prime condition, while the large barouche, which is standing
close by, might have just emerged from a coach-house in a London mews; a
few servants are loitering about, and give life to this otherwise
tranquil scene.

Nobody can for an instant suppose that this is the camp of Jung Bahadoor;
his tents are green and red and generally surrounded by soldiers; his
horses do not look so sleek and fresh as these; he has not got a barouche
belonging to him, far less a piano, and I think I hear the music of one
proceeding from yonder large tent.--No--this is an Indian picnic--none of
your scrambling, hurried pleasure parties to last for a wet day, when
everybody brings his own food, and eats it uncomfortably with his
fingers, with some leaves for a plate and an umbrella for a roof, and
then persuades himself and others that he has been enjoying himself. Let
such an one come and make trial of a deliberate, well-organized picnic of
a fortnight's duration, such as the one now before us, with plenty of
sport in the neighbourhood, while the presence of the fair sex in camp
renders the pleasures of the drawing-room doubly delightful after those
of the chace.

Boar-hunting, or, as it is commonly called, pig-sticking, is essentially
an Indian sport, and I could not have partaken of it under more
favourable auspices than I did at Hirsede, when, having obtained
intelligence of a wild boar, and having been supplied with steeds, some
five or six of us proceeded in pursuit of the denizen of the jungles. We
soon roused and pressed him closely through the fields of castor-oil and
rare-cates. The thick stalks of the former often balked our aim. He
received repeated thrusts notwithstanding, and charged three or four
times viciously, slightly wounding my horse, and more severely that of
one of my companions. After being mortally wounded, the brute
unfortunately dodged into a thick jungle, where, hiding himself in the
bushes, he baffled all our efforts to dislodge him. In their attempts to
do so, however, the beaters turned out a fine young boar, who gave us a
splendid run of upwards of a mile at top speed--for a pig is a much
faster animal than his appearance indicates, and one would little
imagine, as he scuttles along, that he could keep a horse at full gallop.
However, he soon became blown, and, no friendly patch of jungle being
near for him to take refuge in, was quickly despatched,

Our revels having been kept up to a late hour, I lef