2 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



and the various friends who at one time or another 

 had considered joining the party, to spend many a 

 winter evening poring over maps and formulating 

 delightfully hazy plans, from which the elements of 

 time and conditions of travel were entirely elimi- 

 nated. But as the date for setting out approached, 

 tKe only arrangement which could be called quite 

 decided was our intention to avoid so far as possible 

 the beaten track of tourists, and, by taking trips into 

 the interior of the various countries we visited, to 

 combine what sight-seeing should really attract us 

 with plenty of big-game shooting, a certain amount 

 of roughing it, and much valuable experience in 

 becoming familiar with the more natural and primi- 

 tive parts of foreign lands. 



Even up to the time of starting, our arrangements 

 had taken no more definite shape than this. Tele- 

 grams had come to me from Mr. A. H. Wheeler and 

 Mr. H. P. Perry, who were at the time travelling in 

 Japan, one dispatch asking me to meet them in 

 Sydney, Australia, whence we could take a previ- 

 ously discussed cruise among the South Sea Islands, 

 and a second, shortly after, requesting that I come 

 instead to Yokohama, in order to go on a tiger- 

 shooting trip in Korea. When, a few weeks later, 

 came a third telegram, saying" Cholera Korea, meet 

 Singapore," and for a second time I was obliged to 



