88 REMINISCENCES OF SONEPORE. 



so the race was declared by them null and void. Then we had 

 to mourn the loss of Lord Mayo, done to death by a foul assassin's 

 cruel knife at the Andamans. But in Tirhoot itself, things 

 looked fairly rosy, for Jimmy McLeod and Gwatkin Williams 

 were gradually bringing into the district an ever increasing 

 and yearly improving lot of racers ; as fast as one got 

 something good enough to win, the other would try and go one 

 better, but up to this the Lall Serryah stable held pride of place. 

 Lower Bengal, too, lost a good sportsman, well known to us up 

 here as a champion slayer of tigers and the unclean beast ; 

 five hundred of the former, and boars by the thousand, had 

 fallen under his unerring rifle and undeviating spear; known 

 as Black Simmy, to distinguish him from our Judex, Mr. F. B. 

 Simson was a good man and true, and though not a racing 

 man, was always ready to help keep up race fixtures at any 

 station he was sent to. He has a son in the Kernaul Indigo 

 Concern, who, though not yet a mighty Nimrod like his worthy 

 dad, is the best hand at beans and bacon in the district ; they 

 call him " The Stodger." That dullest of bores, and most sanc- 

 timonious of prigs, George Campbell, Lieutenant-Governor of 

 Bengal, who was always poking his nose into things that did 

 not concern him, ruled then at Belvedere, and because poor 

 Wilkinson met his death in the Bengal Grand Annual, he must 

 needs step in and stop chasing on the old course ; and then be- 

 cause pretty plain speaking was used, and repeated to him, in 

 his nasty, spiteful way he revenged himself by threatening to 

 prosecute the promoters of the time-honored Derby Lottery ; 

 and as in addition to worrying the general community, he 

 worried his subordinates inordinately, he was very much beloved 

 by all sections of the community. The Maori's poems, compiled 

 from the Oriental Sporting Magazine, were published this year 

 in book form, some of them very clever, particularly one on the 

 death of Jimmy McLeod's pet Arab pigsticker Bonnie Morn, 

 and the song " A Planter's Bungalow." Rowland Hudson 



