Contributions to tlie Ornithology of India y Sj'C. 95 



waste on stately progresses with vast camps, such as Governor- 

 Generals had formerly indulged in. He wanted to visit places 

 and inspect parts of the country which no rail or even metalled 

 road had opened out ; and he had, moreover, no time to waste 

 dawdling along ten or fifteen miles a day with an army of fol- 

 lowers ; and so, with a small personal staff of half a dozen officers, 

 he rode his forty to seventy miles a day, the only way in which he 

 could do what he believed to be his duty (God having gifted him 

 with the necessary physical powers) and do it at the same time 

 quickly and at the least cost to the nation. If the public could 

 have even partially realized the noble motive, (the noblest of all 

 motives, that of qualifying himself to do thoroughly that work 

 which his '' strong and kindly hand which has ceased, alas, to 

 labour and to give " found to do) that spurred him on to disre- 

 gard discomfort and fatigue, they would, perhaps, instead of 

 cavilling, have honoured him no less for his " galloping" habits 

 than for his many other noble attributes. 



I am not going to describe these famous mines — vast sparkling 

 halls and corridors, many miles in length, hewn out of the living 

 rosy crystal ; I leave to the geologists those mighty caves carved 

 in seams of chemically-pure salt, glittering, translucent, rainbow 

 hued, seventy feet in thickness, with their weird pools, opaline 

 stalactites, and altogether unearthly glories ; quant a nous, reve- 

 nons a nos oiseaux. 



Throughout the bare and wondrous coloured hills and hillocks 

 which surround the mines, hills in which red and green marls 

 glare out in fiercest tints, above beds of snowy gypsum, from a 

 back-ground in which lilac, purple, and wondrous shades of grey 

 and brown are intermingled with a grace that mocks the skill 

 of human artists, — hills grim and stony amidst all their gor- 

 geur — the modest-tinted Isabelline lark (A. lusitania) and the 

 no less soberly-arrayed Seesee swarmed, while over-head the 

 terror of these harmless little partridges, quick to spy , and 

 sudden and cruel to strike, soared and swooped Bonelli^s eagle. 

 I counted no less than five pairs, all of whom, as we were told, had 

 their eyries in the neighlDourhood. Of the common Punjaub 

 raven [Corvus Lanrencei nobis) we saw numbers, one pair already 

 busy repairing an old nest in a dense acacia tree. Slept at the 

 mines. 



'iiUli. — Rode down back to Pindadhun Kb an, shooting a very 

 fine A. fulvescens en route. Embarked about 12 o^clock. Saw 

 a few geese and killed three ; a good number of green shank, a 

 very few terns, a good many mallard, of which I killed fourteen, 

 and a few other ducks, probably Gadwall, as one of them which 

 I shot as they flew overhead at an immense height turned out 



