QO By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



fly too high to make killing a certainty, with 

 twelve - bores at least, which was what we were 

 armed with ; for, as every one knows, they have 

 a pad of feathers over their breasts against which 

 BB. shot may rattle like hail without doing 

 damage. I had a " magnum " twelve that took a 

 charge of an ounce and a half of shot, an excel- 

 lent weapon with an effective range perhaps ten 

 yards longer than the ordinary gun, 1 but doubt- 

 less only a subject for mirth in the ranks of the 

 great host of lags. 



The next quarter of an hour, while the levies 

 are cripple hunting, is spent in baling out one's 

 Jcula, for by this time the water has come well 

 above one's ankles, or if such is not the case one 

 may congratulate oneself on having a particularly 

 dry hole. One kula I remember in very deep 



1 I should have been glad to give the maker a free advertisement 

 if he had at the same time employed ordinary care in supplying me 

 with cartridges. The story is that the last year I was in Seistan 

 I found I was not doing so well with the gun as the previous season, 

 and after having for two months attributed it to my own bad shoot- 

 ing, I had the curiosity to open a cartridge and weigh the charge, 

 when the matter became clear. The maker had put in the full 

 load of shot for the 3-inch case but had only put in a powder charge 

 for an ordinary short case, and the whole batch was the same. 

 Gunmakers ought to employ special care in the execution of orders 

 for remote places abroad. A mistake of this sort could at home be 

 remedied in a few days, but in a place like Seistan, where goods 

 from England take six months to arrive, there is no remedy, and 

 one has vainly to grind one's teeth, and, I may add, revile one's 

 gunmaker. 



