The Press. — London, England, 1857-12-26 00:00:00

THE PRESS, DECEMBER 26, 1857. 1256 being a member of it, to explain questions of international or municipaklaw, on which the most important measures of government may depend ?" M.—" Yes, I do. Whoever is St to be Minister should know enough of general principles to guide him, and when any technicalities arise we can consult the Attorney and Solicitor-General." So Lord Melbourne went oil, as long as be could, with the Great Seal in commission, and he was exceedingly annoyed by the thought of a Chancellor being intruded into the Cabinet. In the beginning of 1836 he was alarmed by the loud complaints that the Lords Commissioners were incompetent to do the judicial business of the Chancellor, as they were unable to clear off the arrears in their own proper courts,—and he reluctantly made a Chancellor— but with tin intimation that the office was to be divided as soon as possible. _ _ And after some detail, too lengthy for extract, Lord Campbell thus concludes : But, when we consider the perils to be encountered, perhaps we ought to rejoice that the office still survives, and that the Chancellor still presides on the woolsack, and has a seat in the Cabinet. The creation of Lords Justices of Appeal under Lord Truro may have been a necessary evil, and the complaints against the exercise of the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords may have arisen from fortuitous circumstances not to be foreseen, and not likely to recur,—without any particle of blame being imputable to any of the very learned, and able, and honourable men on whom the exercise of this jurisdiction devolved. _ _ My anxious wish is that the ascendancy of the Great Seal should be fully maintained. Considering the diffi culties with which the holders of it recently have been encompassed and with which 1 should have been unable to cope, 1 consider my lot felicitous iu escaping it. Suave maxi magno,&o. But, instead of calmly enjoying the contrast between my position and that of others, I am earnestly desirous to contribute, if I could, to the relief and safety of thosewho are tossed by the tempest. Hatrigge, Sept. 22nd, 1857. There is an excellent and most copious index to the whole ten volumes, occupying not less than seventy (!) pages of nonpareil type. This is a most valuable addition to the work. In one or two instances we note an error—as when the reversal of the attainder of Lord StAfford is classed under "Strafford." But these slight mistakes must be expected in every copious index. Sporting Scenes znimyst the Mrs r f l South Africa. By Captain Alfred \V. Drayson, B. A. London : Routledge. THERE is not a more inspiriting book than a volume of sporting adventures well told. Every Englishman possesses, in a greater or less degree, sufficient sporting taste to appre ciate a detailed description of sport, whether it be of a five and thirty minutes' burst across country at a pace that " weeds the mob," of a tearing gallop across vast plains after a herd of magnificent antelopes, of a run for life from the rush of a troop of angry elephants, or of the rapid dodging of the charge of a savage rhinoceros. We enter fully into all the excitement of such adven tures, we accept as our own the hopes and fears of the sportsman, we sympathise with his disappointments, we relish his perils, and applaud his skill in bringing down his game, or in effecting a clever escape. To the youth of this country nothing is so attractive as a good book of sporting adventures, but it is to boys of bigger growth that a book like the one before us must be principally recommended. " Should " any gentleman," says Captain Drayson, " feel that he has finished everything in " Europe, and is disposed for sport and ex " citetnent, let him at once give up white kids " and patents, and take to skin shoes and " leather breeches ; lay out a couple of hun " dreds in rifles, sadtres, and powder, and " start for the wilds of South Africa." And then he continues:— There will be the excitement of midnight hazard, for ivory is plentiful in Africa. although only lu the rough at present, while lions' teeth may be looked upon as the bones," and are nearly as fatal. And if the traveller is not wide awake, the lion will carry off the stakes to a certainty. A man who has passed through an African shooting campaign will find that his health is improved ; that he is better able to help himself, has a greater trust in his natural gifts, and that trifles cease to annoy him. He will return to England without having lost much of his taste for his native sports My parting advice to all sportsmen is—" Try a shooting trip for a year in the bush, and on the plains of South Africa, the true fairy-land of sport." Most men now know the nature of the sport to be met with in South Africa. It is a little duff. I tilt. fr. In plwasaut-shooting awl fox-hunt ing—not quite so easy, and more inspiriting. The game, too, is less tractable than that of our coverts and stubble•fields. There are the eland, the hartebeest, the buffalo, the wild boar, the leopard, the lion, the rhinoceros, and the elephant. Then the qualifications de manded of a sportsman in South Africa are such as exceed the accomplishments of ordinary European sporting men. Let us hear Captain Drayson upon this point : It is absolutely necessary not only to be a good shot, but to be so after a sharp four•mile gallop, and from either shoulder; to load as well while at full speed as when on foot ; to be able to ride boldly across country, and allow your horse to go down-hill at speed over the large stones and with a loose rein ; to pull up, dismount, fire, and get up again with a rapidity a monkey might envy; and when an animal has been wounded and is out of sight, to lean over your horse's shoulder, and follow the spoor at a canter on the hard ground with the accuracy of a hound ; and last and not least, to take care to fly clear of your horse when he turns over in a jackal's or porcu pine's hole, instead of letting him come on you and smash a few ribs. These and many other qualifications, I have no doubt, most of my readers possess; but there may be some who do not, and who in consequence would not stand A 1 in the far south. Hence it is very clear that any man going out to enjoy the sports of Africa, must, before ho can become anything more than a mere sporting man, servo a certain apprenticeship. Then with high courage should he combine ex• treme patience, keen observation, considerable skill, and no little personal activity and powers of endurance. In point of fact, sport in South Africa is very arduous, and, until certain practical experience is gained, such as a knowledge of the spoor of different animals, &c., very unsatisfactory work. Our author acknowledges that in the first three months of his buck-shooting he only bagged five. The principal reason why other wise good shots fail in so marked a manner when they first use the bullet against the larger animals in the bush we take to be this —that they are deficient in patience and cau tion. Of all shooting, that in the bush re quires the utmost care in your approach to the game. You must move through the bush with stealth and watchfulness, or you will never get a shot. The snap of a twig, the click of your lock—even the rustle of a dead leaf— will startle the acute hearing or excite the keen scent of your wary game, be it buck or bull elephant, and before you can fairly sight him, whew !he is off—if a buck, with a bound and a whistle—or if an elephant, with a vin dictive trumpet scream lie is crashing down upon you full charge, like " a runaway railway engine." Then is the time to try your nerve— to put into him either one or two of your ten to-the-pound hardened with tin, and fly for your life. Woe to you if your legs are not strong, your wind sound, and your head cool, when the giant of the forest bears down in chase ; it is a run then for life, for a long trunk, sharp tusks, and a heavy foot, are close behind. Captain Drayson of course met with many adventures in his two years' sport ing. Those of most interest relate princi pally to the elephant shooting. The elephant in his natural state appears, from Captain Drayson's account, to be quite as wise, but by no means so timid, as he is generally repre sented ; in fact, his temper wouli appear, like that of certain other animals, to depend much upon the state of his digestion. " It fluctuates " even in a greater degree than that of man,' writes Captain Drayson ; but, whether they show temper or turn tail, elephants always afford good sport Here is an instance in point One morning, when stopping at the little frontier town of D'Urban, fresh ele phants were reported about three miles off. Accompanied by two Ka& s carrying his guns, Captain Drayson started. The elephants had wandered about in the open for some time at daylight, and at length, as the sun rose, had entered in single file the deep recesses of the forest : We entered on their footsteps, lionyosi leading the spoor; we advanced with the usual slow, noiseless tread, with occasional rests of five or ten minutes, for the pur pose of listening. This latter performance is tiresome to the impatient hunter, but most essential. Listening is the only certain means of discovering the presence of elephants, as they will frequently stand for hours, in perfect stillness, especially on a calm hot day, and when the bush affords them a secure and cool cover. The rumbling noise in their vest interior they cannot keep quiet; this sounds like bubbles cowing up iu %ger, and is sure to be heard every five or ten minutes on a still day, even when at a hundred yards' distance. We had proceeded about two miles on their traces, and had entered the densest part of the forest, when we heard this noise, and at once sat down to listen, to find out all about them. " They must never know you are coming, " and have time to make a plan," was the ad vice of an old hunter, and so Captain Drayson moved on with great caution:— Wu continued our advance till we were within a hundred yards of the elephant that we had first heard. We sat down and listened for some minutes to discover if any others were near, as it would have been injudicious to make an attack on this one, and thereby stand a chance of having our retreat cut off by any other elephant that might be nearer. We discovered no others very close, but the snapping of branches in the distance occasionally showed that our purposed victim was not without company. Throwing up some sand, we found the wind was favour. able for our advance, although the eddies that are always met in the bush rendered it advisable to move on with as much quickness as was consistent with silence. Our advance, although conducted with the same stealth that marks the movement of a cat towards its prey, was still not sufficiently inaudible to escape the refined senses of the elephant. He ceased feeding, and remained for some minutes like a statue. A novice would have laughed had he been told that a wild elephant of twelve feet high was within a few yards of him; the only indication the animal gave of his presence was a slight blowing through the trunk as the unsavour j flavour of my warm Kaffirs was wafted to his sensitive olfactories, or as a dried stick cracked under his spungy feet. The density of the under wood, which was caused by the festoons of wild vine and creepers, prevented our seeing more than a yard or two in many parts ; and though the branches directly over us were shaken by the movement of the monster's body, yet we could make out nothing but a dark mass of bush; to have fired thus, therefore, would have been folly. The elephant's patience was the first to he exhausted, and, with " a half growl and half "'trumpet," he crashed through the bush upon the party. Captain Drayson fired, hit him, and then, with a rush that a harlequin might have envied, gave a practical illustration of the better part of valour. After much manceu vring on both sides, another elephant was hit, but both of them got off to the quietly in the bush. ----- Of the remarkable speed of the elephant Captain Drayson gives several instances. They are in reality very quick " upon their pins," and in spite of their waddling, like a man with a baggy pair of trousers on, in the bush, they will run a man to earth very soon, for their enormous bull clears through obstacles which are fatal to the rapid progress of more dimi nutive animals. On one occasion our author was very nearly run to earth by his heavy -footed friends. He tells the story well : I had left my horse to graze, and was walking round the bush, near some deserted Kaffir gardens. I was searching for buck, and had no idea of elephants being near. A fine black bush-buck gave me a chance, and I fired at him; he bolted away into the bush, and I followed. There was only one elephant-path, and it was so over grown and blocked up that I could with difficulty force my way along it. I kept a good look-out for the buck's spoor, which I followed for about a quarter of a mile into the bush, when I suddenly beard en elephant move close to me. I lay down on the ground to try and get a glimpse of him, and soon saw a whole string of elephants moving along very quickly, distant about silty yards. I knew at once, by their way of moving, that they were after me, either from curiosity or rage. My shot at the buck had made them acquainted with my presence. They seemed to be moving round so as to cross my footsteps, and thus to block up the only path by which I could retreat. I feared also, that, when they caught my scent, they would hunt me up. Only a few days previous I had found the skeleton of a Kaffir in the bush with the ribs smashed, evidently the work of some powerful pressure or blow; and Inyovu seemed to think that it hail been done by an elephant's foot. I did not like the look of things, but there was very little time in which to make up my mind; so turning, I ran as well as I could down the path up which I had just come, hoping thus to get along in front of the elephants and before they could cross my spoor. I could hear them crushing through the bush nearly in front of me, and was afraid that I was already blocked in, but they were still some yards distant ; the branches struck me some smart whacks on the face, and one or two thorns buried them selves in my legs. I won the race, however, though only 1)3 a few yard., as the elephants were close to the path as I passed them: they heard and smelt me, and gave tre mendous shrill screams. I kept on, ant was soon clear of the bush, but did not cease looking behind me until on my pony's back. "This sort of work," he adds, " certainly keeps " one up to the mark," and may be decidedly called " sharp practice." -Mese extracts will sufficiently serve to give our readers some notion of the style of adven ture to be encountered in Southern Africa. Captain Drayson spends nearly two years in hunting end shooting deer and buffalo and ■ I t o