have the greatest aversion to docked-tailed horses, and will
never permit the animals to be shorn of the beauty with which Nature has
adorned them, either in length or fulness; besides which, they think it a
barbarous want of taste in those who differ from them, though they fancy
Nature is improved when the long tail and mane of a beautiful white Arab
are dyed with mayndhie; his legs, up to the knees, stained with the same
colour, and divers stars, crescents, &c., painted on the haunches, chest,
and throat of the pretty gentle creature.[26]

When the horses are looking rough, the Natives feed them with a mixture of
coarse brown sugar and ghee, which they say gives sleekness to the skin,
and improves the constitution of the horse. When their horses grow old,
they boil the gram with which they feed them, to make it easy of digestion;
very few people, indeed, give corn at any age to the animal unsoaked, as
they consider it injudicious to give dry corn to horses, which swells in
the stomach of the animal and cannot digest: the grain swells exceedingly
by soaking, and thus moistened, the horse requires less water than would
be necessary with dry corn.

The numberless Native sports I have heard related in this country would
take me too long to repeat at present; describe them I could not, for my
feelings and views are at variance with the painful tortures inflicted on
the brute creation for the perverted amusements of man, consisting of many
unequal contests, which have sickened me to think they were viewed by
mortals with pleasure or satisfaction. A poor unoffending antelope or stag,
perhaps confined from the hour of its quitting its dam in a paddock,
turned out in a confined space to the fury of a cheetah[27] (leopard) to
make his morning's repast. Tigers and elephants are often made to combat
for the amusement of spectators; also, tigers and buffaloes, or alligators.
The battle between intoxicated elephants is a sport suited only for the
cruel-hearted, and too often indulged. The mahouts[28] (the men who sit as
drivers on the neck of the elephant) have frequently been the victims of
the ignoble amusement of their noble masters; indeed, the danger they are
exposed to is so great, that to escape is deemed a miracle. The
fighting-elephants are males, and they are prepared for the sport by
certain drugs mixed up with the wax from the human ear. The method of
training elephants for fighting must be left to abler hands to describ