INTRO D UCTOR Y xix 



makers declined to make rifles with it, asserting that they 

 were unsafe. They make guns and rifles at prices to suit 

 every pocket, in every way equal, barring finish and fitting up, 

 neither of which are required for jungle work in the wilds of 

 Burma. Rich people might do far worse than go to the East 

 for a two years' shooting-trip. They could get pig-sticking in 

 Tirhoot; elephant and gaur and tsine, shooting in Upper 

 Burma ; any amount of tiger and rhinoceros shooting in 

 Assam ; capital all-round sport in Lower Burma. The climate 

 is not pestilential like that of parts of the Dark Continent, 

 and since the rinderpest, our possessions in Eastern Africa 

 have lost two-thirds of its game and nearly the whole of the 

 buffaloes. About Lakoja, where we have troops now, there 

 is good sport, and the place is not very unhealthy, but going 

 up the Niger is. I far prefer, having tried them all, our 

 Eastern possessions beyond the Bay of Bengal ; the people, 

 too, are so much nicer. You can obtain anything and every- 

 thing you want in Burma, as there are capital shops in 

 Rangoon, Moulmein, Akyab, and Mandalay. Even the small 

 game has a great attraction 1 for me, especially snipe. With 

 Horace Browne of the Commission, I have made fair bags of 

 Phayre's Francolin at the base of the hills near the White 

 Pagoda, a few miles north of Padoung Myo. 



One day Blair was my guest at the Sapper and Engineer 

 Mess ; there was a large party, of whom I fear but a few 

 survive. We sat up very late, and probably drank more wine 

 and beer than was good for us. When we got up at day- 

 break next morning to go after snipe, we were conscious of 

 having heads on our shoulders ; but pouring a few chatties of 

 very cold water over us, we felt all right, and sallied forth 

 with six or eight Burmese as beaters to hunt up the long- 

 bills. As is usual in the early morning, the birds were very 

 wild, neither of us as steady as we ought to have been, and we 

 fired atrociously. The beaters regularly laughed at us every 

 time we missed, and I have no doubt thought us fools for 

 trying to shoot such small birds on the wing. I fancy we 

 were the first Europeans they had ever been out with, and 

 had never seen birds shot flying. Generally, Blair and I could 

 hit many more birds than we missed ; but this day the more 



