CHAPTER II.

ARRIVAL IN INDIA-GWALIOR.

1840-1844.

THE Voyage out proved uneventful, and early in the month of August 1840 Taylor reached India.

'I commenced my Indian life,' he writes when his working days were over, 'by spending two months in Calcutta in a cousin's house with the free run of my teeth and throat, and a stable full of pigsticking Arabs and horses of other breeds. I went out and spent a week at Barrackpore with Lord Auckland and the Miss E.'s, and altogether I enjoyed myself, the whole reviving recollections of my father's and mother's stories of India and Calcutta.

'After two months in Calcutta I went to Beshamporc, and spent two more there with my brother and his wife in the merry position of a young brother welcomed from home. Such snipe shootings and other games we had! and then, at the beginning of the beautiful Bengal cold weather, I went off with a first-rate Indian sportsman; my brother lent me a good Arab, and I bought a pony. We had elephants for a time, and stuck pigs on the banks of the Mahanudda, and rode buffaloes under the snowy hills opposite Darjeeling. Then we marched through Tirhoot, a beautiful and rich district, all the time depending on our

guns for our food, and having accompanied my friend to Gorakhpore, where his work in the Thuggee Department lay, I went on my way through Oudh straight up to Ferozepore.'

The first-rate Indian sportsman' here alluded to was Captain James Sleeman, and among Reynell Taylor's books there is a carefully bound copy of The Bengal Sporting Magazine' for the month of April 1841, in the fly-leaf of which is written :

'This book is preserved because it contains an account written by James Sleeman, of a buffalo hunt in which I took a part. It occurred in the course of my first march in India, back along in the times when I had just embarked in life and all was fresh and new, and so the day has a rosecoloured cell of its own in my memory.-R. G. T.'

The account is worth quoting, because it records two incidents, either of which, but for extraordinary good fortune, might have terminated fatally to Reynell Taylor. I quote it therefore almost in extenso :—

'Camp, Mooteeharee, December 30.-We had heard so much in favour of Darjeeling that we determined on visiting it, and for that purpose made a detour to Titalyah. . . . Having no elephants we were obliged to ride and shoot the buffaloes, and in two days floored five splendid specimens, the largest and fiercest I have ever met with.

'Riding buffaloes is no child's play-it requires a bold horse and a steady hand to escape death. The first buffalo we rode, a bull of fair proportions, fought well, but the ground was like a racecourse, and enabled us to avoid his charges. He fell to the sixth shot.

The following morning we got among a herd. After

some hard riding we managed to cut off the leader, a mighty bull, and induced him to take a line of his own, and then commenced a race, compared to which Dick Turpin's ride from London to York was a trifle. Both our horses were steady and in good wind, and in spite of his rapid charges most of our balls were well put in. After running five miles we came suddenly upon a small river with very precipitous banks, and a deep and rapid stream about sixty yards in width; into this he plunged headlong, and, appearing again near the centre, swam over and struggled up the opposite bank. Just as we mounted the bank after our swim we saw him dash into some thick jungle and disappear. The patch was not more than one hundred yards in extent, but the jungle was very high and thick and the ground swampy. To attempt to ride through it was madness, so we quietly dismounted to watch till two pad elephants we had with us should arrive.

While thus occupied, the herd from which we had separated the bull again appeared. They had crossed the river and were making play over a fine grass plain for some heavy tree jungle. Our horses having by this time regained their wind, we mounted, gave chase, and, after a very pretty run and fight, managed to floor a large

COW.

'On returning to our male friends the elephants had come up, so we sent them into the jungle. The buffalo was soon sighted, and the moment the elephants approached he drove them out of the jungle by a rapid charge, and followed them out upon the plain, taking the line which the flying herd had just before traversed. The same scene of load, fire, and charge was acted over again; another

and broader river was stemmed, but in spite of our efforts he reached his point, a heavy tree and bush jungle.

'The latter part of the run I had to myself, for Taylor and his horse came down in a blind ditch an awful smash; and the horse, in trying to get up, struck the trigger-guard of the gun with his foot, bent the iron, and exploded both barrels under their prostrate bodies without injuring either!

At its

'I must tell you that I had a servant mounted in this last run who carried a second gun, and when Taylor joined me after his fall I was busily employed, with the assistance of my servant and some fifty volunteers, in tracing the buffalo through the jungle, sometimes by his blood and sometimes by his footmarks. After carrying on the trail for about a mile we lost it in a barren glade of the forest, not more than sixty yards long by forty in width. upper end we found another narrow path which led to another but smaller glade, while on all sides the tree and bush jungle rose like a wall, impervious to anything but a pig or a buffalo. Here I thought our search must end, and we were on the point of turning back when a native in a tree called out that he saw the jungle in the smaller glade shaking, and that it must be the buffalo. Το ascertain the point I pushed my horse through the narrow path, and had just entered the open space when I was charged furiously from the opposite side. My horse up to this time had behaved pretty well, but his nerves could not stand a charge in such a cramped position, and turning sharp round before I could fire, he dashed back through the path at the top of his speed.

'I had just time to call out to Taylor and the boy to clear the way and take care of themselves, when my horse,

striking his knee against a concealed stump, rolled head over heels, smashing my gun-stock just behind the locks, and leaving me directly in the path of the buffalo, who was then perhaps fifteen paces in my rear.

'I am generally good at getting up, having had considerable experience in that line, and with such a stimulus to my activity a second sufficed to put me on my legs, and I made a dash towards the side jungle. At the same moment Taylor very gallantly pushed his horse between me and the foe, firing into the latter as he came on. This bold act would, under any circumstances, have probably saved me, while it ensured death to him and his horse; but providentially we were both on his blind side (I had stopped one of his previous charges by a ball in the right eye), and though he passed within a yard of Taylor he did not see him, but with head down he held on his course at the boy, who was about twenty yards lower down, and whose horse, paralysed with terror, refused to move away. To say they were upset would convey but a poor idea of the thing. Horse and man were lifted from the ground and thrown forward in a heap, the buffalo goring at them as they lay. Fortunately the boy was completely stunned by the fall, and he lay flat on his back, so that all the efforts of the buffalo to get his horn in or under him failed. Finding this, the furious brute butted him with his forehead, and drove the body about the ground as if it had been a bundle of rags. When I saw him smashing the boy I ran back into the open for my broken gun, intending to use it pistol fashion, but before I could find it the buffalo, thinking he had settled his victim, dashed over the body and disappeared in the jungle. We found the

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