JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES, 1876. 137 



assuring him. " How can that be ? " returned young Nimrod ; 

 " aren't there a lot of fences continually in the way to spoil 

 it ? " Tell me, truthful reader, who have just pulled the first 

 grey hair from your upper lip, would you or I, who are only 

 now beginning to fancy that one of our stud suits us better 

 than another — would ive dare give utterance to a sentiment 

 approaching this, even in the society of others older and more 

 timorous than ourselves ? Methinks there is not a mahogany 

 in the Midlands that would droop its damask over our heretical 

 legs thereafter ; so let me not be so boldly craven as to write 

 it. This absence of fences is not an advantage ; nay, ofttimes 

 we sorely long for blackthorn and ash-rail. After dinner, we 

 sometimes think we could yet meet the combinatiou without 

 flinching, and take our chance at an oxer as in our hottest 

 moments of youth and temerity. 



But now we have nothing to stop us but a broken-banked 

 brook in the bottom, which, however, swallows up all but the 

 turban of " Dick Turpin," a joyous native princeling who 

 accompanies the young Maharajah of Mysore. The Rajah is 

 most regular at the sport, and Dick and Georgey are the most 

 determined of his followers, ready to act as extra whips as 

 occasion offers, and always on the look-out to race their ponies 

 round a straying hound. Dick's steed has just now got a trifle 

 the better of him, and submersion is the consequence ; his zeal 

 being apparently as much wetted as anything else in the pro- 

 cess. Now we struggle up the rising ground in front, the van 

 composed of some three or four hard-riding coffee planters — 

 men who will gallop best pace over rocks or holes, and who 

 ever "stick by the ship " till hounds return to kennel — by half- 

 a-dozen soldiers who have been well entered to the game at 

 home, and by (we beg their pardons) some three or four ladies 

 who fly along till they and their steeds are ready to drop. For 

 let me tell you that to nurse a horse up hill here, and hustle 

 him clown, require muscle and sinew such as our wives and 

 daughters need scarcely possess — at least so long as our national 

 prejudices do not call upon them to do the rougher handiwork 



