266 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



refreshed determination and proper regard for cultivation 

 and the damage fmid. This is the worst of it. The plaine 

 or open is not good going ; it is very deep, with that pro- 

 testing deepness of spade cultivation. I do not know how 

 the land is held, whether in small or large holdings. Of 

 course it is the sort of thing I ought to have asked and did 

 not ask ; but the plaine shows the honourable symptoms of 

 small ownership. Eiding over it gave me the same feeling 

 of doing unkind damage to poor people's pains as riding 

 over allotments or cottage gardens would give me. It has 

 neither the look nor feel of a hunting country. Of course I 

 am only speaking of what I saw, as I fancy in some parts of 

 France, notably the Landes and La Sologne, there is plenty 

 of rough country, although not so wild as in the beginning 

 of this century, when land was sold au son de la voix and 

 the stretch of ground reached by a man's voice sold for a 

 few francs. 



I only had four days' hunting. Two in the forest of 

 Chantilly with the Due de Chartres and the Prince de 

 Joinville ; one in the forest of Halatte with the Halatte hounds, 

 kept by M. le Marquis de Valon ; and one at Fontainebleau 

 with M. M. Lebaudy. 



On the Halatte day we had an excellent hunt. It was a 

 very wet day, but only began to rain about 8 o'clock a.m., 

 after several sunny days with white frosts at night. There 

 was a capital scent, and I was very pleased with the hounds 

 — the way they were hunted, or rather not hunted, and 

 their style and character. I was very unlucky in not seeing 

 M. de Valon hunt his hounds ; he had broken two ribs just 

 before I arrived. We ran through some beech woods some- 

 thing like the birdless grove at Goodwood, and, just as I 

 have noticed in the Goodwood and the Buckinghamshire 

 beechwoods of the Queen's country, the hounds ran a great 

 pace over the thick carpet of wet beech leaves. I do not 



