TWO YEARS IN THE FAR WEST.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "STORIES OF WATERLOO," &c., &c.

B.

No. III.

Sportsmen Idlers-Pot-shooters-The true Sportsman-A Character-Colonel -Finlough-Anecdote-Shawn Briddawn-Living in the West-Illustrations of Irish Character-The Colonel's last duel-Love and Woodcocks.

Sportsmen are considered generally, by the mass, as idle people, who have no legitimate occupation to consume their time; and from that default, and sheer necessity, they are obliged to consort with a setting dog, or arm themselves with a fishing-rod. To the charge we say negatur, and pronounce it absolutely. Almost every stout soldier that we knew in our time and they were many-had some field propensity; and one, our constant shooting companion, when weather interdicted our going out of doors, filled his "hours of idlesse" at the lathe; and the same hand that led the forlorn hope through the greater breach, and won the castle of Rodrigo, could use the chisel as he did the sword, and both right well.

The idle proportion of the independent and comfortable portion of the British body politic are those who cannot fence a wall, use a gun, and know as much of the resources of the fishing-rod as that compound of erudition and bad manners-Doctor Johnson did. Their occupation is the collecting intelligence at the post-office, and greetings in the marketplace. They ascertain a statistical amount of loss of every hen-roost that has been robbed; all particulars touching a neighbour's kitchen-maid who has been abstracted by some recruiting party. By these the old mails were watched with jealous anxiety, and their arrivals and departures chronicled to the minute, and with marked fidelity. With the extinction of carriage transit by horse agencies, their story might have been considered to be closed; but a railway station, if it be within half a mile, forms a glorious substitute. At the first whistle from the engine, they are out of doors instanter; and should the advent of the train be half a minute in advance, or two or three sectional portions of the hour in arrear, that evening the HP notifies the occurrence at the Blue Boar or the Golden Lion; hints that the company are going headlong to the devil, and the sooner that shareholders sold out, in his opinion, would be all the better. The Captain plumes himself upon his prudence in his concluding speech-thanks God that "he has no personal anxiety; had no share in any of these silly speculations; he might have been a director; he would not venture capital idly." The honest man told truth, for he never could, through life, have spared a sovereign in adventure.

In the human family various are the distinguishing degrees. In the sporting branch the same peculiarities will be detected. One shoots for his bag, and provided he can fill it well coute qui coute, he'll not stoop

at the meanness of the means, so that the end shall be accomplished. Another, and a better brother of the order, shoots as a gentleman should shoot. His larder does not require that the gun shall, of necessity, add to its supplies; and he goes to the hill-side, or the lake, merely for exercise and amusement. Of sportsmen-we don't mean turfmen, for the turf has become a trade, and its chief supporters are cockney shopkeepers and licensed victuallers. What we call a sportsman, is definable in a dozen lines. If he resides in a hunting country, and can ride to hounds, he keeps three or four horses; and if he employ them twice a week, he'll pass current with us. If in humbler fortune, his setters must serve the nonce; but still his status as a sportsman is unquestionable. If lower yet, the poor disciple of Izaac Walton steals an hour to the river side, the evening when his work is done. Shall we reject him? God forbid !

Soldiers were formerly believed to be romantic; but sportsmen, in our opinion, will take precedence; and we will back saltpe.re freely against steel. We knew one who united the two-fold virtues. He was brave as a bull-dog, and in every thought and feeling a thorough gentleman; and reckless in monetary matters, he would, like another Antonio, pledge not his fortune, but his person for a friend. He was a true-bred Irish gentleman of the old school. His pistol-case was always unlocked, and so far as his unthrifty means allowed, his purse was equally open; on any point of honour his judgment was correct; but wo worth the tradesman who, to meet a bill, placed confidence in the commander's punctuality. But alas! if you touched on shooting or salmon-fishing operations, then the poor Colonel would go off at score, and nobody could stop him.

The Colonel, in every sense of the word, was a stout gentleman. He weighed fully eighteen stone, and when sorely afflicted with gout, fought a catch-weight Ensign on a moment's warning, though both his legs were swathed in flannel, and the ground was covered a foot deep with snow. In all things honourable he was trustworthy, and only in one point was he vulnerable; and though in deeds of arms a trustier Trojan could not be found, in piscatorial representations, while the ghost in Hamlet might be taken for a thousand pounds, I would not have been security touching the Colonel's veracity for five farthings.

He shot well, but from obesity could not work; and he had an excellent judgment in the adaptation of a fly to weather and water. He was marvellously ambitious as an angler, kept its arcana to himself, and mystified his skill accordingly. The Colonel, could the garment have been partitioned, would have divided his last coat with a stranger he never saw before; but a fancy fly was a sacrifice beyond his generosity.

I remember taking a very dirty advantage of the poor Colonel. We were angling in Finlough, and a more romantic water, and by the way a worse fishing one, could not be found in Britain-based beneath a mountain. I call it so, for I should guess its altitude at two thousand feet. There cannot be a sweeter specimen of a highland lake. It is connected with the inlet called the Killories, a long, deep, narrow arm from the Atlantic; and in the season the lake is visited by a few grisles, and a tolerable number of sea-trout.

The Colonel raised a salmon and killed a three-pound white trout,

and I could not persuade any but a lean bog-trout to even look at me. I implored the commander by every tie of friendship to give me a duplicate of the successful fly that appeared so fashionable; but he swore, as they did formerly in Flanders, that he had not another insect imitation in his possession but what was on the casting line. Now I knew that he committed a piscatorial perjury, and that he had a dozen within the lining of his hat. Revenge is sweet, he hooked a weed, and asked me to relieve him; my task being to hop over half a dozen rocks, a feat eleven stone might achieve at five-and-twenty, but that a sexagenarian of eighteen stone of "too, too solid flesh" would feel some difficulty in achieving. I got to the detentive weed-" Mind," cried the commander, from the strand, "that you don't hurt the hook. It's an O'Shaughnessy, and highly tempered.

..

Don't be afraid," I responded, as I treacherously snapped it between my fingers, and left the unsuspecting commander to operate with the most harmless union of wool and feathers that ever an arm had projected.

Now he has had time to rest himself, and he'll not be far from that rock," quoth the commander, alluding to the salmon; and away went the casting-line in the direction where the intended victim was supposed to lie. I never saw a man who threw a fly upon water with greater neatness; and the Colonel had hit the spot to an inch. Up rose the

sh.

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By the Lord! I have missed him again, and yet he rose greedily." "I have remarked lately," I insidiously returned, "that you are slow in striking your fish. He feels the hook, and very properly rejects it."

nier.

;

the other a non

To question the perfection of his manipulation was death to the commander, and angry was his rejoinder, or rather it would have been had not two actors come unexpectedly on the scene. The one was the Colonel's noble kinsman, the late Marquis of descript sort of animal, who will still be recollected in the far west. "Shawn Briddawn," anglicê, John of the Salmon, was some fifty years old, and one of that endless tribe, who, in the shape of what were termed "hangers on," hung about the Irish country houses, and dodged at the heels of the master with a game-bag or a fishing panShawn was an under-waterkeeper, and through a freak of his noble employer, he was invested with a grey frieze jacket, the right arm being decorated with a salmon in crimson cloth. He was a knave who pretended to be half simpleton, spoke English imperfectly, and understood what was addressed him, just as it suited his convenience. Of course, to his noble patron he looked with the reverential awe of a retainer who hung upon his breath, while the Colonel was an object of the liveliest terror. You could, were the wind favourable, hear the Colonel's bellow half a mile off. He swore like a trooper, and we fancy we still have ringing in our ears—“ Briddawn! you infernal scoundrel! where the devil are ye? I wonder you have not run me into murder ten years ago. Here's my casting-line, ye villain, in the weeds."

Well, we were joined by the noble Marquis and his retainer, and the Colonel considering that in his third essay there might be luck, again projected his casting-line. It caught again in the reeds, and Briddawn proceeded to emancipate it. It was the dropper, and not the tail-fly,

whose existence I had feloniously terminated. Away went the castingline again.

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Colonel, I rather fancy there's a hitch upon the lower fly. The one that Briddawn took from the rushes"-and I whispered to Lord that I had broken the shank across.

The Colonel caught up his line, and on examination, but a moiety of O'Shaughnessy remained, and that was perfectly inoffensive.

I shall recollect to the last hour of my life the scene that followed. "Briddawn, you ruffian, and the greatest at present unhanged, could'nt ye take a casting-line off a reed without ruining the only killing fly in my collection?”

In vain Shawn protested innocence, and louder still the Colonel stormed. Briddawn interposed judiciously a dozen yards between his own person and the arm of the commander. Lord increased

the confusion by treating the business with affected indifference. "Why, Colonel, it's only a broken hook; a penny will replace it." "A broken hook! A fly that could not be matched inside the Shannon! Briddawn, I'll be hanged for your murder!"

The Colonel sate down upon a rock, drew out his whiskey flask, fabricated a refreshing admixture of the pure element and untaxed alcohol, poked out another fly, and recommenced his labours.

He succeeded, hooked and landed a grisle not heavier at the most than four pounds.

"By the Lord.

a beautiful clean-run fish!

and he addressed his noble kinsman, "what

A clean seven pound if he's an ounce."

"In my opinion, Colonel, he would not turn half the weight," I observed.

"And," added Lord

"I'm sure it's not a salmon at all.

It seems to me to be a spent sea-trout."

"A trout!" roared the Colonel. "I'll back it's a salmon for a thousand."

“Yes, Harry, and be sure to add, if any body will lend you the money."

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I say it's a salmon!" roared the Colonel. "And I'll swear its nothing but a sea-trout.

.?"

What say you, Mr.

"It looks very like a white trout, and a devilish flabby one too. But Briddawn can tell at once."

"To be sure he can, the ruffian. Is it not a salmon ?" cried the angler.

"It is a salmon, Colonel."

"Oh! Briddawn," and his patron darted a reproving frown at his attaché, "call you that anything but a trout?"

"It is a trout," groaned the unhappy umpire.

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"A trout ?" roared the Colonel. Shawn Briddawn, I'll be your death!"

"A salmon ?" returned Lord

a haddock is."

"No more like a salmon than

looked daggers at the water

"Is'nt it a salmon, Briddawn?" and the Colonel clenched his fist. "Is it not a trout?" and Lord

keeper.

Shawn skipped about for half a minute like a dancing Dervise; then ensconcing his person behind me, he exclaimed—

"My God! it is either a trout or a salmon as my Lord will have it." What a number of Briddawns this world contains!

The Colonel's residence was a lodge like what our own was in Ballycroy, as wild, and still more inaccessible. But it had a redeeming quality that compensated for bad roads-the welcome was a warm one. The Colonel, for a dozen years, had been en pendion from his noble kinsman. But then, in that wild country, uncursed with plebeian patriots, and a still deeper nuisance-blackguards, who jump, in Ireland, from the cart-tail into holy orders, and would lord it over well-born men-it was astonishing, luxuries set aside, what solid comforts a most limited income would afford to him who, from fancy, necessity, or from both, sought and found there an abiding place. With Waterloo, an event that settled greater careers, Colonel B- -'s à la militaire had reached its termination, and the closing event which passim I alluded to, will illustrate private character of that time, and shew what Irish gentlemen were thirty years ago.

In a division of the mess plate, when the regiment, a militia one, was disembodied, a couple of salt spoons were awarded to one ensign, that should, in another's estimation, have formed part and parcel of his own future property.

The Ancient was a testy young gentleman, the Colonel a disciple of the school of Sir Antony Absolute, and hot as red pepper when any body crossed him. Ensign K demurred touching the partition of the plate, and, more hibernico, Colonel B- - responded, that he might have personal satisfaction if he had a fancy for it. Now, at that time, in Irish opinion, a generous intimation of the kind could not be tendered and rejected. The regiment was disbanded; gentlemen had no longer distinctive rank; and, as a matter of course, the ex-ancient sent a friend to the ex-colonel, and received in return a very polite reply, that he was quite at his service next morning at half-past eight o'clock, that hour being the earliest that would suit pistol-distance in dark December. The gentleman who bore the cartel, in the handsomest manner on his part, insinuated that his own lawn was centrical and quite free from interruption, and also added that Mrs. E― would be most happy in having breakfast ready for the survivor.

Some difficulty arose in the Colonel's selection of a friend. There were a dozen who would have willingly obliged him with their company, but they were all, unfortunately, under recognizances to keep the pe..ce, and no choice remained but to take with him a little Scotchman who had been Adjutant to the regiment. A worse artiste could not have been selected, for to all explosive matters, beyond a blank cartridge, Johnny had as great an antipathy as "a hurt wild duck." Gladly would he have declined the honour had he dared, but one roar upon parade from the commander would shake his nervous system to an extent that a week's repose would scarcely re-establish. In fear and trembling he obeyed the mandate, and before day had broken, found himself ensconsed in a post-chaise with his former commander, and en route to the field of glory.

The Colonel had chosen Johnny from necessity, and, on the road, he endeavoured to indoctrinate the little Scotchman into the arcana of a passage of arms. Alas! the personal alarm of the ex-adjutant rendered him thoroughly oblivious to these cunning points and practical directions