to face with real Nature. A faint and distant roar was also a reminder
that the jungle had its inhabitants, and through it all came the
quaintly incongruous strains of the orchestra playing a selection from
"The Mikado":

"My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time,
To make the punishment fit the crime,
The punishment fit the crime."

The moonlit jungle night-scene, and the familiar air with its London
associations were such endless thousands of miles apart.

On the floor of my drawing-room, in Westminster, the skin of a bear
reposes close to those of two tigers. This is how he came there: We
were at breakfast when _kubber_ of a bear only two miles away was
brought in. The Maharajah at once ordered the howdah-elephants round.
Opposite me on the breakfast-table stood a large plate of buns, which
the camp baker made most admirably. Ever since my earliest childhood I
had gone on every possible occasion to the Zoological Gardens in
Regent's Park, and was therefore in a position to know what was the
favourite food of the ursine race. That they did not exist on buns in
the jungle was due to a lack of opportunity rather than to a lack of
inclination, so I argued that the dainty would prove just as
irresistible to a bear in the jungle as it did to his brethren in the
big pit near the entrance to the Zoo, and ignoring the rather cheap
gibes of the rest of the party, I provided myself with half-a-dozen
buns, three of which I attached by long strings to the front of my
howdah, where they swung about like an edible pawnbroker's sign. The
bear was lying in a very small patch of bamboo, and broke cover at
once. As I had anticipated, the three swinging buns proved absolutely