me across his brain, and glide before his eyes, he hears,
and fancies he sees the sylvan spirits dancing before him; his ears are
full of mysterious and unearthly sounds, plaintive and melancholy,
celestial harmonies, fairy melodies of another world, interrupted
conversations between the winds, the trees, the herbage and the earth,
as if they were offering homage to the great Creator of the universe.

Firm at his post, and uninfluenced by this phantasmagoria of the brain,
without movement and almost without breath, the sportsman waits
hopefully; for the greatest virtue in this kind of sport is patience,
the second courage, first-rate--his heart should be of marble, his flesh
of steel, and his members should possess a power of immobility as great
as that of a sphynx in an Egyptian temple. Yes! the sport _aux mares_ is
the most stirring, the roughest that I am acquainted with, not so much
on account of the real danger attending it, but in consequence of those
fictitious, unknown, and imaginary, produced by the silence and
loneliness of the forest. It is my intention, therefore, in describing
this kind of sport, to enter into the most ample details, in order that
I may make myself thoroughly understood. I shall take, as representing
very nearly all the pieces of water to be met with in the forest, three
kinds of _Mares_ of different dimensions. I shall explain their
position, the relative value they possess in the eyes of the sportsman,
the game, large and small, to be found on their banks, and the most
propitious time for approaching them, and I shall endeavour, if
possible, to impress my readers with the pleasures and adventures which
have on several occasions agitated me.

If the woods and forests of Le Morvan, which, by the clouds they
attract, the thunder-storms that continually fall over them, and the
moisture that generally prevails, feed a great many streams, the
district is not the less deprived, by its elevated position, of large
rivers and extensive sheets of water; for the rains, falling down the
sides of the trees, and penetrating the thick mossy grass at their
roots, do not remain for any length of time on the surface of the earth.
The whole forest may, in fact, be described as a large sponge, through
which the water filters, descending to the inferior strata, where it
finds the secret drains of Nature, and is by them conducted into the
plains. The roots being thus continually watered, the trees are fresh
an