no RIDING, DRIVING AND KINDRED SPORTS 



coaching books tell us, those who had a taste 

 for coaching, qualified in the art by driving the 

 staee-coaches, and no doubt this was an incom- 

 parable school for coachmen. Roads of all 

 sorts, horses of all kinds and seldom of the 

 best, with loads of varying weight, and time 

 to keep, taught them to be thorough coach- 

 men, judges of pace, strong with a weak team, 

 and o-entle with a strono- one, so as to o-et the 

 most work with the least expenditure of the 

 horses' strength. 



When in 1881 I was appointed to the frontier, 

 I found that part of my duties would consist in 

 drivino- from one end of the frontier to the 

 other, from Bannu to Rajanpore. My im- 

 mediate predecessor had done the journey on a 

 camel, but I have no taste for camel riding. 

 The ordinary riding-camel is dull work, and the 

 trotting-camels from Bhowalpur are expensive, 

 and carry litde or nothing besides the rider. 

 The journey might be ridden on horseback, 

 but there was the question of baggage. Why 

 not drive tandem.^ "Oh," said everybody, "that 

 is impossible. The roads are so bad, no cart 

 would stand them, and you would not get 

 twenty miles." I am afraid I am not very good 

 at taking advice, and experience has told me 

 that not one man in a hundred knows anything 

 about a road over which he may have travelled 



