thicket, and a rush which was like the volcanic upheaval of the ground at my feet, and, as it seemed, several tons of upheaved matter hit me on the chest and other parts, and I was catapulted on to the broad of my back a yard or two from where I had stood. That upheaval was the panther. The brute hadn't had the patience to wait until I saw him, or the modesty to take himself off peaceably in some other direction: he had resented my staring his way, even though I saw him not, and so had emerged out of his lair like an animal rocket, and knocked me down in his flight. As he failed to claw me, I came off scathless; but not so my attendant, who foolishly embraced the panther in view to arresting his flight: he got himself rather badly mauled, and did not come a whole man out of hospital for some weeks. That was was my disastrous commencement with

panthers.

It was about this time that an unfortunate beater of mine lost his life by a foolhardy act like that above described. We were beating pigs out of the long grass on the left bank of the Bhagiruti, and a boar getting up at this man's feet, or from under his feet, he jumped upon it. Why he did so it is impossible to say: it furthered no object of anybody's, for we were awaiting the pig at the edge of the higher jungle, and quite ready for it, and, in fact, we did get it. But as soon as we had speared this boar, we were made

acquainted with the sad accident that had befallen the beater. The boar had ripped him across both thighs and both arms with those clean deep cuts that the boar inflicts when its tushes have not been blunted by age; and although the poor man lived to reach a hospital, he died there in spite of every attention, and the necessary amputation of one mutilated limb.

39

CHAPTER III.

AMONG THE INDIGO-PLANTERS.

INDIGO MAGNATES-PLANTERS' COURTS-A NATIVE MURDER THROUGH JEALOUSY-MURDEROUS PROPENSITIES OF THE NATIVES-MURDER OF A MISTRESS-THE KISHENGUNJ ESTATE-APPEARANCE IN THE DOCK-" LATTIALS"-KESHUB CHUNDER ROY-INDIAN WRESTLING

N my Kishnaghur days the indigoplanter of Eastern Bengal was generally a sportsman, and often a substantial patron of sport. The industry that he pursued was more profitable then than it now is, and he lived in

a baronial style that the

present generation cannot

attain to without ultimate re

course to the Bankruptcy Court. Within his own territory of some hundreds of square miles he was

very much a king of the patriarchal type; his court was open to all who possessed the simple qualifications of fair repute and good-fellowship; his board was spread abundantly for many guests, and all the resources of his establishment placed at the disposal of those who sojourned within his gates.

Sometimes this limited monarch lived in a really palatial style: he of Mulnauth, for example. Architecturally considered, Mulnauth ranked amongst the Indian mansions that I saw second only to Government House, Calcutta, and it stood in a large nobly timbered park with which the Calcutta Palace grounds cannot be compared. Nor was the Mulnauth structure a whitened sepulchre wherein pretentious stucco sought to disguise the plebeian lath or clay its halls were of marble, and even its bathrooms were marble paved. It was a fitting abode for a parochial lord paramount; and many another mansion like unto it, if not quite its equal, was to be found in the indigo districts of Bengal.

Indigo-planters were in Bengal something more than mere growers of plant and manufacturers of a dye; they were also territorial magnates— owners or farmers of estates from which they drew more revenue in service than in specie. Terrible things have been said about the tyranny of planter rule. In one instance a judge propounded the startling economic theory that every cake of indigo was made of, or stained with,

human gore. In other instances officials have described the indigo-planter as a Legree modified to harmonise with his environment. But I think these severe critics somewhat misjudged the object of their censure, and took a too partial and onesided view of the planter's method. They magnified the planter's exactions, while they largely ignored the countervailing advantages enjoyed by the ryots; they made mountains of the planter's demands for ryot-grown plant, and molehills of the lowered rents and other pecuniary advantages conceded to the cultivator by way of quid pro quo. And be it said in favour of the old-time planter, that in addition to the court he kept in the regal sense, he held one for the administration of justice that was even-handed enough, if defective in its law, and wholly innocent of the law's delay or costs. Seated on the judicial bench as an unpaid and ungazetted magistrate and judge, the planter settled the frequent differences of the peasantry with an expedition that was only equalled by the freedom of the decisions from legal quibbles and technicalities. He administered something more equitable, but no less expeditious, than Jeddart justice without Acts or Regulations, or as much even as a pocket Blackstone to guide him. He was his own Legislative Council, and his homemade law was made there and then as he dealt with the cases and causes before him. On the whole, the planter's court of justice was better suited to, and more popular with, the impecunious