refused to lose it in a wayside, lukewarm pool, preferring to retain it in its hard, parched-up condition in order to indulge fond visions of prospective drinks all the way back, that culminated in the stern reality immediately on arrival! Iced soda-water, with claret or iced bottled beer was the nectar that filled the foaming goblet, and as it disappeared with a huge sigh of relief, I felt that the gratification was worth all the hard labour by which so valuable a thirst had been acquired. Let not the reader imagine from these or from my antecedent remarks that I was a bon-vivant and fond of such indulgences. On the contrary, I have always held strongly that sport and abstemiousness must go together. No sportsman can possibly undergo the fatigue of a long tiring day in the hot weather, or can keep his nerves in order, unless he is temperate in all things and in good training. I made it a rule to touch nothing alcoholic whilst the sun was up, and the draught I speak of, which lingers so fondly in the memory when recalling tent life, was probably the first of the day. It is a most welcome provision of Nature, exemplifying again the accepted principle, that the poison and the antidote are usually to be found together, that by means of the extreme heat our liquor was cooled, and that the hotter the wind the quicker and the better did its temperature approach perfection. This was effected by means of evaporation, a simple enough cause to achieve so great and so satisfactory a result.

THE intelligent Hindoo who, it is averred, described billiards as a game in which two men, armed with long sticks, poked at a ball, while one player exclaimed Oh!' and the other Hard lines!' was, I am inclined to think, a bit of a plagiarist; whilst the Kaffir warrior who is reported to have belaboured a great boulder with a huge pole, shouting Hang it!' the while, under the impression that he was following closely in the footsteps of certain players he had witnessed playing at golf, was either a myth or a bit of a fool.

6

Without doubt there is something very amusing in a foreigner's description of a game with which we are familiar and he is entirely ignorant. His efforts to render the technicalities of the sport so as to make it understandable by his compatriots, his ignorance of its nomenclatural features, and his endeavours to surmount the difficulty, together render his attempt supremely funny; so, may I add, is the ordinary male mortal's description of the ordinary female mortal's outdoor garb from the feminine point of view. But our foreign friend does not make such an egregious mess of it as the intelligent Hindoo' and 'Kaffir warrior' anecdotes would have us believe; he reports what he sees, and what he imagines he would feel were he a player, and

if his phraseology is peculiar, his imagination fearful, his description is full of intelligence; we recognise the difficulties he has to encounter, and acknowledge that he conquers them very creditably; it is therefore in no captious or unfriendly spirit that I recall some of the quaint idiosyncrasies he has embodied in his descriptions of essentially British sports.

Some fourteen or fifteen years ago a very precious report of an England v. Australia match at the Oval, written by an adventurous Frenchman, was presented to English readers by a contemporary. The enterprising foreigner having rendered ' himself at the Oval, appreciatively remarked: In entering, I paid for the privilege to observe the struggle; and I shall soon say that never in my life have I seen, at so cheap a price, a spectacle so extraordinary.' The day was of the hottest-so, by the way, was the scoring, for at the close Murdoch was not out 145, Scott not out 101, McDonnell had aggregated 103, while the total was 363 for two wickets; and our Gallic acquaintance having remarked to himself, Ah! the combat has place then in the open air!' confessed to a feeling of astonishment, for naturally I figured to myself that when it was hot they should play cricket in some pavilion.' The English team-did ever a finer step into the field? W. W. Read, it will be remembered, going in when eight wickets were down, scored more than a hundred-having arranged themselves irregularly. . . at certain distances from two light barricades of wood . . . I see two players of the Australian party march firmly to the barricades. Each one is habited in white costume, and carries a heavy staff with a broad blade; and, in addition, each one is fortified with stiff greaves and gauntlets of thick caoutchouc

I hesitate to believe that the delegates are upon the point to fight with weapons so dangerous, yet I find no other explanation of the armour.' Having taken their position at the wickets the observer 'happily assured' himself that they had not meditated a struggle together.' The bowling was terrific in the Frenchman's eyes; the ball, 'like a cannon bullet,' and of 'frightfully dangerous character,' was hurled furiously towards the legs of the Australian delegate;' surely Ulyett must have gone on first. 'But hold with his staff the brave Australian has dexterousiy turned aside the projectile, which he has sent far to his right. where it has descended among the spectators. I fear some one shall be killed; yet it is nothing.' As the game proceeds the writer declares that he fails to comprehend how it is amusing for the players, and especially for the Australian delegates, who are in great peril at each instant. More than once the ball strikes

the leg of a delegate; but, thanks to the protecting greaves, fails to actually break it.' The strategy of the Australians is extolled, but the barbarity of the English' deplored, and finally our visitor offers to the public his 'regrets that some people, sensible, polished, and well raised, can find a pleasure to take part in a labour so dangerous. To stand upright during so many hours of an extreme heat; to take a violent exercise without any meat; to run deliberately a grave danger not less than that which one is obliged to encounter on a field of battle-all this is folly of the most profound.'

The phrase all this is folly of the most profound' appears to be the text upon which most foreign critics base their strictures upon our national games, though they sometimes, as in the case of the American papers, express themselves differently. At the time when the Australians visited Chicago in the fall of 1896, our American contemporaries had a good deal to say about cricket; one paper, indeed, went so far as to admit that cricket is a great game, but, alas! the admission was qualified by the addition of 'for Englishmen, dead men, or other phlegmatic and stoical people.'

An American writer, when giving a few particulars of the game, noticed the umpire, whose presence failed to attract the attention of our Gallic critic. There is an umpire,' he reported, and what he says goes. Englishmen are not kickers. The first cricket umpire was probably a Saxon king, and anybody who objected went away in the dead waggon.' It is in the cultivation of a pleasant breezy style that the American press is so supremely pre-eminent.

With regard to the game itself we learn that There is a runway, and a batter stands at each end thereof. A bowler, who corresponds to the American pitcher, throws the ball at a little wooden gate which stands just behind one of the batters. If they knock down the gate the man is out; if the ball is caught on the fly he is out; and he may be out in several other ways, including getting hit in the ear with the ball. When he hits the ball he scoots up and down the runway and scores a run per scoot. Sometimes he will scoot 300 times before he is put out, and the amount of exercise he gets is therefore about what a base-ball player would have if he made seventy-five home runs without going into the field between bats. Ten men must be put out to retire the side, instead of three. This is why the game usually lasts part of a century.'

A few years ago our Gallic neighbours would have applied to

football much the same language as the Chinese gentleman, who was taken to an inter-University match, used in his description of the game for the benefit of friends in his native country. A translation of the report he is said to have written runs as follows: The handsome youths attack one another, tread upon one another; they bruise, they wound, they dislocate the joints of one another, they break each other's noses, they kill one another. From beneath a pyramid of sprained members, broken collar-bones, and bruised heads, they drag out a gladiator, his hair matted, and his clothing soiled with mud made of dust and blood-flowery language for the Flowery Land, but not particularly accurate. Thanks, however, to the Stade Français and the British teams it invites over to play them, the game has lost its terrors for the French spectators, who line the ropes and cry with vigour, "Vite ! vite! Kick the little ballon! Kick it with the foot!" or otherwise encourage their representatives to further deeds of prowess; and it has even been described and commended in the press, a journal of Marseilles speaking learnedly of its mêlée compacte, its demis agiles et audacieux, its longues passes et vigoureuses charges, and the règles précises qui obligent les joueurs à certaines formalités; finally, the writer declared that as a game it was séduisant et bien fait pour développer les muscles, la rapidité du coup d'œil, de la décision, le courage et le sang-froid.

The times have changed since a writer in the Paris Figaro twenty years ago, and à propos of the 'Varsity Boat Race, explained that to the ninth of each boat is added a tenth. He does not mount on the barque, he mounts on horseback. He is called the "coachman;" he is only utilised during the preparatory exercises, and on the day of combat disappears. He is, so to speak, the trainer, and it is he who regulates the pace of the eight oars by corresponding movements on horseback. The crews are renewed every year. The coachman remains the same until he is no longer able to bestride his steed. The crews belong to the highest families in England. The proof is that it is not uncommon for two lords, whom roast beef has profited, to meet twenty years afterwards, and to recall, with lowered heads, those happy days of training when they only weighed forty-five kilogrammes.'

Twenty years have passed since then; athletic France has in the meanwhile awakened and does not seem likely to slumber again. There is no knowing what may occur in the next couple of decades, but many things may happen: the United States may meet a picked eleven of our champions on the cricket field on