The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-06-20

ply carts with mules that lean In upon each other at such an angle that you never cease wondering how they man age to keep their footing at all in the greasy state of the road when the bhis- tinen have just watered it, says L. Raven Hill, in the Pail Mall Magazine. A most wonderful sight, that Alipur road-every race in India passing along, and always in hurry. As we drew near the Frontier and Punjoub camps, one remarked the difference in the types seen on the road-tall, hook nosed. fierce looking men from Cabul and PeshawaT, with high conical caps, with black waistceats or yellow fur lined jackets over long shirts and bag
 gy trousers; loutish overcoated tribes from Gllgit, looking more like Caucas- ians than inhabitants of India. in their woolen caps and heelless boots. seeming to terrify the sightseeing Babus, who wandered meekly, hand in hand, quite as interested as the English globe trot- ter.
 After breakfast with the political agent the fanatical Akali Sikhs were shown us, with their strange blue head
 dresses, nearly three feet high, orna- mented with crescent shaped knives, bearing axes, bows and arrows, spears,
 daggers and swords; with their chain
 armor breastplates and shields, they
 suggested a travelling museum rather than warriors. Here. also, were the devil dancers from the Tibetan border, wearing grotesque masks. whose clum- sy dancing suggested the rawlings of some virago in an East End sium, rath-
 CT than anything diabollc.
 Every camp had something peculiar
 to itself-Kolah it's najas, almost nude
 swordsmen, whose bodies are colored
 yellow; Rewar it's resplendent horse
 men, whose steeds are covered with sil- yer ornaments and hung with silk dra- peries, and from whose saddles hang
 heavy yaks' tails. One of the most
 pleasing camps of all-more so from
 the charm of it's people than from the
 decoration of the tents, was that of the Shan States of Upper Burnah. They were delightful little people; even an official photographer, who was placing them In the most formal of groups, and
 who tortured them for over an hour in the regular professional photographers
 way, failed to damp their cheerfulness although they hastened to divest them selves of their stiff state garments the
 moment the operation was over.
 In the afternoon in addition to the
 usual polo, this day saw the final of the International Cup. There were to be
 some exhibition games by the Manipur teams, the ,originators of the polo game; also the Gilgit polo players were
 going to show us their variety of the sport From the spectacular point of
 view the interest in the Manipur play CTS was chiefly in the curious appear ance of their tiny ponies, almost buried
 under huge saddles with curved flaps to guard their feet, and wooien balls at 1 tached to every part of their brides; on
 the other hand, the Gilgit teams played a game that had to be seen to be be- 1 lieved. Starting from the end of nar-
 row course boarded in at the sides,
 some twenty galloped headlong down | the field, the leading man holding the ball and throwing it up into the air when half way between the goals. From that moment the whole field be- came pandemonium of galloping po- | nies and excited men, who worked with
 arms and legs, and who seemed capable of anything except alling Off. How any of them escaped destruction was a mar I vel, but their usual cuctom is to play the game up and wown their own streets, so ponies and men are used to charging at full speed against a, wall with an excited crowd following them
 up. How the ponies stood twenty min- utes of the game was little short of marvellous. One or two falls there were, but neither horse nor rider
 seemed at all inconvenienced by them Legitimate polo seemed very slow af- ter this, but a Babu photographer in lemon yellow, who planted himself in
 gaol to snapshot the game, was sight for the gods.