HUNTING ABROAD 155 



bottom without being seen. Some of them are cov- 

 ered with underbrush, and if a horse falls in he becomes 

 completely hidden from view. Falls are numerous, 

 but are, as a rule, not serious, for the ground is very- 

 soft and the fall resembles a sort of scramble rather 

 than the swift and sharp catapult onto a brick-like 

 ground that one gets over timber in America. The 

 worst kind of an Irish fall is that in which the horse 

 loses his footing in climbing up a bank and falls back 

 into the drain, in which case the only thing to do is to 

 throw yourself away from him as quickly as possible 

 so as to avoid being crushed. Once in a drain, there 

 is little, if any, possibility of catching hounds again, 

 and the services of a " wrecker," a specie of jolly but 

 dirty-looking Irishman, is required to pull the horse 

 out of the ditch with ropes and pulleys. These men 

 station themselves at the jumps just for this sort of 

 service. The most amusing experience of my hunting 

 in Ireland was when my horse fell backward into a 

 drain at the only jumpable spot in that particular 

 bank, thereby blocking the progress of the rest of the 

 field. Realizing that I could go no farther with the 

 animal, who lay sprawling on his back in the lower 

 regions of a watery, dark, and deep ditch, I called to 

 my groom to assist me in getting the saddle off. 

 Plastered with mud, we emerged from the ditch to 

 put the saddle on the groom's horse, who fortunately 

 happened to be on the right side of the drain. This 

 horse was able to carry me on, and eventually I caught 

 up with hounds, much to the disgust of the fuming 

 field, who were still trying to devise ways of jumping 

 over my prostrate animal with a minimum amount of 

 danger to him and to themselves. 

 Timber is scarcely ever met with in Ireland, and is 



