CHOOSING A HORSE 57 



a horse well, without making him fight, are few. 

 If you have only a short swim to face do not get 

 off your horse ; he will carry you easily enough, 

 and you can catch your pig in the water. I have 

 twice speared pig swimming. A horse swims double 

 the pace a pig does. Pig, though, are strong 

 swimmers and fond of water. I have seen them 

 repeatedly swim at right angles across a strong 

 current where a horse at the same place is carried 

 a hundred yards down -stream. I fancy this is 

 because the greater bulk of the horse is more readily 

 caught hold of by the current. 



In any pig-sticking country you must expect 

 to swim at any time. This reminds me of a certain 

 Hog-hunter's Cup. These are point to point races 

 after the Kadir Cup : they generally bore me to 

 distraction. Well, we took our racing friends and 

 made the course clear to them, quite clear to the 

 meanest intellect. They had to go round an 

 elephant with a white flag on him. We warned 

 them of a couple of awkward nullahs with deepish 

 water. Soon after they started we saw Major 

 Tilney, 17th Lancers, fall on his head. He got up 

 apparently none the worse, though we found later 

 that his fall had temporarily somewhat affected 

 his clarity of vision, mental and physical. When 

 the race ended there was no Tilney. Our anxieties 

 were allayed an hour later when he and his horse, 

 very wet and tired, came in. His only comment 

 was, " D d big nullahs those." He had mis- 

 taken a white temple across the river for the white 

 flag. He had swum and re-swum the Ganges. 



The Kadir Cup country is so flat and featureless 

 that these flagged point elephants are sometimes a 

 necessity. One year one of these flag elephants, 



