AVINNING EASILY. 



AS with tlie chase, so M'ith the steeplechase, some of the leading iiicideuts of which 

 we have preseuictl to oiu' readers. iVnd now we come to the final scene, where 

 the Captain, who has been waiting patiently off until the last leap is safely 

 negotiated, comes out with his horse full of running, and takes hina to the front. There 

 he sits, calm as though taking his dinner, and with hands well down is stealing away 

 without having once to caU upon his horse ; in fact, the orders that Elacklock's trainer 

 gave his jockey when he put him up for the Leger, to " lig thee hands dovm and let him 

 stride away and cUstauce them,"' have iu this instance a fail- chance of being carried out ; 

 for though the nag in the double-reined snaffle and martingale has a good eftbrt left in 

 him yet, his companion has all the best of it, and must with luck land the winner. 



So much for the accompanying sketch, which is one of the most spii'ited in oiu- collec- 

 tion. And now, as this is our last effort in the steeplechase line, perhaps we may be 

 allowed to say something anent its antecedents and antiquity. In the first place, a very 

 general and at the same time erroneous impression prevails that steeplechasing is a sport 

 of modern date, and an inno^■ation on the province of both the racer and hunter. This 

 is fallacious, and though there is no record of its having been carried on quite on 

 the same principles as in the present day, there can be no doubt that trials of speed and 

 endurance across coimtry were very general amongst oiu* ancestors at a much earlier date 

 than we give them credit for. Though the fii'st regular accredited steeplechase was run 

 off in Leicestershii-e now nearly eighty years since, and won by a scion of the grand old 

 Meynell, who made that county the happy hunting-groimd of the elite of England, still, 

 the veutxu-e in which the judge placed Meynell fii-st, Forester second, and Gilbert Ileath- 

 cote last, was but a resuscitation under another form of the trail scent, or drag hunt, which 

 oiu- ancestors appear to have enjoyed as much as Oxonians have done iu these later days. 

 In the race to which we have alluded, the distance was eight miles, from the Coplow to 

 Barkley Ilolt and back ; and even the research of the Druid has been able to elucidate 

 little more concerning it. 



If we look back to old Gervase Markham's directions for training horses, we find 

 the chase of the badger and fox, in the then state of the coimtry, discountenanced, but 

 that of the stag, buck, and hare recommended for training horses, whether for pleasm-e 

 or for wager. But what could the wager be that requu-ed a horse trained for it in such a 

 way ; certamly not on the race-com-se, for even at this early period was not Kewmarket in 

 full swing, with its regular com-ses and gallops, whereon horses could be sweated and 

 galloped, and the work they did as well as the distance they were sent along measured to a 

 nicety ? With these advantages, who would have encoimtered the drawbacks of an 

 animal rimning at will over groimd good or bad, and the uncertain pace of a pack of 

 hounds, which must be regulated by the day and the scent, instead of by the work the horse 

 was requii-cd to do '? But sometlung more than a plain gallop was wanted ; in fact, the 

 training evidently enough was for a race across country instead of on the flat, or for 

 what in those days was termed a hunting match, where, as in the modern Oxford Drag 

 Hunt, or the paper hunts of India or the Crimea, trail scents, either with or without 

 hounds, were used to point out the line to be taken ; and our good old ancestors, no doubt, 

 scudded away right merrily on their " Barbary jennets or light English geldings," as 



