172 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



CHAPTEE IX 



BANKS AND DITCHES 



Make me feel the wild pulsation I have often felt before, 



When my horse went on before me and my hack was at the door, 



Yearning for the large excitement that the coming sport should yield. 

 And rejoicing in the cropper that I got the second field. 



Ha, ha, ha ! was that an oxer ? What, old Eambler, is he dead ? 

 What of that ? pick up the pieces, he was mortal, go ahead 



There is very little to be said about the Buckinghamshire 

 side of the Queen's country. It is a land of large undulations, 

 light-coloured plough, beech-woods, and flints. Here and 

 there in the valleys a narrow tract of permanent pasture 

 cheers you up, and fills another corner in the sketch-book of 

 memory. I saw the body of the pack carry a rare head up 

 the emerald stream line of the Amersham Valley one day, 

 with a hound called Splendour three hundred yards in front 

 of them all — we could never make out where or how he had 

 got such a lead. But it cannot be considered a good hunting 

 country from a riding point of view. In old days the Queen's 

 Hounds used sometimes to run down into the Vale of 

 Aylesbury from Gerrard's Cross — at least, so the late William 

 Bartlett, for many years second whip, used to tell me. One 

 or other of our Nestors used always to remark to me — it was 

 the veteran commonplace of this particular meet — that the 

 wind, whatever its quarter, was right for taking us thither. 

 But, alas ! it never did so in my time. At the same time, 

 all about Gerrard's Cross and Beaconsfield is not by any 

 means a bad' stag-hunting country. At all events there is 



