288 THE IMAGE OF WAE 



England : I allude to the fact that they have, on one 

 or more sides, tracts of unhunted and unhuntable 

 country. This is a fact which sometimes leads to 

 great and yet quite unenjoyable runs. Thus, on the 

 6th of April 1907, the Duke of Buccleuch's hounds, 

 meeting in the extreme west of their country, found 

 a fox who incontinently left it, and ran over grouse 

 moors and hills in such a way as to entirely get 

 rid of the field. He must have given a great run, for 

 the officials did not find the pack till dark, twenty-six 

 miles from home, which was reached at two o'clock on 

 Sunday morning. 



Perhaps the best way of giving a reader an idea of 

 the sport in any particular country is to describe one 

 or two days' sport therein, and this I will now attempt 

 to do. 



Turning to my hunting diary, I find one or two 

 which may serve. The meet, on the first of them, 

 which took place at a large country house on the out- 

 skirts of the county town, was a large one, occurring 

 as it did at the end of a long frost. A move was 

 made to the woods in the policies, where a fox was 

 quickly on foot Now, this particular place is one 

 noted for the facility with which one gets " left " at 

 the start, and on this occasion it did not fail to act up 

 to its reputation. I, however, was this time one of 

 the fortunate ones, for which, by the way, I paid on 

 our next visit to the place a month later, when my 

 share of the run was limited to jogging along with 

 the Hunt second-horsemen till I could pick up hounds 

 for their second draw. On this day it was otherwise. 

 Hounds rattled their fox through unrideable wood- 

 lands till he came away "convenient" to my own 

 position. On the grass they simply flew. The fences 



