236 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



Some years ago Masters of hounds were perhaps more easily 

 found than they were, say, in the decade immediately preced- 

 ing the war. What will happen in the future when countries 

 become vacant it is impossible to say, but it is the case that 

 the Masters who were in office during the summer of 1914 held 

 on to their duties with wonderful accord. Quite a consider- 

 able number of those who went back to or joined the forces 

 still continued their mastership, appointing a deputy — very 

 often their wives — to carry on in their absence. Indeed, one 

 and all showed extraordinary spirit in the matter of carrying 

 on, and it may he the case that there will in many 

 countries be less of the " pomp and circumstance " of 

 the hunt, and therefore a decrease in expenditure. This, how- 

 ever, is not my theme, for I am still trying to give some 

 idea of the changes in the conditions of hunting which have 

 taken place during the last two generations. I may say 

 at the outset, then, that the travelling Master, who took a 

 pack in a country which was not his own by birth or residence, 

 was by no means unknown fifty years ago, and even before. 

 Indeed, Surtees in his novels has scores of references to stranger 

 INIasters; but I am inclined to think that the number has 

 greatly increased, and it passes through my mind that I 

 have at the moment two friends, and both twenty years 

 or more younger than I am, who have each had three 

 separate and distinct countries, hundreds of miles apart, 

 and who evidently love mastership, and all its triumphs and 

 troubles. 



Time was when, except in some of the Shire countries, the 

 Masters of the provincial packs were, in nine oases out of ten, 

 local men with many and varied interests in the country which 

 they hunted, and as a broad general rule the local Master was 

 the right man in the right place. His knowledge of hunting 

 and his enthusiasm were known before he was appointed, and 

 on his side he had the advantage of knowing his followers, the 

 landlords within his district, and generally a considerable 

 number of the farmers. He was in a majority of cases a land 

 and covert owner himself, and he knew where fox preservation 

 was strict and where it was slack. He also very often knew 

 how to strengthen the weak places in his country ; but in many 

 ways matters were much more simple for him than they have 



