General "Monty'' Turnbull. i8i 



the Hermitage — called after his favourite horse — at Ali- 

 pore, near Calcutta, he did yeoman service, in the true 

 interests of racing as a steward of the Calcutta Turf 

 Club, and as one of the Editors of the Oriental Sporting 

 Magazine, the other two being Lord Ulick Browne and 

 Colonel W. Nassau Lees, LL.D. 



As a writer he was fond of a joke, and often enlivened 

 "" The Month " of his paper by a droll tale. " Arab 

 merchants," he relates in one of the numbers, " are apt 

 to be too fond of trials, and so much does the term work 

 •on their imagination, that one of them was heard to 

 apply it to a loving couple riding round the racecourse. 

 When it was suggested that it would result in a match, 

 the immediate answer was, "Nahiir, Sahib, we khalee 

 try kurten haih." (No, sir, they are only running a trial!) 



What a fine old Indian flavour there is about the 

 following story, which a correspondent to the magazine 

 tells as having happened in Calcutta. " One of the 

 Southern Confederates bet two noble and gallant sports- 

 men a dozen of champagne that he would carry each of 

 them one hundred yards on his back, in front of the 

 stand, on a race morning between the races, in fourteen 

 seconds. ' Done,' and ' done ' was said. Down goes 

 the Confederate, down go the Northerners accompanied 



