WESTWARD HO ! 43 



landowner, save one, is opposed to the scheme ; 

 and the farmers know well enough that any small 

 benefit which will accrue to them from a slightly 

 accelerated traffic will be more than counterbalanced 

 by losing their best customers, the men who come 

 down yearly to the West to enjoy a sport such as 

 no other country but our own can show, and 

 which for four hundred years — ay, and more — has 

 gladdened the hearts of the brave men of the 

 West, without any practical interruption. 



Curiously enough, the inquiry into the light 

 railway scheme, the chief result of which will 

 be the flooding of Devonshire and Somersetshire 

 with Welsh miners from the Rhondda valley — 

 a questionable benefit indeed — will be held on the 

 day when the season will open at Haddon. Let 

 the scheme be opposed with all the power of two 

 united counties, say I, and I cannot better conclude 

 than with Dr. Collyns's noble words : " I trust," 

 says he, " that ' the nobilitie ' and youths of the 

 West of England will follow the steps of their 

 forefathers, that every man will, to the best of his 

 power, use his influence in preventing the noblest 

 of English sports falling again into desuetude, 

 and that if the time come when it should be 

 necessary to use exertion in order to prevent the 

 discontinuance of sport which it has been the pride, 

 the boast, and the pleasure of the good men and 

 true of North Devon and Somerset for many a 

 century past to have enjoyed, those who have the 

 power of doing so, and their number is not small, 

 will, with heart and soul, combine to give their 

 support to the maintenance of the hounds and 

 the preservation of the deer, and show by acts 

 unmistakable, and not by words merely, that they 



