198 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



undertook the duty of collecting the half-crowns. (An 

 admirable system this, I venture to think, and one that, if 

 adopted in the Rugby and Melton districts, might go to 

 paying for many broken rails. And broken rails, we know 

 too well, often lead to wire.) 



I was struck with the thoroughly " useful " type of 

 most of the horses of the day. Short-legged, strong- 

 hocked, strong-backed, and of course snaffle-bridled, they 

 looked like lifting a rider well on to a bank, and setting 

 him down safely beyond it. Not very many carried 

 suggestion of great pace — nor is excessive speed, I am 

 taught to believe, an essential qualification in county Cork. 

 Power and activity to cope with continual jumping are 

 much more necessary in a country, to cross parts of 

 which — I quote an expression attributed to our mourned 

 comrade. Captain Middleton — is not unlike jumping in and 

 out of the pews of a church. 



On the sport of Friday I have not long to dwell. The 

 meet being at Brough Cross, hounds were first run through 

 the gorse at the foot of Ballyvoneare Mountain. (I re- 

 produce these names with a certain degree of fear and 

 trembling, and under all protest agamst my being held 

 responsible for further exactitude than painstaking inquiry 

 and a barbarous Saxon ear enable me to attain.) How- 

 ever, I may say that it was in the demesne of Doneraile — 

 the place it was hoped Lord Chesham might have 

 succeeded in obtaining as a residence, in view of his taking 

 the country — that they first found. A brace of foxes were 

 started here ; and one of them, rumour informed us after- 

 wards, had taken his line for Cahirmee Gorse, which would 

 have introduced us to some far better ground. But 

 hounds were hard upon another, and chased him to death 

 round the plantations of the demesne. 



Of the three, or four, foxes found at what I take to be 

 Annakisna Wood, they hunted one for a couple of miles or 

 so to the Blackwater, over anything but a captivating line, 

 where even the un-Irish element of ridge-and-furrow was 

 met with, while the more indigenous bog had not dis- 

 appeared at its presence. The great salmon river was in 

 full water ; but a ford existed some half a mile down stream 



