Captain Belfield, from his perfect knowledge of the language and the people—whom, I observed, he always treated with great kindness—was soon able to ascertain the spot in the neighbourhood of the river where the game was to be found (there is but little, comparatively, in this part of Bengal), and which I should probably have been long in discovering; to them we accordingly went, and found hares, black partridges, and abundance of real snipes, which I perceived did not differ in the smallest degree from English ones; and I had the supreme felicity of bagging something more respectable than paddy-birds and snippets, which I afterwards treated with proper contempt. The captain, although he had been so long on the retired list as a sportsman, fired a capital good stick nevertheless, and knocked the black partridges about, right and left, in great style; indeed, he once or twice, to borrow a not very delicate sporting phrase, “wiped my nose” in a very off-hand manner, proofs of his powers as a marksman with which I could have readily dispensed; as next probably, to a smack in the face, there are few things more disagreeable than having your “nose wiped.” The black partridge of India, I must inform the reader, is a beautiful bird; its breast (_i.e._, the male’s), glossy shining black, spangled with round and clearly defined white spots; its haunts are the long grass on the borders of jheels and marshes, from whence it creeps, in the mornings and evenings, into the neighbouring cultivation. When flushed, up he goes, as straight as a line, to a certain elevation, and then off with him, at a right angle, like a dart. He is by no means an easy shot, though, from his mode of rising, it would appear otherwise. It will be long ere I forget the thrill of pleasure I experienced when I dropped my first black partridge on this occasion, and how pompously, after ascertaining his specific gravity, I consigned him to my bag, taking him out about every five minutes, to indulge in another examination. It is difficult to express the contempt with which I then viewed my quondam friends, the snippets and paddy-birds.