THE BRAES OF DERWENT COUNTRY. 91 



time hounds were at Fyne House. At all events, I never saw 

 anyone for an hour, when hounds, after covering a great deal 

 of country, had run to ground midway between the present 

 Master's house and the village of Ebchester, having made a 

 point of five or &iix miles. Curiously, hounds wont round the 

 Mere Burn that day without going into it, for from the 

 Bolisher Covert they ran parallel with the lane all the way to 

 Newlands, only touching covert when they went through the 

 corner of Clark's pastures. My old horse ran away with the 

 dogcart down this long and gradual descent, but pulled up at 

 Guce as hounds oroseed the road in front of him at Stand 

 Alone. 



I could 'give many more accounts of good runs from the 

 chain of Sneep coverts, and may mention that at one time it 

 was not an easy matter to force foxes away from the neigh- 

 bourhood of the river. I can think of days when one crossed 

 the stream half a dozen times in the forenoon, and when foxes 

 either went up the banks, or down the banks, but resolutely 

 declined to face the open. But this state of affairs was, I am 

 almost certain, chiefly due to the mange visitation, and was 

 caused by the foxes being weak and feeble. Possibly, too, 

 the hounds ha,ve more drive than they had nearly twenty 

 years ago, but of this I am doubtful, for even the foundation 

 hounds of the present pack were possessed of great drive, and 

 were not in the least inclined to hang on the scent. On the 

 other hand, I am quite certain that the foxes all over the 

 country have improved in strength and stamina in an unusual 

 degree since the mange was got under, and now good runs 

 come just as frequently from the Sneep as they do from any 

 small covert in the open country. West and North of the 

 Sneep, between the Badger Wood and the village of Edmund- 

 byers, and the covert' at Hunter House, there is a pretty grass 

 valley of four or five miles in length, in which there are two 

 small plantations, Eddys Bridge Wood and Edmundbyers 

 Bum Wood. Both occasionally hold a fox, but they are not 

 frequently drawn, being somewhat remote. The Edmundbyers 

 Burn covert is at right angles to the Derwent, half a mile 

 from the river, and the North Durham ran through it. in the 

 course of their memorable hunt from the Oak Gill near Wood- 

 lands, to Bog Hall in the Haydon country. At Edmundbyers 



