Gentlemen Riders 



selected. I have seen a stone and mortar wall in one, and 

 stone-faced banks five or six feet high were considered most 

 suitable fences. I remember, in 1856, seeing John Hubert 

 Moore riding a match, carrying eighteen stone, over the Knock- 

 barron course in Galway, where all the jumps were four and a 

 half feet walls ; and I have a distinct recollection of what riding 

 at the last of them on a beaten horse was like. The riding in 

 those days was of the roughest description. I well remember 

 a jockey named Chiffney, in a race with only two starters, when 

 they reached a part of the course out of view of the primitive 

 structure which did duty for a stand, seizing his opponent by 

 the collar and dexterously throwing him out of the saddle, and 

 then going on and winning the race at his leisure. Keeping 

 the course was a duty almost entirely neglected. I remember 

 riding in a military race at Newbridge, where the steeplechase 

 course was inside the flat. The crowd thought there was 

 another round of the steeplechase course to be taken, and 

 stood in a dense mass on the flat course just beyond the judge's 

 box. I was riding a mare belonging to David Palesy, the 

 well-known veterinary of the R.A. ; poor Bay Middleton was 

 on a horse of his own, and Frank Osborne on a very smart 

 mare named Clintonia. It was a very close finish between the 

 three. As soon as we passed the post there was nothing for 

 it but to gallop right into the dense crowd, which we accordingly 

 did, as there was not time to pull up, and I have a vivid recol- 

 lection of seeing poor Bay and his horse turning about three 

 somersaults among the crowd. We picked ourselves up and 

 weighed in, and, strange to say, no one was killed, nor, so far 

 as I remember, even seriously injured. They do these things 

 better now. 



" After a couple of years spent abroad, my health became 

 sufiiciently restored to enable me once more to follow hounds, 



214 



