Lord Fitzwilliam's. 53 



LORD FITZWILLIAM'S.* 



It scarcely amounts to taking away the name of tlie 

 Country in question to say that only an intense love 

 of hounds, and the necessity to which he has been 

 born of residing here, could possibly have induced 

 Lord Fitzwilliam to have established a pack in such 

 an uncongenial quarter. Sheffield, Rotherham, and 

 their contiguous chain of factories and dwellings, with 

 Parkgate, Swinton, and Mexboro', form an almost 

 unbroken town across the country up to Doncaster — 

 cutting in two the only really huntable portion of a 

 territory that looks wide and extensive on the map. 

 The south is nearly all collieries; and so is a large central 

 strip from south to north. The west is high and 

 broken moorland — whither hounds only get by acci- 

 dent, and where men soon lose themselves amid its 

 gullies, walls, and unknown wilds. Wentworth (the 

 seat of Lord Fitzwilliam) stands the centre of one little 

 oasis, girt on every side by railways, rivers, canals, 

 collieries, tramways, and factories. The only other 

 piece of practicable ground for horse and hound is a 

 strip, two to four miles broad, along the edge of the 



* Vide Stanford's " Hunting Map," Sheet 9, and Hobson's 

 Foxhunting Atlas. 



