THE SHIRES. 



239 





to Market Harboro's prosperity as a hunting centre. Bold men, 

 perhaps, battle with them for a year or two : fathers of families 

 shudder as they look at them, and decline further acquaintance 

 at once.' Discretion is the truest valour at Harboro 1 . To the 

 stiffness of the Pytchley country generally another witness 

 speaks from the mouth of one who was not wont to turn his 

 head away from a big fence. * Large grass fields,' says Whyte- 

 Melville, ' from fifty to a hundred acres in extent, carrying a 

 rare scent, are indeed tempting ; but to my own taste, though 

 perhaps in this my reader may not agree with me, they would 

 be more inviting were they not separated by such forbidding 





' The Niagara-like rush to which the " gone-away " is a signal.' 



fences. A high black-thorn hedge, strong enough to hold an 

 elephant, with one and sometimes two ditches, fortified, more- 

 over, in many cases, by a rail placed half a horse's length off to 

 keep out cattle from the thorns, offers, indeed, scope for all the 

 nobler qualities of man and beast, but while sufficiently perilous 

 for glory, seems to my mind rather too stiff for pleasure.' * ' Most 

 of the country hereabouts is grass, and in the very centre of the 

 most formidable tract stands the far-famed Waterloo Gorse. 

 Blue Covert (supposed to have been planted by the 'Blues' 

 when last quartered at Northampton), Talliho, Sulby Gorse, 



1 Riding Recollections, ch. xiv. 



