74 A MONTH IN THE FORESTS OF FRANCE. 



divide^ who is to stop the wrong hounds^ and assig n 

 the huntsmen enough to keep the line ? " 



While wonderinof at the French notions in recrard 

 to the hound, and observing that every one of them, 

 except two poor thin-looking things, who evidently 

 would not eat from age and disease, were as full of 

 the morning's food as they could be — one of these 

 creatures yawned, when, it being impossible to shut 

 his mouth again except on one of the noses of his 

 companions, of course he did so, and a fight was the 

 consequence ; this at once became general, till all 

 were obliged to bite to defend themselves from being 

 bitten. Their huntsman, loath to put out his pipe, 

 shouted at them from his seat on the bank first ; but, 

 finding that that would not do, he took his whip from 

 his shoulder, around which it was slung, and, at a 

 running jump, lit with his jack boots and fixed spurs, 

 with rowels in them like lancets, rig-ht into the middle 

 of the struggling and tearing mass of combatants, 

 and whipped them all up as a cook would do cream, 

 till, what with fighting among themselves, the stran- 

 gulation of their couples, kicks, and blows, the whole 

 thing subsided into quiesence. The man had then 

 some trouble in unravelling the canine puzzle ; for 

 every hound w^as more or less bitten and bleeding, 

 whipped, and insanely snappish, and all of them 



