A Picturesque Hunt
The foxhunt at Algeciras (of which a Spanish grandee and an English lady were joint masters) has resumed its activities with the opening of the season. The history (of which a sketch has been given in The Times) is quaint and very English ; but what appealed to me on the only occasion that I attended a meet was both the apparent danger of the game and the
picturesqueness of the scene. The foxes are wont to inhabit the brambly undergrowth below the cork trees. The boughs of these-beautiful holm-oaks (of which a few are to be seen in the Isle of Wight) do not sweep low and would for the most part allow a seventeen-hand horse a free gallop ; but they would often miss his ears by a very small margin. Of the brevity of this margin the hardy riders seemed to take no notice whatever, but put their horses to the gallop as freely as if they were crossing a grass field in the -Shires. The rivers and the open fields between the groves make a very lovely scene. One miserable sign of the poverty that attends war is that a number of cork trees—in other parts of Spain--have been cut down for fuel.
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