THE BLACKSTONE VALLEY 



American hounds entirely, as we find that, with careful training, they can 

 be handled about as easily as English. So many parts of our country are 

 either unrideable, or so rough, and a horse's pace through them is necessarily 

 so very slow, that we need hounds which will hunt by themselves, as it is quite 

 impossible to stay with them. We have not been breeding very extensively 

 as yet, but have had fair results with what we have undertaken. 



"Some of our hounds were bred from a strain which Mr. Campbell has 

 developed along lines of his own for a number of years ; some of them are 

 from the South, and we find that those from the Walkers in Kentucky give 

 the best all-round results of any we have bought. 



"We also find that the Campbell hounds, which have a distant cross on 

 the old-fashioned New England foxhound, have very keen noses and are 

 very useful on dry, windy, poor-scenting days, when Southern hounds are 

 relatively at a disadvantage." 



The country over which the Blackstone Valley Hounds hunt is rather 

 rough and wooded and there is also a good deal of swamp-land. The 

 big woodlands are fairly rideable, and most of the open fields are bounded 

 by stone walls which are usually rather low, but as the land is apt to be 

 very rough on either side of them, the jumping is extremely trappy and the 

 horses which go best are very quiet and clever jumpers. A hot horse is 

 really dangerous in many of the rough pastures and thick woodlands. The 

 landowners are, on the whole, well disposed, being only too glad to do ail 

 they can to keep down the foxes, which are steadily on the increase. Ow- 

 ing to the character of the country it is impossible to do any systematic 

 earth-stopping, hence all the chances are in favor of the fox, and hounds are 

 rarely able to kill above ground. 



Hunting men who are lucky enough to have a good grass country over 

 which they can enjoy a sustained gallop, scarcely realize the tremendous 

 difficulties of fox-hunting in parts of New England, but to those who are 

 great lovers of the niceties of hound-work, as are Mr. Whitin and many of the 

 members of the Blackstone Valley Hunt, the abundance of foxes more than 

 makes up for the difficult character of the country. As the immortal Beckford 

 says : " The countries which are favorable to horses are seldom so to hounds." 



5 



