BULLET AND SHOT 



loafing rascals who would commit any villainy for a 

 fee. All these tricks make it very difficult to dis- 

 tinguish between the false and the true, and a 

 personal recommendation from any previous 

 employer (or an intimate friend of the latter) is. 

 worth a whole sheaf of the often very dirty scrip. 



It must be borne in mind, in engaging servants 

 for camp work, that it by no means follows that a 

 really excellent headquarters "boy" will be at all 

 a shining light in camp. Having had myself, ever 

 since my marriage in 1885, to keep two sets of 

 servants when in India, I have had considerable 

 experience of the way in which good camp boys 

 often fail when tried in headquarters, and also 

 conversely. In the case of cooks in my opinion 

 the most important of Indian servants this charac- 

 teristic is curiously accentuated. It is very easy 

 to comprehend why a good station cook, capable 

 of preparing a dinner of which his master need not 

 be ashamed, if taken out to camp with but few 

 appliances wherewith to work, should fail to give 

 satisfaction ; but it is less facile of comprehension 

 why a really good camp cook, if employed at a 

 pinch when his master is in headquarters, with a 

 good cook-room and all the necessary utensils and 

 materials, should be unable to do even as well as he 

 can, with but a very limited amount of the latter, 

 when in camp, and yet I have in practice found 

 this to be the case, and much of the sportsman's 

 comfort will depend upon his securing a really 

 good specimen of the genus cook, species camp- 

 understanding. 



436 



