20 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



or imagination to explain to me. Each house in Madras is 

 built in a compound of sufficient size to give it half a claim to 

 the title of park, and all the racecourses in India might find 

 intra-mural accommodation here without removing a brick, or 

 interfering with any part of the road labyrinth of the municipal 

 council. As the case stands, however, the racecourse, training 

 ground, and centre-of-gossip remain a couple of leagues away ; 

 and to be present at the morning meeting, men — aye, and fair 

 women too — are content to rise at 4.30, and drive out in the 

 black night, wearied, apparently unwashed, and obviously un- 

 adorned. There is a refreshing balm, though, in the grey dawn, 

 a reviving sweetness in the vista of foliage that daylight opens 

 out ; and when the bright verdant plain, backed by the green 

 mount of St. Thomas, and by countless clusters of palms and 

 banyan trees, gradually stands forth out of the darkness, you 

 almost forget the self-hatred that animated you as you shuffled 

 limp and half unconscious, into your clothes, nor waste a thought 

 on the weary weight that the coming day will too surely cast 

 upon your illused eyelids. Grouped on the stand or in the 

 inclosure, knots of men are anxiously watching the gallops, as 

 horse after horse is brought from the bamboo-built stables within 

 the circle of the course, and goes by at his allotted speed. Many 

 of these keen observers hold stop-watches in their hands, for 

 Anglo-Indians believe strongly in the time test. Whether they 

 are justified in their fixed belief is a matter of argument often 

 revived ; but surely if a horse can be made to exert himself 

 with the regular exactitude of a machine, mark that fiery little 

 bay Arab, Chieftain, now tearing along over the sand track as 

 if he revelled in showing his muscle to the Prince. And here 

 I may remark that he does make such an impression on his 

 Royal Highness that eventually Chieftain took passage in the 

 Serapis. The little horse deserves a word of description. He 

 is barely fourteen hands, but compact and muscular as a hunter, 

 with legs that are hard and smooth as steel, though he has run 

 over thirty races and won more than twenty, and with a head 

 and Deck as clean shaped as a duchess's. As a specimen of 



