellow, and had not 

 only wounded several of them, but had been the means of 

 detecting and imprisoning others. He was one day missing, 

 and no one could give any account of him. Upon long 

 search being made after him, he was discovered in a retired 

 part of the forest, dead shot through the heart and laid 

 out in a lengthened position, as if for burial, with a rude 

 cross upon his breast, made of the long grass that grew 

 around. This was, no doubt, an act of vengeance from the 

 poachers in question; but the assassin or assassins were 

 never discovered. 



The summer of this year I passed in revisiting my old 

 fishing grounds in the Kinzigthal and Murgthal with un di- 

 minished zest, and met with quite as much, if not more, 

 sport than ever. My head-quarters being established at 

 Manheim, I made several excursions into the valley of the 

 Neckar, between Heidelberg and Heilbronn, and met with 

 good trout-fishing in some of its tributary streams, and the 

 fish of a very superior quality, a circumstance to be, no 

 doubt, attributed in this, and all other instances, to the 

 nature of the food they derive from the soil which the 

 streams run through. During the month of July I could 

 not withstand the temptations of Baden-Baden I wish I 

 could say with impunity ! and about the middle of August* 



