With but periodical instalments of news to vary the monotony of life from day to day, the details of our expedition proved very acceptable, and were devoured with special eagerness by those in whose veins flowed the love of sport.
Indeed, from what I afterwards heard, leaves of absence were since spent not far from the recently acquired “El Dorado”! Then indeed the reign of peace enjoyed by animals and birds in that hitherto favoured region must have come to an abrupt end. A force greater than their own invaded their solitudes, once so free from our insatiable propensity to take life in all its lower forms.
By this time the game has in all probability been scared far away; and it may, for all I know, be safe to have a picnic where once the tiger had his lair, or one may wander without even the chance of a shot through tracts where the shy fowl once strutted in numbers, consequential and pugnacious as usual.
Maybe too, bungalows and barracks now dot its original outskirts, where balls and picnics are of frequent occurrence, while shooting and hunting are the order of the day.
I should certainly, for the sake of comparison, like to see the place as it now is; a military band, playing perchance at one end of the stockade, would certainly sound divinely in that valley.
Alas! if I were only a Buddhist, I might be cheered by the hope of visiting that earthly paradise in another form.
The camp broke up shortly afterwards, and I returned to Prome with our chief and a few others. We had described a considerable circle during the past month; little more than a month, and it seemed more like a year.
In connection with that march, now nearly forty years ago, a somewhat singular coincidence occurred to me in the summer of 1889 at that paradise of cricketers, Lord’s. While I was conversing at the refreshment bar with an acquaintance, the subject of Burmah cropped up, and I happened to refer in detail to this particular expedition. “So well do I remember it,” I was saying, “that I could mention the names of the officers concerned, though I have not come across one of them since.”
I then proceeded to fulfil this undertaking, and had just named the one who remained behind in charge of the garrison, when a voice behind me exclaimed, “I am that individual.”
We had probably met many times before in that enclosure, maybe sat near one another; but seven-and-twenty years tend to alter men; and unless that keynote had been struck, no recognition would have ensued, as in the following spring he joined the majority. He was a regular attendant at Lord’s, and had, he told me, occupied the same seat for many successive seasons; the following year I looked for him in vain—his place knew him no more!