exhaustion follows in a very short time, although I have seen both spotted-deer and antelope brought in alive, having been caught in this manner. Our leave was now nearly expired, so we were obliged to commence a retrograde movement, and, having packed up our trophies, we returned to Bowani, where Mother Garrow, a very Paphian queen, was awaiting our arrival with a formidable array of dusky nymphs. For three days we kept up a continuous nautch, and even after that time we were not tired of gazing upon the graceful pirouettes of the fair votaries of Terpsichore, or listening to the warbling of the dark-eyed songstresses as they sang on the old subjects, "Love and War;" and, when the time came for us to take our departure, more than one shed tears as the farewell words were spoken: indeed if "Rumour with her many tongues" spake true, it was discovered, soon after our departure, that there were vacancies to be filled up in the Pagoda of the dark mysterious goddess. Oh, D, "I could a tale unfold" that would raise up a spirit on thy fireside, that all the soft sawder of thy oily tongue would never calm! But I'll spare your feelings for the sake of "Auld lang syne and the jolly days we spent together in the merry green woods. We got into Trichy just in time, for two days afterwards the monsoon broke, and there was a continuous downfall of rain, which inundated the whole country. Section 3.-The Mountain Ranges. CHAPTER XIV. THE NEILGHERRIES. "Primeval woods, and forests vast and rude, Index.-Pleasing recollections.-The deep forest described.-The pleasures and excitement of a hunter's life.-The requisite qualifications. The Neilgherries and their productions.-Variety of game.-Ootacamund.-Englishmen and their love of Sport. -Dawson's Hotel.-Burnside Cottage.-Mala-mund.—The Todas: their women, habitations, and strange customs. News of elk.-The start: preliminaries.—The drive.-Game afoot. A capital shot.-Three deer bite the dust, and Bruin yields up his spoils.-A stag at bay. The return.-Convivial gathering.-The Major's story. HE Neilgherries. How many pleasing recollec THE tions of heart-stirring events are associated with that name; how many glorious days' sport does it recall to mind; how many a dear friend does it bring before me, with whom I have bearded the tiger in his lair, tracked the mighty elephant to his haunt in the pathless forest, and there despoiled him of his trophies, or pursued the watchful ibex from crag to crag, over precipices, chasms, and ledges of rock which men dared not look down in their cooler moments! Many a hand I then clasped has become cold, many a voice I loved to listen to is hushed for ever; he with whom I have often scoured the plain and struggled for the spear after the mighty grey boar, fell a shattered wreck before my eyes in the van of the fight that murky morn when "the Six Hundred" charged. There are times when the past comes before me with sadly painful distinctness, and my heart yearns to return once more to that land where I have passed the happiest years of my life, and to revisit those scenes which are engraven in my memory in strong and ineffaceable colours, although I know that my merry companions are gone, and that their places are occupied by strangers. Who among us have not some sunny spots in their existence, some remembrance of happier days gone by which they love to look back upon with pleasure, however bright future prospects may appear? Almost all of us have some fondly cherished souvenir or trophy upon which we love to gaze and think of the past, until the soul-stirring scenes of "auld lang syne" again come vividly to mind; and although we feel that they may never come again, we look back with pleasure upon the time when sunshine illumined our path. P With some the golden age appears to have been passed at school-with others, later in life. Here a stately old general tells of the glorious time he passed as a jolly sub in the days of powder and pigtails; and there a sturdy old squire of the last generation recounts with glee the doings of his time, 'when hounds could run and huntsmen went the pace;' yon phlegmatic looking old divine, with blanched locks and rubicund nose which bespeaks his love of the pleasures of the table, relates, with intense satisfaction, the roistering days he spent as a young man in a fast regiment of Light Dragoons, when it was considered a "crying sin" for any one to quit the social board until he had disposed of a couple of magnums under his belt; and that shrivelled-up old relic of mortality, who seems to stand before us as a specimen of what the hand of Time can effect on our mortal frame, will prate by the hour of the jolly dogs of his day, and the fascinations of town when he was a gay Lothario. Each and every one has some period of his life on which he loves to look back and think upon, although, perhaps, he may talk much more about the future. The soldier loves to recall to mind the scenes of many a hard-fought day; the sailor his adventures on the heaving main; the wanderer delights in the reminiscences of travel in many lands; and the foxhunter in the stiff bursts and glorious runs of bygone times; but the sportsman who has visited the Neilgherri mountains and stricken the mightiest denizens of the jungle, muses by day and dreams by night of the dark deep Wynaad forest. Those who have never explored a primeval forest can have but a very faint conception of the mysterious effect that absence of light and intense depth of gloom have upon the human mind. The unbroken silence and utter stillness that everywhere pervades its leafy arches, creates a strange feeling of awe and loneliness that depresses the spirits and appals the heart of those who are unaccustomed to wander in its solitudes; and even the stoutest heart feels overpowered with a strange sensation he can neither account for nor explain the first time he enters, for the voice of man resounds with a strange and startling echo, and even the very hound whines with fear, and couches close to his master's side, afraid of being left alone. Solitude is too insufficient a term to convey an idea of the intensely overpowering sensation of desolation and loneliness that pervades these regions; yet to the hunter, who is accustomed to sojourn in their deepest recesses, the wilderness is a home which he would not exchange for any other; and as he roams through its boundless expanse of verdure, with no other companions but the silent trackers and his dogs, and no guide but a pocket-compass and certain jungle signs not to be understood by the dwellers of cities, he imbibes certain feelings that cannot be entered into |