We set about making our camp, close to some large bush which came down
from the mountains on to the flat, and tethered out our horses upon
ground as free as we could find it from anything round which they might
wind the rope and get themselves tied up. We dared not let them run
loose, lest they might stray down the river home again. We then gathered
wood and lit the fire. We filled a tin pannikin with water and set it
against the hot ashes to boil. When the water boiled we threw in two or
three large pinches of tea and let them brew.

We had caught half a dozen young ducks in the course of the day--an easy
matter, for the old birds made such a fuss in attempting to decoy us away
from them--pretending to be badly hurt as they say the plover does--that
we could always find them by going about in the opposite direction to the
old bird till we heard the young ones crying: then we ran them down, for
they could not fly though they were nearly full grown. Chowbok plucked
them a little and singed them a good deal. Then we cut them up and
boiled them in another pannikin, and this completed our preparations.

When we had done supper it was quite dark. The silence and freshness of
the night, the occasional sharp cry of the wood-hen, the ruddy glow of
the fire, the subdued rushing of the river, the sombre forest, and the
immediate foreground of our saddles packs and blankets, made a picture
worthy of a Salvator Rosa or a Nicolas Poussin. I call it to mind and
delight in it now, but I did not notice it at the time. We next to never
know when we are well off: but this cuts two ways,--for if we did, we
should perhaps know better when we are ill off also; and I have sometimes
thought that there are as many ignorant of the one as of the other. He
who wrote, "O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint agricolas," might have
written quite as truly, "O infortunatos nimium sua si mala norint"; and
there are few of us who are not protected from the keenest pain by our