THE 



CAN SPORTSMAN 



JOURNAL. 



Terms, Fonr Dollars a Year. I 

 Ten Ceuts a Copy. I 



NEW YORxC, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1877- 



/ Volume 9.— No. lO. 

 1No. Ill Fulton St., N. T. 



THE LOST HEIR. 



" Mr. Penguin, an egg!'' " Good gracious ! my dear, 

 Where is it ?'' " Don't Joggle. Bight under me here." 



"In the nest ; that we made ?" "'ire/' Isn't that fun? 

 I built it of atones, and you brought me just one 

 Extremely small pebble the day it was done." 



" But the egg— are you certain ?" "As sure as can be ; 

 So get ready this moment and start for the sea ; 

 Th ere eat and grow fat, and your pouch fill with food 

 Of the kind that will strengthen and nourish our brood." 



" ' Our brood ?' Why, you said there was only one egg." 



" Don't stand wasting time, Mr. Penguin, 1 beg. 

 That egg, you'll remember, was laid, sir, by we, 

 And the chick that Thatch, you may wager, will be 

 Worth twenty young penguins of lower degree. 



"Methinks I can see him becomingly dressed. 

 In a little dark coat and a little white vest, 

 With cunning wee flippers, eyes wondrously keen — 

 The handsomest penguin that ever was seen ! 



' ' At first his short steps I most carefully guide, 

 Then graceful and haughty he walks by my side, 

 Like a prince among birds, with his head carried high, 

 And the sea-fowl who gather to see us go by 

 Are ready, my dear, of sheer envy to die!" 



While she spoke, a small bird, much resembling a crow, 

 Peeped over a rock at the picture below, 

 And he danced like an imp, and he waggled his head, 

 And he grinned such a grin when he heard what she Said, 



And he laughed a strange laugh, without making a sound, 

 And he flew from the rock[to the nest on the ground; 

 And behind Mrs, Penguin he crept like a snail, 

 And jerked a long feather straight out of her tail. 



Then, as quickly she turned, he as quickly took wing, 



While she s reamed, "Oh, you robber! you hard-hearted thing! 



Oh, Penguin, how can you, how dare you, stand there 



Like a fowl made of marble, and heartlessly stare? 



Don't you see what he's got ? I am mad with despair !" 



But, alas ! all in vain did she threaten and shriek ; 

 Crow was off with the egg sticking fast on his beak ; 

 And Pen remarked, calmly, " Next time 'twere as well 

 To say naught of your son till he's out of the shell." 



—Harper's Weekly. 



$hq fjtmmorq 



A VIEGINIA FOX HUNT OF TO-DAY. 



u To learn to ihootyour gun sure ; 

 To fight the game cock, to chase the fox ; 

 Or to win at the Piedmont races ; 

 To kiss your wife ; or take yoar life 

 At twelve or fifteen paces; 

 With wine for more, but whisky galore ; 

 Oh that's the man for Dunmore." 



WITHIN less than a radius of a hundred miles from the 

 National Capital, in the Old Dominion, lie the three 

 contiguous counties, Fairfax, Prince William and Fauquier. 

 In the good old olden time, when the hoary headed old grand- 

 sire, who now sits pensively in Ms split-bottom chair under 

 the shade of the ancestral oaks, was hut a little freckled-faced 

 youngster running wild over the plantation, these three coun- 

 ties were, the garden spot of Virginia. In my " Sportsmen of 

 the Olden Time," which was published in the Foeest and 

 Stbeam of Oct. 5, 1876, I portrayed the easy life of the plant- 

 ers in the section I write of, and, although that epoch was be- 

 fore the Revolution, yet the immense estates, the numerous 

 retinues and the profuse style of living were kept up until the 

 beginning of our late Civil War. 



In the year 1861 the Piedmont region was a land fair to look 

 upon, broad estates joined each other, and were cultivated 

 thoroughly by the scores of held hands. Each plantation was 

 a colony in itself, and had its blacksmith, wheelwright and car- 

 penter shops, spinning, weaving and tailors' rooms, all surround- 

 ing the pretentious mansion, and giving to the place an air of a 

 thriving village. It cost but little to live then. Cattle and 

 sheep were raised in large numbers on the estates. His own mill 

 ground the farmer's wheat into bread, and each planter had 

 his own private still, and his cellar was rilled with apple- 

 jack and generous pure peach brandy of his own brewing, 



Every housewife took particular pride in her garden, her 

 fowls and her dairy— the latter of which was under her own 



especial charge— and the house was finished in profusion all 

 the year round with their products. Naturally it took but 

 little ready cash to live in ehgant and literal style. The 

 thousand and one little things that now cost money were to 

 be found upon the place as a matter of course, and the money 

 accumulating from the harvest was spent lavishly at the 

 watering places, vhere the planter and his family went every 

 summer. 



In those days the life of the Virginia country gentleman 

 was very pleasant ; his prolific acres grew annually richer 

 and increased in value. Such was the contrast with the pre- 

 sent time, when, as Gov. "Wise ouce wittily expressed it, 

 " The landlord skins the tenant, the tenant skins the land, 

 and they both get poor together." The large estates are now 

 all subdivided and rented out to working men, who, in a few 

 years, make that a sterile patch of land, which once was pro- 

 lific soil. It was a line country for a gentleman and landed 

 proprietor to live in, for a life of ease was his ; but had you 

 been a poor white, better never have been born, for the gulf 

 that separated Dives from Lazarus was never so deep and 

 broad as that between the planter and common white. 



Fox hunting was the popular pastime of the Virginians, 

 fighting the cock was considered rather disreputable, and 

 men would indulge in it as they did in their loved recreations 

 of old sledge and draw poker, go off by themselves, have a 

 stag party and say nothing at all about it. Early in the morn- 

 ing the "raarster," as he was called, would ride over the 

 plantation, and in an hour or two his work would be done. 

 The rest of the day was devoted to his horse, his gun and his 

 hounds. Each gentleman kept as much blooded stock as he 

 could afford to hold ; and his kennel was visited as regularly 

 as his stable. 



It has always been an open question with economists and 

 philosophers as to whether progress and the immutable change, 

 is after all a benefit to the human race. To the young on the 

 very threshold of life, it doubtless is, the future is to them a 

 roseate hued land, a veritable realm of promise, and to their 

 ardent minds the successive changes are eagerly welcomed, 

 and the future beckons alluringly to them as the fabled Evad- 

 ne to the storm tossed Argonauts. Their past has no thought, 

 no regret. To those who have reached or passed the magic 

 age of thirty, that middle post in the race course of life, the 

 case is different, and they learn to know that anticipation is 

 after all sweeter than realization. Only when experience tem- 

 pers their passion, and disappointment blasts their hopes, then 

 it is that they linger over the past, and sigh for the glorious 

 long ago. I never go to a fox chase now that I do not recall 

 regretfully the splendid " meets " of my boyhood days. 



However much the country may have been benefited by the 

 events of the past fifteen years, it has certainly not improved 

 fox hunting, and there are many ancient sportsmen who so 

 devotedly love their calling that they would rather have the 

 sport as it was in the days of its pristine splendor, than even 

 the blessings of a national debt, a paper currency or the liber- 

 ated, though ungrateful, African. 



Fox chasing is now shorn of many of its former attractions. 

 No open house with hospitable doors thrown wide, no brilliant 

 hunting dress, or famous thoroughbred barb ; no succession 

 of miles of tilled fields, where the pride of the stable could go 

 in a sweeping gallop, leaping the fences with the long Arab 

 stride. No, a meet of today is a very common-place affair, 

 with no accessories of the pride and pomp of the old glorious 

 chase. 



Last winter, a few days after Christmas, I received the fol- 

 lowing epistle, which will explain itself : 



Dtjnmobe C. H., Va., Dec. — , 1SW. 



My De ab Fellow : Where have you been keeping yourself ? Not a 

 sign of you among the scenes and faces you were once wont to love so 

 well. Still, if you are not ill or dead, I know you will accept the invita- 

 tion which I am commissioned to send to you. There will be a grand 

 meet at Dunmore C. H. next Saturday; all the good riders for 

 miles round will attend; and there will be some crack dogs from a 

 distance. Come a da> or two before the meet. I can give you a flue 

 mount if you are not already suited. Faithfully yours, Douglas. 



Dunmore C H. is situated in the middle of the Piedmont 

 region, and has the fastest men and the best riders of the whole 

 country. Douglas, the writer of the letter, is a thorough 

 sportsman some thirty years or so of age, who keeps bachelor 

 hall, and has ruined— so the young wives and old mothers 

 say — nearly all the youths in the section. He is one of those 

 men who do every thing well ; spars, fences, shoots, rides, 



and is besides, as the girls say, the tenderest wooer in the 

 whole region. 



Of course I aceepted'this invitation, and the next afternoon 

 found me at my friend's. Night found us at the tavern, where 

 the village magnates and the huntsmen sat around a big stove 

 in the centre of the room. In their talk of the chase and of 

 sporting reminiscences they stretched veracity very far, and 

 I heard of longer runs, higher leaps, and more wonderful 

 dogs than were ever^before chronicled. The more they talked 

 the thirstier they got, and as the means to satisfy thirst was 

 close at hand they imbibed much and often, and the more 

 they drank the faster flew their tongues; and as the potent 

 liquor mounted to their heads and fired their imaginations, 

 they told wilder yarns and more atrocious lies, and swore to 

 them too ; then they would drink again, and the "ruby wine," 

 as Dick Swiveller would call it, began to flow like water. 

 All friends meeting after a long time, must, of course, drink 

 to each other's health ; new acquaintances just introduced 

 must tip their glasses ; men with money in their pocket, in a 

 generous mood treated afl their friends, and as the night 

 waxed apace everybody was drinking with everybody else. 

 About midnight some old soaks, veterans of a thousand drink- 

 ing bouts, proposed to lock the doors and make a night of it. 

 This was carried stormily, some few strongly protesting, but 

 the door was shut. A big iron kettle was placed on the stove, 

 and quiet reigned until the keeper brued a huge pitcher of 

 punch, made with Virginia's own apple-jack, and then the 

 crowd quaffed long and deep, and the fiery liquor began to 

 show its work in the wild eye, unsteady gait and thickened 

 speech. Then all broke into a Bacchanalian chant, each man on 

 his own hook ; and so the debauch was kept up, the revel 

 growing madder and madder until a real Saturnalia was in - 

 progress. I had seen enough, and left about two in the morn- 

 ing, pausing as I passed through the door for another look. 

 The scene was one that a Cruikshank or Darley would have 

 delighted to picture. Here were a trio of old fellows as happy 

 as lords, singing away at some ancient song that had died out 

 a half century since ; next to them was a young man, whose 

 head was probably weak, for he had pitched forward, and 

 with his head resting on the table he was peacefully snoring 

 awaf in the midst of a din fit to wake the dead. There were 

 half a dozen young bucks singing a love song, and nearly a 

 score more talking, singing, discussing, disputing and arguing 

 at one and the same time. 



The next morning broke cloudy with a light wind, a perfect 

 day for a hunt. Daybreak dawned, but the village reposed in 

 absolute quiet, and the huntsmen appeared not. Nor was it 

 until the mantle of night had lifted, and the gray dawn had 

 melted into day, long after the villagers commenced their daily 

 routines, that the huntsmen came forth, sad-eyed, heavy- 

 browed, and drowsy. Those who were on time waited anx- 

 iously for the others, but it was nearly nine o'clock before the 

 cavalcade started ; and such an assemblage of steeds was never 

 seen since Lee's army surrendered. There was Bill Thomas 

 mounted on a three-year-old colt, that kicked and bit at every- 

 thing within her reach ; and there Ned Malone bestrode an 

 old piebald, ewe-necked mare, which carried her head so high 

 in the air that Ned couldn't be seen from the front ; Dick 

 Martin was well-mounted on a thoroughbred of great power 

 and endurance ; Will Coxsen on an old plug, some five-and- 

 twenty years old ; Richardson sat perched upon a quaint old 

 rip of a mare that wheezed and coughed at every step. Others 

 there were who had splendid horses, who could leap any ditch or 

 fence in the country. Broadwater had a mare which showed 

 her noble blood in every motion and quiver of her sinewy form 

 and I saw at a glance that if the race were to be a long one and 

 Broadwater knew how to manage his animal, the odds were 

 heavy in his favor. John Thomas brought up the rear with a 

 steed whose equal mortal eye never rested upon. It was the 

 veritable ghost of an old Confederate charger, whose sides 

 resembled a patent beefsteak broiler. 



The dogs were of all colors, sizes, breeds and conditions. 

 The blare of the horns, the shouts of the huntsmen, and the 

 yelping of the hounds, brought out every cur in the village to 

 join the chase, and the whole good village of Dunmore was in 

 an uproar. As the procession passed out, windows were 

 raised, doors opened, and disgusted sleepy faces appeared in- 

 quiring the cause of the row. Out in the fields a halt waa 

 made, and Will Coxen, the " master of the hounds," ordered 

 every cur of low and high degree to be clubbed and chased 

 back into the village, but just here it was discovered that the 



