38 INDIAN BIG GAME 



their rounds. Yet it was pathetic that, for all 

 this naive simplicity, the name of Gandhi was 

 abroad in the land. It was pathetic, for few of 

 them knew who Gandhi was or what he stood 

 for. While I was there they said the edict had 

 gone forth that there should be no more wine 

 and no more fowls. I reasoned with them. Wine 

 was their affair, eggs were mine ; and with out- 

 stretched cash I persuaded them that a present 

 Sahib was worth many absent Gandhis. 



There were no metalled roads — the cost of their 

 construction and maintenance in those wild parts 

 would have been prohibitive — but there were good 

 tracks. Transport was all by camel, donkey, or 

 buffalo. Carts were unknown. 



My transport consisted of seven baggage 

 camels, good honest beasts that one could pat 

 even when they were being loaded, and a marked 

 contrast to the gurgling atrocities met with on 

 the roads of Upper India. 



The heat was as severe as I have ever known it. 

 During the hot hours of the day, on going out of 

 the shade and meeting the hot blast it was as 

 though one leant against a wall of heat. How- 

 ever, to many besides myself, I think, the heat 

 and the hot weather camps are incomparably 

 more pleasant than the cold. Sport is better in 

 the heat. There are then the joys of the smell of 

 the dried-up jungles, the whiff of the hot wind 

 with its little eddies of dry leaves, the coolness of 

 the streams, and the shade of great trees. Those 

 who only camp in cool weather do not know what 

 a tree can be. 



I felt the heat less this year, although we had 



