The very knowledge that farmers could readily have recourse
to the assistance of such a dog, would serve to prevent the commission
of much crime.

To try whether a young bloodhound was well instructed, a nobleman
(says Mr. Boyle) caused one of his servants to walk to a town four
miles off, and then to a market-town three miles from thence. The dog,
without seeing the man he was to pursue, followed him by the scent to
the above-mentioned places, notwithstanding the multitude of people
going the same road, and of travellers that had occasion to cross it.
When the hound came to the chief market-town, he passed through the
streets, without noticing any of the people there, till he got to the
house where the man he sought was, and there found him in an upper
room.

A sure way of stopping the dog was to spill blood upon the track,
which destroyed the discriminating fineness of his scent. A captive
was sometimes sacrificed on such occasions. Henry the Minstrel tells
us a romantic story of Wallace, founded on this circumstance. The
hero's little band had been joined by an Irishman named Fawdon, or
Fadzean, a dark, savage, and suspicious character. After a sharp
skirmish at Black Erneside, Wallace was forced to retreat with only
sixteen followers. The English pursued with a border sleuth-bratch, or
bloodhound. In the retreat, Fawdon, tired, or affecting to be so,
would go no farther. Wallace having in vain argued with him, in hasty
anger struck off his head, and continued the retreat. When the English
came up, their hound stayed upon the dead body.

To the present group has been referred by some naturalists a dog of
Spanish descent, termed the Cuban bloodhound. A hundred of these
sagacious but savage dogs were sent, in 1795, from the Havanna to
Jamaica, to extinguish the Maroon war, which at that time was fiercely
raging. They were accompanied by forty Spanish chasseurs, chiefly
people of colour, and their appearance and that of the dogs struck
terror into the negroes. The dogs, muzzled and led in leashes, rushed
ferociously upon every object, dragging along the chasseurs in spite
of all their endeavours. Dallas, in his "History of the Maroons,"
informs us that General Walpole ordered a review of these dogs and the
men, that he might see in what manner they would act. He set out for
a place called Seven Rivers, accompanied by Colonel Skinner, whom he
appointed to conduct the attack. "Notice of his coming having preceded
him,