532 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 6, 1906. 
animal threatens to carry the hunter down the 
precipice. As he tells us, in his “Theuerdank,” 
Maximilian had several very narrow escapes 
from death in consequence of chamois or stones 
set loose by them falling upon him. 
As to the length of these spears, the “Secret 
Hunting-Book” we have spoken of contains some 
details that are almost incredible. Thus we are 
told that the length was 4 klafters, or, according 
to our measure, thirty-five feet. How they 
handled these unwieldy poles on narrow ledges, 
or when clinging to the face of giddy precipices, 
it is difficult to imagine. None of the pictures in 
Maximilian’s works, or in other prints of the 
sixteenth century, such as Stradanus’s and Bol’s 
well-known series, contain representations of 
spears of anything like that length, the usual 
size being from nine to twelve feet. For chamois 
they seem to have remained in use much later 
than for any other game. For ibex hunting the 
hopelessness of pursuit with the Jadgschaft 
seemed to have impressed itself upon all from 
early days, for in all old pictures of this sort we 
see either the crossbow or the fire-tube in the 
hands of the ibex hunter. Indeed, we know 
from Maximilian's chronicles that ibex poachers 
made use of firearms much earlier than we have 
any trace of in any other form of chase: the 
Emperor’s bitter complaint about the use of the 
“devilish hand-guns” by peasants, and the harsh 
regulations which he consequently passed, bear¬ 
ing eloquent testimony of his anger. 
In the picture of the stag-hunt we have more 
familiar surroundings before us. In the upper 
half of the print we see the making of the Quete 
or Suche by means of the limer or lyam hound, 
which had for its object the singling out or un¬ 
harboring of the best stag. Upon "his slot the 
running hounds were laid much in the fashion 
still in use on Exmoor. Behind the man who 
had the limer in leash one sees the two hardes, 
each consisting of three hounds, which were 
presently slipped when the harborer had done his 
work. 
In the center of the picture we see a stag of 
fourteen dash across a stream making straight 
for a wood, where under the cover of trees we 
see a Jagdknecht in red hose holding a coupled 
brace of greyhounds. The sport that would 
presently ensue when these fleet beasts were laid 
on—hunting by sight and not by scent—was 
called the Windhetz, and to judge by the fre¬ 
quency with which it occurs in the “Gejaid 
Buch,” it must have been a favorite mode of 
chasing the hart. In the foreground a noble 
stag of great head, who has “soiled”— i. e., taken 
to water—is being shot by Maximilian seated on 
his white hunting horse. Several of Maximilian’s 
hunting weapons are still preserved in the Vienna 
Imperial collections, whither they were brought 
from Ambras, and among them are several of 
his crossbows and his hunting-sword. With the 
latter he used to tackle bear and wild boar when 
they had been brought to bay, or when as these 
huge beasts often did, they charged their pur¬ 
suers. The strength of the crossbows must have 
been prodigious, a powerful winch being re¬ 
quired to bend the steel bow, which is almost 
two inches broad, and half an inch in thickness. 
In winter-time, when extreme cold makes steel 
brittle, a bow_ of horn replaced, according to the 
Hunting-Book,” the metal one. 
. What the two men-at-arms, with huge halberts 
m their hands, had to do in a stag-hunt history 
does not relate; probably they formed the royal 
sportsman s bodyguard. 
To the critical eye of a modern artist these 
quaint drawings, void as they are of all reo-ard 
to perspective, present, of course,, many features 
that are ludicrous. In those days it was the 
artist s desire to convey to the reader, in as com¬ 
pact form as possible, various incidents, which in 
later periods would have been represented in 
separate pictures. Hence we observe, crowded 
into one and the same canvas, several scenes in 
which the central personage is shown occupied 
m different ways. _ In a third we see the Em¬ 
peror, or rather King, as he then was, in no less 
than four different positions. In the immediate 
foreground we observe him mounted on a white 
horse, probably in the act of arriving at the hunt¬ 
ing rendezvous. Behind him is some scribe read¬ 
ing a report or petition to him; in front are two 
receptacles with fish, to which one of his attend¬ 
ants is drawing his master’s attention by point¬ 
ing at them. Then we see him in a boat on the 
lake superintending the working of a net, and 
holding in his hands a big trout, for which the 
lake in question—the Achen See, in North Tyrol 
—was at all times famous. A third time we 
recognize the King as, seated in the left-hand 
corner of the picture, he is being dressed for 
chamois hunting, a valet strapping crampons to 
his feet after having taking off the long fishing- 
boots. One of his councillors is in the act of 
reading to him some document, for we know that 
state business was constantly being transacted 
by this ever busy monarch while out on hunt¬ 
ing expeditions, relays of messengers bringing him 
dispatches and the latest news from the distant 
capital. In his “Secret Hunting-Book,” which 
was avowedly written for his son’s instruction, 
Maximilian is very particular about telling his 
successor that one of the advantages of sport for 
a ruler is the opportunity which it gives his sub¬ 
jects to come into closer touch with him, thus 
enabling them to present their petitions in person. 
The fourth position in which we find the King 
on the picture before us is indicated by the 
purple hunting-cap which is the only article of 
aparel that remains the same in the several 
pictures. Maximilian is now represented shoot¬ 
ing with a “fire-tube” at a chamois, this being 
the detail to which reference has already been 
made, when alluding- to the single exception to 
the rule that Maximilian killed his chamois with 
the javelin or with the long Jagdschaft. It is 
said by good judges that this scene is the earliest 
pictorial representation extant of the use of fire¬ 
arms in the chase of mountain game, and I am 
not aware of any earlier picture. 
This spirited illumination has other points of 
interest about it. 1 he Achen See, a fine sheet 
of mountain-inclosed water some four miles in 
length, was, for the last six centuries, a favorite 
resort of the rulers of Tyrol, and Maximilian, 
we know, frequented the scene here depicted on 
many occasions, passing his time in shooting 
chamois and stags from a boat, from which in 
the intervals between the drives he used to fish. 
He himself narrates that once a chamois, while 
attempting to swim across the lake, was caught 
in a net! The quaintly gabled shooting lodge we 
observe in the background is now, alas! the site 
of a huge ungainly summer hotel for tourists, 
whose presence in chattering shoals has spoilt 
the grand solitude that until recently reigned 
over a locality sacred to sport. Four centuries 
passed over the Achen See, leaving it in much 
the same pristine condition that attracted the 
great mediaeval sportsman to its shores, when 
many a Capital Bock was laid low by the hand 
of Maximilian, armed not with an Express or 
Mannlicher, but with the spear! Then, sad to 
relate, the shrill whistle of railways and steam¬ 
boats doomed for good and all the grand solitude 
of this beautiful spot. 
But let us turn our backs upon the ugly 
modernity of to-day, and resume our attempt to 
picture to ourselves the quaint scenes portrayed by 
the clever pencil of Master Kolderer who, it is 
almost certain, was the originator of the pictures 
before us. One amusing detail must not be over¬ 
looked in this picture of sport on the Achen See. 
1 he figure of the man in a broad-brimmed wide¬ 
awake hat, with a sash and sword of Turkish 
pattern, who is standing in front of the shoot¬ 
ing lodge engaged in earnest converse with a be- 
mghtcapped individual is, we are told, nobody 
else but the Court. Jew.* Maximilian’s finances 
were occasionally in a sadly disorganized con¬ 
dition, so much so that on more than one occas¬ 
ion the citizens of his provincial capitals refused 
to open their gates to their King till he had set¬ 
tled long standing scores. This notorious fail¬ 
ing is quaintly touched upon by the artist, for 
even for hunting expeditions ready cash had to 
be forthcoming, or sport would suffer; hence the 
presence of this “necessary evil.” That the paper 
which the be-nightcapped personage is holding 
in Ins hand was probablv a bill of exchange or 
other form of mediaeval I. O. U. is a likely pre¬ 
sumption, for we have evidence that the want 
.. *Tn many parts of South Germany the yellow sash was 
the distinguishing article of appafel which Tews were 
compelled to wear. 
of ready money obliged Maximilian to affix his 
sign-manual to such documents amid surround¬ 
ings similar to those which we see here depicted. 
Another historical personage the artist has in¬ 
troduced in the picture of the hawking scene, 
is the then Turkish ambassador, who about 
that time was paying a visit to Maxi¬ 
milian’s court. The locality which this illumina¬ 
tion represents is near Innsbruck, and is identi¬ 
fied by the gallows in the background, which gave 
the spot the name that it still retains. In this 
picture, hunting and fishing seem again to- be 
progressing simultaneously, the identity of Maxi¬ 
milian on horseback and in the boat as usual in¬ 
dicated by the purple hunting dress. 
In Plate 4 Master Kolderer did not forget to 
indicate the usual termination of the day’s sport, 
viz., the al fresco banquet. Maximilian was in 
the habit of taking his queen—he was twice mar¬ 
ried, both consorts meeting with early deaths in 
consequence of their zeal for hunting—with 
some of the ladies of the court to witness his 
sport in easily reached localities. In “Theuer¬ 
dank” we have a picture of an assembly of ladies 
demurely seated near the foot of a cliff, high 
un on which the royal sportsman is shown in the 
act of spearing a chamois with the javelin.* In 
the picture before us a square dance to the music 
of the fife and drum is progressing, the Turkish 
ambassador being among the audience, while 
Maximilian on horseback is watching the pas¬ 
toral fete, his queen being opposite to him. 
To the right we notice the royal couple en¬ 
gaged in sampling the famous lake trout, Maxi¬ 
milian helping himself from the dish placed in 
the center of the party, while three bearers under 
the guidance of the Master of the Table, with 
his chain of office round his neck and “wand of 
control” in his hand, are bringing a fresh relay 
of dishes. Seated in the bottom of the boat on 
the lake we notice a third Maximilian, with his 
crossbow bent ready for a shot at a stag swim¬ 
ming across the lake. 
In conclusion, it is of some antiquarian in¬ 
terest to know that in the StadthaUerei Archiv 
in Innsbruck are preserved the original accounts 
relating to the writing- of the “Gejaid Buch,” 
showing in detail what was paid for the lodg¬ 
ment of the game secretary, Wolfgang Hohen- 
leyter, while he was writing the book, what pay¬ 
ment was made for his candles, firewood, stab¬ 
ling of his horse; and even the item of the cost 
of binding the book is not forgotten. And though 
Master Wolfgang apparently remained unpaid 
for more than a year, so that Maximilian had 
repeatedly to command the officers of his ex¬ 
chequer in Innsbruck to settle the reckoning, he 
seems to have received his money all right in 
the end. W. A. Baillie-Grohman. 
*T arive this nicture in my “Sport in the Alps” (A. & 
C. Black: 1896). 
A Bass That Came Back. 
One of New York city’s well-known anglers, 
who has seen something of the Atlantic Ocean, 
says he has come to the conclusion that it is 
not such a large pond, after all, for a fellow 
angler who lost a hook with a bit of line attached 
in the Atlantic one afternoon recovered his prop¬ 
erty the following morning. Hence the opinion. 
It was while these gentlemen were fishing out¬ 
side Barnegat Bay, in the open sea, that one of 
them struck a channel bass of large size, and 
lost it, together with his hook and part of his 
line. Next morning another angler brought to 
gaff a large channel bass, and in extracting his 
hook found another one, with a piece of line 
attached, in its mouth. Removing this hook also, 
he noticed that it was bright and free from rust 
and of a peculiar shape, it having been forged 
by hand. There was no difficulty, therefore, in 
identifying it, as only one man present used 
hooks of its kind, and further inquiry resulted in 
proving the line’s ownership as well. 
There is nothing remarkable about this inci¬ 
dent, but it is interesting, nevertheless, showing 
that the bass, once hooked, went after a similar 
lure, and during the twelve or more hours that 
intervened, remained in or returned to the same 
water where it was first hooked. 
