190 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



that we might all very soon leave fort Baling and never see 

 it again. 



However, April had come before we finally handed over 

 the fort to some native police, with our best wishes, long 

 after the Bhooteas had come to terms, when we crossed the 

 Teesta River on our way to Julpigoree. 



Although the forests around the fort swarmed with every kind 

 of noble game, it went almost untouched by the garrison of 

 Dalimkote, owing to the want of proper rifles and permission 

 to be absent from the fort at night. In less than a year 

 I was back on leave in those Dooars on shikar bent ; but 

 although elephants and rhinoceros were frequently met with, 

 I bagged nothing except the most pernicious and intractable 

 fever, which eventually necessitated my return to England. 



II. EUROPE. 



On Christmas Day, 1870, a small party of six, five men 

 and one lady, all endowed with the best of appetites, took 

 their places at the dinner-table in the house of a doctor in 

 the village of Beaune-la-Rolande, Department Loiret, France. 

 Four of the party were surgeons attached to the ambulance 

 sent out by England in aid of the sick and wounded during 

 the Franco -Prussian War, the other two being the owner of 

 the house we were billeted in and his wife. The dinner 

 was a great success, all the more appreciated by us who had 

 lately been used to very rough fare. It had been prepared 

 under the superintendence of the lady of the house, and 

 consisted of soup, a goose, which, in some miraculous way 

 only known to itself, had managed to escape the keen and 

 hungry eyes of both French and German soldier on the war- 

 path, at last to be rewarded by being the honoured and admired 

 dish on our Christmas table. A piece of beef of American 

 origin, flanked by various vegetables, and then, to crown all, 

 a more or less successful plum-pudding a I'Anglaise. The 

 many ingredients of the latter, with butter, cheese, &c., luxuries 

 here at the front, I had been able to collect during an expe- 

 dition with a wagon to a neighbouring town, ordered to bring 

 in stores urgently needed for our many patients in the village. 



