86 REMINISCENCES OF SONEPORE. 



twenty miles. Nothing but his high spirit and total inability 

 to give in kept him alive through that journey. He ought to 

 have died from loss of blood, for the wounds burst out every 

 time there was a bad jolt over the breaks in the road, and they 

 were legion. And then the poison from the bites and danger 

 of lockjaw would have been sufficient to settle any nervous 

 fellow. Luckily he has not got such a thing as nerves in his 

 composition ; hence, I suppose, his escape." 



Rowland Hudson came out to India this year at the age 

 of eighteen, and Red Gauntlet was his first racing mount out 

 here. We have never seen his equal in Behar, for his first two 

 years, he rode over a country as well as on the flat, and one 

 of his best performances, between the flags, was when he won 

 on that hard-pulling, shifty horse Blackboy, at Mozufferpore, 

 beating Jimmy, who was on the best chaser in India, the white- 

 faced Delphos, judge's verdict a length; but after the sad 

 accident at home to his brother, who was killed in a hurdle 

 race, Rowland acceded to the wishes of his relatives and 

 gave up cross country racing. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



YEAR 1872. 



When 1872 began, Indian racing was undoubtedly in a 

 parlous state, chiefly due to the red hot plunging of a not too 

 honorable clique of men frequenting the North-West meetings. 

 Neglecting their legitimate business, they went from fixture to 

 fixture, vainly endeavouring to pick up at one shop what they 

 had lost at another, lax Secretaries refraining from posting 

 and allowing them to continue their unprincipled course. 

 Little or no settling took place, and several meetings were 

 consequently frequented by the hard-up crew who endeavoured 

 to pigeon each other. Even in Calcutta the system of settling 

 was unsatisfactory. Instead of the Secretary keeping the 

 accounts, and collecting and disbursing the monies, the lottery 



