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A PEEP AT THE PROVINCES;

OR,

THE CRACK PACKS OF ENGLAND UNDER REVIEW.

BY ACTEON.

(Continued.)

On Monday, the 13th of December, I started on my second journey into Dorsetshire; but, owing to the stupidity of a porter at Southampton, where the passengers who may wish to proceed beyond that place enter a fresh set of carriages, my baggage was either not placed in the train at all, or else consigned to a wrong compartment; for when I arrived at Dorchester, to my utter dismay, there was no luggage of mine to be found, excepting my gun, which I had had the precaution to take with me in the carriage in which I rode. My poor dog, too, a retriever which I had purchased some time previous from one of the best wildfowl-shooters who live close to Poole Harbour, had been left at the wrong station, having been pulled out of his den and detained, with three spaniels, the property of some other sportsman, who, upon asking for his dogs, was gratuitously presented with mine also. Here was a pretty go! Engaged to dine at a friend's house, six miles off, at seven o'clock; no clothes but those on my back; and what was ten times worse, my dog, for which at the moment I would not have taken kingdoms, gone from me, perhaps for ever. "Some poacher will get him,' thought I; "or perhaps he will, when alone and alarmed, slip his collar, and, with that intuitive intelligence peculiar to his race, find his way back to his old master." Racked by apprehensions the most wild and distressing, and almost frantic at my most unenviable position, I patiently resigned myself to the tender mercies of the conductor of an omnibus, and in due course of time found myself, in no very agreeable or contented mood, pacing up and down the coffee-room of the King's Arms Hotel, in the quiet town of Dorchester. Upon collecting my ideas, my first impression was that the best thing to be done was to take the first train back, and inquire at every station for my dog, and when I had secured him, to go right back to Southampton, and bring my baggage myself; but an assurance from the station-clerk that, if I would only rest quiet till the morning, I might depend upon receiving safe and sound all my property, instilled no small degree of consolation to my mental disquietude; and, with the full hope of seeing the sun rise upon a day fraught with better luck to myself, I at length submitted to the repeated and anxious solicitations of the attentive waiter; and, with as collected and rational a deportment as I was then able, proceeded to the discussion of a tureen of excellent hare-soup, "with a roast pullet to follow ;" and as the old brown sherry was not much amiss for a "tavern tap," I managed, by the assistance of sundry very old papers, both London and provincial, to spend three tedious hours, before I retired for the night to dream of my vexatious misfortunes.

Upon coming down to breakfast on the morrow at the usual hour, I

was informed that my dog had arrived safe and sound by the mailtrain; but train after train becoming due, and there being no tidings of my baggage, I was at length resolved to put up with the loss, at any rate for the present, and, by making the best out of the matter to send at once for "the Moses" of the place, have an evening suit stitched up with all possible dispatch, purchase a couple of changes of ready-made linnens, bargain for an elegant pair of light boots, and, with the few et ceteras which would be required, proceed at once to the place of my destination, being determined not to be done out of my fun, but brave the pitiless storm, both out hunting and shooting, in my shooting-dress in which I then was equipped. The artistical and facetious schneider who presides over the most approved and latest registered fashions in the town of Dorchester had already announced his presence in the coffee-room of the King's Arm's Hotel by the display of sundry roll-up Morocco books containing cloths and "tweeds" of every hue and colour in the rainbow, his long tape measure was already unfurled, and the right arm of your correspondent was even elevated with all the elegance of the last Parisian figures illustrative of the newest fashions in the tailors' windows, which are so temptingly displayed in the suburbs of the great metropolis, when, with breathless haste, a courier arrived, in the veritable person of "the boots," who at once informed us that "The gemmen's luggage was come, and carried up to number thirteen." Dashed from the highest pinnacle were hurled, or rather would have been, the hopes and pride of this disappointed man of cabbage, had he but already known that the honour of building a suit of garments for one second only to the renowned editor of this Magazine had, by the merest chance, been wrested from his grasp. However, to cut the story short, I dismissed the disappointed tailor, made him some compensation for his loss of time by purchasing a large travelling P-coat, ordered out a conveyance and the well-known pair of fast-trotting mules, and in half-an-hour was on my road to the intended place of my destination.

On Saturday, December the eighteenth, Mr. Farquharson's hounds met at Glanvilles Wootten, a fixture at the head or tail of the vale of Blackmoor, whichever, courteous reader, you may choose to call it. The morning was wet and stormy, but still there was a softness in the atmos phere that indicated many of the attributes of a real hunting day; and although the country was more than "knce-deep" in many places, from the incessant heavy rains that had lately fallen and were still in the act of descending, we had every prospect of enjoying a good day's sport. Owing to the unpropitious state of the weather, the field was very select, none showing but those keen fellows who would at any time much rather wear a wet shirt than miss a good day's fun. The worthy master himself was, I am sorry to record it, amongst the absentees; but his post was ably represented by the presence of his two sons. At ten-minutes before eleven Treadwell proceeded to draw those covers which are situated to the east of the village, the first of which was drawn blank, but in the adjoining cover a brace-and-a-half of foxes were speedily on foot. After giving the foxes two or three turns round this diversified cover, which consisted of high wood, fir-plantation, and brakes, the hounds were, in a most workmanlike manner on the part of the whippers-in, stopped to one fox, which went away at the upper end. Upon his breaking, it was evident that there was a real burning scent; but,

from the nature of the country, composed of much broken ground and a large wood, the pack were some time before they got settled well to him; when, after a very pretty burst of eighteen minutes, the fox went to ground in a large drain, and thus saved his life. At the time of going to ground, some of the hounds flashed upon the stale scent of another fox, which had come away from the same cover in which we had found, and which they ran at a slow hunting pace heelways for a short distance; but the state of the case soon becoming more evident every minute to the experienced eye of Treadwell, the hounds were taken away, and as the drain was well known to be too deep to allow of their fox being dug out, he was left for another day, and the huntsman proceeded to draw for a second fox, which was found after some time in Gore Woods. He broke as if about to face the lower part of the vale; but I suppose not fancying the water-meadows, which were perfectly inundated in some places, he turned to the right, and after a beautiful run of one hour and thirty-five minutes he was killed. For me, a perfect stranger in the country, to attempt to describe all the covers we passed through, the villages we galloped by, or even the hill we killed him on, would be perfectly impossible, as I kept no journal; suffice it to say, take it as a day's sport, it was considerably above the average, and one exceedingly interesting to a person fond of the work of hounds, for here we had every description of hunting-pace enough at times, for twenty minutes. together, to tail off the best field that ever attempted to go to hounds even in Leicestershire; then again we had two or three miles of beautiful hunting on the part of the hounds; then came some of Treadwell's well-directed casts, recovering by degrees those good terms with their fox, which an impetuous field on the cold brow of a storm-exposed hill had for a time deprived the pack, cheering his hounds and encouraging them to the last, as occasion required; for although Treadwell is a most remarkably quiet man in his work, he is not one of the mistaken silent sort, but constantly waits upon his hounds, and encourages them, when it is required, to a great degree, both with his voice and horn. In fact, I should consider him not only a most cheery fellow out hunting, but really second in the field to no huntsman of the present day. The country we passed over to-day was exceedingly diversified, consisting of every description of land and every variety of fence. We found our fox in the vale, and the first part of the run was entirely confined to that district; but when the fox found he was a dying before 'em," he left the vale and sought an asylum in the hills, which on one side are clothed with hanging woods. This determination of the fox was a dreadful punisher for the horses, who had had a pretty good bucketing in the vale; to say nothing of the sharp eighteen minutes in the morning with the first fox, when the pace was so severe that only one man could live with the hounds, and he was a perfect stranger in the country. Upon the death of the fox, the now almost obsolete custom of " capping" for the huntsman was resorted to; which I understand is always done with these hounds at the death after a good run, but never twice on the same day. I have no doubt that this old method of rewarding the huntsman, and of exciting his best energies to show sport, is highly agreeable to the recipient of the donation; but taking all the features of "modern hunting" into consideration, and the really capital form in which these hounds are turned out six days a week by their worthy master, entirely at

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his own expense-even to the earth-stopping-I somehow fancy that the system would be improved if the above-named practice were at once dispensed with, and some other mode of conferring rewards upon a good servant and an indefatigable huntsman adopted for the future. There were several hard riders out to-day, and many of them very much inclined to go. In all humility, in speaking of myself, I must say I never was much better mounted in my life. I rode a chestnut horse that had run in the Liverpool steeple-chase two years ago, and had run second for the Windsor. He was as near as a toucher thorough-bred, if not quite; one of the very best horses in dirt I ever crossed-and he had plenty of it to-day-excellent at timber and water, but so dreadful a puller that few men chose to get on his back. However, we were very good friends all day, and when hounds were going, nothing that was out on that day could touch him. Even at the finish he faced the great choking hills which we had to ascend, like a horse fresh from his stable, and, if I had let him, would have gone up it like an arrow, whilst it was bellows to mend" with a long string of horses which came creeping along in his wake. I can only add upon that subject, that I wish I had eight such now standing in the far-famed Vale of Belvoir.

The next day, Sunday, was passed as that day ought always to be spent; viz., in going to church in the morning, and in inspecting the various studs in the afternoon, finishing with a contemplative country walk, by way of invigorating the appetite for our host's hebdomidal dish-the roast beef of Old England.

On Monday, the twentieth, we met the hounds at Ilsington Wood, a large holding cover of five-hundred acres, the property of Lord Orford, situated about six miles east of the town of Dorchester. From the rough broken country by which this fixture is surrounded, and from the frequency of the large covers in the neighbourhood, it is by no means a favourite meet with the sportsmen of Dorsetshire, consequently but a small field, comparatively speaking, met the hounds upon the above morning. Upon the hounds being thrown into cover they soon found a fox, which traversed the whole of the wood, excepting the lower quarter, twice before he broke away and went in the direction of the covers, which lie to the right of Puddletown; after passing through these covers he went away as if pointing for the country near Blandford; but the hounds coming to an unfortunate check amidst a whole army of footpeople, who had congregated upon a hill, and who, by their noise and false halloos, got their heads up; whilst an ungovernable field of reckless horsemen forced them so far beyond the line of their fox, that, to the great chagrin of Jem Treadwell, he was lost, after running and hunting him, in cover and out, thirty-seven minutes. In going back towards Ilsington Wood, the hounds showed a line of scent into a turnip-field, and they being allowed to try on, it was evident a fox had either gone from the turnips, or else had crossed the field since we came away in the morning. The huntsman let 'em work the line, and although they could hardly speak to it, they brought a very low scent, chopping along to Ilsington Wood. Here they soon worked up to a fox, and after hunting him in cover for nearly half-an-hour, they got upon better terms with him, and chased him very prettily across the open parts of the low cover, turning as he turned, and guiding the line in a most satisfactory manner.

During all this beautiful display of nose and close

hunting, only two men were near the hounds. The field were, as in these days of slackness and modern refinement, coffee-housing at the lower extremity of the cover, hoping the fox would break in that direction; but they were deservedly doomed to disappointment, for the fox went away at the upper end of the wood, and after facing the wind, turned to the right, and was run into in a grass-field in his way back to the large wood; which circumstance let in the field, or they never would have seen a hound again till the death. The time occupied with this fox, from the turnip-field to the death, was about forty minutes; but in point of a run there was nothing to crack about, as the first part was as slow as possible; and nearly all the rest of the work, satisfactory as it was, was in a large holding wood, with the exception of about ten minutes-a regular bursting pace-in the open at the finish. A general move was now made, at the express invitation of the hospitable Squire of Ilsington House, by the whole body of cavalry, in that direction; and to one of the most substantial and refined luncheons that could be turned out by one of the best French cooks of the day, all were made welcome, from the highest of the land to the tenant-farmer who had scrambled along in the run upon "the fore-horse of the team." Business the most important seemed to be the order of the day; there was very little music indeed, but heads down and a good holding scent appeared to keep the whole pack at work; every man seemed to be eating for his life; and with the exception of renewed invitations to the sherry, &c., from our worthy host and his assistants, nothing but a kind of suppressed murmur of acquiescence, if I may so term it, seemed to pervade the whole party. We then trotted off to Yellam Wood, the property of Lord Ilchester, and after drawing the whole of that cover, found in the lower quarter. The fox came away directly, after passing through the centre of the wood, and with only one person (a farmer) besides one of the whippers in, slipped away unperceived, and crossing the Dorchester turnpike-road, made the best of his way across the large heath lying to the right of Ilsington Wood, and finally went to ground in some very strong main-earths on a small hill lying above the river Frome. time occupied, from the find to the earth, was eleven minutes, by the whipper-in's watch. The field by degrees came creeping up, each man condoling with his friend that he had not seen a yard of it. If the fox had kept on, it would have been an awful affair, as the waters were all out, and the river impassable for horses, except by swimming; and that is not only very unpleasant-even after such a heavy luncheon as we all had been fortified with-but utter destruction to horse-flesh. This earth had been destroyed, as it was supposed, some time previous; but, unfortunately, the foxes had drawn it out for use within a few days.

The

To describe the three days' good rough shooting which I enjoyed during the week in which this most agreeable visit was spent, and to enter more fully than I have done into all that was said and achieved by the party of good fellows who were there assembled, would not only be foreign to my present purpose, but uninteresting to the majority of my readers. Far be it from me to display before the vulgar eye of the - public those sacred scenes of private life which are so particularly characteristic of the Englishman's home and fire-side, and which upon too frequent occasions have been réchauffés by some of the correspondents of this periodical, as much to gratify their own pitiful vanity, as to