rous, and indeed very lamentable accidents are some.imes the result of a cloudy night's excursion in a gunning punt. The author of "The Wildfowler" gives several amusing and stirring anecdotes of accidents of the kind, and hairbreadth escapes. Our advice, as wildfowl shooters of many years' experience, is, to punt by daylight when the nights are dark, and by night only when there is moonlight; for suc cess, however great, is but a poor consolation if it be earned at the sacrifice of the life or limb of a fellow-creature.

I had long been desirous of visiting the State of Arkansas, and it was not from lack of invitations that I had not done so, but some other engagement had always prevented me. At last being in New Orleans, to which place I had come upon a planter's business, and that being satisfactorily concluded, I determined, now that I could so easily reach the State by a Mississippi steamboat, to run up to the "Creation State," and visit an old friend whom I had repeatedly promised to join in a hunting excursion or two, into the forest which surrounded his plantation.

My friend lived near the river and close to a beautiful little lake. The land immediately around his house was high and healthy; but about a mile off and to the westward began one of those great and interminable swamps, for which that region is famous, a region where the creeks are full of alligators, the cane-brakes of bears and panthers, whilst the hard timber-forests swarm with deer, wild turkeys, and other game, to use a thoroughly new quotation, "too numerous to mention."

I shall pass over my meeting with my friend, of how we rode over his fine sugar plantation, looked at the young canes, the corn crops, the sugar-house with its "batterie" of kettles for juice boiling, furnace, cooling, purgery, and store houses, and all the thousand-and one things necessary to enable an old woman in this country to sweeten her tea after a day's washing. His kennel was a rather singular one; five or six couple of deer-hounds, which were only allowed to run deer, when deer-driving was the order of the day, looked pretty well-bred and a likely lot generally, but his team of bear and cat dogs were "considerably mixed."

The team numbered something over twenty, and were unconfined—indeed I do not think their owner could tell how many there really ought to be, as some were occasionally "worn out" by bears and panthers, whilst others were often "absent without leave on private cat-hunts of their own; however, whenever wanted, a few toots on the horn would call up" a showing," generally enough to catch a "hog thief" on an emergency, or to do their proper duty by showing sport to their master.

The pack, if made up of a variety of breeds, was admirably adapted for the purposes it was intended for, and as the composition of a team may not be understood in this country, I may as well give some idea of what it consisted.

First and foremost were two or three old hounds called the start dogs: their business was to trail the bear or panther or wild cat to its den, and rouse it, and afterwards, if any check occurred in the run, their duty was to puzzle it out and make it all serene for the others. The others were the fighters: they were curs of nearly every breed under the sun; in their veins could be found blood from every variety of dog; some long, lithe, lurcher-looking brutes showed that some ancestor had been a greyhound; others showed terrier blood; some half-mastiff halfhound; and so on through the lot, the great desideratum being that they should not possess too much pluck, as that ensured their being killed should they fasten on to a bear or panther; at the same time they ought to be plucky enough to jump in, and pinch a bear, and active enough to spring away and avoid punishment. A bear pinched right and left, before and behind, by a score of active dogs, is soon glad to take a tree, and once "treed" the hunter's rifle puts in the last and finishing word.

A panther cannot be bullied in this way; "tooth and toe nails" are too quick to make it practicable; but it is a shy and cowardly animal, and the very number of its pursuers makes it "tree," though very often this is resorted to as a chance of escape when not very closely pressed, and very often it is done from cunning, where the trees grow thickly, as the wary beast will spring from tree to tree, and thus traverse over head hundreds of yards in the endeavour to foil its pursuers. Old "start dogs," however, who are used to their business, generally surmount this difficulty readily by making very wide" casts," and as the scent of a "painter" is particularly "loud," they soon recover the trail.

"I have sent round and asked two or three neighbouring planters to join us in a hunt to-morrow," said Armstrong, my host, one evening; and they have promised to be on hand early in the morning."

Long before daylight next morning I was aroused by Armstrong, who said that he expected the arrival of his friends every moment, so tumbling into my tub of cold water, all desire for another ten minutes was cooled out of me, and I was speedily on the verandah of the house, where I found the looked-for arrivals awaiting, to whom I was made known. Then followed a backwoods breakfast, where venison, steaks, broiled fowls, ham and eggs, with flour bread, corn bread, waffles, buckwheat cakes, hot rolls, &c., offered plenty of occupation for knives, forks, and mouths. Afterwards we mounted our horses and struck off for a great swamp, having previously "tooted" up Armstrong's team, which had been strongly reinforced by the teams of his friends; and as soon as the new arrivals had fought a few preliminary battles, to test I suppose each other's gameness, and these party riots had been quelled by kicks, sticks, and oaths, we held for the great swamp. The swamp was an immense stretch of low land, comprising thousands of acres of alternately heavy timber, open elm flats, cane brakes, palmetto swamps, intersected here and there with deep, narrow, sluggish, boggy bayous, the whole being often overflowed by the inundations of the "Old-big-strong," as the Mississippi should be termed according to its strict translation, and not "Father of Waters," as it is improperly named, Missah meaning old big, and Sippah strong, in the Choctaw language, and these Indians named the river. We soon reached the swamp, which began not quite a mile from the house; and

arrived there, we spread out, each horseman being about a hundred yards from his right and left neighbours. The riding was not the pleasantest in the world; old cotton-wood trees three or four feet in diameter, that had been cast down in some gale, had to be jumped, the horses often having to take their rise out of a network of ground-creeping vines, whilst the rider's head would be forced into others trailing pendent from one tree to the other, natural Calcraft's anxious to suspend any intruders on their dark solitudes; for overhead the frondage met heavily, and shut out the sun, giving a grandly sombre shade to all below. Hard swearing could often be heard, as a vine caused some horse to trip, or caught his rider under chin or nose, and as some little distance of this difficult ground had been negotiated without any start dogs challenging, the tempers of the humans began to get tried.

In the midst of this ill-humour a solitary bark was heard; some one exclaimed, "That was Rockwood ;" another long bay-"That's like Minstrel's." All listened eagerly; even breathing was almost suspended in the excitement of the moment; presently another and another hound challenged, and soon the whole mingled teams burst into one grand chorus as they settled on a red-hot scent. The sudden change from almost silence--for the unscriptural exclamations were comparatively nothing to this dog music, where nearly fifty different voices mingled, was almost deafening, for the sombre old woods reverberated the sounds and trebled them. No one who has never heard it can imagine how those grand old woods can add to any noise made in them, especially when the clamour is made by a pack of dogs or wolves. As soon as my companions saw that the teams had settled down in earnest, each took his own road for some particular stand, where he thought the quarry might be driven, so as to get a shot; but I was a stranger to the country; so I determined to keep as near to the hounds as I could: to ride near them was impossible, so tangled were the woods; occasionally though, here and there, were more open spots, where I could gain a little, so that the teams were never entirely out of hearing. Luckily, too, the animal, whatever it was, had gained but little start, for from the change of yelping on the scent to baying when they got the pursued to face them for a moment could be casily distinguished. After half an hour's gallop, trot, walk, and creep, as the nature of the ground permitted, I fancied I was gradually improving my position. Every minute the voices of the hounds seemed to grow nearer and nearer. "Have they turned back?" I asked myself.

At last I came to a swamp so tangled with bushes, reeds, canes, brambles, boggy ground, and fallen logs, that it was clearly impenetrable to a horse; and whilst circling it, to find a more likely spot or a wild cattle trail, I came upon two of my brother-sportsmen's horses tied to bushes. The riddle was plain; they knew the country, and knew that it was only practicable on foot, and they thought the animal to be at bay or "treed." Just as I was securing my horse, up came Armstrong, and dismounting he at once tied his horse.

"Come along, come along, it's 'treed' whatever it is, and that and the team are going it like a high-pressure political meeting, and I must be there to control the voting.'

How we blundered through I don't know; but by dint of climbing, cutting, stumbling, creeping, and crawling we did reach the scene of