As peacocks are regarded as
sacred by Hindoos, the Maharajah had particularly begged us not to
shoot any. There were plenty of other birds, snipe, partridges,
florican and jungle-cocks, the two latter greatly esteemed for their
flesh. I shot a jungle-cock, and was quite disappointed at finding him
a facsimile of our barndoor game-cock, for I had imagined that he
would have the velvety black wing starred with cream-coloured eyes,
which we associate with the "jungle-cock wing" of salmon flies. The
so-called "jungle-cock" in a "Jock Scott" fly is furnished by a bird
found, I believe, only round Madras. An animal peculiar to this part
of Assam is the pigmy hob, the smallest of the swine family. These
little beasts, no larger than guinea-pigs, go about in droves of about
fifty, and move through the grass with such incredible rapidity that
the eye is unable to follow them. The elephants, oddly enough, are
scared to death by the pigmy hogs, for the little creatures have
tushes as sharp as razors, and gash the elephants' feet with them as
they run past them.
I think that we all regretted the Maharajah's keenness about
water-buffalo and rhinos, for this entailed long days of plodding on
elephants through steamy, fetid swamps, where the grass was twenty
feet high and met over one's head, where the heat was intolerable,
without one breath of air, and the mosquitoes maddening.
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