74 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



an elephant I have been riding on, as this one. If 

 I had had a man behind me, I feel sure my animal 

 would have been cut, for I could not have fired as I 

 did. In the " dooars," Colonel Cookson and I went 

 out on foot one afternoon to pick up jungle fowl, 

 florikan, black partridge, or in fact anything we could 

 get. Our elephants were tired, as they had been 

 worked from dawn to mid-day, during which time 

 we had bagged three rhinoceros, one male and two 

 females. A couple of attendants carrying rifles 

 attended us, for one never knows what may be come 

 across in that region. At the edge of the forest we 

 hit a marsh deer with exceptionally fine horns, and in 

 following it up, forgot time and distance, and found 

 ourselves in a vast plain dotted here and there with 

 bushes, which almost deserved the names of trees. 

 Water-fowl we could see flying about, so we knew there 

 must be marshy ground towards which our stag had 

 retreated. So we followed and followed. At last 

 we noticed that the sun was declining, so pulled up, 

 but where w r e were, no one knew. We sent a man 

 up a tree, but he could distinguish no land marks 

 that were known to him, but he suddenly pointed 

 to the north and said he saw three or four rhinoceros 

 not far off. The grass was only about three to four 

 feet high, so more favourable for tigers than for 

 pachyderms, yet we thought we would just go a 

 little way and try for a shot. We got to within one 

 hundred yards of the game easily enough, then there 

 was little or no cover, excepting a few conical white 

 ant hills. My companion chose one, I another, and we 

 crawled on hands and feet till we got about thirty 

 paces of the animals, and then we opened fire. One 



