“As further illustrating the persistency of the bloodhound when on the trail, I may mention the case of a murder to which I was called in to assist the police in Scotland. As I and my hounds were in England at the time, it was seventeen hours after the murder when we reached the scene. Not only this, but severe frost had intervened during the night, rendering the ground very unfavourable for scenting purposes. The murder had taken place in a town, but evidences were found that the criminal had been at a certain spot outside the town on the cliffs where he had discarded certain belongings.
“I took my hounds to this spot and laid them on the trail, first giving them the scent from the discarded articles. They went clear away for some distance, and leaving the main road crossed some fields through a wood to a cottage. Here they seemed to be at fault, and ran about whimpering. On inquiry at the cottage it appeared that a man had shortly after the murder called there for some water.
“Feeling the hounds were right so far I cast them round about in hopes of their picking up the trail again. After working persistently for a little time one of them, ‘Solferino,’ opened to a line beyond the wood, and went off at a steady rate followed by the other hound, ‘Waterloo,’ who also found the line himself. They held to this for a while until checked by a main road.
MAJOR RICHARDSON’S MAN-TRACKER “PATHAN”
By kind permission of Major Richardson
“The murderer had evidently walked along the road some distance, until, perhaps, scared by a pedestrian or vehicle, and he then evidently took to the fields again.
“Although checked by the road, where the trail became obliterated, the hounds, nothing daunted, kept steadily onwards, casting all the time on each side, until they found it again in the fields. By steadily working in this manner they led us for four miles, partly across country, and partly on the road, to a populous town, and to the vicinity of a railway station. Here the trail was completely obliterated, and it was evident that by this time the murderer had got clear away, probably by train, and was not hiding in the neighbourhood.
“The chief constable testified to the excellent work of the hounds on this occasion, and there is not the slightest doubt, that had this town been supplied with a bloodhound which could have been put on the trail immediately on the discovery of the murder, the murderer would have been quite easily run to earth.”
In Moscow a bloodhound is systematically used by the police to discover stolen property, and some of his “finds” have been recorded in all the European papers. In the early part of March of last year this police dog, “Tref,” recovered a number of bank-notes and a quantity of silver plate that had been taken from the house of a Moscow gentleman.