Page:A La California.djvu/206

and display it with honest pride, with an expression of contempt upon their faces; then led the way exultingly to where their game was hanging. There were exactly twelve dozen quails, tied neatly in bunches of two dozen each, hanging on the wall. I was staggered. After examining them closely, I remarked that I had never seen so great a quantity of game killed with so slight an expenditure of ammunition—there was not a shot-mark to be found on any bird in the entire lot so far as I could see; and nearly every one had his neck dislocated, or head crushed in. Travelers, according to popular opinion, are inclined to exaggeration, and will sometimes indulge in something very like outright falsehood, when the truth would fall short of creating the desired sensation. From my youth up I have been a hunter, and association with sportsmen and travelers has had a tendency to fill my mind with suspicion and doubt, as to the genuineness of trophies of the chase exhibited as the result of hunting expeditions, and the entire reliableness of travelers' tales. When Gordon Cumming returns to Europe, from a raid on the game of South Africa, it is a notorious fact that it is next to impossible to find any first-rate lion-skins, leopard-skins, or elephant-tusks of extra large size for sale in the markets of Cape Town and Natal. In our own country, unscrupulous parties have not unfrequently brought obloquy upon the entire fraternity, by returning from a hunt with more game than they could possibly have shot within the number of hours they were out, even if the game had been ranged before them in platoons, and