242 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



any time of day, especially when the mist-banks settle 

 down on the woods. The writer has known tigers thus 

 shot at midday and early in the afternoon. However, as 

 already noted, there is little sport to be had in the rains 

 near our little Junglypur, although a tramp along the open, 

 outlying foot-hills, where the soil is gravelly and the going 

 hard and dry, will repay the wandering rifleman by many 

 a charming stalk at gazelle and antelope. 



Localities like this little station of ours, where some 

 pottering sport, as has been described, may be had within 

 a walk or ride of one's quarters, are now few and far 

 between in this deteriorating land. 



Poor old Junglypur ! In spite of its drawbacks, its 

 admittedly bad climate, its loneliness, some of us will ever 

 have a soft corner for it in our memories. 



Many the jolly day spent on its plains, and in its jungly 

 hills, and in its comfortable old-fashioned little mess, the 

 walls of which bear silent testimony to the sport it has 

 afforded to more than one generation of sportsmen. To 

 us, apparently the last of these, it has given of its best 

 scarcely comparable with the " best " of its palmy old days 

 but something nevertheless. 



Tigers, panthers, and leopards, bears, bison ; many a 

 fine sdmbar among which may be counted trophies 

 magnificent even in a region where the "rusa" is at his 

 very best beside nilgae, barking deer, four-horned ante- 

 lope, etc., and, in the open country, chinkara and antelope 

 in great numbers. Also some pig-sticking; and a little 

 small game shooting, the best day, to my recollection, 

 being a yield of a hundred head, including seventy hares. 



But all this is over now, for Junglypur is numbered with 

 those deserted camps scattered about India, where a few 

 grass-grown plinths, a row or two of once grateful trees, 

 and a forsaken cemetery mark the mournful spot where a 

 colony of the ruling race once lived and died and had its 

 day. 



