28o 



5 TEEPLE- Chasing 



In those days steeples had something to do with 

 steeple-chases. Courses were not marked out ; that 

 came later, and the regulation ' steeple-chase course ' of 

 the present day later still. Some distant point was 

 fixed on — four, five, eight, it might have been ten 

 miles off (unnecessarily and cruelly severe chases of twice 

 ten miles are recorded), and to this the riders made the 



Started off on a Steeple-chase eohthvvith 



best of their way. The hunters that ran these races 

 were, as regards the question of speed, almost immeasur- 

 ably inferior to the chasers of to-day, which latter are with 

 the rarest exception thoroughbred ; most believers in the 

 past flatter themselves that there was wonderful supe- 

 riority of endurance about the old-fashioned hunter, that 

 is to say, that he could ' stay ' at racing pace better than 



