CHAPTER III. 



ELEPHANT SHOOTING (ASIATIC 1 ). 



THIS may be designated one of the extinct 

 sports of India, for slaying the noble beasts is 

 now forbidden in nearly every portion of our Indian 

 Dependencies, except when an elephant has been 

 killing people, and destroying property in a wholesale 

 manner. Then permission is granted for the 

 obnoxious brute to be destroyed. In my younger 

 days, however, it was a favourite sport, and many a 

 man who could boast of having killed his dozen 

 elephants had never shot a tiger. My great am- 

 bition as a griffin was to kill one of these leviathans. 

 After a severe bout of jungle fever, Dr. R., 

 who was then Civil Surgeon of Rajahmundry, and 

 had been formerly our regimental doctor, recom- 

 mended that I should have a year's leave on sick 

 certificate. I appeared before a medical board, one 

 member of which disliked R., as they had been carry- 

 ing on a paper warfare regarding a disease called 

 beri-beri, in which he had been worsted. Another of 

 the members had formerly been an apothecary and 

 got a commission by some backdoor influence, 

 and he was completely under the thumb of the last 



