JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES, 



1876. 



First, my readers, learn — if you do not know already — that 

 the Blue Mountains are to Southern India what the Himalayas 

 are to the North ; and that hither, when the hot months of 

 early summer approach, flee Military and Civilians to the 

 utmost extent that the exigencies of duty will allow. Govern- 

 ment, as represented by the head of the Madras Presidency 

 and his satellites, move up to Ootacamund in a body, bringing 

 with them their office clerks, papers, and peons, and ruling the 

 •country comfortably from their cool perch — after the example 

 :set them by their seniors in Bengal, whose summer seat is Simla. 

 The editors of local papers in the plains take no small excep- 

 tion to this course ; but it should be remembered that their 

 virtuous indignation is fanned by the very hottest of breezes, 

 and that they find it impossible to move their type and talents 

 and join in the general exodus. Deprived of this privilege, 

 •they are much prone at this season to cast such missiles as their 

 pens afford them against — and so, in one sense at least, to 

 •" make it hot " for — those who sit in office on a higher and 

 rpleasanter level. Not that your correspondent is a government 

 • official. No such luck ! There are but two other kinds of men 

 in India — the military man and the merchant. The former 

 makes no rupees, while the latter absolutely loses them ; 

 whereas the " civilian " lives on the fat of the land while out 

 here, returning home at forty or thereabouts to enjoy the 

 "fruits of his labour" in the shape of a pension that will make 

 him almost as much a man of mark at Cheltenham or Clifton 

 .as he was at Calcutta or Madras. 



