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Chapter 25

There were seventeen officers in all riding in this race. The

race course was a large three-mile ring of the form of an ellipse

in front of the pavilion. On this course nine obstacles had been

arranged: the stream, a big and solid barrier five feet high,

just before the pavilion, a dry ditch, a ditch full of water, a

precipitous slope, an Irish barricade (one of the most difficult

obstacles, consisting of a mound fenced with brushwood, beyond

which was a ditch out of sight for the horses, so that the horse

had to clear both obstacles or might be killed); then two more

ditches filled with water, and one dry one; and the end of the

race was just facing the pavilion. But the race began not in the

ring, but two hundred yards away from it, and in that part of the

course was the first obstacle, a dammed-up stream, seven feet in

breadth, which the racers could leap or wade through as they

preferred.