Aug. ii, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
209 
THE VISION OF ST. EUSTACE. 
From Vittore Pisano’s picture in the National Gallery (London). 
At the end. they let in a big long-homed bull 
with lots of life, and two men thickly padded 
as clowns, and a pedestal on which one man 
perched. The bull tossed one of them about 
five feet, and they both had several collisions 
that were surely funny for the audience, and 
seemed to interest the bull and gratify the up¬ 
holstered matadors at the same time. But when 
it was all finished, I remembered a remark I 
once heard: “I would like to see those fellows 
tackle a real mad long-horned Texas ‘outlaw’ 
steer once,” and I knew that our cowpunchers 
every day take more of a chance in their work 
than is the risk in the ring, save in excep¬ 
tional cases. 
But I must tell you about the return to San 
Diego. After waiting a half hour on the Mexican 
side with a jolly crowd of every kind, while the 
wagons made one trip, with a rare chance to 
see a typical southern gypsy group of palm 
readers at work—young women of wild,. strange 
beauty, clad in gorgeous tints and thi'ck with 
grease and dirt, and with eyes and fingers and 
wits too quick to follow, my wagon came back, 
and I got in and we got half way across—and 
that was all. The off hind wheel slipped into a 
mud hole, and the six horses stopped. After 
a few vain tries, a whiffletree broke and the 
young Mexican driver got into the two feet of 
water to fix it. Then the horses would not pull, 
and two of us took off our shoes, and took the 
leaders’ heads, and at the first good pull, away 
went another tree! 
A few of us stayed with the driver to help 
out, but I soon saw it was useless, and after 
several tries, got an old Mexican with two 
burros to take me up for fifty cents, and try for 
the train. I learned in that stream what a man 
in San Diego meant who said: “No Tia Juana 
for me to-day; I have been in those mountain 
streams, and I want no more.” That cold 
muddy water runs swift and strong, but that is 
the least. The bottom is often an untried slip¬ 
pery sand, and you never know which spot is 
the deadly slime that will grasp your foot and 
never let go, nor which direction to turn in for 
safety, if any there be. That day there was no 
danger, but not far from there, more than one 
was lost within the previous week. Well, it was 
getting dark, and the train half a mile off nearly, 
and the two burros would not run and the old 
Mexican was almost as bad. But I labored 
with him, and he labored with them. The big 
hole was bigger, and I feared we could not 
clear it in that rig, but we only wet their backs. 
At last we cleared the water, and there I met 
three young fellows who were waiting for their 
friends on the tally-ho. They decided to try for 
the train, and we started away together. They 
soon left the old man. but I picked them up one 
by one presently, and reached the train just in 
time to hold it for them; and had we lost it, 
there was nothing but an eighteen-mile walk 
down that track in the dark, for no rig would 
leave there that night, and the “town” boasts 
no wire even to tell your home where you are. 
The engine carried water enough for five 
miles at a run, and took twenty minutes to fill 
the boiler each time. We reached San Diego at 9 
P. M. I was expected at 6. 
Saints of the Chase. 
As late as the sixth century A. D., in the 
Ardennes, Diana, the Roman goddess of the 
chase, was reverenced by the Gauls, till the 
Christian deacon, Vulfilaie, cleverly diverted the 
worship of the people from her idol to a church 
dedicated to St. Martin; and in other parts of 
the province St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre, 
who had been a hunter of renown, was highly 
venerated; but in the tenth century the glory of 
both saints paled before that of St. Hubert. 
Legend tells how Hubert, son of Bertrand, Duke 
of Guienne, at one time a great courtier of 
Theodoric, King of the Franks, and of Pepin 
d’Heristal, was so inordinately fond of the chase, 
that even Holy Week put no restraint on his 
ruling passion, till on a certain Good Friday, 
when hunting in the forest of the Ardennes, he 
encountered a white stag, bearing between his 
horns an apparition of the crucifix. The death 
of his wife, Floribane, and the shock of the 
miraculous warning completely changed his 
mode of life, and after several years in a her¬ 
mitage, he entered the priesthood, dying bishop 
of Maestricht in 727. His body was placed origin¬ 
ally in the church of Saint Pierre at Liege, but 
transferred Nov. 3, 817, to the Benedictine Abbey 
of Andain, in the Ardennes, and the fact that dur¬ 
ing the interval since his death his remains had 
suffered no apparent decay, added greatly to the 
sanctity of his tomb, which became an object 
of pilgrimage. The exhumation of St. Hubert 
is the subject of a fifteenth-century painting of 
the Flemish School in the National Gallery. 
The same wonderful hunting adventure is told 
of Placidus, a Roman solider in the reign of 
the Emperor Adrian, and he became famous in 
art through Albrecht Differs largest engraving, 
a work of about the year 1504, called “The 
Conversion of St. Eustace,” and the peasants 
still flock to Cologne for his festival, the venera¬ 
tion of his relics equally with those of St. 
Hubert being a protection from the bite of dogs. 
The National Gallery contains a beautiful 
rendering of the same subject in the painting of 
Vittore Pisano (B. 1380—D. 1451-2) called “The 
Vision of St. Eustace” (No. 9). 
Even before the Revolution, the patron of 
hunting was evidently becoming neglected in 
France, for it is with regret that Le Verrier de 
la Conterie, the Seigneur D’Amigny, thinks of 
the Saint’s Days of long ago. His account of 
such a day, of which we give a translation, 
makes a fitting close to the great hunts of the 
past and their nobler place in art. 
“Here in the town (Auxerre) a lively and 
noisy crowd filled the church, then, mass barely 
finished, rushed with uproar into the plain, into 
the woods, into the warren of the Seigneur; for 
plain, wood, and Seigneur’s warren were open, 
and all the game, which dogs of all breeds and 
arms of any kind could reach, was a fair prize 
on the grand day of St. Hubert. It was the 
people’s hunt, the orgy of St. Hubert! 
“But there is the country, at the chapel of 
the old manor-house, or better still in the depths 
of the forest, on a crumbling altar, raised by a 
pilgrim to St. Hubert, or to Our Lady of the 
Woods, a priest, reading in a smoke-stained 
missal, hurried the mass of the blessed patron; 
the huntsmen crowded round, standing and bare¬ 
headed, with horns hung from their necks and 
hunting knives at their belts; the keepers hold¬ 
ing the hounds in packs, the whippers-in re¬ 
straining under the whip the tractable impa¬ 
tience of the coupled dogs; further off, horses, 
fastened up, pawing the ground, quivering with 
excitement, and completing the picture which 
the great woodland roof covered with its re¬ 
ligious shade. At the consecration the horns 
sounded the Saint Hubert. At this well-loved 
noise the horses neighed, the hounds bayed with 
eagerness, and this outburst-was beginning to 
disturb the peaceful solicitude of the forest. 
Meanwhile the priest blessed the huntsmen’s 
bread, which should save the kennel from the 
scourge of hydrophobia for a year. Then, as 
the last prayer left their lips, the hunters were 
in the saddle, and the jocund company hurried, 
for the scent was excellent, and the broken 
branches well scattered, and success certain for 
the pious disciples of the great St. Hubert. 
Quickly the forest became animated with a new 
life at the joyous talk of the huntsmen and the 
pleasant clamor of the hounds, the quarry 
bounded from its lair, and the chase started en¬ 
thusiastic and excited. Oh! a fine hunt was the 
hunt of St. Hubert! Then in the evening, 
around the hearth, they told marvelous hunting 
stories and artless tales; they handed down the 
traditions and instructions of the noble art of 
hunting; they read the great masters, the 
chivalrous Phoebus, the worthy Du Fouilloux, a 
quaint and simple witness of the manners of his 
time. Ah! St. Hubert’s Day as it was kept by 
our fathers was a grand day.”—L. Beatrice 
Thompson, in Art Journal. 
Consul B. M. Rasmusen writes from Stavan¬ 
ger that the poultry experiment station, which 
will commence operations at Stavanger on Oct. 
1, will deal not only with the improvement of 
breeds, but the cheapening of poultry food. Grain 
is largely imported, and it is believed that a 
chicken food can be prepared from fish, of which 
there is such abundance, and if put to new uses 
would be of great benefit to western Norway. 
Denmark has established five experimental 
poultry stations since 1902. 
