or office, or at the durbar, they forgather with Europeans and transact business or go through barbaric ceremonial with them; but there is no intercommunion between the two races in any matter concerning the family and inner life of either, and the native is, I think, exclusively to blame for this state of things.

What encouragement does the native give that should cause the Briton to open his heart to him? None! When the Rajah or Reis calls upon a sahib, he does so as a disagreeable duty. He talks about the weather (and that is the only English feature of the occasion), the crops, the electric telegraph, or maybe the balloon; then he fidgets uneasily, so that the sahib has to release him with the necessary rooksut (high polite for the Yankee "get"). Then he shakes hands with his host; and then, as likely as not, he goes straightway to a retainer outside the door, who holds in hand a basin of water, wherein the Reis or Rajah may wash off the pollution of that handshake with the Christian. Is that sort of thing calculated to make us rush into the arms of our Aryan brothers the Hindoos? Can there be any intimacy with men of whom to ask how their wives are is a dire offence against good manners-to whom one may not address one word about their female relatives, even down to their cousins and aunts? Can one adopt as one's own especial Pylades a man who regards one's wife in the light of a hireling nautch

girl because he is permitted to see her waltzing round a ballroom-who admires her (if at all he admires) in a peculiarly reprehensible way, and who wonders, as a certainty, why this dancing is not done by paid coryphées from the bazaar?

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CHAPTER VI.

THE DEOGHUR TIGERS.

THE SHRINE OF BYJINAUTH-MAN-EATING TIGERS-A NIGHT IN A MACHAN-THE FIRST BYJINAUTH TIGER-THE SPRING-BOW-A HYENA-A CAVE INCIDENT-BUFFALO FOR BEAR-PANTHERS

TRACKING A WOUND

ED TIGER-A BRACE

OF TIGERS.

T Deoghur I found myself not only in the midst of big game, but, happily, clear of the malarious country. Jungle was there through

out the district, interspersed with cultivated tracts and towns

and villages. Sometimes

the cultivated lands were but

small clearings in the forest depths, sometimes the forest was a mere fringe of the settlements; but everywhere and always the jungle was more or less

at hand-tree jungle with a dense undergrowth, wherein the tiger and the panther found congenial homes, and the bear a pleasant huntingground.

For the most part the country was undulating throughout, and had, as a frequent dominant feature, a hill that rose sheer out of the plain—a stony outcrop, unconnected with any range, that varied from the dwarf mountain of 1200 feet in height, such as Teeur or Phooljoori, to the unnamed rock-pile of 50 feet. The rivers were hillstreams that, in dry weather, trickled through their gravelly beds, and after rain rushed seaward

as torrents. I have ridden across one of these rivers in the morning when the water only covered my horse's fetlocks, and, returning in the afternoon, have had to swim it-then ten feet of rapid, bearing upon its angry bosom uprooted trees and other wreckage of its course. These rivers provided for the district a splendid drainage-system, and the only scheme of sanitation known or required.

The station of Deoghur (which consisted of the bungalows of myself and my assistant, the Government cutcherry, and the ruins of the barracks where two mutinous companies of a native infantry regiment had been quartered) stood upon a height which commanded the native town and the renowned Hindoo temple of Byjinauth. This temple, served by 360 Brahmin priests or pundas, ranked in the Hindoo mind with that of Juggur

There

nauth at Pooree, and pilgrims in hundreds of thousands poured into the town at certain seasons to lay their votive offerings at the idol's feet, to fill the purses of the pundas, and to disseminate amongst the town's folks such smallpox or cholera as might be going then. Byjinauth's fane was a constant thorn in my official flesh, and provided me with a considerable amount of work. was a standing difficulty about the chief pundaship that was always at hand to occupy my diplomatic skill-a difficulty that arose, if I rightly remember, out of this de facto high priest having failed to observe the rule of celibacy required by his office. He was a man of strong family instincts, and would not give up his wife and children; he was also a man of marked acquisitiveness, and would not forgo the emoluments of the chief pundaship,-and no diplomacy of mine could adjust this difficulty. When I left Deoghur, after nearly five years, that obstinate flamen was still battling with a less domestic priest who sought to oust him from the musnud. Then the other 359 pundas were always at loggerheads with each other or with any available outsider, frequently about their chelas or disciples, but about anything or anybody when the chela failed as motive for a row. And, finally, the wretched pilgrims gave constant trouble, in that they were plundered by the priests and other robbers no less professional, who found their opportunity of thieving in the crowded town, just as if