190 GALLANT RUN WITH THE BELVOIR HOUNDS. 



Cecil Forester, Esq., and one or two others. On 

 examining the period of duration of this wonderful 

 chace, it was found to have lasted three hours. 

 This run is supposed by all sportsmen to have been 

 the best that can be remembered in the annals of 

 fox-hunting. Its great distinguishing marks were, 

 the distance of the point where the fox was found 

 from the place where the hounds were whipped from 

 the scent, and the still greater distance of the furthest 

 point in the run (Gotham) from the same place. The 

 former is not less, as the crow flies, than fourteen 

 miles ; the latter, eighteen. The other qualifications 

 which give this run a decided superiority over all 

 others that can be remembered, were the beauty and 

 the novelty of the country over which the fox carried 

 us, and the extraordinary and continued pace at 

 which the hounds ran during the whole time. Con- 

 fident in his own strength, the fox never endeavoured 

 to keep farther away from the pack than a few 

 minutes ; and to this, perhaps, is partly to be attri- 

 buted the apparent goodness of the scent, and the 

 consequent severity of the chace. He was at no time 

 pressed to defeat*, excepting when he gave up his 

 Gotham point; nor did he fear showing himself 

 occasionally, as he did before we reached Bottesford, 

 and again at Long Bennington, and a third time at 

 Sir John Thorold's Plantation. It was thought by 



* It must be recollected, that this fox was possessed of such stoutness, that he 

 endured, for three hours, the pace which is in general supposed equal to the 

 destruction of an ordinary fox in forty minutes. He had evidently a knowledge 

 of Mr. Musters' county, by his running up wind to Cotham ; and when he found 

 that it was not safe to persevere longer in that line, he immediately determined 

 upon reaching the Great Woodlands, nearly twenty miles distant in another 

 direction. 



