NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



as their fellow-hunters of the sterner sex. Here hare- 

 hunting may truly be said to flourish in the old- 

 fashioned manner. Hares are not coursed to death, 

 as is too often the case with dwarf foxhounds — the 

 quarry has a fair chance for her life — and runs of an 

 hour and a half or two hours are not uncommon. 

 I know of no part of England where hare-hunting may 

 be more thoroughly enjoyed than with the Hailsham 

 Harriers on Pevensey Marshes. Plenty of hares are 

 killed ; during the season of 1900-1 some thirty brace 

 were accounted for by this pack. At the eastern end 

 of the Marsh the Bexhill Harriers, a mounted pack, 

 descend periodically from their higher country on to 

 the Marsh pastures ; but, as I have indicated, the Level 

 is not by any means adapted for hunting on horseback 

 — that is to say, when hounds run hard. 



The Marsh graziers, besides being good sportsmen, 

 are, like most of their fellows throughout England — 

 one may say throughout Britain — among the most 

 hospitable people in the world. It seems a real pleasure 

 to these hearty, downright souls to welcome hunting 

 folk and set before them every good thing in the way 

 of eating and drinking that their homesteads can pro- 

 duce. They are few in number, grazing being an 

 occupation in which small holdings can have little part 

 or lot. Some of these families and their forbears have 

 lived in the same homesteads for generations. They 

 have strange tales, handed down from their fathers and 

 grandfathers, of the old smuggling days. I gather 

 from these narratives that there dwelt in the eighteenth 

 century scarcely a single farmer in this locality who 

 was not in some way or another mixed up in the free- 

 trading business. Men between fifty and seventy have 

 told me, with a keen twinkle in their eyes, how their 

 grandfathers evaded the excisemen, and sank their 



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