Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/157

 out of his back, and would perhaps have killed him, had not the people in the bazār interfered and rescued the man. It was an odd freak, he is such a sweet-tempered animal, and I never knew him behave incorrectly before.

We spent the month of December, our hunting season, at Papamhow; and purchased several couple of the Berkeley hounds, from the Calcutta kennel, for the pack at Allahabad. I received a present of an excellent little black horse with a long tail; and, mounted on him, used to go out every day after the jackals and foxes. I am rich in riding-horses, and the dark brown stud Arab Trelawny bids fair to rival Mootee in my affections. Returning from chasing a jackal one evening, it was very dark, and as Captain A S was cantering his Arab across the parade-ground, the animal put his foot into a deep hole, and fell; our friend thought nothing of it, and refused to be bled; a few days afterwards the regiment quitted Allahabad, and he died the second day, on the march to Benares. He was an ill-fated animal, that little horse of his: they called him an Arab pony, but no good caste animal would have been so vicious; he had one fault, a trick of biting at the foot of his rider—he bit off the toe of his former master, mortification ensued, and the man died. I often wished to mount him, but they would never allow me: the creature was very handsome, and remarkably well formed; doubtless a native would have found unlucky marks upon him—at that time I was ignorant respecting samāt, or unlucky marks on horses.