Reminiscences of Jungly pur. \ 1 7 



would have been quite the dullest spot in the whole of this 

 vast peninsula to which a poor exile could be condemned, 

 had it not been for the sport obtainable in its neighbour- 

 hood. 



To the southward stretched a great flat and fertile plain, 

 the home of countless antelope, and here and thero afford- 

 ing good pigsticking ; while to the north there rose, 

 sweeping from east to west, as far as the eye could range, 

 the wall-like ramparts of a mountain system in and beyond 

 which, in the old days, lay a famous big game country. 

 The fastnesses of this region were not outside the limits of 

 a day's ride, while many of its wildest glens could be reach- 

 ed within three or four hours. 



Famine, native guns, and the proximity of the Canton- 

 ments are, each to a certain extent, responsible for a 

 considerable diminution in the numbers of the fauna of 

 those hills, which, like the heavy forests that once pnotected 

 them, have receded to the more inaccessible nooks of hidden 

 glens. 



The traveller, passing up the old route taken by 

 Wellesley's force on its victorious dash from Argaon on 

 Gawalgarh, will now disturb no wild-eyed bison. The 

 mountain bull, through whose very bamboo-grown retreats 

 a British Army then forced its arduous passage, has long 

 since withdrawn himself and the steadily contracting 

 numbers of his kind deeper and deeper into the forest 

 depths. Other game animals have followed his example. 



But there is still a little shikar to be had. At intervals 



which are becoming fewer and farther between red-letter 

 days dawn, reminiscences of what one might have 

 expected long ago in those days when khubber was not 

 scarce, and the Briton quaffed his " brandy pawnee " in 

 the grateful shade of the golden-blossomed pagoda tree. 



