Sometimes, instead of going by water to _Pfauen-Insel_, the court drove in carriages to Sacrow, a small Schloss uninhabited except by the _Kastellan_ and his wife, situated in a lovely tangled wilderness of garden overlooking the water. To get to the other side it was necessary to use the ferry, and when the Princess crossed it in the afternoon with her ponies, she would assist the ferryman to warp his craft over the river. Once when we went to Sacrow with an automobile, the shirt-sleeved waiter from the adjacent restaurant, the blue-jerseyed man in charge of the ferry and the Princess worked all in a row, walking slowly along the rope, gravely performing their task together, while the two chauffeurs in their elegant royal livery regarded this pleasantly democratic picture with hardly concealed surprise and amusement. The woods round Sacrow were the most beautiful of any in the neighbourhood, threaded with sandy paths which skirted the water side. In one part were the kennels of the _Königliche Meute_ or royal pack of hounds, which we visited once or twice in the summer-time before the hunting began. During the autumn and winter these hounds hunted two or three times a week at Döberitz after wild boar, carted from one of the Emperor’s neighbouring forests. The meets were attended almost exclusively by the officers of the regiments stationed in Potsdam, and very often by the Emperor. The Empress, although very fond of riding, was not at all keen on hunting, and rarely appeared except on St. Hubert’s Day, which is a very ceremonial occasion, the horses being decorated with green ribbons, and every one riding in pink with chimney-pot hat, whereas on ordinary occasions the round velvet hunting-cap and black coat may be worn. The Emperor invariably gives a hunting dinner on the evening of this day, when all the gentlemen invited appear in pink, each one wearing in the buttonhole of his coat the spray of oak-leaves which is the trophy presented to everybody “in at the death.” When the Emperor is present at a hunt, he himself distributes the bunches of oak-leaves; otherwise it is one of the duties of the M.F.H. The riding-horses of His Majesty are mostly big-boned weight-carriers of English or Irish breed, trained in the royal stables for six months or so before being ridden by the Emperor. Those of the Empress are in charge of a second official, who is responsible for their good behaviour. Once, as Their Majesties rode together in the early morning in the neighbourhood of Potsdam, the horse of the Empress stumbled and fell, turning a complete somersault and throwing its rider on to her head, fortunately without serious injury, thanks to the hard straw hat she was wearing.