100 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hound 



impossible to have a run of any reasonable distance that does 

 not include the crossing of from one to half a dozen of these 

 gullies. To attempt to ride around them, either above or below, 

 usually means to ride yourself out of the chase altogether. 

 Often when you have reached the opposite side of one of these 

 ravines or gullies you find Reynard has turned back into it 

 again. Many of these ravines have a beginning near the crest 

 of the hills, and grow gradually deeper and wider, until a 

 ditch becomes a gully ; a gully a ravine, a ravine a gorge, with a 

 distance of two or three miles from source to valley. In mid- 

 summer most of these ditches are dry, while in the breaking 

 of spring and during the autumn rains, they are roaring tor- 

 rents, cascades and waterfalls. They go from extreme to ex- 

 treme in a presto change order. In some places, the "Seven 

 Gullies" for instance, you no sooner negotiate the opposite bank 

 of one, than another a little deeper and steeper confronts you. 

 These gullies are from fifty to a hundred and fifty feet deep, 

 and have a pitch of 45 degrees or less. They are mostly wooded, 

 and dense with underbrush. 



The usual method of negotiating these gulHes is to dis- 

 mount and lead your horse down to the bottom, then catch 

 hold of his tail and scramble up the best you can. Some horses 

 have to be led, and more than one has taken a header. Cross- 

 ing these gullies is usually a sort of "follow the leader" game, 

 there being but one or two, possibly three, trails by which it 

 is possible to go in and out of them. 



The great flat lands of the valley are mostly owned by the 

 Wadsworths, and are principally devoted to pasture, so that 

 when a fox — which is not very often — leads the way across 

 these beautiful fields of fifty to three hundred acres in extent, 

 you may have such a gallop as is only enjoyed over the great 

 "grass lands" of England. 



In a word the Genesee Valley, for the most part, is a timber 

 country, rail or worm-fence, mostly stake and rider, ditches. 



