THE JOURNAL OF AN INDIAN SPORTSMAN.*
COLONEL CAMPBELL is a sportsman pur sang, and not only that, but a sportsman as expert with the pen as with the rifle or the hog-spear. The announcement "by the-Author of the 'Old Forest Ranger'" on the title-page will be enough to secure for its successor more readers than any other recommendation could give it. There are few men living more versed in woodcraft and the destruction of " big game" than Colonel Campbell, few men capable of narrating the exciting episodes and wild adventures of Indian sport in the graphic but unaffected style of which he has the command, and still fewer who could have managed in a professedly sporting work to give the stay-at-home Englishman so vivid an impression of the general tone, habits, and circum- stances of Anglo-Indian life.
It was only quite recently that Colonel Campbell, at the in- stance of friends, determined upon following up his first essay in authorship by the publication of a journal kept in India during the first years of his sojourn there. This he has done with as few additions and emendations as possible, filling up occasionally the meagre details of the chase from memory, and occasionally condensing where his youthful ardour had led him into too lofty flights of composition. Colonel Campbell was a sportsman from his earliest youth, and he prefaces his journal by describing the High- land life of his childhood, one which in these degenerate days would be thought at least a strange one. His mother, though English by birth, bad adopted her Highland home with romantic attachment, and, on the death of their father, her two sons were brought up by her on her own theories of what Highland gentlemen should be. Out of doors Spartan hardihood and endurance were her only thought, but in the drawing-room the strictest etiquette and the most devoted courtesy to the fair sex was exacted, and thus, though the boys spent their days in roughest of rough sports, at sea in all weathers, rifling unbroken Highland ponies, swimming across riversin their clothes, and generally leading the life of young savages, the discipline of the house answered effectually the object usually attributed to the ingenure arias. It must be con- fessed that these last attainments themselves were not thought mach of in Mrs. Campbell's curriculum in comparison with wood- craft and power of "roughing it," so that when her son quitted Edinburgh for the army he was told politely by the Rector that as he would never be good for anything else he was just the sort of fellow to make capital food for powder. Colonel Campbell can afford now to record this unflattering horoscope, especially as in after years the worthy Rector recanted, and blandly told his former scholar that he was really glad he had not been "used
• My Journal in India. By Colonel Walter Campbell, Author of the "Old Forest Ranger." Edinburgh : Ednaonston and Douglas. 1864.
up." The first foundations of our Nimrod's attainments as a sportsman were laid by old Allan M'Intyre, the fox- hunter, eagle-destroyer, and bard of the district. Under his preceptorship, he graduated as a sportsman by killing a stag, a seal, an eagle, and a swan. This done, old Allan seems to have conferred the degree of "hunter" upon the boy, gave him his blessing, and sent him forth con- quering and to conquer. When his pupil returned from India he found Allan still alive, creeping about with his old Culloden gun under his arm, and happy beyond measure to listen, with tears of joy running down his cheeks, to his exploits in what he termed, in a song composed in their special honour, "The far-off hunting-grounds near the rising sun." We could almost wish as we read these reminiscences of Colonel Campbell's boy- hood that he had extended them to somewhat greater length. The true sportsman—removed as far as east from west from the sporting character—must have an education, and a pretty severe one, too, before he is even qualified to attempt the pursuit of big game. We fancy our author would never have lived to tell his Indian adventures—or even experience half of them—if old Allan the bard had not trained the nerves of his charge until a tiger charging at ten paces would have no power to unsteady the muzzle of his rifle by one hair's breadth. His readers ought to extend no small share of their gratitude for this most entertaining book to Allan.
Colonel Campbell left for India as a subaltern in 1830, and what others merely looked upon as a term of exile to be endured, notenjoyed, he looked forward to with the mostardent anticipations of the grand arena of sport where be might actually encounter in single combat the tigers, panthers, and bears, for whose acquaint- ance he had long yearned. After a voyage diversified mainly by a frightful storm brought on, according to nautical belief, by the wild recklessness of a young ensign who, in defiance of all warning, would stick a knife into the mast during a calm, his first impressions of India were derived from being landed through the Madras surf by a distinguished specimen of the " Tindal " of a Masulah boat, amidst the usual swarm of " Catamaran Jacks," whose presence serves to remind the voyager that the upsetting of his boat is at least looked forward to as a possibility, and his rescue from sharks as only a probability. His first opportunities for sport were obtained during an excursion to his brother's station at Dharwar, where he was much delighted with the civilian society. We fear that no equivalent has been found under the present Kgime for the athletic sports of Haileybury, where a set of hog spears were the prize most dearly coveted by the future civilian, and to use them well one of the greatest objects of his ambition. These civilians were men after Colonel Campbell's own heart, dead shots with a rifle, hard riders in a country where hard riding means a good deal, and staunch to back a fellow-sportsman in the hour of danger. They were all this, and to his especial delight, quiet, gentleman- like, and free from all the slang and swagger of "sporting coves," —neither talking like stable-boys, dressing like "swell drags- men," nor indulging in the "quaint blasphemies supposed to impart force and brilliancy to the conversation of 'tile bang-up sporting character.'" We agree cordially with Colonel Campbell's advice to the rising generation on this subject. Instead of the study of Bell's Life lie recommends that of natural history in all its branches, comparative anatomy, and drawing. In company with these Dharwar civilians he opened his first sporting campaign, and on the first day commenced his career as a tiger-slayer by aiding in the destruction of a" man-eater " that had long been the terror of the neighbourhood. As pretty well half of the volume consists of tiger stories, we may as well at once generalize by stating that they are all exciting, all well told, and—though it is scarcely necessary to mention it—without the faintest vestige of exag- geration or colouring. There are probably few men living who know as much about tigers as Colonel Campbell. He mentions inuidentally having taken the accurate dimensions of some three hundred tigrine corpses, and there are few men to whom the ryots of tiger-haunted districts ought to be more grateful. In one district alone—that of Kandeish—an official return shows that in four years only three hundred and fifty human beings and 24,000 head of cattle had fallen victims to these ferocious brutes. All tigers attack cattle, but it is far from being the same with regard to men, and the "man eater" of a village is gener- ally personally known, hated, and feared by the ryots. The tiger, though often most capricious and inconsistent in this respect, its a thorough coward, and so far from preferring man as an article of food, only lies in wait for him when injuries, failing teeth, or general old age make the contest between itself and other wild,
animals not quite so one-sided as it formerly was. The taste under these circumstances unhappily is soon acquired, and an elderly tigress with weak teeth taking her abode in a neigh- bouring jungle is in reality a calamity too frightful for any but those who have experienced it to realize. When once the unwelcome fact is known a deadly gloom falls over the com- munity. Day after day the ever recurring tragedy is acted—a stealthy footfall, a spring, a low growl, and some fresh victim lies on the ground a battered mangled mass of flesh. This goes on perhaps until every family has lost a member, and the in- habitants only cultivate their fields at the risk of life, and at last the mild Hindoas, suddenly putting off their dreamy apathy, bind themselves by vows to avenge their relatives, and with a reckless disregard of life, the exact opposite of their ordinary timidity, seek out the brute in his jungle and rush on him in a body with swords or whatever weapons they can get. Sometimes the.tiger is literally hacked in pieces—the loss of human life is always fearful. But if a station of " Sahibs " is anywhere near the case is very different. All turn out, a " &likes," or a professional master of the ceremonies, with trained and astute elephants, experienced mahouts, a strong force of natives as beaters, and a strong battery are employed, and a systematic tiger-hunt ensues. No sport in the world can possibly compare with it. A tiger killed means possibly scores of human lives saved, and though the foolhardy frenzy which sometimes suddenly attacks the natives often ends badly, the calm pluck and steady nerves of Englishmen generally carry them safe through the most tremendous risks. But unless Englishmen possess these last-mentioned qualities they had better abstain from this kind of sport, as they may not only lose their own lives but endanger those of others by a moment's hesitation or a slight tremor of the hand. When one reflects that a tiger can shatter at a blow the skull of a bison, spring like a cat, and carry—as Colonel Campbell once witnessed—sixteen rifle bullets without dropping, one can realize the nerve required to stand in front of an enraged specimen of the race, knowing the while that it is only just between the eyes or straight through the heart that the bullet can save one. We wish we had space for one or two of Colonel Campbell's most exciting stories. To show, however, that tiger-hunting has its ludicrous side, like everything else, we must repeat a story told him by an old Kandeish sportsman :-
"We were closing in upon a wounded tiger, whose hind leg was broken. Some Bheels, who had run up the trail to a patch of high grass, were drawing back, now that their game was found, when the brute started up behind the elephant, and charged the nearest man, a little hairy, bandy-legged, square built oddity, more like a satyr than a human being. Away spun the Bheel for the nearest tree, with the wounded tiger roaring at his haunches. By the Prophet, Si; it would have done your heart good to see the springs the active little sinner made. Just in time he reached the tree, and scrambled into a branch, hardly out of reach. There he sat, crouched up in the smallest possi- ble compass, expecting every moment to be among the Houris. The tiger made several desperate efforts to reach him, but the broken bind leg failing, he dropped back exhausted. It was now the Bheel's turn. He saw that he was safe and accordingly commenced a philippic against the father and mother, sisters, aunts, nieces and children, of his helpless enemy ; who sat with glaring eyeballs fixed on his contemptible little reviler, and roaring as if his heart would break with rage. As the excited orator warmed by his eloquence, he began skipping from branch to branch, grinning and chattering with the emphasis of an enraged baboon; pouring out a torrent of the most foul abuse ; and attributing to the tiger's fimily in general, and his female relatives in particular, every crime and atrocity that ever was or will be committed. Occasionally he varied his insults by roaring, in imitation of the tiger ; and at last, when fairly exhausted, he leant forward till he appeared within the grasp of the enraged animal, and ended this inimitable scene by spitting in his face. So very absurd was the whole farce, that we who were at first shoving up the elephant, in alarm for the safety of our little hairy friend, ended by laughing till our sides ached ; and it was not without reluctance that we put an end to the scene by firing a death volley."
It must not be supposed that the whole volume is taken upswith bunting details, or that there is not a great deal of most amusing description of Indian society, manners, and customs generally. There is a ghastly narrative, too, of the sufferings of the author's regiment from cholera whilst on and after their march to Masuli- patam. According to the usual custom of Government in select- ing stations, that in question consisted of a fort surrounded by a ditch connected with the sea by a creek of two miles, and at low tide a mere extent of pestilence-breeding mud. On Colonel Campbell's arrival—he vouches for the fact—he was waited upon by a respectable half-caste gentleman, "in a 'genteel ' suit of black and a white tie," with "tile grave smile and obsequious air of a well-bred undertaker," who unfolded a beautifully drawn and ornamented plan of a new cemetery, and politely, but as a matter of course, asked him to select a place for his own obse- squies. It is but just to add that this was the last occasion of
European troops being quartered in Masulipatam. At length the pestilence reached such a height that Colonel Campbell found himself the only officer competent to take charge of a detach- ment of convalescents ordered on a cruise, and to this we owe the amusing narrative of his visit to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands which forma the concluding portion of his book.
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