THE CHEETAH, OE HUNTING LEOPAED. 87 



form an article of commerce, being exported thence to England 

 and other European countries — at one time in considerable numbers. 



In Asia, however, the cheetah is regularly trained to hunt. 

 Many of the rajahs, princes, and wealthy natives in India still 

 keep large numbers of these animals in their hunting estab- 

 lishments, and, as before stated, the manner of their use seems 

 to have undergone but little change from that practised in the 

 very earliest periods. 



Such importance have the Persians always attached to these 

 sports that according to Sir William .Jones, the great orientahst, 

 they record in their history that " Hushing, probably contem- 

 porary with Minos, and King of Persia, B.o. 865, was the first who 

 bred dogs and leopards for hunting, and introduced the fashion of 

 wearing the furs of wild beasts in winter." Hunting with the 

 cheetah afterwards became and continued a very popular form of 

 sport aiU over the Bast. The animal was employed in this capacity, 

 however, long before the above date, although, perhaps, not in 

 Persia, but it appears to have been used in some Eastern countries 

 from a very remote age, but where or when it was first trained 

 cannot be ascertained. On those wonderfully carved and beautiful 

 Assyrian bas-reliefs to be seen in the British Museum, a cheetah is 

 represented in the act of seizing an antelope, and it is also to be 

 seen.represented on an Egyptian monument, dating about 1700 years 

 before Christ, being brought, among other animals, as tribute to the 

 King of Thebes by the black tribes of the Upper Nile. It is led 

 in a slip, and has a very ornamental collar. A coloured facsimile 

 of the painting, reproduced in Rosellini's great work on Egyptian 

 monuments and antiquities, is given herewith. It represents an 

 Ethiopian leading the animal and carrying a log of very precious 

 black wood resembling eboiiy, the whole being copied from the 

 drawings on a tomb in Thebes. 



The second Caliph, Yezid, son of Moaweeyah, who began to reign 

 in Damascus, a.d. 680, is said to have been the first who adopted the 

 method of carrying the cheetah to the field on horseback, sitting on a 

 pillion behind the hunter, a method that was subsequently followed 

 by others, and was the one introduced into Europe at a later date. 

 Marco Polo informs us : " The Kaan himself goes every week to 



