ys things just miss the bag--you can't exactly tell why--so it
was this afternoon; there should have been two hares, and two quail, and
two birds that seemed very like pheasants. One fell in impenetrable
thorns, and we could not get nearer than about ten yards, and I missed
another sitting. To restore my reputation with the Burmese boy, I had to
claw down some high pigeons from untold heights on their way home to
roost. After this, as I was loading, a partridge got up from some
stubbly grass in a clearing, with an astonishingly familiar whirr, and
went clear away, and I'd barely loaded when a Button quail whipped over
some bushes, and it dropped, but in impenetrable thorns! I'd not heard
of Burmese partridges, but the flight and whirr were unmistakeable,
though the bird was larger than those at home. So we went on, longing
for the company of my silky, black-coated pointer Flo, and a couple of
hardy mongrel spaniels--together we would soon have filled the bag!...
It is such fun going through new country, without a ghost of an idea
which direction to take or what method to pursue, or what game to
expect.

At the next cleared space we came to, two birds, mightily like
pheasants, were feeding on some ground that had once been tilled, so, by
signs to the Burmese boy (he cleans the knives on board) I easily made
him understand he was to drive them over me, and we each made a circuit,
he round the open, the gun behind a brake of dog roses and plantains,
and the birds came over with rather too uncertain flight for pheasants.
I got one, and the other fell far into thorns, but they were, after all,
only a large kind of magpie, but with regular gamey-brown wings,
blue-black heads, and long tails that gave them on the ground a passing
resemblance to pheasants. The next open space seemed absolutely suited
for partridges, and, as we walked into the middle, up got two and came
down to quite a conventional right and left, and our glee was unbounded
when we found them in the dried grass. The colours of their plumage was
handsome, not quite so sober as that of our partridge at home, and their
size and shape was almost between that of a grouse and a partridge;
Francolin,[37] I've since heard they were. Two hares I just got a
glimpse of, greyish in colour, and very thin-looking beasts. Then the
sun got low, and we heard deer barking in knolly ground, and would fain
have sat the evening out quietly, and waited, and watched the night life
of