where the population are Mohammedan, built of mud like the houses, but
whitewashed and bright. The Hindoo villages generally, but not always,
have their temples. The vegetation of the great plains of India is not
tropical, according to the ideas of tropical vegetation gathered from
British hothouses. There are a few palms and many bananas with their wide
leaves, but the groves are composed of sturdy trees, whose appearance at a
distance differs in no way from that of ordinary English forest trees.
Viewed closer, the banian with its many stems is indeed a vegetable
wonder; but, were it not for the villages and natives, a traveler might
journey for very many miles across the plains of India without seeing
anything which would specially remind him that he was out of England.

There were a considerable number of traps assembled when Major Warrener
drew up, and some eight or ten gentlemen on horseback, each carrying a
boar-spear--a weapon not unlike the lance of an English cavalryman, but
shorter in the handle. The riders were mostly dressed in coats of the
Norfolk jacket type, and knee-breeches with thick gaiters. The material of
their clothes was a coarse but very strong cloth of native make, gray or
brown in color. Some wore round hats and forage caps with puggarees
twisted round them.

A chorus of greeting saluted the party as they drove up.

"Well, young ladies," the colonel said, "so you have come out to see the
death of the boar,

"'The boar, the boar, the mighty boar,'

as the song says? So you are not going to take a spear to-day, major?
Think it's time to leave it to the youngsters, eh?"