I/O CHASE OF THE WILD RED DEER 



the Exmoor blood in their veins, and are from their 

 size better adapted for general purposes than the 

 native animal. In the year 1816 I bought an 

 Exmoor pony for twenty-three shillings ! (a fair 

 price in those days) at Simonsbath. When 

 ' haltered ' — caught, that is, after I had concluded 

 my bargain, and secured for the first time in his 

 life — he proved to be two years old. I gave him 

 to my brother's son, a child of four or five years of 

 age. The boy learned to ride upon him, and his 

 brothers and sisters, eight in number, afterwards 

 used him in succession. The pony was but 1 1 

 hands high ; he died at the age of 23, and after he 

 had reached his 20th year carried my eldest nephew, 

 his first owner, then grown up and by no means 

 a light weight, a run with fox-hounds in such a 

 manner as to excite the surprise, and I may add, 

 the envy, of many a sportsman, apparently better 

 mounted. Judging from the prices obtained for 

 these animals at the present day, compared with 

 those that they fetched forty years ago, it may 

 be safely asserted that they have risen in value 

 three, or four, hundred per cent. ! Let any man 

 see one of these ' little horses ' living at grass, and 

 probably never having tasted corn in his life, 

 carrying a full-grown man through a long day with 



