EARLY DAYS IN OUDH 19 
time in dispelling the loneliness of his life. At 
present, Lucknow is only separated by about 
thirty hours’ journey from Bombay, and this 
time may be spent commodiously in an express 
train with restaurant accommodation; while from 
Lucknow one may nowadays enter the saloons of 
the Rohilkhand and Kumaon Railway one evening, 
and the next be at the railhead on the Nepal 
frontier. Running train thefts have replaced high- 
way robbery, and political unrest, punctuated by 
bombs, the display of the more warlike tastes of 
the population of that period, while hotels con- 
structed on European designs have taken the place 
of the genial hospitality of the past. 
\ The Trans-Sarda Forest, where I first was posted 
as assistant, comprises an area of about 300 square 
_ miles abutting on the Nepal border, and on its out- 
skirts were numerous small villages, struggling 
against malaria and against the disadvantages of 
‘the jungle and the raids of its wild beasts; there 
were then probably few populous and wealthy 
villages within a distance of five miles of the State 
Reserves. Inside these the aboriginal Tharus were 
settlers, and they, on an area of about 30,000 acres, 
enjoyed what the peasant of the plains considered 
to be the greatest drawbacks to the locality. They 
were proof against malaria, and mighty hunters and 
fishermen ; they fed on rice, flesh, and fish, distilling 
their own liquor, and, like the Burmans in the north- 
east of India, tattooed themselves with indigo, were 
adepts at the manufacture of artistic baskets, and 
answered no call to work for others when they could 
otherwise live in comfort. The forests even then 
