274 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AXD SPORT. 



on which an elephant might have been used with 

 advantage to pull the carriage. The colonel carried 

 quite a battery of small-arms about with him ; I was 

 not unarmed, and we were both rather above the 

 average size. Up to this point we had got on 

 quite amicably ; but it struck me that if we were 

 stretched beside each other in this coffin of a bullock 

 gdrlii, and pitched about in the usual fashion of such 

 vehicles, there would be very little chance of our both 

 reaching Yirumgaum alive. In fact, I felt perfectly 

 certain that ere we had been a full hour in that con- 

 veyance, the undignified spectacle would have been 

 presented of a colonel commanding a station and a 

 wandering litterateur dodging round it, taking shots 

 at one another with their revolvers. Hence, and 

 having also another possibility in view as to my own 

 means of conveyance, I suggested that the colonel, 

 who was anxious to catch a train at Yirumgaum, 

 should go on with the bullock-carriage and leave me to 

 shift for myself. This solution of the difficulty was 

 not so much accepted, as taken advantage of, by him, 

 with the somewhat gruff remark that he at least 

 required to reach Virumgaum without delay, and that 

 I had better accompany him. unless I thought of 

 walking the whole distance. Whenever I saw him 

 out of sight, I turned to the driver of the horse- 

 carriage, and suggested to him that, now we were rid 

 of the weight of the colonel, and of the colonel's 

 baggage, and of his battery of small-arms, it might be 



