y be certain.

The planters of the Northern Neck, living in widely separated
plantations, took steps in 1670, to bring together the families and
promote sociability in the section. An agreement was entered into by Mr.
Corbin, Mr. Gerrard, Mr. Lee and Mr. Allerton to build a banqueting
house "for the continuance of a good neighborhood." Each man or his
heirs in turn then would make "an honorable treatment fit to entertain
the undertakers thereof, their wives, mistresses and friends, yearly and
every year." This appears to be the antecedent of the modern country
club.

In hunting, fishing, and fowling there was always ample out-of-door
recreation at hand. In addition to the deer-hunts, there were often
bear-hunts, and 'possum and 'coon-hunts were popular nighttime sports.
On the latter occasions a party of men set out, preferably on a
moonlight night, with their dogs. Having entered the woods, the dogs
shortly took up the trail of their intended victim, while the men on
foot followed the yelping dogs through the rough terrain. Finally the
exhausted animal was "treed" and there the sport reached a climax. If
the dogs were unable to reach their victim the tree was hastily felled,
whereupon the pack of dogs made short work of the creature. In case the
'possum sought refuge in a hollow log, he was smoked out and the end was
the same.

There was less excitement in hunting rabbits and squirrels, and the
pursuit of the fox had certainly not attained in the seventeenth century
the social status that it enjoys in sections of Virginia today.

In fishing, many of the colonists acquired from the natives a skill in
spearing fish, though netting them was far more general in the Colony.

Horse-racing as a regular sport was inaugurated in the latter half of
the seventeenth century, although it does not appear that horses were
bred and kept especially for racing in that period as they were during
the eighteenth century. At the "race-paths" at "Malvern Hill," the Cocke
plantation in Henrico, running the quarter of a mile was a popular
contest.

Elsewhere, similar races were engaged in. In 1674, James Bullock, a
tailor, was fined 100 pounds of tobacco in York County for racing his
horse against Mr. Mathew Slader's horse, the decree reciting that it was
"contrary to law for a laborer to make a race, being a sport only for
gentlemen." Yet, Mr. Slader's intent to cheat at the race brought him a
sentence of an "hour in the stocks."

On