8 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



oak there is practically no hazel. In fact, in such oak woods 

 as there are bracken takes the place of hazel, and though this 

 forms a fine autumn covert, and stands up well until there is 

 fairly severe frost, it has a strong smell of its own, and is about 

 the worst scenting ground I ever knew, and particularly 

 harmful at cubhunting time, for there are patches of it ex- 

 tending over many acres, often just where cubs have been bred. 

 The Sawmill Wood, which lies between Long Edge lane and 

 Rippon Burn, contains a considerable amount of old beech and 

 some magnificent spruce, some of which are nearly 100ft. high. 

 It is, in fact, a real wood, and not a larch plantation except 

 in one or two corners ; but it is overrun with bracken, and 

 even when I was a boy the Durham County huntsman used tc 

 complain about it. "If you could rid yon Sawmill Wood of the 

 bracken I should kill a vast more foxes," he used to say, and 

 most certainly the bracken is a great drawback every autumn 

 until it is well laid by frost or snow, or both. As Rippon Burn 

 began to decline the north-west corner, about 10 acres, of the 

 Sawmill Wood took its place, and it was from this corner that 

 Richard Freeman viewed the eighteen foxesi over the road. 



North of the Woodlands coverts is the Knitsley Valley, 

 with a stream running through it which joins the Browney at 

 Lanchester, four miles away. This Knitsley Valley has one 

 long, straggling covert named Howens Gill, of which the 

 extreme noitherly end is the Braes of Derwent country, 

 and both packs draw the gill by arrangement. There are 

 alwa5'^s foxes in some part of it but it is the worst covert in 

 either hunt to get away from, for it consists of two hanging 

 woods, each on a steep hillside, and foxes run up and down 

 the full length of it and cross to the other side and repeat 

 the same game. There is too much " up the banks and dov.'n 

 the banks " for a riding field, and possibly Surtees had Howens 

 Gill in his mind when he wrote the conversation between Sir 

 Moses and Cuddy Flintoff, on the return of the former from 

 a day of up and down the banks. But if Howens Gill is 

 rather a heartbreaking place— and bad scenting ground to 

 boot — it has a wonderful spur which used to be called Beggar- 

 side, but is now known as the Oak Gill. This is only a little 

 place in acreage, but of considerable length, and with good dry 

 lying to the south, and it has been the starting point of two 



