198 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



Irregulars true. The Guides are coming down here 

 by forced marches." 



In the midst of more pressing matters, Mr George 

 Ricketts, as the following letter will show, was to 

 prove a friend in need to the future commandant 

 of Hodson's Horse : " Hodson asked me to get him 

 as many good men as I could, — a squadron, if 

 possible, — and if possible with their own horses 

 under them, or with sufficient money in their 

 pockets to buy them ; but on this point, horse or 

 money, he was not very particular, for, as he said, 

 he could always pick up the horses. It was a 

 curious business : there were the old Sikh ghor- 

 charhas ^ everywhere, and old artillerymen, too. 

 They were looking every way, certain that sooner 

 or later they would take a hand one side or the 

 other, and were just biding their time, and it was 

 hard to get a beginning. . . . After the first start 

 the men began to come in, and I had a pretty good 

 number to select from ; and the test of their riding 

 capabilities was to ride my grey mare, a country- 

 bred, from my house verandah to the compound 

 gate and back. She was ajungli [untamed], 14.3, 

 and used to stand like a sheep until she was 

 mounted bare-back, and then the fun used to begin. 

 She used to fly right and left, and bound in the 

 air, and lumbai [plunge] all down the road, and get 

 almost all of them ofl" sooner or later ; and we soon 

 found out those who had ridden before, and no 

 others were accepted." ^ 



The men thus enlisted were sent down in batches 

 to the camp before Delhi, where Hodson, with the 



1 Horse Guards of the old Sikh rule. 



2 Letter quoted in 'Blackwood's Magazine,' March 1899. 



