The jungle fowl are the domestic cock and hen in a wild state, of which there are many varieties in the East, though they are not often found in the jungles far beyond the tropics. The plumage of the cock bird is rich, varied, and beautiful, far more so than that of the civilized chanticleer; the hens, however, are generally of a uniform dun or slate colour, having callow bluish wattles, and spots of the same colour around the aural orifices. These were the first I had ever seen, though I had heard them in the Sunderbunds, and was not a little surprised to learn from the captain that they were not only game, but capital shooting also, and what to many may be considered a still further recommendation, very good eating to boot—of this, indeed, we had next day satisfactory proof. So completely, however, are the cock and hen associated with scenes of civilized life, so perfectly are the highly respectable couple identified with man and his comforts—the stack and barn-yard—that it is almost impossible to fancy them wild, or still more to “make game” of them. I recollect well, in after-times, the extraordinary feeling I experienced on contemplating the first jungle cock I ever shot. I had heard him sound his bugle-horn just before—a plain, matter-of-fact, English _cock-a-doodle-doo_; and there he was, with his comb, bright red wattles, and fine, curved, drooping tail, lying dead at my feet. It required the full consideration that I was in a wild forest in India, to convince me that I had not done one of those “devilish deeds” perpetrated now and then at ’Igate and ’Ampstead, by adventurous gunners from the vicinity of Bow Church. These hills of Rajmahal, with their various attractions of scenery, wild inhabitants, and peculiar productions, constitute a very pleasant break to what many may deem the monotony of a voyage up the Ganges in a budgerow; for many days they presented to me successive novelties. One evening, our boats moored at a place called Peer Pointee—a holy saint, or _peer_, is interred on a neighbouring eminence—and in the evening, after sundown, the captain, his sister, and myself, took a stroll, in order to pay our respects to the shrine or tomb of his holiness. To gain this, we had to ascend a low and rugged hill, on one side of which, about half-way up, is an old mosque, with an arcade in front, a pendant, doubtless, to the neighbouring durgah. The path was difficult, but we soon found ourselves on the spot where the holy man’s ashes are enshrined. The tomb occupied the centre of a terrace, surrounded by a low wall. Lamps burnt around it, if I rightly remember, and the attendant fakeer told the captain, who communicated it to us, the legend of Peer Pointee, and the cause which obtained him his present celebrity. The particulars of the legend I have forgotten.