LEAVES FROM A SPORTSMAN'S 



DIARY. 



A TIGER AND FEVER DEN. 



Jn the above few words what a lot is expressed, but 

 I am about to write of a place that most thoroughly 

 deserves this appellation, viz. the Sundcrbunds — not 

 " Cumberbunds," as I heard a youngster once call 

 them to a lot of country cousins — at the mouth of the 

 Ganges. Of the thousand-and-one passengers that 

 annually pass up the Hoogly on their way to Cal- 

 cutta, some of them " griffs/' otheis matured and 

 seasoned Anglo-Indians, very few indeed know that 

 the dense jungle, on either hand of the course that 

 the ship is pursuing, swarms with many descriptions 

 of the largest and most formidable game, while the 

 atmosphere that floats over its surface is redolent 

 with miasma, so pregnant with death to Europeans 

 that few can breathe it for even a short season and 

 survive the ordeal. 



Yet, in spite of these drawbacks to hunting, so 

 firmly is the passion for indulging in field sports sown 

 in the breast of our countrymen, that many of our 

 officers, both military and naval, have attempted the 

 task of exploring the delta of the " Sacred River," and 

 of forcing landings and cutting their way through the 

 dense tropical semi-aquatic jungle that covers the in- 

 numerable labyrinths of islands that composes it. 



B 



