SO SPORTING IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. 



snipe. These birds breed and remain in the same localities 

 all the year round, and I imagine never migrate. Although 

 a young and very indifferent shot, I could always manage to 

 kill from, twenty-five to fifty couple of snipe during a morn- 

 ing's shooting, washing out my gun as fast as it became 

 heated, and restoring my own energies, rather exhausted by 

 heat and perspiration, with a little cold brandy pawnee. 



I must own, although I was "laughed at for my appre- 

 hensions, that one of the greatest drawbacks to my enjoy- 

 ment was the constant fear of coming in contact with 

 venomous snakes, of which I had an instinctive dread, 

 although pretty well familiarized to their presence ; nothing 

 being more domestic in its habits than the deadly cobra, and 

 I have several times all but stepped on one, comfortably 

 curled up on the stone step of my quarters. They were 

 frequently discovered in officers' beds, and once when at- 

 tempting to leap a small nullah or ditch, at which my 

 pony stumbled and fell, I was pitched over his head on to the 

 opposite bank, and upon gathering myself up, espied a cobra 

 capella creeping away within a few yards of me. With all 

 these risks (although I have heard of many), I never wit- 

 nessed a fatal accident in India. 



The story of the drunken soldier in Fort St. George has, I 

 believe, been often related in print and otherwise, but I will 

 risk a repetition of it. 



A soldier belonging to an Irish regiment, a part of 

 which formed the garrison of Fort St. George, was condemned' 

 for repeated acts of drunkenness to twenty- four hours' con- 

 finement in the black-hole, a term given to a dark and sub- 

 terraneous cell, used as a place of punishment and confine- 

 ment for similar offenders. He had not long been conducted 

 there, locked up, and left by the jailor in litter darkness to 

 his own reflections, stretched upon his straw pallet, when he 

 felt a substance gliding over his person which he well knew, 



