448 SAIGON RACES 



I attended some races in Saigon, the French town of 

 Cochin China. They struck me as rather funny, for all 

 the entries were these same little rats, and the time made 

 was slow enough ; but the plucky ponies proved clearly 

 that they had endurance, and speed according to their 

 kind. There were, among other events, trotting races in 

 harness and under saddle ; and, providing the horse went 

 anything but a gallop, it was looked on as within the law. 

 In one saddle-race, with only two entries, one pony paced 

 and the other single-footed. The latter was a phenom- 

 enal little beast, and won the trotting -race in as fine a 

 three-minute rack as you ever saw, with the side-wheeler 

 at his tail. The whole thing was as interesting as it was 

 ludicrous. 



Practically, no one rides in these Mongolian countries. 

 Only a stray mandarin who wants to put on an extra bit 

 of dignity uses a saddle-beast, and then he does not ride ; 

 he occupies, as it were, a box-seat on the four-footed con- 

 veyance a phrase, by-the-way, which recalls the lady who 

 is said to have gone out riding on her pet trained tiger, 

 and on the return -trip to have occupied an inside seat. 

 The mandarin has rarely a well-caparisoned mount. He 

 himself is as gaudy as the birds of his native land, but his 

 knees wobble to and fro and his toes point in every direc- 

 tion in and out of season. He does not ride, he gets trans- 

 ported by the horse. 



The French officers serving with the army of Tonquin 

 and its dependencies ride the Himalaya pony; and all the 

 beasts they use in the artillery and trains are of this race ; 

 but the native uses him little. "No other horse can take 

 his place. The Government buys ponies at about thirty 

 Mexican dollars ($20 of our money) a head ; an officer 

 pays forty to sixty for a good one ; and the universal testi- 

 mony is that he is unexcelled. 



