HO 



Next, to grapple with a feat of this kind, the rider must be in 

 perfect health and good working condition ; in themselves, the 

 chief elements of pleasure to man : then there is that feeling of 

 secret self-glorification or satisfaction or conceit (call it what the 

 reader pleases, we shall not, I trust, quawel about a word,) which 

 every one worth his or her salt must now and then give way to, in 

 knowing that the feat you are doing with such ease to yourself, that 

 you will bear it out jauntily at mess or ball that evening, is not to 

 be tried by half of your acquaintance. Again, in a long and fast 

 ride, the rapid change of scenery, or of the wayfarers, the constant 

 attention to the horse, the chance of taking the wrong path and 

 with it perhaps the certainty of loss of dinner and bed, distract a 

 man's thoughts from himself, and happier than most and more 

 blessed must he be, whose thoughts do not require being thus 

 distracted : Alas ! we all find in one way or another, sooner or later, 

 we acknowledge that there is truth in 



" Post equitem sedet atra cura." 



If anything however could unseat the gloomy spirit from her 

 evil perch, it would be an eighty-mile gallop across the Dekkan." 



However while we were quartered in the Northern Circars 

 where good ponies are very scarce, and where palankeen bearers 

 are in hundreds, we all, for long distances, took to a sort of covered 

 litter, designed by a dear old brother officer, whose talents of 

 stowing away kit, were so excellent that a regimental wit, in 

 dubbing this invention the "triumph" remarked that my ingenious 

 friend, " would never be satisfied until he could pack a camel load 

 " on a bullock." 



As " triumphs" therefore were these litters known from that day 

 and probably in the Ganjam district they still retain their original 

 name. They were especially convenient for sportsmen in the 

 Northern Circars, for they were very comfortable beds in quarters, 

 and when turned over and fastened to a bamboo pole with a light 

 canvass cover or pent roof fixed on the legs, they were in a few 

 minutes converted into admirably light and weatherproof palan- 

 keens for camp use, 



