6 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



has been passing for an hour or more after leaving the 

 western metropolis, our new-comer may, perhaps, watch 

 awhile at the window in the hope of noting some sign of 

 wild life in the forests passing panorama-like alongside. 

 But he will be disappointed. And as his train surmounts 

 the buttressing mountains, and steams out over the lifeless 

 and uninteresting upland plains of the Deccan, he may be 

 excused should he acknowledge his anticipations realised 

 and turn to thoughts unconnected with an apparently 

 extinct Indian fauna. 



Although these impressions may not be quite correct 

 for there is still some big game left in the jungles along 

 the ghats, in spite of its not being accommodating enough 

 to present itself for review by the traveller the generally 

 gameless appearance of this portion of the country to 

 which he is thus first introduced is bound to have the 

 effect of misleading him to a too hasty conclusion ; and 

 his eye will therefore miss a good deal as he is carried 

 further inland, and unconsciously passes through country 

 where the tiger, as well as the other denizens of an Indian 

 forest, is still to be found if one knows where and how to 

 find him. 



In order that the reader may be led naturally and in 

 due order to the scene of this biography, it is necessary 

 that he should accompany us on our way thither. But he 

 should note that the tracts referred to are by no means 

 among those most favoured of game in this country ; nor 

 are they likely nowadays to repay the toil of a stranger 

 on sport intent. They have been chosen, in this instance, 

 as perhaps the best known of many localities to the 

 biographer. 



Let us imagine that the train has been travelling for 

 about a day into the interior of the peninsula of India, 

 and that a tropic moon is now brilliantly illuminating the 

 wide plains across which it pursues its way. In this 

 wonderful light it is possible to discern from the carriage 



