N1MROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 267 



old sportsman not in a better plight. I have often thought that 

 there ought to be amongst sportsmen, a fund, supported by a 

 small annual subscription, to provide for the latter days of such 

 men as huntsmen and whippers-in, as well as earth-stoppers and 

 keepers, of good character, who certainly run great risk of their 

 lives and health, in furtherance of their amusement, and not 

 always able to provide for declining years. The Whip Club had 

 their benevolent fund ; why should not sportsmen have theirs ? 

 I shall recur to this subject at another time. 



When God gave us the grape, he did it in mercy to our suffer- 

 ings, and we ought to acknowledge the valuable boon. A few 

 glasses of wine made John Craick feel young again, and forget- 

 ting both his poverty and. his years, he made us laugh " without 

 intervallums," as Falstaff says. And some of our laughs were at 

 my expense ; for as John never happened to have heard of 

 Nimrod, he would admit of no association of the word with 

 hounds and hunting ; and when Lord Kintore told him I was a 

 sportsman, he seemed very much to doubt it, taking a glance at 

 me at the time that was irresistibly ludicrous. Then some anec- 

 dotes of himself were exceedingly good, particularly one about a 

 thorough-bred horse, for which he gave in those days the very 

 large sum of one hundred guineas, and at the time when he was 

 farming the fox-hounds, and mounting himself, and his whip, for 

 three hundred pounds per annum ! It seems he one day mounted 

 a young lieutenant in the navy on this horse with the hounds for 

 the small sum of one guinea ; and on the captain asking him 

 how he could venture to put a young sailor on a horse of that 

 value, his answer was capital. " Oh," said he, " I knew what 

 I was about. You must know this horse pulled like a bull (pro- 

 nouncing///// and bull as if there had been half a dozen letter 

 n's in each word), and as soon as the lieutenant was able to stop 

 him, after we found the fox, he jumped off his back and led him 

 home." John, it seems, won two fifties with this nag afterwards, 

 and sold him for the money he gave for him. He also rode and 

 won a match for .200 a side, between the Duke of Gordon, when 

 Marquis of Huntley, and a Captain M'Culloch who rode his own 

 horse, four miles on a turnpike road. " Towards the last," said 

 John, " the captain thought I was done, because I kept back as 

 I used to do when I wanted to let in some tail hounds at the 

 death ; but I soon told him a different story, and threw the dirt 

 in his face when I had nursed my horse a little." 



Wednesday, 18. The fixture of this day I have forgotten, but 

 what happened upon it I shall never forget. At the second 

 fence, after we found our fox, the Duchess fell with me at a 

 double fence, owing to the ground being false, and, in getting 



