This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
278
LETTERS FROM INDIA.

arm-chairs, tables and clothes all travel on the heads of human beings, we cannot progress very fast; besides, we encamp for the day at eight or nine in the morning, to set off again at five the next morning. A Mr. and Mrs. —— and Mr. and Mrs. —— have organised a regular tiger-hunting expedition to the hills; only their four selves and five-and-twenty elephants are going. —— intends to join them there, and I am upon the brink of settling to go with him; they are all ‘heartening’ me up to it, because they say it will be such a good thing to get up some extraneous strength for the hot season, and that strength is to be found on the top of a hill.

—— won't hear reason as to the horrible dangers he is going to take me into. The other two ladies regularly get upon their elephants, and go tiger-hunting every day—talk of the excitement of the tiger’s spring, and the excellent day it was when they saw eight killed. I happen to be very much afraid of a cat—I may say, a kitten; but if I were to stay at home while the others went out, a stray tiger would just walk in and carry me off: as George encouragingly observed this morning,