"■ Plenipo',' " Colonist',' and ''King George " 203 



and knew he must have a pace, they waited on him, and I 

 was forced to make my own running. For the whole 

 distance I had to keep at that horse, the end of a hardly 

 contested race being that " Carnival " beat me by a long 

 neck; when I returned to weigh in I had lost \\ lb., the 

 greatest amount that I ever did lose. 



Another fact is the extraordinary effect a very mode- 

 rate amount of food can have, when you have been 

 wasting. My ordinary weight was 10 st. 5 or 6 lb. when 

 stripped, and I had been riding 10 stone. As the next 

 race was 13 st. 9 lb., and the following one 10 st. 7 lb. I 

 ventured to take a very slight amount of food between 

 the two races, yet when I presented myself at the scales 

 only a few minutes afterwards my weight had gone up to 

 10 st. 4 lb., though I had just previously weighed in at 

 10 St. with my saddle. 



At the Seville autumn meeting we had a very sensa- 

 tional race for the Duke of Montpensier's prize, which 

 was run over hurdles — very awkward hurdles they were 

 too, being 4 feet 6 inches high, with double top -bars, 

 between which tall broom was drawn, through which we 

 had to " swish " like a " bullfinch." The hurdles might 

 break indeed, but they were too firmly fixed into the 

 ground to knock down, and were not even slanted to assist 

 the horses when jumping. The usual rains had not com- 

 menced, so that the course was very dry and hard, and to 

 keep the dust down under the royal box — which was on 

 the very verge of the course — a water cart had been freely 

 used. As Spanish clerks of the course did not know 

 much about hurdle-racing — in fact, this form of sport had 

 only been introduced that year — I generally had a look 

 round to see if it was necessary to make any alteration in 



