Weekly commercial herald. (Vicksburg, Miss.) 1884-18??, 1886-02-19
SCIENCE s2RoRESS
Negro Hounds.

Negro Hound
The following facts certainly cannot come
under the head Of progress. They come
under science. It is a sort of sole ice that
the American people have no reason to be
proud of, but that does not alter the story.
1t was first told by a correspondent Of The
Atlanta Constitution ~
The Georgia Ten~itentiary superintendent
told the correspondent that he could select
any convict from the prisoners, send him of
to circle the wood, have him cross and criss-
cross the tracks Of squads Of other c~onvicts,
and start back to headquarters an hour
later, md then the trained hounds could be
set upon his track and run him down in
fallibly.
The correspondent could hardly believe it.
The experiment was tried, to convince him.
The dogs, it is claimed, are not ~bloodhounds,
butfoxhounds of the Redbone breed, trained
to hunt men. They are called ''nigger
dogs" The penitentiary superintendent
said:
There may be a hundred ~convicts, clothed
precisely alike and wearing precisely the
same shoes. They may feed together on pre-
cisely the same food, and sleep in hunks that
touch each other, under precisely the same
cover. And yet each one of them has a
scent that marks him just as distinctly to
my hounds from his fellows as his appear
ance marks him under your deliberate study.
He may stop in a squad and change shoes
with a convict, and the dogs will still fol
low him. On the hardest ground his scent
will be plain to them, though his shoe soles
are half an inch thick. When he runs
fb.O,torl, 4ho ,,,oo1, ,rIa.o H.. a1aAI.. Az..I,
the bushes, they will trail him, heads up, in
full cry, fifty yards, running parallel, but
away from where he ram"
A gaunt convict, long of leg and flank,
was selected for the run. He was told to
put off quickly, circle in the woods, take a
swift run over fields, roads and through
every squad of convicts he could find in his
way. This be did. The hounds were then
loafing about the stockade yard, as ~listltss a
lot of dogs as ever were seen.
"Ihave had dogs trail a convict on horse
back four miles, and then take the track
where b, jumped from the horse,' said Mr..
Williams. BY this time the flying convict
was a small speck on the broad fields, and in
a momen more had melted into the horizon
and was gone, as if, indeed, he had found
that liberty for which his soul painted and
had gone as the strong-winged birds go
when they vanish in the blue ether.
In an hour we mounted our horses. Sud
denly Mr.. Williams, squaring himself iu his
saddle, blew three quick, short blasts on the
cows horn that hung at his side. AS if by
magic the hounds awaked and charged at
his saddle-eager, baying, frantic, "NiggerP
he said sententiously. Like the wind they
were off, nose to the ground, tails up, cir
cling like beagles, Larger the circles grew,
the hounds silent as specters, eyes and nose
eating the earth for its secret. 'They will
pass over the tracks Of convict squads, but
will open on the first single track they find.
Ii it is the wrong track we will simply sit
still. They will run it q hundred yards or
so, and, noting our silence, will throw it off
and search again. When they get the right
track we will halloo and start after the
hound that has it. The others win join him
and the race is opened" said Williams.
At last a red hound, careering like. mad
across the field, halts suddenly, tumbles over
himself, faces about, noses the ground eager
", lifts his head. 'A-a-o-o-o-w-ut' and is
off like an arrow from a bowstring. "Thats
the track" shouts Williams, and after the
bowling hound we 90. The other dogs join
in pell neil at first, then each hound, true
tothe track, runs in full cry and at q rafting
gait. Away off to the left Capt. james calls
attention to a moving speck against the sky.
That is the convict circling back to camp
he said. On the dogs went, keen as the
wind, inexorable as fate, following the track
of the convict as true as his own shadow,
Across the tracks Of hundreds Of others,
along high roads, over fields, through herds
of cattle, by o-her convicts that smiled
grimly as they passed, tho hounds went,
holding the track of the flying convict whers
it had been laid as lightly as thistle down
on the firm earth, but where it left its tell
tale scent all the same. Nothing could shake
them off-nothing check their furious rush,
led by some intangible miracle of the air,
straight on a single trail.