"Garden of India! fading flower! Withers thy bosom fair; State, upstart, usurer devour What frost, flood, famine spare." A. H. H. "Ce que [nous voulons] c'est que le pauvre, relevé de sa longue déchéance, cesse de trainer avec douleur ses chaines heréditaires, d'être un par instrument de travail, une simple matière exploitable Tout effort qui ne produirait pas ce résultat serait stérile; toute réforme dans les choses présentes qui n'aboutirait point à cette réforme fondamentale serait dérisoire et vaine." Lamennais. George Sand. A. C. Swinburne. THE GARDEN OF INDIA. CHAPTER I. A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW. IF the reader were gifted with telescopic powers of vision, and could take his stand at sunrise some bright morning in early April on a certain wind-swept hill-side, almost exactly 82° E. longitude and 23° N. latitude, which is very vividly present before my mind's eye at this moment, he would see before him, sloping gently southward to the Ganges, the great plain of Oudh. Behind him would rise. in green, tumbled masses the pine-clad hills of Naipál, shutting out the distant glories of the snowy range. At his feet, and stretching far away on either hand to east and west, he would see a broad belt of primæval forest-the shrunken remnant of that mighty wood, the great Gandharb Ban, which once covered the country north of the Sarjú river up to the hills-intersected by a gleaming line where the waters of the Rápti glisten brightly in the morning sunlight. only in Oudh may still be tasted, though in diminished measure, the indescribable charm, which no one who has once known it can ever forget, of the wild, free, irresponsible life of the forest. Here Life has not many better things to offer in the way of purely natural pleasure than it bestows on a hard-working Anglo-Indian who, having fairly earned a month of holiday by eleven months of honest toil in court-house or in tent, can resort to these happy hunting-grounds, and abandon himself for a season to the bliss of an existence such as Browning has sung of in "Saul" : “Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, Think of the awakening in the early twilight from such slumber as only a couch in the forest, after a long day in the howdah, can afford, to see the morning star growing pale in the green sky before the gathering flush of the dawn, and to taste in anticipation the coming bliss of a long, objective, irresponsible day! Think, next, of the exquisite plunge into the blue dancing ripples of the river, as it comes racing down from the hills over tree trunk and boulder! Hard to believe that it is the same stream whose steady murmur lulled us to sleep overnight, as we lay with halfclosed eyes watching it shimmering past in the starlight. Strike out boldly, and lend yourself without fear to the cool fresh embrace of its mimic waves. No dread of crocodiles here to mar your rapture as you "Try the water with delighted limbs." Lower down the stream the elephants are enjoying to the uttermost their morning bath, lying stretched out in uncouth abandon, and uttering subdued grunts and squeals of delight, while their mahouts clamber about their huge persons, and scrub their rugged hides. Then come the saunter through the camp, the inspection of the horses, and the alfresco breakfast, followed by the arrival of the wise old shikárí who went out overnight, and has now returned with sure khabar of a tiger's whereabouts. Then the long slow march of elephants in line, winding their way to the distant cover, through deep forest glades where the spotted deer scurry away unscathed by random bullet, skirting noble streams |