Sport in the Alps in the past and present, an account of the chase of the chamois, red-deer, bouquetin, roe-deer, capercaillie, and black-cock

Front matter

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

Introdtjction ....... xi

1. Chamois-htntino in the Old Days .... 1

Index

298 812

333 351

ILLUSTEATIONS

PRINTED SEPARATELY FROM THE TEXT

The Son of Two Continents

PLATE

I. A Sportsman of the Seventeenth Century 11. A Chamois Drive in the Seventeenth Century

III. A famous Tyrol Chamois Ground .

IV. H.R:H. the late Duke of Coburg .

V. Getting a Shot at a Stag .

VI. The Duke of Coburg's Shooting Lodge VII. A Favourite Keeper VIIL A Chamois Drive .

IX. Peasant getting a Shot at a Chamois X. The Author stalking Chamois XI. Chamois fighting during the Rut .

XII. Blading, and Weighing of Stags .

XIII. Ancient Antlers in Castle Tratzberg

XIV. Hungarian Stag Antlers .

XV. Roebuck Heads in the Erbach Collection

XVI. Male and Female Bouquetin XVII. King of Italy Bouquetin-hunting .

Frontiipiece

To face page 16

ILLUSTRATIONS

PRINTED IN THE TEXT

PAGE

Vignette to Introduction .

xi

Vignette to Chapter I. no.

1. Steel Cross-bow

2. Emperor Maximilian spearing Chamois

3. Emperor Maximilian's Adventure .

4. Chamois Buck in Winter Coat

5. Female Chamois with her Kid

6. Fraudulent Chamois Horns

7. Abnormal Chamois Horns .

8. Abnormal Chamois Foot

9. Peasant watching for Chamois

10. The Sixty-six pointed Antler

11. The largest Red-deer Antlers

12. Antlers with Fifty Points .

13. Antlers in Oak-tree Stump .

14. Roebuck Monstrosity

15. Lord Powerscourt's Monstrosity .

16. Band of Bonquetin in Salzburg

17. Malformed Bouquetin Horns

18. SUigeisen or Crampons and Boots .

Introduction

Hundreds of books upon climbing and adventure in the Alps

have appeared in the course of the last five-and-thirty years ;

dozens of Alpine Clubs have been established in all the hilly

countries of Europe, thousands annually spend their holidays

clambering about on the slopes of the Alps, while tens of

thousands go sight -seeing to the same region. Is it not

strange that during this period of great, not to say excessive,

activity in connection with " Alpinism," not a single attempt

has been made by English writers to describe the Alps from

the standpoint of the sportsman ?

To go back even to the days preceding the formation of the first Alpine Club — the English Alpine Club being the one that enjoys that honour — there existed only one book in the English language which deals with sport in the Alps. This is Charles Boner's Chamois Shooting in the Bavarian Mountains, published almost half a century ago. This classic treats, however, of only a small district of what the " climber " of to-day would describe as the foothills of the real Alps. A little book, Tyrol and the Tyrolese, which the writer published more than twenty years ago, though it contains some chapters on sport of the rough kind, such as the hardy natives enjoy, has, I fear, proved of little use to English fellow-sportsmen desirous of reading up the subject with a view of visiting the Alps for sport. Most of the great mountain systems of the world were first visited by pioneer British sportsmen, the climber following at a much later period. That the contrary should be the case with that great mountain system that is nearest to the British Isles, of which many parts can, in fact, be reached in less time than some of the more isolated forests north of the Tweed, is, to say the least, a singular circumstance.

To the wish to fill in some measure this void in sporting literature, must be ascribed the present attempt to do justice to a subject with which a life-long acquaintance has made me familiar.

This attempt of mine, as I may at once confess, leaves almost unnoticed the very country which to the climbing firatemity, as well as to the sight-seer, possesses the greatest attraction, i.e. Switzerland. There are two reasons why I have confined myself to the Central and Eastern Alps, dealing with the Western only in so far as is concerned that minute portion situated on the Southern or Italian face, which is the only remaining refuge of the Bouquetin.

The first and best reason is, that the Swiss Alps harbour comparatively but few chamois, and no red-deer whatever. Since the day when the battle of Sempach, 500 years and more ago, decided the future republican rule of the Northern cantons, the holding of large landed properties became unconstitutional, and the chase was thrown open to every adult native. Kepublican equality of civil rights and

INTRODUCTION game-preservixig cannot, we know, exist side bj side. For a modem illustration of this fatal effect of democratic rule upon ferat Tutt'urae we need but glance at those once choice hunting-grounds in the Western portion of the great Transatlantic republic. What has happened there of late years is but a repetition, on a large scale, of what occurred in Switzerland during the first century or two after that country's emancipation from monarchical government. There, even that most shy of all moimtain game, the Bouquetin, which then, as now, inhabited only the most remote and inaccessible recesses of tlie snowy Alps, became practically extinct within that period. If this could happen, it need not be pointed out that the chamois and the red-deer had much less chance of escaping extermination.

It is true that within the last twenty years the Federal Swiss Government, by creating in 1876 three sanctuaries, have made praiseworthy efforts to re-stock certain Swiss mountain ranges with chamois, and that the local governments of certain cantons, by extending the close season to eleven months of the year, have shown a similar desire. But for obvious reasons no great head of game, enduring for more than one, or at the most two, seasons, is ever likely to result from these measures. A further difficulty obstructing the path of the stranger, is the regulation prohibiting non-residents to shoot chamois. Though in some districts this law, one is told, is often broken, it is not pleasant to place oneself at the mercy of informers.

The second and perhaps rather personal reason is that Switzerland, since fashion has made it the goal of ever-increasing crowds of hoUday-makers, often of an objectionable type, has lost its charm to one admirer of Alpine solitude and unsophisticated mountain life. To view nature amid surroundings to which one is condemned by this invasion, is not an unalloyed pleasure. Fortunately there are wide and beautiful districts left in the Alps which are as yet uninvaded by fashionable crowds, and to these byeways the reader will be invited to accompany the writer.

Two of the chapters will be found to relate to what, I fear, may prove dry reading, viz. an account of the chase of mountain game in old times. A fine day is supposed to inspire the Englishman with an irresistible desire to go out and kill something. But there are many days in the year when this longing cannot be satisfied, and what better use can be made of them, than to devote them to research in library and archive, for is not the pleasure of reading how somebody else went forth and slew the noble beast next to going out and killing the great stag oneself ?

If at the risk of being considered egotistical I have added a chapter containing some personal reminiscences of my boyhood in the Alps, I have at least safeguarded the reader by placing it at the end of the book, so that by thus reversing the usual order of things he may not be taken unawares. He has now received fair warning that the last few pages are but a recital of the writer's apprenticeship to Alpine venery, in those years of early youth that leave their impress for life.

With the exception of three drawings by Mr. Caton- Woodville, and those illustrations which are reproductions from photographs or old prints, I am indebted to my wife and Colonel von Schnorr for the pictorial matter in this book.

INTRODUCTION

In conclusion, my thanks are due to the proprietors of the Fidd and the English Illustrated Magazine for their permission to republish some of the substance of articles that have appeared in the columns of these journals.

THE AUTHOR.

ScHLOss Matzen, Tyrol, June 1896.

Chapter I

Four hundred years ago sporting scribes, when instructing " princes and other high-born readers " in the ways of sport, admonished them to provide themselves with their barber-surgeon when they went to the forest to track the fierce wild boar, so that gashes inflicted by the quarry to man and beast might be at once dressed. When, however, they went in pursuit of the great hart or of the bear, their chaplain, rather than their barber-surgeon, should accompany them, for, said they, all that man can do when a hunter is gored by the one or mauled by the other, is to administer the last rites of the church, so that the door of heaven may be found at least on the latch. But if princes and highnesses would foolishly and rashly go into the snowy mountains in pursuit of a beast some call the chamois, over which gnomes and pixies hold watchful guard, the priest had best be left at home to read masses for the salvation of the sportsman's soul, while the barber-surgeon had best take with him a sack wherein to collect the bones when the eagles and wolves have picked them clean. For to return safe and sound from those weird wildernesses of ice and rock is only to be achieved by very special intercession of divine providence.

That the men who held such opinions were ako devout believers in all kinds of nasty nostrums to "proof" oneself against evil spirits, vertigo and breathlessness, need hardly be mentioned. More interesting than a recital of their superstitions, will be a glance at the conditions which made the hunting of big game in the Alps in those days a far more riskful undertaking than it is to-day. In the first place, the arms then in use were of a most primitive kind. To tackle a wounded bear in his lair, or receive the charge of a cornered boar of the inmiense size then attained by these beasts, or to finish ofif a hart of great head when at last brought to bay by the hounds, the hunter only armed with a short spear or with the even less formidable sword-like hanger, was a feat calling for very different sporting attributes than does the shooting down, with repeating rifles at long ranges, of the muchdegenerated modem progeny of these monarchs of medieval woods.

At the time to which we are referring, chamois-stalking was considered a very perilous sport, even if a good conscience and an ardently praying chaplain secured one against the machinations of the gnomes and pixies, whose mode of attack, we are told, was to overcome the daring hunter at the moment of greatest danger with an irresistible longing to throw himself down the giddy abyss at his side, or to loosen with invisible hand the rock on which he heid gained a precarious foothold, and thus hurl him where eagles and wolves could perform their part of the obsequies. The chamois-hunter of those days set about his sport in a manner, it is safe to say, no modem brother craftsman would dream of imitating. He went into the mountains armed only with a spear-like javelin 9 or 10 feet in length, which he threw at his quarry. To get to such close quarters, as would enable men of even such giant's biceps as seem to have been possessed by these tough old Nimrods, called for sporting qualities of no mean order, for to comer chamois needs not only a perfect knowledge of the ground, but climbing powers such as would be the boast of any candidate for membership in the Alpine Club. Indeed, I can speak for one old Alpine Club man, who would consider such a task a hopeless one for him to attempt unaided. That this cornering of chamois was really performed in the days preceding the adaptation of firearms for hunting purposes, there is but little doubt, though we may safely assume that success in this particular feat was not attained without the assistance of others, who prevented the escape of the game from places where the hunter could get near enough to throw his javelin. With such assistance it is possible, though by no means easy, to spear the nimble mountain antelope. On several occasions the writer could have transfixed driven chamois when, utterly fagged by a long uphill flight in very hot weather, they passed his stand within a few yards, their mouths open and their tongues hanging out. But to spear chamois under other conditions, and without the assistance of beaters and stoppers, is, it is safe to say, impossible.

Another factor that made chamois-hunting appear such dangerous sport to our forefathers has already been touched upon, viz. the superstition that goblins and fairies were for ever guarding their favourites, and were only too ready to lure the daring intruder to destruction. Every phenomenon of Alpine life was connected with some occult power ; the avalanches were the playthings of the snow-fairies, and when the heat of the summer's sun bared the lower slopes, the fairies bombarded the intruder with showers of stones. To sleep on a mountain was, until the middle of last century, considered a most reckless proceeding. While the enhanced violence with which thunder and lightning visit elevated mountain regions, has to this day not lost in the minds of the unsophisticated inhabitants a supernatural significance, as is betokened in the more secluded glens by the ringing of all the church bells and the sprinkling of holy water during the outburst of the elements. It was this fear of unknown evil consequences, which contributed so largely in delaying Alpine exploration until comparatively modern days, and gave the feat of Balmat's first ascent of Mont Blanc, little more than a century ago (1786), the world-wide celebrity it did.

Under these circimistances the paucity of the literature relating to chamois-hunting in olden days need not surprise one. Two early blfick-letter works named Weisshunig and Theuerdank} and two manuscripts, constitute the principal literary remains concerning chamois-hunting in the age that witnessed the discovery of America. All four emanated either directly from the pen, or, at any rate, must be considered as the creation of that famous old sportsman, Emperor Maximilian (1459-1519), acknowledged by all his contemporaries as the Master of the Masters of the Chase, and who was one of the few foreigners who proved himself equal to British archers in the handling of the long-bow, in the management of which the English, since the time of Edward III., were acknowledged by all nations to have been far and away the most skilled. Such strength had he in his arms, that, as he himself relates in the first-named work, he once shot a wooden arrow, on which there was no iron whatever, through a plank of very hard larch wood 3 inches thick.^

The woodcuts, 354 in number, that adorn the printed works, however primitive in their perspective and in their artistic qualities, were drawn by the -first artists of the time.

^ In the Appendix will be found a more ample description of these works. ^ The account says "3 Zwerch Finger breit," rather more than three English inches. Seasoned larch wood is an exceedingly hard wood.

They form an exceedingly interesting and, in fact, unique series, treating the adventures of various kinds that befell Maximilian not only when hunting the chamois, the stag, the bear, and the wild boar, but when travelling in the many foreign lands he visited, and when engaged in the numberless battles, sieges, and skirmishes, in which he took a leading part, in his wars against the French, Hungarians, Turks, Italians, Swiss, and Venetians.

There are few figures, even in modem history, that appeal to such an extent to the sport and adventure-loving, as does that of the Last Knight, as Maximilian is often called ; and as for the subject of the present chapter, there would be very little to write, had not Maximilian left us the accounts to which I have alluded. The two manuscripts, though less known than the two printed works, are of as great interest to us, for they contain minute instructions concerning the chase of the chamois and the hart, the former, it is very evident, being the one to which the Emperor was most partial. They may be briefly described as, firstly, the Secret Hunting Book or Hunting Instructions, which is preserved in the Imperial Library in Vienna ; and secondly, a treatise on the same subject written at the Emperor's dictation by his Master of the Game, Charles von Spaur. It consists of 244 folio pages, embellished with several interesting miniatures, and is preserved in the Boyal Library in Brussels.

These four works give one a fairly accurate idea of the manner in which the chase of the chamois was conducted by Maximilian, while some additional notes found in the archives at Innsbruck, the capital of the country, in which lay his favourite hunting-grounds, no less than some of his arms preserved in the Imperial Museums in Vienna, enable one to picture to oneself the personality of this bold climber and explorer of the mountain wilds. The goblins of the mountains seem to have inspired him with little dread, for the only specific reference to supernatural powers one finds in his Secret Instructions, is where he admonishes the Hapsburg prince, who may be his successor on the throne, and for whose benefit the little treatise is written, " to rise at three of the clock so as to hear mass read" before starting on the chamois chase, where death in various forms ever hovers on the sportsman's tracks. Such sound advice, as to wear a stout leathern cap to cover the skull, so as to protect the latter against falling stones, and to have good care that the six spikes of the crampons for one's feet are of the stoutest make, show the practical turn of Maximilian's mind, and that he knew perfectly well what he was about. Another proof of this is afforded by the fact that, notwithstanding he was probably one of the last sportsmen of great position who ordinarily used the cross-bow (Charles V. being probably the very last one), he yet found that this arm could be improved and rendered safer to the bearer and his surroundings, when carried on horseback or through thick woods, than it had hitherto been. An accident, described in Theuerdank, which nearly ended fatally for him, probably led him to invent the trigger-catch, which prevented the arm going off while in any other than a horizontal position.^ For big game short arrows^ with massive iron points were used, while for small game lead bullets were preferred. Though, as a rule, difiTerent cross-bows were used for arrows and bullets, there were such that could be converted so as to use either. Maximilian must have been an excellent shot with this arm, for he shot

^ Cro88-bow8 were fumisbed with such formidable bows of steel that to bend them a portable hand windlass was employed, and as this took some time, the sportsman, during the chase, carried the cross-bow bent ready to be fired. One of Maximilian's cross-bows is in Vienna ; it was one of his *' light stalking bows " ; his heavy arms must have been indeed most formidable weapons. The steel bow is very nearly 4 inches wide, and half an inch thick, and the bow string is 27 inches long. On the shaft is inscribed in Gothic lettering, " Si Deus pro nobis quia contra nos." Maximilian evinced a great partiality for cross-bows manufactured in the Low Countries. The bow-strings came invariably from Antwerp.

ducks as they rose from the water, killing on one occasion 100 ducks with 104 shots. Once he killed 26 hares, without missing once, with one and the same arrow, though his biography does not mention how many of them were running

Fig. 1. — Steel Cross-bow of Maximilian's time, showing the attachment

for the use of Balls.

(Preserved in the Royal Museum in Munich.)

shots. In winter, on account of great cold rendering steel dangerously brittle, Maximilian tells his successor he is to use in the chase of the chamois a cross-bow with a bow made of horn.^ The " hand-gonne " or fire-tube, as the first exceed-

^ The use of the English bow is only mentioned in connection with flying game in Maximilian's writings.

ingly primitive firearm used in the chase was called, was never used by the Emperor for chamois -hunting. Considering the smallness of the stock, unwieldy shape and great weight, which made it necessary to rest the long barrel on a forked prop, while applying a slow match to the touch-hole, this can hardly surprise us. In Weisshunig there is narrated the following incident, proving the superiority of the cross-bow, when in such skilled hands as those of Maximilian, over the hand-gonne of his day. MaximiKan, jiccompanied by one Yoi^ Purgkhardt, who is described as a man most skilled in the use of the fire-tube, went out chamois -shooting. Coming upon a chamois standing high over their heads on a rock, the Emperor commanded Yorg to shoot the buck with his fire-tube, but the latter declared that the chamois was much too high up, and could not be reached by his bullet. Whereupon Maximilian, taking his cross-bow, said, " Look out, I shall kill that buck with my steel cross-bow," and really brought him down the very first shot, the distance being 100 Klafter, or over 200 yards.

But the Emperor's favourite manner of hunting the chamois was with the javelin, which of course was far more difficult than with the cross-bow, for to be successful it was necessary to get to close quarters and tread the dangerous paths and narrow ledges to which the game, when pressed, always takes refuge. This sporting spirit of desiring to come to close quarters with his game, distinguished Maximilian in a high degree. The more dangerous the foe, the greater the zest with which this courageous sportsman entered the fray. Hand-to-hand personal encounters, in which the skill, strength, or endurance of the hunter vanquished the ferociousness or fleetness of foot of the hunted beast, were the joy of his life. Maximilian would journey afar to meet single-handed a great bear or monster boar that had been marked to cover for him. And what enormous sizes those beasts then still attained we know from game registers, that give their weights as up to 900 and 800 lbs. respectively.

These beasts he would tackle on foot single-handed in their lair, armed either with the short hunting spear, with which, gripped firmly in both hands, the charge of the beast was received, or with his hunting sword or hanger. Maximilian's favourite hanger, by the way, is preserved in Vienna.^ With either in his hand he seems to have feared no beast, and his adventures were of the most thrilling kind. When on horseback in pursuit of a big stag he would, when the cornered beast turned and charged, receive the infuriated beast at the point of the latter arm. But of all these various modes of pursuing game that resulted in dangerous hand-to-hand combats with the fiercest beasts of prey, none, according to his own accounts, brought him so often into deadly peril as the chamois chase with the javelin, or Scl\aft, as was its technical term. Swiftly moving avalanches, showers of stones, set in motion by beaters or by the game itself, shot chamois tumbling down upon the sportsmen from heights above, rocks giving way, the snapping of his alpenstock, the giving way in a most dangerous place of five of the six spikes of his crampon, slipping on narrow ledges and being saved from instant death by a quick leap into the top of a handy tree growing below, or, on another similar occasion, by clinging with one hand to a point of rock, are, one and all, adventures narrated by the Emperor, and quaintly illustrated by the pencil of Burgkmair, Schauffelin, and Beck.

Maximilian's sporting establishment was very large, con-

^ This 8word is one of the finest pieces of armourer's work extant. The blade is 2 inches wide and 34 inches long. For three-fifths of its length the blade has one edge, for the rest of its lengtli it is double-edged. For about two- thirds of its length the blade is "blued," in what was known to the Milan armourers as "alia sanguigna," which gave the steel that red shimmer it obtains when withdrawn from the body of a foe, be it human or animal. The hilt is a plain cross without guard, and is a masterpiece of the metal-chaser's art.

sisting of Masters of the Chase, Master of the Forest, keepers and kennelmen by the hundred, for he had separate staffs in most of the Austrian provinces, and in his kennels were no fewer than 1500 hounds. The latter were, however, chiefly used when other royal guests were present, to whom the hardships of stalking were less welcome than they were to Maximilian himself.^

In a few of the illustrations in Maximilian's works, hounds figure in the chase of the chamois, but it does not appear clearly for what purpose they were thus used, whether for tracking the unwounded game, or running it for the purpose of bringing it to bay, or lastly, whether their assistance was called in for the only purpose that hounds are now ever used, as track-hounds in leash to follow the wounded game. On average chamois ground running hounds could never have been used, for they would speedily have come to grief, even if they could have followed their quarry for any distance over the precipitous ground, or along the minute ledges on which the chamois, but no other animal except the practically extinct bouquetin, can find a footing. It can therefore be assumed that hounds, upon which in those days even greater store was set than to-day, would not be brought into use except for tracking wounded chamois.

How far this strong-armed old sportsman could throw his javelin there is unfortunately no evidence, for the faulty perspective in the pictures is anything but a trustworthy guide. By the great care taken of these Schcifte, it would seem that the men using them had acquired great skill. Thus in liis " Secret Instructions " the Emperor gives special orders that, in order to keep the shafts perfectly true and straight, they should be hung up in special boxes, some of which by the way, we hear, were kept in the organ-lofts of

^ Maximilian's first wife, Mary of Burgundy, first introduced into Germany the French manner of stag-hunting.

CHAMOIS-HUNTING IN THE OLD DAYS ii

churches. Very few collections possess specimens of these chamois javelins ; the one I was fortunate enough to secure many years ago is 7 feet 8 inches long, but is not quite

Fig. 2. — Emperor Maximilian (1459-1519) spearing Chamois, the Ladies of his Court looking on.

(From Thtiunlank.)

perfect, the wooden shaft having been cut down by a foot or two. It has a double-edged, lance-shaped point, 7 inches long and 2 inches wide at the broadest part. A strong man could throw it a considerable distance, and no doubt at 25 or 30 yards it was in such hands a deadly arm.

Maximilian appears to have held occasionally great chamois drives, to which the inhabitants of all the nearest villages were commanded to act as beaters. Of one such drive Weisskunig gives us details. It was held in the Schmirn mountains, access to which was gained by following up one of the side glens of the Unter Inn valley. There were, we hear, 600 chamois in one drive ; on another occasion the bag was no less than 183. Another favourite ground for driving was the Achensee in North Tyrol Steep mountains rising on all sides from this elevated lake, it was possible, by using a large force of men, to drive the game into the water, where the stags and chamois were killed from boats, the ladies of the court honouring with their presence these spectacular performances.^ In the picture from Theuerdanky of which a copy is here presented, we see the fair audience demurely seated near the foot of cliffs on which the Emperor is spearing chamois. The little wine-keg left to cool in the rushing brook, and the cart with provisions, show that even in those days creature comforts were not forgotten.

Some doubt has been thrown upon the truth of Maximilian's famous adventure on the Martinswand, near Innsbruck, where, in consequence of advancing foolhardily along a narrow ledge, on the face of a stupendous precipice, he at last got to a place where farther advance was as impossible as retreat, and death from starvation became imminent. While there is no doubt that religious zealots embellished the final rescue of the Emperor by the intervention of an angel disguised as a superior youth, there is no good ground to call into question the main details of the adventure. The fact that none of the earlier editions of either Themrdank or