Books, music, cards and dances serve to while away spare time, and an occasional wedding, lasting, as it generally does, for several days, stirs the little community to its core.

But sport, in a region abounding with game of all kinds, is the great time-killer, giving the longed-for excitement, and contributing as well to the daily bill of fare the very choicest of human food.

Such a life is indeed to be envied rather than commiserated, and we met with few, if any, who cared to leave it.

But such posts are the "plums" of the service, and are few and far between.

At many of the solitary outposts life has a very different colour.