64 HINTS ON VISITING A STRANGE COUNTRY 



if a horse can go well in one country he can do so 

 in another, but nothing is a greater fallacy. 



Horses which have gone well in some Irish counties 

 may be able to do well even in Leicestershire, and 

 there are also some of our English counties, bank 

 countries, where horses which have been hunted in 

 them can go in Dublin, Louth, Meath, Kildare, etc. ; 

 but it is very rarely the case that I have known 

 English -bred hunters go well in Ireland until they 

 had been properly broken to the country, when they will 

 do well enough. As an example of this I may quote 

 a horse named Stilton, belonging to Captain Cunning- 

 ham, iith Hussars. This horse was the biggest and 

 freest jumper I ever saw, but by careful schooling he 

 became a most brilliant fencer even over an Irish 

 county. He was entered to run for the Grand 

 Military at Punchestown, and we had far less trouble 

 to get him fit to run than his owner to ride, and over 

 such a course a man must needs be * fit ' to have a 

 chance of winning. It was a great trial of patience, 

 and was a hopeless task to prevail on the owner to go 

 to bed in decent time and take the necessary care of 

 himself. The result was that when the day arrived 

 he was not able to hold his horse and ride to his orders, 

 which were to lie back about fourth up to a certain point ; 

 but his horse ran clean away with him from start to 

 finish, and instead of winning easily, won by a neck 

 only, while the rider was only just able to stick in 

 his saddle long enough to get into the paddock, where 

 he almost fainted from exhaustion. Nor is this the 

 only case in which I have had the greatest difficulty in 

 getting men fit to ride, whereas with their horses it has 

 been easy enough. We all felt so certain of Stilton 



