CHAPTER III
TOUR IN INDIA, 1870: MADRAS, DARJEELING AND
SIKKIM
On January 16th, 1870, I landed at Madras after a bad passage of twenty- eight days from Marseilles in the P. and O. Mooltan. I stayed at the Club, where I was introduced to the late Colonel Michael, one of the founders of the Forest Service in the Presidency, and well known as a great hunter. This Club was then the ne plus ultra of Anglo-Indian luxury; and I was much amused to find that a servant with a pellet bow was constantly walking about to scare the crows, which were so bold that they often attempted, sometimes with success, to plunder the dishes as they were carried from the kitchen to the dining-room.
I left Madras by train for Trichinopoly, where I had to wait a day for my luggage, and went on by bullock cart to Madura. In those days trotting bullocks, which were changed about every six miles, were the usual means of locomotion on the plains of Southern India, averaging about five miles an hour when the roads were dry and level. At Madura I was hospitably entertained by Mr. Arbuthnot, the Collector, who showed me the temples, which are very large and curious. I was much interested in the civil court where Arbuthnot heard cases daily; he told me that he had great difficulty in preventing the natives employed about the court, and even his own servants, from taking bribes from the suitors to get influence in their favour.
On January 22nd my brother officers and companions, Captain Barne and the Hon. F. Bridgeman, who had gone out a fortnight earlier, returned from the Sherramalay Hills where they had been hunting for a week and had killed three bison. After spending some days in engaging servants, buying ponies and getting camp outfit, in which we were much helped by Arbuthnot, we started on the evening of the 26th for Tirimungalam, about twelve miles out, in a dog-cart, and there found two bullock carts waiting to take us to the foot of the hills. Owing to the muddy rivers which had to be crossed, and in which the carts often stuck, it was a slow night’s journey, without much sleep. In the morning we breakfasted at a large village, and rode thence to the foot of a pass which led into the Wursenaad valley, about seventeen miles, where we found our camp pitched in an open spot on the banks of a river.
The Wursenaad valley at that time was mostly filled with thick jungle, and a very favourite place for elephants; it was more or less preserved by the Collector of Madura for the sport of himself and his friends. Native trackers had already been engaged, and gave excellent reports of the number of elephants in the valley.
In those days, when breech-loaders and express rifles were hardly known, heavy rifles or smooth bores were considered the best for elephant hunting, and I had been lent by Colonel Michael a single 4-bore rifle weighing over twenty pounds, which was loaded with round bullet weighing
four to the pound, and an ounce of powder. The kick of this rifle was such
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