RIDING Al STAG-HOUNDS 



Yet old practitioners, notably that prince of 

 sportsmen, the Rev. John Russell, contrive to see 

 runs of many hours' duration without so entirely 

 exhausting their horses but that they can travel 

 some twenty miles home across the moor. Such 

 men as Mr. Granville Somerset, the late Mr. 

 Dene of Barnstaple, Mr. Bissett himself, though 

 weighing twenty stone, and a score of others — for 

 in the West good sportsmen are the rule, not the 

 exception — go well from find to finish of these 

 long, exhausting chases, yet never trespass too 

 far on the generosity and endurance of the noble 

 animal that carries them to the end. - And why? 

 Because they take pains, use their heads sagaci- 

 ously, their hands skilfully, and their heels scarcely 

 at all. To their experience I am indebted for the 

 following little hints which I have found service- 

 able when embarked on those wide, trackless 

 wastes, brown, endless, undulating, and spacious 

 as the sea. 



There are happily no fences, and the chief 

 obstructions to be defeated, or rather negotiated, 

 are the "combes" — a succession of valleys that 

 trend upward from the shallow streams to the 

 heathery ridges, narrowing as they ascend till lost 

 in the level surface of the moor. Never go down 

 into these until your deer is sinking. So surely 

 as you descend will you have to climb the opposite 

 rise ; rather keep round them towards the top, 



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