CHAPTER III

Summary

As balls must infallibly be popular in a place where everybody dances, so must races claim a large share of patronage where everybody rides, or is in some manner interested in the quality and value of horses; and accordingly Hobarton, Launceston, Campbell-town, Oatlands, and other places in the colony, have their annual meetings, where “cups,” “ladies' purses,” “town plates,” “sweepstakes,” and such like exciting prizes, are gallantly striven for, and fairly won, often by gentlemen-riders, and horses worthy of them.

Hunting is also a favourite diversion, and occasionally the newspapers put forth most grandiloquent narratives purporting to be communications from “correspondents,” detailing the exploits of the “field,” which usually consist of galloping over a rough country after two or three couple of hounds (a kind of “scratch pack”), which drive before them a poor tame deer, one of the few imported into the colony, and placed at the disposal of the hunt, by owners more liberal than humane. When the poor creature is completely exhausted, it is rescued from the hounds for future torments, and again and again chased to the very verge of existence, by the noble and Christian worthies who enjoy the cruel sport.