dly, and then suddenly hauled taut and
were fast to a "big un." It was pull devil, pull baker for about five to
ten minutes, when the big fish came alongside, and we got a noose round
its tail and hauled it on board. It weighed twenty-eight lbs!

... The 22nd.--I think, but who can tell?--for each glorious hot day is
as monotonously beautiful as the day before; all bright and shining, the
blue and white sky reflected in the endless silky riband of the river
down which we steadily paddle, between silver strands and bowery woods,
stopping only for the night, and possibly for an hour or two in the day,
when we go ashore to sketch, or sometimes to shoot.

I have been trying to make up my mind which of two perfect days'
shooting was the best. This afternoon's shoot and tramp through the
jungle--Bag, my first brace francolin, to my own gun, or a day last year
in stubble and turnips, and twenty-five brace partridges to my own gun
and black pointer. I think the jungle day has it, though the bag was so
small, by virtue of its beauty, as against the trim fields of the
Lothians.

We started together, G. and her maid to collect seeds and roots and
orchids, and I wandered on to shoot with a Burmese guide.

Some of the tall trees have shed their leaves, and are now a mass of
blossom. One high tree had dropped a mat of purple flowers, as large as
tulips, across the dried grass and brown leaves at its foot. Another
tree with silvery bark had every leafless branch ablaze with orange
vermilion flowers. "Fire of the Forest," or "Flame of Forest," I heard
it called in India,--its colour so dazzling, you see everything grey for
seconds after looking at it. Then there were brakes of flowering shrubs
like tobacco plants with star like white flowers, and the scent of
orange blossom; and others with velvety petals of heliotrope tint, and
masses of creepers with flowers like myrtle, and a fresh scent of
violets and daisies--the air so pure and pleasant that each scent came
to one separately; and, as the most of the foliage is dry and thin just
now, these flowers and green bushes were the more effective. Certainly
the surroundings were more beautiful than those we have in low ground
shooting at home, and the smallness of the bag was balanced by this, and
the delightfully unfamiliar sensation of both shooting and right-of-way,
being free to you or your neighbour.

With a shade of luck, I'd have had quite a decent bag; but you know how
some da