DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62133#0137
VALIANT SHOOTERS.
121
bound together with the everlasting drapery of white and
blue, with fluttering banners and spruce-firs, planted, as I
have already said, to give shade and beauty to the space
around them. One, quite a superior booth, had a regular
garden fenced in with spruce-fir. This we entered, and
were supplied with dehcious hot sausages, and excellent
coffee and chocolate. The interior was very pretty with
scarlet and white festooned drapery. Guests, as yet, were
few, for the morning was damp and cheerless.
We saw on the meadow but one solitary “ round-
about,” such as are so common at English places of popular
amusement, and among the Viennese people, and only
one solitary hand-organ was to be heard, There was, how-
ever, a raised circular platform for musicians, with a heavy
banner of red, black, and gold, floating over it.
The whole area, including this settlement of good cheer,
the refreshment booths, was marked out by spruce-firs
planted at regular distances ; each tree with its gay banner,
and connected with its neighbour by long festoons of green
wreaths ; and here you caught sight of many a Teniers
and Ostade group. Beyond this area, and between it and
the Bavaria, a portion of the meadow was laid out in
shooting grounds, with targets and marks of various de-
scriptions. There was a wooden stag to be shot at, as he
is pulled backwards and forwards between two clumps of
fir-trees, and a bird fixed upon a high pole, looking very
like a sign of the spread-eagle, holding in its beak and
claws the marks at which the shooter is to aim. On the
ground stand little wooden booths, from which the marks-
men were to fire • with plenty of long sheds, where they
might assemble, charge their pieces, and refresh them-
selves.
While we stood on their ground, the valiant shooters,
with sound of music and much pageantry, advanced across
the plain, their blue and white banners, of course, “ fluttering
121
bound together with the everlasting drapery of white and
blue, with fluttering banners and spruce-firs, planted, as I
have already said, to give shade and beauty to the space
around them. One, quite a superior booth, had a regular
garden fenced in with spruce-fir. This we entered, and
were supplied with dehcious hot sausages, and excellent
coffee and chocolate. The interior was very pretty with
scarlet and white festooned drapery. Guests, as yet, were
few, for the morning was damp and cheerless.
We saw on the meadow but one solitary “ round-
about,” such as are so common at English places of popular
amusement, and among the Viennese people, and only
one solitary hand-organ was to be heard, There was, how-
ever, a raised circular platform for musicians, with a heavy
banner of red, black, and gold, floating over it.
The whole area, including this settlement of good cheer,
the refreshment booths, was marked out by spruce-firs
planted at regular distances ; each tree with its gay banner,
and connected with its neighbour by long festoons of green
wreaths ; and here you caught sight of many a Teniers
and Ostade group. Beyond this area, and between it and
the Bavaria, a portion of the meadow was laid out in
shooting grounds, with targets and marks of various de-
scriptions. There was a wooden stag to be shot at, as he
is pulled backwards and forwards between two clumps of
fir-trees, and a bird fixed upon a high pole, looking very
like a sign of the spread-eagle, holding in its beak and
claws the marks at which the shooter is to aim. On the
ground stand little wooden booths, from which the marks-
men were to fire • with plenty of long sheds, where they
might assemble, charge their pieces, and refresh them-
selves.
While we stood on their ground, the valiant shooters,
with sound of music and much pageantry, advanced across
the plain, their blue and white banners, of course, “ fluttering