After crossing the Hoogly, we marched, for the first few days, through a well cultivated country, but afterwards struck into a newly made road, lying amid thick low jungle, until we reached the Rajmahal hills, which in some places are thickly and prettily wooded, whilst the intervening plains and valleys diversify the scene with their irregular patches of Indian corn, sugar cane, and barley fields. The Rajmahal hills abound with bears, tigers, wild hog, and elephants; but all chance of sport in wild beast hunting was denied us; we had no shikar wallahs, or sporting elephants among our party; for in India it is quite as necessary--nay, more so--that the elephant should be a sporting character as the rider, for the uninitiated usually dread the sight of a wild beast, and at the critical moment of encounter the unhappy sportsman often finds himself involuntarily taking to an ignominious flight. It is impossible to beat the heavy coverts of this part of India, with a moderate chance of success, except on elephants. Our principal amusement during the whole march consisted in partridge and snipe shooting, and even these were exceedingly scarce in the neighbourhood of our camp; but this was on account of the distance we generally kept from the Ganges, the banks of which are well supplied with game. In fact, throughout India, game is rarely found anywhere save in the vicinity of rivers, theels, or inundated ground. Our friends, the jackals, continued their nightly lamentations, varied occasionally by the deep bass of a bear, or hyæna's eccentric cry; but I heard of only one actual encounter between man and beast in the Rajmahals, which was between an infantry soldier and a bear, beside the stump of an old tree, which both approached, unconscious of each other's presence, to use as a seat. Having eyed one another with feelings of mutual aversion, they executed a chassée-croisée, and parted. When a bear is desirous of being on intimate terms with a man, he rears himself on his hind legs, and advances to embrace, but the cruel sportsman marks, with his keen eye, a white mark on the affectionate creature's breast, and repays the advance by a bullet sent through this vital spot--that is, if his hand be steady enough to execute the act of ingratitude. On emerging from the hills, we marched over an almost uninterrupted plain, which preserves the same smooth features almost to the very foot of the Himalayahs. After an uninteresting and monotonous march of four hundred miles, which occupied about six weeks, always halting on Sundays, the first military station we reached was the sacred city of Benares. Here we crossed the Ganges, above whose muddy waters we descried the minarets of the holy places towering in the cloudless sky, and, from their lofty relief, rendering more apparent the insignificance of the low mud and brick dwelling-places clustered around their bases.