The Cheshire and South Cheshire. 373 



often involves a collar-bone or a loss of nerve. A fall 

 does you either liarm or good. In Cheshire it will 

 likely enough do you good — up to a certain time of 

 life ; enabling you to pick yourself up with renewed 

 confidence, under the grateful discovery that a fall 

 need not be such a terrible thing after all. On the 

 theory of chances, too, you run a double risk of a 

 tumble in Cheshire ; for are you not twice as often in 

 the air as you could be anywhere else — unless it be 

 Derbyshire or the stonewall section of Gloucestershire ? 

 And, in the last-named, there are no blind ditches to 

 ensnare the hunter, already overtaxed by continued 

 jumping. There is scarcely a gate to be seen, and, to 

 cross the country at all, you must have the fences as 

 they come. Jump and twist and turn, and mind you 

 are never in front of hounds ! '^ The fence that gives 

 a moment to the pack,^^ is your temptation in Cheshire. 

 It comes too frequently and too temptingly; and a 

 field should be under command enough for an advance 

 by squadrons. A solid rush gives no time for the 

 scouting party, represented by a too often over-ridden 

 pack. Yet, taken all in all, hounds (and foxes, too) 

 have a rare chance in Cheshire. There are few com- 

 manding points from which a fox may be seen, and a 

 clever man (oh, how fatal is a pointrider in many an 

 open country!) has few chances of meeting a fox in 

 his path, and sounding a damning yell to lead hounds 

 astray or turn the fox from his point. A good fox in 

 Cheshire may go where he will, and never be viewed 

 on his journey till he becomes food and trophy. 

 Hounds and huntsman must work unassisted. The 

 former have their noses down as long as the master 



