28 REMINISCENCES OF SONEPORE. 



Losers' Handicap with Emperor, and Mr. Vincent's Tasso who 

 had been disqualified for a cross on Tuesday, today, with 

 Peter Irving up, won the handicap for untrained hacks, in a 

 dhoby's donkey's canter. To finish up a short day on the i6th, 

 a ten mile race was improvised, four nags started, a native 

 gentleman rode his own horse and finished the course, Mr. 

 Vincent's Hector won it, but on going to scale the first three 

 were disqualified for over weight, their saddle cloths having 

 absorbed so much perspiration, and the fourth had sent his 

 horse away, not thinking there was any necessity for him to 

 weigh, being last. The Monghyr stable had carried off most 

 of the plums, and it continued its triumphs at a poor meeting 

 in Calcutta, the handsome Grace Lee winning the Colonials 

 and Merchants' Plate. In those days there was no railway, 

 and horses marched from Sonepore to Calcutta. Slowly but 

 surely the influx of Australians and English horses, was driv- 

 ing the game, but slow Arabians, to the wall, and instead of 

 thirty to forty of them entering, and a round dozen starting at 

 Sonepore, as they did in 1847 anc ^ 1848, we find only one 

 race filled by them in 1853. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

 YEARS 1854-55. 



For 1854 Mr. Vincent still acted as Secretary, but with 

 the poorer meeting of 1853, and the still poorer show in 

 Calcutta, old owners retiring, and but very few replacing 

 them, it looked very like a forlorn hope. One of the chief 

 reasons seemed to be that Government had steadily set its 

 face against its employes racing, and though the military 

 cared not, yet the civilians found it detrimental to their 

 careers if they defied their seniors. We of today know 

 too well the difference it makes to Sonepore, if we have a sport- 

 ing, or non-sporting Commissioner at Patna. Ichabod was 

 what, as far as first-class racing went, had now to .be wcitten 



