94 Contributions to the Ornitliology of India, Sfc. 



the distance for the first shot, with reference to yovir bore and 

 charge. A little too far, you wound a score, without perhaps 

 bag-ging* one ; a little too near, and you kill one or two out- 

 right, and though you perhaps get two or three more as they 

 rise, that is all ; but if you use a good heavy duck gun, say No. 

 8 bore, with two ounces of A A, and fire at about 50 yards, you 

 will rarely get less than eight out of a good large flock of geese 

 (and I have got as many as sixteen) with the first shot, besides 

 a brace or so more, with green cartridge, as they rise. 



The whole of our eight cranes were out of one party of about 

 forty. Four fell dead at the first shot, another pair I dropped 

 right and left, and two others whose wings were broken by the 

 first shot were soon hunted down, though the men had a tremen- 

 dous run for it on the sandbank, and the birds in both cases 

 finally took to the water and swam well, fighting us desperately 

 when we came up with them in the water. 



The mallard keep in small parties of from three to six, and as 

 a rule do not sit close enough to allow of more than two 

 being killed at" the first shot, while they rise so rapidly that one 

 rarely gets more than a single bird after the first shot. 



At Pindadhun Khan we landed, and slept in tents which had 

 been kindly pitched for us by friends. 



2Srd. — 'We rode up very early to Kewrah, where I had to 

 inspect the Mayo mines, some of the most splendid salt mines 

 in the world, to which in the previous hot season, I had, with 

 his permission, given the name of our late lamented Viceroy, 

 who was the first Grovernor General who had ever visited them. 



A cynic once remarked, when taxed with some foible, that 

 it was necessary to leave something for malice and folly to carp 

 at, and surely dear Lord Mayor's foibles must have been few and 

 far between when malice and folly found nothing better to re- 

 proach him with than that he was a " galloping Viceroy." Of 

 all the senseless howls ever raised against a great and good man 

 this was perhaps the most absurd. Lord Mayo did his " gallop- 

 ing," as it was called, on fixed principles and under a strong 

 sense of duty. He desired of all things to fit himself for form- 

 ing an independent oj)inion on all important subjects and spe- 

 cially on that of the comparative abilities and capacities of all 

 offieials. He wanted to see all places and things in regard to 

 which important questions had arisen, or were likely to arise, with 

 his own eyes, and he wanted specially to see and judge of all ofii- 

 cials in their own districts and jurisdictions, and to hear, as he 

 could only hear in private personal intercourse^, their opinions on all 

 those subjects, which circumstances liad given them opportunities 

 of thoroughly studying. The Government had no money to 



