334 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



utmost. In these chases our hounds suffered more than our 

 horses, their first sustained rushes seeming to cause them 

 great distress, for the bucks invariably had a long start, no 

 matter how cautiously we made the stalk. 



Once only have I succeeded in laying my horse fairly 

 alongside a beaten buck, and that was in the south of the 

 Midnapoor district, not far from Jellaisar, on an excessively 

 hot day in April, when the hot winds had scorched the 

 country dry to nearly spontaneous combustion point. I was 

 riding to camp about eleven in the forenoon, mounted on 

 " Comet," a famous Arab pig-sticker, nearly fifteen hands 

 high, and in racing condition ; a gallant horse, as fleet as he 

 was staunch, high-hearted, active, and intelligent. On passing 

 over a broad expanse of sun-dried rice-fields, divided by low 

 walls of twelve to twenty inches in height, I came suddenly 

 upon half-a-dozen antelope reposing in the shade of some 

 thorny bushes, out of which they sprang as I approached 

 them at a canter, and broke away with high bounds. Select- 

 ing the only buck, I lay into him with a cheery tally-ho, and 

 we set to for about three miles, when he seemed to be coming 

 back to me, making short turns to the right and left. Another 

 mile and he was almost under my off stirrup, so that, had I 

 been armed with a hog-spear, I could have rolled him over as 

 dead as Julius Caesar, but holding only a riding-switch in my 

 hand, I could do no more than ride the poor beast till his 

 heart broke, possibly seriously injuring my gallant steed in 

 the attempt ; accordingly I pulled up the latter, and allowed 

 the former to stagger away sorely distressed. This buck was 

 of a rusty black colour, and, I take it, past his prime. The 

 ground was, as I have observed, as hard as rock, uneven, and 

 intersected by many low ridges, but in no way, as I under- 

 stand it, more favourable to the horse than to the buck. Be 

 that as it may, the antelope was fairly beaten, and the horse 

 none the worse for the run. 



In Pooree, the soil, which was pure sand, lightly covered 

 here and there by a crisp sappy weed on which the antelope 

 browse, was more favourable for the buck than for the horse, 



