AND STIRLINGSHIRE HUNT 



the road to Berwick — a distance of nearly sixty 

 miles by the milestones — and embracing, with a 

 small part of Berwickshire, the whole of the three 

 Lothians — or in other words, the entire counties 

 of Haddington, Linlithgow, and Edinburgh. Of 

 each of these I shall now proceed briefly to 

 speak ; and commence with that of Linlithgow, 

 which, as a hunting country, was decidedly in 

 every respect to be preferred to the others. In 

 the first place it held a remarkably good scent 

 at all seasons of the year, and consisted, for a 

 provincial, of a very fair proportion of grass ; 

 secondly, it was a flat and very pleasant and 

 straight - forward one to ride over ; and thirdly, 

 the foxes were flyers, and the coverts, the 

 majority of them at least, were neither too large, 

 nor crammed with that redundance of game that 

 is so destructive and inimical to sport in the 

 largest portions of Mid and East Lothian. I 

 cannot, indeed, imagine, and certainly have never 

 seen, anything much superior to the cream of 

 it ; and it was here that this splendid pack, with 

 Williamson at their head, displayed themselves in 

 their proper colours. It was indeed a delight, 

 after witnessing the distressing and fruitless 

 efforts of man and hound in the cold cheerless 

 ploughs they usually came last from, to see 

 twenty couples of these magnificent animals press- 

 ing their fox gallantly away from Binny craig, 

 Drumshorelane moor, Duntarvie, or Riccarton, 

 and afterwards sticking to him over a country 



71 



