In the days of Queen Elizabeth England was still a sheep range, producing wool as the staple industry, and supporting five million people. Sufficient grain was raised for feeding the small population; and to keep the sheep off their crops the people had invented a fence peculiar to Britain. This fence consisted of an earthwork of ridge and ditch called a hedgerow. The ridge carries, and the ditch waters, a row of bushes, trimmed yearly to make it strong and dense, and known as a hedge. Unlike rigid fences the hedge may be safely jumped by horses who have the courage. As the population increased the swamps were drained and forests cleared for farming and, outside the sheep down, the whole country was meshed with an intricate small skein of hedges. At a period when guns were very short of range, and poison was still dear, the foxes became abundant and destructive, so that a special hound had to be bred able to run them down. This was a matter of business until foxes made it a sport, and from about 1740 survived as sportsmen rather than be extinct as merely vermin. There was no detriment to the land from hunting on winter fallows; and, but for the fox, our people would have been {211} driven to invent some other way of breaking their necks to let off surplus energy. For rich people there is no cleaner or healthier form of pleasure, no better training in nerve and all that makes a man. [Sidenote: Leadership] The training for leadership among the Germans is a matter of beer and fencing, among the Americans of office work, among the British of field sports. Which method is best to save leaders of men from corruption, and decadence? The mettle of our pastures gives cool judgment in administration, leadership in affairs, and in times of peril a sterling worth of manhood proof against disaster. Far be it from me then to deride the British horsemanship. Any horseman who can tolerate so slippery and unreliable a contraption as the English saddle is greatly to be envied and admired. Always a timid horseman but emulous, I made two attempts to ride the damned thing, and came to grief without the least delay. The third try was quite a success, the occasion being a cavalry charge into a converging fire at point-blank range. I was much too scared to fall off, and so came to the conclusion that any fool could ride anything if his attention were sufficiently distracted by a hail of bullets. {212} After that I went to the best horseman I could find in England and asked him to explain the merits of his saddle. "The English saddle," said Lord Lonsdale, "is made for falling off. You see it throws the rider clear of a falling horse." [Sidenote: The pleasure saddle]