ally becomes fainter, and ere we reach the meeting-place, the sun has struggled through the mist which until now has enveloped the landscape with a dreary shroud. We are first except the keeper, who by his own account has been out watching all night, and we are gratified with a favourable report of the covers and the game. It is not long before the party is assembled-four guns, and four and a half brace of spaniels, of various colours and sizes, and having proceeded to the top of the wood, that we may drive the pheasants downwards away from his lordship's preserves (his manor begins over the hedge, and his keeper is watching our proceedings), each man takes his station, and we throw off with "i, Flora, hi-push 'em up there." Our work is any thing but light. The brushwood overtops our heads, so thick that it appears impenetrable, and the bine- weed and briars which luxuriate in the dank-moist shelter render our path tangled and difficult. It certainly is wonderful to see the manner in which our friend the keeper dashes through the bushes, sometimes head first, at others vice versa, never once ceasing-" Hi flush-hi cock, cock, cock,” and ever and anon, as a pheasant rises at his feet, shouting to the gun nearest to him to "Look to." As to shooting, that is quite out of the question at present, for though the pheasants rise pretty briskly, we cannot raise our guns to fire, and the rabbits and hares steal so rapidly by us, that we catch but a single glance and they are gone. For the first hour, nothing is done except beating, only three or four shots are fired, and without effect, but we now emerge from the thicket, and a different scene presents itself to our view. The trees are much wider spread; the brush wood has been lately cleared away; the monarch of the forest rises proudly in the open, and the tall sedge, and grass, and underwood formed of sallows and such light wood, offer as fine a piece of lying as ever gladdened the sportsman's eye. Grateful to every man is the halt which takes place before we enter this enchanted region. The dew drops which hang thickly from every spray have found their way through the thickest clothing, and each one as he presents himself to view seems in a worse plight than his neighbour. The dogs, too, have found it out, and their eager wildness at first throwing off is rather abated. Forming a line, we again commence our sport, and it is not many minutes before one of the spaniels, who has been feathering round a bush, gives tongue, a fine old cock pheasant rises from the sedge, and as he towers proudly over our head, making his way back again to the thick spinney, a patent cartridge stops his career for ever. Another soon succeeds; the rabbits and hares keep dashing by us, and the continual shouts to "Look out”—“ Rabbit over the riding," keep up the excitement, both in men and dogs. We take it coolly; try every inch of ground, and by lunch time, our bag consists of about six brace of pheasants, as many hares, and a few couple of rabbits. As we are resting, our conversation, of course, turns upon pheasant shooting, and in this sport it would be almost impossible to lay down any certain rules for the Tyro to follow. There is so much difference in the manner of the birds rising in different situations, that at one time they present a tolerably easy mark, at others a most difficult one. But taking all into consideration, we ever fancied a pheasant far from an easy shot, and always mistrust the man who talks about their being as easy to hit as a barn door. Independent of the difficulty in seeing the birds, when the trees and underwood are thick (especially if the leaf is on) the exertion of the beating is usually so great that, added to the flurry attendant upon the bird's rising, it is quite enough to throw a young shot off his aim. Pheasant shooting may be easy work when the shooter catches a hide in a piece of turnip or stubble, and they rise singly to the point; but place him in the riding of a wood, and let him try his skill at an old cock pheasant as he sails over the tops of the trees at the rate of about sixty miles an hour. Strictly speaking, wood-shooting can hardly be said to commence till the fall of the leaf, nor is pheasant shooting at its zenith till the rude blasts of December have stripped the forest trees. It is pretty shooting as they rise from a hedge row to a couple or so of steady spaniels. For pheasant shooting we recommend a short heavy gun, charge one and a half ozs. of No. 4, and to the sportsman who has much wood shooting, a retriever is indispensable. In our opinion, it will make ten per cent difference on an average in a bag in recovering the wounded birds. In foggy weather pheasants stray widely and lie well, and during rain they always frequent situations where they will escape the dripping of the rain drops from the over-hanging branches. We finish in the wood by about three, and taking up the spaniels, proceed to the turnips by the wood side with a steady pointer, to pick up any outlying birds that may have strayed from the wood, and four brace of birds and a leash more pheasants wind up a very pretty day's sport. The setting sun casts a rich golden lustre over the wood, and gilds with its mellow ray the branches and leaves, which have already assumed the autumnal tint. The chill mist rises from the river and reeks over the valley below, and the spire of the village church, towards which our steps are bent, is soon obscured by the shades of evening. After we have done ample justice to the good cheer of "bachelor's hall," the table is drawn to the fire, and here over our wine the evening glides by happily in the social converse of friends, whom we esteem as being tried and true sportsmen. So surely as we commence our day at the same place, so surely do we wind up the evening with a social rubber, till the village clock warns us that the hour of midnight is approaching, when we again mount the old poney, and turn his head towards home, after having spent a day (we may truly say) without alloy. Such was our last first of October. We recollect well, on that occasion, we enjoyed ourselves to our heart's content, and we also remember leaving our friend's house with a leash of pheasants in our game bag, but not before he had made us promise to come over and have another day with him before long. May the first of October, 1842, as happy prove. Sept. 1842. Тоно. THE BARREN COUNTRY. BY CHARLES WILLOWDALE. "I PITY the man," says Sterne, "who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry It is all barren,' and so it is, and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruit it offers;" but friend Yorick never traversed turnip and stubble field, tilt and eddish, with a brace of pointers for seven hours, without a point, or he would have known that it is possible to cry "It is all barren," and yet deserve no pity, and that the patient cultivation of such fruit is no easy matter. Before the passing of the new Game Bill, which has turned every labourer into a poacher, and every preserve into a sale room, it was an every day occurrence with us to bag from five to eight brace of birds, and a leash of leverets in September. Those who were less moderate in their desires killed their twelve or fifteen brace, and thought nothing of it. Now times are changed, and men with them. The fields have been devastated and stripped bare of their feathered tenants, and men who roamed over the scenes of their boyhood for amusement and health, crowning the success of the morning with a blazing hearth and jovial evening, do so no more. The game is gone-the country is changed. Nature herself is changed, and sport is like the dreams of what has been-no more to be. It is truly distressing to shoot over a barren country; to see the poor tykes of dogs stand at a lark, and back each other for very shame's sake, when the old ones know it is all false. And then to toil hour after hour with no better prospect of success than a brace of barren birds or a landrail, backed, it may be, by a suckling doe, for the leverets have been snared long since, poor silly things, or shot on a Sunday. Then comes a heavy rain, none of your drizzling doubtful "wets," but a downright pouring "flood," assimilated in its fall to "cats and dogs," a certainty of wet shirts and brim-full boots-rusted barrels and wet locks. A pleasant amusement on returning home to set them to rights, with a full prospect of a similar day to-morrow! Talk of picking oakum, the tread-mill, or hard labour, I wish to know what can equal the toil of seven hours over a barren country, and such a rain as I have spoken of for the last two hours on the road home? And then there comes a notice in a day or two from some young fellow who has come to his fortune, bought a brace of greyhounds, and seen a hare on his farm, requesting you not to trespass in pursuit of game over his land, or on any other pretence whatsoever. Very good that ! as if there were a head of game, save that solitary hare, in the whole lordship-poor devil! Well may he prize her talk of a rara avis, she is a mammoth, an ichthyoramus now-a-days, and not to be shot at with impunity. Well, all things have an end save poaching, and that goes on and prospers, not only here and there but every where. It was the fashion in 1830 to run down the Game Laws. The London newspapers, the Globe especially, teemed daily with leaders against the demoralizing system of the Game Laws. May the editor of that day shoot for the rest of his days over a barren country! 1831 came, and all restriction in the shape of qualification was taken away, and the game handed over to the ducal preserver and the poacher for sale. The sportsman being the weaker party, went to the wall. Has poaching decreased ? Have morals mended? Nay, is not every day-labourer a hare snarer, and net, gun, and springe doing their work upon the partridges all over the open? Is not the aristocracy bartering game and sport for gold? The sale of the game preserves the dignity, and pays the keeper's feeding and expenses! Moors are advertised, manors and mansions are let, and the new regulation under the Property Tax Act the melancholy gist of the hour, requiring a return "from property or profits not coming within any of the foregoing heads, (except lands, &c., or other property of which no return is required to be made,) and which consists of and that the amount thereof is computed according to average," has had the mysterious blank supplied by the words game sold and delivered." It was thought by many that the foregoing heads" comprised every possible source of income, but not so, as many and many a return has shown. But enough; pass on to a pleasanter subject, reader, and be thankful if your stars have saved you from shooting over a barren country; but know that shortly it will come upon you, if the present system be kept up, and no restriction in the shape of qualification adopted to protect the game for the fair sportsman. ،، ،، SKETCHES OF SPORTING LIFE IN IRELAND. No. IV. HARRY O'HARA; OR HIS FIRST PAIR OF TOPS. Κνημίδας μεν πρυτον περι κνημησιν ἐθηκε Kaλaç-HOMER IL. T. 330. "First he encased his nether man, In boots which shone with Day's japan, "My first pair of tops!" What magic in the words! How many a bright and happy scene do they recal! How many a loved and gallant friend with whom they are inseparably associated! How many of the first gushings of youthful enthusiasm, when the heart was light and bounding, when the fancy was warm and susceptible, the affections unchilled by the cold realities of life! We are strange beings; a compound of contradictions which we cannot ourselves reconcile, of mazes which we may not unravel even to our own hearts. Youth pines to be changed into manhood-manhood thirsts after the fancied solidity of the pleasures of maturer age—this in its turn looks back with repining upon the days which have run their course, and acknowledges that after all, there is but shallow philosophy in the lesson which youth is so often taught, "Gather the rose-bud while you may, Old Time is still a flying; And the flowers that bloom so fresh to day, "Now what, in the name of common sense, has come over you this morning, Milesius ?" roared my rollicking cousin, Tom Blake, who had walked into my room unheard, and, choaking with laughter, had all this time been following over my shoulder, the course of my moralizing them. "Pshaw, man," continued he, "this beats all our modern sentimentalists. First Loves' we have had often enough. 'First Friendships' are long out of fashion. Some of the sporting men in Regentstreet can fill whole pages with Their First Steeple Chases,' or. The First Day of the Season.' But The First Pair of Tops!' Ha ha! Egad, this flogs them all! I suppose your next will be My First Pair of Leather Breeches !' |