To return to the Drag for a moment.
The Over Drag and the Downing Arms were considered the severest in my day. The former was a course of some three miles, but a fence for every hundred yards, and a big fence too. I rode this Drag six times, and only once got to the end of it on one of my own horses. Thrice I never finished, and of the other times I won it once on a thoroughbred belonging to that excellent sportsman, Mr. W. H. Garforth, of Gilling, and once on a black hireling, appropriately named Satan.
The first time I got through this Drag it was won by Lord Binning. It was a ludicrous finish. Lawley broke his girth over a stile into the last field but one; the next fence was a bullfinch with a great black fen ditch beyond, a regular death-trap. Lawley and Binning were neck and neck across the field, and I was just behind. Girths or no girths, Gingertail had to do it, but the peck on landing left him a clean back. Binning’s horse fell on landing, and the two raced in on foot; my horse fell, and I only made a moderate third behind the men on foot. Binning had a thorn in his eye, and had to get off to Cambridge, and then to London, to get it cut out. We all expected to see him back minus the eye, but it was sound again within a week or two. In this Drag, Mosquito jumped the biggest place I have ever seen leaped. I often wish I had gone to measure it, and I fear to state my impressions of what its dimensions are. It consisted of a high four-rail timber fence on the top of a high bank, with about twelve or fourteen feet of water on the takeoff side. As Binning was going to have it, I pulled back a length, hoping he would bring the rail down when he fell, as fall he must. To my astonishment, up flew Mosquito over the water; I saw for a second the whole four feet of bank under the horse, and in another moment he was over the rails, just carrying the top-rail away with his hind-legs. I got over with a smash through the next rail. It is my honest opinion that Mosquito jumped seven feet in the air and covered some twenty-five feet in this marvellous jump.
Once during my Mastership I organised a Drag that was to be on the pattern of a long hunting-run, by making the course some fourteen miles, instead of the usual five or six. I arranged with old Leete that we could run two Drags into one, leaving half a mile twice without scent being laid, to give us “checks” and time to breathe our horses and get hounds together. But the hounds were too cunning. They carried such a head that when we reached the first check at the end of the Two Pot House Drag, they flashed straight on up wind and made for the place where they were usually started for the other drag. It was too severe for the numerous field, and I never tried it again. There were some nine that finished, and it was won by Mr. F. R. Meuricoffre, of Naples, who has since proved himself a good rider over many a steeplechase course in his native Italy. Here are the last entries I made, at the close of my undergraduate career, in 1879.
Nov. 22. Fulbourn Drag—Queen Mab went beautifully.
" 25. Barton White Horses. 23 started. 9 at finish. 18 falls.
" 28. Five Bells, Oakington. 23 at the meet. 3 in with hounds.
" 30. Moyes Farm. Capital day. 27 out. 4 finished.
