 | NO. II. Sporting scenes and sundry sketches |  |
2. NO. II.
“Toxoph. Of the first finders out of shoting, diuers men diuerslye doo
wryte. Claudiane the poete sayth that nature gaue example of shotyng
first, by the Porpentine; whiche doth shote his prickes and will hitte any
thinge that fightes with it; whereby men learned afterwarde to immitate
the same in finding out both bow and shaftes. Plinie referreth it to Schythes
the sonne of Jupiter. Better and more noble wryters bringe shoting from
a more noble inuentour; as Plato, Calimachus, and Galene, from Apollo.
Yet longe afore those days do we reade in the bible of shotinge expreslye.
And also if we shall beleve Nicholas de Lyra, Lamech killed Cain
with a shafte. So this great continuaunce of shoting doth not a lytle praise
shotinge; nor that neither doth not a lytle set it oute, that it is referred to
the inuention of Apollo, for the which poynt shoting is highly praised of
Galene; where he sayth the mean craftes be first found out by men or
beastes, as meaning by a spider, and suche other; but high and comendable
sciences by goddes, as shotinge and musicke by Apollo. And thus
shotinge for the necessite of it used in Adam's days, for the noblenesse of
it referred to Apollo, hath not been onelie comended in all tunges and
writers, but also had in greate price, both in the best comune wealthes, in
warre time for the defence of their countrie, and of all degrees of men in
peace tyme, bothe for the honestie that is ioyned with it, and the profyte
that followeth of it.”
Roger Ascham.
We have heretofore reviewed the Brigades of ancient hunters,
as they tramped before us magnificently upon the parade
ground of history; from Captain General Nimrod, and stately
riding Queen Diana, down to those savage Loco Focos, Robin
Hood and Little John. Something now is due to the vanatical
artillery of later days. The hunter tribe is not extinct. Collineomania
rages yet. Human nature is still projectilitarian.
The same excellent love of destruction that moved the old
world to swing the catipult, and scatter javelins and arrows,
urges on this modern age of civilization and philanthropy, to
throw rockets, hot water, and cold lead.
But our present business is not with human wars, and the
Peace Society. Whether the shooting of men be honest and
honorable, we leave to the determination of that fighting
school of the General Assembly, which shall prove itself to
be most meek and most forbearing.
Beasts, and birds, we have an unchallengeable right, and
oftentimes, unquestionable duty, to transfix. This birth-obligation
of every freeman, was first imposed by that never-to-be-too-much-prized
article in the constitution of human nature, which
gave to the lords of the creation, dominion over the fowls of
the air, and the fish of the sea. We have the authority from
Heaven, and the recommendation from Earth. “Kill and
eat,” was hieroglyphickied upon the shooting jacket of Esau.
Peter, the Apostle, saw it in his dream, as the tenth chapter
of Acts bears testimony. And now we are all shooters. To
be a Collineomaniac, is only to fulfil worthily, and with prudent
enthusiasm, a duty, which nature hath allowed, good example
hath approved, and honesty, skill, art, health, and happiness,
recommend.
To descend, from ancient fashions of contrived death, to
Joe Manton, Westley Richards, Miss Nancy Hawker, and
percussion caps—is it a fall, my countrymen, or not? That
thought suggests gunpowder. Talk of the invention of the
printing press, and all its attendant honors of light and knowledge!
it has not effected one tithe of the changes in the physical
condition of the world, which have been wrought by the
discovery of the virtue of combined nitre, sulphur, and granulated
charcoal. We fling no more javelins,—we thrust no
more spears,—unless it be into a porpoise or a whale, but we
kill our lions with four pounders from the back of a well-trained
elephant, our buffaloes with Kentucky rifles, and our
woodcock with the familiar pills of number Eight. That is a
pathetic discourse, which Cervantes reads in Don Quixotte of
and company. But it is not all true. Strength, muscular excellence,
personal skill, and all honorable accomplishments
have not lost their recommendation utterly. It is true that
the tyrants of the land have been changed from stalworth
knights and grim barons, into bank directors, and obtainers of
other people's goods under peaceable pretences, for whom
it is not necessary to know any thing but arithmetic, and a
little criminal law; but the honest hunter's vocation and the
amateur's occasional indulgence, require all the virtues which
belonged to a lover of the sport in the olden time. A man
must sometimes stand up against a grizzly bear, and use his
shooting-knife, after he has put a dozen buck-shot into that
“interesting individual.” We have known a well-antlered
deer, who did not believe his time had come, to make good
fight in the last moment of his translation. Wing-tip a wild
gander, and what man-baby can pick him up? Then for endurance,
patience, steadiness of nerve, a good eye, and a well
disciplined heart;—no modification of saltpetre can manufacture
them. No; we do not believe that true chivalry is gone.
It will live until there is not a running buck or a flying bird.
When that time arrives, the millennium will be here, and we
shall want to shoot no more.
What good reason have we to doubt that ancient chivalry
knew gunpowder, or at least, the expansive force of marine
acid, and the oxymuriate of potash, or something else that had
the true grit and stuff? Every body has heard of the “Greek
fire.” But what was it? Salmoneus, king of Elis, manufactured
such capital thunder and lightning, that Jupiter became
jealous, and cut him down with an original thunderbolt.—For
the place of his residence in the infernal regions, see Lempriere's
directory.—Roger Bacon, in his treatise, “de secretis
of making thunder and coruscations in the air, and the ease of
taking cities thereby. He thinks that Gideon defeated the
Midianites, by a similar device.—See Judges, chapter vii.—
Polydore Virgil refers the detection of the grace of the subtle
mixture to a 'chemist, who accidentally put some of the sublime
composition into a mortar and covering it with a stone,
was thereby blown into the upper air, and on his dying descent,
bequeathed the mysterious cause of his exaltation to his
head apprentice. Some attribute the discovery to a monk of
Fribourgh. Others say that Swartz was the original patentee,
and that he sold his copy-right to the Venetians in 1340,
which,—it being war-time—made all Italy cry out against the
monstrous innovation as not fair-play. Another author says
it was used by the Moors in 1343, when besieged by Alphonso,
king of Castile. The bishop of Leon gives an account of
a sea-fight between the kings of Tunis and Seville, in which
those of Tunis, “threw out of certain tubes, thunderbolts of
iron.” We believe, earnestly, that the genuine old sporting
men knew the virtue of powder and shot, but kept it private.
Witness the cunning, lurking, alternative of “other pastimes
of the field” slyly hinted at, for those who knew, in the
“Basilikon Doron,” of the learned king James. Here are his
own words;
“It ever hath been of old antiquitie used in this realme of most noble fame,
for all lustye gentlemen to pass the delectable season of summer, after divers
manner, and sundry fashions of disports, as in hunting the rede and fallowe
deer, with houndes, greyhoundes, and with the bowe, also in hawking
with hawkes, and other pastimes of the field.”
Those were times, however, when only monopolists shot.
Westley Richards could not have sold a gun to a man. His
trade would have been confined to paper-title-gentlemen; and
he would have been compelled to contract “by His Majesty's
—freely-hating—proud—submitted to slavery, because not
shut out from hope; looking to the New America as the Canaan
of their liberty, where they might dare to keep their own
fire-arms, and shoot without fear of encroachment upon the
special monopolies of the Norman Game Law.[5] Thank God!
we have equal rights, in matters of venation, here. No punyfaced
spawn of a title, King or Queen, Duke or Squire, shall
tread down our grain, or riot in our meadows, by virtue of a
ribbon. We are all noblemen in Columbia, and he is the King
who is most eloquent to a bevy of quail getting up,—talking
with both barrels in quick succession. Our game laws go for
the protection of game, not for the benefit of corporations, individual
or collective. Every farmer is master, owner and
Sovereign of his own ground. No idle jackass, that is privileged
by law to wear a herald's device, at a Queen's coronation,
can send his game-keeper into our quiet woodland, to
kill birds for him, while he lies by, and luxuriates, and prepares
his oath as to the contents of his game bag. Alas! for
the slavery of the Welsh and Cornish;—shall we say, for
every county in Old England,—from which the people have
not had knowledge or power to come out Puritan;—but whose
language is a scoff, and whose daughters are a tribute to the
protection of Lord Melbourne!
We are off the road. Pull to the right.
Ten thousand blessings upon our republican institutions.
The question is not, “At whose preserve shall we stand envious
wishers?” but, “Boys, where shall we go?” Shall
Nova Cesarea, or Matowacs, ring with funeral vollies, over
the dangerously won graves of Goffe and Whalley, prayed
against in the British Episcopal prayer-book, as murderers of
Charles the first,—sweet saint!
Non sum qualis eram, we can all, nevertheless, say, in a
plural sense. The shooting is not as it has been. We must
fulfil our true duties of observance of the game-laws, enacted
for the benefit of all, or else be content, by and by, with the
pulling at tossed pennies, or turkeys tied up. Who would not
have rejoiced to have shot and died two hundred years ago,
if he could have been on the stand of John Megapolensis, junior,
minister, who testifies after this wise, in a letter copied
into Hackleyt's State papers, translated from the original and
beautiful Dutch?
“In the forests, is great plenty of Deer, which in Harvest time are as
fat as any Holland deer can be. I have had them with fat more than two
inches thick on the ribs, and likewise that they had no other than clear fat,
and could hardly be eaten. There are also many turkies, as large as in
Holland. The year before I came here, there were so many turkies and
deer that they came to the houses and hog-pens to feed, and were taken
by the Indians with so little trouble, that a Deer was sold for a knife, a loaf
of bread, or even for a tobacco-pipe, hut now we commonly give for a Deer
six or seven guilders. In the Forests, are also Partridges, Pheasants, and
Pidgeons, that fly in flocks of thousands, and sometimes 10, 20, 30, and
even 40 or 50, are killed at one shot; we have here, too, a great number
of several kinds of Fowl, Swan, Geese, Ducks, Widgeons. Teal, and Brant,
which are taken by thousands upon the river, in the spring of the year, and,
again, in the fall, fly away in flocks, so that in the morning and evening a
man may stand ready with his gun before the house, and shoot them as
they fly past.”
That thought is almost too much to think. Sweet is thy
memory dear Mr. Megapolensis! If it was given to you to
paint Heaven half so well as you adorned Earth, there could
not have been an unconverted sinner in the whole valley of the
Mohawk!
We have killed wild geese in our time; and we know what
We have seen their sinewy wedge splitting the wind, as they
rushed to their illimitable and unknown domains at the North,
matched, married, and fierce for the indulgence of safe love,
where no poaching, egg-hunter knows to tread; yet half lingering,
wondering, doubting, pitying, willing to wait for the
wooden devices which we have anchored in the shallow feeding-grounds,
as a picture-gallery of their uncles, cousins, and
sweet-hearts.
Hawnk! Hawnk! we have roared out, and tore our gasping
throat, and low in our skulking boat, or close in our floating
battery, have we fallen, when the music of the flying march
of the anseric host thrilled upon our ear. Hawnk! Hawnk!
They come, they tear the yielding air, with pennon fierce and
strong; on clouds they leap, from deep to deep, the vaulted
air along—tear—air—strong—along—break forth my soul into
a song!—
On clouds they leap, from deep to deep, the vaulted dome along;
Heaven's light horse, in a column of attack upon the pole;
Were ever seen, on ocean green, or under the blue sky,
Such disciplined battalia as the cohort in your eye;—
Around her ancient axis, let old Terra proudly roll,
But the rushing flight that's in your sight, is what will wake your soul.
Hawnk! Honk! and forward to the Nor'ward, is the trumpet tone,
What goose can lag, or feather flag, or break the goodly cone,
Hawnk! onwards to the cool blue lakes, where lie our safe love bowers,
No stop, no drop of ocean brine, near stool, nor blue light tory,
Our travelling watchword is “our mates, our goslings, and our glory!”
Symsonia and Labrador for us are crowned with flowers,
And not a breast on wave shall rest, until that Heaven is ours,
Hawnk! Hawnk! E—e hawnk!
| NO. II. Sporting scenes and sundry sketches | |