Sir Walter (says the local historian) lived in the suburb which we now call Tivoli, where cedars planted by him still stand. From Cork he wrote those wonderful letters in which he, a brilliant cavalier of eight-and-twenty, seeks, with quaint felicity of style, to persuade Queen Elizabeth, then a maiden of seventy, that he was madly in love with her. Cork was his headquarters in a long series of military services against the MacCarthys, the Desmonds, the Roches, and the Barrys. Some of these services were notable for knightly valour, others for unknightly wiles. Thus at Midleton, then called Chore Abbey, close to where the distillery now stands, he, single-handed, confronted Fitzgerald, seneschal of Immokilly, with a host, and held the fort until his companions came up. Thus at Castletown he disguised himself as a benighted traveller, sought admission to Lord Roche's Castle, was hospitably received, and, when supper was over, announced to his host and Lady Roche that they were his prisoners, that their castle was surrounded by his t.oops, and that they should forthwith go to Cork gaol. By such quaint love-making and such daring exploits he obtained a royal grant of thirty-six thousand acres of the forfeited Desmond estates. He went to reside at Youghal, and there, in a spot still indicated, grew the first of all Irish potatoes. But a quiet country life did not suit so brilliant an adventurer. He left Ireland, sailed for America, discovered Virginia, stormed Guiana, and bore home to England the splendid spoil of many a Spanish galleon. He soon afterwards fell into disgrace, and was imprisoned for ten years in the Tower of London. There he wrote his famous History of the World. He came back to Cork a ruined man, sold the vast Desmond estates for one thousand crowns, and sailed from under the walls of Dundanion Castle on his last desperate adventure to seek an Eldorado in the Indies, whence he returned broken,' as he said, ' in brain and heart,' to die a

traitor's death at Whitehall.

JOHN POPE HENNESSY.

SHEEP-HUNTING IN THE MOUNTAINS.

OVIS MONTANA, locally and variously called the mountain sheep, Bighorn, or Taye, is very closely allied to, if he is not identical with, Ovis Argali, the wild sheep of Asia, and he is akin to the European Mouflon. He stands about as high as a black-tail deer, but is much thicker and more massively made in the body and limbs than the latter animal. His head resembles that of a domestic sheep, but it is larger and more powerful-looking, and, in the case of the male, it is surmounted by a huge pair of curving horns far longer than those that adorn the head of any civilised ram. Among these animals this ornament is not confined to the male sex, for the females also carry small horns. The hair is coarse, very thick and close, resembling that of the deer in texture, but bluer in colour over the greater portion of his body, with a peculiar exception which makes him look as if he was in the habit of sitting down in the snow, and some stuck to him. He is a grand and noble-looking animal, viewed standing motionless on some jutting crag, or bounding with gigantic springs down a precipice that apparently could not afford a foot-hold to any living thing.

Some years ago I doubted the existence of the mountain sheep. I classed him with the Gorgons, dragons, and unicorns. I had read about him in books, but in all my wanderings I had never seen one, not even a stuffed specimen except in the British Museum, and I had some doubts as to whether they were genuine, or had been got up after the manner of Barnum's mermaid; neither had I come across any reliable man who had killed one. My doubts were, however, at length dispelled. One day, while hunting on the plains, the government scout of a neighbouring post told me he was certain that there were big-horns on a certain range of bluffs in Wyoming. I did not believe him in the least, but as a large party of us, including some soldiers, were going through from a post on the railway to one of the forts situated in that territory, and as we should have to pass through the bluffs, we determined to spend a few days there and to prospect for sheep. This same government scout was a considerable villain, and got us into a nice mess. I don't know why it was, but the inhabitants of the city' in the neighbourhood of the fort from which we had been hunting took it into their wise heads that neither my friend P.

nor myself were likely ever to revisit that region, and that therefore it was expedient to pillage, squeeze, and skin us completely before we got away. They laid their plans pretty well. The scout arranged with a worthy citizen from whom we had hired some horses that at the last moment he should put in a most exorbitant claim for damage done to his horses. Accordingly, after the ambulance that had conveyed us to the station had returned to the fort, and while we were waiting quietly at the hotel for the train, it being then about eleven o'clock at night, we were politely but firmly requested to pay a sum for damage done to the team, greatly exceeding the whole value of both horses and wagon put together, and, at the same moment, an attachment was placed upon our luggage. We were in a nice fix. We had to leave by that night's train, for there was but one train a day, and the party we were to join were impatiently waiting for us at S, a station some distance down the line, and expected to leave the next day, the moment the train got in. Fortunately the cars were three or four hours late, which gave us time to do something. We got a buggy, drove off to the residence of an attorney, who was recommended to us by the hotel proprietor for his strict honesty, woke him up, turned him out of bed, narrated the circumstances, lugged him down to the station, paid the money into court, got the attachment off our luggage, and started triumphantly by the train. I never found out what became of our case, but I need scarcely say we never saw any of our money again. Where it went to I do not know; probably it went, in the words of the late Mr. James Fisk, where the woodbine twineth;' at any rate I am pretty sure that a very small proportion of it, if any, found its way into the pockets of the two conspirators-the scout and the owner of the horses.

On arriving at the little town of S- we found the party were not ready, and we were compelled to wait there some days, a period of inactivity which proved fatal to our scout. S was at that time inhabited by a great many cardsharpers and gentlemen of that and kindred persuasions, and a few railway employés. The small military post is situated some little distance outside the town. The day after our arrival a carpenter who had just completed a building contract somewhere, and who was overflowing with money and good-nature, came back to the town and proceeded to treat,' with the result that in a few hours the city was mad drunk, and remained so for a considerable time. P and I dined that night at the barracks, and by the time we returned to the town the orgie was at its height. The men were simply wild, raving drunk, drunk with the vilest of whisky, and nobody knows how vile and how horrible in its consequences whisky can be until he has tasted a sample of the kind of stuff that is, or used to be, concocted at many of those little out-of-the-way frontier towns. They were yelling, laughing, roaring, fighting, exploding rifles and firing off revolvers promiscuously

all over the place. They intended it as a feu de joie no doubt, but as they loaded with ball cartridge, and were too magnanimous to take the petty precaution of firing in the air, it did not strike P and me exactly in that light. In fact it appeared anything but a joyful proceeding to us, and considering that discretion, in such a case, was undoubtedly the better part of valour, we made a wide circle out of the line of fire until we gained the shelter of a long line of trucks, and under their friendly cover crept up to the hotel at the railway station, like a couple of malefactors escaping from a hot pursuit. Malefactors in fact we soon found ourselves to be, for when we reached the hotel we discovered all our baggage piled up in a heap in the centre of the room, with the sheriff drunk, and in his shirt-sleeves, seated on it, attended by a judge and the sub-sheriff, both also the better or worse-for whisky. It was fortunate that we arrived when we did. The sheriff or sub-sheriff, I forget which, had assaulted my servant in the most cowardly, brutal manner. The man had refused, and very properly refused, to separate my property from a lot of baggage belonging to other people, and the drunken representative of the law drew two pistols upon him, knocked him down, kicked him, threatened to blow his bad-worded brains out, and likely enough would have done so but for the man's wonderful command of himself and quiet courage.

After some little difficulty we found out what was the matter. It appeared that our government scout, under the influence of bad whisky, had taken it into his head to try the attachment dodge over again. Accordingly, during our absence at the barracks, he trumped up a most ridiculous charge, claiming five dollars a day wages from us during the whole time he was out on an expedition from Fort, which we had accompanied. He was receiving government pay, was detailed for duty with the expedition in his capacity of government scout, and was allowed by the officer in command to go out hunting with us as a matter of courtesy and kindness to us, and because he knew the country better than any one else. The man was anxious to go, and was very pleased and perfectly satisfied with the liberal present we made him at the termination of the hunt. The charge was too preposterous to be sustained, but there was no use in representing the injustice and absurd nature of it, as the civil authorities and legal functionaries in the town were in the swim, and, if they had not been, were too drunk to listen to reason. At first the captors of our baggage were very offensive, and things looked somewhat ugly; but a remark of Pquite altered the aspect of affairs. He asked the sheriff, with a plaintive air of humble submission, whether he would not allow us the use of one small article of baggage, namely a five-gallon keg of whisky. This request seemed somehow to tickle the fancies of the officials, for they allowed us to take possession of the keg, and becom

rooms.

ing more civil and communicative, told us that either we must pay the money claimed, or lose our baggage, or get two well-to-do respectable citizens to go security for the amount. The hotel proprietor and other gentlemen were kind enough to do this for us, and the sheriffs then condescended to give over our baggage and vacate our The shouting and the riot went on all night, and I am bound to say that I was not very sorry to leave S. The impression it made upon me was that it was not a nice place for a quiet inoffensive man to live in, especially if he had any property of any kind. Of course we then and there discharged our scout. He applied to the officer commanding at S to pay his expenses back to Fort which that officer politely declined to do, and our friend had to make his way back as best he could. He lost his place, and that was the last I heard of him. We subsequently heard that the sheriff also came to an untimely end. It seems he had a little unpleasantness with some gentleman of the town, and, happening one night to see his friend through a window seated with his back towards him, and thinking that the opportunity of settling the difference between them was too good to be lost, he fired at the man, shot him through the back, and killed him. In consequence of this the sheriff lost his appointment, and, if report be true, what he probably thought of still greater importance, his life. The whole town also was thoroughly purged. Detectives were sent down, the cardsharpers were hunted out of the place, the ring of villains who administered so-called law and justice was broken up, and I believe S———— has ever since been as peaceable a place as a man need wish to see anywhere. So possibly our experience, which was decidedly disagreeable to us personally, resulted to the general welfare of the community at S. After this episode we met with no further delays, and the next morning we started on our way to Fort.

A very pleasant time we had, skirting the base of the hills, following the old emigrant track to Utah. The month was December, the weather fine and open, and game-that is deer and antelopeabundant, with an occasional buffalo for a change. One day I went out alone on foot to look for a deer. I had not gone very far walking along a ridge, keeping a sharp look-out on either side, before I espied a long way off a party of five or six deer. Taking care to keep myself concealed, I got up within good view and took a spy at them with my field-glasses, to see if there was a good head among the gang. There they were-one, two, three, four, five deer, feeding quietly, but I could not make out any antlers among them. Curiouslooking deer, too, I thought to myself, and screwed the glasses in a little, and steadied myself for a better look. Well, I thought, there is certainly an unusual appearance about them, something odd in the colour, something strange in the shape. Of a sudden a thought that felt red hot rushed through me-what if they should be sheep! By