I just got a nice poste from Karen Streaker, who's husband was one of those hard-knockin', ride anywhere, go as fast as necessary (but not-too-fast-to-think) foxhunting people who loved to follow good foxhounds during middle years of the century. He and his sons hunted with Goshen when Stanley Stabler was Master, with the Howard County Hunt, and with Iron Bridge.

Karen, also, mentioned Alda Clark. Alda Clark was a character--a lovely, intelligent, and often somewhat eccentric lady--who wrote the book _Hold Hard_, a stitchingly funny history of some of her foxchasing experiences in N. Virginia. She, with her two young sons, used to ride their hunters at 2 a.m.from Ellicott City, Maryland, via Point of Rocks, to go foxhunting in Middleburg the next day; and, she also would annoiunce her age at every Iron Bridge Meet to parallel what she anticipated her pace would be for the day ("80 years old" translated to: "no jumping today") My guess is that she was actually at least 80 .

Well, as I recall, both of them were with us that day in 1963 or '64. It was a mid-week hunt. At any rate. we left the kennels at 1 p.m., under gray skies, about mid-way through February Alda was a little younger than age 80 that day, which apparently reflected her intention to move right along but to leave early because she was having a dinner party. Whitney Aitcheson was Huntsman, Leiter took the Field, I was whipping. Alda and I were the only women in a group of about ten people. The ground was not totally snow-covered, but there was layer of ice three inches under the surface in several long stretches where bare sod showed through the snow cover; and there were patches of ice along the edges of the Patuxant and the Patapsco Rivers. As Tom Pardoe has explained, the soil there is loamy clay which is nice, soft going--when there isn't hard ice directly underfoot. Whitney had heels on his horse's hind shoes, as did most, except for Leiter, Mrs. Clark, and me whose horses had flat shoes on (no borium or cleats), as usual. I was riding a steeplechaser that day, named John's Gesture, and that horse loved to Hunt and was a good whip horse--he had a good instinct for how to chase foxes and used to flatten his ears when he smelled where a fox had been.

We found Br'er Fox on the other side of Rt. 29, in Dustin's cow pasture, and he took off fast right in front of us where we could see him. The hounds picked up his scent right away, and the fox and hounds both travelled in a NEasterly direction--down the hill, smack-dab down the middle of the Route 29 bridge spanning the Patuxant, over the the steep, tall bank on the other side, and continued onward at a rapid pace. We all did, too--red fox and hounds still in sight. They raced East for about 3/4 of a mile and then turned NNE beyond the backside of Kingdon Gould's property. Wasn't long before we ran out of Howard Co. Hunt's panelled territory and were simply making our way through whatever appeared. Nevertheless, we were still moving on--all of us together behind Whitney who was going to go directly behind the hounds regardless of what might be in front of him.

I think that the route we followed was more or less slightly west of where I-95 was eventually constructed, but it wasn't there then; and, we caught glimpses of Route 29 occasionally off in the distance. For all practical purposes, though, we were lost; in truth, we all felt perfectly oriented because the fox appeared to have everything under control and we were still all together in pursuit of said gentleman. As long as we kept up with the MFH's Aitcheson, we were secure...didn't matter where we were, or where we were going. Every hound was on...there were seven couple out. The music which those Brooke, PMD, and American hounds were making made the world seem surreal, as they had been roaring for a solid half-hour. They were travelling quickly and so were we--nobody had time to throw a coat over any wire fencing before we flew it. Except for the crest of a hill or two, we were in sight of our hounds and we also viewed the fox regularly.

The hounds checked in a covert somewhere east and about four miles north of Ellicott City. I went around the east side of the covert to view the fox away, and view him I did, as he was sitting on the top of the next little hill just watching. Mrs. Clark said that she regrettably had to leave, and Warren Streaker left with her to escort her home safely. She didn't get a chance to leave *us. We left her, as the hounds struck again and the chase was resumed.

I saw M. Reynard stay atop that hill until the hounds cleared the cover; then he turned NNE again and split--he had obviously gotten refreshed during his five-minute break. He didn't cause the hounds to check again until we got to the Patapsco R. Again the check was brief, as the hounds cast themselves on both sides of the river. The fox had run across the river at some small rapids up behind the campuses, gone on the eastside of the U. of Md., and then took off almost dead east mostly on small steets until he ran across Carroll's Hundred. As the mansion loomed up on our left, we looked down and saw the whole pack heading toward pavement and the Basin. As we quickly passed beside Mt. Clare, I thought to myself that it'd been a hundred years since Baltimore had seen anything like this, and I wondered what its citizenry would do about it.

The hounds were really almost into the city by the time we passed by the mansion, and we could not hear them as well as we could see them then. Soon, we could neither hear nor view them. The last time we'd seen the fox was when he disappeared on the SE side of the U. of Md. campus. It was obvious where the hounds had got across the first street because the traffic was confused--some people out of their cars--and when we asked for direction, the people who had stopped said the whole shebang (the fox and the pack) had proceeded almost directly east. So, we did, too. The only way we could track the hounds from then on was "by word of mouth". Two mounted policemen dropped in with us at the Basin, and they reported that the hounds had run around the city-side edges of the docks, and were seen to be skirting the shoreline along the water's edge of the North West Branch. We found them stopped at a culvert going under the street which bisects Fells Point, and it appeared as though both we *and Baltimore issued a great sigh of relief. It was then about tea time. A whole fleet of people brought trailers from the kennels to pick us up, and we were back at the kennels long before it got dark, all hounds accounted for. The hot toddies that Mrs. Aitcheson had waiting for us after we'd taken basic care of the hounds and horses were the best I've ever tasted. Game fox!!

Ed. Note - the following portion was added later by Mary in response to another subscriber's comment about the police participation.

We loved that part, too. Needless to say, we woud have had a nightmare of a search without them, as they were able to lead us directly through Baltimore safely and surely to where our hounds were.

They were both funny, and nice--and their horses were excited but very well-behaved. One policeman was waiting and watching for us (he'd been radio'd that there were a group of horseback riders traveling toward downtown from Carroll's). He said that he'd been on ordinary patrol along Pratt Street when all of a sudden he heard "a terrible-loud howling noise" coming from behind him, then almost beside him, and he got to the Convention Center in time to see a "buncha houndogs" run right past the back of it. He was parked on the west side of the Upper Basin and intercepted us as we arrived. He volunteered to take us to where the hounds had last been seen, and informed that there was another officer waiting around the NE corner of the Basin who'd seen what direction they'd gone after that. It only took us about ten minutes to "get-it-all-together" and to meet up with the second cop. Then, both policemen escorted us for the fifteen minutes more it took us all walk and trot our horses to the lower end of Fells Point where we found all of the hounds. The two policeman then helped us to collect our charges ("go back", they learned to say, and"pack up") and to move them all to the upper part of the Pt. After that, they stayed with us until two other cops arrived in a squad car.

Had to be about 30 minutes that they rode with us, but neither had tried to keep pace with the hounds as they ran to the drainage pipe on the Point.

Submitted by Mary Fauber