For big game the ‘Express’ is simply invaluable.  For all-round shooting perhaps a No. 12 smooth-bore is the best.  It should be snap action with rebounding locks.  You should have facilities and instruments for loading cartridges.  A good cartridge belt is a good thing for carrying them, but go where you will now, where there is game to be killed, a No. 12 B. L. will enable you to participate in whatever shooting is going.  Such a one as I have described would satisfy all the wishes of any young man who perhaps can only afford one gun.

As we rode slowly along, we learned many curious facts of jungle and native life from the followers, and by noticing little incidents happening before our eyes.  Pat, who is so well versed in jungle life and its traditions, told us of a curious moveable feast which the natives of these parts hold annually, generally in March or April, which is called the Sirwah Purrub.

It seems to be somewhat like the old carnivals of the middle ages.  I have read that in Sardinia, and Italy, and Switzerland something similar takes place.  The Sirwah Purrub is a sort of festival held in honour of the native Diana—­the chumpa buttee before referred to.  On the appointed day all the males in the forest villages, without exception, go a-hunting.  Old spears are furbished up; miraculous guns, of even yet more ancient lineage than Mehrman Singh’s dangerous flintpiece, are brought out from dusty hiding-places.  Battle-axes, bows and arrows, hatchets, clubs and weapons of all sorts, are looked up, and the motley crowd hies to the forest, the one party beating up the game to the other.

Some go fishing, others try to secure a quail or partridge, but it is a point of honour that something must be slain.  If game be not plentiful they will even go to another village and slay a goat, which, rather than return empty-handed, they will bear in triumph home.  The women meet the returning hunters, and if there has been a fortunate beat, there is a great feast in the village during the evening and far on into the night.  The nets are used, and in this way they generally have some game to divide in the village on their return from the hunt.  Ordinarily they seethe the flesh, and pour the whole contents of the cooking-pot into a mess of boiled rice.  With the addition of a little salt, this is to them very palatable fare.  They are very good cooks, with very simple appliances; with a little mustard oil or clarified butter, a few vegetables or a cut-up fish, they can be very successful.  The food, however, is generally smoked from the cow-dung fire.  If you are much out in these villages this smoke constantly hangs about, clinging to your clothes and flavouring your food, but the natives seem to like it amazingly.