As a rule therefore, the records of Indian sportsmen give no idea of the vast quantities of game that are put up and never fired at.  It would be the very wantonness of destruction, to shoot animals not wanted for some specific purpose, unless indeed, you were raging an indiscriminate war of extermination, in a quarter where their numbers were a nuisance and prejudicial to crops.  In that case, your proceedings would not be dignified by the name of sport.

After a few more days shooting, the incidents of which were pretty much like those I have been describing, I started back for the factory.  I sent my horse on ahead, and took five elephants with me to beat up for game on the homeward route.  Close to camp a fine buck got up in front of me.  I broke both his forelegs with my first shot, but the poor brute still managed to hobble along.  It was in some very dense patair jungle, and I had considerable difficulty in bringing him to bag.  When we reached the ghat or ferry, I ordered Geerdharee Jha’s mahout to cross with his elephant.  The brute, however, refused to cross the river alone, and in spite of all the driver could do, she insisted on following the rest.  I got down, and some of the other drivers got out the hobbles and bound them round her legs.  In spite of these she still seemed determined to follow us.  She shook the bedding and other articles with which she was loaded off her back, and made a frantic effort to follow us through the deep sand.  The iron chains cut into her legs, and, afraid that she might do herself an irreparable injury, I had her tied up to a tree, and left her trumpeting and making an indignant lamentation at being separated from the rest of the line.

The elephant seems to be quite a social animal.  I have frequently seen cases where, after having been in company together for a lengthened hunt, they have manifested great reluctance to separate.  In leaving the line, I have often noticed the single elephant looking back at his comrades, and giving vent to his disappointment and disapproval, by grunts and trumpetings of indignant protest.  We left the refractory hathee tied up to her tree, and as we crossed the long rolling billows of burning sand that lay athwart our course, she was soon lost to view.  I shot a couple more hog-deer, and got several plover and teal in the patches of water that lay in some of the hollows among the sandbanks.  I fired at a huge alligator basking in the sun, on a sandbank close to the stream.  The bullet hit him somewhere in the forearm, and he made a tremendous sensation header into the current.  From the agitation in the water, he seemed not to appreciate the leaden message which I had sent him.

We found the journey through the soft yielding sand very fatiguing, and especially trying to the eyes.  When not shooting, it is a very wise precaution to wear eye-preservers or ‘goggles.’  They are a great relief to the eyes, and the best, I think, are the neutral tinted.  During the west winds, when the atmosphere is loaded with fine particles of irritating sand and dust, these goggles are very necessary, and are a great protection to the sight.