Summary
On the 2nd of August we had nothing to do but wait for the rain to cease and listen to the cries of injured bunneahs coming to us for redress in money and other matters. An eagle made a sensation, by flying; right through Mea Bahadoor's poultry, but his swoop was re infectâ, and the bold brahmin cock at once clapped his wings and celebrated the escape of his little ones and their mothers, with indecent jubilation, considering that he had fled under a pile of timber as soon as the tyrant made his first sweep over the courtyard. It was nearly 2 p.m. ere the weather permitted us to leave the shelter of our Bahadoor's roof, and to push on for the next available bungalow at Syree. On our way the black-partridges were so very provocative with their “tie-tara, tie-tara,” that we were obliged to halt and to go into the fields of Indian corn and kill some of them. The energy and pleasure of the hill-men in beating for game is not a whit less than that of the Scotch gillie, or of the Irish peasant. We arrived with a fair bag at Syree bungalow at 6.30 p.m.; and as our camp commissariat had not arrived we made a banquet on bottled ale, air-tight and nearly appetite-proof cheese and preserved salmon, in rooms which beyond any other are sacred to Hymen of the Hills, for here is most frequently the first anchorage of the outward-bound couples which have launched into matrimony at Simla.
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- My Diary in India, in the Year 1858–9 , pp. 152 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1860