346 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



and spirits, his food will consist of lean and tough fowls and 

 ducks, and flabby, tasteless fish, with a kid or lamb for high 

 days and holidays when in luck. Bread is not procurable in 

 the interior, and butter must be made, since it is not to be 

 bought, " ghee " being the native substitute for the latter, and 

 hand- bread (chapatee) for the former. A supply of biscuits 

 and rusks should never be omitted. Thus the inexperienced 

 traveller will not be tempted to excesses of the table ; but, on 

 the other hand, he will find the camp and the boat of the old 

 Anglo-Indian, who does not rely on the country's resources 

 abundantly supplied with all necessaries, as well as many 

 delicacies. 



Servants in this country are not luxuries but necessaries, 

 and in the mass are now careless, ignorant, dirty, and dis- 

 honest, except in large and well-ordered establishments. They 

 have greatly deteriorated of late years, being drawn from a 

 lower stratum of the native community, quite unlike the 

 clean, smart, respectful, and respectable domestics of old. 

 The worst specimens of the class will be found at the Presi- 

 dencies, where they prey upon new arrivals, European 

 travellers and others, imposing upon them with borrowed 

 certificates and clothing, and assumed names. The new comer 

 will do well, then, in engaging servants to do so through the 

 head servants of some friend or old resident, who will vouch 

 for those they present for service. The amount of petty 

 thieving that prevails, varied by a " grand coup " now and 

 then, ought to be a caution to employers ; but it is not so, and 

 thus convicts and jail-birds appear to experience no difficulty 

 in entering the service of certain classes of Europeans. 



I once recognised a notorious criminal blandly waiting at 

 the table of a gentleman with whom I was dining, and who, 

 being informed of the true character of his servant, confessed 

 to having engaged him without inquiry or inspection of cer- 

 tificates of character. This man, who eyed me furtively from 

 time to time, to discover whether he was identified, was not only 

 a thief, but had narrowly escaped conviction for a murder of 

 a more than ordinarily dastardly and treacherous nature, and 



