PHYSICAL AND CLIMATIC FEATURES. 7 



presence of his camp will be tolerated, and his custom on 

 the terms above named will be accepted ; moreover, any odds 

 and ends of benevolences in the way of medicine and 

 pecuniary gifts will be received, perhaps ungraciously and 

 without any pretence of gratitude ; but ordinary Bengalee 

 complaisance will yield no farther. If in return for ridding 

 them of pests, which render their lives a burden, the young 

 sportsman should expect a basket of country vegetables or 

 fruits, a fish, or a lamb, with which he may vary his some- 

 what meagre diet, verily let him remember that "Blessed 

 is he \vho expects nothing;" otherwise he will be dis- 

 appointed. 



In many parts of India the native gentlemen and land 

 proprietors are courteous and hospitable to the European visi- 

 tor and stranger ; and even in Bengal proper the local native 

 grandees of the old school are so generally ; but not so those 

 of the modern type, who, however, rarely live on their estates 

 among their tenants. In this respect the people of Assam are 

 worse than those of Bengal ; but in that province one seldom 

 meets with persons much above the rank of the common 

 agriculturist. I have asked for a few sugar-canes for my 

 elephants, after killing a pair of man-eaters which had for 

 months ravaged their village, and have been refused by the 

 inhabitants, although it grew abundantly all round ; and 

 when one more civil than his fellows brought half-a-dozen 

 of the most " filamentous " (like the late Justice Nuokool 

 Mookerjee, as described by his talented kinsman and bio- 

 grapher, whose name escapes me at the present moment), and 

 flung them down with a grand air, I was asked exactly forty 

 times the local price for the poor little sticks, with which I 

 was expected to make glad the hearts of six. or seven 

 elephants, which had done the people such yeoman's service. 

 Supposing no value whatever were put upon the lives of their 

 relatives, still the death of those two tigers was worth to 

 the villagers not less than four thousand rupees, who grudged 

 us a bundle of sugar-canes worth less than a shilling. In some 

 places out of Assam and Bengal proper the people would 



