of British India and in a native State, to whose ruler we had written asking for help in the way of coolies and supplies. We were sanguine enough to expect to find both waiting for us at the first village over the border, and so we agreed to release our present set of men without a qualm, although we took the precaution to bribe (and we had to bribe high) a couple of them, in addition to our shikarries, to remain permanently with us-one to hew wood and draw water, the other to act as letter - carrier between us and the nearest British post-office.

But all our plans fell to the ground. The Rajah wired and wrote to us, by round-about routes through British India, that the country for fifty miles in front of us was still uninhabited, and therefore there were no men to send to our assistance, but that he would help us on as soon as he could.

Then week succeeded week, and finally, as our leave drew to its appointed end, we were compelled to appeal to the nearest British Deputy-Commissioner to release us from the trap into which we had fallen by despatching a rescueparty to take us back; and so, by the irony of fate, it happened that on one and the same fine afternoon forty men came over the Pass from the British side to carry us to India again, while a similar number marched up the valley from the opposite direction with instructions from the Rajah to take us through his

territory to the land where we would be. Ours was Hobson's choice, so sadly we turned our faces southwards, and thus ended our trip to "NOWHERE."

In another week or so we were back once more in a land of ice, but it was, alas ! ice that lived in chests and tinkled in tumblers only,-in a land of early parades and late dinners, in a land of white uniform and red-tape, a land of roasting beds and sleepless nights,-in fact, in the land of India at midsummer.

When we think now of our long - enforced halt, we find that time has mellowed the asperity of our feelings, and that we really did enjoy it very much. Addington sketched and painted, and I read, and we both worked the surrounding country-side very thoroughly, and though unable to go any distance, we got a certain number of decent heads and skins. In fact, I had one really extraordinary day, of which I subsequently wrote an account to two brothers in different parts of India. Both of them, without previous collusion, but with singular unanimity, hastened to inform me that my letter "read like a fairy-tale"! so I have no desire to repeat it here.

But some day I shall send an account of it to 'Maga,' and those who read it will probably snort like the warhorse when he says "Ha-ha," and decline to believe a word of it; and yet, like this tale, it will be nothing but the plain, unvarnished truth.

HILLSIDE.

AFTER a long life how few horses or ponies can any man look back upon as "real olinkers," but when blessed with one, how he loved and gloried in him. He may have been a racehorse, a steeplechaser, a hunter, a pig-sticker, a polo pony, a hack, or а trotter, chacun à son goût, but to each one of us he was, or ought to have been, a part of our life.

You often hear a man say of a horse, "Oh! he's a rattling good hunter, but can't jump timber, or won't face water." I never think you can or ought to call a horse a "hunter," and you certainly cannot call him a "elinker," unless he will carry you safely over every class of jumpable fence, nor can he be called a hunter unless he has pace enough to live with hounds. What is the use, if hounds run, of a horse that cannot gallop and keep with them, or that stops at any fence, determinedly; you are out of the hunt at once. What people call a good slow hunter is, to my mind, a horse to be avoided, and should have no place in the stable of any man who wants to see hounds. But there is a vast difference between what some people call hunting, and seeing hounds.

Fortunately I've been blessed, for being a poor man I could

never afford to pay a big price for horses, and yet in my small way I have had perhaps more than my share of "real clinkers." I will only touch on those horses which I have owned myself, and tell of their virtues, vices, and performances; but I could give many tales of "real olinkers though some of their owners did not know what they had got in them which I have ridden, belonging to my friends, for I was a light weight, and my friends were many and kind, as all true sportsmen are, so that I often got mounted by them.

that

ever

I had one dear old horse, a hunter, that stands out by himself in my memory. No "looked horse through a bridle" could beat him to hounds, and that is a the big word; but it was opinion of all who ever knew him and

saw him over & country, and their name was legion, for I hunted him for ten seasons in very many countries, both in England and Ireland, and he was quickly known wherever he went, and his fame had often preceded him. His memory lives in many countries even to this day, though all who ever knew him are grey in the beard. Yet many an old pal greets me to-day with, "Well, old Ballyragget, how are you? ?"

No hounds could go too fast for him, no country could be too strong or too intricate for him, for he was as wise as a man, in fact wiser than many, and he loved hounds and insisted on being with them. The "narrow back" of Meath, with its yawning ditch always towards you, as the Irishman expresses it, the fair stone wall of Galway or the nasty treacherous one of Louth, the wide stretch of gleaming water or the ugly stiff hogbacked stile, the sheep-net of Yorkshire, which is a terror to most, or the iron railings round an enclosure, were all one to old Bally. He knew them all, and seemed to instil the feeling into you, as plainly as if he was saying it: Trust to me, and you are safe. And you

were.

I do not think he gave me half a dozen falls during the many years I rode him, and I had such absolute confidence in him I am afraid at times I tried him most unfairly high. That gallant sportsman, Whyte Melville, in his stirring rhymes, describes Old Bally most accurately

"When the country is deepest, I give

you my word "Tis a pride and a pleasure to put him along;

O'er fallow and pasture he sweeps like a bird,

And there's nothing too wide nor too high nor too strong, For the ploughs cannot choke nor the

fences can crop This Clipper that stands in the stall at the top."

He would stand at the covert side like an old doghorse, apparently taking no

notice of anything, fellows riding and galloping all about and around him; but at the first whimper of a hound, often before I heard it myself, up would go his head, and with ears pricked he would stand still as a statue, listening, not a move, though I often felt his heart beating between my knees from excitement. But no fuss it was real business as well as pleasure with him. He knew a View Holloa and Gone Away as well as I did, but he would not move until you gave him the " office," and then look out! No need to wait for the crowd in the gateway or gap; turn his head where you wanted him to go; that Gone Away had been enough for him, and he was off like a shot from a gun. Reaching into his snafflebridle, for he would stand a curb, he would pull you almost out of your saddle till he got into the field with the hounds racing in front of him; after that your troubles were over, and he would drop his head to your hand and keep his pace and his place. Like most high-couraged good 'uns he had his peculiarities, and sometimes was a bit of a handful if you did not know him, he was 80 keen and powerful; so I never put anyone else on him, and he and I at that time lived for and understood each other. Well, he taught me not only how to ride but how to ride to hounds, and I owe the dear old fellow a very deep debt of gratitude.

never

Got by Lord Waterford's "Red Wing" out of a three

to him in his stall, had him stripped, and said, Major, he's mine." "Have a ride on him," said Major Cass. "No, thanks, he'll do," said I; but he insisted, and Bally was brought out, and with a leg up I was on his back. How well I remember it! With a double bridle and noseband, and a a tight curb, his head low down to the ground, reaching into his bridle, he took me in that long slinging trot which only a big, powerful, well-bred horse has, right up to the barrack gates, where the sentry stopped him-I couldn't. Turned round, back he went to the stables, where I jumped off, and said, "Come on, Major, I'll give you a cheque." "Well," said he, "take him if you like, my dear boy, but I tell you he's a real brute; he can't gallop, he can't jump, but he's a good walker, and he can and will run away with you." "All right," said I; "if he's a good walker, he can do something else," and thus I fortunately became the possessor of dear old Ballyragget, the best friend a young sportsman ever possessed.

I had him led on next morning to a meet of the York and Ainsty, about fifteen miles off. We found a fox. The hounds went away and so did he, keen as mustard, for he had had nothing but oats and quiet exercise for two months. Shaking his head low to the ground, fighting at his heavy double bridle and noseband which they assured me was the only thing you could possibly hold him in, he hardly seemed to see or rise at the first two

fences, but got through or over them somehow, and not till the middle of the third field could I really get a pull at him. Then I jumped off, put the curb in my pocket, let the bit down as low as I could in his mouth, jumped on his back, and said to him, "Now, you beggar, you may rip!" Finding his head practically loose, up it went, and in about three fences he dropped to my hand, never made another mistake,

and I had a ripping ride. From that day till he died he never again knew what a double bridle and curb meant, or felt the indignity of whip or spur. But he could pull a bit sometimes on a snaffle. He never had a good mouth, though he and I got to know one another so well that I could have ridden him almost with my voice and a pack - thread. I am a great believer in the human voice with all animals.

His first notable performance was with Lord Middleton's hounds in Yorkshire. There were great festivities at the present Lord Middleton's coming of age, a big ball, and lawn meet at Birdsall, for which all the houses round were filled, and many first-class wellmounted sportsmen and sportswomen from the neighbouring packs meant to "do or die the next morning. We found a fox in the laurels close to the house. There was a holloa forrard, most of the field galloped off down the ride, whilst I and a few others stopped back and listened. The fox turned short back with the hounds close at him, and with