OYER THE BORDER 283 



is surely drawn or caricatured from the famous 

 Williamson, who was so good a servant to the 

 contemporary Duke of Buccleuch ; and, indeed, in 

 the Analysis of the Hunting Field, Surtees repeats 

 several of the best-known stories of that worthy. 



However, to quit second-hand sources of informa- 

 tion, it was not till a recent season that I was able at 

 last to see something of the chase in " Caledonia 

 stern and wild." Stern and wild she was, too, with 

 deep and heavy snow about Christmas, and a frost 

 which let hounds out of kennel only four times in five 

 weeks of the two following months. The Fife Hounds 

 lost twenty (nearly one - third) of their sixty - six 

 hunting days. Snow again stopped hounds as late 

 as March 19th, and gales and bad scent marked 

 the close of the season. Moreover, on my private 

 account, stable troubles interfered with some of my 

 sport ; so altogether, and apart from local conditions, 

 it was not a season to look back upon with unalloyed 

 satisfaction. StiJl, it enables me to give the reader 

 some idea of what is, from a hunting point of view, a 

 ter7'a incognita to most Englishmen. 



I must begin by saying that my personal Scottish 

 experience was limited to two packs : one probably 

 the admitted "Quorn" of Scotland; the other a 

 provincial hunt, owning a good deal of rough country 

 — hill, moor, and wire. From the latter curse the big 

 pack suffers little, but timber is supplied with such a 

 lavish hand to the farmers that the tendency of the 

 fences is yearly to degenerate more and more from 

 hedges into posts and rail, pure and simple. Now, 

 this is a fence that tends to become monotonous, and 

 is one which, with a blown horse, may easily lead to 

 worse things than ennui. It is true that the timber 



