SPORTING AND GUARD DOGS 



the minutes of the Court of the East India Company a com- 

 plaint that the principal mastiffs which were to have been 

 sent abroad as presents were seized by the master of the 

 Bear Garden for the King. It was, perhaps, in retaliation 

 for such complaints that at about the same time dispatch of 

 four mastiffs on one of the Company's ships was vetoed by the 

 King on account of overcrowding. 



In 1623 the Company's factors at Batavia remark : " Broad 

 cloth and fine perpetuanos of good and lively colours would 

 yearly vend in these parts, also four or five mastiffs of a 

 fair and stout kind." * 



The Tibetan mastiff was first figured in Mr. Bryan Hodg- 

 son's " Drawings of Nepalese Animals." For the protection 

 of their encampments against wolves, bands of robbers and 

 petty thieves, for the herding of their sheep, yaks, and horses 

 in a country whose climate is arctic in winter, the possession 

 of a race of exceptionally powerful and shaggy dogs is a 

 necessity to the Tibetan. The breed has been known to 

 modern Europe since 1774, when Bogle, who was sent by 

 Warren Hastings as his deputy to visit the Teshu Lama, 

 mentioned the dogs as being of the shepherd breed, " the 

 same kind with those called Nepal dogs, large size, often 

 shagged like a lion, and extremely fierce." Bogle also refers 

 to greyhounds and says, " The Pyn Cushos keep a parcel of all 

 kinds of dogs at Rinjaitzay." He also refers to a " wolf 

 chained at the foot of the stair." f Bower writes : " We 

 bought a Tibetan sheep-dog here (at Fob rang), to guard the 

 camp, for four rupees. These dogs are something like 

 big, powerfully built collies, and are excellent as watch-dogs, 

 but one never gets fond of them, as they possess nothing of the 

 nobleness of character that European dogs have, and are 



* " Calendar of State Papers, East Indies," 1513-1625. 



f " Tibet," Bogle and Manning, Markham, pp. 68 and 116. 



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