428 CROSS-SADDLE RIDING FOR LADIES. 



loose, instead of hanging on to them as most men do, 

 I lost the aid which they might have afforded me in my 

 efforts to stick on. Besides, my grip was all wrong, 

 and seemed to be obtainable only at the thigh, which, 

 my husband tells me, ought, for riding purposes, to be 

 flat and not round. My experience of this kind of 

 riding appears to have been borne out by another lady 

 who tried it, for " Rapier," in the Sportmg and 

 Dramatic Neivs, Nov. 26th, 1892, says: "A few 

 weeks ago my correspondent ' Ion,' who is, I believe, 

 an excellent horsewoman, told me how she made an 

 essay at riding on a man's saddle, with the result that 

 she had a very bad fall." I believe both of us would 

 have done better if we had had no previous experience 

 of riding, and had acquired the art of hanging on to 

 the reins. A lady who is well known with the Devon 

 and Somerset Staghounds asked my husband's advice 

 about a suitable saddle, as she desired to ride astride, 

 and he helped her to procure one with large knee pads, 

 made on the principle of Australian buck-jumping 

 saddles, which appears to have answered her purpose 

 very well ; but I do not know how she would get on in 

 Leicestershire. Mrs. Tweedie rode astride in a Mexican 

 saddle, which, like those used by natives in India, are 

 something after the pattern of an easy-chair. William 

 Stokes, in an old work on riding which was published 

 at Oxford, tells us that in Mexico '' xh^ pisana, or 

 country lady, is often seen mounted before her 

 cavaliero, who, seated behind his fair one, supports her 

 with his arm thrown round her waist." This was much 



