The Savannah morning news., 1902-07-20
FOX HUNTING ON FOOT.
In England Their Are Regions
Where Horses Cannot Be Used.

From the London Standard.
Fox-hunting in most of our English
shires is a sport for the wealthy, but
in the Lake country. as Mr.. A. G.
Bradley shows in the new number of
Macmillan's Magazine, it can be en-
joyed by "all sorts and conditions of
men"-provided they are not ''scant of
breath" In this region horse would
be as useless as at the hunt in Liddes-
dale described in Guy Mannering,
where the fox was slaughtered with
out any attention to the ordinary rules
and decorum of sport" but apparent
ly, with quite as much qualification to
both bipeds and quadrupeds as If all
due ritual had been followed"
In Lakeland, also though the fox is
treated with more ceremony, notwith-
standing its depredations among the
lambs, it has to be followed on foot,
SO that all can join the chase, No
stronger testimony could be found to
the local popularity of the sport than
the simple monument in Threlkeld
Churchyard, at the foot of Saddleback,
which as Mr.. Bradley remarks, has
none other like it in this kingdom.
An inscription states that it is raised
in loving memory of noted veterans
of the chase, all of whom lie in this
,hurchyard." Then follow the names
of nearly 40 Statesmen" tenant-farm-
ers and villagers, all of whom have
passed away during the last 40 years,
and space is left for other names to
be added in the future. Not one of
these worthless of their living successors
ever donned pink or crossed a horse to
| follow the fox, yet what most of these
men did not know about hunting is not,
| as the saying goes. worth knowing"
Besides the Threlkeld pack there are
| four others in Lakeland, and it is with
| the Patterdale one that Mr.. Bradley
| chiefly concerns himself, Sometimes it
ranges far afield. even to Crossfel and
the moors around Kirkby Stephan: it
! has run it's foxes-and killed them.
| too-across the borders of Yorkshire, of
Durham, and even West Northumber-
land. The pack is less miscellaneous
| than that kept up by the Liddesdale
farmers. for the hounds do not much
| differ in general appearance from those
| of the Pytchley or the Quorn They
have. we are told, good deal of War
wickshire blood in them, but still more
| of "the old Welsh foxhound, with it's
| Characteristic marking of pale lemon
| and white"-altogether different from
The small weedy hounds of Virginia.
| The terriers, however, are more mis-
cellaneous in aspect there. though they
do not, as in Liddesdale, take the chief
| part by driving the fox down to the
| lower ground, when the swift deer
| hounds are slipped on his track. Deeds
| rather than pedigree are their recon-
mendation, for the subterranean haunts
of the fox in the Lakeland hills require
no ordinary dog.
| When young and inexperienced they
are apt to run into dangers above as
we'll as below ground by getting "bink-
ed" or landed in a place from which
they can neither advance not retreat
| Sometimes they are lost for days to-
| gether. One that had gone hunting
on its own account disappeared for
a month. 1t was mourned for dead,
but one morning "a dreadful apart
| tion," hairless, fieshless. seemingly al
most blind, "crawled into the cottage,
staggered toward the hearth, flung It
self down on the rug" and ultimately
recovered. Once a hound and two
terriers vanished together for several
days. The hound returned plump, but
one only of the terriers, and this In
miserable condition, so there were
grave suspicious that the others, like
the Lady of Riga, had taken an in
side passage.