fast can boast. By the time breakfast is finished, and the fragrant hookah discussed, the followers have arrived, and the remainder of the camp is pitched; and thus we move along, by easy stages, enjoying healthful exercise with constant change of scene, and finding every thing as comfortable and well arranged, as if the tents had never been moved.

Another important advantage of travelling with a civilian is this, that being looked upon in the light of a Rajah, every man, woman, and child in the district is the humble and willing slave of "His Mightiness." If he be a sportsman-and few young civilians in India are not-the shikarees of the different villages, hearing of his approach are almost sure to have a tiger, a sounder of wild hog, or some other large game marked down previous to his arrival; and a word to the obsequious Ameldar ensures the services of every male inhabitant of the village to act as beaters. And so we travel in princely style, receiving homage from the dignitaries of each village, and finding bears, tigers, and wild hog, awaiting the Burrah-sahib's pleasure at almost every stage.

April 20th.-We are encamped to-day near a village with an unpronounceable name, fortified with mud walls, after the manner of Mahratta villages in general, and containing a handsome Pagoda. E- having some business to transact here, was received in his official capacity by the Ameldar and other leading men of the place. Just before we reached the entrance of the village we saw them approaching, mounted on little punchy ponies, smothered in gaudy trappings, and having their tails dyed of a bright pink colour. They were preceded by a band of native musicians, playing upon horns and tomtoms, and other barbarous instruments, and accompanied by servants bearing brazen dishes, filled with fruit and flowers, and a few rupees, intended as the offering, without which no native ever presumes to approach a superior. Half the population of the village followed at their heels, shouting with delight at beholding so grand a spectacle; and altogether, there was noise, dust, and confusion enough to render the procession quite imposing.

On meeting, both parties came to a halt, the music ceased, and the sleek, well-fed Brahmins, dismounting from their equally well-fed steeds, approached E- with the most profound salaams; vying with each other in the fervour of their welcomes, and humbly craving his acceptance of their unworthy offerings.

Having politely replied to their high-flown compliments, and laid his hand upon each of their gifts-a ceremony which is considered quite equivalent to accepting them, and when there are rupees in the case, even more satisfactory to the donor-E- begged the obsequious functionaries to remount. This, after some remonstrance, and a great many apologies, they were persuaded to do. The two Peons ran before their master's horse, proclaiming his titles, shouting his praises, and commanding the populace, on pain of death, to make way for the Burrah-sahib !-the invincible !-the mirror of justice !-the redresser of wrongs!-the protector of the oppressed!-and the terror of wild beasts and evil-doers !!-The musicians again sounded their discordant instruments; the mob rent the air with acclamations, the fat Brahmins nodded their heads approvingly, and grunted forth their assent to each

eulogium pronounced by the bawling Peons; and thus escorted we rode slowly through the dusty bazaar till we made our exit at the opposite gate of the village. Here we found our tent pitched, and E———— right glad to escape from the barbarous pageantry, and fulsome flattery of an Indian welcome, dismissed his fawning escort, with many civil speeches for their polite attention.

Our first care was to summon Bussapa, the principal Shikaree of the village-more generally known, in this district, by his well-earned title of the "Tiger-slayer." He is the most noted hunter of the southern Mahratta country, and wears upon his breast several silver medals, rewards given by Government for feats of valour performed in the destruction of notorious tigers. Most of his family have fallen victims to these formidable animals; his last remaining son was killed by one within the last two months, and he himself has made several extraordinary escapes; but his firm belief in predestination makes him blind to all danger, and each succeeding casualty among the members of his family only tends to strengthen the feeling of mortal hatred with which he regards the whole feline race, and renders him more daring in his almost daily encounters with them.

The following anecdote, related by my Brother, affords a striking instance of this man's extraordinary presence of mind, and determined courage. I give it as I find it noted down in his journal.

"Bussapa, a shikaree of the Lingyat caste, with whom I am well acquainted, was sent for, by the headman of a village, to destroy a tiger which had carried off a number of cattle. He came, and having ascertained the brute's usual haunts, fastened a bullock near the edge of a ravine which he frequented, and quietly seated himself beside it, protected only by a small bush. Soon after sunset the tiger appeared, killed the bullock, and was glutting himself with the blood, when Bussapa, thrusting his long matchlock through the bush, fired and wounded him severely. The tiger half rose, but being unable to see his assailant, on account of the intervening bush, dropped again upon his prey with a sullen growl. Bussapa was kneeling within three paces of him, completely defenceless; he did not even dare to reload, for he well knew that the slightest movement, on his part, would be the signal for his immediate destruction: his bare knees were pressed upon gravel, but he dared not venture to shift his uneasy position. Ever and anon, the tiger as he lay with his glaring eyes fixed upon the bush, uttered his hoarse growl of anger; his hot breath absolutely blew upon the cheek of the wretched man, yet still he moved not.

"The pain of his cramped position increased every moment-suspense became almost intolerable; but the motion of a limb, the rustling of a leaf would have been death. Thus they remained, the man and the tiger watching each other's motions; but even in this fearful situation, his presence of mind never for a moment forsook the noble fellow. He heard the gong of the village strike each hour of that fearful night, that seemed to him an eternity, and yet he lived.' The tormenting mosquitoes swarmed round his face, but he dared not brush them off. That fiendlike eye met his whenever he ventured a glance towards the horrid spell that bound him, and a hoarse growl grated on the stillness of the night, as a passing breeze stirred the leaves that sheltered him. Hours rolled on, and his powers of endurance were

wellnigh exhausted; when, at length, the welcome streaks of light, shot up from the eastern horizon. On the approach of day the tiger rose and stalked away with a sulky pace to a thicket at some distance; and then the stiff and wearied Bussapa felt that, he was safe. One would have thought that, after such a night of suffering, he would have been too thankful for his escape, to venture on any further risk. But the valiant Bussapa was not so easily diverted from his purpose: as soon as he had stretched his cramped limbs and restored the checked circulation, he reloaded his matchlock, and coolly proceeded to finish his work. With his match lighted, he advanced close to the tiger, lying ready to receive him; and shot him dead, by a ball in the forehead, while in the act of charging.

"If this does not show courage, nerve, and coolness, I know not what does. Many will, I dare say, doubt the truth of the story-I can only say that I firmly believe it. I heard it from the man's own lips the very day the circumstance occurred; and from his manner of relating the story-from his well-known character for determined bravery -which I have repeatedly seen put to the test,-and from other corrorating testimony, I give it full credence."

From Bussapa we learn that the country in this neighbourhood abounds with large game, and that we have arrived at a propitious moment. He has for the last three days been upon the trail of a family of wandering tigers, that have killed a number of cattle lately; and he gives us good hopes of being able to mark them down for to-morrow. If any man in the world can do so, Bussapa is the man.

In the afternoon a troop of strolling tumblers, jugglers, and snakecharmers, came to exhibit their tricks in front of the tent. They were inferior to some I have seen at the Presidency; but several of their feats were new to me, and sufficiently curious.

A man, with his legs firmly bound together, and a long, straight Mahratta sword, lashed to the back of his neck, so as to stand upright, threw a summerset backwards and alighted on his feet, without allowing the point of the sword to touch the ground. To do this on a sandy soil without any spring-board required some muscle: he then, with a sword and shield in his hands, jumped head foremost through the loop of a rope not more than eighteen inches wide, which was held by two men in a square form, as high as their heads, turned over in the air and alighted on his feet, with the sword and shield still in his hands. A boy then climbed to the top of a pole about forty feet high, supported by shrouds descending at an angle of 45°, and having doubled up an antelope's skin and fastened it between his legs, to protect him from the friction of the rope, he got astride upon one of the shrouds, let go his hold, and slid down to the bottom with fearful rapidity, holding his arms aloft, and trusting entirely to his balance to keep him upright on his narrow seat: the grace, and apparent ease, with which he accomplished this difficult feat were truly wonderful. People were, of course, stationed with a blanket to receive him, and break his fall when he reached the bottom; otherwise the velocity with which he descended was so great that his legs must have been fractured. examining the antelope-skin, which served him for a saddle, I found that it was nearly cut through by the friction of the rope.

On

The jugglers and snake-charmers exhibited their usual tricks, but did not perform any feat particularly worthy of notice.

While on the subject of snake-charmers, I shall, with the reader's permission, give an extract from a later part of my journal, relating to these curious people.

We had an argument the other day as to whether the snakecharmers of India extract the fangs of the snakes which they exhibit or not. I, myself, believe that the fangs are in general extracted; but I can vouch for one instance at least, where one of these men not only exhibited a snake without extracting his fangs, but was at length bitten, and fell a victim to his temerity.

When I was on General D--'s staff at Trichinopoly, there was a dry well in the garden, which was the favourite haunt of snakes, and in which I shot several. One morning I discovered a large cobracapella at the bottom of this well, basking in the sun; but while I ran to fetch my gun, some of the native servants began to pelt him with stones, and drove him into his hole among the brickwork. I therefore sent for the snake-charmers to get him out. Two of these worthies having arrived, we lowered them into the well by means of a rope; one of them (after performing sundry incantations and sprinkling himself and his companion with ashes, prepared from the dung of a sacred cow) began to play a shrill, monotonous ditty upon a pipe, ornamented with shells, brass rings, and beads; while the other stood on one side of the snake's hole, holding a rod, furnished at one end with a horsehair noose.

At first, the snake, who had been considerably bullied before he took refuge in his hole, was deaf to the notes of the charmer; but, after half an hour's constant playing, the spell began to operate, and the snake was heard to move. In a few minutes more he thrust out his head-the horsehair noose was dexterously slipped over it and drawn tight, and we hoisted up the men, dangling their snake in triumph. Having carried him to an open space of ground, they released him from the noose. The enraged snake immediately made a rush at the bystanders, putting to flight a crowd of native servants, who had assembled to witness the sport. The snake-charmer, tapping him on the tail with a switch, induced him to turn upon himself; and at the same moment sounding his pipe, the snake coiled himself up, raised his head, expanded his hood, and appeared about to strike; but, instead of doing so, he remained in the same position, as if fascinated by the music, darting out his slender forked tongue, and following with his head the motion of the man's knee, which he kept moving from side to side, within a few inches of him, as if tempting him to bite. No sooner did the music cease, than the snake darted forward with such fury that it required great agility on the part of the man to avoid him, and immediately made off as fast as he could go. The sound of the pipe, however, invariably made him stop, and obliged him to remain in an upright position as long as the man continued to play.

After repeating this experiment several times, we placed a fowl within his reach, which he instantly darted at and bit. The fowl screamed at the moment he was struck, but ran off and began picking among his companions as if nothing had happened. I pulled out my watch to note how long the venom took to operate.

In about half-a-minute, the comb and wattles of the fowl began to change from a red to a livid hue, and were soon nearly black, but no other symptom was apparent; in two minutes it began to stagger, was

seized with strong convulsions, fell to the ground, and continued to struggle violently till it expired, exactly three minutes and a half after it had been bitten. On plucking the fowl, we found that he had merely been touched on the extreme point of the pinion; the wound, not larger than the puncture of a needle, was surrounded by a livid spot, but the remainder of the body, with the exception of the comb and wattles, which were of a dark, livid hue, was of the natural colour, and I afterwards learned that the coachman (a half-caste) had eaten it.

The charmer now offered to show us his method of catching snakes, and seizing the reptile (about five feet long) by the point of the tail with his left hand, he slipped the right hand along the body with the swiftness of lightning, and grasping him by the throat with his finger and thumb, held him fast, and forced him to open his jaws and display his poisonous fangs. Having now gratified my curiosity, I proposed that the snake should be destroyed, or at least that his fangs might be extracted-an operation easily performed with a pair of forceps; but the snake being a remarkably fine one, the charmer was unwilling to extract his teeth, as the operation sometimes proves fatal; and begged so hard to be allowed to keep him as he was, that I at last suffered him to put him in a basket and carry him off. After this, he frequently brought the snake to the house to exhibit him, and still with his fangs entire, as I ascertained by personal inspection, but so tame that he handled him freely, and apparently without fear of danger.

On my return to Trichinopoly, after an absence of some weeks, I inquired for my friend the snake-charmer, and learnt that he was dead, having been bitten by this identical snake. I afterwards had another snake charmed out of the same well, but took care to put him to death immediately.

As an instance of the extraordinary rapidity with which the venom of the cobra-capella acts upon the human frame, I must here mention an anecdote related to me by an officer in India. His regiment, a native one, were on the line of march one morning before daylight, when a sepoy of his company asked leave to "fall out," saying that he had run a thorn into his foot, and that it pained him so much as to make him feel faint. The poor fellow sat down by the roadside, and in less than a quarter of an hour, he was a corpse. The surgeon on examining the body, pronounced the wound in the foot, which the unfortunate man had mistaken for the prick of a thorn, to be the bite of a cobra-capella.

April 22d.-While sitting at breakfast this morning, a messenger arrived with the welcome intelligence that the indefatigable Bussapa had marked down four tigers and two bears, and surrounded them in a nullah within six miles of our camp. We immediately mounted old Anack, with a goodly supply of rockets and fireworks in the howdah, and proceeded to the place.

On reaching the ground, we found the nullah closely guarded by some fifty well-armed Mahrattas, and learned that just before our arrival a fight had taken place between a tiger and one of the bears, who had made off to the hills with a broken head. The others had not moved, and we immediately commenced beating.

The elephant was posted on a bank directly over the pass into one