THE CHIEFTAIN IN DANGER.

ENGRAVED BY H. BECKWITH, FROM A PAINTING BY THOMPSON.

"Already glorying in the prize,

Measured his antlers with his eyes;
For the death-wound, and death-halloo,
Muster'd his breath, his distance drew."

There is scarcely a sport in the wide world which requires so much energy and determination of purpose, so cool a head and so quick a hand, so firm a foot and so " pretty a wit"-in short, such a perfection of the mens sana in corpore sano as the ancient art of Deer-stalking. If though this labour of love be something of the severest, the prize, as in most great attempts, is proportionately grand; and only let there be one taste of triumph, one visible sign of a good day's work, success colours the beauties of the country, the enthusiasm of the attendants, the sagacity of the enemy, and the ecstacy of the whole, in a style which, as the advertisements say, "must be tried to be properly appreciated." Still, per contra, after breaking one's bellows in running up hills, skinning the shins in sliding down precipices, and risking one's life in a variety of other romantic encounters with the magnificent scenery-to make a right down mull or a wrong cast of it must be backed by a tolerable amount of the right sort of spirit, especially should it be the essayist's first turn-out. Just let us suppose, by way of example, that the sportsman who is about to have so good and open a chance at the Chieftain, is some gentle southron become partially insane on the subject, by the constant contemplation of Landseer's paintings or Scrope's writings; and that, concentrating the hopes and anxieties of the last six months into one simple crack of the rifle-trembling with excitement, and bewildered with eagerness-he merely hurries off "the antlered monarch" in no slight alarm, and the old hand at his elbow in no little disgust. We know no way of illustrating such a conclusion better than the answer we once heard a north countryman give, when called on for a song:-"Singing, is it? I think I see myself a coming two hundred and forty mile to make a fool of myself!" Depend upon it, worthy stranger, if Wallace Mac Donnel don't say as much of you, there may be a slight suspicion of his thinking it, nevertheless.

But, again, allowing he does make a hit of it, that he can serve a ne exeat on that bit of full blown dignity, what a change comes o'er the spirit of the man-"O, then, it is sic a bonnie beastie, and 'twas sic a bonnie shot, and he's sic a bonnie mon." The old

stalker does feel pleasure in serving a real gentleman who can profit so well by his skilful generalship; the gillies and helpers would never wish for a better "mon" to cut out the work for them, and even the very deer-hounds look up in his face with a kind of respectful admiration, till he cannot actually help believing himself quite as good as any of the track-tracing, venison-finding heroes, who owe their fame to the genius of Fenimore Cooper. When it does come to this-when such Herculean labours meet with such ample reward-why, as Sheridan said of his speech, "it is a deuced fine thing, and that's the truth of it."

AN APRIL FOOL IN THE JUNGLES.

BY MAJOR CALDER CAMPBELL.

There

When the hill-fort of Nundydroog, in the Madras presidency, was a military station, which it has ceased to be for many years, its sole attraction consisted in the fund of amusements which its mountains, woods, and plains afforded to the East Indian sportsman. was a constant plenitude of game, from the tusky wild-hog, larding itself with saccharine fat from its sugar-cane banquet, to the timid Asiatic hare, so much more diminutive and less juicy than its European namesake. The hills abounded in partridges, black and brown, the former so peculiar from their screaming attributes. The leopard and panther occasionally drew hunting parties to attack them in the ravines. The plains-those long, dreary savannahs covered with thick and prickly speargrass, through which the sportsman has literally to wade, with stockings off, or booted to the knee, to prevent the unbearable irritation occasioned by its bristly awns, which stick in sock and stocking excoriating the whole skin,-the plains were rife in foxes for a chase; or for the pedestrian, hares, bustards, and florikins, lurking mid grey stones, or among the scoria of chasmy gravel pits, while quails sprang up at every footfall. Amidst the short narrow valleys that disparted the hills might now and then be seen a stretch of jheel, or marsh, in which, at proper seasons, there was no difficulty in coming upon wild-duck, teal, and widgeon; while the paddi grounds, or rice-fields, at that period when from the process of irrigation the plants were covered with water up to the embryo ear, abounded in delicious snipes. In the adjoining jungles the peacock and the porcupine shared the rich solitude with less innocent denizens. We had certainly no forests of teak to harbour elephantine prey. Rumours of tigers were rare, floating about but at remote intervals; nor were there bison, elk, or neelghai, in our woods; but we had all the game I have named at our disposal, with this one drawbacka brooding malaria, that soon afterwards led to the evacuation of the place as a military post.

Nundydroog is, as I have said, a strong hill-fort in the Mysore Rajah's dominions; situated on the very summit of a mountain which has been accounted 1700 feet high, and inaccessible throughout threefourths of its circumference, it ranked as one of the principal strongholds of the Mahrattas, from whom it was taken by Hyder Ali, after a tedious blockade of no less than three years: an equal number of weeks sufficed to place it in the hands of the British in 1791, when it was captured by storm after an obstinate defence. In the year 1817, ours was the only battalion cantoned there; and the occurrences I am about to relate took place in that season when Madras is at its hottest, and winds, finding no dews nor waters to cool them, waft airs around that seem like the exhalations of a heated oven. was about the end of March that I became the prime mover of a jest played off upon a young griffin who had recently joined us; a jest that led to my subsequent performance of the undignified part that confers a title to this article-The April Fool in the Jungles!

It

The juvenile ensign, by name Lloyd, was a fine, frank youth, abundantly green, to be sure, and consequently, as all griffins are, until the first year of their noviciate in India is out, he was constantly subjected to the thousand-and-one contrivances by which his messmates, initiated by similar processes into the mysteries of "life in the colonies," strove to puzzle, perplex, and dupe him. Idleness is the original toad which hatches the cockatrice eggs that produce mischief; and though with us all was fun and gaieté de cœur, malice being a thing that mixed not with our glee, the joke in question was very nearly proving fatal in its effects to me. The tricks, that are generally mise en action to enlighten the new arrival through the medium of a deceiving lens, are seldom followed by such results.

Lloyd says he wants to buy a smart young tattoo (pony)," said I, one day when our new friend was absent: "suppose we borrow Subidar Chinnoo's old white horse, make it up into a young bay, and sell it to him." Upon this hint we acted in concert. The Subidar, one of our most esteemed native officers, was a jolly old fellow, and entered heartily into the joke, lending his faithful steed of many years for the plot, and putting us in the way of the suggested making up with an inventive facility which conduced to corroborate certain reports we had heard of the worthy Chinnoo's expertness in such acts, in his youth, when he was a horse-dealer. It may be as well to state, that among the Jack Sheppards of the east, he who steals a steed is the most honoured. He who steals a steed deserves eulogy, but he who sells that same steed to its former proprietor as another horse with a new colour, is exalted to the very highest altitude of fame. The Seiks, who are the most dexterous horse-thieves of all Asiatic tribes, frequently resort to what is termed the ghorè-ko rung-denèkee kám, or horse-staining art. Now, as the beast upon which we had to exercise our dyeing capabilities was a white one, it so happened that, after a rigorous and carefully scientific application of turmeric, cowdung, and other staining matter procured by Chinnoo, the venerable white tattoo caracoled before the mess-house door, on a certain day in March, nothing more nor less than a golden bay!