340 ftfngs of tbe 1Rofc, IRlfle, anfc <3un 



he managed to turn up in Africa at this critical 

 moment. 



In India he spent ten years, rising rapidly to the post 

 of collector and judge. His station was thirty miles 

 from the nearest English doctor, so he added the study 

 of medicine to his regular work. This was heavy enough, 

 but did not hinder him from joining any young English- 

 man who came to hunt. In one of these hunts he saved 

 the life of the then Lord Gifford, shooting a tiger, which 

 his lordship, who was short-sighted, had not noticed, and 

 which was in the act of springing. On another of these 

 excursions the party encamped on ground full of malaria, 

 and were struck with jungle fever, of which several died. 

 Oswell, thanks to his splendid constitution, struggled 

 through, after being insensible for several days. No 

 sooner had he recovered consciousness than he set to 

 work on a pile of his district papers complaints from 

 villages, reports of gang-robberies, etc. with a wet towel 

 round his head. He cleared his table at the cost of a 

 dangerous relapse, the effects of which he could not 

 shake off; so he was sent to the Cape on sick-leave, 

 those who saw him embark doubting if he would ever 

 reach the Cape alive." 



Oswell himself thus narrates the circumstances under 

 which he left India for the Cape : 



" Reduced from 12 st. 2 Ibs. to 7 st. 12 Ibs. by many 

 attacks of Indian fever, caught during a shooting excursion 

 in the valley of the Bhavany River, I was sent to the Cape 

 as a last resource by the Madras doctors : indeed, whilst 

 lying in a semi-comatose state, I heard one of them declare 

 that I ought to have been dead a year ago ; so all thanks 



