SPORT IN BENGAL. 



CHAPTER I. 



Physical and Climatic Features of the Country. 



IT is the common belief, out of the country itself, that Bengal 

 is a vast alluvial plain a dead level, hardly broken by palms, 

 low trees, rank bushes, and giant grasses, in traversing which 

 the traveller's eye meets only with rice fields and swamps suc- 

 cessively, in unending monotony ; a region inhabited by 

 savage tigers, panthers, buffaloes, wild hog, serpents and 

 baboons, as fully as by intelligent baboos and polite " coolies." 

 A " griffin," asked what he expected to find, replied that, out 

 of towns, he had looked for immense flat plains, dotted over 

 with palms, in the shade of which tigers might be seen re- 

 clining in the noon-day heat, while snakes encircled the trunks-,, 

 and natives drank the milk of the fruit among the topmost 

 leaves. This poetical picture is not, however, the correct one, 

 since the territories officially known as the Lower Provinces, 

 can boast of as great a variety of scenery as most countries of - 

 the globe. 



The immense and populous country called Bengal, consists, 

 in fact, of four distinct provinces, differing much in soil, 

 climate, natural features, and the character of the inhabitants, 

 these four being, Bengal proper, Behar, Orissa, and Chota, or 

 Chutia Nagpoor, while a fifth, Assam, has been recently 

 placed under a separate civil administration. 



