THE COLONIAL HORSE 197 



It was some time before hunting-men in New Zealand 

 became convinced that the danger of jumping wire was not 

 greater than that of attempting any other stiff fence. In the 

 early days of Canterbury hunting it was looked upon as mad- 

 ness to put your horse at an open wire fence, though some- 

 times a wire running through a gorse fence, if low enough down, 

 was disregarded. Then it was necessary to choose carefully 

 the line of country, and to run a drag over a line where nothing 

 but post-and-rail, hedge, bank or ditch could stop a horse. In 

 the Wellington district at the present day, where, owing to the 

 mountainous nature of the country, hunting has not been able 

 to flourish, what little is done is over a carefully selected line 

 where the top bars of the fences are removed. Advantage is 

 taken of the propinquity of a race stand, or the neighbourhood 

 of a railway line, from which the townspeople can see the whole 

 course, or, better still, accompany the ' hunt ' in a special train. 



When the Canterbury men first began hunting, though 

 the wire fences were cut or avoided, riders had more falls 

 than they have had in any one day since. The first division 

 made a gap, and then all that could galloped through it, till a 

 good-sized gig might have accompanied the tail-end of the field. 

 The farmers were at first good-natured, but soon began to 

 .grumble ; so one or two of the bolder spirits resolved to train 

 their horses to jump wire. These gentlemen soon showed that 

 horses could be ridden over wire just as safely as they had 

 previously negotiated the post and rails. Their horses were 

 considered prodigies of cleverness, but the master avers that 

 during the last few seasons these paragons would never have 

 been alone, however high the wire. During the last two 

 seasons i/. has more than covered the amount of damage done 

 to fences. During the same period, though he has never once 

 let hounds get away from him, the Master of the Ash burton 

 pack has had but one fall over wire. He says : 



We think very little of ordinary wire, but the barbed and double 

 barbed a fence with barbed wire each side of a bank, sometimes 

 six feet apart and four feet high take a good lot of jumping. 



