FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA. f)37 



a Red Fox. I have never heard of a Gray Fox being seen 

 there, although in the King country, seven or eight miles 

 to the southeast, Grays are numerous. 



In front of us, to the north, was the creek; west of us 

 three miles, the mountains. Eastward four or five miles, 

 running north and south, was a low line of hills called the 

 Old Ridge, covered with black-jack and broom-sedge; and 

 in many parts lay huge boulders, and more or less extensive 

 tracts of loose magnesian shale, seamed and scarred all over 

 with galls, washes, and gulleys. In places, these hills were 

 densely covered with scrub-pine and tangled masses of 

 green-brier, hawthorn, and grape-vines. Behind us, to the 

 south, extended an open country, from the foot of Bull 

 Run Mountain eastward, some ten miles, to Broad Run, a 

 considerable tributary of the Potomac. 



Our Foxes usually ran a quadrilateral, going up the 

 creek west to Negro Mountain, a low, brushy range of hills 

 extending from Bull Run Range; along Negro Mountain 

 from two to five miles southward; thence eastward to Broad 

 Run, and thence northward along the Old Ridge to the 

 creek, and up the creek to Negro Mountain. My father' s 

 estate extended northward to the creek, and eastward 

 down the creek several miles, occupying a central position 

 in the quadrilateral described, the circuit of which was 

 about twenty miles as the Foxes ran it. Foxes started in 

 front of us, almost invariably ran down the creek to the 

 Old Ridge, southward along the Old Ridge to Broad Run, 

 up that run and across the open country to Negro Mount- 

 ain, northward along Negro Mountain to the creek, and 

 again down the creek. 



In what we called the mill-dam field, a splendid old Red 

 dog-Fox had taken up his quarters, and my father, some- 

 times alone, sometimes in company with some friends, with 

 select hounds from their paeks, had run him around the 

 quadrilateral divers times without being able to do any- 

 thing with him other than to put him in perfect training; 

 and it began to be thought that no pack could either kill 

 him or run him to earth. 



