120 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hound 



"It takes the kinks out of their legs," explains the Commo- 

 dore, "and gives them a rehsh for a good feed of oats at the 

 club, while we are 'worrying' a beefsteak for ourselves." 



Thus we arrive at the Hunt Club stables, horses and riders 

 feeling what a privilege it is to live in a land where a cross 

 country gallop is indulged in, to the enjoyment of man and 

 beast. 



The writer has certainly had his share and perhaps more 

 of the joys of living, but there is no one spot on all the 

 earth he has ever visited that fits him all round, that touches 

 him on every side, like Toronto. To sail a smart yacht, to 

 ride a good horse, to visit one of the best packs of hounds and 

 most orderly kennels, at a most homelike Hunt Club situated 

 on a bluff overlooking Lake Ontario; and then spend an 

 evening by a hickory fire, talking yacht and hound, horse and 

 sails and bits and anchors with the best fellows alive, until the 

 servants had retired and the fire burnt to coals and the coals 

 to ashes — well, that's Toronto. 



There is also a Hunt Club at Hamilton, another at Guelph, 

 Woodstock and London. No better cross country horses 

 come to the States than those which are found in this part of 

 Canada. It is owing to the universal use of thoroughbreds 

 that Canada has been able to send to the States hundreds of 

 horses annually, for saddle and hunting purposes. 



The oldest organised "Hunt Club" in Canada, which 

 I believe is also the oldest in America, is at Montreal, where 

 they hunt the wild red fox over a rough broken country. They 

 have a very fine club house at the foot of Mount Royal, which 

 overlooks a most beautiful vale and farming land, suggest- 

 ing a landscape not unlike good old England. The club 

 possesses a fine pack of bounds and the best appointed ken- 

 nels the writer knows of in America, the Middlesex alone 

 excepted. 



The few days' cub hunting which the writer enjoyed with 



