44 STAG-HUNTING ON EXMOOR. 



seems at once to have made him enthusiastic. The 

 beginning of his twenty-seven years' mastership is told 

 thus in the first words of his journal. 



" The sporting community in the neighbourhood of 

 Dulverton having long felt that their country was not 

 sufficiently hunted, and being possessed with an itch- 

 ing desire to have a pack of foxhounds which they 

 could call their owiiy in the spring of 1855 ^^- Froude 

 Bellew (a nephew of the celebrated Parson Froude) 

 consented to start a pack for their edification. Mr. 

 Bellew had inherited from his uncle a beautiful and 

 unequalled pack of harriers, which up to this time he 

 had himself hunted, aided by the faithful Jack 

 Babbage.* The well-known yellow pied pack, how- 

 ever, being rather on the small side for fox-hunting, 

 Mr. Bellew, in the month of May, purchased the pack 

 belonging to Mr. Horlock, a well known M.F.H. of 

 that day, who was just then giving up a subscription 

 pack in Cornwall. 



" This pack having arrived at Rhyll, Mr. Bellew on 

 the 13th of that month announced in the most liberal 

 and sportsman -like way that if the country thought it 

 desirable ever again to have a pack of staghounds to 

 hunt the wild deer, and any one would undertake the 

 * Till 1870 huntsman of the Staghounds. 



