On January 2, 1831, Burnes made his first plunge into the wilderness which lay between him and Lahore, the capital of the Sikh kingdom, and he entered that city on the 17th. There he was most hospitably received by the French officers in the service of Ranjit Singh, Messieurs Allard and Court, and was welcomed by the Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who treated him with "marked affability." Burnes was accompanied by Dr. Gerard, and the two travellers were taken by Ranjit Singh to a hunting party in the Punjab, a description of which serves as a forcible illustration of the changes which less than one century of British administration has effected in the plains of India. Never will its like be seen again in the Land of the Five Rivers. The guests' tents were made of Kashmir shawls, and were about 14 feet square. One tent was red and the other white, and they were connected by tent-walls of the same material, shaded by a _Shamiana_ supported on silver-mounted poles. In each tent stood a camp-bed with Kashmir shawl curtains. It was, as Burnes remarks, not an encampment suited to the Punjab jungles; and the hunting procession headed by the Maharaja, dressed in a tunic of green shawls, lined with fur, his dagger studded with the richest brilliants, and a light metal shield, the gift of the ex-king of Kabul (Shah Sujah, who, it will be remembered, also surrendered the Koh-i-Nor diamond to Ranjit Singh about this time), as the finishing touch to his equipment, must have been quite melodramatic in its effects of colour and movement. It was, as a matter of fact, a pig-sticking expedition, but the game fell to the sword rather than to the spear; such of it, that is to say, as was not caught in traps. The party was terminated by a hog-baiting exhibition, in which dogs were used to worry the captive pigs, after the latter were tied by one leg to a stake. When the pigs were sufficiently infuriated, the entertainment concluded with letting them loose through the camp, in order, as Ranjit said, "that men might praise his humanity."