46 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



drink obtainable in Calcutta, and were unsurpassed, except 

 by the dinners which followed at eight in the evening, served 

 with much form and ceremony by a staff of excellent servants 

 in the fine large mess-tent. Ordinarily the majority of the 

 members retired to their own private tents between ten and 

 eleven, leaving three or four late sitters to discuss grilled 

 bones and an extra glass till midnight, by which hour the 

 camp was perfectly still, except for the neighing or the 

 stamping of a horse, or the howling of packs of jackals, 

 attracted by the scent of good provender. 



I am unable to state when this Club was first started, but 

 it must have been, at least, so far back as 1830, and probably 

 a Club of this kind has existed since the third quarter of 

 the last century in some form or other ; it flourished till 1863, 

 or thereabouts, and then was broken up, to be succeeded by 

 another on a somewhat different footing. 



During the period that I was a member of the old Club, 

 an honorary one as a resident of the Mofussil and if I 

 recollect rightly, the only one not an ordinary and resident 

 member it consisted of six merchants, two barristers, three 

 covenanted and uncovenanted civil servants, and a naval 

 officer. The President, when I joined the Club, was the late 

 James Patton, a Judge of the Chief Civil and Criminal 

 Court of Bengal, a dashing and accomplished horseman, and 

 a most agreeable companion, who was succeeded by one as 

 worthy, the late William Fergusson, a Calcutta merchant, a 

 very popular and respected President, and the last. 



The most successful party I ever attended was when a 

 detachment of four members of the Club came down to my 

 country near Tumlook, to be shown the sport it could boast, 

 and being received by my then assistant, Mr. S., and myself, 

 we six slew thirty-six boars the first three days, and after- 

 wards, reinforced by half-a-dozen more members who had 

 heard of our success, forty-four more were added to the list 

 in the same number of days, or eighty in six full days' 

 hunting ; and, be it understood, good sized boars too ; not a 

 half-grown grunter being among them. In consequence of 



