Laurence Oliphant and the Bear.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 160, 10 July 1886, Page 3

Laurence Oliphant and the Bear.

The easiest way to shoot bears is to smoke them out of the holes or cavea which they use as sleeping-places, and which the natives always know, and to lie in wait for them at the mouth ; or to watch for them by tanks — though probably the commonest method is to drive them. This is the plan adopted in Turkey Six j>enrs agu, while staying at Constantinople, I waa invited to join a bear-shooting expedition! News had arrived that they were numerous on (he peninsula of (xuetnlike in the Sea of Marmora, and good sport was promised us as a certainty. Nearly twenty years had elapsed since I had fired off a gun. I had never used a breech-loader in my life, for they had come into fashion after my days, and I had lost all kind of sporting enthusiasm ; bnt the trip promised tobe enjoy* able so fai as climate, new country, and fine scenery wereconc^rned, and I was tempted by the society of four agreeable companions to nvike one of the part>, ruth<.r as a spectator than as an active participator in the sport, which was the more reasonable as I was the only ons of the party who had ever shot a bear. We landed at Guemlik where H.M.S. Fawn, then surveying the Sea of Marmora, was lying at anchor, and adding two or three of the officers to our party, made a night sail in a native boat to the small fishing island from which we were to strike inland From this point we advanced n the eariy morning through lovely scenery come three or four miles into the interior, and found ourselves in the midßt of a beautifully wooded, rolling, upland country, with open grassy valloye, rich soil, and abundance of water, almost totally uninhabited, and ouly thirty milea as the crow flies from Constantinople. It is one of the anomalies of Turkey that a region twenty miles in length by about ten broad, comprising fine forests and splendid agricultural land, should be lying waste within so short a distanca of the capital of the empire and of the market which it affords, However, had it not been so, we should have had to go farther afield for our bears. As it was, with a good gang of beaters, we toilad all da> without any result except a few false alarms En revanche we had eplecdid appetites and sound slumbers on leaf beds under the blue canopy of heaven, for we had brought no tents with us. Meantime I had so far caught the infection that 1 had accepted the offer of his second gun from a friend and had occupied the post assigned to me at e*ch beat with the most sportsmanlike conscientiousness. Next day we tried some new country. I had expressly asked the master of the hounds to post the others in the best stations, and was occupying the least likely place in one of the drives, my thoughts at the time far away from bear shooting, when the sudden clamour of the dogs right in front of me roused my attention. There was no doubt about it this time. I was standing on the slope of a valley, bare except for a few bushes, near a path which led across n little strpatn into a wood on the opposite slope, which was now resounding with th 9 shouts of beaters and the yelping of dogs. *s I fixed my eyes on the point where the pain entered the wood, I saw Bruin emerge. Slowly and deliberately ho trotted up the path straight towards me ; slowly and deliberately fretired behind a bush about p\x yards from the path, so as to screen myself from his observation and have a phot, which, even after twenty years without practice, ifc ■would bo impossible to miss The bear did not quicken his pace, and he wps exactly abreast of me. I fired -at least I puilel ihe t'igger. The met barrel reppondfd with a gentle tick ; the second followed suit. I almoet fancied I could see the bear wink. At all events, he did not quicken his pace, and I had almost time to put a couplo of cartridges into my gun — which, I need not say. did not go off for the simple reason that there was nothing in it— before he ui&appeared into some brushwood. Thus my first and only experience of breech loadei'S has not been encouraging. But how was I, who had never been out with a party of breech-loading sportsmen, to suppose that, after I had loaded my own gun, and leant it against a tree during luncheon, somebody else's servant would come and abstract the cartridges and puts them in his pocket, and then after luncheon hand me the gun wthout eaying a word about it ? I had been accustomed to consider that when I had loaded a gun myself it remained loaded unless I fired it off. The idea that any one else would consider himpelf entitled to draw the charge and Docket tho cartridges never entered my head ;"but it seems it is the custom, for on remonstrating with the man, who was an Englishman, he replied — " Well, I thought you would haUooked to see whether the gun was loaded before you undertook to fire it off." i So I had to accept the situation, and. the chaff by which it was accompanied ; and as we none of us had another chance, I established my reputation as a " duffer, 31 and we returned to Constantinople emptyhanded.— Lawrence OUphant, in " Black - Mood."