|
My residence in favoured
districts for sport—Pumeah—Bhaugulpore— Kheri—How Indian descriptions strike
the ordinary English reader— Jogees or Fakeers—Scenes and encounters in the
jungle—The attitude of the sceptical inexperienced reader to records of
Indian sport— Anecdote in illustration—An appeal to the reader.
For some years I enjoyed the
privilege of residence in two of the very finest sporting districts of
India.
Purneah and North Bhaugulpore,
bordering on the Terai, is admittedly even for India a very sportsman's
paradise, and is probably, or was then at all events, the best
tiger-shooting ground in the world. Having practically supreme control over
many miles of territory there, and feudal jurisdiction over scores of
villages and leagues of jungle, it would be strange if, with my ardent love
of field-sports, I did not have some noteworthy experiences.
In the district of Kheri, in
the North-West Provinces, I had charge subsequently of very extensive grants
of "waste," or unfilled jungle lands, and was actively engaged in reclaiming
the virgin forest, and administering great estates in a wild and
comparatively unsettled country. Here again the opportunities for sport—from
rhino and tiger-shooting, down to ortolan and plover—are probably only
second in all India to Turneah; and hero again I had manifest opportunities
of filling my sporting journal with many items of more than ordinary
interest.
I was brought, too, into
constant contact with past masters in woodcraft and jungle lore. I was a
good listener as well as an industrious scribe, and having some literary
leanings, I took care to embellish my journals with the records of many a
stirring adventure poured into my willing ear in the shadow of the tent, at
the time when the camp fire casts its ruddy glow on the motley menage of a
good old-fashioned mofussil shikar party.
Then again, I was rather a
favourite with my native servants and companions, always trying to treat
them kindly and to mix freely with them, and was not above listening to
their stories; and I am indebted for many a curious bit of description to
the unaffected narration of some one or other of my keenly-observant native
foresters or huntsmen.
To the ordinary reader in an
English or Australian town, or to any one indeed who has not lived in India,
the bare recital of many of the most common incidents of a day's shooting in
that land of glowing colour, teeming life, and romantic associations, seems
exaggerated, strained and unnatural. To come suddenly, for instance, on a
gaunt, haggard, dishevelled devotee, hollow-eyed and emaciated, his almost
nude frame daubed over with barbaric pigments, brandishing curious-looking
weapons, shouting uncouth discordant rhymes, or waking the forest echoes
with cries like those of the wild beasts, among whose jungle solitudes he
takes up his abode, would rather startle the nerves of the ordinary dweller
in cities. And yet these wandering jogees or fakeers are to be met with in
almost every jungle from Cape Comorin to the Spiti.
To meet face to face a surly
boar, having tusks that would badly "rip" an elephant, and who resents your
intrusive approach—to note the stealthy slouching gait of some lithe
leopard, stalking the peaceful antelope or graceful spotted deer, yourself
all unseen, is a sensation that lives in your memory—to gaze on the shock of
combat between two antlered stags, or the snarling battle for the fragments
of a carrion feed between hissing vultures, or howling wolves, is a
revelation of savage animal life that one does not soon forget. To lie on
the river-bank and watch the animation and picturesque grouping in the broad
shallow of the troubled stream below, as the great elephants gambol in the
cooling pool and splash their heated heaving sides with spurts and dashes of
water from the river, is a sight that would gladden an artist's heart. To
mark the rapid flight over the sequestered forest tank of myriads of
bright-plumaged waterfowl, to see the long-legged waders running nimbly
round the sedgy marge, or view the bending broad leaves of the water-lily,
lapping pearly globules from the cool clear tank, as the blue fowl step
daintily from one to the other, pressing them for a moment beneath the
surface; and then as the lazy ralw pops his round nose above water to suck
in a fly; to see the long ugly serrated back of the maaeating saurian surge
slowly through the yielding element—that is a picture which one can never
hope to see equalled, in varied interest, in any other land. And, most
thrilling and memorable of all, to see the convulsive upward leap, and hear
the throttled gasping roar of a wounded tiger, as the whiff of powder smoke
from your trusty gun salutes your nostrils like grateful incense—that's one
of the sensations that makes the dull pulses throb and quicken their beat;
and all these, dear 1 leader, and hundreds more, are within the compass of
one day's successful shooting in the dear old happy hunting-grounds of a
good mofussil district in India.
To any one who truly loves
nature, who has perhaps happily something of the artist and the poet, be it
ever so faint, in liis soul, as well as the ardour and enthusiasm of the
sportsman, to that one who has experienced even a little ot the charm of the
Indian sporting life—all the sneers and stupid imbecilities of the
untravelled and inexperienced sceptic, to whom the hunter's stories and
reminiscences are so many "idle tales," are harmless, and do not even cause
a momentary irritation; they excite his good-natured pity. Beyond no doubt
the least experienced in jungle-craft are very often the most prone to
exaggerate; but to any one who has gone through even one season's shooting
in India, in a good district, the truth is very easily winnowed from the
admixture of falsehood; and to such an one it is matter of constant
acknowledgment that, so far as Indian sport is concerned, "Truth is often
stranger than fiction."
This attitude of cynical
unbelief, and partly good-humoured, partly contemptuous scepticism, in
regard especially to Indian tiger stories, is very humorously illustrated by
the following good anecdote, which I cut out of a Sydney newspaper some time
ago—"A well-known Anglo-Indian raconteur, on his first reappearance m
London, was one of a dozen or more guests at a dinner-party in Kensington,
and among them he was delighted to see his old friend, Sir D. M., who had
retired some years previously from the bench of a provincial High Court. He
recollected a startling incident connected with a tiger in which he and Sir
D. M. had both shared. At a fitting opportunity he introduced the story,
and, feeling confidence in his old friend's memory and his readiness to
vouch for the truth of every detail, gave it with all the facts, especially
with one special fact that was rather hard to believe. "When telling it,
therefore, he laid stress upon the presence at the scene of his former
colleague in the service, and looked pointedly at him. The expected response
did not come; but Sir D. M.'s face wore a look of perfect incredulity. 'My
dear fellow,' he said at last, on direct appeal, ' I am very sorry, but I
recollect nothing whatever about it.' The raconteur of course collapsed
there and then. Boiling over with rage, he sought his friend as soon as he
could get at him in private, and remonstrated witli him on his strange lapse
of memory, and appealed to him whether, even if he did not fully recollect
the occurrence, it might not have been possible to save Ins credit with the
company by a less positive disclaimer. 'My dear J.,' replied the old Judge,
'I remembered perfectly well the incident you were telling; but I remarked
that all the people at the table considered you were lying. If, then, I had
corroborated you, the only result would have been that they would have set
me down as a liar too, and my regard for our host made me wish to avoid a
double catastrophe.'"
In the following pages, my
second instalment of sporting recollections, and descriptions of all the
varied and strange incidents of jungle life in our far-off Indian
hunting-grounds, may perchance call up a feeling similar to that exhibited
by the guests at the table in the foregoing anecdote; but I well know that
there are many of my "dear old chums" whose kindly remembrance of the truth
will be refreshed by the recital of old stories, half forgotten, it may be,
till my narration quickens the sleeping memory; and there will be many too,
I hope and trust, who will go hand in hand with me through the villages and
jungles trusting to my guidance; and who, over the evening camp-fire, will
listen with sympathy, interest and kindly appreciation, as I endeavour to
portray to them a real presentment of the life of a pioneer in the Indian
backwoods, and with a lenient regard to my shortcomings, may reward me by
their attention, and inspire me afresh by their confidence and goodwill.
And now to our recollections
of Tent Life in Tigerland. |
