196 Hunting the Grisly 



them have done as well as the American 

 horses. I have hunted half a dozen times in 

 England, with the Pytchely, Essex, and North 

 Warwickshire, and it seems to me probable 

 that English thoroughbreds, in a grass coun- 

 try, and over the peculiar kinds of obstacles 

 they have on the other side of the water, would 

 gallop away from a field of our Long Island 

 horses; for they have speed and bottom, and 

 are great weight carriers. But on our own 

 ground, where the cross-country riding is 

 more like leaping a succession of five and six- 

 bar gates than anything else, they do not as 

 a rule, in spite of the enormous prices paid 

 for them, show themselves equal to the native 

 stock. The highest recorded jump, seven feet 

 two inches, was made by the American horse 

 Filemaker, which I saw ridden in the very 

 front by Mr. H. L. Herbert, in the hunt at 

 Sagamore Hill, about to be described. 



When I was a member of the Meadowbrook 

 hunt, most of the meets were held within a 

 dozen miles or so of the kennels: at Farm- 

 ingdale, Woodbury, Wheatly, Locust Valley, 

 Syosset, or near any one of twenty other queer, 

 quaint old Long Island hamlets. They were 

 almost always held in the afternoon, the busi- 

 ness men who had come down from the city 



