392 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



fowl, and in the season, in one locality, thousands of 

 snipe but this I kept to myself; had it become 

 known, men from Tezpore would have been shooting- 

 over it constantly, and the sport would have been 

 soon ruined. The ground consisted along the borders 

 of a bheel situated in a natural depression, about a 

 mile from my bungalow, which I occasionally visited, 

 and many a day's sport have I had there amongst 

 the long-bills. Now and then I found a solitary or 

 double snipe there, a rare bird anywhere, especially 

 in the plains. If I went very early, jungle-fowl 

 would be about searching for ants' nests in the open, 

 and amongst the trees peafowl were also to be found. 

 Some time before the adventure I am about to 

 relate occurred, there had been some cultivation, but 

 it had been abandoned as deer and other ruminants 

 took more than their fair share of it ; in fact, in one 

 year the cultivators applied for a remission of tax, as 

 they had not saved a bushel of grain out of the fifty 

 or sixty acres under plant. Being in the neighbour- 

 hood, I was asked by the Deputy Commissioner to 

 inspect the cultivated area and to report upon it. I 

 found the grain trampled down, the paddy-fields a 

 mass of pits caused by rhinoceros, elephants, buffaloes, 

 and deer. The marvel was, not that these animals 

 had helped themselves to such a, to them, unwonted 

 luxury, but that anybody should have chosen such a 

 spot for cultivation. The taxes were remitted, and 

 the experiment was given up. The land thus left 

 fallow I found swarming with snipe, and taking a 

 few men as beaters, I soon got my old Westley 

 Eichards gun, the first breech-loader I ever possessed, 

 at work. I generally carried thirty cartridges in a 



