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AFTER THE HUNT-THE PRESIDENTIAL PARTY RETURNS TO THE CASTLE

carriages are brought up, every one takes his place as expeditiously as possible, and the procession moves at a quick trot in the direction of the pheasantry, where there is to be some cock-shooting. The road takes us close by a pond somewhat famous in the history of the French chase-the pond of St. Hubert.

During the last century a unique scene was enacted there, when it so happened that three stags, pursued by three distinct hunting trains, met at this point.

There was King Louis XV, with his suite, wearing the blue; then the Prince de Conti, whose followers wore yellow; and the Prince de Dombes, whose colors were red with white stripes.

It was a sight, observes Baron de Vaux, probably without parallel-three full-grown stags in the water, three packs in full pursuit, three hunts in different liveries, witnesses of the struggle, and finally a triple. hallali.

While M. Leddet, erudite and agreeable, is recounting this incident to his companions, the horses increase their speed, and presently we reach our destination. The pheasantry is a majestic grove of oaks, at the lower end of which is a group of magnificent pine-trees, the straight, bare trunks shooting upward for a distance of thirty meters from the ground.

"Gentlemen, take your places! Attention!"

The sport now is one that requires the utmost precision, for pheasant-shooting is a difficult matter. Above all, the hens must be spared. At this exercise President Faure is a passed master; every time his "hammerless" is heard, a bird drops dead. The grand duke is likewise a marvelous shot. Not a cock comes within range that he does not salute him at the precise second when to fire is to send him with bloodstained feathers to the ground. From time to time M. Leddet blows his little horn. Shrilly the trumpet gives the signal to cease firing, the deafening detonation stops, and the keepers advance, gather up the game, heap it on the paths, the walks, and the road, whence servants presently carry it away.

But breakfast-time has come. There is a general shouldering of arms, and the company set briskly forth on foot, talking as they go, for the hunting-lodge.

This is a pretty building of brick, in the

LXVI.-96

style of Louis XIII. The walls are covered with fine old ivy, and it is shaded by the luxuriant foliage of a tricentenary oaktree and by a magnificent California beech. In addition to the quarters assigned to Brigadier Antin and his wife, the lodge contains two large apartments, which, if required, may be thrown into one by the removal of a sliding partition. There are also two dressing-rooms reserved for the use of the President and his guests.

After a hasty toilet, we assemble in the dining-room and seat ourselves most willingly at table; for the fresh air has quickened every one's appetite. Mme. Antin, wife of the brigadier forester, promoted for that one day to be chief cook to President Félix Faure, has prepared a typical hunter's breakfast, to which the President. and his guests do ample justice, to the unqualified delight of the worthy cordon bleu. In an hour the meal has been despatched, but the company still linger to talk. Baron de Mohrenheim and Count Potocki recount, for the benefit of M. Le Gall, reminiscences of their hunts in Russia. The grand duke and the President talk navy. General Hagron and M. Leddet exchange views on the subject of the best means to suppress poaching. Colonel Ménétrez and Commandant Meaux SaintMarc, a jurist emeritus, discuss a point of military law.

But now Father Antin, with his mingled air of respect and familiarity, approaches M. Faure, and, after an elaborate preamble, asks if his Highness the grand duke and the other distinguished guests would care to wind up the day with a rabbit fermé.

The proposal is at once accepted. Every one picks up his gun, and the party is con ducted to a spacious glade, inclosed by wire nettings and entered from the lower end. The beaters have been left behind this time, and the sportsmen beat up the game themselves. Innumerable rabbits presently appear, running wildly in all directions, and making vain attempts to get away from the fire by leaping over the nettings, which, alas! are too high for them. Never was there seen such carnage! Yet once again, and now for the last time, the little clarion sounds the signal to stop firing. The hunt is over, gentlemen.

It is, moreover, past three o'clock and time to think about going home. The latest victims are accordingly gathered up,

and the keepers, assisted by half a dozen beaters, make a striking picture as they count the game.

There are the three roe-bucks, besides five hundred and thirty rabbits, a hundred and sixteen pheasant cocks, three hens, ninety-one hares, two squirrels, and one-crow! The heap of gray and white rabbits looks like some huge fur tippet which has been thrown carelessly on the ground; beside it the gorgeous plumage of the pheasants makes a rich mosaic of wonderful colors.

All this game, with the exception of a few pieces, will be sent to the hospitals. Each hunter selects from among what he himself has killed anything he may particularly fancy, the keepers hastily construct hampers out of straw, and this game is carried off and deposited in the break along with the rest of the baggage.

But dusk is rapidly approaching. From the darkening sky the last rays of the sun are fading. The ancient forest lies buried in shadow and stillness.

Beside the heap of game, gendarmes in long blue cloaks, with carbines over their shoulders, mount their last guard; the beaters have scattered over the adjacent roads, and are wending their several ways

homeward to where bowls of good soup await them smoking on the table. Each carries with him a rabbit or two.

The enchantment of night-time begins to make itself felt; through the falling dusk, illumined by the afterglow of a wonderful sunset, the carriages roll rapidly along. Now we have left the forest and are on the plain; the purple distances grow blurred, indistinct, fade out of sight completely; the horizon is swallowed up in a dusky cloud. Over there, among the trees, rises the lofty and massive outline of the château of Rambouillet.

Such, ordinarily, were the circumstances of a day's hunting with M. Félix Faure. In the evening, after dinner, every one gathered about the fire and chatted in a low voice, while the President, cheery and simple, recounted his cynegetic feats, and those of his predecessors, from Marshal MacMahon, himself a mighty hunter, down. Grévy would be passed lightly over, as for him the chief event of a hunting day was the breakfast; and Carnot, too, a worthy man who never amused himself at all, but who loved to see other people amuse themselves. As for Casimir-Périer, his time was short; that happy hunter really left no history.

THE SIGNAL CORPS IN WAR-TIME

BY BRIGADIER-GENERAL A. W. GREELY

Chief Signal-Officer, U. S. Army

HE operations of the Signal Corps of the army in the war between Spain and the United States marked a distinct advance in the evolution of military science. When the war began, the public at large knew nothing of the Signal Corps or of its duties. Officers of distinction in the Civil War, failing to keep pace with the march of progress, ignored the existence of the corps, and some even voiced its uselessness. One general officer of national reputation wrote an article for a leading American journal in which the Signal Corps was not even named among the staff organizations of the army. Congress was not only indifferent, but almost hostile, and it organized a volunteer army of two hundred thousand men without provision for signal work.

Other corps have claimed to be the eyes and ears of the army; the Signal Corps claims only to be its nerve system. In this age, when trade, commerce, and manufactures have harnessed in their service the subtle force of electricity, the world has come to realize that without this force its powers and possibilities would be materially crippled. That which is done in electricity for the world at large through the agency of countless corporations is done for the army by the Signal Corps. Telegraphy, telephony, ballooning, and heliography are specialties of the Signal Corps. In addition to its duties of sending orders or military messages, it is charged by law with the collection and transmission of military information by telegraph or otherwise.

In time of peace, in preliminary training for war, it has sent heliograph flash messages from the Arizona mountains to the Mexican boundary, and thus ended an

Indian war, and on one occasion it made the world's record by flashing sun-ray messages between mountain-peaks one hundred and eighty miles apart. It has stretched and operated thousands of miles of military telegraph lines on the disturbed Mexican border, and along the war-paths that lead to and from the great Indian reservations.

Now, in time of war it succeeded (in what many thought impossible) in justifying its right to existence by a series of successes that have won general commendation. An American-made war cable was secretly carried and laid on the Cuban coast. A telegraph office for Shafter's army was opened in Cuba before it landed, and the army was given a twenty-minute service with the War Department in Washington. Telephone field-exchanges were opened and lines maintained in the trenches of Manila and Santiago and on the firinglines in Porto Rico. The fire of the navy was effectively directed at Santiago and at Caloocan, Philippine Islands. A war balloon, made by the Signal Corps, was transported to Santiago; it was put in air on the skirmish-line, where orders of superiors placed it contrary to advice. The cables of our enemies were cut and those of our friends were repaired. Whether in Cuba, Porto Rico, or the Philippines, field lines, whenever permitted, were put up as fast as each command moved forward, and the generals or colonels on the firing-lines were kept in touch not only with one another, but with the commanderin-chief. All important war information came first through the Signal Corps, from the affair at Cienfuegos to the Tagal outbreak at Manila, and a daily war map in the White House was made practicable. Its secret-service information was so ac

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WAR-ROOM AT THE WHITE HOUSE-"WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OF CUBA" President McKinley used to sit at night on the sofa to the right and receive the latest despatches

was faultless, but it is asserted that from Porto Rico to the Philippines there was no demand for its services, whether in camp, in field, or in battle, that was not promptly and satisfactorily met. Indeed, in many cases the corps anticipated the situation and necessity. The approval of its work is to be found in the President's message, the report of the Secretary of War, the proceedings of the War Investigation Board, and in the special reports of every commanding general of an army.

The scope of this article precludes any attempt at a formal or historic review of the war work of the Signal Corps, and is necessarily confined to the presentation of certain phases of that work which, from

the field office at Caimanéra, reached the President in five minutes. On reflection, the import of this fact is startling. It means that for the first time in history the chief executive of a nation was able continually to control the operations of and dictate the policy to be pursued by an army fifteen hundred miles distant-not in a civilized region of continuous land, but across an ocean, and in the forests of a hostile and barren country. Not only was the commanding general thus reached, but also the army outposts from mountain to sea-shore, and even, by army signal-flag, the White Squadron of our navy.

The war-room of the White House, the headquarters of Colonel Montgomery of

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