and Mustard, were also in attendance, having been sent forward
under the care of a shepherd. Mongrel, whelp, and cur of low
degree, filled up the burden of the chorus. The spectators on the
brink of the ravine, or glen, held their greyhounds in leash in
readiness to slip them at the fox, as soon as the activity of the
party below should force him to abandon his cover.
The scene, though uncouth to the eye of a professed sportsman, had
something in it wildly captivating. The shifting figures on the
mountain ridge, having the sky for their background, appeared to
move in the air. The dogs, impatient of their restraint, and
maddened with the baying beneath, sprung here and there, and
strained at the slips, which prevented them from joining their
companions. Looking down, the view was equally striking. The thin
mists were not totally dispersed in the glen, so that it was often
through their gauzy medium that the eye strove to discover the
motions of the hunters below. Sometimes a breath of wind made the
scene visible, the blue rill glittering as it twined itself through
its rude and solitary dell. They then could see the shepherds
springing with fearless activity from one dangerous point to
another, and cheering the dogs on the scent, the whole so
diminished by depth and distance that they looked like pigmies.
Again the mists close over them, and the only signs of their
continued exertions are the halloos of the men, and the clamours of
the hounds, ascending as it were out of the bowels of the earth.
When the fox, thus persecuted from one stronghold to another, was
at length obliged to abandon his valley, and to break away for a
more distant retreat, those who watched his motions' from the top
slipped their greyhounds, which, excelling the fox in swiftness,
and equalling him in ferocity and spirit, soon brought the
plunderer to his life's end.
In this way, without any attention to the ordinary rules and
decorums of sport, but apparently as much to the gratification bath
of bipeds and quadrupeds as if all due ritual had been followed,
four foxes were killed on this active morning; and even Brown
himself, though he had seen the princely reports of India, and
ridden a-tiger-hunting upon an elephant with the Nabob of Arcot,
professed to have received an excellent morning's amusement. When
the sport was given up for the day, most of the sportsmen,
according to the established hospitality of the country, went to
dine at Charlies-hope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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