20 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



amusements of the Welsh farmers and peasantry a 

 century and a half ago, and it has not even now fallen 

 altogether into disuse. The following story of one of 

 these expeditions is related in the Cambrian Quar- 

 terly Magazine : 



" A farmer, named Hugo Garonwy, lived in the 

 neighbourhood of Llewyn Georie. Although he 

 handled the small tilt plough, and other farming 

 tools in their due season, yet the catching of the 

 merlin, the fox, and the hare, were pursuits more 

 congenial to his tastes ; and the tumbles and thumps 

 which he received, and from which no pony hunter 

 was exempt, served but to attach him to the sport. 

 Rugged, however, as were the Merioneddshire coast 

 and its environs, and abounding with precipices and 

 morasses, the hunter sometimes experienced worse 

 mishaps, and so it happened with Garonwy. 



" He set out one morning with his lasso coiled 

 round his waist, and attended by two hardy de- 

 pendents and their greyhounds. The lasso was then 

 familiar to the Welshman, and as adroitly managed 

 by him as by any guacho on the plains of South 

 America. As the hunters climbed the mountain's 

 brow, the distant herd of ponies took alarm some- 

 times galloping onwards, and then suddenly halting 

 and wheeling round, snorting as if in defiance of the 



