IN THE LAND OF THE BO 11 A. 137 



My last day on the hill— and indeed it came 

 near to being my last in more ways than one — 

 may bear relating, especially as it points a moral. 

 My companion on this occasion was the Morlak 

 who supplied us with milk, and who had re- 

 peatedly begged me to go out shooting with him 

 one day. He boasted the possession of a breech- 

 loader, but surely a more wonderful specimen of 

 one has rarely been seen. Stock and breech 

 action were those of an army Snider (Turkish 

 he said, and no doubt truthfully), to which some 

 looal gunmaker had fitted, with brass hoops and 

 similar devices, one of those yard- and- a-half-long 

 barrels, once so common in the East, whose 

 barrel is enlarged at the end to enable the maker 

 to work it into the semblance of a lion's head, 

 from between whose grinning jaws the muzzle 

 protrudes. With this he used 20-bore brass car- 

 tridges ; but, as the breech was a little too large 

 for them, each one was carefully wrapped round 

 with paper before being pushed in. He always 

 carried it loaded and with the hammer down on 

 the striker. As the trigger-guard was missing, 

 this was perhaps as well. It was also fitted with 

 an iron ramrod, because, as he explained, "the 

 cartridges did not always come out." As a matter 

 of fact, they hardly ever did, and but for the 

 honour and glory of the thing, he would have 

 done much better with a muzzle-loader, for an 



