Yes, kind reader, and brother sportsmen who inhabit the sunny shores of the south, let you but have a taste of these mountain sports, such as a day among the grouse, or a cast for that noble fish, the salmon, in some of our rapid rivers; just one. taste, and you will long for another when the season comes again. There is nothing to be compared to the bracing air of these heath-clad hills. Yes, brother sportsmen, who think no sport equal to "fox-hunting"-and who can deny but the latter is a "most noble sport?" But take " Hawthorne's" advice, and try both. One "sojourn" among the hills of the far north will put you in prime condition previous to the commencement of the hunting season; and your "honest hunter" will bless his stars that you went to the hills, and came home all "bone and muscle"-no quarter given for superfluity of" flesh" on the wild face of the mountains. But we must to the foray, which has been going on for these last five weeks on the moors; and we have pleasure in again placing our old friend Alexander Campbell, of Monzie Castle, at the head of our list of sportsmen, he having killed and bagged, to his own guns, on the 12th of August, two hundred and twelve brace of grouse! Once on a time we saw this same gentleman bring to bag one hundred and forty-seven and-a-half brace of grouse on a 12th of August; but when one begins to add sixty-four and-a-half brace to the said bag, it makes a most extraordinary day's sport; and good and straight power, with a "leetle shot," must be sent in the proper direction to bring such a quantity of birds to book. Four hundred and twenty-four grouse! Yes, that is sport indeed; and now-a-days nearly every sportsman tries to make a good bag on the opening-day. "Hawthorne," however, may be old-fashioned in his ways, and would rather be content with a less number of birds killed in one day. Indeed, had he anything to do with the affairs of the nation, and could pass a Bill through Parliament, he would make the grouse shooting to begin on the 1st September-then no chance of this great slaughter on our hills. Besides, the sultry weather often experienced in August is not good for sport, and bad for dogs; not forgetting half worn-out hunters, such as your old correspondent himself. But we would not hold with the members of the grouse family only, we would extend it to all other kind of game. Partridgeshooting to begin on the 1st October, and pheasant-shooting on that day which brings joy and gladness to the heart of the fox-hunter, namely, the first of November. Nine seasons out of ten, you are plodding through corn-fields uncut in September, and getting black looks from your friend the farmer, besides killing many a poor little chirper, no bigger than a lark. Then, as regards pheasants; you have the leaf on the " greenwoods" and your young birds all in a moulting state, if you begin to kill the poor simple young things on the first of October. Grouse-shooting should expire on the first day of the new year, and partridge and pheasant-shooting on the first of February, as at present. But we must hark back, for we are off the line. Well, then, the party at Drumoor (Lord Panmure's) have had excellent sport, and in the first four weeks brought one thousand seven hundred brace of grouse to book, Lord Panmure killing one hundred and fifty-four brace of grouse to his own guns on the 12th of August. The Earl of Mansfield has had good sport at Logie-almond, and bagged one hundred and twelve brace of grouse, on the 16th of August; and his party at Logie-almond continue to do well up to the present writing. Lord Charles Kerr has been in luck at Conachan, and was killing from forty to fifty brace daily for the first few weeks of the season. We could enumerate a host of other sportsmen who have good cause to be satisfied so far, but will leave the total of the whole till a more advanced period of the season. And now a word for the sport of all other sports-that of salmon fishing, which stands proudly pre-eminent in "Hawthorne's" estimation. The noble Tay! Yes, give to me the noble reaches of that noble river, with its picturesque and magnificent scenery. The linn o' Campsie, Byreswood, Pitlochry-head, the Cottage Water, Thistle Brig, Black Rock, Colm Haugh, Drumshogles, The Halket Horse, and Almond Mouth, all favourite casts for that princely fish. What splendid sport we have had on that part of the river this season! and we could name some of the best sportsmen of this tight little island, who resigned their presence at a snug box on well-preserved moors on the front range of the Grampians, to enjoy a few days with the salmon and grilse on the Tay. We live in hopes to see that noble river as full of fish as it was in the days of yore, when the sturdy ploughmen of these parts stipulated with their masters, the farmers on the banks of the river, that they were not to be forced to eat salmon more that three times a-week! Those were the good old times, and we hope to see them return. The proprietors on the Tay have begun to take an interest in the protection and propagation of fry to stock the river; so that, in a few more years, we hope to see the river full of fish; and to crown all, a good " Saturday's gap" would be a grand affair. Here, again, we would legislate; close time for all nets on the 26th of August, with a Saturday's gap during the fishing season, to begin at 6 P.M., and to continue to Monday at 6 A.M.-this to extend to all kinds of nets, weirs, and curves by sea or river, and a heavy penalty to be inflicted on each and all that did not obey the said law. What a loss, what a public loss, it is to see many a noble river without a superabundant supply of fish! There runs the river, and there might live the fish, food-good and wholesome food-for the million. What a loss our country suffers in this way for the want of a good Act of Parliament, to protect its rivers! Let us hope that ere another session passes, this important matter will be taken into mature deliberation. Then for"A whirr! a birr! a salmon's on, a good fish, a thumper!" And then as our friend Old Davie o' Drumshogles, invariably remarks, on the landing of a fish: "We maun hae him bapteesed." But old Father Time is up for the post, and we maun off to the hill side. Bank's o' the Almond, Sept. 18. "This may be sport, but hang me if you can call it pleasure." "Enough is as good as a feast," was a wholesome old adage carefully impressed upon me in my pinafore days, when year by year the shiny-faced urchin's birthday brought back with its annual plum-cake its annual temptation to indigestion and excess. It is needless to mention how many lustres" have elapsed since this luscious compound has agreed either with my palate or my stomach; but though the birthdays are now fitter subjects for condolence than congratulation, cach returning October, with its mellow sunshine and its yellowing leaves, brings forcibly back to my recollection the frugal proverb quoted above. 66 The fact is, that regularly as the almanack records on its well-ruled columns October 1, Pheas. shoot beg.." so regularly do I receive an invitation from my old friend and school-fellow, John Stopcock, couched in the same precise and somewhat formal language, hoping that I will do him the pleasure of paying him a short visit, and enjoying such sport as his fields and coverts can afford," with the invariable addition of a reminder that the 1st having arrived, he trusts we may be fortunate enough to fall in with a few pheasants; though it is an invariable rule of his to spare the hens." I am passionately fond of shooting in my own way, though for the modern abomination of a battue I entertain unconquerable feelings of disgust not unmingled with terror; and my friend Stopcock being, like myself, a bachelor, and consequently living with his comforts about him, I need not specify my usual answer to his kind invitation. As a contrast between the manners and customs of that forward and presuming race, "the young men of the present day," and those sensible, well-informed people, who, like myself, have arrived at " everybody's age," I may be allowed to describe, first, a quiet rational day's sport such as I enjoy annually at my old friend's; and, secondly, one of those harum-scarum skirmishes where dogs and rabbits, game and beaters, killed and wounded, pursuers and pursued, are all mixed up in vociferous confusion, which Lord Feu-de-Joie calls "battoos ;" and which later in the season, partly from my British reverence for a Peer, and partly persuaded by my worse genius and nephew Percy Rattles, I am occasionally prevailed on to attend. As my annual visit to "The Hazels," the residence of Mr. Stopcock, is year by year conducted with the same ceremonies, and with the observance of certain rites the omission of which would irretrievably forfeit the friendship of the proprietor, a simple relation of my proceedings there in any one October for the last thirty years may be taken for a specimen of the whole, The Hazels being one of those places which seem to contradict the general rule of mutability in human affairs, and in which the same servants, the same wine, the same furniture, the same dogs (or their descendants), and the same woodcock, whom I have missed year after year at the corner of Flushley Gill, apparently return in an endless routine of unvarying regularity. The tenth of the month is the day on which we have always commenced our sport; and on the ninth I have accordingly left my own door precisely at two o'clock, giving old Cherry-Bounce three hours to do the distance, so as to deposit at my friend's threshold myself, my portmanteau, and my gun-case by five o'clock precisely. On one occasion I was unfortunate enough to break a shaft on the journey, which delayed my arrival till twenty-five minutes behind the specified time: that I was ever asked again I regard as the greatest compliment to my own intrinsic worth, and the most convincing proof of Stopcock's sincere and unalterable friendship. I dare not take a servant; such a breach of privilege my nephew alone has ever ventured on, and, it is needless to add, he received no more invitations to The Hazels after such an offence. But this is a small privation, as never are my boots so well blacked, my linen so well aired, or my shaving-water so hot, as when I escape from the tyranny of my own man to the fostering care of Stopcock's "James." Master's orders being strictly enforced as regards "vails and perquisites," I am obliged to reward this worthy with a degree of ingenuity and secrecy that might bribe an ambassador. We dine at six to a minute; the cook, a plain one (conceive a woman allowing that she is plain !), is a most excellent performer. The port is beyond praise; and we drink one bottle a-piece-never more, never less. We have coffee at eight; we play backgammon till nine, when "James" appears with a smoking Welsh-rabbit, which elicits Stopcock's annual joke of "the rabbit he never misses," accompanied by a little hot brandy-and-water; and we go to bed at ten precisely. I like regular hours, but I never sleep very well at The Hazels, which I attribute partly to the Welsh-rabbit. My host breakfasts at nine, a practice more deserving of approval than imitation. I confess to a partiality for late breakfasts myself, and agree with that dissipated dog Percy, that every hour in bed after eight in the morning is worth two before twelve at night; but when at Rome, had I ever been there, I feel I should have done as the Romans did-who, by the way, were very early birds; so I make my annual struggle without much grumbling, and am repaid by an excellent meal. At a quarter before ten the keeper, his two assistants, and the spaniels parade before the hall door, and as the hour strikes we get under arms and prepare for action. There is nothing I am so fond of as shooting partridges in October, when one is not entirely restricted to that particular species of game, On the 30th of September, after toiling all the morning, just as your dogs are getting tired, yourself sulky, and your keeper foolish, a consummation that usually accompanies a deficiency of game, you are perhaps rewarded by a "dead point" in turnips. You gather fresh energy at the sight; you scramble through a briery fence, very likely in plaid trousers, and, cocking both barrels, struggle up to the truculent " Don," who stands rigid as a poker. After much tension of your nerves, he is prevailed upon to move on, which he does, one foot at a time, with a degree of fuss and expectation ridiculously disproportioned to the result. 66 You begin to have horrid misgivings, and a nervous inclination to shoot, when, whirr! making noise enough to frighten an Achilles, up springs a magnificent old cock-pheasant all the colours of the rainbow, with a tail like a comet; and you must not pull a trigger, forsooth, because you are just four-and-twenty hours too soon! So you sit down to luncheon in that state of disappointment which too surely degenerates into disgust. But no such efforts of self-denial damped our pleasure on the day in question, as we ranged the stubbles and the hedge-rows with a roving commission to shoot all that rose, save and except when the keeper's warning voice shouted the monosyllable Hen!" and that nucleus for future pheasants whirred away, rejoicing in the immunities of her sex. Stopcock took the right of the line, a flank he always selected for the to him unanswerable reason that he always had done so. Three couple of the best-broke spaniels in the world hunted to and fro in front of us, the old keeper waving them backwards and forwards to his orders without speaking a word. His two sons, healthy, ruddy-looking men of thirty or forty, walked quietly in our rear, the one ready with fresh powder or shot the instant our ammunition was exhausted, whilst the other held Victor, the finest retriever I ever saw, to whose speed and sagacity I am ashamed to say I owed several of the hares which swelled my score. Not an unnecessary word or exclamation was permitted; and, although this Spartan discipline might sometimes be rather irksome, our sport was so good in consequence, that for my part I was perfectly willing to submit to the rules of the establishment. The day was beautiful; an October sun, breaking into an occasional gleam of gold was for the most part veiled by those thin marbled clouds which the vulgar call "a mackerel sky," and which are the invariable harbingers of calm, still weather. The "birds" (meaning partridges) sat well, rising at that exact distance which suits my style of gunnery, and not waiting stupidly to be kicked up-a proceeding which invariably flurries my nerves, and makes me ridiculous by shooting too soon. The hares were accommodating, and the rabbits plentiful; while in the two or three plantations which we beat on our march, we flushed a fair proportion of pheasants, and "crumpled up" the old cocks at all distances in workman-like style. 66 Two-and-twenty minutes were consumed, as usual, in the mastication of bread and cheese and the absorption of weak brandy-and-water for luncheon, and we were just about proceeding to the best part of our ground--comprising the sweet little coverts of Flushley Gill and Blackberry Copse when an untoward accident put a period to our sports, and cut short the pleasantest day's shooting I ever remember to have enjoyed. I have already observed that my friend Stopcock is a man of method, though carrying his crotchets to a point at which, as Percy says, "there is more madness in his method than method in his madness ;" and amongst other whims he is very particular about dates. If his saddle were discovered to have been made in 'thirty-four, and his girths in 'thirty-five, the finest morning that ever smiled would not induce him to get upon his horse till such a frightful mistake had been rectified; and in all other matters of dress and appointments he is equally rigid, Well, we were in the act of getting up from luncheon, and Stopcock |