The sports of the world, with illustrations from drawings and photographs . a, the West Cumber-land, and the Eskdale. Foxes are plentiful, but toget to their haunts on good terms is often the workof several hours. The sport is rendered difficult bythe nature of the ground ; all must go afoot, forhorses cannot negotiate the rugged fells at cliffs with scant handhold, slippery, steepscrees, ghylls carved out of solid rock, acres ofboulders where progress is made only by dexter-ously leaping from pinnacle to pinnacle—these arethe obstacles to mountain fox-hunting. At otherplaces the sc
The sports of the world, with illustrations from drawings and photographs . a, the West Cumber-land, and the Eskdale. Foxes are plentiful, but toget to their haunts on good terms is often the workof several hours. The sport is rendered difficult bythe nature of the ground ; all must go afoot, forhorses cannot negotiate the rugged fells at cliffs with scant handhold, slippery, steepscrees, ghylls carved out of solid rock, acres ofboulders where progress is made only by dexter-ously leaping from pinnacle to pinnacle—these arethe obstacles to mountain fox-hunting. At otherplaces the scent may lie across wide rolling moorscovered with bent grass, and here the pack racesalong at a terrible speed. A horse would certainlybe outpaced ; a man can only hope to keep trackby carefully watching for scurrying sheep or atwinkling line of dots, maybe a couple of milesahead. Did the fox go straight, these tremendousbursts would find the pack coming up to him manymiles in front of the sweating, struggling field ; butReynard, finding that hounds are overhauling him. 256 THE SPORTS OF THE WORLD. at his best pace very rapidly on the comparativelysmooth backs of the fells, heads carefully uphill,crosses the ridge, and by descending the rockyfront usually gains some respite. For Reynardcan climb and descend and run over rocks wherethe pack scarce dare venture, and it is no unusualthing for the hunters to be thrown out by thepack scaling or otherwise negotiating faces ofrocks where men cannot find foot or is not the only characteristic trick of thetough mountain fox—the greyhound fox has butlately disappeared from here—and I quote thefollowing graphic statement on the subject bythe Rev. E. M. Reynolds, master of the ConistonFoxhounds :— Were killing as common on the fells as in theshires, not a fox would be left at the end of aseason. Here it takes half a days good huntingto find. The fox is strong, he is a master ofworking the wall-tops, he has plenty of r
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