The East Kent. 237 



useless — for want of foxes. There are coverts in it, 

 of wliicli foxes would avail themselves as gladly as 

 would the pursuing force : but the Ashford Vale is no 

 place for them. The rest of the East-Kent Country- 

 is mostly a cold plough upland, thickly studded 

 throughout with great woods ; and to drive a fox 

 through them, hounds must be thorough workers, 

 keen of nose, and stout of frame and heart. Here 

 and there in the valleys are patches of hop-garden 

 (deep and holding in winter) ; but hops do not flourish 

 in the soil of East Kent as freely as further west. 

 The valleys, consequently, are more often merely 

 marked by a single breadth of meadow bounded by 

 fairly strong wattle hedges, constituting the only fences 

 to be met with for miles. Great unfenced fields of 

 arable cover all the upper ground, especially where, 

 between Canterbury, Sandwich, and Deal, much of 

 the land assumes quite a wold character. Further 

 south, however, on the high ground above Hythe and 

 Shorncliffe, cultivation is of a much closer description, 

 and a fair sprinkling of grass comes in about Acrise 

 and Eeindean. As a rule. East Kent is not good 

 scenting ground. Hounds have the best chance of 

 killing their foxes in cub-hunting — before the leaves 

 have fallen to any extent — or when, now and again, 

 one of the early spring months brings a steady, good- 

 scenting period. You need not have a very expensive 

 horse to enter the woods with the East Kent, or to 

 see many of their runs. But if hounds slip away 

 close on their fox, and at best pace dip in and out of 

 one of the above little valleys as they run from wood 

 to wood, only a very respectable hunter will carry you 



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