The heights above were dotted with men at intervals to mark the prey if it climbed upwards. An hour of weary waiting ensued, during which the din of the beaters with tom-tom, shell, and latterly with blank cartridge, was incessant. For a number of men to advance along a high, steep, rugged hillside thickly clothed with jungle is necessarily a slow business, and the difficulty of keeping line so as to prevent a tiger breaking back can be easily imagined. It seemed to us, when the yelling grew closer and closer and nothing appeared, that nothing would appear. Several shots were fired from among the foremost beaters, hidden from our view by the thick jungle, but still no effect. We were tired of waiting, and said, 'No tiger to-day.' At length, all of a sudden, with two roars-the sound was more like a muffled bark or boom-a tiger ran across the ledge, and as our rifles rang out was seen to stumble, clutch at the hillside to steady himself, and still clutching, to roll down to the water's edge, amid a fusillade from the boats which seemed quite unnecessary, and only calculated to spoil his skin, unless someone thought he was going to swim for the boats. But his course was run; with head towards us just under water, and tail above touching the land, he was soon hauled stone dead into the boat, while a minute or two afterwards we learned that another tiger had fallen a few yards off in the jungle to the gun of a beater, who was roundly objurgated for interfering with our sport.

His excuse was that the beast could not be persuaded to move on by blank cartridge, but turned round on him, so in selfdefence he fired a ball. Nevertheless, the way in which his audacity was at first regarded, and he was rated as having done rather a shabby thing, was amusing. Subsequently it was still more amusing to discover that while he had disposed of his tiger by a single shot, ours, which had run the gauntlet of at least twenty, bore the marks of only two. The latter, however, achieved the distinction of providing a singular amount of sport, and enabling perhaps half a dozen men to think that each had accomplished his downfall. It was my luck to be presented with the skins of both, as a memento of a very pleasant excursion when two dead tigers were carried home in a boat, though the fact that I happened to be the chief representative of the British Government in Rajputana had no doubt something to do with this act of courtesy. That word courtesy is redolent of the East, and as I think of the land of the Rajputs its perfume lingers in my memory and recalls a thousand kindnesses.

NO. XV. VOL. III.

FF

BRITISH Universities are sometimes accused of conceding an exaggerated importance to sport. Certainly the times are changed since the early days of the Henley Regatta, when college crews had to enter their boats under fancy names in order to escape the censure of the authorities. And now what are we to say to this new departure of the University of Pennsylvania? It has actually published an elaborate treatise on the games of Korea and Japan at its own academic press. Shall we follow the example? Are we to look to the Clarendon Press for an exhaustive book on cricket, to Cambridge for a treatise on football, to St. Andrews for a history of golf? The American University justifies itself by the assertion that it is making a contribution to anthropological science. The study of national games is likely to be not the least productive of the provinces of ethnology. Though this is not the point of view taken in my article, which, indeed, is of a far less pretentious character, a few words on the subject may not be out of place.

Proofs are not wanting, especially in various kinds of sortilege, an art which we still practise with a sort of half-hearted belief, that games had an origin coeval with some of man's earliest religious ceremonials. He has always contrived to combine entertainment and duty. A sacrifice was the occasion, and sometimes, it may well have been, the pretext for a feast. So with the drawing of lots, by which either precedence in rank or the division of plunder was to be decided, was closely connected the element of sport. As time goes on the serious element

Korean Games, with Notes on the Corresponding Games of China and Japan. By Stewart Culin. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

dwindles, the sportive grows. What grave issues may not prehistoric man have made to depend on a custom which has come down to us from the remotest antiquity, the breaking of the merry-thought of a bird! In Korea, and in the Far East generally, the arrow seems to have been the first implement of divination. A quiver-full would be shuffled, and then counted out in lots. The combinations were noted, and the book of fate' was consulted for the corresponding answers. We are at once reminded of the Meisir, a pre-Islamite game played by the Arabs with seven arrows, at which they gambled for camels, horses, and even each other's bodies. Mohammed forbade it, calling it an invention of the Devil, in curious anticipation of the opprobrious name of 'Devil's prayer-book,' which our own Puritans gave to a pack of cards. From arrows are copied the sticks carved with totems which the Haida Indians of British Columbia use in gambling. To-day in Korea the fortune-teller no longer uses arrows, but a bundle of bamboo splints which he shuffles and then distributes with the aid of a diagram, so forecasting the fortune of his customers. Exactly in the same way the Scythian soothsayers are described by Herodotus as using strips of peeled willow, doubtless in substitution for the arrow, the characteristic weapon of the nation. The arrow, however, still survives in the playing cards of the East, which have the feather conventionally portrayed on

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their backs. A further indication of their origin is given by their awkward shape, for they are strips of oiled paper eight inches in length and but little more than a quarter of an inch in width. Possibly there is a further significance in the curious names, reminding us of animal totems, which are given to the eight

suits of which the pack consists. These are 'man,' ' fish,' 'crow,' ' pheasant,' 'antelope,' 'star,' rabbit,' and 'horse.' But I must pass on to my proper subject.

Of the athletic games of Korea, perhaps the most important is the tug-of-war.' It is something like our own county cricket,

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for whole villages play against each other, the prize for which they contend not being the barren honour of a championship, but a superior harvest, which the heavenly powers are supposed to

Wrestling is a common amusement in the country districts, but it does not flourish as in Japan, where it has developed the 'professional,' who, in every game, is the invariable product of popular favour. In Japan, indeed, the game has a most romantic

history, which goes back to a date earlier than the Christian era. A certain Kehaya, a man of huge strength and stature, in fact the Goliath of his time, challenged all the world to wrestle with him. Provoked by his boasting, the Emperor found an antagonist

who kicked Kehaya in the ribs and killed him. Eight centuries later the Imperial throne itself was wrestled for, not by the claimants in person, but by their champions. About the same time the office of champion wrestler was instituted. The holder had a fan-imagine a Cornish or North-country wrestler fanning himself!—as his badge of office, inscribed with the title of Prince of Lions. Japan was divided into two provinces, East and West, for purposes of competition; and forty-eight falls, i.e. twelve throws, twelve lifts, twelve twists, twelve throws over the back, were pronounced to be fair. Wrestling long continued to have a religious significance. This has passed away, but the great matches are still held at famous shrines.

Two centuries and a half ago the ingenious Oriental, always anticipating the slow-witted West, conceived the idea of making