‘Run with the 7th Dragoon foxhounds in Caffir Land, Cape of Good Hope’, 1843-1847 (coloured...

‘Run with the 7th Dragoon foxhounds in Caffir Land, Cape of Good Hope’, 1843-1847. Lithograph after Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Harry Darell (1814-1853) 7th Dragoon Guards, published by Day and Son, London, 1852. No 11 in the series ‘China India Cape of Good Hope and Vicinity, a Series of Thirteen Treble-Tinted Views’. The 7th (The Princess Royal’s) Regiment of Dragoon Guards, which served in southern Africa between July 1843 and April 1848, was the first British heavy cavalry regiment to be stationed in the African continent. When it embarked for the Cape in HMS Rodney at Spithead in April 1843, the regiment took with it 44 foxhounds in the care of a co-opted civilian huntsman named Mesheck Cornwall. While the 7th were stationed at Fort Beaufort the pack became known as ‘the Fort Beaufort Hunt’ and officers and other ranks, joined by many of the local sporting farmers, took part in jackal hunts, 93 animals being accounted for in one particularly successful month.