369 



and pistol. Inasmuch, however, as I have not dealt in this book with 

 target-shooting, my readers must seek elsewhere for his records at 

 Wimbledon and other places, when they will find they are, on the 

 whole, unsurpassed by anyone, and that up to when he was nearly 

 three-score years and ten. 



Of him it was written, some thirty years ago, by one qualified to 

 judge, "that since the invention of gunpowder no other man has yet 

 been born who was such a complete master of the fowling-piece, rifle 

 and pistol ; and for many years he offered to back himself for £5,000 

 against any man in the whole world for a three-cornered match with 

 these weapons." 



Captain Ross attributed his preserving until late in life more 

 activity than many young men and most men of middle age, to the 

 fact of his having habitually kept himself in a state of moderate 

 training. This he did by living well and drinking moderately ; taking 

 a cold bath every morning, and walking daily, no matter what might 

 be the state of the weather, from eight to twelve mile?. At the a-.c of 

 sixty-five he was able, without fatigue, to go right ahead for fifty miles 

 at three and a half miles an hour. 



Unlike his friend Osbaldeston, Captain Ross was all through his 

 life a pradent man, showing great judgment and sound business 

 capacity in managing both his own affairs and those which devolve 

 upon a country gentleman. For some years he turned his attention to 

 politics and represented in Parliament the town of Montrose, which 

 was close to his ancestral home, and what was his popularity may be 

 inferred from the fact that out of four hundred votes he polled three 

 hundred and sixty. He was familiarly called "The Laird." 



In 1833 he married Miss Macrae, a Highland lady, and had five 

 sons, all of whom have followed their father's good example and are 

 sportsmen of high order. After his marriage Captain Ross gave up his 

 Melton establishment, and lived almost entirely in the wildest and 

 most out-of-the-way part of the Highlands as suiting his taste and 

 that of Mrs. Ross, who one of the sons described as being " one of the 

 very best of mothers that a lot of sons ever had to look up to and 

 love." 



He died at Rossie Castle, December 6, 1886, in his eighty-sixth year, 

 having retained his good health to the last. 



For Captain Ross's match on Clinker against Captain Douglas on 

 Radical, see Steeplechase chapter. 



As a contemporary of Osbaldeston and Ross, 

 Lord Kennedy 

 was an all-round sportsman of the first water, but he never attained 

 the superlative brilliancy of the other two. 



Of his lordship I shall narrate a performance which, if equalled, 

 was never surpassed. He backed himself for a considerable sum to 

 ride from his shooting quarters, then at Feloar, in Perthshire, to 



B B 



