The preserves at Gohrde are liked best by the kaiser, as they were by his grandfather, the old emperor, for they are alive with wild boars. Persons invited for the first time to these imperial shooting parties have to go through a regular form of initiation, somewhat akin to that practised in the case of people crossing the line for the first time at sea. On the eve of the day on which the hunt is to begin, and when the party are assembled in the smoking and card-rooms of the jagdschloss, after dinner, the great oak table in the dining-room is cleared and ornamented with several lines of chalk; thereupon, the deputy grand huntsman, Baron Heintze Weissenrode, after receiving the emperor's final instructions, selects a dozen members of the party, and conducts them to the dining-room, where they take their places around the table, each armed with a wooden spoon of a different size from those of his neighbors. At a given signal the huntsman in charge of the imperial pack of boar-hounds, who has been stationed at the entrance leading into the dining-room, sounds the "view-halloo!" on his horn, and immediately every one of the wooden spoons is rubbed up and down the oaken table in a manner that produces a sound similar to that of the noise made by a pack in full pursuit. The person about to be initiated is then seized and blindfolded, after which the doors are thrown open, and he is carried into the dining-room, and laid upon the table athwart the chalk lines. The emperor immediately draws his short hunting-knife, and after making several mystic passes with it in the air, strikes the prostrate body of the neophyte a smart blow with the flat of the broad blade. The huntsman toots forth the signal of "dead! dead!" which is used to call the pack off the quarry, and the new-fledged "weide-man" is permitted to struggle off the table and onto the ground. I may add that the emperor's blow with the hunting-knife is not the only one which the neophyte receives while stretched on the table on his face, nor does it constitute the sum total of the initiation, but only the conclusion thereof. Indeed, there is sometimes a good deal of rough horse-play on these occasions, in which the emperor, who delights therein, takes a prominent part. The boar hunt on the following day partakes of the nature of the chamois drives already described, the only difference being that the beaters are assisted in their work by a carefully trained pack of boar-hounds, which are accustomed to obey the horn signals of the huntsman in charge, and are of much service in driving the quarry from its lair in the dense brush and underwood.