SHOOTING PARTIES.

497

CHAPTER XXII.

Excursion of a Shooting Party in Turcaseer-Wild BeastsMonkeys Bheels-Serpents-Locusts - Feathered Game of Guzerat-Anecdote of a Sahras-Baubul, or Acacia-Curious Instinct and Sagacity in the Baubul Caterpillar-Further Description of the Baya, or Bottle-nested Sparrow-Instinct of various Animals-Raje-pipley Hills-Tiger Mountain-Number of wild Animals in those unfrequented Regions-Various Habits of Tigers-Of Hyenas and other Beasts of PreyRhinoceros-Wild Hogs-Bears-Anecdote of their dreadful Brutality.

DURING my residence at Baroche I frequently joined the English chief on hunting and shooting parties in the neighbouring districts: not that I had any pleasure in those diversions, but his tents being often pitched in unfrequented forests, and savage tracts, little known to Europeans, I had an opportunity of exploring scenes of nature, which, on account of wild beasts and wilder men, it would have been impossible to have traversed without a strong and expensive guard.

The most interesting of these excursions occurred the year after my arrival at Baroche, when the sporting camp was formed in the environs of Turcaseer, a small Mahratta town which gives name to ruined districts once populous and cultivated, then containing only two inhabited villages, and the shabby

capital. A scene so contrasted to the futile plains in the Baroche purgunna, afforded me a fund of novelty and amusement; the woods and forests were filled with tigers, hyenas, wolves, jackals, elks, antelopes, spotted-deer, and a variety of smaller game.

We continued some time at Turcaseer, and then moved on, in the patriarchal style, from place to place, as shade, water, and game attracted us. The different quadrupeds just mentioned were occasionally seen; peacocks, doves, and squirrels, unaccustomed to molestation, approached our tents with familiarity; while monkeys in great number diverted us with their playfulness and cunning devices to purloin the bottled-beer, fruit, or any delicacy that suited their taste. The Chinese are said to eat monkeys; but I never heard of any caste, tribe, or individual in Hindostan using them for food; not even the Pariahs and Chandalas, who eat carrion and offal of every description.

The surrounding districts were nearly as wild and uncultivated as Turcaseer: the wildness increased as we approached the Raje-pipley hills, and there every trace of agriculture and population ceased. The only human inhabitants are a set of cruel robbers called Bheels, more barbarous than the beasts among whom they dwell.

The serpents, reptiles, and insects in these wilds were varied and beautiful, particularly some of the cicada and locusts; that called the creeping leaf was to be seen in great variety; they are not easily distinguished from the plants on which they feed. Guanas, cameleons, and lizards of every description abounded; some of the

latter, basking in the sun, appeared in alternate stripes of blue and gold; and a large kind of locust was arrayed in the same splendid hues.

Many of these insects, when separately viewed, are extremely curious, and very pretty; but, considered collectively, as destroyers of a country, they appear in an awful light. Desolation and famine mark their progress; the face of the country is covered with them for many miles; all the expectations of the husbandman vanish; his fields, which the rising sun beheld covered with luxuriance, are before evening a desert ; the produce of his garden and orchards is equally destroyed: for where these destructive swarms alight, not a leaf is left upon the trees, a blade of grass in the all wears pasture, nor an ear of corn in the field; the marks of dreadful devastation; vegetation being no more renewed until the next rainy season. The locusts not only cause a famine, by destroying the produce of the country, but in districts near the sea, where they had been drowned, they have occasioned a pestilence, from the putrid effluvia of immense numbers blown upon the coast, or thrown up by the tides. In India they are not near so pernicious as in Arabia, and many parts of Africa. Soon after my arrival at Baroche I saw a flight of locusts extending above a mile in length, and half as much in breadth; they appeared, as the sun was in the meridian, like a black cloud at a distance: as they approached, the density of the host obscured the solar rays, cast an awful gloom, like that of an eclipse, over the garden, aud caused a noise like the rushing of a torrent. They were near an hour in passing over our little territory; I need not say with

what an anxious eye we marked their progress, fearful lest the delicacies of our garden should allure them to a repast. We picked up a few stragglers, but the main body took a western direction, and without settling in the country most probably perished in the gulph of Cambay. A few months afterwards a much larger army alighted on the opposite side of the Nerbudda, destroyed every vegetable production throughout the Occlaseer purgunna, and gave the whole country the appearance of having been burnt. Each of these flights were brought by an east wind, from whence I cannot say they completely realized the picture so affectingly recorded in Holy Writ: "The Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night, and when it was morning the east wind brought the locusts, and the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt; very grievous were they; for they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened, and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees, and there remained not any green thing on the trees, or in the herbs of the field throughout all the land of Egypt."-Exodus, ch. x.ver. 13—15.

It has been a matter of dispute between learned commentators on the scriptures, whether the animals mentioned by Moses in the miraculous supply of food for the Israelites in the wilderness, were quails or locusts. Our translators render them the former; but, from the description given by the sacred historian, and from what I observed of locusts, I rather incline to the opinion of Ludolphus, and the late Bishop of Clogher, that they were locusts, and not quails, which

FEATHERED GAME.

501

the children of Israel ate in the desert. Moses says, "There went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails; he that gathered least gathered ten homers; and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp."-Numbers, ch. xi. ver. 31, 32.

The Nerbudda is enlivened by fourteen different kinds of wild-ducks; some are extremely beautiful in their plumage, and many roost on trees. Pelicans, spoon-bills, white and rose-coloured flamingos, storks, cranes, and a variety of aquatic birds frequent the lakes and marshes; woodcocks are sometimes seen in the cool season; snipes are more common, and immense flocks of wheat-ears and ortolans emigrate from distant countries during the harvest. The common partridge in shape and plumage is very like that in England; the feathers of that called the black-partridge are peculiarly rich; the quails are excellent. The florican, or curmoor, (otis houbara, Lin.) exceeds all the Indian wild-fowl in delicacy of flavour; its varied plumage, lofty carriage, and tuft of black feathers, falling gracefully from its head, make him one of the most elegant birds in India; it is of the bustard species, but much smaller than the English otis. Green pigeons, doves, and the usual variety of songsters, animated the woods of Turcaseer.

The cullum, or large crane, similar to the demoiselle of Numidia (ardea virgo, Lin.) is a majestic bird;