Pepper 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 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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