COMFORT IN JUNGLE LIFE 251 



to be borne in mind in making arrangements for jungle life 

 is, that the sportsman should make himself and followers as 

 comfortable as possible. Any amount of hard work may be 

 done by all during the day if they have dry clothes and a 

 comfortable dinner and bed at the end of it. Roughing it 

 when there is no necessity, and there seldom is nowadays in 

 India or Burma, is a mistake which only the inexperienced 

 fall into. There is rarely any reason why a sportsman should 

 sleep without sheets, drink out of a tin-pot, or dine off a box, 

 though these are merely discomforts. In matters actually 

 affecting the health of a party in jungle localities it is suicidal 

 not to know what are the precautions to be observed or 

 to neglect them." Many people at home seem to be under 

 the impression that Burma is a fever-stricken, unhealthy tract 

 of swampy country, inhabited by an uncivilized people, and 

 that Europeans in stations there are deprived of many 

 comforts and enjoyments of home life, by the want of which 

 existence is rendered unbearable. Let me inform the reader, 

 on the authority of one who has just returned to this country, 

 for the first time after an absence of eleven years, as fit if not 

 fitter than when he left it, that such is far from being the case. 

 Europeans have certainly to take greater care of themselves 

 in many respects, especially with regard to what they eat and 

 drink; more care, I suppose, than has to be exercised at home. 

 Plenty of outdoor exercise and general moderation in every- 

 thing, especially with regard to whisky, is the key to good 

 health in the East, but I suppose the same maxim is also 

 applicable at home. I attribute all my present health to, in 

 the first place, a good constitution, and next to the greater 

 amount of outdoor exercise I went in for there, and at the 

 same time total abstinence as regards spirits. The two 

 enemies of the European in Burma are the water when drunk 

 unboiled or unfiltered, especially out of standing pools in the 

 jungle, and ordinary malaria or fever, brought on for the most 

 part by one's own carelessness, by either catching a chill, 

 drinking bad water, or sleeping in the open when roughing it 

 out shooting. I have had one or two sharp attacks of jungle 

 fever off and on at different times. These attacks were, I may 

 say, the results of my own indiscretion in sleeping on damp 



