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Frank Forester's sporting scenes and characters
Frank Forester's sporting scenes and characters Author:Henry William Herbert Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER in. A HUNTING STABLE. Less than five minutes walking brought the party to the door of the stables, which, unvisited as yet by Percy Fairfax, contai... more »ned the gallant horses on which he was to make his debut, on the following day, before the great convention of the best sportsmen in all England. He had never as yet ridden once to English fox-hounds, and every one who has ever seen the two knows how widely different is that glorious sport, as pursued in Virginia and some of the southern states of North America, and as performed even in the provincial countries of England, much more at the very metropolis of fox-hunting, Melton Mowbray. In the latter, no fields less than forty acres, smooth as a Turkey carpet, without a bush or brake to stint the rattling gallop of the thorough-breds, nothing less than which can live behind the racing, high-drawn, fine-bred modern fox-hounds; old white-thorn fences with double rails and ditches, insuperable obstacles to any thing short of the indomitable bottom of English horses and the unconquerable pluck of English riders, or timber palings six feet perpendicular height, or rivulets, like the Whissendine, with ten yards of bright water between its level banks, all to be taken in the stride, without the time to choose a favorable place to take them; foxes that are found in small furze coverts, or gorses as they are called in Leicestershire, and go away straight as an arrow, across country, never doubling or running rings, till they either go to ground without the limits of the hunt, and are so saved, or 80 (45) are run into by the pack, in the middle of some wide grass field, game to the last; and render up their lives to the triumphant chorus of who-whoop !" add to this a scent so burning, that the hounds rarely stoop to pick it fr...« less