The Indian Colonel a Munchausen.

Bush Advocate, Volume XI, Issue 869, 9 December 1893, Page 5

The Indian Colonel a Munchausen.

Mr Edward Braddon, writing in "Blaok--woodi" on " Thirty Years of Shikar," deals with' the Indian colonel as Munchausen. "I wonder,", he Bays, "If the Indian colonel ■ootrtumes to the present day to play the Moneh&osea. Somehow, it always happened in •ay time that the colonel monopolised this role in public estimation, and ona might have justifiably believed that' the army waa tradnoed, and the civilians let afftoo easily in this connection. < It was of a colonel ((be brilliant if erratic Teddy Oakes) that people told tie tale how, being at sea, in » 'violent Btorm, when hope was abandoned, and the passengers were bidden to pray, Ms, nearest approach to orison was, * Oh, pilot ; lisa fearful night!' It .was a colonel who, according to fable,' declared that on a voyage round the Cape his tip was spoken (thousands of miles from land) by a man in a tub who would not come «n board the ship, but took in a supply of fciseuit and water and waa left in mid-ocean. It was a colonel from whom the wily snake escaped by entering a bamboo tail first, after that colonel had twice pulled it from that refogebythetail. And according to popular belief, a' colonel told that story about the quail which nearly resulted in ■ his prompt discomfiture. ' For that colonel desoribed a flight of quail that «londed the sky, and then, having settled, -covered the parade-ground in close-packed swarm ; and he told how hegot out of an 18. founder cannon and loaded it almost to the zauzslewith powder and No. 10 shot, and trained that gun to volley its contents into the thick ef the birds,and then asked of those who sat at mees. 'How many do you think I shot V and a subaltern of more wit than veneration answered him 'a million.' Whereupon, that olonel' changing his tactics to meet the situation, said ' No, by G— , sir, not one t ' "