POLO IN INDIA 279 



for eleven years had greater opportunities of seeing the game 

 played than most men. Fascinated with the charms of the 

 sport, he took to playing himself. Then came the stormy days 

 of the great Indian Mutiny, when men's minds were turned to 

 other and more serious matters, and it was more an object to hit 

 a Pandy head than a polo ball ; but when the great wave of re- 

 bellion had quieted down, Sherer and Captain Robert Stewart, 

 who was then Superintendent of Cachar, and whose assistant 

 Sherer was, 'started and organised a European polo club in 

 1859, and this they had no great difficulty in doing, for between 

 1854 and 1859 the European element had largely increased, 

 and the game was becoming more popular and better known 

 year by year. Before long some of the active young mercantile 

 blood of the great Calcutta houses, whilst visiting their tea 

 estates in Cachar, became bitten with the mania. They used 

 to see Sherer, Stewart, and their merry men playing, and became 

 infected with the disease to such an extent, that from time to 

 time they took down balls and sticks to Calcutta, began to play 

 in earnest, and started a club of their own. So popular did 

 the sport become, that in February 1864 Captain Sherer took 

 down his team of seven Munnipoories, who went by the name of 

 the ' Band of Brothers,' to Calcutta, to show them how the 

 trick was done. The game took like wild fire, and so Captain 

 Sherer not only obtained the honoured title of ' the father of 

 polo,' but was entertained at a great banquet in the Indigo Mart 

 at Calcutta, and received more tangible recognition of the value 

 of his services in being presented with a most handsome tankard 

 and salver of solid silver. 



It was not, however, till 1861 or 1862 that the game was 

 introduced into the Punjaub and North- West Provinces by 

 Captain G. Stewart, of the Guides, and a Madras officer, Eustace 

 Hill, of the Lahore Light Horse. About this time also Captain 

 (now General) G. Stewart, C.B., late of the Guides, who had 

 seen the game played in Cachar when staying with his brother, 

 the late Colonel R. Stewart, then Superintendent of Cachar 

 in 1862, formed a club at Barrackpore, and on his way to 



