[ Sporting Magazine ]
The Sporting Magazine (1792 - 1870) is considered the first general sporting magazine, though in its later decades it gave considerable emphasis to fox hunting. But it published all manner of sporting-related material, from news stories to poetry to calendars of upcoming sporting events. The subtitle of this magazine was "Monthly Calendar of the Transactions of the Turf, the Chace, and every other Diversion interesting to the Man of Pleasure, Enterprize and Spirit." [more at Wikipedia]
The December, 1865, issue contained a memoir written by someone identified only as "Greville F." Writing of his youthful visits to "the Squire" on the coast of southwest England, he tells the story of a smuggler's cave and tunnel, used by one of the farmers on the Squire's estate, who long ago stopped his smuggling. Wanting to show the author the hidden entrance to the cave, the Squire calls one of the farmer's sons, Dan, who "appeared with a large black and magnificent Newfoundland dog." Having opened the hidden trap door to reveal "a dark and apparently bottomless void," Dan invites the author to verify for himself that the tunnel communicates with the ocean. But the Squire intervenes:
The Squire would not permit me to satisfy my curiosity; but Dan, to prove his father's assertion that the entrance communicated with the sea, spoke a word to the Newfoundland, who had been watching with evident impatience some signal from his young master, and the dog disappeared down the ladder like a shot, and returned some five minutes afterwards with a bunch of dripping seaweeds in his mouth. (437 - 438)
The farmer then explains how he conducted his smuggling, in which his Newfoundland was instrumental. When a ship carrying contraband approached the beach where the smuggling cave was located, the captain would sail back and forth as if looking for a place to land, all the while dropping the kegs loaded with contraband alcohol into the sea, where they would sink. At this point the Newfoundland gets involved:
While this was being effected, the Newfoundland dog was taken quietly along under the overhanging cliffs, and at a singal he took to the water where the tide would give him the best assistance in swimming off to the vessel. This being done, and having arrived there, he was treated well, and took to the water again: this time with a piece of wood in his mouth, to which is attached a pack-thread, the coil of which is paid-out by one of the men on board. Carried now some distance upon the opposite side of the ship, the dog is received a-shore by another of the brothers, who takes the pack-thread and rapidly draws this light portion of the line to land; but to this is attached a stouter water-line, and then again to the latter a yet thicker rope. By this means a communication with the Bunken contraband is obtained, and the vessel having set sail, the watch, if any above, retires, satisfied that "all," at least for the present, "is well." (438)