REVIEW.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9325, 30 March 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

REVIEW.

Life in Tioer Land and Sport and Work on the Nefaot. Frontier, being twelve years' Sporting Reminiscences of a Pioneer Planter in an Indian frontier district. By the Hon. James Inglis, M.L.A., N.S.W. Published by A. Hutchison and Son, Sydney and Brisbane. (Special Colonial Edition.)

The author of this work, well known as "Maori," the author of "Our Australian Cousins" and " Our New Zealand Cousins," has presented to tho reading public a very chatty and readable book. Mr. Inglis says in his preface that when he wrote " Sport and Work on tho Nepaul Frontier," a book which is incorporated with the present volume, lie closed it with those words :—"lf this volume meets the approbation of the public, I may bo tempted to draw further 011 a well-stocked memory, and gossip afresh 011 Indian life, Indian experiences, and Indian sport, &c." That tho work was well received iudeed, tho success of tho London edition is matter of history ; and tho American publishers did not fail to talco ample advantage of there being 110 copyright law between the United States and Great Britain to issue a cheap edition of it. In the present work Mr. Inglis has simply resumed the thread of his sporting recollections, choosing his own way of telling his story and arranging his incidents. While in England in .1875, on a trip after a twelve years' residence in India, he was astounded at the amassing ignorance of ordinary Indian life betrayed by people at home, and this first suggested to his mind the idea of writing " Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier," and of writing a chatty frontier work for the British public, giving an account of every-day life in India, the labours and amusements, the toils and relaxations, and a few pictures of the ordinary daily surroundings in the far, far East. Tart of the design was to depict planter life in the mofussil, or country districts of India, to tell the reader of their hunting, shooting, fishing, and other amusements ; to describe their work, play, and matter-of-fact incidents in daily life ; to describe the natives as they appear to the planters in their intimate evei-y-day dealings with thorn; to illustrate their manners, customs, dispositions, observances, and sayings, so far as these bear on the social life of the planters. Mr. Inglis simply describes in an easy, graphic style his reminiscences of sport and labour in the villages and jungles 011 tho far olf frontier of Nepaul, and, owing to the inquiries for tho book, has incorporated it in his now work, " Tent Life in Tiger Land," a continuation of his planting and hunting experiences in India, and the present double volumo is tho result. In the preface to the present volume, Mr. Inglis says :—" Lot mo hope my book may not only interest and amuse, but that my endeavours to give a faithful picture of planter life in India may help to remove some misconceptions and enlist the sympathy of our fellow-country-men for those gallant and kindly pioneers of peaceful conquest who are doing so much to uphold tho high honour and fair fame of the dear old mother-land in the far off Eastern dependency, so full of interest and mystery, and which (may I say it ?) is still so little known or understood by the mass of average Britons at home." Mr. Inglis states that he enjoyed the privilege of residence in two of the very finest sporting districts of —Purneali and Noith Bhangulpore, bordering 011 the Terai, a very sportsman's paradise, and probably one of the best tiger sporting grounds in the world. He had practically supreme control over many miles of territory there, and feudal jurisdiction over scores of villages and leagues of jungle. In the district of Khri, in the north-west provinces, he had charge of the extensive grants of untilled jungle lands, where the opportunities for sportfrom rhino and tigershooting down to ortolan and plover—were second only to Purneah. The following description of a "happy hunting ground in one of these country districts gives a good idea of the author's style :—

To meet face to face a surly boar, having tusks that would badly " rip"an elephant, and who resents your intrusive approach— to note the stealthy, slouching gait of some lithe leopard, stalking the peaceful antelope or graceful spotted deer, yourself all unseen, is a sensation that lives in your memory— gaze on the shock of com between two antlered stags, or the snarling battle for the fragments of a carrion feed between hissing vultures, or howling wolves, is a revelation of savage animal life that one does not soon forget. _ To lie on the river bank and watch the animation and picturesque grouping in the broad shallow of the troubled stream below, as the great elephants gambol in the cooling pool and splash their heated, heaving sides with spurts and dashes of water from the river, is a sight that would gladden an artist's heart. To mark the rapid flight over bright-plumaged water-fowl, to see the longthe sequestered forest tank of myriads of legged waders running nimbly round the sedgy marge, or view the bending br- leavf&Af wie

water lily, lapping pearly globules from the cool clear tank, as the blue fowl step daintily from one to. the other, pressing them for a moment beneath the surface; and then as the lazy raho pops his round nose above water to suck in a fly; to see the long ugly Serrated back of the man-eating saurian surge slowly through the yielding element — that is a picture which one can-never hope to see equalled, in varied interest, in any other land. And, most .thrilling and memorable of all, to see the convulsive upward leap, and hear the Jhrottled grasping roar of a wounded tjger, as the whin of powder smoke from your trusty gun salutes your nostrils like grateful incense—that's one of the sensations that makes the dull pulses throb and quicken their beat; and all these, dear reader, and hundreds more, are within the compass of ona day's successful shooting in the dear old happy hunting-grounds of a good mofussil district in India.

The book throughout is full, of incident, characterised by a fund of humour, and abounding in many fine pieces of wordpainting and descriptive writing. As a work on hunting and " tent-life" in India, and sport generally, it could not be surpassed. Mr. Inglis shines as a narrator, and the incident of "A Jungle Tragedy," in which a must elephant gets on the rampage, charges a camp, and kills a camp follower, is graphically told. But Mr. Inglis does not confine himself to sport. A chapter, entitled "Famine and Fighting," depicts one of those periodical famines which assail certain districts in India, and swoep off millions of human beings. The social condition of the people also receives attention, and Mr. Inglis thus vigorously expresses himself regarding the movement in India for Home Rule, which some Englishmen seem disposed to grant, and the capacity, or rather incapacity, of the Hindoo for self-government:—

Cheating, and lying, and taking bribes, and abuse of authority are ingrained into their very souls« and all the cut and dry formulas of namby-pamby philanthropists, the inane maundering of stay-at-home sentimentalists, the wise saws of self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo as he really shows himself to us in daily and hourly contact with him, will ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule, would be productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless venality, or would end in anything but anarchy and chaos.

It sounds very well in print, and increases the circulation of a paper or two among the Baboos, to crv out that our task is to elevate the oppressed and ignorant millions of the East, to educate them into self-government, .to make the judges, officers, lawgivers, governors over all the land. lo vacate our place and p jvver, and let the Baboo and the Bunneah, to whom we have given the glories of Western civilisation, rule in our place, and guide the fortunes of these toiling millions who owe protection and peace to our fostering rule. It is a noble sentiment to resign wealth, honour, glory, and power; to give up a settled government; to alter a policy that has welded the conflicting elements of Hindostan into one stable whole; to throw up our title of conqueror, and disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A sprinkling of thinly-veneered, half-educated _ natives want a share of the loaves and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people of the " man and brother" type cry out at homo to let them have thoir way.

No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life and property; develop the resources of the country ; foster all the virtues you can find in the native mind ; but till you can give him the energy, the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly, honourable straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of meanness, trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do right; his contempt for oppression of the weak; his self-dependence ; his probity. But why go on? When you make Hindoos honest, truthful, God-fearing Englishmen, you can let them govern themselves; but as soon " may the leopard change his spots" as the Hindoo his character. He is wholly unfit for self-government; utterly opposed to honest, truthful, staple government at all. Time brings strange changes, but the wisdom that' has governed the country hitherto -will surely be able to meet the new demand that may be made upon it in the immediate present or in the far distant future.

Mr. Inglis* book, in addition to its literary attractions, is beautifully printed and bound, and illustrated by twenty-two chromo-lithographs (including a portrait of the author), artistically executed. A copy of it should be in the Free Public Library. We may mention, in conclusion, that Mr. Wildman, bookseller, is the Auckland agent for the work.