NORTHERN COUNTRIES 113 



sincerity — as will many and many, nay, a countless 

 number of sportsmen and men-of-the-woild. 



But who shall say this end was the worst for him ? 

 Not I, however sadly one may think of those who have 

 the melancholy right to mourn most for him. He died 

 painlessly — dropped out unawares — in the heyday of his 

 strength and fame. Would he have chosen a sick-bed or 

 a puling old age ? No — and who shall wish it for him ? 



But through England, and wherever Englishmen fore- 

 gather the wide world through, there have gone up this 

 week the words I find myself uttering sorrowfully, " Poor 

 Bay ! Poor Bay ! A gallant fellow, a good comrade, and 

 a kindly man ! God be with him ! " 



The Tynedale 



My last day with this flying pack gave me the oppor- 

 tunity I particularly desired — -of making acquaintance with 

 their wild western ground and highest plateaux. And now 

 I am in a position to emphasise what I have already as- 

 serted, viz. that most of you are little aware how charming 

 a country is to be found in Northumberland, and to be 

 found, moreover, at its best when the playgrounds of 

 fashion are nearly, or quite, dried out. The Tynedale 

 grass would seem to be virtually sunproof. On this 

 Wednesday there was never clatter of hoof, except on 

 a wall-top, and in a wide run (five miles across its breadth 

 on the map) wc never saiv a ploughed field ! 



Nor am I, if I take the tone of my informants cor- 

 rectly, by any means imperilling the comfort of those 

 already on the spot by calling attention thus to the attrac- 

 tions of Tyneside in spring. Northumberland is too far 

 from London, too remote from the interruptions that the 

 smart world considers necessary to its existence, to allow 

 of the gay mass migrating thither in strength or for a 

 permanency. But there are a number — a very large 

 number — of men and women who set a gallop with 

 hounds, over a grass country, far before any other joy 

 in life. These are accustomed to hunt on, in the Mid- 

 lands, in Cheshire, in Wiltshire, or with the Meynell, till 



H 



