81

ROUGH NOTES OF A SPORTING EXCURSION THROUGH THE MAREMME OF TUSCANY.

(Continued from page 25.)

CHAPTER V.

Description of a Grande Chasse in the Maremme-Wild Boar-stalkers, their Habits, Intrepidity, and Enthusiasm for their dangerous Avocation-An Adventure more extraordinary than probable.

A NUMEROUS party sallied forth this morning for the Caccia dei Cignali: and our host earnestly essayed to induce us to prolong our stay at Piombino, by proposing that we should join them; but the discomforts of his wretched hostelrie prevailed over even our passion for the chase, and made us turn a deaf ear to all his persuasions and eloquence.

When a grande chasse is planned in any particular district of the Maremme, all capable of bearing arms in the nearest towns and hamlets unite in the expedition, and form a body consisting of seldom less than sixty or seventy sportsmen, and frequently exceeding two hundred in number. The beaters are drawn up in the form of a semicircle, or crescent, and enclose a vast extent of country and tract of forest, which they drive with shouts and cries, arousing from their lairs the denizens of the wilds, and urging them all forward-the fleet roebuck, the subtle fox, the stealthy wolf, and the savage boar, to one point, where the marksmen are all stationed. The sharp ring of the rifle then commences, and the work of destruction proceeds rapidly. Where all had been for hours hushed in the stillness of death, is noise and uproar. The deadly ambuscade is opened upon the scared animals, who rush hither and thither in all directions for a place of refuge or of safety, but finding none, and, maddened with terror by the cries and shouts of the beaters in their rear, they charge the line of marksmen, when many fall victims to the science for which the cacciatori of the Maremme are celebrated; and some few succeed in breaking the line, and escaping from the murderous devices of their assailants.

The hecatombs of game slaughtered at some of these battues exceed belief. A friend of mine, a Florentine noble, saw seventeen wild boars, exclusive of much game of other descriptions, killed in one day this last winter. There is little danger or none in a chasse of this kind, for the savage animals-paralyzed with consternation at the shouts, yells, and hootings in their rear, the deep baying of the hounds, and the thunder of the rifles-appear to have but one thought, one hope, one all-absorbing impulse of escaping from their deadly foes, and of extricating themselves from the toils by which they are environed. No sportsman is allowed to fire until the animals have passed the boundary of the line along which they are stationed; and thus it seldom or never occurs that a wild boar, however savage he may be by temperament, however infuriated by wounds, wheels round again and

charges his assailants, or dares to rush again headlong on the fire of the battery from which his escape was marvellous.

During the period that we were in the Maremme, on one occasion only did we encounter any of the wild boar-stalkers, who resemble the Highlanders in yielding themselves, body and soul, to the irresistible fascination of the avocation they pursue. This boar-stalker was a tall, gaunt man, clothed from head to foot in skins of the buffalo, the hair turned outwards to resist the rain and tempest, and to protect him against thorn and brier in threading the tangled mazes of the forest. The huge rough cap that covered his head was made of the skin of a wolf, and a flap attached there unto fell over his ears and shoulders; and the cap itself descended so low over his forehead, that the restless, unquiet eyes, deeply sunk in his head, and glaring forth from beneath a lair of bristles, invested his countenance with the characteristic expression of the ferocious animal whose spoils he wore. In his belt gleamed a sharp double-edged couteau de chasse, which, with the long-barrelled rifle that reposed in the bend of his arm, were the only weapons offensive or defensive that he considered necessary for the exercise of his craft.

It is impossible to describe the fierce and sanguinary enthusiasm with which these men exultingly rave of the raptures and the excitement of the chase-the attack of the ferocious animal-his headlong and infuriated onset-the terrible strife-and the struggle for life or death. Their dangerous profession is only the more endeared to them by the very perils with which it is fraught, and the hair-breadth escapes to which they are hour by hour exposed.

The habits of the boar-stalker are of a nature to interpose an impassable gulf between him and all social communion to raise an insurmountable barrier between him and all friendly intercourse with the sons of men. His world is the desert: his only thought by day, his only dream by night, are of toils to circumvent the savage animal, in search of whom he is ever in hot pursuit: his home is the forest—the friend of his soul his faithful hound-solitude his society; and his spirit is free and unfettered as the breeze of the mountains that he inhales ! Yea

"He is as free as nature first made man,

Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran."

Hour by hour, and day by day, he follows, with unceasing assiduity, the fierce boar, through illimitable wilds-tracks him to his lair --and attacks him on his feeding-grounds. If victorious in the terrible contest, he drags the trophy of his prowess triumphantly to the nearest town, barters his spoil away for food and ammunition, and again plunges into the forest, more hotly, more fervently bent than ever on the perilous chase.

The life of the boar-stalker is a brief, and certainly not a merry one, if we lose sight of the intense excitement which stimulates him amidst all perils, and supports him amidst all vicissitudes: for his is the lot to brave the howling tempest, the falling cataract of the skies, the piercing winds of heaven, as he passes sleepless nights in the pathless forest, or on the banks of the pestilential lake; and even if he escapes ever scatheless and unwounded, a victor from the dire encounter of

man with beast, he cannot long resist the fatal exhalations of the climate, which have converted regions worthy of a paradise, in their rich and faultless beauty, into a depopulated and pestilential wilderness.

Sooner or later, or by the tusks of his fierce foe, or by the baneful breath of the pestilence, is weaved the web of the hunter's mortal destiny. He is missed not among the haunts of men, for there he sojourned not. For him there is no anxious wife, with tearful sighs, to await his coming. For him there is no tender child to wonder why father lingereth on his path. Unconnected by any link to those social ties which exalt frail and imperfect humanity even unto the godhead of divinity, soften the sternest natures, and permit not indurating egotism to exclude all warm feelings of affection from the stormy tempest of warring passions, the intrepid but unsocial, daring but repulsive boar-stalker is forgotten when living, unmourned when dead-his last home the gloomy forest-his burial-place the arena of his exploits! 66 Oh, it was a sport

Dearer than life, and but with life relinquish'd!
My sire, my grandsire, died among these wilds.
As for myself (he cried, and he held forth

His wallet in his hand), this do I call

My winding-sheet-for I shall have none else."

Many and various were the anecdotes of these wild boar-stalkers related to me by Alessandro Tonissi; and one, to attest the truth of which he invoked every saint in the calendar, when I was unable to conceal a smile of incredulity, shall be recorded as characteristic (whether true or false in this particular instance) of the indomitable intrepidity and extraordinary presence of mind which they have been known to manifest on various occasions, when the slightest flinching of spirit, or quailing of nerve or limb, would have sealed their fate for

ever.

In pursuing his dangerous avocation in a forest near Grosseto, one of these men aroused from his lair a wild boar of gigantic proportions, and unusual size. He followed him for hours through the mazes of the forest, before he could approach sufficiently near to bring him within range of his rifle. At last, impatient of delay, he ventured a chance shot at a considerable distance, and slightly wounded the formidable animal, who turned at once on him with irresistible fury, rent from limb to limb, and buried his tusks in the faithful hound who dashed at his throat, in the vain attempt of averting his wrath from his master, and became the victim of his self-devotion. The boar-hunter was hurled to the ground, and, in the momentary but fearful struggle for life or death, he found himself clinging to the back of his exasperated antagonist, whose frenzied rage instantaneously subsided into extreme terror, as he dashed away into the depths of the forest. On, on they foamed, man and beast, the strange courser and the appalled rider

"Fast, fast they fled, away, away—

And he could neither sigh nor pray.
And his cold sweat-drops fell like rain
Upon the courser's bristling mane;
But, snorting still with rage and fear,
He flew upon his far career."

Paralyzed with terror and consternation, the hunter's only thought and only impulse was to cling, "like a strong swimmer in his agony,"

with the convulsive grasp of utter despair, to the bristles and neck of his fearful steed! Gradually, however, self-possession returned, and with self-possession the power to reflect, and the courage to execute. He slipped from its sheath the long double-edged knife, which all the hunters of the Maremme wear in their belts, and buried the blade up to its hilt behind the shoulder of the ferocious animal, who sprang up into the air, and rolled over dead, relieving the intrepid hunter from his perilous position, and appalling anticipations of a terrible death and then, and not till then, triumphed the weakness of nature over the moral intrepidity of the spirit.

"His heart turn'd sick, his brain grew sore,
And throbb'd awhile-then beat no more;
And a slight flash sprang o'er his eyes,
Which saw no farther. He who dies
Can die no more than then he died,
O'ertortured by that ghastly ride.”

;

SPORTING PASSAGES IN MY LIFE;

WITH DISCURSIVE REMARKS UPON MEN AND MANNERS.

BY LORD WILLIAM LENNOX.

(Continued from p. 31.)

CHAPTER II.

"And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school."-SHAKSPEARE.

Private Tutorage-" Home, sweet Home!"-My First Day's Shooting-School Days:
Westminster as it was-Fagging-Byron-Commissary-general of the P. C.

THE winter had now set in, and a large party of sportsmen were assembled at the paternal mansion. It was one of those " merry homes of England!" so beautifully described by Mrs. Hemans; and who among our authoresses can better translate feeling into words?— "The merry homes of England! Around their hearths by night,

What gladsome looks of household love
Meet in the ruddy light!"

Hunting and shooting were the order of the day, and there I first imbibed my passion for field sports. The gardener, poor old Harry King, had an antiquated piece of ordnance, something between a blunderbuss and a fowling-piece, with which he was wont to scare all feathered trespassers from the young sprouts; and, being an especial favourite of the said gardener, upon every half-holiday I was indulged with a day's sparrow-shooting. Never shall I forget the joyful pride I experienced when I bagged my first bird. Prince Albert could not have been more elated with success when, upon a late occasion, his royal highness killed an antlered monarch of the forest upon the far-famed wilds of Glenartney, than I did in shooting a sparrow