PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
Volume 108, January 12, 1895.
edited by Sir Francis Burnand
TALL TALES OF SPORT AND ADVENTURE.
(By Mr. Punch's own Short Story-teller.)
Introduction.
Not many living men, and even fewer in the ages that are past, have—if I may use the word—sported with greater assiduity and success than I have during a life which is even now little past its middle period. At one time on horseback, at another on the bounding and impulsive elephant; now bestriding the matchless dromedary on his native prairie, now posted on foot in a jungle crowded with golden pheasants in all the native splendour of their plumage; sometimes matching my solitary craft against a host of foxes on the swelling uplands of Leicestershire, sometimes facing the Calydonian boar or the sanguinary panther in their woodland lairs, dealing showers of leaden death from a hundred tubes, or tracking my fearful prey by the lonely light of a wax vesta and despatching it at midnight with my trusty bowie—wherever there were leagues to be walked, risks to be run, or fastnesses to be rushed there not only have I been the first, but (paradoxical as it may appear) there also have I succeeded and have never been successfully followed. My experiences are therefore unique, and it is in the hope that they may to some extent profit a younger generation, less inured, I fear, to hardship and danger than my own, that I now set pen to paper and recount some of the exploits that have made my name famous wherever sport is loved and true sportsmen are revered.
A less modest man might have said more, but one whose deeds speak for him in every quarter of the world may well be content to leave to punier men the ridiculous trumpeting braggadocio that too often makes so-called sportsmen the laughing stock of society. For myself, I can never forget the lesson I learned at an early age from my dear father, himself a shikari of no common order, though to be sure, as he himself would be the first to admit if he were alive, the exploits of the son (I had no brothers) have now thrust the parental performances into the background. Still, it was my father who first inculcated upon my infant mind the daring, the ignorance of fear, the contempt of danger, and the iron endurance which have since made me a household word. Heaven rest the old man! He sleeps his last sleep far away in the Desert of Golden Sand, with no head-stone to mark his resting-place, and neither the roaring of his old enemies the tigers, nor the bellowing of the countless alligators who infest the spot can rouse him any more. Alas! it was trustfulness that destroyed him. He was gored to death by a favourite rhinoceros that he had rescued at a tender age when its mother was killed, and had brought up to know and, as he thought, to love him. But I have always thought myself that the rhinoceros was a treacherous brute, and though I have often been asked to tame one, for presentation to this or that Emperor, I have consistently declined.
Marvellous, however, as my father was in his day for his exploits and his variegated bags of game, he was perhaps even more wonderful for the unswerving accuracy with which he was accustomed to relate his adventures. Far and wide over the steppes of Central Asia, the burning regions of equatorial Africa, the precipitous haunts of the American Grizzly, and the wild retreats of the ferocious Albanian pig—everywhere, in short, where he had set foot or drawn trigger, this peculiarity of his was known and appreciated, and many a respectful sobriquet did it earn for him from the savage tribes amongst whom he spent the best years of his life. In Kashmir he was known as Peili Ton, that is, the man who cannot lie; amongst the swarthy Zambesians the name of Govun Bettîr (the Undefeated and Veracious Man) was a name to conjure with even when in their moments of warlike passion the tribesmen rushed madly through their primeval thickets, shouting their terrible war-cry, "Itzup ures Leeve," that is, "Death to the white-faced robbers."