REMINISCENCES OF SONEPORE. 55 



and used to fill his unfortunate animals up with drugs, 

 Once Dr. Rimmer gave him his horses to train, while he was 

 away, and he gave the whole lot rheumatism, by chucking 

 cold water over them when they came in hot from their gallops. 



It was at this meeting that Mr. Gilbert Nicolay first 

 donned silk, he had come out to indigo the year before, at the 

 early age of nineteen, a pretty blue-eyed, fair-haired, slim 

 youngster, with undeniably good hands, and pluck, he was the 

 beau ideal of a race rider, and in a very few years he turned 

 out one. of the most accomplished horsemen in Chumparun, 

 and could hold his own, not only with the best G.R's. in the 

 country, but with professionals too. A true gentleman in every 

 sense of the word, Gilbert would not have pulled a horse to save 

 his soul. He had a brother nicknamed The Emperor, an equally 

 good fellow who would probably, had he lived, have turned out 

 quite as good a rider as Gilbert, but unfortunately he could not 

 stand the climate, and died a short time after he came out. 



Mr. Vincent went for two years furlough at the end of 

 1866 and during his absence Sir Seymour Blane was racing 

 under his name. 



,Thpse who witnessed it will never forget the awful acci- 

 dent which occurred at Sonepore in 1866 and ended the career 

 of as promising a young soldier as ever wore Her Majesty's 

 uniform. Poor young Boileau of the lythB.C was bolted with 

 by a mad half-bred Australian brute, called Alfred, belonging 

 to Jack Becher; unable to pull him up, he was carried into 

 the trees, behind the stables, and in endeavpviring to avoid one 

 branch, his head came crash agajj#i| r n other,-, and the skull was 

 simply smashed beyond recogniti&nv The regiment was under 

 orders for Bhootan, but Boileau had come to say farewell to his 

 ma^ny friends. This sad event cast a terrible gloom over the 

 meeting. Alfred ended his days as a dog-cart nag of Harry 

 Abbott's. 



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