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ing her again dart across the path, and run into the water, through the Nulla, for some yards; at which moment our elephant became refractory; kept wheeling about, and was so unsteady, as to make it impossible for us to fire. However, we followed her up to the thicket, in which she had taken shelter, and put the elephant's head right into it; when we had the satisfaction to hear her growling close to us. Just as we were expecting her charge every minute, and had prepared our musquets ready to point at her, round wheeled the elephant again, and became perfectly unmanageable.

During the scuffle between the elephant and the Mahout, we heard the cry, that the lioness was again running down the bank, and a gun went off. She again crossed the Nulla, and we saw the partridges start up from a thicket into which she had penetrated. Just as we got our elephant to go well in, she ran back again, and couched under a thicket, on our left hand bank, near to which she had originally been started. All this happened in the space of a short minute. Frazer then called to us to come round the bush, as the lioness being in a line between him and us, we hindered him from firing. Just as we got out of his reach, he fired; and as soon as our elephant stopped, I did the same; both shots took effect, for the poor lioness stirred not from the spot, but lay and growled, in rather a more mellow or hollow tone than that of a tiger. All our guns were loaded with slugs, and after a few discharges, poor lioness tried to sally from her covert, and rolled over and over into the bed of the canal below. Her loins were evidently all cut to pieces, and her hind parts trailed after her. This was lucky for us, as her fore parts appeared to be strong and unhurt. She reared herself upon her fore legs, and cast towards us a look that bespoke revenge, complaint, and dignity, which I thought to be quite affecting; perhaps, however, it was the old prejudice in favour of lions, that made me fancy this, as well as that there was an infinite degree of spirit and dignity in her attitude; her head half averted from us, was turned back, as if

ready to start at us, if the wounds in her loins had not disabled her. As it was now mercy to fire, and put an end to her sufferings, I took a steady aim, and shot her right through the head; she fell dead at once, and it was found, on going up to her, that the ball had completely carried away her lower jaw. Her body was dragged up the bank, and Frazer pronounced her to be not two years old.

We now learnt, that the shot which we had heard, when down below, was occasioned by the lioness having made a spring at a poor man, who stood panic-struck, unable to discharge his piece, or to run away. She had thrown him down, and got him completely under her, and his turban into her mouth. The elephants all dismayed had turned back, when Mr. Wilder, seeing the imminent danger of the moment, fired at the lioness, and grazed her side. She immediately left her hold, ran back into the jungle, and across the canal, where we first perceived her. This grand sight we lost, by being stationed in the bed below; it was said to have been very fine; but then we had, instead of it, several views of this noble animal, in full vigour; and with the sight of an hyena, which also ran across the Nulla.

We then proceeded on the road to Pannuput, on our elephants, five miles to

which is a pretty village. Here I got into my palankeen; Wilder returned to Dehlee; and William Frazer and Mr. Barton mounted their horses, and rode on as hard as they could. I changed bearers at Seerhana, twelve miles, and arrived at Pannuput, eleven further, at midnight. The gentlemen had arrived there about sun-set.

After a little bit of dinner, I was glad to go to bed. Next day, the gentlemen told me, they had crossed again Firoze's canal, which appeared very tigerish; but that part of it, near Pannuput, was the finest corn country they ever saw, and doubly delightful after the fatiguing and dreary wastes we had been in for the last six days. Pannuput plains were, in 1761, (1174 of the Hegira), the scene of one of the greatest battles ever fought, between the united Mus

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“That night a child might understand The Deil had business on his hand."

ON reaching home, I found our wo

men folk sitting in woful plight. It is well known how wonderfully acute they generally are, either at raising up imaginary evils, or magnifying those that exist; and our's had made out a theory so fraught with misery and distress, that the poor things were quite overwhelmed with grief. "There were none of us ever to see the house again in life. There was no possibility of the thing happening, all circumstances considered. There was not a sheep in the country to be saved, nor a single shepherd left alive-nothing but women! and there they were left, three poor helpless creatures, and the men lying dead out among the snow,and none to bring them home. Lord help them, what was to become of them!" They perfectly agreed in all this; there was no dissenting voice; and their prospects still continuing to darken with the fall of night, they had no other resource left them, long before my arrival, but to lift up their voices and weep. The group consisted of a young lady, our master's niece, and two servant girls, all of the same age, and beautiful as three spring days, every one of which are mild and sweet, but differ only a little in brightness. No sooner had I entered, than every tongue and every hand was put in motion, the former to pour forth queries faster than six tongues of men could answer them with any degree of precision, and the latter to rid me of the inCATHENEUM VOL. 6.

cumbrances of snow and ice with which

I was loaded. One slit up the sewing of my frozen plaid, another brushed the

icicles from my locks,and a third unloosed my clotted snow boots; we all arrived within a few minutes of each other, and all shared the same kind offices, and heard the same inquiries, and long string of perplexities narrated; even our dogs shared of their caresses and ready assistance in ridding them of the frozen snow, and the dear consistent creatures were six times happier than if no storm or danger had existed. Let no one suppose that, even amid toils and perils, the shepherd's life is destitute of enjoyment.

I

Borthwick had found his way home without losing his aim in the least. had deviated but little, save that I lost the river, and remained a short time in the country of the fairies; but the other two had a hard struggle for life. They went off, as I said formerly, in search of seventeen scores of my flock that had been left in a place not far from the house, but being unable to find one of them,in searching for these they lost themselves, while it was yet early in the afternoon. They supposed that they had gone by the house very near to it, for they had toiled till dark among deep snow in the burn below; and if John Burnet, a neighbouring shepherd, had not heard them calling, and found and conducted them, it would have stood hard with them indeed, for none of us would have looked for them in that direction. They were both very much exhausted, and the goodman could not speak above his breath that night.

Sex Ath. vol. 5, p. 485.

moun

All

Next morning the sky was clear, but a cold intemperate wind still blew from the north. The face of the country was entirely altered. The form of every hill was changed, and new tains leaned over every valley. traces of burns, rivers, and lakes, were obliterated, for the frost had been commensurate with the storm, and such as had never been witnessed in Scotland. Some registers that I have seen, place this storm on the 24th of December, a month too early, but that day was one of the finest winter days I ever saw.

There having been 340 of my flock that had never been found at all during the preceding day, as soon as the morning dawned we set all out to look after them. It was a hideous looking scene -no one could cast his eyes around him and entertain any conception of sheep being saved. It was one picture of desolation. There is a deep glen lies between Blackhouse and Dryhope, called the Hawkshaw Cleuch, which is full of trees. There was not the top of one of them to be seen. This may convey some idea how the country looked; and no one can suspect that I would state circumstances other wise than they were, when there is so many living that could confute me.

When we came to the ground where these sheep should have been, there was not one of them above the snow. Here and there, at a great distance from each other, we could perceive the head or horns, of stragglers appearing, and these were easily got out; but when we had collected these few, we could find no more. They had been lying all abroad in a scattered state when the storm came on, and were covered over It was on just as they had been lying. a kind of slanting ground, that lay half beneath the wind, and the snow uniformly from six to eight feet deep. Under this the hogs were lying scattered over at least 100 acres of heathery ground. It was a very ill looking conWe went about boring with our long poles.and often did not find one hog in a quarter of an hour. But at length a white shaggy colley, named Sparkie, that belonged to the cow-herd boy,

cern.

was

seemed to have comprehended something of our perplexity, for we observed him plying and scraping in the snow with great violence and always looking over his shoulder to us. On going to the spot,we found that he had marked straight above a sheep. From that he flew to another, and so on to another, as fast as we could dig them out, and ten times faster, for he sometimes had 20 or 30 holes marked before hand.

We got out three hundred of that division before night, and about half as as many on the other parts of the farm, in addition to those we had rescued the day before; and the greater part of these would have been lost had it not been for the voluntary exertions of Sparkie. Before the snow went away (which lay only eight days) we had got every sheep on the farm out, either dead or alive, except four; and that these were not found was not Sparkie's blame, for though they were buried below a mountain of snow at least fifty feet deep, he had again and again marked on the top of it above them. The sheep were all living when we found them, but those that were buried in the snow to a certain depth, being I suppose in a warm, half suffocated state, though on being taken out they bounded away like roes, yet the sudden change of atmosphere instantly paralized them, and they fell down deprived of all power in their limbs. We had great numbers of these to carry home and feed with the hand, but others that were very deep buried, died outright in a few minutes. We did not however, lose above sixty in all, but I am certain Sparkie saved us at least two hundred.

We were for several days utterly ignorant how affairs stood with the country around us, all communication between farms being cut off, at least all communication with such a wild place as that in which I lived; but John Burnet, a neighbouring shepherd on another farm, was remarkably good at picking up the rumours that were afloat in the country, which he delighted to circulate without abatement. Many people tell their stories by halves, and in a manner so cold and indifferent, that

VOL. 6.]

The Shepherd's Calendar.

the purport can scarcely be discerned, and if it is, cannot be believed; but that was not the case with John; he gave them with interest, and we were very much indebted to him for the intelligence that we daily received that week; for no sooner was the first brunt of the tempest got over, than John made a point of going off at a tangent every day, to learn and bring us word what was going on. The accounts were most dismal; the country was a charnel-house. The first day he brought us tidings of the loss of thousands of sheep, and likewise of the death of Robert Armstrong, a neighbour shepherd, one whom we all well knew, he having but lately left the Blackhouse to herd on another farm. He died not above three hundred paces from a farm-house, while at the same time it was known to them all that he was there. His companion left him at a dike-side, and went in to procure assistance; yet, nigh as it was, they could not reach him, though they attempted it again and again; and at length they were obliged to return, and suffer him to perish at the side of the dike. There were three of my own intimate acquaintances perished that night. There was another shepherd named Watt, the circumstances of whose death were peculiarly affecting. He had been to see his sweetheart on the night before, with whom he had finally agreed and settled every thing about ther marriage; but it so happened, in the inscrutable awards of Providence, that at the very time when the banns of his marriage were proclaimed in the church of Moffat, his companions were carrying him home a corpse from the hill.

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safer restorative in the fields. There is no denying, that there were some who took a glass of spirits that night that never spoke another word, even though they were continuing to walk and converse when their friends found them.

On the other hand, there was one woman who left her children, and followed her husband's dog, who brought her to his master lying in a state of insensibility. He had fallen down bareheaded among the snow, and was all covered over, save one corner of his plaid. She had nothing better to take with her, when she set out, than a bottle of sweet milk and a little oatmeal cake, and yet, with the help of these, she so far recruited his spirits as to get him safe home, though not without long and active perseverance. She took two little vials with her, and in these she heated the milk in her bosom. That man would not be disposed to laugh at the silliness of the fair sex for some time.

The

It is perfectly unaccountable how easily people died that night. frost must certainly have been prodigious; so intense as to have seized momentarily on the vitals of those that overheated themselves by wading and toiling too impatiently among the snow, a thing that is very aptly done. I have conversed with five or six that were carried home in a state of insensibility that night, who never would again have moved from the spot where they lay, and were only brought to life by rubbing and warm applications; and they uniformly declared that they felt no kind of pain or debility,or farther than an irresistible desire to sleep. Many fell down while walking and speaking, in a sleep so sound as to resemble torpidity; and there is little doubt that those who perished slept away in the same manner. I knew a man well whose name was Andrew Murray, that perished in the snow on Minchmoor; and he had taken it so deliberately, that he had buttoned his coat and folded his plaid, which he had laid beneath his head for a bolster.

It may not be amiss here to remark, that it was a received opinion all over the country, that sundry lives were lost, and a great many more endangered, by the administering of ardent spirits to the sufferers while in a state of exhaustion. It was a practice against which I enter ed my vehement protest, nevertheless the voice of the multitude should never be disregarded. A little bread and But it is now time to return to my sweet milk, or even a little bread and notable literary society. In spite of the cold water, it was said, proved a much hideous appearances that presented

themselves, the fellows actually met, all save myself, in that solitary shieling before mentioned. It is easy to conceive how they were confounded and taken by surprise, when the storm burst forth on them in the middle of the night, while they were in the heat of sublime disputation. There can be little doubt that there was part of loss sustained in their respective flocks, by reason of that meeting; but this was nothing, compared with the obloquy to which they were subjected on another account, and one which will scarcely be believed, even though the most part of the members be yet alive to bear testimony to it,

The storm was altogether an unusual convulsion of nature. Nothing like it had ever been seen or heard of among us before; and it was enough of itself to arouse every spark of superstition that lingered among these mountains. It did so. It was universally viewed as a judgment sent by God for the punishment of some heinous offence, but what that offence was, could not for a while be ascertained; but when it came out, that so many men had been assembled in a lone unfrequented place, and busily engaged in some mysterious work at the very instant that the blast came on, no doubts were entertained that all had not been right there, and that some horrible rite, or correspondence with the powers of darkness, had been going on. It so happened, too, that this shieling of Entertrony was situated in the very vortex of the storm; the devastations made by it, extended all around that to a certain extent, and no farther on any one quarter than another. This was easily and soon remarked; and, upon the whole, the first view of the matter had rather an equivocal appearance to those around who had suffered so severely by it.

But still as the rumour grew, the certainty of the event gained ground-new corroborative circumstances were eve

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day divulged, till the whole district was in an uproar, and several of the members began to meditate a speedy retreat from the country; come of them, I know, would have fled,

if it had not been for the advice of the late worthy and judicious Mr. Bryden of Crosslee. The first intimation that I had of it was from my friend John Burnet, who gave it me with his accustomed energy and full assurance. He came over one evening, and I saw by his face he had some great news. I think I remember, as I well may, every word that past between us on the subject.

we

"Weel chap," said he to me, hae fund out what has been the cause of a' this mischief now."

"What do you mean, John ?"

"What do I mean?-It seems that a great squad o' birkies that ye are conneckit wi', had met that night at the herd's house o' Everphaup, an' had raised the deil amang them."

Every countenance in the kitchen changed; the women gazed at John, and then at me, and their lips grew white. These kind of feelings are infectious, people inay say what they will; fear begets fear as naturally as light springs from reflection. I reasoned stoutly at first against the veracity of the report, observing that it was utter absurdity, and a shame and disgrace for the country to cherish such a ridiculous lie.

"Lie!" said John, "It's nae lie; they had him up amang them like a. great rough dog at the very time that the tempest began, and were glad to draw cuts, and gie him ane o' their number to get quit o' him again." Lord, how every hair of my head, and inch of my frame crept at hearing this sentence; for I had a dearly loved brother who was of the number, several full cousins and intimate acquaintances; indeed, I looked upon the whole fraternity as my brethren, and considered myself involved in all their transactions. I could say no more in defence of the society's proceedings; for, to tell the truth, though I am ashamed to acknowledge it, I suspected that the allegation might be too true.

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"Has the deil actually ta'en o' them bodily ?" said Jean. "He has that," returned John, "an' it's thought the skaith wadna hae been grit, had he

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