A SPOETING EXPEDITION INTO BICKANEEE AND 

 THE BOEDEES OF THE GEEAT DESEET. 



The Start Drawbacks to stalking Antelope in cultivated Plains Sirsa 

 Ludhiana Faridkot A Maharajah's Ideas of Sport Native Villages 

 Peacocks "We put up at G-husaniana Driving Deer Game 

 numerous Successful Stalks after Antelope. 



ASTRIDE upon a grey Arab pony belonging to our 

 Assistant- Commissioner at Sirsa, I followed my caval- 

 cade, consisting of a couple of camels and two armed 

 and mounted horsemen belonging to the tehsil or 

 tehsildar's office, as we emerged from the Commis- 

 sioner's compound on Feb. 14, 1888, and wound our 

 way through the square walled town of Sirsa, with 

 its straight streets crowded from end to end by gaily 

 dressed Sikhs, obstructive bullock carts, camels, and 

 native vendors with their wares spread out upon the 

 roadway. I was anxious to visit one of those unfre- 

 quented and favoured districts of India where the 

 inhabitants had not experienced much contact with 

 Europeans, and which I was informed abounded with 

 game of various descriptions, that I might have no 

 difficulty in securing, in the limited period of time 

 at my disposal, three or four specimens of antelope 

 and deer. Excepting in the preserved country of the 

 Nizam, the Guikwar, and one or two other of our 

 Indian potentates, it has become a very difficult 

 matter anywhere in the vicinity of any of the lines of 



