Identifier: cu31924104002419 (find matches)
Title: North-country sketches, notes, essays and reviews ..
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Neasham, George Bewick, John, 1760-1795 Bewick, Thomas, 1753-1828 Wordsworth Collection
Subjects:
Publisher: Durham, Printed for the author by T. Caldcleugh
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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CHAPTER XIII.

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HUNTING AND COURSING

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Early Hunters.— Robert Smith Surtees.— Hard Riders in the North
Durham Hunt.— Mr. Taylor-Smith.— Coroner Favell.— Squire
Baker.— The Braes of Derwent.— The Raby Pack.— Hardwick.
—The Russells.— A Hunting Diary. — At a Coursing- Meeting.

FROM the remotest ages of the world, man has assumed a
right to appropriate to himself the beasts of the field,
this right in all probability having been founded on the
words of the first chapter of Genesis, where power is given
to man over every living thing. Nimrod, the third in
descent from Noah, was a great hunter.

He taught to turn the hare, to bay the deer,
And wheel the courser in his mad career.


Saul perhaps hunted partridges in the mountains, and
Samson must have been addicted to the pleasures of the
chase, for he it was that conceived the novel idea of tying
fire-brands to the tails of foxes which he had caught and
letting them loose among the standing corn of the
Philistines. If we accept less reliable authority, Pollux
was the first trainer of dogs, while his twin brother.
Castor, was the first who broke and trained horses.
Alexander the Great kept a kennel, and had a favourite
old dog with a nose as keen as his own sword. Xenophon,
the celebrated Athenian general and philosopher, wrote a
book on sport. He was of opinion that it habituated men
to cold, heat, and fatigue, that it kindled courage, elevated
the soul and invigorated the body, and rendered the senses
more acute ; that it retarded the stiffening effects of old
age, and that the pleasure it afforded was a sovereign
remedy against all mental uneasiness. The North-country
pitman who thinks that there is no property in game takes
his views from the jurisprudence of the Romans, who
established it as a maxim that all wild animals were the
Text Appearing After Image:
C. E. Laytdon

R. S. Surtees

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