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 obl'ged 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 both 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 sports 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 Charlie's Hope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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