

NATIVE LOVE OF LITIGATION. 145 



far as we were aware, published an account of this affair, 

 turning it into " another act of brutality perpetrated by a 

 ruffianly Anglo-Indian upon a native lady." Be it known 

 that in these cases it never is an Englishman, but always an 

 Anglo-Indian, who is the object of the diatribe. 



European sportsmen, especially the inexperienced, are 

 liable to be mobbed by villagers, though neither intending 

 nor doing any injury, and this becomes commoner the nearer 

 the scene is to the Presidency. The best way to meet such 

 misadventures is to remain as calm as is possible ; to sit down, 

 gun in hand, and quietly to " argue the point " like Mr. Mid- 

 shipman Easy. There is nothing so posing to a native mob 

 as a cool and judicial bearing, and equally nothing more 

 exasperating than an interchange of loud threats and in- 

 vectives to which they are accustomed among themselves. 

 The argmentum baculinum should be kept in reserve as the 

 last resource, as the advance of the Imperial guard to finish 

 the affair, and if ever resorted to, it should be short and sharp, 

 notwithstanding the odds of ten or twenty to one ; also under 

 none but the direst necessity should the police or the courts 

 be appealed to, the remedy being worse than the disease. 

 In most instances, even after blows, compromises will be 

 possible, and will always be infinitely preferable to law, 

 while the exercise of temper, coolness, and judgment, will 

 carry a man through many a row into which he has been 

 forced against his wishes. 



Some there are among the natives so fond of litigation, 

 and so vindictive in disposition, that nothing will satisfy 

 them but recourse to those abyssmal reservoirs of vexatious 

 forms and procrastinations, the courts civil and criminal. 

 There is a saying among the people of the eastern districts 

 that the inhabitants of Chittagong are so revengeful and 

 litigious, that an accidental brush of a man's shoulder against 

 a neighbour's thatch will give rise to law suits which will 

 last two generations. 



Out snipe-shooting one day with EL, of the Civil Service, 

 in rather high green "paddy," he had the misfortune to 



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