ere long the creatures would be almost incapable of locomotion, and would absolutely die of fat-the most cruel death in all the catalogue. Therefore, let Sir John Brute and Jerry Sneak henceforth-on the subject of hunting-belong to the dumb animals. Lion-hunting and tiger-hunting are merely cat-hunting on a considerably larger scale;-wolf-hunting and foxhunting are the same modified by climate;-of mart and hare-hunting, more hereafter;-but of bear-hunting it is now our intention to speak, under the guidance and direction of our sporting friend Mr Lloyd, who was born under Ursa Major, and does credit to the celestial sign of Bruin. ALL men who are eloquent on the cruelty of hunting, beat their wives. That is a general rule, admitting of no exceptions. There is another. All men who stammer on the cruelty of hunting, are beaten by their wives. Fortunately these classes are not numerous, otherwise we should be a cock-peeked and hen-pecked generation. Humanity, in the long run, rejoices in pursuing unto the death, on foot or horseback, lions, tigers, bears, wolves, hyenas, foxes, marts, and hares. Were you to talk to himself of the cruelty of killing a lion, he would stun you with a roar of derision to a tiger, his stripes would wax blacker and brighter in contempt -to a bear, he would hug you to his heart, as the choicest of all imaginable ninnies-to a wolf, he would suspect you of being a man-trap-in to a hyena, he would laugh in your face-to a fox, he would give you such a brush as you never had in your life-to a mart, he would look so sweet upon you that you would be scented like a milliner-to a hare, he would prick up his ears in vain emulation of the length of your own, and wonder to see an ass among the Bipeds. They all perfectly well know that they were made to be huntedthat they are provided, to fit them for that end, with certain organs and members, which otherwise would be, comparatively speaking, of little or no use, and would get so rusty, that The passion of the chase is strong Mr Lloyd's constitution. It seems for years to have been his ruling passion, and to have made him a perfect model of perpetual motion. But like all other passions, ruling or ruled, it can be thrown off ad libitum by a strong-bodied, strong-minded man. All of them, we hold, are in our own power, and at our own disposal. True, that while they are at their acme they hurry us away like whirlwinds. But then they are whirlwinds of our own raising, and we are still the magicians who can either allay the storm, or leap out of it, down upon the soft calm green of tranquillity and peace. Take ambition. You Field Sports of the North of Europe, comprised in a Personal Narrative of a Residence in Sweden and Norway, in the Years 1827-8. By L. Lloyd, Esq. Lon don. Colburn and Bentley, 1830. Two Vols. VOL. XXVIII. NO. CLXVIII. A see the same man mad for power or fame in spring, and in summer lying half-asleep on a hillside, conversing dreamily with the clouds. Take Love. In May, a young gentleman knows of the existence in this world but of one auburn-haired, hazel-eyed, fragile-figured angel, with a slim ankle and small foot-and on the twelfth of August he is flirting with a redheaded Highland goatherdess, supported on pedestals barely human, and the terror of all worms. Just so with any other sport. In Wermeland and Dalecarlia, Mr Lloyd's whole soul was filled with bears. Then and there, “How easy was a bush supposed a bear!" In sleep, Bruin hugged him in his arms-awake, Bruin hobbled "before that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude." Between sleeping and waking, one cry was in his ears-" The Bear-the Bear!" And had he died of fever-which, thank Heaven, he did not he would have confounded his medical and religious attendants-both alike ghostly-with apostrophes to Bruin. Occasionally the violence of his passion was a little relieved by a slight and transient change of its object-a wolf, for example, a lynx, a capercailzie, or a salmon. But we defy any man to cherish a permanent passion for a wolf. 'Tis a dirty, dingy-coloured, lean, hungry, cruel, cowardly brute, whom 'twould be paying an undeserved compliment to kill otherwise than in a pitfall, into which no sooner does the villain play plump, than his base heart dies within him; he coils himself up like a sick turnspit, pretends for a while to be a carcass, and, ere long, is so, out of pure, filthy bodily fear. As for your lynx, he is a person with whom we have little or no acquaintance; but, though sharp-sighted enough, we believe, he seems to be an insignificant devil; if not really scarce, he generally contrives to make himself so; and it is not to be supposed that a man of Mr Lloyd's abilities would give himself the trouble to pursue such a pitiful individual. Of the capercailzie on his pine, and of the salmon in his pool, heaven forfend that we should ever speak in any other terms but those of the highest respect and admiration. But the feathered and the finned people, the one dwelling in air, and the other in water, do not readily enter into the same day or night-dream with the bear, to whom they have little, indeed no resemblance, but are entitledeach per se-to the whole of our imagination. Accordingly, though, throughout these most amusing and interesting volumes, they do now and then whirr from the forests and plunge in the floods, the bear is the prevailing, paramount, and predomi→ nant object of our friend's passion. He scampers in every paragraph, and gives up the ghost at the end of every chapter. The whole work is delightfully redolent of hides and tallow; and so full is our fancy at this moment of images of bears, that the very hands now tracing this rambling article, seem covered with hair,— "Very paws, as you might say;" and most alarming would they be, fist," and encircle the tender waist, were they to squeeze the " downy of a virgin in the Gallopade. There is something exceedingly contemptible in visiting, now-a-days, France and Italy, Paris and Rome. The talk of such tourists is wersh indeed-nay, young gentlemen are tiresome at table who have gone up or down the Rhine. All the world and his wife have visited all the cities in Europe. But give us for our love and money, a man like Mr Lloyd, a gentleman, a scholar, and a sportsman, who has swept on skidor through the frozen forests of Scandinavia. Snow is inspiring, and ice bracing to the nerves of the soul; in narrating adventures in such a clime and country, a man's style gets as glowing and ruddy as his cheeksas rapid as the motion of his limbs on snow-skates;-in writing about bears, he leaps over a chasm with as much agility as in hunting them→→→ and his reader never falls asleep, so anxious is he to be in at the death. As for picturesque description of scenery, our author seems to have lost no time in looking at it, and he loses none in describing it; but he gives us many striking touches as he moves along, and at the close of the volume, we feel that our imagination has been enriched with materials out of which to form to itself Scandinavian forest scenery at once singular and magnificent. Some night-bivouacks are painted with great spirit. We admire Mr Lloyd. He is a fine specimen of an English gentleman, bold, free, active, intelligent, observant, good-humoured, and generous, no would-be wit-no paltry painter of the picturesque,-above all, no pedant and philosopher, forsooth-like your paid and professional vagrants, who go up and down a country book-making, and articlemongering to order, haunted all the while by the image of some far-off editor or publisher, and living at inns like bagmen, at the rate of two guineas a-sheet. Mr Lloyd's mind was wholly engrossed by his own wild and adventurous Scandinavian life; but when it was flown, he then began to lead it over again in imagination, and, lo!" Field Sports of the North of Europe!" Mr Lloyd, it appears, was four years wandering over almost all parts of Scandinavia. In the summer of 1827, he lived at some eighty miles to the northward of Carlstad, a town situated at the northern extremity of the noble lake Wenern, among the largest and finest in Europe. The province of Wermeland is about a hundred and fifty miles in length, by one hundred in breadth, containing about 150,000 inhabitants. The more northern parts are hilly, mountainous, almost one continued forest studded with numerous fine lakes, and watered by several large streams. Of the multitude of lakes we may form some idea, from the parish of Tuna in Norrland, which is commonly said to contain as many lakes as there are days in the year. Throughout the whole range which separates Sweden from Norway, nature assumes a most imposing aspect, and is sometimes seen on a magnifi cent scale. There the winter is most severe, the snow usually remaining on the ground six months; but the summers are, in general, excessively warm, and vegetation proportionately rapid and rich. The principal river in Wermeland is the Klar, which, rising in the Norwegian mountains, after a course of three hundred miles, falls into the Wenern, near Carlstad. Mr Lloyd fixed his residence at a small bamlet, called Stjern, near the Klar, and on the bank of a lake eight or nine miles long, the Răda. He occupied a single room, twenty feet square, in a peasant's cottage. Its great comfort was a large open fireplace or hearth-much needed-for on one occasion, when a friend had paid him a visit from Stockholm, some port wine, which he had brought along with him, and over which they had been enjoying themselves-as was right-in a sort of Noctes Ambrosianæ, till past midnight-Temperance Societies would not do there -was next morning frozen into so solid a mass, that they were unable to get a drop of it out of the bottles. Here he soon formed the friendship of Mr Falk, head-ranger or chief hunting-master of the Wermeland forests, which title alone would have given him the rank of a captain in the Swedish army. But in addition to this, and in consequence of his meritorious services in having ridded the country of very many noxious animals, he had received the honorary title of Hof Jägmästre, or Hunting-master to the Court, which put him on the footing of a colonel. He was a tall and handsome man, about forty years of age; his appearance, with which his actions fully accorded, denoting him to be possessed of great quickness and intelligence. In the different skalls, or battues, which he had commanded, he had killed, many of them with his own gun, 100 bears-but in all his conflicts never had received a wound. This gentleman found Mr Lloyd an apt scholar; and under his tuition the Englishman soon became as good a chasseur as in all Sweden. Mr Lloyd gives many interesting details of the domestic economy and character of the Swedish peasantry; and his volumes are well worth buy ing for the sake of these alone; but at present we have less to do with the boors than the bears-and therefore must forget our landlord, Sven Jansson, though somewhat of a bear himself, for sake of the veritable Bruin. Mr Lloyd purchased him in Norway, from a celebrated bear-hunter, named Daniel Anderson, residing at a place called Tissjöberget, who said he had killed in his day sixty bears, and thirteen of them with the aid of Hector. But Mr Lloyd had to exclaim "Heu quantum mutatus ab illo For he by no means turned out the capital dog his master's representation had led him to expect. The third was Paijas, or Harlequin,-of a good size, very strongly built, and, with the exception of his toes, which were white, he was of a coal-black colour,―his ears were pricked,—and his tail, which was bushy, he usually carried much in the manner of a fox, while his countenance depicted, and truly, a great deal of courage. He, too, was a Norwegian, and presented to Mr Lloyd by Mr Falk. But he was old, and somewhat worn, and now incapable of great exertion, though in his younger days, a better dog for bears had never been seen in that part of Sweden. In his puppyhood, the first time he saw a bear, he flew at his head, and attempted to fasten, but was seized in the iron paws of the brute, and dashed with violence on the snow; his master, at that time a celebrated chasseur, came to the rescue; but Harlequin ever after tempered his courage with caution, and would hang on the hind-quarters of Bruin, worrying him for leagues through the woods. Such were Mr Lloyd's four-footed friends, with the two latter of which he did wonders. At one time, that noble animal, the Elk, abounded in all parts of Scandinavia. But Mr Lloyd tells us it is now seldom to be seen, and then only in particular districts-the line of demarcation running between Sweden and Norway a hundred miles to the northward of his abode. Roebuck and red-deer are there, too, to be found; and rein-deer are still numerous in the north, Mr Lloyd having fallen in with them in a wild state, as well upon the Hardanger and Douvre mountains in Norway, as upon the range of hills separating Swedish from Norwegian Lapland. But now for bears. A bear is a fine fellow-whether white, black, brown, or grizzled-pugnacious, voracious, salacious, and sa gacious;-at times full of fun and frolic as O'Doherty-next hour grave as the Archbishop of Canterbury; -to-day feeding contentedly, like Sir Richard Phillips, on vegetables-tomorrow, like any alderman, devouring an ox. Always rough and ready, his versatility is beyond all admiration. Behold him for months sound asleep, as if in church-he awakes, and sucks his paws with alacrity and elegance-then away over the snows like a hairy hurricane. He richly deserves hunting for the highest considerations-and for the lowest, only think on-Pomatum. The Scandinavian bear-generally a dark brown-but frequently black, and then he is largest-and sometimes silver-for you seldom see two skins altogether alike-is, as we have hinted, fond of flesh; but ants and vegetables compose his principal food. Indeed, that excellent authority, Mr Falk, very justly observes, that an animal which is able to devour a moderate-sized cow in twentyfour hours, would, if flesh formed the chief part of its sustenance, destroy all the herds in the country. He thinks that the destruction which the bear commits upon cattle is often owing to the latter attacking him in the first instance; for, when provoked by the bellowing and pursuit of him, which not unfrequently commence as soon as they get a view of him, he then displays his superior strength, falls foul of them, and eats them up before sunset. Bears, Mr Falk says, may reside in the neighbourhood of cattle for years without doing them any injury, if they will but keep quiet; yet it is equally notorious that they will sometimes visit herds solely from the desire of prey. Young bears seldom molest cattle; but old bears, after having been insulted by them, and eaten a few, often become very destructive, and passionately fond of beef. Beef every day, however, palls on the palate of a bear, just as toujours perdrix did on that of Henry the Fourth of France. Accordingly, he varies his diet judiciously, by an intermixture of roots, the leaves and small branches of the aspen, mountain-ash, and other trees, such succulent plants as angelica and mountain-thistle, and berries, to which he is very partial-during the autumn devouring vast quantities of ripe cranberries, blaeberries, raspberries, strawberries, cloud-berries, and other berries cominon to the Scandinavian forests; and there can be no doubt that in a garden he would be an ugly customer among the grozets. Ripe corn he also eats, and seating himself on his haunches in a field of it, he collects, with his outstretched arms, nearly a sheaf at a time-what a contrast to Ruth!-and munches the ears at his leisure. By way of condiment, he sucks honey-plundering the peasants of their beehives; and, to subdue the excess of sweetness, he ever and anon takes a mouthful of ants, of which the taste is known to all amateurs of acids to be pungent. "If any of these little creatures," quoth Professor Nillson, "sting him in a tender part, he becomes angry immediately, and scatters around the whole ant-hill." That is scarcely decorous in a "budge doctor of the stoic fur;" but it is good exercise, and promotes digestion. Mr Lloyd says, "This may be perfectly true, for all I know to the contrary; if so, however, I apprehend the bear is generally in an illhumour with the ants; because, wherever I have met with any of their nests at which the bear had been feeding, they had most commonly been turned inside out." On the other hand, when a bear gets old, grows sick, and dies, the ants pay him back in his own coin; and, without getting angry, pick him-pomatum and all-to the bones. This, in Scandinavia-as elsewhere-is called tit for tat. During the summer, of course, the bear is always as lean as a postbut in autumn, as fat as a pillow. He is not often found in poor hilly countries, but in the wildest recesses of the forest, where there are morasses and wild wood-fruit in abundance. These are his favourite haunts. Towards the end of October, he leaves off eating altogether for that year; his bowels and stomach become quite empty, and contracted into a very small compass, while the extremity of them is closed by an indurated substance, which in Sweden is called tappen. He retires to his den, and very wisely falls asleep. Professor Nillson avers he gets fatter and fatter in his slumbers on to the end of February; but Mr Lloyd is sceptical on that point; be cause, says he, " in the first place, it seems contrary to reason; and, in the next, I do not know how the point is to be ascertained." Here we take part with the hunter against the Professor; yet one thing is certain, that, let the bear be killed at what period of the winter he may, our gentleman or lady is always embonpoint, nor can you feel his ribs. He retains his fat from the time he lies down in the early part of winter, till he rises in spring; and that is surely as much, if not more, than you can have any reason to expect. As spring approaches, he shakes off his lethargy-parts with his tappenand enters on a new career of cows, ants, branches, plants, honey, berries, and corn. Rarely-and but very rarely-he passes his tappen during winter-and then he becomes a scarecrow. At first his stomach is nice, and he eats sparingly-not more, perhaps, than a large dog; confining himself to ants and other delicacies, till his stomach has resumed its natural tone, and then he devours almost every thing edible that comes in his way, according to his usual practice during the preceding autumn. The story of the bear sucking his paws for nourishment, Mr Lloydjustly says, has long since been exploded; but still he does suck his paws-and the question is-Why? Mr Lloyd says, he has reason to believe that the bear obtains a new skin on the balls of his feet during the winter. If, therefore, he does suck his pawsand there is generally some truth in all old beliefs-may it not be done, he asks, for the purpose of facilitating this operation of nature? We think it is very likely so. Some tame bears in our author's possession, were constantly sucking or mumbling their paws; the operation, which was often continued for hours together, being attended with a murmuring kind of noise, which might be heard at some distance. In consequence of this, their legs or feet were covered with saliva, or rather foam, which by ignorant people might not improbably be taken for the milk which it was at one time said the bear was in the habit of extracting from his paws. But it was not the want of food that caused Mr Lloyd's bears to be so continually mouthing, for they were seen to be thus en |
