78 THE CONDITION OF HUNTERS 



for being out twice a week if there have been no tiring 

 days. Some horses require much more work than 

 others ; but none of them can go the pace, and con- 

 tinue it over a country, unless they are in strong 

 work. Were I asked when I was best carried for an 

 hour without a check, I should say it was by a horse 

 on whose back I had been nine hours with hounds 

 on the preceding day. This, of course, was the effect 

 of accident. A boy mistook a pot of bhstering oint- 

 ment for one of hniment for the heels, and rubbed 

 it well into all my horses. The horse I allude to, 

 having been the property of an old lady, and looked 

 after by her coachman, had had his legs trimmed, 

 which made the hair strong and bristly, so that he 

 suffered less than the rest ; and by the help of a couple 

 of urine balls and fomentation he soon recovered. 

 The consequence was, I rode him these two days in 

 succession, and I shall never forget the way in which 

 he carried me on the second. Milton, the dealer, 

 gave 250 guineas to a master of fox-hounds for this 

 horse when fourteen years old, and sold him to a 

 Metropolitan sportsman, who broke his leg the first 

 day he rode him. 



I never had the curiosity to ascertain the number 

 of day's hunting I have had in any one season, much 

 less the number of times any one particular horse had 

 carried me ; but I recollect the celebrated Captain 

 Barclay telling me, on the last day of Sir Thomas 

 Mostyn's hunting for the season, that he had been 

 carried eighty-two times that winter by four horses — 

 being twenty times and a half to each horse — which 



