says that the Emperor Domitian presented a hundred matches in one day. At those races, the Romans, as in the present day, rode in different colours, particularly the company of charioteers, to distinguish themselves: these were generally four, viz., prussina (green), russita (red), alba or albata (white), and the veneta (sea colour).'

Montfaucon gives a copper-plate of a drawing of an urn, which has two inscriptions upon it, the uppermost regarding the horses, the lower human beings. Over the quadruped was the following inscription: "That this was to the memory of the horse Equito, begot by Equito, which had conquered 137 times, won the second prizes 88 times, and the third 37 times."

In Spartianus we find that Hadrian was so fond of his horses, that he built sepulchres for them, and there yet remains an epitaph to Borysthenes, called Alames, from the country he came from, who was the property of the Emperor.

Homer's account of a race may not be here uninteresting, especially as it refers to a prize to the third, fourth, and last horses, which prizes in the annals of the British turf are unknown, except as regards the first and second:

"And the fierce coursers urged their rapid pace
So swift, it seemed a flight, and not a race;
First stood the prizes to reward the force
Of rapid racers on the dusty course.

A woman for the first, in beauty's bloom,
Skill'd in the needle and the lab'ring loom;
And a large vase, where two bright handles rise,
Of twenty measures its capacious size.

The second victor claims a mare unbroke,
Big with a mule, unknowing of the yoke.
The third a charger yet untouched by flame.
Four ample measures held the shining frame,
Two golden talents for the fourth were placed :
An ample double bowl contents the last."

The breed of race-horses is descended from stallions brought from the Medes, Persians, and Arabians, to which they give mares suitable in size, strength, and wind; in all of which we have excelled other countries. Roger de Belesme, created Earl of Salisbury by the Conqueror, is the first upon record that introduced a Spanish stallion into his estate at Powisland; from which circumstance, that part of Wales was celebrated for a swift and noble breed of horses. Geraldus Cambrensis, who lived in the time of Henry II., takes notice of it; and Michael Drayton, contemporary with Shakespeare, sings their excellence in the Polyolbion. This breed was destined to mount the flower of the nobility in their tournaments.

James Markham, who wrote in 1579, mentions running horses; but these were only designed for matches between gentlemen. This di version, however, got greater in favour, and subscriptions were entered into to make a purse, or to purchase plates for the winner. Thus the turf men of those days went on breeding for shape and speed alone, without considering bottom, until the reign of Queen Anne, when a public-spirited individual left thirteen plates or purses to be run for at such places as the Crown should appoint, upon condition that every horse

should carry 12st., for the best of three heats-four miles. By this means, a stronger horse was bred, who, if he was not good enough upon the race-course, made a hunter.

Races seem to have flourished greatly during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and to have been carried to such an excess as to have ruined many of the nobility.

THE CHAMOIS HUNTERS OF THE ALPS.

The bold daring of the hunters of the chamois in Switzerland and the Tyrolean Alps was never more poetically and truthfully depicted than in those words of Schiller, which, in his well-known tragedy of "William Tell," he puts in the mouth of the Swiss hunter, Werni, in the fine song:

"From height to height, though peals the thunder dread,
Shaking the narrow pine-bridge 'neath his tread,
Unmoved the hunter climbs each dizzy height,
And o'er the glacier strides with spirits light;

Where flower of spring, nor moss, nor twig of green,
Crops up to cheer the terrors of the scene.
Far down beneath, a rolling sea of clouds,
Or wide-spread mist on every side enshrouds
The distant cities of mankind from view;

And only 'twixt some clond-rent piercing through,
He sees the world one moment, far below

The tumbling waters, and the distant sheen
Of far-off hamlets, and of fields of green."

In truth, also, the life of the hunter of the Alps, who seeks out the chamois in his pasture-grounds, amid the ice-girt and fearful precipices of his native mountains, is one unbroken series of the most hazardous feats of daring.

The chamois themselves are so unremittingly watchful, and endowed with sense of sight, smell, and hearing, so extremely acute, that from such circumstances alone they are most difficult to approach, even at long-range of the rifle. They live in small herds, in which not only one and all are ever on the alert, and respectively intercommunicate every subject for alarm; but to ensure yet more the maintenance of a constant vigilance on every side, they even post vedettes at particular points, chosen with the most surprising sagacity, whose special business it is to perform outpost duty for the common safety of the herd, and give instant warning of the approach of danger. Under the safeguard of precautions so constant and well devised, it may be readily believed they are very rarely taken by surprise; but should this so happen, the celerity with which they fly as it were from the spot is astounding, and their strength and agility are so great, that they will spring the distance of five-and-twenty feet across a chasm, or at a few bounds, with unerring surety of foot and velocity, climb the steepest rocks.

It is in pursuit of game gifted with such wonderful instinctive vigilence and facilities for self-preservation, that the mad daring of the Alpine hunter's foot seeks the haunts of the chamois, under difficulties of

access that would be insurmountable to the keenest sportsmen of other lands. From early youth inured to the arduous toil and appalling dan gers of his occupation by choice, he not alone sets the pride of his heart on overcoming them, but in themselves they are a source of the keenest enjoyment to him, and the magnitude of the perils but a stronger incentive to the ruling passion of his life.

The three, or at the utmost four, dollars which the most successful shot may bring him, after surmounting a host of obstacles and dangers, as of privations and trials, are for him the least allurement, for such only is the pecuniary gain which, in the absence of the more considerate burgher or proprietor in the nearest town, he receives from the cupidity of some granite-hearted innkeeper. Far beyond, in attractive charm for him, is the peculiar stimulating allurements of a life in which all the energies of body and mind are kept constantly on the stretch-a life staked anew every day, and every day won anew. His head must not be seized with giddiness: one moment's wavering, one false or uncertain step may precipitate him helpless into a dark, yawning abyss, or crevasse, into which no human eye, much less foot, ever penetrated. With keen precision his glance must measure both heights and depths, must note afar the gathering mist, lest it envelope him and lead him astray in unknown paths, and must be quick to descry at a distance the coveted booty. Neither heat nor cold, wind, rain, nor blinding snowstorm, hunger nor thirst, must deter or appal him when for whole days together in pursuit of his ever-wary quarry.

To form some tolerably accurate notion of the outward man of one, who, without aspiring to see his name in print, thus alone, in the awful solitudes of the Bernese and Tyrolean Alps, performs as the daily habit of his humble life, feats of daring, to which the chronicled achievements of fashionable aspirants to Alpine renown are but the spasmodic enterprises of vanity; our readers must dismiss from their fancy the type and style of the Swiss and Tyrolean hunters of the opera, just as he should dismiss from his mind the Tom Cooke style of a theatrical-British salt, though nearly become the regulation vogue of the present day, if he would picture to himself the British sailor who fought under Collingwood and Nelson.

In stature the chamois-Jager of the Bernese Oberland we recall was not of that height to which the English worship of bigness renders its admiration as the sum of all qualifications in man and Christmas beef. No British duchess would have hired him for her footman, few brewingfirms for their drayman, and when a youth, it is doubtful that he would have passed muster for a promising lifeguardsman. But he has an impersonation of that union of strength and activity, with which nature rarely favours the sons of Anak.

Clad in simple garb, in which the appropriately useful was more considered than the ornamental, it had but little of the holiday fashion of the Bernese peasant.

In respect to the intellectual side of our subject, as may be readily imagined, he would have been considered by any one of the three male representatives of modern civilization, adverted to above, as greatly deficient in those qualities, the development of which comes to them of that superior grade of modern culture enjoyed in great cities. Nevertheless, though wanting that keen edge to what may perhaps

rather be distinguished as the lower mental faculties only, our simple Alpine hunter, from the avocation of his life, pursued amidst the grandest works and forms of nature, had derived from this wholly different kind of intercourse, a development of certain of the higher faculties of the intellect, that had also its influence upon him, and one which imparted an unaffected manly dignity of bearing, and tone of thought, by no means unattractive.

Clad in simple garb, as we have said, in which from head to foot the appropriately useful to his calling was more considered than the ornamental; beneath the broad brim of his weather-worn felt hat, the high crown of which a mathematician would have pronounced a perfect example of the fourth Definition in Conic Sections, the reader must picture to himself an earnest-looking, hale, bronzed-visage, of some seven-and-thirty summers, lit up by a pair of dark lustrous eyes, the piercing glances of which were yet attempered by the natural cheerfulness of the inner mood, which, when addressed on subjects connected with his Alpine pursuit, evinced itself in a hearty readiness to communicate information.

Such was our Alpine friend; but the reader must picture him when every feature in repose re-assumed the habitual reflex of the calm, inner resolution, and fixity of purpose that then bespoke silently, but eloquently, that fear was scarcely known to him by name. He must be imagined also, at the moment when the good fortune which had so frequently favoured his keen courage, had again been true to him. The chamois which has fallen beneath his rarely erring fire, is slung upon his back. His body and arms are clothed in a light, unadorned jacket of Swiss as much as of Tyrolean cut; the customary breeches of coarse velveteen-like material, confined just below the knees; blue, coarsewoollen knit-stockings, which exhibit the muscular powers of the leg adapted to all the arduous difficulties of mountain toil.

He has just unbuckled from round his strong, thickly-nailed ankleboots, the iron-spiked foot-soles which have borne him safely down from the ice-fields and glaciers to the grass-grown rock. He rests awhile, leaning upon his "alpenstock," from the fatigue of his long mountainwanderings; and, as a relish to the short repose, he has lit his short stump-pipe." His way henceforth is less precipitous and toilsome; all the greater perils dared, and overcome, are now left far behind. With but little bread-and-cheese, both already long since consumed, a small flask of brandy, that now yields not a drop more, he had undertaken his long and hazardous chase. From the time that the sun of yester-morn lit up the heights with its first beams, until night-fall, he had kept the game in view, and followed it over rock and chasm, till darkness closed around him. His eye could discern no object more. Sleepless, and chilled through by the icy breath of the glacier, he had passed the night. With the first dawn of morning, not far from the place where he had passed that cheerless night in compulsory vigil, he beheld a herd of chamois grazing. But to reach any one of them with that degree of certainty so indispensable in the chase of this wary animal was impossible; the nearest of the herd was beyond sure range of his rifle. Even less dare he venture to approach nearer to them, if he would not irretrievably scare away the booty, in pursuit of which with such unwearied and persistent toil he had clambered so high. His

only resource was patiently to abide where he stood, in the hope that they themselves would approach nearer to him. Happily, that hope was realized, and sooner than he had expected; screened from their sight by the curve of the rock which formed the abutment of his night's resting-place, they came gradually nearer, moving on a line parallel to his post. At length, the whole herd passed at a quicker pace, as though in review before him. He took aim; the crack of his rifle reverberated from every cliff, and the terror-stricken chamois, with the celerity of magic, dispersed in maddest flight on every side. But they left one of their number behind; the bullet had struck him full in the head; he lay weltering in his blood. The "Jager" with some difficulty succeeds in reaching the spot where lay the coveted meed of all his toil. To accelerate the flow of blood he plunges his huntingknife into the breast, disembowels it, binds the feet together in a knot, and throws his hard-earned prize upon his back, making it fast round his shoulders.

But his arduous toil is not yet ended. In the excitement of the chase he has ascended and penetrated the most trackless regions of the mountains his keen passion for the sport assisted him to overcome every obstacle. Now he has a burden to carry; and, without such an incumbrance, the descent is at all times more difficult. But his spirits are re-invigorated by the sentiment of achieved success, and the pride of conquest dispels every reflection that would embarrass immediately resumed action. Foot-irons and "alpenstock" perform for him their wonted service, and unfaltering courage is again his faithful guide.

Herein our readers will have pictured to themselves the task achieved. They must now imagine how, at evening-fall, wife and children come joyously forth to meet him. With a kiss, hearty as her love for her bold and skilful "jager," she welcomes him; and entering with them his humble but happy home, he throws down his prize, carefully puts rifle and shooting-gear out of reach, and, grateful to God for his safe return, partakes of a simple but invigorating repast. On the following morning he leaves to his wife's management the sale of the chamois. In her absence he cleans his trusty rifle, and gets everything in readiness for another expedition. One night only he rests under the roof-tree of his cottage; he longs to be again on the new discovered track of the chamois-herd, and the dawn of the following morning breaks upon him once more, high up in the mountains.

As represented in the engraving below, after a drawing taken from the still life, or dead animal, the chamois-Rupicapra of Linnæus, Gemse and Steinbock of the Germans-averages a length of 3 feet 3 inches, English admeasurement, and a height of 2 feet 1 inch. It varies in colour, according to the season of the year. In the spring it is of a whitish-grey colour, in summer of a red-brown, in autumn dark-brown, and in winter black. The nostrils, forehead, lower-jaw, and the inside of the ears are, however, at all seasons of the year of a yellow-white or light tawny colour; as also the buttocks, the inside of the legs, the belly, and the hair above the hoofs. A brown stripe crosses, as it were, through the eye. The chamois, though less numerous than formerly, is still to be met with in small herds in the higher regions of the Swiss Alps, more especially in the Bernese Oberland, among the wild solitudes of the Wetterhorn; as also in the Tyrolean Alps, the mountains