THE COLONIAL HORSE 193 



Owing to the dryness of the ground the scent was not very good, 

 but after a slight check the pack hit it off again on the swampy 

 land near the river, carrying it breast high through Mrs. Bower- 

 man's grounds, and across alternate scrub and cleared land till 

 they reached the cross road to Pennant Hill Wharf. Here renard, 

 hard pressed, turned his head northward, and skirting the road 

 gave the field most of whom had lost ground in the dense bush 

 an opportunity to retrieve leeway by racing up this woodland lane. 

 Close at his brush the pack pushed him across the Paramatta road 

 and through a long rough dingle, without giving him a moment's 

 breathing time, into a large grass paddock of forty or fifty acres, 

 thinly dotted with acacia bushes, the horsemen charging several 

 stiffish flights of rails crossing the country at right angles with the 

 dingle, until dingo, hounds, and field together reached the pad- 

 dock above mentioned, in the middle of which the pack fairly 

 coursed up to him and pulled him down, not a single hound having 

 lost his place. A party of farming people who were working in 

 a field hard by, hearing the whoo-whoop ! joined in the ceremony 

 of breaking up, and appeared highly delighted at this realisation in 

 Australia of the good old field sports of the mother country. 



This capital run occupied twenty-six minutes ; the pace in the 

 low grounds was very fast, and the fences were of a less impractic- 

 able nature than is usual in this country At one point a field of 

 British fox-hunters found themselves in the somewhat uncommon 

 predicament of thrusting through a dense scrub of burnt wattle- 

 bushes about the height of hop-poles, to the great disfigurement of 

 white leathers, and at another, charging at full cry over hedges 

 of lemon and through alleys of orange trees laden with fruit. 



As the worthy master trotted home through Paramatta with a 

 white tagged brush peeping out of his pocket, the dingo's head 

 hanging from the whipper-in's saddle, and the hounds following 

 with blood-smeared muzzles, an old fellow, who looked like a retired 



earth-stopper from the old country, exclaimed, ' Well, d me, but 



this looks like work.' 



New Zealand hunting began in the primitive manner 

 familiar to schoolboys, with the inauguration of paper hunts by 

 the officers quartered in the colony during the Maori wars. 

 Hares were shortly after imported and multiplied at a rapid 

 rate ; they were followed by three couple of harriers brought by 

 the doctor of one of the trading ships, who happened to be of 



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