The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-01-11


a sedge with hunters as supporting
grifins. From the Potomac to the Rio
Grande, from the Chesapeake to Okla
homa. there is hardly a considerable
stretch where the art and mystery of
fox-hunting is unknown.
The reason is not far to seek. There
.he dominant race-note is the English
strain. unmixed and sturdy, which first
raonled Maryland, Virginia and the
Carolinas. 1t loved sport no less than
,;bertv. Witness George Washington
setting down in his dairy how he went
a-hunting with Jacky GUSTS and
oo+nbed a fox" The record shows him
n have been fully man of his time
and his people and is wonderfully
Illuminating as to the root of his
The Virginia of to-day is still a
sportsman's paradise. Foxes abound
there, also country fit for the chase.
wide. tenantless stretchee, half over
grown with young pines, beset with
sedge. Therapeutics and thorn clumps
and threaded with whipping Streams,
Weld alike cover for the quarry and
room for good hunting. Where a
plantation intervenes there are fences
mot so many, it is true, as the holder
sportsmen yearn for, but enough,
when supplemented with bitches and
fallen timber to furnish a fair amount
of jumping.
The season is a long one, from
September to late March. Almost
anywhere outside the mountain coun-
ties. strangers within the gates, If they
go about it rightly, can manage to
Join in the chase, without going too
far a-field.
This, of course, is apart from the
regular hunt clubs, which, South or
North. are modelled on modern Eng
lish lines, and rather more concern
themselves with nice points of sport
than with the pith and marrow of it.
There are hunt clubs in nearly: every
state. Often they are the outgrowth
of exotic influence. Englishmen whom
the exigencies of the cotton trade, or
tobacco, or iron, keep in the United
States for six months of each year,
have a hand in starting many of them
English emigrants also are behind
some of the clubs-notably those of
Virginia. AS for the hunts at Aiken
and other winter resorts, they are
as little racy of the soil as the Radnor
or the Meadowbrook would be if bodt-
ly transplanted several degrees fur
Their South.
The Composite Hunt the FavOrite.
For nQQL CluD OI6 nGSQS,
of course, to be properly introduced
Once he is thus introduced hospitality
is boundless. But those in search of
sport pure and simple, without tfE
frills and letters of society, will do
we'll to eliminate the clubs from con-
sideration. Each and several they are
worthy institutions, answering admir-
ably the ends of their creation, pro-
noting comradery, exciting healthful
aT1IIIa finn in md ft1If 70 local
trade, but still not to be named be-
side a composite hunt where almost
every rider comes up with dogs at
his horses heels, and is thus, in
way, his own M. F. H.
He who shares such a hunt knows
ever after the true magic of fox-hunt
ing, particularly if the huntsmen have
ridden across well-grassed country,
under cloudy sky with a southerly
wind playing trickily in the face. The
grass country is never all grass-there
will be fallows, stubble, young wheat
and stripped corn land, with wooded
skirts, rocky hiilsides and brier fields:
the briers islanded in seas of yellow
sedge. 1t is at least SeVen-eighths
open and cut criss-crossed with fences
of many sorts. Hedges, hedges with
wire, post and rail, plank and wire,
occasional timber palings, still more
occasional stone walls, and old-fash-
Toned crooked rail enclosures make
up the most part of the array. What
ever the sort they commonly run
about fields so big that there is good
galloping between jumps. Still, the
pace is rarely very hot. 1t never en-
tiers the mind of man or horse or
hound that salvation hinges on COM
ing out half a second ahead of a
worlds record.
All that the dogs may lack in speed
they make up in beauty and music.
The huntsmen keep hounds very often
IN inverse ratio to the size of their
farms. Thus the master of thou
sand acres may content himself with
Two couple, while his neighbor, who
owns bare hundred and fifty comes
braVely out with six couple at heel.
Cornbread is the hounds staple food,
and it is estimated that four couple
OF dogs will eat as much as one mule
Until the Civil War the dogs were
almost exclusively black-and-tan or
olue-mottled. There are still fox-huHt-
ers who swear by those strains, al
tnough, in a measure, they have been
ssupplanted by more fashionably bred
mounds with white coats and liver or
orange spots.
Shakespeare must have had the
Dlack-and-tan in mind when he wrote
Of
Ears that sweep away the morning
dew;
Slow in pursuit, but matched in
mouth like BELLS
hounds give tongue individually IS
they do most other things, but there
IS a quality in the black-and- tan crying
which makes it unique. Less loud
IMAM the blue-mottle, less shrill than
the racing fine-drawn, orange-spotted
gentry, 1t carries wonderfully, and
thrills as far as heard,
The Hunters Full of Fire.
Horses bred in the grass country
rove to hunt as we'll as their masters.
Almost without exception they are
quick and clever fencers, full of fire,
and up to carrying fair weight. There
mas been from the beginning a large
nIusion of blood in the native stock.
supplement two or three judicious
thoroughbred crosses and the result is
an animal excellently fit. The best of
mem stand between fifteen hands and
sixteen hands, one inch. taller
Deast is apt to be leggy and washy.
nose under fifteen hands rarely show
the bone and substance necessary to
Keep heavy man well up to the
mounds. Still many of them are mag
nlncent jumpers, and may lead the
hunt with a light rider, such as a boy
or woman.
1t is an article of faith with many
south country huntsmen that red and
gray foxes will not live in the same
region. The red, they say, drive the
gray fellows out, to the ruin and con-
fusion of sport, as the red foxes can
run long enough to break down two
packs of hounds. So where reds APP