2 FOX-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



lady justified in her bitter reproof to a young man 

 overfond of allusions to his family ? *^ Don't talk 

 to me of ancestors/' she said; ''I once kept a 

 grandmother myself ! " Let it be sufficient to 

 record that 1835 was the year of my birth at Norton 

 Conyers, in the North Riding of Yorkshire ; that I 

 was educated at the Royal Military College, Sand- 

 hurst, gazetted at the age of seventeen to the 

 14th Regiment (then the Buckinghamshire, now 

 the West Yorkshire), joined them at Limerick, 

 passed a year in Ireland, and at the end of that 

 period was ordered with the regiment to Malta. 

 The detachment with which I went sailed in 

 an old troopship of about seven hundred 

 tons, by name the AUpore, and it took fifteen 

 days on the voyage from Cork to Gibraltar 

 (think of that in these days of swift military 

 transport). 



Malta was but a brief halting-place on the way 

 to the Crimea, and we landed at Balaclava the 

 first week of November 1854. The 14th was 

 soon moved to the front, and posted to the Third 

 Division, commanded by General Sir Richard 

 England. Our chief duty for many months to 

 come was in the trenches day and night, and my 

 most vivid recollection of that dreary time is 

 snow, everlasting snow, throughout the bitterly 

 severe winter of 1854-55. Owing to our hasty 



