The sport was mainly drag-hunting, and
was most exciting, as the fences were high and the pace fast. The Long
Island country needs a peculiar style of horse, the first requisite
being that he shall be a very good and high timber jumper. Quite a
number of crack English and Irish hunters have at different times been
imported, and some of them have turned out pretty well; but when they
first come over they are utterly unable to cross our country, blundering
badly at the high timber. Few of them have done as well as the American
horses. I have hunted half a dozen times in England, with Pytchely,
Essex, and North Warwickshire, and it seems to me probable that English
thoroughbreds, in a grass country, and over the peculiar kinds of
obstacles they have on the other side of the water, would gallop away
from a field of our Long Island horses; for they have speed and
bottom, and are great weight carriers. But on our own ground, where
the cross-country riding is more like leaping a succession of five or
six-bar gates than anything else, they do not as a rule, in spite of
the enormous prices paid for them, show themselves equal to the native
stock.
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