all over my body introduced the "amari aliquid" into the excitement and pleasure of the sport. It would be tedious again to describe the search for fresh tracks, the long and exciting stalk, and the final knowledge that the game was almost within reach; but now the density of the jungle was against us, and an unlucky bamboo, hidden in the long grass, gave a warning crack, not, I am glad to say, under my foot, but that of the careful Afsul, and the small herd of three beasts that we were following bolted just as we caught a glimpse of them. I fired, however, at a young bull on chance, and when we followed to the spot where they had been sheltering, we found blood. Then came a two hours' chase, with all its varied agitation and alternations of hope and fear. On we went and still on, and, though I could not help seeing that the shikarris showed less and less confidence, my spirits were kept up by the constant large drops of blood which I could see on my track. At last the trackers threw up their heads, like hounds at fault, declared that the bison was only slightly wounded, and that further pursuit was useless. I was confounded. Whence were the blood tracks which I had marked so confidently and with such satisfaction? Alas! I saw the men picking the wretched leeches from their bare legs, and I knew that it was the blood which dropped from them, as they preceded me, which had stained the jungle-grass and wofully deceived. The sun was sinking, and there were five miles to cover before we could reach the hut. So ended the sport of a day to be marked with a white stone-the day of my first bison, and that a big solitary bull. The chucklers of the nearest village were sent for, and despatched into the jungles to secure the trophies of the chase. These are men of the lowest caste, who have none of the scruples about working with any dead animals, clean or unclean, skinning them and preparing leather, which are common among most Hindoos. The shikarri was with me, and therefore could not assist, but eight stout and most hideous men, almost quite black, and wearing a minimum of clothing, under the guidance of the peon, brought in my bull's head in triumph, skinned it artistically, and prepared it for the final manipulation of the great Mr Ward. I could describe two more days of the most thrilling and delightful sport, but in bison-stalking, as in everything else, history repeats itself. Bison are not monarchs, whose destinies thrill the world, nor are shikarris statesmen and generals, whose powers of speech and onliness can be discussed by admiring thousands; so I spare the details of pursuit, triumph, and failure. I may say that the bull's head did not travel to the station alone, and that I left the reputation in the forest of being a lucky sahib. How important that repution is to those who intend to tread the same paths, and employ the same shikarris again, all old sportsmen will know. One word before losing the atten tion of the reader, if I have kept it so far, on the supposed dangers of jungle life, which I have heard many expatiate upon. No doubt there are deadly snakes in the forest; but I never heard of any of the jungle men being bitten, and I myself have only once seen one, upon which I narrowly escaped treading in the ardour of a stalk. Poor chap! he was in a greater funk of me than I was of him, and his beautifully ringed form disappeared in flight at once. I have never suffered from anything more deadly than my enemies the leeches, and to find your stockings full of blood at the end of a day's work is the worst evil they can inflict upon you. No doubt bison will charge sometimes, but the hunter who is careful, after he has fired, to reload before moving, may move with confidence. If a bull does show fight, a steady shot, even if it does not hit him in a vital place, will always floor him, or at any rate turn him from his attack. The bugbear of fever is much overestimated. Of course, no one can suppose that a damp forest in a tropical country is wholesome in this respect. But with reasonable precautions, the danger is reduced to a minimum. The hunter who is in fair health to begin with, lives well and temperately, takes care after a day's work to put on dry clothes at once, and sleeps in as comfortable a bed and in as good a shelter as possible, has little to fear. I have always taken a daily ration of quinine as prophylactic. It may be a good thing to do, and as I have never had jungle fever, I suppose I ought to say that it is a good thing. Let me finish by making use of the oft-quoted words of the immortal Jorrocks, and say that I have found that stalking the bison is the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt, and only five-and-twenty per cent of its danger." 66 MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR. A VIRGINIA REMINISCENCE. COLONEL DABNEY CARTER DIGGES was a Virginia landowner and farmer. Certain of his neighbours used to say "he'd a heap too much name," but it was the matter and not the extent of the patronymic of which, I fancy, they were jealous. Indeed one of these was called Thomas Jefferson Smith, and the other George Washington Brown, so it would have been manifestly absurd for either to criticise the taste of the Colonel's godfathers and godmothers. This reason or other, universally spoken of and to as Mar'se Dab. was partly, no doubt, an unconscious tribute to the local fame of his family, as if, perhaps, it were due to these latter not to snap the old ties quite so abruptly as in ordinary cases, and partly, no doubt, to accident. Nor, indeed, was this a unique survival of old habits; it was simply a rather exceptional one. So I think the reason that made those of us who were the Colonel's immediate friends and neighbours Whether our friend possessed, speak of him generally, and in or did not possess, too much name frivolous moments to him, as for one or two of his republican "Mar'se Dab," must be sought friends is a matter of no import. for in the humorous contrast We shall briefly allude to this between that great man's impresfurther on. One thing is quite sive personal appearance and the certain, the names he usually curt juvenility of this particuanswered to in everyday life were, lar sobriquet. At any rate, it as regards brevity, far out of reach is as "Mar'se Dab" that my old of the most captious criticism. Of friend's image comes most forcibly these the Cunnel" was the most to my recollection, and it seems formal and dignified, and was used natural to recall his peculiarities, only by comparative strangers_or or to attempt to do so, with the inferiors of his own colour. For familiar appellative upon the titlethe rest, he submitted without a page. With regard to the subject murmur to the monosyllabic abbre- of this sketch, I have so far used viation of "DAB,"—a capital name and shall continue to use the past to shout at an unruly pointer or a tense. I don't wish the reader headstrong setter on a windy day, to suppose Mar'se Dab is dead. no doubt, but a queer name for a Far from it. But because the ingentleman of unquestioned position dustrial system he pursued with and weighing over 200 lb. such vigour proved so much less profitable than picturesque, he is, I regret to say, now an exile from his native land. The paternal acres, fortunately for them I fear it must be added, know him no more. Fortunately it was almost always "Uncle Dab," or "Cousin Dab," among his friends; while by nearly the whole of the negro population, in spite of the tendency to drop, after the war, old ante-bellum terms that denoted servitude, he was still, for some Yes, Mar'se Dab "burst all to pieces" many years ago, as his viduals may possibly have borne them, but the names themselves are by no means distinguished. In Virginia, however, it is otherwise; for they are all three written large upon the pages of her past. There are, no doubt, plenty of people in Virginia possessing one or other of these names who are no connection whatever to the old colonial families who have given to them their local lustre. The Colonel, however, was a representative of the main stock of these three illustrious houses, respectively. For his mother was a Carter of Birley, and his grandmother had been a Dabney from the shores of the Rappahannoc, while as for the Diggeses, are they not written in the chronicles of Berkeley county from generation to generation? neighbours, with that kindly interest people take in their friends' futures, used always to prophesy he would. Not a fragment even from this aforesaid explosion remained wherewith to start him in a new land-killing enterprise. So he, poor man, scarcely past the prime of life, had to accept an offer from his wife's brother, who kept a store far away in Western Kansas. The Colonel, was not, I think, a proud man. He had not so much pride in matters of this kind as most of his class. But what he had he was compelled to swallow, when circumstances forced him behind the counter of a western country store. Whether he took the dose in one gulp, or whether it took some time going down,--and, above all, whether it agreed with him afterwards,-I never heard. For those, however, who had known Mar'se Dab on his ancestral acres, it required a mental effort of no ordinary kind to imagine him tying up more particularly in the superpackets of sugar and coffee for Teutonic or Scandinavian homesteaders. Indeed, it is distressing even to think of the Colonel in such a place or at such an occupation. It is the firm conviction that my old friend would be positively grateful to me if I would consider him as defunct, that decided me in using the past tense in everything relating to him. To attempt a Virginia sketch without at least a genealogical allusion would not merely be unpardonable, it would be impossible. It was an instinctive feeling that this had to come which I think prompted me to open this paper with the Colonel's full baptismal name. For the English ear, neither the names of Dabney, of Carter, or of Digges have any particular significance. Distinguished indi Mar'se Dab himself, however, never appeared to take much stock in the genealogical advantages he enjoyed. In many respects indeed ficialities of life-he by no means did credit to his courtly progenitors. It used to be a common matter of whisper in the more aristocratic circles of Berkeley county-anong the ladies particularly-that "Cousin Dab was a mighty rough man for his raising." But then, as these fair critics would go on to relate, it was not so much to be wondered, seeing of what "very ordinary stock" his wife came. Now, as I have said, the Dabney's, the Carters, and the Diggeses were among the very first families in the State. If all their members were not educated and polished men, they ought to have been. But the Thackers, from whose family the Colonel took his wife, neither were, nor ever had been, people of education and polish. They were not, it must be understood, mere common farmers. They owned plenty of land, and before the war had acquired almost as many negroes as the Diggeses themselves. Nevertheless they were upon quite another social plane. as having rather let himself down when he married Amanda Thacker. Southern rural society, however, though by no means destroyed in that district, was greatly shattered. People were too poor and too busy, and too sore with the outside world, to be very ill-natured about such trifles. Still, social traditions that are founded upon common-sense and natural forces cannot be destroyed in a moment. So, as I have already remarked, the ladies of Berkeley county used to say in after years, that it was not altogether to be wondered at "Cousin Dab had got so rough." The Thackers, in short, belonged to that enormous class that came between the real gentry of the south and the poor non-slaveholding whites. Politically a part of the great compact "slavocracy," numerically too its greater part, but socially, and for obvious reasons, inferior. Not a harshly defined inferiority, it is true; that would never have done among people whose somewhat precarious Mar'se Dab's social position is interests were identical, and who then, I think, sufficiently well dewere all members of a dominant picted. I once heard him airily political caste, with most of the described, by a jocose Canadian world against against them. But the who was staying in the neighbourdivision was the unavoidable one hood, as "a dilapidated blood." between people with the traditions, The Colonel's friends rather rehabits, and customs of gentlefolk, sented the sobriquet; but when and those whose existence was he heard it himself some time quite devoid of such refinements afterwards, he laughed so loud -were, in short, solid intelligent that you could have heard him farmers, and nothing more. These things were managed very well. The Diggeses and the Thackers had been accustomed to interchange calls regularly every year. The phraseology of the most perfect equality had always been maintained when they met, but there the fiction ended. Human nature could do no more, as I am sure you would have said if you had paid a visit first to the old Digges's homestead, and then gone on to the family mansion of the Thackers; and the Diggeses and the Thackers were only types, and very good ones, of what, to apply English terms, we may call the old gentry and the old yeomanry of the south. all over the plantation, and so long that his wife got anxious about him,-Uncle Ephraim, however, who was standing by at the time, reassuredly remarking, That's 'zactly how Mar'se Dab useter laff befo' the wah." When I first knew the Colonel, soon after the close of the war, he might have been five-and-forty. He weighed 16 stone, and "stood 6 feet 3 in his stockings." His lung-power was tremendous. The negroes on the place used to declare that "Mar'se Dab could go in two hollers to Shucksville." Now Shucksville was the county town, and as it was thirteen miles off, this remark must of course be regarded as an Ethiopian ilSo when the war was over-lustration of a purely allegorical though old prejudices and social nature barriers were a good deal shaken Mar'se Dab's title of Colonel, I -Mar'se Dab was looked upon may as well here remark, was a |