76 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



was a personal friend of the older members of the hunt, as 

 well as of the young hunting folk of both sexes among his 

 own contemporaries whom he enlisted as new members. He 

 had also from early boyhood been an enthusiast of hunting, 

 determined to acquire knowledge of the sport in all its sur- 

 roundings. He had studied the conditions which belong to 

 present day hunting, and had for several years been remark- 

 ably well mounted and well turned out. He had no hounds 

 to begin with, as Colonel Cowen's pack had been disposed of 

 during the previous spring, and he had no kennels beyond the 

 old buildings of the defunct Shotley Bridge Beagles. He at 

 once built new kennels on his own property at Tinkler Hill 

 and procured drafts from other kennels with which to begin 

 the season. I shall have something to say about these later, 

 but at present I may put it on record that the new scratch 

 pack did wonderfully well in their first season, and that this 

 was almost entirely due to the fact that the best of the new 

 hounds were possessed of any amount of drive. Naturally 

 some were better than others, but the best — though getting on 

 in years — took to their new country as a fish takes to water, 

 and the upshot was that before the season was at an end foxes 

 instead of hanging to the woodlands were being forced into 

 the open, the result being that capital runs — many with long 

 points — were being obtained over a fine, wild country, the 

 going of which, outside the coverts, is, in spite of the hilly 

 nature of the land, on the whole the very best I ever found in 

 any country. 



One of the first things Mr. Priestman did after he assumed 

 the mastership of the Braes of Derwent was to map out the 

 country into quarters or districts, and arrange a plan by 

 which every covert should be drawn, when possible, in regular 

 order, so that there should be the same amount of hunting 

 everywhere, and no complaints of one covert or district being 

 favoured at the expense of another. Like every other country, 

 the Braes of Derwent has its favoured localities, and, as a 

 matter of course, certain fixtures are much more popular than 

 others, but the plan of hunting each district in turn has 

 worked very well, and I need hardly say that many of the very 

 best hunts have come from the least popular coverts, while 

 occasionally the best coverts in the best country have had 



