10 The Hunting Countries of England. 



picking you out as lier special victim. Yet depend 

 upon it you are better off relying upon yourself, though 

 you may have to grind your teeth through many a 

 crisis. Only stable philosophy this — though no restric- 

 tion is placed upon its being applied to every-day life, 

 and no patent has been taken out for the principle. 



Brighton, as everyone knows, is little more than an 

 hour^s journey from London ; and the Southdown will 

 give you either a scurry over the open downs, which 

 stretch some thirty-five or forty miles from Shoreham 

 to Eastbourne, or more solid foxhunting in the stiff 

 vale farther inland. A racing burst over the hills — a 

 flying scent and never a fence — is a thing almost of 

 itself. The Gorse coverts lie in many instances three 

 or four miles apart, and invariably hold foxes. Hounds 

 seldom fail to get away at their fox's brush ; the downs 

 almost always carry a scent ; and thus a point-to-point 

 race is the ordinary result — he who can, with judg- 

 ment, gallop fastest and ride lightest being in all 

 probability nearest to hounds, who in their turn will 

 often more than hold their own with the horses and 

 generally burst up their fox. 



The Downs or " the hill,'' and the Weald or '' Low 

 Country " are the two natural divisions of the country 

 — the former being marked on the map as the South- 

 downs and stretching along the sea-coast the whole 

 length of the country, the latter a strong clay valley 

 divided on the north from the Crawley and Horsham 

 by the little stream of the Adur. The Southdown 

 country was originally a part of the East Sussex — the 

 present line of demarcation on the east being the 

 north road from Hail sham. 



