YORKSHIRE 285 



Lambton's hounds are particularly steady and handy, to a degree 

 not often witnessed. 



I consider Durham altogether a very sporting county. The 

 farmers ride good horses, the greater part of which they breed 

 themselves, beginning the cross with the Cleveland-bay mare. 

 There was one part of their rural economy which I particularly 

 admired ; and that was, I never saw a real cart-horse in the 

 principality of Durham. They make use of, for all purposes of 

 husbandry, what we call the strong nag horse, so much quicker in 

 his step, and altogether more useful than the heavy-legged, slow- 

 moving, cart-horse that we are doomed to employ in the South, and 

 to which I have no hesitation in saying the ruin of maiiy hundred 

 small farmers is to be traced. It may scarcely ])e believed, but 

 such is the prejudice of carters and wagoners in my part of the 

 world in favour of these long-tailed, heavy-legged brutes, that they 

 will wantonly maltreat a horse of the nag kind if put into their 

 master's stables to work with the others. I was given to under- 

 stand, that had I visited Durham some years back, when wheat sold 

 for better prices, I should have seen more well-mounted yeomanry 

 than at the present day, the times having taken the hunting out of 

 some of them. 



The eastern side, that is, from the Tees to the Wear, and so on to 

 the sea-shore, is the best part of the Sedgefield country to ride over. 

 Here is a good deal of old grass, the fields from ten to fifty acres in 

 extent ; and although the surface of the land appears indifferent, 

 yet being upon a limestone subsoil, with the benefit of a bumid 

 atmosphere from sea breezes, a pretty good scent is often the result. 

 I could perceive there is a large tract of this sort of land, well 

 planted with whin coverts ; but the most likely country to ensure a 

 run is the southern side, bounded by the Tees, and extending 

 towards Piercebridge, in Lord Darlington's Hunt. Here, although 

 the inclosures are smaller and the fences stronger, yet the land is 

 greatly superior, and consequently more to be depended upon for 

 a scent. It was this side of the country that afforded us our capital 

 daj-'s sport. 



There are sporting peculiarities in almost all counties I have been 

 in. In the one I live in, they call a couple and a half, or three 



