In Australia there is a good deal of hunting and the Melbourne hunt is a well-organized institution. Australia is a country in which all animal life increases and multiplies rapidly. In 1864 one dog fox and two vixens were imported from England. There soon became enough foxes in Victoria to last the colony, now the province, forever. But red deer and kangaroos are sometimes hunted with foxhounds, and in Western Australia, in the neighborhoods of Freemantle, Perth and Kalgoorlie, there has been much sport experienced in hunting the brush-tailed kangaroos. This form of hunting was introduced by Mr. Cairns Candy in the late nineties.
In Tasmania, the island province off the main Australian continent, there is some hunting with properly constituted and maintained packs of hounds. In this lovely country, noted for its apples and the matchless complexions of its pretty women, they hunt deer and hare. In New Zealand there is a good deal of hunting, and harriers are principally in use. There is a fine open country, and that in the North Island will remind the hunting man of some of the shires of England.
The hounds of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia have been discussed, and now we will find ourselves back in America. And this country may well be proud of its old-fashioned, long-eared, heavy-jawed and deep-throated foxhounds. That American foxhounds are suitable for hunting American foxes, and where foxes are shot before hounds, there can be no manner of doubt; but they do not kill many foxes, neither may this killing quality be placed to the credit of the English foxhounds in this country. Once a fox is able to sit down and listen to his pursuers, then a foxhound or a pack of foxhounds have as much chance of overtaking the quarry as a short-winged hawk has of catching a swallow on the wing. A century ago, it is recorded, it was not unusual in South Carolina to drive out of one large swamp, deer, wolves, bears, foxes, wildcats and wild turkeys. The sportsmen were ready to shoot all of these.
In descriptive poetry of the earliest date, hunting is frequently alluded to; even in the most important action of the whole Iliad, the death of Hector, the pursuit of him by Achilles is thus introduced:
“As through the forest, o’er the vale and lawn,
The well-breathed beagle drives the flying fawn,
In vain he tries the coverts of the brakes,
Or deep beneath the trembling thicket shakes,
Sure of the vapor in the tainted dews,
The certain hound his various maze pursues.”