442 THE HIGHLANDS OF CEXTEAL INDIA. 



not dilate on the general interest of the country. It 

 may be hoped that most Englishmen will benefit as 

 much from a tour through this greatest of our de- 

 pendencies, as India herself will assuredly benefit from 

 having the bull's-eye of outside observation turned 

 on to her obscurity. I will here speak only of the 

 glorious field that the country offers to the sportsman — 

 incomparably the finest in the world. As a field 

 for sportsmen, Africa may be thought to be better, 

 but it is not so if India be looked at as a whole. 

 Perhaps more animals in number or in size may 

 be slaughtered in Central Africa ; but that does 

 not surely imply superior sport. In reading accounts 

 of African shooting, I have often wondered how men 

 could continue to wade throuGfh the sickeninsf details 

 of daily massacre of half-tame animals offering themselves 

 to the rifle on its vast open plains. In India fewer animals 

 will perhaps be bagged ; all will have to be worked for, 

 and some perhaps fought for. The sport will be far 

 superior ; and the sportsman will return from India 

 with a collection of trophies which Africa cannot match. 

 Africa and India both have their elephants. We cannot 

 offer a hippopotamus; but we have a rhinoceros superior 

 in a sportiijg point of view to his African relative. We 

 have a wild bufi'alo as savage and with far superior 

 horns to the Cape species ; and we have fou)' other 

 species of wild bovines besides, to which there is nothing 

 comparable in Africa. In felines, besides a lion, a 

 panther, and a hunting-leopard, almost identical with 

 those of Africa, we have the tiger, and one, if not two, 

 other species of leopard. Our black antelope is un- 

 surpassed by any of the many antelopes of Africa; and 

 Ijesides him we have fourteen species of antelopes and 

 wild goats and sheep in our hills and plains, affording 



