162 mme of tbe tbunttno-ftelD 



say, though as fine and fearless a cross-country rider as 

 any in England, he had a supreme contempt for steeple- 

 chasing. It was on the flat that he loved to display his 

 jockeyship; and, to show how conscientious he was in his 

 efforts to keep down his weight, I may mention that 

 on one occasion, having to get off lo lbs. in order to ride 

 a horse at Heaton Park Races, he went off on a tre- 

 mendous sweating walk, and, when dead beat, fell in with 

 a Scotch piper whom he engaged to cheer him up. 

 With the piper before him playing vigorously. White 

 came up the flower garden towards Lord Wilton's house, 

 at which he was staying, and, ' faint but pursuing,' thus 

 burst upon the gaze of the house party, who greeted him 

 with roars of laughter. 



As a cocker or patron of the ' sod ' he had no superior 

 in dash and enthusiasm. It was a time when cock- 

 fighting ranked high among aristocratic sports, and had 

 its centre at the ancient city of Chester, where Lord 

 Sefton, Mr Price of Brynprys, Squire Bold Haughton, 

 and the celebrated Dr Audlem, were the ' Kings of 

 the Cockpit,' with those famous rivals Gilliver and 

 Potter as feeders. Here Captain White, with his re- 

 nowned black-reds, always held his own and sometimes 

 won very big stakes indeed. 



In 1842 Captain White (he commanded a troop of 

 Cheshire yeomanry, hence his military title) took his 

 leave of Melton, where he was regarded as the ' last of 

 the Mohicans,' and became the Master of the Cheshire 

 hounds, when he showed such sport as even that sporting 

 country had never seen before. 



In ' Farmer Dobbin's Day with the Cheshire Fox 

 Dugs,' written by Egerton Warburton, the poet laureate 

 of the hunting-field at that time, he is thus hit off: — 



