224 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



North Hill (the same rosy colouring on its brow, the same 

 sombre verdancy on its wooded side) marking the sea line from 

 Minehead to Horsedown Point ; while through the gap smiled 

 Porlock Bay, " calm and still," as the master pen of romance 

 and sport described it, " like the eyes of a girl, whose being has 

 never yet been stirred into passion by the storm." It was too 

 beautiful a scene for such a motley carousal, such a break-out 

 of Cockneydom ; still worse that such sacrilege should be 

 committed under the assumed shadow of a grand and genuine 

 sport. Repugnant it must be to all true sportsmen (and this 

 is a country where in unusual number they are the natural 

 outcome of the soil) ; and repugnant it undoubtedly is, if form 

 of expression and epithet go for anything. But the Master 

 knows he has to undergo it every year ; so submits to the 

 inevitable, and accepts it with the equanimity with which 

 Masters of Hounds have to fortify themselves against trials 

 more numerous and galling than the world at large would 

 imagine. For the others, they stay away on this opening day, 

 or else attend under protest. They do not expect sport under 

 such circumstances, and in this they are seldom disappointed ; 

 it is only fair to add that they do their best to forestall any 

 such miscarriage of hope on the part of the visitor. 



" Go on Friday " they say " to Hawk combe Head, and next 

 week to Winsford and the open common, and you may come in 

 for a gallop over Exmoor that will give you a fairer notion of 

 our sport. To-day you will only see a number of people eating 

 and drinking more than is good for them ; and if a stag is 

 hunted at all 'tis more than we expect." Indeed, anything less 

 suggestive of the chase it would be impossible to conceive. A 

 grass field next the farmhouse was like a square cut out of 

 Epsom Downs on Derby Day packed close with carriages, the 

 air alive with champagne corks, and the ground already littered 

 with bottles and the debris of luncheons innumerable. On the 

 edge of the coombe each tree had its group of merrymakers 

 intent upon their luncheon-hampers, while horsemen passed 

 from party to party feasting as they went, and noise and mirth 



