Now, a Dalesman from beyond Skipton will forgive an injury when the
Strid lets a man live; but a South Devon man is as soft as a Dartmoor bog. You
can see from their names that Nafferton had the race-advantage of Pinecoffin.
He was a peculiar man, and his notions of humor were cruel. He taught me a new
and fascinating form of shikar. He hounded Pinecoffin from Mithankot to
Jagadri, and from Gurgaon to Abbottabad up and across the Punjab, a large
province and in places remarkably dry. He said that he had no intention of
allowing Assistant Commissioners to "sell him pups," in the shape of ramping,
screaming countrybreds, without making their lives a burden to them.
Most Assistant Commissioners develop a bent for some special work after their
first hot weather in the country. The boys with digestions hope to write their
names large on the Frontier and struggle for dreary places like Bannu and
Kohat. The bilious ones climb into the Secretariat. Which is very bad for the
liver.
Others are bitten with a mania for District work, Ghuznivide coins or Persian
poetry; while some, who come of farmers' stock, find that the smell of the
Earth after the Rains gets into their blood, and calls them to "develop the
resources of the Province.
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