124 THE PULSE OF ASIA
the mêlée, the horses jumped and turned this way and that, while all the riders tried to force a way to the middle of the fight, whipping their own and other people's horses, taking horses by the head and turning them suddenly round, and themselves leaning far out of their saddles as they grabbed madly at the black calf. At last one man captured it, threw it over the front of his saddle, put both legs over it, and was off at a dead run with fifty others after him. They could not catch him, and, making a great sweep as large as the terrace allowed, he returned in triumph to throw the beast before me and get the customary reward.
Then began another scrimmage, in which one over-zealous rider was knocked from his horse and apparently trampled on, but when the kicking, surging crowd of horses had passed, his horse was still with him, and he mounted and galloped off with a grin. After half-a-dozen scrimmages, one daring rider seized the prize and went over the terrace, down a hundred-foot slope so steep that a footman could scarcely climb it without zigzagging. At the foot, the bold rider, hard pressed by his pursuers, cantered across a broad arm of the river, and away across the plain beyond, trying as he went to skin the calf, for he who carries off the skin wins the " bagai."
We rode away with the " Deyem Bai," the giver of the entertainment, who was homeward bound to inspect the cooking of the sheep for the feast that was to follow. It is the custom, I was told, for men of wealth to furnish a goat or calf for the " bagai," and to invite all the men of one or two villages to join in the sport, and at the end to indulge in a feast, or better, a carnivorous orgie. Among the occa-
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