But, as the doctor said, we had not come to eat, and very soon expressed our readiness to start, when the elephants were guided to the front of the tent, and we mounted, after giving orders to the drivers of the vehicles in which we had come, to be in waiting for us just at dusk. Then the huge animal on which I was mounted with the doctor moved slowly on apparently, but covering a good deal of ground in his shuffling stride. A shout from Brace on the next elephant arrested us, though, and, on turning, we found that he was pointing back. The scene was worth stopping to contemplate, for there, miles away behind us, lay Rajgunge, with its mosques and temples glittering in the morning sun, and the dust which often shrouded the place now visible only as a faint haze, while the sparkling river looked a very band of silver curving round it like the fold of some wondrous serpent undulating over the plain. The city lay in a hollow, from which the land sloped away on one side, while, on the other, hill and valley alternated, with the country rising higher and higher to where we stood, and then rose more and more into a wild of jungle and mountain, whose more distant eminences died into a soft blue mist. "I never saw a more beautiful view," said the doctor to me. "Grand place to send patients to. Sight of the country would do them more good than my physic. Make much of it, Vincent," he said; "you may never see the city look so beautiful again." I looked at him so wonderingly that he laughed. "Well, next time it may be dark or cloudy, or raining, or at a different time of year." The elephants were again in motion, and, leaving the well-beaten dak road behind us, we were now following an elephant's track, going at every step more and more into scenery such as I had pictured to myself when thinking about India as my future home. "Look!" I cried excitedly, as, from the edge of a patch of jungle, a couple of peacocks ran along for a few yards, and then took flight, one blaze of bright colour for a few moments, as I caught flashes of vivid blue and green, and metallic gold. My hand went mechanically to the rifle behind me in the howdah, and the doctor laughed. "Well done, Englishman!" he cried. "Something beautiful, and wild. Let's kill it!" "We've come out shooting," I said, half sulkily. "Yes--tigers!" said the doctor. "What a curious fate mine is--to live always with you soldiers, who think of nothing but killing, while my trade is to save life! There goes another peacock," he cried, as one of the lovely birds, with an enormous train, ran out into the open, rose, and went skimming away before us. "I wonder such beautiful birds don't attract the common people; they're grand eating. Why don't they get shot?" "Sacred to everybody but to us Englishmen," he replied. "We are the only savages out here who kill peafowl." "Then the Hindoos don't like it?"