DEVON AND SOMERSET. 287 



shout three full hundredweight of resisting 

 venison are Hfted up the muddy, shppery, 

 dripping bank to the shelving green sward 

 where the huntsman waits. 



Sometimes a hard pressed stag will take 

 refuge beneath the narrow span of some road- 

 way bridge across a trout stream, and once 

 within this shelter will prove a very awkward 

 customer to handle, for to seize an angry stag 

 in a place w^here there is no room to step 

 back and avoid his charge is a very ticklish 

 matter indeed, and the hounds moreover have 

 far less opportunity of joining in and attract- 

 ing the creature's attention just when the 

 venturous human is in most need of their 

 assistance. 



The Bristol Channel with its muddy waters 

 and its high rising tides, its dense and frequent 

 fogs, its shifting quicksands and its dangerous 

 shores must ever figure largely in all narratives 

 of staghunting in the west. 



Just opposite red deer land, across the 

 capricious and troubled waters of the wide 

 estuary of the Severn, stand the tall chimneys 

 of Cardiff and Newport with their glare of 

 light at night and their drifting clouds of 

 smoke by day. The Welsh hills presented a 

 striking appearance on the Jubilee night of 

 1897, when every important peak from the 

 Malvern beacon fires to Haldon sprang into 



