6 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



where I was staying. Just below the old kennels at Castleside 

 a fox crossed the road, and shortly afterwards eleven couples 

 of hounds. I was riding a horse I intended to hunt with the 

 Durham on the following day, but the temptation was great, 

 so I followed on. Scent was holding, and hounds ran over 

 the North Durham boundary and went to Sheepwalks, where 

 there was a main earth. I knew the locality of this earth, 

 went to it, and found about two couples of hounds marking. 

 The earth was in the heart of the wood, and I tried to entice 

 the hounds away, but what really moved them was the sound 

 of their companions giving tongue. I quickly left the wood, 

 and hounds ran on to Broomshieldsi, the very place I was going 

 to, and there the second fox got to ground. What had hap- 

 pened was that a fresh fox had jumped up in Sheepwalks 

 and taken a majo'rity of the eleven couples on. The hounds 

 were the Braes of Derwent, of which the late Colonel Cowen 

 was then Master, but the curious part of the thing was that 

 I never saw a single rider or a hunt servant, and the fact 

 is hounds had slipped their field several miles from where they 

 crossed my path. At Broomshields we succeeded in coaxing 

 most of the hounds into the stable yard, and there they 

 remained until a hunt servant arrived from Blaydon Bum the 

 next morning. This hunt, as far as I saw it, had a seven-mile 

 point, but I have quite forgotten what hounds had done before 

 I saw them (except the fact that they had come several miles), 

 though Colonel Cowen told me all about it. the neixt time I saw 

 him. 



Sheepwalks, mentioned as the starting place of many 

 good hunts, was more than half a century ago the best 

 covert in its own particular district, and was in high repute 

 when Mr. Russell had a pack of foxhounds at Brancepeth 

 Castle {circa 1850) and for some years later. After a time, 

 however, a long defunct gorse called the Freehold, nearly a 

 mile to the east of Sheepwalks, used to catch up all the foxes 

 of the district. The Freehold is now the grass field to the 

 north-east of the most easterly entrance to the Woodlands on 

 Long Edge lane, and there is still a well-known breeding earth 

 among trees at one corner of it. llippon Burn followed the 

 Freehold as the best covert of the district, and for many years 

 hounds used to be taken there direct from the Browney Bank 



