How different is it on the Dvina and Narova, on the Peipus Lake and the Finland Gulf! In 3000 German square miles of forest and marsh, there are two dozen small towns, and scarcely any thing to be called a village. The settlements of men occupy but a small part of the vast wilderness. Here are forests scarcely ever trod by any foot but a wolfs or bear's, rivers and lakes seldom disturbed by a boat. Here hunting has indeed its reward. In such a country a man need not be ashamed of being a sportsman.
The races of beasts are various enough, and endowed by nature with sufficient means of defence to make their conquest difficult, Interesting, and adventurous. The northern tiger (the lynx) in the trees, the Livonian hyena (the wolf) on the pathways, the bear In his den, the badger in his hole, the seals and otters on the river banksall know how to trick and cheat mankind, making many heroes, and some martyrs.
The chase is not here restrained and fettered by rules and regulations. It has not been made a science. No one is a hunter by profession, but every one is a born sportsman, and hunts and shoots for pleasure. Nothing is forbidden game ; and every man, that is, every nobleman, may shoot bears and elks as freely as sparrows.
In Livonia every landowner is the sole proprietor of all the game on his domains. In this manner many noblemen count whole herds of deer, elks, foxes, and lynxes, among their cattle. Many have whole colonies of bears, and extensive settlements of wolves, on their land. In Courland the freedom of game is extended still further ; for every nobleman has the right of hunting on the ground belonging to others, without asking leave. Even in Livonia it is never customary for one noble to exclude another from liis hunting grounds, so that every one of these landowners may look upon himself as privileged to sport over the whole country between Lithuania and Finland. It may easily be imagined, therefore, that hunting parties in Courland are made on a very large scale.
Many gentlemen have different estates in opposite parts of the country. They sometimes sound the horn on the one estate, dive into the forests with their hounds, horses, and hunters, and emerge again after three or four days, to rest in their other castle, after having reaped the gameharvest of twenty or thirty miles of forest. Many quarter themselves in some lonely house in the wilderness for weeks together, and make excm- sions into the surrounding district. Sometimes the poorer nobility speculate with their hunting privileges, which are shared by all the companions of a nobleman ; they hire assistants, and, scouring through the forests, shoot stores of game, w^hicli they sell again at good prices.
The two kinds of sporting most practised here, are the " flying hunt," and the " clapper hunt." The " flying hunt" is followed entirely on horseback, and with hounds. The hunters follow the noise of their canine guides, who find out the track of the game, and all that the dogs raise is shot.
The "clapper hunt" requires the assistance of drivers, and is confined to wolves, bears, elks, and such animals. It has its name from the clapping instruments of the drivers, with which they strike against the trees to rouse the game Tlie Lettes and Esthonians, the skilful assistants of the noble hunters, raise a tumult with whistling, screaming, shouting, and clapping, which might drive a Diogenes from his tub, let alone tlie poor shy beasts of the forest. Their general hunting-cry may be articulated ^'' Skrowya ! Shrowj/a.'' But it will not be easy for tlic imagination to picture the many dreadful variations of this Skrowya that resound in the forests of the JJaltlc. The tribes who inhabit the wilderness, almost in as savage a state as the wolves and elks themselves, are particularly adapted to be the assistants of sportsmen. They have great skill in imitating all natural sounds to snare the game, and in discovering its numbers and haunts ; so that a Lettish or Esthonian gamekeeper can give the most accurate information, not only as to the rank and locality of the elks and deer, the size of their families, and their last battles and feuds with the wolves, but also respecting the number of nests of the partridges and heathcocks, the extension of their colony, and the alterations in their haunts. His imitative voice well knows hnv to snare every animal that lias an ear and a throat. Tiiey even howl horrible harmony to the pnwliug wolves the night before a hunt, in order to alliu-e them into tlic
fixed enclosure, where they are surrounded by the hunters. The gTowling of the bear, however, a)pears to be incapable of imitation.