122 MODERN PIG-STICKING 



out of the ranks and insured ; after our camp was 

 finished we re-sold the horses to the Government. 

 There is a good regulation which enables one to 

 re-sell within a year at cost price, the framer of 

 which no doubt had the impecunious but sporting 

 cavalry subaltern in his mind when the regulation 

 was drafted. The horse's cost was, I think, 950 

 rupees for a stud-bred, and 1200 rupees for a Waler. 

 The insurance was about 6 per cent, and Cox and 

 Co. charged the same rate for borrowing the money, 

 but as the horses were all re-sold in about a month 

 our bill for hiring good horses was not excessive. We 

 got a concession from the railway company for what 

 the babus called " not less than four players of the 

 pig-sticking only," double journey for single rates, 

 and this worked out at roughly 100 rupees per 

 horse from Pindi to Forbesganj and back. As the 

 distance was sixteen hundred miles each way this 

 works out at about thirty-two miles for a rupee, or, 

 in English, a halfpenny a mile, which is cheap 

 enough. 



The whole trip, including our subsequent shoot 

 in Nepaul, cost us 100 each. I have never had 

 better value for the money. On these long journeys 

 to save expense I am always ready to send horses 

 or polo ponies by trucks instead of boxes, provided 

 that arrangements are made to unload and groom 

 and exercise the horses every twenty-four hours. 



At the last moment two of our 10th Hussars 

 were unable to come, and Messrs. Weinholt and 

 Cheape of the K.D.G.'s volunteered as substitutes. 

 We went first to the Kadir meeting, and then sent 

 some of the horses on from there to Forbesganj, 

 where they arrived about three days after the Pindi 

 detachment. 



