PREFACE. Vll 



Europe, that any true description will 

 necessarily wear the garb of fiction or 

 exaggeration. I should not therefore have 

 ventured to offer this to the public on my 

 own credit, had not others before me pub- 

 lished books on similar subjects. All per- 

 sons who have not been in India would 

 naturally doubt rny veracity, and even 

 those who have visited that country only of 

 late years would imagine that my account 

 was exaggerated, in as much as most of 

 the. sporting which I shall describe, I saw 

 about 26 years ago and before that 

 period. 



In those days the Prince of Lucknow 

 and all the great Zemeendars of the coun- 

 try were much more opulent than at pre- 

 sent. No Zemeendars of consequence, 

 then ever quitted their houses, without a 

 retinue of at least a hundred or more per- 

 sons riding and running before them, some 



