1 20 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



It may be, however, that his spirit still roams 

 over his old hunting-grounds, the sweeping plains 

 and jagged hills of Persia ; and if so, with what 

 feelings, I wonder, does he look down on the 

 modern sportsman, armed with Koss and Mann- 

 licher ? I hope, notwithstanding all, he will for- 

 give us. We may well alter the old apothegm 

 and say, " Sport is long, life short." Conditions 

 change, but the spirit of the game remains the 

 same. The sportsmen we know now existed 

 even in those ancient times. There are historic 

 instances of the jealous shot. We read how the 

 nephew of Odnathus of Palmyra presumed to 

 dart his javelin in front of his uncle and met 

 with trouble of an orientally unpleasant kind. 

 The Emperor Jehangir was a " big bag man." 

 According to his own memoirs, he killed 17,188 



makes perfect." The king, incensed at being thus damned with 

 faint praise (the babus improved version is "praised with faint 

 damns " !), banished the lady to a distant part. Not to be beaten, 

 she there evolved a plan. Selecting a young calf, she practised 

 carrying it about. As the calf grew in size, the lady's strength 

 increased, so that some years later, when the king on one of his 

 expeditions saw a woman carrying about a full-sized cow with 

 apparent ease, he stopped to ask what made her "so awfully 

 clever." Then her toil was rewarded, and she archly replied, 

 "Practice makes perfect." The modern novelist, with brutal 

 realism, would probably have made the monarch pass on with 

 some such remark as " Bless me, how very droll ! " and leave the 

 heroine to her exercises. The Persian story, however, ends in the 

 obvious and orthodox manner. 



