IN THE SAL FORESTS 



" The best laid schemes o' mice and men 



Gang aft a-gley. 

 And lea'e us nought but grief and pain 



For promised joy.*' 



SO said the ploughman-bard a hundred and more 

 years ago ; and, with a trifling modification, so 

 thought we on our return from a distant shooting- 

 ground of India not long since. Tired and weary 

 of the worries and drawbacks connected with sporting 

 expeditions undertaken in the more accessible districts, 

 attracted by the novelty of exploration, and fired by the 

 entries in the diaries of one who had travelled, shot, and 

 administered the country some forty years before, I per- 

 suaded a kindred spirit to join me in that enterprise. 



It cannot be denied that we had certain warnings. But 

 what of them! For the last eight years and more had 

 I not gloated over the old diaries, pored over the well- 

 known maps, dreamt of the sportsman's paradise at last to 

 be realised? And at length was not the auspicious time 

 come? 



" Shot out ! " Was it ? We knew something worth two 

 of that. Those diaries ! Even remote pastures change in 

 thirty-five years, but the change could not be so great 

 after all. I would be well content with one quarter as 

 much sport as that recorded in the neat, old-fashioned 

 handwriting within those musty covers. 



And so the grand expedition started. The middle of 



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