242 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



exploits in that way of one of the best of good fellows and 

 horsemen, who has ridden his last race. D., who cared little 

 for shooting, was out with us one day, when a bear, roused out 

 of a rocky and almost bare hill, made straight for his " ma 

 chan " at a leisurely shuffle. I was posted on D.'s left, near 

 enough to witness the whole affair, and to throw in an in- 

 effectual shot into the bargain. When Bruin was thirty or 

 forty yards off and coming directly towards him, D. opened 

 fire, and maintained it with spirit till the beast had passed un- 

 wounded under him, and away into the covert in his rear. 

 An old Santhal " Shikaree " who sat with D., observing the 

 heavy and well sustained fusilade as well as the ultimate 

 escape untouched of the bear, remarked that, eschewing the 

 use of firearms in future, D. ought to take to the spear or 

 club only, at which the latter smiled grimly and told the old 

 Maujee that he quite agreed with him. 



Time passes tediously in big beats, and especially is such 

 the case in those huge circular drives to which native chiefs and 

 landowners are addicted. These last often embrace a wooded 

 and hilly area of many square miles, two to four thousand 

 beaters driving coverts for four or five miles towards the centre, 

 forming an immense circle at first in loose order and scattered 

 in knots, and gradually closing in more compactly as they 

 approach the spot in the middle of the ring where the plat- 

 forms are constructed at intervals of sixty or eighty yards, 

 commanding passes and paths along which all the animals 

 roused ought to be driven if the arrangements be perfect and 

 the beaters intelligent and experienced; but so far as my own 

 acquaintance with such grand circular drives extends, they 

 prove in most cases surprisingly tiresome and barren of results. 



I was carried one day twelve miles from my camp in the 

 south of Manbhoom by a Zameendar styling himself a Rajah, 

 who, wishing to show me sport, had organised a circular beat 

 of great dimensions, in which three or four thousand men were 

 to take part. I was placed in due course on a " machan " built 

 in the midst of a " sal " forest on a ridge of some height, my 

 obliging host and his numerous and very noisy and miscel- 



