FIELD SPORTS OF THE, NORTH OF EUROPE.*
" NIMROD was a mighty hunter before the Lord." We are in goodly company here—wolves, bears, lynxes, elks, and a murderous gentle- man clothed in sheepskin, and armed with rifles. Mr. LLOYD is a man of deeds, a tremendous bear-killer, the insatiable enemy of the ursine race, who has modestly enough handled the story of his own achievements. It is plain fusee that he is readier at charging his gun than Isis pen, and we feel very sure that the idea of publishing his exploits is not the kind of idea to have originated with himself'. For an unpractised hand, he has, however, brought down his ffanne well : we should have been very sorry if uny natural timidity at trying a new sport had deterred bins from favouring the world with his experience in the forests of Scandinavia: we have been greatly entertained by his various kinds of ehaa,.e, trxd have found additional reason fbr main- taining our opinion that every trawIler who wishes to see and know a country must have a pursuit. Mr. LLOYD had a thousand, though all of the same genus ; and we will underiakc, that he by his wanderings learned more of the interior of Sweden than half a dozen professed travellers would have done, whose only- object was to see and hear what might fall in their way. All we lament is, that Mr. LLOYD was not a naturalist as well as a sportsman : the latter character is always necessarily something of the former one, and our author is by no means destitute either of information or interest in natural science ; but had he been better stored with knowledge in this department, his sports would have assumed a nobler character, and he would have instructed the world iss we'd as amused it. In that case, his wander- ings would have been put on t he same shelf with WarErtroll's • and his perseverance, enthusiasm, and carelessness of danger and faligue, the fbrtility of his resources, and his cheerful submission to the pains of solitude, might have led us to hope in him an English LB V AI LLANT. Certainly the interior of Sweden is a country- which ought to be better known to us I hen the interior of South Africa, or the wilds of Guiana, and conseouently an adventurer in this part of Europe may expect less honour 'than the African or American discoverer: never- theless, we will venture to say, that the forests of Scandinavia are in point of fact. as little traversed as many lands to penetrate into which is a distinction. The banks of the Klar and the shores of the Wenern are better known by name than the Orange River, but we are not sure that in point of diet the generality of the people are really much bettor acquainted with the land of the bear than the land of the lion and giraffe.
Mr. Li.ovn has apparently passed some years in Sweden and Nor- way—wit im what object We are not made acquainted: the year 1827 he however devoted, as prohably he laid done his previous time, to pur- suing the sports of the field. He planted himself some two hundred miles to the north-west of Stockholm, and sixty miles to the north of Carlstadt, in a solitary farm-house in the province of Wermeland on the banks of the Klar, and near the lake of Rada, amidst boundless forests of pine, in a countiy, though not mountainous, still finely un- dulated, and varied by numerous views of great picturesque beauty. This was a central position : he was surrounded by the haunts of the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the river and lake. Wermeland, like all Sweden, is full of lakes ; on their shores there is a greater variety of wood, and in many respects they contri- bute to the pleasures of the sportsman. If a man's object were economy only, no country possesses attraction superior to Sweden. Including fuel, Mr. LLOYD'S apartment cost him about two shillings a week. The traveller in this country not only travels at the very cheapest of rates, but he is sheltered from imposition by the exposition of the prices at inns as fixed by the Government. Accord- ing to this table, a dinner of two substantial dishes costs threepence, a quart em of pure brandy three farthings, three quarts of small beer three farthings, a warm worn with bed for the night fourpence-half- penny, a candle three farthings, and other necessary matters at the same rate; posting seems to amount to about a penny a mile per horse. Assuredly an Englishman could not carry his rentes• to a mole profitable country than this: in addition to which, it must be remem- bered that every house is an inn, for hospitality is the virtue of * Comprised in a personal Narrative of a Residence in Sweden and Norway, in the years 1827-28. By L. Lloyd, Esq. With numerous Engravings. 2 vols. London, l880, Sweden ; no stranger is turned from the door, but, on the contrary, as among all people similarly situated, a wanderer from the more fre- quented parts of Europe cannot do an isolated proprietor a greater favour than bed and board under his roof. Besides the pleasure of living cheap, other pleasures abound : the thermometer may be at 58° below the freezing-point in the forest, yet it mounts to 90° in the well- warmed apartments of the house. Here is a charm of variety :—clothed in fur and sheepskin, reclining in a sledge, or skating in skidor on the snow at sixteen miles an hour, defyins; the blast and the sleet, you roughly seize rather than woo health ; then the forest is changed for the blazing tire, the eider-down 'bed, the copious bowl by night, and the refreshing draughts of coffee before rising in the morning, administered by houris in flannel petticoats. Such are the luxuries of the Swedish gentleman. His day sports are the shooting of the cock of the woods, the wolf, or the bear: in the evening—not so far re- moved to the North as Captain CAPEL BROOKE'S friends, who played at cards for butts of oil and cakes of tallow in the absence of specie— the civilized gaieties of the fireside are far from being deficient, —the dance, music, literature, the bottle, and the card-table. 13tit these are winter amusements : the summer is not long, but it is glorious ; and angling, divinest of solitary pleasures ! is nowhere to be had in greater perfection,—salmon, trout, grayling, pike of from sixteen to thirty pounds, and scores of other fish whose existence is scarcely known to the English angler. The interest of this countiy is not confined either to the shooter, the angler, or the lover of the social board ; its natural treasures tempt the votary of science ; the-chemist, the mineralogist, the geologist, find within its limits the most curious subjects of speculation in their respective pursuits. Mr. LLOYD gave but little, attention to that which is beneath the surface of the earth, though he gives some accounts of mines down which he descended : his object was in the bosom of the forest. There are two kinds of bear-hunting. The first is called a shalt, or battue, in which the whole population of a country encloses a certain space, which is known to contain several of the objects in pursuit, and by con- tinually contracting the space between them, drive the beasts into an open space, cleared for the purpose of shooting, termed the shall platz. The other and more manly, because more adventurous and dangerous mode of hunting this powerful animal, the bear, is to attack him in his lair, either single-handed like Mr. LLOYD, or with a small company ; previous to which, the bear has been what is called ringed, that is to say, the position of his den has been ascertained to lie within a certain ring of territory. In this case dogs may or may not be used. Mr. LLOYD tried both methods : sometimes, his dogs discovered the bear when he could not ; in others, he was afraid of disturbing the beast by the challenges of the dog, and preferred to unkennel him from the brake by his own perseverance. In this dangerous occupation, everything depends upon the certainty of the aim : if the rifle misses, it is exceedingly probable that the animal will turn upon the aggressor; and when he is once roused, his stupendous force is such that the hunter stands small chance of escape. If the bear proceeded with men as he does with other animals, it would be still less than it is : the blow of his paw is fatal to the horse and the cow, and his hug is of such power, that a middling-sized bear has been seen walking on his hind legs across a tree thrown over a stream, with a dead horse in his forepaws. But when dealing with his human enemy, he prefers to use his mouth : his antagonist usually comes off with his arms and legs bitten in innumerable places, and most frequently with the loss of his crown,—for it is somewhat odd that a bear has a vast pleasure in stripping the skull of its scalp. Bears are in fact by no means the inoffensive, uncarnivorous ani- mals they are represented : the devastations they commit among cattle are of the most serious kind ; their rapacity is extreme, and their ap- petite eaormous,—a horse or a cow serves for very few meals, and a sheep only for one. Of the ferocity of the bear we have numerous anecdotes in these volumes, and in one instance, of an extraordinary kind of resistance with which it was encountered, fatal to both parties. —" A bull was attacked in the forest by a rather small bear, when, striking his horns into his assailant, he pinned him against a tree. In this situation they were both found dead,—the bull from starvation, the bear from wounds."
After the bears, the next interesting object of description-is caper- call, or cock-of-the-wood-shooting. Respecting this noble bird Mr. LLOYD communicates many new and curious facts. We are glad to find so good a report of the condition of the Swedish peasant : it is primitive, but enviable': want and cold seem to be un- known in a climate which at first‘sight we should suppose to be their fruiful parent. The Swedish peasant or farmer—for there every peasant is a holder of land—is well fed, well clothed ; most can read, and many write ; he is peaceably disposed, and in the enjoyment of a. tolerable portion of liberty. His vices are brandy-drinking and vermin. Brandy he distils from his own corn ; and as almost every farmer has his little hop-garden, he brews a considerable quantity of beer, which, together with the brandy, and the salt-meat he is so fond of, serve to beguile the weary hours of the long winter nights. The facility with which man adapts himself to circumstances, isa stale remark. It is also a truism, that the wholesomeness or noxiousness of different kinds of food depends upon the climate and condition of the persons who take -it. What would a Neapolitan, flushed with macaroni and iced- water, say to four or five copious meals a-day on oatmeal-porridge, salt-meat, and brandy?
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