256 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



and except immediately round the obahs, the plain 

 was absolutely untilled. Numerous streams from 

 the mountains meander across the steppe, some- 

 times pursuing a brisk course, more often wander- 

 ing sluggishly through great brakes of reeds. 

 One of these reed -beds was the reputed haunt 

 of a large and fierce tiger, but one had only to 

 look at the growth, so high that an elephant 

 would be lost in it, to realise the futility of any 

 effort to get a shot at him. 



It was where the reed-beds invaded the savannah 

 in promontories and islets that we had the novel 

 satisfaction of shooting each day a few real wild 

 pheasants, the original Phasianus Colchicus x that 

 supplied the tables of Koman epicures, and was 

 eventually brought to England to become in these 

 days the " old English " pheasant. I think if, 

 the big-game shooting over, we had not been in a 

 hurry to get to England and had spent a day at 

 one or two places in arranging drives, we might 

 have made respectable bags. As it was, we simply 

 walked through the likely-looking places we came 

 across in the course of the march, making a line 

 with our mounted men the very worst of beaters 

 and in this way were able to pick up five or six 



1 A hundred miles or so east of this, in the valley of the Hari 

 Rud, another pheasant is found, which, according to Major P. M. 

 Sykes, is the Phasianus principalis, the " Prince of Wales pheasant." 



