WESTWARD HO ! 35 



day, and " forty minutes o'er the grass without a 

 check " the next, a quo animo. 



A friend of mine once said to me when the sun 

 was pouring its rays down on us in pitiless fashion, 

 and the radiation of the heat from the grand stand 

 — it was at a race meeting — made the enclosure 

 seem like the Black Hole at Calcutta, at 5 st. 7 lb., 

 for heat, " It is too hot to hunt." My reply was, 

 " Is it ? " It is never too hot or too anything to 

 hunt, save too frosty or too foggy, from the first 

 by -day the Devon and Somerset have till the 

 remotest moorland pack has killed its May fox. 

 Bear that in mind, my hunting tyro, and so shall 

 you see many a good run you would otherwise 

 have missed. 



So my advice to all and sundry of my hunting 

 friends is to try and get a fortnight on the breezy 

 uplands of Somersetshire and Devon, to make a 

 pilgrimage to the mythical Doone valley, and all 

 the better will that pilgrimage be appreciated if 

 there should be a " stag o' ten " before you that 

 had led you nearly a four-hours' chase " o'er brake 

 and scaur " from the Deer park, as happened when 

 I first set eyes on that picturesque spot. 



If you have any eye for the picturesque in 

 scenery or in hunting — if you have any love of 

 hounds and hound work, if you delight in 

 scrambling over a rough country and in over- 

 coming difficulties — in a word, if you view hunting 

 in any other light than that of galloping so many 

 miles in an apocryphal number of minutes, and 

 jumping so many fences of more or less — generally 

 less — formidable proportions, you will enjoy your- 

 self immensely, even should your luck be out, and 

 you should fail to fall in with one of those brilliant 



