0 • A LONG SWIM.
A marvellous example of the endurance of a hunted stag is sent me by the author of The Old Stag. Lord Dunraven wrote to him to record the fact that in his grandfather's time a stag, hunted on the south side of the Bristol Channel (exactly where, I do not know) swam the breadth of the Bristol Channel, landed in Wales, and lived for some while on the Dunraven property there. The date was 1867. There are, I believe, some notable records of long swims by stags of many species in many lands, but this must be among the longest. Is there any parallel, even in fiction ? It is a remarkable fact that in several recent reviews of stories about animals, the facts, on which the stories were founded, were disbelieved and the fictional incidents gladly accepted. The sailor's mother who would believe anything except that fishes flew has her modern descendants.
Previous page
