148 NIMROD'S HUNTING TOUR 



saw Mr. Osbaldeston in the field, I saw him under very different 

 circumstances. I saw him on the ground with his leg broken, the 

 bone protruding through the skin, with his boot full of blood, and 

 with every prospect of immediate amputation being necessary. He 

 bore it like a man ; but one remarkable expression escaped him. 

 "I am so unlucky," said he (having only just then recovered from 

 another bad fall — and to the regimen he had been undergoing in 

 consequence of it, was he, perhaps, indebted for the preservation of 

 his limb), that I think I shall give up hunting." I thought the 

 same at the moment ; for to say the truth, when Mr. Lucas, 

 Veterinary Surgeon, put his whip into the boot, and it came out 

 bloody, my heart sickened at the scene ; and I said to myself — ■ 

 " this will be my case next." Fortunately, however, for humanity, 

 like the woman in travail, who says in her haste, " all men are 

 liars," these impressions soon wear away; and Mr. Osbaldeston 

 now hunts his own hounds six days a week ! 



There was a very large field on this day, and rather a novel scene 

 presented itself. Glen Gorse, a very thick covert, w^as the first 

 place drawn, and it was surrounded by at least a hundred foot 

 people, assembled there, as they said, from the neighbouring 

 villages, for the purpose of finding the fox, and to be paid for their 

 trouble by a collection from the field. When they came to me for 

 my shilling, I told them I never would bestow one upon such 

 purposes. Fox-hunting, said I, has already lost much of its native 

 wildness ; but if this is to be the case — if men, not hounds, are to 

 find our foxes — we must soon leave them to men to kill, for hounds 

 would be useless, as every covert in the country would be surrounded 

 by foot people, and every chance of a fox getting away would be 

 lost. I believe this farce originated in some foot people getting into 

 this very thick gorse the last time the hounds drew it, and being the 

 means of pushing the fox out, for which they received a reward, and 

 of course they speculated on a similar adventure. 



After a good deal of badgering, our fox broke gallantly. As I 

 tally-ho'd him away two fields from the gorse, of course I got a fair 

 start ; but having been so long in the provincials I was only half 

 awake, and instead of going away as about a dozen of the leading 

 men did, with only six couples of leading hounds, I pulled to my 



