98 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hound 



If you would see the valley at its finest, "Come up," as 

 Joshua Whitcomb says, "in the spring-time, when nature is 

 doing its best, and let the scarlet-runners chase you back to 

 childhood." If you would see it in its prime, postpone your 

 visit until mid-summer, when the yellow harvest fields checker 

 the landscape in squares of gold, filling the barns with plenty 

 and the granaries to overflowing. But if you would see the vale 

 in all its beauty and loveliness, come up when the first hazy 

 atmosphere of October has subdued the fiercer rays of a sum- 

 mer sun. When the glorious colours of autumn have touched 

 each leaf, when the squirrels are at harvest, and the woodcock 

 and partridge are fit — then is the time to come to the valley, 

 for then it is that apples and cider are plenty and the rich 

 golden pumpkins make heavenly pie. Is that not enough to 

 start you? Then listen to the huntsman's horn, and the melo- 

 dious chorus of the pack, how it echoes from wood to wood, 

 from hill to hill, proclaiming the glorious news that a chicken- 

 thief fox is afoot, and retribution hard after. That is the time 

 to come to the valley ; unless you have eyes without seeing, ears 

 without hearing, and a heart that is in the wrong place alto- 

 gether — so that your blood runs backwards — "You're a goner." 

 All your sorrows, disajipointments, wrongs, vexations, sickness, 

 cares, all, all, are gone. Can the gods offer more? No, but 

 the Genesee Vallians can. They can 



"Give you a mount and a field you can count. 

 And a fox that is willing to go. 

 Hounds you cannot surpass, a full cry on the grass. 

 What more would you wish for below?" 



The noble Genesee river enters the valley from a gorge 

 wherein it has been confined for the last fourteen miles; viz., 

 from the falls at Portage, whence it winds its tortuous way 

 between walls of solid masonry three to four hundred feet liigh. 



