I have been for seventeen years an ardent lover of sport in Turkey, and have generally shot in Asia Minor.  I have slept in villages that were supposed to be inhabited by brigands.  I have been almost alone among an armed crowd of beaters, all of whom had the reputation of being robbers, but I have never been robbed or threatened with robbery.  Perhaps there exists a sort of sympathy between brigands and sportsmen, for I cannot call to mind any instance of a sportsman being robbed.  It is true that sometimes a fat financier, or rich rentier, who may have called himself a sportsman, has been carried off and ransom demanded for him, but a real sportsman never.

It is true that in some of the villages where dwell the peoples of a nation I am not supposed to love, you are liable to and probably will be exploite to a considerable extent in the way of pilfering cartridges, &c., but it is their nature to.  So, brother sportsmen, when you come out here take your abode in Turkish villages.

CHAPTER XXI.

SPORT AND SOCIETY.

I have mentioned, in what I have written above relating to sport, the name of a somewhat celebrated spaniel of mine, whose name was ‘Dick.’

The commencement of this bow-wow’s career was as strange as the many adventures he afterwards went through.  When he was quite a young dog, he once worked with me all day in ice and snow, and at last fell down lifeless.  A heavy snowstorm was raging, and as poor Dick seemed quite dead, we made him a grave in the snow and covered him up with leaves and bushes.  We accomplished this with difficulty, on account of the blinding snow and the streams that were much swollen by torrents from the mountains.  Dick’s burial-place was about eight miles from where the vessel was lying.  We all got on board that night.  I was deeply grieved at the loss of the dog, who had already shown great promise as a first-class sporting dog, a most difficult thing to procure in this country.  What was our astonishment the next morning at daylight to see Dick on the beach, making piteous howls to draw attention to his whereabouts.  He was warmly welcomed, as may be supposed; he did not seem a bit the worse for his brief sojourn in the grave, and went out shooting again the same day as happy as ever.  This enthusiastic little spaniel was always doing strange things; he followed every fox and every badger into their holes, and we have had, time after time, to dig him out covered with blood and fearfully mauled, after having passed perhaps twenty-four hours in the earth.

Mr. Dick generally hunted alone, occasionally coming near to see that I was all right.  Now this sounds bad for Dick’s qualities as a sporting dog, but such a dog is necessary in a thickly-wooded region such as I shot in, when one wants to know what is in the country.