But it is comparatively
easy to acquire a light hand and a capacity to sit fairly well down in
the saddle; and when a man has once got these, he will find no especial
difficulty in following the hounds on a trained hunter.
Fox-hunting is a great sport, but it is as foolish to make a fetish of
it as it is to decry it. The fox is hunted merely because there is no
larger game to follow. As long as wolves, deer, or antelope remain in
the land, and in a country where hounds and horsemen can work, no one
could think of following the fox. It is pursued because the bigger
beasts of the chase have been killed out. In England it has reached its
present prominence only within two centuries; nobody followed the fox
while the stag and the boar were common. At the present day, on Exmoor,
where the wild stag is still found, its chase ranks ahead of that of
the fox. It is not really the hunting proper which is the point of
fox-hunting. It is the horsemanship, the galloping and jumping, and the
being out in the open air.
Pages:
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227