way. Owing to the convenient bamboo, this is fairly easy of
achievement, for the bamboo is at the same time tough and pliable, and
bamboo bridges, in spite of their flimsy appearance, can carry great
weights, and can be run up in no time, and kindly Nature furnishes in
Bengal an endless supply of this adaptable building material.

Our Calcutta party were driven out to the camp by the Maharajah's
Australian trainer in a brake-and-four. I had heard before of the
recklessness and skill of Australian stage-coach drivers, but had had
no previous personal experience of it. Frankly, it is not an
experience I should care to repeat indefinitely. I have my own
suspicions that that big Australian was trying, if I may be pardoned a
vulgarism, "to put the wind up us." Bang! against a tree-trunk on the
off-side. Crash! against another on the near-side; down a steep hill
at full gallop, and over a creaking, swaying, loudly protesting bamboo
bridge that seemed bound to collapse under the impact; up the
corresponding ascent as hard as the four Walers could lay leg to the
ground; off the track, tearing through the scrub on two wheels,
righting again to shave a big tree by a mere hair's-breadth; it
certainly was a fine exhibition of nerve and of recklessness redeemed
by skill, but I do not think that elderly ladies would have preferred
it to their customary jog-trot behind two fat and confidential old
slugs. One wondered how the harness held together under our Australian
Jehu's vagaries.

The Maharajah had chosen the site of his camp well. On a bare
_maidan_ overhanging a turbulent river a veritable city of white
tents gleamed in the sunshine, all neatly ranged in streets and lanes.
The river was not, as most Indian rivers in the dry season, a mere
trickle of muddy water meandering through a broad expanse of stones