424 A RAJPUT RIDER 



pressive spectacle, this rider ; no picture which does not 

 give color can yield any distinct impression of him. But 

 he is not properly a horseman ; he is a man on horseback 

 merely. He can, I dare say, ride in his fashion ; but he 

 has no kind of a horse, nor any knowledge which will 

 help him teach himself or it. Neither have his ancestors 

 had any, and the consequence is plain. Farther north, 

 nearer the Himalayas, there are tribes of quasi-hor semen, 

 but not in the provinces usually known to tourists as Brit- 

 ish India. This rawness in color is, by-the-way, natural 

 to the Hindoo. You see it in all the decorations of his 

 palaces and his temples. 



I saw a lot of horses in the stable of his Highness the 

 Maharajah, at Jeypore. They came, the grooms informed 

 me as they unblanketed and named each one, from every 

 section of India, from Arabia, Morocco, and Burmah, and 

 some from Europe. The majority were native. The sta- 

 ble was a long, shed-like structure, on one side of a huge 

 quadrangle, massively built of stone, and highly ornate. 

 It had no partitions throughout its entire length, but back 

 of each horse was an arch some seven feet wide and fifteen 

 high, while the mangers were built into the stone-wall op- 

 posite. The horses stood on the ground, which was not 

 solid and cool, but warm and stamped into dust like very 

 fine dry sand, fully three inches deep. The season being 

 chilly, each arch was closed in by a straw -woven mat 

 hung over it like a curtain. The horses were all blanket- 

 ed with an extremely thick wadded cotton blanket, over 

 which a second thinner one was thrown and girthed ; and 

 each horse, under its fancy halter, had its face and eyes 

 entirely covered up by a piece of loose- woven cotton cloth, 

 " to prevent his seeing the flies," as the grooms said, and 

 I presume to prevent his getting worried and unnecessari- 

 ly stamping at them. This practice of blindfolding them 



