TRAINING A CHEETA 
with one of them that an attempt was made to give an exhibition of the 
sport in Windsor Park, resulting in a short stampede among the noble 
spectators and a long laugh for all England. 
The Italians, who had close trade relations with the Saracens, intro- 
duced the first trained leopards into Europe. When, in 1459, a French 
ambassador, sent by the Duke of Burgundy to Pope Pius II, stopped on 
his way at Milan, and hunted with Francis Sforza, first Duke of ‘Milan, he 
was astonished to see leopards carried on horseback (on a pillion behind 
.their owners) and slipped at hares, which they coursed and killed. An 
illustrated account of such hunting may be read in La Croix’s work.!4! 
Both Charles VIII and Louis XII of France kept trained animals of 
this kind with which they killed hares and roedeer. After a kill, the cheeta, 
on being shown a little blood in a tin bowl, would leave its prey and 
jump on the horse’s crupper behind its master. “One would imagine,” 
as J. E. Harting remarks, ‘“‘that the horse would require almost as much 
training as the cheeta to stand quiet under such circumstances.” This 
sport continued among the French nobles until the time of Henry IV, and 
was revived in Germany by Leopold I, who died in 1705, but it was never 
followed in Great Britain. 
In India the sport is still popular, especially among the native 
princes, and is conducted much as of old. Of the many de- 
scriptions of it I prefer that of the senior Kipling," who places 
the picturesqueness of it, as it seems to me, where it belongs : — 
“The Rev. J. G. Wood descants on the great powers of the Orientals 
in training the cheeta or hunting leopard. In this instance the only point 
where real skill comes into play is in the first capture of the 
adult animal, when it has already learned the swift bounding 
onset, —its one accomplishment. The young cheeta is not worth catching, 
for it has not learned its trade, nor can it be taught in captivity. There 
are certain trees where these great dog cats come to play and whet their 
claws. The hunters find such a tree, arrange deer-sinew nooses around it, 
and await the event. The animal comes and is caught by a leg, and it is 
at this point the trouble begins. It is no small achievement for two naked, 
ill-fed men to secure so fierce a captive and carry him home on a cart. 
Then his training commences. He is tied in all directions, principally 
from a thick grummet of rope round his loins, while a hood fitted over his 
head effectually blinds him. He is fastened on a strong cot bedstead, and 
the keepers and their wives and families reduce him to submission by starv- 
149 
Training. 
