292 WOLF-HUNTING. 



accidents have happened with impunity both to man and hors"e ; 

 and as two of these have occurred to gentlemen in the West of 

 England, and can be authenticated by witnesses alive at the 

 present day, they are well worthy of being chronicled in these 

 pages, and rescued from the oblivion to which otherwise they 

 would soon be inevitably consigned. 



The first accident took place with Mr. George Templer's 

 hounds, the famous " Let-'em-alones," which kept the South 

 of Devon alive for so many years, before a regular pack of 

 foxhounds was established in that division of the county. A 

 fox had been found in Bovey Heathfield a district in which 

 coal-pits had been sunk in former days, but which, being long 

 abandoned, were covered over with boughs of trees to prevent the 

 farm-stock from breaking their necks. The scent was first-rate, 

 and the hounds trimming him at a rattling pace, when the 

 Rev. Henry Taylor, one of the finest horsemen ever known in 

 that or any other country, in landing over a fence, found his 

 horse's hind-quarters giving way, and only able to save himself 

 from falling backwards by a tremendous effort with his fore-legs. 

 He was riding his celebrated "Nunky" at the time ; and instantly 

 being aware that Mr. William Ley was coming at the fence close 

 on his heels, he shouted wildly at him to hold hard, and avoid 

 the coal-pit into which he had himself well-nigh fallen. But the 

 warning came too late, and either was not heard or was dis- 

 regarded : over they shot and down they went, horse and rider, 

 head foremost into the pit, the whole frame of the woodwork 

 giving way under the weight, and falling before them into the 

 gulf below. This probably saved their lives ; the mass of soft, 

 decayed wood acting as a buffer, and easing the force of the 

 final concussion. However that may be, neither the man nor 

 the horse were even bruised seriously by the fall ; for, unlike 

 Marcus Curtius of old, by the help of a few ropes they not only 

 reappeared speedily in the land of the living, but did not quit 



