[Footnote 23:  Journal of Agricultural Society, vol. x.  Part xi.  No. xx.]

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The Tokay district--Visit at Schloss G------Wild-boar
hunting—­Incidents of the chase.

My first expedition to the Tokay district was in the winter; I was then the guest of Baron V——­, who has a charming chateau, surrounded by an English garden, in this celebrated place of vineyards.

In the winter there is a very fair amount of good sport in this part of Hungary.  Sometimes one is enabled to go out hare-shooting in sledges; of course the horses’ bells are removed on these occasions.  Hares are not preserved in the Tokay district, but they are pretty numerous.  I myself shot fifty-four in the space of a few weeks, which is nothing compared to an English battue of a single day; but then this is sport, and there is immense pleasure in dashing right across country behind a pair of fleet horses, thinking yourself well repaid if you bag a couple or three hares in the afternoon’s scamper.  For wolf and wild-boar hunting one must penetrate into the forests which extend in the rear of the southern slopes of this Tokay range of hills.

During my stay at G——­ a party was got up for a few days’ shooting in the interior.  On this occasion we were to shoot in Baron Beust’s forests, which extend over an area of about forty miles square; as it may be supposed, the sport is not the easy affair it is in the well-stocked parks of Bohemia.

There was not snow enough for sledging, so we drove to the rendezvous on wheels, using the springless carts of the country, the roads being far too rough for ordinary carriages.  Wrapped in our bundas, we were proof against the cold.  The wolf-skin collar turned up rises above the head and forms a capital protection; and very necessary it was on this occasion, for there was a keen cutting wind the day we started.

I carried a smooth-bore breechloader charged with the largest buck-shot in one barrel and with a bullet in the other.  In Hungary the forests are usually so thick that one scarcely ever fires at a long range, and heavy shot at a short distance in a thicket is better than a bullet.  After driving in a break-neck fashion for about two hours we arrived at the river Bodrog, a tributary of the Theiss.  Nearly every winter the country hereabouts is under water; I remember once seeing it when there was all the appearance of an extensive inland sea.  Sometimes the inundations are disastrous, but the ordinary flood is an accepted event, and no damage accrues beyond the prevalence of marsh fever in April and May, when the water recedes.  This part of the country offers first-rate wildfowl-shooting in the season.