HUNTING ABROAD 153 



larger fences to keep them in bounds than in the former, 

 where the live stock is chiefly dairy cows. 



The ground between the fences is also quite different 

 from anything we ever see over here, and what they 

 consider good going would to us appear a veritable 

 bog. On the other hand, I have seen Englishmen look 

 with quite justifiable horror on our taking horses out 

 hunting when the ground was as hard as bricks and 

 covered with a thin coating of ice. The difference in 

 the going undoubtedly accounts for the fact that 

 whereas spavins and curbs, arising from strains in the 

 heavy mud, are very common over there, over here 

 they are less frequently met with than foot lameness, 

 navicular, laminitis, etc. 



"Ridge and furrow," which is a system of culti- 

 vating pastureland so as to drain off the surplus 

 water, is frequently met with, and should be nego- 

 tiated slowly and diagonally in the same manner as 

 if traversing plough. On the whole, however, in the 

 best sections of English or Irish hunting centres, the 

 miles and miles of soft green pastureland that one 

 gallops over gives the American, accustomed to hunt- 

 ing over plough, corn stubble, or rocks, an impression 

 of having flown to heaven, where one hunts over golf 

 courses. 



In Ireland the turf is — if such a thing be possible — 

 even greener and springier than in England, but the 

 going is consequently heavier, and one jumps banks 

 and drains with the horses almost up to their hocks 

 in mud. These banks are often ten feet in height, and 

 the drains are not ditches but rather yawning chasms. 

 Occasionally, one meets a " double," which consists of 

 a drain, a bank, then another drain, and yet another 

 bank, and it requires a clever horse to jump from the 



