HUNTING WITH HOUNDS. 165 



imported, and some of them have turned out 

 pretty well ; but when they first come ever 

 they are utterly unable to cross our country, 

 blundering badly at the high timber. Few of 

 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 File- 

 maker, which I saw ridden in the very front 

 by Mr. H. L. Herbert, in the hunt at Saga- 

 more 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 

 jogging over behind the hounds to the ap- 

 pointed place, where they were met by the 



