CHAPTER I

Summary

At day-break of October the 4th, we had a good view of the Island of Saugor, a perfectly flat and swampy shore, with scattered tall trees, dark-like firs, and jungle about the height of young coppice wood, of a very fresh and vivid green. With a large glass I could distinguish something like deer grazing or lying down amid the swampy grass, and also some ruinous cottages and barn-like buildings.

These are the remains of a village began by a joint company, who undertook to cut down the thickets and reclaim the marshes of Saugor, a few years ago. They found, however, that as the woods were cut down on this side, the sea encroached, the sandy beach not having sufficient tenacity of itself to resist its invasions; and the land was again abandoned to its wild deer and its tygers; for these last it has always been infamous, and the natives, I understand, regard it with such dread, that it is almost impossible to induce them to approach the wilder parts of its shore, even in boats, as instances are said to be by no means infrequent of tygers swimming off from the coast to a considerable distance. This danger is probably, like all others, over-rated, but it is a fortunate circumstance that some such terror hangs over Saugor, to deter idle seamen and young officers from venturing on shooting excursions so much as they otherwise would do, on a shore so dreadfully unwholesome as all these marshy islets are, under a sun, which even now intensely fierce, is standing over our heads “in a hot and copper sky.”