d reverently and _Raja_ rewarded his curiosity with a vicious snap,
for he was being dressed over, and his temper was out of joint. Close to
him stood _Autocrat_, the grey with the nutmeg marks on the
off-shoulder, a picture of a horse, also disturbed in his mind. Next to
him was a chestnut Arab, a hopeless cripple, for one of his knees had
been smashed and the leg was doubled up under him. It was _Turquoise_,
who, six or eight years ago, rewarded good feeding by getting away from
his groom, falling down and ruining himself, but who, none the less, has
lived an honoured pensioner on the Maharaja's bounty ever since. No
horses are shot in the Jodhpur stables, and when one dies--they have
lost not more than twenty-five in six years--his funeral is an event. He
is wrapped in a white sheet which is strewn with flowers, and, amid the
weeping of the _saises_, is borne away to the burial ground.

After doing the honours for nearly half an hour the Maharaja departed,
and as the Englishman has not seen more than forty horses, he felt
justified in demanding more. And he got them. _Eclipse_ and _Young
Revenge_ were out down-country, but _Sherwood_ at the stud, _Shere Ali_,
_Conqueror_, _Tynedale_, _Sherwood II_, a maiden of Abdul Rahman's, and
many others of note, were in, and were brought out. Among the veterans,
a wrathful, rampant, red horse still, came _Brian Boru_, whose name has
been written large in the chronicles of the Indian turf, jerking his
_sais_ across the road. His near-fore is altogether gone, but as a
pensioner he condescends to go in harness, and is then said to be a
"handful." He certainly looks it.

At the two hundred and fifty-seventh horse, and perhaps the twentieth
block of stables, the Englishman's brain began to reel, and he demanded
rest and information on a certain point. He had gone into some fifty
stalls, and looked into all the rest, and in the looking had searchingly
sniffed. But, as truly as he was then standing far below _Brian Boru's_
bony withers, never the ghost of a stench had polluted the keen morning
air. The City of the Houyhnhnms was specklessly clean--cleaner than any
stable, racing or private, that he had been into. How was it done? The
pure white sand accounted for a good deal, and the rest was explained by
one of the Masters of Horse: "Each horse has one _sais_ at least--old
_Ringwood_ has four--and we make 'em work. If we didn't, we'd be mucked
up to the horses' bellies in no time. Eve