HUNTING LOCALITIES 187 



arrangements concluded for sending on one's horse 

 and driving the whole or a part of a distance to the 

 fixture. 



Luckily for some of the visitors the meets do not 

 take place until the forenoon is well advanced, but 

 the sport may come quickly, or it may come late, 

 and when one has travelled a long way one hardly 

 likes to leave until one has seen something besides 

 the tufting. This may last a few minutes, or two 

 or three hours, and a slow, dragging hunt may work 

 up into a quick one, with the result that a stranger 

 may find himself at an immense distance from his 

 quarters, with a tired horse, and a very indistinct 

 notion as to how he is going to cover the long, weary 

 miles. No sport that we have seen is quite so uncertain 

 as this staghunting. We have been for two or three 

 hours amongst the heather on Croydon Hill, and 

 hounds have suddenly got away in the afternoon, 

 and made a fifteen-mile point. At other times — when 

 fat stags were in evidence — we have spent a whole 

 day within a radius of two or three miles, and again 

 we have had to ride a tired horse home from a spot 

 midway between Dulverton and Tiverton to Porlock 

 Weir. 



But the fascination of Exmoor and its hunting 

 is extraordinary, and this is proved by the fact that 

 many hard-working business men spend their annual 

 holiday on Exmoor, hunting as often as they possibly 

 can with the staghounds, and filling up their spare 

 time with the Exmoor foxhounds, or Minehead Harriers. 

 Hunting men, too, come from all parts of the kingdom 

 for a week or two of the sport, and one has seen half 

 a dozen masters of foxhounds from far-away countries 

 at a September meet at Hawkcombe Head. 



