In attempting to reproduce various personal experiences on paper, I
shall claim the roaming freedom of the fireside muser, for he can in
one second skip from Continent to Continent and vault over gaps of
thirty years and more, just as the spirit moves him; indeed, to change
the metaphor, before one record has played itself out, he can turn on
a totally different one without rising from his chair, adjusting a new
needle, or troubling to re-wind the machine, for this convenient
mental apparatus reproduces automatically from its repertory whatever
air is required.
Having claimed the privilege of roaming at will far from my subject, I
may say that ever since my boyhood I had longed to take part in a
big-game shoot, so when the late Maharajah of Cooch Behar invited me
in 1891 to one of his famous shooting-parties, I accepted with
alacrity, for the Cooch Behar shoots were justly famed throughout
India. The rhinoceros was found there, tigers, as Mrs. O'Dowd of
_Vanity Fair_ would have remarked, "were as plentiful as cabbages";
there were bears, too, leopards and water buffaloes, everything, in
short, that the heart of man could desire. It was no invitation to
travel five hundred miles for two days' shooting only, there were to be
five solid weeks of it in camp, and few people entertained on so
princely a scale as the Maharajah.
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