ssion to
"off-saddle" if you were riding, or "out-span" if driving, for the night
or a couple of hours, as the case might be. This was a roundabout way of
asking if he could put you and your animals up for the night. When leaving
in the morning, it would have been a great breach of good manners to ask
for your bill, but you inquired what you were indebted to his head-boy for
the forage your horses had consumed--a polite way of asking for your
account; the number of bundles per shilling varying according to the time
you remained, and the accommodation you had received; but, notwithstanding
this fiction, I did not, as a rule, find the total any less than in a
regular hotel where you get your bill.

Hay.

Hay, as is known in Europe and Australia, is never seen in India. In some
parts, what is called hay can be obtained; but, compared to English meadow
hay, it is at the best but poor stuff. No doubt hay of a very tolerable
quality can be made in India; in fact, I have done so, but usually the
grass is cut after the plant has flowered, the seed ripened and shed, when
it is what is known as "the sap being down," and then it is dry and with
little nourishment in it. It is generally also allowed to lie out too long
after it has been cut in a hot, powerful sun, which utterly bakes it up.
The grass should be cut when the seed is green and the sap well up in it,
and should not be allowed to remain too long drying. I have generally
found that from eight to ten hours of the Indian sun was enough, so that
grass cut in the morning should be stacked at night; it will then not be
utterly dried up, and in the stack will undergo the process of
fermentation that gives the characteristic smell to English hay. There is
a certain amount of difficulty in doing this. The grass flowers and seeds
at the end of the hot weather, about September, when the monsoon rains are
on, and these sometimes last for days together. It is, therefore,
sometimes difficult to get a fine day to cut and save the hay in before
the seed is shed; and before the dry weather again sets in the sap has
gone down, and there is but little nutriment left in the grass. It is not
a bad plan to sprinkle some salt over each layer of hay as the stack is
made up; horses eat this cured hay with great relish. In making up the
stack, a bundle or two of straw, put on end from the bottom upwards,
should be built into the centre of it as it is being raised up, to act as
a chimney or ve