THE OOTACAMUNB HOUNDS. 165 



on advertised days. These were now alternately three and four 

 per week — quite sufficient, you will say, to employ a pack of 

 about thirty couples, but, believe me, not a bit more than suffi- 

 cient to keep the ardour of such a " vagarious " establishment 

 within bounds. In fact, severity administered in the shape of 

 work was found to act far more beneficially than in the form of 

 punishment — the more so as Bob Devonshire's stud being- 

 very liberally employed by the department to which he was 

 attached, his services could not always be depended upon, and 

 Mr. Schmidt's knowledge of the country did not always make 

 such amends for want of pace in his hunters as would allow him 

 to be at all times within hail. Indeed, the chief difficulty con- 

 nected with arranging for more than two days in the week was 

 in the impossibility of getting together a field of anything like 

 reasonable size. 



I was going to say they are all one-horse men in the Presi- 

 dency of Madras. But that expression, I have been told, is 

 nowadays occasionally used as a term of reproach (much as that 

 of Ensign was considered and repelled accordingly by a friend 

 of mine, to whom it been applied, and who added indignantly, 

 "off parade"), and, moreover, as such might be seized upon in 

 triumph by the intolerant men of Bengal ; so I may qualify it 

 by saying that, with few exceptions, they don't keep any horses 

 at all — solely for recreative, much less for hunting purposes. 

 Whether this is due to the famine of the last two years, which, 

 directly or indirectly, pinched everybody ; to the facilities of 

 the present day towards an early return to England, and the 

 consequent desirability of saving a fund for the trip home ; or 

 to the extinction of other sport, such as pig-sticking, in Southern 

 India, I am not in a position to decide. Or else, again, it may 

 be that India is not as desirable a country of residence as the 

 pensioners of old John Company depict it as having been in 

 their day ; and, consequently, all men whose means are sufficient 

 to allow of their keeping a horse or two, or of permitting them- 

 selves any indulgence beyond bare existence and a never-ending 

 succession of rank Trichinopoli cheroots, prefer to return as 



