Thus we pursued our ambulatory meditations through the Góndwana. If
we had been sportsmen, we should have found full as varied a field for
the bagging of game as for that more spiritual hunt after new ideas
and sensations in which we were engaged. Gray quail, gray partridges,
painted partridges (_Francolinus pictus_), snipe and many varieties
of water-fowl, the sambor, the black antelope, the Indian gazelle or
ravine deer, the gaur or Indian bison, chewing the cud in the midday
shade or drinking from a clear stream, troops of _nilgaé_ springing
out from the long grass and dwarf growth of polás and jujube trees
which covered the sites of abandoned villages and fields,--all
these revealed themselves to us in the most tempting situations. But
although I had been an ardent devotee of the double-barrel, the large
and manly tenderness which Bhima Gandharva invariably displayed toward
all animals, whether wild or tame, had wrought marvels upon me, and
I had grown fairly ashamed--nay, horrified--at the idea that anything
which a generous and brave man could call _sport_ should consist
wholly in the most keen and savage cruelties inflicted upon creatures
whom we fight at the most unknightly odds, we armed, they unarmed.
While I knew that our pleasures are by the divine order mostly
distillations from pain, I could not now help recognizing at the same
time that this circumstance was part of an enormous plan which the
slaughter of innocent creatures in the way of "sport" did in nowise
help to carry out.

The truth is, although I had been for some days wavering upon the
brink of these conclusions in a quiet way, I found the old keen ardor
of the sportsman still burning too strongly, and I had started out
with a breech-loader, intent upon doing much of the Góndwana route gun
in hand. It was not long before a thoughtless shot operated to