58 FOX-HUNTING IN THE SHIRES 



they have pictured it as a vast plain of grass intersected 

 with flying fences. Instead of that, it is, as my readers 

 will before now have learned, an undulating, rather 

 hilly country and the fences of very varied descriptions. 

 Sometimes you can fly these, and again at others you 

 can barely creep through. Often only courage in the 

 man, boldness in the horse, and the constraining effect 

 of pace in the hounds will enable a rider to cross them 

 at all. There are fences which even a good man to 

 hounds would hardly ride at if he had time to think. 

 Horses can do more perhaps than we give them credit 

 for, yet it is certainly only the pace that carries us 

 over some parts of the country. A horse must be a 

 hunter, and a man must be something of a horseman, 

 able at least to sit still and leave his horse's head 

 alone. Moreover, he must like jumping, or he will 

 find himself out of place here. " I think, sir," once 

 said a well-known hunt servant to a man who was 

 alongside, as a stranger turned aside from a big fence, 

 " that gentleman has no business in our shire." 



Although, however, the man who would see a hunt 

 must like jumping, he must not jump when he can 

 fairly avoid it, for it has been well said that to be 

 ridden over a big fence with fourteen stone on his 

 back takes as much out of a horse as to gallop half- 

 way over a forty-acre field. The best men do not 

 waste their horses' strength, knowing that, though 

 great, it is not unlimited. Therefore the men with- 

 out judgment seldom see the end of a fast run. Thus 

 if you watch the best men, you will see that they 

 start quickly and gallop hard till they are on terms 

 with hounds, and they turn from no possible fences, 

 but they are always ready to trot off to a gate or 

 take advantage of a gap if by so doing they do not 

 lose their places. It may be safely asserted that in 



