80 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



Readers will, perhaps, pardon me for having whipped off 

 on to local history; but, by way of excuse, I may say that 

 though I know something of the historical conditions of the 

 district in which I was born and brought up, I care most for 

 it on account of the sport of all sorts I have seen in it. In 

 the Allansford district every field and almost every inch of 

 woodland reminds me of some incident in hunting, and I may 

 now go on to say that the high road between Allansford and 

 Riding Mill passes through no village, no town, and no popu- 

 lation. It is a land of wide pastures of " white " land and 

 fir plantations, and just as good scenting ground as I ever saw. 

 The road winds up the hill from Allansford, and in the firsit^ 

 mile or two there are a few fields — always the smallest fields — 

 of arable land; but when the higher ground is reached these 

 disappear, and it is grass, and nothing but grass, all the way 

 to the Tyne Valley. I am making rather a point of this 

 because a correspondent writes me saying that, although he 

 does not know the country, he has always understood that the 

 plough land was more extensive than the grass, and he refers 

 me to The Hunting Countries of England, in which the follow- 

 ing is, in the description of the Braes of Derwent : ' ' Most of 

 the land is under the plough — though grass fields come in here 

 and there, more often in the form of temporary seeds." I 

 have looked up the reference, and find it correct. And I turn 

 to Baily's Hunting Directory, where the description of the 

 oo'Untry is as follows : "A bank and stone wall country ; 

 about 60 per cent, pasture, 15 per cent, plough, and the 

 remainder about equal proportions of woodland and moor." 

 Who gave the description for Bcdly I have no idea, but it 

 is absolutely true, and I feel quite certain that " Brooksby," 

 who wrote the Hunting Co-imtries of England, cannot have 

 seen the western and bigger side of the Braes of Derwent 

 country, but has probably judged the hunt from what he 

 saw from Blaydon Burn, the residence of the late Colonel 

 Cowen. The volumes describing the various countries were 

 written more than thirty-five years ago, and it is possible that 

 some land has been laid down to grass since then, but I 

 may add that by far the greater part of the arable land in the 

 hunt is at the extreme east of the country, about Blaydon 

 Burn, Barlow Fell, and Greenside. There are odd fields of 



