Chapter XIV (4)

"The reindeer calf, which we had got on the way, was killed and cut up in front of the tent a few minutes, after our arrival. The men now brought the bleeding flesh into the tent, and began devouring it immediately, quite raw, with the heartiest appetite. The old man was satisfied with sucking the brain from the head, whilst each of our younger comrades gnawed away at a limb of the animal, even to the bone. They laughed at the amazement which my good-humoured Esthonian attendant expressed at their blood-stained faces; and when he gave them to understand, through the interpreter, that they were no better than wolves, they seemed quite unprepared for such reproof; replying gravely, that they were at the same time no worse than the wolves, since they shared honestly with them, and left the bones and some scraps of flesh merely for their sake." In this same tent there was a little monster of a boy named Peina, whom one reads of with a sort of shudder, and with a strong suspicion that the creature was not _canny_. Mr Erman himself seems to write of him with peculiar reserve, stating facts, but evidently unwilling to give an opinion as to the exact nature of the beast. Peina, who had first-rate masticators, got his share of the raw meat, which did not prevent his drawing on his mother's lacteal resources, and thumping her brutally till she honoured the draft, or handed him the pot-ladle, with which he supped scalding porridge to his great internal contentment. The travellers' bread, although frozen hard and not easy eating for adult jaws, disappeared by wholesale within those of Peina. At night the anomalous urchin was laid naked in a canoe-shaped basket, and covered up so thickly with furs that his cries seemed to come from the depths of the earth. In the morning his mother took him from his bed and set him up, still naked, before the fire to warm himself. Sugar, when first presented to him, he called snow, and threw away, but when once he had tasted the dainty, his demands for it were unceasing and peremptory. Taking into consideration the uncomfortable and uncleanly peculiarities of the Samoyedes, both young and old, we cannot feel surprised that Mr Erman's interpreter conceived an intense dislike to their society, and so managed matters that one morning, whilst the man of science was busy measuring a base-line to ascertain the heights of some mountains, his Samoyede companions suddenly disappeared with their tent and their reindeer, leaving him with three ill-equipped sledges and a few Ostyak attendants, and with no choice but to make the best of his way back to Obdorsk, whence he soon afterwards returned to Tobolsk. There he passed his Christmas, and then resumed his journey; but this time in a southerly direction. After having penetrated to sixty-seven degrees north, the region of eternal frost, he struck southwards to the latitude of the Land's End, making a dip into China, which furnishes some of the best chapters in his book.

Irkutsk, the last town of importance north of the Chinese frontier, consists of nineteen hundred houses, fifty being of brick, and the remainder of wood, and is probably the cheapest place in the civilised world as regards articles of food. We say "civilised," because, although situate in a barbarous region, and possessing a population of a very motley character, the town has much that is European in its aspect and usages. It possesses an exchange, government factories, where newly-arrived convicts are employed, a school of medicine, a gymnasium, and a handsome parade-ground. In the market, formed of wooden booths, the stores of food were enormous. Beef cost about a halfpenny a pound; of flour one penny would purchase nearly eight and a half pounds; partridges and heathfowl were sold at five farthings a-piece. But we are in haste to get amongst the Celestials. First comes a gallop across More Baikal, a large lake just beyond Irkutsk, on which the Russian government maintains an armed flotilla. This gallop is a fine bit of helter-skelter, over ice brilliant as glass. "There was no snow upon the ice, so that its surface shone like a polished mirror in the moonlight. The horses that were put under our sledges in Kadilnaya had to be held on each side till the very moment of starting, when they broke at once into full gallop, which they kept up till we landed on the further shore. We completed seven German miles in two hours and a quarter, undoubtedly the most extraordinary as well as the most speedy stage upon any route in Russia." Thence, onwards to the frontier line. "We followed the crowd that pressed forward towards a narrow door in the front of a long wooden building. This admitted us into the inner quadrangle of a Russian warehouse. A corresponding door, at the opposite side of this court, opens just upon a wooden barricade, which constitutes the barrier of China. In this there is a wide portal, ornamented with pillars, and displaying the Russian eagle above it, along with the cipher of the reigning emperor, Nicholas the First, by whom it was erected." On passing through this gate, the change is immediate and striking,--from Russian sobriety of aspect and hue to the gaudy finery of China. Maimachen, the name of the Chinese town visited by Mr Erman, has a very masquerading air to a European eye. The walls on either side of the streets do not look like house walls, the roofs being flat and invisible from the street. "Indeed, they are nearly altogether concealed by the gay-coloured paper lanterns and flags, with inscriptions on them, hung out on both sides of the way. Cords, with similar scrolls and lanterns, are likewise stretched from roof to roof across the street. These dazzling decorations stand out in glaring contrast with the dull yellow of the ground and walls. In the open crossings of the streets, which intersect each other at right angles, stood enormous chafing-dishes of cast-iron, like basins, upon a slender pedestal four feet in height. The benches by which they were surrounded were occupied by tea-drinkers, who sat smoking from the little pipes they carry at their girdles, whilst their kettles boiled at the common fire." Mr Erman had the good fortune to be on the frontier at the period of the Chinese festival of the White Moon, which is in fact the celebration of the new-year, and he had the still greater luck to be invited to share in it at Maimachen. He found the town in its gayest costume. The expenditure of flags and lanterns was prodigious. The scrolls usually contained the names of the families before whose houses they were hung out, coupled with words of auspicious import, as gladness, riches, wisdom, &c. There was a great firing of crackers and rockets, partly to celebrate the day, but chiefly in honour of the guests. Before dinner the latter were diverted by a theatrical representation. Maimachen boasts a regular company of actors, and upon this great occasion they did their best. Their orchestra was of a rather violent description, consisting of "wooden drums, shaped like casks, brass cymbals, and plates of the same metal, or gongs, held by a string and beaten with knockers, and wooden truncheons, of different sizes, which they used as castanets." There were no actresses; but the deficiency was not to be detected, the younger and more delicate men personating women to the life by the aid of wigs and long tresses of black hair, but especially by curls pressed flat upon the forehead. Masks were not used, but paint was in abundance; in some cases with a view to represent spectacles, mustachios, &c.; in others to conceal the human features, or give them a monstrous aspect. "One face was covered with coloured rays, issuing from the mouth. The same actor had also a feather on his head--in Chinese comedy the conventional mark of a ghost or apparition. Another wore a golden helmet, which constituted him a warrior. Several kept beating themselves incessantly on the hip with a cane, and by so doing intimated that they were on horseback." The play itself was more like a game of romps than any regular dramatic representation. Little was said; but, on the other hand, there was a deal of dancing, drumming, and running about. Mr Erman could make neither head nor tail of the proceedings. By way of experiment, however, he made some tender gestures to one of the pseudo-ladies, who acknowledged them in the most amiable manner, and after that the horsemen without horses paid him much attention, pointing with their sticks to his spectacles, and trying to touch them as they passed. All this greatly diverted the Mongol audience, evidently delighted to see a real counterpart to the painted spectacles of some of the actors.

The play over, Mr Erman and the other guests, preceded by the uproarious orchestra, marched off to dinner at the house of the sarguchei or chief officer of Maimachen. This gentleman, a tall, thin person of stern countenance, dressed in gray velvet, had a white button on the crown of his black felt hat, indicating his rank, and a chalcedony ring, an inch wide, upon his right-hand thumb, this being a mark of official dignity. "His nails," says our traveller, "did not extend above half an inch beyond the tips of his fingers, his personal vanity being in this respect subdued, as might be expected in a man of sober mind and mature years." The man of short nails and sober mind was exceeding hospitable, welcomed his guests in a soft and sonorous voice, and sat down with them to dinner at tables covered with scarlet cloth. The regale that followed might have caused a European _chef_ to pale his ineffectual fires from sheer envy. It began, oddly enough, with fruits, sweetmeats, and tea. These discussed, a piece of fine paper, for a napkin, and a pair of ivory chopsticks, were laid before each guest, and the tables, which were six feet wide, were covered over thickly with small porcelain plates full of all manner of complicated edibles. Fat abounded in the dressing, to neutralise which weak vinegar was used. The first series of saucers duly honoured, a second was brought in and put on the top of its predecessor. Others followed, and as the previous stratum was never removed, there soon arose upon the table a lofty pile of gastronomical curiosities. Pipes and _chowsen_, a Chinese spirit distilled from rice, concluded the feast, as the strangers thought;--but they were vastly mistaken. The soup course had still to come, and that was followed by an infusion of cabbage-leaves, drawn out of an urn by a cock, and drunk steaming hot. How a dinner commencing with preserved apricots, and concluding with cabbage water, agreed with German stomachs, Mr Erman does not inform us. After managing to taste upwards of a hundred dishes, he went to visit the temple of Fo, whose court was guarded by two clay lions painted green, whilst at his shrine were deposited, on account of the festive season, a prodigious heap of delicacies. Whole sheep without the skin, plucked chickens, pheasants, and guinea-fowls, in their natural positions, and glistening with fat, lay in hillocks at the feet of half-a-dozen grotesque and indecent idols. On a long table, a wall of offerings was built up, consisting of dressed meat and cakes of every kind, the whole surrounded with an elaborate lattice-work of white dough, five or six feet high, the openings of which were filled with dried fruits and confectionary of the finest kind. Perfumed candles burned before the disgusting idols, and brass discs hung from the ceiling, and were struck with clappers when any bearing offerings approached.

The contents of the shops at Maimachen gave Mr Erman a very high opinion of Chinese skill and ingenuity. He saw scientific instruments of great merit, very clever clockwork, paintings drawn and finished with the greatest care, (although highly objectionable by the indelicacy of their subjects,) porcelain, sculpture, bowls, vases, and figures of various kinds of stone. "There were large spherical bowls, and oval vases, of chalcedony and agate, and reliefs cut in cornelians, nephrit, and other coloured stones. Of the latter kind, the most common are flowers, the several parts of which are formed of various and tastefully selected stones, and then cemented with mastic on a foundation of stone. For many of these articles, highly elaborate, and at the same time quite useless, the merchants of Maimachen asked four thousand tea-bricks, (a standard of currency,) or about two thousand five hundred Russian dollars. In this we saw a proof of luxury and profuse expenditure amongst the Chinese. Many other branches of industry indicated enervation and effeminacy of manners:" musk, for instance, and other perfumes, enclosed in little bags, and considered indispensable appendages to a young man's dress. A curious plaything, considered equally essential, is composed of two polished balls, about an inch in diameter, which the men always carry with them. "These are taken in the right hand, at idle times, and rolled and rubbed one over the other with the fingers; the noise they make amuses, and perhaps there is something agreeable also in the feel of them. Here, in Maimachen, I saw some of these balls made of glass, striped green and white, and, hollow, containing within them a little lump of clay, which rattled with every motion." The musk and perfumes, however abundantly used, are all insufficient to counteract a very peculiar and unpleasant smell attributed by Mr Erman to the Chinese. He first perceived it at the theatre, and took it to arise from an inordinate addiction to leeks on the part of actors and audience, whose breath and clothes were infected with the disagreeable odour of that bulb. But he was subsequently induced to regard it as a national taint, a Chinese exhalation, not to be overcome by any amount of artificial perfume, and whose cause is matter of inquiry for the chemist. Doubtless the Chinese would get rid of it, were it possible so to do, for the care they bestow on personal beauty and elegance is very great. Another striking defect in the inhabitants of Maimachen is to be found in their black and decayed teeth. The cause of this Mr Erman suspects to be the solution of copper, produced by the empyreumatic oil of tobacco in the bronze mouth-pieces of their pipes.

At a post-house upon his road back to Irkutsk, Mr Erman and his party were met by a deputation from no less a personage than the Khamba Lama, the high-priest of the Buraets, a Mongolian tribe closely allied in language and customs to the natives of the northern provinces of China. The embassy consisted of four lamas or priests attired in scarlet robes and bright yellow hats. They brought an invitation to a grand festival, which was readily accepted,--and a very remarkable business it proved to be. The discordant theatrical music at Maimachen was a mere trifle compared to the monstrous noise made by the Buraet kettle-drums, so large that they were dragged upon four wheels, and by copper trumpets ten feet long, borne by one man and blown by another. "The grave prelude of the wind instruments was like a roaring hurricane, and the chorus of brass gongs, drums, &c., resembled the crash of a falling mountain." In this place we find some curious and interesting details respecting the Buddhist religion and priesthood, after which Mr Erman returns to Irkutsk, and resumes his journey eastward, through the valley of the Lena, to the land of the Tunguzes and Yakuts. The chief town of the latter people, Yakutsk, is two degrees to the south of Beresov, which Mr Erman had visited on his way to Obdorsk; but, nevertheless, the cold is far more severe at the former place, where frozen earth is found near the surface all the year round, and the same condition of the ground continues to the depth of six hundred feet. "The inhabitants of the Swiss Alps would not unjustly think themselves lost if they were compelled to live at the height of ten thousand feet, or two thousand three hundred feet above the hospital of the great St Bernard, and there to support and clothe themselves by keeping cattle, and with the productions of the surrounding mountains; yet they would then, and not until they arrived at that height, be settled on ground having the same temperature which I found here amongst the Yakuts, who are rich in cattle. It would seem, therefore, as if that succeeded in Siberia which was impossible in Europe, if we did not take into account that the same constant temperature of the ground may be made up at different places of very different elements." Notwithstanding the severity of their climate and resistance of their frozen soil, the Yakuts are a prosperous people, having attained a considerable degree of civilisation, and amongst whom crime is rare, although the influence of Russian example and contact daily renders it less so. There is much interest in Mr Erman's account of them, and of the wandering Tunguzses, the last tribe with whom he consorted before his arrival at Okhotsk. Here his reception was not very flattering. "We were looked at with much curiosity from all the house-doors on the way, for the devout elders of the place had been filled with anxious forebodings by the accounts of the arrival of a foreigner. They signed themselves with the cross whenever he was mentioned. And I learned to-day that they had fears of war, conscription, and other calamities." Nor was their alarm abated by learning that "the heathen foreigner wore snow-shades (spectacles) even in thick weather, and that he carried a dog in the sledge with him. Thus the return to civilised man was marked in the first instance by the encounter of intolerant superstition, and it was necessary to forget the nobler traits of the wilderness before we could become reconciled to the Russians of Okhotsk." At which place Mr Erman's narrative ceases. We await with interest its promised continuation--an account of his adventures in Kamschatka, California, and the Pacific.

THE SCOTTISH DEER FORESTS.

_Lays of the Deer Forest, with Sketches of Olden and Modern Deer Hunting, &c. &c._ By JOHN SOBIESKI and CHARLES EDWARD STUART. 2 vols., post 8vo. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London.

We would that, like stout Lord Percy of yore, it were in our power at this present moment to chronicle a vow that we should forthwith take our pastime for three summer days on the pleasant hills of Scotland. Alas for us, that we are doomed, from divers causes, to absent ourselves from felicity awhile, and, amidst the heat and noise of London, listen with intense disgust to the brutal bayings of the Chartists! This very night, we hear, the ignoble hunt is to be up in Bishop Bonner's fields. Crowds of dirty, unshaven, squalid ruffians, who have not the strength to use the pike, but the will to employ the knife of the assassin--fellows whom even Cobden would be chary to recognise as his _quondam_ supporters, defenders, and dupes--not unmingled with foreign propagandists, whom even France, in the fury of her revolutionary tornado, repudiates--are thronging to the place of rendezvous, where, doubtless, their souls will be worthily regaled by the ravings of some rascally vendors of sedition, blasphemy, and treason. Then will ensue the usual scene which for nights has disgraced the metropolis. Some unfortunate tradesman, whose curiosity has been stronger than his prudence, will be fixed upon as a "special" or a spy--the cowards, presuming upon their numbers, and the apparent absence of all executive power, will attempt a deliberate murder--the police will sally from their hiding-place to the rescue--there will be a storm of brickbats, a determined charge with the baton, a shop or two will be gutted, some score of craniums cracked, and to-morrow morning the greasy patriots, at the bar of Bow Street, will read their recantation, and, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, protest their loyalty to the Queen. Such are the pastimes of merry England in the month of June, and such the results of that enlightened policy which yields every thing to popular clamour, adopts the most fatal delusions as distinct principles of right, and then shrinks, trembling and aghast, from the inevitable result of their development!

We do not want--in this article, at least--to be political, and we vow that we took up our pen three minutes ago in a spirit of perfect good-will and harmony towards all manner of men. But the hoarse bawling of these cannibals has somewhat ruffled our temper, dispelled for the moment our dreams of the mountains, and forced us back to the sterner realities of popular tumult and the truncheon. If this sort of thing lasts, we shall indubitably emigrate. Assassination, as recommended by the modern Hamilcar, is by no manner of means to our taste. Our opinion coincides with that of the gracious Captain of Knockdunder, and, were we promoted to a judicial function, "the chiel they ca' the Fustler" should ere long fustle in a tow. Neither are we at all disposed to fraternise with the milder Cuffey--a fellow, by the way, who is not without some redeeming scintillations of humour. We have no wish to be introduced to him even at a mesmeric soiree; and, acting upon the principle of Jacquey, we shall pray heaven to decrease our acquaintance, and put the Tweed as speedily as possible between ourselves and the partisans of O'Connor. We hope the Lord Provost, though discomfited in his Police Bill, has been looking after the tranquillity of the Calton. If not, we must move further north, and finally locate ourselves somewhere in the vicinity of Dalnacardoch. The deuce is in it, if the revolutionary mania has penetrated to that sequestred region! No son of the mountains has ever yet given in his adhesion to the Charter--treason hath not stained the tartan, and no republican pins have ever been exposed beneath the checkered margin of the kilt. There is loyalty at least in the land which was traversed by Montrose and Dundee; and without the slightest fear that any of the numerous points of that interesting but incomprehensible public document, which Mr Joseph Hume proposes to condense, shall be unduly obtruded on our notice, we shall at once exchange our London dwelling for the more pleasant bothy of the hills.

As for a companion, we shall seek none better--for we could not find one--than this last publication of the Stuarts. And here, once for all, let us draw a line of distinction betwixt the poetry and the prose of these very remarkable brothers. We have not the remotest intention of sitting in judgment on the "Lays," or of testing the poetical merits of John Sobieski and Charles Edward, either by the canons of Longinus, or by that superior code of literary laws which Maga has promulgated to the world. The poems, which occupy exclusively the first of these volumes, are, with one exception, fugitive in their nature, and appear to have been penned rather from occasional impulse, than from any deliberate intention of publication. Accordingly, we find that most of them relate to topics personal to the authors themselves--and with these we do not meddle. In others, there are flashes of the deep national spirit which still survives--though our rulers do not seem to mark it--in Scotland: indignation at the neglect with which too many of our national institutions have been treated, and mournful lamentings over the misfortunes of a former age. But the impulse which leads to the composition of poetry does not always imply its accomplishment. Poetry, as an art in which excellence can only be obtained by a combination of the simple and the sublime, requires a study far more intense and serious than the mere critic is apt to allow. In a former Number we devoted an article to an exposition of those principles, which are absolutely invariable in their application, and which must be thoroughly understood, if they are not intuitive to the poet; and, being in no mood for repetition, we shall simply say that we adhere to our recorded doctrines. The Stuarts, it must be confessed, are more successful with the rifle than the lyre. We would far rather meet them in the garb of the forester, than in the more fantastic fashion of the minstrel: be theirs the lot of Ryno the hunter, not the darkened destiny of the bard.

Do, therefore, what you please with the first volume--pack it up in your portmanteau, or place it on the shelf beside Chambers' History and the collections of good old Bishop Forbes. But if you profess to be a deer-stalker--though we fear your profession to be false--or if you are but an aspiring neophyte, and hankerer after that proud position--or if you merely bound your aspirations towards the compassing of the death of a roebuck--or if simply you have a keen and a kindly eye for nature, and are a lover of the sylvan solitudes--in one or other, or all of these characters, we pray you to deal more leisurely with the other tone, which is the Hunter's Vade-Mecum, the best guide ever yet published to the haunts of the antlered monarch.

We are fond of Mr Scrope, and we have an excessive partiality for St John. Two finer fellows never shouldered a rifle; and our conscience does not accuse us of having used too superlative, in epithet in their praise. This was the more creditable on our part, because we knew them both to be Southrons; and while freely admitting the sportsman-like qualities of the one, and the strong picturesque style and spirit of the other, we felt a slight, passing, but pardonable pang of jealousy, that they should have stepped in, and pre-occupied the native field. Where, thought we, are our Scottish deer-stalkers? Can the lads not handle a pen as well as touch a trigger? Will none of them, who have been trained to the hills since they were striplings, stand forth for the honour of Albyn, and try a match with these fustian-coated circumventers of the stag? By the shade of Domhnull Mac-Fhionnlaidlhnan Dan, we blush for the literary reputation of our country, and almost wish that we were young enough ourselves to take the hill against the invading Sassenach! At length--and we are delighted to see it--the reproach has been swept away. Two stalwart champions of the forest have risen in the persons of the Stuarts--they have encountered the Englishmen with their own weapons, and, in our opinion, beaten them hollow.

Mr Scrope had the merit of producing the earliest work in which deer-stalking was treated as a distinct and peculiar branch of the art venatory. We speak of it now from recollection; for our copy, somewhat frayed and worn by the fingers of ambitious sportsmen, is in the snug corner of a library some hundred miles to the northward. But we remember well the Waltonian character of the book--the professional style in which the elder practitioner enforced his precepts upon the dawning intellect of his companion; and the adventures, neither few nor feeble, which were depicted in the heart of the Atholl forest. Taken as the production of an English sportsman, Mr Scrope's book is highly creditable: considered as the manual of a deer-stalker, it is at the best indifferent. Nor, indeed, could it well be otherwise. Not until middle age, if we are informed rightly, did Mr Scrope first send a ball into the ample shoulder of a hart: his young blood never beat tumultuously in his veins at the sight of the mighty creature rolling over upon the heather, and its antlers buried in the moss. His boyish enthusiasm, we fear, was expended upon game of less mark and likelihood--partridges, perchance, as they whirred from the turnips, or possibly he was "entered" with the hare. Wordsworth's maxim, that the boy is the father of the man, is peculiarly applicable in sporting matters. Upon the character of the country in which the latent spirit of the hunter is earliest developed, depends, in a great degree, his future success, and certainly his accomplishment as an Orion. The young squire, who has been brought up in the faith of Sykes, who never stirs abroad without a keeper, and who is accustomed to see his delicate pointers execute their manœuvres with almost mathematical precision on the flat stubbles of Norfolk, labours under a huge disadvantage in the higher branches of his science, compared with the Highland boy who has received his education on the hill. What though the single barrel of the latter be a clumsy implement indeed in competition with the Purdie which decorates the shoulder of the former--though the hound that sometimes attends him, though oftener he is alone, never slept a single night in a kennel, and is the ruggedest specimen of his kind--still he is in the enjoyment of advantages incomparably superior for the development of all his faculties, and the sharpening of every sense. The triumph of the sportsman does not lie so much in the killing as in the finding of his game. Were it otherwise, the pigeon-slayer of Battersea or the Red-house would have just claims to the honours of Sir Tristram, and the annihilator of poultry to rank with the Nimrods of the world. Our young friend the Squire shoots well--that is to say, he can kill with reasonable precision: but, after all, what is he save an instrument? Take Ponto away from him, tie up Juno, send a bullet through the brain of Basta, and a pretty beggarly account you will have of it in the evening when we come to the emptying of the bags! Or lead him down to the sea-shore, and show him a whaup, which in the English tongue is denominated a curlew; request him to use all his possible skill to compass possession of the bird; but do not set your heart on having it, else, as sure as fate, you are doomed to disappointment. Whaup is quite alive to his own interests, and by no means unsuspicious of the Saxon, who advances straight towards him with a hypocritical air of unconcern. Had the Highland lad been there, what a difference! He would have dropped like a stone behind that rock, wriggled like a serpent over the sand, kept the bird between himself and the sea, taken advantage of every inequality in the ground, discerned from the attitude of his quarry whether its suspicions were aroused or not, and in ten minutes a pluff of white smoke and a report would have announced its extermination. As it is, the curlew remains apparently unconcerned until the Lord of the Manor has reduced the intermediate distance to a hundred and twenty yards, and then, with a shrill whistle, takes flight along the margin of the tide. Or set him to stalk a blackcock, perched high of an Autumn morning on a dyke. How clumsily he sets about it! how miserable is his stoop! how wretchedly he calculates his distance! That wide-awake hat, which, for the sake of symmetry, he has been pleased to surmount with a feather, is as conspicuous to the country for miles round, and of course to the blackcock, as was the white plume of Murat in the field of battle, and as potent to effect a clearance, of which we presently have ocular demonstration.

We contend, therefore, that it is extremely difficult for the man, be he ever so addicted to field-sports, who has been educated in a cultivated country, to disembarrass himself of the artificial habits which he is tolerably sure to acquire. His trolling may be excellent--indeed, English gentlemen are, generally speaking, first-rate shots--but he will be deficient in the science of the naturalist, and in that singular acuteness of perception which can hardly be gained save by an early intimacy with nature, on the mountain, the moor, or in the glen. No subsequent education or experience can make up for the normal deficiency, least of all in the pursuit of an animal so wary, so instinctive, and so peculiar in its habits as the deer. Of course we do not mean to deny that there is much which may be learned. What a pointer is to partridges, some wary and experienced forester may often be made to the deer; and if you put yourself under his tuition, and scrupulously obey his orders, you may very possibly succeed in attaining the object of your desires. Nor indeed can you do better, up to a certain point, notwithstanding the strictures of the Stuarts, who are, we think, unnecessarily wroth at the system which would call in the aid of any supplementary assistance. We hope no gentleman who has rented a forest for the ensuing season will be deterred from following the feet of a Highland Gamaliel on account of any ridicule which may be attached to the fact of his having been "taken up" to a deer. If he should rashly attempt stalking at his own hand, without any preliminary instruction, we should be sorry to found our hopes of dinner on the chance of his acquisition of a haunch.

"When advancing upon deer [say our authors]--except in strange
ground--the forester, or any other attendant, should be left
behind a stone, or in some covert, before the stalker commences
his approach; not from any recognition of the false reproach
made against the guides by Mr Scrope, but because there is
no occasion for an assistant, and the action of one has more
celerity, independence, and security from discovery, than when
a greater number are in motion. The charge made by the author
of 'The Art of Deer-stalking,' that the forester is often in
the way, and sometimes obstructs the shot, is not true, unless
in instances of inexperienced and awkward individuals, who are
not to be found among that class of foresters of whom the guest
of the _Atholl Forest_ proposes his remarks. With a MacKenzie,
or a MacDonald, a Catanach, and a MacHardie, the asserted
inconvenience must proceed from the ignorance or maladroitness
of the gray worm which crawls at his back, and who often does
not know what he is doing, or where he is going, with his
ideas _égaré_ on his sensitive knees and varnished Purdie,
unconscious of what he ought to do and nervous for what he ought
not, flurried with eagerness and disgusted with his posture,
and who, never seeing a deer except once in the year, is led
up to him like a 'blind burraid,' by one whose language he
scarcely understands. In general, therefore, the embarrassments
of the 'creep' are those of the superior, who is frequently so
ignorant, unpractised, and dependent upon the guidance of the
forester, that to be '_taken up to the deer_' has become the
modern forest phrase for the approach of the sportsman. This
contemptible term, and its contemptible practice, has only
been introduced within the last quarter century, since the
prevalence of stalking gentlemen utterly unacquainted with the
ground and pursuit of deer. Of old, the '_Seàlgair uasal nam
bèann_' was initiated to the hill when yet but a '_biorach_'
of a stalker; and when he became a matured hill-man, he should
no more have suffered himself to be--'_taken up_ to his deer'
by an attendant, than a Melton fox-hunter to be trained after
the hounds by a whipper-in with a leading rein.--What should
have been the sentiments of the old chiefs and Uaislean of the
last century--the Dukes of Atholl and Gordon--Glengarrie--John
Aberardar--Iain dubh Bhail-a-Chroäin--to hear a deer-hunter
speak of being '_taken up to his deer_!'--Certainly that he was
a noble 'amadan' or 'gille-crùbach,' who had not the faculties
or the limbs to act for himself.--But this is only one of the
many instances for which the hills of Gael may mourn with the
mountains of Gilboa--'_Quomodo ceciderunt robusti!_'"

Far are we from insinuating that Mr Scrope is at all liable to the remarks contained in the foregoing extract. On the contrary, we hold him to be a man of vigorous mind and acute eye, and any thing but a contemptible foe to the stags, after the measure of his own experience. If he is deficient at all, it is in the poetry and higher mysteries of the art, which hardly would be expected from a stranger, whose initiation was necessarily late. Waverley, though a respectable shot, and a man of literary taste, would, we apprehend, have described the driving and disposition of the tainchel less effectively, and certainly far less truly, than Fergus M'Ivor; so great a difference is there betwixt the craft of the master and his pupil. Let Mr Scrope, therefore, rest content with the laurels he has won, and the trophies he has taken from the forest. Not unforgotten is his name in Atholl, nor unloved. Let him be a guide to the Southren, but he must not dream of rivalling the Stuarts in woodcraft, or Stoddart in the science of piscation.

Of Mr St John's "Wild Sports of the Highlands," we have already spoken in terms of unqualified praise. A more delightful volume was never adapted for the pocket of the sportsman: a more truthful or observant work has seldom issued from the pen of the naturalist. His sketches and pictures of deer-stalking we allow to be as perfect in their way as the compositions of Landseer; and having said so much, we shall not make any further call upon that gentleman's blushes. Still, even his experience is limited, and his knowledge imperfect. He has given us a brilliant account of his own exploits upon the hill, but he has not lived long enough in the wilder haunts of the deer accurately to understand their habits. Not so our authors, who for years have been denizens of the mountains, speaking the tongue of the Gael, wearing the native garb, and following the chase with an ardour and enthusiasm unparalleled in these degenerate days.

Gentlemen who complain of the inferior accommodation afforded by some of the more distant hostelries of Scotland--who are shocked at the absence of warming-pans, and tremulously nervous about your sanatory condition, when subjected to the enormity of damp sheets--how would you like to spend a few nights on the misty hill-side, or even in the hut of the hunters? We shall take you if you please to the latter spot, merely premising that, in order to reach it, we must cross the Findhorn, now roaring down in spate. A terrible stream is that Findhorn, as Mr St John well knows; but we question whether he ever ventured to ford it on the rise, as was done by one of the Stuarts. For the information of distant friends, we beg to put our imprimatur to the following description of this furious Highland flood, which rolled between the residence of the hunters and their favourite ground.

"That stream, however, which was so calm, and bright, and sunny,
when the otters floated down its current in a still summer's
morning, was a fierce and terrible enemy in its anger; and,
for a great part of the year, the dread of its uncertainty
and danger was a formidable cause for the preservation of
that profound solitude of the forest which so long made it
the sanctuary of deer, roe, and every kind of wild game. The
rapidity with which the river comes down, the impassable height
to which it rises in an incredibly short time, its incertitude
and fury, would render it an object of care to bold forders and
boatmen; but with the peasants of the 'laich,' unaccustomed,
like the Highlanders, to wrestle with a mountain torrent, and,
excepting in rare instances, unable to swim or manage a coble,
it inspires a dread, almost amounting to awe, and none except
ourselves ventured to keep a boat above the fishing-station of
Slui. Pent within a channel of rocks from fifty to a hundred
and eighty feet in height, the rise of the water is rapidly
exaggerated by the incapability of diffusion; and the length of
its course sometimes concealing beyond the horizon the storms by
which it is swelled at its source, its floods then descend with
unexpected violence. Frequently when, excepting a low wreath
upon Beann-Drineachain, the sun is shining in a cloudless sky,
and the water scarce ripples over the glittering ford, a deep
hollow sound--a dull approaching roar may be heard in the gorges
of the river; and almost before the wading fisherman can gain
the shore, a bank of water, loaded with trees, and rocks, and
wreck, will come down three--four--five feet abreast--sweeping
all before it in a thunder of foam and ruin. In ordinary cases,
after two days of rain, the stream will rise twenty or thirty
feet--it _has_ risen nearly ten fathoms in its rocky gulf; and
once upon this occasion it mounted fifteen feet in a quarter
of an hour. When the dawn broke, it appeared sweeping through
the trees, which the evening before hung fifty feet above its
brink--a black roaring tempest loaded with ruins and debris,
from which were seen to rise at times the white skeletons of
trees peeled of their bark, beams and couples of houses--a
cart--a door--a cradle, hurrying and tilting through the foam
and spray, like the scattered 'floatsome' of a wreck.

"It may be judged how far it was convenient in winter to hunt
a forest separated by such a boundary, of which the nearest
certain passage was by a bridge two miles to the west, with
frequently the view of hunting three miles to the east. Often we
have gone out in a clear sapphire morning, when there was scarce
a ripple on the pools, and the water on the ford was not over
our 'glunachan,' and when we returned at evening, and approached
through the dark veil of pines which descended to the river,
have heard a roar as if the world was rolling together down the
black trough before us, and as we came out on the bank, found a
furious tempest of water, tumbling, and plunging, and leaping,
over stock and rock twenty feet upon the clatach, where we had
left it whimpering among the pebbles in the morning; while, in
the far, deep, birch-embowered channel, where the stream was
then so still and placid that you could only guess its course by
the bright glistening eye which here and there blinked between
the trees and stones,--now it came yelling, and skirling, and
clamouring down the rocks and falls, as if all the air was full
of gibbering, babbling, laughing demons, who were muttering, and
yammering, and prophesying, and hooting, at what you were going
to do, if you attempted to cross."

We pray you at your leisure to read on, and you will presently see what peril our authors underwent at the fearful fords of the Findhorn. Once or twice in our life we have been in similar jeopardy, and we can testify with unction to the singular sensations which beset a man in the midst of a roaring river, when the rapids are shooting away below, and the boulder-stones rolling beneath his feet. We pass over some perilous instances of adventure, which at length became so frequent as to lead to the construction of the hut.

"Such continually and unexpectedly were the ferries of the
Findhorn, and many such escapes we had, in daylight and in
darkness.--Twice I have been swamped, often nearly upset, and
more than once carried off my legs in the fords; and--I say it
with humility, and always under the mercy of heaven--that I owed
rescue either to actual swimming, or to the confidence inspired
by that power when struggling with the strong and terrible enemy.

"This continual exposure to battle and disappointment, however,
became at length too vexatious an abridgment of sport and
certainty; and as I would--and often--have made my bed under
a fir tree rather than go round by the bridge of Daltullich,
I resolved upon another alternative--to build in the forest a
'_bothan an t-sealgair_,' or 'hunter's hut,' where we might
lodge for the night when it was impossible to cross the water.

"There is a high and beautiful craig at the crook of the river
near the 'Little Eas,'--a precipice eighty feet in height, and
then like a vast stone helmet crowned with a feathery plume of
wood, which nodded over its brow. From its top you might drop
a bullet into the pool below, but on the south side there is
an accessible woody bank, down which, by planting your heels
firmly in the soil and among the roots of the trees, there is a
descent to a deep but smooth and sandy ford. Upon the summit of
the rock there is, or there was--my blessing upon it!--a thick
and beautiful bird-cherry, which hung over the craig, and whose
pendant branches, taking root on the edge of the steep, shot up
again like the banana, and formed a natural arbour and close
trellis along the margin of the precipice. Behind its little
gallery, there is a mighty holly, under which the snow rarely
lays in winter, or the rain drops in summer. Beneath the shelter
of this tree, and within the bank at its foot, I dug a little
cell large enough to hold two beds, a bench, a hearth, a table,
and a 'kistie.' The sides were lined with deals well caulked
with moss, and the roof was constructed in the same manner, but
covered with a tarpauling, which, lying in the slope of the
surrounding bank, carried off any water which might descend from
thaw or rain, and, when the autumn trees shook off their leaves,
could not be distinguished from the adjoining bank. Its door was
on the brink of the craig, veiled by the thick bird-cherries
on the edge of the precipice; and the entrance to the little
path, which ascended from either side upon the brow of the
rock, was concealed by a screen of birch and hazel, beneath
which the banks were covered with primroses, wood-anemones,
and forget-me-not. Bowers of honeysuckle and wild-roses twined
among the lower trees; and even in the tall pines above, the
rose sometimes climbed to the very top, where all its blossoms,
clustering to the sun, hung in white tassels out of the
dark-blue foliage. There the thrush and the blackbird sang at
morning and evening, and the owl cried at night, and the buck
belled upon the Torr.--Blessed, wild, free, joyous dwelling,
which we shall never see again!"

A lovely place indeed must that have been in the pleasant days of summer! We do not wonder at the fondness with which the Stuarts speak of that lodge in the wilderness, reared as it was in the midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery which exists within the compass of the seas of Britain, or, for aught we know, elsewhere. Years have rolled by since we last set foot upon the banks of Findhorn; but never shall we forget the glories of that deep ravine, or the noble woods of Altyre, still possessed by the descendants of the princely Comyns. Did we not expect to be summoned out within half an hour to contribute to the safety of the realm by breaking the head of a Chartist, we should ourselves launch out into description, and try conclusions with Horatio M'Culloch. But, after all, it would be a work of supererogation. Mr St John has already illustrated most charmingly that abode of the faithful; and he will not be displeased to see that, even in painting, he has met with formidable rivals. Rarely, indeed, have we met with any thing so perfect as the following sketch:--