318 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



a position to bring pressure to bear on refractory subjects 

 at their will, while the inhabitants are practically bound to 

 observe their wishes in such matters as are here treated of. 



Or it may be that none of them care for the pleasures of 

 the jungle ; and here the path would appear more smooth 

 which however depends on a variety of other circum- 

 stances. 



Let us however take a simple case from which those 

 more involved may be inferred by the reader and assume 

 that of the four or five district officials, the Deputy-Com- 

 missioner is the only one keen on shooting. 



Although it depends on several factors, it may be taken 

 for granted that a Deputy-Commissioner has the power to 

 make himself, within certain wide limits, absolute autocrat 

 of the country he administers. In such a position he forms 

 a point on which the attention of his native subordinates 

 is focussed, and is the centre (sometimes unconsciously) 

 of a keen struggle for advancement of an official, com- 

 mercial, or private nature. There is a continual effort to 

 enlist his sympathies, to gain his ear, to obtain by his 

 fancied favours some apparently trivial advantage ; and it 

 may be imagined therefrom that few points of his character 

 escape notice. What, then, more natural than that those 

 who are able should lose no opportunity of ministering to 

 his taste for sport, should he possess such, nor hesitate 

 to employ any means that they imagine may aid them to 

 gain his favour by so doing ? 



From this it is not difficult to infer the effect on the 

 sport of the " outsider " should the Deputy-Commissioner 

 show the least tendency to look askance at men making 

 shooting excursions into his domain ; nor indeed the 

 crushing results of an active dog-in-the-manger policy 

 when he actually sets impeding machinery in motion. 



At the same time those who theorise to the effect that 

 district officials have no more right to the game than have 

 men from a distance, are apt to forget the workings of 



