28 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



heat of the day. The moon, nearly at the full, was rising over 

 the sea opposite, the sun sinking below the landward horizon ; 

 the air of a January evening was deliciously refreshing after 

 the fatigues of a hot day, for the days are sultry in Orissa, 

 even in the cold season ; and thus as we smoked our cheroots 

 and sipped pleasant beverages, enjoying the beauty of the scene 

 before us, we congratulated ourselves on the favourable pro- 

 spects of good sport on the morrow. Some fifteen years later 

 my camp was once more pitched on the very same spot; the 

 village was unchanged, the cultivation no broader, and the grass 

 lands and sandy ridge presented no marked alterations, but 

 not a track of buffalo or spotted deer could be found ; the only 

 foot-prints to be seen, and these by no means numerous, were 

 of black buck. What had become of the game ? No satis- 

 factory reply could be elicited on this subject from the people, 

 at least none which satisfied my mind. The villagers said 

 that the buffaloes and deer had been all shot by the European 

 sportsmen of the district, or by the native " Shikarees," who 

 now possessed guns in great numbers ; but as I happened to 

 know who were the European sportsmen, how few in number, 

 and how little at leisure to visit such remote tracts, I rejected 

 the first reason as only partially correct ; but for the second 

 there seemed a better basis, as not only the "Shikarees" 

 themselves had increased, but those who formerly plied their 

 calling with bow and arrow, a matchlock, a Monghyr fowling- 

 piece, or gun and trap only, now carried some good English 

 guns, and others the superannuated Brown Bess ; nevertheless, 

 it seemed improbable that even with firearms, if loaded with 

 the weak native -made powder, they could in the course of a 

 few years have completely exterminated such powerful beasts 

 as the wild buffalo, whatever they might have effected among 

 the herds of deer. Probably the " Shikarees " had wounded 

 more than they killed, and had driven all survivors away into 

 the heavy coverts further south ; be that as it may, where 

 buffalo and deer might be counted by hundreds over a space 

 of thirty or forty miles, hardly one remained fifteen years 

 later. 



