FLESH OF WILD CATTLE. 183 



whose ill luck made him my fellow-sufferer, he will, I feel 

 assured, bear me out in the assertion I make, that the time 

 we spent together then is to be regarded as the most trying 

 and painful to look upon in our lives. The exposure, the coarse 

 food, and frightful heat of May and June, 1858, when we 

 rarely pitched tents, were bad enough, and Crimean veterans 

 declared them to be harder to endure than the cold and mud 

 of the first winter before Sebastopol ; but while then we had 

 compensation in the excitements of marching and fighting, in 

 our November campaign among dead and rotten nature there 

 was none. 



The above has been, it must be admitted, an unwarrant- 

 ably long digression from the far pleasanter subject of sport 

 but the mention of those once famous sporting " churs," Sid- 

 hee and Boodhoo, has caused me to swerve off the course to 

 relate incidents connected with them. Landing upon them in 

 our tour after the cyclone of 1876, we found the fresh foot- 

 prints of a solitary wild hog on the former, and none of 

 any living creature on the other. I have not revisited those 

 places since, but understand that they are without attrac- 

 tions for the hog-hunter and shooter of large game now, 

 containing only a few pigs ; but wild buffaloes and cattle are 

 abundant upon the adjacent island of Jalchirah, and, of 

 course, wild hog, which last increase and multiply in a mar- 

 vellous manner under favourable conditions. There are some 

 wild cattle too, upon one or two other islets at the mouth 

 of the Megna. 



This wild beef was excellent during the cold weather 

 months, but unfit for the table at other seasons, on account 

 of a salt and bitter flavour. Throughout the cold season 

 the flesh of a young bull or heifer was esteemed preferable 

 to butcher's beef, and that of a barren cow was still better ; 

 the peculiarity of the wild beef being a slight game or venison 

 taste. 



The pursuit of these wild cattle was only attractive on 

 account of their extreme wariness, and also, perhaps, because 

 they were found where wild buffaloes and hog were very 



