268 POLO 



should strongly recommend it to be tried on the Hippodrome at 

 Bayswater. 



I fear that the locality alluded to would hardly have suited 

 players of the present day, but the above shows that forty years 

 ago there was some idea of introducing polo into England, and 

 Vigne on his return to the Punjaub and North-West Provinces 

 may have spoken highly of it to some of our Native Cavalry 

 officers, and so introduced the game to their notice. Several 

 distinguished Indian officers, however, who were through the 

 Sikh wars have told me they never heard of polo in the Punjaub 

 in those days. The following account of it in Baltistan appeared 

 in the ' Field ' in 1888 under the signature of ' Turbot ' : 



Towards six o'clock in the afternoon the Rajah, preceded by 

 his musicians and followed by. the retainers (a very mixed pack), 

 without whom a great man of Asiatic extraction appears to be 

 unable to move, rode past my camp to inform the Zillah Sahib, or 

 representative of the Kashmir Maharaja, that the game was about 

 to begin. I therefore started for the ground, followed, according to 

 the custom of the country, by all the available blackguards whom 

 my shikari could gather together. . . . 



As we approached the polo ground strains of native music 

 again played havoc with my nerves, and on our arrival we found a 

 man dancing, and dancing uncommonly well, too, whilst awaiting 

 the arrival of the Zillah Sahib. The polo ground itself is very 

 picturesquely situated : cornfields, backed by a half-ruined fort to 

 the east, a ridge of gravel with trees and buildings on it to the 

 south, and, on the other sides, the great isolated rock with two 

 forts on it which towers" above the town ; l a peep of the Indus, 

 with the sandy plain 1 50 or 200 feet below the level on which we 

 stood, and mountains bounding the view. 



The ground itself is an exact oblong, about 150 yards long and 

 not much more than thirty yards wide, 2 bounded on three sides 

 by a low stone wall, and on the fourth by a terrace ten to twelve 

 feet high, on which the spectators were assembled in considerable 

 numbers. The surface is partly gravel, partly short tufty grass, 



1 Skardo, on the Indus, about 100 miles north-east of S'rinagar, capital ot 

 Kashmir. 



2 This is about the size of the ground at Le"h, where the game is played in 

 the principal street. 



