208 mtngs of tbe Ibimtina^jftelb 



alone" were his words to the whips at a check. ... If 

 his temper were hasty it was over and soon forgotten. 

 He was a perfect gentleman in appearance, manner 

 and conversation. . . . His hounds appeared to love him, 

 and one of the prettiest parts of the day was, when a 

 check occurred, to see them fly to his call and him take 

 them to a holloa and plant them on the line of scent.' 



After forty years' service with them, Davis thought 

 his own pack the fastest in England, and certainly it 

 would have been hard to find any hounds that could have 

 beaten the famous run with the stag ' Richmond Trump ' 

 on the 13th of March 1832, when they ran twenty miles 

 in exactly an hour ! On that occasion, Davis, who, 

 though he stood six feet one inch, only scaled nine 

 stone two pounds, and was mounted on a horse (Clipper), 

 well up to sixteen stone, had most of the run all to 

 himself The way in which he took ' Richmond Trump ' 

 that day showed his indomitable pluck. He rolled with 

 the stag into a ditch and lay there, with his arm round 

 the beast's neck, till assistance arrived. His skill and 

 knack in taking deer were indeed extraordinary. On 

 another occasion one who was present says he saw 

 Charles Davis jump off in a narrow lane as the tired 

 stag was coming up it slowly, with the hounds all round 

 it, let the stag half pass him, catch its horns with his 

 left hand, and swinging his whip round with his right 

 hand, keep the hounds at bay and hold the stag till 

 some one came to help him. 



Once Davis tried a curious experiment. Here is the 

 entry in his diary relating to it : ' May 2, 1829. Turned 

 out an elk at Swinley ; he hobbled away — I could not 

 call it running — for half-an-hour, and I took him at 

 Bagshot. The hounds would not hunt him.' 



