WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 293 



the hunting-field till the hounds went home to their kennel. 

 This anecdote was told to the present narrator by the Rev. Henry 

 Taylor himself alas ! long since summoned to the "Land o' the 

 leal " a man who would have gone to the stake, aye, and fired 

 it with his own hand, rather than have told a lie. 



The other casualty is still more remarkable. In 1848 two 

 gentlemen, meeting by appointment on Roborough Down, soon 

 came to terms in dealing for a clever little bay mare called 

 " Jingalina," the one buying her, as she stood, with saddle and 

 bridle on, and the other walking back, a distance of eight miles, 

 to his home and heronry on the blue Tamar. The latter was 

 Mr. Walter C. Radcliffe of Warleigh, the other the Rev. Richard 

 Sleeman, vicar of Whitchurch, in that neighbourhood. Jingalina's 

 previous history, however, claims a few words ere we proceed to 

 the details of her marvellous escape, the account of which shall 

 be given in the written and expressive language of her quondam 

 owner, Mr. Radcliffe. She had carried him for two seasons 

 with admirable safety and endurance, chiefly with Mr. Russell's 

 hounds, in the north of Devon, and occasionally with those of 

 the Duke of Beaufort. In a brilliant run with the latter from 

 Hullavington to Cirencester, poor John Baily and Mr. Radcliffe 

 on Jingalina had far and away the best of it from first to last ; 

 the little mare going home as merrily as if she had been only 

 doing her morning exercise. Notwithstanding her merits, how- 

 ever, Mr. Radcliffe, being about to travel abroad, found it 

 expedient to part with her, and she then passed into Mr. Sleeman's 

 hands. 



One morning, not long after this event, that gentleman's 

 groom, a man called John Cowell, who had been exercising 

 Jingalina and another horse on Whitchurch Down, returned with 

 a rueful countenance to his master, saying, " Plaize, sir, I've a-lost 

 the mare : " and all he could explain was that she had suddenly 

 gone down into the earth, clean out of sight. Mr. Sleeman 



