148 



fences we race over to-day. The hunt steeplechase is, 

 therefore, by no means a thing of recent creation in 

 Calcutta, and the race that is annually contested over the 

 Tollygunge course has, it will be seen, a very fairly long 

 '' pedigree" as these things go. For many years there 

 was only one race of this order at Tollygunge, now there 

 are four, two on each day, one each for horses and ponies, 

 but the race " on terms " is the real lineal descendant in 

 " tail-male " of the original event an account of which we 

 have first set out. Prior to 1903, there was only the one 

 race for hunters at Tollygunge, but in that year, sufficient 

 inducement offering, the Stewards of the C. T. C. gave the 

 Paperchase Club a second race, and it has continued to 

 hold its place in the card since then and is much apprecia- 

 ted and very well patronised. 



It was about this time also that Pony Hunter's steeple- 

 chases were instituted, and* a record of them is appended 

 at foot. 



The first Hunter's steeplechase proper, as we have said, 

 was run in 1890, and the first winner was a bay gelding 

 named Barrister, owned by "Mr. Lawrence," the noin de 

 guerre^ adopted by a very popular owner of times gone by, 

 Mr. C. Lawrie Johnstone, himself at one time a great per- 

 former at all manner of feats of equitation — race-riding, 

 pigsticking, paperchasing, polo and any other kind of 

 " divarshun," in which a horse bore a part. He was one 

 of the shining lights of the Calcutta Turf Club and also 

 a well-known figure in the Calcutta Polo Club. He came 

 from a firm that has always been connected with sport in 

 India, Messrs. Jardine, Skinner & Co., and in those days 

 the most potent, grave and reverend signiors did not set their 

 faces quite so sternly against the Turf as they have in more 

 recent years. Like other Burra Sahibs of the big firm who 

 have come after him, "Mr. Lawrence" was also in his 

 time a Steward of the C. T. C, and everyone who knew him 



