e reading of love or sport makes men and women feel better because it
takes them away from themselves (we should have no mirrors in our rooms),
what must the reality of either be? For both dart through the system with
electric and delight-yielding force, and produce effects which, to those
who have not experienced them, are wellnigh incredible. And, as regards
big game shooting in particular, the effects are so astonishing that one
almost ceases to believe in them till another experience proves over again
that sport, or even the prospect of sport, can effect miracles, or at
least that it can cause an alteration in the system through the action of
the mind. And, some eighteen months ago, I realized this most vividly when
feeling much out of sorts, and indeed unfit for anything. For just at the
time of my deepest depression, news came in that a tiger had killed two
cattle in my plantation, and, what made the news much more acceptable,
two trespassing cattle--animals which are the plague of a planter's life.
The news acted like a charm. I at once felt slightly better, better still
when I arrived at the spot and saw the traces of the cattle having been
dragged along the ground, and the bodies of the slain--one more than half
eaten and the other untouched--and almost well when I returned to the
bungalow to make preparations for hunting up the tiger. There is no tonic
half so good as news of a tiger, and I feel that even news of a bear would
rival in a great many cases all that a doctor could do for me. But, though
tiger shooting is a valuable and delightful sport, it is equalled if not
eclipsed by stalking on the mountains amidst the beautiful and splendid
scenery of the Western Ghauts, when you traverse the forest-margined open
lands rifle in hand, feeling that everything depends upon yourself, and
followed by a tried and experienced shikari on whose keen sight and
coolness you can thoroughly rely. There are natives of course and natives,
just as there are Europeans and Europeans, but there are natives who have
been gifted with the greatest daring, coolness, and the promptest presence
of mind, and who are capable of much personal devotion to those who know
how to treat them. I was fortunate enough to have one of these in my
service, and to no sporting scenes in life can I look back with greater
pleasure than when I was able, with my trusted native follower, to spend
delightful mornings and evenings, and at certain times whole d