Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. I landed in Madras in 1864, and proceeded to a station in the Mysore country where I had friends. I was fresh from school and looked with delight upon the prospect of a coffee-planter's life, in which I had been promised a start by a friend, himself a planter. But coffee was in one of the vicissitudes with which that enterprise seems so frequently to be struggling - at least my friend's estate was - and before I had completed a voyage round the Cape he had been eaten out by the borer insect, or his prospects had shared the blight at that time affecting his trees' leaves - I forget which. My hopes of a jungle-life seemed to be doomed; my vision of wild elephants, tigers, and bison to be hopelessly dispelled! However, in a month or two a friend who was engaged in prosecuting some surveys for Government took me with him, and in the next six months I learnt a little of the country and surveying, and a good deal about duck and antelope shooting.