CHAPTER XXII. 



During my residence at Baroche I frequently joined the Eng- 

 lish chief on hunting and shooting parties in the neighbouring dis- 

 tricts: not that I had any pleasure in those diversions, but his 

 tents being often pitched in unfrequented forests, and savage tracts, 

 little known to Europeans, I had an opportunity of exploring 

 scenes of nature, which, on account of wild beasts and wilder men, 

 it would have been impossible to have traversed without a strong 

 and expensive guard. 



The most interesting of these excursions occurred the year after 

 my arrival at Baroche, when the sporting camp was formed in the 

 environs of Turcaseer, a small Mahratta town which gives name to 

 ruined districts once populous and cultivated, then containing 

 only two inhabited villages, and the shabby capital. A scene so 

 contrasted to the fertile plains in the Baroche purgunna, afforded 

 me a fund of novelty and amusement; the woods and forests 

 abounded with tigers, hyenas, wolves, jackals, elks, antelopes, 

 spotted-deer, and a variety of smaller game. 



We continued some time at Turcaseer, and then moved on, in 

 the patriarchal style, from place to place, as shade, water, and game 

 attracted us. The different quadrupeds just mentioned were occa- 



