Pleasure Travel and Resorts
Pleasure Travel and Resorts
THEacclimatization of the wild turkey has been tried with great success in Austria. Count Breuner, on his estate at Graffeneck, turned down three males and four females with the result that there is now a flock of 580. In addition, some 150 have been shot on neighboring estates. The largest weight yet recorded is 19 pounds.
ACURIOUSincident is reported from England. The Catswold hounds, Gloucestershire, recently found three foxes, and after a good run two foxes at once were killed at a place called Postlip.
ACCORDINGto report, Prince Henri de Bourbon and the Princess, who are traveling in India as the Comte and Comtesse de Bardi, have been badly hoaxed by some person or persons, who are alleged to have given them tame tigers and cows to shoot. The cows one can understand, but tame tigers! Such may be found in the possession of dervishes in temples, but we doubt if any are available for turning out and shooting. A tiger so tame as that would be worth several hundred pounds to any circus proprietor.
THELondonSunday Timespublishes the following from its New York correspondent:
“One of the rarest and finest specimens of big game ever mounted has recently been presented by Mr. Royal Carroll to a Fifth Avenue club, where it hangs over the mantel in the smoking-room. It is the head of a Harris deer, which Mr. Carroll recently shot in that part of Africa made famous by Rider Haggard’s novels. The deer is jet black, save only his face and ears, stood 14.2, weighed 400 pounds, has backward curving horns like the ibex, and is the only specimen of the species in this country. The glowing descriptions which Mr. Carroll gives of his adventures with big game in the jungles of India and the forests of Africa have given considerable impetus to a department of sport in which we have permitted our English cousins to far outstrip us, and several expeditions similar to Mr. Carroll’s are now being planned.”
LIEUT.-GENERALBURTON, in “An Indian Olio,” refers to the increasing scarceness of large game in India. After pointing out how the intrusion of the railway with the “diabolical screech of the steam whistle,” and “the demoralizing puff and snort of the rushing engine,” and the “evil odor of coal gas” penetrating the forest, acts upon such shy animals as the bison, he shows what the natives have to do with it. “Guns have of late years come much more generally into use with the natives. Where there was, fifty years ago, perhaps only one matchlock, a venerable flint musket, in a village, there are now a dozen, and natives have got much more into the habit of killing game—the eatable animals for food, the fierce and dangerous beasts (potted from a safe shelter) for the Government reward. I knew a party of natives go out under supervision, in fact, in pay of Brahmin (save the mark), with a big jingal, or wall piece, carried between two of them, until they came upon the fresh tracks of a herd of elephants. They then crept to within ten or fifteen paces and tied the jingal, ready loaded, and laid for the biggest elephant, to a tree trunk, lighted a slow match and retired to a safe distance. Presently the great weapon, which had been pointed straight for the vitals, behind the shoulder of the elephant, exploded with a report like that of a small cannon echoing through the forest.”
AMONGthe features of New York life which particularly strike the visitor is the extreme elegance and luxury of the Hoffman House baths. The comfort of indulging in a thorough cleansing after the inevitable discomforts of travel, whether by sea or land, is sufficient to induce every traveler to visit them. But, moreover, residents of Gotham find that nothing so conduces to general health, or is so efficient a foe to rheumatism, neuralgia, or other “evils that the flesh is heir to,” as the Turkish bath. The result is that one and all fly to this, the best appointed establishment of the kind in the city.
EVERYBODYis going to Paris this year to the Exposition, and in this age of progress it is no great undertaking to cross the ocean, nor is one compelled to forego many comforts while traveling. True, some dissatisfaction is expressed from time to time at the want of proper accommodations in English hotels. This criticism does not apply, however, to the magnificentHotel Metropolein London, which has already come under the favorable notice of many Americans, and is fast making new friends. Situated conveniently to the business portion of the city, while at no great distance from society’s haunts, it furnishes home comforts to the weary traveler, and affords every possible convenience and luxury.
An equally excellent and not less pretentious “hostelry” is the magnificentVictoria Hotel, one of the finest hotel buildings in the world, and conducted in a manner sure to please the American tourist. Its large number of patrons speak of it in terms of the highest praise. At either house rooms may be secured by cable from New York. We would advise tourists in 1889 to make sure of their apartments certainly by telegram from their landing-places in Britain.