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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10818 ***
+
+[Illustration: _Frontispiece_. TIGER HUNTING. RETURN TO THE CAMP.]
+
+
+SPORT AND WORK
+
+ON THE
+
+NEPAUL FRONTIER
+
+
+OR
+
+
+TWELVE YEARS SPORTING REMINISCENCES
+
+OF AN INDIGO PLANTER
+
+
+By "MAORI"
+
+
+1878
+
+
+
+
+[Note: Some words in this book have a macron over a vowel. A macron
+is a punctuation mark ( - ) and is represented herein as [=a], [=e]
+or [=o].]
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+I went home in 1875 for a few months, after some twelve years' residence
+in India. What first suggested the writing of such a book as this, was
+the amazing ignorance of ordinary Indian life betrayed by people at
+home. The questions asked me about India, and our daily life there,
+showed in many cases such an utter want of knowledge, that I thought,
+surely there is room here for a chatty, familiar, unpretentious book
+for friends at home, giving an account of our every-day life in India,
+our labours and amusements, our toils and relaxations, and a few
+pictures of our ordinary daily surroundings in the far, far East.
+
+Such then is the design of my book. I want to picture to my readers
+Planter Life in the Mofussil, or country districts of India; to tell
+them of our hunting, shooting, fishing, and other amusements; to
+describe our work, our play, and matter-of-fact incidents in our daily
+life; to describe the natives as they appear to us in our intimate
+every-day dealings with them; to illustrate their manners, customs,
+dispositions, observances and sayings, so far as these bear on our own
+social life.
+
+I am no politician, no learned ethnologist, no sage theorist. I simply
+try to describe what I have seen, and hope to enlist the attention and
+interest of my readers, in my reminiscences of sport and labour, in the
+villages and jungles on the far off frontier of Nepaul.
+
+I have tried to express my meaning as far as possible without Anglo-Indian
+and Hindustani words; where these have been used, as at times they could
+not but be, I have given a synonymous word or phrase in English, so that
+all my friends at home may know my meaning.
+
+I know that my friends will be lenient to my faults, and even the
+sternest critic, if he look for it, may find some pleasure and profit in
+my pages.
+
+JAS. INGLIS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Province of Behar.--Boundaries.--General description.--District of
+Chumparun.--Mooteeharree.--The town and lake.--Native houses.--The
+Planters' Club.--Legoulie.
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+My first charge.--How we get our lands.--Our home farm.--System of
+farming.--Collection of rents.--The planter's duties.
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
+--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at Work.
+--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Manufacture of Indigo.--Loading the vats.--Beating.--Boiling, straining,
+and pressing.--Scene in the Factory.--Fluctuation of produce.--Chemistry
+of Indigo.
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Parewah factory.--A 'Bobbery Pack.'--Hunt through a village after
+a cat.--The pariah dog of India.--Fate of 'Pincher.'--Rampore
+hound.--Persian greyhound.--Caboolee dogs.--A jackal hunt.--Incidents
+of the chase.
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Fishing in India.--Hereditary trades.--The boatmen and fishermen of
+India.--Their villages.--Nets.--Modes of fishing.--Curiosities relating
+thereto.--Catching an alligator with a hook.--Exciting capture.
+--Crocodiles.--Shooting an alligator.--Death of the man-eater.
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Native superstitions.--Charming a bewitched woman.--Exorcising ghosts
+from a field.--Witchcraft.--The witchfinder or 'Ojah,'--Influence of
+fear.--Snake bites.--How to cure them.--How to discover a thief.--Ghosts
+and their habits.--The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.--Cruelty to
+animals by natives.
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Our annual race meet.--The arrivals.--The camps.--The 'ordinary,'--The
+course.--'They're off.'--The race.--The steeple-chase.--Incidents of
+the meet.--The ball.
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Pig-sticking in India.--Varieties of boar.--Their size and height.
+--Ingenious mode of capture by the natives.--The 'Batan' or buffalo
+herd.--Pigs charging.--Their courage and ferocity.--Destruction of
+game.--A close season for game.
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Kuderent jungle.--Charged by a pig.--The biter bit.--'Mac' after the
+big boar.--The horse for pig-sticking.--The line of beaters.--The boar
+breaks.--'Away! Away!'--First spear.--Pig-sticking at Peeprah.--The
+old 'lungra' or cripple.--A boar at bay.--Hurrah for pig-sticking!
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The sal forests.--The jungle goddess.--The trees in the jungle.
+--Appearance of the forests.--Birds.--Varieties of parrots.--A 'beat'
+in the forest.--The 'shekarry.'--Mehrman Singh and his gun.--The Banturs,
+a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.--Their habits.--A village feast.--We
+beat for deer.--Habits of the spotted deer.--Waiting for the game.
+--Mehrman Singh gets drunk.--Our bag.--Pea-fowl and their habits.--How
+to shoot them.--Curious custom of the Nepaulese.--How Juggroo was
+tricked, and his revenge.
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
+one.--Encounter with a leopard in a Dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
+leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
+annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
+harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
+sanitation.
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
+--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
+village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
+village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
+system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
+justice.
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The temple.
+--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.--Their
+low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions and knavery.
+--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native officials.--The
+Hindoo unfit for self-government.
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Jungle wild fruits.--Curious method of catching quail.--Quail nets.
+--Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.--Native wrestling.--The trainer.
+--How they train for a match.--Rules of wrestling.--Grips.--A wrestling
+match.--Incidents of the struggle.--Description of a match between a
+Brahmin and a blacksmith.--Sparring for the grip.--The blacksmith has
+it.--The struggle.--The Brahmin getting the worst of it.--Two to one
+on the little 'un!--The Brahmin plays the waiting game, turns the tables
+_and_ the blacksmith.--Remarks on wrestling.
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Indigo seed growing.--Seed buying and buyers.--Tricks of sellers.--Tests
+for good seed.--The threshing-floor.--Seed cleaning and packing.--Staff
+of servants.--Despatching the bags by boat.--The 'Pooneah' or rent day.
+--Purneah planters--their hospitality.--The rent day a great festival.
+--Preparation.--Collection of rents.--Feast to retainers.--The reception
+in the evening.--Tribute.--Old customs.--Improvisatores and bards.
+--Nautches.--Dancing and music.--The dance of the Dangurs.--Jugglers
+and itinerary showmen.--'Bara Roopes,' or actors and mimics.--Their
+different styles of acting.
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The Koosee jungles.--Ferries.--Jungle roads.--The rhinoceros.--We go
+to visit a neighbour.--We lose our way and get belated.--We fall into
+a quicksand.--No ferry boat.--Camping out on the sand.--Two tigers close
+by.--We light a fire.--The boat at last arrives.--Crossing the stream.
+--Set fire to the boatman's hut.--Swim the horses.--They are nearly
+drowned.--We again lose our way in the jungle.--The towing path, and
+how boats are towed up the river.--We at last reach the factory.--News
+of rhinoceros in the morning.--Off we start, but arrive too late.--Death
+of the rhinoceros.--His dimensions.--Description.--Habits.--Rhinoceros
+in Nepaul.--The old 'Major Capt[=a]n.'--Description of Nepaulese scenery.
+--Immigration of Nepaulese.--Their fondness for fish.--They eat it
+putrid.--Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul.--Resources of the country.
+--Must sooner or later be opened up.--Influences at work to elevate
+the people.--Planters and factories chief of these.--Character of the
+planter.--Has claims to consideration from government.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The tiger.--His habitat.--Shooting on foot.--Modes of shooting.--A
+tiger hunt on foot.--The scene of the hunt.--The beat.--Incidents of
+the hunt.--Fireworks.--The tiger charges.--The elephant bolts.--The
+tigress will not break.--We kill a half-grown cub.--Try again for
+the tigress.--Unsuccessful.--Exaggerations in tiger stories.--My
+authorities.--The brothers S.--Ferocity and structure of the
+tiger.--His devastations.--His frame-work, teeth, &c.--A tiger at
+bay.--His unsociable habits.--Fight between tiger and tigress.--Young
+tigers.--Power and strength of the tiger.--Examples.--His cowardice.
+--Charge of a wounded tiger.--Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+--A spined tiger.--Boldness of young tigers.--Cruelty.--Cunning.--Night
+scenes in the jungle.--Tiger killed by a wild boar.--His cautious
+habits.--General remarks.
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
+--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
+--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of tiger.
+--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His description.
+--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to measure tigers.
+--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.--Number of
+young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs to kill.
+--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and cunning
+of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of concealment.
+--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.--Caught by
+floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives
+about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Claw-marks
+on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s
+howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.
+--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye
+out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers
+easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of shells on tiger and buffalo.--Best
+weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives
+prone to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for
+tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six
+elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.
+--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the Koosee.
+--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to shoot at
+moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of different animals
+in the grass.
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Howdahs and howdah-ropes.--Mussulman custom.--Killing animals for food.
+--Mysterious appearance of natives when an animal is killed.--Fastening
+dead tigers to the pad.--Present mode wants improving.--Incident
+illustrative of this.--Dangerous to go close to wounded tigers.
+--Examples.--Footprints of tigers.--Call of the tiger.--Natives and
+their powers of description.--How to beat successfully for tiger.
+--Description of a beat.--Disputes among the shooters.--Awarding
+tigers.--Cutting open the tiger.--Native idea about the liver of the
+tiger.--Signs of a tiger's presence in the jungle.--Vultures.--Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?--A vulture carrion feast.
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul frontier.--Indian scenery near
+the border.--Lose our way.--Cold night.--The river by night.--Our boat
+and boatmen.--Tigers calling on the bank.--An anxious moment.--Fire at
+and wound the tigress.--Reach camp.--The Nepaulee's adventure with a
+tiger.--The old Major.--His appearance and manners.--The pompous
+Jemadar.--Nepaulese proverb.--Firing the jungle.--Start a tiger and
+shoot him.--Another in front.--Appearance of the fires by night.--The
+tiger escapes.--Too dark to follow up.--Coolie shot by mistake during
+a former hunt.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+We resume the beat.--The hog-deer.--Nepaulese villages.--Village
+granaries.--Tiger in front.--A hit! a hit!--Following up the wounded
+tiger.--Find him dead.--Tiffin in the village.--The Patair jungle.
+--Search for tiger.--Gone away!--An elephant steeplechase in pursuit.
+--Exciting chase.--The Morung jungle.--Magnificent scenery.--Skinning
+the tiger.--Incidents of tiger hunting.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Camp of the Nepaulee chief.--Quicksands.--Elephants crossing rivers.
+--Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.--We beat the forest for tiger.--Shoot
+a young tiger.--Red ants in the forest.--Bhowras or ground bees.--The
+_ursus labialis_ or long-lipped bear.--Recross the stream.--Florican.
+--Stag running the gauntlet of flame.--Our bag.--Start for factory.
+--Remarks on elephants.--Precautions useful for protection from the
+sun in tiger shooting.--The _puggree_.--Cattle breeding in India, and
+wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.--Nathpore.--Ravages of the
+river.--Mrs. Gray, an old resident in the jungles.--Description of
+her surroundings.
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Exciting jungle scene.--The camp.--All quiet.--Advent of the cow-herds.
+--A tiger close by.--Proceed to the spot.--Encounter between tigress
+and buffaloes.--Strange behaviour of the elephant.--Discovery and
+capture of four cubs.--Joyful return to camp.--Death of the tigress.
+--Night encounter with a leopard.--The haunts of the tiger and our
+shooting grounds.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Remarks on guns.--How to cure skins.--Different Recipes.--Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+Tiger Hunting--Return to the Camp
+Coolie's Hut
+Indigo Beating Vats
+Indigo Beaters at work in the Vat
+Indian Factory Peon
+Indigo Planter's House
+Pig Stickers
+Carpenters and Blacksmiths at work
+Hindoo Village Temples
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Province of Behar.--Boundaries.--General description.--District of
+Chumparun.--Mooteeharree.--The town and lake.--Native houses.--The
+Planters' Club.--Legoulie.
+
+Among the many beautiful and fertile provinces of India, none can, I
+think, much excel that of Behar for richness of soil, diversity of
+race, beauty of scenery, and the energy and intelligence of its
+inhabitants. Stretching from the Nepaul hills to the far distant
+plains of Gya, with the Gunduch, Bogmuttee and other noble streams
+watering its rich bosom, and swelling with their tribute the stately
+Ganges, it includes every variety of soil and climate; and its various
+races, with their strange costumes, creeds, and customs, might afford
+material to fill volumes.
+
+The northern part of this splendid province follows the Nepaulese
+boundary from the district of Goruchpore on the north, to that of
+Purneah on the south. In the forests and jungles along this boundary
+line live many strange tribes, whose customs, and even their names and
+language, are all but unknown to the English public. Strange wild
+animals dispute with these aborigines the possession of the gloomy
+jungle solitudes. Great trees of wondrous dimensions and strange
+foliage rear their stately heads to heaven, and are matted and
+entwined together by creepers of huge size and tenacious hold.
+
+To the south and east vast billows of golden grain roll in successive
+undulations to the mighty Ganges, the sacred stream of the Hindoos.
+Innumerable villages, nestling amid groves of plantains and feathery
+rustling bamboos, send up their wreaths of pale grey smoke into the
+still warm air. At frequent intervals the steely blue of some lovely
+lake, where thousands of water-fowl disport themselves, reflects from
+its polished surface the sheen of the noonday sun. Great masses of
+mango wood shew a sombre outline at intervals, and here and there the
+towering chimney of an indigo factory pierces the sky. Government
+roads and embankments intersect the face of the country in all
+directions, and vast sheets of the indigo plant refresh the eye with
+their plains of living green, forming a grateful contrast to the hard,
+dried, sun-baked surface of the stubble fields, where the rice crop
+has rustled in the breezes of the past season. In one of the loveliest
+and most fertile districts of this vast province, namely, Chumparun, I
+began my experiences as an indigo planter.
+
+Chumparun with its subdistrict of Bettiah, lies to the north of
+Tirhoot, and is bounded all along its northern extent by the Nepaul
+hills and forests. When I joined my appointment as assistant on one
+of the large indigo concerns there, there were not more than about
+thirty European residents altogether in the district. The chief town,
+Mooteeharree, consisted of a long _bazaar_, or market street, beautifully
+situated on the bank of a lovely lake, some two miles in length. From
+the main street, with its quaint little shops sheltered from the sun
+by makeshift verandahs of tattered sacking, weather-stained shingles,
+or rotting bamboo mats, various little lanes and alleys diverged,
+leading one into a collection of tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up
+apparently by chance, and presenting the most incongruous appearance
+that could possibly be conceived. One or two _pucca_ houses, that is,
+houses of brick and masonry, shewed where some wealthy Bunneah
+(trader) or usurious banker lived, but the majority of the houses were
+of the usual mud and bamboo order. There is a small thatched hut where
+the meals were cooked, and where the owner and his family could sleep
+during the rains. Another smaller hut at right angles to this, gives
+shelter to the family goat, or, if they are rich enough to keep one,
+the cow. All round the villages in India there are generally large
+patches of common, where the village cows have free rights of pasture;
+and all who can, keep either a cow or a couple of goats, the milk from
+which forms a welcome addition to their usual scanty fare. In this
+second hut also is stored as much fuel, consisting of dried cow-dung,
+straw, maize-stalks, leaves, etc., as can be collected; and a ragged
+fence of bamboo or _rahur_[1] stalks encloses the two unprotected
+sides, thus forming inside a small court, quadrangle, or square. This
+court is the native's _sanctum sanctorum_. It is kept scrupulously
+clean, being swept and garnished religiously every day. In this the
+women prepare the rice for the day's consumption; here they cut up and
+clean their vegetables, or their fish, when the adjacent lake has been
+dragged by the village fishermen. Here the produce of their little
+garden, capsicums, Indian corn, onions or potatoes--perchance turmeric,
+ginger, or other roots or spices--are dried and made ready for storing
+in the earthen sun-baked repository for the reception of such produce
+appertaining to each household. Here the children play, and are washed
+and tended. Here the maiden combs out her long black hair, or decorates
+her bronzed visage with streaks of red paint down the nose, and a
+little antimony on the eyelids, or myrtle juice on the finger and toe
+nails. Here, too, the matron, or the withered old crone of a
+grandmother, spins her cotton thread; or, in the old scriptural
+hand-mill, grinds the corn for the family flour and meal; and the
+father and the young men (when the sun is high and hot in the heavens)
+take their noonday _siesta_, or, the day's labours over, cower round
+the smoking dung fire of a cold winter night, and discuss the prices
+ruling in the bazaar, the rise of rents, or the last village scandal.
+
+In the middle of the town, and surrounded by a spacious fenced-in
+compound, which sloped gently to the lake, stood the Planters' Club, a
+large low roofed bungalow, with a roomy wide verandah in front. Here
+we met, when business or pleasure brought us to 'the Station.' Here
+were held our annual balls, or an occasional public dinner party. To
+the north of the Club stood a long range of barrack-looking buildings,
+which were the opium godowns, where the opium was collected and stored
+during the season. Facing this again, and at the extremity of the
+lake, was the district jail, where all the rascals of the surrounding
+country were confined; its high walls tipped at intervals by a red
+puggree and flashing bayonet wherever a jail sepoy kept his 'lonely
+watch.' Near it, sheltered in a grove of shady trees, were the court
+houses, where the collector and magistrate daily dispensed justice, or
+where the native _moonsiff_ disentangled knotty points of law. Here,
+too, came the sessions judge once a month or so, to try criminal cases
+and mete out justice to the law-breakers.
+
+We had thus a small European element in our 'Station,' consisting of
+our magistrate and collector, whose large and handsome house was built
+on the banks of another and yet lovelier lake, which joined the town
+lake by a narrow stream or strait at its southern end, an opium agent,
+a district superintendent of police, and last but not least, a doctor.
+These formed the official population of our little 'Station.' There
+was also a nice little church, but no resident pastor, and behind the
+town lay a quiet churchyard, rich in the dust of many a pioneer, who,
+far from home and friends, had here been gathered to his silent rest.
+
+About twelve miles to the north, and near the Nepaul boundary, was the
+small military station of Legoulie. Here there was always a native
+cavalry regiment, the officers of which were frequent and welcome
+guests at the factories in the district, and were always glad to see
+their indigo friends at their mess in cantonments. At Rettiah, still
+further to the north, was a rich rajah's palace, where a resident
+European manager dwelt, and had for his sole society an assistant
+magistrate who transacted the executive and judicial work of the
+subdistrict. These, with some twenty-five or thirty indigo managers
+and assistants, composed the whole European population of Chumparun.
+
+Never was there a more united community. We were all like brothers.
+Each knew all the rest. The assistants frequently visited each other,
+and the managers were kind and considerate to their subordinates.
+Hunting parties were common, cricket and hockey matches were frequent,
+and in the cold weather, which is our slackest season, fun, frolic,
+and sport was the order of the day. We had an annual race meet, when
+all the crack horses of the district met in keen rivalry to test their
+pace and endurance. During this high carnival, we lived for the most
+part under canvass, and had friends from far and near to share our
+hospitality. In a future chapter I must describe our racing meet.
+
+
+[1] The _rahur_ is a kind of pea, growing not unlike our English broom
+    in appearance; it is sown with the maize crop during the rains,
+    and garnered in the cold weather. It produces a small pea, which
+    is largely used by the natives, and forms the nutritive article of
+    diet known as _dhall_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+My first charge.--How we get our lands.--Our home farm.--System of
+farming.--Collection of rents.--The planter's duties.
+
+My first charge was a small outwork of the large factory Seeraha. It
+was called Puttihee. There was no bungalow; that is, there was no
+regular house for the assistant, but a little one-roomed hut, built on
+the top of the indigo vats, served me for a residence. It had neither
+doors nor windows, and the rain used to beat through the room, while
+the eaves were inhabited by countless swarms of bats, who, in the
+evening flashed backwards and forwards in ghostly rapid flight, and
+were a most intolerable nuisance. To give some idea of the duties of
+an indigo assistant, I must explain the system on which we get our
+lands, and how we grow our crop.
+
+Water of course being a _sine qua non_, the first object in selecting
+a site for a factory is, to have water in plenty contiguous to the
+proposed buildings. Consequently Puttihee was built on the banks of a
+very pretty lake, shaped like a horseshoe, and covered with water
+lilies and broad-leaved green aquatic plants. The lake was kept by the
+native proprietor as a fish preserve, and literally teemed with fish
+of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. I had not been long at Puttihee
+before I had erected a staging, leading out into deep water, and many
+a happy hour I have spent there with my three or four rods out,
+pulling in the finny inhabitants.
+
+Having got water and a site, the next thing is to get land on which to
+grow your crop. By purchase, by getting a long lease, or otherwise,
+you become possessed of several hundred acres of the land immediately
+surrounding the factory. Of course some factories will have more and
+some less as circumstances happen. This land, however, is peculiarly
+factory property. It is in fact a sort of home farm, and goes by the
+name of _Zeraat_. It is ploughed by factory bullocks, worked by
+factory coolies, and is altogether apart and separate from the
+ordinary lands held by the ryots and worked by them. (A ryot means a
+cultivator.) In most factories the Zeraats are farmed in the most
+thorough manner. Many now use the light Howard's plough, and apply
+quantities of manure.
+
+The fields extend in vast unbroken plains all round the factory. The
+land is worked and pulverised, and reploughed, and harrowed, and
+cleaned, till not a lump the size of a pigeon's egg is to be seen. If
+necessary, it is carefully weeded several times before the crop is
+sown, and in fact, a fine clean stretch of Zeraat in Tirhoot or
+Chumparun, will compare most favourably with any field in the highest
+farming districts of England or Scotland. The ploughing and other farm
+labour is done by bullocks. A staff of these, varying of course with
+the amount of land under cultivation, is kept at each factory. For
+their support a certain amount of sugar-cane is planted, and in the
+cold weather carrots are sown, and _gennara_, a kind of millet, and
+maize.
+
+Both maize and gennara have broad green leaves, and long juicy
+succulent stalks. They grow to a good height, and when cut up and
+mixed with chopped straw and carrots, form a most excellent feed for
+cattle. Besides the bullocks, each factory keeps up a staff of
+generally excellent horses, for the use of the assistant or manager,
+on which he rides over his cultivation, and looks generally after the
+farm. Some of the native subordinates also have ponies, or Cabool
+horses, or country-breds; and for the feed of these animals some few
+acres of oats are sown every cold season. In most factories too, when
+any particular bit of the Zeraats gets exhausted by the constant
+repetition of indigo cropping, a rest is given it, by taking a crop of
+oil seeds or oats off the land. The oil seeds usually sown are mustard
+or rape. The oil is useful in the factory for oiling the screws or the
+machinery, and for other purposes.
+
+The factory roads through the Zeraats are kept in most perfect order;
+many of them are metalled. The ditches are cleaned once a year. All
+thistles and weeds by the sides of the roads and ditches, are
+ruthlessly cut down. The edges of all the fields are neatly trimmed
+and cut. Useless trees and clumps of jungle are cut down; and in fact
+the Zeraats round a factory shew a perfect picture of orderly thrift,
+careful management, and neat, scientific, and elaborate farming.
+
+Having got the Zeraats, the next thing is to extend the cultivation
+outside.
+
+The land in India is not, as with us at home, parcelled out into large
+farms. There are wealthy proprietors, rajahs, baboos, and so on, who
+hold vast tracts of land, either by grant, or purchase, or hereditary
+succession; but the tenants are literally the children of the soil.
+Wherever a village nestles among its plantain or mango groves, the
+land is parcelled out among the villagers. A large proprietor does not
+reckon up his farms as a landlord at home would do, but he counts his
+villages. In a village with a thousand acres belonging to it, there
+might be 100 or even 200 tenants farming the land. Each petty villager
+would have his acre or half acre, or four, or five, or ten, or twenty
+acres, as the case might be. He holds this by a 'tenant right,' and
+cannot be dispossessed as long as he pays his rent regularly. He can
+sell his tenant right, and the purchaser on paying the rent, becomes
+the _bona fide_ possessor of the land to all intents and purposes.
+
+If the average rent of the village lands was, let me say, one rupee
+eight annas an acre, the rent roll of the 1000 acres would be 1500
+rupees. Out of this the government land revenue comes. Certain
+deductions have to be made--some ryots may be defaulters. The village
+temple, or the village Brahmin, may have to get something, the
+road-cess has to be paid, and so on. Taking everything into account,
+you arrive at a pretty fair view of what the rental is. If the
+proprietor of the village wants a loan of money, or if you offer to
+pay him the rent by half-yearly or quarterly instalments, you taking
+all the risk of collecting in turn from each ryot individually, he is
+often only too glad to accept your offer, and giving you a lease of
+the village for whatever term may be agreed on, you step in as
+virtually the landlord, and the ryots have to pay their rents to you.
+
+In many cases by careful management, by remeasuring lands, settling
+doubtful boundaries, and generally working up the estate, you can much
+increase the rental, and actually make a profit on your bargain with
+the landlord. This department of indigo work is called Zemindaree.
+Having, then, got the village in lease, you summon in all your tenants;
+shew them their rent accounts, arrange with them for the punctual
+payment of them, and get them to agree to cultivate a certain
+percentage of their land in indigo for you.
+
+This percentage varies very considerably. In some places it is one
+acre in five, in some one in twenty. It all depends on local
+circumstances. You select the land, you give the seed, but the ryot
+has to prepare the field for sowing, he has to plough, weed, and reap
+the crop, and deliver it at the factory. For the indigo he gets so
+much per acre, the price being as near as possible the average price
+of an acre of ordinary produce: taking the average out-turn and prices
+of, say, ten years. It used formerly to be much less, but the ryot
+nowadays gets nearly double for his indigo what he got some ten or
+fifteen years ago, and this, although prices have not risen for the
+manufactured article, and the prices of labour, stores, machinery,
+live stock, etc., have more than doubled. In some parts the ryot gets
+paid so much per bundle of plants delivered at the vats, but generally
+in Behar, at least in north Behar, he is paid so much per acre or
+_Beegah_. I use the word acre as being more easily understood by
+people at home than Beegah. The Beegah varies in different districts,
+but is generally about two-thirds of an acre.
+
+When his rent account, then, comes to be made out, the ryot gets
+credit for the price of his indigo grown and delivered; and this very
+often suffices, not only to clear his entire rent, but to leave a
+margin in hard cash for him to take home. Before the beginning of the
+indigo season, however, he comes into the factory and takes a cash
+advance on account of the indigo to be grown. This is often a great
+help to him, enabling him to get his seeds for his other lands,
+perhaps ploughs, or to buy a cart, or clothes for the family, or to
+replace a bullock that may have died; or to help to give a marriage
+portion to a son or daughter that he wants to get married.
+
+You will thus see that we have cultivation to look after in all the
+villages round about the factory which we can get in lease. The ryot,
+in return for his cash advance, agrees to cultivate so much indigo at
+a certain price, for which he gets credit in his rent. Such, shortly,
+is our indigo system. In some villages the ryot will estimate for us
+without our having the lease at all, and without taking advances.
+He grows the indigo as he would grow any other crop, as a pure
+speculation. If he has a good crop, he can get the price in hard cash
+from the factory, and a great deal is grown in this way in both
+Purneah and Bhaugulpore. This is called _Kooskee_, as against the
+system of advances, which is called _Tuccaree_.
+
+The planter, then, has to be constantly over his villages, looking out
+for good lands, giving up bad fields, and taking in new ones. He must
+watch what crops grow best in certain places. He must see that he does
+not take lands where water may lodge, and, on the other hand, avoid
+those that do not retain their moisture. He must attend also to the
+state of the other crops generally all over his cultivation, as the
+punctual payment of rents depends largely on the state of the crops.
+He must have his eyes open to everything going on, be able to tell the
+probable rent-roll of every village for miles around, know whether the
+ryots are lazy and discontented, or are industrious and hard-working.
+Up in the early morning, before the hot blazing sun has climbed on
+high, he is off on his trusty nag, through his Zeraats, with his
+greyhounds and terriers panting behind him. As he nears a village, the
+farm-servant in charge of that particular bit of cultivation, comes
+out with a low salaam, to report progress, or complain that so-and-so
+is not working up his field as he ought to do.
+
+Over all the lands he goes, seeing where re-ploughing is necessary,
+ordering harrowing here, weeding there, or rolling somewhere else. He
+sees where the ditches need deepening, where the roads want levelling
+or widening, where a new bridge will be necessary, where lands must be
+thrown up and new ones taken in. He knows nearly all his ryots, and
+has a kind word for every one he passes; asks after their crops, their
+bullocks, or their land; rouses up the indolent; gives a cheerful nod
+to the industrious; orders this one to be brought in to settle his
+account, or that one to make greater haste with the preparation of his
+land, that he may not lose his moisture. In fact, he has his hands
+full till the mounting sun warns him to go back to breakfast. And so,
+with a rattling burst after a jackal or fox, he gets back to his
+bungalow to bathe, dress, and break his fast with fowl cutlets, and
+curry and rice, washed down with a wholesome tumbler of Bass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
+--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at work.
+--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
+
+Having now got our land, water, and buildings--which latter I will
+describe further on--the next thing is to set to work to get our crop.
+Manufacture being finished, and the crop all cut by the beginning or
+middle of October, when the annual rains are over, it is of importance
+to have the lands dug up as early as possible, that the rich moisture,
+on which the successful cultivation of the crop mainly depends, may be
+secured before the hot west winds and strong sun of early spring lick
+it up.
+
+Attached to every factory is a small settlement of labourers, belonging
+to a tribe of aborigines called _Dangurs_. These originally, I believe,
+came from Chota Nagpoor, which seems to have been their primal home.
+They are a cheerful industrious race, have a distinct language of their
+own, and only intermarry with each other. Long ago, when there were no
+post carriages to the hills, and but few roads, the Dangurs were
+largely employed as dale runners, or postmen. Some few of them settled
+with their families on lands near the foot of the hills in Purneah, and
+gradually others made their way northwards, until now there is scarcely
+a factory in Behar that has not its Dangur tola, or village.
+
+The men are tractable, merry-hearted, and faithful. The women betray
+none of the exaggerated modesty which is characteristic of Hindoo women
+generally. They never turn aside and hide their faces as you pass, but
+look up to you with a merry smile on their countenances, and exchange
+greetings with the utmost frankness. In a future chapter I may speak at
+greater length of the Dangurs; at present it suffices to say, that they
+form a sort of appanage to the factory, and are in fact treated as part
+of the permanent staff.
+
+Each Dangur when he marries, gets some grass and bamboos from the
+factory to build a house, and a small plot of ground to serve as a
+garden, for which he pays a very small rent, or in many instances
+nothing at all. In return, he is always on the spot ready for any
+factory work that may be going on, for which he has his daily wage.
+Some factories pay by the month, but the general custom is to charge
+for hoeing by piece-work, and during manufacture, when the work is
+constant, there is paid a monthly wage.
+
+In the close foggy mornings of October and November, long before the
+sun is up, the Dangurs are hard at work in the Zeraats, turning up the
+soil with their _kodalies_, (a kind of cutting hoe,) and you can often
+hear their merry voices rising through the mist, as they crack jokes
+with each other to enliven their work, or troll one of their quaint
+native ditties.
+
+They are presided over by a 'mate,' generally one of the oldest men and
+first settlers in the village. If he has had a large family, his sons
+look up to him, and his sons-in-law obey his orders with the utmost
+fealty. The 'mate' settles all disputes, presents all grievances to the
+_sahib_, and all orders are given through him.
+
+The indigo stubble which has been left in the ground is perhaps about a
+foot high, and as they cut it out, their wives and children come to
+gather up the sticks for fuel, and this of course also helps to clean
+the land. By eleven o'clock, when the sluggish mist has been dissipated
+by the rays of the scorching sun, the day's labour is nearly concluded.
+You will then see the swarthy Dangur, with his favourite child on his
+shoulder, wending his way back to his hut, followed by his comely wife
+carrying his hoe, and a tribe of little ones bringing up the rear, each
+carrying bundles of the indigo stubble which the industrious father has
+dug up during the early hours of morning.
+
+In the afternoon out comes the _hengha_, which is simply a heavy flat
+log of wood, with a V shaped cut or groove all along under its flat
+surface. To each end of the hengha a pair of bullocks are yoked, and
+two men standing on the log, and holding on by the bullocks' tails, it
+is slowly dragged over the field wherever the hoeing has been going on.
+The lumps and clods are caught in the groove on the under surface, and
+dragged along and broken up and pulverized, and the whole surface of
+the field thus gets harrowed down, and forms a homogeneous mass of
+light friable soil, covering the weeds and dirt to let them rot,
+exposing the least surface for the wind and heat to act on, and thus
+keeping the moisture in the soil.
+
+Now is a busy time for the planter. Up early in the cold raw fog, he is
+over his Zeraats long before dawn, and round by his outlying villages
+to see the ryots at work in their fields. To each eighty or a hundred
+acres a man is attached called a _Tokedar_. His duty is to rouse out
+the ryots, see the hoes and ploughs at work, get the weeding done, and
+be responsible for the state of the cultivation generally. He will
+probably have two villages under him. If the village with its lands be
+very extensive, of course there will be a Tokedar for it alone, but
+frequently a Tokedar may have two or more villages under his charge. In
+the village, the head man--generally the most influential man in the
+community--also acts with the Tokedar, helping him to get ploughs,
+bullocks, and coolies when these are wanted; and under him, the village
+_chowkeydar_, or watchman, sees that stray cattle do not get into the
+fields, that the roads, bridges and fences are not damaged, and so on.
+Over the Tokedars, again, are Zillahdars. A 'zillah' is a small
+district. There may be eight or ten villages and three or four Tokedars
+under a Zillahdar. The Zillahdar looks out for good lands to change for
+bad ones, where this is necessary, and where no objection is made by
+the farmer; sees that the Tokedars do their work properly; reports
+rain, blight, locusts, and other visitations that might injure the
+crop; watches all that goes on in his zillah, and makes his report to
+the planter whenever anything of importance happens in his particular
+part of the cultivation. Over all again comes the JEMADAR--the head man
+over the whole cultivation--the planter's right-hand man.
+
+He is generally an old, experienced, and trusted servant. He knows all
+the lands for miles round, and the peculiar soils and products of all
+the villages far and near. He can tell what lands grow the best
+tobacco, what lands are free from inundation, what free from drought;
+the temper of the inhabitants of each village, and the history of each
+farm; where are the best ploughs, the best bullocks, and the best
+farming; in what villages you get most coolies for weeding; where you
+can get the best carts, the best straw, and the best of everything at
+the most favourable rates. He comes up each night when the day's work
+is done, and gets his orders for the morrow. You are often glad to take
+his advice on sowing, reaping, and other operations of the farm. He
+knows where the plant will ripen earliest, and where the leaf will be
+thickest, and to him you look for satisfaction if any screw gets loose
+in the outside farm-work.
+
+He generally accompanies you in your morning ride, shows you your new
+lands, consults with you about throwing up exhausted fields, and is
+generally a sort of farm-bailiff or confidential land-steward. Where he
+is an honest, intelligent, and loyal man, he takes half the care and
+work off your shoulders. Such men are however rare, and if not very
+closely looked after, they are apt to abuse their position, and often
+harass the ryots needlessly, looking more to the feathering of their
+own nests than the advancement of your interests.
+
+The only Jemadar I felt I could thoroughly trust, was my first one at
+Parewah, an old Rajpoot, called Kassee Rai. He was a fine, ruddy-faced,
+white-haired old man, as independent and straightforward an old farmer
+as you could meet anywhere, and I never had reason to regret taking his
+advice on any matter. I never found him out in a lie, or in a dishonest
+or underhand action. Though over seventy years of age he was upright as
+a dart. He could not keep up with me when we went out riding over the
+fields, but he would be out the whole day over the lands, and was
+always the first at his work in the morning and the last to leave off
+at night. The ryots all loved him, and would do anything for him; and
+when poor old Kassee died, the third year he had been under me, I felt
+as if an old friend had gone. I never spoke an angry word to him, and I
+never had a fault to find with him.
+
+When the hoeing has been finished in zeraat and zillah, and all the
+upturned soil battened down by the _hengha_, the next thing is to
+commence the ploughing. Your ploughmen are mostly low caste
+men--Doosadhs, Churnars, Moosahurs, Gwallahs, _et hoc genus omne_.
+The Indian plough, so like a big misshapen wooden pickaxe, has often
+been described. It however turns up the light soft soil very well
+considering its pretensions, and those made in the factory workshops
+are generally heavier and sharper than the ordinary village plough.
+Our bullocks too, being strong and well fed, the ploughing in the
+zeraats is generally good.
+
+The ploughing is immediately followed up by the _hengha_, which again
+triturates and breaks up the clods, rolls the sticks, leaves, and grass
+roots together, brings the refuse and dirt to the surface, and again
+levels the soil, and prevents the wind from taking away the moisture.
+The land now looks fine and fresh and level, but very dirty. A host of
+coolies are put on the fields with small sticks in their hands. All the
+Dangur women and children are there, with men, women, and children of
+all the poorest classes from the villages round, whom the attractions
+of wages or the exertions of headmen Tokedars and Zillahdars have
+brought together to earn their daily bread. With the sticks they beat
+and break up every clod, leaving not one behind the size of a walnut.
+They collect all the refuse, weeds, and dirt, which are heaped up and
+burnt on the field, and so they go on till the zeraats look as clean as
+a nobleman's garden, and you would think that surely this must satisfy
+the fastidious eye of the planter. But no, our work is not half begun
+yet.
+
+It is rather a strange sight to see some four or five hundred coolies
+squatted in a long irregular line, chattering, laughing, shouting, or
+squabbling. A dense cloud of dust rises over them, and through the dim
+obscurity one hears the ceaseless sound of the thwack! thwack! as their
+sticks rattle on the ground. White dust lies thick on each swarthy
+skin; their faces are like faces in a pantomime. There are the flashing
+eyes and the grinning rows of white teeth; all else is clouded in thick
+layers of dust, with black spots and stencillings showing here and
+there like a picture in sepia and chalk. As they near the end of the
+field they redouble their thwacking, shuffle along like land-crabs, and
+while the Mates, Peons, and Tokedars shout at them to encourage them,
+they raise a roar loud enough to wake the dead. The dust rises in
+denser clouds, the noise is deafening, a regular mad hurry-scurry, a
+wild boisterous scramble ensues, and amid much chaffing, noise, and
+laughter, they scramble off again to begin another length of land; and
+so the day's work goes on.
+
+The planter has to count his coolies several times a-day, or they would
+cheat him. Some come in the morning, get counted, and their names put
+on the roll, and then go off till paytime comes round. Some come for an
+hour or two, and send a relative in the evening when the pice are being
+paid out, to get the wage of work they have not done. All are paid in
+pice--little copper bits of coin, averaging about sixty-four to the
+rupee. However, you soon come to know the coolies by sight, and after
+some experience are rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get
+'done' most thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the
+artless and unsophisticated coolie.
+
+The type of feature along a line of coolies is as a rule a very
+forbidding and degraded one. They are mostly of the very poorest class.
+Many of them are plainly half silly, or wholly idiotic; not a few are
+deaf and dumb; others are crippled or deformed, and numbers are leprous
+and scrofulous. Numbers of them are afflicted in some districts with
+goitre, caused probably by bad drinking water; all have a pinched,
+withered, wan look, that tells of hard work and insufficient fare. It
+is a pleasure to turn to the end of the line, where the Dangur women
+and boys and girls generally take their place. Here are the loudest
+laughter, and the sauciest faces. The children are merry, chubby, fat
+things, with well-distended stomachs and pleasant looks; a merry smile
+rippling over their broad fat cheeks as they slyly glance up at you.
+The women--with huge earrings in their ears, and a perfect load of
+heavy brass rings on their arms--chatter away, make believe to be shy,
+and show off a thousand coquettish airs. Their very toes are bedizened
+with brass rings; and long festoons of red, white, and blue beads hang
+pendent round their necks.
+
+In the evening the line is re-formed before the bungalow. A huge bag of
+copper coin is produced. The old Lallah, or writer, with spectacles on
+nose, squats down in the middle of the assembled coolies, and as each
+name is called, the mates count out the pice, and make it over to the
+coolie, who forthwith hurries off to get his little purchases made at
+the village Bunneah's shop; and so, on a poor supper of parched peas,
+or boiled rice, with no other relish but a pinch of salt, the poor
+coolie crawls to bed, only to dream of more hard work and scanty fare
+on the morrow. Poor thing! a village coolie has a hard time of it!
+During the hot months, if rice be cheap and plentiful, he can jog along
+pretty comfortably, but when the cold nights come on, and he cowers in
+his wretched hut, hungry, half naked, cold, and wearied, he is of all
+objects most pitiable. It is, however, a fact little creditable to his
+more prosperous fellow-countrymen, that he gets better paid for his
+labour in connection with factory work, than he does in many cases for
+tasks forced on him by the leading ryots of the village in connection
+with their own fields.
+
+[Illustration: COOLIE'S HUT.]
+
+This first cleaning of the fields--or, as it is called, _Oustennie_--being
+finished, the lands are all again re-ploughed, re-harrowed, and then
+once more re-cleaned by the coolies, till not a weed or spot of dirt
+remains; and till the whole surface is uniformly soft, friable, moist,
+and clean. We have now some breathing time; and as this is the most
+enjoyable season of the year, when the days are cool, and roaring wood
+fires at night remind us of home, we hunt, visit, race, dance, and
+generally enjoy ourselves. Should heavy rain fall, as it sometimes does
+about Christmas and early in February, the whole cultivation gets
+beaten down and caked over. In such a case amusements must for a time
+be thrown aside, till all the lands have been again re-ploughed. Of
+course we are never wholly idle. There are always rents to collect,
+matters to adjust in connexion with our villages and tenantry,
+law-suits to recover bad debts, to enforce contracts, or protect
+manorial or other rights,--but generally speaking, when the lands have
+been prepared, we have a slack season or breathing time for a month or
+so.
+
+Arrangements having been made for the supply of seed, which generally
+comes from about the neighbourhood of Cawnpore, as February draws near
+we make preparations for beginning our sowings. February is the usual
+month, but it depends on the moisture, and sometimes sowings may go on
+up till May and June. In Purneah and Bhaugulpore, where the cultivation
+is much rougher than in Tirhoot, the sowing is done broadcast. And in
+Bengal the sowing is often done upon the soft mud which is left on the
+banks of the rivers at the retiring of the annual floods. In Tirhoot,
+however, where the high farming I have been trying to describe is
+practised, the sowing is done by means of drills. Drills are got out,
+overhauled, and put in thorough repair. Bags of seed are sent out to
+the villages, advances for bullocks are given to the ryots, and on a
+certain day when all seems favourable--no sign of rain or high
+winds--the drills are set at work, and day and night the work goes on,
+till all the cultivation has been sown. As the drills go along, the
+hengha follows close behind, covering the seed in the furrows; and once
+again it is put over, till the fields are all level, shining, and
+clean, waiting for the first appearance of the young soft shoots.
+
+These, after some seven, nine, or perhaps fifteen days, according to
+the weather, begin to appear in long lines of delicate pale yellowish
+green. This is a most anxious time. Should rain fall, the whole surface
+of the earth gets caked and hard, and the delicate plant burns out, or
+being chafed against the hard surface crust, it withers and dies. If
+the wind gets into the east, it brings a peculiar blight which settles
+round the leaf and collar of the stem of the young plant, chokes it,
+and sweeps off miles and miles of it. If hot west winds blow, the plant
+gets black, discoloured, burnt up, and dead. A south wind often brings
+caterpillars--at least this pest often makes its appearance when the
+wind is southerly; but as often as not caterpillars find their way to
+the young plant in the most mysterious manner,--no one knowing whence
+they come. Daily, nay almost hourly, reports come in from all parts of
+the zillah: now you hear of 'Lahee,' blight on some field; now it is
+'Ihirka,' scorching, or 'Pilooa,' caterpillars. In some places the seed
+may have been bad or covered with too much earth, and the plant comes
+up straggling and thin. If there is abundant moisture, this must be
+re-sown. In fact, there is never-ending anxiety and work at this
+season, but when the plant has got into ten or fifteen leaf, and is an
+inch or two high, the most critical time is over, and one begins to
+think about the next operation, namely WEEDING.
+
+The coolies are again in requisition. Each comes armed with a
+_coorpee_,--this is a small metal spatula, broad-pointed, with which
+they dig out the weeds with amazing deftness. Sometimes they may
+inadvertently take out a single stem of indigo with the weeds: the eye
+of the mate or Tokedar espies this at once, and the careless coolie is
+treated to a volley of Hindoo Billingsgate, in which all his relations
+are abused to the seventh generation. By the time the first weeding is
+finished, the plant will be over a foot high, and if necessary a second
+weeding is then given. After the second weeding, and if any rain has
+fallen in the interim, the plant will be fully two feet high.
+
+It is now a noble-looking expanse of beautiful green waving foliage. As
+the wind ruffles its myriads of leaves, the sparkle of the sunbeams on
+the undulating mass produces the most wonderful combinations of light
+and shade; feathery sprays of a delicate pale green curl gracefully all
+over the field. It is like an ocean of vegetation, with billows of rich
+colour chasing each other, and blending in harmonious hues; the whole
+field looking a perfect oasis of beauty amid the surrounding dull brown
+tints of the season.
+
+It is now time to give the plant a light touch of the plough. This
+eases the soil about the roots, lets in air and light, tends to clean
+the undergrowth of weeds, and gives it a great impetus. The operation
+is called _Bedaheunee_. By the beginning of June the tiny red flower is
+peeping from its leafy sheath, the lower leaves are turning yellowish
+and crisp, and it is almost time to begin the grandest and most
+important operation of the season, the manufacture of the dye from the
+plant.
+
+To this you have been looking forward during the cold raw foggy days of
+November, when the ploughs were hard at work,--during the hot fierce
+winds of March, and the still, sultry, breathless early days of June,
+when the air was so still and oppressive that you could scarcely
+breathe. These sultry days are the lull before the storm--the pause
+before the moisture-laden clouds of the monsoon roll over the land
+'rugged and brown,' and the wild rattle of thunder and the lurid glare
+of quivering never-ceasing lightning herald in the annual rains. The
+manufacture however deserves a chapter to itself.
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO BEATING VATS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Manufacture of Indigo.--Loading the vats.--Beating.--Boiling,
+straining, and pressing.--Scene in the Factory.--Fluctuation of
+produce.--Chemistry of Indigo.
+
+Indigo is manufactured solely from the leaf. When arrangements have
+been made for cutting and carting the plant from the fields, the vats
+and machinery are all made ready, and a day is appointed to begin
+'Mahye' or manufacture. The apparatus consists of, first, a strong
+serviceable pump for pumping up water into the vats: this is now mostly
+done by machinery, but many small factories still use the old Persian
+wheel, which may be shortly described as simply an endless chain of
+buckets, working on a revolving wheel or drum. The machine is worked by
+bullocks, and as the buckets ascend full from the well, they are
+emptied during their revolution into a small trough at the top, and the
+water is conveyed into a huge masonry reservoir or tank, situated high
+up above the vats, which forms a splendid open air bath for the planter
+when he feels inclined for a swim. Many of these tanks, called
+_Kajhana_, are capable of containing 40,000 cubic feet of water or
+more.
+
+Below, and in a line with this reservoir, are the steeping vats, each
+capable of containing about 2000 cubic feet of water when full. Of
+course the vats vary in size, but what is called a _pucca_ vat is of
+the above capacity. When the fresh green plant is brought in, the carts
+with their loads are ranged in line, opposite these loading vats. The
+loading coolies, 'Bojhunneas'--so called from '_Bojh_,' a bundle--jump
+into the vats, and receive the plant from the cart-men, stacking it up
+in perpendicular layers, till the vat is full: a horizontal layer is
+put on top to make the surface look even. Bamboo battens are then
+placed over the plant, and these are pressed down, and held in their
+place by horizontal beams, working in upright posts. The uprights have
+holes at intervals of six inches. An iron pin is put in one of the
+holes; a lever is put under this pin, and the beam pressed down, till
+the next hole is reached and a fresh pin inserted, which keeps the beam
+down in its place. When sufficient pressure has been applied, the
+sluice in the reservoir is opened, and the water runs by a channel into
+the vat till it is full. Vat after vat is thus filled till all are
+finished, and the plant is allowed to steep from ten to thirteen or
+fourteen hours, according to the state of the weather, the temperature
+of the water, and other conditions and circumstances which have all to
+be carefully noted.
+
+At first a greenish yellow tinge appears in the water, gradually
+deepening to an intense blue. As the fermentation goes on, froth forms
+on the surface of the vat, the water swells up, bubbles of gas arise to
+the surface, and the whole range of vats presents a frothing, bubbling,
+sweltering appearance, indicative of the chemical action going on in
+the interior. If a torch be applied to the surface of a vat, the
+accumulated gas ignites with a loud report, and a blue lambent flame
+travels with amazing rapidity over the effervescent liquid. In very hot
+weather I have seen the water swell up over the mid walls of the vats,
+till the whole range would be one uniform surface of frothing liquid,
+and on applying a light, the report has been as loud as that of a small
+cannon, and the flame has leapt from vat to vat like the flitting
+will-o'-the-wisp on the surface of some miasmatic marsh.
+
+When fermentation has proceeded sufficiently, the temperature of the
+vat lowers somewhat, and the water, which has been globular and convex
+on the surface and at the sides, now becomes distinctly convex and
+recedes a very little. This is a sign that the plant has been steeped
+long enough, and that it is now time to open the vat. A pin is knocked
+out from the bottom, and the pent-up liquor rushes out in a golden
+yellow stream tinted with blue and green into the beating vat, which
+lies parallel to, but at a lower level than the loading vat.
+
+Of course as the vats are loaded at different hours, and the steeping
+varies with circumstances, they must be ready to open also at different
+intervals. There are two men specially engaged to look after the
+opening. The time of loading each one is carefully noted; the time it
+will take to steep is guessed at, and an hour for opening written down.
+When this hour arrives, the _Gunta parree_, or time-keeper, looks at
+the vat, and if it appears ready he gets the pinmen to knock out the
+pin and let the steeped liquor run into the beating vat.
+
+Where there are many vats, this goes on all night, and by the morning
+the beating vats are all full of steeped liquor, and ready to be
+beaten.
+
+The beating now is mostly done by machinery; but the old style was very
+different. A gang of coolies (generally Dangurs) were put into the
+vats, having long sticks with a disc at the end, with which, standing
+in two rows, they threw up the liquor into the air. The quantity forced
+up by the one coolie encounters in mid air that sent up by the man
+standing immediately opposite to him, and the two jets meeting and
+mixing confusedly together, tumble down in broken frothy masses into
+the vat. Beginning with a slow steady stroke the coolies gradually
+increase the pace, shouting out a hoarse wild song at intervals; till,
+what with the swish and splash of the falling water, the measured beat
+of the _furrovahs_ or beating rods, and the yells and cries with which
+they excite each other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which
+at first is of a yellowish green, is now beginning to assume an intense
+blue tint; this is the result of the oxygenation going on. As the blue
+deepens, the exertions of the coolie increase, till with every muscle
+straining, head thrown back, chest expanded, his long black hair
+dripping with white foam, and his bronzed naked body glistening with
+blue liquor, he yells and shouts and twists and contorts his body till
+he looks like a true 'blue devil.' To see eight or ten vats full of
+yelling howling blue creatures, the water splashing high in mid air,
+the foam flecking the walls, and the measured beat of the _furrovahs_
+rising weird-like into the morning air, is almost enough to shake the
+nerve of a stranger, but it is music in the planter's ear, and he can
+scarce refrain from yelling out in sympathy with his coolies, and
+sharing in their frantic excitement. Indeed it is often necessary to
+encourage them if a vat proves obstinate, and the colour refuses to
+come--an event which occasionally does happen. It is very hard work
+beating, and when this constant violent exercise is kept up for about
+three hours (which is the time generally taken), the coolies are pretty
+well exhausted, and require a rest.
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO BEATERS AT WORK IN THE VATS.]
+
+During the beating, two processes are going on simultaneously. One is
+chemical--oxygenation--turning the yellowish green dye into a deep
+intense blue: the other is mechanical--a separation of the particles of
+dye from the water in which it is held in solution. The beating seems
+to do this, causing the dye to granulate in larger particles.
+
+When the vat has been beaten, the coolies remove the froth and scum
+from the surface of the water, and then leave the contents to settle.
+The fecula or dye, or _mall_, as it is technically called, now settles
+at the bottom of the vat in a soft pulpy sediment, and the waste liquor
+left on the top is let off through graduated holes in the front. Pin
+after pin is gradually removed, and the clear sherry-coloured waste
+allowed to run out till the last hole in the series is reached, and
+nothing but dye remains in the vat. By this time the coolies have had a
+rest and food, and now they return to the works, and either lift up the
+_mall_ in earthen jars and take it to the mall tank, or--as is now more
+commonly done--they run it along a channel to the tank, and then wash
+out and clean the vat to be ready for the renewed beating on the
+morrow. When all the _mall_ has been collected in the mall tank, it is
+next pumped up into the straining room. It is here strained through
+successive layers of wire gauze and cloth, till, free from dirt, sand
+and impurity, it is run into the large iron boilers, to be subjected to
+the next process. This is the boiling. This operation usually takes two
+or three hours, after which it is run off along narrow channels, till
+it reaches the straining-table. It is a very important part of the
+manufacture, and has to be carefully done. The straining-table is an
+oblong shallow wooden frame, in the shape of a trough, but all composed
+of open woodwork. It is covered by a large straining-sheet, on which
+the mall settles; while the waste water trickles through and is carried
+away by a drain. When the mall has stood on the table all night, it is
+next morning lifted up by scoops and buckets and put into the presses.
+These are square boxes of iron or wood, with perforated sides and
+bottom and a removeable perforated lid. The insides of the boxes are
+lined with press cloths, and when filled these cloths are carefully
+folded over the _mall_, which is now of the consistence of starch; and
+a heavy beam, worked on two upright three-inch screws, is let down on
+the lid of the press. A long lever is now put on the screws, and the
+nut worked slowly round. The pressure is enormous, and all the water
+remaining in the _mall_ is pressed through the cloth and perforations
+in the press-box till nothing but the pure indigo remains behind.
+
+The presses are now opened, and a square slab of dark moist indigo,
+about three or three and a half inches thick, is carried off on the
+bottom of the press (the top and sides having been removed), and
+carefully placed on the cutting frame. This frame corresponds in size
+to the bottom of the press, and is grooved in lines somewhat after the
+manner of a chess-board. A stiff iron rod with a brass wire attached is
+put through the groove under the slab, the wire is brought over the
+slab, and the rod being pulled smartly through brings the wire with it,
+cutting the indigo much in the same way as you would cut a bar of soap.
+When all the slab has been cut into bars, the wire and rod are next put
+into the grooves at right angles to the bars and again pulled through,
+thus dividing the bars into cubical cakes. Each cake is then stamped
+with the factory mark and number, and all are noted down in the books.
+They are then taken to the drying house; this is a large airy building,
+with strong shelves of bamboo reaching to the roof, and having narrow
+passages between the tiers of shelves. On these shelves or _mychans_,
+as they are called, the cakes are ranged to dry. The drying takes two
+or three months, and the cakes are turned and moved at frequent
+intervals, till thoroughly ready for packing. All the little pieces and
+corners and chips are carefully put by on separate shelves, and packed
+separately. Even the sweepings and refuse from the sheets and floor are
+all carefully collected, mixed with water, boiled separately, and made
+into cakes, which are called 'washings.'
+
+During the drying a thick mould forms on the cakes. This is carefully
+brushed off before packing, and, mixed with sweepings and tiny chips is
+all ground up in a hand-mill, packed in separate chests, and sold as
+dust. In October, when _mahye_ is over, and the preparation of the land
+going on again, the packing begins. The cakes, each of separate date,
+are carefully scrutinised, and placed in order of quality. The finest
+qualities are packed first, in layers, in mango-wood boxes; the boxes
+are first weighed empty, re-weighed when full, and the difference gives
+the nett weight of the indigo. The tare, gross, and nett weights are
+printed legibly on the chests, along with the factory mark and number
+of the chest, and when all are ready, they are sent down to the brokers
+in Calcutta for sale. Such shortly is the system of manufacture.
+
+During _mahye_ the factory is a busy scene. Long before break of day
+the ryots and coolies are busy cutting the plant, leaving it in green
+little heaps for the cartmen to load. In the early morning the carts
+are seen converging to the factory on every road, crawling along like
+huge green beetles. Here a cavalcade of twenty or thirty carts, there
+in clusters of twos or threes. When they reach the factory the loaders
+have several vats ready for the reception of the plant, while others
+are taking out the already steeped plant of yesterday; staggering under
+its weight, as, dripping with water, they toss it on the vast
+accumulating heap of refuse material.
+
+Down in the vats below, the beating coolies are plashing, and shouting,
+and yelling, or the revolving wheel (where machinery is used) is
+scattering clouds of spray and foam in the blinding sunshine. The
+firemen stripped to the waist, are feeding the furnaces with the dried
+stems of last year's crop, which forms our only fuel. The smoke hovers
+in volumes over the boiling-house. The pinmen are busy sorting their
+pins, rolling hemp round them to make them fit the holes more exactly.
+Inside the boiling-house, dimly discernible through the clouds of
+stifling steam, the boilermen are seen with long rods, stirring slowly
+the boiling mass of bubbling blue. The clank of the levers resounds
+through the pressing-house, or the hoarse guttural 'hah, hah!' as the
+huge lever is strained and pulled at by the press-house coolies. The
+straining-table is being cleaned by the table 'mate' and his coolies,
+while the washerman stamps on his sheets and press-cloths to extract
+all the colour from them, and the cake-house boys run to and fro
+between the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on
+their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from
+the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary
+to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds.
+The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the
+roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of
+the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified
+or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the objurgations of the
+'mates' as some lazy fellow eases his stroke in the beating vats; the
+cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round the circle where the
+Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp, dilapidated wheel-house;
+the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on the drum, the arriving and
+departing carts; the clang of the anvil, as the blacksmith and his men
+hammer away at some huge screw which has been bent; the hurrying crowds
+of cartmen and loaders with their burdens of fresh green plant or
+dripping refuse;--form such a medley of sights and sounds as I have
+never seen equalled in any other industry.
+
+The planter has to be here, there, and everywhere. He sends carts to
+this village or to that, according as the crop ripens. Coolies must be
+counted and paid daily. The stubble must be ploughed to give the plant
+a start for the second growth whenever the weather will admit of it.
+Reports have to be sent to the agents and owners. The boiling must be
+narrowly watched, as also the beating and the straining. He has a large
+staff of native assistants, but if his _mahye_ is to be successful, his
+eye must be over all. It is an anxious time, but the constant work is
+grateful, and when the produce is good, and everything working
+smoothly, it is perhaps the most enjoyable time of the whole year. Is
+it nothing to see the crop, on which so much care has been expended,
+which you have watched day by day through all the vicissitudes of the
+season, through drought, and flood, and blight; is it nothing to see it
+safely harvested, and your shelves filling day by day with fine sound
+cakes, the representatives of wealth, that will fill your pockets with
+commission, and build up your name as a careful and painstaking
+planter?
+
+'What's your produce?' is now the first query at this season, when
+planters meet. Calculations are made daily, nay hourly, to see how much
+is being got per beegah, or how much per vat. The presses are calculated
+to weigh so much. Some days you will get a press a vat, some days it
+will mount up to two presses a vat, and at other times it will recede
+to half a press a vat, or even less. Cold wet weather reduces the
+produce. Warm sunny weather will send it up again. Short stunted plant
+from poor lands will often reduce your average per acre, to be again
+sent up as fresh, hardy, leafy plant comes in from some favourite
+village, where you have new and fertile lands, or where the plant from
+the rich zeraats laden with broad strong leaf is tumbled into the
+loading vat.
+
+So far as I know, there seems to be no law of produce. It is the most
+erratic and incomprehensible thing about planting. One day your presses
+are full to straining, next day half of them lie empty. No doubt the
+state of the weather, the quality of your plant, the temperature of the
+water, the length of time steeping, and other things have an influence;
+but I know of no planter who can entirely and satisfactorily account
+for the sudden and incomprehensible fluctuations and variations which
+undoubtedly take place in the produce or yield of the plant. It is a
+matter of more interest to the planter than to the general public, but
+all I can say is, that if the circumstances attendant on any sudden
+change in the yielding powers of the plant were more accurately noted;
+if the chemical conditions of the water, the air, and the raw material
+itself, more especially in reference to the soil on which it grows, the
+time it takes in transit from the field to the vat, and other points,
+which will at once suggest themselves to a practical planter, were more
+carefully, methodically, and scientifically observed, some coherent
+theory resulting in plain practical results might be evolved.
+
+Planters should attend more to this. I believe the chemical history of
+indigo has yet to be written. The whole manufacture, so far as
+chemistry is concerned, is yet crude and ill-digested. I know that by
+careful experiment, and close scientific investigation and observation,
+the preparation of indigo could be much improved. So far as the
+mechanical appliances for the manufacture go, the last ten years have
+witnessed amazing and rapid improvements. What is now wanted, is, that
+what has been done for the mere mechanical appliances, should be done
+for the proper understanding of the chemical changes and conditions in
+the constitution of the plant, and in the various processes of its
+manufacture[1].
+
+[1] Since the above chapter was written Mons. P.I. Michea, a French
+    chemist of some experience in Indigo matters, has patented
+    an invention (the result of much study, experiment, and
+    investigation), by the application of which an immense increase in
+    the produce of the plant has been obtained during the last season,
+    in several factories where it has been worked in Jessore, Purneah,
+    Kishnaghur, and other places. This increase, varying according to
+    circumstances, has in some instances reached the amazing extent
+    of 30 to 47 per cent., and so far from being attended with a
+    deterioration of quality the dye produced is said to be finer than
+    that obtained under the old crude process described in the above
+    chapter. This shows what a waste must have been going on, and what
+    may yet be done, by properly organised scientific investigation.
+    I firmly believe that with an intelligent application of the
+    principles of chemistry and agricultural science, not only to the
+    manufacture but to growth, cultivation, nature of the soil,
+    application of manures, and other such departments of the
+    business, quite a revolution will set in, and a new era in the
+    history of this great industry will be inaugurated. Less area for
+    crop will be required, working expenses will be reduced, a greater
+    out-turn, and a more certain crop secured, and all classes,
+    planter and ryot alike, will be benefited.
+
+[Illustration: INDIAN FACTORY PEON.]
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO PLANTER'S HOUSE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Parewah factory.--A 'Bobbery Pack.'--Hunt through a village after a
+cat.--The pariah dog of India.--Fate of 'Pincher.'--Rampore hound.
+--Persian greyhound.--Caboolee dogs.--A jackal hunt.--Incidents of
+the chase.
+
+After living at Puttihee for two years, I was transferred to another
+out-factory in the same concern, called Parewah. There was here a very
+nice little three-roomed bungalow, with airy verandahs all round. It
+was a pleasant change from Puttihee, and the situation was very pretty.
+A small stream, almost dry in the hot weather, but a swollen, deep,
+rapid torrent in the rains, meandered past the factory. Nearing the
+bullock-house it suddenly took a sweep to the left in the form of a
+wide horseshoe, and in this bend or pocket was situated the bungalow,
+with a pretty terraced garden sloping gently to the stream. Thus the
+river was in full view from both the front and the back verandahs.
+In front, and close on the bank of the river, stood the kitchen,
+fowl-house, and offices. To the right of the compound were the stables,
+while behind the bungalow, and some distance down the stream, the
+wheel-house, vats, press-house, boiling-house, cake-house, and
+workshops were grouped together. I was but nine miles from the
+bead-factory, and the same distance from the station of Mooteeharree,
+while over the river, and but three miles off, I had the factory of
+Meerpore, with its hospitable manager as my nearest neighbour. His
+lands and mine lay contiguous. In fact some of his villages lay beyond
+some of mine, and he had to ride through part of my cultivation to
+reach them.
+
+Not unfrequently we would meet in the zillah of a morning, when we
+would invariably make for the nearest patch of grass or jungle, and
+enjoy a hunt together. In the cool early mornings, when the heavy night
+dews still lie glittering on the grass, when the cobwebs seem strung
+with pearls, and faint lines of soft fleecy mist lie in the hollows by
+the watercourses; long ere the hot, fiery sun has left his crimson bed
+behind the cold grey horizon, we are out on our favourite horse, the
+wiry, long-limbed _syce_ or groom trotting along behind us. The
+_mehter_ or dog-keeper is also in attendance with a couple of
+greyhounds in leash, and a motley pack of wicked little terriers
+frisking and frolicking behind him. This mongrel collection is known as
+'the Bobbery Pack,' and forms a certain adjunct to every assistant's
+bungalow in the district. I had one very noble-looking kangaroo hound
+that I had brought from Australia with me, and my 'bobbery pack' of
+terriers contained canine specimens of all sorts, sizes, and colours.
+
+On nearing a village, you would see one black fellow, 'Pincher,' set
+off at a round trot ahead, with seemingly the most innocent air in the
+world. 'Tilly,' 'Tiny,' and 'Nipper' follow.
+
+Then 'Dandy,' 'Curly,' 'Brandy,' and 'Nettle,' till spying a cat in the
+distance, the whole pack with a whimper of excitement dash off at a mad
+scramble, the hound straining meanwhile at the slip, till he almost
+pulls the _mehter_ off his legs. Off goes the cat, round the corner of
+a hut with her tail puffed up to fully three times its normal size.
+Round in mad, eager pursuit rattle the terriers, thirsting for her
+blood. The _syce_ dashes forward, vainly hoping to turn them from their
+quest. Now a village dog, roused from his morning nap, bounds out with
+a demoniac howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the curs in the
+village.
+
+Meanwhile the row inside the hut is fiendish. The sleeping family
+rudely roused by the yelping pack, utter the most discordant screams.
+The women with garments fluttering behind them, rush out beating their
+breasts, thinking the very devil is loose. The wails of the unfortunate
+cat mingle with the short snapping barks of the pack, or a howl of
+anguish as puss inflicts a caress on the face of some too careless or
+reckless dog. A howling village cur has rashly ventured too near.
+'Pincher' has him by the hind leg before you could say 'Jack Robinson.'
+Leaving the dead cat for 'Toby' and 'Nettle' to worry, the whole pack
+now fiercely attack the luckless _Pariah_ dog. A dozen of his village
+mates dance madly outside the ring, but are too wise or too cowardly to
+come to closer quarters. The kangaroo hound has now fairly torn the
+rope from the keeper's hand, and with one mighty bound is in the middle
+of the fight, scattering the village dogs right and left. The whole
+village is now in commotion, the _syce_ and keeper shout the names of
+the terriers in vain. Oaths, cries, shouts, and screams mingle with the
+yelping and growling of the combatants, till riding up, I disperse the
+worrying pack with a few cracks of my hunting whip, and so on again
+over the zillah, leaving the women and children to recover their
+scattered senses, the old men to grumble over their broken slumbers,
+and the boys and young men to wonder at the pluck and dash of the
+_Belaitee Kookoor_, or English dog.
+
+The common Pariah dog, or village dog of India, is a perfect cur; a
+mangy, carrion-loving, yellow-fanged, howling brute. A most unlovely
+and unloving beast. As you pass his village he will bounce out on you
+with the fiercest bark and the most menacing snarl; but lo! if a
+terrier the size of a teacup but boldly go at him, down goes his tail
+like a pump-handle, he turns white with fear, and like the arrant
+coward that he is, tumbles on his back and fairly screams for mercy. I
+have often been amused to see a great hulking cowardly brute come out
+like an avalanche at 'Pincher,' expecting to make one mouthful of him.
+What a look of bewilderment he would put on, as my gallant little
+'Pincher,' with a short, sharp, defiant bark would go boldly at him.
+The huge yellow brute would stop dead short on all four legs, and as
+the rest of my pack would come scampering round the corner, he would
+find himself the centre of a ring of indomitable assailants.
+
+How he curses his short-sighted temerity. With one long howl of utter
+dismay and deadly fear, he manages to get away from the pack, leaving
+my little doggies to come proudly round my horse with their mouths full
+of fur, and each of their little tails as stiff as an iron ramrod.
+
+That 'Pincher,' in some respects, was a very fiend incarnate. There was
+no keeping him in. He was constantly getting into hot water himself,
+and leading the pack into all sorts of mischief. He was as bold as
+brass and as courageous as a lion. He stole food, worried sheep and
+goats, and was never out of a scrape. I tried thrashing him, tying him
+up, half starving him, but all to no purpose. He would be into every
+hut in a village whenever he had the chance, overturning brass pots,
+eating up rice and curries, and throwing the poor villager's household
+into dismay and confusion. He would never leave a cat if he once saw
+it. I've seen him scramble through the roofs of more than one hut, and
+oust the cat from its fancied stronghold.
+
+I put him into an indigo vat with a big dog jackal once, and he whipped
+the jackal single-handed. He did not kill it, but he worried it till
+the jackal shammed dead and would not 'come to the scratch.' 'Pincher's'
+ears were perfect shreds, and his scars were as numerous almost as his
+hairs. My gallant 'Pincher!' His was a sad end. He got eaten up by an
+alligator in the 'Dhans,' a sluggish stream in Bhaugulpore. I had all
+my pack in the boat with me, the stream was swollen and full of weeds.
+A jackal gave tongue on the bank, and 'Pincher' bounded over the side
+of the boat at once. I tried to 'grab' him, and nearly upset the boat
+in doing so. Our boat was going rapidly down stream, and 'Pincher'
+tried to get ashore but got among the weeds. He gave a bark, poor
+gallant little dog, for help, but just then we saw a dark square snout
+shoot athwart the stream. A half-smothered sobbing cry from 'Pincher,'
+and the bravest little dog I ever possessed was gone for ever.
+
+There is another breed of large, strong-limbed, big-boned dogs, called
+Rampore hounds. They are a cross breed from the original upcountry dog
+and the Persian greyhound. Some call them the Indian greyhound. They
+seem to be bred principally in the Rampore-Bareilly district, but one
+or more are generally to be found in every planter's pack. They are
+fast and strong enough, but I have often found them bad at tackling,
+and they are too fond of their keeper ever to make an affectionate
+faithful dog to the European.
+
+Another somewhat similar breed is the _Tazi_. This, although not so
+large a dog as the Rhamporee, is a much pluckier animal, and when well
+trained will tackle a jackal with the utmost determination. He has a
+wrinkled almost hairless skin, but a very uncertain temper, and he is
+not very amenable to discipline. _Tazi_ is simply the Persian word for
+a greyhound, and refers to no particular breed. The common name for a
+dog is _Kutta_, pronounced _Cootta_, but the Tazi has certainly been an
+importation from the North-west, hence the Persian name. The wandering
+Caboolees, who come down to the plains once a year with dried fruits,
+spices, and other products of field or garden, also bring with them the
+dogs of their native country for sale, and on occasion they bring
+lovely long-haired white Persian cats, very beautiful animals. These
+Caboolee dogs are tall, long-limbed brutes, generally white, with a
+long thin snout, very long silky-haired drooping ears, and generally
+wearing tufts of hair on their legs and tail, somewhat like the
+feathering of a spaniel, which makes them look rather clumsy. They
+cannot stand the heat of the plains at all well, and are difficult to
+tame, but fleet and plucky, hunting well with an English pack.
+
+My neighbour Anthony at Meerpore had some very fine English greyhounds
+and bulldogs, and many a rattling burst have we had together after the
+fox or the jackal. Imagine a wide level plain, with one uniform dull
+covering of rice stubble, save where in the centre a mound rises some
+two acres in extent, covered with long thatching grass, a few scrubby
+acacia bushes, and other jungly brushwood. All round the circular
+horizon are dense forest masses of sombre looking foliage, save where
+some clump of palms uprear their stately heads, or the white shining
+walls of some temple, sacred to Shiva or Khristna glitter in the
+sunshine. Far to the left a sluggish creek winds slowly along through
+the plain, its banks fringed with acacias and wild rose jungle. On the
+far bank is a small patch of _Sal_ forest jungle, with a thick rank
+undergrowth of ferns, thistles, and rank grass. As I am slowly riding
+along I hear a shout in the distance, and looking round behold Anthony
+advancing at a rapid hand gallop. His dogs and mine, being old friends,
+rapidly fraternise, and we determine on a hunt.
+
+'Let's try the old patch, Anthony!'
+
+'All right,' and away we go making straight for the mound. When we
+reach the grass the syces and keepers hold the hounds at the corners
+outside, while we ride through the grass urging on the terriers, who,
+quivering with excitement, utter short barks, and dash here and there
+among the thick grass, all eager for a find.
+
+'Gone away, gone away!' shouts Anthony, as a fleet fox dashes out,
+closely followed by 'Pincher' and half a dozen others. The hounds are
+slipped, and away go the pack in full pursuit, we on our horses riding
+along, one on each side of the chase. The fox has a good start, but now
+the hounds are nearing him, when with a sudden whisk he doubles round
+the ridge encircling a rice field, the hounds overshoot him, and ere
+they turn the fox has put the breadth of a good field between himself
+and his pursuers. He is now making back again for the grass, but
+encounters some of the terriers who have tailed off behind. With
+panting chests and lolling tongues, they are pegging stolidly along,
+when fortune gives them this welcome chance. Redoubling their efforts,
+they dash at the fox. 'Bravo, Tilly! you tumbled him over that time;'
+but he is up and away again. Dodging, double-turning, and twisting, he
+has nearly run the gauntlet, and the friendly covert is close at hand,
+but the hounds are now up again and thirsting for his blood. 'Hurrah!
+Minnie has him!' cries Anthony, and riding up we divest poor Reynard of
+his brush, pat the dogs, ease the girths for a minute, and then again
+into the jungle for another beat.
+
+This time a fat old jackal breaks to the left, long before the dogs are
+up. Yelling to the _mehters_ not to slip the hounds, we gather the
+terriers together, and pound over the stubble and ridges. He is going
+very leisurely, casting an occasional scared look over his shoulder.
+'Curly' and 'Legs,' two of my fastest terriers, are now in full view,
+they are laying themselves well to the ground, and Master Jackal thinks
+it's high time to increase his pace. He puts on a spurt, but condition
+tells. He is fat and pursy, and must have had a good feed last night on
+some poor dead bullock. He is shewing his teeth now. Curly makes his
+rush, and they both roll over together. Up hurries Legs, and the jackal
+gets a grip, gives him a shake, and then hobbles slowly on. The two
+terriers now hamper him terribly. One minute they are at his heels, and
+as soon as he turns, they are at his ear or shoulder. The rest of the
+pack are fast coming up.
+
+Anthony has a magnificent bulldog, broad-chested, and a very Goliath
+among dogs. He is called 'Sailor.' Sailor always pounds along at the
+same steady pace; he never seems to get flurried. Sitting lazily at the
+door, he seems too indolent even to snap at a fly. He is a true
+philosopher, and nought seems to disturb his serenity. But see him
+after a jackal, his big red tongue hanging out, his eyes flashing fire,
+and his hair erected on his back like the bristles of a wild boar. He
+looks fiendish then, and he is a true bulldog. There is no flinching
+with Sailor. Once he gets his grip it's no use trying to make him let
+go.
+
+Up comes Sailor now.
+
+He has the jackal by the throat.
+
+A hoarse, rattling, gasping yell, and the jackal has gone to the happy
+hunting grounds.
+
+The sun is now mounting in the sky. The hounds and terriers feel the
+heat, so sending them home by the keeper, we diverge on our respective
+roads, ride over our cultivation, seeing the ploughing and preparations
+generally, till hot, tired, and dusty, we reach home about 11.30,
+tumble into our bath, and feeling refreshed, sit down contentedly to
+breakfast. If the _dak_ or postman has come in we get our letters and
+papers, and the afternoon is devoted to office work and accounts,
+hearing complaints and reports from the villages, or looking over any
+labour that may be going on in the zeraats or at the workshops. In the
+evening we ride over the zeraats again, give orders for the morrow's
+work, consume a little tobacco, have an early dinner, and after a
+little reading, retire soon to bed to dream of far away friends and the
+happy memories of home. Many an evening it is very lonely work. No
+friendly face, and no congenial society within miles of your factory.
+Little wonder that the arrival of a brother planter sends a thrill
+through the frame, and that his advent is welcomed as the most
+agreeable break to the irksome monotony of our lonely life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Fishing in India.--Hereditary trades.--The boatmen and fishermen of
+India.--Their villages.--Nets.--Modes of fishing.--Curiosities
+relating thereto.--Catching an alligator with a hook.--Exciting
+capture.-Crocodiles.--Shooting an alligator.--Death of the man-eater.
+
+Not only in the wild jungles, on the undulating plains, and among the
+withered brown stubbles, does animal life abound in India; but the
+rivers, lakes, and creeks teem with fish of every conceivable size,
+shape, and colour. The varieties are legion. From the huge black
+porpoise, tumbling through the turgid stream of the Ganges, to the
+bright, sparkling, silvery shoals of delicate _chillooahs_ or
+_poteeahs_, which one sees darting in and out among the rice stubbles
+in every paddy field during the rains. Here a huge _bhowarree_ (pike),
+or ravenous _coira_, comes to the surface with a splash; there a
+_raho_, the Indian salmon, with its round sucker-like mouth, rises
+slowly to the surface, sucks in a fly and disappears as slowly as it
+rose; or a _pachgutchea_, a long sharp-nosed fish, darts rapidly by; a
+shoal of mullet with their heads out of the water swim athwart the
+stream, and far down in the cool depths of the tank or lake, a thousand
+different varieties disport themselves among the mazy labyrinths of the
+broad-leaved weeds.
+
+During the middle, and about the end of the rains, is the best time for
+fishing; the whole country is then a perfect network of streams. Every
+rice field is a shallow lake, with countless thousands of tiny fish
+darting here and there among the rice stalks. Every ditch teems with
+fish, and every hollow in every field is a well stocked aquarium.
+
+Round the edge of every lake or tank in the early morning, or when the
+fierce heat of the day begins to get tempered by the approaching shades
+of evening, one sees numbers of boys and men of the poorer classes,
+each with a couple of rough bamboo rods stuck in the ground in front of
+him, watching his primitive float with the greatest eagerness, and
+whipping out at intervals some luckless fish of about three or four
+ounces in weight with a tremendous haul, fit for the capture of a
+forty-pounder. They get a coarse sort of hook in the bazaar, rig up a
+roughly-twisted line, tie on a small piece of hollow reed for a float,
+and with a lively earth-worm for a bait, they can generally manage in a
+very short time to secure enough fish for a meal.
+
+With a short light rod, a good silk line, and an English hook attached
+to fine gut, I have enjoyed many a good hour's sport at Parewah. I used
+to have a cane chair sent down to the bank of the stream, a _punkah_,
+or hand fan, plenty of cooling drinks, and two coolie boys in
+attendance to remove the fish, renew baits, and keep the punkah in
+constant swing. There I used to sit enjoying my cigar, and pulling in
+little fish at the rate sometimes of a couple a minute.
+
+I remember hooking a turtle once, and a terrible job it was to land
+him. My light rod bent like a willow, but the tackle was good, and
+after ten minutes' hard work I got the turtle to the side, where my
+boys soon secured him. He weighed thirteen pounds. Sometimes you get
+among a colony of freshwater crabs.
+
+They are little brown brutes, and strip your hooks of the bait as fast
+as you fling them in. There is nothing for it in such a case but to
+shift your station. Many of the bottom fish--the _ghurai_, the
+_saourie_, the _barnee_ (eel), and others, make no effort to escape the
+hook. You see them resting at the bottom, and drop the bait at their
+very nose. On the whole, the hand fishing is uninteresting, but it
+serves to wile away an odd hour when hunting and shooting are hardly
+practicable.
+
+Particular occupations in India are restricted to particular castes.
+All trades are hereditary. For example, a _tatmah_, or weaver, is
+always a weaver. He cannot become a blacksmith or carpenter. He has no
+choice. He must follow the hereditary trade. The peculiar system of
+land-tenure in India, which secures as far as possible a bit of land
+for every one, tends to perpetuate this hereditary selection of trades,
+by enabling every cultivator to be so far independent of his
+handicraft, thus restricting competition. There may be twenty _lohars_,
+or blacksmiths, in a village, but they do not all follow their calling.
+They till their lands, and are _de facto_ petty farmers. They know the
+rudiments of their handicraft, but the actual blacksmith's work is done
+by the hereditary smith of the village, whose son in turn will succeed
+him when he dies, or if he leave no son, his fellow caste men will put
+in a successor.
+
+Nearly every villager during the rains may be found on the banks of the
+stream or lake, angling in an amateur sort of way, but the fishermen
+of Behar _par excellence_ are the _mull[=a]hs_; they are also called
+_Gouhree, Beeu_, or _Muchooah_. In Bengal they are called _Nikaree_,
+and in some parts _Baeharee_, from the Persian word for a boat. In the
+same way _muchooah_ is derived from _much_, a fish, and _mullah_ means
+boatman, strictly speaking, rather than fisherman. All boatmen and
+fishermen belong to this caste, and their villages can be recognised at
+once by the instruments of their calling lying all around.
+
+Perched high on some bank overlooking the stream or lake, you see
+innumerable festoons of nets hanging out to dry on tall bamboo poles,
+or hanging like lace curtains of very coarse texture from the roofs and
+eaves of the huts. Hauled up on the beach are a whole fleet of boats of
+different sizes, from the small _dugout_, which will hold only one man,
+to the huge _dinghy_, in which the big nets and a dozen men can be
+stowed with ease. Great heaps of shells of the freshwater mussel show
+the source of great supplies of bait; while overhead a great hovering
+army of kites and vultures are constantly circling round, eagerly
+watching for the slightest scrap of offal from the nets. When the rains
+have fairly set in, and the fishermen have got their rice fields all
+planted out, they are at liberty to follow their hereditary avocation.
+A day is fixed for a drag, and the big nets are overhauled and got in
+readiness. The head _mullah_, a wary grizzled old veteran, gives the
+orders. The big drag-net is bundled into the boat, which is quickly
+pushed off into the stream, and at a certain distance from shore the
+net is cast from the boat. Being weighted at the lower end it rapidly
+sinks, and, buoyed on the upper side with pieces of cork, it makes a
+perpendicular wall in the water. Several long bamboo poles are now run
+through the ropes along the upper side of the net, to prevent the net
+being dragged under water altogether by the weight of the fish in a
+great haul. The little boats, a crowd of which are in attendance, now
+dart out, surrounding the net on all sides, and the boatmen beating
+their oars on the sides of the boats, create such a clatter as to
+frighten, the fish into the circumference of the big net. This is now
+being dragged slowly to shore by strong and willing arms. The women and
+children watch eagerly on the bank. At length the glittering haul is
+pulled up high and dry on the beach, the fish are divided among the
+men, the women fill their baskets, and away they hie to the nearest
+_bazaar_, or if it be not _bazaar_ or market day, they hawk the fish
+through the nearest villages, like our fish-wives at home.
+
+There is another common mode of fishing adopted in narrow lakes and
+small streams, which are let out to the fishermen by the Zemindars or
+landholders. A barricade made of light reeds, all matted together by
+string, is stuck into the stream, and a portion of the water is fenced
+in, generally in a circular form. The reed fence being quite flexible
+is gradually moved in, narrowing the circle. As the circle narrows, the
+agitation inside is indescribable; fish jumping in all directions--a
+moving mass of glittering scales and fins. The larger ones try to leap
+the barrier, and are caught by the attendant _mullahs_, who pounce on
+them with swift dexterity. Eagles and kites dart and swoop down,
+bearing off a captive fish in their talons. The reed fence is doubled
+back on itself, and gradually pushed on till the whole of the fish
+inside are jammed together in a moving mass. The weeds and dirt are
+then removed, and the fish put into baskets and carried off to market.
+
+Others, again, use circular casting nets, which they throw with very
+great dexterity. Gathering the net into a bunch they rest it on the
+shoulder, then with a circular sweep round the head, they fling it far
+out. Being loaded, it sinks down rapidly in the water. A string is
+attached to the centre of the net, and the fisherman hauls it in with
+whatever prey he may be lucky enough to secure.
+
+As the waters recede during October, after the rains have ended, each
+runlet and purling stream becomes a scene of slaughter on a most
+reckless and improvident scale. The innumerable shoals of spawn and
+small fish that have been feeding in the rice fields, warned by some
+instinct seek the lakes and main streams. As they try to get their way
+back, however, they find at each outlet in each ditch and field a
+deadly wicker trap, in the shape of a square basket with a V-shaped
+opening leading into it, through which the stream makes its way. After
+entering this basket there is no egress except through the narrow
+opening, and they are trapped thus in countless thousands. Others of
+the natives in mere wantonness put a shelf of reeds or rushes in the
+bed of the stream, with an upward slope. As the water rushes along, the
+little fish are left high and dry on this shelf or screen, and the
+water runs off below. In this way scarcely a fish escapes, and as
+millions are too small to be eaten, it is a most serious waste. The
+attention of Government has been directed to the subject, and steps may
+be taken to stop such a reckless and wholesale destruction of a
+valuable food supply.
+
+In some parts of Purneah and Bhaugulpore I have seen a most ingenious
+method adopted by the _mullahs_. A gang of four or five enter the
+stream and travel slowly downwards, stirring up the mud at the bottom
+with their feet. The fish, ascending the stream to escape the mud, get
+entangled in the weeds. The fishermen feel them with their feet amongst
+the weeds, and immediately pounce on them with their hands. Each man
+has a _gila_ or earthen pot attached by a string to his waist and
+floating behind him in the water. I have seen four men fill their
+earthen pots in less than an hour by this ingenious but primitive mode
+of fishing. Some of them can use their feet almost as well for grasping
+purposes as their hands.
+
+Another mode of capture is by a small net. A flat piece of netting is
+spread over a hoop, to which four or five pieces of bamboo are
+attached, rising up and meeting in the centre, so as to form a sort of
+miniature skeleton tent-like frame over the net. The hoop with the net
+stretched tight across is then pressed down flat on the bottom of the
+tank or stream. If any fish are beneath, their efforts to escape
+agitate the net. The motion is communicated to the fisherman by a
+string from the centre of the net which is rolled round the fisherman's
+thumb. When the jerking of his thumb announces a captive fish, he puts
+down his left hand and secures his victim. The _Banturs_, _Nepaulees_,
+and other jungle tribes, also often use the bow and arrow as a means of
+securing fish.
+
+Seated on the branch of some overhanging tree, while his keen eye scans
+the depths below, he watches for a large fish, and as it passes, he
+lets fly his arrow with unerring aim, and impales the luckless victim.
+Some tribes fish at night, by torchlight, spearing the fish who are
+attracted by the light. In Nepaul the bark of the _Hill Sirres_ is
+often used to poison a stream or piece of water. Pounded up and thrown
+in, it seems to have some uncommon effect on the fish. After water has
+been treated in this way, the fish, seemingly quite stupefied, rise to
+the surface, on which they float in great numbers, and allow themselves
+to be caught. The strangest part of it is that they are perfectly
+innocuous as food, notwithstanding this treatment.
+
+Fish forms a very favourite article of diet with both Mussulmans and
+Hindoos. Many of the latter take a vow to touch no flesh of any kind.
+They are called _Kunthees_ or _Boghuts_, but a _Boghut_ is more of an
+ascetic than a _Kunthee_. However, the _Kunthee_ is glad of a fish
+dinner when he can get it. They are restricted to no particular sect or
+caste, but all who have taken the vow wear a peculiar necklace, made
+generally of sandal-wood beads or _neem_ beads round their throats.
+Hence the name, from _kunth_ meaning the throat.
+
+The right to fish in any particular piece of water, is let out by the
+proprietor on whose land the water lies, or through which it flows. The
+letting is generally done by auction yearly. The fishing is called a
+_shilkur_; from _shal_, a net. It is generally taken by some rich
+_Bunneah_ (grain seller) or village banker, who sub-lets it in turn to
+the fishermen.
+
+In some of the tanks which are not so let, and where the native
+proprietor preserves the fish, first-class sport can be had. A common
+native poaching dodge is this: if some oil cake be thrown into the
+water a few hours previous to your fishing, or better still, balls made
+of roasted linseed meal, mixed with bruised leaves of the 'sweet
+basil,' or _toolsee_ plant, the fish assemble in hundreds round the
+spot, and devour the bait greedily. With a good eighteen-foot rod, fish
+of from twelve to twenty pounds are not uncommonly caught, and will
+give good play too. Fishing in the plains of India is, however, rather
+tame sport at the best of times.
+
+You have heard of the famous _mahseer_--some of them over eighty or a
+hundred pounds weight? We have none of these in Behar, but the huge
+porpoise gives splendid rifle or carbine practice as he rolls through
+the turgid streams. They are difficult to hit, but I have seen several
+killed with ball; and the oil extracted from their bodies is a splendid
+dressing for harness. But the most exciting fishing I have ever seen
+was--What do you think?--Alligator fishing! Yes, the formidable scaly
+monster, with his square snout and terrible jaws, his ponderous body
+covered with armour, and his serrated tail, with which he could break
+the leg of a bullock, or smash an outrigger as easily as a whale could
+smash a jolly-boat.
+
+I must try to describe one day's alligator fishing.
+
+When I was down in Bhaugulpore, I went out frequently fishing in the
+various tanks and streams near my factory. My friend Pat, who is a keen
+sportsman and very fond of angling, wrote to me one day when he and his
+brother Willie were going out to the Teljuga, asking me to join their
+party. The Teljuga is the boundary stream between Tirhoot and
+Bhaugulpore, and its sluggish muddy waters teem with alligators--the
+regular square-nosed _mugger_, the terrible man-eater. The _nakar_ or
+long-nosed species may be seen in countless numbers in any of the large
+streams, stretched out on the banks basking in the noonday sun. Going
+down the Koosee particularly, you come across hundreds sometimes lying
+on one bank. As the boat nears them, they slide noiselessly and slowly
+into the stream. A large excrescence forms on the tip of the long
+snout, like a huge sponge; and this is often all that is seen on the
+surface of the water as the huge brute swims about waiting for his
+prey. These _nakars_, or long-nosed specimens, never attack human
+beings--at least such cases are very very rare--but live almost
+entirely on fish. I remember seeing one catch a paddy-bird on one
+occasion near the junction of the Koosee with the Ganges. My boat was
+fastened to the shore near a slimy creek, that came oozing into the
+river from some dense jungle near. I was washing my hands and face on
+the bank, and the boatmen were fishing with a small hand-net, for our
+breakfast. Numbers of attenuated melancholy-looking paddy-birds were
+stalking solemnly and stiltedly along the bank, also fishing for
+_theirs_. I noticed one who was particularly greedy, with his long legs
+half immersed in the water, constantly darting out his long bill and
+bringing up a hapless struggling fish. All of a sudden a long snout and
+the ugly serrated ridgy back of a _nakar_ was shot like lightning at
+the hapless bird, and right before our eyes the poor paddy was crunched
+up. As a rule, however, alligators confine themselves to a fish diet,
+and are glad of any refuse or dead animal that may float their way. But
+with the _mugger_, the _boach_, or square-nosed variety, 'all is fish
+that comes to his net.' His soul delights in young dog or live pork. A
+fat duck comes not amiss; and impelled by hunger he hesitates not to
+attack man. Once regaled with the flavour of human flesh, he takes up
+his stand near some ferry, or bathing ghaut, where many hapless women
+and children often fall victims to his unholy appetite, before his
+career is cut short.
+
+I remember shooting one ghastly old scaly villain in a tank near
+Ryseree. He had made this tank his home, and with that fatalism which
+is so characteristic of the Hindoo, the usual ablutions and bathings
+went on as if no such monster existed. Several woman having been
+carried off, however, at short intervals, the villagers asked me to try
+and rid them of their foe. I took a ride down to the tank one Friday
+morning, and found the banks a scene of great excitement. A woman had
+been carried off some hours before as she was filling her water jar,
+and the monster was now reposing at the bottom of the tank digesting
+his horrible meal. The tank was covered with crimson water-lilies in
+full bloom, their broad brown and green leaves showing off the crimson
+beauty of the open flower. At the north corner some wild rose bushes
+dropped over the water, casting a dense matted shade. Here was the
+haunt of the _mugger_. He had excavated a huge gloomy-looking hole,
+into which he retired when gorged with prey. My first care was to cut
+away some of these bushes, and then, finding he was not at home, we
+drove some bamboo stakes through the bank to prevent him getting into
+his _manu_, which is what the natives term the den or hole. I then sat
+down under a _goolar_ tree, to wait for his appearance. The _goolar_ is
+a species of fig, and the leaves are much relished by cattle and goats.
+Gradually the village boys and young men went off to their ploughing,
+or grass cutting for the cows' evening meal. A woman came down
+occasionally to fill her waterpot in evident fear and trembling. A
+swarm of _minas_ (the Indian starling) hopped and twittered round my
+feet. The cooing of a pair of amatory pigeons overhead nearly lulled me
+to slumber. A flock of green parrots came swiftly circling overhead,
+making for the fig-tree at the south end of the tank. An occasional
+_raho_ lazily rose among the water-lilies, and disappeared with an
+indolent flap of his tail. The brilliant kingfisher, resplendent in
+crimson and emerald, sat on the withered branch of a prostrate
+mango-tree close by, pluming his feathers and doubtless meditating on
+the vanity of life. Suddenly, close by the massive post which marks the
+centre of every Hindoo tank, a huge scaly snout slowly and almost
+imperceptibly rose to the surface, then a broad, flat, forbidding
+forehead, topped by two grey fishy eyes with warty-looking callosities
+for eyebrows. Just then an eager urchin who had been squatted by me for
+hours, pointed to the brute. It was enough. Down sank the loathsome
+creature, and we had to resume our attitude of expectation and patient
+waiting. Another hour passed slowly. It was the middle of the
+afternoon, and very hot. I had sent my _tokedar_ off for a 'peg' to the
+factory, and was beginning to get very drowsy, when, right in the same
+spot, the repulsive head again rose slowly to the surface. I had my
+trusty No. 12 to my shoulder on the instant, glanced carefully along
+the barrels, but just then only the eyes of the brute were invisible. A
+moment of intense excitement followed, and then, emboldened by the
+extreme stillness, he showed his whole head above the surface. I pulled
+the trigger, and a Meade shell crashed through the monster's skull,
+scattering his brains in the water and actually sending one splinter of
+the skull to the opposite edge of the tank, where my little Hindoo boy
+picked it up and brought it to me.
+
+There was a mighty agitation in the water; the water-lilies rocked to
+and fro, and the broad leaves glittered with the water drops thrown on
+them; then all was still. Hearing the report of my gun, the natives
+came flocking to the spot, and, telling them their enemy was slain, I
+departed, leaving instructions to let me know when the body came to the
+surface. It did so three days later. Getting some _chumars_ and _domes_
+(two of the lowest castes, as none of the higher castes will touch a
+dead body under pain of losing caste), we hauled the putrid carcase to
+shore, and on cutting it open, found the glass armlets and brass
+ornaments of no less than five women and the silver ornaments of three
+children, all in a lump in the brute's stomach. Its skull was
+completely smashed and shattered to pieces by my shot. Its teeth were
+crusted with tartar, and worn almost to the very stumps. It measured
+nineteen feet.
+
+But during this digression my friends Pat and Willie have been waiting
+on the banks of the 'Teljuga.' I reached their tents late at night,
+found them both in high spirits after a good day's execution among the
+ducks and teal, and preparations being made for catching an alligator
+next day. Up early in the morning, we beat some grass close by the
+stream, and roused out an enormous boar that gave us a three mile spin
+and a good fight, after Pat had given him first spear. After breakfast
+we got our tackle ready.
+
+This was a large iron hook with a strong shank, to which was attached a
+stout iron ring. To this ring a long thick rope was fastened, and I
+noticed for several yards the strands were all loose and detached, and
+only knotted at intervals. I asked Pat the reason of this curious
+arrangement, and was told that if we were lucky enough to secure a
+_mugger_, the loose strands would entangle themselves amongst his
+formidable teeth, whereas were the rope in one strand only he might
+bite it through; the knottings at intervals were to give greater
+strength to the line. We now got our bait ready. On this occasion it
+was a live tame duck. Passing the bend of the hook round its neck, and
+the shank under its right wing, we tied the hook in this position with
+thread. We then made a small raft of the soft pith of the
+plantain-tree, tied the duck to the raft and committed it to the
+stream. Holding the rope as clear of the water as we could, the poor
+quacking duck floated slowly down the muddy current, making an
+occasional vain effort to get free. We saw at a distance an ugly snout
+rise to the surface for an instant and then noiselessly disappear.
+
+'There's one!' says Pat in a whisper.
+
+'Be sure and not strike too soon,' says Willie.
+
+'Look out there, you lazy rascals!' This in Hindostanee to the grooms
+and servants who were with us.
+
+Again the black mass rises to the surface, but this time nearer to the
+fated duck. As if aware of its peril it now struggles and quacks most
+vociferously. Nearer and nearer each time the black snout rises, and
+then each time silently disappears beneath the turgid muddy stream. Now
+it appears again; this time there are two, and there is another at a
+distance attracted by the quacking of the duck. We on the bank cower
+down and go as noiselessly as we can. Sometimes the rope dips on the
+water, and the huge snout and staring eyes immediately disappear. At
+length it rises within a few yards of the duck; then there is a mighty
+rush, two huge jaws open and shut with a snap like factory shears, and
+amid a whirl of foam and water and surging mud the poor duck and the
+hideous reptile disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense
+volumes of mud that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the
+tragedy that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim
+to and fro still further disturbing the muddy current.
+
+'Give him lots of time to swallow,' yells Pat, now fairly mad with
+excitement.
+
+The grooms and grass-cutters howl and dance. Willie and I dig each
+other in the ribs, and all generally act in an excited and insane way.
+
+Pat now puts the rope over his shoulder, we all take hold, and with a
+'one, two, three!' we make a simultaneous rush from the bank, and as
+the rope suddenly tightens with a pull and strain that nearly jerks us
+all on our backs, we feel that we have hooked the monster, and our
+excitement reaches its culminating point.
+
+What a commotion now in the black depths of the muddy stream! The
+water, lashed by his powerful tail, surges and dashes in eddying
+whirls. He rises and darts backwards and forwards, snapping his
+horrible jaws, moving his head from side to side, his eyes glaring with
+fury. We hold stoutly on to the rope, although our wrists are strained
+and our arms ache. At length he begins to feel our steady pull, and
+inch by inch, struggling demoniacally, he nears the bank. When once he
+reaches it, however, the united efforts of twice our number would fail
+to bring him farther. Bleeding and foaming at the mouth, his horrid
+teeth glistening amid the frothy, blood-flecked foam, he plants his
+strong curved fore-legs against the shelving bank, and tugs and strains
+at the rope with devilish force and fury. It is no use--the rope has
+been tested, and answers bravely to the strain; and now with a long
+boar spear, Pat cautiously descends the bank, and gives him a deadly
+thrust under the fore arm. With a last fiendish glare of hate and
+defiance, he springs forward; we haul in the rope, Pat nimbly jumps
+back, and a pistol shot through the eye settles the monster for ever.
+This was the first alligator I ever saw hooked; he measured sixteen and
+a half feet exactly, but words can give no idea of half the excitement
+that attended the capture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Native superstitions.--Charming a bewitched woman.--Exorcising ghosts
+from a field.--Witchcraft.--The witchfinder or 'Ojah.'--Influence of
+fear.--Snake bites.--How to cure them.--How to discover a thief.--Ghosts
+and their habits.--The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.--Cruelty to
+animals by natives.
+
+The natives as a rule, and especially the lower classes, are
+excessively superstitious. They are afraid to go out after nightfall,
+believing that then the spirits of the dead walk abroad. It is almost
+impossible to get a coolie, or even a fairly intelligent servant, to go
+a message at night, unless you give him another man for company.
+
+A belief in witches is quite prevalent, and there is scarcely a village
+in Behar that does not contain some withered old crone, reputed and
+firmly believed to be a witch. Others, either young or old are believed
+to have the evil eye; and, as in Scotland some centuries ago, there are
+also witch-finders and sorcerers, who will sell charms, cast
+nativities, give divinations, or ward off the evil efforts of wizards
+and witches by powerful spells. When a wealthy man has a child born,
+the Brahmins cast the nativity of the infant on some auspicious day.
+They fix on the name, and settle the date for the baptismal ceremony.
+
+I remember a man coming to me on one occasion from the village of
+Kuppoorpuckree. He rushed up to where I was sitting in the verandah,
+threw himself at my feet, with tears streaming down his cheeks, and
+amid loud cries for pity and help, told me that his wife had just been
+bewitched. Getting him somewhat soothed and pacified, I learned that a
+reputed witch lived next door to his house; that she and the man's wife
+had quarrelled in the morning about some capsicums which the witch was
+trying to steal from his garden; that in the evening, as his wife was
+washing herself inside the _angana_, or little courtyard appertaining
+to his house, she was seized with cramps and shivering fits, and was
+now in a raging fever; that the witch had been also bathing at the
+time, and that the water from her body had splashed over this man's
+fence, and part of it had come in contact with his wife's body--hence
+undoubtedly this strange possession. He wished me to send peons at
+once, and have the witch seized, beaten, and expelled from the village.
+It would have been no use my trying to persuade him that no witchcraft
+existed. So I gave him a good dose of quinine for his wife, which she
+was to take as soon as the fit subsided. Next I got my old _moonshee_,
+or native writer, to write some Persian characters on a piece of paper;
+I then gave him this paper, muttering a bit of English rhyme at the
+time, and telling him this was a powerful spell. I told him to take
+three hairs from his wife's head, and a paring from her thumb and big
+toe nails, and at the rising of the moon to burn them outside the walls
+of his hut. The poor fellow took the quinine and the paper with the
+deepest reverence, made me a most lowly _salaam_ or obeisance, and
+departed with a light heart. He carried out my instructions to the
+letter, the quinine acted like a charm on the feverish woman, and I
+found myself quite a famous witch-doctor.
+
+There was a nice flat little field close to the water at Parewah, in
+which I thought I could get a good crop of oats during the cold
+weather. I sent for the 'dangur' mates, and asked them to have it dug
+up next day. They hummed and hawed and hesitated, as I thought, in
+rather a strange manner, but departed. In the evening back they came,
+to tell me that the dangurs would _not_ dig up the field.
+
+'Why?' I asked.
+
+'Well you see, Sahib,' said old Teerbouan, who was the patriarch and
+chief spokesman of the village, 'this field has been used for years as
+a burning ghaut' (i.e. a place where the bodies of dead Hindoos were
+buried).
+
+'Well?' said I.
+
+'Well, Sahib, my men say that if they disturb this land, the "Bhoots"
+(ghosts) of all those who have been burned there, will haunt the
+village at night, and they hope you will not persist in asking them to
+dig up the land.'
+
+'Very well, bring down the men with their digging-hoes, and I will
+see.'
+
+Accordingly, next morning, I went down on my pony, found the dangurs
+all assembled, but no digging going on. I called them together, told
+them that it was a very reasonable fear they had, but that I would cast
+such a spell on the land as would settle the ghosts of the departed for
+ever. I then got a branch of a _bael_[1] tree that grew close by,
+dipped it in the stream, and walking backwards round the ground, waved
+the dripping branch round my head, repeating at the same time the first
+gibberish that came into my recollection. My incantation or spell was
+as follows, an old Scotch rhyme I had often repeated when a child at
+school--
+
+  'Eenerty, feenerty, fickerty, feg,
+  Ell, dell, domun's egg;
+  Irky, birky, story, rock,
+  An, tan, toose, Jock;
+  Black fish! white troot!
+  "Gibbie Gaw, ye're oot."'
+
+It had the desired effect. No sooner was my charm uttered, than, after
+a few encouraging words to the men, telling them that there was now no
+fear, that my charm was powerful enough to lay all the spirits in the
+country, and that I would take all the responsibility, they set to work
+with a will, and had the whole field dug up by the evening.
+
+I have seen many such cases. A blight attacks the melon or cucumber
+beds; a fierce wind rises during the night, and shakes half the mangoes
+off the trees; the youngest child is attacked with teething
+convulsions; the plough-bullock is accidentally lamed, or the favourite
+cow refuses to give milk. In every case it is some 'Dyne,' or witch,
+that has been at work with her damnable spells and charms. I remember a
+case in which a poor little child had bad convulsions. The 'Ojah,' or
+witch-finder, in this case a fat, greasy, oleaginous knave, was sent
+for. Full of importance and blowing like a porpoise, he came and caused
+the child to be brought to him, under a tree near the village. I was
+passing at the time, and stopped out of curiosity. He spread a tattered
+cloth in front of him, and muttered some unintelligible gibberish,
+unceasingly making strange passes with his arms. He put down a number
+of articles on his cloth--which was villainously tattered and
+greasy--an unripe plantain, a handful of rice, of parched peas, a thigh
+bone, two wooden cups, some balls, &c., &c.; all of which he kept
+constantly lifting and moving about, keeping up the passes and
+muttering all the time.
+
+The child was a sickly-looking, pining sort of creature, rocking about
+in evident pain, and moaning and fretting just as sick children do.
+Gradually its attention got fixed on the strange antics going on. The
+Ojah kept muttering away, quicker and quicker, constantly shifting the
+bone and cups and other articles on the cloth. His body was suffused
+with perspiration, but in about half an hour the child had gone off to
+sleep, and attended by some dozen old women, and the anxious father,
+was borne off in triumph to the house.
+
+Another time one of Mr. D.'s female servants got bitten by a scorpion.
+The poor woman was in great agony, with her arm swelled up, when an
+Ojah was called in. Setting her before him, he began his incantations
+in the usual manner, but made frequent passes over her body, and over
+the bitten place. A gentle perspiration began to break out on her skin,
+and in a very short time the Ojah had thrown her into a deep mesmeric
+sleep. After about an hour she awoke perfectly free from pain. In this
+case no doubt the Ojah was a mesmerist.
+
+The influence of fear on the ordinary native is most wonderful. I have
+known dozens of instances in which natives have been brought home at
+night for treatment in cases of snake-bite. They have arrived at the
+factory in a complete state of coma, with closed eyes, the pupils
+turned back in the head, the whole body rigid and cold, the lips pale
+white, and the tongue firmly locked between the teeth. I do not believe
+in recovery from a really poisonous bite, where the venom has been
+truly injected. I invariably asked first how long it was since the
+infliction of the bite; I would then examine the marks, and as a rule
+would find them very slight. When the patient had been brought some
+distance, I knew at once that it was a case of pure fright. The natives
+wrap themselves up in their cloths or blankets at night, and lie down
+on the floors of their huts. Turning about, or getting up for water or
+tobacco, or perhaps to put fuel on the fire, they unluckily tread on a
+snake, or during sleep they roll over on one. The snake gives them a
+nip, and scuttles off. They have not seen what sort of snake it is, but
+their imagination conjures up the very worst. After the first outcry,
+when the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly possessed by
+the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his fears work the
+effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye gets dull, his
+pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb, and unless forcibly
+roused by the bystanders he will actually succumb to pure fright, not
+to the snake-bite at all. My chief care when a case of this sort was
+brought me, was to assume a cheery demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears
+of the relatives, and tell them he would be all right in a few hours if
+they attended to my directions. This not uncommonly worked by
+sympathetic influence on the patient himself. I believe, so long as all
+round him thought he was going to die, and expected no other result,
+the same effect was produced on his own mind. As soon as hope sprang up
+in the breasts of all around him, his spirit also caught the contagion.
+As a rule, he would now make an effort to articulate. I would then
+administer a good dose of sal volatile, brandy, eau-de-luce, or other
+strong stimulant, cut into the supposed bite, and apply strong nitric
+acid to the wound. This generally made him wince, and I would hail it
+as a token of certain recovery. By this time some confidence would
+return, and the supposed dying man would soon walk back sound and whole
+among his companions after profuse expressions of gratitude to his
+preserver.
+
+I have treated dozens of cases in this way successfully, and only seen
+two deaths. One was a young woman, my chowkeydar's daughter; the other
+was an old man, who was already dead when they lifted him out of the
+basket in which they had slung him. I do not wish to be misunderstood.
+I believe that in all these cases of recovery it was pure fright
+working on the imagination, and not snake-bite at all. My opinion is
+shared by most planters, that there is no cure yet known for a cobra
+bite, or for that of any other poisonous snake, where the poison has
+once been fairly injected and allowed to mix with the blood[2].
+
+There is another curious instance of the effects of fear on the native
+mind in the common method taken by an Ojah or Brahmin to discover a
+suspected thief. When a theft occurs, the Ojah is sent for, and the
+suspected parties are brought together. After various _muntras_, i.e.
+charms or incantations, have been muttered, the Ojah, who has meanwhile
+narrowly scrutinized each countenance, gives each of the suspected
+individuals a small quantity of dry rice to chew. If the thief be
+present, his superstitious fears are at work, and his conscience
+accuses him. He sees some terrible retribution for him in all these
+_muntras_, and his heart becomes like water within him, his tongue gets
+dry, his salivary glands refuse to act; the innocent munch away at
+their rice contentedly, but the guilty wretch feels as if he had ashes
+in his mouth. At a given signal all spit out their rice, and he whose
+rice comes out, chewed indeed, but dry as summer dust, is adjudged the
+thief. This ordeal is called _chowl chipao_, and is rarely
+unsuccessful. I have known several cases in my own experience in which
+a thief has been thus discovered.
+
+The _bhoots_, or ghosts, are popularly supposed to have favourite
+haunts, generally in some specially selected tree; the _neem_ tree is
+supposed to be the most patronised. The most intelligent natives share
+this belief with the poorest and most ignorant; they fancy the ghosts
+throw stones at them, cast evil influences over them, lure them into
+quicksands, and play other devilish tricks and cantrips. Some roads are
+quite shunned and deserted at night, for no other reason than that a
+ghost is supposed to haunt the place. The most tempting bribe would not
+make a native walk alone over that road after sunset.
+
+Besides the witchfinder, another important village functionary who
+relies much on muntras and charms, is the _Huddick_, or cow doctor. He
+is the only veterinary surgeon of the native when his cow or bullock
+dislocates or breaks a limb, or falls ill. The Huddick passes his hands
+over the affected part, and mutters his _muntras_, which have most
+probably descended to him from his father. Usually knowing a little of
+the anatomical structure of the animal, he may be able to reduce a
+dislocation, or roughly to set a fracture; but if the ailment be
+internal, a draught of mustard oil, or some pounded spices and
+turmeric, or neem leaves administered along with the _muntra_, are
+supposed to be all that human skill and science can do.
+
+The natives are cruel to animals. Half-starved bullocks are shamefully
+overworked. When blows fail to make the ill-starred brute move, they
+give a twist and wrench to the tail, which must cause the animal
+exquisite torture, and unless the hapless beast be utterly exhausted,
+this generally induces it to make a further effort. Ploughmen very
+often deliberately make a raw open sore, one on each rump of the
+plough-bullock. They goad the poor wretch on this raw sore with a
+sharp-pointed stick when he lags, or when they think he needs stirring
+up. Ponies, too, are always worked far too young; and their miserable
+legs get frightfully twisted and bent. The petty shopkeepers, sellers
+of brass pots, grain, spices, and other bazaar wares, who attend the
+various bazaars, or weekly and bi-weekly markets, transport their goods
+by means of these ponies.
+
+The packs of merchandise are slung on rough pack-saddles, made of
+coarse sacking. Shambling along with knees bent together, sores on
+every joint, and frequently an eye knocked out, the poor pony's back
+gets cruelly galled; when the bazaar is reached, he is hobbled as
+tightly as possible, the coarse ropes cutting into the flesh, and he is
+then turned adrift to contemplate starvation on the burnt-up grass.
+Great open sores form on the back, on which a plaster of moist clay, or
+cowdung and pounded leaves, is roughly put. The wretched creature gets
+worn to a skeleton. A little common care and cleanliness would put him
+right, with a little kindly consideration from his brutal master, but
+what does the _Kulwar_ or _Bunneah_ care? he is too lazy.
+
+This unfeeling cruelty and callous indifference to the sufferings of
+the lower animals is a crying evil, and every magistrate, European, and
+educated native, might do much to ease their burdens. Tremendous
+numbers of bullocks and ponies die from sheer neglect and ill treatment
+every year. It is now becoming so serious a trouble, that in many
+villages plough-bullocks are too few in number for the area of land
+under cultivation. The tillage suffers, the crops deteriorate, this
+reacts on prices, the ryot sinks lower and lower, and gets more into
+the grasp of the rapacious money-lender. In many villages I have seen
+whole tracts of land relapsed into _purtee_, or untilled waste, simply
+from want of bullocks to draw the plough. Severe epidemics, like foot
+and mouth disease and pleuro, occasionally sweep off great numbers;
+but, I repeat, that annually the lives of hundreds of valuable animals
+are sacrificed by sheer sloth, dirt, inattention, and brutal cruelty.
+
+In some parts of India, cattle poisoning for the sake of the hides is
+extensively practised. The _Chumars_, that is, the shoemakers,
+furriers, tanners, and workers in leather and skins generally,
+frequently combine together in places, and wilfully poison cattle and
+buffaloes. There is actually a section in the penal code taking
+cognisance of the crime. The Hindoo will not touch a dead carcase, so
+that when a bullock mysteriously sickens and dies, the _Chumars_ haul
+away the body, and appropriate the skin. Some luckless witch is blamed
+for the misfortune, when the rascally Chumars themselves are all the
+while the real culprits. The police, however, are pretty successful in
+detecting this crime, and it is not now of such frequent occurrence
+[3].
+
+Highly as the pious Hindoo venerates the sacred bull of Shira, his
+treatment of his mild patient beasts of burden is a foul blot on his
+character. Were you to shoot a cow, or were a Mussulman to wound a
+stray bullock which might have trespassed, and be trampling down his
+opium or his tobacco crop, and ruining his fields, the Hindoos would
+rise _en masse_ to revenge the insult offered to their religion. Yet
+they scruple not to goad their bullocks, beat them, half starve them,
+and let their gaping wounds fester and become corrupt. When the poor
+brute becomes old and unable to work, and his worn-out teeth unfit to
+graze, he is ruthlessly turned out to die in a ditch, and be torn to
+pieces by jackals, kites, and vultures. The higher classes and
+well-to-do farmers show much consideration for high-priced
+well-conditioned animals, but when they get old or unwell, and demand
+redoubled care and attention, they are too often neglected, till, from
+sheer want of ordinary care, they rot and die.
+
+
+[1] The _bael_ or wood-apple is a sacred wood with Hindoos. It is
+    enjoined in the Shastras that the bodies of the dead should be
+    consumed in a fire fed by logs of bael-tree; but where it is not
+    procurable in sufficient quantity, the natives compound with their
+    consciences by lighting the funeral pyre with a branch from the
+    bael-tree. It is a fine yellow-coloured, pretty durable wood, and
+    makes excellent furniture. A very fine sherbet can be made from
+    the fruit, which acts as an excellent corrective and stomachic.
+
+[2] Deaths from actual snake bite are sadly numerous; but it appears
+    from returns furnished to the Indian Government that Europeans
+    enjoy a very happy exemption. During the last forty years it would
+    seem that only two Europeans have been killed by snake bite, at
+    least only two well substantiated cases. The poorer classes are
+    the most frequent victims. Their universal habit of walking about
+    unshod, and sleeping on the ground, penetrating into the grasses
+    or jungles in pursuit of their daily avocations, no doubt conduces
+    much to the frequency of such accidents. A good plan to keep
+    snakes out of the bungalow is to leave a space all round the
+    rooms, of about four inches, between the walls and the edge of the
+    mats. Have this washed over about once a week with a strong
+    solution of carbolic acid and water. The smell may be unpleasant
+    for a short time, but it proves equally so to the snakes; and I
+    have proved by experience that it keeps them out of the rooms.
+    Mats should also be all firmly fastened down to the floor with
+    bamboo battens, and furniture should be often moved, and kept
+    raised a little from the ground, and the space below carefully
+    swept every day. At night a light should always be kept burning in
+    occupied bedrooms, and on no account should one get out of bed in
+    the dark, or walk about the rooms at night without slippers or
+    shoes.
+
+[3] Somewhat analogous to this is the custom which used to be a
+    common one in some parts of Behar. _Koombars_ and _Grannés_, that
+    is, tile-makers and thatchers, when trade was dull or rain
+    impending, would scatter peas and grain in the interstices of the
+    tiles on the houses of the well-to-do. The pigeons and crows, in
+    their efforts to get at the peas, would loosen and perhaps
+    overturn a few of the tiles. The grannés would be sent for to
+    replace these, would condemn the whole roof as leaky, and the
+    tiles as old and unfit for use, and would provide a job for
+    himself and the tile-maker, the nefarious profits of which they
+    would share together.
+
+    Cultivators of thatching-grass have been known deliberately and
+    wantonly to set fire to villages simply to raise the price of
+    thatch and bamboo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Our annual race meet.--The arrivals.--The camps.--The 'ordinary.'--The
+course.--'They're off.'--The race.--The steeple-chase.--Incidents of
+the meet.--The ball.
+
+Our annual Race Meet is the one great occasion of the year when all the
+dwellers in the district meet. Our races in Chumparun generally took
+place some time about Christmas. Long before the date fixed on,
+arrangements would be made for the exercise of hearty hospitality. The
+residents in the 'station' ask as many guests as will fill their
+houses, and their 'compounds' are crowded with tents, each holding a
+number of visitors, generally bachelors. The principal managers of the
+factories in the district, with their assistants, form a mess for the
+racing week, and, not unfrequently, one or two ladies lend their
+refining presence to the several camps. Friends from other districts,
+from up country, from Calcutta, gather together; and as the weather is
+bracing and cool, and every one determined to enjoy himself, the meet
+is one of the pleasantest of reunions. There are always several races
+specially got up for assistants' horses, and long before, the
+youngsters are up in the early morning, giving their favourite nag a
+spin across the zeraats, or seeing the groom lead him out swathed in
+clothing and bandages, to get him into training for the Assistants'
+race.
+
+As the day draws near, great cases of tinned meats, hampers of beer and
+wine, and goodly supplies of all sorts are sent into the station to the
+various camps. Tents of snowy white canvas begin to peep out at you
+from among the trees. Great oblong booths of blue indigo sheeting show
+where the temporary stables for the horses are being erected; and at
+night the glittering of innumerable camp-fires betokens the presence of
+a whole army of grooms, grass-cutters, peons, watchmen, and other
+servants cooking their evening meal of rice, and discussing the chances
+of the horses of their respective masters in the approaching races. On
+the day before the first racing, the planters are up early, and in
+buggy, dogcart, or on horseback, singly, and by twos and threes, from
+all sides of the district, they find their way to the station. The
+Planter's Club is the general rendezvous. The first comers, having
+found out their waiting servants, and consigned the smoking steeds to
+their care, seat themselves in the verandah, and eagerly watch every
+fresh arrival.
+
+Up comes a buggy. 'Hullo, who's this?'
+
+'Oh, it's "Giblets!" How do you do, "Giblets," old man?'
+
+Down jumps 'Giblets,' and a general handshaking ensues.
+
+'Here comes "Boach" and the "Moonshee,"' yells out an observant
+youngster from the back verandah.
+
+The venerable buggy of the esteemed 'Boach' approaches, and another
+jubilation takes place; the handshaking being so vigorous that the
+'Moonshee's' spectacles nearly come to grief. Now the arrivals ride and
+drive up fast and furious.
+
+'Hullo, "Anthony!"'
+
+'Aha, "Charley," how d'ye do?'
+
+'By Jove, "Ferdie," where have you turned up from?'
+
+'Has the "Skipper" arrived?'
+
+'Have any of you seen "Jamie?"'
+
+'Where's big "Mars'" tents?'
+
+'Have any of ye seen my "Bearer?"'
+
+'Has the "Bump" come in?' and so on.
+
+Such a scene of bustle and excitement. Friends meet that have not seen
+each other for a twelvemonth. Queries are exchanged as to absent
+friends. The chances of the meeting are discussed. Perhaps a passing
+allusion is made to some dear one who has left our ranks since last
+meet. All sorts of topics are started, and up till and during breakfast
+there is a regular medley of tongues, a confused clatter of voices,
+dishes, and glasses, a pervading atmosphere of dense curling volumes of
+tobacco smoke.
+
+To a stranger the names sound uncouth and meaningless, the fact being,
+that we all go by nicknames[1].
+
+'Giblets,' 'Diamond Digger,' 'Mangelwurzel,' 'Goggle-eyed Plover,'
+'Gossein' or holy man, 'Blind Bartimeus,' 'Old Boots,' 'Polly,'
+'Bottle-nosed Whale,' 'Fin MacCoul,' 'Daddy,' 'The Exquisite,' 'The
+Mosquito,' 'Wee Bob,' and 'Napoleon,' are only a very few specimens of
+this strange nomenclature. These soubriquets quite usurp our baptismal
+appellations, and I have often been called 'Maori,' by people who did
+not actually know my real name.
+
+By the evening, all, barring the very late arrivals, have found out
+their various camps. There is a merry dinner, then each sahib, well
+muffled in ulster, plaid, or great coat, hies him to the club, where
+the 'ordinary' is to be held. The nights are now cold and foggy, and a
+tremendous dew falls. At the 'ordinary,' fresh greetings between those
+who now meet for the first time after long separation. The entries and
+bets are made for the morrow's races, although not much betting takes
+place as a rule; but the lotteries on the different races are rapidly
+filled, the dice circulate cheerily, and amid laughing, joking,
+smoking, noise, and excitement, there is a good deal of mild
+speculation. The 'horsey' ones visit the stables for the last time; and
+each retires to his camp bed to dream of the morrow.
+
+Very early, the respective _bearers_ rouse the sleepy _sahibs_. Table
+servants rush hurriedly about the mess tent, bearing huge dishes of
+tempting viands. Grooms, and _grasscuts_ are busy leading the horses
+off to the course. The cold raw fog of the morning fills every tent,
+and dim grey figures of cowering natives, wrapped up over the eyes in
+blankets, with moist blue noses and chattering teeth, are barely
+discernible in the thick mist.
+
+The racecourse is two miles from the club, on the other side of the
+lake, in the middle of a grassy plain, with a neat masonry structure at
+the further side, which serves as a grand stand. Already buggies,
+dogcarts in single harness and tandem, barouches, and waggonettes are
+merrily rolling through the thick mist, past the frowning jail, and
+round the corner of the lake. Natives in gaudy coloured shawls, and
+blankets, are pouring on to the racecourse by hundreds.
+
+Bullock carts, within which are black-eyed, bold beauties, profusely
+burdened with silver ornaments, are drawn up in lines. _Ekkas_--small
+jingling vehicles with a dome-shaped canopy and curtains at the
+sides--drawn by gaily caparisoned ponies, and containing fat, portly
+Baboos, jingle and rattle over the ruts on the side roads.
+
+Sweetmeat sellers, with trays of horrible looking filth, made seemingly
+of insects, clarified butter, and sugar, dodge through the crowd
+dispensing their abominable looking but seemingly much relished wares.
+Tall policemen, with blue jackets, red puggries, yellow belts, and
+white trousers, stalk up and down with conscious dignity.
+
+A madcap young assistant on his pony comes tearing along across
+country. The weighing for the first race is going on; horses are being
+saddled, some vicious brute occasionally lashing out, and scattering
+the crowd behind him. The ladies are seated round the terraced grand
+stand; long strings of horses are being led round and round in a
+circle, by the _syces_; vehicles of every description are lying round
+the building.
+
+Suddenly a bugle sounds; the judge enters his box; the ever popular old
+'Bikram,' who officiates as starter, ambles off on his white cob, and
+after him go half-a-dozen handsome young fellows, their silks rustling
+and flashing through the fast rising mist.
+
+A hundred field-glasses scan the start; all is silent for a moment.
+
+'They're off!' shout a dozen lungs.
+
+'False start!' echo a dozen more.
+
+The gay colours of the riders flicker confusedly in a jumble. One horse
+careers madly along for half the distance, is with difficulty pulled
+up, and is then walked slowly back.
+
+The others left at the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At
+length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!'
+shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!'
+breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the six horses,
+all together, and at a rattling pace, tear up the hill, over the sand
+at the south corner, and up, till at the quarter mile post 'a blanket
+could cover the lot.'
+
+Two or three tails are now showing signals of distress; heels and whips
+are going. Two horses have shot ahead, a bay and a black. 'Jamie' on
+the bay, 'Paddy' on the black.
+
+Still as marble sit those splendid riders, the horses are neck and
+neck; now the bay by a nose, now again the black. The distance post is
+passed with a rush like a whirlwind.
+
+'A dead heat, by Jove!'
+
+'Paddy wins!' 'Jamie has it!' 'Hooray, Pat!' 'Go it, Jamie!' 'Well
+ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent
+racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses
+through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a
+nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up
+a lively air, and the saddling for the next race goes on.
+
+The other races are much the same; there are lots of entries: the
+horses are in splendid condition, and the riding is superb. What is
+better, everything is emphatically 'on the square.' No _pulling_ and
+_roping_ here, no false entries, no dodging of any kind. Fine, gallant,
+English gentlemen meet each other in fair and honest emulation, and
+enjoy the favourite national sport in perfection. The 'Waler' race, for
+imported Australians, brings out fine, tall, strong-boned, clean-limbed
+horses, looking blood all over. The country breds, with slender limbs,
+small heads, and glossy coats, look dainty and delicate as antelopes.
+The lovely, compact Arabs, the pretty-looking ponies, and the
+thick-necked, coarse-looking Cabools, all have their respective trials,
+and then comes the great event--the race of the day--the Steeplechase.
+
+The course is marked out behind the grand stand, following a wide
+circle outside the flat course, which it enters at the quarter-mile
+post, so that the finish is on the flat before the grand stand. The
+fences, ditches, and water leap, are all artificial, but they are
+regular _howlers_, and no make-believes.
+
+Seven horses are despatched to a straggling start, and all negotiate
+the first bank safely. At the next fence a regular _snorter_ of a 'post
+and rail'--topped with brushwood--two horses swerve, one rider being
+deposited on his racing seat upon mother earth, while the other sails
+away across country in a line for home, and is next heard of at the
+stables. The remaining five, three 'walers' and two country-breds, race
+together to the water jump, where one waler deposits his rider, and
+races home by himself, one country-bred refuses, and is henceforth out
+of the race, and the other three, taking the leap in beautiful style,
+put on racing pace to the next bank, and are in the air together. A
+lovely sight! The country is now stiff, and the stride of the waler
+tells. He is leading the country-breds a 'whacker,' but he stumbles and
+falls at the last fence but one from home. His gallant rider, the
+undaunted 'Roley,' remounts just as the two country-breds pass him like
+a flash of light. 'Nothing venture, nothing win,' however, so in go the
+spurs, and off darts the waler like an arrow in pursuit. He is gaining
+fast, and tops the last hurdle leading to the straight just as the
+hoofs of the other two reach the ground.
+
+It is now a matter of pace and good riding. It will be a close finish;
+the waler is first to feel the whip; there is a roar from the crowd; he
+is actually leading; whips and spurs are hard at work now; it is a mad,
+headlong rush; every muscle is strained, and the utmost effort made;
+the poor horses are doing their very best; amid a thunder of hoofs,
+clouds of dust, hats in air, waving of handkerchiefs from the grand
+stand, and a truly British cheer from the paddock, the 'waler' shoots
+in half a length ahead; and so end the morning's races.
+
+Back to camp now, to bathe and breakfast. A long line of dust marks the
+track from the course, for the sun is now high in the heavens, the lake
+is rippling in placid beauty under a gentle breeze, and the long lines
+of natives, as well as vehicles of all sorts, form a quaint but
+picturesque sight. After breakfast calls are made upon all the camps
+and bungalows round the station. Croquet, badminton, and other games go
+on until dinner-time. I could linger lovingly over a camp dinner; the
+rare dishes, the sparkling conversation, the racy anecdote, and the
+general jollity and brotherly feeling; but we must all dress for the
+ball, and so about 9 P.M. the buggies are again in requisition for the
+ball room--the fine, large, central apartment in the Planters' club.
+
+The walls are festooned with flowers, gay curtains, flags, and cloths.
+The floor is shining like silver, and as polished as a mirror. The band
+strikes up the Blue Danube waltz, and amid the usual bustle,
+flirtation, scandal, whispering, glancing, dancing, tripping, sipping,
+and hand-squeezing, the ball goes gaily on till the stewards announce
+supper. At this--to the wall-flowers--welcome announcement, we adjourn
+from the heated ball-room to the cool arbour-like supper tent, where
+every delicacy that can charm the eye or tempt the appetite is spread
+out.
+
+Next morning early we are out with the hounds, and enjoy a rattling
+burst round by the racecourse, where the horses are at exercise.
+Perchance we have heard of a boar in the sugar-cane, and away we go
+with beaters to rouse the grisly monster from his lair. In the
+afternoon there is hockey on horseback, or volunteer drill, with our
+gallant adjutant putting us through our evolutions. In the evening
+there is the usual drive, dinner, music, and the ordinary, and so the
+meet goes on. A constant succession of gaieties keeps everyone alive,
+till the time arrives for a return to our respective factories, and
+another year's hard work.
+
+
+[1] In such a limited society every peculiarity is noted; all our
+    antecedents are known; personal predilections and little foibles
+    of character are marked; eccentricities are watched, and no one,
+    let him be as uninteresting as a miller's pig, is allowed to
+    escape observation and remark. Some little peculiarity is hit
+    upon, and a strange but often very happily expressive nickname
+    stamps one's individuality and photographs him with a word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Pig-sticking in India.--Varieties of boar.--Their size and height.
+--Ingenious mode of capture by the natives,--The 'Batan' or buffalo
+herd.--Pigs charging.--Their courage and ferocity.--Destruction of
+game.--A close season for game.
+
+The sport _par excellence_ of India is pig-sticking. Call it
+hog-hunting if you will, I prefer the honest old-fashioned name. With a
+good horse under one, a fair country, with not too many pitfalls, and
+'lots of pig,' this sport becomes the most exciting that can be
+practised. Some prefer tiger shooting from elephants, others like to
+stalk the lordly ibex on the steep Himalayan slopes, but anyone who has
+ever enjoyed a rattle after a pig over a good country, will recall the
+fierce, delight, the eager thrill, the wild, mad excitement, that
+flushed his whole frame, as he met the infuriate charge of a good
+thirty-inch fighting boar, and drove his trusty spear well home, laying
+low the gallant grey tusker, the indomitable, unconquerable grisly
+boar. The subject is well worn; and though the theme is a noble one,
+there are but few I fancy who have not read the record of some gallant
+fight, where the highest skill, the finest riding, the most undaunted
+pluck, and the cool, keen, daring of a practised hand are not _always_
+successful against the headlong rush and furious charge of a Bengal
+boar at bay.
+
+A record of planter life in India, however, such as this aims at being,
+would be incomplete without some reference to the gallant tusker, and
+so at the risk of tiring my readers, I must try to describe a
+pig-sticking party.
+
+There are two distinct kinds of boar in India, the black and the grey.
+Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer and more
+pugnacious. He is a vicious and implacable foe when roused, and always
+shews better fight than the black variety. The great difference,
+however, is in the shape of the skull; that of the black fellow being
+high over the frontal bone, and not very long in proportion to height,
+while the skull of the grey boar is never very high, but is long, and
+receding in proportion to height.
+
+The black boar grows to an enormous size, and the grey ones are,
+generally speaking, smaller made animals than the black. The young of
+the two also differ in at least one important particular; those of the
+grey pig are always born striped, but the young of the black variety
+are born of that colour, and are not striped but a uniform black colour
+throughout. The two kinds of pig sometimes interbreed, but crosses are
+not common; and, from the colour, size, shape of the head, and general
+behaviour, one can easily tell at a glance what kind of pig gets up
+before his spear, whether it is the heavy, sluggish black boar, or the
+veritable fiery, vicious, fighting grey tusker.
+
+Many stories are told of their enormous size, and a 'forty-inch tusker'
+is the established standard for a Goliath among boars. The best
+fighting boars, however, range from twenty-eight to thirty-two inches
+in height, and I make bold to say that very few of the Present
+generation of sportsmen have ever seen a veritable wild boar over
+thirty-eight inches high.
+
+G.S., who has had perhaps as much jungle experience as any man of
+his age in India, a careful observer, and a finished sportsman,
+tells me that the biggest _boar_ he ever saw was only thirty-eight
+inches high; while the biggest _pig_ he ever killed was a barren
+sow, with three-inch tusks sticking out of her gums; she measured
+thirty-nine-and-a-half inches, and fought like a demon. I have shot
+pig--in heavy jungle where spearing was impracticable--over thirty-six
+inches high, but the biggest pig I ever stuck to my own spear was only
+twenty-eight inches, and I do not think any pig has been killed in
+Chumparun, within the last ten or a dozen years at any rate, over
+thirty-eight inches.
+
+In some parts of India, where pigs are numerous and the jungle dense,
+the natives adopt a very ingenious mode of hunting. I have frequently
+seen it practised by the cowherds on the Koosee _derahs_, i.e. the flat
+swampy jungles on the banks of the Koosee. When the annual floods have
+subsided, leaving behind a thick deposit of mud, wrack, and brushwood,
+the long thick grass soon shoots up to an amazing height, and vast
+herds of cattle and tame buffaloes come down to the jungles from the
+interior of the country, where natural pasture is scarce. They are
+attended by the owner and his assistants, all generally belonging to
+the _gualla_, or cowherd caste, although, of course, there are other
+castes employed. The owner of the herd gets leave to graze his cattle
+in the jungle, by paying a certain fixed sum per head. He fixes on a
+high dry ridge of land, where he runs up a few grass huts for himself
+and men, and there he erects lines of grass and bamboo screens, behind
+which his cattle take shelter at night from the cold south-east wind.
+There are also a few huts of exceedingly frail construction for himself
+and his people. This small colony, in the midst of the universal jungle
+covering the country for miles round, is called a _batan_.
+
+At earliest dawn the buffaloes are milked, and then with their
+attendant herdsmen they wend their way to the jungle, where they spend
+the day, and return again to the batan at night, when they are again
+milked. The milk is made into _ghee_, or clarified butter, and large
+quantities are sent down to the towns by country boats. When we want to
+get up a hunt, we generally send to the nearest _batan_ for _khubber_,
+i.e. news, information. The _Batanea_, or proprietor of the
+establishment, is well posted up. Every herdsman as he comes in at
+night tells what animals he has seen through the day, and thus at the
+_batan_ you hear where tiger, and pig, and deer are to be met with;
+where an unlucky cow has been killed; in what ravine is the thickest
+jungle; where the path is free from clay, or quicksand; what fords are
+safest; and, in short, you get complete information on every point
+connected with the jungle and its wild inhabitants.
+
+To these men the mysterious jungle reveals its most hidden secrets.
+Surrounded by his herd of buffaloes, the _gualla_ ventures into the
+darkest recesses and the most tangled thickets. They have strange wild
+calls by which they give each other notice of the approach of danger,
+and when two or three of them meet, each armed with his heavy,
+iron-shod or brass-bound _lathee_ or quarter staff, they will not budge
+an inch out of their way for buffalo or boar; nay, they have been known
+to face the terrible tiger himself, and fairly beat him away from the
+quivering carcase of some unlucky member of their herd. They have
+generally some favourite buffalo on whose broad back they perch
+themselves, as it browses through the jungle, and from this elevated
+seat they survey the rest of the herd, and note the incidents of jungle
+life. When they wish a little excitement, or a change from their milk
+and rice diet, there are hundreds of pigs around.
+
+They have a broad, sharp spear-head, to which is attached a stout cord,
+often made of twisted hide or hair. Into the socket of the spear is
+thrust a bamboo pole or shaft, tough, pliant, and flexible. The cord is
+wound round the spear and shaft, and the loose end is then fastened to
+the middle of the pole. Having thus prepared his weapon, the herdsman
+mounts his buffalo, and guides it slowly, warily, and cautiously to the
+haunts of the pig. These are, of course, quite accustomed to see the
+buffaloes grazing round them on all sides, and take no notice until the
+_gualla_ is within striking distance. When he has got close up to the
+pig he fancies, he throws his spear with all his force. The pig
+naturally bounds off, the shaft comes out of the socket, leaving the
+spearhead sticking in the wound. The rope uncoils of itself, but being
+firmly fastened to the bamboo, it brings up the pig at each bush, and
+tears and lacerates the wound, until either the spearhead comes out, or
+the wretched pig drops down dead from exhaustion and loss of blood. The
+_gualla_ follows upon his buffalo, and frequently finishes the pig with
+a few strokes of his _lathee_. In any case he gets his pork, and it
+certainly is an ingenious and bold way of procuring it.
+
+Wild pig are very destructive to crops. During the night they revel in
+the cultivated fields contiguous to the jungle, and they destroy more
+by rooting up than by actually eating. It is common for the ryot to dig
+a shallow pit, and ensconce himself inside with his matchlock beside
+him. His head being on a level with the ground, he can discern any
+animal that comes between him and the sky-line. When a pig comes in
+sight, he waits till he is within sure distance, and then puts either a
+bullet or a charge of slugs into him.
+
+The pig is perhaps the most stubborn and courageous animal in India.
+Even when pierced with several spears, and bleeding from numerous
+wounds, he preserves a sullen silence. He disdains to utter a cry of
+fear and pain, but maintains a bold front to the last, and dies with
+his face to the foe, defiant and unconquered. When hard pressed he
+scorns to continue his flight, but wheeling round, he makes a
+determined charge, very frequently to the utter discomfiture of his
+pursuer.
+
+I have seen many a fine horse fearfully cut by a charging pig, and a
+determined boar over and over again break through a line of elephants,
+and make good his escape. There is no animal in all the vast jungle
+that the elephant dreads more than a lusty boar. I have seen elephants
+that would stand the repeated charges of a wounded tiger, turn tail and
+take to ignominious flight before the onset of an angry boar.
+
+His thick short neck, ponderous body, and wedge-like head are admirably
+fitted for crashing through the thick jungle he inhabits, and when he
+has made up his mind to charge, very few animals can withstand his
+furious rush. Instances are quite common of his having made good his
+charge against a line of elephants, cutting and ripping more than one
+severely. He has been known to encounter successfully even the kingly
+tiger himself. Can it be wondered, then, that we consider him a 'foeman
+worthy of our steel'?
+
+To be a good pig-sticker is a recommendation that wins acceptance
+everywhere in India. In a district like Chumparun where nearly every
+planter was an ardent sportsman, a good rider, and spent nearly half
+his time on horseback, pig-sticking was a favourite pastime. Every
+factory had at least one bit of likely jungle close by, where a pig
+could always be found. When I first went to India we used to take out
+our pig-spear over the _zillah_ with us as a matter of course, as we
+never knew when we might hit on a boar.
+
+Things are very different now. Cultivation has much increased. Many of
+the old jungles have been reclaimed, and I fancy many more pigs are
+shot by natives than formerly. A gun can be had now for a few rupees,
+and every loafing 'ne'er do weel' in the village manages to procure
+one, and wages indiscriminate warfare on bird and beast. It is a
+growing evil, and threatens the total extinction of sport in some
+districts. I can remember when nearly every tank was good for a few
+brace of mallard, duck, or teal, where never a feather is now to be
+seen, save the ubiquitous paddy-bird. Jungles, where a pig was a
+certain find, only now contain a measly jackal, and not always that;
+and cover in which partridge, quail, and sometimes even florican were
+numerous, are now only tenanted by the great ground-owl, or a colony of
+field rats. I am far from wishing to limit sport to the European
+community. I would let every native that so wished sport his double
+barrels or handle his spear with the best of us, but he should follow
+and indulge in his sport with reason. The breeding seasons of all
+animals should be respected, and there should be no indiscriminate
+slaughter of male and female, young and old. Until all true sportsmen
+in India unite in this matter, the evil will increase, and bye-and-bye
+there will be no animals left to afford sport of any kind.
+
+There are cases where wild animals are so numerous and destructive
+that extraordinary measures have to be taken for protection from their
+ravages, but these are very rare. I remember having once to wage a war
+of extermination against a colony of pigs that had taken possession of
+some jungle lands near Maharjnugger, a village on the Koosee. I had a
+deal of indigo growing on cleared patches at intervals in the jungles,
+and there the pigs would root and revel in spite of watchmen, till at
+last I was forced in sheer self-defence to begin a crusade against
+them. We got a line of elephants, and two or three friends came to
+assist, and in one day, and round one village only, we shot sixty-three
+full grown pigs. The villagers must have killed and carried away nearly
+double that number of young and wounded. That was a very extreme case,
+and in a pure jungle country; but in settled districts like Tirhoot
+and Chumparun the weaker sex should always be spared, and a close
+season for winged game should be insisted on. To the credit of the
+planters be it said, that this necessity is quite recognised; but
+every pot-bellied native who can beg, borrow, or steal a gun, or in
+any way procure one, is constantly on the look out for a pot shot at
+some unlucky hen-partridge or quail. A whole village will turn out to
+compass the destruction of some wretched sow that may have shewn her
+bristles outside the jungle in the daytime.
+
+In districts where cultivated land is scarce and population scattered,
+it is almost impossible to enjoy pig-sticking. The breaks of open land
+between the jungles are too small and narrow to afford galloping space,
+and though you turn the pig out of one patch of jungle, he immediately
+finds safe shelter in the next. On the banks of some of the large
+rivers, however, such as the Gunduch and the Bagmuttee, there are vast
+stretches of undulating sand, crossed at intervals by narrow creeks,
+and spotted by patches of close, thick jungle. Here the grey tusker
+takes up his abode with his harem. When once you turn him out from his
+lair, there is grand hunting room before he can reach the distant patch
+of jungle to which he directs his flight. In some parts the _jowah_ (a
+plant not unlike broom in appearance) is so thick, that even the
+elephants can scarcely force their way through, but as a rule the
+beating is pretty easy, and one is almost sure of a find.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Kuderent jungle.--Charged by a pig.--The biter bit.--'Mac' after the
+big boar.--The horse for pig-sticking.--The line of beaters.--The boar
+breaks.--'Away! Away!'--First spear.--Pig-sticking at Peeprah.--The
+old 'lungra' or cripple.--A boar at bay.--Hurrah for pig-sticking!
+
+There was a very fine pig jungle at a place called Kuderent, belonging
+to a wealthy landowner who went by the name of the Mudhobunny Baboo. We
+occasionally had a pig-sticking meet here, and as the jungle was
+strictly preserved, we were never disappointed in finding plenty who
+gave us glorious sport. The jungles consisted of great grass plains,
+with thickly wooded patches of dense tree jungle, intersected here and
+there by deep ravines, with stagnant pools of water at intervals; the
+steep sides all thickly clothed with thorny clusters of the wild
+dog-rose. It was a difficult country to beat, and we had always to
+supplement the usual gang of beaters with as many elephants as we could
+collect. In the centre of the jungle was an eminence of considerable
+height, whence there was a magnificent view of the surrounding country.
+
+Far in the distance the giant Himalayas towered into the still clear
+air, the guardian barriers of an unknown land. The fretted pinnacles
+and tremendous ridges, clothed in their pure white mantle of
+everlasting snow, made a magnificent contrast to the dark, misty,
+wooded masses formed by the lower ranges of hills. In the early
+morning, when the first beams of the rising sun had but touched the
+mountain tops, leaving the country below shrouded in the dim mists and
+vapours of retiring night, the sight was most sublime. In presence of
+such hills and distances, such wondrous combinations of colour, scenery
+on such a gigantic scale, even the most thoughtless become impressed
+with the majesty of nature.
+
+Our camp was pitched on the banks of a clear running mountain stream,
+brawling over rocks and boulders; and to eyes so long accustomed to the
+never ending flatness of the rich alluvial plains, and the terrible
+sameness of the rice swamps, the stream was a source of unalloyed
+pleasure. There were only a few places where the abrupt banks gave
+facilities for fording, and when a pig had broken fairly from the
+jungle, and was making for the river (as they very frequently did),
+you would see the cluster of horsemen scattering over the plain like
+a covey of partridges when the hawk swoops down upon them. Each made
+for what he considered the most eligible ford, in hopes of being first
+up with the pig on the further bank, and securing the much coveted
+first spear.
+
+When a pig is hard pressed, and comes to any natural obstacle, as a
+ditch, bank, or stream, he almost invariably gets this obstacle between
+himself and his pursuer; then wheeling round he makes his stand,
+showing wonderful sagacity in choosing the moment of all others when he
+has his enemy at most disadvantage. Experienced hands are aware of
+this, and often try to outflank the boar, but the best men I have seen
+generally wait a little, till the pig is again under weigh, and then
+clearing the ditch or bank, put their horses at full speed, which is
+the best way to make good your attack. The rush of the boar is so
+sudden, fierce, and determined, that a horse at half speed, or going
+slow, has no chance of escape; but a well trained horse at full speed
+meets the pig in his rush, the spear is delivered with unerring aim,
+and slightly swerving to the left, you draw it out as you continue your
+course, and the poor pig is left weltering in his blood behind you.
+
+On one occasion I was very rudely made aware of this trait. It was a
+fine fleet young boar we were after, and we had had a long chase, but
+were now overhauling him fast. I had a good horse under me, and 'Jamie'
+and 'Giblets' were riding neck and neck. There was a small mango
+orchard in front surrounded by the usual ditch and bank. It was nothing
+of a leap; the boar took it with ease, and we could just see him top
+the bank not twenty spear lengths ahead. I was slightly leading, and
+full of eager anxiety and emulation. Jamie called on me to pull up, but
+I was too excited to mind him. I saw him and Giblets each take an
+outward wheel about, and gallop off to catch the boar coming out of the
+cluster of trees on the far side, as I thought. I could not see him,
+but I made no doubt he was in full flight through the trees. There was
+plenty of riding room between the rows, so lifting my game little horse
+at the bank, I felt my heart bound with emulation as I thought I was
+certain to come up first, and take the spear from two such noted heroes
+as my companions. I came up with the pig first, sure enough. _He_ was
+waiting for _me_, and scarce giving my horse time to recover his stride
+after the jump, he came rushing at me, every bristle erect, with a
+vicious grunt of spite and rage. My spear was useless, I had it
+crosswise on my horse's neck; I intended to attack first, and finding
+my enemy turning the tables on me in this way was rather disconcerting.
+I tried to turn aside and avoid the charge, but a branch caught me
+across the face, and knocked my _puggree_ off. In a trice the savage
+little brute was on me. Leaping up fairly from the ground, he got the
+heel of my riding boot in his mouth, and tore off the sole from the
+boot as if it had been so much paper. Jamie and Giblets were sitting
+outside watching the scene, laughing at my discomfiture. Fortunately
+the boar had poor tusks, and my fine little horse was unhurt, but I got
+out of that orchard as fast as I could, and ever after hesitated about
+attacking a boar when he had got a bank or ditch between him and me,
+and was waiting for me on the other side. The far better plan is to
+wait till he sees you are not pressing him, he then goes off at a surly
+sling trot, and you can resume the chase with every advantage in your
+favour. When the blood however is fairly up, and all one's sporting
+instincts roused, it is hard to listen to the dictates of prudence or
+the suggestions of caution and experience.
+
+The very same day we had another instance. My manager, 'Young Mac,' as
+we called him, had started a huge old boar. He was just over the boar,
+and about to deliver his thrust, when his horse stumbled in a rat hole
+(it was very rotten ground), and came floundering to earth, bringing
+his rider with him. Nothing daunted, Mac picked himself up, lost the
+horse, but so eager and excited was he, that he continued the chase on
+foot, calling to some of us to catch his horse while he stuck his boar.
+The old boar was quite blown, and took in the altered aspect of affairs
+at a glance; he turned to charge, and we loudly called on Mac to 'clear
+out.' Not a bit of it, he was too excited to realise his danger, but
+Pat fortunately interposed his horse and spear in time, and no doubt
+saved poor Mac from a gruesome mauling. It was very plucky, but it was
+very foolish, for heavily weighted with boots, breeches, spurs, and
+spear, a man could have no chance against the savage onset of an
+infuriated boar.
+
+In the long thick grass with which the plain was covered the riding was
+very dangerous. I remember seeing six riders come signally to grief
+over a blind ditch in this jungle. It adds not a little to the
+excitement, and really serious accidents are not so common as might be
+imagined. It is no joke however when a riderless horse comes ranging up
+alongside of you as you are sailing along, intent on war; biting and
+kicking at your own horse, he spoils your sport, throws you out of the
+chase, and you are lucky if you do not receive some ugly cut or bruise
+from his too active heels. There is the great beauty of a well trained
+Arab or country-bred; if you get a spill, he waits beside you till you
+recover your faculties, and get your bellows again in working order; if
+you are riding a Cabool, or even a waler, it is even betting that he
+turns to bite or kick you as you lie, or he rattles off in pursuit of
+your more firmly seated friends, spoiling their sport, and causing the
+most fearful explosions of vituperative wrath.
+
+There is something to me intensely exciting in all the varied incidents
+of a rattling burst across country after a fighting old grey boar. You
+see the long waving line of staves, and spear heads, and quaint shaped
+axes, glittering and fluctuating above the feathery tops of the swaying
+grass. There is an irregular line of stately elephants, each with its
+towering howdah and dusky mahout, moving slowly along through the
+rustling reeds. You hear the sharp report of fireworks, the rattling
+thunder of the big _doobla_ or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of
+innumerable _tom-toms_. Shouts, oaths, and cries from a hundred noisy
+coolies, come floating down in bursts of clamour on the soft morning
+air. The din waxes and wanes as the excited beaters descry a 'sounder'
+of pig ahead; with a mighty roar that makes your blood tingle, the
+frantic coolies rally for the final burst. Like rockets from a tube,
+the boar and his progeny come crashing through the brake, and separate
+before you on the plain. With a wild cheer you dash after them in hot
+pursuit; no time now to think of pitfalls, banks, or ditches; your
+gallant steed strains his every muscle, every sense is on the alert,
+but you see not the bush and brake and tangled thicket that you leave
+behind you. Your eye is on the dusky glistening hide and the stiff
+erect bristles in front; the shining tusks and foam-flecked chest are
+your goal, and the wild excitement culminates as you feel your keen
+steel go straight through muscle, bone, and sinew, and you know that
+another grisly monster has fallen. As you ease your girths and wipe
+your heated brow, you feel that few pleasures of the chase come up to
+the noblest, most thrilling sport of all, that of pig-sticking.
+
+The plain is alive with shouting beaters hurrying up to secure the gory
+carcase of the slaughtered foe. A riderless horse is far away, making
+off alone for the distant grove, where the snowy tents are glistening
+through the foliage. On the distant horizon a small cluster of eager
+sportsmen are fast overhauling another luckless tusker, and enjoying in
+all their fierce excitement the same sensations you have just
+experienced. Now is the time to enjoy the soothing weed, and quaff the
+grateful 'peg'; and as the syces and other servants come up in groups
+of twos and threes, you listen with languid delight to all their
+remarks on the incidents of the chase; and as, with their acute
+Oriental imagination nations they dilate in terms of truly Eastern
+exaggeration on your wonderful pluck and daring, you almost fancy
+yourself really the hero they would make you out to be.
+
+Then the reunion round the festive board at night, when every one again
+lives through all the excitement of the day. Talk of fox-hunting after
+pig-sticking, it is like comparing a penny candle to a lighthouse, or a
+donkey race to the 'Grand National'!
+
+Peeprah Factory with its many patches of jungle, its various lakes and
+fine undulating country, was another favourite rendezvous for the
+votaries of pig-sticking. The house itself was quite palatial, built on
+the bank of a lovely horseshoe lake, and embosomed in a grove of trees
+of great rarity and beautiful foliage. It had been built long before
+the days of overland routes and Suez canals, when a planter made India
+his home, and spared no trouble nor expense to make his home
+comfortable. In the great garden were fruit trees from almost every
+clime; little channels of solid masonry led water from the well to all
+parts of the garden. Leading down to the lake was a broad flight of
+steps, guarded on the one side by an immense peepul tree, whose hollow
+trunk and wide stretching canopy of foliage had braved the storms of
+over half a century, on the other side by a most symmetrical almond
+tree, which, when in blossom, was the most beautiful object for miles
+around. A well-kept shrubbery surrounded the house, and tall
+casuarinas, and glossy dark green india-rubber and bhur trees, formed a
+thousand combinations of shade and colour. Here we often met to
+experience the warm, large-hearted hospitality of dear old Pat and his
+gentle little wife. At one time there was a pack of harriers, which
+would lead us a fine, sharp burst by the thickets near the river after
+a doubling hare; but as a rule a meet at Peeprah portended death to the
+gallant tusker, for the jungles were full of pigs, and only honest hard
+work was meant when the Peeprah beaters turned out.
+
+The whole country was covered with patches of grass and thorny jungle.
+Knowing they had another friendly cover close by, the pigs always broke
+at the first beat, and the riding had to be fast and furious if a spear
+was to be won. There were some nasty drop jumps, and deep, hidden
+ditches, and accidents were frequent. In one of these hot, sharp
+gallops poor 'Bonnie Morn,' a favourite horse belonging to 'Jamie,' was
+killed. Not seeing the ditch, it came with tremendous force against the
+bank, and of course its back was broken. Even in its death throes it
+recognised its master's voice, and turned round and licked his hand. We
+were all collected round, and let who will sneer, there were few dry
+eyes as we saw this last mute tribute of affection from the poor dying
+animal.
+
+  THE DEATH OF 'BONNIE MORN.'
+
+  Alas, my 'Brave Bonnie!' the pride of my heart,
+  The moment has come when from thee I must part;
+  No more wilt thou hark to the huntsman's glad horn,
+  My brave little Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  How proudly you bore me at bright break of day,
+  How gallantly 'led,' when the boar broke away!
+  But no more, alas! thou the hunt shall adorn,
+  For now thou art dying, my dear 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  He'd neigh with delight when I'd enter his stall,
+  And canter up gladly on hearing my call;
+  Rub his head on my shoulder while munching his corn,
+  My dear gentle Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Or out in the grass, when a pig was in view,
+  None so eager to start, when he heard a 'halloo';
+  Off, off like a flash, the ground spurning with scorn,
+  He aye led the van, did my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  O'er _nullah_ and ditch, o'er hedge, fence, or bank,
+  No matter, _he'd_ clear it, aye in the front rank;
+  A brave little hunter as ever was born
+  Was my grand Arab fav'rite, my good 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Or when in the 'ranks,' who so steady and still?
+  None better than 'Bonnie,' more 'up' in his drill;
+  His fine head erect--eyes flashing with scorn--
+  Right fit for a charger was staunch 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And then on the 'Course,' who so willing and true?
+  Past the 'stand' like an arrow the bonnie horse flew;
+  No spur his good rider need ever have worn,
+  For he aye did his best, did my fleet 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And now here he lies, the good little horse,
+  No more he'll career in the hunt or on 'course':
+  Such a charger to lose makes me sad and forlorn;
+  I _can't_ help a tear, 'tis for poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Ah! blame not my grief, for 'tis deep and sincere,
+  As a friend and companion I held 'Bonnie' dear;
+  No true sportsman ever such feelings will scorn
+  As I heave a deep sigh for my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And even in death, when in anguish he lay,
+  When his life's blood was drip--dripping--slowly away,
+  His last thought was still of the master he'd borne;
+  He neighed, licked my hand--and thus died 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+One tremendous old boar was killed here during one of our meets, which
+was long celebrated in our after-dinner talks on boars and hunting. It
+was called 'THE LUNGRA,' which means the cripple, because it had been
+wounded in the leg in some previous encounter, perhaps in its hot
+youth, before age had stiffened its joints and tinged its whiskers with
+grey. It was the most undaunted pig I have ever seen. It would not
+budge an inch for the beaters, and charged the elephants time after
+time, sending them flying from the jungle most ignominiously. At length
+its patience becoming exhausted, it slowly emerged from the jungle,
+coolly surveyed the scene and its surroundings, and then, disdaining
+flight, charged straight at the nearest horseman. Its hide was as tough
+as a Highland targe, and though L. delivered his spear, it turned the
+weapon aside as if it was merely a thrust from a wooden pole. The old
+_lungra_ made good his charge, and ripped L's. horse on the shoulder.
+It next charged Pat, and ripped his horse, and cut another horse, a
+valuable black waler, across the knee, laming it for life. Rider after
+rider charged down upon the fierce old brute. Although repeatedly
+wounded none of the thrusts were very serious, and already it had put
+five horses _hors de combat_. It now took up a position under a big
+'bhur' tree, close to some water, and while the boldest of us held back
+for a little, it took a deliberate mud bath under our very noses.
+Doubtless feeling much refreshed, it again took up its position under
+the tree, ready to face each fresh assailant, full of fight, and
+determined to die but not to yield an inch.
+
+Time after time we rode at the dauntless cripple. Each time he charged
+right down, and our spears made little mark upon his toughened hide.
+Our horses too were getting tired of such a customer, and little
+inclined to face his charge. At length 'Jamie' delivered a lucky spear
+and the grey old warrior fell. It had kept us at bay for fully an hour
+and a half, and among our number we reckoned some of the best riders
+and boldest pig-stickers in the district.
+
+Such was our sport in those good old days. Our meets came but seldom,
+so that sport never interfered with the interests of honest hard work;
+but meeting each other as we did, and engaging in exciting sport like
+pig-sticking, cemented our friendship, kept us in health, and
+encouraged all the hardy tendencies of our nature. It whetted our
+appetites, it roused all those robust virtues that have made Englishmen
+the men they are, it sent us back to work with lighter hearts and
+renewed energy. It built up many happy, cherished memories of kindly
+words and looks and deeds, that will only fade when we in turn have to
+bow before the hunter, and render up our spirits to God who gave them.
+Long live honest, hearty, true sportsmen, such as were the friends of
+those happy days. Long may Indian sportsmen find plenty of 'foemen
+worthy of their steel' in the old grey boar, the fighting tusker of
+Bengal.
+
+[Illustration: PIG-STICKERS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The sal forests.--The jungle goddess.--The trees in the jungle.
+--Appearance of the forests.--Birds.--Varieties of parrots.--A 'beat'
+in the forest.--The 'shekarry.'--Mehrman Singh and his gun.--The
+Banturs, a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.--Their habits.--A village
+feast.--We beat for deer.--Habits of the spotted deer.--Waiting for
+the game.--Mehrman Singh gets drunk.--Our bag.--Pea-fowl and their
+habits.--How to shoot them.--Curious custom of the Nepaulese.--How
+Juggroo was tricked, and his revenge.
+
+Tirhoot is too generally under cultivation and too thickly inhabited
+for much land to remain under jungle, and except the wild pig of which
+I have spoken, and many varieties of wild fowl, there is little game to
+be met with. It is, however, different in North Bhaugulpore, where
+there are still vast tracts of forest jungle, the haunt of the spotted
+deer, nilghau, leopard, wolf, and other wild animals. Along the banks
+of the Koosee, a rapid mountain river that rolls its flood through
+numerous channels to join the Ganges, there are immense tracts of
+uncultivated land covered with tall elephant grass, and giving cover to
+tigers, hog deer, pig, wild buffalo, and even an occasional rhinoceros,
+to say nothing of smaller game and wildfowl, which are very plentiful.
+
+The sal forests in North Bhaugulpore generally keep to the high ridges,
+which are composed of a light, sandy soil, very friable, and not very
+fertile, except for oil and indigo seeds, which grow most luxuriantly
+wherever the forest land has been cleared. In the shallow valleys which
+lie between the ridges rice is chiefly cultivated, and gives large
+returns. The sal forests have been sadly thinned by unscientific and
+indiscriminate cutting, and very few fine trees now remain. The earth
+is teeming with insects, chief amongst which are the dreaded and
+destructive white ants. The high pointed nests of these destructive
+insects, formed of hardened mud, are the commonest objects one meets
+with in these forest solitudes.
+
+At intervals, beneath some wide spreading peepul or bhur tree, one
+comes on a rude forest shrine, daubed all over with red paint, and with
+gaudy festoons of imitation flowers, cut from the pith of the plantain
+tree, hanging on every surrounding bough. These shrines are sacred
+to _Chumpa buttee_, the Hindoo Diana, protectress of herds, deer,
+buffaloes, huntsmen, and herdsmen. She is the recognised jungle
+goddess, and is held in great veneration by all the wild tribes and
+half-civilized denizens of the gloomy sal jungle.
+
+The general colour of the forest is a dingy green, save when a deeper
+shade here and there shows where the mighty bhur uprears its towering
+height, or where the crimson flowers of the _seemul_ or cotton tree,
+and the bronze-coloured foliage of the _sunpul_ (a tree very like the
+ornamental beech in shrubberies at home) imparts a more varied colour
+to the generally pervading dark green of the universal sal.
+
+The varieties of trees are of course almost innumerable, but the sal is
+so out of all proportion more numerous than any other kind, that the
+forests well deserve their recognised name. The sal is a fine, hard
+wood of very slow growth. The leaves are broad and glistening, and in
+spring are beautifully tipped with a reddish bronze, which gradually
+tones down into the dingy green which is the prevailing tint. The
+_sheshum_ or _sissod_, a tree with bright green leaves much resembling
+the birch, the wood of which is invaluable for cart wheels and
+such-like work, is occasionally met with. There is the _kormbhe_, a
+very tough wood with a red stringy bark, of which the jungle men make
+a kind of touchwood for their matchlocks, and the _parass_, whose
+peculiarity is that at times it bursts into a wondrous wealth of bright
+crimson blossom without a leaf being on the tree. The _parass_ tree in
+full bloom is gorgeous. After the blossom falls the dark-green leaves
+come out, and are not much different in colour from the sal. Then there
+is the _mhowa_, with its lovely white blossoms, from which a strong
+spirit is distilled, and on which the deer, pigs, and wild bear love to
+feast. The peculiar sickly smell of the _mhowa_ when in flower pervades
+the atmosphere for a great distance round, and reminds one forcibly of
+the peculiar sweet, sickly smell of a brewery. The hill _sirres_ is a
+tall feathery-looking tree of most elegant shape, towering above the
+other forest trees, and the natives strip it of its bark, which they
+use to poison streams. It seems to have some narcotic or poisonous
+principle, easily soluble in water, for when put in any quantity in a
+stream or piece of water, it causes all the fish to become apparently
+paralyzed and rise to the surface, where they float about quite
+stupified and helpless, and become an easy prey to the poaching
+'Banturs' and 'Moosahurs' who adopt this wretched mode of fishing.
+
+Along the banks of the streams vegetation gets very luxurious, and
+among the thick undergrowth are found some lovely ferns, broad-leaved
+plants, and flowers of every hue, all alike nearly scentless. Here is
+no odorous breath of violet or honeysuckle, no delicate perfume of
+primrose or sweetbriar, only a musty, dank, earthy smell which gets
+more and more pronounced as the mists rise along with the deadly
+vapours of the night. Sleeping in these forests is very unhealthy.
+There is a most fatal miasma all through the year, less during the hot
+months, but very bad during and immediately after the annual rains; and
+in September and October nearly every soul in the jungly tracts is
+smitten with fever. The vapour only rises to a certain height above the
+ground, and at the elevation of ten feet or so, I believe one could
+sleep in the jungles with impunity; but it is dangerous at all times to
+sleep in the forest, unless at a considerable elevation. The absence of
+all those delicious smells which make a walk through the woodlands at
+home so delightful, is conspicuous in the sal forests, and another of
+the most noticeable features is the extreme silence, the oppressive
+stillness that reigns.
+
+You know how full of melody is an English wood, when thrush, blackbird,
+mavis, linnet, and a thousand warblers flit from tree to tree. How the
+choir rings out its full anthem of sweetest sound, till every bush and
+tree seems a centre of sweet strains, soft, low, liquid trills, and
+full ripe gushes of melody and song. But it is not thus in an Indian
+forest. There are actually few birds. As you brush through the long
+grass and trample the tangled undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling
+branches, or dodging under the pliant arms of the creepers, you may
+flush a black or grey partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a
+quiet family party of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting
+about to make the vaulted arcades of the forest echo to their music.
+
+The hornbill darts with a succession of long bounding flights from one
+tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow tree close by,
+his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A
+flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the _golden
+oriole_ or mango bird, the _koel_, with here and there a red-tufted
+_bulbul_, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep
+silence is unbroken, save by the melancholy hoot of some blinking owl,
+and the soft monotonous coo of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The
+exquisite honey-sucker, as delicately formed as the petal of a fairy
+flower, flits noiselessly about from blossom to blossom. The natives
+call it the 'Muddpenah' or drinker of honey. There are innumerable
+butterflies of graceful shape and gorgeous colours; what few birds
+there are have beautiful plumage; there is a faint rustle of leaves, a
+faint, far hum of insect life; but it feels so silent, so unlike the
+woods at home. You are oppressed by the solemn stillness, and feel
+almost nervous as you push warily along, for at any moment a leopard,
+wolf, or hyena may get up before you, or you may disturb the siesta of
+a sounder of pig, or a herd of deer.
+
+Up in those forests on the borders of Nepaul, which are called the
+_morung_, there are a great many varieties of parrot, all of them
+very beautiful. There is first the common green parrot, with a red
+beak, and a circle of salmon-coloured feathers round its neck; they
+are very noisy and destructive, and flock together to the fields
+where they do great damage to the crops. The _lutkun sooga_ is an
+exquisitely-coloured bird, about the size of a sparrow. The _ghur[=a]l_,
+a large red and green parrot, with a crimson beak. The _tota_ a
+yellowish-green colour, and the male with a breast as red as blood;
+they call it the _amereet bhela_. Another lovely little parrot, the
+_taeteea sooga_, has a green body, red head, and black throat; but the
+most showy and brilliant of all the tribe is the _putsoogee_. The body
+is a rich living green, red wings, yellow beak, and black throat; there
+is a tuft of vivid red as a topknot, and the tail is a brilliant blue;
+the under feathers of the tail being a pure snowy white.
+
+At times the silence is broken by a loud, metallic, bell-like cry,
+very like the yodel you hear in the Alps. You hear it rise sharp and
+distinct, 'Looralei!' and as suddenly cease. This is the cry of the
+_kookoor gh[=e]t_, a bird not unlike a small pheasant, with a
+reddish-brown back and a fawn-coloured breast. The _sherra_ is another
+green parrot, a little larger than the _putsoogee_, but not so
+beautifully coloured.
+
+There is generally a green, slime-covered, sluggish stream in all these
+forests, its channel choked with rotting leaves and decaying vegetable
+matter. The water should never be drunk until it has been boiled and
+filtered. At intervals the stream opens out and forms a clear
+rush-fringed pool, and the trees receding on either bank leave a lovely
+grassy glade, where the deer and nilghau come to drink. On the glassy
+bosom of the pool in the centre, fine duck, mallard, and teal, can
+frequently be found, and the rushes round the margin are to a certainty
+good for a couple of brace of snipe.
+
+Sometimes on a withered branch overhanging the stream, you can see
+perched the _ahur_, or great black fish-hawk. It has a grating,
+discordant cry, which it utters at intervals as it sits pluming its
+black feathers above the pool. The dark ibis and the ubiquitous
+paddy-bird are of course also found here; and where the land is low and
+marshy, and the stream crawls along through several channels, you are
+sure to come across a couple of red-headed _sarus_, serpent birds, a
+crane, and a solitary heron. The _moosahernee_ is a black and white
+bird, I fancy a sort of ibis, and is good eating. The _dokahur_ is
+another fine big bird, black body and white wings, and as its name
+(derived from _dokha_, a shell) implies, it is the shell-gatherer, or
+snail-eater, and gives good shooting.
+
+When you have determined to beat the forest, you first get your coolies
+and villagers assembled, and send them some mile or two miles ahead,
+under charge of some of the head men, to beat the jungle towards you,
+while you look out for a likely spot, shady, concealed, and cool, where
+you wait with your guns till the game is driven up to you. The whole
+arrangements are generally made, of course under your own supervision,
+by your _Shekarry_, or gamekeeper, as I suppose you might call him. He
+is generally a thin, wiry, silent man, well versed in all the lore of
+the woods, acquainted with the name, appearance, and habits of every
+bird and beast in the forest. He knows their haunts and when they are
+to be found at home. He will track a wounded deer like a bloodhound,
+and can tell the signs and almost impalpable evidences of an animal's
+whereabouts, the knowledge of which goes to make up the genuine hunter.
+
+When all is still around, and only the distant shouts of the beaters
+fall faintly at intervals on the ear, his keen hearing detects the
+light patter of hoof or paw on the crisp, withered leaves. His
+hawk-like glance can pick out from the deepest shade the sleek coat or
+hide of the leopard or the deer; and even before the animal has come in
+sight, his senses tell him whether it is young or old, whether it is
+alarmed, or walking in blind confidence. In fact, I have known a good
+shekarry tell you exactly what animal is coming, whether bear, leopard,
+fox, deer, pig, or monkey.
+
+The best shekarry I ever had was a Nepaulee called 'Mehrman Singh.' He
+had the regular Tartar physiognomy of the Nepaulese. Small, oblique,
+twinkling eyes, high cheekbones, flattish nose, and scanty moustache.
+He was a tall, wiry man, with a remarkably light springy step, a bold
+erect carriage, and was altogether a fine, manly, independent fellow.
+He had none of the fawning obsequiousness which is so common to the
+Hindoo, but was a merry laughing fellow, with a keen love of sport and
+a great appreciation of humour. His gun was fearfully and wonderfully
+made. It was a long, heavy flint gun, with a tremendously heavy barrel,
+and the stock all splices and splinters, tied in places with bits of
+string. I would rather not have been in the immediate vicinity of the
+weapon when he fired it, and yet he contrived to do some good shooting
+with it.
+
+He was wonderfully patient in stalking an animal or waiting for its
+near approach, as he never ventured on a long shot, and did not
+understand our objection to pot-shooting. His shot was composed of
+jagged little bits of iron, chipped from an old _kunthee_, or
+cooking-pot; and his powder was truly unique, being like lumps of
+charcoal, about the size of small raisins. A shekarry fills about four
+or five fingers' depth of this into his gun, then a handful of old
+iron, and with a little touch of English powder pricked in with a pin
+as priming, he is ready for execution on any game that may come within
+reach of a safe pot-shot. When the gun goes off there is a mighty
+splutter, a roar like that of a small cannon, and the slugs go hurtling
+through the bushes, carrying away twigs and leaves, and not
+unfrequently smashing up the game so that it is almost useless for the
+table.
+
+The _Banturs_, who principally inhabit these jungles, are mostly of
+Nepaulese origin. They are a sturdy, independent people, and the women
+have fair skins, and are very pretty. Unchastity is very rare, and the
+infidelity of a wife is almost unknown. If it is found out, mutilation
+and often death are the penalties exacted from the unfortunate woman.
+They wear one long loose flowing garment, much like the skirt of a
+gown; this is tightly twisted round the body above the bosoms, leaving
+the neck and arms quite bare. They are fond of ornaments--nose, ears,
+toes and arms, and even ancles, being loaded with silver rings and
+circlets. Some decorate their nose and the middle parting of the hair
+with a greasy-looking red pigment, while nearly every grown-up woman
+has her arms, neck, and low down on the collar bone most artistically
+tattooed in a variety of close, elaborate patterns. The women all work
+in the clearings; sowing, and weeding, and reaping the rice, barley,
+and other crops. They do most of the digging where that is necessary,
+the men confining themselves to ploughing and wood-cutting. At the
+latter employment they are most expert; they use the axe in the most
+masterly manner, but their mode of cutting is fearfully wasteful; they
+always leave some three feet of the best part of the wood in the
+ground, very rarely cutting a tree close down to the root. Many of
+them are good charcoal-burners, and indeed their principal occupation
+is supplying the adjacent villages with charcoal and firewood. They use
+small narrow-edged axes for felling, but for lopping they invariably
+use the Nepaulese national weapon--the _kookree_. This is a heavy,
+curved knife, with a broad blade, the edge very sharp, and the back
+thick and heavy. In using it they slash right and left with a quick
+downward stroke, drawing the blade quickly toward them as they strike.
+They are wonderfully dexterous with the _kookree_, and will clear
+away brush and underwood almost as quickly as a man can walk. They
+pack their charcoal, rice, or other commodities, in long narrow
+baskets, which they sling on a pole carried on their shoulders, as we
+see the Chinese doing in the well known pictures on tea-chests. They
+are all Hindoos in religion, but are very fond of rice-whiskey. Although
+not so abstemious in this respect as the Hindoos of the plains, they
+are a much finer race both physically and morally. As a rule they are
+truthful, honest, brave, and independent. They are always glad to see
+you, laugh out merrily at you as you pass, and are wonderfully
+hospitable. It would be a nice point for Sir Wilfrid Lawson to
+reconcile the use of rice-whiskey with this marked superiority in all
+moral virtues in the whiskey-drinking, as against the totally-abstaining
+Hindoo.
+
+To return to Mehrman Singh. His face was seamed with smallpox marks,
+and he had seven or eight black patches on it the first time I saw him,
+caused by the splintering of his flint when he let off his antediluvian
+gun. When he saw my breechloaders, the first he had ever beheld, his
+admiration was unbounded. He told me he had come on a leopard asleep in
+the forest one day, and crept up quite close to him. His faith in his
+old gun, however, was not so lively as to make him rashly attack so
+dangerous a customer, so he told me. 'Hum usko jans deydea oos wukt,'
+that is, 'I _gave_ the brute its life that time, but,' he continued,
+'had I had an English gun like this, your honour, I would have blown
+the _soor_ (_Anglice_, pig) to hell.' Old Mehrman was rather strong in
+his expletives at times, but I was not a little amused at the cool way
+he spoke of _giving_ the leopard its life. The probability is, that had
+he only wounded the animal, he would have lost his own.
+
+These Nepaulese are very fond of giving feasts to each other. Their
+dinner-parties, I assure you, are very often 'great affairs.' They are
+not mean in their arrangements, and the wants of the inner man are very
+amply provided for. Their crockery is simple and inexpensive. When the
+feast is prepared, each guest provides himself with a few broad leaves
+from the nearest sal tree, and forming these into a cup, he pins them
+together with thorns from the acacia. Squatting down in a circle, with
+half-a-dozen of these sylvan cups around, the attendant fills one with
+rice, another with _dhall_, a third with goat's-flesh, a fourth with
+_turkaree_ or vegetables, a fifth with chutnee, pickle, or some kind of
+preserve. Curds, ghee, a little oil perhaps, sugar, plantains, and
+other fruit are not wanting, and the whole is washed down with copious
+draughts of fiery rice-whiskey, or where it can be procured, with
+palm-toddy. Not unfrequently dancing boys or girls are in attendance,
+and the horrid din of tom-toms, cymbals, a squeaking fiddle, or a
+twanging sitar, rattling castanets, and ear-piercing songs from the
+dusky _prima donna_, makes night hideous, until the grey dawn peeps
+over the dark forest line.
+
+Early in January, 1875, my camp was at a place in the sal jungles
+called Lohurneah. I had been collecting rents and looking after my seed
+cultivation, and Pat and our sporting District Engineer having joined
+me, we determined to have a beat for deer. Mehrman Singh had reported
+numerous herds in the vicinity of our camp. During the night we had
+been disturbed by the revellers at such a feast in the village as I
+have been describing. We had filled cartridges, seen to our guns, and
+made every preparation for the beat, and early in the morning the
+coolies and idlers of the forest villages all round were ranged in
+circles about our camp.
+
+Swallowing a hasty breakfast we mounted our ponies, and followed by our
+ragged escort, made off for the forest. On the way we met a crowd of
+Banturs with bundles of stakes and great coils of strong heavy netting.
+Sending the coolies on ahead under charge of several headmen and peons,
+we plunged into the gloom of the forest, leaving our ponies and grooms
+outside. When we came to a likely-looking spot, the Banturs began
+operations by fixing up the nets on the stakes and between trees, till
+a line of strong net extended across the forest for several hundred
+yards. We then went ahead, leaving the nets behind us, and each took up
+his station about 200 yards in front. The men with the nets then hid
+themselves behind trees, and crouched in the underwood. With our
+kookries we cut down several branches, stuck them in the ground in
+front, and ensconced ourselves in this artificial shelter. Behind us,
+and between us and the nets, was a narrow cart track leading through
+the forest, and the reason of our taking this position was given me by
+Pat, who was an old hand at jungle shooting.
+
+When deer are being driven, they are intensely suspicious, and of
+course frightened. They know every spot in the jungle, and are
+acquainted with all the paths, tracks, and open places in the forest.
+When they are nearing an open glade, or a road, they slacken their
+pace, and go slowly and warily forward, an old buck generally leading.
+When he has carefully reconnoitred and examined the suspected place in
+front, and found it clear to all appearance, they again put on the
+pace, and clear the open ground at their greatest speed. The best
+chance of a shot is when a path is in front of _them_ and behind _you_,
+as then they are going slowly.
+
+At first when I used to go out after them, I often got an open glade,
+or road, in _front_ of me; but experience soon told me that Pat's plan
+was the best. As this was a beat not so much for real sport, as to show
+me how the villagers managed these affairs, we were all under Pat's
+direction, and he could not have chosen better ground. I was on the
+extreme left, behind a clump of young trees, with the sluggish muddy
+stream on my left. Our Engineer to my right was about one hundred yards
+off, and Pat himself on the extreme right, at about the same distance
+from H. Behind us was the road, and in the rear the long line of nets,
+with their concealed watchers. The nets are so set up on the stakes,
+that when an animal bounds along and touches the net, it falls over
+him, and ere he can extricate himself from its meshes, the vigilant
+Banturs rush out and despatch him with spears and clubs.
+
+We waited a long time hearing nothing of the beaters, and watching the
+red and black ants hurrying to and fro. Huge green-bellied spiders
+oscillated backwards and forwards in their strong, systematically woven
+webs. A small mungoose kept peeping out at me from the roots of an old
+india-rubber tree, and aloft in the branches an amatory pair of hidden
+ringdoves were billing and cooing to each other. At this moment a
+stealthy step stole softly behind, and the next second Mr. Mehrman
+Singh crept quietly and noiselessly beside me, his face flushed with
+rapid walking, his eye flashing with excitement, his finger on his lip,
+and a look of portentous gravity and importance striving to spread
+itself over his speaking countenance. Mehrman had been up all night at
+the feast, and was as drunk as a piper. It was no use being angry with
+him, so I tried to keep him quiet and resumed my watch.
+
+A few minutes afterwards he grasped me by the wrist, rather startling
+me, but in a low hoarse whisper warning me that a troop of monkeys was
+coming. I could not hear the faintest rustle, but sure enough in a
+minute or two a troop of over twenty monkeys came hopping and shambling
+along, stopping every now and then to sit on their hams, look back,
+grin, jabber, and show their formidable teeth, until Mehrman rose up,
+waved his cloth at them, and turned them off from the direction of the
+nets toward the bank of the stream.
+
+Next came a fox, slouching warily and cautiously along; then a couple
+of lean, hungry-looking jackals; next a sharp patter on the crisp dry
+leaves, and several peafowl with resplendent plumage ran rapidly past.
+Another touch on the arm from Mehrman, and following the direction of
+his outstretched hand, I descried a splendid buck within thirty yards
+of me, his antlers and chest but barely visible above the brushwood. My
+gun was to my shoulder in an instant, but the shekarry in an excited
+whisper implored me not to fire. I hesitated, and just then the stately
+head turned round to look behind, and exposing the beautifully curving
+neck full to my aim, I fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the
+fine buck topple over, seemingly hard hit.
+
+A shot on my right, and two shots in rapid succession further on,
+shewed me that Pat and H. were also at work, and then the whole forest
+seemed alive with frightened, madly-plunging pig, deer, and other
+animals. I fired at, and wounded an enormous boar that came rushing
+past, and now the cries of the coolies in front as they came trooping
+on, mingled with the shouts of the men at the nets, where the work of
+death evidently was going on.
+
+It was most exciting while it lasted, but, after all, I do not think it
+was honest sport. The only apology I could make to myself was, that the
+deer and pig were far too numerous, and doing immense damage to the
+crops, and if not thinned out, they would soon have made the growing of
+any crop whatever an impossibility.
+
+The monkey being a sacred animal, is never molested by the natives, and
+the damage he does in a night to a crop of wheat or barley is
+astonishing. Peafowl too are very destructive, and what with these and
+the ravages of pig, deer, hares, and other plunderers, the poor ryot
+has to watch many a weary night, to secure any return from his fields.
+
+On rejoining each other at the nets, we found that five deer and two
+pigs had been killed. Pat had shot a boar and a porcupine, the latter
+with No. 4 shot. H. accounted for a deer, and I got my buck and the
+boar which I had wounded in the chest; Mehrman Singh had followed him
+up and tracked him to the river, where he took refuge among some long
+swamp reeds. Replying to his call, we went up, and a shot through the
+head settled the old boar for ever. Our bag was therefore for the first
+beat, seven deer, four pigs, and a porcupine.
+
+The coolies were now sent away out of the jungle, and on ahead for a
+mile or so, the nets were coiled up, our ponies regained, and off we
+set, to take another station. As we went along the river bank,
+frequently having to force our way through thick jungle, we started 'no
+end' of peafowl, and getting down we soon added a couple to the bag.
+Pat got a fine jack snipe, and I shot a _Jheela_, a very fine waterfowl
+with brown plumage, having a strong metallic, coppery lustre on the
+back, and a steely dark blue breast. The plumage was very thick and
+glossy, and it proved afterwards to be excellent eating.
+
+Peafowl generally retire to the thickest part of the jungles during the
+heat of the day, but if you go out very early, when they are slowly
+wending their way back from the fields, where they have been revelling
+all night, you can shoot numbers of them. I used to go about twenty or
+thirty yards into the jungle, and walk slowly along, keeping that
+distance from the edge. My syce and pony would then walk slowly by the
+edges of the fields, and when the syce saw a peafowl ahead, making for
+the jungle, he would shout and try to make it rise. He generally
+succeeded, and as I was a little in advance and concealed by the
+jungle, I would get a fine shot as the bird flew overhead. I have shot
+as many as eight and ten in a morning in this way. I always used No. 4
+shot with about 3-1/2 drams of powder.
+
+Unless hard hit peafowl will often get away; they run with amazing
+swiftness, and in the heart of the jungle it is almost impossible to
+make them rise. A couple of sharp terriers, or a good retriever, will
+sometimes flush them, but the best way is to go along the edge of the
+jungle in the early morn, as I have described. The peachicks, about
+seven or eight months old, are deliciously tender and well flavoured.
+Old birds are very dry and tough, and require a great deal of that
+old-fashioned sauce, Hunger.
+
+The common name for a peafowl is _m[=o]r_, but the Nepaulese and Banturs
+call it _majoor_. Now _majoor_ also means coolie, and a young fellow,
+S., was horrified one day hearing his attendant in the jungle telling
+him in the most excited way, '_Majoor, majoor_, Sahib; why don't you
+fire?' Poor S. thought it was a coolie the man meant, and that he must
+be going mad, wanting him to shoot a coolie, but he found out his
+mistake, and learnt the double meaning of the word, when he got home
+and consulted his _manager_.
+
+The generic name for all deer is in Hindustani HURIN, but the Nepaulese
+call it CHEETER. The male spotted deer they call KUBRA, the female
+KUBREE. These spotted deer keep almost exclusively to the forests, and
+are very seldom found far away from the friendly cover of the sal
+woods. They are the most handsome, graceful looking animals I know,
+their skins beautifully marked with white spots, and the horns wide and
+arching. When properly prepared the skin makes a beautiful mat for a
+drawing room, and the horns of a good buck are a handsome ornament to
+the hall or the verandah. When bounding along through the forest, his
+beautifully spotted skin flashing through the dark green foliage, his
+antlers laid back over his withers, he looks the very embodiment of
+grace and swiftness. He is very timid, and not easily stalked.
+
+In March and April, when a strong west wind is blowing, it rustles the
+myriads of leaves that, dry as tinder, encumber the earth. This
+perpetual rustle prevents the deer from hearing the footsteps of an
+approaching foe. They generally betake themselves then to some patch of
+grass, or long-crop outside the jungle altogether, and if you want them
+in those months, it is in such places, and not inside the forest at
+all, that you must search. Like all the deer tribe, they are very
+curious, and a bit of rag tied to a tree, or a cloth put over a bush,
+will not unfrequently entice them within range.
+
+Old shekarries will tell you that as long as the deer go on feeding and
+flapping their ears, you may continue your approach. As soon as they
+throw up the head, and keep the ears still, their suspicions have been
+aroused, and if you want venison, you must be as still as a rock, till
+your game is again lulled into security, As soon as the ears begin
+flapping again, you may continue your stalk, but at the slightest
+noise, the noble buck will be off like a flash of lightning. You should
+never go out in the forest with white clothes, as you are then a
+conspicuous mark for all the prying eyes that are invisible to you. The
+best colour is dun brown, dark grey, or dark green. When you see a deer
+has become suspicious, and no cover is near, stand perfectly erect and
+rigid, and do not leave your legs apart. The 'forked-parsnip' formation
+of the 'human form divine' is detected at a glance, but there's just a
+chance that if your legs are drawn together, and you remain perfectly
+motionless, you may be mistaken for the stump of a tree, or at the best
+some less dangerous enemy than man.
+
+As we rode slowly along, to allow the beaters to get ahead, and to let
+the heavily-laden men with the nets keep up with us, we were amused to
+hear the remarks of the syces and shekarries on the sport they had just
+witnessed. Pat's old man, Juggroo, a merry peep-eyed fellow, full of
+anecdote and humour, was rather hard on Mehrman Singh for having been
+up late the preceding night. Mehrman, whose head was by this time
+probably reminding him that there are 'lees to every cup,' did not seem
+to relish the humour. He began grasping one wrist with the other hand,
+working his hand slowly round his wrist, and I noticed that Juggroo
+immediately changed the subject. This, as I afterwards learned, is the
+invariable Nepaulese custom of showing anger. They grasp the wrist as I
+have said, and it is taken as a sign that, if you do not discontinue
+your banter, you will have a fight.
+
+The Nepaulese are rather vain of their personal appearance, and hanker
+greatly after a good thick moustache. This, nature has denied them, for
+the hair on their faces is scanty and stubbly in the extreme. One day
+Juggroo saw his master putting some bandoline on his moustache, which
+was a fine, handsome, silky one. He asked Pat's bearer, an old rogue,
+what it was.
+
+'Oh!' replied the bearer, 'that is the gum of the sal tree; master
+always uses that, and that is the reason he has such a fine moustache.'
+
+Juggroo's imagination fired up at the idea.
+
+'Will it make mine grow too?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+'How do you use it?'
+
+'Just rub it on, as you see master do.'
+
+Away went Juggroo to try the new recipe.
+
+Now, the gum of the sal tree is a very strong resin, and hardens in
+water. It is almost impossible to get it off your skin, as the more
+water you use, the harder it gets.
+
+Next day Juggroo's face presented a sorry sight. He had plentifully
+smeared the gum over his upper lip, so that when he washed his face,
+the gum _set_, making the lip as stiff as a board, and threatening to
+crack the skin every time the slightest muscle moved.
+
+Juggroo _was_ 'sold' and no mistake, but he bore it all in grim
+silence, although he never forgot the old bearer. One day, long after,
+he brought in some berries from the wood, and was munching them,
+seemingly with great relish. The bearer wanted to know what they were,
+Juggroo with much apparent _nonchalance_ told him they were some very
+sweet, juicy, wild berries he had found in the forest. The bearer asked
+to try one.
+
+Juggroo had _another_ fruit ready, very much resembling those he was
+eating. It is filled with minute spikelets, or little hairy spinnacles,
+much resembling those found in ripe doghips at home. If these even
+touch the skin, they cause intense pain, stinging like nettles, and
+blistering every part they touch.
+
+The unsuspicious bearer popped the treacherous berry into his mouth,
+gave it a crunch, and then with a howl of agony, spluttered and spat,
+while the tears ran down his cheeks, as he implored Juggroo by all the
+gods to fetch him some water.
+
+Old Juggroo with a grim smile, walked coolly away, discharging a
+Parthian shaft, by telling him that these berries were very good for
+making the hair grow, and hoped he would soon have a good moustache.
+
+A man from the village now came running up to tell us that there was a
+leopard in the jungle we were about to beat, and that it had seized,
+but failed to carry away, a dog from the village during the night.
+Natives are so apt to tell stories of this kind that at first we did
+not credit him, but turning into the village he showed us the poor dog,
+with great wounds on its neck and throat where the leopard had pounced
+upon it. The noise, it seems, had brought some herdsmen to the place,
+and their cries had frightened the leopard and saved the wretched dog.
+As the man said he could show us the spot where the leopard generally
+remained, we determined to beat him up; so sending a man off on
+horseback for the beaters to slightly alter their intended line of
+beat, we rode off, attended by the villager, to get behind the
+leopard's lair, and see if we could not secure him. These fierce and
+courageous brutes, for they are both, are very common in the sal
+jungles; and as I have seen several killed, both in Bhaugulpore and
+Oudh, I must devote a chapter to the subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
+one.--Encounter with a leopard in a dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
+leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
+annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
+harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
+sanitation.
+
+Writing principally for friends at home, who are not familiar with
+Indian life, I must narrate facts that, although well known in Indian
+circles, are yet new to the general reader in England. My object is of
+course to represent the life we lead in the far East, and to give a
+series of pictures of what is going on there. If I occasionally touch
+on what may to Indian readers seem well-worn ground, they will forgive
+me.
+
+The leopard then, as a rule keeps to the wooded parts of India. In the
+long grassy jungles bordering the Koosee he is not generally met with.
+He is essentially a predatory animal, always on the outlook for a meal;
+round the villages, nestling amid their sal forests, he is continually
+on the prowl, looking out for a goat, a calf, or unwary dog. His
+appearance and habits are well known; he generally selects for his
+lair, a retired spot surrounded by dense jungle. The one we were after
+now had his home in a matted jungle, growing out of a pool of water,
+which had collected in a long hollow, forming the receptacle of the
+surface drainage from the adjacent slopes. This hollow stretched for
+miles towards the creek which we had been beating up; and the locality
+having moisture and other concurring elements in its favour, the
+vegetation had attained a luxuriance rarely seen in the dry uplands,
+where the west winds lick up the moisture, and the soil is arid and
+unpromising. The matted intertwining branches of the creepers had
+formed an almost impervious screen, and on the basis thus formed, amid
+the branches and creepers, the leopards had formed their lair. Beneath,
+was a still stagnant pool; above, was the leafy foliage. The tracks led
+down to a well-worn path.
+
+Climbing like a cat, as the leopards can do, they found no difficulty
+in gaining a footing on the mass of vegetation. They generally select
+some retired spot like this, and are very seldom seen in the daytime.
+With the approach of night, however, they begin their wandering in
+quest of prey. In a beat such as we were having 'all is fish that comes
+to the net,' and leopards, if they are in the jungle, have to yield to
+the advance of the beaters, like the other denizens of the forest.
+
+Experience tells you that the leopard is daring and ferocious. Old
+experienced hands warn you, that unless you can make sure of your shot,
+it is unwise to fire at a leopard approaching. It is better to wait
+till he has got past you, or at all events is 'broadside on.' If you
+only wound him as he is approaching, he will almost to a certainty make
+straight at you, but if you shoot him as he is going past, he will,
+maddened by pain and anger, go straight forward, and you escape his
+charge. He is more courageous than a tiger, and a very dangerous
+customer at close quarters. Up in one of the forests in Oudh, a friend
+of mine was out one day after leopard, with a companion who belonged to
+the forest department. My friend's companion fired at a leopard as it
+was approaching him, and wounded it severely. Nothing daunted, and
+recognising whence its hurt had come, it charged directly down on the
+concealed sportsman, and before he could half realise the position,
+sprang on him, caught his left arm in its teeth, and began mauling him
+with its claws. His presence of mind did not desert him; noticing close
+by the stump of a sal tree, that had been eaten by white ants till the
+harder parts of the wood alone remained, standing up hard and sharp
+like so many spikes of steel; and knowing that the leopard was already
+badly wounded, and in all probability struggling for his life, he
+managed to drag the struggling animal up to the stump; jammed his left
+arm yet further into the open mouth of the wounded beast, and being a
+strong man, by pure physical force dashed the leopard's brains out on
+the jagged edges of the stump. It was a splendid instance of presence
+of mind. He was horribly mauled of course; in fact I believe he lost
+his arm, but he saved his life. It shows the danger of only wounding a
+leopard, especially if he is coming towards you; always wait till he
+has passed your station, if it is practicable. If you _must_ shoot,
+take what care you can that the shot be a sure one.
+
+In some of the hill stations, and indeed in the villages on the plains,
+it is very common for a leopard to make his appearance in the house or
+verandah of an evening.
+
+One was shot in Bhaugulpore station by the genial and respected
+chaplain, on a Sunday morning two or three years ago. As we went along,
+H. told us a humorous story of an Assistant in the Public Works
+Department, who got mauled by a leopard at Dengra Ghat, Dak Bungalow.
+It had taken up its quarters in a disused room, and this young fellow
+burning, with ardour to distinguish himself, made straight for the room
+in which he was known to be. He opened the door, followed by a motley
+crowd of retainers, discharged his gun, and the sequel proved that he
+was _not_ a dead shot. He had only wounded the leopard. With a bound
+the savage brute was on him, but in the hurry and confusion, he had
+changed front. The leopard had him by the back. You can imagine the
+scene! He roared for help! The leopard was badly hit, and a plucky
+_bearer_ came to his rescue with a stout _lathee_. Between them they
+succeeded in killing the wounded animal, but not before it had left its
+marks on a very sensitive portion of his frame. The moral is, if you go
+after leopard, be sure you kill him at once.
+
+They seldom attack a strong, well-grown animal. Calves, however, goats,
+and dogs are frequently carried off by them. The young of deer and pig,
+too, fall victims, and when nothing else can be had, peafowl have been
+known to furnish them a meal. In my factory in Oudh I had a small,
+graceful, four-horned antelope. It was carried off by a leopard from
+the garden in broad daylight, and in face of a gang of coolies.
+
+The most commonly practised mode of leopard shooting, is to tie a goat
+up to a tree. You have a _mychan_ erected, that is, a platform elevated
+on trees above the ground. Here you take your seat. Attracted by the
+bleating of the goat, the prowling leopard approaches his intended
+victim. If you are on the watch you can generally detect his approach.
+They steal on with extreme caution, being intensely wary and
+suspicious. At a village near where we now were, I had sat up for three
+nights for a leopard, but although I knew he was prowling in the
+vicinity, I had never got a look at him. We believed this leopard to be
+the same brute.
+
+I have already described our mode of beating. The jungle was close, and
+there was a great growth of young trees. I was again on the right, and
+near the edge of the forest. Beyond was a glade planted with rice. The
+incidents of the beat were much as you have just read. There was,
+however, unknown or at any rate unnoticed by us, more intense
+excitement. We knew that the leopard might at any moment pass before
+us. Pat was close to a mighty bhur tree, whose branches, sending down
+shoots from the parent stem, had planted round it a colony of vigorous
+supports. It was a magnificent tree with dense shade. All was solemn
+and still. Pat with his keen eye, his pulse bounding, and every sense
+on the alert, was keeping a careful look-out from behind an immense
+projecting buttress of the tree. All was deadly quiet. H. and myself
+were occupied watching the gambols of some monkeys in our front. The
+beaters were yet far off. Suddenly Pat heard a faint crackle on a dried
+leaf. He glanced in the direction of the sound, and his quick eye
+detected the glossy coats, the beautifully spotted hides of not _one_
+leopard, but _two_. In a moment the stillness was broken by the report
+of his rifle. Another report followed sharp and quick. We were on the
+alert, but to Pat the chief honour and glory belonged. He had shot one
+leopard dead through the heart. The female was badly hit and came
+bounding along in my direction. Of course we were now on the _qui
+vive_. Waiting for an instant, till I could get my aim clear of some
+intervening trees, I at length got a fair shot, and brought her down
+with a ball through the throat. H. and Pat came running up, and we
+congratulated ourselves on our success. By and bye Mehrman Singh and
+the rest of the beaters came up, and the joy of the villagers was
+gratifying. These were doubtless the two leopards we had heard so much
+about, for which I had sat up and watched. It was amusing to see some
+villager whose pet goat or valued calf had been carried off, now coming
+up, striking the dead body of the leopard, and abusing it in the most
+unmeasured terms. Such a crowding round as there was! such a noise, and
+such excitement!
+
+While waiting for the horses to be brought, and while the excited mob
+of beaters and coolies carried off the dead animals to the camp to be
+skinned, we amused ourselves by trying our rifles at a huge tree that
+grew on the further side of the rice swamp. We found the effects of the
+'Express' bullet to be tremendous. It splintered up and burst the bark
+and body of the tree into fragments. Its effects on an animal are even
+more wonderful. On looking afterwards at the leopard which had been
+shot, we found that my bullet had touched the base of the shoulder,
+near the collar-bone. It had gone downwards through the neck, under the
+collar-bone, and struck the shoulder. There it had splintered up and
+made a frightful wound, scattering its fragments all over the chest,
+and cutting and lacerating everything in its way.
+
+For big game the 'Express' is simply invaluable. For all-round shooting
+perhaps a No. 12 smooth-bore is the best. It should be snap action with
+rebounding locks. You should have facilities and instruments for
+loading cartridges. A good cartridge belt is a good thing for carrying
+them, but go where you will now, where there is game to be killed, a
+No. 12 B. L. will enable you to participate in whatever shooting is
+going. Such a one as I have described would satisfy all the wishes of
+any young man who perhaps can only afford one gun.
+
+As we rode slowly along, we learned many curious facts of jungle and
+native life from the followers, and by noticing little incidents
+happening before our eyes. Pat, who is so well versed in jungle life
+and its traditions, told us of a curious moveable feast which the
+natives of these parts hold annually, generally in March or April,
+which is called the _Sirwah Purrub_.
+
+It seems to be somewhat like the old carnivals of the middle ages. I
+have read that in Sardinia, and Italy, and Switzerland something
+similar takes place. The _Sirwah Purrub_ is a sort of festival held in
+honour of the native Diana--the _chumpa buttee_ before referred to. On
+the appointed day all the males in the forest villages, without
+exception, go a-hunting. Old spears are furbished up; miraculous guns,
+of even yet more ancient lineage than Mehrman Singh's dangerous
+flintpiece, are brought out from dusty hiding-places. Battle-axes, bows
+and arrows, hatchets, clubs and weapons of all sorts, are looked up,
+and the motley crowd hies to the forest, the one party beating up the
+game to the other.
+
+Some go fishing, others try to secure a quail or partridge, but it is a
+point of honour that something must be slain. If game be not plentiful
+they will even go to another village and slay a goat, which, rather
+than return empty-handed, they will bear in triumph home. The women
+meet the returning hunters, and if there has been a fortunate beat,
+there is a great feast in the village during the evening and far on
+into the night. The nets are used, and in this way they generally have
+some game to divide in the village on their return from the hunt.
+Ordinarily they seethe the flesh, and pour the whole contents of the
+cooking-pot into a mess of boiled rice. With the addition of a little
+salt, this is to them very palatable fare. They are very good cooks,
+with very simple appliances; with a little mustard oil or clarified
+butter, a few vegetables or a cut-up fish, they can be very successful.
+The food, however, is generally smoked from the cow-dung fire. If you
+are much out in these villages this smoke constantly hangs about,
+clinging to your clothes and flavouring your food, but the natives seem
+to like it amazingly.
+
+In the cold mornings of December or January it hangs about like the
+peat smoke in a Highland village. Round every house are great stacks
+and piles of cow-dung cakes. Before every house is a huge pile of
+ashes, and the villagers cower round this as the evening falls, or
+before the sun has dissipated the mist of the mornings. During the day
+the village dogs burrow in the ashes. Hovering in a dense cloud about
+the roofs and eaves, and along the lower branches of the trees in filmy
+layers, the smoke almost chokes one to ride through it. I have seen a
+native sit till half-choked in a dense column of this smoke. He is too
+lazy to shift his position; the fumes of pungent smoke half smother
+him; tears run from his eyes; he splutters and coughs, and abuses the
+smoke, and its grandfather, and maternal uncle, and all its other known
+relatives; but he prefers semi-suffocation to the trouble of budging an
+inch.
+
+Sometimes the energy of these people is surprising. To go to a fair or
+feast, or on a pilgrimage, they will walk miles upon miles, subsisting
+on parched peas or rice, and carrying heavy burdens. In company they
+sing and carol blithely enough. When alone they are very taciturn, man
+and woman walking together, the man first with his _lathee_ or staff,
+the woman behind carrying child or bundle, and often looking fagged and
+tired enough.
+
+Taking vegetables, or rice, or other commodities to the bazaar, the
+carrier often slings his burden to the two ends of a pole worn over the
+shoulder, much as Chinamen do. But they generally make their load into
+one bundle which they carry on the head, or which they sling, if not
+large and bulky, over their backs, rolled up in one of their cloths.
+
+During the rice-planting season they toil in mud and water from
+earliest morn till late into twilight. Bending and stooping all the
+day, their lower extremities up to the knee sometimes in water, and the
+scorching sun beating on their backs, they certainly show their patient
+plodding industry, for it is downright honest hard work.
+
+The young rice is taken from the nursery patch, where it has been sown
+thick some time previously. When the rice-field is ready--a sloppy,
+muddy, embanked little quagmire--the ryot gets his bundle of young
+rice-plants, and shoves in two or three at a time with his finger and
+thumb. These afterwards form the tufts of rice. Its growth is very
+rapid. Sometimes, in case of flood, the rice actually grows with the
+rise of the water, always keeping its tip above the stream. If wholly
+submerged for any length of time it dies. There are over a hundred
+varieties. Some are only suited for very deep marshy soils; others,
+such as the _s[=a]tee_, or sixty-days rice, can be grown on comparatively
+high land, and ripen early. If rain be scanty, the _s[=a]tee_ and other
+rice crops have to be weeded. It is cut with a jagged-edged sort of
+reaping-hook called a _hussooa_. The cut bundles are carried from the
+fields by women, girls, and lads. They could not take carts in many
+instances into the swamps.
+
+At such times you see every little dyke or embankment with a crowd of
+bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on his head,
+hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The women, with clothes
+tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at
+a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken--garnering
+the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over.
+Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor,
+dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a
+yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use
+leaving a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by
+such a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty
+stomachs in every village, a bundle of rice would be gone by the
+morning.
+
+As in Greece, where every man has to watch his vineyard at night, so
+here, the _kureehan_ or threshing-floor each has its watchman at night.
+For the protection of the growing crops, the villagers club together,
+and appoint a watchman or _chowkeydar_, whom they pay by giving him a
+small percentage on the yield; or a small fractional proportion of the
+area he has to guard, with its standing crop, may be made over to him
+as a recompense.
+
+They thresh out the rice when it has matured a little on the
+threshing-floor. Four to six bullocks are tied in a line to a post in
+the centre, and round this they slowly pace in a circle. They are not
+muzzled, and the poor brutes seem rather to enjoy the unwonted luxury
+of feeding while they work. When there is a good wind, the grain is
+winnowed; it is lifted either in bamboo scoops or in the two hands. The
+wind blows the chaff or _bhoosa_ on to a heap, and the fine fresh rice
+remains behind. The grain merchants now do a good business. Rice must
+be sold to pay the rent, the money-lender, and other clamouring
+creditors. The _bunniahs_ will take repayment in kind. They put on
+the interest, and cheat in the weighments and measurements. So much has
+to be given to the weigh-man as a perquisite. If seed had been borrowed,
+it has now to be returned at a ruinous rate of interest. Some seed must
+be saved for next year, and an average _poor_ ryot, the cultivator of
+but a little holding, very soon sees the result of his harvesting melt
+away, leaving little for wife and little ones to live on. He never
+gets free of the money-lender. He will have to go out and work hard
+for others, as well as get up his own little lands. No chance of a new
+bullock this year, and the old ones are getting worn out and thin. The
+wife must dispense with her promised ornament or dress. For the poor
+ryot it is a miserable hand-to-mouth existence when crops are poor.
+As a rule he is never out of debt. He lives on the scantiest fare;
+hunger often pinches him; he knows none of the luxuries of life.
+Notwithstanding all, the majority are patient, frugal, industrious,
+and to the full extent of their scanty means even charitable and
+benevolent. With the average ryot a little business goes a great way.
+There are some irreconcileable, discontented, worthless fellows in
+every village. All more or less count a lie as rather a good thing to
+be expert in; they lie naturally, simply, and instinctively: but with
+all his faults, and they are doubtless many, I confess to a great
+liking for the average Hindoo ryot.
+
+At times, however, their apathy and laziness is amazing. They are very
+childish, petted, and easily roused. In a quarrel, however, they
+generally confine themselves to vituperation and abuse, and seldom
+come to blows.
+
+As an instance of their fatalism or apathetic indolence, I can remember
+a village on the estate I was managing taking fire. It was quite close
+to the factory. I had my pony saddled at once, and galloped off for the
+burning village. It was a long, straggling one, with a good masonry
+well in the centre, shadowed by a mighty _peepul_ tree. The wind was
+blowing the fire right along, and if no obstruction was offered, would
+sweep off every hut in the place. The only soul who was trying to do a
+thing was a young Brahmin watchman belonging to the factory. He had
+succeeded in removing some brass jars of his own, and was saving some
+grain. One woman was rocking to and fro, beating her breast and crying.
+There sat the rest of the apathetic villagers in groups, not lifting a
+finger, not stirring a step, but calmly looking on, while the devouring
+element was licking up hut after hut, and destroying their little all.
+In a few minutes some of my servants, syces, and factory men had
+arrived. I tied up the pony, ordered my men to pull down a couple of
+huts in the centre, and tried to infuse some energy into the villagers.
+Not a bit of it; they would _not_ stir. They would not even draw a
+bucket of water. However, my men got earthen pots; I dug up fresh earth
+and threw it on the two dismantled huts, dragging away as much of the
+thatch and _debris_ as we could.
+
+The fire licked our faces, and actually got a footing on the first
+house beyond the frail opening we had tried to make, but we persevered,
+and ultimately stayed the fire, and saved about two thirds of the
+village. I never saw such an instance of complete apathy. Some of the
+inhabitants even had not untied the cattle in the sheds. They seemed
+quite prostrated. However, as we worked on, and they began to see that
+all was not yet lost, they began to buckle to; yet even then their
+principal object was to save their brass pots and cooking utensils,
+things that could not possibly burn, and which they might have left
+alone with perfect safety.
+
+A Hindoo village is as inflammable as touchwood. The houses are
+generally built of grass walls, connected with thin battens of bamboo.
+The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all the little
+courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are piled up round
+every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which smoulders all day. A
+stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit round the corner, and
+before one can half realise the catastrophe, the village is on fire.
+Then each only thinks of his own goods; there is no combined effort to
+stay the flames. In the hot west winds of March, April, and May, these
+fires are of very frequent occurrence. In Bhaugulpore, I have seen,
+from my verandah, three villages on fire at one and the same time. In
+some parts of Oudh, among the sal forests, village after village is
+burnt down annually, and I have seen the same catastrophe visit the
+same village several times in the course of one year. These fires arise
+from pure carelessness, sheer apathy, and laziness.
+
+Sanitary precautions too are very insufficient; practically there are
+none. Huge unsightly water-holes, filled during the rains with the
+drainage of all the dung-heaps and mounds of offal and filth that
+abound in the village, swelter under the hot summer sun. They get
+covered with a rank green scum, and if their inky depths be stirred,
+the foulest and most fearful odours issue forth. In these filthy pools
+the villagers often perform their ablutions; they do not scruple to
+drink the putrid water, which is no doubt a hotbed and regular nursery
+for fevers, and choleraic and other disorders.
+
+Many home readers are but little acquainted with the Indian village
+system, and I shall devote a chapter to the description of a Hindoo
+village, with its functionaries, its institutions, its inhabitants, and
+the more marked of their customs and avocations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
+--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
+village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
+village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
+system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
+justice.
+
+A typical village in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of thatched
+huts, apparently set down at random--as indeed it is, for every one
+erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or wherever he can
+get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved
+plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the huts and buildings. Several
+small orchards of mango surround the village; the roads leading to and
+from it are merely well-worn cattle tracks,--in the rains a perfect
+quagmire, and in the hot weather dusty, and confined between straggling
+hedges of aloe or prickly pear. These hedges are festooned with masses
+of clinging luxuriant creepers, among which sometimes struggles up a
+custard apple, an avocado pear, or a wild plum-tree. The latter is a
+prickly straggling tree, called the _bhyre_; the wood is very hard, and
+is often used for making ploughs. The fruit is a little hard yellow
+crisp fruit, with a big stone inside, and very sweet; when it is ripe,
+the village urchins throw sticks up among the branches, and feast on
+the golden shower.
+
+On many of the banks bordering the roads, thatching grass, or rather
+strong upright waving grass, with a beautiful feathery plume, is
+planted. This is used to make the walls of the houses, and these are
+then plastered outside and in with clay and cowdung. The tall hedge
+of dense grass keeps what little breeze there may be away from the
+traveller. The road is something like an Irish 'Boreen,' wanting only
+its beauty and freshness. On a hot day the atmosphere in one of these
+village roads is stifling and loaded with dust.
+
+These houses with their grass walls and thatched roof are called
+_kutcha_, as opposed to more pretentious structures of burnt brick,
+with maybe a tiled sloping or flat plastered roof, which are called
+_pucca. Pucca_ literally means 'ripe,' as opposed to _cutcha_, 'unripe';
+but the rich Oriental tongue has adapted it to almost every kind of
+secondary meaning. Thus a man who is true, upright, respected, a man
+to be depended on, is called a _pucca_ man. It is a word in constant
+use among Anglo-Indians. A _pucca_ road is one which is bridged and
+metalled. If you make an engagement with a friend, and he wants to
+impress you with its importance, he will ask you, Now is that _pucca_?'
+and so on.
+
+Other houses in the village are composed of unburnt bricks cemented
+with mud, or maybe composed of mud walls and thatched roof; these,
+being a compound sort of erection, are called _cutcha pucca_. In the
+_cutcha_ houses live the poorer castes, the _Chumars_ or workers in
+leathers, the _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, or _Gwallahs_.
+
+The _Dornes_, or scavengers, feeders on offal, have to live apart in a
+_tolah_, which might be called a small suburb, by themselves. The
+_Dornes_ drag from the village any animal that happens to die. They
+generally pursue the handicraft of basket making, or mat making, and
+the _Dorne tolah_ can always be known by the pigs and fowls prowling
+about in search of food, and the _Dorne_ and his family splitting up
+bamboo, and weaving mats and baskets at the doors of their miserable
+habitation. To the higher castes both pigs arid fowls are unclean and
+an abomination. _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, and other poor castes, such as
+_Dangurs_, keep however an army of gaunt, lean, hungry-looking pigs.
+These may be seen rooting and wallowing in the marshes when the rice
+has been cut, or foraging among the mango groves, to pick up any stray
+unripe fruit that may have escaped the keen eyes of the hungry and
+swarming children.
+
+There is yet another small _tolah_ or suburb, called the _Kusbee
+tolah_. Here live the miserable outcasts who minister to the worst
+passions of our nature. These degraded beings are banished from the
+more respectable portions of the community; but here, as in our own
+highly civilised and favoured land, vice hovers by the side of virtue,
+and the Hindoo village contains the same elements of happiness and
+misery, profligacy and probity, purity and degradation, as the fine
+home cities that are a name in the mouths of men.
+
+Every village forms a perfect little commonwealth; it contains all the
+elements of self-existence; it is quite a little commune, so far as
+social life is concerned. There is a hereditary blacksmith, washerman,
+potter, barber, and writer. The _dhobee_, or washerman, can always be
+known by the propinquity of his donkeys, diminutive animals which he
+uses to transport his bundle of unsavoury dirty clothes to the pool or
+tank where the linen is washed. On great country roads you may often
+see strings of donkeys laden with bags of grain, which they transport
+from far-away villages to the big bazaars; but if you see a laden
+donkey near a village, be sure the _dhobee_ is not far off.
+
+Here as elsewhere the _hajam_, or barber, is a great gossip, and
+generally a favourite. He uses no soap, and has a most uncouth-looking
+razor, yet he shaves the heads, beards, moustaches, and armpits of his
+customers with great deftness. The lower classes of natives shave the
+hair of the head and of the armpits for the sake of cleanliness and for
+other obvious reasons. The higher classes are very regular in their
+ablutions; every morning, be the water cold or warm, the Rajpoot and
+Brahmin, the respectable middle classes, and all in the village who lay
+any claim to social position, have their _goosal_ or bath. Some hie to
+the nearest tank or stream; at all hours of the day, at any ferry or
+landing stage, you will see swarthy fine-looking fellows up to mid
+waist in the water, scrubbing vigorously their bronzed arms, and neck
+and chest. They clean their teeth with the end of a stick, which they
+chew at one extremity, till they loosen the fibres, and with this
+improvised toothbrush and some wood ashes for paste, they make them
+look as white and clean as ivory.
+
+There is generally a large masonry well in the middle of the village,
+with a broad smooth _pucca_ platform all round it. It has been built by
+some former father of the hamlet, to perpetuate his memory, to fulfil a
+vow to the gods, perhaps simply from goodwill to his fellow townsmen.
+At all events there is generally one such in every village. It is
+generally shadowed by a huge _bhur, peepul_, or tamarind tree. Here may
+always be seen the busiest sight in the village. Pretty young women
+chatter, laugh, and talk, and assume all sorts of picturesque attitudes
+as they fill their waterpots; the village matrons gossip, and sometimes
+quarrel, as they pull away at the windlass over the deep cool well. On
+the platform are a group of fat Brahmins nearly nude, their lighter
+skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower classes. There
+are several groups. With damp drapery clinging to their glistening
+skins, they pour brass pots of cold water over their dripping bodies;
+they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again as the cool element pours
+over head and shoulders. They sit down while some young attendant or
+relation vigorously rubs them down the back; while sitting they clean
+their feet. Thus, amid much laughing and talking, and quaint gestures,
+and not a little expectoration, they perform their ablutions. Not
+unfrequently the more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil,
+which at all events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it
+does, though it is not fragrant. Round the well you get all the village
+news and scandal. It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings,
+and only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village
+into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the hand-mill,
+or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy damsel or
+matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool shadow of her
+hut, for the wants of her lord and master.
+
+Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by government,
+and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars subscribe liberally
+for a schoolmaster in their villages. Near the principal street then,
+in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old mango-tree, we come on the
+village school. The little fellows have all discarded their upper
+clothes on account of the heat, and with much noise, swaying the body
+backwards and forwards, and monotonously intoning, they grind away at
+the mill of learning, and try to get a knowledge of books. Other dusky
+urchins figure away with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces
+of wood to serve as copy-books. The din increases as the stranger
+passes: going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause
+a momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school. The little
+Hindoo scholar probably wishes to impress you with a sense of his
+assiduity. He raises his voice, sways the body more briskly, keeps his
+one eye firmly fixed on his task, while with the other he throws a keen
+swift glance over you, which embraces every detail of your costume, and
+not improbably includes a shrewd estimate of your disposition and
+character.
+
+Hindoo children never seem to me to be boys or girls; they are
+preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing
+together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most
+portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning candour and
+guileless innocence, when they are all the while plotting some petty
+scheme against you. They are certainly far more precocious than English
+children; they realise the hard struggle for life far more quickly. The
+poorer classes can hardly be said to have any childhood; as soon as
+they can toddle they are sent to weed, cut grass, gather fuel, tend
+herds, or do anything that will bring them in a small pittance, and
+ease the burden of the struggling parents. I think the children of the
+higher and middle classes very pretty; they have beautiful, dark,
+thoughtful eyes, and a most intelligent expression. Very young babies
+however are miserably nursed; their hair is allowed to get all tangled
+and matted into unsightly knots; their faces are seldom washed, and
+their eyes are painted with antimony about the lids, and are often
+rheumy and running with water. The use of the pocket handkerchief is
+sadly neglected.
+
+There is generally one open space or long street in our village, and in
+a hamlet of any importance there is weekly or bi-weekly a bazaar or
+market. From early morning in all directions, from solitary huts in
+the forest, from struggling little crofts in the rice lands, from
+fishermen's dwellings perched on the bank of the river, from lonely
+camps in the grass jungle where the herd and his family live with their
+cattle, from all the petty Thorpes about, come the women with their
+baskets of vegetables, their bundles of spun yarn, their piece of woven
+cloth, whatever they have to sell or barter. There is a lad with a pair
+of wooden shoes, which he has fashioned as he was tending the village
+cows; another with a grass mat, or bamboo staff, or some other strange
+outlandish-looking article, which he hopes to barter in the bazaar for
+something on which his heart is set. The _bunniahs_ hurry up their
+tottering, overladen ponies; the rice merchant twists his patient
+bullock's tail to make it move faster; the cloth merchant with his bale
+under his arm and measuring stick in hand, walks briskly along. Here
+comes a gang of charcoal-burners, with their loads of fuel slung on
+poles dangling from their shoulders. A _box wallah_ with his attendant
+coolie, staggering under the weight of a huge box of Manchester goods,
+hurries by. It is a busy sight in the bazaar. What a cackling! What a
+confused clatter of voices! Here also the women are the chief
+contributors to the din of tongues. There is no irate husband here or
+moody master to tell them to be still. Spread out on the ground are
+heaps of different grain, bags of flour, baskets of meal, pulse, or
+barley; sweetmeats occupy the attention of nearly all the buyers. All
+Hindoos indulge in sweets, which take the place of beer with us;
+instead of a 'nobbler,' they offer you a 'lollipop.' Trinkets, beads,
+bracelets, armlets, and anklets of pewter, there are in great bunches;
+fruits, vegetables, sticks of cane, skins full of oil, and sugar, and
+treacle. Stands with fresh 'paun' leaves, and piles of coarse looking
+masses of tobacco are largely patronised. It is like a hive of bees.
+The dust hovers over the moving mass; the smells are various, none of
+them 'blest odours of sweet Araby.' Drugs, condiments, spices, shoes,
+in fact, everything that a rustic population can require, is here. The
+_pice_ jingle as they change hands; the haggling and chaffering are
+without parallel in any market at home. Here is a man apparently in the
+last madness of intense passion, in fierce altercation with another,
+who tries his utmost to outbluster his furious declamation. In a moment
+they are smiling and to all appearance the best friends in the world.
+The bargain has been concluded; it was all about whether the one could
+give three _brinjals_ or four for one pice. It is a scene of
+indescribable bustle, noise, and confusion. By evening however, all
+will have been packed up again, and only the faint outlines of yet
+floating clouds of dust, and the hopping, cheeky crows, picking up the
+scattered litter and remnants of the market, will remain to tell that
+it has been bazaar day in our village.
+
+Generally, about the centre of it, there is a more pretentious
+structure, with verandahs supported on wooden pillars. High walls
+surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little
+doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs
+leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside verandahs.
+Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or walk slowly to and
+from the yard with seemingly purposeless indecision. In the outer
+verandah is an old _palkee_, with evidences in the tarnished gilding
+and frayed and tattered hangings, that it once had some pretensions to
+fashionable elegance.
+
+The walls of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and numerous
+young _peepul_ trees grow in the crevices, their insidious roots
+creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and expediting the work
+of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is the residence of the
+Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner of the lands adjoining.
+Probably he is descended from some noble house of ancient lineage. His
+forefathers, possibly, led armed retainers against some rival in yonder
+far off village, where the dim outlines of a mud fort yet tell of the
+insecurity of the days of old. Now he is old, and fat, and lazy.
+Possibly he has been too often to the money-lender. His lands are
+mortgaged to their full value. Though they respect and look up to their
+old Zemindar, the villagers are getting independent; they are not so
+humble, and pay less and less of feudal tribute than in the old days,
+when the golden palanquin was new, when the elephant had splendid
+housings, when mace, and javelin, and matchlock-men followed in his
+train. Alas! the elephant was sold long ago, and is now the property of
+a wealthy _Bunniah_ who has amassed money in the buying and selling of
+grain and oil. The Zemindar may be a man of progress and intelligence,
+but many are of this broken down and helpless type.
+
+Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant,
+conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages through
+a small staff of _peons_, or un-official police. The accounts are kept
+by another important village functionary--the _putwarrie_, or village
+accountant. _Putwarries_ belong to the writer or _Kayasth_ caste. They
+are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous as any
+class in India. They manage the most complicated accounts between ryot
+and landlord with great skill. Their memories are wonderful, but they
+can always forget conveniently. Where ryots are numerous, the
+landlord's wants pressing, and frequent calls made on the tenantry for
+payment, often made in various kinds of grain and produce, the rates
+and prices of which are constantly changing, it is easy to imagine the
+complications and intricacies of a _putwarrie's_ account. Each ryot
+pretty accurately remembers his own particular indebtedness, but woe to
+him if he pays the _putwarrie_ the value of a 'red cent' without taking
+a receipt. Certainly there may be a really honest _putwarrie_, but I
+very much doubt it. The name stands for chicanery and robbery. On
+the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up for money,
+questioning his accounts, and putting him not unfrequently to actual
+bodily coercion. The ryot on the other hand is constantly inventing
+excuses, getting up delays, and propounding innumerable reasons why
+he cannot pay. He will try to forge receipts, he will get up false
+evidence that he has already paid, and the wretched _putwarrie_ needs
+all his native and acquired sharpness, to hold his own. But all ryots
+are not alike, and when the _putwarrie_ gets hold of some unwary and
+ignorant bumpkin whom he can plunder, he _does_ plunder him
+systematically. All cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle
+lifters, and a _putwarrie_ after he has got over the stage of infancy,
+and has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can
+teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of villains. A
+popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:--
+
+  'Unda poortee, Cowa maro!
+  Iinnum me, billar:
+  Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!!
+  Humesha mara gwar!!'
+
+This is translated thus: 'When the shell is breaking kill the crow, and
+the wild cat at its birth.' A _Kayasth_, writer, or _putwarrie_, may be
+allowed to live till he is twelve years old, at which time he is sure
+to have learned rascality. Then kill him; but kill _gwars_ or cowherds
+any time, for they are invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim
+bucolic humour in this, and it very nearly hits the truth.
+
+The _putwarrie_, then, is an important personage. He has his
+_cutcherry_, or office, where he and his tribe (for there are always
+numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his books and accounts)
+squat on their mat on the ground. Each possesses the instruments of his
+calling in the shape of a small brass ink-pot, and an oblong box
+containing a knife, pencil, and several reeds for pens. Each has a
+bundle of papers and documents before him, this is called his _busta_,
+and contains all the papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce
+squabbles with the tenantry. There is always some noise about a
+putwarrie's cutcherry. He has generally some half dozen quarrels on
+hand, but he trusts to his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is
+essentially a man of peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a
+keen argument, and an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain.
+Another proverb says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming
+a soldier as a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.
+
+The _lohar_, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at home. Here
+is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks from the heated
+iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little to remind one of
+Longfellow's beautiful poem. The _lohar_ sits in the open air. His
+hammers and other implements of trade are very primitive. Like all
+native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work. His bellows are made of
+two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted alternately by the attendant
+coolie. As they lift they get inflated with air; they are then sharply
+forced down on their own folds, and the contained air ejected forcibly
+through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing
+charcoal which forms the fire. His principal work is making and
+sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat
+blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the
+_hussowahs_, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They
+are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in
+metal. They are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and
+even gun-locks, made by a common native village blacksmith, that could
+not be surpassed in delicacy of finish by any English smith. It is
+foreign to our ideas of the brawny blacksmith, to hear that he sits to
+his work, but this is the invariable custom. Even carpenters and masons
+squat down to theirs. Cheap labour is but an arbitrary term, and a
+country smith at home might do the work of ten or twelve men in India;
+but it is just as well to get an idea of existing differences. On many
+of the factories there are very intelligent _mistrees_, which is the
+term for the master blacksmith. These men, getting but twenty-four to
+thirty shillings a month, and supplying themselves with food and
+clothing, are nevertheless competent to work all the machinery, attend
+to the engine, and do all the ironwork necessary for the factory. They
+will superintend the staff of blacksmiths; and if the sewing-machine of
+the _mem sahib_, the gun-lock of the _luna sahib_, the lawn-mower,
+English pump, or other machine gets out of order, requiring any metal
+work, the _mistree_ is called in, and is generally competent to put
+things to rights.
+
+[Illustration: CARPENTERS AND BLACKSMITHS AT WORK]
+
+As I have said, every village is a self-contained little commune. All
+trades necessary to supplying the wants of the villagers are
+represented in it. Besides the profits from his actual calling, nearly
+every man except the daily labourer, has a little bit of land which he
+farms, so as to eke out his scanty income. All possess a cow or two, a
+few goats, and probably a pair of plough-bullocks.
+
+When a dispute arises in the village, should a person be suspected of
+theft, should his cattle trespass on his neighbour's growing crop,
+should he libel some one against whom he has a grudge, or, proceeding
+to stronger measures, take the law into his own hands and assault
+him, the aggrieved party complains to the head man of the village.
+In every village the head man is the fountain of justice. He holds
+his office sometimes by right of superior wealth, or intelligence,
+or hereditary succession, not unfrequently by the unanimous wish of
+his fellow-villagers. On a complaint being made to him, he summons
+both parties and their witnesses. The complainant is then allowed to
+nominate two men, to act as assessors or jurymen on his behalf, his
+nominations being liable to challenge by the opposite party. The
+defendant next names two to act on his behalf, and if these are
+agreed to by both parties, these four, with the head man, form what
+is called a _punchayiet_, or council of five, in fact, a jury. They
+examine the witnesses, and each party to the suit conducts his own
+case. The whole village not unfrequently attends to hear what goes on.
+In a mere caste or private quarrel, only the friends of the parties
+will attend. Every case is tried in public, and all the inhabitants of
+the village can hear the proceedings if they wish. Respectable
+inhabitants can remark on the proceedings, make suggestions, and give
+an opinion. Public feeling is thus pretty accurately gauged and
+tested, and the _punchayiet_ agree among themselves on the verdict. To
+the honour of their character for fair play be it said, that the
+decision of a _punchayiet_ is generally correct, and is very seldom
+appealed against. Our complicated system of law, with its delays, its
+technicalities, its uncertainties, and above all its expense, its
+stamp duties, its court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the
+innumerable vexations attendant on the administration of justice in
+our revenue and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of
+Hindostan. They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give
+them justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are
+far too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and
+complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the gate'
+is what they want. It is quite enough admission of the reality of our
+rule--that we are the paramount power--that they submit a case to us
+at all; and all impediments in the way of their getting cheap and
+speedy justice should be done away with. A codification of existing
+laws, a sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at
+present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less
+legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to efficiency
+and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be the aim of our
+Indian rulers. More especially should this be the case in rural
+districts where large interests are concerned, where cases involve
+delicate points of law. Our present courts, divested of their hungry
+crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough; but I would like
+to see rural courts for petty cases established, presided over by
+leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of probity, which would
+in a measure supplement the _punchayiet_ system, which would be easy
+of access, cheap in their procedure, and with all the impress of
+authority. It is a question I merely glance at, as it does not come
+within the scope of a book like this; but it is well known to every
+planter and European who has come much in contact with the rural
+classes of Hindostan, that there is a vast amount of smouldering
+disaffection, of deep-rooted dislike to, and contempt of, our present
+cumbrous costly machinery of law and justice.
+
+If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a
+plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready
+with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a _vakeel_,
+that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or
+round the factory to get some little business done, to neglect his
+work, to get his rent or produce account investigated, wherever there
+is worry, trouble, delay, or difficulty about anything concerning the
+relations between himself and the factory, the deepest and keenest
+expression of discontent and disgust his versatile and acute
+imagination can suggest, or his fluent tongue give utterance to is,
+that this is 'Adanlut lea mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.'
+Could there be a stronger commentary on our judicial institutions?
+
+The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages.
+Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing; communications are
+much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of
+besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering
+tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no
+difficulty in establishing in such village or district courts as I
+have indicated. All educated respectable Europeans with a stake in the
+country should be made Justices of the Peace, with limited powers to
+try petty cases. There is a vast material--loyalty, educated minds, an
+honest desire to do justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of
+everything pettifogging and underhand--that the Indian Government
+would do well to utilise. The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit
+him of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal
+facility to fall under pecuniary temptation. The educated gentleman
+planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering
+titles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the bench,
+and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our rulers'
+while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience, loyalty, honour,
+and integrity of those of our countrymen who might be willing to place
+their services at the disposal of Government. 'India for the Indians'
+is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it will not do to push it to
+its logical issue. Unless Indians can govern India wisely and well, in
+accordance with modern national ideas, they have no more right to
+India than Hottentots have to the Cape, or the black fellows to
+Australia. In my opinion, Hindoos would never govern Hindustan half,
+quarter, nay, one tithe as well as Englishmen. Make more of your
+Englishmen in India then, make not less of your Baboo if you please,
+but make more of your Englishmen. Keep them loyal and content. Treat
+them kindly and liberally. One Englishman contented, loyal, and
+industrious in an Indian district, is a greater pillar of strength to
+the Indian Government than ten dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them
+have as many titles, decorations, university degrees, or certificates
+of loyalty from junior civilians as they may. Not India for the
+Indians, but India for Imperial Britain say I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The
+temple.--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.
+--Their low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions
+and knavery.--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native
+officials.--The Hindoo unfit for self-government.
+
+One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the watchman or
+_chowkeydar_. He is generally a _Doosadh_, or other low caste man, and
+perambulates the village at night, at intervals uttering a loud cry or
+a fierce howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the _chowkeydars_
+of the neighbouring villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after
+cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into
+faintness. At times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out
+close to your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do
+not feel it to be so. The _chowkeydar_ has to see that no thieves
+enter the village by night. He protects the herds and property of the
+villagers. If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report it to
+the nearest police station. If you lose your way by night, you shout
+out for the nearest _chowkeydar_, and he is bound to pass you on to
+the next village. These men get a small gratuity from government, but
+the villagers also pay them a small sum, which they assess according
+to individual means. The _chowkeydar_ is generally a ragged, swarthy
+fellow with long matted hair, a huge iron-bound staff, and always a
+blue _puggra_. The blue is his official badge. Sometimes he has a
+brass badge, and carries a sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle
+of which is so small that scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found
+to fit it. It is more for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it
+has become so fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.
+
+[Illustration: HINDOO VILLAGE TEMPLES.]
+
+In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the village
+itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is often
+perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village tank.
+Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the sacred
+fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several oleaginous
+old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear only the
+_dhote_ or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton, and hanging about
+the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can be told by his
+sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder. His skin is much
+fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers. It is not
+unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as fair as many
+Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds, but lazy and
+self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is simply a sensual
+voluptuary. This is not the time or place to descant on their
+religion, which, with many gross practices, contains not a little that
+is pure and beautiful. The common idea at home that they are miserable
+pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and stones,' is, like many of the
+accepted ideas about India, very much exaggerated. That the masses,
+the crude uneducated Hindoos, place some faith in the idol, and expect
+in some mysterious way that it will influence their fate for good or
+evil, is not to be denied, but the more intelligent natives, and most
+of the Brahmins, only look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of
+the divinity. They want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to
+God, and the idol is a means to assist their thoughts heavenward. As
+works of art their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other
+symbols of the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same
+purpose. Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has
+perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the gods by erecting a
+temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shrine, which
+they visit at intervals and daub with red paint. They deposit flowers,
+pour libations of water or milk, and in other ways strive to shew that
+a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as I have
+observed, however, the vast mass of the poor toilers in India have
+little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing. They may have
+some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a holier life, but the
+fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and shelter, is too
+incessant for them to indulge much in contemplation. They have a dim
+idea of a future life, but none of them can give you anything but a
+very unsatisfactory idea of their religion. They observe certain forms
+and ceremonies, because their fathers did, and because the Brahmins
+tell them. Of real, vital, practical religion, as we know it, they
+have little or no knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low
+castes about immortality, about salvation, about the higher virtues,
+about the yearnings and wishes that every immortal soul at periods
+has, and he will simply tell you 'Khoda jane, hum greel admi,' i.e.
+'God knows; I am only a poor man!' There they take refuge always when
+you ask them anything puzzling. If you are rating them for a fault,
+asking them to perform a complicated task, or inquiring your way in a
+strange neighbourhood, the first answer you get will, ten to one, be
+'Hum greel admi.' It is said almost instinctively, and no doubt in
+many cases is the refuge of simple disinclination to think the matter
+out. Pure laziness suggests it. It is too much trouble to frame an
+answer, or give the desired information, and the 'greel admi' comes
+naturally to the lip. It is often deprecatory, meaning 'I am ignorant
+and uninformed,' you must not expect too 'much from a poor, rude,
+uncultivated man like me.' It is often, also, a delicate mode of
+flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and often conveying in a
+tone, a look, a gesture, that though the speaker is 'greel,' poor,
+humble, despised, it is only by contrast to you, the questioner, who
+are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For downright fawning
+obsequiousness, or delicate, implied, fine-strung, subtle flattery, I
+will back a Hindoo sycophant against the courtier or place-hunter of
+every other nation. It is very annoying at times, if you are in a
+hurry, and particularly want a direct answer to a plain question, to
+hear the old old story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it
+but patience. You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer
+classes are easily flurried; they will always give what information
+they have if kindly spoken to, but you must not fluster them. You must
+rouse their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of
+your inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your
+object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your motive,
+inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer that they
+think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are weary and tired,
+and you ask your distance from the place you may be wishing to reach,
+they will ridiculously underestimate the length of road. A man may
+have all the cardinal virtues, but if they think you do not like him,
+and you ask his character, they will paint him to you blacker than
+Satan himself. It is very hard to get the plain, unvarnished truth
+from a Hindoo. Many, indeed, are almost incapable of giving an
+intelligent answer to any question that does not nearly concern their
+own private and purely personal interests. They have a sordid,
+grubbing, vegetating life, many of them indeed are but little above
+the brute creation. They have no idea beyond the supply of the mere
+animal wants of the moment. The future never troubles them. They live
+their hard, unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no
+surprises. They have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and
+life is one long continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence.
+What wonder then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the
+mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to suffer,
+to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is _Kismet_--their
+fate. Many of them never strive to avert any impending calamity, such,
+for example, as sickness. A man sickens, he wraps himself in stolid
+apathy, he makes no effort to shake of his malady, he accepts it with
+sullen, despairing, pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends
+mourn in their dumb, despairing way, but they too accept the
+situation. He has no one to rouse him. If you ask him what is the
+matter, he only wails out, 'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am
+unwell. No attempt whatever to tell you of the origin of his illness,
+no wish even for sympathy or assistance. He accepts the fact of his
+illness. He struggles not with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight
+against it? Amen; so let it be. I have often been saddened to see poor
+toiling tenants struck down in this way. Even if you give them
+medicine, they often have not energy enough to take it. You must see
+them take it before your eyes. It is _your_ struggle not theirs. _You_
+must rouse them, by _your_ will. _Your_ energy must compel _them_ to
+make an attempt to combat their weakness. Once you rouse a man, and
+infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his disease, but it is a
+hard fight to get him to TRY. What a meaning in that one word TRY! TO
+ACT. TO DO. The average poor suffering native Hindoo knows nothing of
+it.
+
+Of course their moods vary. They have their 'high days and holidays,'
+feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the whole the average
+ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.
+
+In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or jungle
+lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture. The cow
+being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and butter.
+The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings of
+emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the evening
+wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust, having had
+but 'short commons' all the day on the parched and scanty herbage.
+
+The police are too often a source of annoyance, and become
+extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor. It seems
+to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority. I do not
+scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court peons,
+writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts, about the
+courts of justice, in the service of government officers, or in any
+way attached to the retinue of a government official, one and all are
+undeniably shamelessly venal and corrupt. They accept a bribe much
+more quickly than an attorney a fee, or a hungry dog a shin of beef.
+If a policeman only enters a village he expects a feast from the head
+man, and will ask a present with unblushing effrontery as a perquisite
+of his office. If a theft is reported, the inspector of the nearest
+police-station, or _thanna_ as it is called, sends one of his
+myrmidons, or, if the chance of bribes be good, he may attend himself.
+On arrival, ambling on his broken-kneed, wall-eyed pony, he seats
+himself in the verandah of the chief man of the village, who
+forthwith, with much inward trepidation, makes his appearance. The
+policeman assumes the air of a haughty conqueror receiving homage from
+a conquered foe. He assures the trembling wretch that, 'acting on
+information received,' he must search his dwelling for the missing
+goods, and that his women's apartments will have to be ransacked, and
+so annoys, goads, and insults the unfortunate man, that he is too glad
+to purchase immunity from further insolence by making the policeman a
+small present, perhaps a 'kid of the goats,' or something else. The
+guardian of the peace is then regaled with the best food in the house,
+after which he is 'wreathed with smiles.' If he sees a chance of a
+farther bribe, he takes his departure saying he will make his report
+to the _thanna_. He repeats his procedure with some of the other
+respectable inhabitants, and goes back a good deal richer than he
+came, to share the spoil with the _thannadar_ or inspector.
+
+Another man may then be sent, and the same course is followed, until
+all the force in the station have had their share. The ryot is afraid
+to resist. The police have tremendous powers for annoying and doing
+him harm. A crowd of subservient scoundrels always hangs round the
+station, dependents, relations, or accomplices. These harry the poor
+man who is unwise enough to resist the extortionate demands of the
+police. They take his cattle to the pound, foment strife between him
+and his neighbours, get up frivolous and false charges against him,
+harass him in a thousand ways, and if all else fails, get him summoned
+as a witness in some case. You might think a witness a person to be
+treated with respect, to be attended to, to have every facility
+offered him for giving his evidence at the least cost of time and
+trouble possible, consistent with the demands of justice, and the
+vindication of law and authority.
+
+Not so in India with the witness in a police case, when the force
+dislike him. If he has not previously satisfied their leech-like
+rapacity, he is tormented, tortured, bullied, and kicked 'from pillar
+to post,' till his life becomes a burden to him. He has to leave all
+his avocations, perhaps at the time when his affairs require his
+constant supervision. He has to trudge many a weary mile to attend the
+Court. The police get hold of him, and keep him often in real durance.
+He gets no opportunity for cooking or eating his food. His daily
+habits are upset and interfered with. In every little vexatious way
+(and they are masters of the art of petty torture) they so worry and
+goad him, that the very threat of being summoned as a witness in a
+police case, is often enough to make the horrified well-to-do native
+give a handsome gratuity to be allowed to sit quietly at home.
+
+This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the police.
+They exercise a real despotism. They have set up a reign of terror.
+The nature of the ryot is such, that he will submit to a great deal to
+avoid having to leave his home and his work. The police take full
+advantage of this feeling, and being perfectly unscrupulous,
+insatiably rapacious, and leagued together in villany, they make a
+golden harvest out of every case put into their hands. They have made
+the name of justice stink in the nostrils of the respectable and
+well-to-do middle classes of India.
+
+The District Superintendents are men of energy and probity, but after
+all they are only mortal. What with accounts, inspections, reports,
+forms, and innumerable writings, they cannot exercise a constant
+vigilance and personal supervision over every part of their district.
+A district may comprise many hundred villages, thousands of
+inhabitants, and leagues of intricate and densely peopled country. The
+mere physical exertion of riding over his district would be too much
+for any man in about a week. The subordinate police are all interested
+in keeping up the present system of extortion, and the inspectors and
+sub-inspectors, who wink at malpractices, come in for their share of
+the spoil. There is little combination among the peasantry. Each
+selfishly tries to save his own skin, and they know that if any one
+individual were to complain, or to dare to resist, he would have to
+bear the brunt of the battle alone. None of his neighbours would stir
+a finger to back him; he is too timid and too much in awe of the
+official European, and constitutionally too averse to resistance, to
+do aught but suffer in silence. No doubt he feels his wrongs most
+keenly, and a sullen feeling of hate and wrong is being garnered up,
+which may produce results disastrous for the peace and wellbeing of
+our empire in the East.
+
+As a case in point, I may mention one instance out of many which came
+under my own observation. I had a _moonshee_, or accountant, in one of
+my outworks in Purneah. Formerly, when the police had come through the
+factory, he had been in the habit of giving them a present and some
+food. Under my strict orders, however, that no policemen were to be
+allowed near the place unless they came on business, he had
+discontinued paying his black mail. This was too glaring an
+infringement of what they considered their vested rights to be passed
+over in silence. Example might spread. My man must be made an example
+of. I had a case in the Court of the Deputy Magistrate some twenty
+miles or so from the factory. The moonshee had been named as a witness
+to prove the writing of some papers filed in the suit. They got a
+citation for him to appear, a mere summons for his attendance as a
+witness. Armed with this, they appeared at the factory two or three
+days before the date fixed on for hearing the cause. I had just ridden
+in from Purneah, tired, hot, and dusty, and was sitting in the shade
+of the verandah with young D., my assistant. One policeman first came
+up, presented the summons, which I took, and he then stated that it
+was a _warrant_ for the production of my moonshee, and that he must
+take him away at once. I told the man it was merely a summons,
+requiring the attendance of the moonshee on a certain date, to give
+evidence in the case. He was very insolent in his manner. It is
+customary when a Hindoo of inferior rank appears before you, that he
+removes his shoes, and stands before you in a respectful attitude.
+This man's headdress was all disarranged, which in itself is a sign of
+disrespect. He spoke loudly and insolently; kept his shoes on; and sat
+down squatting on the grass before me. My assistant was very
+indignant, and wanted to speak to the man; but rightly judging that
+the object was to enrage me, and trap me into committing some overt
+act, that would be afterwards construed against me, I kept my temper,
+spoke very firmly but temperately, told him my moonshee was doing some
+work of great importance, that I could not spare his services then,
+but that I would myself see that the summons was attended to. The
+policeman became more boisterous and insolent. I offered to give him a
+letter to the magistrate, acknowledging the receipt of the summons,
+and I asked him his own name, which he refused to give. I asked him if
+he could read, and he said he could not. I then asked him if he could
+not read, how could he know what was in the paper which he had
+brought, and how he knew my moonshee was the party meant. He said a
+chowkeydar had told him so. I asked where was the chowkeydar, and
+seeing from my coolness and determination that the game was up, he
+shouted out, and from round the corner of the huts came another
+policeman, and two village chowkeydars from a distance. They had
+evidently been hiding, observing all that passed, and meaning to act
+as witnesses against me, if I had been led by the first scoundrel's
+behaviour to lose my temper. The second man was not such a brute as
+the first, and when I proceeded to ask their names and all about them,
+and told them I meant to report them to their superintendent, they
+became somewhat frightened, and tried to make excuses.
+
+I told them to be off the premises at once, offering to take the
+summons, and give a receipt for it, but they now saw that they had
+made a mistake in trying to bully me, and made off at once. Mark the
+sequel. The day before the case was fixed on for hearing, I sent off
+the moonshee who was a witness of my own, and his evidence was
+necessary to my proving my case. I supplied him with travelling
+expenses, and he started. On his way to the Court he had to pass the
+_thanna_, or police-station. The police were on the watch. He was
+seized as he passed. He was confined all that night and all the
+following day. For want of his evidence I lost my case, and having
+thus achieved one part of their object to pay me off, they let my
+moonshee go, after insult and abuse, and with threats of future
+vengeance should he ever dare to thwart or oppose them. This was
+pretty 'hot' you think, but it was not all. Fearing my complaint to
+the superintendent, or to the authorities, might get them into
+trouble, they laid a false charge against me, that I had obstructed
+them in the discharge of their duty, that I had showered abuse on
+them, used threatening language, and insulted the majesty of the law
+by tearing up and spitting upon the respected summons of Her Majesty.
+On this complaint I was accordingly summoned into Purneah. The charge
+was a tissue of the most barefaced lies, but I had to ride fifty-four
+miles in the burning sun, ford several rivers, and undergo much
+fatigue and discomfort. My work was of course seriously interfered
+with. I had to take in my assistant as witness, and one or two of the
+servants who had been present. I was put to immense trouble, and no
+little expense, to say nothing of the indignation which I naturally
+felt, and all because I had set my face against a well known evil, and
+was determined not to submit to impudent extortion. Of course the case
+broke down. They contradicted themselves in almost every particular.
+The second constable indeed admitted that I had offered them a letter
+to the magistrate, and had not moved out of the verandah during the
+colloquy. I was honourably acquitted, and had the satisfaction of
+seeing the lying rascals put into the dock by the indignant magistrate
+and prosecuted summarily for getting up a false charge and giving
+false evidence. It was a lesson to the police in those parts, and they
+did not dare to trouble me much afterwards; but it is only one
+instance out of hundreds I could give, and which every planter has
+witnessed of the barefaced audacity, the shameless extortion, the
+unblushing lawlessness of the rural police of India.
+
+It is a gigantic evil, but surely not irremediable. By adding more
+European officers to the force; by educating the people and making
+them more intelligent, independent, and self-reliant, much may be done
+to abate the evil, but at present it is admittedly a foul ulcer on the
+administration of justice under our rule. The menial who serves a
+summons, gets a decree of Court to execute, or is entrusted with any
+order of an official nature, expects to be bribed to do his duty. If
+he does not get his fee, he will throw such impediments in the way,
+raise such obstacles, and fashion such delays, that he completely
+foils every effort to procure justice through a legal channel. No
+wonder a native hates our English Courts. Our English officials, let
+it be plainly understood, are above suspicion. It needs not my poor
+testimony to uphold their character for high honour, loyal integrity,
+and zealous eagerness to do 'justly, and to walk uprightly.' They are
+unwearied in their efforts to get at truth, and govern wisely; but our
+system of law is totally unsuited for Orientals. It is made a medium
+for chicanery and trickery of the most atrocious form. Most of the
+native underlings are utterly venal and corrupt. Increased pay does
+not mean decrease of knavery. Cheating, and lying, and taking bribes,
+and abuse of authority are ingrained into their very souls; and all
+the cut and dry formulas of namby pamby philanthropists, the inane
+maunderings of stay-at-home sentimentalists, the wise saws of
+self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo as he
+really shews himself to us in daily and hourly contact with him, will
+ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule, would be
+productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless venality, or
+would end in anything but anarchy and chaos.
+
+It sounds very well in print, and increases the circulation of a paper
+or two among the Baboos, to cry out that our task is to elevate the
+oppressed and ignorant millions of the East, to educate them into
+self-government, to make them judges, officers, lawgivers, governors
+over all the land. To vacate our place and power, and let the Baboo
+and the Bunneah, to whom we have given the glories of Western
+civilization, rule in our place, and guide the fortunes of these
+toiling millions who owe protection and peace to our fostering rule.
+It is a noble sentiment to resign wealth, honour, glory, and power; to
+give up a settled government; to alter a policy that has welded the
+conflicting elements of Hindustan into one stable whole; to throw up
+our title of conqueror, and disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A
+sprinkling of thinly-veneered, half-educated natives, want a share of
+the loaves and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people
+of the 'man and brother' type, cry out at home to let them have their
+way.
+
+No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life and
+property; develop the resources of the country; foster all the virtues
+you can find in the native mind; but till you can give him the energy,
+the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly, honourable
+straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of meanness,
+trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do right; his
+contempt for oppression of the weak; his self-dependence; his probity.
+But why go on? When you make Hindoos honest, truthful, God-fearing
+Englishmen, you can let them govern themselves; but as soon 'may the
+leopard change his spots,' as the Hindoo his character. He is wholly
+unfit for self-government; utterly opposed to honest, truthful, stable
+government at all. Time brings strange changes, but the wisdom which
+has governed the country hitherto, will surely be able to meet the new
+demand that may be made upon it in the immediate present, or in the
+far distant future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Jungle wild fruits.--Curious method of catching quail.--Quail nets.
+--Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.--Native wrestling.--The
+trainer.--How they train for a match.--Rules of wrestling.--Grips.
+--A wrestling match.--Incidents of the struggle.--Description of a
+match between a Brahmin and a blacksmith.--Sparring for the grip.--The
+blacksmith has it.--The struggle.--The Brahmin getting the worst of
+it.--Two to one on the little 'un!--The Brahmin plays the waiting
+game, turns the tables _and_ the blacksmith.--Remarks on wrestling.
+
+A peculiarity in the sombre sal jungles is the scarcity of wild fruit.
+At home the woods are filled with berries and fruit-bearing bushes.
+Who among my readers has not a lively recollection of bramble hunting,
+nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries, wild strawberries,
+raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might walk many a mile through
+the sal jungles without meeting fruit of any kind, save the dry and
+tasteless wild fig, or the sickly mhowa.
+
+There are indeed very few jungle fruits that I have ever come across.
+There is one acid sort of plum called the _Omra_, which makes a good
+preserve, but is not very nice to eat raw. The _Gorkah_ is a small red
+berry, very sweet and pleasant, slightly acid, not unlike a red
+currant in fact, and with two small pips or stones. The Nepaulese call
+it _Bunchooree_. It grows on a small stunted-looking bush, with few
+branches, and a pointed leaf, in form resembling the acacia leaf, but
+not so large.
+
+The _Glaphur_ is a brown, round fruit; the skin rather crisp and hard,
+and of a dull earthy colour, not unlike that of a common boiled
+potato. The inside is a stringy, spongy-looking mass, with small seeds
+embedded in a gummy viscid substance. The taste is exactly like an
+almond, and it forms a pleasant mouthful if one is thirsty.
+
+Travelling one day along one of the glades I have mentioned as
+dividing the strips of jungle, I was surprised to see a man before me
+in a field of long stubble, with a cloth spread over his head, and two
+sticks projecting in front at an obtuse angle to his body, forming
+horn-like projections, on which the ends of his cloth twisted
+spirally, were tied. I thought from his curious antics and movements,
+that he must be mad, but I soon discovered that there was method in
+his madness. He was catching quail. The quail are often very numerous
+in the stubble fields, and the natives adopt very ingenious devices
+for their capture. This was one I was now witnessing. Covering
+themselves with their cloth as I have described, the projecting ends
+of the two sticks representing the horns, they simulate all the
+movements of a cow or bull. They pretend to paw up the earth, toss
+their make-believe horns, turn round and pretend to scratch
+themselves, and in fact identify themselves with the animal they are
+representing; and it is irresistibly comic to watch a solitary
+performer go through this _al fresco_ comedy. I have laughed often at
+some cunning old herdsman, or shekarry. When they see you watching
+them, they will redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old
+bull, going through all his pranks and practices, and throw you into
+convulsions of laughter.
+
+Round two sides of the field, they have previously put fine nets, and
+at the apex they have a large cage with a decoy quail inside, or
+perhaps a pair. The quail is a running bird, disinclined for flight
+except at night; in the day-time they prefer running to using their
+wings. The idiotic looking old cow, as we will call the hunter, has
+all his wits about him. He proceeds very slowly and warily, his keen
+eye detects the coveys of quail, which way they are running; his ruse
+generally succeeds wonderfully. He is no more like a cow, than that
+respectable animal is like a cucumber; but he paws, and tosses, and
+moves about, pretends to eat, to nibble here, and switch his tail
+there, and so manoeuvres as to keep the running quail away from the
+unprotected edges of the field. When they get to the verge protected
+by the net, they begin to take alarm; they are probably not very
+certain about the peculiar looking 'old cow' behind them, and running
+along the net, they see the decoy quails evidently feeding in great
+security and freedom. The V shaped mouth of the large basket cage
+looks invitingly open. The puzzling nets are barring the way, and the
+'old cow' is gradually closing up behind. As the hunter moves along, I
+should have told you, he rubs two pieces of dry hard sticks gently up
+and down his thigh with one hand, producing a peculiar crepitation, a
+crackling sound, not sufficient to startle the birds into flight, but
+alarming them enough to make them get out of the way of the 'old cow.'
+One bolder than the others, possibly the most timid of the covey,
+irritated by the queer crackling sound, now enters the basket, the
+others follow like a flock of sheep; and once in, the puzzling shape
+of the entrance prevents their exit. Not unfrequently the hunter bags
+twenty or even thirty brace of quail in one field, by this ridiculous
+looking but ingenious method.
+
+The small quail net is also sometimes used for the capture of hares.
+The natives stretch the net in the jungle, much as they do the large
+nets for deer described in a former chapter; forming a line, they then
+beat up the hares, of which there are no stint. My friend Pat once
+made a novel haul. His _lobarkhanna_ or blacksmith's shop was close to
+a patch of jungle, and Pat often noticed numbers of quail running
+through the loose chinks and crevices of the walls, in the morning
+when anyone went into the place for the first time; this was at a
+factory called Rajpore. Pat came to the conclusion, that as the
+blacksmith's fires smouldered some time after work was discontinued at
+night, and as the atmosphere of the hut was warmer and more genial
+than the cold, foggy, outside air, for it was in the cold season, the
+quail probably took up their quarters in the hut for the night, on
+account of the warmth and shelter. One night therefore he got some of
+his servants, and with great caution and as much silence as possible,
+they let down a quantity of nets all round the lobarkhanna, and in the
+morning they captured about twenty quails.
+
+The quail is very pugnacious, and as they are easily trained to fight,
+they are very common pets with the natives, who train and keep them to
+pit them against each other, and bet what they can afford on the
+result. A quail fight, a battle between two trained rams, a cock
+fight, even an encounter between trained tamed buffaloes, are very
+common spectacles in the villages; but the most popular sport is a
+good wrestling match.
+
+The dwellers in the Presidency towns, and indeed in most of the large
+stations, seldom see an exhibition of this kind; but away in the
+remote interior, near the frontier, it is very popular pastime, and
+wrestling is a favourite with all classes. Such manly sport is rather
+opposed to the commonly received idea at home, of the mild Hindoo. In
+nearly every village of Behar however, and all along the borders of
+Nepaul, there is, as a rule, a bit of land attached to the residence
+of some head man, or the common property of the commune, set apart for
+the practice of athletic sports, chief of which is the favourite
+_khoosthee_ or wrestling. There is generally some wary old veteran,
+who has won his spurs, or laurels, or belt, or whatever you choose to
+call it, in many a hard fought and well contested tussle for the
+championship of his little world; he is 'up to every dodge,' and knows
+every feint and guard, every wile and tactic of the wrestling ground.
+It is generally in some shady grove, secluded and cool; here of an
+evening when the labours of the day are over, the most stalwart sons
+of the hamlet meet, to test each others skill and endurance in a
+friendly _shake_. The old man puts them through the preliminary
+practice, shows them every trick at his command, and attends strictly
+to their training and various trials. The ground is dug knee deep, and
+forms a soft, good holding stand. I have often looked on at this
+evening practice, and it would astonish a stranger, who cannot
+understand strength, endurance, and activity being attributed to a
+'mere nigger,' to see the severe training these young lads impose upon
+themselves. They leap into the air, and suddenly assume a sitting
+position, then leap up again and squat down with a force that would
+seem to jerk every bone in their bodies out of its place; this gets up
+the muscles of the thighs. Some lie down at full length, only touching
+the ground with the extreme tips of their toes, their arms doubled up
+under them, and sustaining the full weight of the body on the extended
+palms of the hands. They then sway themselves backwards and forwards
+to their full length, never shifting hand or toe, till they are bathed
+in perspiration; they keep up a uniform steady backward and forward
+movement, so as to develop the muscles of the arms, chest, and back.
+They practice leaping, running, and lifting weights. Some standing at
+their full height, brace up the muscles of the shoulder and upper arm,
+and then leaping up, allow themselves to fall to earth on the tensely
+strung muscles of the shoulder. This severe exercise gets the muscles
+into perfect form, and few, very few indeed of our untrained youths,
+could cope in a dead lock, or fierce struggle, with a good village
+Hindoo or Mussulman in active training, and having any knowledge of
+the tricks of the wrestling school. No hitting is allowed. The Hindoo
+system of wrestling is the perfection of science and skill; mere dead
+weight of course will always tell in a close grip, but the catches,
+the holds, the twists and dodges that are practised, allow for the
+fullest development of cultivated skill, as against mere brute force.
+The system is purely a scientific one. The fundamental rule is 'catch
+where you can,' only you must not clutch the hair or strike with the
+fists.
+
+The loins are tightly girt with a long waist-belt or _kummerbund_ of
+cloth, which, passed repeatedly between the limbs and round the loins,
+sufficiently braces up and protects that part of the body. In some
+matches you are not allowed to clutch this waist cloth or belt, in
+some villages it is allowed; the custom varies in various places, but
+what is a fair grip, and what is not, is always made known before the
+competitors engage. A twist, or grip, or dodge, is known as a
+_paench_. This literally means a screw or twist, but in wrestling
+phraseology, means any grip by which you can get such an advantage
+over your opponent as to defeat him. For every paench there is a
+counter paench. A throw is considered satisfactory when BOTH shoulders
+of your opponent touch the ground simultaneously. The old _khalifa_ or
+trainer takes a great interest in the progress of his _chailas_ or
+pupils. _Chaila_ really means disciple or follower. Every khalifa has
+his favourite paenches or grips, which have stood him in good stead in
+his old battling days; he teaches these paenches to his pupils, so
+that when you get young fellows from different villages to meet, you
+see a really fine exhibition of wrestling skill. There is little
+tripping, as amongst our wrestlers at home; a dead-lock is uncommon.
+The rival wrestlers generally bound into the ring, slapping their
+thighs and arms with a loud resounding slap. They lift their legs high
+up from the ground with every step, and scheme and manoeuvre sometimes
+for a long while to get the best corner; they try to get the sun into
+their adversaries eyes; they scan the appearance and every movement of
+their opponent. The old wary fellows take it very coolly, and if they
+can't get the desired side of the ground, they keep hopping about like
+a solemn old ostrich, till the impetuosity or impatience of their foe
+leads him to attack. They remind you for all the world of a pair of
+game cocks, their bodies are bent, their heads almost touching. There
+is a deal of light play with the hands, each trying to get the other
+by the wrist or elbow, or at the back of the head round the neck. If
+one gets the other by a finger even, it is a great advantage, as he
+would whip nimbly round, and threaten to break the impounded finger;
+this would be considered quite fair. One will often suddenly drop on
+his knees and try to reach the ankles of his adversary. I have seen a
+slippery customer, stoop suddenly down, grasp up a handful of dust,
+and throw it into the eyes of his opponent. It was done with the
+quickness of thought, but it was detected, and on an appeal by the
+sufferer, the knave was well thrashed by the onlookers.
+
+There are many professionals who follow no other calling. Wrestlers
+are kept by Rajahs and wealthy men, who get up matches. Frequently one
+village will challenge another, like our village cricket clubs. The
+villagers often get up small subscriptions, and purchase a silver
+armlet or bracelet, the prize him who shall hold his own against all
+comers. The 'Champion's Belt' scarcely calls forth greater
+competition, keener rivalry, or better sport. It is at once the most
+manly and most scientific sport in which the native indulges. A
+disputed fall sometimes terminates in a general free fight, when the
+backers of the respective men lay on the stick to each other with
+mutual hate and hearty lustiness.
+
+It is not by any means always the strongest who wins. The man who
+knows the most paenches, who is agile, active, cool, and careful, will
+not unfrequently overthrow an antagonist twice his weight and
+strength. All the wrestlers in the country-side know each other's
+qualifications pretty accurately, and at a general match got up by a
+Zemindar or planter, or by public subscription, it is generally safe
+to let them handicap the men who are ready to compete for the prizes.
+We used generally to put down a few of the oldest professors, and let
+them pit couples against each other; the sport to the onlookers was
+most exciting. Between the men themselves as a rule, the utmost good
+humour reigns, they strive hard to win, but they accept a defeat with
+smiling resignation. It is only between rival village champions,
+different caste men, or worse still, men of differing religions, such
+as a Hindoo and a Mahommedan, that there is any danger of a fight. A
+disturbance is a rare exception, but I have seen a few wrestling
+matches end in a regular general scrimmage, with broken heads, and
+even fractured limbs. With good management however, and an efficient
+body of men to guard against a breach of the peace, this need never
+occur.
+
+It rarely takes much trouble to get up a match. If you tell your head
+men that you would like to see one, say on a Saturday afternoon, they
+pass the word to the different villages, and at the appointed time,
+all the finest young fellows and most of the male population, led by
+their head man, with the old trainer in attendance, are at the
+appointed place. The competitors are admitted within the enclosure,
+and round it the rows of spectators packed twenty deep squat on the
+ground, and watch the proceedings with deep interest.
+
+While the _Punchayiet_, a picked council, are taking down the names of
+intending competitors, finding out about their form and performances,
+and assigning to each his antagonist, the young men throw themselves
+with shouts and laughter into the ring, and go through all the
+evolutions and postures of the training ground. They bound about, try
+all sorts of antics and contortions, display wonderful agility and
+activity; it is a pretty sight to see, and one can't help admiring
+their vigorous frames, and graceful proportions. They are handsome,
+well made, supple, wiry fellows, although they be NIGGERS, and Hodge
+and Giles at home would not have a chance with them in a fair
+wrestling bout, conducted according to their own laws and customs.
+
+The entries are now all made, places and pairs are arranged, and to
+the ear-splitting thunder of two or three tom-toms, two pair of
+strapping youngsters step into the ring; they carefully scan each
+other, advance, shake hands, or salaam, leisurely tie up their back
+hair, slap their muscles, rub a little earth over their shoulders and
+arms, so that their adversary may have a fair grip, then step by step
+slowly and gradually they near each other. A few quick passages are
+now interchanged; the lithe supple fingers twist and intertwine, grips
+are formed on arm and neck. The postures change each moment, and are a
+study for an anatomist or sculptor. As they warm to their work they
+get more reckless; they are only the raw material, the untrained lads.
+There is a quick scuffle, heaving, swaying, rocking, and struggling,
+and the two victors, leaping into the air, and slapping their chests,
+bound back into the gratified circle of their comrades, while the two
+discomfited athletes, forcing a rueful smile, retire and 'take a back
+seat.' Two couple of more experienced hands now face each other. There
+is pretty play this time, as the varying changes of the contest bring
+forth ever varying displays of skill and science. The crowd shout as
+an advantage is gained, or cry out 'Hi, hi' in a doubtful manner, as
+their favourite seems to be getting the worst of it. The result
+however is much the same; after a longer or shorter time, two get
+fairly thrown and retire. If there is any dispute, it is at once
+referred to the judges, who sit grimly watching the struggle, and
+comparing the paenches displayed, with those they themselves have
+practised in many a well-won fight. On a reference being made, both
+combatants retain their exact hold and position, only cease straining.
+As soon as the matter is settled, they go at it again till victory
+determine in favour of the lucky man. In no similar contest in England
+I am convinced would there be so much fairness, quietness, and order.
+The only stimulants in the crowd are betel nut and tobacco. All is
+orderly and calm, and at any moment a word from the sahib will quell
+any rising turbulence. It is now time for a still more scientific
+exhibition.
+
+Pat has a man, a tall, wiry, handsome Brahmin, who has never yet been
+beaten. Young K. has long been jealous of his uniform success, and on
+several occasions has brought an antagonist to battle with Pat's
+champion. To-day he has got a sturdy young blacksmith, whom rumour
+hath much vaunted, and although he is not so tall as Pat's wrestler,
+his square, deep chest and stalwart limbs, give promise of great
+strength and endurance.
+
+As the two men strip and bound into the ring, there is the usual hush
+of anticipation. Keen eyes scan the appearance of the antagonists.
+They are both models of manly beauty. The blacksmith, though more
+awkward in his motions, has a cool, determined look about him. The
+Brahmin, conscious of his reputation, walks quickly up, with a smile
+of rather ostentatious condescension on his finely cut features, and
+offers his hand to the blacksmith. The little man is evidently
+suspicious. He thinks this may be a deeply laid trap to get a grip
+upon him. Nor does he like the bland patronising manner of
+'Roopuarain,' so he surlily draws back, at which there is a roar of
+laughter from the. crowd, in which we cannot help joining.
+
+K. now comes forward, and pats his 'fancy man' on the back. The two
+wrestlers thereupon shake hands, and then in the usual manner both
+warily move backwards and forwards, till amid cries from the
+onlookers, the blacksmith makes a sudden dash at the practised old
+player, and in a moment has him round the waist.
+
+He evidently depended on his superior strength. For a moment he fairly
+lifted Roopnarain clean off his legs, swayed him to and fro, and with
+a mighty strain tried to throw him to the ground. Bending to the
+notes, Roopnarain allowed himself to yield, till his feet touched the
+ground, then crouching like a panther, he bounded forward, and getting
+his leg behind that of the blacksmith, by a deft side twist he nearly
+threw him over. The little fellow, however, steadied himself on the
+ground with one hand, recovered his footing, and again had the Brahmin
+firmly locked in his tenacious hold. Roopuarain did not like the grip.
+These were not the tactics he was accustomed to. While the other
+tugged and strained, he, quietly yielding his lithe lissome frame to
+every effort, tried hard with obstinate endeavour to untwist the hands
+that held him firmly locked. It was beautiful play to see the mute
+hands of both the wrestlers feeling, tearing, twisting at each other,
+but the grasp was too firm, and, taking advantage of a momentary
+movement, Roopnarain got his elbow under the other's chin, then
+leaning forward, he pressed his opponent's head backward, and the
+strain began to tell. He fought fiercely, he struggled hard, but the
+determined elbow was not to be baulked, and to save himself from an
+overthrow the blacksmith was forced to relax his hold, and sprang
+nimbly back beyond reach, to mature another attack. Roopnarain quietly
+walked round, rubbed his shoulders with earth, and with the same
+mocking smile, stood leaning forward, his hands on his knees, waiting
+for a fresh onset.
+
+This time the young fellow was more cautious. He found he had no
+novice to deal with, and the Brahmin was not at all anxious to
+precipitate matters. By a splendid feint, after some pretty sparring
+for a grip, the youngster again succeeded in getting a hold on the
+Brahmin, and wheeling round quick as lightning, got behind Roopnarain,
+and with a dexterous trip threw the tall man heavily on his face. He
+then tried to get him by the ankle, and bending his leg up backwards,
+he would have got a purchase for turning him on his back. The old man
+was, however, 'up to this move.' He lay extended flat on his chest,
+his legs wide apart. As often as the little one bent down to grasp his
+ankle, he would put out a hand stealthily, and silently as a snake,
+and endeavour to get the little man's leg in his grasp. This
+necessitated a change of position, and round and round they spun, each
+trying to get hold of the other by the leg or foot. The blacksmith got
+his knee on the neck of the Brahmin, and by sheer strength tried
+several times with a mighty heave to turn his opponent. It was no use,
+however, it is next to impossible to throw a man when he is lying flat
+out as the Brahmin now was. It is difficult enough to turn the dead
+weight of a man in that position, and when he is straining every nerve
+to resist the accomplishment of your object it becomes altogether
+impracticable. The excitement in the crowd was intense. The very
+drummer--I ought to call him a tom-tomer--had ceased to beat his
+tom-tom. Pat's lips were firmly pressed together, and K. was trembling
+with suppressed excitement. The heaving chests and profuse
+perspiration bedewing the bodies of both combatants, told how severe
+had been their exertions. The blacksmith seemed gathering himself up
+for a mighty effort, when, quick as light, the Brahmin drew his limbs
+together, was seen to arch his back, and with a sudden backward
+movement, seemed to glide from under his dashing assailant, and
+quicker than it takes me to write it, the positions were reversed.
+
+The Brahmin was now above, and the blacksmith taking in the altered
+aspect of affairs at a glance, threw himself flat on the ground, and
+tried the same tactics as his opponent. The different play of the two
+men now came strongly into relief. Instead of exhausting himself with
+useless efforts, Roopnarain, while keeping a wary eye on every
+movement of his prostrate foe, contented himself while he took breath,
+with coolly and and yet determinedly making his grip secure. Putting
+out one leg then within reach of his opponent's hand, as a lure, he
+saw the blacksmith stretch forth to grasp the tempting hold.
+
+Quicker than the dart of the python, the fierce onset of the kingly
+tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering lightning, was the
+grasp made at the outstretched arm by the practised Brahmin. His
+tenacious fingers closed tightly round the other's wrist. One sudden
+wrench, and he had the blacksmith's arm bent back and powerless, held
+down on the little fellow's own shoulders. Pat smiled a derisive
+smile, K. uttered what was not a benison, while the Brahmins in the
+crowd, and all Pat's men, raised a truly Hindoo howl. The position of
+the men was now this. The stout little man was flat on his face, one
+of his arms bent helplessly round on his own back. Roopnarain, calm
+and cool as ever, was astride the prostrate blacksmith, placidly
+surveying the crowd. The little man writhed, and twisted, and
+struggled, he tried with his legs to entwine himself with those of the
+Brahmin. He tried to spin round; the Brahmin was watching with the eye
+of a hawk for a grip of the other arm, but it was closely drawn in,
+and firmly pressed in safety under the heaving chest of the
+blacksmith. The muscles were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that
+was seen at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete
+was surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm
+further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero,
+game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain tried
+to bend him over, till we thought either the poor fellow's neck must
+break, or his arm be torn from its socket.
+
+He endured all without a murmur. Not a chance did he throw away. Once
+or twice he made a splendid effort, once he tried to catch the Brahmin
+again by the leg. Roopnarain pounced down, but the arm was as quickly
+within its shield. It was now but a question of time and endurance.
+Every dodge that he was master of did the Brahmin bring into play.
+They were both in perfect training, muscles as hard as steel, every
+nerve and sinew strained to the utmost tension. Roopnarain actually
+tried tickling his man, but he would not give him a chance. At length
+he got his hand in the bent elbow of the free arm, and slowly, and
+laboriously forced it out. There were tremendous spurts and struggles,
+but patient determination was not to be baulked. Slowly the arm came
+up over the back, the struggle was tremendous, but at length both the
+poor fellow's arms were tightly pinioned behind his back. He was
+powerless now. The Brahmin drew the two arms backwards, towards the
+head of the poor little fellow, and he was bound to come over or have
+both his arms broken. With a hoarse cry of sobbing-pain and shame, the
+brave little man came over, both shoulders on the mould, and the
+scientific old veteran was again the victor.
+
+This is but a very faint description of a true wrestling bout among
+the robust dwellers in these remote villages. It may seem cruel, but
+it is to my mind the perfection of muscular strength and skill,
+combined with keen subtle, intellectual acuteness. It brings every
+faculty of mind and body into play, it begets a healthy, honest love
+of fair play, and an admiration of endurance and pluck, two qualities
+of which Englishmen certainly can boast. Strength without skill and
+training will not avail. It is a fine manly sport, and one which
+should be encouraged by all who wish well to our dusky fellow subjects
+in the far off plains and valleys of Hindostan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Indigo seed growing.--Seed buying and buyers.--Tricks of sellers.
+--Tests for good seed.--The threshing-floor.--Seed cleaning and
+packing.--Staff of servants.--Despatching the bags by boat.--The
+'Pooneah' or rent day.--Purneah planters--their hospitality.--The
+rent day a great festival.--Preparation.--Collection of rents.--Feast
+to retainers.--The reception in the evening.--Tribute.--Old customs.
+--Improvisatores and bards.--Nautches.--Dancing and music.--The dance
+of the Dangurs.--Jugglers and itinerary showmen.--'Bara Roopes,' or
+actors and mimics.--Their different styles of acting.
+
+Besides indigo planting proper, there is another large branch of
+industry in North Bhaugulpore, and along the Nepaul frontier there,
+and in Purneah, which is the growing of indigo seed for the Bengal
+planters. The system of advances and the mode of cultivation is much
+the same as that followed in indigo planting proper. The seed is sown
+in June or July, is weeded and tended all through the rains, and cut
+in December. The planters advance about four rupees a beegah to the
+ryot, who cuts his seed-plant, and brings it into the factory
+threshing ground, where it is beaten out, cleaned, weighed, and packed
+in bags. When the seed has been threshed out and cleaned, it is
+weighed, and the ryot or cultivator gets four rupees for every
+maund--a maund being eighty pounds avoirdupois. The previous advance
+is deducted. The rent or loan account is adjusted, and the balance
+made over in cash.
+
+Others grow the seed on their own account, without taking advances,
+and bring it to the factory for sale. If prices are ruling high, they
+may get much more than four rupees per maund for it, and they adopt
+all kinds of ingenious devices to adulterate the seed, and increase
+its weight. They mix dust with it, seeds of weeds, even grains of
+wheat, and mustard, pea, and other seeds. In buying seed, therefore,
+one has to be very careful, to reject all that looks bad, or that may
+have been adulterated. They will even get old useless seed, the refuse
+stock of former years, and mixing this with leaves of the neem tree
+and some turmeric powder, give it a gloss that makes it look like
+fresh seed.
+
+When you suspect that the seed has been tampered with in this manner,
+you wet some of it, and rub it on a piece of fresh clean linen, so as
+to bring off the dye. Where the attempt has been flagrant, you are
+sometimes tempted to take the law into your own hands, and administer
+a little of the castigation which the cheating rascal so richly
+deserves. In other cases it is necessary to submit the seed to a
+microscopic examination. If any old, worn seeds are detected, you
+reject the sample unhesitatingly. Even when the seed appears quite
+good, you subject it to yet another test. Take one or two hundred
+seeds, and putting them on a damp piece of the pith of a plantain
+tree, mixed with a little earth, set them in a warm place, and in two
+days you will be able to tell what percentage has germinated, and what
+is incapable of germination. If the percentage is good, the seed may
+be considered as fairly up to the sample, and it is purchased. There
+are native seed buyers, who try to get as much into their hands as
+they can, and rig the market. There are also European buyers, and
+there is a keen rivalry in all the bazaars.
+
+The threshing-floor, and seed-cleaning ground presents a busy sight
+when several thousand maunds of seed are being got ready for despatch
+by boats. The dirty seed, full of dust and other impurities, is heaped
+up in one corner. The floor is in the shape of a large square, nicely
+paved with cement, as hard and clean as marble. Crowds of nearly nude
+coolies, hurry to and fro with scoops of seed resting on their
+shoulders. When they get in line, at right angles to the direction in
+which the wind is blowing, they move slowly along, letting the seed
+descend on the heap below, while the wind winnows it, and carries the
+dust in dense clouds to leeward. This is repeated over and over again,
+till the seed is as clean as it can be made. It is put through bamboo
+sieves, so formed that any seed larger than indigo cannot pass
+through. What remains in the sieve is put aside, and afterwards
+cleaned, sorted, and sold as food, or if useless, thrown away or given
+to the fowls. The men and boys dart backwards and forwards, there is a
+steady drip, drip, of seed from the scoops, dense clouds of dust, and
+incessant noise and bustle. Peons or watchmen are stationed all around
+to see that none is wasted or stolen. Some are filling sacks full of
+the cleaned seed, and hauling them off to the weighman and his clerk.
+Two maunds are put in every sack, and when weighed the bags are hauled
+up close to the _godown_ or store-room. Here are an army of men with
+sailmaker's needles and twine. They sew up the bags, which are then
+hauled away to be marked with the factory brand. Carts are coming and
+going, carrying bags to the boats, which are lying at the river bank
+taking in their cargo, and the returning carts bring back loads of
+wood from the banks of the river. In one corner, under a shed, sits
+the sahib chaffering with a party of _paikars_ (seed merchants), who
+have brought seed for sale.
+
+Of course he decries the seed, says it is bad, will not hear of the
+price wanted, and laughs to scorn all the fervent protestations that
+the seed was grown on their own ground, and has never passed through
+any hands but their own. If you are satisfied that the seed is good,
+you secretly name your price to your head man, who forthwith takes up
+the work of depreciation. You move off to some other department of the
+work. The head man and the merchants sit down, perhaps smoke a
+_hookah_, each trying to outwit the other, but after a keen encounter
+of wits perhaps a bargain is made. A pretty fair price is arrived at,
+and away goes the purchased seed, to swell the heap at the other end
+of the yard. It has to be carefully weighed first, and the weighman
+gets a little from the vendor as his perquisite, which the factory
+takes from him at the market rate.
+
+You have buyers of your own out in the _dehaat_ (district), and the
+parcels they have bought come in hour by hour, with invoices detailing
+all particulars of quantity, quality, and price. The loads from the
+seed depots and outworks, come rolling up in the afternoon, and have
+all to be weighed, checked, noted down, and examined. Every man's hand
+is against you. You cannot trust your own servants. For a paltry bribe
+they will try to pass a bad parcel of seed, and even when you have
+your European assistants to help you, it is hard work to avoid being
+over-reached in some shape or other.
+
+You have to keep up a large staff of writers, who make out invoices
+and accounts, and keep the books. Your correspondence alone is enough
+work for one man, and you have to tally bags, count coolies, see them
+paid their daily wage, attend to lawsuits that may be going on, and
+yet find time to superintend the operations of the farm, and keep an
+eye to your rents and revenues from the villages. It is a busy, an
+anxious time. You have a vast responsibility on your shoulders, and
+when one takes into consideration the climate you have to contend
+with, the home comforts and domestic joys you have to do without, the
+constant tension of mind and irritation of body from dust, heat,
+insects, lies, bribery, robbers, and villany of every description,
+that meets you on all hands, it must be allowed that a planter at such
+a time has no easy life.
+
+The time at which you despatch the seed is also the very time when you
+are preparing your land for spring sowings. This requires almost as
+much surveillance as the seed-buying and despatching. You have not a
+moment you can call your own. If you had subordinates you could trust,
+who would be faithful and honest, you could safely leave part of the
+work to them, but from very sad experience I have found that trusting
+to a native is trusting to a very rotten stick. They are certainly not
+all bad, but there are just enough exceptions to prove the rule.
+
+One peculiar custom prevailed in this border district of North
+Bhaugulpore, which I have not observed elsewhere. At the beginning of
+the financial year, when the accounts of the past season had all been
+made up and arranged, and the collection of the rents for the new year
+was beginning, the planters and Zemindars held what was called the
+_Pooneah_. It is customary for all cultivators and tenants to pay a
+proportion of their rent in advance. The Pooneah might therefore be
+called 'rent-day.' A similar day is set apart for the same purpose in
+Tirhoot, called _tousee_ or collections, but it is not attended by the
+same ceremonious observances, and quaint customs, as attach to the
+Pooneah on the border land.
+
+When every man's account has been made up and checked by the books,
+the Pooneah day is fixed on. Invitations are sent to all your
+neighbouring friends, who look forward to each other's annual Pooneah
+as a great gala day. In North Bhaugulpore and Purneah, nearly all the
+planters and English-speaking population belong to old families who
+have been born in the district, and have settled and lived there long
+before the days of quick communication with home. Their rule among
+their dependants is patriarchal. Everyone is known among the natives,
+who have seen him since his birth living amongst them, by some pet
+name. The old men of the villages remember his father and his father's
+father, the younger villagers have had him pointed out to them on
+their visits to the factory as 'Willie Baba,' 'Freddy Baba,' or
+whatever his boyish name may have been, with the addition of 'Baba,'
+which is simply a pet name for a child. These planters know every
+village for miles and miles. They know most of the leading men in each
+village by name. The villagers know all about them, discuss their
+affairs with the utmost freedom, and not a single thing, ever so
+trivial, happens in the planter's home but it is known and commented
+on in all the villages that lie within the _ilaka_ (jurisdiction) of
+the factory.
+
+The hospitality of these planters is unbounded. They are most of them
+much liked by all the natives round. I came a 'stranger amongst them,'
+and in one sense, and not a flattering sense, they tried 'to take me
+in,' but only in one or two instances, which I shall not specify here.
+By nearly all I was welcomed and kindly treated, and I formed some
+very lasting friendships among them. Old traditions of princely
+hospitality still linger among them. They were clannish in the best
+sense of the word. The kindness and attention given to aged or
+indigent relations was one of their best traits. I am afraid the race
+is fast dying out. Lavish expenditure, and a too confiding faith in
+their native dependants has often brought the usual result. But many
+of my readers will associate with the name of Purneah or Bhaugulpore
+planter, recollections of hospitality and unostentatious kindness, and
+memories of glorious sport and warm-hearted friendships.
+
+On the Pooneah day then, or the night before, many of these friends
+would meet. The day has long been known to all the villages round, and
+nothing could better shew the patriarchal semi-feudal style in which
+they ruled over their villages than the customs in connection with
+this anniversary. Some days before it, requisitions have been made on
+all the villages in any way connected with the factory, for various
+articles of diet. The herdsmen have to send a tribute of milk, curds,
+and _ghee_ or clarified butter. Cultivators of root crops or fruit
+send in samples of their produce, in the shape of huge bundle of
+plantains, immense jack-fruits, or baskets of sweet potatoes, yams,
+and other vegetables. The _koomhar_ or potter has to send in earthen
+pots and jars. The _mochee_ or worker in leather, brings with him a
+sample of his work in the shape of a pair of shoes. These are pounced
+on by your servants and _omlah_, the omlah being the head men in the
+office. It is a fine time for them. Wooden shoes, umbrellas, brass
+pots, fowls, goats, fruits, in fact all the productions of your
+country side are sent or brought in. It is the old feudal tribute of
+the middle ages back again. During the day the _cutcherry_ or office
+is crowded with the more respectable villagers, paying in rents and
+settling accounts. The noise and bustle are great, but an immense
+quantity of work is got through.
+
+The village putwarries and head men are all there with their
+voluminous accounts. Your rent-collector, called a _tehseeldar_, has
+been busy in the villages with the tenants and putwarries, collecting
+rent for the great Pooneah day. There is a constant chink of money, a
+busy hum, a scratching of innumerable pens. Under every tree, 'neath
+the shade of every hut, busy groups are squatted round some acute
+accountant. Totals are being totted up on all hands. From greasy
+recesses in the waistband a dirty bundle is slowly pulled forth, and
+the desired sum reluctantly counted out.
+
+From early morn till dewy eve this work goes on, and you judge your
+Pooneah to have been a good or bad one by the amount you are able to
+collect. Peons, with their brass badges flashing in the sun, and their
+red puggrees shewing off their bronzed faces and black whiskers, are
+despatched in all directions for defaulters. There is a constant going
+to and fro, a hurrying and bustling in the crowd, a hum as of a
+distant fair pervading the place, and by evening the total of the
+day's collections is added up, and while the sahib and his friends
+take their sherry and bitters, the omlah and servants retire to wash
+and feast, and prepare for the night's festivities.
+
+During the day, at the houses of the omlah, culinary preparations on a
+vast scale have been going on. The large supplies of grain, rice,
+flour, fruit, vegetables, &c., which were brought in as _salamee_ or
+tribute, supplemented by additions from the sahib's own stores, have
+been made into savoury messes. Curries, and cakes, boiled flesh, and
+roast kid, are all ready, and the crowd, having divested themselves of
+their head-dress and outer garments, and cleaned their hands and feet
+by copious ablutions, sit down in a wide circle. The large leaves of
+the water-lily are now served out to each man, and perform the office
+of plates. Huge baskets of _chupatties_, a flat sort of
+'griddle-cake,' are now brought round, and each man gets four or five
+doled out. The cooking and attendance is all done by Brahmins. No
+inferior caste would answer, as Rajpoots and other high castes will
+only eat food that has been cooked by a Brahmin or one of their own
+class. The Brahmin attendants now come round with great _dekchees_ or
+cooking-pots, full of curried vegetables, boiled rice, and similar
+dishes. A ladle-full is handed out to each man, who receives it on his
+leaf. The rice is served out by the hands of the attendants. The
+guests manipulate a huge ball of rice and curry mixed between the
+fingers of the right hand, pass this solemnly into their widely-gaping
+mouths, with the head thrown back to receive the mess, like an
+adjutant-bird swallowing a frog, and then they masticate with much
+apparent enjoyment. Sugar, treacle, curds, milk, oil, butter,
+preserves, and chutnees are served out to the more wealthy and
+respectable. The amount they can consume is wonderful. Seeing the
+enormous supplies, you would think that even this great crowd could
+never get through them, but by the time repletion has set in, there is
+little or nothing left, and many of the inflated and distended old
+farmers could begin again and repeat 'another of the same' with ease.
+Each person has his own _lotah_, a brass drinking vessel, and when all
+have eaten they again wash their hands, rinse out their mouths, and
+don their gayest apparel.
+
+The gentlemen in the bungalow now get word that the evening's
+festivities are about to commence. Lighting our cigars, we sally out
+to the _shamiana_ which has been erected on the ridge, surrounding the
+deep tank which supplies the factory during the manufacturing season
+with water. The _shamiana_ is a large canopy or wall-less tent. It is
+festooned with flowers and green plantain trees, and evergreens have
+been planted all round it. Flaring flambeaux, torches, Chinese
+lanterns, and oil lamps flicker and glare, and make the interior
+almost as bright as day. When we arrive we find our chairs drawn up in
+state, one raised seat in the centre being the place of honour, and
+reserved for the manager of the factory.
+
+When we are seated, the _malee_ or gardener advances with a wooden
+tray filled with sand, in which are stuck heads of all the finest
+flowers the garden can afford, placed in the most symmetrical
+patterns, and really a pretty tasteful piece of workmanship. Two or
+three old Brahmins, principal among whom is 'Hureehar Jha,' a wicked
+old scoundrel, now advance, bearing gay garlands of flowers, muttering
+a strange gibberish in Sanskrit, supposed to be a blessing, but which
+might be a curse for all we understood of it, and decking our wrists
+and necks with these strings of flowers. For this service they get a
+small gratuity. The factory omlah headed by the dignified, portly
+_gornasta_ or confidential adviser, dressed in snowy turbans and
+spotless white, now come forward. A large brass tray stands on the
+table in front of you. They each present a _salamee_ or _nuzzur_, that
+is, a tribute or present, which you touch, and it is then deposited
+with a rattling jingle on the brass plate. The head men of villages,
+putwarries, and wealthy tenants, give two, three, and sometimes even
+four rupees. Every tenant of respectability thinks it incumbent on him
+to give something. Every man as he comes up makes a low salaam,
+deposits his _salamee_, his name is written down, and he retires. The
+putwarries present two rupees each, shouting out their names, and the
+names of their villages. Afterwards a small assessment is levied on
+the villagers, of a 'pice' or two 'pice' each, about a halfpenny of
+our money, and which recoups the putwarree for his outlay.
+
+This has nothing to do with the legitimate revenue of the factory. It
+never appears in the books. It is quite a voluntary offering, and I
+have never seen it in any other district. In the meantime the
+_Raj-bhats_, a wandering class of hereditary minstrels or bards, are
+singing your praises and those of your ancestors in ear-splitting
+strains. Some of them have really good voices, all possess the gift of
+improvisation, and are quick to seize on the salient points of the
+scene before them, and weave them into their song, sometimes in a very
+ingenious and humorous manner. They are often employed by rich
+natives, to while away a long night with one of their, treasured
+rhythmical tales or songs. One or two are kept in the retinue of every
+Rajah or noble, and they possess a mine of legendary information,
+which would be invaluable to the collector of folk-lore and
+antiquarian literature.
+
+At some of the Pooneahs the evening's gaiety winds up with a _nautch_
+or dance, by dancing girls or boys. I always thought this a most
+sleep-inspiring exhibition. It has been so often described that I need
+not trouble my readers with it. The women are gaily dressed in
+brocades and gauzy textures, and glitter with spangles and tawdry
+ornaments. The musical accompaniment of clanging zither, asthmatic
+fiddle, timber-toned drum, clanging cymbal, and harsh metallic
+triangle, is a sore affliction, and when the dusky prima donna throws
+back her head, extends her chest, gets up to her high note, with her
+hand behind her ear, and her poura-stained mouth and teeth wide
+expanded like the jaws of a fangless wolf, and the demoniac
+instruments and performers redouble their din, the noise is something
+too dreadful to experience often. The native women sit mute and
+hushed, seeming to like it. I have heard it said that the Germans eat
+ants. Finlanders relish penny candles. The Nepaulese gourmandise on
+putrid fish. I am fond of mouldy cheese, and organ-grinders are an
+object of affection with some of our home community. I _know_ that the
+general run of natives delight in a nautch. Tastes differ, but to me
+it is an inexplicable phenomenon.
+
+Amid all this noise we sit till we are wearied. Parin-leaves and betel
+nut are handed round by the servants. There is a very sudorific odour
+from the crowd. All are comfortably seated on the ground. The torches
+flare, and send up volumes of smoke to the ornamented roof of the
+canopy. The lights are reflected in the deep glassy bosom of the
+silent tank. The combined sounds and odours get oppressive, and we are
+glad to get back to the bungalow, to consume our 'peg' and our 'weed'
+in the congenial company of our friends.
+
+In some factories the night closes with a grand dance by all the
+inhabitants of the _dangur tola_. The men and women range themselves
+in two semicircles, standing opposite each other. The tallest of both
+lines at the one end, diminishing away at the other extremity to the
+children and little ones who can scarcely toddle. They have a wild,
+plaintive song, with swelling cadences and abrupt stops. They go
+through an extraordinary variety of evolutions, stamping with one foot
+and keeping perfect time. They sway their bodies, revolve, march, and
+countermarch, the men sometimes opening their ranks, and the women
+going through, and _vice versa_. They turn round like the winding
+convolutions of a shell, increase their pace as the song waxes quick
+and shrill, get excited, and finish off with a resounding stamp of the
+foot, and a guttural cry which seems to exhaust all the breath left in
+their bodies. The men then get some liquor, and the women a small
+money present. If the sahib is very liberal he gives them a pig on
+which to feast, and the _dangurs_ go away very happy and contented.
+Their dance is not unlike the _corroborry_ of the Australian
+aborigines. The two races are not unlike each other too in feature,
+although I cannot think that they are in any way connected.
+
+Next morning there is a jackal hunt, or cricket, or pony races, or
+shooting matches, or sport of some kind, while the rent collection
+still goes on. In the afternoon we have grand wrestling matches
+amongst the natives for small prizes, and generally witness some fine
+exhibitions of athletic skill and endurance.
+
+Some wandering juggler may have been attracted by the rumour of the
+gathering. A tight-rope dancer, a snake charmer, an itinerant showman
+with a performing goat, monkey, or dancing bear, may make his
+appearance before the admiring crowd.
+
+At times a party of mimes or actors come round, and a rare treat is
+not seldom afforded by the _bara roopees_. _Bara_ means twelve, and
+_roop_ is an impersonation, a character. These 'twelve characters'
+make up in all sorts of disguises. Their wardrobe is very limited, yet
+the number of people they personate, and their genuine acting talent
+would astonish you. With a projecting tooth and a few streaks of clay,
+they make up a withered, trembling old hag, afflicted with palsy,
+rheumatism, and a hacking cough. They make friends with your bearer,
+and an old hat and coat transforms them into a planter, a missionary,
+or an officer. They whiten their faces, using false hair and
+moustache, and while you are chatting with your neighbour, a strange
+sahib suddenly and mysteriously seats himself by your side. You stare,
+and look at your host, who is generally in the secret, but a stranger,
+or new comer, is often completely taken in. It is generally at night
+that they go through their personations, and when they have dressed
+for their part, they generally choose a moment when your attention is
+attracted by a cunning diversion. On looking up you are astounded to
+find some utter stranger standing behind your chair, or stalking
+solemnly round the room.
+
+They personate a woman, a white lady, a sepoy policeman, almost any
+character. Some are especially good at mimicking the Bengalee Baboo,
+or the merchant from Cabool or Afghanistan with his fruits and cloths.
+A favourite _roop_ with them is to paint one half of the face like a
+man. Everything is complete down to moustache, the folds of the
+puggree, the _lathee_ or staff, indeed to the slightest detail. You
+would fancy you saw a stalwart, strapping Hindoo before you. He turns
+round, and lo, a bashful maiden. Her eyes are stained with _henna_
+(myrtle juice) or antimony. Her long-hair neatly smoothed down is tied
+into a knot at the back, and glistens with the pearl-like ornaments.
+The taper arm is loaded with armlets and bracelets. The very toes are
+bedecked with rings. The bodice hides the taper waist and budding
+bosom, the tiny ear is loaded with jewelled ear-rings, the very nose
+is not forgotten, but is ornamented with a golden circle, bearing on
+its circumference a pearl of great price. The art, the posturing, the
+mimicry, is really admirable. A good _bara roopee_ is well worth
+seeing, and amply earns the two or three rupees he gets as his reward.
+
+The Pooneah seldom lasts more than the two days, but it is quite
+unique in its feudal character, and is one of the old-fashioned
+observances; a relic of the time when the planter was really looked
+upon as the father of his people, and when a little sentiment and
+mutual affection mingled with the purely business relations of
+landlord and tenant.
+
+I delighted my ryots by importing some of our own country recreations,
+and setting the ploughmen to compete against each other. I stuck a
+greasy bamboo firmly into the earth, putting a bag of copper coins at
+the top. Many tried to climb it, but when they came to the grease they
+came down 'by the run.' One fellow however filled his _kummerbund_
+with sand, and after much exertion managed to secure the prize.
+Wheeling the barrow blindfold also gave much amusement, and we made
+some boys bend their foreheads down to a stick and run round till they
+were giddy. Their ludicrous efforts then to jump over some water-pots,
+and run to a thorny bush, raised tumultuous peals of laughter. The
+poor boys generally smashed the pots, and ended by tumbling into the
+thorns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The Koosee jungles.--Ferries.--Jungle roads.--The rhinoceros.--We go
+to visit a neighbour.--We lose our way and get belated.--We fall into
+a quicksand.--No ferry boat.--Camping out on the sand.--Two tigers
+close by.--We light a fire.--The boat at last arrives.--Crossing the
+stream.--Set fire to the boatman's hut.--Swim the horses.--They are
+nearly drowned.--We again lose our way in the jungle.--The towing
+path, and how boats are towed up the river.--We at last reach the
+factory.--News of rhinoceros in the morning.--Off we start, but arrive
+too late.--Death of the rhinoceros.--His dimensions.--Description.
+--Habits.--Rhinoceros in Nepaul.--The old 'Major Capt[=a]n.'--Description
+of Nepaulese scenery.--Immigration of Nepaulese.--Their fondness for
+fish.--They eat it putrid.--Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul.
+--Resources of the country.--Must sooner or later be opened up.
+--Influences at work to elevate the people.--Planters and factories
+chief of these.--Character of the planter.--His claims to consideration
+from government.
+
+In the vast grass jungles that border the banks of the Koosee,
+stretching in great plains without an undulation for miles on either
+side, intersected by innumerable water-beds and dried up channels,
+there is plenty of game of all sorts. It is an impetuous,
+swiftly-flowing stream, dashing directly down from the mighty hills of
+Nepaul. So swift is its current and so erratic its course, that it
+frequently bursts its banks, and careers through the jungle, forming a
+new bed, and carrying away cattle and wild animals in its headlong
+rush.
+
+The _ghauts_ or ferries are constantly changing, and a long bamboo
+with a bit of white rag affixed, shows where the boats and boatmen are
+to be found. In many instances the track is a mere cattle path, and
+hundreds of cross openings, leading into the tall jungle grass, are
+apt to bewilder and mislead the traveller. During the dry season these
+jungles are the resort of great herds of cattle and tame buffaloes,
+which trample down the dry stalks, and force their way into the
+innermost recesses of the wilderness of grass, which grows ten to
+twelve feet high. If you once lose your path you may wander for miles,
+until your weary horse is almost unable to stumble on. In such a case,
+the best way is to take it coolly, and halloo till a herdsman or
+thatch-cutter comes to your rescue. The knowledge of the jungles
+displayed by these poor ignorant men is wonderful; they know every
+gully and watercourse, every ford and quicksand, and they betray not
+the slightest sign of fear, although they know that at any moment they
+may come across a herd of wild buffalo, a savage rhinoceros, or even a
+royal tiger.
+
+The tracks of rhinoceros are often seen, but although I have
+frequently had these pointed out to me when out tiger shooting, I only
+saw two while I lived in that district.
+
+The first occasion was after a night of discomfort such as I have
+fortunately seldom experienced. I had been away at a neighbouring
+factory in Purneah, some eighteen or twenty miles from my bungalow. My
+companion had been my predecessor in the management, and was supposed
+to be well acquainted with the country. We had gone over to one of the
+outworks across the river, and I had received charge of the place from
+him. It was a lonely solitary spot; the house was composed of grass
+walls plastered with mud, and had not been used for some time. F.
+proposed that we should ride over to see H., to whom he would
+introduce me as he would be one of my nearest neighbours, and would
+give us a comfortable dinner and bed, which there was no chance of our
+procuring where we were.
+
+We plunged at once into the mazy labyrinths of the jungle, and soon
+emerged on the high sandy downs, stretching mile beyond mile along the
+southern bank of the ever-changing river. Having lost our way, we got
+to the factory after dark, but a friendly villager volunteered his
+services as guide, and led us safely to our destination. After a
+cheerful evening with H., we persuaded him to accompany us back next
+day. He took out his dogs, and we had a good course after a hare,
+killing two jackals, and sending back the dogs by the sweeper. At
+Burgamma, the outwork, we stopped to _tiffin_ on some cold fowl we had
+brought with us. The old factory head man got us some milk, eggs, and
+_chupatties_; and about three in the afternoon we started for the head
+factory. In an evil moment F. proposed that, as we were near another
+outwork called _Fusseah_, we should diverge thither, I could take over
+charge, and we could thus save a ride on another day. Not knowing
+anything of the country I acquiesced, and we reached Fusseah in time
+to see the place, and do all that was needful. It was a miserable
+tumbledown little spot, with four pair of vats; it had formerly been a
+good working factory, but the river had cut away most of its best
+lands, and completely washed away some of the villages, while the
+whole of the cultivation was fast relapsing into jungle.
+
+'Debnarain Singh' the _gomorsta_ or head man, asked us to stay for the
+night, as he said we could never get home before dark. F. however
+scouted the idea, and we resumed our way. The track, for it could not
+be called a road, led us through one or two jungle villages completely
+hidden by the dense bamboo clumps and long jungle grass. You can't see
+a trace of habitation till you are fairly on the village, and as the
+rice-fields are bordered with long strips of tall grass, the whole
+country presents the appearance of a uniform jungle. We got through
+the rice swamps, the villages, and the grass in safety, and as it was
+getting dark, emerged on the great plain of undulating ridgy
+sandbanks, that form the bed of the river during the annual floods. We
+had our _syces_ (grooms) and two peons with us. We had to ride over
+nearly two miles of sand before we could reach the _ghat_ where we
+expected the ferry-boats, and, the main stream once crossed, we had
+only two miles further to reach the factory. We were getting both
+tired and hungry; a heavy dew was falling, and the night was raw and
+chill. It was dark, there was no moon to light our way, and the stars
+were obscured by the silently creeping fog, rising from the marshy
+hollows among the sand. All at once F., who was leading, called out
+that we were off the path, and before I could pull up, my poor old
+tired horse was floundering in a quicksand up to the girths; I threw
+myself off and tried to wheel him round. H. was behind us, and we
+cried to him to halt where he was. I was sinking at every movement up
+to the knees, when the syce came to my rescue, and took charge of the
+horse. F.'s syce ran to extricate his master and horse; the two peons
+kept calling, 'Oh! my father, my father,' the horses snorted, and
+struggled desperately in the tenacious and treacherous quicksand; but
+after a prolonged effort, we all got safely out, and rejoined H. on
+the firm ridge.
+
+We now hallooed and shouted for the boatmen, but beyond the swish of
+the rapid stream to our right, or the plash of a falling bank as the
+swift current undermined it, no sound answered our repeated calls. We
+were wet and weary, but to go either backward or forward was out of
+the question. We were off the path, and the first step in any
+direction might lead us into another quicksand, worse perhaps than
+that from which we had just extricated ourselves. The horses were
+trembling in every limb. The syces cowered together and shivered with
+the cold. We ordered the two peons to try and reach the ghat, and see
+what had become of the boats, while we awaited their return where we
+were. The fog and darkness soon swallowed them up, and putting the
+best face on our dismal circumstances that we could, we lit our pipes
+and extended our jaded limbs on the damp sand.
+
+For a time we could hear the shouts of the peons as they hallooed for
+the boatmen, and we listened anxiously for the response, but there was
+none. We could hear the purling swish of the rapid stream, the
+crumbling banks falling into the current with a distant splash.
+Occasionally a swift rushing of wings overhead told us of the arrowy
+flight of diver or teal. Far in the distance twinkled the gleam of a
+herdsman's fire, the faint tinkle of a distant bell, or the subdued
+barking of a village dog for a moment, alone broke the silence.
+
+At times the hideous chorus of a pack of jackals woke the echoes of
+the night. Then, at no great distance, rose a hoarse booming cry,
+swelling on the night air, and subsiding into a lengthened growl. The
+syces started to their feet, the horses snorted with fear; and as the
+roar was repeated, followed closely by another to our left, and
+seemingly nearer, H. exclaimed 'By Jove! there's a couple of tigers.'
+
+Sure enough, so it was. It was the first time I had heard the roar of
+the tiger in his own domain, and I must confess that my sensations
+were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting sticks and what
+roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats everything was
+wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about on our hands and
+knees, and pick up whatever we came across.
+
+With great difficulty we managed to light a small fire, and for about
+half-an-hour were nearly smothered by trying with inflated cheeks to
+coax it into a blaze. The tigers continued to call at intervals, but
+did not seem to be approaching us. It was a long weary wait, we were
+cold, wet, hungry, and tired; F., the cause of our misfortunes, had
+taken off his saddle, and with it for a pillow was now fast asleep. H.
+and I cowered over the miserable sputtering flame, and longed and
+wished for the morning. It was a miserable night, the hours seemed
+interminable, the dense volumes of smoke from the water-sodden wood
+nearly choked us. At last, after some hours spent in this miserable
+manner, we heard a faint halloo in the distance; it was now past
+eleven at night. We returned the hail, and bye-and-bye the peons
+returned bringing a boatman with them. The lazy rascals at the ghat
+where we had proposed crossing, had gone home at nightfall, leaving
+their boats on the further bank. Our trusty peons, had gone five miles
+up the river, through the thick jungle, and brought a boat down with
+them from the next ghat to that where we were.
+
+We now warily picked our way down to the edge of the bank. The boat
+seemed very fragile, and the current looked so swift and dangerous,
+that we determined to go across first ourselves, get the larger boat
+from the other side, light a fire, and then bring over the horses. We
+embarked accordingly, leaving the syces and horses behind us. The
+peons and boatman pulled the boat a long way up stream by a rope, then
+shooting out we were carried swiftly down stream, the dark shadow of
+the further bank seeming at a great distance. The boatman pushed
+vigorously at his bamboo pole, the water rippled and gurgled, and
+frothed and eddied around. Half-a-dozen times we thought our boat
+would topple over, but at length we got safely across, far below what
+we had proposed as our landing place.
+
+We found the boats all right, and the boatman's hut, a mere collection
+of dry grass and a few old bamboos. As it could be replaced in an
+hour, and the material lay all around, we fired the hut, which soon,
+blazed up, throwing a weird lurid glow on bank and stream, and
+disclosing far on the other bank our weary nags and shivering syces,
+looking very bedraggled and forlorn indeed. The leaping and crackling
+of the flames, and the genial warmth, invigorated us a little, and
+while I stayed behind to feed the fire, the others recrossed to bring
+the horses over.
+
+With the previous fright however, their long waiting, the blazing
+fire, and being unaccustomed to boats at night, the poor scared horses
+refused to enter the boat, The boats are flat-bottomed or broadly
+bulging, with a bamboo platform strewn with grass in the centre. As a
+rule, they have no protecting rails, and even in the daytime, when the
+current is strong and eddies numerous, they are very dangerous for
+horses. At all events, the poor brutes would not be led on to the
+platform, so there was nothing for it but to swim them across. The
+boat was therefore towed a long way up the bank, which on the farther
+side was nearly level with the current, but where the hut had stood
+was steep and slushy, and perhaps twenty feet high. This was where the
+deepest water ran, and where the current was swiftest. If the horses
+therefore missed the landing ghat or stage, which was cut sloping into
+the bank, there was a danger of their being swept away altogether and
+lost. However, we determined on making the attempt. Entering the
+water, and holding the horses tightly by the head, with a leading rope
+attached, to be paid out in case of necessity; the boat shot out, the
+horses pawed the water, entering deeper and deeper, foot by foot, into
+the swiftly rushing silent stream. So long as they were in their
+depth, and had footing, they were alright, but when they reached the
+middle of the river, the current, rushing with frightful velocity,
+swept them off their feet, and boat and horses began to go down
+stream. The horses, with lips apart showing their teeth firmly set,
+the lurid glare of the flame lighting up their straining eyeballs, the
+plashing of the water, the dark rapid current flowing noiselessly
+past; the rocking heaving boat, the dusky forms of syces, peons, and
+boatman, standing out clear in the ruddy fire-light against the utter
+blackness of the night, composed a weird picture I can never forget.
+
+The boat shot swiftly past the ghat, and came with a thump against the
+bank. It swung round into the stream again, but the boatman had
+luckily managed to scramble ashore, and his efforts and mine united,
+hauling on the mooring-rope, sufficed to bring her in to the bank. The
+three struggling horses were yet in the current, trying bravely to
+stem the furious rush of the river. The syces and my friends were
+holding hard to the tether-ropes, which were now at their full
+stretch. It was a most critical moment. Had they let go, the horses
+would have been swept away to form a meal for the alligators. They
+managed, however, to get in close to the bank, and here, although the
+water was still over their backs, they got a slight and precarious
+footing, and inch by inch struggled after the boat, which we were now
+pulling up to the landing place.
+
+After a sore struggle, during which we thought more than once the
+gallant nags would never emerge from the water, they staggered up the
+bank, dripping, trembling, and utterly overcome with their exertions.
+It was my first introduction to the treacherous Koosee, and I never
+again attempted to swim a horse across at night. We led the poor tired
+creatures up to the fire, heaping on fresh bundles of thatching-grass,
+of which there was plenty lying about, the syces then rubbed them
+down, and shampooed their legs, till they began to take a little
+heart, whinnying as we spoke to them and caressed them.
+
+After resting for nearly an hour, we replaced the saddles, and F., who
+by this time began to mistrust his knowledge of the jungles by night,
+allowed one of the peons, who was sure he knew every inch of the road,
+to lead the way. Leaving the smouldering flames to flicker and burn
+out in solitude, we again plunged into the darkness of the night,
+threading our way through the thick jungle grass, now loaded with dewy
+moisture, and dripping copious showers upon us from its high walls at
+either side of the narrow track. We crossed a rapid little stream, an
+arm of the main river, turned to the right, progressed a few hundred
+yards, turned to the left, and finally came to a dead stop, having
+again lost our way.
+
+We heaped execrations on the luckless peon's head, and I suggested
+that we should make for the main stream, follow up the bank till we
+reached the next ghat, where I knew there was a cart-road leading to
+the factory. Otherwise we might wander all night in the jungles,
+perhaps get into another quicksand, or come to some other signal
+grief. We accordingly turned round. We could hear the swish of the
+river at no great distance, and soon, stumbling over bushes and
+bursting through matted chumps of grass, dripping with wet, and
+utterly tired and dejected, we reached the bank of the stream.
+
+Here we had no difficulty in following the path. The river is so
+swift, that the only way boats are enabled to get up stream to take
+down the inland produce, is by having a few coolies or boatmen to drag
+the boat up against the current by towing-lines. This is called
+_gooning_. The goon-ropes are attached to the mast of the boat. At the
+free end is a round bit of bamboo. The towing-coolie places this
+against his shoulder, and slowly and laboriously drags the boat up
+against the current. We were now on this towing-path, and after riding
+for nearly four miles we reached the ghat, struck into the cart-road,
+and without further misadventure reached the factory about four in the
+morning, utterly fagged and worn out.
+
+About eight in the morning my bearer woke me out of a deep sleep, with
+the news that there was a _gaerha_, that is, a rhinoceros, close to
+the factory. We had some days previously heard it rumoured that there
+were _two_ rhinoceroses in the _Battabarree_ jungles, so I at once
+roused my soundly-sleeping friends. Swallowing a hasty morsel of toast
+and a cup of coffee, we mounted our ponies, sent our guns on ahead,
+and rode off for the village where the rhinoceros was reported. As we
+rode hurriedly along we could see natives running in the same
+direction as ourselves, and one of my men came up panting and
+breathless to confirm the news about the rhinoceros, with the
+unwelcome addition that Premnarain Singh, a young neighbouring
+Zemindar, had gone in pursuit of it with his elephant and guns. We
+hurried on, and just then heard the distant report of a shot, followed
+quickly by two more. We tried to take a short cut across country
+through some rice-fields, but our ponies sank in the boggy ground, and
+we had to retrace our way to the path.
+
+By the time we got to the village we found an excited crowd of over a
+thousand natives, dancing and gesticulating round the prostrate
+carcase of the rhinoceros. The Baboo and his party had found the poor
+brute firmly imbedded in a quicksand. With organised effort they might
+have secured the prize alive, and could have sold him in Calcutta for
+at least a thousand rupees, but they were too excited, and blazed away
+three shots into the helpless beast. 'Many hands make light work,' so
+the crowd soon had the dead animal extricated, rolled him into the
+creek, and floated him down to the village, where we found them
+already beginning to hack and hew the flesh, completely spoiling the
+skin, and properly completing the butchery. We were terribly vexed
+that we were too late, but endeavoured to stop the stupid destruction
+that was going on. The body measured eleven feet three inches from the
+snout to the tail, and stood six feet nine. The horn was six and a
+half inches long, and the girth a little over ten feet. We put the
+best face on the matter, congratulated the Baboo with very bad grace,
+and asked him to get the skin cut up properly.
+
+Cut in strips from the under part of the ribs and along the belly, the
+skin makes magnificent riding-whips. The bosses on the shoulder and
+sides are made into shields by the natives, elaborately ornamented and
+much prized. The horn, however, is the most coveted acquisition. It is
+believed to have peculiar virtues, and is popularly supposed by its
+mere presence in a house to mitigate the pains of maternity. A
+rhinoceros horn is often handed down from generation to generation as
+a heirloom, and when a birth is about to take place the anxious
+husband often gets a loan of the precious treasure, after which he has
+no fears for the safe issue of the labour.
+
+The flesh of the rhinoceros is eaten by all classes. It is one of the
+five animals that a Brahmin is allowed to eat by the _Shastras_. They
+were formerly much more common in these jungles, but of late years
+very few have been killed. When they take up their abode in a piece of
+jungle they are not easily dislodged. They are fierce, savage brutes,
+and do not scruple to attack an elephant when they are hard pressed by
+the hunter. When they wish to leave a locality where they have been
+disturbed, they will make for some distant point, and march on with
+dogged and inflexible purpose. Some have been known to travel eighty
+miles in the twenty-four hours, through thick jungle, over rivers, and
+through swamp and quicksand. Their sense of hearing is very acute, and
+they are very easily roused to fury. One peculiarity often noticed by
+sportsmen is, that they always go to the same spot when they want to
+obey the calls of nature. Mounds of their dung are sometimes seen in
+the jungle, and the tracks shew that the rhinoceros pays a daily visit
+to this one particular spot.
+
+In Nepaul, and along the _terai_ or wooded slopes of the frontier,
+they are more numerous; but 'Jung Bahadur,' the late ruler of Nepaul,
+would allow no one to shoot them but himself. I remember the wailing
+lament of a Nepaul officer with whom I was out shooting, when I
+happened to fire at and wound one of the protected beasts. It was in
+Nepaul, among a cluster of low woody hills, with a brawling stream
+dashing through the precipitous channel worn out of the rocky,
+boulder-covered dell. The rhinoceros was up the hill slightly above
+me, and we were beating up for a tiger that we had seen go ahead of
+the line.
+
+In my eagerness to bag a 'rhino' I quite forgot the interdict, and
+fired an Express bullet into the shoulder of the animal, as he stood
+broadside on, staring stupidly at me. He staggered, and made as if he
+would charge down the hill. The old 'Major Capt[=a]n,' as they called our
+sporting host, was shouting out to me not to fire. The _mahouts_ and
+beaters were petrified with horror at my presumption. I fancy they
+expected an immediate order for my decapitation, or for my ears to be
+cut off at the very least, but feeling I might as well be 'in for a
+pound as for a penny,' I fired again, and tumbled the huge brute over,
+with a bullet through the skull behind the ear. The old officer was
+horror-stricken, and would allow no one to go near the animal. He
+would not even let me get down to measure it, being terrified lest the
+affair should reach the ears of his formidable lord and ruler, that he
+hurried us off from the scene of my transgression as quickly as he
+could.
+
+The old Major Capt[=a]n was a curious character. The government of
+Nepaul is purely military. All executive and judicial functions are
+carried on by military officers. After serving a certain time in the
+army, they get rewarded for good service by being appointed to the
+executive charge of a district. So far as I could make out, they seem
+to farm the revenue much as is done in Turkey. They must send in
+so much to the Treasury, and anything over they keep for themselves.
+Their administration of justice is rough and ready. Fines, corporal
+punishment, and in the case of heinous crimes, mutilation and death are
+their penalties. There is a tax of _kind_ on all produce, and licenses
+to cut timber bring in a large revenue. A protective tariff is levied on
+all goods or produce passing the frontier from British territory, and no
+European is allowed to travel in the country, or to settle and trade
+there. In the lower valleys there are magnificent stretches of land
+suitable for indigo, tea, rice, and other crops. The streams are
+numerous, moisture is plentiful, the soil is fertile, and the slopes of
+the hills are covered with splendid timber, a great quantity of which is
+cut and floated down the Gunduch, Bagmuttee, Koosee, and other streams
+during the rainy season. It is used principally for beams, rafters, and
+railway sleepers.
+
+The people are jealous of intrusion and suspicious of strangers, but
+as I was with an official, they generally came out in great numbers to
+gaze as we passed through a village. The country does not seem so
+thickly populated as in our territory, and the cultivators had a more
+well-to-do look. They possess vast numbers of cattle. The houses have
+conical roofs, and great quadrangular sheds, roofed with a flat
+covering of thatch, are erected all round the houses, for the
+protection of the cattle at night. The taxes must weigh heavily on the
+population. The executive officer, when he gets charge of a district,
+removes all the subordinates who have been acting under his
+predecessor. When I asked the old Major if this would not interfere
+with the efficient administration of justice, and the smooth working
+of his revenue and executive functions, he gave a funny leer, almost a
+wink, and said it was much more satisfactory to have men of your own
+working under you, the fact being, that with his own men he could more
+securely wring from the ryots the uttermost farthing they could pay,
+and was more certain of getting his own share of the spoil.
+
+With practically irresponsible power, and only answerable directly to
+his immediate military superior, an unscrupulous man may harry and
+harass a district pretty much as he chooses. Our old Major seemed to
+be civil and lenient, but in some districts the exactions and
+extortions of the rulers have driven many of the hard-working
+Nepaulese over the border into our territory. Our landholders or
+Zemindars, having vast areas of untilled land, are only too glad to
+encourage this immigration, and give the exiles, whom they find
+hard-working industrious tenants, long leases on easy terms. The
+new-comers are very independent, and strenuously resist any
+encroachment on what they consider their rights. If an attempt is made
+to raise their rent, even equitably, the land having increased in
+value, they will resist the attempt 'tooth and nail,' and take every
+advantage the law affords to oppose it. They are very fond of
+litigation, and are mostly able to afford the expense of a lawsuit. I
+generally found it answer better to call them together and reason
+quietly with them, submitting any point in dispute to an arbitration
+of parties mutually selected.
+
+Nearly all the rivers in Nepaul are formed principally from the
+melting of the snow on the higher ranges. A vast body of water
+descends annually into the plains from the natural surface drainage of
+the country, but the melting of the snows is the main source of the
+river system. Many of the hill streams, and it is particularly
+observable at some seasons in the Koosee, have a regular daily rise
+and fall. In the early morning you can often ford a branch of the
+river, which by midday has become a swiftly-rolling torrent, filling
+the channel from bank to bank. The water is intensely cold, and few or
+no fish are to be found in the mountain streams of Nepaul. When the
+Nepaulese come down to the plains on business, pleasure, or pilgrimage
+their great treat is a mighty banquet of fish. For two or three
+_annas_ a fish of several pounds weight can easily be purchased. They
+revel on this unwonted fare, eating to repletion, and very frequently
+making themselves ill in consequence. When Jung Bahadur came down
+through Chumparun to attend the _durbar_ of the lamented Earl Mayo,
+cholera broke out in his camp, brought on simply by the enormous
+quantities of fish, often not very fresh or wholesome, which his
+guards and camp followers consumed.
+
+Large quantities of dried fish are sent up to Nepaul, and exchanged
+for rice and other grain, or horns, hides, and blankets. The
+fish-drying is done very simply in the sun. It is generally left till
+it is half putrid and taints the air for miles. The sweltering,
+half-rotting mass, packed in filthy bags, and slung on ponies or
+bullocks, is sent over the frontier to some village bazaar in Nepaul.
+The track of a consignment of this horrible filth can be recognised
+from very far away. The perfume hovers on the road, and as you are
+riding up and get the first sniff of the putrid odour, you know at
+once that the Nepaulese market is being recruited by a _fresh_
+accession of very _stale_ fish. If the taste is at all equal to the
+smell, the rankest witches broth ever brewed in reeking cauldron would
+probably be preferable. Over the frontier there seems to be few roads,
+merely bullock tracks. Most of the transporting of goods is done by
+bullocks, and intercommunication must be slow and costly. I believe
+that near Katmandoo, the capital, the roads and bridges are good, and
+kept in tolerable repair. There is an arsenal where they manufacture
+modern munitions of war. Their soldiers are well disciplined, fairly
+well equipped, and form excellent fighting material.
+
+Our policy of annexation, so far as India is concerned, may perhaps be
+now considered as finally abandoned. We have no desire to annex
+Nepaul, but surely this system of utter isolation, of jealous
+exclusion at all hazards of English enterprise and capital, might be
+broken down to a mutual community of interest, a full and free
+exchange of products, and a reception by Nepaul without fear and
+distrust of the benefits our capitalists and pioneers could give the
+country by opening out its resources, and establishing the industries
+of the West on its fertile slopes and plains. I am no politician, and
+know nothing of the secret springs of policy that regulate our
+dealings with Nepaul, but it does seem somewhat weak and puerile to
+allow the Nepaulese free access to our territories, and an unprotected
+market in our towns for all their produce, while the British subject
+is rigorously excluded from the country, his productions saddled with
+a heavy protective duty, and the representative of our Government
+himself, treated more as a prisoner in honourable confinement, than as
+the accredited ambassador of a mighty empire.
+
+I may be utterly wrong. There may be weighty reasons of State for this
+condition of things, but it is a general feeling among Englishmen in
+India that, _we_ have to do all the GIVE and our Oriental neighbours
+do all the TAKE. The un-official English mind in India does not see
+the necessity for the painfully deferential attitude we invariably
+take in our dealings with native states. The time has surely come,
+when Oriental mistrust of our intentions should be stoutly battled
+with. There is room in Nepaul for hundreds of factories, for
+tea-gardens, fruit-groves, spice-plantations, woollen-mills,
+saw-mills, and countless other industries. Mineral products are
+reported of unusual richness. In the great central valley the climate
+approaches that of England. The establishment of productive industries
+would be a work of time, but so long as this ridiculous policy of
+isolation is maintained, and the exclusion of English tourists,
+sportsmen, or observers carried out in all its present strictness, we
+can never form an adequate idea of the resources of the country. The
+Nepaulese themselves cannot progress. I am convinced that a frank and
+unconstrained intercourse between Europeans and natives would create
+no jealousy and antagonism, but would lead to the development of a
+country singularly blessed by nature, and open a wide field for
+Anglo-Saxon energy and enterprise. It does seem strange, with all our
+vast territory of Hindustan accurately mapped out and known, roads and
+railways, canals and embankments, intersecting it in all directions,
+that this interesting corner of the globe, lying contiguous to our
+territory for hundreds of miles, should be less known than the
+interior of Africa, or the barren solitudes of the ice-bound Arctic
+regions.
+
+In these rich valleys hundreds of miles of the finest and most fertile
+lands in Asia lie covered by dense jungle, waiting for labour and
+capital. For the present we have enough to do in our own possessions
+to reclaim the uncultured wastes; but considering the rapid increase
+of population, the avidity with which land is taken up, the daily
+increasing use of all modern labour-saving appliances, the time must
+very shortly come when capital and energy will need new outlets, and
+one of the most promising of these is in Nepaul. The rapid changes
+which have come over the face of rural India, especially in these
+border districts, within the last twenty years, might well make the
+most thoughtless pause. Land has increased in value more than
+two-fold. The price of labour and of produce has kept more than equal
+pace. Machinery is whirring and clanking, where a few years ago a
+steam whistle would have startled the natives out of their wits. With
+cheap, easy, and rapid communication, a journey to any of the great
+cities is now thought no more of than a trip to a distant village in
+the same district was thought of twenty years ago. Everywhere are the
+signs of progress. New industries are opening up. Jungle is fast
+disappearing. Agriculture has wonderfully improved; and wherever an
+indigo factory has been built, progress has taken the place of
+stagnation, industry and thrift that of listless indolence and
+shiftless apathy. A spirit has moved in the valley of dry bones, and
+has clothed with living flesh the gaunt skeletons produced by
+ignorance, disease, and want. The energy and intelligence of the
+planter has breathed on the stagnant waters of the Hindoo intellect
+the breath of life, and the living tide is heaving, full of activity,
+purging by its resistless ever-moving pulsations the formerly stagnant
+mass of its impurities, and making it a life-giving sea of active
+industry and progress.
+
+Let any unprejudiced observer see for himself if it be not so; let him
+go to those districts where British capital and energy are not employed;
+let him leave the planting districts, and go up to the wastes of
+Oudh, or the purely native districts of the North-west, where there
+are no Europeans but the officials in the _station_. He will find
+fewer and worse roads, fewer wells, worse constructed houses, much
+ruder cultivation, less activity and industry; more dirt, disease,
+and desolation; less intelligence; more intolerance; and a peasantry
+morally, mentally, physically, and in every way inferior to those who
+are brought into daily contact with the Anglo-Saxon planters and
+gentlemen, and have imbibed somewhat of their activity and spirit of
+progress. And yet these are the men whom successive Lieutenant-Governors,
+and Governments generally, have done their best to thwart and obstruct.
+They have been misrepresented, held up to obloquy, and foully slandered;
+they have been described as utterly base, fattening on the spoils of a
+cowed and terror-ridden peasantry. Utterly unscrupulous, fearing neither
+God nor man, hesitating at no crime, deterred by no consideration from
+oppressing their tenantry, and compassing their interested ends by the
+vilest frauds.
+
+Such was the picture drawn of the indigo planter not so many years
+ago. There may have been much in the past over which we would
+willingly draw the veil, but at the present moment I firmly believe
+that the planters of Behar--and I speak as an observant student of
+what has been going on in India--have done more to elevate the
+peasantry, to rouse them into vitality, and to improve them in every
+way, than all the other agencies that have been at work with the same
+end in view.
+
+The Indian Government to all appearance must always work in extremes.
+It never seems to hit the happy medium. The Lieutenant-Governor for
+the time being impresses every department under him too strongly with
+his own individuality. The planters, who are an intelligent and
+independent body of men, have seemingly always been obnoxious to the
+ideas of a perfectly despotic and irresponsible ruler. In spite
+however of all difficulties and drawbacks, they have held their own. I
+know that the poor people and small cultivators look up to them with
+respect and affection. They find in them ready and sympathizing
+friends, able and willing to shield them from the exactions of their
+own more powerful and uncharitable fellow-countrymen. Half, nay
+nine-tenths, of the stories against planters, are got up by the
+money-lenders, the petty Zemindars, and wealthy villagers, who find
+the planter competing with them for land and labour, and raising the
+price of both. The poor people look to the factory as a never failing
+resource when all else fails, and but for the assistance it gives in
+money, or seed, or plough bullocks and implements of husbandry, many a
+struggling hardworking tenant would inevitably go to the wall, or
+become inextricably entangled in the meshes of the Bunneah and
+money-lender.
+
+I assert as a fact that the great majority of villagers in Behar would
+rather go to the factory, and have their sahib adjudicate on their
+dispute, than take it into Court. The officials in the indigo
+districts know this, and as a rule are very friendly with the
+planters. But not long since, an official was afraid to dine at a
+planter's house, fearing he might be accused of planter proclivities.
+In no other country in the world would the same jealousy of men who
+open out and enrich a country, and who are loyal, intelligent, and
+educated citizens, be displayed; but there are high quarters in which
+the old feeling of the East India Company, that all who were not in
+the service must be adventurers and interlopers, seems not wholly to
+have died out.
+
+That there have been abuses no one denies; but for years past the
+majority of the planters in Tirhoot, Chupra, and Chumparun, and in the
+indigo districts generally, not merely the managers, but the
+proprietors and agents have been laudably and loyally stirring, in
+spite of failures, reduced prices, and frequent bad seasons, to
+elevate the standard of their peasantry, and establish the indigo
+system on a fair and equitable basis. During the years when I was an
+assistant and manager on indigo estates, the rates for payment of
+indigo to cultivators nearly doubled, although prices for the
+manufactured article remained stationary. In well managed factories,
+the forcible seizure of carts and ploughs, and the enforcement of
+labour, which is an old charge against planters, was unknown; and the
+payment of tribute, common under the old feudal system, and styled
+_furmaish_, had been allowed to fall into desuetude. The NATIVE
+Zemindars or landholders however, still jealously maintain their
+rights, and harsh exactions were often made by them on the cultivators
+on the occasions of domestic events, such as births, marriages,
+deaths, and such like, in the families of the landowners. For years
+these exactions or feudal payments by the ryot to the Zemindar have
+been commuted by the factories into a lump sum in cash, when villages
+have been taken in farm, and this sum has been paid to the Zemindar as
+an enhanced rent. In the majority of cases it has not been levied from
+the cultivators, but the whole expense has been borne by the factory.
+In individual instances resort may have been had to unworthy tricks to
+harass the ryots, the factory middle-men having often been oppressors
+and tyrants; but as a body, the indigo planters of the present day
+have sternly set their faces to put down these oppressions, and have
+honestly striven to mete out even-handed justice to their tenants and
+dependants. With the spread of education and intelligence, the
+development of agricultural knowledge and practical science, and the
+vastly improved communication by roads, bridges, and ferries, in
+bringing about all of which the planting community themselves have
+been largely instrumental, there can be little doubt that these old
+fashioned charges against the planters as a body will cease, and
+public opinion will be brought to bear on any one who may promote his
+own interests by cruelty or rapacity, instead of doing his business on
+an equitable commercial basis, giving every man his due, relying on
+skill, energy, industry, and integrity, to promote the best interests
+of his factory; gaining the esteem and affection of his people by
+liberality, kindness, and strict justice.
+
+It can never be expected that a ryot can grow indigo at a loss to
+himself, or at a lower rate of profit than that which the cultivation
+of his other ordinary crops would give him, without at least some
+compensating advantages. With all his poverty and supposed stupidity,
+he is keenly alive to his own interests, quite able to hold his own in
+matters affecting his pocket. I have no hesitation in saying that the
+steady efforts which have been made by all the best planters to treat
+the ryot fairly, to give him justice, to encourage him with liberal
+aid and sympathy, and to put their mutual relations on a fair business
+footing, are now bearing fruit, and will result in the cultivation and
+manufacture of indigo in Upper Bengal becoming, as it deserves to
+become, one of the most firmly established, fairly conducted, and
+justly administered industries in India. That it may be so is, as I
+know, the earnest wish, as it has long been the dearest object, of my
+best friends among the planters of Behar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+The tiger.--His habitat.--Shooting on foot.--Modes of shooting.--A
+tiger hunt on foot.--The scene of the hunt.-The beat.--Incidents of
+the hunt.--Fireworks.--The tiger charges.--The elephant bolts.--The
+tigress will not break.--We kill a half-grown cub.--Try again for
+the tigress.--Unsuccessful.--Exaggerations in tiger stories.--My
+authorities.--The brothers S.--Ferocity and structure of the tiger.
+--His devastations.--His frame-work, teeth, &c.--A tiger at bay.
+--His unsociable habits.--Fight between tiger and tigress.--Young
+tigers.--Power and strength of the tiger.--Examples.--His cowardice.
+--Charge of a wounded tiger.--Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+--A spined tiger.--Boldness of young tigers.--Cruelty.--Cunning.--Night
+scenes in the jungle.--Tiger killed by a wild boar.--His cautious
+habits.--General remarks.
+
+In the foregoing chapters I have tried to perform my promise, to give
+a general idea of our daily life in India; our toils and trials, our
+sports, our pastimes, and our general pursuits. No record of Indian
+sport, however, would be complete without some allusion to the kingly
+tiger, and no one can live long near the Nepaul frontier, without at
+some time or other having an encounter with the royal robber--the
+striped and whiskered monarch of the jungle.
+
+He is always to be found in the Terai forests, and although very
+occasionally indeed met with in Tirhoot, where the population is very
+dense, and waste lands infrequent, he is yet often to be encountered
+in the solitudes of Oudh or Goruchpore, has been shot at and killed
+near Bettiah, and at our pig-sticking ground near Kuderent. In North
+Bhaugulpore and Purneah he may be said to be ALWAYS at home, as he can
+be met there, if you search for him, at all seasons of the year.
+
+In some parts of India, notably in the Deccan, and in some districts
+on the Bombay side, and even in the Soonderbunds near Calcutta,
+sportsmen and shekarries go after the tiger on foot. I must confess
+that this seems to me a mad thing to do. With every advantage of
+weapon, with the most daring courage, and the most imperturbable
+coolness, I think a man no fair match for a tiger in his native
+jungles. There are men now living who have shot numbers of tigers on
+foot, but the numerous fatal accidents recorded every year, plainly
+shew the danger of such a mode of shooting.
+
+In Central India, in the North-west, indeed in most districts where
+elephants are not easily procurable, it is customary to erect
+_mychans_ or bamboo platforms on trees. A line of beaters, with
+tom-toms, drums, fireworks, and other means for creating a din, are
+then sent into the jungle, to beat the tigers up to the platform on
+which you sit and wait. This is often a successful mode if you secure
+an advantageous place, but accidents to the beaters are very common,
+and it is at best a weary and vexatious mode of shooting, as after all
+your trouble the tiger may not come near your _mychan_, or give you
+the slightest glimpse of his beautiful skin.
+
+I have only been out after tiger on foot on one occasion. It was in
+the sal jungles in Oudh. A neighbour of mine, a most intimate and dear
+friend, whom I had nicknamed the 'General,' and a young friend,
+Fullerton, were with me. A tigress and cub were reported to be in a
+dense patch of _nurkool_ jungle, on the banks of the creek which
+divided the General's cultivation from mine. The nurkool is a tall
+feathery-looking cane, very much relished by elephants. It grows in
+dense brakes, and generally in damp boggy ground, affording complete
+shade and shelter for wild animals, and is a favourite haunt of pig,
+wolf, tiger, and buffalo.
+
+We had only one elephant, the use of which Fullerton had got from a
+neighbouring Baboo. It was not a staunch animal, so we put one of our
+men in the howdah, with a plentiful supply of bombs, a kind of native
+firework, enclosed in a clay case, which burns like a huge squib, and
+sets fire to the jungle. Along with the elephant we had a line of
+about one hundred coolies, and several men with drums and tom-toms.
+Fullerton took the side nearest the river, as it was possible the
+brute might sneak out that way, and make her escape along the bank.
+The General's shekarry remained behind, in rear of the line of
+beaters, in case the tigress might break the line, and try to escape
+by the rear. My _Gomasta_, the General, and myself, then took up
+positions behind trees all along the side of the glade or dell in
+which was the bit of nurkool jungle.
+
+It was a small basin, sloping gently down to the creek from the sal
+jungle, which grew up dark and thick all around. A margin of close
+sward, as green and level as a billiard-table, encircled the glade,
+and in the basin the thick nurkool grew up close, dense, and high,
+like a rustling barrier of living green. In the centre was the
+decaying stump of a mighty forest monarch, with its withered arms
+stretching out their bleached and shattered lengths far over the
+waving feathery tops of the nurkool below.
+
+The General and I cut down, some branches, which we stuck in the
+ground before us. I had a fallen log in front of me, on which I rested
+my guns. I had a naked _kookree_ ready to hand, for we were sure that
+the tigress was in the swamp, and I did not know what might happen. I
+did not half like this style of shooting, and wished I was safely
+seated on the back of 'JORROCKS,' my faithful old Bhaugulpore
+elephant. The General whistled as a sign for the beat to begin. The
+coolies dashed into the thicket. The stately elephant slowly forced
+his ponderous body through the crashing swaying brake. The rattle of
+the tom-toms and rumble of the drums, mingled with the hoarse shouts
+and cries of the beaters, the fiery rush of sputtering flame, and the
+loud report as each bomb burst, with the huge volumes of blinding
+smoke, and the scent of gunpowder that came on the breeze, told us
+that the bombs were doing their work. The jungle was too green to
+burn; but the fireworks raised a dense sulphurous smoke, which
+penetrated among the tall stems of the nurkool, and by the waving and
+crashing of the tall swaying canes, the heaving of the howdah, with
+the red puggree of the peon, and the gleaming of the staves and
+weapons, we could see that the beat was advancing.
+
+As they neared the large withered tree in the centre of the brake, the
+elephant curled up his trunk and trumpeted. This was a sure sign there
+was game afoot. We could see the peon in the howdah leaning over the
+front bar, and eagerly peering into the recesses of the thicket before
+him. He lit one of the bombs, and hurled it right up against the hole
+of the tree. It hissed and sputtered, and the smoke came curling over
+the reeds in dense volumes. A roar followed that made the valley ring
+again. We heard a swift rush. The elephant turned tail, and fled madly
+away, crashing through the matted brake that crackled and tore under
+his tread. The howdah swayed wildly, and the peon clung tenaciously on
+to the top bar with all his desperate might. The _mahout_, or
+elephant-driver, tried in vain to check the rush of the frightened
+brute, but after repeated sounding whacks on the head he got her to
+stop, and again turn round. Meantime the cries and shouting had
+ceased, and the beaters came pouring from the jungle by twos and
+threes, like the frightened inhabitants of some hive or ant-heap. Some
+in their hurry came tumbling out headlong, others with their faces
+turned backwards to see if anything was in pursuit of them, got
+entangled in the reeds, and fell prone on their hands and knees. One
+fellow had just emerged from the thick cover, when another terrified
+compatriot dashed out in blind unreasoning fear close behind him. The
+first one thought the tiger was on him. With one howl of anguish and
+dismay he fled as fast as he could run, and the General and I, who had
+witnessed the episode, could not help uniting in a resounding peal of
+laughter, that did more to bring the scared coolies to their senses
+than anything else we could have done.
+
+There was no doubt now of the tiger's whereabouts. One of the beaters
+gave us a most graphic description of its appearance and proportions.
+According to him it was bigger than an elephant, had a mouth as wide
+as a coal scuttle, and eyes that glared like a thousand suns. From all
+this we inferred that there was a full grown tiger or tigress in the
+jungle. We re-formed the line of beaters, and once more got the
+elephant to enter the patch. The same story was repeated. No sooner
+did they get near the old tree, than the tigress again charged with a
+roar, and our valiant coolies and the chicken-hearted elephant vacated
+the jungle as fast as their legs could carry them. This happened twice
+or thrice. The tigress charged every time, but would not leave her
+safe cover. The elephant wheeled round at every charge, and would not
+shew fight. Fullerton got into the howdah, and fired two shots into
+the spot where the tigress was lying. He did not apparently wound her,
+but the reports brought her to the charge once more, and the elephant,
+by this time fairly tired of the game, and thoroughly demoralised with
+fear, bolted right away, and nearly cracked poor Fullerton's head
+against the branch of a tree.
+
+We could plainly see, that with only one elephant we could never
+dislodge the tigress, so making the coolies beat up the patch in
+lines, we shot several pig and a hog-deer, and adjourned for something
+to eat by the bank of the creek. We had been trying to oust the
+tigress for over four hours, but she was as wise as she was savage,
+and refused to become a mark for our bullets in the open. After lunch
+we made another grand attempt. We promised the coolies double pay if
+they roused the tigress to flight. The elephant was forced again into
+the nurkool very much against his will, and the mahout was promised a
+reward if we got the tigress. The din this time was prodigious, and
+strange to say they got quite close up to the big withered tree
+without the usual roar and charge. This seemed somewhat to stimulate
+the beaters and the old elephant. The coolies redoubled their cries,
+smote among the reeds with their heavy staves, and shouted
+encouragement to each other. Right in the middle of the line, as it
+seemed to us from the outside, there was then a fierce roar and a
+mighty commotion. Cries of fear and consternation arose, and forth
+poured the coolies again, helter skelter, like so many rabbits from a
+warren when the weasel or ferret has entered the burrow. Right before
+me a huge old boar and a couple of sows came plunging forth. I let
+them get on a little distance from the brake, and then with my
+'Express' I rolled over the tusker and one of his companions, and just
+then the General shouted out to me, 'There's the tiger!'
+
+I looked in the direction of his levelled gun, and there at the edge
+of the jungle was a handsome half-grown tiger cub, beautifully marked,
+his tail switching angrily from side to side, and his twitching
+retracted lips and bristling moustache drawn back like those of a
+vicious cat, showing his gleaming polished fangs and teeth.
+
+The General had a fine chance, took a steady aim, and shot the young
+savage right through the heart. The handsome young tiger gave one
+convulsive leap into the air and fell on his side stone dead. We could
+not help a cheer, and shouted for Fullerton, who soon came running up.
+We got some coolies together, but they were frightened to go near the
+dead animal, as we could plainly hear the old vixen inside snarling
+and snapping, for all the world like an angry terrier. We heard her
+half-suppressed growl and snarl. She was evidently in a fine temper.
+How we wished for a couple of staunch elephants to hunt her out of the
+cane. It was no use, however, the elephant would not go near the
+jungle again. The coolies were thoroughly scared, and had got plenty
+of pork and venison to eat, so did not care for anything else. We
+collected a lot of tame buffaloes, and tried to drive them through the
+jungle, but the coolies had lost heart, and would not exert
+themselves; so we had to content ourselves with the cub, who measured
+six feet three inches (a very handsome skin it was), and very
+reluctantly had to leave the savage mother alone. I never saw a brute
+charge so persistently as she did. She always rushed forward with a
+succession of roars, and was very wary and cunning. She never charged
+home, she did not even touch the elephant or any of the coolies, but
+evidently trusted to frighten her assailants away by a bold show and a
+fierce outcry.
+
+We went back two days after with five elephants, which with great
+difficulty we had got together[1], and thoroughly beat the patch of
+nurkool, killed a lot of pig and a couple of deer, shot an alligator,
+and destroyed over thirty of its eggs, which we discovered on the bank
+of the creek; and returning in the evening shot a nilghau and a black
+buck, but the tigress had disappeared. She was gone, and we grumbled
+sorely at our bad luck. That was the only occasion I was ever after
+tiger on foot. It was doubtless intensely exciting work, and both
+tigress and cub must have passed close to us several times, hidden by
+the jungle. We were only about thirty paces from the edge of the
+brake, and both animals must have seen us, although the dense cover
+hid them from our sight. I certainly prefer shooting from the howdah.
+
+Although it is beyond the scope of this book to enter into a detailed
+account of the tiger, discussing his structure, habits, and
+characteristics, it may aid the reader if I give a sketchy general
+outline of some of the more prominent points of interest connected
+with the monarch of the jungle, the cruel, cunning, ferocious king of
+the cat tribe, the beautiful but dreaded tiger.
+
+I should prefer to shew his character by incidents with which I have
+myself been connected, but as many statements have been made about
+tigers that are utterly absurd and untrue, and as tiger stories
+generally contain a good deal of exaggeration, and a natural
+scepticism unconsciously haunts the reader when tigers and tiger
+shooting are the topics, it may be as well to state once for all, that
+I shall put down nothing that cannot be abundantly substantiated by
+reference to my own sporting journals, on those of the brothers S.,
+friends and fellow-sportsmen of my own. To G.S. I am under great
+obligations for many interesting notes he has given me about tiger
+shooting. Joe, his brother, was long our captain in our annual
+shooting parties. Their father and _his_ brother, the latter still
+alive and a keen shot, were noted sportsmen at a time when game was
+more plentiful, shooting more generally practised, and when to be a
+good shot meant more than average excellence. The two brothers between
+them have shot, I daresay, more than four hundred and fifty male and
+female tigers, and serried rows of skulls ranged round the
+billiard-rooms in their respective factories, bear witness to their
+love of sport and the deadly accuracy of their aim. Under their
+auspices I began my tiger shooting, and as they knew every inch of the
+jungles, had for years been observant students of nature, were
+acquainted with all the haunts and habits of every wild creature, I
+acquired a fund of information about the tiger which I knew could be
+depended on. It was the result of actual observation and experience,
+and in most instances it was corroborated by my own experience in my
+more limited sphere of action. Every incident I adduce, every
+deduction I draw, every assertion I make regarding tigers and tiger
+shooting can be plentifully substantiated, and abundantly testified
+to, by my brother sportsmen of Purneah and Bhaugulpore. From their
+valuable information I have got most of the material for this part of
+my book.
+
+Of the order FERAE, the family _felidae_, there is perhaps no animal
+in the wide range of all zoology, so eminently fitted for destruction
+as the tiger. His whole structure and appearance, combining beauty and
+extreme agility with prodigious strength, his ferocity, and his
+cunning, mark him out as the very type of a beast of prey. He is the
+largest of the cat tribe, the most formidable race of quadrupeds on
+earth. He is the most bloodthirsty in habit, and the most dreaded by
+man. Whole tracts of fertile fields, reclaimed from the wild
+luxuriance of matted jungle, and waving with golden grain, have been
+deserted by the patient husbandmen, and allowed to relapse into
+tangled thicket and uncultured waste on account of the ravages of this
+formidable robber. Whole villages have been depopulated by tigers, the
+mouldering door-posts, and crumbling rafters, met with at intervals in
+the heart of the solitary jungle, alone marking the spot where a
+thriving hamlet once sent up the curling smoke from its humble
+hearths, until the scourge of the wilderness, the dreaded 'man-eater,'
+took up his station near it, and drove the inhabitants in terror from
+the spot. Whole herds of valuable cattle have been literally destroyed
+by the tiger. His habitat is in those jungles, and near those
+localities, which are most highly prized by the herdsmen of India for
+their pastures, and the numbers of cattle that yearly fall before his
+thirst for blood, and his greed for living prey, are almost
+incredible. I have scarcely known a day pass, during the hot months,
+on the banks of the Koosee, that news of a _kill_ has not been sent in
+from some of the villages in my _ilaka_, and as a tiger eats once in
+every four or five days, and oftener if he can get the chance, the
+number of animals that fall a prey to his insatiable appetite, over
+the extent of Hindustan, must be enormous. The annual destruction of
+tame animals by tigers alone is almost incredible, and when we add to
+this the wild buffalo, the deer, the pig, and other untamed animals,
+to say nothing of smaller creatures, we can form some conception of
+the destruction caused by the tiger in the course of a year.
+
+His whole frame is put together to effect destruction. In cutting up a
+tiger you are impressed with this. His tendons are masses of nerve and
+muscle as hard as steel. The muscular development is tremendous. Vast
+bands and layers of muscle overlap each other. Strong ligaments, which
+you can scarcely cut through, and which soon blunt the sharpest knife,
+unite the solid, freely-playing, loosely-jointed bones. The muzzle is
+broad, and short, and obtuse. The claws are completely retractile. The
+jaws are short. There are two false molars, two grinders above, and
+the same number below. The upper carnivorous tooth has three lobes,
+and an obtuse heel; the lower has two lobes, pointed and sharp, and no
+heel. There is one very small tuberculous tooth above as an auxiliary,
+and then the strong back teeth. The muscles of the jaws are of
+tremendous power. I have come across the remains of a buffalo killed
+by a tiger, and found all the large bones, even the big strong bones
+of the pelvis and large joints, cracked and crunched like so many
+walnuts, by the powerful jaws of the fierce brute.
+
+The eye is peculiarly brilliant, and when glaring with fury it is
+truly demoniac. With his bristles rigid, the snarling lips drawn back,
+disclosing the formidable fangs, the body crouching for his spring,
+and the lithe tail puffed up and swollen, and lashing restlessly from
+side to side, each muscle tense and strung, and an undulating movement
+perceptible like the motions of a huge snake, a crouching tiger at bay
+is a sight that strikes a certain chill to the heart of the onlooker.
+When he bounds forward, with a roar that reverberates among the mazy
+labyrinths of the interminable jungle, he tests the steadiest nerve
+and almost daunts the bravest heart.
+
+In their habits they are very unsociable, and are only seen together
+during the amatory season. When that is over the male tiger betakes
+him again to his solitary predatory life, and the tigress becomes, if
+possible, fiercer than he is, and buries herself in the gloomiest
+recesses of the jungle. When the young are born, the male tiger has
+often been known to devour his offspring, and at this time they are
+very savage and quarrelsome. Old G., a planter in Purneah, once came
+across a pair engaged in deadly combat. They writhed and struggled on
+the ground, the male tiger striking tremendous blows on the chest and
+flanks of his consort, and tearing her skin in strips, while the
+tigress buried her fangs in his neck, tearing and worrying with all
+the ferocity of her nature. She was battling for her young. G. shot
+both the enraged combatants, and found that one of the cubs had been
+mangled, evidently by his unnatural father. Another, which he picked
+up in a neighbouring bush, was unharmed, but did not survive long.
+Pairs have often been shot in the same jungle, but seldom in close
+proximity, and it accords with all experience that they betray an
+aversion to each other's society, except at the one season. This
+propensity of the father to devour his offspring seems to be due to
+jealousy or to blind unreasoning hate. To save her offspring the
+female always conceals her young, and will often move far from the
+jungle which she usually frequents.
+
+When the cubs are able to kill for themselves, she seems to lose all
+pleasure in their society, and by the time they are well grown she
+usually has another batch to provide for. I have, however, shot a
+tigress with a full-grown cub--the hunt described in the last chapter
+is an instance--and on several occasions, my friend George has shot
+the mother with three or four full-grown cubs in attendance. This is
+however rare, and only happens I believe when the mother has remained
+entirely separate from the company of the male.
+
+The strength of the tiger is amazing. The fore paw is the most
+formidable weapon of attack. With one stroke delivered with full
+effect he can completely disable a large buffalo. On one occasion, on
+the Koosee _derahs_, that is, the plains bordering the river, an
+enraged tiger, passing through a herd of buffaloes, broke the backs of
+two of the herd, giving each a stroke right and left as he went along.
+One blow is generally sufficient to kill the largest bullock or
+buffalo. Our captain, Joe, had once received _khubber_, that is, news
+or information, of a kill by a tiger. He went straight to the
+_baithan_, the herd's head-quarters, and on making enquiries, was told
+that the tiger was a veritable monster.
+
+'Did you see it?' asked Joe.
+
+'I did not,' responded the _goala_ or cowherd.
+
+'Then how do you know it was so large?'
+
+'Because,' said the man, 'it killed the biggest buffalo in my herd,
+and the poor brute only gave one groan.'
+
+George once tracked a tiger, following up the drag of a bullock that
+he had carried off. At one place the brute came to a ditch, which was
+measured and found to be five feet in width. Through this there was no
+drag, but the traces continued on the further side. The inference is,
+that the powerful thief had cleared the ditch, taking the bullock
+bodily with him at a bound. Others have been known to jump clear out
+of a cattle pen, over a fence some six feet high, taking on one
+occasion a large-sized calf, and another time a sheep.
+
+Another wounded tiger, with two bullets in his flanks, the wound being
+near the root of the tail, cleared a _nullah_, or dry watercourse, at
+one bound. The nullah was stepped by George, and found to be
+twenty-three paces wide. It is fortunate, with such tremendous powers
+for attack, that the tiger will try as a rule to slink out of the way
+if he can. He almost always avoids an encounter with man. His first
+instinct is flight. Only the exciting incidents of the chase are as a
+rule put upon record. A narrative of tiger shooting therefore is apt
+in this respect to be a little misleading. The victims who meet their
+death tamely and quietly (and they form the majority in every
+hunt),--those that are shot as they are tamely trying to escape--are
+simply enumerated, but the charging tiger, the old vixen that breaks
+the line, and scatters the beaters to right and left, that rouses the
+blood of the sportsmen to a fierce excitement, these are made the most
+of. Every incident is detailed and dwelt upon, and thus the idea has
+gained ground, that ALL tigers are courageous, and wait not for
+attack, but in most instances take the initiative. It is not the case.
+Most of the tigers I have seen killed would have escaped if they
+could. It is only when brought to bay, or very hard pressed, or in
+defence of its young, that a tiger or tigress displays its native
+ferocity. At such a moment indeed, nothing gives a better idea of
+savage determined fury and fiendish rage. With ears thrown back, brows
+contracted, mouth open, and glaring yellow eyes scintillating with
+fury, the cruel claws plucking at the earth, the ridgy hairs on the
+back stiff and erect as bristles, and the lithe lissome body quivering
+in every muscle and fibre with wrath and hate, the beast comes down to
+the charge with a defiant roar, which makes the pulse bound and the
+breath come short and quick. It requires all a man's nerve and
+coolness, to enable him to make steady shooting.
+
+Roused to fury by a wound, I have seen tigers wheel round with amazing
+swiftness, and dash headlong, roaring dreadfully as they charged, full
+upon the nearest elephant, scattering the line and lacerating the poor
+creature on whose flanks or head they may have fastened, their whole
+aspect betokening pitiless ferocity and fiendish rage.
+
+Even in death they do not forget their savage instincts. I knew of one
+case in which a seemingly dead tiger inflicted a fearful wound upon an
+elephant that had trodden on what appeared to be his inanimate
+carcase. Another elephant, that attacked and all but trampled a tiger
+to death, was severely bitten under one of the toe-nails. The wound
+mortified, and the unfortunate beast died in about a week after its
+infliction. Another monster, severely wounded, fell into a pool of
+water, and seized hold with its jaws of a hard knot of wood that was
+floating about. In its death agony, it made its powerful teeth meet in
+the hard wood, and not until it was being cut up, and we had divided
+the muscles of the jaws, could we extricate the wood from that
+formidable clench. In rage and fury, and mad with pain, the wounded
+tiger will often turn round and savagely bite the wound that causes
+its agony, and they very often bite their paws and shoulders, and tear
+the grass and earth around them.
+
+A tiger wounded in the spine, however, is the most exciting spectacle.
+Paralysed in the limbs, he wheels round, roaring and biting at
+everything within his reach. In 1874 I shot one in the spine, and
+watched his furious movements for some time before I put him out of
+his misery. I threw him a pad from one of the elephants, and the way
+he tore and gnawed it gave me some faint idea of his fury and
+ferocity. He looked the very personification of impotent viciousness;
+the incarnation of devilish rage.
+
+Urged by hunger the tiger fearlessly attacks his prey. The most
+courageous are young tigers about seven or eight feet long. They
+invariably give better sport than larger and older animals, being more
+ready to charge, and altogether bolder and more defiant. Up to the age
+of two years they have probably been with the mother, have never
+encountered a reverse or defeat, and having become bold by impunity,
+hesitate not to fly at any assailant whatever.
+
+Like all the cat tribe, they are very cruel in disposition, often most
+wantonly so. Having disabled his prey with the first onset, the tiger
+plays with it as a cat does with a mouse, and, unless very sharp set
+by hunger, he always indulges this love of torture. His attacks are by
+no means due only to the cravings of his appetite. He often slays the
+victims of a herd, in the wantonness of sport, merely to indulge his
+murderous propensities. Even when he has had a good meal he will often
+go on adding fresh victims, seemingly to gratify his sense of power,
+and his love of slaughter. In teaching her cubs to kill for
+themselves, the mother often displays great cruelty, frequently
+killing at a time five or six cows from one herd. The young savages
+are apt pupils, and 'try their prentice hand' on calves and weakly
+members of the herd, killing from the mere love of murder.
+
+Their cunning is as remarkable as their cruelty; what they lack in
+speed they make up in consummate subtlety. They take advantage of the
+direction of the wind, and of every irregularity of the ground. It is
+amazing what slight cover will suffice to conceal their lurking forms
+from the observation of the herd. During the day they generally
+retreat to some cool and shady spot, deep in the recesses of the
+jungle. Where the soft earth has been worn away with ragged hollows
+and deep shady water-courses, where the tallest and most impenetrable
+jungle conceals the winding and impervious paths, hidden in the gloom
+and obscurity of the densely-matted grass, the lordly tiger crouches,
+and blinks away the day. With the approach of night, however, his mood
+undergoes a change. He hears the tinkle of the bells, borne by some of
+the members of a retreating herd, that may have been feeding in close
+proximity to his haunt all day long, and from which he has determined
+to select a victim for his evening meal. He rouses himself and yawns,
+stretches himself like the great cruel cat he is, and then crawls and
+creeps silently along, by swampy watercourses, and through devious
+labyrinths known to himself alone. He hangs on the outskirts of the
+herd, prowling along and watching every motion of the returning
+cattle. He makes his selection, and with infinite cunning and patience
+contrives to separate it from the rest. He waits for a favourable
+moment, when, with a roar that sends the alarmed companions of the
+unfortunate victim scampering together to the front, he springs on his
+unhappy prey, deprives it of all power of resistance with one
+tremendous stroke, and bears it away to feast at his leisure on the
+warm and quivering carcase.
+
+He generally kills as the shades of evening are falling, and seldom
+ventures on a foraging expedition by day. After nightfall it is
+dangerous to be abroad in the jungles. It is then that dramas are
+acted of thrilling interest, and unimaginable sensation scenes take
+place. Some of the old shekarries and field-watchers frequently dig
+shallow pits, in which they take their stand. Their eye is on the
+level of the ground, and any object standing out in relief against the
+sky line can be readily detected. If they could relate their
+experiences, what absorbing narratives they could write. They see the
+tiger spring upon his terror-stricken prey, the mother and her hungry
+cubs prowling about for a victim, or two fierce tigers battling for
+the favours of some sleek, striped, remorseless, bloodthirsty
+forest-fiend. In pursuit of their quarry, they steal noiselessly
+along, and love to make their spring unawares. They generally select
+some weaker member of a herd, and are chary of attacking a strong
+big-boned, horned animal. They sometimes 'catch a Tartar,' and
+instances are known of a buffalo not only withstanding the attack of a
+tiger successfully, but actually gaining the victory over his more
+active assailant, whose life has paid the penalty of his rashness.
+
+Old G. told me, he had come across the bodies of a wild boar and an
+old tiger, lying dead together near Burgamma. The boar was fearfully
+mauled, but the clean-cut gaping gashes in the striped hide of the
+tiger, told how fearfully and gallantly he had battled for his life.
+
+In emerging from the jungle at night, they generally select the same
+path or spot, and approach the edge of the cover with great caution.
+They will follow the same track for days together. Hence in some
+places the tracks of the tigers are so numerous as to lead the tyro to
+imagine that dozens must have passed, when in truth the tracks all
+belong to one and the same brute. So acute is their perception, so
+narrowly do they scrutinize every minute object in their path, so
+suspicious is their nature, that anything new in their path, such as a
+pitfall, a screen of cut grass, a _mychan_, that is, a stage from
+which you might be intending to get a shot, nay, even the print of a
+footstep--a man's, a horse's, an elephant's--is often quite enough to
+turn them from a projected expedition, or at any rate to lead them to
+seek some new outlet from the jungle. In any case it increases their
+wariness, and under such circumstances it becomes almost impossible to
+get a shot at them from a pit or shooting-stage. Their vision, their
+sense of smell, of hearing, all their perceptions are so acute, that I
+think lying in wait for them is chiefly productive of weariness and
+vexation of spirit. It is certainly dangerous, and the chances of a
+successful shot are so problematical, while the _disagreeables_, and
+discomforts, and dangers are so real and tangible, that I am inclined
+to think this mode of attack 'hardly worth the candle.'
+
+With all his ferocity and cruelty, however, I am of opinion that the
+tiger is more cowardly than courageous. He will always try to escape a
+danger, and fly from attack, rather than attack in return or wait to
+meet it, and wherever he can, in pursuit of his prey, he will trust
+rather to his cunning than to his strength, and he always prefers an
+ambuscade to an open onslaught.
+
+
+[1] This was at the time the Prince of Wales was shooting in Nepaul,
+    not very far from where I was then stationed. Most of the
+    elephants in the district had been sent up to his Royal Highness's
+    camp, or were on their way to take part in the ceremonies of the
+    grand _Durbar_ in Delhi.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
+--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
+--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of
+tiger.--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His
+description.--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to
+measure tigers.--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.
+--Number of young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs
+to kill.--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and
+cunning of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of
+concealment.--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.
+--Caught by floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
+
+The tiger's mode of attack is very characteristic of his whole nature.
+To see him stealthily crouching, or crawling silently and sneakingly
+after a herd of cattle, dodging behind every clump of bushes or tuft
+of grass, running swiftly along the high bank of a watercourse, and
+sneaking under the shadowing border of a belt of jungle, is to
+understand his cunning and craftiness. His attitude, when he is
+crouching for the final bound, is the embodiment of suppleness and
+strength. All his actions are graceful, and half display and half
+conceal beneath their symmetry and elegance the tremendous power and
+deadly ferocity that lurks beneath. For a short distance he is
+possessed of great speed, and with a few short agile bounds he
+generally manages to overtake his prey. If baffled in his first
+attack, he retires growling to lie in wait for a less fortunate
+victim. His onset being so fierce and sudden, the animal he selects
+for his prey is generally taken at a great disadvantage, and is seldom
+in a position to make any strenuous or availing resistance.
+
+Delivering the numbing blow with his mighty fore paw, he fastens on
+the throat of the animal he has felled, and invariably tries to tear
+open the jugular vein. This is his practice in nearly every case, and
+it shews a wonderful instinct for selecting the most deadly spot in
+the whole body of his luckless prey. When he has got hold of his
+victim by the throat, he lies down, holding on to the bleeding
+carcase, snarling and growling, and fastening and withdrawing his
+claws, much as a cat does with a rat or mouse. Some writers say he
+then proceeds to drink the blood, but this is just one of those broad
+general assertions which require proof. In some cases he may quench
+his thirst and gratify his appetite for blood by drinking it from the
+gushing veins of his quivering victim, but in many cases I know from
+observation, that the blood is not drunk. If the tiger is very hungry
+he then begins his feast, tearing huge fragments of flesh from the
+dead body, and not unusually swallowing them whole. If he is not
+particularly hungry, he drags the carcase away, and hides it in some
+well-known spot. This is to preserve it from the hungry talons and
+teeth of vultures and jackals. He commonly remains on guard near his
+_cache_ until he has acquired an appetite. If he cannot conveniently
+carry away his quarry, because of its bulk, or the nature of the
+ground, or from being disturbed, he returns to the place at night and
+satisfies his appetite.
+
+Tigers can sneak crouchingly along as fast as they can trot, and it is
+wonderful how silently they can steal on their prey. They seem to have
+some stray provident fits, and on occasions make provision for future
+wants. There are instances on record of a tiger dragging a _kill_
+after him for miles, over water, and through slush and weeds, and
+feasting on the carcase days after he has killed it. It is a fact, now
+established beyond a doubt, that he will eat carrion and putrid flesh,
+but only from necessity and not from choice.
+
+On one occasion my friends put up a tigress during the rains, when
+there are few cattle in the _derahs_ or plains near the river. She had
+killed a pig, and was eagerly devouring the carcase when she was
+disturbed. Snarling and growling, she made off with a leg of pork in
+her mouth, when a bullet ended her career. They seem to prefer pork
+and venison to almost any other kind of food, and no doubt pig and
+deer are their natural and usual prey. The influx, however, of vast
+herds of cattle, and the consequent presence of man, drive away the
+wild animals, and at all events make them more wary and more difficult
+to kill. Finding domestic cattle unsuspicious, and not very formidable
+foes, the tiger contents himself at a pinch with beef, and judging
+from his ravages he comes to like it. Getting bolder by impunity, he
+ventures in some straits to attack man. He finds him a very easy prey;
+he finds the flesh too, perhaps, not unlike his favourite pig.
+Henceforth he becomes a 'man-eater,' the most dreaded scourge and
+pestilent plague of the district. He sometimes finds an old boar a
+tough customer, and never ventures to attack a buffalo unless it be
+grazing alone, and away from the rest of the herd. When buffaloes are
+attacked, they make common cause against their crafty and powerful
+foe, and uniting together in a crescent-shaped line, their horns all
+directed in a living _cheval-de-frise_ against the tiger, they rush
+tumultuously at him, and fairly hunt him from the jungle. The pig,
+having a short thick neck, and being tremendously muscular, is hard to
+kill; but the poor inoffensive cow, with her long-neck, is generally
+killed at the first blow, or so disabled that it requires little
+further effort to complete the work of slaughter.
+
+Two friends of mine once shot an enormous old tiger on a small island
+in the middle of the river, during the height of the annual rains. The
+brute had lost nearly all its hair from mange, and was an emaciated
+sorry-looking object. From the remains on the island--the skin,
+scales, and bones--they found that he must have slain and eaten
+several alligators during his enforced imprisonment on the island.
+They will eat alligators when pressed by hunger, and they have been
+known to subsist on turtles, tortoises, iguanas, and even jackals.
+Only the other day in Assam, a son of Dr. B. was severely mauled by a
+tiger which sprang into the verandah after a dog. There were three
+gentlemen in the verandah, and, as you may imagine, they were taken
+not a little by surprise. They succeeded in bagging the tiger, but not
+until poor B. was very severely hurt.
+
+After tearing the throat open, they walk round the prostrate carcase
+of their prey, growling and spitting like 'tabby' cats. They begin
+their operations in earnest, invariably on the buttock. A leopard
+generally eats the inner portion of the thigh first. A wolf tears open
+the belly, and eats the intestines first. A vulture, hawk, or kite,
+begins on the eyes; but a tiger invariably begins on the buttocks,
+whether of buffalo, cow, deer, or pig. He then eats the fatty covering
+round the intestines, follows that up with the liver and udder, and
+works his way round systematically to the fore-quarters, leaving the
+head to the last. It is frequently the only part of an animal that
+they do not eat.
+
+A 'man-eater' eats the buttocks, shoulders, and breasts first. So many
+carcases are found in the jungle of animals that have died from
+disease or old age, or succumbed to hurts and accidents, that the
+whitened skeletons meet the eye in hundreds. But one can always tell
+the kill of a tiger, and distinguish between it and the other bleached
+heaps. The large bones of a tiger's kill are always broken. The broad
+massive rib bones are crunched in two as easily as a dog would snap
+the drumstick of a fowl. Vultures and jackals, the scavengers of the
+jungle, are incapable of doing this; and when you see the fractured
+large bones, you can always tell that the whiskered monarch has been
+on the war-path. George S. writes me:--
+
+'I have known a tiger devour a whole bullock to his own cheek in one
+day. Early in the morning a man came to inform me he had seen a tiger
+pull down a bullock. I went after the fellow late in the afternoon,
+and found him in a bush not more than twenty feet square, the only
+jungle he had to hide in for some distance round, and in this he had
+polished off the bullock, nothing remaining save the head. The jungle
+being so very small, and he having lain the whole day in it, nothing
+in the way of vultures or jackals could have assisted him in finishing
+off the bullock.'
+
+When hungry they appear to bolt large masses of flesh without
+masticating it. The same correspondent writes:--
+
+'We cut out regular "fids" once from a tiger's stomach, also large
+pieces of bone. Joe heard a tremendous roaring one night, which
+continued till near morning, not far from Nipunneah. He went out at
+dawn to look for the tiger, which he found was dead. The brute had
+tried to swallow the knee-joint of a bullock, and it had stuck in his
+gullet. This made him roar from pain, and eventually choked him.'
+
+As there are two distinct varieties of wild pig in India, so there
+seems to be little doubt that there are two distinct kinds of tigers.
+As these have frequently crossed we find many hybrids. I cannot do
+better than again quote from my obliging and observant friend George.
+The two kinds he designates as 'The Royal Bengal,' and 'The Hill
+Tiger,' and goes on to say:--
+
+'As a rule the stripes of a Royal Bengal are single and dark. The
+skull is widely different from that of his brother the Hill tiger,
+being low in the crown, wider in the jaws, rather flat in comparison,
+and the brain-pan longer with a sloping curve at the end, the crest of
+the brain-pan being a concave curve.
+
+'The Hill tiger is much more massively built; squat and thick set,
+heavier in weight and larger in bulk, with shorter tail, and very
+large and powerful neck, head, and shoulders. The stripes generally
+are double, and of a more brownish tinge, with fawn colour between the
+double stripes. The skull is high in the crown, and not quite so wide.
+The brain-pan is shorter, and the crest slightly convex or nearly
+straight, and the curve at the end of the skull rather abrupt.
+
+'They never grow so long as the "Bengal," yet look twice as big.
+
+'The crosses are very numerous, and vary according to pedigree, in
+stripes, skulls, form, weight, bulk, and tail. This I find most
+remarkable when I look at my collection of over 160 skulls.
+
+'The difference is better marked in tigers than in tigresses. The
+Bengal variety are not as a rule as ferocious as the Hill tiger. Being
+more supple and cunning, they can easier evade their pursuers by
+flight and manoeuvre than, their less agile brothers. The former,
+owing to deficiency of strength, oftener meet with discomfiture, and
+consequently are more wary and cunning; while the latter, prone to
+carry everything before them, trust more to their strength and
+courage, anticipating victory as certain.
+
+'In some the stripes are doubled throughout, in others only partially
+so, while in some they are single throughout, and some have manes to a
+slight extent.'
+
+I have no doubt this classification is correct. The tigers I have seen
+in Nepaul near the hills, were sometimes almost a dull red, and at a
+distance looked like a huge dun cow, while those I have seen in the
+plains during our annual hunts, were of a bright tawny yellow, longer,
+more lanky, and not shewing half such a bold front as their bulkier
+and bolder brethren of the hills.
+
+The length of the tiger has often given rise to fierce discussions
+among sportsmen. The fertile imagination of the slayer of a solitary
+'stripes,' has frequently invested the brute he has himself shot, or
+seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been shot by a friend, or
+the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous length, inches swelling to
+feet, and dimensions growing at each repetition of the yarn, till, as
+in the case of boars, the twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch
+tusker, and the eight foot tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.
+
+Purists again, sticklers for stern truth, haters of bounce or
+exaggeration, have perhaps erred as much on the other side; and in
+their eagerness to give the exact measurement, and avoid the very
+appearance of exaggeration, they actually stretch their tape line and
+refuse to measure the curves of the body, taking it in straight lines.
+This I think is manifestly unfair.
+
+Our mode of measurement in Purneah was to take the tiger as he lay
+before he was put on the elephant, and measure from the tip of the
+nose, over the crest of the skull, along the undulations of the body,
+to the tip of the tail. That is, we followed the curvature of the
+spine along the dividing ridge of the back, and always were careful
+and fair in our attempts. I am of opinion that a tiger over ten feet
+long is an exceptionally long one, but when I read of sportsmen
+denying altogether that even that length can be attained, I can but
+pity the dogmatic scepticism that refuses credence to well ascertained
+and authenticated facts. I believe also that tigers are not got nearly
+so large as in former days. I believe that much longer and heavier
+tigers--animals larger in every way--were shot some twenty years ago
+than those we can get now, but I account for this by the fact that
+there is less land left waste and uncultivated. There are more roads,
+ferries, and bridges, more improved communications, and in consequence
+more travelling. Population and cultivation have increased; firearms
+are more numerous; sport is more generally followed; shooting is much
+more frequent and deadly; and, in a word, tigers have not the same
+chances as they had some twenty years ago of attaining a ripe old age,
+and reaching the extremest limit of their growth. The largest tigers
+being also the most suspicious and wary, are only found in the
+remotest recesses of the impenetrable jungles of Nepaul and the Terai,
+or in those parts of the Indian wilds where the crack of the European
+rifle is seldom or never heard.
+
+It has been so loudly asserted, and so boldly maintained that no tiger
+was ever shot reaching, when fairly measured (that is, measured with
+the skin on, as he lay), ten feet, that I will let Mr. George again
+speak for himself. Referring to the royal Bengal, he says:--
+
+'These grow to great lengths. They have been shot as long as twelve
+feet seven inches (my father shot one that length) or longer; twelve
+feet seven inches, twelve feet six inches, twelve feet three inches,
+twelve feet one inch, and twelve feet, have been shot and recorded in
+the old sporting magazines by gentlemen of undoubted veracity in
+Purneah.
+
+'I have seen the skin of one twelve feet one inch, compared with which
+the skin of one I have by me _that measured as he lay_ (the italics
+are mine) eleven feet one inch, looks like the skin of a cub. The old
+skin looks more like that of a huge antediluvian species in comparison
+with the other.
+
+'The twelve footer was so heavy that my uncle (C.A.S.) tells me no
+number of mahouts could lift it. Several men, if they could have
+approached at one and the same time, might have been able to do so,
+but a sufficient number of men could not lay hold simultaneously to
+move the body from the ground.
+
+'Eventually a number of bamboos had to be cut, and placed in an
+incline from the ground to the elephant's saddle while the elephant
+knelt down, and up this incline the tiger had to be regularly hauled
+and shoved, and so fastened on the elephant.
+
+'He (the tiger) mauled four elephants, one of whom died the same day,
+and one other had a narrow _batch_, i.e. escape, of its life.
+
+In another communication to me, my friend goes over the same ground,
+but as the matter is one of interest to sportsmen and naturalists, I
+will give the extract entire. It proceeds as follows:--
+
+'Tigers grow to great lengths, some assert to even fourteen feet. I do
+not say they do not, but such cases are very rare, and require
+authentication. The longest I have seen, measured as he lay, eleven
+feet one inch (see "Oriental Sporting Magazine," for July, 1871, p.
+308). He was seven feet nine inches from tip of nose to root of tail;
+root of tail one foot three inches in circumference; round chest four
+feet six inches; length of head one foot two inches; fore arm two feet
+two inches; round the head two feet ten inches; length of tail three
+feet four inches.
+
+'Besides this, I have shot another eleven feet, and one ten feet
+eleven inches.
+
+'The largest tigress I have shot was at Sahareah, which measured ten
+feet two inches. I shot another ten feet exactly.' (See O.S.M., Aug.,
+1874, p. 358.)
+
+'I have got the head of a tiger, shot by Joe, which measured eleven
+feet five inches. It was shot at Baraila.
+
+'The male is much bigger built in every way--length, weight, size,
+&c., than the female. The males are more savage, the females more
+cunning and agile. The arms, body, paws, head, skull, claws, teeth,
+&c., of the female, are smaller. The tail of tigress longer; hind legs
+more lanky; the prints look smaller and more contracted, and the toes
+nearer together. It is said that though a large tiger may venture to
+attack a buffalo, the tigress refrains from doing so, but I have found
+this otherwise in my experience.
+
+'I have kept a regular log of all tigers shot by me. The average
+length of fifty-two tigers recorded in my journal is nine feet six and
+a half inches (cubs excluded), and of sixty-eight tigresses (cubs
+excluded), eight feet four inches.
+
+'The average of tigers and tigresses is eight feet ten and a quarter
+inches. This is excluding cubs I have taken alive.'
+
+As to measurements, he goes on to make a few remarks, and as I cannot
+improve on them I reproduce the original passage:--
+
+'Several methods have been recommended for measuring tigers. I measure
+them on the ground, or when brought to camp before skinning, and run
+the tape tight along the line, beginning at the tip of the nose, along
+the middle of the skull, between the ears and neck, then along the
+spine to the end of the tail, taking any curves of the body.
+
+'No doubt measurements of skull, body, tail, legs, &c., ought all to
+be taken, to give an adequate idea of the tiger, and for comparing
+them with one another, but this is not always feasible.'
+
+Most of the leading sportsmen in India now-a-days are very particular
+in taking the dimensions of every limb of the dead tiger. They take
+his girth, length, and different proportions. Many even weigh the
+tiger when it gets into camp, and no doubt this test is one of the
+best that can be given for a comparison of the sizes of the different
+animals slain.
+
+Another much disputed point in the natural history of the animal, a
+point on which there has been much acrimonious discussion, is the
+number of young that are given at a birth. Some writers have asserted,
+and stoutly maintained, that two cubs, or at the most three, is the
+extreme number of young brought forth at one time.
+
+This may be the ordinary number, but the two gentlemen I have already
+alluded to have assured me, that on frequent occasions they have
+picked up four actually born, and have cut out five several times, and
+on one occasion six, from the womb of a tigress.
+
+I have myself picked up four male cubs, all in one spot, with their
+eyes just beginning to open, and none of their teeth through the gums.
+One had been trampled to death by buffaloes, the other three were
+alive and scatheless, huddled into a bush, like three immense kittens.
+I kept the three for a considerable time, and eventually took them to
+Calcutta and sold them for a very satisfactory price.
+
+It seems clear, however, that the tigress frequently has four and even
+five cubs. It is rare, indeed to find her accompanied by more than two
+well grown cubs, very seldom three; and the inference is, that one or
+two of the young tigers succumb in very early life.
+
+The young ones do not appear to grow very quickly; they are about a
+foot long when they are born; they are born blind, with very minute
+hair, almost none in fact, but with the stripes already perfectly
+marked on the soft supple skin; they open their eyes when they are
+eight or ten days old, at which time they measure about a foot and a
+half. At the age of nine months they have attained to five feet in
+length, and are waxing mischievous. Tiger cubs a year old average
+about five feet eight inches, tigresses some three inches or so less.
+In two years they grow respectively to--the male seven feet six
+inches, and the female seven feet. At about this time they leave the
+mother, if they have not already done so, and commence depredations on
+their own account. In fact, their education has been well attended to.
+The mother teaches them to kill when they are about a year old. A
+young cub that measured only six feet, and whose mother had been shot
+in one of the annual beats, was killed while attacking a full grown
+cow in the government pound at Dumdaha police station. When they reach
+the length of six feet six inches they can kill pretty easily, and
+numbers have been shot by George and other Purneah sportsmen close to
+their 'kills.'
+
+They are most daring and courageous when they have just left their
+mother's care, and are cast forth to fight the battle of life for
+themselves. While with the old tigress their lines have been cast in
+not unpleasant places, they have seldom known hunger, and have
+experienced no reverses. Accustomed to see every animal succumb to her
+well planned and audacious attacks, they fancy that nothing will
+withstand their onslaught. They have been known to attack a line of
+elephants, and to charge most determinedly, even in this adolescent
+stage.
+
+Bye-and-bye, however, as they receive a few rude shocks from
+buffaloes, or are worsted in a hand-to-hand encounter with some tough
+old bull, or savage old grey boar, more especially if they get an ugly
+rip or two from the sharp tusks of an infuriated fighting tusker, they
+begin to be less aggressive, they learn that discretion may be the
+better part of valour, and their cunning instincts are roused. In
+fact, their education is progressing, and in time they instinctively
+discover every wile and dodge and cunning stratagem, and display all
+the wondrous subtlety of their race in procuring their prey.
+
+Old tigers are invariably more wary, cautious, and suspicious than
+young ones, and till they are fairly put to it by hunger, hurt, or
+compulsion, they endeavour to keep their stripes concealed. When
+brought to bay, however, there is little to reproach them with on the
+score of cowardice, and it will be matter of rejoicing if you or your
+elephants do not come off second best in the encounter. Even in the
+last desperate case, a cunning old tiger will often make a feint, or
+sham rush, or pretended charge, when his whole object is flight. If he
+succeed in demoralising the line of elephants, roaring and dashing
+furiously about, he will then try in the confusion to double through,
+unless he is too badly wounded to be able to travel fast, in which
+case he will fight to the end.
+
+Old fellows are well acquainted with every maze and thicket in the
+jungles, and they no sooner hear the elephants enter the 'bush' or
+'cover' than they make off for some distant shelter. If there is no
+apparent chance of this being successful, they try to steal out
+laterally and outflank the line, or if that also is impossible, they
+hide in some secret recess like a fox, or crouch low in some clumpy
+bush, and trust to you or your elephant passing by without noticing
+their presence.
+
+It is marvellous in what sparse cover they will manage to lie up. So
+admirably do their stripes mingle with the withered and charred
+grass-stems and dried up stalks, that it is very difficult to detect
+the dreaded robber when he is lying flat, extended, close to the
+ground, so still and motionless that you cannot distinguish a tremor
+or even a vibration of the grass in which he is crouching.
+
+On one occasion George followed an old tiger through some stubble
+about three feet high. It had been well trampled down too by tame
+buffaloes. The tiger had been tracked into the field, and was known to
+be in it. George was within ten yards of the cunning brute, and
+although mounted on a tall elephant, and eagerly scanning the thin
+cover with his sharpest glance, he could not discern the concealed
+monster. His elephant was within four paces of it, when it sprang up
+at the charge, giving a mighty roar, which however also served as its
+death yell, as a bullet from George's trusty gun crashed through its
+ribs and heart.
+
+Tigers can lay themselves so flat on the ground, and lie so perfectly
+motionless, that it is often a very easy thing to overlook them. On
+another occasion, when the Purneah Hunt were out, a tigress that had
+been shot got under some cover that was trampled down by a line of
+about twenty elephants. The sportsmen knew that she had been severely
+wounded, as they could tell by the gouts of blood, but there was no
+sign of the body. She had disappeared. After a long search, beating
+the same ground over and over again, an elephant trod on the dead body
+lying under the trampled canes, and the mahout got down and discovered
+her lying quite dead. She was a large animal and full grown.
+
+On another occasion George was after a fine male tiger. He was
+following up fast, but coming to a broad nullah, full of water, he
+suddenly lost sight of his game. He looked up and down the bank, and
+on the opposite bank, but could see no traces of the tiger. Looking
+down, he saw in the water what at first he took to be a large
+bull-frog. There was not a ripple on the placid stagnant surface of
+the pool. He marvelled much, and just then his mahout pointed to the
+supposed bull-frog, and in an excited whisper implored George to fire.
+A keener look convinced George that it really was the tiger. It was
+totally immersed all but the face, and lying so still that not the
+faintest motion or ripple was perceptible. He fired and inflicted a
+terrible wound. The tiger bounded madly forward, and George gave it
+its quietus through the spine as it tried to spring up the opposite
+bank.
+
+A nearly similar case occurred to old Mr. C., one of the veteran
+sportsmen of Purneah. A tiger had bolted towards a small tank or pond,
+and though the line followed up in hot pursuit, the brute disappeared.
+Old C., keener than the others, was loth to give up the pursuit, and
+presently discerned a yellowish reflection in the clear water. Peering
+more intently, he could discover the yellowish tawny outline of the
+cunning animal, totally immersed in the water, save its eyes, ears,
+and nose. He shot the tiger dead, and it sank to the bottom like a
+stone. So perfectly had it concealed itself, that the other sportsmen
+could not for the life of them imagine what old C. had fired at, till
+his mahout got down and began to haul the dead animal out of the
+water.
+
+Tigers are not at all afraid of water, and are fast and powerful
+swimmers. They swim much after the fashion of a horse, only the head
+out of the water, and they make scarcely any ripple.
+
+'In another case,' writes George, 'though not five yards from the
+elephant, and right under me, a tiger was swimming with so slight a
+ripple that I mistook it for a rat, until I saw the stripes emerge,
+when I perforated his jacket with a bullet.'
+
+Only their head remaining out of water when they are swimming, they
+are very hard to hit, as shooting at an object on water is very
+deceptive work as to judging distance, and a tiger's head is but a
+small object to aim at when some little way off.
+
+Old C. had another adventure with a cunning rogue, which all but ended
+disastrously. He was in hot pursuit of the tiger, and, finding no
+safety on land, it took to swimming in a broad unfordable piece of
+water, a sort of deep lagoon. Old C. procured a boat that was handy,
+and got a coolie to paddle him out after the tiger. He fired several
+shots at the exposed head of the brute, but missed. He thought he
+would wait till he got nearer and make a sure shot, as he had only one
+bullet left in the boat. Suddenly the tiger turned round, and made
+straight for the boat. Here was a quandary. Even if lie killed the
+tiger with his single bullet it might upset the boat; the lagoon was
+full of alligators, to say nothing of weeds, and there was no time to
+get his heavy boots off. He felt his life might depend on the accuracy
+of his aim. He fired, and killed the tiger stone dead within four or
+five yards of the boat.
+
+On one occasion, when out with our worthy district magistrate, Mr. S.,
+I came on the tracks of what to all appearance, was a very large
+tiger. They led over the sand close to the water's edge, and were very
+distinct. I could see no returning marks, so I judged that the tiger
+must have taken to the water. The stream was rapid and deep, and
+midway to the further bank was a big, oblong-shaped, sandy islet, some
+five or six hundred yards long, and having a few scrubby bushes
+growing sparsely on it. We put our elephants into the rapid current,
+and got across. The river here was nearly a quarter of a mile wide on
+each side of the islet. As we emerged from the stream on to the island
+we found fresh tracks of the tiger. They led us completely round the
+circumference of the islet. The tiger had evidently been in quest of
+food. The prints were fresh and very well defined. Finding that all
+was barren on the sandy shore, he entered the current again, and
+following up we found his imprint once more on the further bank,
+several hundred yards down the stream.
+
+One tiger was killed stone dead by a single bullet during one of our
+annual hunts, and falling back into the water, it sank to the bottom
+like lead. Being unable to find the animal, we beat all round the
+place, till I suggested it might have been hit and fallen into the
+river. One of the men was ordered to dive down, and ascertain if the
+tiger was at the bottom. The river water is generally muddy, so that
+the bottom cannot be seen. Divesting himself of puggree, and girding
+up his loins, the diver sank gently to the bottom, but presently
+reappeared in a palpable funk, puffing and blowing, and declaring that
+the tiger was certainly at the bottom. The foolish fellow thought it
+might be still alive. We soon disabused his mind of that idea, and had
+the dead tiger hauled up to dry land.
+
+Surprised by floods, a tiger has been known to remain for days on an
+ant-hill, and even to take refuge on the branch of some large tree,
+but he takes to water readily, and can swim for over a mile, and he
+has been known to remain for days in from two to three feet depth of
+water.
+
+A time-honoured tiger story with old hands, used to tell how the
+Soonderbund tigers got carried out to sea. If the listener was a new
+arrival, or a _gobe mouche_, they would explain that the tigers in the
+Soonderbunds often get carried out to sea by the retiring tide. It
+would sweep them off as they were swimming from island to island in
+the vast delta of Father Ganges. Only the young ones, however,
+suffered this lamentable fate. The older and more wary fellows, taught
+perhaps by sad experience, used always to dip their tails in, before
+starting on a swim, so as to ascertain which way the tide was flowing.
+If it was the flow of the tide they would boldly venture in, but if it
+was ebb tide, and there was the slightest chance of their being
+carried out to sea, they would patiently lie down, meditate on the
+fleeting vanity of life, and like the hero of the song--
+
+  'Wait for the turn of the tide.'
+
+Without venturing an opinion on this story, I may confidently assert,
+that the tiger, unlike his humble prototype the domestic cat, is not
+really afraid of water, but will take to it readily to escape a
+threatened danger, or if he can achieve any object by 'paddling his
+own canoe.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives
+about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Clawmarks
+on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s
+howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.
+--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye
+out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers
+easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of shells on tiger and buffalo.--Best
+weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives
+prone to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for
+tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six
+elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.
+--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the
+Koosee.--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to
+shoot at moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of
+different animals in the grass.
+
+Tigers seem to have no regular breeding season. As a rule the male and
+female come together in the autumn and winter, and the young ones are
+born in the spring and summer. All the young tigers I have ever heard
+of have been found in March, April, and May, and so on through the
+rains.
+
+The natives have many singular beliefs and prejudices about tigers,
+and they are very often averse to give the slightest information as to
+their whereabouts. To a stranger they will either give no information
+at all, pleading entire ignorance, or they will wilfully mislead him,
+putting him on a totally wrong track. If you are well known to the
+villagers, and if they have confidence in your nerve and aim, they
+will eagerly tell you everything they know, and will accompany you on
+your elephant, to point out the exact spot where the tiger was last
+seen. In the event of a 'find' they always look for _backsheesh_, even
+though your exertions may have rid their neighbourhood of an
+acknowledged scourge.
+
+The _gwalla_, or cowherd caste, seem to know the habits of the yellow
+striped robber very accurately. Accompanied by their herd they will
+venture into the thickest jungle, even though they know that it is
+infested by one or more tigers. If any member of the herd is attacked,
+it is quite common for the _gwalla_ to rush up, and by shouts and even
+blows try to make the robber yield up his prey. This is no
+exaggeration, but a simple fact. A cowherd attacked by a tiger has
+been known to call up his herd by cries, and they have succeeded in
+driving off his fierce assailant. No tiger will willingly face a herd
+of buffaloes or cattle united for mutual defence. Surrounded by his
+trusty herd, the _gwalla_ traverses the densest jungle and most
+tiger-infested thickets without fear.
+
+They believe that to rub the fat of the tiger on the loins, and to eat
+a piece of the tongue or flesh, will cure impotency; and tiger fat,
+rubbed on a painful part of the body, is an accepted specific for
+rheumatic affections. It is a firmly settled belief, that the whiskers
+and teeth, worn on the body, will act as a charm, making the wearer
+proof against the attacks of tigers. The collar-bone too, is eagerly
+coveted for the same reason.
+
+During the rains tigers are sometimes forced, like others of the cat
+tribe, to take to trees. A Mr. McI. shot two large full grown, tigers
+in a tree at Gunghara, and a Baboo of my acquaintance bagged no less
+than eight in trees during one rainy season at Rampoor.
+
+Tigers generally prefer remaining near water, and drink a great deal,
+the quantity of raw meat they devour being no doubt provocative of
+thirst.
+
+The marks of their claws are often seen on trees in the vicinity of
+their haunts, and from this fact many ridiculous stories have got
+abroad regarding their habits. It has even been regarded by some
+writers as a sort of rude test, by which to arrive at an approximate
+estimate of the tiger's size. A tiger can stretch himself out some two
+or two and a half feet more than his measurable length. You have
+doubtless often seen a domestic cat whetting its claws on the mat, or
+scratching some rough substance, such as the bark of a tree; this is
+often done to clean the claws, and to get rid of chipped and ragged
+pieces, and it is sometimes mere playfulness. It is the same with the
+tiger, the scratching on the trees is frequently done in the mere
+wantonness of sport, but it is often resorted to to clear the claws
+from pieces of flesh, that may have adhered to them during a meal on
+some poor slaughtered bullock. These marks on the trees are a valuable
+sign for the hunter, as by their appearance, whether fresh or old, he
+can often tell the whereabouts of his quarry, and a good tracker will
+even be able to make a rough guess at its probable size and
+disposition.
+
+Like policemen, tigers stick to certain beats; even when disturbed,
+and forced to abandon a favourite spot, they frequently return to it;
+and although the jungle may be wholly destroyed, old tigers retain a
+partiality for the scenes of their youthful depredations; they are
+often shot in the most unlikely places, where there is little or no
+cover, and one would certainly never expect to find them; they migrate
+with the herds, and retire to the hills during the annual floods,
+always coming back to the same jungle when the rains are over.
+
+Experienced shekarries know this trait of the tiger's character well,
+and can tell you minutely the colour and general appearance of the
+animals in any particular jungle; they are aware of any peculiarity,
+such as lameness, scars, &c., and their observations must be very keen
+indeed, and amazingly accurate, as I have never known them wrong when
+they committed themselves to a positive statement.
+
+An old planter residing at Sultanpore, close on the Nepaul border, a
+noted sportsman and a crack shot, was charged on one occasion by a
+large tiger; the brute sprang right off the ground on to the
+elephant's head; his hind legs were completely off the ground, resting
+on the elephant's chest and neck; Mr. F. retained sufficient presence
+of mind to sit close down in his howdah; the tiger's forearm was
+extended completely over the front bar, and so close that it touched
+his hat. In this position he called out to his son who was on another
+elephant close by, to fire at the tiger; he was cool enough to warn
+him to take a careful aim, and not hit the elephant. His son acted
+gallantly up to his instructions, and shot the tiger through the
+heart, when it dropped down quite dead, to Mr. F.'s great relief.
+
+Some sportsmen are of opinion, that the tiger when charging never
+springs clear from the ground, but only rears itself on its hind legs;
+this however is a mistake. I saw a tiger leap right off the ground,
+and spring on to the rump of an elephant carrying young Sam S. The
+elephant proved staunch, and remained quite quiet, and Sam, turning
+round in his howdah, shot his assailant through the head.
+
+I may give another incident, to shew how closely tigers will sometimes
+stick to cover; they are sometimes as bad to dislodge as a quail or a
+hare; they will crouch down and conceal themselves till you almost
+trample on them. One day a party of the Purneah Club were out; they
+had shot two fine tigers out of several that had been seen; the others
+were known to have gone ahead into some jungle surrounded by water,
+and easy to beat. Before proceeding further it was proposed
+accordingly to have some refreshment. The _tiffin_ elephant was
+directed to a tree close by, beneath whose shade the hungry sportsmen
+were to plant themselves; the elephant had knelt down, one or two
+boxes had actually been removed, several of the servants were clearing
+away the dried grass and leaves. H.W.S. came up on the opposite side
+of the tree, and was in the act of leaping off his elephant, when an
+enormous tiger got up at his very feet, and before the astounded
+sportsmen could handle a gun, the formidable intruder had cleared the
+bushes with a bound, and disappeared in the thick jungle.
+
+The following adventure bears me out in my remark, that tigers get
+attached to, and like to remain in, one place. Mr. F. Simpson, a
+thorough-going sportsman of the good old type, had been out one day in
+the Koosee derahs; he had had a long and unsuccessful beat for tiger,
+and had given up all hope of bagging one that day; he thought
+therefore that he might as well turn his attention to more ignoble
+game. Extracting his bullets, he replaced them with No. 4 shot. In a
+few minutes a peacock got up in front of him, and he fired. The report
+roused a very fine tiger right in front of his elephant; to make the
+best of a bad bargain, he gave the retreating animal the full benefit
+of his remaining charge of shot, and peppered it well. About a year
+after, close to this very place, C.A.S. bagged a fine tiger. On
+examination, the marks of a charge of shot were found in the flanks,
+and on removing the pads of the feet, numbers of pellets of No. 4 shot
+were found embedded in them. It was evidently the animal that had been
+peppered a year before, and the pellets had worked their way downwards
+to the feet.
+
+On another occasion, a man came to the factory where George was then
+residing, to give information of a tiger. He bore on his back numerous
+bleeding scratches, ample evidence of the truth of his story. While
+cutting grass in the jungle, with a blanket on his back, the day being
+rainy, he had been attacked by a tiger from the rear. The blanket is
+generally folded several times, and worn over the head and back. It is
+a thick heavy covering, and in the first onset the tiger tore the
+blanket from the man's body, which was probably the means of saving
+his life. The man turned round, terribly scared, as may be imagined.
+In desperation he struck at the tiger with his sickle, and according
+to his own account, he succeeded in putting out one of its eyes. He
+said it was a young tiger, and his bleeding wounds, and the
+persistency with which he stuck to his story, impressed George with
+the belief that he was telling the truth. A search for the tiger was
+made. The man's blanket was found, torn to shreds, but no tiger,
+although the footprints of one were plainly visible. But some months
+after, near the same spot, George shot a half grown tiger with one of
+its eyes gone, which had evidently been roughly torn from the socket.
+This was doubtless the identical brute that had attacked the
+grass-cutter.
+
+It is sometimes wonderful how easily a large and powerful tiger may be
+killed. The most vulnerable parts are the back of the head, through
+the neck, and broadside on the chest. The neck is the most deadly spot
+of all, and a shot behind the shoulder, or on the spine, is sure to
+bring the game to bag. I have seen several shot with a single bullet
+from a smooth-bore, and on one occasion, George tells me he saw a
+tigress killed with a single smooth-bore bullet at over a hundred
+yards. The bullet was a _ricochet_, and struck the tigress below the
+chest, and travelled towards the heart, but without touching it. She
+fell twenty yards from where she had been hit. Another, which on
+skinning we found had been shot through the heart, with a single
+smooth-bore bullet at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards,
+travelled for thirty yards before falling dead. Meiselback, a
+neighbour of mine, shot three tigers successively, on one occasion,
+with a No. 18 Joe Manton smooth-bore. Each of the three was killed by
+a single bullet, one in the head, one in the neck, and one through the
+heart, the bullet entering behind the shoulder.
+
+On the other hand, I once fired no less than six Jacob's shells into a
+tiger, all behind the shoulder, before I could stop him. The shells
+seemed to explode on the surface the moment they came in contact with
+the body. There was a tremendous surface wound, big enough to put a
+pumpkin into, but very little internal hurt. On another occasion
+(April 4, 1874) during one of the most exciting and most glorious
+moments of my sporting life--buffaloes charging the line in all
+directions, burning jungle all around us, and bullets whistling on
+every side--I fired TWELVE shells into a large bull before I killed
+him. As every shell hit him, I heard the sharp detonation, and saw the
+tiny puff of smoke curl outward from the ghastly wound. The poor
+maddened brute would drop on his knees, stagger again to his feet,
+and, game to the last, attempt to charge my elephant. I was anxious
+really to test the effect of the Jacob's shell as against the solid
+conical bullet, and carefully watched the result of each shot. My
+weapon was a beautifully finished No. 12 smooth-bore, made expressly
+to order for an officer in the Royal Artillery, from whom I bought it.
+From that day I never fired another Jacob's shell.
+
+My remarks about the tiger springing clear off the ground when
+charging, are amply borne out by the experience of some of my sporting
+friends. I could quote pages, but will content myself with one
+extract. It is a point of some importance, as many good old sportsmen
+pooh-pooh the idea, and maintain that the tiger merely stretches
+himself out to his fullest length, and if he does leave the ground, it
+is by a purely physical effort, pulling himself up by his claws.
+
+My friend George writes me: 'In several cases I have known and seen
+the tiger spring, and leave the ground. In one case the tiger sprang
+from fully five yards off. He crouched at the distance of a few paces,
+as if about to spring, and then sprang clean on to the head of Joe's
+_tusker_. An eight feet nine inch tigress once got on to the head of
+my elephant, which was ten feet seven inches in height. Every one
+present saw her leave the ground. Once, when after a tiger in small
+stubble, about six feet high, I saw one bound over a bush so clean
+that I could see every bit of him.' And so on.
+
+For long range shooting the rifle is doubtless the best weapon. The
+Express is the most deadly. The smooth-bore is the gun for downright
+honest sport. Shells and hollow pointed bullets are the things, as one
+sportsman writes me, 'for mutilation and cowardly murder, and for
+spoiling the skin.' Poison is the resource of the poacher. No
+sportsman could descend so low. Grant that the tiger is a scourge, a
+pest, a nuisance, a cruel and implacable foe to man and beast; pile
+all the vilest epithets of your vocabulary on his head, and say that
+he deserves them all, still he is what opportunity and circumstance
+have made him. He is as nature fashioned him; and there are bold
+spirits, and keen sights, and steady nerves enough, God wot, among our
+Indian sportsmen, to cope with him on more equal and sportsmanlike
+terms than by poisoning him like a mangy dog. On this point, however,
+opinions differ. I do not envy the man who would prefer poisoning a
+tiger to the keen delight of patiently following him up, ousting him
+from cover to cover, watching his careful endeavours to elude your
+search; perhaps at the end of a long and fascinating beat, feeling the
+electric excitement thrill every nerve and fibre of your body, as the
+magnificent robber comes bounding down at the charge, the very
+embodiment of ferocity and strength, the perfection of symmetry, the
+acme of agility and grace.
+
+Natives are such notorious perverters of the truth, and so often hide
+what little there may be in their communications under such floods of
+Oriental hyperbole and exaggeration, that you are often disappointed
+in going out on what you consider trustworthy and certain information.
+They often remind me of the story of the Laird of Logan. He was riding
+slowly along a country road one day, when another equestrian joined
+him. Logan's eye fixed itself on a hole in the turf bank bounding the
+road, and with great gravity, and in trust-inspiring accents, he said,
+'I saw a _tod_ (or fox) gang in there.'
+
+'Did you, really;' cried the new comer.
+
+'I did,' responded the laird.
+
+'Will you hold my horse till I get a spade,' cried the now excited
+traveller.
+
+The laird assented. Away hurried the man, and soon returned with a
+spade. He set manfully to work to dig out the fox, and worked till the
+perspiration streamed down his face. The laird sat stolidly looking
+on, saying never a word; and as he seemed to be nearing the confines
+of the hole, the poor digger redoubled his exertions. When at length
+it became plain that there was no fox there, he wiped his streaming
+brow, and rather crossly exclaimed, 'I'm afraid there's no tod here.'
+
+'It would be a wonder if there was,' rejoined the laird, without the
+movement of a muscle, 'it's ten years since I saw him gang in there.'
+
+So it is sometimes with a native. He will fire your ardour, by telling
+you of some enormous tiger, to be found in some jungle close by, but
+when you come to enquire minutely into his story, you find that the
+tiger was seen perhaps the year before last, or that it _used_ to be
+there, or that somebody else had told him of its being there.
+
+Some tigers, too, are so cunning and wary, that they will make off
+long before the elephants have come near. I have seen others rise on
+their hind legs just like a hare or a kangaroo, and peer over the
+jungle trying to make out one's whereabouts. This is of course only in
+short light jungle.
+
+The plan we generally adopt in beating for tiger on or near the Nepaul
+border, is to use a line of elephants to beat the cover. It is a fine
+sight to watch the long line of stately monsters moving slowly and
+steadily forward. Several howdahs tower high above the line, the
+polished barrels of guns and rifles glittering in the fierce rays of
+the burning and vertical sun. Some of the shooters wear huge hats made
+from the light pith of the solah plant, others have long blue or white
+puggrees wound round their heads in truly Oriental style. These are
+very comfortable to wear, but rather trying to the sight, as they
+afford no protection to the eyes. For riding they are to my mind the
+most comfortable head-dress that can be worn, and they are certainly
+more graceful than the stiff unsightly solah hat.
+
+Between every two howdahs are four or five pad elephants. These beat
+up all the intervening bushes, and carry the game that may be shot.
+When a pig, deer, tiger, or other animal has been shot, and has
+received its _coup de grace_, it is quickly bundled on to the pad, and
+there secured. The elephant kneels down to receive the load, and while
+game is being padded the whole line waits, till the operation is
+complete, as it is bad policy to leave blanks. Where this simple
+precaution is neglected, many a tiger will sneak through the opening
+left by the pad elephant, and so silently and cautiously can they
+steal through the dense cover, and so cunning are they and acute, that
+they will take advantage of the slightest gap, and the keenest and
+best trained eye will fail to detect them.
+
+In most of our hunting parties on the Koosee, we had some twenty or
+thirty elephants, and frequently six or eight howdahs. These
+expeditions were very pleasant, and we lived luxuriously. For real
+sport ten elephants and two or three tried comrades--not more--is much
+better. With a short, easily-worked line, that can turn and double,
+and follow the tiger quickly, and dog his every movement, you can get
+far better sport, and bring more to bag, than with a long unwieldy
+line, that takes a considerable time to turn and wheel, and in whose
+onward march there is of necessity little of the silence and swiftness
+which are necessary elements in successful tiger shooting.
+
+I have been out with a line of seventy-six elephants and fourteen
+howdahs. This was on 16th March 1875. It was a magnificent sight to
+see the seventy-six huge brutes in the river together, splashing the
+water along their heated sides to cool themselves, and sending huge
+waves dashing against the crumbling banks of the rapid stream. It was
+no less magnificent to see their slow stately march through the
+swaying, crashing jungle. What an idea of irresistible power and
+ponderous strength the huge creatures gave us, as they heaved through
+the tangled brake, crushing everything in their resistless progress.
+It was a sight to be remembered, but as might have been expected, we
+found the jungles almost untenanted. Everything cleared out before us,
+long ere the line could reach its vicinity. We only killed one tiger,
+but next day we separated, the main body crossing the stream, while my
+friends and myself, with only fourteen elephants, rebeat the same
+jungle and bagged two.
+
+In every hunt, one member is told off to look after the forage and
+grain for the elephants. One attends to the cooking and requirements
+of the table, one acts as paymaster and keeper of accounts, while the
+most experienced is unanimously elected captain, and takes general
+direction of every movement of the line. He decides on the plan of
+operations for the day, gives each his place in the line, and for the
+time, becomes an irresponsible autocrat, whose word is law, and
+against whose decision there is no appeal.
+
+Scouts are sent out during the night, and bring in reports from all
+parts of the jungle in the early morning, while we are discussing
+_chota baziree_, our early morning meal. If tiger is reported, or a
+kill has been discovered, we form line in silence, and without noise
+bear down direct on the spot. In the captain's howdah are three flags.
+A blue flag flying means that only tiger or rhinoceros are to be shot
+at. A red flag signifies that we are to have general firing, in fact
+that we may blaze away at any game that may be afoot, and the white
+flag shews us that we are on our homeward way, and then also may shoot
+at anything we can get, break the line, or do whatever we choose. On
+the flanks are generally posted the best shots of the party. The
+captain, as a rule, keeps to the centre of the line. Frequently one
+man and elephant is sent on ahead to some opening or dry water-bed, to
+see that no cunning tiger sneaks away unseen. This vedette is called
+_naka_. All experienced sportsmen employ a naka, and not unfrequently
+where the ground is difficult, two are sent ahead. The naka is a most
+important post, and the holder will often get a lucky shot at some
+wary veteran trying to sneak off, and may perhaps bag the only tiger
+of the day. The mere knowledge that there is an elephant on ahead,
+will often keep tigers from trying to get away. They prefer to face
+the known danger of the line behind, to the unknown danger in front,
+and in all cases where there is a big party a naka should be sent on
+ahead.
+
+Tigers can be, and are, shot on the Koosee plains all the year round,
+but the big hunts take place in the months of March, April, and May,
+when the hot west winds are blowing, and when the jungle has got
+considerably trampled down by the herds of cattle grazing in the
+tangled wilderness of tall grass. Innumerable small paths shew where
+the cattle wander backward and forward through the labyrinths of the
+jungle. In the howdah we carry ample supplies of vesuvians. We light
+and drop these as they blaze into the dried grass and withered leaves
+as we move along, and soon a mighty wall of roaring flame behind us,
+attests the presence of the destroying element. We go diagonally up
+wind, and the flames and smoke thus surge and roar and curl and roll,
+in dense blinding volumes, to the rear and leeward of our line. The
+roaring of the flames sounds like the maddened surf of an angry sea,
+dashing in thunder against an iron-bound coast. The leaping flames
+mount up in fiery columns, illuminating the fleecy clouds of smoke
+with an unearthly glare. The noise is deafening; at times some of the
+elephants get quite nervous at the fierce roar of the flames behind,
+and try to bolt across country. The fire serves two good purposes. It
+burns up the old withered grass, making room for the fresh succulent
+sprouts to spring, and it keeps all the game in front of the line,
+driving the animals before us, as they are afraid to break back and
+face the roaring-wall of flame. A seething, surging sea of flame,
+several miles long, encircling the whole country in its fiery belt,
+sweeping along at night with the roar of a storm-tossed sea; the
+flames flickering, swelling, and leaping up in the dark night, the
+fiery particles rushing along amid clouds of lurid smoke, and the
+glare of the serpent-like line reddening the horizon, is one of those
+magnificent spectacles that can only be witnessed at rare intervals
+among the experiences of a sojourn in India. Words fail to depict its
+grandeur, and the utmost skill of Doré could not render on canvas, the
+weird, unearthly magnificence of a jungle fire, at the culmination of
+its force and fury.
+
+In beating, the elephants are several yards apart, and, standing in
+the howdah, you can see the slightest motion of the grass before you,
+unless indeed it be virgin jungle, quite untrodden, and perhaps higher
+than your elephant; in such high dense cover, tigers will sometimes
+lie up and allow you to go clean past them. In such a case you must
+fire the jungle, and allow the blaze to beat for you. It is common for
+young, over eager sportsmen, to fire at moving jungle, trusting to a
+lucky chance for hitting the moving animal; this is useless waste of
+powder; they fail to realize the great length of the swaying grass,
+and invariably shoot over the game; the animal hears the crashing of
+the bullet through the dense thicket overhead, and immediately stops,
+and you lose all idea of his whereabouts. When you see an animal
+moving before you in long jungle, it should be your object to follow
+him slowly and patiently, till you can get a sight of him, and see
+what sort of beast he is. Firing at the moving grass is worse than
+useless. Keep as close behind him as you can, make signs for the other
+elephants to close in; stick to your quarry, never lose sight of him
+for an instant, be ready to seize the first moment, when more open
+jungle, or some other favourable chance, may give you a glimpse of his
+skin.
+
+Another caution should be observed. Never fire down the line. It is
+astonishing how little will divert a bullet, and a careless shot is
+worse than a dozen charging tigers. If a tiger does break back, let
+him get well away behind the line, and then blaze at him as hard as
+you like. It is particularly unpleasant to hear a bullet come singing
+and booming down the line from some excited dunderhead on the far left
+or right.
+
+A tiger slouching along in front moves pretty fast, in a silent
+swinging trot; the tops of the reeds or grass sway very gently, with a
+wavering, side to side motion. A pig rushes boldly through, and a deer
+will cause the grass to rock violently to and fro. A buffalo or
+rhinoceros is known at once by the crashing of the dry stalks, as his
+huge frame plunges along; but the tiger can never be mistaken. When
+that gentle, undulating, noiseless motion is once seen, be ready with
+your trusty gun, and remove not your eye from the spot, for the mighty
+robber of the jungle is before you.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Howdahs and howdah-ropes.--Mussulman custom.--Killing animals for
+food.--Mysterious appearance of natives when an animal is killed.
+--Fastening dead tigers to the pad.--Present mode wants improving.
+--Incident illustrative of this.--Dangerous to go close to wounded
+tigers.--Examples.--Footprints of tigers.--Call of the tiger.--Natives
+and their powers of description.--How to beat successfully for tiger.
+--Description of a beat.--Disputes among the shooters.--Awarding
+tigers.--Cutting open the tiger.--Native idea about the liver of the
+tiger.--Signs of a tiger's presence in the jungle.--Vultures.--Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?--A vulture carrion feast.
+
+The best howdahs are light, single-seated ones, with strong, light
+frames of wood and cane-work, and a moveable seat with a leather
+strap, adjustable to any length, on which to lean back. They should
+have a strong iron rail all round the top, covered with leather, with
+convenient grooves to receive the barrels of the guns, as they rest in
+front, ready to either hand. In front there should be compartments for
+different kinds of cartridges; and pockets and lockers under the seat,
+and at the back, or wherever there is room. Outside should be a strong
+iron step, to get out and in by easily, and a strong iron ring,
+through which to pass the rope that binds the howdah to the elephant.
+
+You cannot be too careful with your howdah ropes. A chain is generally
+used as an auxiliary to the rope, which should be of cotton, strong
+and well twisted, and should be overhauled daily, to see that there is
+no chafing. It is passed round the foot-bars of the howdah, and
+several times round the belly of the elephant.
+
+Another rope acts as a crupper behind, being passed through rings in
+the terminal frame-work of the howdah, and under the elephant's tail;
+it frequently causes painful sores there, and some drivers give it a
+hitch round the tail, in the same way as you would hitch it round a
+post. Another steadying rope goes round the elephant's breast, like a
+chest-band. 'A merciful man is merciful to his beast.' You should
+always, therefore, have a sheet of soft well oiled leather to go
+between the chest and belly ropes and the elephant's hide; this
+prevents chafing, and is a great relief to the poor old _hathi_, as
+they call the elephant. _Hatnee_ is the female elephant. _Duntar_ is a
+fellow with large tusks, and _mukna_ is an elephant with small
+downward growing tusks.
+
+Many of the old fashioned howdahs are far too heavy; a firm, strong
+howdah should not weigh more than 28 lbs. In most of the old fashioned
+ones, there is a seat for an attendant. If your attendant be a
+Mussulman, he hurries down as soon as you shoot a deer, to cut its
+throat. The Mohammedan religion enjoins a variety of rules on its
+professors in regard to the slaying of animals for food. Chief of
+these is a prohibition, against eating the flesh of an animal that has
+died a natural death; the throat of every animal intended to be eaten
+should be cut, and at the moment of applying the knife, _Bismillah_
+should be said, that is, 'In the name of God.' If therefore your
+mahout, or attendant, belong to the religion of the _Koran_, he will
+hurry down to cut the throat of a wounded deer if possible before life
+is extinct; if it be already dead, he will leave it alone for the
+Hindoos, who have no such scruples.
+
+A number of _moosahurs, banturs, gwallas_, and other idlers, from the
+jungle villages, generally follow in the wake of the line. If you
+shoot many pigs, they carry off the dead bodies, and hold high
+carnival in their homes in the evening. To see them rush on a slain
+buffalo, and hack it to pieces, is a curious sight; they fight for
+pieces of flesh like so many vultures. Sportsmen generally content
+themselves with the head of a buffalo, but not a scrap of the carcase
+is ever wasted. The natives are attracted to the spot, like ants to a
+heap of grain, or wasps to an old sugar barrel; they seem to spring
+out of the earth, so rapidly do they make their appearance. If you
+were to kill a dozen buffaloes, I believe all the flesh would be taken
+away to the neighbouring villages within an hour.
+
+This appearance of men in the jungles is wonderful. You may think
+yourself in the centre of a vast wilderness, not a sign of human
+habitation for miles around; on all sides stretches a vast ocean of
+grass, the resort of ferocious wild animals, seemingly untrodden by a
+human foot. You shoot a deer, a pig, or other animal whose flesh is
+fit for food; the man behind you gives a cry, and in ten minutes you
+will have a group of brawny young fellows around your elephant, eager
+to carry away the game. The way these natives thread the dense jungle
+is to me a wonder; they seem to know every devious path and hidden
+recess, and they traverse the most gloomy and dangerous solitudes
+without betraying the slightest apprehension.
+
+In fastening dead game to the pad of the carrying elephant great care
+is necessary. Some elephants are very timid, and indeed all elephants
+are mistrustful and suspicious of anything behind them. They are
+pretty courageous in facing anything before them, but they do not like
+a rustling or indeed any motion in their rear. I have seen a dog put
+an elephant to flight, and if you have a lazy _hathi_, a good plan is
+to walk a horse behind him. He will then shuffle along at a prodigious
+pace constantly looking round from side to side, and no doubt in his
+heart anathematising the horse that forces the running so
+persistently.
+
+The present method of roughly lashing on dead game anyhow requires
+altering. Some ingenious sportsman could surely devise a system of
+slings by which the dead weight of the game could be more equally
+distributed. At present the dead bodies are hauled up at random, and
+fastened anyhow. The pad gets displaced, the elephant must stop till
+the burden is rearranged; the ropes, especially on a hot day, cut into
+the skin and rub off the hair, and many a good skin is quite spoiled
+by the present rough method of tying on the pad.
+
+One day, in taking off a dead tiger from the pad, near George's
+bungalow, the end of the rope (a new one) remained somehow fixed to
+the neck of the elephant. When he rose up, being relieved of the
+weight, he dragged the dead tiger with him. This put the elephant into
+a horrible funk, and despite all the efforts of the driver he started
+off at a trot, hauling the tiger after him. Every now and then he
+would turn round, and tread and kick the lifeless carcase. At length
+the rope gave way, and the elephant became more manageable, but not
+before a fine skin had been totally ruined, all owing to this
+primitive style of fastening by ropes to the pad. A proper pad, with
+leather straps and buckles, that could be hauled as tight as
+necessary--a sort of harness arrangement, could easily be devised, to
+secure dead game on the pad. I am certain it would save time in the
+hunting-field, and protect many a fine skin, that gets abraded and
+marked by the present rough and ready lashing.
+
+It is always dangerous to go too close up to a wounded tiger, and one
+should never rashly jump to the conclusion that a tiger is dead
+because he appears so Approach him cautiously, and make very certain
+that he is really and truly dead, before you venture to get down
+beside the body. It is a bad plan to take your elephant close up to a
+dead tiger at all. I have known cases where good staunch elephants
+have been spoiled for future sport, by being rashly taken up to a
+wounded tiger. In rolling about, the tiger may get hold of the
+elephants, and inflict injuries that will demoralise them, and make
+them quite unsteady on subsequent occasions.
+
+I have known cases where a tiger left for dead has had to be shot over
+again. I have seen a man get down to pull a seemingly dead tiger into
+the open, and get charged. Fortunately it was a dying effort, and I
+put a bullet through the skull before the tiger could reach the
+frightened peon. We have been several times grouped round a dying
+tiger, watching him breathe his last, when the brute has summoned up
+strength for a final effort, and charged the elephants.
+
+On one occasion W.D. had got down beside what he thought a dead tiger,
+had rolled him over, and, tape in hand, was about to measure the
+animal, when he staggered to his feet with a terrific growl, and made
+away through the jungle. He had only been stunned, and fortunately
+preferred running to fighting, or the consequences might have been
+more tragic; as it was, he was quickly followed up and killed. But
+instances like these might be indefinitely multiplied, all teaching,
+that seemingly dead tigers should be approached with the utmost
+respect. Never venture off your elephant without a loaded revolver.
+
+In beating for tiger, we have seen that the appearance of the kill,
+whether fresh or old, whether much torn and mangled or comparatively
+untouched, often affords valuable indications to the sportsman. The
+footprints are not less narrowly looked for, and scrutinized. If we
+are after tiger, and following them up, the captain will generally get
+down at any bare place, such as a dry nullah, the edge of a tank or
+water hole, or any other spot where footprints can be detected. Fresh
+prints can be very easily distinguished. The impression is like that
+made by a dog, only much larger, and the marks of the claws are not
+visible. The largest footprint I have heard of was measured by George
+S., and was found to be eight and a quarter inches wide from the
+outside of the first to the outside of the fourth toe. If a tiger has
+passed very recently, the prints will be fresh-looking, and if on damp
+ground there can be no mistaking them. If it has been raining
+recently, we particularly notice whether the rain has obliterated the
+track at all, in any place; which would lead us to the conclusion that
+the tiger had passed before it rained. If the water has lodged in the
+footprint, the tiger has passed after the shower. In fresh prints the
+water will be slightly puddly or muddy. In old prints it will be quite
+clear; and so on.
+
+The call of the male tiger is quite different from that of the female.
+The male calls with a hoarse harsh cry, something between the grunt of
+a pig and the bellow of a bull; the call of the tigress is more like
+the prolonged mew of a cat much intensified. During the pairing season
+the call is sharper and shorter, and ends in a sudden break. At that
+time, too, they cry at more frequent intervals. The roar of the tiger
+is quite unlike the call. Once heard it is not easily forgotten, The
+natives who live in the jungles can tell one tiger from another by
+colour, size, &c., and they can even distinguish one animal from
+another by his call. It is very absurd to hear a couple of natives get
+together and describe the appearance of some tiger they have seen.
+
+In describing a pig, they refer to his height, or the length of his
+tusks. They describe a fish by putting their fists together, and
+saying he was so thick, _itna mota_. The head of a tiger is always the
+most conspicuous part of the body seen in the jungle. They therefore
+invariably describe him by his head. One man will hold his two hands
+apart about two feet, and say that the head was _itna burra_, that is,
+so big. The other, not to be outdone, gives rein to his imagination,
+and adds another foot. The first immediately fancies discredit will
+attach to his veracity, and vehemently asserts that there must in that
+case have been two tigers; and so they go on, till they conclusively
+prove, that two tigers there must have been, and indeed, if you let
+them go on, they will soon assure you that, besides the pair of
+tigers, there must be at least a pair of half-grown cubs. Their
+imaginations are very fertile, and you must take the information of a
+native as to tigers with a very large pinch of salt.
+
+For successful tiger shooting much depends on the beating. When after
+tiger, general firing should on no account be allowed, and the line
+should move forward as silently as possible. In light cover, extending
+over a large area, the elephants should be kept a considerable
+distance apart, but in thick dense cover the line should be quite
+close, and beat up slowly and thoroughly, as a tiger may lay up and
+allow the line to pass him. On no account should an elephant be let to
+lag behind, and no one should be allowed to rush forward or go in
+advance. The elephants should move along, steady and even, like a
+moving wall, the fastest being on the flanks, and accommodating their
+pace to the general rate of progress. No matter what tempting chances
+at pig or deer you may have, you must on no account fire except at
+tiger.
+
+The captain should be in the centre, and the men on the flanks ought
+to be constantly on the _qui vive_, to see that no cunning tiger
+outflanks the line. The attention should never wander from the jungle
+before you, for at any moment a tiger may get up--and I know of no
+sport where it is necessary to be so continuously on the alert. Every
+moment is fraught with intense excitement, and when a tiger does
+really show his stripes before you, the all-absorbing eager excitement
+of a lifetime is packed in a few brief moments. Not a chance should be
+thrown away, a long, or even an uncertain shot, is better than none,
+and if you make one miss, you may not have another chance again that
+day: for the tiger is chary of showing his stripes, and thinks
+discretion the better part of valour.
+
+All the line of course are aware, as a rule, when a tiger is on the
+move, and a good captain (and Joe S., who generally took the direction
+of our beats, could not well be matched) will wheel the line, double,
+turn, march, and countermarch, and fairly run the tiger down. At such
+a time, although you may not actually see the tiger, the excitement is
+tremendous. You stand erect in the howdah, your favourite gun ready;
+your attendant behind is as excited as yourself, and sways from side
+to side to peer into the gloomy depths of the jungle; in front, the
+mahout wriggles on his seat, as if by his motion he could urge the
+elephant to a quicker advance. He digs his toes savagely into his
+elephant behind the ear; the line is closing up; every eye is fixed on
+the moving jungle ahead. The roaring of the flames behind, and the
+crashing of the dried reeds as the elephants force their ponderous
+frames through the intertwisted stems and foliage, are the only sounds
+that greet the ear. Suddenly you see the tawny yellow hide, as the
+tiger slouches along. Your gun rings out a reverberating challenge, as
+your fatal bullet speeds on its errand. To right and left the echoes
+ring, as shot after shot is fired at the bounding robber. Then the
+line closes up, and you form a circle round the stricken beast, and
+watch his mighty limbs quiver in the death-agony, and as he falls over
+dead, and powerless for further harm, you raise the heartfelt,
+pulse-stirring cheer, that finds an echo in every brother sportman's
+heart.
+
+Disputes sometimes arise as to whose bullet first drew blood. These
+are settled by the captain, and from his decision there is no appeal.
+Many sportsmen put peculiar marks on their bullets, by which they can
+be recognised, which is a good plan. In an exciting scrimmage every
+one blazes at the tiger, not one bullet perhaps in five or six takes
+effect, and every one is ready to claim the skin, as having been
+pierced with his particular bullet. Disputes are not very common, but
+an inspection of the wounds, and the bullets found in the body,
+generally settle the question. After hearing all the pros and cons,
+the captain generally succeeds in awarding the tiger to the right man.
+
+After a successful day, the news rapidly spreads through the adjacent
+country, and we may take the line a little out of our way to make a
+sort of triumphal procession through the villages. On reaching the
+camp there is sure to be a great crowd waiting to see the slain
+tigers, the despoilers of the people's flocks and herds.
+
+It is then you hear of all the depredations the dead robber has
+committed, and it is then you begin to form some faint conception of
+his enormous destructive powers. Villager after villager unfolds a
+tale of some favourite heifer, or buffalo, or cow having been struck
+down, and the copious vocabulary of Hindostanee Billingsgate is almost
+exhausted, and floods of abuse poured out on the prostrate head.
+
+On cutting open the tiger, parasites are frequently found in the
+flesh. These are long, white, thread-like worms, and are supposed by
+some to be Guinea worms. Huge masses of undigested bone and hair are
+sometimes taken from the intestines, shewing that the tiger does not
+waste much time on mastication, but tears and eats the flesh in large
+masses. The liver is found to have numbers of separate lobes, and the
+natives say that this is an infallible test of the age of a tiger, as
+a separate lobe forms on the liver for each year of the tiger's life.
+I have certainly found young tigers having but two and three lobes,
+and old tigers I have found with six, seven, and even eight, but the
+statement is entirely unsupported by careful observation, and requires
+authentication before it can be accepted.
+
+A reported kill is a pretty certain sign that there are tigers in the
+jungle, but there are other signs with which one soon gets familiar.
+When, for example, you hear deer calling repeatedly, and see them
+constantly on the move, it is a sign that tiger are in the
+neighbourhood. When cattle are reluctant to enter the jungle,
+restless, and unwilling to graze, you may be sure tiger are somewhere
+about, not far away. A kill is often known by the numbers of vultures
+that hover about in long, sailing, steady circles. What multitudes of
+vultures there are. Overhead, far up in the liquid ether, you see them
+circling round and round like dim specks in the distance; farther and
+farther away, till they seem like bees, then lessen and fade into the
+infinitude of space. No part of the sky is ever free from their
+presence. When a kill has been perceived, you see one come flying
+along, strong and swift in headlong flight. With the directness of a
+thunderbolt he speeds to where his loathsome meal lies sweltering in
+the noonday sun. As he comes nearer and nearer, his repulsive looking
+body assumes form and substance. The cruel, ugly bald head, drawn
+close in between the strong pointed shoulders, the broad powerful
+wings, with their wide sweep, measured and slow, bear him swiftly
+past. With a curve and a sweep he circles round, down come the long
+bony legs, the bald and hideous neck is extended, and with talons
+quivering for the rotting flesh, and cruel beak agape, he hurries on
+to his repast, the embodiment of everything ghoul-like and ghastly. In
+his wake comes another, then twos and threes, anon tens and twenties,
+till hundreds have collected, and the ground is covered with the
+hissing, tearing, fiercely clawing crowd. It is a horrible sight to
+see a heap of vultures battling over a dead bullock. I have seen them
+so piled up that the under ones were nearly smothered to death; and
+the writhing contortions of the long bare necks, as the fierce brutes
+battled with talons and claws, were like the twisting of monster
+snakes, or the furious writhing of gorgons and furies over some fated
+victim.
+
+It has been a much debated point with sportsmen and naturalists,
+whether the eye or the sense of smell guides the vulture to his feast
+of carrion. I have often watched them. They scan the vast surface
+spread below them with a piercing and never tiring gaze. They observe
+each other. When one is seen to cease his steady circling flight, far
+up in mid air, and to stretch his broad wings earthwards, the others
+know that he has espied a meal, and follow his lead; and these in turn
+are followed by others, till from all quarters flock crowds of these
+scavengers of the sky. They can detect a dog or jackal from a vast
+height, and they know by intuition that, where the carcase is there
+will the dogs and jackals be gathered. I think there can be no doubt
+that the vision is the sense they are most indebted to for directing
+them to their food.
+
+On one occasion I remember seeing a tumultuous heap of them, battling
+fiercely, as I have just tried to describe, over the carcases of two
+tigers we had killed near Dumdaha. The dead bodies were hidden
+partially in a grove of trees, and for a long time there were only
+some ten or a dozen vultures near. These gorged themselves so
+fearfully, that they could not rise from the ground, but lay with
+wings expanded, looking very aldermanic and apoplectic. Bye-and-bye,
+however, the rush began, and by the time we had struck the tents,
+there could not have been fewer than 150 vultures, hissing and
+spitting at each other like angry cats; trampling each other to the
+dust to get at the carcases; and tearing wildly with talon and beak
+for a place. In a very short time nothing but mangled bones remained.
+A great number of the vultures got on to the rotten limb of a huge
+mango tree. One other proved the last straw, for down came the rotten
+branch and several of the vultures, tearing at each other, fell
+heavily to the ground, where they lay quite helpless. As an experiment
+we shot a miserable mangy Pariah dog, that was prowling about the
+ground seeking garbage and offal. He was shot stone-dead, and for a
+time no vulture ventured near. A crow was the first to begin the feast
+of death. One of the hungriest of the vultures next approached, and in
+a few minutes the yet warm body of the poor dog was torn into a
+thousand fragments, till nothing remained but scattered and disjointed
+bones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul frontier.--Indian scenery near
+the border.--Lose our way.--Cold night.--The river by night.--Our boat
+and boatmen.--Tigers calling on the bank.--An anxious moment.--Fire at
+and wound the tigress.--Reach camp.--The Nepaulee's adventure with a
+tiger.--The old Major.--His appearance and manners.--The pompous
+Jemadar.--Nepaulese proverb.--Firing the jungle.--Start a tiger and
+shoot him.--Another in front.--Appearance of the fires by night.--The
+tiger escapes.--Too dark to follow up.--Coolie shot by mistake during
+a former hunt.
+
+Early in 1875 a military friend of mine was engaged in inspecting the
+boundary pillars near my factory, between our territory and that of
+Nepaul. Some of the pillars had been cut away by the river, and the
+survey map required a little alteration in consequence. Our district
+magistrate was in attendance, and sent me an invitation to go up and
+spend a week with them in camp. I had no need to send on tents, as
+they had every requisite for comfort. I sent off my bed and bedding on
+Geerdharee Jha's old elephant, a timid, useless brute, fit neither far
+beating jungle nor for carrying a howdah. My horse I sent on to the
+ghat or crossing, some ten miles up the river, and after lunch I
+started. It was a fine cool afternoon, and it was not long ere I
+reached the neighbouring factory of Im[=a]mnugger. Here I had a little
+refreshment with Old Tom, and after exchanging greetings, I resumed my
+way over a part of the country with which I was totally unacquainted.
+
+I rode on, past villages nestling in the mango groves, past huge
+tanks, excavated by the busy labour of generations long since
+departed; past decaying temples, overshadowed by mighty tamarind
+trees, with the _peepul_ and _pakur_ insinuating their twining roots
+amid the shattered and crumbling masonry. In one large village I
+passed through the bustling bazaar, where the din, and dust, and
+mingled odours, were almost overpowering. The country was now assuming
+quite an undulating character. The banks of the creeks were steep and
+rugged, and in some cases the water actually tumbled from rock to
+rock, with a purling pleasant ripple and plash, a welcome sound to a
+Scotch ear, and a pleasant surprise after the dull, dead, leaden,
+noiseless flow of the streams further down on the plains.
+
+Far in front lay the gloomy belt of Terai, or border forest, here
+called the _morung_, where the British territories had their extreme
+limit in that direction. Behind this belt, tier on tier, rose the
+mighty ranges of the majestic Himalayas, towering up in solemn
+grandeur from the bushy masses of forest-clad hills till their
+snow-capped summits seemed to pierce the sky. The country was covered
+by green crops, with here and there patches of dingy rice-stubble, and
+an occasional stretch of dense grass jungle. Quail, partridge, and
+plover rose from the ground in coveys, as my horse cantered through;
+and an occasional peafowl or florican scudded across the track as I
+ambled onward. I asked at a wretched little accumulation of weavers'
+huts where the ghat was, and if my elephant had gone on. To both my
+queries I received satisfactory replies, and as the day was now
+drawing in, I pushed my nag into a sharp canter and hurried forward.
+
+I soon perceived the bulky outline of my elephant ahead, and on coming
+up, found that my men had come too far up the river, had missed the
+ghat to which I had sent my spare horse, and were now making for
+another ferry still higher up. My horse was jaded, so I got on the
+elephant, and made one of the peons lead the horse behind. It was
+rapidly getting dark, and the mahout, or elephant driver, a miserable
+low caste stupid fellow, evidently knew nothing of the country, and
+was going at random. I halted at the next village, got hold of the
+chowkeydar, and by a promise of backsheesh, prevailed on him to
+accompany us and show us the way. We turned off from the direct
+northerly direction in which we had been going, and made straight for
+the river, which we could see in the distance, looking chill and grey
+in the fast fading twilight. We now got on the sandbanks, and had to
+go cautiously for fear of quicksands. By the time we reached the ghat
+it was quite dark and growing very cold.
+
+We were quite close to the hills, a heavy dew was falling, and I found
+that I should have to float down the liver for a mile, and then pole
+up stream in another channel for two miles before I could reach camp.
+
+I got my horse into the boat, ordering the elephant driver to travel
+all night if he could, as I should expect my things to be at camp
+early in the morning, and the boatmen pushed off the unwieldy
+ferry-boat, floating us quietly down the rapid 'drumly' stream. All is
+solemnly still and silent on an Indian river at night. The stream is
+swift but noiseless. Vast plains and heaps of sand stretch for miles
+on either bank. There are no villages near the stream. Faintly, far
+away in the distance, you hear a few subdued sounds, the only
+evidences of human habitation. There is the tinkle of a cow-bell, the
+barking of a pariah dog, the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub of a
+timber-toned tom-tom, muffled and slightly mellowed by the distance.
+The faint, far cries, and occasional halloos of the herd-boys calling
+to each other, gradually cease, but the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub
+continues till far into the night.
+
+It was now very cold, and I was glad to borrow a blanket from my peon.
+At such a time the pipe is a great solace. It soothes the whole
+system, and plunges one into an agreeable dreamy speculative mood,
+through which all sorts of fantastic notions resolve. Fancies chase
+each other quickly, and old memories rise, bitter or sweet, but all
+tinged and tinted by the seductive influence of the magic weed. Hail,
+blessed pipe! the invigorator of the weary, the uncomplaining faithful
+friend, the consoler of sorrows, and the dispeller of care, the
+much-prized companion of the solitary wayfarer!
+
+Now a jackal utters a howl on the bank, as our boat shoots past, and
+the diabolical noise is echoed from knoll to knoll, and from ridge to
+ridge, as these incarnate devils of the night join in and prolong the
+infernal chorus. An occasional splash, as a piece of the bank topples
+over into the stream, rouses the cormorant and gull from their placid
+dozing on the sandbanks. They squeak and gurgle out an unintelligible
+protest, then cosily settle their heads again beneath the sheltering
+wing, and sleep the slumber of the dreamless. A sharp sudden plump, or
+a lazy surging sound, accompanied by a wheezy blowing sort of hiss,
+tells us that a _seelun_ is disporting himself; or that a fat old
+'porpus' is bearing his clumsy bulk through the rushing current.
+
+The bank now looms out dark and mysterious, and as we turn the point
+another long stretch of the river opens out, reflecting the merry
+twinkle of the myriad stars, that glitter sharp and clear millions of
+miles overhead. There is now a clattering of bamboo poles. With a
+grunt of disgust, and a quick catching of the breath, as the cold
+water rushes up against his thighs, one of the boatmen splashes
+overboard, and they commence slowly and wearily pushing the boat up
+stream. We touch the bank a dozen times. The current swoops down and
+turns us round and round. The men have to put their shoulders under
+the gunwale, and heave and strain with all their might. The long
+bamboo poles are plunged into the dark depths of the river, and the
+men puff, and grunt, and blow, as they bend almost to the bottom of
+the boat while they push. It is a weary progress. We are dripping wet
+with dew. Quite close on the bank we hear the hoarse wailing call of a
+tigress. The call of the tiger comes echoing down between the banks.
+The men cease poling. I peer forward into the obscurity. My syce pats,
+and speaks soothingly to the trembling horse, while my peon with
+excited fingers fumbles at the straps of my gun-case. For a moment all
+is intensely still.
+
+I whisper to the boatmen to push out a little into the stream. Again
+the tigress calls, this time so close to us that we could almost fancy
+we could feel her breath. My gun is ready. The syce holds the horse
+firmly by the head, and as we leave the bank, we can distinctly see
+the outline of some large animal, standing out a dark bulky mass
+against the skyline. I take a steady aim and fire. A roar of
+astonishment, wrath, and pain follows the report. The horse struggles
+and snorts, the boatman calls out 'Oh, my father!' and ejaculates
+'hi-hi-hi!' in tones of piled up anguish and apprehension, the peon
+cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug, gea,' that bullet has told;
+oh your highness! and while the boat rocks violently to and fro, I
+abuse the boatmen, slang the syce, and rush to grasp a pole, while the
+peon seizes another; for we are drifting rapidly down stream, and may
+at any moment strike on a bank and topple over. We can hear by the
+growling and commotion on the bank, that my bullet has indeed told,
+and that something is hit. We soon get the frightened boatmen quieted
+down, and after another hour's weary work we spy the white outline of
+the tents above the bank. A lamp shines out a bright welcome; and
+although it is nearly twelve at night, the Captain and the magistrate
+are discussing hot toddy, and waiting my arrival. My spare horse had
+come on from the ghat, the syce had told them I was coming, and they
+had been indulging in all sorts of speculations over my non-arrival.
+
+A good supper, and a reeking jorum, soon banished all recollections of
+my weary journey, and men were ordered to go out at first break of
+dawn, and see about the wounded tiger. In the morning I was gratified
+beyond expression to find a fine tigress, measuring 8 feet 3 inches,
+had been brought in, the result of my lucky night shot; the marks of a
+large tiger were found about the spot, and we determined to beat up
+for him, and if possible secure his skin, as we already had that of
+his consort.
+
+Captain S. had some work to finish, and my elephant and bearer had not
+arrived, so our magistrate and myself walked down to the sandbanks,
+and amused ourselves for an hour shooting sandpipers and plover; we
+also shot a pair of mallard and a couple of teal, and then went back
+to the tents, and were soon busily discussing a hunter's breakfast.
+While at our meal, my elephant and things arrived, and just then also,
+the 'Major Capt[=a]n,' or Nepaulese functionary, my old friend, came up
+with eight elephants, and we hurried out to greet the fat,
+merry-featured old man.
+
+What a quaint, genial old customer he looked, as he bowed and salaamed
+to us from his elevated seat, his face beaming, and his little
+bead-like eyes twinkling with pleasure. He was full of an adventure he
+had as he came along. After crossing a brawling mountain-torrent, some
+miles from our camp, they entered some dense kair jungle. The kair is
+I believe a species of mimosa; it is a hard wood, growing in a thick
+scrubby form, with small pointed leaves, a yellowish sort of flower,
+and sharp thorns studding its branches; it is a favourite resort for
+pig, and although it is difficult to beat on account of the thorns,
+tigers are not unfrequently found among the gloomy recesses of a good
+kair scrub.
+
+As they entered this jungle, some of the men were loitering behind.
+When the elephants had passed about halfway through, the men came
+rushing up pell mell, with consternation on their faces, reporting
+that a huge tiger had sprung out on them, and carried off one of their
+number. The Major and the elephants hurried back, and met the man
+limping along, bleeding from several scratches, and with a nasty bite
+in his shoulder, but otherwise more frightened than hurt. The tiger
+had simply knocked him down, stood over him for a minute, seized him
+by the shoulder, and then dashed on through the scrub, leaving him
+behind half dead with pain and fear.
+
+It was most amusing to hear the fat little Major relate the story. He
+went through all the by-play incident to the piece, and as he got
+excited, stood right up on his narrow pad. His gesticulations were
+most vehement, and as the elephant was rather unsteady, and his
+footing to say the least precarious, he seemed every moment as if he
+must topple over. The old warrior, however, was equal to the occasion;
+without for an instant abating the vigour of his narrative, he would
+clutch at the greasy, matted locks of his mahout, and steady himself,
+while he volubly described incident after incident. As he warmed with
+his subject, and tried to shew us how the tiger must have pounced on
+the man, he would let go and use his hands in illustration; the old
+elephant would give another heave, and the fat little man would make
+another frantic grab at the patient mahout's hair. The whole scene was
+most comical, and we were in convulsions of laughter.
+
+The news, however, foreboded ample sport; we now had certain _khubber_
+of at least two tigers; we were soon under weigh; the wounded man had
+been sent back to the Major's head-quarters on an elephant, and in
+time recovered completely from his mauling. As we jogged along, we had
+a most interesting talk with the Major Capt[=a]n. He was wonderfully
+well informed, considering he had never been out of Nepaul. He knew all
+about England, our army, our mode of government, our parliament, and
+our Queen; whenever he alluded to Her Majesty he salaamed profoundly,
+whether as a tribute of respect to her, or in compliment to us as loyal
+subjects, we could not quite make out. He described to us the route
+home by the Suez canal, and the fun of his talk was much heightened by
+his applying the native names to everything; London was _Shuhur_, the
+word meaning 'a city,' and he told us it was built on the _Tham[=a]ss
+nuddee_, by which he meant the Thames river.
+
+Our magistrate had a Jemadar of Peons with him, a sort of head man
+among the servants. This man, abundantly bedecked with ear-rings,
+finger-rings, and other ornaments, was a useless, bullying sort of
+fellow; dressed to the full extent of Oriental foppishness, and
+because he was the magistrate's servant, he thought himself entitled
+to order the other servants about in the most lordly way. He was now
+making himself peculiarly officious, shouting to the drivers to go
+here and there, to do this and do that, and indulging in copious
+torrents of abuse, without which it seems impossible for a native
+subordinate to give directions on any subject. We were all rather
+amused, and could not help bursting into laughter, as, inflated with a
+sense of his own importance, he began abusing one of the native
+drivers of the Nepaulee chief; this man did not submit tamely to his
+insolence. To him the magistrate was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a
+perfect nonentity. He accordingly turned round and poured forth a
+perfect flood of invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar
+took a back seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his
+melodious voice in tones of imperious command.
+
+The old Major chuckled, and rubbed his fat little hands, and leaning
+over to me said, 'at home a lion, but abroad a lamb,' for, surrounded
+by his women at home, the man would twirl his moustaches, look fierce,
+and fancy himself a very tiger; but, no sooner did he go abroad, and
+mix with men as good, if not better than himself, than he was ready to
+eat any amount of humble pie.
+
+We determined first of all to beat for the tiger whose tracks had been
+seen near where I had fired my lucky shot the preceding night. A
+strong west wind was blowing, and dense clouds of sand were being
+swept athwart our line, from the vast plains of fine white sand
+bordering the river for miles. As we went along we fired the jungle in
+our rear, and the strong wind carried the flames raging and roaring
+through the dense jungle with amazing fury. One elephant got so
+frightened at the noise behind him, that he fairly bolted for the
+river, and could not be persuaded back into the line.
+
+Disturbed by the fire, we saw numerous deer and pig, but being after
+tiger we refrained from shooting at them. The Basinattea Tuppoo, which
+was the scene of our present hunt, were famous jungles, and many a
+tiger had been shot there by the Purneah Club in bygone days. The
+annual ravages of the impetuous river, had however much changed the
+face of the country; vast tracts of jungle had been obliterated by
+deposits of sand from its annual incursions. Great skeletons of trees
+stood everywhere, stretching out bare and unsightly branches, all
+bending to the south, shewing the mighty power of the current, when it
+made its annual progress of devastation over the surrounding country.
+Now, however, it was like a thin streak of silver, flashing back the
+fierce rays of the meridian sun. Through the blinding clouds of fine
+white sand we could at times, during a temporary lull, see its ruined
+surface. And we were glad when we came on the tracks of the tiger,
+which led straight from the stream, in the direction of some thick
+tree jungle at no great distance. We gladly turned our backs to the
+furious clouds of dust and gusts of scorching wind, and led by a
+Nepaulee tracker, were soon crashing heavily through the jungle.
+
+When hunting with elephants, the Nepaulese beat in a dense line, the
+heads of the elephants touching each other. In this manner we were now
+proceeding, when S. called out, 'There goes the tiger.'
+
+We looked up, and saw a very large tiger making off for a deep
+watercourse, which ran through the jungle some 200 yards ahead of the
+line. We hurried up as fast as we could, putting out a fast elephant
+on either flank, to see that the cunning brute did not sneak either up
+or down the nullah, under cover of the high banks. This, however, was
+not his object. We saw him descend into the nullah, and almost
+immediately top the further bank, and disappear into the jungle
+beyond.
+
+Pressing on at a rapid jolting trot, we dashed after him in hot
+pursuit. The jungle seemed somewhat lighter on ahead. In the distance
+we could see some dangurs at work breaking up land, and to the right
+was a small collection of huts with a beautiful riband of green crops,
+a perfect oasis in the wilderness of sand and parched up grass.
+Forming into line we pressed on. The tiger was evidently lying up,
+probably deterred from breaking across the open by the sight of the
+dangurs at work. My heart was bounding with excitement. We were all
+intensely eager, and thought no more of the hot wind and blinding
+dust. Just then Captain S. saw the brute sneaking along to the left of
+the line, trying to outflank us, and break back. He fired two shots
+rapidly with his Express, and the second one, taking effect in the
+neck of the tiger, bowled him over as he stood. He was a mangy-looking
+brute, badly marked, and measured eight feet eleven inches. He did not
+have a chance of charging, and probably had little heart for a fight.
+
+We soon had him padded, and then proceeded straight north, to the
+scene of the Major's encounter with the tiger in the morning. The
+jungle was well trampled down; there were numerous streams and pools
+of water, occasional clumps of bamboos, and abrupt ridgy undulations.
+It was the very jungle for tiger, and elated by our success in having
+bagged one already, we were all in high spirits. The line of fire we
+could see far in the distance, sweeping on like the march of fate, and
+we could have shot numerous deer, but reserved our fire for nobler
+game. It was getting well on in the afternoon when we came up to the
+kair jungle. We beat right up to where the man had been seized, and
+could see the marks of the struggle distinctly enough. We beat right
+through the jungle with no result, and as it was now getting rather
+late, the old Major signified his desire to bid us good evening. As
+this meant depriving us of eight elephants, we prevailed on him to try
+one spare straggling corner that we had not gone through. He laughed
+the idea to scorn of getting a tiger there, saying there was no cover.
+One elephant, however, was sent while we were talking. Our elephants
+were all standing in a group, and the mahout on his solitary elephant
+was listlessly jogging on in a purposeless and desultory manner, when
+we suddenly heard the elephant pipe out a shrill note of alarm, and
+the mahout yelled 'Bagh! Bagh!' tiger! tiger! The Captain was again
+the lucky man. The tiger, a much finer and stronger built animal than
+the one we had already killed, was standing not eighty paces off,
+shewing his teeth, his bristles erect, and evidently in a bad temper.
+He had been crouching among some low bushes, and seeing the elephant
+bearing directly down on him, he no doubt imagined his retreat had
+been discovered. At all events there he was, and he presented a
+splendid aim. He was a noble-looking specimen as he stood there grim
+and defiant. Captain S. took aim, and lodged an Express bullet in his
+chest. It made a fearful wound, and the ferocious brute writhed and
+rolled about in agony. We quickly surrounded him, and a bullet behind
+the ear from my No. 16 put an end to his misery.
+
+The old Major now bade us good evening, and after padding the second
+tiger, and much elated at our success, we began to beat homewards,
+shooting at everything that rose before us. A couple of tremendous pig
+got up before me, and dashed through a clear stream that was purling
+peacefully in its pebbly bed. As the boar was rushing up the farther
+bank, I deposited a pellet in his hind quarters. He gave an angry
+grunt and tottered on, but presently pulled up, and seemed determined
+to have some revenge for his hurt. As my elephant came up the bank,
+the gallant boar tried to charge, but already wounded and weak from
+loss of blood, he tottered and staggered about. My elephant would not
+face him, so I gave him another shot behind the shoulder, and padded
+him for the _moosahurs_ and sweepers in camp. Just then one of the
+policemen started a young hog-deer, and several of the men got down
+and tried to catch the little thing alive. They soon succeeded, and
+the cries of the poor little _butcha_, that is 'young one,' were most
+plaintive.
+
+The wind had now subsided, there was a red angry glare, as the level
+rays of the setting sun shimmered through the dense clouds of dust
+that loaded the atmosphere. It was like the dull, red, coppery hue
+which presages a storm. The vast morung jungle lay behind us, and
+beyond that the swelling wooded hills, beginning to show dark and
+indistinct against the gathering gloom. A long line of cattle were
+wending their way homeward to the batan, and the tinkle of the big
+copper bell fell pleasingly on our ears. In the distance, we could see
+the white canvas of the tents gleaming in the rays of the setting sun.
+A vast circular line of smouldering fire, flickering and flaring
+fitfully, and surmounted by huge volumes of curling smoke, shewed the
+remains of the fierce tornado of flame that had raged at noon, when we
+lit the jungle. The jungle was very light, and much trodden down, our
+three howdah elephants were not far apart, and we were chatting
+cheerfully together and discussing the incidents of the day. My bearer
+was sitting behind me in the back of the howdah, and I had taken out
+my ball cartridge from my No. 12 breechloader, and had replaced them
+with shot. Just then my mahout raised his hand, and in a hoarse
+excited whisper called out,
+
+'Look, sahib, a large tiger!'
+
+'Where?' we all exclaimed, getting excited at once. He pointed in
+front to a large object, looking for all the world like a huge dun
+cow.
+
+'Why, you fool, that is a bullock.' I exclaimed.
+
+My bearer, who had also been intently gazing, now said.
+
+'No, sahib! that is a tiger, and a large one.'
+
+At that moment, it turned partly round, and I at once saw that the men
+were right, and that it was a veritable tiger, and seemingly a monster
+in size. I at once called to Captain S. and the magistrate, who had by
+this time fallen a little behind.
+
+'Look out, you fellows! here's a tiger in front.'
+
+At first they thought I was joking, but a glance confirmed the truth
+of what I had said. When I first saw the brute, he was evidently
+sneaking after the cattle, and was about sixty paces from me. He was
+so intent on watching the herd, that he had not noticed our approach.
+He was now, however, evidently alarmed and making off. By the time I
+called out, he must have been over eighty yards away. I had my No. 12
+in my hand, loaded with shot; it was no use; I put it down and took up
+my No. 16; this occupied a few seconds; I fired both barrels; the
+first bullet was in excellent line but rather short, the second went
+over the animal's back, and neither touched him. It made him, however,
+quicken his retreat, and when Captain S. fired, he must have been
+fully one hundred and fifty yards away; as it was now somewhat dusky,
+he also missed. He fired another long shot with his rifle, but missed
+again. Oh that unlucky change of cartridges in my No. 12! But for
+that--but there--we are always wise after the event. We never expected
+to see a tiger in such open country, especially as we had been over
+the same ground before, firing pretty often as we came along.
+
+We followed up of course, but it was now fast getting dark, and though
+we beat about for some time, we could not get another glimpse of the
+tiger. He was seemingly a very large male, dark-coloured, and in
+splendid condition. We must have got him, had it been earlier, as he
+could not have gone far forward, for the lines of fire were beyond
+him, and we had him between the fire and the elephants. We got home
+about 6.30, rather disappointed at missing such a glorious prize, so
+true is it that a sportsman's soul is never satisfied. But we had rare
+and most unlooked-for luck, and we felt considerably better after a
+good dinner, and indulged in hopes of getting the big fellow next
+morning.
+
+In the same jungles, some years ago, a very sad accident occurred. A
+party were out tiger-shooting, and during one of the beats, a cowherd
+hearing the noise of the advancing elephants, crouched behind a bush,
+and covered himself with his blanket. At a distance he looked exactly
+like a pig, and one of the shooters mistook him for one. He fired, and
+hit the poor herd in the hip. As soon as the mistake was perceived,
+everything was done for the poor fellow. His wound was dressed as well
+as they could do it, and he was sent off to the doctor in a dhoolie, a
+a sort of covered litter, slung on a pole and carried on men's shoulders.
+It was too late, the poor coolie died on the road, from shock and loss
+of blood. Such mistakes occur very seldom, and this was such a natural
+one, that no one could blame the unfortunate sportsman, and certainly
+no one felt keener regret than he did. The coolie's family was amply
+provided for, which was all that remained to be done.
+
+This is the only instance I know, where fatal results have followed
+such an accident. I have known several cases of beaters peppered with
+shot, generally from their own carelessness, and disregard of orders,
+but a salve in the shape of a few rupees has generally proved the most
+effective ointment. I have known some rascals say, they were sorry
+they had not been lucky enough to be wounded, as they considered a
+punctured cuticle nothing to set against the magnificent douceur of
+four or five rupees. One impetuous scamp, being told not to go in
+front of the line during a beat near Burgamma, replied to the warning
+caution of his jemadar,
+
+'Oh never mind, if get shot I will get backsheesh.'
+
+Whether this was a compliment to the efficacy of our treatment (by the
+silver ointment), or to the inaccuracy and harmlessness of our shooting,
+I leave the reader to judge.
+
+Our bag during this lucky day, including the tigress killed by my shot
+on the river bank, was as follows: three tigers, one boar, four deer,
+including the young one taken alive, eight sandpipers, nine plovers,
+two mallards, and two teal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+We resume the beat.--The hog-deer.--Nepaulese villages.--Village
+granaries.--Tiger in front.--A hit! a hit!--Following up the wounded
+tiger.--Find him dead.--Tiffin in the village.--The Patair jungle.
+--Search for tiger.--Gone away!--An elephant steeplechase in pursuit.
+--Exciting chase.--The Morung jungle.--Magnificent scenery.--Skinning
+the tiger.--Incidents of tiger hunting.
+
+Next morning, both the magistrate and myself felt very ill, headachy
+and sick, with violent vomiting and retching; Captain S. attributed it
+to the fierce hot wind and exposure of the preceding day, but we, the
+sufferers, blamed the _dekchees_ or cooking pots. These _dekchees_ are
+generally made of copper, coated or tinned over with white metal once
+a month or oftener; if the tinning is omitted, or the copper becomes
+exposed by accident or neglect, the food cooked in the pots sometimes
+gets tainted with copper, and produces nausea and sickness in those
+who eat it. I have known, within my own experience, cases of copper
+poisoning that have terminated fatally. It is well always thoroughly
+to inspect the kitchen utensils, particularly when in camp; unless
+carefully watched and closely supervised, servants get very careless,
+and let food remain in these copper vessels. This is always dangerous,
+and should never be allowed.
+
+In consequence of our indisposition, we did not start till the
+forenoon was far advanced, and the hot west wind had again begun to
+sweep over the prairie-like stretches of sand and withered grass. We
+commenced beating up by the Batan or cattle stance, near which we had
+seen the big tiger, the preceding evening. S. however became so sick
+and giddy, that he had to return to camp, and Captain S. and I
+continued the beat alone. Having gone over the same ground only
+yesterday, we did not expect a tiger so near to camp, more especially
+as the fire had made fearful havoc with the tall grass. Hog-deer were
+very numerous; they are not as a rule easily disturbed; they are of a
+reddish brown colour, not unlike that of the Scotch red deer, and rush
+through the jungle, when alarmed, with a succession of bounding leaps;
+they make very pretty shooting, and when young, afford tender and
+well-flavoured venison. One hint I may give. When you shoot a buck,
+see that he is at once denuded of certain appendages, else the flesh
+will get rank and disagreeable to eat. The bucks have pretty antlers,
+but are not very noble looking. The does are somewhat lighter in
+colour, and do not seem to consort together in herds like antelopes;
+there are rarely more than five in a group, though I have certainly
+seen more on several occasions.
+
+This morning we were unlucky with our deer. I shot three, and Captain
+S. shot at and wounded three, not one of which however did we bag.
+This part of the country is exclusively inhabited by Parbutteas, the
+native name for Nepaulese settled in British territory. Over the
+frontier line, the villages are called Pahareeas, signifying
+mountaineers or hillmen, from Pahar, a mountain. We beat up to a
+Parbuttea village, with its conical roofed huts; men and women were
+engaged in plaiting long coils of rice straw into cable looking ropes.
+A few split bamboos are fastened into the ground, in a circle, and
+these ropes are then coiled round, in and out, between the stakes;
+this makes a huge circular vat-shaped repository, open at both ends;
+it is then lifted up and put on a platform coated with mud, and
+protected from rats and vermin by the pillars being placed on smooth,
+inverted earthen pots. The coils of straw are now plastered outside
+and in with a mixture of mud, chaff, and cowdung, and allowed to dry;
+when dried the hut is filled with grain, and securely roofed and
+thatched. This forms the invariable village granary, and looks at a
+distance not unlike a stack or rick of corn, round a farm at home. By
+the abundance of these granaries in a village, one can tell at a
+glance whether the season has been a good one, and whether the frugal
+inhabitants of the clustering little hamlet are in pretty comfortable
+circumstances. If they are under the sway of a grasping and
+unscrupulous landlord, they not unfrequently bury their grain in
+clay-lined chambers in the earth, and have always enough for current
+wants, stored up in the sun-baked clay repositories mentioned in a
+former chapter.
+
+Beyond the village we entered some thick Patair jungle. Its greenness
+was refreshing after the burnt up and withered grass jungle. We were
+now in a hollow bordering the stream, and somewhat protected from the
+scorching wind, and the stinging clouds of fine sand and red dust. The
+brook looked so cool and refreshing, and the water so clear and
+pellucid, that I was about to dismount to take a drink and lave my
+heated head and face, when a low whistle to my right made me look in
+that direction, and I saw the Captain waving his hand excitedly, and
+pointing ahead. He was higher up the bank than I was, and in very
+dense Patair; a ridge ran between his front of the line and mine, so
+that I could only see his howdah, and the bulk of the elephant's body
+was concealed from me by the grass on this ridge.
+
+I closed up diagonally across the ridge; S. still waving to me to
+hurry up; as I topped it, I spied a large tiger slouching along in the
+hollow immediately below me. He saw me at the same instant, and
+bounded on in front of S. His Express was at his shoulder on the
+instant; he fired, and a tremendous spurt of blood shewed a hit, a
+hit, a palpable hit. The tiger was nowhere visible, and not a cry or a
+motion could we hear or see, to give us any clue to the whereabouts of
+the wounded animal. We followed up however, quickly but cautiously,
+expecting every instant a furious charge.
+
+We must have gone at least a hundred yards, when right in front of me
+I descried the tiger, crouching down, its head resting on its fore
+paws, and to all appearance settling for a spring. It was about twenty
+yards from me, and taking a rather hasty aim, I quickly fired both
+barrels straight at the head. I could only see the head and paws, but
+these I saw quite distinctly. My elephant was very unsteady, and both
+my bullets went within an inch of the tiger's head, but fortunately
+missed completely. I say fortunately, for finding the brute still
+remaining quite motionless, we cautiously approached, and found it was
+stone dead. The perfect naturalness of the position, however, might
+well have deceived a more experienced sportsman. The beast was lying
+crouched on all fours, as if in the very act of preparing to spring.
+The one bullet had killed it; the wound was in the lungs, and the
+internal bleeding had suffocated it, but here was a wonderful instance
+of the tiger's tenacity of life, even when sorely wounded, for it had
+travelled over a hundred and thirty yards after S. had shot it.
+
+It was lucky I missed, for my bullets would have spoiled the skull.
+She was a very handsome, finely marked tigress, a large specimen, for
+on applying the tape we found she measured exactly nine feet. Before
+descending to measure her, we were joined by the old Major Capt[=a]n,
+whose elephants we had for some time descried in the distance. His
+congratulations were profuse, and no doubt sincere, and after padding
+the tigress, we hied to the welcome shelter of one of the village
+houses, where we discussed a hearty and substantial tiffin.
+
+During tiffin, we were surrounded by a bevy of really fair and buxom
+lasses. They wore petticoats of striped blue cloth, and had their arms
+and shoulders bare, and their ears loaded with silver ornaments. They
+were merry, laughing, comely damsels, with none of the exaggerated
+shyness, and affected prudery of the women of the plains. We were
+offered plantains, milk, and chupatties, and an old patriarch came out
+leaning on his staff, to revile and abuse the tigress. From some of
+the young men we heard of a fresh kill to the north of the village,
+and after tiffin we proceeded in that direction, following up the
+course of the limpid stream, whose gurgling ripple sounded so
+pleasantly in our ears.
+
+Far ahead to the right, and on the further bank of the stream, we
+could see dense curling volumes of smoke, and leaping pyramids of
+flame, where a jungle fire was raging in some thick acacia scrub. As
+we got nearer, the heat became excessive, and the flames, fanned into
+tremendous fury by the fierce west wind, tore through the dry thorny
+bushes. Our elephants were quite unsteady, and did not like facing the
+fire. We made a slight detour, and soon had the roaring wall of flame
+behind us. We were now entering on a moist, circular, basin-shaped
+hollow. Among the patair roots were the recent marks of great numbers
+of wild pigs, where they had been foraging among the stiff clay for
+these esculents. The patair is like a huge bulrush, and the elephants
+are very fond of its succulent, juicy, cool-looking leaves. Those in
+our line kept tearing up huge tufts of it, thrashing out the mud and
+dirt from the roots against their forelegs, and with a grunt of
+satisfaction, making it slowly disappear in their cavernous mouths.
+There was considerable noise, and the jungle was nearly as high as the
+howdahs, presenting the appearance of an impenetrable screen of vivid
+green. We beat and rebeat, across and across, but there was no sign of
+the tiger. The banks of the nullah were very steep, rotten looking,
+and dangerous. We had about eighteen elephants, namely, ten of our
+own, and eight belonging to the Nepaulese. We were beating very close,
+the elephants' heads almost touching. This is the way they always beat
+in Nepaul. We thought we had left not a spot in the basin untouched,
+and Captain S. was quite satisfied that there could be no tiger there.
+It was a splendid jungle for cover, so thick, dense, and cool. I was
+beating along the edge of the creek, which ran deep and silent,
+between the gloomy sedge-covered banks. In a placid little pool I saw
+a couple of widgeon all unconscious of danger, their glossy plumage
+reflected in the clear water. I called to Captain S. 'We are sold this
+time Captain, there's no tiger here!'
+
+'I am afraid not,' he answered.
+
+'Shall I bag those two widgeon?' I asked.
+
+'All right,' was the response.
+
+Putting in shot cartridge, I shot both the widgeon, but we were all
+astounded to see the tiger we had so carefully and perseveringly
+searched for, bound out of a crevice in the bank, almost right under
+my elephant. Off he went with a smothered roar, that set our elephants
+hurrying backwards and forwards. There was a commotion along the whole
+line. The jungle was too dense for us to see anything. It was one more
+proof how these hill tigers will lie close, even in the midst of a
+line.
+
+S. called out to me to remain quiet, and see if we could trace the
+tiger's progress by any rustling in the cover. Looking down we saw the
+kill, close to the edge of the water. A fast elephant was sent on
+ahead, to try and ascertain whether the tiger was likely to break
+beyond the circle of the little basin-shaped valley. We gathered round
+the kill; it was quite fresh; a young buffalo. The Major told us that
+in his experience, a male tiger always begins on the neck first. A
+female always at the hind quarters. A few mouthfuls only had been
+eaten, and according to the Major, it must have been a tigress, as the
+part devoured was from the hind quarters.
+
+While we were talking over these things, a frenzied shout from the
+driver of our naka elephant caused us to look in his direction. He was
+gesticulating wildly, and bawling at the top of his voice, 'Come, come
+quickly, sahibs, the tiger is running away.'
+
+Now commenced such a mad and hurried scramble as I have never
+witnessed before or since, from the back of an elephant. As we tore
+through the tangled dense green patair, the broad leaves crackled like
+crashing branches, the huge elephants surged ahead like ships rocking
+in a gale of wind, and the mahouts and attendants on the pad
+elephants, shouted and urged on their shuffling animals, by excited
+cries and resounding whacks.
+
+In the retinue of the Major, were several men with elephant spears or
+goads. These consist of a long, pliant, polished bamboo, with a sharp
+spike at the end, which they call a _jhetha_. These men now came
+hurrying round the ridge, among the opener grass, and as we emerged
+from the heavy cover, they began goading the elephants behind and
+urging them to their most furious pace. On ahead, nearly a quarter of
+a mile away, we could see a huge tiger making off for the distant
+morung, at a rapid sling trot. His lithe body shone before us, and
+urged us to the most desperate efforts. It was almost a bare plateau.
+There was scarcely any cover, only here and there a few stunted acacia
+bushes. The dense forest was two or three miles ahead, but there were
+several nasty steep banks, and precipitous gullies with deep water
+rushing between. Attached to each Nepaulee pad, by a stout
+curiously-plaited cord, ornamented with fancy knots and tassels of
+silk, was a small pestle-shaped instrument, not unlike an auctioneer's
+hammer. It was quaintly carved, and studded with short, blunt,
+shining, brass nails or spikes. I had noticed these hanging down from
+the pads, and had often wondered what they were for. I was now to see
+them used. While the mahouts in front rained a shower of blows on the
+elephants head, and the spear-men pricked him up from behind with
+their jhethas, the occupant of the pad, turning round with his face to
+the tail, belaboured the poor hathee with the auctioneer's hammer. The
+blows rattled on the elephant's rump. The brutes trumpeted with pain,
+but they _did_ put on the pace, and travelled as I never imagined an
+elephant _could_ travel. Past bush and brake, down precipitous ravine,
+over the stones, through the thorny scrub, dashing down a steep bank
+here, plunging madly through a deep stream there, we shuffled along.
+We must have been going fully seven miles an hour. The pestle-shaped
+hammer is called a _lohath_, and most unmercifully were they wielded.
+We were jostled and jolted, till every bone ached again. Clouds of
+dust were driven before our reeling waving line. How the Nepaulese
+shouted and capered. We were all mad with excitement. I shouted with
+the rest. The fat little Major kicked his heels against the sides of
+his elephant, as if he were spurring a Derby winner to victory. Our
+usually sedate captain yelled--actually yelled!--in an agony of
+excitement, and tried to execute a war dance of his own on the floor
+of his howdah. Our guns rattled, the chains clanked and jangled, the
+howdahs rocked and pitched from side to side. We made a desperate
+effort. The poor elephants made a gallant race of it. The foot men
+perspired and swore, but it was not to be. Our striped friend had the
+best of the start, and we gained not an inch upon him. To our
+unspeakable mortification, he reached the dense cover on ahead, where
+we might as well have sought for a needle in a haystack. Never,
+however, shall I forget that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant
+steeple-chase. Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for it next day.
+
+The old Major and his fleet racing elephants now left us, and our
+jaded beasts took us slowly back in the direction of our camp. It was
+a fine wild view on which we were now gazing. Behind us the dark
+gloomy impenetrable morung, the home of ever-abiding fever and ague.
+Behind that the countless multitude of hills, swelling here and
+receding there, a jumbled heap of mighty peaks and fretted pinnacles,
+with their glistening sides and dark shadowless ravines, their mighty
+scaurs and their abrupt serrated edges showing out clearly and boldly
+defined against the evening sky. Far to the right, the shining
+river--a riband of burnished steel, for its waters were a deep steely
+blue--rolled its swift flood along amid shining sand-banks. In front,
+the vast undulating plain, with grove, and rill, and smoking hamlet,
+stretched at our feet in a lovely panorama of blended and harmonious
+colour. We were now high up above the plain, and the scene was one of
+the finest I have ever witnessed in India. The wind had gone down, and
+the oblique rays of the sun lit up the whole vast panorama with a
+lurid light, which was heightened in effect by the dust-laden
+atmosphere, and the volumes of smoke from the now distant fires,
+hedging in the far horizon with curtains of threatening grandeur and
+gloom. That far away canopy of dust and smoke formed a wonderful
+contrast to the shining snow-capped hills behind. Altogether it was a
+day to be remembered. I have seen no such strange and unearthly
+combination of shade and colour in any landscape before or since.
+
+On the way home we bagged a florican and a very fine mallard, and
+reached the camp utterly fagged, to find our worthy magistrate very
+much recovered, and glad to congratulate us on our having bagged the
+tigress. After a plunge in the river, and a rare camp dinner--such a
+meal as only an Indian sportsman can procure--we lay back in our cane
+chairs, and while the fragrant smoke from the mild Manilla curled
+lovingly about the roof of the tent, we discussed the day's
+proceedings, and fought our battles over again.
+
+A rather animated discussion arose about the length of the tiger--as
+to its frame merely, and we wondered what difference the skin would
+make in the length of the animal. As it was a point we had never heard
+mooted before, we determined to see for ourselves. We accordingly went
+out into the beautiful moonlight, and superintended the skinning of
+the tigress. The skin was taken off most artistically. We had
+carefully measured the animal before skinning. She was exactly nine
+feet long. We found the skin made a difference of only four inches,
+the bare skeleton from tip of nose to extreme point of tail measuring
+eight feet eight inches.
+
+As an instance of tigers taking to trees, our worthy magistrate
+related that in Rajmehal he and a friend had wounded a tiger, and
+subsequently lost him in the jungle. In vain they searched in every
+conceivable direction, but could find no trace of him. They were about
+giving up in despair, when S., raising his hat, happened to look up,
+and there, on a large bough directly overhead, he saw the wounded
+tiger lying extended at full length, some eighteen feet from the
+ground. They were not long in leaving the dangerous vicinity, and it
+was not long either ere a well-directed shot brought the tiger down
+from his elevated perch.
+
+These after-dinner stories are not the least enjoyable part of a
+tiger-hunting party. Round the camp table in a snug, well-lighted
+tent, with all the 'materials' handy, I have listened to many a tale
+of thrilling adventure. S. was full of reminiscences, and having seen
+a deal of tiger shooting in various parts of India, his recollections
+were much appreciated. To shew that the principal danger in tiger
+shooting is not from the tiger himself, but from one's elephant
+becoming panic-stricken and bolting, he told how a Mr. Aubert, a
+Benares planter, lost his life. A tiger had been 'spined' by a shot,
+and the line gathered round the prostrate monster to watch its
+death-struggle. The elephant on which the unfortunate planter sat got
+demoralised and attempted to bolt. The mahout endeavoured to check its
+rush, and in desperation the elephant charged straight down, close
+past the tiger, which lay writhing and roaring under a huge
+overhanging tree. The elephant was rushing directly under this tree,
+and a large branch would have swept howdah and everything it contained
+clean off the elephant's back, as easily as one would brush off a fly.
+To save himself Aubert made a leap for the branch, the elephant
+forging madly ahead; and the howdah, being smashed like match-wood,
+fell on the tiger below, who was tearing and clawing at everything
+within his reach. Poor Aubert got hold of the branch with his hands,
+and clung with all the desperation of one fighting for his life. He
+was right above the wounded tiger, but his grasp on the tree was not a
+firm one. For a moment he hung suspended above the furious animal,
+which, mad with agony and fury, was a picture of demoniac rage. The
+poor fellow could hold no longer, and fell right on the tiger. It was
+nearly at its last gasp, but it caught hold of Aubert by the foot, and
+in a final paroxysm of pain and rage chawed the foot clean off, and
+the poor fellow died next day from the shock and loss of blood. He was
+one of four brothers who all met untimely deaths from accidents. This
+one was killed by the tiger, another was thrown from a vehicle and
+killed on the spot, the third was drowned, and the fourth shot by
+accident.
+
+Our bag to-day was one tiger, one florican, one mallard, and two
+widgeon. On cutting the tiger open, we found that the bullet had
+entered on the left side, and, as we suspected, had entered the lungs.
+It had, however, made a terrible wound. We found that it had
+penetrated the heart and liver, gone forward through the chest, and
+smashed the right shoulder. Notwithstanding this fearful wound,
+shewing the tremendous effects of the Express bullet, the tiger had
+gone on for the distance I have mentioned, after which it must have
+fallen stone-dead. It was a marvellous instance of vitality, even
+after the heart, liver, and lungs had been pierced. The liver had six
+lobes, and it was then I heard for the first time, that with the
+natives this was an infallible sign of the age of a tiger. The old
+Major firmly believed it, and told us it was quite an accepted article
+of faith with all native sportsmen. Facts subsequently came under my
+own observation which seemed to give great probability to the theory,
+but it is one on which I would not like to give a decided opinion,
+till after hearing the experiences of other sportsmen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Camp of the Nepaulee chief.--Quicksands.--Elephants crossing rivers.
+--Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.--We beat the forest for tiger.--Shoot
+a young tiger.--Red ants in the forest.--Bhowras or ground bees.--The
+_ursus labialis_ or long-lipped bear.--Recross the stream.--Florican.
+--Stag running the gauntlet of flame.--Our bag.--Start for factory.
+--Remarks on elephants.--Precautions useful for protection from the
+sun in tiger shooting.--The _puggree_.--Cattle breeding in India, and
+wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.--Nathpore.--Ravages of the
+river.--Mrs. Gray, an old resident in the jungles.--Description of her
+surroundings.
+
+Next morning we started beating due east, setting fire to the jungle
+as we went along. The roaring and crackling of the flames startled the
+elephant on which Captain S. was riding, and going away across country
+at a furious pace, it was with difficulty that it could be stopped. We
+crossed the frontier line a short distance from camp, and entered a
+dense jungle of thorny acacia, with long dry grass almost choking the
+trees. They were dry and stunted, and when we dropped a few lights
+amongst such combustible material, the fire was splendid beyond
+description. How the flames surged through the withered grass. We were
+forced to pause and admire the magnificent sight. The wall of flame
+tore along with inconceivable rapidity, and the blinding volumes of
+smoke obscured the country for miles. The jungle was full of deer and
+pig. One fine buck came bounding along past our line, but I stopped
+him with a single bullet through the neck. He fell over with a
+tremendous crash, and turning a complete somersault broke off both his
+horns with the force of the fall.
+
+We beat down a shallow sandy watercourse, and could see the camp of
+the old Major on the high bank beyond. Farther down the stream there
+was a small square fort, the whitewashed walls of which flashed back
+the rays of the sun, and grouped round it were some ruinous looking
+huts, several snowy tents, and a huge shamiana or canopy, under which
+we could see a host of attendants spreading carpets, placing chairs,
+and otherwise making ready for us. The banks of the stream were very
+steep, but the guide at length brought us to what seemed a safe and
+fordable passage. On the further side was a flat expanse of seemingly
+firm and dry sand, but no sooner had our elephants begun to cross it,
+than the whole sandbank for yards began to rock and tremble; the water
+welled up over the footmarks of the elephants, and S. called out to
+us, Fussun, Fussun! quicksand, quicksand! We scattered the elephants,
+and tried to hurry them over the dangerous bit of ground with shouts
+and cries of encouragement.
+
+The poor animals seemed thoroughly to appreciate the danger, and
+shuffled forward as quickly as they could. All got over in safety
+except the last three. The treacherous sand, rendered still more
+insecure by the heavy tread of so many ponderous animals, now gave way
+entirely, and the three hapless elephants were left floundering in the
+tenacious hold of the dreaded fussun. Two of the three were not far
+from the firm bank, and managed to extricate themselves after a short
+struggle; but the third had sunk up to the shoulders, and could
+scarcely move. All hands immediately began cutting long grass and
+forming it into bundles. These were thrown to the sinking elephant. He
+rolled from side to side, the sand quaking and undulating round him in
+all directions. At times he would roll over till nearly half his body
+was invisible. Some of the Nepaulese ventured near, and managed to
+undo the harness-ropes that were holding on the pad. The sagacious
+brute fully understood his danger, and the efforts we were making for
+his assistance. He managed to get several of the big bundles of grass
+under his feet, and stood there looking at us with a most pathetic
+pleading expression, and trembling, as if with an ague, from fear and
+exhaustion.
+
+The old Major came down to meet us, and a crowd of his men added their
+efforts to ours, to help the unfortunate elephant. We threw in bundle
+after bundle of grass, till we had the yielding sand covered with a
+thick passage of firmly bound fascines, on which the hathee,
+staggering and floundering painfully, managed to reach firm land. He
+was so completely exhausted that he could scarcely walk to the tents,
+and we left him there to the care of his attendants. This is a very
+common episode in tiger hunting, and does not always terminate so
+fortunately. In running water, the quicksand is not so dangerous, as
+the force of the stream keeps washing away the sand, and does not
+allow it to settle round the legs of the elephant; but on dry land, a
+dry fussun, as it is called, is justly feared; and many a valuable
+animal has been swallowed up in its slow, deadly, tenacious grasp.
+
+In crossing sand, the heaviest and slowest elephants should go first,
+preceded by a light, nimble pioneer. If the leading elephant shows
+signs of sinking, the others should at once turn back, and seek some
+safer place. In all cases the line should separate a little, and not
+follow in each other's footsteps. The indications of a quicksand are
+easily recognised. If the surface of the sand begins to oscillate and
+undulate with a tremulous rocking motion, it is always wise to seek
+some other passage. Looking back, after elephants have passed, you
+will often see what was a perfectly dry flat, covered with several
+inches of water. When water begins to ooze up in any quantity, after a
+few elephants have passed, it is much safer to make the remainder
+cross at some spot farther on.
+
+In crossing a deep swift river, the elephants should enter the water
+in a line, ranged up and down the river. That is, the line should be
+ranged along the bank, and enter the water at right angles to the
+current, and not in Indian file. The strongest elephants should be up
+stream, as they help to break the force of the current for the weaker
+and smaller animals down below. It is a fine sight to see some thirty
+or forty of these huge animals crossing a deep and rapid river. Some
+are reluctant to strike out, when they begin to enter the deepest
+channel, and try to turn back; the mahouts and 'mates' shout, and
+belabour them with bamboo poles. The trumpeting of the elephants, the
+waving of the trunks, disporting, like huge water-snakes, in the
+perturbed current, the splashing of the bamboos, the dark bodies of
+the natives swimming here and there round the animals, the unwieldy
+boat piled high with how-dahs and pads, the whole heap surmounted by a
+group of sportsmen with their gleaming weapons, and variegated
+puggrees, make up a picturesque and memorable sight. Some of the
+strong swimmers among the elephants seem to enjoy the whole affair
+immensely. They dip their huge heads entirely under the current, the
+sun flashes on the dark hide, glistening with the dripping water; the
+enormous head emerges again slowly, like some monstrous antediluvian
+creation, and with a succession of these ponderous appearances and
+disappearances, the mighty brutes forge through the surging water.
+When they reach a shallow part, they pipe with pleasure, and send
+volumes of fluid splashing against their heaving flanks, scattering
+the spray all round in mimic rainbows.
+
+At all times the Koosee was a dangerous stream to cross, but during
+the rains I have seen the strongest and best swimming elephants taken
+nearly a mile down stream; and in many instances they have been
+drowned, their vast bulk and marvellous strength being quite unable to
+cope with the tremendous force of the raging waters.
+
+When we had got comfortably seated under the shamiana, a crowd of
+attendants brought us baskets of fruit and a very nice cold collation
+of various Indian dishes and curries. We did ample justice to the old
+soldier's hospitable offerings, and then betel-nut, cardamums, cloves,
+and other spices, and pauri leaves, were handed round on a silver
+salver, beautifully embossed and carved with quaint devices. We lit
+our cigars, our beards and handkerchiefs were anointed with attar of
+roses; and the old Major then informed us that there was good khubber
+of tiger in the wood close by.
+
+The trees were splendid specimens of forest growth, enormously thick,
+beautifully umbrageous, and growing very close together. There was a
+dense undergrowth of tangled creeper, and the most lovely ferns and
+tropical plants in the richest luxuriance, and of every conceivable
+shade of amber and green. It was a charming spot. The patch of forest
+was separated from the unbroken line of morung jungle by a beautifully
+sheltered glade of several hundred acres, and further broken in three
+places by avenue-looking openings, disclosing peeps of the black and
+gloomy-looking mass of impenetrable forest beyond.
+
+In the first of these openings we were directed to take up a position,
+while the pad elephants and a crowd of beaters went to the edge of the
+patch of forest and began beating up to us. Immense numbers of genuine
+jungle fowl were calling in all directions, and flying right across
+the opening in numerous coveys. They are beautifully marked with black
+and golden plumes round the neck, and I determined to shoot a few by
+and bye to send home to friends, who I knew would prize them as
+invaluable material in dressing hooks for fly-fishing. The crashing of
+the trees, as the elephants forced their way through the thick forest,
+or tore off huge branches as they struggled amid the matted
+vegetation, kept us all on the alert. The first place was however a
+blank, and we moved on to the next. We had not long to wait, for a
+fierce din inside the jungle, and the excited cries of the beaters,
+apprised us that game of some sort was afoot. We were eagerly
+watching, and speculating on the cause of the uproar, when a very fine
+half-grown tiger cub sprang out of some closely growing fern, and
+dashed across the narrow opening so quickly, that ere we had time to
+raise a gun, he had disappeared in some heavy jhamun jungle on the
+further side of the path.
+
+We hurried round as fast as we could to intercept him, should he
+attempt to break on ahead; and leaving some men to rally the mahouts,
+and let them know that there was a tiger afoot, we were soon in our
+places, and ready to give the cub a warm reception, should he again
+show his stripes. It was not long ere he did so. I spied him stealing
+along the edge of the jungle, evidently intending to make a rush back
+past the opening he had just crossed, and outflank the line of beater
+elephants. I fired and hit him in the forearm; he rolled over roaring
+with rage, and then descrying his assailants, he bounded into the
+open, and as well as his wound would allow him, came furiously down at
+the charge. In less time however than it takes to write it, he had
+received three bullets in his body, and tumbled down a lifeless heap.
+We raised a cheer which brought the beaters and elephants quickly to
+the spot. In coming through a thickly wooded part of the forest, with
+numerous long and pliant creepers intertwisted into a confused tangle
+of rope-like ligaments, the old Juddeah elephant tore down one of the
+long lines, and dislodged an angry army of venomous red ants on the
+occupants of the guddee, or cushioned seat on the elephant's pad. The
+ants proved formidable assailants. There were two or three Baboos or
+native gentlemen, holding on to the ropes, chewing pan, and enjoying
+the scene, but the red ants were altogether more than they had
+bargained for. Recognising the Baboos as the immediate cause of their
+disturbance, they attacked them with indomitable courage. The mahout
+fairly yelled with pain, and one of the Baboos, smarting from the
+fiery bites of the furious insects, toppled clean backwards into the
+undergrowth, showing an undignified pair of heels. The other two
+danced on the guddee, sweeping and thrashing the air, the cushion, and
+their clothes, with their cummerbunds, in the vain effort to free
+themselves of their angry assailants. The guddee was literally covered
+with ants; it looked an animated red mass, and the wretched Baboos
+made frantic efforts to shake themselves clear. They were dreadfully
+bitten, and reaching the open, they slid off the elephant, and even on
+the ground continued their saltatory antics before finally getting rid
+of their ferocious assailants.
+
+In forest shooting the red ant is one of the most dreaded pests of the
+jungle. If a colony gets dislodged from some overhanging branch, and
+is landed in your howdah, the best plan is to evacuate your stronghold
+as quickly as you can, and let the attendants clear away the invaders.
+Their bite is very painful, and they take such tenacious hold, that
+rather than quit their grip, they allow themselves to be decapitated
+and leave their head and formidable forceps sticking in your flesh.
+
+Other dreaded foes in the forest jungle are the Bhowra or ground bees,
+which are more properly a kind of hornet. If by evil chance your
+elephant should tread on their mound-like nest, instantly an angry
+swarm of venomous and enraged hornets comes buzzing about your ears.
+Your only chance is to squat down, and envelope yourself completely in
+a blanket. Old sportsmen, shooting in forest jungle, invariably take a
+blanket Avith them in the howdah, to ensure themselves protection in
+the event of an attack by these blood-thirsty creatures. The thick
+matted creepers too are a great nuisance, for which a bill-hook or
+sharp kookree is an invaluable adjunct to the other paraphernalia of
+the march. I have seen a mahout swept clean off the elephant's back by
+these tenacious creepers, and the elephants themselves are sometimes
+unable to break through the tangle of sinewy, lithe cords, which drape
+the huge forest trees, hanging in slender festoons from every branch.
+Some of them are prickly, and as the elephant slowly forces his way
+through the mass of pendent swaying cords, they lacerate and tear the
+mahout's clothes and skin, and appropriate his puggree. As you crouch
+down within the shelter of your howdah, you can't help pitying the
+poor wretch, and incline to think that, after all, shooting in grass
+jungle has fewer drawbacks and is preferable to forest shooting.
+
+One of the drivers reported that he had seen a bear in the jungle, and
+we saw the earth of one not far from where the young tiger had fallen;
+it was the lair of the sloth bear or _Ursus labialis_, so called from
+his long pendent upper lip. His spoor is very easily distinguished
+from that of any other animal; the ball of the foot shows a distinct
+round impression, and about an inch to an inch and a half further on,
+the impression of the long curved claws are seen. He uses these
+long-curved claws to tear up ant hills, and open hollow decaying
+trees, to get at the honey within, of which he is very fond. We went
+after the bear, and were not long in discovering his whereabouts, and
+a well-directed shot from S. added him to our bag. The best bear
+shooting in India perhaps is in CHOTA NAGPOOR, but this does not come
+within the limits of my present volume. We now beat slowly through the
+wood, keeping a bright look out for ants and hornets, and getting fine
+shooting at the numerous jungle fowl which flew about in amazing
+numbers.
+
+The forest trees in this patch of jungle were very fine. The hill
+seerees, with its feathery foliage and delicate clusters of white
+bugle-shaped blossom; the semul or cotton tree, with its wonderful
+wealth of magnificent crimson flowers; the birch-looking sheeshum or
+sissod; the sombre looking sal; the shining, leathery-leafed bhur,
+with its immense over-arching limbs, and the crisp, curly-leafed
+elegant-looking jhamun or Indian olive, formed a paradise of sylvan
+beauty, on which the eye dwelt till it was sated with the woodland
+loveliness.
+
+In recrossing the dhar or water-course, we took care to avoid the
+quicksands, and as we did not expect to fall in with another tiger, we
+indulged in a little general firing. I shot a fine buck through the
+spine, and we bagged several deer, and no less than five florican;
+this bird is allied to the bustard family, and has beautiful drooping
+feathers, hanging in plumy pendants of deep black and pure white,
+intermingled in the most graceful and showy manner. The male is a
+magnificent bird, and has perhaps as fine plumage as any bird on the
+border; the flesh yields the most delicate eating of any game bird I
+know; the slices of mingled brown and white from the breast are
+delicious. The birds are rather shy, generally getting up a long way
+in front of the line, and moving with a slow, rather clumsy, flight,
+not unlike the flight of the white earth owl. They run with great
+swiftness, and are rather hard to kill, unless hit about the neck and
+head. There are two sorts, the lesser and the greater, the former also
+called the bastard florican. Altogether they are noble looking birds,
+and the sportsman is always glad to add as many florican as he can to
+his bag.
+
+We were now nearing the locality of the fierce fire of the morning; it
+was still blazing in a long extended line of flame, and we witnessed
+an incident without parallel in the experience of any of us. I fired
+at and wounded a large stag; it was wounded somewhere in the side, and
+seemed very hard hit indeed. Maddened probably by terror and pain, it
+made straight for the line of fire, and bounded unhesitatingly right
+into the flame. We saw it distinctly go clean though the flames, but
+we could not see whether it got away with its life, as the elephants
+would not go up to the fire. At all events, the stag went right
+through his fiery ordeal, and was lost to us. We started numerous
+hares close to camp, and S. bowled over several. They are very common
+in the short grass jungle, where the soil is sandy, and are frequently
+to be found among thin jowah jungle; they afford good sport for
+coursing, but are neither so fleet, nor so large, nor such good eating
+as the English hare. In fact, they are very dry eating, and the best
+way to cook them is to jug them, or make a hunter's pie, adding
+portions of partridge, quail, or plover, with a few mushrooms, and a
+modicum of ham or bacon if these are procurable.
+
+We reached camp pretty late, and sent off venison, birds, and other
+spoils to Mrs. S. and to Inamputte factory. Our bag shewed a diversity
+of spoil, consisting of one tiger, seven hog-deer, one bear _(Ursus
+labialis)_, seventeen jungle fowl, five florican, and six hares. It
+was no bad bag considering that during most of the day we had been
+beating solely for tiger. We could have shot many more deer and jungle
+fowl, but we never try to shoot more than are needed to satisfy the
+wants of the camp. Were we to attempt to shoot at all the deer and pig
+that we see, the figures would reach very large totals. As a rule
+therefore, the records of Indian sportsmen give no idea of the vast
+quantities of game that are put up and never fired at. It would be the
+very wantonness of destruction, to shoot animals not wanted for some
+specific purpose, unless indeed, you were raging an indiscriminate war
+of extermination, in a quarter where their numbers were a nuisance and
+prejudicial to crops. In that case, your proceedings would not be
+dignified by the name of sport.
+
+After a few more days shooting, the incidents of which were pretty
+much like those I have been describing, I started back for the
+factory. I sent my horse on ahead, and took five elephants with me to
+beat up for game on the homeward route. Close to camp a fine buck got
+up in front of me. I broke both his forelegs with my first shot, but
+the poor brute still managed to hobble along. It was in some very
+dense patair jungle, and I had considerable difficulty in bringing him
+to bag. When we reached the ghat or ferry, I ordered Geerdharee Jha's
+mahout to cross with his elephant. The brute, however, refused to
+cross the river alone, and in spite of all the driver could do, she
+insisted on following the rest. I got down, and some of the other
+drivers got out the hobbles and bound them round her legs. In spite of
+these she still seemed determined to follow us. She shook the bedding
+and other articles with which she was loaded off her back, and made a
+frantic effort to follow us through the deep sand. The iron chains cut
+into her legs, and, afraid that she might do herself an irreparable
+injury, I had her tied up to a tree, and left her trumpeting and
+making an indignant lamentation at being separated from the rest of
+the line.
+
+The elephant seems to be quite a social animal. I have frequently seen
+cases where, after having been in company together for a lengthened
+hunt, they have manifested great reluctance to separate. In leaving
+the line, I have often noticed the single elephant looking back at his
+comrades, and giving vent to his disappointment and disapproval, by
+grunts and trumpetings of indignant protest. We left the refractory
+hathee tied up to her tree, and as we crossed the long rolling billows
+of burning sand that lay athwart our course, she was soon lost to
+view. I shot a couple more hog-deer, and got several plover and teal
+in the patches of water that lay in some of the hollows among the
+sandbanks. I fired at a huge alligator basking in the sun, on a
+sandbank close to the stream. The bullet hit him somewhere in the
+forearm, and he made a tremendous sensation header into the current.
+From the agitation in the water, he seemed not to appreciate the
+leaden message which I had sent him.
+
+We found the journey through the soft yielding sand very fatiguing,
+and especially trying to the eyes. When not shooting, it is a very
+wise precaution to wear eye-preservers or 'goggles.' They are a great
+relief to the eyes, and the best, I think, are the neutral tinted.
+During the west winds, when the atmosphere is loaded with fine
+particles of irritating sand and dust, these goggles are very
+necessary, and are a great protection to the sight.
+
+Another prudent precaution is to have the back of one's shirt or coat
+slightly padded with cotton and quilted. The heat prevents one wearing
+thick clothes, and there is no doubt that the action of the direct
+rays of the burning sun all down the back on the spinal cord, is very
+injurious, and may be a fruitful cause of sunstroke. It is certainly
+productive of great lassitude and weariness. I used to wear a thin
+quilted sort of shield made of cotton-drill, which fastened round the
+shoulders and waist. It does not incommode one's action in any
+particular, and is, I think, a great protection against the fierce
+rays of the sun. Many prefer the puggree as a head-piece. It is
+undeniably a fine thing when one is riding on horseback, as it fits
+close to the head, does not catch the wind during a smart trot or
+canter, and is therefore not easily shaken off. For riding I think it
+preferable to all other headdresses. A good thick puggree is a great
+protection to the back of the head and neck, the part of the body
+which of all others requires protection from the sun. It feels rather
+heavy at first, but one gets used to it, and it does not shade the
+eyes and face. These are the two gravest objections to it, but for
+comfort, softness, and protection to the head and neck, I do not think
+it can be surpassed.
+
+After crossing the sand, we again entered some thin scrubby acacia
+jungle, with here and there a moist swampy nullah, with rank green
+patair jungle growing in the cool dank shade. Here we disturbed a
+colony of pigs, but the four mahouts being Mahommedans I did not fire.
+As we went along, one of my men called my attention to some footprints
+near a small lagoon. On inspection we found they were rhinoceros
+tracks, evidently of old date. These animals are often seen in this
+part of the country, but are more numerous farther north, in the great
+morung forest jungle.
+
+A very noticeable feature in these jungles was the immense quantity of
+bleached ghastly skeletons of cattle. This year had been a most
+disastrous one for cattle. Enormous numbers had been swept off by
+disease, and in many villages bordering on the morung the herds had
+been well-nigh exterminated. Little attention is paid to breeding. In
+some districts, such as the Mooteeharree and Mudhobunnee division,
+fine cart-bullocks are bred, carefully handled and tended, and fetch
+high prices. In Kurruchpore, beyond the Ganges in Bhaugulpore
+district, cattle of a small breed, hardy, active, staunch, and strong,
+are bred in great numbers, and are held in great estimation for
+agricultural requirements; but in these Koosee jungles the bulls are
+often ill-bred weedy brutes, and the cows being much in excess of a
+fair proportion of bulls, a deal of in-breeding takes place; unmatured
+young bulls roam about with the herd, and the result is a crowd of
+cattle that succumb to the first ailment, so that the land is littered
+with their bones.
+
+The bullock being indispensable to the Indian cultivator, bull calves
+are prized, taken care of, well nurtured, and well fed. The cow calves
+are pretty much left to take care of themselves; they are thin,
+miserable, half-starved brutes, and the short-sighted ryot seems
+altogether to forget that it is on these miserable withered specimens
+that he must depend for his supply of plough and cart-bullocks. The
+matter is most shamefully neglected. Government occasionally through
+its officers, experimental farms, etc., tries to get good sire stock
+for both horses and cattle, but as long as the dams are bad--mere
+weeds, without blood, bone, muscle, or stamina, the produce must be
+bad. As a pretty well established and general rule, the ryots look
+after their bullocks,--they recognise their value, and appreciate
+their utility, but the cows fare badly, and from all I have myself
+seen, and from the concurrent testimony of many observant friends in
+the rural districts, I should say that the breed has become much
+deteriorated.
+
+Old planters constantly tell you, that such cattle as they used to get
+are not now procurable for love or money. Within the last twenty years
+prices have more than doubled, because the demand for good
+plough-bullocks has been more urgent, as a consequence of increased
+cultivation, and the supply is not equal to the demand. Attention to
+the matter is imperative, and planters would be wise in their own
+interests to devote a little time and trouble to disseminating sound
+ideas about the selection of breeding stock, and the principles of
+rearing and raising stock among their ryots and dependants. Every
+factory should be able to breed its own cattle, and supply its own
+requirements for plough and cart-bullocks. It would be cheaper in the
+end, and it would undoubtedly be a blessing to the country to raise
+the standard of cattle used in agricultural work.
+
+To return from this digression. We plodded on and on, weary, hot, and
+thirsty, expecting every moment to see the ghat and my waiting horse.
+But the country here is so wild, the river takes such erratic courses
+during the annual floods, and the district is so secluded and so
+seldom visited by Europeans or factory servants, that my syce had
+evidently lost his way. After we had crossed innumerable streams, and
+laboriously traversed mile upon mile of burning sand, we gave up the
+attempt to find the ghat, and made for Nathpore.
+
+Nathpore was formerly a considerable town, not far from the Nepaul
+border, a flourishing grain mart and emporium for the fibres, gums,
+spices, timbers, and other productions of a wide frontier. There was a
+busy and crowded bazaar, long streets of shops and houses, and
+hundreds of boats lying in the stream beside the numerous ghats,
+taking in and discharging their cargoes. It may give a faint idea of
+the destructive force of an Indian stream like the Koosee when it is
+in full flood, to say that this once flourishing town is now but a
+handful of miserable huts. Miles of rich lands, once clothed with
+luxuriant crops of rice, indigo, and waving grain, are now barren
+reaches of burning sand. The bleached skeletons of mango, jackfruit,
+and other trees, stretch out their leafless and lifeless branches, to
+remind the spectator of the time when their foliage rustled in the
+breeze, when their lusty limbs bore rich clusters of luscious fruit,
+and when the din of the bazaar resounded beneath their welcome shade.
+A fine old lady still lived in a two-storied brick building, with
+quaint little darkened rooms, and a narrow verandah running all round
+the building. She was long past the allotted threescore years and ten,
+with a keen yet mildly beaming eye, and a wealth of beautiful hair as
+white as driven snow, neatly gathered back from her shapely forehead.
+She was the last remaining link connecting the present with the past
+glories of Nathpore. Her husband had been a planter and Zemindar.
+Where his vats had stood laden with rich indigo, the engulphing sand
+now reflected the rays of the torrid sun from its burning whiteness.
+She shewed me a picture of the town as it appeared to her when she had
+been brought there many a long and weary year ago, ere yet her step
+had lost its lightness, and when she was in the bloom of her bridal
+life. There was a fine broad boulevard, shadowed by splendid trees, on
+which she and her husband had driven in their carriage of an evening,
+through crowds of prosperous and contented traders and cultivators.
+The hungry river had swept all this away. Subsisting on a few
+precarious rents of some little plots of ground that it had spared,
+all that remained of a once princely estate, this good old lady lived
+her lonely life cheerful and contented, never murmuring or repining.
+The river had not spared even the graves of her departed dear ones.
+Since I left that part of the country I hear that she has been called
+away to join those who had gone before her.
+
+I arrived at her house late in the afternoon. I had never been at
+Nathpore before, although the place was well known to me by
+reputation. What a wreck it presented as our elephants marched
+through. Ruined, dismantled, crumbling temples; masses of masonry half
+submerged in the swift-running, treacherous, undermining stream; huge
+trees lying prostrate, twisted and jammed together where the angry
+flood had hurled them; bare unsightly poles and piles, sticking from
+the water at every angle, reminding us of the granaries and godowns
+that were wont to be filled with the agricultural wealth of the
+districts for miles around; hard metalled roads cut abruptly off, and
+bridges with only half an arch, standing lonely and ruined half way in
+the muddy current that swept noiselessly past the deserted city. It
+was a scene of utter waste and desolation.
+
+The lady I mentioned made me very welcome, and I was struck by her
+unaffected cheerfulness and gentleness. She was a gentlewoman indeed,
+and though reduced in circumstances, surrounded by misfortunes, and
+daily and hourly reminded by the scattered wreck around her of her
+former wealth and position, she bore all with exemplary fortitude, and
+to the full extent of her scanty means she relieved the sorrows and
+ailments of the natives. They all loved and respected, and I could not
+help admiring and honouring her.
+
+She pointed out to me, far away on the south-east horizon, the place
+where the river ran in its shallow channel when she first came to
+Nathpore. During her experience it had cut into and overspread more
+than twenty miles of country, turning fertile fields into arid wastes
+of sand; sweeping away factories, farms, and villages; and changing
+the whole face of the country from a fruitful landscape into a
+wilderness of sand and swamp.
+
+My horse came up in the evening, and I rode over to Inamputte,
+leaving my kindly hostess in her solitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+Exciting jungle scene.--The camp.--All quiet.--Advent of the cowherds.
+--A tiger close by.--Proceed to the spot.--Encounter between tigress
+and buffaloes.--Strange behaviour of the elephant.--Discovery and
+capture of four cubs.--Joyful return to camp.--Death of the tigress.
+--Night encounter with a leopard.--The haunts of the tiger and our
+shooting grounds.
+
+One of the most exciting and deeply interesting scenes I ever
+witnessed in the jungles, was on the occasion I have referred to in a
+former chapter, when speaking of the number of young given by the
+tigress at a birth. It was in the month of March, at the village of
+Ryseree, in Bhaugulpore. I had been encamped in the midst of
+twenty-four beautiful tanks, the history and construction of which
+were lost in the mists of tradition. The villagers had a story that
+these tanks were the work of a mighty giant, Bheema, with whose aid
+and that of his brethren they had been excavated in a single night.
+
+At all events, they were now covered with a wild tangle of water
+lilies and aquatic plants; well stocked with magnificent fish, and an
+occasional scaly monster of a saurian. They were the haunt of vast
+quantities of widgeon, teal, whistlers, mallard, ducks, snipe, curlew,
+blue fowl, and the usual varied _habitués_ of an exceptionally good
+Indian lake. In the vicinity hares were numerous, and in the thick
+jungle bordering the tanks in places, and consisting mostly of nurkool
+and wild rose, hog-deer and wild pig were abundant. The dried-up bed
+of an old arm of the Koosee was quite close to my camp, and abounded
+in sandpiper, and golden, grey, goggle-eyed, and stilted plover,
+besides other game.
+
+It was indeed a favourite camping spot, and the village was inhabited
+by a hardy, independent set of Gwallas, Koormees, and agriculturists,
+with whom I was a prime favourite.
+
+I was sitting in my tent, going over some village accounts with the
+village putwarrie, and my gomasta. A possé of villagers were grouped
+under the grateful shade of a gnarled old mango tree, whose contorted
+limbs bore evidence to the violence of many a _tufan_, or tempest,
+which it had weathered. The usual confused clamour of tongues was
+rising from this group, and the sub; ect of debate was the eternal
+'pice.' Behind the bank, and in rear of the tent, the cook and his
+mate were disembowelling a hapless _moorghee_, a fowl, whose
+decapitation had just been effected with a huge jagged old cavalry
+sword, of which my cook was not a little proud; and on the strength of
+which he adopted fierce military airs, and gave an extra turn to his
+well-oiled moustache when he went abroad for a holiday.
+
+Farther to the rear a line of horses were picketed, including my
+man-eating demon the white Cabool stallion, my gentle country-bred
+mare Motee--the pearl--and my handsome little pony mare, formerly my
+hockey or polo steed, a present from a gallant sportsman and rare good
+fellow, as good a judge of a horse, or a criminal, as ever sat on a
+bench.
+
+Behind the horses, each manacled by weighty chains, with his ponderous
+trunk and ragged-looking tail swaying too and fro with a never-ceasing
+motion, stood a line of ten elephants. Their huge leathery ears
+flapped lazily, and ever and anon one or other would seize a mighty
+branch, and belabour his corrugated sides to free himself of the
+detested and troublesome flies. The elephants were placidly munching
+their _chana_ (bait, or food), and occasionally giving each other a
+dry bath in the shape of a shower of sand. There was a monotonous
+clank of chains, and an occasional deep abdominal rumble like distant
+thunder. All over the camp there was a confused subdued medley of
+sound. A hum from the argumentative villagers, a lazy flop in the tank
+as a raho rose to the surface, an occasional outburst from the ducks,
+an angry clamour from the water-hens and blue-fowl. My dogs were lying
+round me blinking and winking, and making an occasional futile snap at
+an imaginary fly or flea. It was a drowsy and peaceful scene. I was
+nearly dropping off to sleep, from the heat and the monotonous drone
+of the putwarrie, who was intoning nasally some formidable document
+about fishery rights and privileges.
+
+Suddenly there was a hush. Every sound seemed to stop simultaneously
+as if by pre-arranged concert. Then three men were seen rushing madly
+along the elevated ridge surrounding one of the tanks. I recognised
+one of my peons, and with him two cowherds. Their head-dresses were
+all disarranged, and their parted lips, heaving chests, and eyes
+blazing with excitement, shewed that they were brimful of some unusual
+message.
+
+Now arose such a bustle in the camp as no description could adequately
+portray. The elephants trumpeted and piped; the _syces_, or grooms,
+came rushing up with eager queries; the villagers bustled about like
+so many ants aroused by the approach of a hostile foe; my pack of
+terriers yelped out in chorus; the pony neighed; the Cabool stallion
+plunged about; my servants came rushing from the shelter of the tent
+verandah with disordered dress; the ducks rose in a quacking crowd,
+and circled round and round the tent; and the cry arose of 'Bagh!
+Bagh! Khodamund! Arree Bap re Bap! Ram Ram, Seeta Ram!'
+
+Breathless with running, the men now tumbled up, hurriedly salaamed,
+arid then each with gasps and choking stops, and pell-mell volubility,
+and amid a running fire of cries, queries, and interjections from the
+mob, began to unfold their tale. There was an infuriated tigress at
+the other side of the nullah, or dry watercourse, she had attacked a
+herd of buffaloes, and it was believed that she had cubs.
+
+Already Debnarain Singh was getting his own pad elephant caparisoned,
+and my bearer was diving under my camp bed for my gun and cartridges.
+Knowing the little elephant to be a fast walker, and fairly staunch, I
+got on her back, and accompanied by the gomasta and mahout we set out,
+followed by the peon and herdsmen to shew us the way.
+
+I expected two friends, officers from Calcutta, that very day, and
+wished not to kill the tigress but to keep her for our combined
+shooting next day. We had not proceeded far when, on the other side of
+the nullah, we saw dense clouds of dust rising, and heard a confused,
+rushing, trampling sound, mingled with the clashing of horns, and the
+snorting of a herd of angry buffaloes.
+
+It was the wildest sight I have ever seen in connection with animal
+life. The buffaloes were drawn together in the form of a crescent;
+their eyes glared fiercely, and as they advanced in a series of short
+runs, stamping with their hoofs, and angrily lashing their tails,
+their horns would come together with a clanging, clattering crash, and
+they would paw the sand, snort and toss their heads, and behave in the
+most extraordinary manner.
+
+The cause of all this commotion was not far to seek. Directly in
+front, retreating slowly, with stealthy, prowling, crawling steps, and
+an occasional short, quick leap or bound to one side or the other, was
+a magnificent tigress, looking the very personification of baffled
+fury. Ever and anon she crouched down to the earth, tore up the sand
+with her claws, lashed her tail from side to side, and with lips
+retracted, long moustaches quivering with wrath, and hateful eyes
+scintillating with rage and fury, she seemed to meditate an attack on
+the angry buffaloes. The serried array of clashing horns, and the
+ponderous bulk of the herd, seemed however to daunt the snarling
+vixen; at their next rush she would bound back a few paces, crouch
+down, growl, and be forced to move back again, by the short,
+blundering rush of the crowd.
+
+All the calves and old cows were in the rear of the herd, and it was
+not a little comical to witness their ungainly attitudes. They would
+stretch their clumsy necks, and shake their heads, as if they did not
+rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they stopped too
+long to indulge their curiosity, there was a danger of their getting
+separated from the fighting members of the herd, they would make a
+stupid, headlong, lumbering lurch forward, and jostle each other, in
+their blundering panic.
+
+It was a grand sight. The tigress was the embodiment of lithe and
+savage beauty, but her features expressed the wildest baffled rage. I
+could have shot the striped vixen over and over again, but I wished to
+keep her for my friends, and I was thrilled with the excitement of
+such a novel scene.
+
+Suddenly our elephant trumpeted, and shied quickly to one side, from
+something lying on the ground. Curling up its trunk it began backing
+and piping at a prodigious rate.
+
+'Hullo! what's the matter now?' said I to Debnarain.
+
+'God only knows,' said he.
+
+'A young tiger!' 'Bagh ka butcha!' screams our mahout, and regardless
+of the elephant or of our cries to stop, he scuttled down the pad rope
+like a monkey down a backstay, and clutching a young dead tiger cub,
+threw it up to Debnarain; it was about the size of a small poodle, and
+had evidently been trampled by the pursuing herd of buffaloes.
+
+'There may be others,' said the gomasta; and peering into every bush,
+we went slowly on.
+
+The elephant now shewed decided symptoms of dislike and a reluctance
+to approach a particular dense clump of grass.
+
+A sounding whack on the head, however, made her quicken her steps, and
+thrusting the long stalks aside, she discovered for us three blinking
+little cubs, brothers of the defunct, and doubtless part of the same
+litter. Their eyes were scarcely open, and they lay huddled together
+like three enormous striped kittens, and spat at us and bristled their
+little moustaches much as an angry cat would do. All the four were
+males.
+
+It was not long ere I had them carefully wrapped in the mahout's
+blanket. Overjoyed at our good fortune, we left the excited buffaloes
+still executing their singular war-dance, and the angry tigress,
+robbed of her whelps, consuming her soul in baffled fury.
+
+We heard her roaring through the night, close to camp, and on my
+friends' arrival, we beat her up next morning, and she fell pierced by
+three bullets, after a fierce and determined charge. We came upon her
+across the nullah, and her mind was evidently made up to fight. Nearly
+all the villagers had turned out with the line of elephants. Before we
+had time to order them away, she came down upon the line, roaring
+furiously, and bounding over the long grass,--a most magnificent
+sight.
+
+My first bullet took her full in the chest, and before she could make
+good her charge, a ball each from Pat and Captain G. settled her
+career. She was beautifully striped, and rather large for a tigress,
+measuring nine feet three inches.
+
+It was now a question with me, how to rear the three interesting
+orphans; we thought a slut from some of the villages would prove the
+best wet nurse, and tried accordingly to get one, but could not. In
+the meantime an unhappy goat was pounced on and the three young-tigers
+took to her teats as if 'to the manner born.' The poor Nanny screamed
+tremendously at first sight of them, but she soon got accustomed to
+them, and when they grew a little bigger, she would often playfully
+butt at them with her horns.
+
+The little brutes throve wonderfully, and soon developed such an
+appetite that I had to get no less than six goats to satisfy their
+constant thirst. I kept the cubs for over two months, and I shall not
+soon forget the excitement I caused, when my boat stopped at
+Sahribgunge, and my goats, tiger cubs, and attendants, formed a
+procession from the ghat or landing-place, to the railway station.
+
+Soldiers, guards, engineers, travellers, and crowds of natives
+surrounded me, and at every station the guard's van, with my novel
+menagerie, was the centre of attraction. I sold the cubs to Jamrach's
+agent in Calcutta for a very satisfactory price. Two of them were very
+powerful, finely marked, handsome animals; the third had always been
+sickly, had frequent convulsions, and died a few days after I sold it.
+I was afterwards told that the milk diet was a mistake, and that I
+should have fed them on raw meat. However, I was very well satisfied
+on the whole with the result of my adventure.
+
+I had another in the same part of the country, which at the time was a
+pretty good test of the state of my nerves.
+
+I was camped out at the village of Purindaha, on the edge of a gloomy
+sal forest, which was reported to contain numerous leopards. The
+villagers were a mixed lot of low-caste Hindoos, and Nepaulese
+settlers. They had been fighting with the factory, and would not pay
+up their rents, and I was trying, with every probability of success,
+to make an amicable arrangement with them. At all events, I had so far
+won them round, that they were willing to talk to me. They came to the
+tent and listened quietly, and except on the subject of rent, we got
+on in the most friendly manner.
+
+It was the middle of April. The heat was intense. The whole atmosphere
+had that coppery look which denotes extreme heat, and the air was
+loaded with fine yellow dust, which the daily west wind bore on its
+fever laden wings, to disturb the lungs and tempers of all good
+Christians. The _kanats_, or canvas walls of the tent, had all been
+taken down for coolness, and my camp bed lay in one corner, open all
+round to the outside air, but only sheltered from the dew. It had been
+a busy day. I had been going over accounts, and talking to the
+villagers till I was really hoarse. After a light dinner I lay down on
+my bed, but it was too close and hot to sleep. By and bye the various
+sounds died out. The tom-toming ceased in the village. My servants
+suspended their low muttered gossip round the cook's fire, wrapped
+themselves in their white cloths, and dropped into slumber. 'Toby,'
+'Nettle,' 'Whisky,' 'Pincher,' and my other terriers, resembled so
+many curled-up hairy balls, and were in the land of dreams.
+Occasionally an owl would give a melancholy hoot from the forest, or a
+screech owl would raise a momentary and damnable din. At intervals,
+the tinkle of a cow-bell sounded faintly in the distance. I tossed
+restlessly, thinking of various things, till I must have dropped off
+into an uneasy fitful sleep. I know not how long I had been dozing,
+but of a sudden I felt myself wide awake, though with my eyes yet
+firmly closed.
+
+I was conscious of some terrible unknown impending danger. I had
+experienced the same feeling before on waking from a nightmare, but I
+knew that the danger now was real. I felt a shrinking horror, a
+terrible and nameless fear, and for the life of me I could not move
+hand or foot. I was lying on my side, and could distinctly hear the
+thumping of my heart. A cold sweat broke out behind my ears and over
+my neck and chest. I could analyse my every feeling, and I knew there
+was some PRESENCE in the tent, and that I was in instant and imminent
+peril. Suddenly in the distance a pariah dog gave a prolonged
+melancholy howl. As if this had broken the spell which had hitherto
+bound me, I opened my eyes, and within ten inches of my face, there
+was a handsome leopardess gazing steadily at me. Our eyes met, and how
+long we confronted each other I know not. It must have been some
+minutes. Her eyes contracted and expanded, the pupil elongated and
+then opened out into a round lustrous globe. I could see the lithe
+tail oscillating at its extreme tip, with a gentle waving motion, like
+that of a cat when hunting birds in the garden. I seemed to possess no
+will. I believe I was under a species of fascination, but we continued
+our steady stare at each other.
+
+Just then, there was a movement by some of the horses. The leopard
+slowly turned her head, and I grasped the revolver which lay under my
+pillow. The beautiful spotted monster turned her head for an instant,
+and shewed her teeth, and then with one bound went through the open
+side of the tent. I fired two shots, which were answered with a roar.
+The din that followed would have frightened the devil. It was a
+beautiful clear night, with a moon at the full, and everything shewed
+as plainly as at noonday. The servants uttered exclamations of terror.
+The terriers went into an agony of yelps and barks. The horses
+snorted, and tried to get loose, and my chowkeydar, who had been
+asleep on his watch, thinking a band of dacoits were on us, began
+laying round him with his staff, shouting, _Chor, Chor! lagga, lagga,
+lagga!_ that is, 'thief, thief! lay on, lay on, lay on!'
+
+The leopard was hit, and evidently in a terrible temper. She halted
+not thirty paces from the tent, beside a jhamun tree, and seemed
+undecided whether to go on or return and wreak her vengeance on me.
+That moment decided her fate. I snatched down my Express rifle, which
+was hanging in two loops above my bed, and shot her right through the
+heart.
+
+I never understood how she could have made her way past dogs,
+servants, horses, and watchman, right into the tent, without raising
+some alarm. It must have been more from curiosity than any hostile
+design. I know that my nerves were very rudely shaken, but I became
+the hero of the Purindaha villagers. I believe that my night adventure
+with the leopardess did more to bring them round to a settlement than
+all my eloquence and figures.
+
+The river Koosee, on the banks of which, and in the long grass plains
+adjacent, most of the incidents I have recorded took place, takes its
+rise at the base of Mount Everest, and, after draining nearly the
+whole of Eastern. Nepaul, emerges by a deep gorge from the hills at
+the north-west corner of Purneah. The stream runs with extreme
+velocity. It is known as a snow stream. The water is always cold, and
+generally of a milky colour, containing much fine white sand. No
+sooner does it leave its rocky bed than it tears through the flat
+country by numerous channels. It is subject to very sudden rises. A
+premonitory warning of these is generally given. The water becomes of
+a turbid, almost blood-like colour. Sometimes I have seen the river
+rise over thirty feet in twenty-four hours. The melting of the snow
+often makes a raging torrent, level from bank to bank, where only a
+few hours before a horse could have forded the stream without wetting
+the girths of the saddle.
+
+In 1876 the largest channel was a swift broad stream called the Dhaus.
+The river is very capricious, seldom flowing for any length of time in
+one channel. This is owing in great measure to the amount of silt it
+carries with it from the hills, in its impetuous progress to the
+plains.
+
+In these dry watercourses, among the sand ridges, beside the humid
+marshy hollows, and among the thick strips of grass jungle, tigers are
+always to be found. They are much less numerous now however than
+formerly. As a rule, there is no shelter in these water-worn,
+flood-ravaged tracts and sultry jungles. Occasionally a few straggling
+plantain trees, a clump of sickly-looking bamboos, a cluster of tall
+shadowless palms, marks the site of a deserted village. All else is
+waving grass, withered and dry. The villages, inhabited mostly by a
+few cowherds, boatmen, and rice-farmers are scattered at wide
+intervals. In the shooting season, and when the hot winds are blowing,
+the only shadow on the plain is that cast by the dense volumes of
+lurid smoke, rising in blinding clouds from the jungle fires.
+
+According to the season, animal life fluctuates strangely. During the
+rains, when the river is in full flood, and much of the country
+submerged, most of the animals migrate to the North, buffaloes and
+wild pig alone keeping possession, of the higher ridges in the
+neighbourhood of their usual haunts.
+
+The contrasts presented on these plains at different seasons of the
+year are most remarkable. In March and April they are parched up,
+brown, and dead; great black patches showing the track of a destroying
+fire, the fine brown ash from the burnt grass penetrating the eyes and
+nostrils, and sweeping along in eddying and blinding clouds. They then
+look the very picture of an untenable waste, a sea of desolation,
+whose limits blend in the extreme distance with the shimmering coppery
+horizon. In the rainy season these arid-looking wastes are covered
+with tall-plumed, reed-like, waving grass, varying from two to ten
+feet in height, stretching in an unbroken sweep as far as the eye can
+reach, except where an abrupt line shews that the swift river has its
+treacherous course. After the rains, progress through the jungle is
+dangerous. Quicksands and beds of tenacious mud impede one at every
+step. The rich vegetation springs up green and vigorous, with a
+rapidity only to be seen in the Tropics. But what a glorious hunting
+ground! What a preserve for Nimrod! Deer forest, or heathered moor,
+can never compete with the old Koosee Derahs for abundance of game and
+thrilling excitement in sport. My genial, happy, loyal comrades
+too--while memory lasts the recollection of your joyous, frank,
+warm-hearted comradeship shall never fade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Remarks on guns.--How to cure skins.--Different recipes.--Conclusion.
+
+My remarks on guns shall be brief. The true sportsman has many
+facilities for acquiring the best information on a choice of weapons.
+For large game perhaps nothing can equal the Express rifle. My own
+trusty weapon was a '500 bore, very plain, with a pistol grip, point
+blank up to 180 yards, made by Murcott of the Haymarket, from whom I
+have bought over twenty guns, every one of which turned out a splendid
+weapon.
+
+My next favourite was a No. 12 breachloader, very light, but strong
+and carefully finished. It had a side snap action with rebounding
+locks, and was the quickest gun to fire and reload I ever possessed. I
+bought it from the same maker, although it was manufactured by W.W.
+Greener.
+
+Avoid a cheap gun as you would avoid a cheap Jew pedlar. A good name
+is above riches so far as a gun is concerned, and when you have a good
+gun take as much care of it as you would of a good wife. They are both
+equally rare. An expensive gun is not necessarily a good one, but a
+cheap gun is very seldom trustworthy. Have a portable, handy black
+leather case. Keep your gun always clean, bright, and free from rust.
+After every day's shooting see that the barrels and locks are
+carefully cleaned and oiled. Nothing is better for this purpose than
+rangoon oil.
+
+For preserving horns, a little scraping and varnishing are all that is
+required. While in camp it is a good plan to rub them with deer, or
+pig, or tiger fat, as it keeps them from cracking.
+
+To clean a tiger's or other skull. If there be a nest of ants near the
+camp, place the skull in their immediate vicinity. Some recommend
+putting in water till the particles of flesh rot, or till the skull is
+cleared by the fishes. A strong solution of caustic water may be used
+if you wish to get the bones cleaned very quickly. Some put the skulls
+in quicklime, but it has a tendency to make the bones splinter, and it
+is difficult to keep the teeth from getting loose and dropping out.
+The best but slowest plan is to fix them in mechanically by wire or
+white lead. A good preservative is to wash or paint them with a very
+strong solution of fine lime and water.
+
+To cure skins. I know no better recipe than the one adopted by my
+trainers in the art of _shibar_, the brothers S. I cannot do better
+than give a description of the process in the words of George himself.
+
+'Skin the animal in the usual way. Cut from the corner of the mouth,
+down the throat, and along the belly. A white stripe or border
+generally runs along the belly. This should be left as nearly as
+possible equal on both sides. Carefully cut the fleshy parts off the
+lips and balls of the toes and feet. Clean away every particle of
+fatty or fleshy matter that may still adhere to the skin. Peg it out
+on the ground with the hair side undermost. When thoroughly scraped
+clean of all extraneous matter on the inner surface, get a bucket or
+tub of buttermilk, which is called by the natives _dahye_ or _mutha_.
+It is a favourite article of diet with them, cheap and plentiful. Dip
+the skin in this, and keep it well and entirely submerged by placing
+some heavy weight on it. It should be submerged fully three inches in
+the tub of buttermilk.
+
+'After two days in the milk bath, take it out and peg it as before.
+Now take a smooth oval rubbing-board about twelve inches long, five
+round, and about an inch thick in the middle, and scrub the skin
+heartily with this instrument. On its lower surface it should be cuts
+in grooves, semicircular in shape, half an inch wide, and one inch
+apart. During scrubbing use plenty of pure water to remove filth. In
+about half an hour the pinkish-white colour will disappear, and the
+skin will appear white, with a blackish tinge underneath. This is the
+true hide.
+
+'Again submerge in the buttermilk bath for twenty-four hours, and get
+a man to tread on it in every possible way, folding it and unfolding
+it, till all has been thoroughly worked.
+
+'Take it out again, peg out and scrub it as before, after which wash
+the whole hide well in clear water. Never mind if the skin looks
+rotten, it is really not so.
+
+'When washed put it into a tub, in which you have first placed a
+mixture consisting of half an ounce of alum to each gallon of water.
+Soak the skin in this mixture for about six hours, taking it up
+occasionally to drain a little. This is sufficient to cure your skin
+and clean it.'
+
+The tanning remains to be done.
+
+'Get four pounds of babool, tamarind, or dry oak bark. (The babool is
+a kind of acacia, and is easily procurable, as the tamarind also is).
+Boil the bark in two gallons of water till it is reduced to one half
+the quantity. Add to this nine gallons of fresh water, and in this
+solution souse the skin for two, or three, or four days.
+
+'The hairs having been set by the soaking in alum, the skin will tan
+more quickly, and if the tan is occasionally rubbed into the pores of
+the skin it will be an improvement. You can tell when the tanning is
+complete by the colour the skin assumes. When this satisfies the eye,
+take it out and drain on a rod. When nearly dry it should be curried
+with olive oil or clarified butter if required for wear, but if only
+for floor covering or carriage rug, the English curriers' common
+'dubbin,' sold by shopkeepers, is best. This operation, which must be
+done on the inner side only, is simple.
+
+'Another simple recipe, and one which answers well, is this. Mix
+together of the best English soap, four ounces; arsenic, two and a
+half grains; camphor, two ounces; alum, half an ounce; saltpetre, half
+an ounce. Boil the whole, and keep stirring, in a half-pint of
+distilled water, over a very slow fire, for from ten to fifteen
+minutes. Apply when cool with a sponge. A little sweet oil may be
+rubbed on the skins after they are dry.
+
+'Another good method is to apply arsenical soap, which may be made as
+follows: powdered arsenic, two pounds; camphor, five ounces; white
+soap, sliced thin, two pounds; salt of tartar, twelve drams; chalk, or
+powdered fine lime, four ounces; add a small quantity of water first
+to the soap, put over a gentle fire, and keep stirring. When melted,
+add the lime and tartar, and thoroughly mix; next add the arsenic,
+keeping up a constant motion, and lastly the camphor. The camphor
+should first be reduced to a powder by means of a little spirits of
+wine, and should be added to the mess after it has been taken off the
+fire.
+
+'This preparation must be kept in a well-stoppered jar, or properly
+closed pot. When ready, the soap should be of the consistency of
+Devonshire cream. To use, add water till it becomes of the consistency
+of clear rich soup.'
+
+I have now finished my book. It has been pleasant to me to write down
+these recollections. Ever since I began my task, death has been busy,
+and the ranks of my friends have been sadly thinned. Failing health
+has driven me from my old shooting grounds, and in sunny Australia I
+have been trying to recruit the energies enervated by the burning
+climate of India. That my dear old planter friends may have as kindly
+recollections of 'the Maori' as he has of them, is what I ardently
+hope; that I may yet get back to share in the sports, pastimes, joys,
+and social delights of Mofussil life in India, is what I chiefly
+desire. If this volume meets the approbation of the public, I may be
+tempted to draw further on a well-stocked memory, and gossip afresh on
+Indian life, Indian experiences, and Indian sport. Meantime, courteous
+reader, farewell.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+by James Inglis
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10818 ***
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+Project Gutenberg's Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier, by James Inglis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+       Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter
+
+Author: James Inglis
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2004 [EBook #10818]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN NEPAUL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _Frontispiece_. TIGER HUNTING. RETURN TO THE CAMP.]
+
+
+SPORT AND WORK
+
+ON THE
+
+NEPAUL FRONTIER
+
+
+OR
+
+
+TWELVE YEARS SPORTING REMINISCENCES
+
+OF AN INDIGO PLANTER
+
+
+By "MAORI"
+
+
+1878
+
+
+
+
+[Note: Some words in this book have a macron over a vowel. A macron
+is a punctuation mark ( - ) and is represented herein as [=a], [=e]
+or [=o].]
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+I went home in 1875 for a few months, after some twelve years' residence
+in India. What first suggested the writing of such a book as this, was
+the amazing ignorance of ordinary Indian life betrayed by people at
+home. The questions asked me about India, and our daily life there,
+showed in many cases such an utter want of knowledge, that I thought,
+surely there is room here for a chatty, familiar, unpretentious book
+for friends at home, giving an account of our every-day life in India,
+our labours and amusements, our toils and relaxations, and a few
+pictures of our ordinary daily surroundings in the far, far East.
+
+Such then is the design of my book. I want to picture to my readers
+Planter Life in the Mofussil, or country districts of India; to tell
+them of our hunting, shooting, fishing, and other amusements; to
+describe our work, our play, and matter-of-fact incidents in our daily
+life; to describe the natives as they appear to us in our intimate
+every-day dealings with them; to illustrate their manners, customs,
+dispositions, observances and sayings, so far as these bear on our own
+social life.
+
+I am no politician, no learned ethnologist, no sage theorist. I simply
+try to describe what I have seen, and hope to enlist the attention and
+interest of my readers, in my reminiscences of sport and labour, in the
+villages and jungles on the far off frontier of Nepaul.
+
+I have tried to express my meaning as far as possible without Anglo-Indian
+and Hindustani words; where these have been used, as at times they could
+not but be, I have given a synonymous word or phrase in English, so that
+all my friends at home may know my meaning.
+
+I know that my friends will be lenient to my faults, and even the
+sternest critic, if he look for it, may find some pleasure and profit in
+my pages.
+
+JAS. INGLIS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Province of Behar.--Boundaries.--General description.--District of
+Chumparun.--Mooteeharree.--The town and lake.--Native houses.--The
+Planters' Club.--Legoulie.
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+My first charge.--How we get our lands.--Our home farm.--System of
+farming.--Collection of rents.--The planter's duties.
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
+--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at Work.
+--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Manufacture of Indigo.--Loading the vats.--Beating.--Boiling, straining,
+and pressing.--Scene in the Factory.--Fluctuation of produce.--Chemistry
+of Indigo.
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Parewah factory.--A 'Bobbery Pack.'--Hunt through a village after
+a cat.--The pariah dog of India.--Fate of 'Pincher.'--Rampore
+hound.--Persian greyhound.--Caboolee dogs.--A jackal hunt.--Incidents
+of the chase.
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Fishing in India.--Hereditary trades.--The boatmen and fishermen of
+India.--Their villages.--Nets.--Modes of fishing.--Curiosities relating
+thereto.--Catching an alligator with a hook.--Exciting capture.
+--Crocodiles.--Shooting an alligator.--Death of the man-eater.
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Native superstitions.--Charming a bewitched woman.--Exorcising ghosts
+from a field.--Witchcraft.--The witchfinder or 'Ojah,'--Influence of
+fear.--Snake bites.--How to cure them.--How to discover a thief.--Ghosts
+and their habits.--The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.--Cruelty to
+animals by natives.
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Our annual race meet.--The arrivals.--The camps.--The 'ordinary,'--The
+course.--'They're off.'--The race.--The steeple-chase.--Incidents of
+the meet.--The ball.
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Pig-sticking in India.--Varieties of boar.--Their size and height.
+--Ingenious mode of capture by the natives.--The 'Batan' or buffalo
+herd.--Pigs charging.--Their courage and ferocity.--Destruction of
+game.--A close season for game.
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Kuderent jungle.--Charged by a pig.--The biter bit.--'Mac' after the
+big boar.--The horse for pig-sticking.--The line of beaters.--The boar
+breaks.--'Away! Away!'--First spear.--Pig-sticking at Peeprah.--The
+old 'lungra' or cripple.--A boar at bay.--Hurrah for pig-sticking!
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The sal forests.--The jungle goddess.--The trees in the jungle.
+--Appearance of the forests.--Birds.--Varieties of parrots.--A 'beat'
+in the forest.--The 'shekarry.'--Mehrman Singh and his gun.--The Banturs,
+a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.--Their habits.--A village feast.--We
+beat for deer.--Habits of the spotted deer.--Waiting for the game.
+--Mehrman Singh gets drunk.--Our bag.--Pea-fowl and their habits.--How
+to shoot them.--Curious custom of the Nepaulese.--How Juggroo was
+tricked, and his revenge.
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
+one.--Encounter with a leopard in a Dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
+leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
+annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
+harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
+sanitation.
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
+--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
+village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
+village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
+system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
+justice.
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The temple.
+--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.--Their
+low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions and knavery.
+--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native officials.--The
+Hindoo unfit for self-government.
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Jungle wild fruits.--Curious method of catching quail.--Quail nets.
+--Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.--Native wrestling.--The trainer.
+--How they train for a match.--Rules of wrestling.--Grips.--A wrestling
+match.--Incidents of the struggle.--Description of a match between a
+Brahmin and a blacksmith.--Sparring for the grip.--The blacksmith has
+it.--The struggle.--The Brahmin getting the worst of it.--Two to one
+on the little 'un!--The Brahmin plays the waiting game, turns the tables
+_and_ the blacksmith.--Remarks on wrestling.
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Indigo seed growing.--Seed buying and buyers.--Tricks of sellers.--Tests
+for good seed.--The threshing-floor.--Seed cleaning and packing.--Staff
+of servants.--Despatching the bags by boat.--The 'Pooneah' or rent day.
+--Purneah planters--their hospitality.--The rent day a great festival.
+--Preparation.--Collection of rents.--Feast to retainers.--The reception
+in the evening.--Tribute.--Old customs.--Improvisatores and bards.
+--Nautches.--Dancing and music.--The dance of the Dangurs.--Jugglers
+and itinerary showmen.--'Bara Roopes,' or actors and mimics.--Their
+different styles of acting.
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The Koosee jungles.--Ferries.--Jungle roads.--The rhinoceros.--We go
+to visit a neighbour.--We lose our way and get belated.--We fall into
+a quicksand.--No ferry boat.--Camping out on the sand.--Two tigers close
+by.--We light a fire.--The boat at last arrives.--Crossing the stream.
+--Set fire to the boatman's hut.--Swim the horses.--They are nearly
+drowned.--We again lose our way in the jungle.--The towing path, and
+how boats are towed up the river.--We at last reach the factory.--News
+of rhinoceros in the morning.--Off we start, but arrive too late.--Death
+of the rhinoceros.--His dimensions.--Description.--Habits.--Rhinoceros
+in Nepaul.--The old 'Major Capt[=a]n.'--Description of Nepaulese scenery.
+--Immigration of Nepaulese.--Their fondness for fish.--They eat it
+putrid.--Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul.--Resources of the country.
+--Must sooner or later be opened up.--Influences at work to elevate
+the people.--Planters and factories chief of these.--Character of the
+planter.--Has claims to consideration from government.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The tiger.--His habitat.--Shooting on foot.--Modes of shooting.--A
+tiger hunt on foot.--The scene of the hunt.--The beat.--Incidents of
+the hunt.--Fireworks.--The tiger charges.--The elephant bolts.--The
+tigress will not break.--We kill a half-grown cub.--Try again for
+the tigress.--Unsuccessful.--Exaggerations in tiger stories.--My
+authorities.--The brothers S.--Ferocity and structure of the
+tiger.--His devastations.--His frame-work, teeth, &c.--A tiger at
+bay.--His unsociable habits.--Fight between tiger and tigress.--Young
+tigers.--Power and strength of the tiger.--Examples.--His cowardice.
+--Charge of a wounded tiger.--Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+--A spined tiger.--Boldness of young tigers.--Cruelty.--Cunning.--Night
+scenes in the jungle.--Tiger killed by a wild boar.--His cautious
+habits.--General remarks.
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
+--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
+--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of tiger.
+--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His description.
+--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to measure tigers.
+--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.--Number of
+young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs to kill.
+--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and cunning
+of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of concealment.
+--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.--Caught by
+floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives
+about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Claw-marks
+on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s
+howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.
+--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye
+out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers
+easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of shells on tiger and buffalo.--Best
+weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives
+prone to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for
+tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six
+elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.
+--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the Koosee.
+--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to shoot at
+moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of different animals
+in the grass.
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Howdahs and howdah-ropes.--Mussulman custom.--Killing animals for food.
+--Mysterious appearance of natives when an animal is killed.--Fastening
+dead tigers to the pad.--Present mode wants improving.--Incident
+illustrative of this.--Dangerous to go close to wounded tigers.
+--Examples.--Footprints of tigers.--Call of the tiger.--Natives and
+their powers of description.--How to beat successfully for tiger.
+--Description of a beat.--Disputes among the shooters.--Awarding
+tigers.--Cutting open the tiger.--Native idea about the liver of the
+tiger.--Signs of a tiger's presence in the jungle.--Vultures.--Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?--A vulture carrion feast.
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul frontier.--Indian scenery near
+the border.--Lose our way.--Cold night.--The river by night.--Our boat
+and boatmen.--Tigers calling on the bank.--An anxious moment.--Fire at
+and wound the tigress.--Reach camp.--The Nepaulee's adventure with a
+tiger.--The old Major.--His appearance and manners.--The pompous
+Jemadar.--Nepaulese proverb.--Firing the jungle.--Start a tiger and
+shoot him.--Another in front.--Appearance of the fires by night.--The
+tiger escapes.--Too dark to follow up.--Coolie shot by mistake during
+a former hunt.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+We resume the beat.--The hog-deer.--Nepaulese villages.--Village
+granaries.--Tiger in front.--A hit! a hit!--Following up the wounded
+tiger.--Find him dead.--Tiffin in the village.--The Patair jungle.
+--Search for tiger.--Gone away!--An elephant steeplechase in pursuit.
+--Exciting chase.--The Morung jungle.--Magnificent scenery.--Skinning
+the tiger.--Incidents of tiger hunting.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Camp of the Nepaulee chief.--Quicksands.--Elephants crossing rivers.
+--Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.--We beat the forest for tiger.--Shoot
+a young tiger.--Red ants in the forest.--Bhowras or ground bees.--The
+_ursus labialis_ or long-lipped bear.--Recross the stream.--Florican.
+--Stag running the gauntlet of flame.--Our bag.--Start for factory.
+--Remarks on elephants.--Precautions useful for protection from the
+sun in tiger shooting.--The _puggree_.--Cattle breeding in India, and
+wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.--Nathpore.--Ravages of the
+river.--Mrs. Gray, an old resident in the jungles.--Description of
+her surroundings.
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Exciting jungle scene.--The camp.--All quiet.--Advent of the cow-herds.
+--A tiger close by.--Proceed to the spot.--Encounter between tigress
+and buffaloes.--Strange behaviour of the elephant.--Discovery and
+capture of four cubs.--Joyful return to camp.--Death of the tigress.
+--Night encounter with a leopard.--The haunts of the tiger and our
+shooting grounds.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Remarks on guns.--How to cure skins.--Different Recipes.--Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+Tiger Hunting--Return to the Camp
+Coolie's Hut
+Indigo Beating Vats
+Indigo Beaters at work in the Vat
+Indian Factory Peon
+Indigo Planter's House
+Pig Stickers
+Carpenters and Blacksmiths at work
+Hindoo Village Temples
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Province of Behar.--Boundaries.--General description.--District of
+Chumparun.--Mooteeharree.--The town and lake.--Native houses.--The
+Planters' Club.--Legoulie.
+
+Among the many beautiful and fertile provinces of India, none can, I
+think, much excel that of Behar for richness of soil, diversity of
+race, beauty of scenery, and the energy and intelligence of its
+inhabitants. Stretching from the Nepaul hills to the far distant
+plains of Gya, with the Gunduch, Bogmuttee and other noble streams
+watering its rich bosom, and swelling with their tribute the stately
+Ganges, it includes every variety of soil and climate; and its various
+races, with their strange costumes, creeds, and customs, might afford
+material to fill volumes.
+
+The northern part of this splendid province follows the Nepaulese
+boundary from the district of Goruchpore on the north, to that of
+Purneah on the south. In the forests and jungles along this boundary
+line live many strange tribes, whose customs, and even their names and
+language, are all but unknown to the English public. Strange wild
+animals dispute with these aborigines the possession of the gloomy
+jungle solitudes. Great trees of wondrous dimensions and strange
+foliage rear their stately heads to heaven, and are matted and
+entwined together by creepers of huge size and tenacious hold.
+
+To the south and east vast billows of golden grain roll in successive
+undulations to the mighty Ganges, the sacred stream of the Hindoos.
+Innumerable villages, nestling amid groves of plantains and feathery
+rustling bamboos, send up their wreaths of pale grey smoke into the
+still warm air. At frequent intervals the steely blue of some lovely
+lake, where thousands of water-fowl disport themselves, reflects from
+its polished surface the sheen of the noonday sun. Great masses of
+mango wood shew a sombre outline at intervals, and here and there the
+towering chimney of an indigo factory pierces the sky. Government
+roads and embankments intersect the face of the country in all
+directions, and vast sheets of the indigo plant refresh the eye with
+their plains of living green, forming a grateful contrast to the hard,
+dried, sun-baked surface of the stubble fields, where the rice crop
+has rustled in the breezes of the past season. In one of the loveliest
+and most fertile districts of this vast province, namely, Chumparun, I
+began my experiences as an indigo planter.
+
+Chumparun with its subdistrict of Bettiah, lies to the north of
+Tirhoot, and is bounded all along its northern extent by the Nepaul
+hills and forests. When I joined my appointment as assistant on one
+of the large indigo concerns there, there were not more than about
+thirty European residents altogether in the district. The chief town,
+Mooteeharree, consisted of a long _bazaar_, or market street, beautifully
+situated on the bank of a lovely lake, some two miles in length. From
+the main street, with its quaint little shops sheltered from the sun
+by makeshift verandahs of tattered sacking, weather-stained shingles,
+or rotting bamboo mats, various little lanes and alleys diverged,
+leading one into a collection of tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up
+apparently by chance, and presenting the most incongruous appearance
+that could possibly be conceived. One or two _pucca_ houses, that is,
+houses of brick and masonry, shewed where some wealthy Bunneah
+(trader) or usurious banker lived, but the majority of the houses were
+of the usual mud and bamboo order. There is a small thatched hut where
+the meals were cooked, and where the owner and his family could sleep
+during the rains. Another smaller hut at right angles to this, gives
+shelter to the family goat, or, if they are rich enough to keep one,
+the cow. All round the villages in India there are generally large
+patches of common, where the village cows have free rights of pasture;
+and all who can, keep either a cow or a couple of goats, the milk from
+which forms a welcome addition to their usual scanty fare. In this
+second hut also is stored as much fuel, consisting of dried cow-dung,
+straw, maize-stalks, leaves, etc., as can be collected; and a ragged
+fence of bamboo or _rahur_[1] stalks encloses the two unprotected
+sides, thus forming inside a small court, quadrangle, or square. This
+court is the native's _sanctum sanctorum_. It is kept scrupulously
+clean, being swept and garnished religiously every day. In this the
+women prepare the rice for the day's consumption; here they cut up and
+clean their vegetables, or their fish, when the adjacent lake has been
+dragged by the village fishermen. Here the produce of their little
+garden, capsicums, Indian corn, onions or potatoes--perchance turmeric,
+ginger, or other roots or spices--are dried and made ready for storing
+in the earthen sun-baked repository for the reception of such produce
+appertaining to each household. Here the children play, and are washed
+and tended. Here the maiden combs out her long black hair, or decorates
+her bronzed visage with streaks of red paint down the nose, and a
+little antimony on the eyelids, or myrtle juice on the finger and toe
+nails. Here, too, the matron, or the withered old crone of a
+grandmother, spins her cotton thread; or, in the old scriptural
+hand-mill, grinds the corn for the family flour and meal; and the
+father and the young men (when the sun is high and hot in the heavens)
+take their noonday _siesta_, or, the day's labours over, cower round
+the smoking dung fire of a cold winter night, and discuss the prices
+ruling in the bazaar, the rise of rents, or the last village scandal.
+
+In the middle of the town, and surrounded by a spacious fenced-in
+compound, which sloped gently to the lake, stood the Planters' Club, a
+large low roofed bungalow, with a roomy wide verandah in front. Here
+we met, when business or pleasure brought us to 'the Station.' Here
+were held our annual balls, or an occasional public dinner party. To
+the north of the Club stood a long range of barrack-looking buildings,
+which were the opium godowns, where the opium was collected and stored
+during the season. Facing this again, and at the extremity of the
+lake, was the district jail, where all the rascals of the surrounding
+country were confined; its high walls tipped at intervals by a red
+puggree and flashing bayonet wherever a jail sepoy kept his 'lonely
+watch.' Near it, sheltered in a grove of shady trees, were the court
+houses, where the collector and magistrate daily dispensed justice, or
+where the native _moonsiff_ disentangled knotty points of law. Here,
+too, came the sessions judge once a month or so, to try criminal cases
+and mete out justice to the law-breakers.
+
+We had thus a small European element in our 'Station,' consisting of
+our magistrate and collector, whose large and handsome house was built
+on the banks of another and yet lovelier lake, which joined the town
+lake by a narrow stream or strait at its southern end, an opium agent,
+a district superintendent of police, and last but not least, a doctor.
+These formed the official population of our little 'Station.' There
+was also a nice little church, but no resident pastor, and behind the
+town lay a quiet churchyard, rich in the dust of many a pioneer, who,
+far from home and friends, had here been gathered to his silent rest.
+
+About twelve miles to the north, and near the Nepaul boundary, was the
+small military station of Legoulie. Here there was always a native
+cavalry regiment, the officers of which were frequent and welcome
+guests at the factories in the district, and were always glad to see
+their indigo friends at their mess in cantonments. At Rettiah, still
+further to the north, was a rich rajah's palace, where a resident
+European manager dwelt, and had for his sole society an assistant
+magistrate who transacted the executive and judicial work of the
+subdistrict. These, with some twenty-five or thirty indigo managers
+and assistants, composed the whole European population of Chumparun.
+
+Never was there a more united community. We were all like brothers.
+Each knew all the rest. The assistants frequently visited each other,
+and the managers were kind and considerate to their subordinates.
+Hunting parties were common, cricket and hockey matches were frequent,
+and in the cold weather, which is our slackest season, fun, frolic,
+and sport was the order of the day. We had an annual race meet, when
+all the crack horses of the district met in keen rivalry to test their
+pace and endurance. During this high carnival, we lived for the most
+part under canvass, and had friends from far and near to share our
+hospitality. In a future chapter I must describe our racing meet.
+
+
+[1] The _rahur_ is a kind of pea, growing not unlike our English broom
+    in appearance; it is sown with the maize crop during the rains,
+    and garnered in the cold weather. It produces a small pea, which
+    is largely used by the natives, and forms the nutritive article of
+    diet known as _dhall_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+My first charge.--How we get our lands.--Our home farm.--System of
+farming.--Collection of rents.--The planter's duties.
+
+My first charge was a small outwork of the large factory Seeraha. It
+was called Puttihee. There was no bungalow; that is, there was no
+regular house for the assistant, but a little one-roomed hut, built on
+the top of the indigo vats, served me for a residence. It had neither
+doors nor windows, and the rain used to beat through the room, while
+the eaves were inhabited by countless swarms of bats, who, in the
+evening flashed backwards and forwards in ghostly rapid flight, and
+were a most intolerable nuisance. To give some idea of the duties of
+an indigo assistant, I must explain the system on which we get our
+lands, and how we grow our crop.
+
+Water of course being a _sine qua non_, the first object in selecting
+a site for a factory is, to have water in plenty contiguous to the
+proposed buildings. Consequently Puttihee was built on the banks of a
+very pretty lake, shaped like a horseshoe, and covered with water
+lilies and broad-leaved green aquatic plants. The lake was kept by the
+native proprietor as a fish preserve, and literally teemed with fish
+of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. I had not been long at Puttihee
+before I had erected a staging, leading out into deep water, and many
+a happy hour I have spent there with my three or four rods out,
+pulling in the finny inhabitants.
+
+Having got water and a site, the next thing is to get land on which to
+grow your crop. By purchase, by getting a long lease, or otherwise,
+you become possessed of several hundred acres of the land immediately
+surrounding the factory. Of course some factories will have more and
+some less as circumstances happen. This land, however, is peculiarly
+factory property. It is in fact a sort of home farm, and goes by the
+name of _Zeraat_. It is ploughed by factory bullocks, worked by
+factory coolies, and is altogether apart and separate from the
+ordinary lands held by the ryots and worked by them. (A ryot means a
+cultivator.) In most factories the Zeraats are farmed in the most
+thorough manner. Many now use the light Howard's plough, and apply
+quantities of manure.
+
+The fields extend in vast unbroken plains all round the factory. The
+land is worked and pulverised, and reploughed, and harrowed, and
+cleaned, till not a lump the size of a pigeon's egg is to be seen. If
+necessary, it is carefully weeded several times before the crop is
+sown, and in fact, a fine clean stretch of Zeraat in Tirhoot or
+Chumparun, will compare most favourably with any field in the highest
+farming districts of England or Scotland. The ploughing and other farm
+labour is done by bullocks. A staff of these, varying of course with
+the amount of land under cultivation, is kept at each factory. For
+their support a certain amount of sugar-cane is planted, and in the
+cold weather carrots are sown, and _gennara_, a kind of millet, and
+maize.
+
+Both maize and gennara have broad green leaves, and long juicy
+succulent stalks. They grow to a good height, and when cut up and
+mixed with chopped straw and carrots, form a most excellent feed for
+cattle. Besides the bullocks, each factory keeps up a staff of
+generally excellent horses, for the use of the assistant or manager,
+on which he rides over his cultivation, and looks generally after the
+farm. Some of the native subordinates also have ponies, or Cabool
+horses, or country-breds; and for the feed of these animals some few
+acres of oats are sown every cold season. In most factories too, when
+any particular bit of the Zeraats gets exhausted by the constant
+repetition of indigo cropping, a rest is given it, by taking a crop of
+oil seeds or oats off the land. The oil seeds usually sown are mustard
+or rape. The oil is useful in the factory for oiling the screws or the
+machinery, and for other purposes.
+
+The factory roads through the Zeraats are kept in most perfect order;
+many of them are metalled. The ditches are cleaned once a year. All
+thistles and weeds by the sides of the roads and ditches, are
+ruthlessly cut down. The edges of all the fields are neatly trimmed
+and cut. Useless trees and clumps of jungle are cut down; and in fact
+the Zeraats round a factory shew a perfect picture of orderly thrift,
+careful management, and neat, scientific, and elaborate farming.
+
+Having got the Zeraats, the next thing is to extend the cultivation
+outside.
+
+The land in India is not, as with us at home, parcelled out into large
+farms. There are wealthy proprietors, rajahs, baboos, and so on, who
+hold vast tracts of land, either by grant, or purchase, or hereditary
+succession; but the tenants are literally the children of the soil.
+Wherever a village nestles among its plantain or mango groves, the
+land is parcelled out among the villagers. A large proprietor does not
+reckon up his farms as a landlord at home would do, but he counts his
+villages. In a village with a thousand acres belonging to it, there
+might be 100 or even 200 tenants farming the land. Each petty villager
+would have his acre or half acre, or four, or five, or ten, or twenty
+acres, as the case might be. He holds this by a 'tenant right,' and
+cannot be dispossessed as long as he pays his rent regularly. He can
+sell his tenant right, and the purchaser on paying the rent, becomes
+the _bona fide_ possessor of the land to all intents and purposes.
+
+If the average rent of the village lands was, let me say, one rupee
+eight annas an acre, the rent roll of the 1000 acres would be 1500
+rupees. Out of this the government land revenue comes. Certain
+deductions have to be made--some ryots may be defaulters. The village
+temple, or the village Brahmin, may have to get something, the
+road-cess has to be paid, and so on. Taking everything into account,
+you arrive at a pretty fair view of what the rental is. If the
+proprietor of the village wants a loan of money, or if you offer to
+pay him the rent by half-yearly or quarterly instalments, you taking
+all the risk of collecting in turn from each ryot individually, he is
+often only too glad to accept your offer, and giving you a lease of
+the village for whatever term may be agreed on, you step in as
+virtually the landlord, and the ryots have to pay their rents to you.
+
+In many cases by careful management, by remeasuring lands, settling
+doubtful boundaries, and generally working up the estate, you can much
+increase the rental, and actually make a profit on your bargain with
+the landlord. This department of indigo work is called Zemindaree.
+Having, then, got the village in lease, you summon in all your tenants;
+shew them their rent accounts, arrange with them for the punctual
+payment of them, and get them to agree to cultivate a certain
+percentage of their land in indigo for you.
+
+This percentage varies very considerably. In some places it is one
+acre in five, in some one in twenty. It all depends on local
+circumstances. You select the land, you give the seed, but the ryot
+has to prepare the field for sowing, he has to plough, weed, and reap
+the crop, and deliver it at the factory. For the indigo he gets so
+much per acre, the price being as near as possible the average price
+of an acre of ordinary produce: taking the average out-turn and prices
+of, say, ten years. It used formerly to be much less, but the ryot
+nowadays gets nearly double for his indigo what he got some ten or
+fifteen years ago, and this, although prices have not risen for the
+manufactured article, and the prices of labour, stores, machinery,
+live stock, etc., have more than doubled. In some parts the ryot gets
+paid so much per bundle of plants delivered at the vats, but generally
+in Behar, at least in north Behar, he is paid so much per acre or
+_Beegah_. I use the word acre as being more easily understood by
+people at home than Beegah. The Beegah varies in different districts,
+but is generally about two-thirds of an acre.
+
+When his rent account, then, comes to be made out, the ryot gets
+credit for the price of his indigo grown and delivered; and this very
+often suffices, not only to clear his entire rent, but to leave a
+margin in hard cash for him to take home. Before the beginning of the
+indigo season, however, he comes into the factory and takes a cash
+advance on account of the indigo to be grown. This is often a great
+help to him, enabling him to get his seeds for his other lands,
+perhaps ploughs, or to buy a cart, or clothes for the family, or to
+replace a bullock that may have died; or to help to give a marriage
+portion to a son or daughter that he wants to get married.
+
+You will thus see that we have cultivation to look after in all the
+villages round about the factory which we can get in lease. The ryot,
+in return for his cash advance, agrees to cultivate so much indigo at
+a certain price, for which he gets credit in his rent. Such, shortly,
+is our indigo system. In some villages the ryot will estimate for us
+without our having the lease at all, and without taking advances.
+He grows the indigo as he would grow any other crop, as a pure
+speculation. If he has a good crop, he can get the price in hard cash
+from the factory, and a great deal is grown in this way in both
+Purneah and Bhaugulpore. This is called _Kooskee_, as against the
+system of advances, which is called _Tuccaree_.
+
+The planter, then, has to be constantly over his villages, looking out
+for good lands, giving up bad fields, and taking in new ones. He must
+watch what crops grow best in certain places. He must see that he does
+not take lands where water may lodge, and, on the other hand, avoid
+those that do not retain their moisture. He must attend also to the
+state of the other crops generally all over his cultivation, as the
+punctual payment of rents depends largely on the state of the crops.
+He must have his eyes open to everything going on, be able to tell the
+probable rent-roll of every village for miles around, know whether the
+ryots are lazy and discontented, or are industrious and hard-working.
+Up in the early morning, before the hot blazing sun has climbed on
+high, he is off on his trusty nag, through his Zeraats, with his
+greyhounds and terriers panting behind him. As he nears a village, the
+farm-servant in charge of that particular bit of cultivation, comes
+out with a low salaam, to report progress, or complain that so-and-so
+is not working up his field as he ought to do.
+
+Over all the lands he goes, seeing where re-ploughing is necessary,
+ordering harrowing here, weeding there, or rolling somewhere else. He
+sees where the ditches need deepening, where the roads want levelling
+or widening, where a new bridge will be necessary, where lands must be
+thrown up and new ones taken in. He knows nearly all his ryots, and
+has a kind word for every one he passes; asks after their crops, their
+bullocks, or their land; rouses up the indolent; gives a cheerful nod
+to the industrious; orders this one to be brought in to settle his
+account, or that one to make greater haste with the preparation of his
+land, that he may not lose his moisture. In fact, he has his hands
+full till the mounting sun warns him to go back to breakfast. And so,
+with a rattling burst after a jackal or fox, he gets back to his
+bungalow to bathe, dress, and break his fast with fowl cutlets, and
+curry and rice, washed down with a wholesome tumbler of Bass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
+--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at work.
+--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
+
+Having now got our land, water, and buildings--which latter I will
+describe further on--the next thing is to set to work to get our crop.
+Manufacture being finished, and the crop all cut by the beginning or
+middle of October, when the annual rains are over, it is of importance
+to have the lands dug up as early as possible, that the rich moisture,
+on which the successful cultivation of the crop mainly depends, may be
+secured before the hot west winds and strong sun of early spring lick
+it up.
+
+Attached to every factory is a small settlement of labourers, belonging
+to a tribe of aborigines called _Dangurs_. These originally, I believe,
+came from Chota Nagpoor, which seems to have been their primal home.
+They are a cheerful industrious race, have a distinct language of their
+own, and only intermarry with each other. Long ago, when there were no
+post carriages to the hills, and but few roads, the Dangurs were
+largely employed as dale runners, or postmen. Some few of them settled
+with their families on lands near the foot of the hills in Purneah, and
+gradually others made their way northwards, until now there is scarcely
+a factory in Behar that has not its Dangur tola, or village.
+
+The men are tractable, merry-hearted, and faithful. The women betray
+none of the exaggerated modesty which is characteristic of Hindoo women
+generally. They never turn aside and hide their faces as you pass, but
+look up to you with a merry smile on their countenances, and exchange
+greetings with the utmost frankness. In a future chapter I may speak at
+greater length of the Dangurs; at present it suffices to say, that they
+form a sort of appanage to the factory, and are in fact treated as part
+of the permanent staff.
+
+Each Dangur when he marries, gets some grass and bamboos from the
+factory to build a house, and a small plot of ground to serve as a
+garden, for which he pays a very small rent, or in many instances
+nothing at all. In return, he is always on the spot ready for any
+factory work that may be going on, for which he has his daily wage.
+Some factories pay by the month, but the general custom is to charge
+for hoeing by piece-work, and during manufacture, when the work is
+constant, there is paid a monthly wage.
+
+In the close foggy mornings of October and November, long before the
+sun is up, the Dangurs are hard at work in the Zeraats, turning up the
+soil with their _kodalies_, (a kind of cutting hoe,) and you can often
+hear their merry voices rising through the mist, as they crack jokes
+with each other to enliven their work, or troll one of their quaint
+native ditties.
+
+They are presided over by a 'mate,' generally one of the oldest men and
+first settlers in the village. If he has had a large family, his sons
+look up to him, and his sons-in-law obey his orders with the utmost
+fealty. The 'mate' settles all disputes, presents all grievances to the
+_sahib_, and all orders are given through him.
+
+The indigo stubble which has been left in the ground is perhaps about a
+foot high, and as they cut it out, their wives and children come to
+gather up the sticks for fuel, and this of course also helps to clean
+the land. By eleven o'clock, when the sluggish mist has been dissipated
+by the rays of the scorching sun, the day's labour is nearly concluded.
+You will then see the swarthy Dangur, with his favourite child on his
+shoulder, wending his way back to his hut, followed by his comely wife
+carrying his hoe, and a tribe of little ones bringing up the rear, each
+carrying bundles of the indigo stubble which the industrious father has
+dug up during the early hours of morning.
+
+In the afternoon out comes the _hengha_, which is simply a heavy flat
+log of wood, with a V shaped cut or groove all along under its flat
+surface. To each end of the hengha a pair of bullocks are yoked, and
+two men standing on the log, and holding on by the bullocks' tails, it
+is slowly dragged over the field wherever the hoeing has been going on.
+The lumps and clods are caught in the groove on the under surface, and
+dragged along and broken up and pulverized, and the whole surface of
+the field thus gets harrowed down, and forms a homogeneous mass of
+light friable soil, covering the weeds and dirt to let them rot,
+exposing the least surface for the wind and heat to act on, and thus
+keeping the moisture in the soil.
+
+Now is a busy time for the planter. Up early in the cold raw fog, he is
+over his Zeraats long before dawn, and round by his outlying villages
+to see the ryots at work in their fields. To each eighty or a hundred
+acres a man is attached called a _Tokedar_. His duty is to rouse out
+the ryots, see the hoes and ploughs at work, get the weeding done, and
+be responsible for the state of the cultivation generally. He will
+probably have two villages under him. If the village with its lands be
+very extensive, of course there will be a Tokedar for it alone, but
+frequently a Tokedar may have two or more villages under his charge. In
+the village, the head man--generally the most influential man in the
+community--also acts with the Tokedar, helping him to get ploughs,
+bullocks, and coolies when these are wanted; and under him, the village
+_chowkeydar_, or watchman, sees that stray cattle do not get into the
+fields, that the roads, bridges and fences are not damaged, and so on.
+Over the Tokedars, again, are Zillahdars. A 'zillah' is a small
+district. There may be eight or ten villages and three or four Tokedars
+under a Zillahdar. The Zillahdar looks out for good lands to change for
+bad ones, where this is necessary, and where no objection is made by
+the farmer; sees that the Tokedars do their work properly; reports
+rain, blight, locusts, and other visitations that might injure the
+crop; watches all that goes on in his zillah, and makes his report to
+the planter whenever anything of importance happens in his particular
+part of the cultivation. Over all again comes the JEMADAR--the head man
+over the whole cultivation--the planter's right-hand man.
+
+He is generally an old, experienced, and trusted servant. He knows all
+the lands for miles round, and the peculiar soils and products of all
+the villages far and near. He can tell what lands grow the best
+tobacco, what lands are free from inundation, what free from drought;
+the temper of the inhabitants of each village, and the history of each
+farm; where are the best ploughs, the best bullocks, and the best
+farming; in what villages you get most coolies for weeding; where you
+can get the best carts, the best straw, and the best of everything at
+the most favourable rates. He comes up each night when the day's work
+is done, and gets his orders for the morrow. You are often glad to take
+his advice on sowing, reaping, and other operations of the farm. He
+knows where the plant will ripen earliest, and where the leaf will be
+thickest, and to him you look for satisfaction if any screw gets loose
+in the outside farm-work.
+
+He generally accompanies you in your morning ride, shows you your new
+lands, consults with you about throwing up exhausted fields, and is
+generally a sort of farm-bailiff or confidential land-steward. Where he
+is an honest, intelligent, and loyal man, he takes half the care and
+work off your shoulders. Such men are however rare, and if not very
+closely looked after, they are apt to abuse their position, and often
+harass the ryots needlessly, looking more to the feathering of their
+own nests than the advancement of your interests.
+
+The only Jemadar I felt I could thoroughly trust, was my first one at
+Parewah, an old Rajpoot, called Kassee Rai. He was a fine, ruddy-faced,
+white-haired old man, as independent and straightforward an old farmer
+as you could meet anywhere, and I never had reason to regret taking his
+advice on any matter. I never found him out in a lie, or in a dishonest
+or underhand action. Though over seventy years of age he was upright as
+a dart. He could not keep up with me when we went out riding over the
+fields, but he would be out the whole day over the lands, and was
+always the first at his work in the morning and the last to leave off
+at night. The ryots all loved him, and would do anything for him; and
+when poor old Kassee died, the third year he had been under me, I felt
+as if an old friend had gone. I never spoke an angry word to him, and I
+never had a fault to find with him.
+
+When the hoeing has been finished in zeraat and zillah, and all the
+upturned soil battened down by the _hengha_, the next thing is to
+commence the ploughing. Your ploughmen are mostly low caste
+men--Doosadhs, Churnars, Moosahurs, Gwallahs, _et hoc genus omne_.
+The Indian plough, so like a big misshapen wooden pickaxe, has often
+been described. It however turns up the light soft soil very well
+considering its pretensions, and those made in the factory workshops
+are generally heavier and sharper than the ordinary village plough.
+Our bullocks too, being strong and well fed, the ploughing in the
+zeraats is generally good.
+
+The ploughing is immediately followed up by the _hengha_, which again
+triturates and breaks up the clods, rolls the sticks, leaves, and grass
+roots together, brings the refuse and dirt to the surface, and again
+levels the soil, and prevents the wind from taking away the moisture.
+The land now looks fine and fresh and level, but very dirty. A host of
+coolies are put on the fields with small sticks in their hands. All the
+Dangur women and children are there, with men, women, and children of
+all the poorest classes from the villages round, whom the attractions
+of wages or the exertions of headmen Tokedars and Zillahdars have
+brought together to earn their daily bread. With the sticks they beat
+and break up every clod, leaving not one behind the size of a walnut.
+They collect all the refuse, weeds, and dirt, which are heaped up and
+burnt on the field, and so they go on till the zeraats look as clean as
+a nobleman's garden, and you would think that surely this must satisfy
+the fastidious eye of the planter. But no, our work is not half begun
+yet.
+
+It is rather a strange sight to see some four or five hundred coolies
+squatted in a long irregular line, chattering, laughing, shouting, or
+squabbling. A dense cloud of dust rises over them, and through the dim
+obscurity one hears the ceaseless sound of the thwack! thwack! as their
+sticks rattle on the ground. White dust lies thick on each swarthy
+skin; their faces are like faces in a pantomime. There are the flashing
+eyes and the grinning rows of white teeth; all else is clouded in thick
+layers of dust, with black spots and stencillings showing here and
+there like a picture in sepia and chalk. As they near the end of the
+field they redouble their thwacking, shuffle along like land-crabs, and
+while the Mates, Peons, and Tokedars shout at them to encourage them,
+they raise a roar loud enough to wake the dead. The dust rises in
+denser clouds, the noise is deafening, a regular mad hurry-scurry, a
+wild boisterous scramble ensues, and amid much chaffing, noise, and
+laughter, they scramble off again to begin another length of land; and
+so the day's work goes on.
+
+The planter has to count his coolies several times a-day, or they would
+cheat him. Some come in the morning, get counted, and their names put
+on the roll, and then go off till paytime comes round. Some come for an
+hour or two, and send a relative in the evening when the pice are being
+paid out, to get the wage of work they have not done. All are paid in
+pice--little copper bits of coin, averaging about sixty-four to the
+rupee. However, you soon come to know the coolies by sight, and after
+some experience are rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get
+'done' most thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the
+artless and unsophisticated coolie.
+
+The type of feature along a line of coolies is as a rule a very
+forbidding and degraded one. They are mostly of the very poorest class.
+Many of them are plainly half silly, or wholly idiotic; not a few are
+deaf and dumb; others are crippled or deformed, and numbers are leprous
+and scrofulous. Numbers of them are afflicted in some districts with
+goitre, caused probably by bad drinking water; all have a pinched,
+withered, wan look, that tells of hard work and insufficient fare. It
+is a pleasure to turn to the end of the line, where the Dangur women
+and boys and girls generally take their place. Here are the loudest
+laughter, and the sauciest faces. The children are merry, chubby, fat
+things, with well-distended stomachs and pleasant looks; a merry smile
+rippling over their broad fat cheeks as they slyly glance up at you.
+The women--with huge earrings in their ears, and a perfect load of
+heavy brass rings on their arms--chatter away, make believe to be shy,
+and show off a thousand coquettish airs. Their very toes are bedizened
+with brass rings; and long festoons of red, white, and blue beads hang
+pendent round their necks.
+
+In the evening the line is re-formed before the bungalow. A huge bag of
+copper coin is produced. The old Lallah, or writer, with spectacles on
+nose, squats down in the middle of the assembled coolies, and as each
+name is called, the mates count out the pice, and make it over to the
+coolie, who forthwith hurries off to get his little purchases made at
+the village Bunneah's shop; and so, on a poor supper of parched peas,
+or boiled rice, with no other relish but a pinch of salt, the poor
+coolie crawls to bed, only to dream of more hard work and scanty fare
+on the morrow. Poor thing! a village coolie has a hard time of it!
+During the hot months, if rice be cheap and plentiful, he can jog along
+pretty comfortably, but when the cold nights come on, and he cowers in
+his wretched hut, hungry, half naked, cold, and wearied, he is of all
+objects most pitiable. It is, however, a fact little creditable to his
+more prosperous fellow-countrymen, that he gets better paid for his
+labour in connection with factory work, than he does in many cases for
+tasks forced on him by the leading ryots of the village in connection
+with their own fields.
+
+[Illustration: COOLIE'S HUT.]
+
+This first cleaning of the fields--or, as it is called, _Oustennie_--being
+finished, the lands are all again re-ploughed, re-harrowed, and then
+once more re-cleaned by the coolies, till not a weed or spot of dirt
+remains; and till the whole surface is uniformly soft, friable, moist,
+and clean. We have now some breathing time; and as this is the most
+enjoyable season of the year, when the days are cool, and roaring wood
+fires at night remind us of home, we hunt, visit, race, dance, and
+generally enjoy ourselves. Should heavy rain fall, as it sometimes does
+about Christmas and early in February, the whole cultivation gets
+beaten down and caked over. In such a case amusements must for a time
+be thrown aside, till all the lands have been again re-ploughed. Of
+course we are never wholly idle. There are always rents to collect,
+matters to adjust in connexion with our villages and tenantry,
+law-suits to recover bad debts, to enforce contracts, or protect
+manorial or other rights,--but generally speaking, when the lands have
+been prepared, we have a slack season or breathing time for a month or
+so.
+
+Arrangements having been made for the supply of seed, which generally
+comes from about the neighbourhood of Cawnpore, as February draws near
+we make preparations for beginning our sowings. February is the usual
+month, but it depends on the moisture, and sometimes sowings may go on
+up till May and June. In Purneah and Bhaugulpore, where the cultivation
+is much rougher than in Tirhoot, the sowing is done broadcast. And in
+Bengal the sowing is often done upon the soft mud which is left on the
+banks of the rivers at the retiring of the annual floods. In Tirhoot,
+however, where the high farming I have been trying to describe is
+practised, the sowing is done by means of drills. Drills are got out,
+overhauled, and put in thorough repair. Bags of seed are sent out to
+the villages, advances for bullocks are given to the ryots, and on a
+certain day when all seems favourable--no sign of rain or high
+winds--the drills are set at work, and day and night the work goes on,
+till all the cultivation has been sown. As the drills go along, the
+hengha follows close behind, covering the seed in the furrows; and once
+again it is put over, till the fields are all level, shining, and
+clean, waiting for the first appearance of the young soft shoots.
+
+These, after some seven, nine, or perhaps fifteen days, according to
+the weather, begin to appear in long lines of delicate pale yellowish
+green. This is a most anxious time. Should rain fall, the whole surface
+of the earth gets caked and hard, and the delicate plant burns out, or
+being chafed against the hard surface crust, it withers and dies. If
+the wind gets into the east, it brings a peculiar blight which settles
+round the leaf and collar of the stem of the young plant, chokes it,
+and sweeps off miles and miles of it. If hot west winds blow, the plant
+gets black, discoloured, burnt up, and dead. A south wind often brings
+caterpillars--at least this pest often makes its appearance when the
+wind is southerly; but as often as not caterpillars find their way to
+the young plant in the most mysterious manner,--no one knowing whence
+they come. Daily, nay almost hourly, reports come in from all parts of
+the zillah: now you hear of 'Lahee,' blight on some field; now it is
+'Ihirka,' scorching, or 'Pilooa,' caterpillars. In some places the seed
+may have been bad or covered with too much earth, and the plant comes
+up straggling and thin. If there is abundant moisture, this must be
+re-sown. In fact, there is never-ending anxiety and work at this
+season, but when the plant has got into ten or fifteen leaf, and is an
+inch or two high, the most critical time is over, and one begins to
+think about the next operation, namely WEEDING.
+
+The coolies are again in requisition. Each comes armed with a
+_coorpee_,--this is a small metal spatula, broad-pointed, with which
+they dig out the weeds with amazing deftness. Sometimes they may
+inadvertently take out a single stem of indigo with the weeds: the eye
+of the mate or Tokedar espies this at once, and the careless coolie is
+treated to a volley of Hindoo Billingsgate, in which all his relations
+are abused to the seventh generation. By the time the first weeding is
+finished, the plant will be over a foot high, and if necessary a second
+weeding is then given. After the second weeding, and if any rain has
+fallen in the interim, the plant will be fully two feet high.
+
+It is now a noble-looking expanse of beautiful green waving foliage. As
+the wind ruffles its myriads of leaves, the sparkle of the sunbeams on
+the undulating mass produces the most wonderful combinations of light
+and shade; feathery sprays of a delicate pale green curl gracefully all
+over the field. It is like an ocean of vegetation, with billows of rich
+colour chasing each other, and blending in harmonious hues; the whole
+field looking a perfect oasis of beauty amid the surrounding dull brown
+tints of the season.
+
+It is now time to give the plant a light touch of the plough. This
+eases the soil about the roots, lets in air and light, tends to clean
+the undergrowth of weeds, and gives it a great impetus. The operation
+is called _Bedaheunee_. By the beginning of June the tiny red flower is
+peeping from its leafy sheath, the lower leaves are turning yellowish
+and crisp, and it is almost time to begin the grandest and most
+important operation of the season, the manufacture of the dye from the
+plant.
+
+To this you have been looking forward during the cold raw foggy days of
+November, when the ploughs were hard at work,--during the hot fierce
+winds of March, and the still, sultry, breathless early days of June,
+when the air was so still and oppressive that you could scarcely
+breathe. These sultry days are the lull before the storm--the pause
+before the moisture-laden clouds of the monsoon roll over the land
+'rugged and brown,' and the wild rattle of thunder and the lurid glare
+of quivering never-ceasing lightning herald in the annual rains. The
+manufacture however deserves a chapter to itself.
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO BEATING VATS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Manufacture of Indigo.--Loading the vats.--Beating.--Boiling,
+straining, and pressing.--Scene in the Factory.--Fluctuation of
+produce.--Chemistry of Indigo.
+
+Indigo is manufactured solely from the leaf. When arrangements have
+been made for cutting and carting the plant from the fields, the vats
+and machinery are all made ready, and a day is appointed to begin
+'Mahye' or manufacture. The apparatus consists of, first, a strong
+serviceable pump for pumping up water into the vats: this is now mostly
+done by machinery, but many small factories still use the old Persian
+wheel, which may be shortly described as simply an endless chain of
+buckets, working on a revolving wheel or drum. The machine is worked by
+bullocks, and as the buckets ascend full from the well, they are
+emptied during their revolution into a small trough at the top, and the
+water is conveyed into a huge masonry reservoir or tank, situated high
+up above the vats, which forms a splendid open air bath for the planter
+when he feels inclined for a swim. Many of these tanks, called
+_Kajhana_, are capable of containing 40,000 cubic feet of water or
+more.
+
+Below, and in a line with this reservoir, are the steeping vats, each
+capable of containing about 2000 cubic feet of water when full. Of
+course the vats vary in size, but what is called a _pucca_ vat is of
+the above capacity. When the fresh green plant is brought in, the carts
+with their loads are ranged in line, opposite these loading vats. The
+loading coolies, 'Bojhunneas'--so called from '_Bojh_,' a bundle--jump
+into the vats, and receive the plant from the cart-men, stacking it up
+in perpendicular layers, till the vat is full: a horizontal layer is
+put on top to make the surface look even. Bamboo battens are then
+placed over the plant, and these are pressed down, and held in their
+place by horizontal beams, working in upright posts. The uprights have
+holes at intervals of six inches. An iron pin is put in one of the
+holes; a lever is put under this pin, and the beam pressed down, till
+the next hole is reached and a fresh pin inserted, which keeps the beam
+down in its place. When sufficient pressure has been applied, the
+sluice in the reservoir is opened, and the water runs by a channel into
+the vat till it is full. Vat after vat is thus filled till all are
+finished, and the plant is allowed to steep from ten to thirteen or
+fourteen hours, according to the state of the weather, the temperature
+of the water, and other conditions and circumstances which have all to
+be carefully noted.
+
+At first a greenish yellow tinge appears in the water, gradually
+deepening to an intense blue. As the fermentation goes on, froth forms
+on the surface of the vat, the water swells up, bubbles of gas arise to
+the surface, and the whole range of vats presents a frothing, bubbling,
+sweltering appearance, indicative of the chemical action going on in
+the interior. If a torch be applied to the surface of a vat, the
+accumulated gas ignites with a loud report, and a blue lambent flame
+travels with amazing rapidity over the effervescent liquid. In very hot
+weather I have seen the water swell up over the mid walls of the vats,
+till the whole range would be one uniform surface of frothing liquid,
+and on applying a light, the report has been as loud as that of a small
+cannon, and the flame has leapt from vat to vat like the flitting
+will-o'-the-wisp on the surface of some miasmatic marsh.
+
+When fermentation has proceeded sufficiently, the temperature of the
+vat lowers somewhat, and the water, which has been globular and convex
+on the surface and at the sides, now becomes distinctly convex and
+recedes a very little. This is a sign that the plant has been steeped
+long enough, and that it is now time to open the vat. A pin is knocked
+out from the bottom, and the pent-up liquor rushes out in a golden
+yellow stream tinted with blue and green into the beating vat, which
+lies parallel to, but at a lower level than the loading vat.
+
+Of course as the vats are loaded at different hours, and the steeping
+varies with circumstances, they must be ready to open also at different
+intervals. There are two men specially engaged to look after the
+opening. The time of loading each one is carefully noted; the time it
+will take to steep is guessed at, and an hour for opening written down.
+When this hour arrives, the _Gunta parree_, or time-keeper, looks at
+the vat, and if it appears ready he gets the pinmen to knock out the
+pin and let the steeped liquor run into the beating vat.
+
+Where there are many vats, this goes on all night, and by the morning
+the beating vats are all full of steeped liquor, and ready to be
+beaten.
+
+The beating now is mostly done by machinery; but the old style was very
+different. A gang of coolies (generally Dangurs) were put into the
+vats, having long sticks with a disc at the end, with which, standing
+in two rows, they threw up the liquor into the air. The quantity forced
+up by the one coolie encounters in mid air that sent up by the man
+standing immediately opposite to him, and the two jets meeting and
+mixing confusedly together, tumble down in broken frothy masses into
+the vat. Beginning with a slow steady stroke the coolies gradually
+increase the pace, shouting out a hoarse wild song at intervals; till,
+what with the swish and splash of the falling water, the measured beat
+of the _furrovahs_ or beating rods, and the yells and cries with which
+they excite each other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which
+at first is of a yellowish green, is now beginning to assume an intense
+blue tint; this is the result of the oxygenation going on. As the blue
+deepens, the exertions of the coolie increase, till with every muscle
+straining, head thrown back, chest expanded, his long black hair
+dripping with white foam, and his bronzed naked body glistening with
+blue liquor, he yells and shouts and twists and contorts his body till
+he looks like a true 'blue devil.' To see eight or ten vats full of
+yelling howling blue creatures, the water splashing high in mid air,
+the foam flecking the walls, and the measured beat of the _furrovahs_
+rising weird-like into the morning air, is almost enough to shake the
+nerve of a stranger, but it is music in the planter's ear, and he can
+scarce refrain from yelling out in sympathy with his coolies, and
+sharing in their frantic excitement. Indeed it is often necessary to
+encourage them if a vat proves obstinate, and the colour refuses to
+come--an event which occasionally does happen. It is very hard work
+beating, and when this constant violent exercise is kept up for about
+three hours (which is the time generally taken), the coolies are pretty
+well exhausted, and require a rest.
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO BEATERS AT WORK IN THE VATS.]
+
+During the beating, two processes are going on simultaneously. One is
+chemical--oxygenation--turning the yellowish green dye into a deep
+intense blue: the other is mechanical--a separation of the particles of
+dye from the water in which it is held in solution. The beating seems
+to do this, causing the dye to granulate in larger particles.
+
+When the vat has been beaten, the coolies remove the froth and scum
+from the surface of the water, and then leave the contents to settle.
+The fecula or dye, or _mall_, as it is technically called, now settles
+at the bottom of the vat in a soft pulpy sediment, and the waste liquor
+left on the top is let off through graduated holes in the front. Pin
+after pin is gradually removed, and the clear sherry-coloured waste
+allowed to run out till the last hole in the series is reached, and
+nothing but dye remains in the vat. By this time the coolies have had a
+rest and food, and now they return to the works, and either lift up the
+_mall_ in earthen jars and take it to the mall tank, or--as is now more
+commonly done--they run it along a channel to the tank, and then wash
+out and clean the vat to be ready for the renewed beating on the
+morrow. When all the _mall_ has been collected in the mall tank, it is
+next pumped up into the straining room. It is here strained through
+successive layers of wire gauze and cloth, till, free from dirt, sand
+and impurity, it is run into the large iron boilers, to be subjected to
+the next process. This is the boiling. This operation usually takes two
+or three hours, after which it is run off along narrow channels, till
+it reaches the straining-table. It is a very important part of the
+manufacture, and has to be carefully done. The straining-table is an
+oblong shallow wooden frame, in the shape of a trough, but all composed
+of open woodwork. It is covered by a large straining-sheet, on which
+the mall settles; while the waste water trickles through and is carried
+away by a drain. When the mall has stood on the table all night, it is
+next morning lifted up by scoops and buckets and put into the presses.
+These are square boxes of iron or wood, with perforated sides and
+bottom and a removeable perforated lid. The insides of the boxes are
+lined with press cloths, and when filled these cloths are carefully
+folded over the _mall_, which is now of the consistence of starch; and
+a heavy beam, worked on two upright three-inch screws, is let down on
+the lid of the press. A long lever is now put on the screws, and the
+nut worked slowly round. The pressure is enormous, and all the water
+remaining in the _mall_ is pressed through the cloth and perforations
+in the press-box till nothing but the pure indigo remains behind.
+
+The presses are now opened, and a square slab of dark moist indigo,
+about three or three and a half inches thick, is carried off on the
+bottom of the press (the top and sides having been removed), and
+carefully placed on the cutting frame. This frame corresponds in size
+to the bottom of the press, and is grooved in lines somewhat after the
+manner of a chess-board. A stiff iron rod with a brass wire attached is
+put through the groove under the slab, the wire is brought over the
+slab, and the rod being pulled smartly through brings the wire with it,
+cutting the indigo much in the same way as you would cut a bar of soap.
+When all the slab has been cut into bars, the wire and rod are next put
+into the grooves at right angles to the bars and again pulled through,
+thus dividing the bars into cubical cakes. Each cake is then stamped
+with the factory mark and number, and all are noted down in the books.
+They are then taken to the drying house; this is a large airy building,
+with strong shelves of bamboo reaching to the roof, and having narrow
+passages between the tiers of shelves. On these shelves or _mychans_,
+as they are called, the cakes are ranged to dry. The drying takes two
+or three months, and the cakes are turned and moved at frequent
+intervals, till thoroughly ready for packing. All the little pieces and
+corners and chips are carefully put by on separate shelves, and packed
+separately. Even the sweepings and refuse from the sheets and floor are
+all carefully collected, mixed with water, boiled separately, and made
+into cakes, which are called 'washings.'
+
+During the drying a thick mould forms on the cakes. This is carefully
+brushed off before packing, and, mixed with sweepings and tiny chips is
+all ground up in a hand-mill, packed in separate chests, and sold as
+dust. In October, when _mahye_ is over, and the preparation of the land
+going on again, the packing begins. The cakes, each of separate date,
+are carefully scrutinised, and placed in order of quality. The finest
+qualities are packed first, in layers, in mango-wood boxes; the boxes
+are first weighed empty, re-weighed when full, and the difference gives
+the nett weight of the indigo. The tare, gross, and nett weights are
+printed legibly on the chests, along with the factory mark and number
+of the chest, and when all are ready, they are sent down to the brokers
+in Calcutta for sale. Such shortly is the system of manufacture.
+
+During _mahye_ the factory is a busy scene. Long before break of day
+the ryots and coolies are busy cutting the plant, leaving it in green
+little heaps for the cartmen to load. In the early morning the carts
+are seen converging to the factory on every road, crawling along like
+huge green beetles. Here a cavalcade of twenty or thirty carts, there
+in clusters of twos or threes. When they reach the factory the loaders
+have several vats ready for the reception of the plant, while others
+are taking out the already steeped plant of yesterday; staggering under
+its weight, as, dripping with water, they toss it on the vast
+accumulating heap of refuse material.
+
+Down in the vats below, the beating coolies are plashing, and shouting,
+and yelling, or the revolving wheel (where machinery is used) is
+scattering clouds of spray and foam in the blinding sunshine. The
+firemen stripped to the waist, are feeding the furnaces with the dried
+stems of last year's crop, which forms our only fuel. The smoke hovers
+in volumes over the boiling-house. The pinmen are busy sorting their
+pins, rolling hemp round them to make them fit the holes more exactly.
+Inside the boiling-house, dimly discernible through the clouds of
+stifling steam, the boilermen are seen with long rods, stirring slowly
+the boiling mass of bubbling blue. The clank of the levers resounds
+through the pressing-house, or the hoarse guttural 'hah, hah!' as the
+huge lever is strained and pulled at by the press-house coolies. The
+straining-table is being cleaned by the table 'mate' and his coolies,
+while the washerman stamps on his sheets and press-cloths to extract
+all the colour from them, and the cake-house boys run to and fro
+between the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on
+their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from
+the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary
+to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds.
+The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the
+roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of
+the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified
+or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the objurgations of the
+'mates' as some lazy fellow eases his stroke in the beating vats; the
+cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round the circle where the
+Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp, dilapidated wheel-house;
+the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on the drum, the arriving and
+departing carts; the clang of the anvil, as the blacksmith and his men
+hammer away at some huge screw which has been bent; the hurrying crowds
+of cartmen and loaders with their burdens of fresh green plant or
+dripping refuse;--form such a medley of sights and sounds as I have
+never seen equalled in any other industry.
+
+The planter has to be here, there, and everywhere. He sends carts to
+this village or to that, according as the crop ripens. Coolies must be
+counted and paid daily. The stubble must be ploughed to give the plant
+a start for the second growth whenever the weather will admit of it.
+Reports have to be sent to the agents and owners. The boiling must be
+narrowly watched, as also the beating and the straining. He has a large
+staff of native assistants, but if his _mahye_ is to be successful, his
+eye must be over all. It is an anxious time, but the constant work is
+grateful, and when the produce is good, and everything working
+smoothly, it is perhaps the most enjoyable time of the whole year. Is
+it nothing to see the crop, on which so much care has been expended,
+which you have watched day by day through all the vicissitudes of the
+season, through drought, and flood, and blight; is it nothing to see it
+safely harvested, and your shelves filling day by day with fine sound
+cakes, the representatives of wealth, that will fill your pockets with
+commission, and build up your name as a careful and painstaking
+planter?
+
+'What's your produce?' is now the first query at this season, when
+planters meet. Calculations are made daily, nay hourly, to see how much
+is being got per beegah, or how much per vat. The presses are calculated
+to weigh so much. Some days you will get a press a vat, some days it
+will mount up to two presses a vat, and at other times it will recede
+to half a press a vat, or even less. Cold wet weather reduces the
+produce. Warm sunny weather will send it up again. Short stunted plant
+from poor lands will often reduce your average per acre, to be again
+sent up as fresh, hardy, leafy plant comes in from some favourite
+village, where you have new and fertile lands, or where the plant from
+the rich zeraats laden with broad strong leaf is tumbled into the
+loading vat.
+
+So far as I know, there seems to be no law of produce. It is the most
+erratic and incomprehensible thing about planting. One day your presses
+are full to straining, next day half of them lie empty. No doubt the
+state of the weather, the quality of your plant, the temperature of the
+water, the length of time steeping, and other things have an influence;
+but I know of no planter who can entirely and satisfactorily account
+for the sudden and incomprehensible fluctuations and variations which
+undoubtedly take place in the produce or yield of the plant. It is a
+matter of more interest to the planter than to the general public, but
+all I can say is, that if the circumstances attendant on any sudden
+change in the yielding powers of the plant were more accurately noted;
+if the chemical conditions of the water, the air, and the raw material
+itself, more especially in reference to the soil on which it grows, the
+time it takes in transit from the field to the vat, and other points,
+which will at once suggest themselves to a practical planter, were more
+carefully, methodically, and scientifically observed, some coherent
+theory resulting in plain practical results might be evolved.
+
+Planters should attend more to this. I believe the chemical history of
+indigo has yet to be written. The whole manufacture, so far as
+chemistry is concerned, is yet crude and ill-digested. I know that by
+careful experiment, and close scientific investigation and observation,
+the preparation of indigo could be much improved. So far as the
+mechanical appliances for the manufacture go, the last ten years have
+witnessed amazing and rapid improvements. What is now wanted, is, that
+what has been done for the mere mechanical appliances, should be done
+for the proper understanding of the chemical changes and conditions in
+the constitution of the plant, and in the various processes of its
+manufacture[1].
+
+[1] Since the above chapter was written Mons. P.I. Michea, a French
+    chemist of some experience in Indigo matters, has patented
+    an invention (the result of much study, experiment, and
+    investigation), by the application of which an immense increase in
+    the produce of the plant has been obtained during the last season,
+    in several factories where it has been worked in Jessore, Purneah,
+    Kishnaghur, and other places. This increase, varying according to
+    circumstances, has in some instances reached the amazing extent
+    of 30 to 47 per cent., and so far from being attended with a
+    deterioration of quality the dye produced is said to be finer than
+    that obtained under the old crude process described in the above
+    chapter. This shows what a waste must have been going on, and what
+    may yet be done, by properly organised scientific investigation.
+    I firmly believe that with an intelligent application of the
+    principles of chemistry and agricultural science, not only to the
+    manufacture but to growth, cultivation, nature of the soil,
+    application of manures, and other such departments of the
+    business, quite a revolution will set in, and a new era in the
+    history of this great industry will be inaugurated. Less area for
+    crop will be required, working expenses will be reduced, a greater
+    out-turn, and a more certain crop secured, and all classes,
+    planter and ryot alike, will be benefited.
+
+[Illustration: INDIAN FACTORY PEON.]
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO PLANTER'S HOUSE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Parewah factory.--A 'Bobbery Pack.'--Hunt through a village after a
+cat.--The pariah dog of India.--Fate of 'Pincher.'--Rampore hound.
+--Persian greyhound.--Caboolee dogs.--A jackal hunt.--Incidents of
+the chase.
+
+After living at Puttihee for two years, I was transferred to another
+out-factory in the same concern, called Parewah. There was here a very
+nice little three-roomed bungalow, with airy verandahs all round. It
+was a pleasant change from Puttihee, and the situation was very pretty.
+A small stream, almost dry in the hot weather, but a swollen, deep,
+rapid torrent in the rains, meandered past the factory. Nearing the
+bullock-house it suddenly took a sweep to the left in the form of a
+wide horseshoe, and in this bend or pocket was situated the bungalow,
+with a pretty terraced garden sloping gently to the stream. Thus the
+river was in full view from both the front and the back verandahs.
+In front, and close on the bank of the river, stood the kitchen,
+fowl-house, and offices. To the right of the compound were the stables,
+while behind the bungalow, and some distance down the stream, the
+wheel-house, vats, press-house, boiling-house, cake-house, and
+workshops were grouped together. I was but nine miles from the
+bead-factory, and the same distance from the station of Mooteeharree,
+while over the river, and but three miles off, I had the factory of
+Meerpore, with its hospitable manager as my nearest neighbour. His
+lands and mine lay contiguous. In fact some of his villages lay beyond
+some of mine, and he had to ride through part of my cultivation to
+reach them.
+
+Not unfrequently we would meet in the zillah of a morning, when we
+would invariably make for the nearest patch of grass or jungle, and
+enjoy a hunt together. In the cool early mornings, when the heavy night
+dews still lie glittering on the grass, when the cobwebs seem strung
+with pearls, and faint lines of soft fleecy mist lie in the hollows by
+the watercourses; long ere the hot, fiery sun has left his crimson bed
+behind the cold grey horizon, we are out on our favourite horse, the
+wiry, long-limbed _syce_ or groom trotting along behind us. The
+_mehter_ or dog-keeper is also in attendance with a couple of
+greyhounds in leash, and a motley pack of wicked little terriers
+frisking and frolicking behind him. This mongrel collection is known as
+'the Bobbery Pack,' and forms a certain adjunct to every assistant's
+bungalow in the district. I had one very noble-looking kangaroo hound
+that I had brought from Australia with me, and my 'bobbery pack' of
+terriers contained canine specimens of all sorts, sizes, and colours.
+
+On nearing a village, you would see one black fellow, 'Pincher,' set
+off at a round trot ahead, with seemingly the most innocent air in the
+world. 'Tilly,' 'Tiny,' and 'Nipper' follow.
+
+Then 'Dandy,' 'Curly,' 'Brandy,' and 'Nettle,' till spying a cat in the
+distance, the whole pack with a whimper of excitement dash off at a mad
+scramble, the hound straining meanwhile at the slip, till he almost
+pulls the _mehter_ off his legs. Off goes the cat, round the corner of
+a hut with her tail puffed up to fully three times its normal size.
+Round in mad, eager pursuit rattle the terriers, thirsting for her
+blood. The _syce_ dashes forward, vainly hoping to turn them from their
+quest. Now a village dog, roused from his morning nap, bounds out with
+a demoniac howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the curs in the
+village.
+
+Meanwhile the row inside the hut is fiendish. The sleeping family
+rudely roused by the yelping pack, utter the most discordant screams.
+The women with garments fluttering behind them, rush out beating their
+breasts, thinking the very devil is loose. The wails of the unfortunate
+cat mingle with the short snapping barks of the pack, or a howl of
+anguish as puss inflicts a caress on the face of some too careless or
+reckless dog. A howling village cur has rashly ventured too near.
+'Pincher' has him by the hind leg before you could say 'Jack Robinson.'
+Leaving the dead cat for 'Toby' and 'Nettle' to worry, the whole pack
+now fiercely attack the luckless _Pariah_ dog. A dozen of his village
+mates dance madly outside the ring, but are too wise or too cowardly to
+come to closer quarters. The kangaroo hound has now fairly torn the
+rope from the keeper's hand, and with one mighty bound is in the middle
+of the fight, scattering the village dogs right and left. The whole
+village is now in commotion, the _syce_ and keeper shout the names of
+the terriers in vain. Oaths, cries, shouts, and screams mingle with the
+yelping and growling of the combatants, till riding up, I disperse the
+worrying pack with a few cracks of my hunting whip, and so on again
+over the zillah, leaving the women and children to recover their
+scattered senses, the old men to grumble over their broken slumbers,
+and the boys and young men to wonder at the pluck and dash of the
+_Belaitee Kookoor_, or English dog.
+
+The common Pariah dog, or village dog of India, is a perfect cur; a
+mangy, carrion-loving, yellow-fanged, howling brute. A most unlovely
+and unloving beast. As you pass his village he will bounce out on you
+with the fiercest bark and the most menacing snarl; but lo! if a
+terrier the size of a teacup but boldly go at him, down goes his tail
+like a pump-handle, he turns white with fear, and like the arrant
+coward that he is, tumbles on his back and fairly screams for mercy. I
+have often been amused to see a great hulking cowardly brute come out
+like an avalanche at 'Pincher,' expecting to make one mouthful of him.
+What a look of bewilderment he would put on, as my gallant little
+'Pincher,' with a short, sharp, defiant bark would go boldly at him.
+The huge yellow brute would stop dead short on all four legs, and as
+the rest of my pack would come scampering round the corner, he would
+find himself the centre of a ring of indomitable assailants.
+
+How he curses his short-sighted temerity. With one long howl of utter
+dismay and deadly fear, he manages to get away from the pack, leaving
+my little doggies to come proudly round my horse with their mouths full
+of fur, and each of their little tails as stiff as an iron ramrod.
+
+That 'Pincher,' in some respects, was a very fiend incarnate. There was
+no keeping him in. He was constantly getting into hot water himself,
+and leading the pack into all sorts of mischief. He was as bold as
+brass and as courageous as a lion. He stole food, worried sheep and
+goats, and was never out of a scrape. I tried thrashing him, tying him
+up, half starving him, but all to no purpose. He would be into every
+hut in a village whenever he had the chance, overturning brass pots,
+eating up rice and curries, and throwing the poor villager's household
+into dismay and confusion. He would never leave a cat if he once saw
+it. I've seen him scramble through the roofs of more than one hut, and
+oust the cat from its fancied stronghold.
+
+I put him into an indigo vat with a big dog jackal once, and he whipped
+the jackal single-handed. He did not kill it, but he worried it till
+the jackal shammed dead and would not 'come to the scratch.' 'Pincher's'
+ears were perfect shreds, and his scars were as numerous almost as his
+hairs. My gallant 'Pincher!' His was a sad end. He got eaten up by an
+alligator in the 'Dhans,' a sluggish stream in Bhaugulpore. I had all
+my pack in the boat with me, the stream was swollen and full of weeds.
+A jackal gave tongue on the bank, and 'Pincher' bounded over the side
+of the boat at once. I tried to 'grab' him, and nearly upset the boat
+in doing so. Our boat was going rapidly down stream, and 'Pincher'
+tried to get ashore but got among the weeds. He gave a bark, poor
+gallant little dog, for help, but just then we saw a dark square snout
+shoot athwart the stream. A half-smothered sobbing cry from 'Pincher,'
+and the bravest little dog I ever possessed was gone for ever.
+
+There is another breed of large, strong-limbed, big-boned dogs, called
+Rampore hounds. They are a cross breed from the original upcountry dog
+and the Persian greyhound. Some call them the Indian greyhound. They
+seem to be bred principally in the Rampore-Bareilly district, but one
+or more are generally to be found in every planter's pack. They are
+fast and strong enough, but I have often found them bad at tackling,
+and they are too fond of their keeper ever to make an affectionate
+faithful dog to the European.
+
+Another somewhat similar breed is the _Tazi_. This, although not so
+large a dog as the Rhamporee, is a much pluckier animal, and when well
+trained will tackle a jackal with the utmost determination. He has a
+wrinkled almost hairless skin, but a very uncertain temper, and he is
+not very amenable to discipline. _Tazi_ is simply the Persian word for
+a greyhound, and refers to no particular breed. The common name for a
+dog is _Kutta_, pronounced _Cootta_, but the Tazi has certainly been an
+importation from the North-west, hence the Persian name. The wandering
+Caboolees, who come down to the plains once a year with dried fruits,
+spices, and other products of field or garden, also bring with them the
+dogs of their native country for sale, and on occasion they bring
+lovely long-haired white Persian cats, very beautiful animals. These
+Caboolee dogs are tall, long-limbed brutes, generally white, with a
+long thin snout, very long silky-haired drooping ears, and generally
+wearing tufts of hair on their legs and tail, somewhat like the
+feathering of a spaniel, which makes them look rather clumsy. They
+cannot stand the heat of the plains at all well, and are difficult to
+tame, but fleet and plucky, hunting well with an English pack.
+
+My neighbour Anthony at Meerpore had some very fine English greyhounds
+and bulldogs, and many a rattling burst have we had together after the
+fox or the jackal. Imagine a wide level plain, with one uniform dull
+covering of rice stubble, save where in the centre a mound rises some
+two acres in extent, covered with long thatching grass, a few scrubby
+acacia bushes, and other jungly brushwood. All round the circular
+horizon are dense forest masses of sombre looking foliage, save where
+some clump of palms uprear their stately heads, or the white shining
+walls of some temple, sacred to Shiva or Khristna glitter in the
+sunshine. Far to the left a sluggish creek winds slowly along through
+the plain, its banks fringed with acacias and wild rose jungle. On the
+far bank is a small patch of _Sal_ forest jungle, with a thick rank
+undergrowth of ferns, thistles, and rank grass. As I am slowly riding
+along I hear a shout in the distance, and looking round behold Anthony
+advancing at a rapid hand gallop. His dogs and mine, being old friends,
+rapidly fraternise, and we determine on a hunt.
+
+'Let's try the old patch, Anthony!'
+
+'All right,' and away we go making straight for the mound. When we
+reach the grass the syces and keepers hold the hounds at the corners
+outside, while we ride through the grass urging on the terriers, who,
+quivering with excitement, utter short barks, and dash here and there
+among the thick grass, all eager for a find.
+
+'Gone away, gone away!' shouts Anthony, as a fleet fox dashes out,
+closely followed by 'Pincher' and half a dozen others. The hounds are
+slipped, and away go the pack in full pursuit, we on our horses riding
+along, one on each side of the chase. The fox has a good start, but now
+the hounds are nearing him, when with a sudden whisk he doubles round
+the ridge encircling a rice field, the hounds overshoot him, and ere
+they turn the fox has put the breadth of a good field between himself
+and his pursuers. He is now making back again for the grass, but
+encounters some of the terriers who have tailed off behind. With
+panting chests and lolling tongues, they are pegging stolidly along,
+when fortune gives them this welcome chance. Redoubling their efforts,
+they dash at the fox. 'Bravo, Tilly! you tumbled him over that time;'
+but he is up and away again. Dodging, double-turning, and twisting, he
+has nearly run the gauntlet, and the friendly covert is close at hand,
+but the hounds are now up again and thirsting for his blood. 'Hurrah!
+Minnie has him!' cries Anthony, and riding up we divest poor Reynard of
+his brush, pat the dogs, ease the girths for a minute, and then again
+into the jungle for another beat.
+
+This time a fat old jackal breaks to the left, long before the dogs are
+up. Yelling to the _mehters_ not to slip the hounds, we gather the
+terriers together, and pound over the stubble and ridges. He is going
+very leisurely, casting an occasional scared look over his shoulder.
+'Curly' and 'Legs,' two of my fastest terriers, are now in full view,
+they are laying themselves well to the ground, and Master Jackal thinks
+it's high time to increase his pace. He puts on a spurt, but condition
+tells. He is fat and pursy, and must have had a good feed last night on
+some poor dead bullock. He is shewing his teeth now. Curly makes his
+rush, and they both roll over together. Up hurries Legs, and the jackal
+gets a grip, gives him a shake, and then hobbles slowly on. The two
+terriers now hamper him terribly. One minute they are at his heels, and
+as soon as he turns, they are at his ear or shoulder. The rest of the
+pack are fast coming up.
+
+Anthony has a magnificent bulldog, broad-chested, and a very Goliath
+among dogs. He is called 'Sailor.' Sailor always pounds along at the
+same steady pace; he never seems to get flurried. Sitting lazily at the
+door, he seems too indolent even to snap at a fly. He is a true
+philosopher, and nought seems to disturb his serenity. But see him
+after a jackal, his big red tongue hanging out, his eyes flashing fire,
+and his hair erected on his back like the bristles of a wild boar. He
+looks fiendish then, and he is a true bulldog. There is no flinching
+with Sailor. Once he gets his grip it's no use trying to make him let
+go.
+
+Up comes Sailor now.
+
+He has the jackal by the throat.
+
+A hoarse, rattling, gasping yell, and the jackal has gone to the happy
+hunting grounds.
+
+The sun is now mounting in the sky. The hounds and terriers feel the
+heat, so sending them home by the keeper, we diverge on our respective
+roads, ride over our cultivation, seeing the ploughing and preparations
+generally, till hot, tired, and dusty, we reach home about 11.30,
+tumble into our bath, and feeling refreshed, sit down contentedly to
+breakfast. If the _dak_ or postman has come in we get our letters and
+papers, and the afternoon is devoted to office work and accounts,
+hearing complaints and reports from the villages, or looking over any
+labour that may be going on in the zeraats or at the workshops. In the
+evening we ride over the zeraats again, give orders for the morrow's
+work, consume a little tobacco, have an early dinner, and after a
+little reading, retire soon to bed to dream of far away friends and the
+happy memories of home. Many an evening it is very lonely work. No
+friendly face, and no congenial society within miles of your factory.
+Little wonder that the arrival of a brother planter sends a thrill
+through the frame, and that his advent is welcomed as the most
+agreeable break to the irksome monotony of our lonely life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Fishing in India.--Hereditary trades.--The boatmen and fishermen of
+India.--Their villages.--Nets.--Modes of fishing.--Curiosities
+relating thereto.--Catching an alligator with a hook.--Exciting
+capture.-Crocodiles.--Shooting an alligator.--Death of the man-eater.
+
+Not only in the wild jungles, on the undulating plains, and among the
+withered brown stubbles, does animal life abound in India; but the
+rivers, lakes, and creeks teem with fish of every conceivable size,
+shape, and colour. The varieties are legion. From the huge black
+porpoise, tumbling through the turgid stream of the Ganges, to the
+bright, sparkling, silvery shoals of delicate _chillooahs_ or
+_poteeahs_, which one sees darting in and out among the rice stubbles
+in every paddy field during the rains. Here a huge _bhowarree_ (pike),
+or ravenous _coira_, comes to the surface with a splash; there a
+_raho_, the Indian salmon, with its round sucker-like mouth, rises
+slowly to the surface, sucks in a fly and disappears as slowly as it
+rose; or a _pachgutchea_, a long sharp-nosed fish, darts rapidly by; a
+shoal of mullet with their heads out of the water swim athwart the
+stream, and far down in the cool depths of the tank or lake, a thousand
+different varieties disport themselves among the mazy labyrinths of the
+broad-leaved weeds.
+
+During the middle, and about the end of the rains, is the best time for
+fishing; the whole country is then a perfect network of streams. Every
+rice field is a shallow lake, with countless thousands of tiny fish
+darting here and there among the rice stalks. Every ditch teems with
+fish, and every hollow in every field is a well stocked aquarium.
+
+Round the edge of every lake or tank in the early morning, or when the
+fierce heat of the day begins to get tempered by the approaching shades
+of evening, one sees numbers of boys and men of the poorer classes,
+each with a couple of rough bamboo rods stuck in the ground in front of
+him, watching his primitive float with the greatest eagerness, and
+whipping out at intervals some luckless fish of about three or four
+ounces in weight with a tremendous haul, fit for the capture of a
+forty-pounder. They get a coarse sort of hook in the bazaar, rig up a
+roughly-twisted line, tie on a small piece of hollow reed for a float,
+and with a lively earth-worm for a bait, they can generally manage in a
+very short time to secure enough fish for a meal.
+
+With a short light rod, a good silk line, and an English hook attached
+to fine gut, I have enjoyed many a good hour's sport at Parewah. I used
+to have a cane chair sent down to the bank of the stream, a _punkah_,
+or hand fan, plenty of cooling drinks, and two coolie boys in
+attendance to remove the fish, renew baits, and keep the punkah in
+constant swing. There I used to sit enjoying my cigar, and pulling in
+little fish at the rate sometimes of a couple a minute.
+
+I remember hooking a turtle once, and a terrible job it was to land
+him. My light rod bent like a willow, but the tackle was good, and
+after ten minutes' hard work I got the turtle to the side, where my
+boys soon secured him. He weighed thirteen pounds. Sometimes you get
+among a colony of freshwater crabs.
+
+They are little brown brutes, and strip your hooks of the bait as fast
+as you fling them in. There is nothing for it in such a case but to
+shift your station. Many of the bottom fish--the _ghurai_, the
+_saourie_, the _barnee_ (eel), and others, make no effort to escape the
+hook. You see them resting at the bottom, and drop the bait at their
+very nose. On the whole, the hand fishing is uninteresting, but it
+serves to wile away an odd hour when hunting and shooting are hardly
+practicable.
+
+Particular occupations in India are restricted to particular castes.
+All trades are hereditary. For example, a _tatmah_, or weaver, is
+always a weaver. He cannot become a blacksmith or carpenter. He has no
+choice. He must follow the hereditary trade. The peculiar system of
+land-tenure in India, which secures as far as possible a bit of land
+for every one, tends to perpetuate this hereditary selection of trades,
+by enabling every cultivator to be so far independent of his
+handicraft, thus restricting competition. There may be twenty _lohars_,
+or blacksmiths, in a village, but they do not all follow their calling.
+They till their lands, and are _de facto_ petty farmers. They know the
+rudiments of their handicraft, but the actual blacksmith's work is done
+by the hereditary smith of the village, whose son in turn will succeed
+him when he dies, or if he leave no son, his fellow caste men will put
+in a successor.
+
+Nearly every villager during the rains may be found on the banks of the
+stream or lake, angling in an amateur sort of way, but the fishermen
+of Behar _par excellence_ are the _mull[=a]hs_; they are also called
+_Gouhree, Beeu_, or _Muchooah_. In Bengal they are called _Nikaree_,
+and in some parts _Baeharee_, from the Persian word for a boat. In the
+same way _muchooah_ is derived from _much_, a fish, and _mullah_ means
+boatman, strictly speaking, rather than fisherman. All boatmen and
+fishermen belong to this caste, and their villages can be recognised at
+once by the instruments of their calling lying all around.
+
+Perched high on some bank overlooking the stream or lake, you see
+innumerable festoons of nets hanging out to dry on tall bamboo poles,
+or hanging like lace curtains of very coarse texture from the roofs and
+eaves of the huts. Hauled up on the beach are a whole fleet of boats of
+different sizes, from the small _dugout_, which will hold only one man,
+to the huge _dinghy_, in which the big nets and a dozen men can be
+stowed with ease. Great heaps of shells of the freshwater mussel show
+the source of great supplies of bait; while overhead a great hovering
+army of kites and vultures are constantly circling round, eagerly
+watching for the slightest scrap of offal from the nets. When the rains
+have fairly set in, and the fishermen have got their rice fields all
+planted out, they are at liberty to follow their hereditary avocation.
+A day is fixed for a drag, and the big nets are overhauled and got in
+readiness. The head _mullah_, a wary grizzled old veteran, gives the
+orders. The big drag-net is bundled into the boat, which is quickly
+pushed off into the stream, and at a certain distance from shore the
+net is cast from the boat. Being weighted at the lower end it rapidly
+sinks, and, buoyed on the upper side with pieces of cork, it makes a
+perpendicular wall in the water. Several long bamboo poles are now run
+through the ropes along the upper side of the net, to prevent the net
+being dragged under water altogether by the weight of the fish in a
+great haul. The little boats, a crowd of which are in attendance, now
+dart out, surrounding the net on all sides, and the boatmen beating
+their oars on the sides of the boats, create such a clatter as to
+frighten, the fish into the circumference of the big net. This is now
+being dragged slowly to shore by strong and willing arms. The women and
+children watch eagerly on the bank. At length the glittering haul is
+pulled up high and dry on the beach, the fish are divided among the
+men, the women fill their baskets, and away they hie to the nearest
+_bazaar_, or if it be not _bazaar_ or market day, they hawk the fish
+through the nearest villages, like our fish-wives at home.
+
+There is another common mode of fishing adopted in narrow lakes and
+small streams, which are let out to the fishermen by the Zemindars or
+landholders. A barricade made of light reeds, all matted together by
+string, is stuck into the stream, and a portion of the water is fenced
+in, generally in a circular form. The reed fence being quite flexible
+is gradually moved in, narrowing the circle. As the circle narrows, the
+agitation inside is indescribable; fish jumping in all directions--a
+moving mass of glittering scales and fins. The larger ones try to leap
+the barrier, and are caught by the attendant _mullahs_, who pounce on
+them with swift dexterity. Eagles and kites dart and swoop down,
+bearing off a captive fish in their talons. The reed fence is doubled
+back on itself, and gradually pushed on till the whole of the fish
+inside are jammed together in a moving mass. The weeds and dirt are
+then removed, and the fish put into baskets and carried off to market.
+
+Others, again, use circular casting nets, which they throw with very
+great dexterity. Gathering the net into a bunch they rest it on the
+shoulder, then with a circular sweep round the head, they fling it far
+out. Being loaded, it sinks down rapidly in the water. A string is
+attached to the centre of the net, and the fisherman hauls it in with
+whatever prey he may be lucky enough to secure.
+
+As the waters recede during October, after the rains have ended, each
+runlet and purling stream becomes a scene of slaughter on a most
+reckless and improvident scale. The innumerable shoals of spawn and
+small fish that have been feeding in the rice fields, warned by some
+instinct seek the lakes and main streams. As they try to get their way
+back, however, they find at each outlet in each ditch and field a
+deadly wicker trap, in the shape of a square basket with a V-shaped
+opening leading into it, through which the stream makes its way. After
+entering this basket there is no egress except through the narrow
+opening, and they are trapped thus in countless thousands. Others of
+the natives in mere wantonness put a shelf of reeds or rushes in the
+bed of the stream, with an upward slope. As the water rushes along, the
+little fish are left high and dry on this shelf or screen, and the
+water runs off below. In this way scarcely a fish escapes, and as
+millions are too small to be eaten, it is a most serious waste. The
+attention of Government has been directed to the subject, and steps may
+be taken to stop such a reckless and wholesale destruction of a
+valuable food supply.
+
+In some parts of Purneah and Bhaugulpore I have seen a most ingenious
+method adopted by the _mullahs_. A gang of four or five enter the
+stream and travel slowly downwards, stirring up the mud at the bottom
+with their feet. The fish, ascending the stream to escape the mud, get
+entangled in the weeds. The fishermen feel them with their feet amongst
+the weeds, and immediately pounce on them with their hands. Each man
+has a _gila_ or earthen pot attached by a string to his waist and
+floating behind him in the water. I have seen four men fill their
+earthen pots in less than an hour by this ingenious but primitive mode
+of fishing. Some of them can use their feet almost as well for grasping
+purposes as their hands.
+
+Another mode of capture is by a small net. A flat piece of netting is
+spread over a hoop, to which four or five pieces of bamboo are
+attached, rising up and meeting in the centre, so as to form a sort of
+miniature skeleton tent-like frame over the net. The hoop with the net
+stretched tight across is then pressed down flat on the bottom of the
+tank or stream. If any fish are beneath, their efforts to escape
+agitate the net. The motion is communicated to the fisherman by a
+string from the centre of the net which is rolled round the fisherman's
+thumb. When the jerking of his thumb announces a captive fish, he puts
+down his left hand and secures his victim. The _Banturs_, _Nepaulees_,
+and other jungle tribes, also often use the bow and arrow as a means of
+securing fish.
+
+Seated on the branch of some overhanging tree, while his keen eye scans
+the depths below, he watches for a large fish, and as it passes, he
+lets fly his arrow with unerring aim, and impales the luckless victim.
+Some tribes fish at night, by torchlight, spearing the fish who are
+attracted by the light. In Nepaul the bark of the _Hill Sirres_ is
+often used to poison a stream or piece of water. Pounded up and thrown
+in, it seems to have some uncommon effect on the fish. After water has
+been treated in this way, the fish, seemingly quite stupefied, rise to
+the surface, on which they float in great numbers, and allow themselves
+to be caught. The strangest part of it is that they are perfectly
+innocuous as food, notwithstanding this treatment.
+
+Fish forms a very favourite article of diet with both Mussulmans and
+Hindoos. Many of the latter take a vow to touch no flesh of any kind.
+They are called _Kunthees_ or _Boghuts_, but a _Boghut_ is more of an
+ascetic than a _Kunthee_. However, the _Kunthee_ is glad of a fish
+dinner when he can get it. They are restricted to no particular sect or
+caste, but all who have taken the vow wear a peculiar necklace, made
+generally of sandal-wood beads or _neem_ beads round their throats.
+Hence the name, from _kunth_ meaning the throat.
+
+The right to fish in any particular piece of water, is let out by the
+proprietor on whose land the water lies, or through which it flows. The
+letting is generally done by auction yearly. The fishing is called a
+_shilkur_; from _shal_, a net. It is generally taken by some rich
+_Bunneah_ (grain seller) or village banker, who sub-lets it in turn to
+the fishermen.
+
+In some of the tanks which are not so let, and where the native
+proprietor preserves the fish, first-class sport can be had. A common
+native poaching dodge is this: if some oil cake be thrown into the
+water a few hours previous to your fishing, or better still, balls made
+of roasted linseed meal, mixed with bruised leaves of the 'sweet
+basil,' or _toolsee_ plant, the fish assemble in hundreds round the
+spot, and devour the bait greedily. With a good eighteen-foot rod, fish
+of from twelve to twenty pounds are not uncommonly caught, and will
+give good play too. Fishing in the plains of India is, however, rather
+tame sport at the best of times.
+
+You have heard of the famous _mahseer_--some of them over eighty or a
+hundred pounds weight? We have none of these in Behar, but the huge
+porpoise gives splendid rifle or carbine practice as he rolls through
+the turgid streams. They are difficult to hit, but I have seen several
+killed with ball; and the oil extracted from their bodies is a splendid
+dressing for harness. But the most exciting fishing I have ever seen
+was--What do you think?--Alligator fishing! Yes, the formidable scaly
+monster, with his square snout and terrible jaws, his ponderous body
+covered with armour, and his serrated tail, with which he could break
+the leg of a bullock, or smash an outrigger as easily as a whale could
+smash a jolly-boat.
+
+I must try to describe one day's alligator fishing.
+
+When I was down in Bhaugulpore, I went out frequently fishing in the
+various tanks and streams near my factory. My friend Pat, who is a keen
+sportsman and very fond of angling, wrote to me one day when he and his
+brother Willie were going out to the Teljuga, asking me to join their
+party. The Teljuga is the boundary stream between Tirhoot and
+Bhaugulpore, and its sluggish muddy waters teem with alligators--the
+regular square-nosed _mugger_, the terrible man-eater. The _nakar_ or
+long-nosed species may be seen in countless numbers in any of the large
+streams, stretched out on the banks basking in the noonday sun. Going
+down the Koosee particularly, you come across hundreds sometimes lying
+on one bank. As the boat nears them, they slide noiselessly and slowly
+into the stream. A large excrescence forms on the tip of the long
+snout, like a huge sponge; and this is often all that is seen on the
+surface of the water as the huge brute swims about waiting for his
+prey. These _nakars_, or long-nosed specimens, never attack human
+beings--at least such cases are very very rare--but live almost
+entirely on fish. I remember seeing one catch a paddy-bird on one
+occasion near the junction of the Koosee with the Ganges. My boat was
+fastened to the shore near a slimy creek, that came oozing into the
+river from some dense jungle near. I was washing my hands and face on
+the bank, and the boatmen were fishing with a small hand-net, for our
+breakfast. Numbers of attenuated melancholy-looking paddy-birds were
+stalking solemnly and stiltedly along the bank, also fishing for
+_theirs_. I noticed one who was particularly greedy, with his long legs
+half immersed in the water, constantly darting out his long bill and
+bringing up a hapless struggling fish. All of a sudden a long snout and
+the ugly serrated ridgy back of a _nakar_ was shot like lightning at
+the hapless bird, and right before our eyes the poor paddy was crunched
+up. As a rule, however, alligators confine themselves to a fish diet,
+and are glad of any refuse or dead animal that may float their way. But
+with the _mugger_, the _boach_, or square-nosed variety, 'all is fish
+that comes to his net.' His soul delights in young dog or live pork. A
+fat duck comes not amiss; and impelled by hunger he hesitates not to
+attack man. Once regaled with the flavour of human flesh, he takes up
+his stand near some ferry, or bathing ghaut, where many hapless women
+and children often fall victims to his unholy appetite, before his
+career is cut short.
+
+I remember shooting one ghastly old scaly villain in a tank near
+Ryseree. He had made this tank his home, and with that fatalism which
+is so characteristic of the Hindoo, the usual ablutions and bathings
+went on as if no such monster existed. Several woman having been
+carried off, however, at short intervals, the villagers asked me to try
+and rid them of their foe. I took a ride down to the tank one Friday
+morning, and found the banks a scene of great excitement. A woman had
+been carried off some hours before as she was filling her water jar,
+and the monster was now reposing at the bottom of the tank digesting
+his horrible meal. The tank was covered with crimson water-lilies in
+full bloom, their broad brown and green leaves showing off the crimson
+beauty of the open flower. At the north corner some wild rose bushes
+dropped over the water, casting a dense matted shade. Here was the
+haunt of the _mugger_. He had excavated a huge gloomy-looking hole,
+into which he retired when gorged with prey. My first care was to cut
+away some of these bushes, and then, finding he was not at home, we
+drove some bamboo stakes through the bank to prevent him getting into
+his _manu_, which is what the natives term the den or hole. I then sat
+down under a _goolar_ tree, to wait for his appearance. The _goolar_ is
+a species of fig, and the leaves are much relished by cattle and goats.
+Gradually the village boys and young men went off to their ploughing,
+or grass cutting for the cows' evening meal. A woman came down
+occasionally to fill her waterpot in evident fear and trembling. A
+swarm of _minas_ (the Indian starling) hopped and twittered round my
+feet. The cooing of a pair of amatory pigeons overhead nearly lulled me
+to slumber. A flock of green parrots came swiftly circling overhead,
+making for the fig-tree at the south end of the tank. An occasional
+_raho_ lazily rose among the water-lilies, and disappeared with an
+indolent flap of his tail. The brilliant kingfisher, resplendent in
+crimson and emerald, sat on the withered branch of a prostrate
+mango-tree close by, pluming his feathers and doubtless meditating on
+the vanity of life. Suddenly, close by the massive post which marks the
+centre of every Hindoo tank, a huge scaly snout slowly and almost
+imperceptibly rose to the surface, then a broad, flat, forbidding
+forehead, topped by two grey fishy eyes with warty-looking callosities
+for eyebrows. Just then an eager urchin who had been squatted by me for
+hours, pointed to the brute. It was enough. Down sank the loathsome
+creature, and we had to resume our attitude of expectation and patient
+waiting. Another hour passed slowly. It was the middle of the
+afternoon, and very hot. I had sent my _tokedar_ off for a 'peg' to the
+factory, and was beginning to get very drowsy, when, right in the same
+spot, the repulsive head again rose slowly to the surface. I had my
+trusty No. 12 to my shoulder on the instant, glanced carefully along
+the barrels, but just then only the eyes of the brute were invisible. A
+moment of intense excitement followed, and then, emboldened by the
+extreme stillness, he showed his whole head above the surface. I pulled
+the trigger, and a Meade shell crashed through the monster's skull,
+scattering his brains in the water and actually sending one splinter of
+the skull to the opposite edge of the tank, where my little Hindoo boy
+picked it up and brought it to me.
+
+There was a mighty agitation in the water; the water-lilies rocked to
+and fro, and the broad leaves glittered with the water drops thrown on
+them; then all was still. Hearing the report of my gun, the natives
+came flocking to the spot, and, telling them their enemy was slain, I
+departed, leaving instructions to let me know when the body came to the
+surface. It did so three days later. Getting some _chumars_ and _domes_
+(two of the lowest castes, as none of the higher castes will touch a
+dead body under pain of losing caste), we hauled the putrid carcase to
+shore, and on cutting it open, found the glass armlets and brass
+ornaments of no less than five women and the silver ornaments of three
+children, all in a lump in the brute's stomach. Its skull was
+completely smashed and shattered to pieces by my shot. Its teeth were
+crusted with tartar, and worn almost to the very stumps. It measured
+nineteen feet.
+
+But during this digression my friends Pat and Willie have been waiting
+on the banks of the 'Teljuga.' I reached their tents late at night,
+found them both in high spirits after a good day's execution among the
+ducks and teal, and preparations being made for catching an alligator
+next day. Up early in the morning, we beat some grass close by the
+stream, and roused out an enormous boar that gave us a three mile spin
+and a good fight, after Pat had given him first spear. After breakfast
+we got our tackle ready.
+
+This was a large iron hook with a strong shank, to which was attached a
+stout iron ring. To this ring a long thick rope was fastened, and I
+noticed for several yards the strands were all loose and detached, and
+only knotted at intervals. I asked Pat the reason of this curious
+arrangement, and was told that if we were lucky enough to secure a
+_mugger_, the loose strands would entangle themselves amongst his
+formidable teeth, whereas were the rope in one strand only he might
+bite it through; the knottings at intervals were to give greater
+strength to the line. We now got our bait ready. On this occasion it
+was a live tame duck. Passing the bend of the hook round its neck, and
+the shank under its right wing, we tied the hook in this position with
+thread. We then made a small raft of the soft pith of the
+plantain-tree, tied the duck to the raft and committed it to the
+stream. Holding the rope as clear of the water as we could, the poor
+quacking duck floated slowly down the muddy current, making an
+occasional vain effort to get free. We saw at a distance an ugly snout
+rise to the surface for an instant and then noiselessly disappear.
+
+'There's one!' says Pat in a whisper.
+
+'Be sure and not strike too soon,' says Willie.
+
+'Look out there, you lazy rascals!' This in Hindostanee to the grooms
+and servants who were with us.
+
+Again the black mass rises to the surface, but this time nearer to the
+fated duck. As if aware of its peril it now struggles and quacks most
+vociferously. Nearer and nearer each time the black snout rises, and
+then each time silently disappears beneath the turgid muddy stream. Now
+it appears again; this time there are two, and there is another at a
+distance attracted by the quacking of the duck. We on the bank cower
+down and go as noiselessly as we can. Sometimes the rope dips on the
+water, and the huge snout and staring eyes immediately disappear. At
+length it rises within a few yards of the duck; then there is a mighty
+rush, two huge jaws open and shut with a snap like factory shears, and
+amid a whirl of foam and water and surging mud the poor duck and the
+hideous reptile disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense
+volumes of mud that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the
+tragedy that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim
+to and fro still further disturbing the muddy current.
+
+'Give him lots of time to swallow,' yells Pat, now fairly mad with
+excitement.
+
+The grooms and grass-cutters howl and dance. Willie and I dig each
+other in the ribs, and all generally act in an excited and insane way.
+
+Pat now puts the rope over his shoulder, we all take hold, and with a
+'one, two, three!' we make a simultaneous rush from the bank, and as
+the rope suddenly tightens with a pull and strain that nearly jerks us
+all on our backs, we feel that we have hooked the monster, and our
+excitement reaches its culminating point.
+
+What a commotion now in the black depths of the muddy stream! The
+water, lashed by his powerful tail, surges and dashes in eddying
+whirls. He rises and darts backwards and forwards, snapping his
+horrible jaws, moving his head from side to side, his eyes glaring with
+fury. We hold stoutly on to the rope, although our wrists are strained
+and our arms ache. At length he begins to feel our steady pull, and
+inch by inch, struggling demoniacally, he nears the bank. When once he
+reaches it, however, the united efforts of twice our number would fail
+to bring him farther. Bleeding and foaming at the mouth, his horrid
+teeth glistening amid the frothy, blood-flecked foam, he plants his
+strong curved fore-legs against the shelving bank, and tugs and strains
+at the rope with devilish force and fury. It is no use--the rope has
+been tested, and answers bravely to the strain; and now with a long
+boar spear, Pat cautiously descends the bank, and gives him a deadly
+thrust under the fore arm. With a last fiendish glare of hate and
+defiance, he springs forward; we haul in the rope, Pat nimbly jumps
+back, and a pistol shot through the eye settles the monster for ever.
+This was the first alligator I ever saw hooked; he measured sixteen and
+a half feet exactly, but words can give no idea of half the excitement
+that attended the capture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Native superstitions.--Charming a bewitched woman.--Exorcising ghosts
+from a field.--Witchcraft.--The witchfinder or 'Ojah.'--Influence of
+fear.--Snake bites.--How to cure them.--How to discover a thief.--Ghosts
+and their habits.--The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.--Cruelty to
+animals by natives.
+
+The natives as a rule, and especially the lower classes, are
+excessively superstitious. They are afraid to go out after nightfall,
+believing that then the spirits of the dead walk abroad. It is almost
+impossible to get a coolie, or even a fairly intelligent servant, to go
+a message at night, unless you give him another man for company.
+
+A belief in witches is quite prevalent, and there is scarcely a village
+in Behar that does not contain some withered old crone, reputed and
+firmly believed to be a witch. Others, either young or old are believed
+to have the evil eye; and, as in Scotland some centuries ago, there are
+also witch-finders and sorcerers, who will sell charms, cast
+nativities, give divinations, or ward off the evil efforts of wizards
+and witches by powerful spells. When a wealthy man has a child born,
+the Brahmins cast the nativity of the infant on some auspicious day.
+They fix on the name, and settle the date for the baptismal ceremony.
+
+I remember a man coming to me on one occasion from the village of
+Kuppoorpuckree. He rushed up to where I was sitting in the verandah,
+threw himself at my feet, with tears streaming down his cheeks, and
+amid loud cries for pity and help, told me that his wife had just been
+bewitched. Getting him somewhat soothed and pacified, I learned that a
+reputed witch lived next door to his house; that she and the man's wife
+had quarrelled in the morning about some capsicums which the witch was
+trying to steal from his garden; that in the evening, as his wife was
+washing herself inside the _angana_, or little courtyard appertaining
+to his house, she was seized with cramps and shivering fits, and was
+now in a raging fever; that the witch had been also bathing at the
+time, and that the water from her body had splashed over this man's
+fence, and part of it had come in contact with his wife's body--hence
+undoubtedly this strange possession. He wished me to send peons at
+once, and have the witch seized, beaten, and expelled from the village.
+It would have been no use my trying to persuade him that no witchcraft
+existed. So I gave him a good dose of quinine for his wife, which she
+was to take as soon as the fit subsided. Next I got my old _moonshee_,
+or native writer, to write some Persian characters on a piece of paper;
+I then gave him this paper, muttering a bit of English rhyme at the
+time, and telling him this was a powerful spell. I told him to take
+three hairs from his wife's head, and a paring from her thumb and big
+toe nails, and at the rising of the moon to burn them outside the walls
+of his hut. The poor fellow took the quinine and the paper with the
+deepest reverence, made me a most lowly _salaam_ or obeisance, and
+departed with a light heart. He carried out my instructions to the
+letter, the quinine acted like a charm on the feverish woman, and I
+found myself quite a famous witch-doctor.
+
+There was a nice flat little field close to the water at Parewah, in
+which I thought I could get a good crop of oats during the cold
+weather. I sent for the 'dangur' mates, and asked them to have it dug
+up next day. They hummed and hawed and hesitated, as I thought, in
+rather a strange manner, but departed. In the evening back they came,
+to tell me that the dangurs would _not_ dig up the field.
+
+'Why?' I asked.
+
+'Well you see, Sahib,' said old Teerbouan, who was the patriarch and
+chief spokesman of the village, 'this field has been used for years as
+a burning ghaut' (i.e. a place where the bodies of dead Hindoos were
+buried).
+
+'Well?' said I.
+
+'Well, Sahib, my men say that if they disturb this land, the "Bhoots"
+(ghosts) of all those who have been burned there, will haunt the
+village at night, and they hope you will not persist in asking them to
+dig up the land.'
+
+'Very well, bring down the men with their digging-hoes, and I will
+see.'
+
+Accordingly, next morning, I went down on my pony, found the dangurs
+all assembled, but no digging going on. I called them together, told
+them that it was a very reasonable fear they had, but that I would cast
+such a spell on the land as would settle the ghosts of the departed for
+ever. I then got a branch of a _bael_[1] tree that grew close by,
+dipped it in the stream, and walking backwards round the ground, waved
+the dripping branch round my head, repeating at the same time the first
+gibberish that came into my recollection. My incantation or spell was
+as follows, an old Scotch rhyme I had often repeated when a child at
+school--
+
+  'Eenerty, feenerty, fickerty, feg,
+  Ell, dell, domun's egg;
+  Irky, birky, story, rock,
+  An, tan, toose, Jock;
+  Black fish! white troot!
+  "Gibbie Gaw, ye're oot."'
+
+It had the desired effect. No sooner was my charm uttered, than, after
+a few encouraging words to the men, telling them that there was now no
+fear, that my charm was powerful enough to lay all the spirits in the
+country, and that I would take all the responsibility, they set to work
+with a will, and had the whole field dug up by the evening.
+
+I have seen many such cases. A blight attacks the melon or cucumber
+beds; a fierce wind rises during the night, and shakes half the mangoes
+off the trees; the youngest child is attacked with teething
+convulsions; the plough-bullock is accidentally lamed, or the favourite
+cow refuses to give milk. In every case it is some 'Dyne,' or witch,
+that has been at work with her damnable spells and charms. I remember a
+case in which a poor little child had bad convulsions. The 'Ojah,' or
+witch-finder, in this case a fat, greasy, oleaginous knave, was sent
+for. Full of importance and blowing like a porpoise, he came and caused
+the child to be brought to him, under a tree near the village. I was
+passing at the time, and stopped out of curiosity. He spread a tattered
+cloth in front of him, and muttered some unintelligible gibberish,
+unceasingly making strange passes with his arms. He put down a number
+of articles on his cloth--which was villainously tattered and
+greasy--an unripe plantain, a handful of rice, of parched peas, a thigh
+bone, two wooden cups, some balls, &c., &c.; all of which he kept
+constantly lifting and moving about, keeping up the passes and
+muttering all the time.
+
+The child was a sickly-looking, pining sort of creature, rocking about
+in evident pain, and moaning and fretting just as sick children do.
+Gradually its attention got fixed on the strange antics going on. The
+Ojah kept muttering away, quicker and quicker, constantly shifting the
+bone and cups and other articles on the cloth. His body was suffused
+with perspiration, but in about half an hour the child had gone off to
+sleep, and attended by some dozen old women, and the anxious father,
+was borne off in triumph to the house.
+
+Another time one of Mr. D.'s female servants got bitten by a scorpion.
+The poor woman was in great agony, with her arm swelled up, when an
+Ojah was called in. Setting her before him, he began his incantations
+in the usual manner, but made frequent passes over her body, and over
+the bitten place. A gentle perspiration began to break out on her skin,
+and in a very short time the Ojah had thrown her into a deep mesmeric
+sleep. After about an hour she awoke perfectly free from pain. In this
+case no doubt the Ojah was a mesmerist.
+
+The influence of fear on the ordinary native is most wonderful. I have
+known dozens of instances in which natives have been brought home at
+night for treatment in cases of snake-bite. They have arrived at the
+factory in a complete state of coma, with closed eyes, the pupils
+turned back in the head, the whole body rigid and cold, the lips pale
+white, and the tongue firmly locked between the teeth. I do not believe
+in recovery from a really poisonous bite, where the venom has been
+truly injected. I invariably asked first how long it was since the
+infliction of the bite; I would then examine the marks, and as a rule
+would find them very slight. When the patient had been brought some
+distance, I knew at once that it was a case of pure fright. The natives
+wrap themselves up in their cloths or blankets at night, and lie down
+on the floors of their huts. Turning about, or getting up for water or
+tobacco, or perhaps to put fuel on the fire, they unluckily tread on a
+snake, or during sleep they roll over on one. The snake gives them a
+nip, and scuttles off. They have not seen what sort of snake it is, but
+their imagination conjures up the very worst. After the first outcry,
+when the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly possessed by
+the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his fears work the
+effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye gets dull, his
+pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb, and unless forcibly
+roused by the bystanders he will actually succumb to pure fright, not
+to the snake-bite at all. My chief care when a case of this sort was
+brought me, was to assume a cheery demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears
+of the relatives, and tell them he would be all right in a few hours if
+they attended to my directions. This not uncommonly worked by
+sympathetic influence on the patient himself. I believe, so long as all
+round him thought he was going to die, and expected no other result,
+the same effect was produced on his own mind. As soon as hope sprang up
+in the breasts of all around him, his spirit also caught the contagion.
+As a rule, he would now make an effort to articulate. I would then
+administer a good dose of sal volatile, brandy, eau-de-luce, or other
+strong stimulant, cut into the supposed bite, and apply strong nitric
+acid to the wound. This generally made him wince, and I would hail it
+as a token of certain recovery. By this time some confidence would
+return, and the supposed dying man would soon walk back sound and whole
+among his companions after profuse expressions of gratitude to his
+preserver.
+
+I have treated dozens of cases in this way successfully, and only seen
+two deaths. One was a young woman, my chowkeydar's daughter; the other
+was an old man, who was already dead when they lifted him out of the
+basket in which they had slung him. I do not wish to be misunderstood.
+I believe that in all these cases of recovery it was pure fright
+working on the imagination, and not snake-bite at all. My opinion is
+shared by most planters, that there is no cure yet known for a cobra
+bite, or for that of any other poisonous snake, where the poison has
+once been fairly injected and allowed to mix with the blood[2].
+
+There is another curious instance of the effects of fear on the native
+mind in the common method taken by an Ojah or Brahmin to discover a
+suspected thief. When a theft occurs, the Ojah is sent for, and the
+suspected parties are brought together. After various _muntras_, i.e.
+charms or incantations, have been muttered, the Ojah, who has meanwhile
+narrowly scrutinized each countenance, gives each of the suspected
+individuals a small quantity of dry rice to chew. If the thief be
+present, his superstitious fears are at work, and his conscience
+accuses him. He sees some terrible retribution for him in all these
+_muntras_, and his heart becomes like water within him, his tongue gets
+dry, his salivary glands refuse to act; the innocent munch away at
+their rice contentedly, but the guilty wretch feels as if he had ashes
+in his mouth. At a given signal all spit out their rice, and he whose
+rice comes out, chewed indeed, but dry as summer dust, is adjudged the
+thief. This ordeal is called _chowl chipao_, and is rarely
+unsuccessful. I have known several cases in my own experience in which
+a thief has been thus discovered.
+
+The _bhoots_, or ghosts, are popularly supposed to have favourite
+haunts, generally in some specially selected tree; the _neem_ tree is
+supposed to be the most patronised. The most intelligent natives share
+this belief with the poorest and most ignorant; they fancy the ghosts
+throw stones at them, cast evil influences over them, lure them into
+quicksands, and play other devilish tricks and cantrips. Some roads are
+quite shunned and deserted at night, for no other reason than that a
+ghost is supposed to haunt the place. The most tempting bribe would not
+make a native walk alone over that road after sunset.
+
+Besides the witchfinder, another important village functionary who
+relies much on muntras and charms, is the _Huddick_, or cow doctor. He
+is the only veterinary surgeon of the native when his cow or bullock
+dislocates or breaks a limb, or falls ill. The Huddick passes his hands
+over the affected part, and mutters his _muntras_, which have most
+probably descended to him from his father. Usually knowing a little of
+the anatomical structure of the animal, he may be able to reduce a
+dislocation, or roughly to set a fracture; but if the ailment be
+internal, a draught of mustard oil, or some pounded spices and
+turmeric, or neem leaves administered along with the _muntra_, are
+supposed to be all that human skill and science can do.
+
+The natives are cruel to animals. Half-starved bullocks are shamefully
+overworked. When blows fail to make the ill-starred brute move, they
+give a twist and wrench to the tail, which must cause the animal
+exquisite torture, and unless the hapless beast be utterly exhausted,
+this generally induces it to make a further effort. Ploughmen very
+often deliberately make a raw open sore, one on each rump of the
+plough-bullock. They goad the poor wretch on this raw sore with a
+sharp-pointed stick when he lags, or when they think he needs stirring
+up. Ponies, too, are always worked far too young; and their miserable
+legs get frightfully twisted and bent. The petty shopkeepers, sellers
+of brass pots, grain, spices, and other bazaar wares, who attend the
+various bazaars, or weekly and bi-weekly markets, transport their goods
+by means of these ponies.
+
+The packs of merchandise are slung on rough pack-saddles, made of
+coarse sacking. Shambling along with knees bent together, sores on
+every joint, and frequently an eye knocked out, the poor pony's back
+gets cruelly galled; when the bazaar is reached, he is hobbled as
+tightly as possible, the coarse ropes cutting into the flesh, and he is
+then turned adrift to contemplate starvation on the burnt-up grass.
+Great open sores form on the back, on which a plaster of moist clay, or
+cowdung and pounded leaves, is roughly put. The wretched creature gets
+worn to a skeleton. A little common care and cleanliness would put him
+right, with a little kindly consideration from his brutal master, but
+what does the _Kulwar_ or _Bunneah_ care? he is too lazy.
+
+This unfeeling cruelty and callous indifference to the sufferings of
+the lower animals is a crying evil, and every magistrate, European, and
+educated native, might do much to ease their burdens. Tremendous
+numbers of bullocks and ponies die from sheer neglect and ill treatment
+every year. It is now becoming so serious a trouble, that in many
+villages plough-bullocks are too few in number for the area of land
+under cultivation. The tillage suffers, the crops deteriorate, this
+reacts on prices, the ryot sinks lower and lower, and gets more into
+the grasp of the rapacious money-lender. In many villages I have seen
+whole tracts of land relapsed into _purtee_, or untilled waste, simply
+from want of bullocks to draw the plough. Severe epidemics, like foot
+and mouth disease and pleuro, occasionally sweep off great numbers;
+but, I repeat, that annually the lives of hundreds of valuable animals
+are sacrificed by sheer sloth, dirt, inattention, and brutal cruelty.
+
+In some parts of India, cattle poisoning for the sake of the hides is
+extensively practised. The _Chumars_, that is, the shoemakers,
+furriers, tanners, and workers in leather and skins generally,
+frequently combine together in places, and wilfully poison cattle and
+buffaloes. There is actually a section in the penal code taking
+cognisance of the crime. The Hindoo will not touch a dead carcase, so
+that when a bullock mysteriously sickens and dies, the _Chumars_ haul
+away the body, and appropriate the skin. Some luckless witch is blamed
+for the misfortune, when the rascally Chumars themselves are all the
+while the real culprits. The police, however, are pretty successful in
+detecting this crime, and it is not now of such frequent occurrence
+[3].
+
+Highly as the pious Hindoo venerates the sacred bull of Shira, his
+treatment of his mild patient beasts of burden is a foul blot on his
+character. Were you to shoot a cow, or were a Mussulman to wound a
+stray bullock which might have trespassed, and be trampling down his
+opium or his tobacco crop, and ruining his fields, the Hindoos would
+rise _en masse_ to revenge the insult offered to their religion. Yet
+they scruple not to goad their bullocks, beat them, half starve them,
+and let their gaping wounds fester and become corrupt. When the poor
+brute becomes old and unable to work, and his worn-out teeth unfit to
+graze, he is ruthlessly turned out to die in a ditch, and be torn to
+pieces by jackals, kites, and vultures. The higher classes and
+well-to-do farmers show much consideration for high-priced
+well-conditioned animals, but when they get old or unwell, and demand
+redoubled care and attention, they are too often neglected, till, from
+sheer want of ordinary care, they rot and die.
+
+
+[1] The _bael_ or wood-apple is a sacred wood with Hindoos. It is
+    enjoined in the Shastras that the bodies of the dead should be
+    consumed in a fire fed by logs of bael-tree; but where it is not
+    procurable in sufficient quantity, the natives compound with their
+    consciences by lighting the funeral pyre with a branch from the
+    bael-tree. It is a fine yellow-coloured, pretty durable wood, and
+    makes excellent furniture. A very fine sherbet can be made from
+    the fruit, which acts as an excellent corrective and stomachic.
+
+[2] Deaths from actual snake bite are sadly numerous; but it appears
+    from returns furnished to the Indian Government that Europeans
+    enjoy a very happy exemption. During the last forty years it would
+    seem that only two Europeans have been killed by snake bite, at
+    least only two well substantiated cases. The poorer classes are
+    the most frequent victims. Their universal habit of walking about
+    unshod, and sleeping on the ground, penetrating into the grasses
+    or jungles in pursuit of their daily avocations, no doubt conduces
+    much to the frequency of such accidents. A good plan to keep
+    snakes out of the bungalow is to leave a space all round the
+    rooms, of about four inches, between the walls and the edge of the
+    mats. Have this washed over about once a week with a strong
+    solution of carbolic acid and water. The smell may be unpleasant
+    for a short time, but it proves equally so to the snakes; and I
+    have proved by experience that it keeps them out of the rooms.
+    Mats should also be all firmly fastened down to the floor with
+    bamboo battens, and furniture should be often moved, and kept
+    raised a little from the ground, and the space below carefully
+    swept every day. At night a light should always be kept burning in
+    occupied bedrooms, and on no account should one get out of bed in
+    the dark, or walk about the rooms at night without slippers or
+    shoes.
+
+[3] Somewhat analogous to this is the custom which used to be a
+    common one in some parts of Behar. _Koombars_ and _Grannés_, that
+    is, tile-makers and thatchers, when trade was dull or rain
+    impending, would scatter peas and grain in the interstices of the
+    tiles on the houses of the well-to-do. The pigeons and crows, in
+    their efforts to get at the peas, would loosen and perhaps
+    overturn a few of the tiles. The grannés would be sent for to
+    replace these, would condemn the whole roof as leaky, and the
+    tiles as old and unfit for use, and would provide a job for
+    himself and the tile-maker, the nefarious profits of which they
+    would share together.
+
+    Cultivators of thatching-grass have been known deliberately and
+    wantonly to set fire to villages simply to raise the price of
+    thatch and bamboo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Our annual race meet.--The arrivals.--The camps.--The 'ordinary.'--The
+course.--'They're off.'--The race.--The steeple-chase.--Incidents of
+the meet.--The ball.
+
+Our annual Race Meet is the one great occasion of the year when all the
+dwellers in the district meet. Our races in Chumparun generally took
+place some time about Christmas. Long before the date fixed on,
+arrangements would be made for the exercise of hearty hospitality. The
+residents in the 'station' ask as many guests as will fill their
+houses, and their 'compounds' are crowded with tents, each holding a
+number of visitors, generally bachelors. The principal managers of the
+factories in the district, with their assistants, form a mess for the
+racing week, and, not unfrequently, one or two ladies lend their
+refining presence to the several camps. Friends from other districts,
+from up country, from Calcutta, gather together; and as the weather is
+bracing and cool, and every one determined to enjoy himself, the meet
+is one of the pleasantest of reunions. There are always several races
+specially got up for assistants' horses, and long before, the
+youngsters are up in the early morning, giving their favourite nag a
+spin across the zeraats, or seeing the groom lead him out swathed in
+clothing and bandages, to get him into training for the Assistants'
+race.
+
+As the day draws near, great cases of tinned meats, hampers of beer and
+wine, and goodly supplies of all sorts are sent into the station to the
+various camps. Tents of snowy white canvas begin to peep out at you
+from among the trees. Great oblong booths of blue indigo sheeting show
+where the temporary stables for the horses are being erected; and at
+night the glittering of innumerable camp-fires betokens the presence of
+a whole army of grooms, grass-cutters, peons, watchmen, and other
+servants cooking their evening meal of rice, and discussing the chances
+of the horses of their respective masters in the approaching races. On
+the day before the first racing, the planters are up early, and in
+buggy, dogcart, or on horseback, singly, and by twos and threes, from
+all sides of the district, they find their way to the station. The
+Planter's Club is the general rendezvous. The first comers, having
+found out their waiting servants, and consigned the smoking steeds to
+their care, seat themselves in the verandah, and eagerly watch every
+fresh arrival.
+
+Up comes a buggy. 'Hullo, who's this?'
+
+'Oh, it's "Giblets!" How do you do, "Giblets," old man?'
+
+Down jumps 'Giblets,' and a general handshaking ensues.
+
+'Here comes "Boach" and the "Moonshee,"' yells out an observant
+youngster from the back verandah.
+
+The venerable buggy of the esteemed 'Boach' approaches, and another
+jubilation takes place; the handshaking being so vigorous that the
+'Moonshee's' spectacles nearly come to grief. Now the arrivals ride and
+drive up fast and furious.
+
+'Hullo, "Anthony!"'
+
+'Aha, "Charley," how d'ye do?'
+
+'By Jove, "Ferdie," where have you turned up from?'
+
+'Has the "Skipper" arrived?'
+
+'Have any of you seen "Jamie?"'
+
+'Where's big "Mars'" tents?'
+
+'Have any of ye seen my "Bearer?"'
+
+'Has the "Bump" come in?' and so on.
+
+Such a scene of bustle and excitement. Friends meet that have not seen
+each other for a twelvemonth. Queries are exchanged as to absent
+friends. The chances of the meeting are discussed. Perhaps a passing
+allusion is made to some dear one who has left our ranks since last
+meet. All sorts of topics are started, and up till and during breakfast
+there is a regular medley of tongues, a confused clatter of voices,
+dishes, and glasses, a pervading atmosphere of dense curling volumes of
+tobacco smoke.
+
+To a stranger the names sound uncouth and meaningless, the fact being,
+that we all go by nicknames[1].
+
+'Giblets,' 'Diamond Digger,' 'Mangelwurzel,' 'Goggle-eyed Plover,'
+'Gossein' or holy man, 'Blind Bartimeus,' 'Old Boots,' 'Polly,'
+'Bottle-nosed Whale,' 'Fin MacCoul,' 'Daddy,' 'The Exquisite,' 'The
+Mosquito,' 'Wee Bob,' and 'Napoleon,' are only a very few specimens of
+this strange nomenclature. These soubriquets quite usurp our baptismal
+appellations, and I have often been called 'Maori,' by people who did
+not actually know my real name.
+
+By the evening, all, barring the very late arrivals, have found out
+their various camps. There is a merry dinner, then each sahib, well
+muffled in ulster, plaid, or great coat, hies him to the club, where
+the 'ordinary' is to be held. The nights are now cold and foggy, and a
+tremendous dew falls. At the 'ordinary,' fresh greetings between those
+who now meet for the first time after long separation. The entries and
+bets are made for the morrow's races, although not much betting takes
+place as a rule; but the lotteries on the different races are rapidly
+filled, the dice circulate cheerily, and amid laughing, joking,
+smoking, noise, and excitement, there is a good deal of mild
+speculation. The 'horsey' ones visit the stables for the last time; and
+each retires to his camp bed to dream of the morrow.
+
+Very early, the respective _bearers_ rouse the sleepy _sahibs_. Table
+servants rush hurriedly about the mess tent, bearing huge dishes of
+tempting viands. Grooms, and _grasscuts_ are busy leading the horses
+off to the course. The cold raw fog of the morning fills every tent,
+and dim grey figures of cowering natives, wrapped up over the eyes in
+blankets, with moist blue noses and chattering teeth, are barely
+discernible in the thick mist.
+
+The racecourse is two miles from the club, on the other side of the
+lake, in the middle of a grassy plain, with a neat masonry structure at
+the further side, which serves as a grand stand. Already buggies,
+dogcarts in single harness and tandem, barouches, and waggonettes are
+merrily rolling through the thick mist, past the frowning jail, and
+round the corner of the lake. Natives in gaudy coloured shawls, and
+blankets, are pouring on to the racecourse by hundreds.
+
+Bullock carts, within which are black-eyed, bold beauties, profusely
+burdened with silver ornaments, are drawn up in lines. _Ekkas_--small
+jingling vehicles with a dome-shaped canopy and curtains at the
+sides--drawn by gaily caparisoned ponies, and containing fat, portly
+Baboos, jingle and rattle over the ruts on the side roads.
+
+Sweetmeat sellers, with trays of horrible looking filth, made seemingly
+of insects, clarified butter, and sugar, dodge through the crowd
+dispensing their abominable looking but seemingly much relished wares.
+Tall policemen, with blue jackets, red puggries, yellow belts, and
+white trousers, stalk up and down with conscious dignity.
+
+A madcap young assistant on his pony comes tearing along across
+country. The weighing for the first race is going on; horses are being
+saddled, some vicious brute occasionally lashing out, and scattering
+the crowd behind him. The ladies are seated round the terraced grand
+stand; long strings of horses are being led round and round in a
+circle, by the _syces_; vehicles of every description are lying round
+the building.
+
+Suddenly a bugle sounds; the judge enters his box; the ever popular old
+'Bikram,' who officiates as starter, ambles off on his white cob, and
+after him go half-a-dozen handsome young fellows, their silks rustling
+and flashing through the fast rising mist.
+
+A hundred field-glasses scan the start; all is silent for a moment.
+
+'They're off!' shout a dozen lungs.
+
+'False start!' echo a dozen more.
+
+The gay colours of the riders flicker confusedly in a jumble. One horse
+careers madly along for half the distance, is with difficulty pulled
+up, and is then walked slowly back.
+
+The others left at the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At
+length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!'
+shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!'
+breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the six horses,
+all together, and at a rattling pace, tear up the hill, over the sand
+at the south corner, and up, till at the quarter mile post 'a blanket
+could cover the lot.'
+
+Two or three tails are now showing signals of distress; heels and whips
+are going. Two horses have shot ahead, a bay and a black. 'Jamie' on
+the bay, 'Paddy' on the black.
+
+Still as marble sit those splendid riders, the horses are neck and
+neck; now the bay by a nose, now again the black. The distance post is
+passed with a rush like a whirlwind.
+
+'A dead heat, by Jove!'
+
+'Paddy wins!' 'Jamie has it!' 'Hooray, Pat!' 'Go it, Jamie!' 'Well
+ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent
+racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses
+through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a
+nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up
+a lively air, and the saddling for the next race goes on.
+
+The other races are much the same; there are lots of entries: the
+horses are in splendid condition, and the riding is superb. What is
+better, everything is emphatically 'on the square.' No _pulling_ and
+_roping_ here, no false entries, no dodging of any kind. Fine, gallant,
+English gentlemen meet each other in fair and honest emulation, and
+enjoy the favourite national sport in perfection. The 'Waler' race, for
+imported Australians, brings out fine, tall, strong-boned, clean-limbed
+horses, looking blood all over. The country breds, with slender limbs,
+small heads, and glossy coats, look dainty and delicate as antelopes.
+The lovely, compact Arabs, the pretty-looking ponies, and the
+thick-necked, coarse-looking Cabools, all have their respective trials,
+and then comes the great event--the race of the day--the Steeplechase.
+
+The course is marked out behind the grand stand, following a wide
+circle outside the flat course, which it enters at the quarter-mile
+post, so that the finish is on the flat before the grand stand. The
+fences, ditches, and water leap, are all artificial, but they are
+regular _howlers_, and no make-believes.
+
+Seven horses are despatched to a straggling start, and all negotiate
+the first bank safely. At the next fence a regular _snorter_ of a 'post
+and rail'--topped with brushwood--two horses swerve, one rider being
+deposited on his racing seat upon mother earth, while the other sails
+away across country in a line for home, and is next heard of at the
+stables. The remaining five, three 'walers' and two country-breds, race
+together to the water jump, where one waler deposits his rider, and
+races home by himself, one country-bred refuses, and is henceforth out
+of the race, and the other three, taking the leap in beautiful style,
+put on racing pace to the next bank, and are in the air together. A
+lovely sight! The country is now stiff, and the stride of the waler
+tells. He is leading the country-breds a 'whacker,' but he stumbles and
+falls at the last fence but one from home. His gallant rider, the
+undaunted 'Roley,' remounts just as the two country-breds pass him like
+a flash of light. 'Nothing venture, nothing win,' however, so in go the
+spurs, and off darts the waler like an arrow in pursuit. He is gaining
+fast, and tops the last hurdle leading to the straight just as the
+hoofs of the other two reach the ground.
+
+It is now a matter of pace and good riding. It will be a close finish;
+the waler is first to feel the whip; there is a roar from the crowd; he
+is actually leading; whips and spurs are hard at work now; it is a mad,
+headlong rush; every muscle is strained, and the utmost effort made;
+the poor horses are doing their very best; amid a thunder of hoofs,
+clouds of dust, hats in air, waving of handkerchiefs from the grand
+stand, and a truly British cheer from the paddock, the 'waler' shoots
+in half a length ahead; and so end the morning's races.
+
+Back to camp now, to bathe and breakfast. A long line of dust marks the
+track from the course, for the sun is now high in the heavens, the lake
+is rippling in placid beauty under a gentle breeze, and the long lines
+of natives, as well as vehicles of all sorts, form a quaint but
+picturesque sight. After breakfast calls are made upon all the camps
+and bungalows round the station. Croquet, badminton, and other games go
+on until dinner-time. I could linger lovingly over a camp dinner; the
+rare dishes, the sparkling conversation, the racy anecdote, and the
+general jollity and brotherly feeling; but we must all dress for the
+ball, and so about 9 P.M. the buggies are again in requisition for the
+ball room--the fine, large, central apartment in the Planters' club.
+
+The walls are festooned with flowers, gay curtains, flags, and cloths.
+The floor is shining like silver, and as polished as a mirror. The band
+strikes up the Blue Danube waltz, and amid the usual bustle,
+flirtation, scandal, whispering, glancing, dancing, tripping, sipping,
+and hand-squeezing, the ball goes gaily on till the stewards announce
+supper. At this--to the wall-flowers--welcome announcement, we adjourn
+from the heated ball-room to the cool arbour-like supper tent, where
+every delicacy that can charm the eye or tempt the appetite is spread
+out.
+
+Next morning early we are out with the hounds, and enjoy a rattling
+burst round by the racecourse, where the horses are at exercise.
+Perchance we have heard of a boar in the sugar-cane, and away we go
+with beaters to rouse the grisly monster from his lair. In the
+afternoon there is hockey on horseback, or volunteer drill, with our
+gallant adjutant putting us through our evolutions. In the evening
+there is the usual drive, dinner, music, and the ordinary, and so the
+meet goes on. A constant succession of gaieties keeps everyone alive,
+till the time arrives for a return to our respective factories, and
+another year's hard work.
+
+
+[1] In such a limited society every peculiarity is noted; all our
+    antecedents are known; personal predilections and little foibles
+    of character are marked; eccentricities are watched, and no one,
+    let him be as uninteresting as a miller's pig, is allowed to
+    escape observation and remark. Some little peculiarity is hit
+    upon, and a strange but often very happily expressive nickname
+    stamps one's individuality and photographs him with a word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Pig-sticking in India.--Varieties of boar.--Their size and height.
+--Ingenious mode of capture by the natives,--The 'Batan' or buffalo
+herd.--Pigs charging.--Their courage and ferocity.--Destruction of
+game.--A close season for game.
+
+The sport _par excellence_ of India is pig-sticking. Call it
+hog-hunting if you will, I prefer the honest old-fashioned name. With a
+good horse under one, a fair country, with not too many pitfalls, and
+'lots of pig,' this sport becomes the most exciting that can be
+practised. Some prefer tiger shooting from elephants, others like to
+stalk the lordly ibex on the steep Himalayan slopes, but anyone who has
+ever enjoyed a rattle after a pig over a good country, will recall the
+fierce, delight, the eager thrill, the wild, mad excitement, that
+flushed his whole frame, as he met the infuriate charge of a good
+thirty-inch fighting boar, and drove his trusty spear well home, laying
+low the gallant grey tusker, the indomitable, unconquerable grisly
+boar. The subject is well worn; and though the theme is a noble one,
+there are but few I fancy who have not read the record of some gallant
+fight, where the highest skill, the finest riding, the most undaunted
+pluck, and the cool, keen, daring of a practised hand are not _always_
+successful against the headlong rush and furious charge of a Bengal
+boar at bay.
+
+A record of planter life in India, however, such as this aims at being,
+would be incomplete without some reference to the gallant tusker, and
+so at the risk of tiring my readers, I must try to describe a
+pig-sticking party.
+
+There are two distinct kinds of boar in India, the black and the grey.
+Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer and more
+pugnacious. He is a vicious and implacable foe when roused, and always
+shews better fight than the black variety. The great difference,
+however, is in the shape of the skull; that of the black fellow being
+high over the frontal bone, and not very long in proportion to height,
+while the skull of the grey boar is never very high, but is long, and
+receding in proportion to height.
+
+The black boar grows to an enormous size, and the grey ones are,
+generally speaking, smaller made animals than the black. The young of
+the two also differ in at least one important particular; those of the
+grey pig are always born striped, but the young of the black variety
+are born of that colour, and are not striped but a uniform black colour
+throughout. The two kinds of pig sometimes interbreed, but crosses are
+not common; and, from the colour, size, shape of the head, and general
+behaviour, one can easily tell at a glance what kind of pig gets up
+before his spear, whether it is the heavy, sluggish black boar, or the
+veritable fiery, vicious, fighting grey tusker.
+
+Many stories are told of their enormous size, and a 'forty-inch tusker'
+is the established standard for a Goliath among boars. The best
+fighting boars, however, range from twenty-eight to thirty-two inches
+in height, and I make bold to say that very few of the Present
+generation of sportsmen have ever seen a veritable wild boar over
+thirty-eight inches high.
+
+G.S., who has had perhaps as much jungle experience as any man of
+his age in India, a careful observer, and a finished sportsman,
+tells me that the biggest _boar_ he ever saw was only thirty-eight
+inches high; while the biggest _pig_ he ever killed was a barren
+sow, with three-inch tusks sticking out of her gums; she measured
+thirty-nine-and-a-half inches, and fought like a demon. I have shot
+pig--in heavy jungle where spearing was impracticable--over thirty-six
+inches high, but the biggest pig I ever stuck to my own spear was only
+twenty-eight inches, and I do not think any pig has been killed in
+Chumparun, within the last ten or a dozen years at any rate, over
+thirty-eight inches.
+
+In some parts of India, where pigs are numerous and the jungle dense,
+the natives adopt a very ingenious mode of hunting. I have frequently
+seen it practised by the cowherds on the Koosee _derahs_, i.e. the flat
+swampy jungles on the banks of the Koosee. When the annual floods have
+subsided, leaving behind a thick deposit of mud, wrack, and brushwood,
+the long thick grass soon shoots up to an amazing height, and vast
+herds of cattle and tame buffaloes come down to the jungles from the
+interior of the country, where natural pasture is scarce. They are
+attended by the owner and his assistants, all generally belonging to
+the _gualla_, or cowherd caste, although, of course, there are other
+castes employed. The owner of the herd gets leave to graze his cattle
+in the jungle, by paying a certain fixed sum per head. He fixes on a
+high dry ridge of land, where he runs up a few grass huts for himself
+and men, and there he erects lines of grass and bamboo screens, behind
+which his cattle take shelter at night from the cold south-east wind.
+There are also a few huts of exceedingly frail construction for himself
+and his people. This small colony, in the midst of the universal jungle
+covering the country for miles round, is called a _batan_.
+
+At earliest dawn the buffaloes are milked, and then with their
+attendant herdsmen they wend their way to the jungle, where they spend
+the day, and return again to the batan at night, when they are again
+milked. The milk is made into _ghee_, or clarified butter, and large
+quantities are sent down to the towns by country boats. When we want to
+get up a hunt, we generally send to the nearest _batan_ for _khubber_,
+i.e. news, information. The _Batanea_, or proprietor of the
+establishment, is well posted up. Every herdsman as he comes in at
+night tells what animals he has seen through the day, and thus at the
+_batan_ you hear where tiger, and pig, and deer are to be met with;
+where an unlucky cow has been killed; in what ravine is the thickest
+jungle; where the path is free from clay, or quicksand; what fords are
+safest; and, in short, you get complete information on every point
+connected with the jungle and its wild inhabitants.
+
+To these men the mysterious jungle reveals its most hidden secrets.
+Surrounded by his herd of buffaloes, the _gualla_ ventures into the
+darkest recesses and the most tangled thickets. They have strange wild
+calls by which they give each other notice of the approach of danger,
+and when two or three of them meet, each armed with his heavy,
+iron-shod or brass-bound _lathee_ or quarter staff, they will not budge
+an inch out of their way for buffalo or boar; nay, they have been known
+to face the terrible tiger himself, and fairly beat him away from the
+quivering carcase of some unlucky member of their herd. They have
+generally some favourite buffalo on whose broad back they perch
+themselves, as it browses through the jungle, and from this elevated
+seat they survey the rest of the herd, and note the incidents of jungle
+life. When they wish a little excitement, or a change from their milk
+and rice diet, there are hundreds of pigs around.
+
+They have a broad, sharp spear-head, to which is attached a stout cord,
+often made of twisted hide or hair. Into the socket of the spear is
+thrust a bamboo pole or shaft, tough, pliant, and flexible. The cord is
+wound round the spear and shaft, and the loose end is then fastened to
+the middle of the pole. Having thus prepared his weapon, the herdsman
+mounts his buffalo, and guides it slowly, warily, and cautiously to the
+haunts of the pig. These are, of course, quite accustomed to see the
+buffaloes grazing round them on all sides, and take no notice until the
+_gualla_ is within striking distance. When he has got close up to the
+pig he fancies, he throws his spear with all his force. The pig
+naturally bounds off, the shaft comes out of the socket, leaving the
+spearhead sticking in the wound. The rope uncoils of itself, but being
+firmly fastened to the bamboo, it brings up the pig at each bush, and
+tears and lacerates the wound, until either the spearhead comes out, or
+the wretched pig drops down dead from exhaustion and loss of blood. The
+_gualla_ follows upon his buffalo, and frequently finishes the pig with
+a few strokes of his _lathee_. In any case he gets his pork, and it
+certainly is an ingenious and bold way of procuring it.
+
+Wild pig are very destructive to crops. During the night they revel in
+the cultivated fields contiguous to the jungle, and they destroy more
+by rooting up than by actually eating. It is common for the ryot to dig
+a shallow pit, and ensconce himself inside with his matchlock beside
+him. His head being on a level with the ground, he can discern any
+animal that comes between him and the sky-line. When a pig comes in
+sight, he waits till he is within sure distance, and then puts either a
+bullet or a charge of slugs into him.
+
+The pig is perhaps the most stubborn and courageous animal in India.
+Even when pierced with several spears, and bleeding from numerous
+wounds, he preserves a sullen silence. He disdains to utter a cry of
+fear and pain, but maintains a bold front to the last, and dies with
+his face to the foe, defiant and unconquered. When hard pressed he
+scorns to continue his flight, but wheeling round, he makes a
+determined charge, very frequently to the utter discomfiture of his
+pursuer.
+
+I have seen many a fine horse fearfully cut by a charging pig, and a
+determined boar over and over again break through a line of elephants,
+and make good his escape. There is no animal in all the vast jungle
+that the elephant dreads more than a lusty boar. I have seen elephants
+that would stand the repeated charges of a wounded tiger, turn tail and
+take to ignominious flight before the onset of an angry boar.
+
+His thick short neck, ponderous body, and wedge-like head are admirably
+fitted for crashing through the thick jungle he inhabits, and when he
+has made up his mind to charge, very few animals can withstand his
+furious rush. Instances are quite common of his having made good his
+charge against a line of elephants, cutting and ripping more than one
+severely. He has been known to encounter successfully even the kingly
+tiger himself. Can it be wondered, then, that we consider him a 'foeman
+worthy of our steel'?
+
+To be a good pig-sticker is a recommendation that wins acceptance
+everywhere in India. In a district like Chumparun where nearly every
+planter was an ardent sportsman, a good rider, and spent nearly half
+his time on horseback, pig-sticking was a favourite pastime. Every
+factory had at least one bit of likely jungle close by, where a pig
+could always be found. When I first went to India we used to take out
+our pig-spear over the _zillah_ with us as a matter of course, as we
+never knew when we might hit on a boar.
+
+Things are very different now. Cultivation has much increased. Many of
+the old jungles have been reclaimed, and I fancy many more pigs are
+shot by natives than formerly. A gun can be had now for a few rupees,
+and every loafing 'ne'er do weel' in the village manages to procure
+one, and wages indiscriminate warfare on bird and beast. It is a
+growing evil, and threatens the total extinction of sport in some
+districts. I can remember when nearly every tank was good for a few
+brace of mallard, duck, or teal, where never a feather is now to be
+seen, save the ubiquitous paddy-bird. Jungles, where a pig was a
+certain find, only now contain a measly jackal, and not always that;
+and cover in which partridge, quail, and sometimes even florican were
+numerous, are now only tenanted by the great ground-owl, or a colony of
+field rats. I am far from wishing to limit sport to the European
+community. I would let every native that so wished sport his double
+barrels or handle his spear with the best of us, but he should follow
+and indulge in his sport with reason. The breeding seasons of all
+animals should be respected, and there should be no indiscriminate
+slaughter of male and female, young and old. Until all true sportsmen
+in India unite in this matter, the evil will increase, and bye-and-bye
+there will be no animals left to afford sport of any kind.
+
+There are cases where wild animals are so numerous and destructive
+that extraordinary measures have to be taken for protection from their
+ravages, but these are very rare. I remember having once to wage a war
+of extermination against a colony of pigs that had taken possession of
+some jungle lands near Maharjnugger, a village on the Koosee. I had a
+deal of indigo growing on cleared patches at intervals in the jungles,
+and there the pigs would root and revel in spite of watchmen, till at
+last I was forced in sheer self-defence to begin a crusade against
+them. We got a line of elephants, and two or three friends came to
+assist, and in one day, and round one village only, we shot sixty-three
+full grown pigs. The villagers must have killed and carried away nearly
+double that number of young and wounded. That was a very extreme case,
+and in a pure jungle country; but in settled districts like Tirhoot
+and Chumparun the weaker sex should always be spared, and a close
+season for winged game should be insisted on. To the credit of the
+planters be it said, that this necessity is quite recognised; but
+every pot-bellied native who can beg, borrow, or steal a gun, or in
+any way procure one, is constantly on the look out for a pot shot at
+some unlucky hen-partridge or quail. A whole village will turn out to
+compass the destruction of some wretched sow that may have shewn her
+bristles outside the jungle in the daytime.
+
+In districts where cultivated land is scarce and population scattered,
+it is almost impossible to enjoy pig-sticking. The breaks of open land
+between the jungles are too small and narrow to afford galloping space,
+and though you turn the pig out of one patch of jungle, he immediately
+finds safe shelter in the next. On the banks of some of the large
+rivers, however, such as the Gunduch and the Bagmuttee, there are vast
+stretches of undulating sand, crossed at intervals by narrow creeks,
+and spotted by patches of close, thick jungle. Here the grey tusker
+takes up his abode with his harem. When once you turn him out from his
+lair, there is grand hunting room before he can reach the distant patch
+of jungle to which he directs his flight. In some parts the _jowah_ (a
+plant not unlike broom in appearance) is so thick, that even the
+elephants can scarcely force their way through, but as a rule the
+beating is pretty easy, and one is almost sure of a find.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Kuderent jungle.--Charged by a pig.--The biter bit.--'Mac' after the
+big boar.--The horse for pig-sticking.--The line of beaters.--The boar
+breaks.--'Away! Away!'--First spear.--Pig-sticking at Peeprah.--The
+old 'lungra' or cripple.--A boar at bay.--Hurrah for pig-sticking!
+
+There was a very fine pig jungle at a place called Kuderent, belonging
+to a wealthy landowner who went by the name of the Mudhobunny Baboo. We
+occasionally had a pig-sticking meet here, and as the jungle was
+strictly preserved, we were never disappointed in finding plenty who
+gave us glorious sport. The jungles consisted of great grass plains,
+with thickly wooded patches of dense tree jungle, intersected here and
+there by deep ravines, with stagnant pools of water at intervals; the
+steep sides all thickly clothed with thorny clusters of the wild
+dog-rose. It was a difficult country to beat, and we had always to
+supplement the usual gang of beaters with as many elephants as we could
+collect. In the centre of the jungle was an eminence of considerable
+height, whence there was a magnificent view of the surrounding country.
+
+Far in the distance the giant Himalayas towered into the still clear
+air, the guardian barriers of an unknown land. The fretted pinnacles
+and tremendous ridges, clothed in their pure white mantle of
+everlasting snow, made a magnificent contrast to the dark, misty,
+wooded masses formed by the lower ranges of hills. In the early
+morning, when the first beams of the rising sun had but touched the
+mountain tops, leaving the country below shrouded in the dim mists and
+vapours of retiring night, the sight was most sublime. In presence of
+such hills and distances, such wondrous combinations of colour, scenery
+on such a gigantic scale, even the most thoughtless become impressed
+with the majesty of nature.
+
+Our camp was pitched on the banks of a clear running mountain stream,
+brawling over rocks and boulders; and to eyes so long accustomed to the
+never ending flatness of the rich alluvial plains, and the terrible
+sameness of the rice swamps, the stream was a source of unalloyed
+pleasure. There were only a few places where the abrupt banks gave
+facilities for fording, and when a pig had broken fairly from the
+jungle, and was making for the river (as they very frequently did),
+you would see the cluster of horsemen scattering over the plain like
+a covey of partridges when the hawk swoops down upon them. Each made
+for what he considered the most eligible ford, in hopes of being first
+up with the pig on the further bank, and securing the much coveted
+first spear.
+
+When a pig is hard pressed, and comes to any natural obstacle, as a
+ditch, bank, or stream, he almost invariably gets this obstacle between
+himself and his pursuer; then wheeling round he makes his stand,
+showing wonderful sagacity in choosing the moment of all others when he
+has his enemy at most disadvantage. Experienced hands are aware of
+this, and often try to outflank the boar, but the best men I have seen
+generally wait a little, till the pig is again under weigh, and then
+clearing the ditch or bank, put their horses at full speed, which is
+the best way to make good your attack. The rush of the boar is so
+sudden, fierce, and determined, that a horse at half speed, or going
+slow, has no chance of escape; but a well trained horse at full speed
+meets the pig in his rush, the spear is delivered with unerring aim,
+and slightly swerving to the left, you draw it out as you continue your
+course, and the poor pig is left weltering in his blood behind you.
+
+On one occasion I was very rudely made aware of this trait. It was a
+fine fleet young boar we were after, and we had had a long chase, but
+were now overhauling him fast. I had a good horse under me, and 'Jamie'
+and 'Giblets' were riding neck and neck. There was a small mango
+orchard in front surrounded by the usual ditch and bank. It was nothing
+of a leap; the boar took it with ease, and we could just see him top
+the bank not twenty spear lengths ahead. I was slightly leading, and
+full of eager anxiety and emulation. Jamie called on me to pull up, but
+I was too excited to mind him. I saw him and Giblets each take an
+outward wheel about, and gallop off to catch the boar coming out of the
+cluster of trees on the far side, as I thought. I could not see him,
+but I made no doubt he was in full flight through the trees. There was
+plenty of riding room between the rows, so lifting my game little horse
+at the bank, I felt my heart bound with emulation as I thought I was
+certain to come up first, and take the spear from two such noted heroes
+as my companions. I came up with the pig first, sure enough. _He_ was
+waiting for _me_, and scarce giving my horse time to recover his stride
+after the jump, he came rushing at me, every bristle erect, with a
+vicious grunt of spite and rage. My spear was useless, I had it
+crosswise on my horse's neck; I intended to attack first, and finding
+my enemy turning the tables on me in this way was rather disconcerting.
+I tried to turn aside and avoid the charge, but a branch caught me
+across the face, and knocked my _puggree_ off. In a trice the savage
+little brute was on me. Leaping up fairly from the ground, he got the
+heel of my riding boot in his mouth, and tore off the sole from the
+boot as if it had been so much paper. Jamie and Giblets were sitting
+outside watching the scene, laughing at my discomfiture. Fortunately
+the boar had poor tusks, and my fine little horse was unhurt, but I got
+out of that orchard as fast as I could, and ever after hesitated about
+attacking a boar when he had got a bank or ditch between him and me,
+and was waiting for me on the other side. The far better plan is to
+wait till he sees you are not pressing him, he then goes off at a surly
+sling trot, and you can resume the chase with every advantage in your
+favour. When the blood however is fairly up, and all one's sporting
+instincts roused, it is hard to listen to the dictates of prudence or
+the suggestions of caution and experience.
+
+The very same day we had another instance. My manager, 'Young Mac,' as
+we called him, had started a huge old boar. He was just over the boar,
+and about to deliver his thrust, when his horse stumbled in a rat hole
+(it was very rotten ground), and came floundering to earth, bringing
+his rider with him. Nothing daunted, Mac picked himself up, lost the
+horse, but so eager and excited was he, that he continued the chase on
+foot, calling to some of us to catch his horse while he stuck his boar.
+The old boar was quite blown, and took in the altered aspect of affairs
+at a glance; he turned to charge, and we loudly called on Mac to 'clear
+out.' Not a bit of it, he was too excited to realise his danger, but
+Pat fortunately interposed his horse and spear in time, and no doubt
+saved poor Mac from a gruesome mauling. It was very plucky, but it was
+very foolish, for heavily weighted with boots, breeches, spurs, and
+spear, a man could have no chance against the savage onset of an
+infuriated boar.
+
+In the long thick grass with which the plain was covered the riding was
+very dangerous. I remember seeing six riders come signally to grief
+over a blind ditch in this jungle. It adds not a little to the
+excitement, and really serious accidents are not so common as might be
+imagined. It is no joke however when a riderless horse comes ranging up
+alongside of you as you are sailing along, intent on war; biting and
+kicking at your own horse, he spoils your sport, throws you out of the
+chase, and you are lucky if you do not receive some ugly cut or bruise
+from his too active heels. There is the great beauty of a well trained
+Arab or country-bred; if you get a spill, he waits beside you till you
+recover your faculties, and get your bellows again in working order; if
+you are riding a Cabool, or even a waler, it is even betting that he
+turns to bite or kick you as you lie, or he rattles off in pursuit of
+your more firmly seated friends, spoiling their sport, and causing the
+most fearful explosions of vituperative wrath.
+
+There is something to me intensely exciting in all the varied incidents
+of a rattling burst across country after a fighting old grey boar. You
+see the long waving line of staves, and spear heads, and quaint shaped
+axes, glittering and fluctuating above the feathery tops of the swaying
+grass. There is an irregular line of stately elephants, each with its
+towering howdah and dusky mahout, moving slowly along through the
+rustling reeds. You hear the sharp report of fireworks, the rattling
+thunder of the big _doobla_ or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of
+innumerable _tom-toms_. Shouts, oaths, and cries from a hundred noisy
+coolies, come floating down in bursts of clamour on the soft morning
+air. The din waxes and wanes as the excited beaters descry a 'sounder'
+of pig ahead; with a mighty roar that makes your blood tingle, the
+frantic coolies rally for the final burst. Like rockets from a tube,
+the boar and his progeny come crashing through the brake, and separate
+before you on the plain. With a wild cheer you dash after them in hot
+pursuit; no time now to think of pitfalls, banks, or ditches; your
+gallant steed strains his every muscle, every sense is on the alert,
+but you see not the bush and brake and tangled thicket that you leave
+behind you. Your eye is on the dusky glistening hide and the stiff
+erect bristles in front; the shining tusks and foam-flecked chest are
+your goal, and the wild excitement culminates as you feel your keen
+steel go straight through muscle, bone, and sinew, and you know that
+another grisly monster has fallen. As you ease your girths and wipe
+your heated brow, you feel that few pleasures of the chase come up to
+the noblest, most thrilling sport of all, that of pig-sticking.
+
+The plain is alive with shouting beaters hurrying up to secure the gory
+carcase of the slaughtered foe. A riderless horse is far away, making
+off alone for the distant grove, where the snowy tents are glistening
+through the foliage. On the distant horizon a small cluster of eager
+sportsmen are fast overhauling another luckless tusker, and enjoying in
+all their fierce excitement the same sensations you have just
+experienced. Now is the time to enjoy the soothing weed, and quaff the
+grateful 'peg'; and as the syces and other servants come up in groups
+of twos and threes, you listen with languid delight to all their
+remarks on the incidents of the chase; and as, with their acute
+Oriental imagination nations they dilate in terms of truly Eastern
+exaggeration on your wonderful pluck and daring, you almost fancy
+yourself really the hero they would make you out to be.
+
+Then the reunion round the festive board at night, when every one again
+lives through all the excitement of the day. Talk of fox-hunting after
+pig-sticking, it is like comparing a penny candle to a lighthouse, or a
+donkey race to the 'Grand National'!
+
+Peeprah Factory with its many patches of jungle, its various lakes and
+fine undulating country, was another favourite rendezvous for the
+votaries of pig-sticking. The house itself was quite palatial, built on
+the bank of a lovely horseshoe lake, and embosomed in a grove of trees
+of great rarity and beautiful foliage. It had been built long before
+the days of overland routes and Suez canals, when a planter made India
+his home, and spared no trouble nor expense to make his home
+comfortable. In the great garden were fruit trees from almost every
+clime; little channels of solid masonry led water from the well to all
+parts of the garden. Leading down to the lake was a broad flight of
+steps, guarded on the one side by an immense peepul tree, whose hollow
+trunk and wide stretching canopy of foliage had braved the storms of
+over half a century, on the other side by a most symmetrical almond
+tree, which, when in blossom, was the most beautiful object for miles
+around. A well-kept shrubbery surrounded the house, and tall
+casuarinas, and glossy dark green india-rubber and bhur trees, formed a
+thousand combinations of shade and colour. Here we often met to
+experience the warm, large-hearted hospitality of dear old Pat and his
+gentle little wife. At one time there was a pack of harriers, which
+would lead us a fine, sharp burst by the thickets near the river after
+a doubling hare; but as a rule a meet at Peeprah portended death to the
+gallant tusker, for the jungles were full of pigs, and only honest hard
+work was meant when the Peeprah beaters turned out.
+
+The whole country was covered with patches of grass and thorny jungle.
+Knowing they had another friendly cover close by, the pigs always broke
+at the first beat, and the riding had to be fast and furious if a spear
+was to be won. There were some nasty drop jumps, and deep, hidden
+ditches, and accidents were frequent. In one of these hot, sharp
+gallops poor 'Bonnie Morn,' a favourite horse belonging to 'Jamie,' was
+killed. Not seeing the ditch, it came with tremendous force against the
+bank, and of course its back was broken. Even in its death throes it
+recognised its master's voice, and turned round and licked his hand. We
+were all collected round, and let who will sneer, there were few dry
+eyes as we saw this last mute tribute of affection from the poor dying
+animal.
+
+  THE DEATH OF 'BONNIE MORN.'
+
+  Alas, my 'Brave Bonnie!' the pride of my heart,
+  The moment has come when from thee I must part;
+  No more wilt thou hark to the huntsman's glad horn,
+  My brave little Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  How proudly you bore me at bright break of day,
+  How gallantly 'led,' when the boar broke away!
+  But no more, alas! thou the hunt shall adorn,
+  For now thou art dying, my dear 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  He'd neigh with delight when I'd enter his stall,
+  And canter up gladly on hearing my call;
+  Rub his head on my shoulder while munching his corn,
+  My dear gentle Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Or out in the grass, when a pig was in view,
+  None so eager to start, when he heard a 'halloo';
+  Off, off like a flash, the ground spurning with scorn,
+  He aye led the van, did my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  O'er _nullah_ and ditch, o'er hedge, fence, or bank,
+  No matter, _he'd_ clear it, aye in the front rank;
+  A brave little hunter as ever was born
+  Was my grand Arab fav'rite, my good 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Or when in the 'ranks,' who so steady and still?
+  None better than 'Bonnie,' more 'up' in his drill;
+  His fine head erect--eyes flashing with scorn--
+  Right fit for a charger was staunch 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And then on the 'Course,' who so willing and true?
+  Past the 'stand' like an arrow the bonnie horse flew;
+  No spur his good rider need ever have worn,
+  For he aye did his best, did my fleet 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And now here he lies, the good little horse,
+  No more he'll career in the hunt or on 'course':
+  Such a charger to lose makes me sad and forlorn;
+  I _can't_ help a tear, 'tis for poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Ah! blame not my grief, for 'tis deep and sincere,
+  As a friend and companion I held 'Bonnie' dear;
+  No true sportsman ever such feelings will scorn
+  As I heave a deep sigh for my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And even in death, when in anguish he lay,
+  When his life's blood was drip--dripping--slowly away,
+  His last thought was still of the master he'd borne;
+  He neighed, licked my hand--and thus died 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+One tremendous old boar was killed here during one of our meets, which
+was long celebrated in our after-dinner talks on boars and hunting. It
+was called 'THE LUNGRA,' which means the cripple, because it had been
+wounded in the leg in some previous encounter, perhaps in its hot
+youth, before age had stiffened its joints and tinged its whiskers with
+grey. It was the most undaunted pig I have ever seen. It would not
+budge an inch for the beaters, and charged the elephants time after
+time, sending them flying from the jungle most ignominiously. At length
+its patience becoming exhausted, it slowly emerged from the jungle,
+coolly surveyed the scene and its surroundings, and then, disdaining
+flight, charged straight at the nearest horseman. Its hide was as tough
+as a Highland targe, and though L. delivered his spear, it turned the
+weapon aside as if it was merely a thrust from a wooden pole. The old
+_lungra_ made good his charge, and ripped L's. horse on the shoulder.
+It next charged Pat, and ripped his horse, and cut another horse, a
+valuable black waler, across the knee, laming it for life. Rider after
+rider charged down upon the fierce old brute. Although repeatedly
+wounded none of the thrusts were very serious, and already it had put
+five horses _hors de combat_. It now took up a position under a big
+'bhur' tree, close to some water, and while the boldest of us held back
+for a little, it took a deliberate mud bath under our very noses.
+Doubtless feeling much refreshed, it again took up its position under
+the tree, ready to face each fresh assailant, full of fight, and
+determined to die but not to yield an inch.
+
+Time after time we rode at the dauntless cripple. Each time he charged
+right down, and our spears made little mark upon his toughened hide.
+Our horses too were getting tired of such a customer, and little
+inclined to face his charge. At length 'Jamie' delivered a lucky spear
+and the grey old warrior fell. It had kept us at bay for fully an hour
+and a half, and among our number we reckoned some of the best riders
+and boldest pig-stickers in the district.
+
+Such was our sport in those good old days. Our meets came but seldom,
+so that sport never interfered with the interests of honest hard work;
+but meeting each other as we did, and engaging in exciting sport like
+pig-sticking, cemented our friendship, kept us in health, and
+encouraged all the hardy tendencies of our nature. It whetted our
+appetites, it roused all those robust virtues that have made Englishmen
+the men they are, it sent us back to work with lighter hearts and
+renewed energy. It built up many happy, cherished memories of kindly
+words and looks and deeds, that will only fade when we in turn have to
+bow before the hunter, and render up our spirits to God who gave them.
+Long live honest, hearty, true sportsmen, such as were the friends of
+those happy days. Long may Indian sportsmen find plenty of 'foemen
+worthy of their steel' in the old grey boar, the fighting tusker of
+Bengal.
+
+[Illustration: PIG-STICKERS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The sal forests.--The jungle goddess.--The trees in the jungle.
+--Appearance of the forests.--Birds.--Varieties of parrots.--A 'beat'
+in the forest.--The 'shekarry.'--Mehrman Singh and his gun.--The
+Banturs, a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.--Their habits.--A village
+feast.--We beat for deer.--Habits of the spotted deer.--Waiting for
+the game.--Mehrman Singh gets drunk.--Our bag.--Pea-fowl and their
+habits.--How to shoot them.--Curious custom of the Nepaulese.--How
+Juggroo was tricked, and his revenge.
+
+Tirhoot is too generally under cultivation and too thickly inhabited
+for much land to remain under jungle, and except the wild pig of which
+I have spoken, and many varieties of wild fowl, there is little game to
+be met with. It is, however, different in North Bhaugulpore, where
+there are still vast tracts of forest jungle, the haunt of the spotted
+deer, nilghau, leopard, wolf, and other wild animals. Along the banks
+of the Koosee, a rapid mountain river that rolls its flood through
+numerous channels to join the Ganges, there are immense tracts of
+uncultivated land covered with tall elephant grass, and giving cover to
+tigers, hog deer, pig, wild buffalo, and even an occasional rhinoceros,
+to say nothing of smaller game and wildfowl, which are very plentiful.
+
+The sal forests in North Bhaugulpore generally keep to the high ridges,
+which are composed of a light, sandy soil, very friable, and not very
+fertile, except for oil and indigo seeds, which grow most luxuriantly
+wherever the forest land has been cleared. In the shallow valleys which
+lie between the ridges rice is chiefly cultivated, and gives large
+returns. The sal forests have been sadly thinned by unscientific and
+indiscriminate cutting, and very few fine trees now remain. The earth
+is teeming with insects, chief amongst which are the dreaded and
+destructive white ants. The high pointed nests of these destructive
+insects, formed of hardened mud, are the commonest objects one meets
+with in these forest solitudes.
+
+At intervals, beneath some wide spreading peepul or bhur tree, one
+comes on a rude forest shrine, daubed all over with red paint, and with
+gaudy festoons of imitation flowers, cut from the pith of the plantain
+tree, hanging on every surrounding bough. These shrines are sacred
+to _Chumpa buttee_, the Hindoo Diana, protectress of herds, deer,
+buffaloes, huntsmen, and herdsmen. She is the recognised jungle
+goddess, and is held in great veneration by all the wild tribes and
+half-civilized denizens of the gloomy sal jungle.
+
+The general colour of the forest is a dingy green, save when a deeper
+shade here and there shows where the mighty bhur uprears its towering
+height, or where the crimson flowers of the _seemul_ or cotton tree,
+and the bronze-coloured foliage of the _sunpul_ (a tree very like the
+ornamental beech in shrubberies at home) imparts a more varied colour
+to the generally pervading dark green of the universal sal.
+
+The varieties of trees are of course almost innumerable, but the sal is
+so out of all proportion more numerous than any other kind, that the
+forests well deserve their recognised name. The sal is a fine, hard
+wood of very slow growth. The leaves are broad and glistening, and in
+spring are beautifully tipped with a reddish bronze, which gradually
+tones down into the dingy green which is the prevailing tint. The
+_sheshum_ or _sissod_, a tree with bright green leaves much resembling
+the birch, the wood of which is invaluable for cart wheels and
+such-like work, is occasionally met with. There is the _kormbhe_, a
+very tough wood with a red stringy bark, of which the jungle men make
+a kind of touchwood for their matchlocks, and the _parass_, whose
+peculiarity is that at times it bursts into a wondrous wealth of bright
+crimson blossom without a leaf being on the tree. The _parass_ tree in
+full bloom is gorgeous. After the blossom falls the dark-green leaves
+come out, and are not much different in colour from the sal. Then there
+is the _mhowa_, with its lovely white blossoms, from which a strong
+spirit is distilled, and on which the deer, pigs, and wild bear love to
+feast. The peculiar sickly smell of the _mhowa_ when in flower pervades
+the atmosphere for a great distance round, and reminds one forcibly of
+the peculiar sweet, sickly smell of a brewery. The hill _sirres_ is a
+tall feathery-looking tree of most elegant shape, towering above the
+other forest trees, and the natives strip it of its bark, which they
+use to poison streams. It seems to have some narcotic or poisonous
+principle, easily soluble in water, for when put in any quantity in a
+stream or piece of water, it causes all the fish to become apparently
+paralyzed and rise to the surface, where they float about quite
+stupified and helpless, and become an easy prey to the poaching
+'Banturs' and 'Moosahurs' who adopt this wretched mode of fishing.
+
+Along the banks of the streams vegetation gets very luxurious, and
+among the thick undergrowth are found some lovely ferns, broad-leaved
+plants, and flowers of every hue, all alike nearly scentless. Here is
+no odorous breath of violet or honeysuckle, no delicate perfume of
+primrose or sweetbriar, only a musty, dank, earthy smell which gets
+more and more pronounced as the mists rise along with the deadly
+vapours of the night. Sleeping in these forests is very unhealthy.
+There is a most fatal miasma all through the year, less during the hot
+months, but very bad during and immediately after the annual rains; and
+in September and October nearly every soul in the jungly tracts is
+smitten with fever. The vapour only rises to a certain height above the
+ground, and at the elevation of ten feet or so, I believe one could
+sleep in the jungles with impunity; but it is dangerous at all times to
+sleep in the forest, unless at a considerable elevation. The absence of
+all those delicious smells which make a walk through the woodlands at
+home so delightful, is conspicuous in the sal forests, and another of
+the most noticeable features is the extreme silence, the oppressive
+stillness that reigns.
+
+You know how full of melody is an English wood, when thrush, blackbird,
+mavis, linnet, and a thousand warblers flit from tree to tree. How the
+choir rings out its full anthem of sweetest sound, till every bush and
+tree seems a centre of sweet strains, soft, low, liquid trills, and
+full ripe gushes of melody and song. But it is not thus in an Indian
+forest. There are actually few birds. As you brush through the long
+grass and trample the tangled undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling
+branches, or dodging under the pliant arms of the creepers, you may
+flush a black or grey partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a
+quiet family party of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting
+about to make the vaulted arcades of the forest echo to their music.
+
+The hornbill darts with a succession of long bounding flights from one
+tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow tree close by,
+his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A
+flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the _golden
+oriole_ or mango bird, the _koel_, with here and there a red-tufted
+_bulbul_, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep
+silence is unbroken, save by the melancholy hoot of some blinking owl,
+and the soft monotonous coo of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The
+exquisite honey-sucker, as delicately formed as the petal of a fairy
+flower, flits noiselessly about from blossom to blossom. The natives
+call it the 'Muddpenah' or drinker of honey. There are innumerable
+butterflies of graceful shape and gorgeous colours; what few birds
+there are have beautiful plumage; there is a faint rustle of leaves, a
+faint, far hum of insect life; but it feels so silent, so unlike the
+woods at home. You are oppressed by the solemn stillness, and feel
+almost nervous as you push warily along, for at any moment a leopard,
+wolf, or hyena may get up before you, or you may disturb the siesta of
+a sounder of pig, or a herd of deer.
+
+Up in those forests on the borders of Nepaul, which are called the
+_morung_, there are a great many varieties of parrot, all of them
+very beautiful. There is first the common green parrot, with a red
+beak, and a circle of salmon-coloured feathers round its neck; they
+are very noisy and destructive, and flock together to the fields
+where they do great damage to the crops. The _lutkun sooga_ is an
+exquisitely-coloured bird, about the size of a sparrow. The _ghur[=a]l_,
+a large red and green parrot, with a crimson beak. The _tota_ a
+yellowish-green colour, and the male with a breast as red as blood;
+they call it the _amereet bhela_. Another lovely little parrot, the
+_taeteea sooga_, has a green body, red head, and black throat; but the
+most showy and brilliant of all the tribe is the _putsoogee_. The body
+is a rich living green, red wings, yellow beak, and black throat; there
+is a tuft of vivid red as a topknot, and the tail is a brilliant blue;
+the under feathers of the tail being a pure snowy white.
+
+At times the silence is broken by a loud, metallic, bell-like cry,
+very like the yodel you hear in the Alps. You hear it rise sharp and
+distinct, 'Looralei!' and as suddenly cease. This is the cry of the
+_kookoor gh[=e]t_, a bird not unlike a small pheasant, with a
+reddish-brown back and a fawn-coloured breast. The _sherra_ is another
+green parrot, a little larger than the _putsoogee_, but not so
+beautifully coloured.
+
+There is generally a green, slime-covered, sluggish stream in all these
+forests, its channel choked with rotting leaves and decaying vegetable
+matter. The water should never be drunk until it has been boiled and
+filtered. At intervals the stream opens out and forms a clear
+rush-fringed pool, and the trees receding on either bank leave a lovely
+grassy glade, where the deer and nilghau come to drink. On the glassy
+bosom of the pool in the centre, fine duck, mallard, and teal, can
+frequently be found, and the rushes round the margin are to a certainty
+good for a couple of brace of snipe.
+
+Sometimes on a withered branch overhanging the stream, you can see
+perched the _ahur_, or great black fish-hawk. It has a grating,
+discordant cry, which it utters at intervals as it sits pluming its
+black feathers above the pool. The dark ibis and the ubiquitous
+paddy-bird are of course also found here; and where the land is low and
+marshy, and the stream crawls along through several channels, you are
+sure to come across a couple of red-headed _sarus_, serpent birds, a
+crane, and a solitary heron. The _moosahernee_ is a black and white
+bird, I fancy a sort of ibis, and is good eating. The _dokahur_ is
+another fine big bird, black body and white wings, and as its name
+(derived from _dokha_, a shell) implies, it is the shell-gatherer, or
+snail-eater, and gives good shooting.
+
+When you have determined to beat the forest, you first get your coolies
+and villagers assembled, and send them some mile or two miles ahead,
+under charge of some of the head men, to beat the jungle towards you,
+while you look out for a likely spot, shady, concealed, and cool, where
+you wait with your guns till the game is driven up to you. The whole
+arrangements are generally made, of course under your own supervision,
+by your _Shekarry_, or gamekeeper, as I suppose you might call him. He
+is generally a thin, wiry, silent man, well versed in all the lore of
+the woods, acquainted with the name, appearance, and habits of every
+bird and beast in the forest. He knows their haunts and when they are
+to be found at home. He will track a wounded deer like a bloodhound,
+and can tell the signs and almost impalpable evidences of an animal's
+whereabouts, the knowledge of which goes to make up the genuine hunter.
+
+When all is still around, and only the distant shouts of the beaters
+fall faintly at intervals on the ear, his keen hearing detects the
+light patter of hoof or paw on the crisp, withered leaves. His
+hawk-like glance can pick out from the deepest shade the sleek coat or
+hide of the leopard or the deer; and even before the animal has come in
+sight, his senses tell him whether it is young or old, whether it is
+alarmed, or walking in blind confidence. In fact, I have known a good
+shekarry tell you exactly what animal is coming, whether bear, leopard,
+fox, deer, pig, or monkey.
+
+The best shekarry I ever had was a Nepaulee called 'Mehrman Singh.' He
+had the regular Tartar physiognomy of the Nepaulese. Small, oblique,
+twinkling eyes, high cheekbones, flattish nose, and scanty moustache.
+He was a tall, wiry man, with a remarkably light springy step, a bold
+erect carriage, and was altogether a fine, manly, independent fellow.
+He had none of the fawning obsequiousness which is so common to the
+Hindoo, but was a merry laughing fellow, with a keen love of sport and
+a great appreciation of humour. His gun was fearfully and wonderfully
+made. It was a long, heavy flint gun, with a tremendously heavy barrel,
+and the stock all splices and splinters, tied in places with bits of
+string. I would rather not have been in the immediate vicinity of the
+weapon when he fired it, and yet he contrived to do some good shooting
+with it.
+
+He was wonderfully patient in stalking an animal or waiting for its
+near approach, as he never ventured on a long shot, and did not
+understand our objection to pot-shooting. His shot was composed of
+jagged little bits of iron, chipped from an old _kunthee_, or
+cooking-pot; and his powder was truly unique, being like lumps of
+charcoal, about the size of small raisins. A shekarry fills about four
+or five fingers' depth of this into his gun, then a handful of old
+iron, and with a little touch of English powder pricked in with a pin
+as priming, he is ready for execution on any game that may come within
+reach of a safe pot-shot. When the gun goes off there is a mighty
+splutter, a roar like that of a small cannon, and the slugs go hurtling
+through the bushes, carrying away twigs and leaves, and not
+unfrequently smashing up the game so that it is almost useless for the
+table.
+
+The _Banturs_, who principally inhabit these jungles, are mostly of
+Nepaulese origin. They are a sturdy, independent people, and the women
+have fair skins, and are very pretty. Unchastity is very rare, and the
+infidelity of a wife is almost unknown. If it is found out, mutilation
+and often death are the penalties exacted from the unfortunate woman.
+They wear one long loose flowing garment, much like the skirt of a
+gown; this is tightly twisted round the body above the bosoms, leaving
+the neck and arms quite bare. They are fond of ornaments--nose, ears,
+toes and arms, and even ancles, being loaded with silver rings and
+circlets. Some decorate their nose and the middle parting of the hair
+with a greasy-looking red pigment, while nearly every grown-up woman
+has her arms, neck, and low down on the collar bone most artistically
+tattooed in a variety of close, elaborate patterns. The women all work
+in the clearings; sowing, and weeding, and reaping the rice, barley,
+and other crops. They do most of the digging where that is necessary,
+the men confining themselves to ploughing and wood-cutting. At the
+latter employment they are most expert; they use the axe in the most
+masterly manner, but their mode of cutting is fearfully wasteful; they
+always leave some three feet of the best part of the wood in the
+ground, very rarely cutting a tree close down to the root. Many of
+them are good charcoal-burners, and indeed their principal occupation
+is supplying the adjacent villages with charcoal and firewood. They use
+small narrow-edged axes for felling, but for lopping they invariably
+use the Nepaulese national weapon--the _kookree_. This is a heavy,
+curved knife, with a broad blade, the edge very sharp, and the back
+thick and heavy. In using it they slash right and left with a quick
+downward stroke, drawing the blade quickly toward them as they strike.
+They are wonderfully dexterous with the _kookree_, and will clear
+away brush and underwood almost as quickly as a man can walk. They
+pack their charcoal, rice, or other commodities, in long narrow
+baskets, which they sling on a pole carried on their shoulders, as we
+see the Chinese doing in the well known pictures on tea-chests. They
+are all Hindoos in religion, but are very fond of rice-whiskey. Although
+not so abstemious in this respect as the Hindoos of the plains, they
+are a much finer race both physically and morally. As a rule they are
+truthful, honest, brave, and independent. They are always glad to see
+you, laugh out merrily at you as you pass, and are wonderfully
+hospitable. It would be a nice point for Sir Wilfrid Lawson to
+reconcile the use of rice-whiskey with this marked superiority in all
+moral virtues in the whiskey-drinking, as against the totally-abstaining
+Hindoo.
+
+To return to Mehrman Singh. His face was seamed with smallpox marks,
+and he had seven or eight black patches on it the first time I saw him,
+caused by the splintering of his flint when he let off his antediluvian
+gun. When he saw my breechloaders, the first he had ever beheld, his
+admiration was unbounded. He told me he had come on a leopard asleep in
+the forest one day, and crept up quite close to him. His faith in his
+old gun, however, was not so lively as to make him rashly attack so
+dangerous a customer, so he told me. 'Hum usko jans deydea oos wukt,'
+that is, 'I _gave_ the brute its life that time, but,' he continued,
+'had I had an English gun like this, your honour, I would have blown
+the _soor_ (_Anglice_, pig) to hell.' Old Mehrman was rather strong in
+his expletives at times, but I was not a little amused at the cool way
+he spoke of _giving_ the leopard its life. The probability is, that had
+he only wounded the animal, he would have lost his own.
+
+These Nepaulese are very fond of giving feasts to each other. Their
+dinner-parties, I assure you, are very often 'great affairs.' They are
+not mean in their arrangements, and the wants of the inner man are very
+amply provided for. Their crockery is simple and inexpensive. When the
+feast is prepared, each guest provides himself with a few broad leaves
+from the nearest sal tree, and forming these into a cup, he pins them
+together with thorns from the acacia. Squatting down in a circle, with
+half-a-dozen of these sylvan cups around, the attendant fills one with
+rice, another with _dhall_, a third with goat's-flesh, a fourth with
+_turkaree_ or vegetables, a fifth with chutnee, pickle, or some kind of
+preserve. Curds, ghee, a little oil perhaps, sugar, plantains, and
+other fruit are not wanting, and the whole is washed down with copious
+draughts of fiery rice-whiskey, or where it can be procured, with
+palm-toddy. Not unfrequently dancing boys or girls are in attendance,
+and the horrid din of tom-toms, cymbals, a squeaking fiddle, or a
+twanging sitar, rattling castanets, and ear-piercing songs from the
+dusky _prima donna_, makes night hideous, until the grey dawn peeps
+over the dark forest line.
+
+Early in January, 1875, my camp was at a place in the sal jungles
+called Lohurneah. I had been collecting rents and looking after my seed
+cultivation, and Pat and our sporting District Engineer having joined
+me, we determined to have a beat for deer. Mehrman Singh had reported
+numerous herds in the vicinity of our camp. During the night we had
+been disturbed by the revellers at such a feast in the village as I
+have been describing. We had filled cartridges, seen to our guns, and
+made every preparation for the beat, and early in the morning the
+coolies and idlers of the forest villages all round were ranged in
+circles about our camp.
+
+Swallowing a hasty breakfast we mounted our ponies, and followed by our
+ragged escort, made off for the forest. On the way we met a crowd of
+Banturs with bundles of stakes and great coils of strong heavy netting.
+Sending the coolies on ahead under charge of several headmen and peons,
+we plunged into the gloom of the forest, leaving our ponies and grooms
+outside. When we came to a likely-looking spot, the Banturs began
+operations by fixing up the nets on the stakes and between trees, till
+a line of strong net extended across the forest for several hundred
+yards. We then went ahead, leaving the nets behind us, and each took up
+his station about 200 yards in front. The men with the nets then hid
+themselves behind trees, and crouched in the underwood. With our
+kookries we cut down several branches, stuck them in the ground in
+front, and ensconced ourselves in this artificial shelter. Behind us,
+and between us and the nets, was a narrow cart track leading through
+the forest, and the reason of our taking this position was given me by
+Pat, who was an old hand at jungle shooting.
+
+When deer are being driven, they are intensely suspicious, and of
+course frightened. They know every spot in the jungle, and are
+acquainted with all the paths, tracks, and open places in the forest.
+When they are nearing an open glade, or a road, they slacken their
+pace, and go slowly and warily forward, an old buck generally leading.
+When he has carefully reconnoitred and examined the suspected place in
+front, and found it clear to all appearance, they again put on the
+pace, and clear the open ground at their greatest speed. The best
+chance of a shot is when a path is in front of _them_ and behind _you_,
+as then they are going slowly.
+
+At first when I used to go out after them, I often got an open glade,
+or road, in _front_ of me; but experience soon told me that Pat's plan
+was the best. As this was a beat not so much for real sport, as to show
+me how the villagers managed these affairs, we were all under Pat's
+direction, and he could not have chosen better ground. I was on the
+extreme left, behind a clump of young trees, with the sluggish muddy
+stream on my left. Our Engineer to my right was about one hundred yards
+off, and Pat himself on the extreme right, at about the same distance
+from H. Behind us was the road, and in the rear the long line of nets,
+with their concealed watchers. The nets are so set up on the stakes,
+that when an animal bounds along and touches the net, it falls over
+him, and ere he can extricate himself from its meshes, the vigilant
+Banturs rush out and despatch him with spears and clubs.
+
+We waited a long time hearing nothing of the beaters, and watching the
+red and black ants hurrying to and fro. Huge green-bellied spiders
+oscillated backwards and forwards in their strong, systematically woven
+webs. A small mungoose kept peeping out at me from the roots of an old
+india-rubber tree, and aloft in the branches an amatory pair of hidden
+ringdoves were billing and cooing to each other. At this moment a
+stealthy step stole softly behind, and the next second Mr. Mehrman
+Singh crept quietly and noiselessly beside me, his face flushed with
+rapid walking, his eye flashing with excitement, his finger on his lip,
+and a look of portentous gravity and importance striving to spread
+itself over his speaking countenance. Mehrman had been up all night at
+the feast, and was as drunk as a piper. It was no use being angry with
+him, so I tried to keep him quiet and resumed my watch.
+
+A few minutes afterwards he grasped me by the wrist, rather startling
+me, but in a low hoarse whisper warning me that a troop of monkeys was
+coming. I could not hear the faintest rustle, but sure enough in a
+minute or two a troop of over twenty monkeys came hopping and shambling
+along, stopping every now and then to sit on their hams, look back,
+grin, jabber, and show their formidable teeth, until Mehrman rose up,
+waved his cloth at them, and turned them off from the direction of the
+nets toward the bank of the stream.
+
+Next came a fox, slouching warily and cautiously along; then a couple
+of lean, hungry-looking jackals; next a sharp patter on the crisp dry
+leaves, and several peafowl with resplendent plumage ran rapidly past.
+Another touch on the arm from Mehrman, and following the direction of
+his outstretched hand, I descried a splendid buck within thirty yards
+of me, his antlers and chest but barely visible above the brushwood. My
+gun was to my shoulder in an instant, but the shekarry in an excited
+whisper implored me not to fire. I hesitated, and just then the stately
+head turned round to look behind, and exposing the beautifully curving
+neck full to my aim, I fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the
+fine buck topple over, seemingly hard hit.
+
+A shot on my right, and two shots in rapid succession further on,
+shewed me that Pat and H. were also at work, and then the whole forest
+seemed alive with frightened, madly-plunging pig, deer, and other
+animals. I fired at, and wounded an enormous boar that came rushing
+past, and now the cries of the coolies in front as they came trooping
+on, mingled with the shouts of the men at the nets, where the work of
+death evidently was going on.
+
+It was most exciting while it lasted, but, after all, I do not think it
+was honest sport. The only apology I could make to myself was, that the
+deer and pig were far too numerous, and doing immense damage to the
+crops, and if not thinned out, they would soon have made the growing of
+any crop whatever an impossibility.
+
+The monkey being a sacred animal, is never molested by the natives, and
+the damage he does in a night to a crop of wheat or barley is
+astonishing. Peafowl too are very destructive, and what with these and
+the ravages of pig, deer, hares, and other plunderers, the poor ryot
+has to watch many a weary night, to secure any return from his fields.
+
+On rejoining each other at the nets, we found that five deer and two
+pigs had been killed. Pat had shot a boar and a porcupine, the latter
+with No. 4 shot. H. accounted for a deer, and I got my buck and the
+boar which I had wounded in the chest; Mehrman Singh had followed him
+up and tracked him to the river, where he took refuge among some long
+swamp reeds. Replying to his call, we went up, and a shot through the
+head settled the old boar for ever. Our bag was therefore for the first
+beat, seven deer, four pigs, and a porcupine.
+
+The coolies were now sent away out of the jungle, and on ahead for a
+mile or so, the nets were coiled up, our ponies regained, and off we
+set, to take another station. As we went along the river bank,
+frequently having to force our way through thick jungle, we started 'no
+end' of peafowl, and getting down we soon added a couple to the bag.
+Pat got a fine jack snipe, and I shot a _Jheela_, a very fine waterfowl
+with brown plumage, having a strong metallic, coppery lustre on the
+back, and a steely dark blue breast. The plumage was very thick and
+glossy, and it proved afterwards to be excellent eating.
+
+Peafowl generally retire to the thickest part of the jungles during the
+heat of the day, but if you go out very early, when they are slowly
+wending their way back from the fields, where they have been revelling
+all night, you can shoot numbers of them. I used to go about twenty or
+thirty yards into the jungle, and walk slowly along, keeping that
+distance from the edge. My syce and pony would then walk slowly by the
+edges of the fields, and when the syce saw a peafowl ahead, making for
+the jungle, he would shout and try to make it rise. He generally
+succeeded, and as I was a little in advance and concealed by the
+jungle, I would get a fine shot as the bird flew overhead. I have shot
+as many as eight and ten in a morning in this way. I always used No. 4
+shot with about 3-1/2 drams of powder.
+
+Unless hard hit peafowl will often get away; they run with amazing
+swiftness, and in the heart of the jungle it is almost impossible to
+make them rise. A couple of sharp terriers, or a good retriever, will
+sometimes flush them, but the best way is to go along the edge of the
+jungle in the early morn, as I have described. The peachicks, about
+seven or eight months old, are deliciously tender and well flavoured.
+Old birds are very dry and tough, and require a great deal of that
+old-fashioned sauce, Hunger.
+
+The common name for a peafowl is _m[=o]r_, but the Nepaulese and Banturs
+call it _majoor_. Now _majoor_ also means coolie, and a young fellow,
+S., was horrified one day hearing his attendant in the jungle telling
+him in the most excited way, '_Majoor, majoor_, Sahib; why don't you
+fire?' Poor S. thought it was a coolie the man meant, and that he must
+be going mad, wanting him to shoot a coolie, but he found out his
+mistake, and learnt the double meaning of the word, when he got home
+and consulted his _manager_.
+
+The generic name for all deer is in Hindustani HURIN, but the Nepaulese
+call it CHEETER. The male spotted deer they call KUBRA, the female
+KUBREE. These spotted deer keep almost exclusively to the forests, and
+are very seldom found far away from the friendly cover of the sal
+woods. They are the most handsome, graceful looking animals I know,
+their skins beautifully marked with white spots, and the horns wide and
+arching. When properly prepared the skin makes a beautiful mat for a
+drawing room, and the horns of a good buck are a handsome ornament to
+the hall or the verandah. When bounding along through the forest, his
+beautifully spotted skin flashing through the dark green foliage, his
+antlers laid back over his withers, he looks the very embodiment of
+grace and swiftness. He is very timid, and not easily stalked.
+
+In March and April, when a strong west wind is blowing, it rustles the
+myriads of leaves that, dry as tinder, encumber the earth. This
+perpetual rustle prevents the deer from hearing the footsteps of an
+approaching foe. They generally betake themselves then to some patch of
+grass, or long-crop outside the jungle altogether, and if you want them
+in those months, it is in such places, and not inside the forest at
+all, that you must search. Like all the deer tribe, they are very
+curious, and a bit of rag tied to a tree, or a cloth put over a bush,
+will not unfrequently entice them within range.
+
+Old shekarries will tell you that as long as the deer go on feeding and
+flapping their ears, you may continue your approach. As soon as they
+throw up the head, and keep the ears still, their suspicions have been
+aroused, and if you want venison, you must be as still as a rock, till
+your game is again lulled into security, As soon as the ears begin
+flapping again, you may continue your stalk, but at the slightest
+noise, the noble buck will be off like a flash of lightning. You should
+never go out in the forest with white clothes, as you are then a
+conspicuous mark for all the prying eyes that are invisible to you. The
+best colour is dun brown, dark grey, or dark green. When you see a deer
+has become suspicious, and no cover is near, stand perfectly erect and
+rigid, and do not leave your legs apart. The 'forked-parsnip' formation
+of the 'human form divine' is detected at a glance, but there's just a
+chance that if your legs are drawn together, and you remain perfectly
+motionless, you may be mistaken for the stump of a tree, or at the best
+some less dangerous enemy than man.
+
+As we rode slowly along, to allow the beaters to get ahead, and to let
+the heavily-laden men with the nets keep up with us, we were amused to
+hear the remarks of the syces and shekarries on the sport they had just
+witnessed. Pat's old man, Juggroo, a merry peep-eyed fellow, full of
+anecdote and humour, was rather hard on Mehrman Singh for having been
+up late the preceding night. Mehrman, whose head was by this time
+probably reminding him that there are 'lees to every cup,' did not seem
+to relish the humour. He began grasping one wrist with the other hand,
+working his hand slowly round his wrist, and I noticed that Juggroo
+immediately changed the subject. This, as I afterwards learned, is the
+invariable Nepaulese custom of showing anger. They grasp the wrist as I
+have said, and it is taken as a sign that, if you do not discontinue
+your banter, you will have a fight.
+
+The Nepaulese are rather vain of their personal appearance, and hanker
+greatly after a good thick moustache. This, nature has denied them, for
+the hair on their faces is scanty and stubbly in the extreme. One day
+Juggroo saw his master putting some bandoline on his moustache, which
+was a fine, handsome, silky one. He asked Pat's bearer, an old rogue,
+what it was.
+
+'Oh!' replied the bearer, 'that is the gum of the sal tree; master
+always uses that, and that is the reason he has such a fine moustache.'
+
+Juggroo's imagination fired up at the idea.
+
+'Will it make mine grow too?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+'How do you use it?'
+
+'Just rub it on, as you see master do.'
+
+Away went Juggroo to try the new recipe.
+
+Now, the gum of the sal tree is a very strong resin, and hardens in
+water. It is almost impossible to get it off your skin, as the more
+water you use, the harder it gets.
+
+Next day Juggroo's face presented a sorry sight. He had plentifully
+smeared the gum over his upper lip, so that when he washed his face,
+the gum _set_, making the lip as stiff as a board, and threatening to
+crack the skin every time the slightest muscle moved.
+
+Juggroo _was_ 'sold' and no mistake, but he bore it all in grim
+silence, although he never forgot the old bearer. One day, long after,
+he brought in some berries from the wood, and was munching them,
+seemingly with great relish. The bearer wanted to know what they were,
+Juggroo with much apparent _nonchalance_ told him they were some very
+sweet, juicy, wild berries he had found in the forest. The bearer asked
+to try one.
+
+Juggroo had _another_ fruit ready, very much resembling those he was
+eating. It is filled with minute spikelets, or little hairy spinnacles,
+much resembling those found in ripe doghips at home. If these even
+touch the skin, they cause intense pain, stinging like nettles, and
+blistering every part they touch.
+
+The unsuspicious bearer popped the treacherous berry into his mouth,
+gave it a crunch, and then with a howl of agony, spluttered and spat,
+while the tears ran down his cheeks, as he implored Juggroo by all the
+gods to fetch him some water.
+
+Old Juggroo with a grim smile, walked coolly away, discharging a
+Parthian shaft, by telling him that these berries were very good for
+making the hair grow, and hoped he would soon have a good moustache.
+
+A man from the village now came running up to tell us that there was a
+leopard in the jungle we were about to beat, and that it had seized,
+but failed to carry away, a dog from the village during the night.
+Natives are so apt to tell stories of this kind that at first we did
+not credit him, but turning into the village he showed us the poor dog,
+with great wounds on its neck and throat where the leopard had pounced
+upon it. The noise, it seems, had brought some herdsmen to the place,
+and their cries had frightened the leopard and saved the wretched dog.
+As the man said he could show us the spot where the leopard generally
+remained, we determined to beat him up; so sending a man off on
+horseback for the beaters to slightly alter their intended line of
+beat, we rode off, attended by the villager, to get behind the
+leopard's lair, and see if we could not secure him. These fierce and
+courageous brutes, for they are both, are very common in the sal
+jungles; and as I have seen several killed, both in Bhaugulpore and
+Oudh, I must devote a chapter to the subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
+one.--Encounter with a leopard in a dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
+leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
+annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
+harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
+sanitation.
+
+Writing principally for friends at home, who are not familiar with
+Indian life, I must narrate facts that, although well known in Indian
+circles, are yet new to the general reader in England. My object is of
+course to represent the life we lead in the far East, and to give a
+series of pictures of what is going on there. If I occasionally touch
+on what may to Indian readers seem well-worn ground, they will forgive
+me.
+
+The leopard then, as a rule keeps to the wooded parts of India. In the
+long grassy jungles bordering the Koosee he is not generally met with.
+He is essentially a predatory animal, always on the outlook for a meal;
+round the villages, nestling amid their sal forests, he is continually
+on the prowl, looking out for a goat, a calf, or unwary dog. His
+appearance and habits are well known; he generally selects for his
+lair, a retired spot surrounded by dense jungle. The one we were after
+now had his home in a matted jungle, growing out of a pool of water,
+which had collected in a long hollow, forming the receptacle of the
+surface drainage from the adjacent slopes. This hollow stretched for
+miles towards the creek which we had been beating up; and the locality
+having moisture and other concurring elements in its favour, the
+vegetation had attained a luxuriance rarely seen in the dry uplands,
+where the west winds lick up the moisture, and the soil is arid and
+unpromising. The matted intertwining branches of the creepers had
+formed an almost impervious screen, and on the basis thus formed, amid
+the branches and creepers, the leopards had formed their lair. Beneath,
+was a still stagnant pool; above, was the leafy foliage. The tracks led
+down to a well-worn path.
+
+Climbing like a cat, as the leopards can do, they found no difficulty
+in gaining a footing on the mass of vegetation. They generally select
+some retired spot like this, and are very seldom seen in the daytime.
+With the approach of night, however, they begin their wandering in
+quest of prey. In a beat such as we were having 'all is fish that comes
+to the net,' and leopards, if they are in the jungle, have to yield to
+the advance of the beaters, like the other denizens of the forest.
+
+Experience tells you that the leopard is daring and ferocious. Old
+experienced hands warn you, that unless you can make sure of your shot,
+it is unwise to fire at a leopard approaching. It is better to wait
+till he has got past you, or at all events is 'broadside on.' If you
+only wound him as he is approaching, he will almost to a certainty make
+straight at you, but if you shoot him as he is going past, he will,
+maddened by pain and anger, go straight forward, and you escape his
+charge. He is more courageous than a tiger, and a very dangerous
+customer at close quarters. Up in one of the forests in Oudh, a friend
+of mine was out one day after leopard, with a companion who belonged to
+the forest department. My friend's companion fired at a leopard as it
+was approaching him, and wounded it severely. Nothing daunted, and
+recognising whence its hurt had come, it charged directly down on the
+concealed sportsman, and before he could half realise the position,
+sprang on him, caught his left arm in its teeth, and began mauling him
+with its claws. His presence of mind did not desert him; noticing close
+by the stump of a sal tree, that had been eaten by white ants till the
+harder parts of the wood alone remained, standing up hard and sharp
+like so many spikes of steel; and knowing that the leopard was already
+badly wounded, and in all probability struggling for his life, he
+managed to drag the struggling animal up to the stump; jammed his left
+arm yet further into the open mouth of the wounded beast, and being a
+strong man, by pure physical force dashed the leopard's brains out on
+the jagged edges of the stump. It was a splendid instance of presence
+of mind. He was horribly mauled of course; in fact I believe he lost
+his arm, but he saved his life. It shows the danger of only wounding a
+leopard, especially if he is coming towards you; always wait till he
+has passed your station, if it is practicable. If you _must_ shoot,
+take what care you can that the shot be a sure one.
+
+In some of the hill stations, and indeed in the villages on the plains,
+it is very common for a leopard to make his appearance in the house or
+verandah of an evening.
+
+One was shot in Bhaugulpore station by the genial and respected
+chaplain, on a Sunday morning two or three years ago. As we went along,
+H. told us a humorous story of an Assistant in the Public Works
+Department, who got mauled by a leopard at Dengra Ghat, Dak Bungalow.
+It had taken up its quarters in a disused room, and this young fellow
+burning, with ardour to distinguish himself, made straight for the room
+in which he was known to be. He opened the door, followed by a motley
+crowd of retainers, discharged his gun, and the sequel proved that he
+was _not_ a dead shot. He had only wounded the leopard. With a bound
+the savage brute was on him, but in the hurry and confusion, he had
+changed front. The leopard had him by the back. You can imagine the
+scene! He roared for help! The leopard was badly hit, and a plucky
+_bearer_ came to his rescue with a stout _lathee_. Between them they
+succeeded in killing the wounded animal, but not before it had left its
+marks on a very sensitive portion of his frame. The moral is, if you go
+after leopard, be sure you kill him at once.
+
+They seldom attack a strong, well-grown animal. Calves, however, goats,
+and dogs are frequently carried off by them. The young of deer and pig,
+too, fall victims, and when nothing else can be had, peafowl have been
+known to furnish them a meal. In my factory in Oudh I had a small,
+graceful, four-horned antelope. It was carried off by a leopard from
+the garden in broad daylight, and in face of a gang of coolies.
+
+The most commonly practised mode of leopard shooting, is to tie a goat
+up to a tree. You have a _mychan_ erected, that is, a platform elevated
+on trees above the ground. Here you take your seat. Attracted by the
+bleating of the goat, the prowling leopard approaches his intended
+victim. If you are on the watch you can generally detect his approach.
+They steal on with extreme caution, being intensely wary and
+suspicious. At a village near where we now were, I had sat up for three
+nights for a leopard, but although I knew he was prowling in the
+vicinity, I had never got a look at him. We believed this leopard to be
+the same brute.
+
+I have already described our mode of beating. The jungle was close, and
+there was a great growth of young trees. I was again on the right, and
+near the edge of the forest. Beyond was a glade planted with rice. The
+incidents of the beat were much as you have just read. There was,
+however, unknown or at any rate unnoticed by us, more intense
+excitement. We knew that the leopard might at any moment pass before
+us. Pat was close to a mighty bhur tree, whose branches, sending down
+shoots from the parent stem, had planted round it a colony of vigorous
+supports. It was a magnificent tree with dense shade. All was solemn
+and still. Pat with his keen eye, his pulse bounding, and every sense
+on the alert, was keeping a careful look-out from behind an immense
+projecting buttress of the tree. All was deadly quiet. H. and myself
+were occupied watching the gambols of some monkeys in our front. The
+beaters were yet far off. Suddenly Pat heard a faint crackle on a dried
+leaf. He glanced in the direction of the sound, and his quick eye
+detected the glossy coats, the beautifully spotted hides of not _one_
+leopard, but _two_. In a moment the stillness was broken by the report
+of his rifle. Another report followed sharp and quick. We were on the
+alert, but to Pat the chief honour and glory belonged. He had shot one
+leopard dead through the heart. The female was badly hit and came
+bounding along in my direction. Of course we were now on the _qui
+vive_. Waiting for an instant, till I could get my aim clear of some
+intervening trees, I at length got a fair shot, and brought her down
+with a ball through the throat. H. and Pat came running up, and we
+congratulated ourselves on our success. By and bye Mehrman Singh and
+the rest of the beaters came up, and the joy of the villagers was
+gratifying. These were doubtless the two leopards we had heard so much
+about, for which I had sat up and watched. It was amusing to see some
+villager whose pet goat or valued calf had been carried off, now coming
+up, striking the dead body of the leopard, and abusing it in the most
+unmeasured terms. Such a crowding round as there was! such a noise, and
+such excitement!
+
+While waiting for the horses to be brought, and while the excited mob
+of beaters and coolies carried off the dead animals to the camp to be
+skinned, we amused ourselves by trying our rifles at a huge tree that
+grew on the further side of the rice swamp. We found the effects of the
+'Express' bullet to be tremendous. It splintered up and burst the bark
+and body of the tree into fragments. Its effects on an animal are even
+more wonderful. On looking afterwards at the leopard which had been
+shot, we found that my bullet had touched the base of the shoulder,
+near the collar-bone. It had gone downwards through the neck, under the
+collar-bone, and struck the shoulder. There it had splintered up and
+made a frightful wound, scattering its fragments all over the chest,
+and cutting and lacerating everything in its way.
+
+For big game the 'Express' is simply invaluable. For all-round shooting
+perhaps a No. 12 smooth-bore is the best. It should be snap action with
+rebounding locks. You should have facilities and instruments for
+loading cartridges. A good cartridge belt is a good thing for carrying
+them, but go where you will now, where there is game to be killed, a
+No. 12 B. L. will enable you to participate in whatever shooting is
+going. Such a one as I have described would satisfy all the wishes of
+any young man who perhaps can only afford one gun.
+
+As we rode slowly along, we learned many curious facts of jungle and
+native life from the followers, and by noticing little incidents
+happening before our eyes. Pat, who is so well versed in jungle life
+and its traditions, told us of a curious moveable feast which the
+natives of these parts hold annually, generally in March or April,
+which is called the _Sirwah Purrub_.
+
+It seems to be somewhat like the old carnivals of the middle ages. I
+have read that in Sardinia, and Italy, and Switzerland something
+similar takes place. The _Sirwah Purrub_ is a sort of festival held in
+honour of the native Diana--the _chumpa buttee_ before referred to. On
+the appointed day all the males in the forest villages, without
+exception, go a-hunting. Old spears are furbished up; miraculous guns,
+of even yet more ancient lineage than Mehrman Singh's dangerous
+flintpiece, are brought out from dusty hiding-places. Battle-axes, bows
+and arrows, hatchets, clubs and weapons of all sorts, are looked up,
+and the motley crowd hies to the forest, the one party beating up the
+game to the other.
+
+Some go fishing, others try to secure a quail or partridge, but it is a
+point of honour that something must be slain. If game be not plentiful
+they will even go to another village and slay a goat, which, rather
+than return empty-handed, they will bear in triumph home. The women
+meet the returning hunters, and if there has been a fortunate beat,
+there is a great feast in the village during the evening and far on
+into the night. The nets are used, and in this way they generally have
+some game to divide in the village on their return from the hunt.
+Ordinarily they seethe the flesh, and pour the whole contents of the
+cooking-pot into a mess of boiled rice. With the addition of a little
+salt, this is to them very palatable fare. They are very good cooks,
+with very simple appliances; with a little mustard oil or clarified
+butter, a few vegetables or a cut-up fish, they can be very successful.
+The food, however, is generally smoked from the cow-dung fire. If you
+are much out in these villages this smoke constantly hangs about,
+clinging to your clothes and flavouring your food, but the natives seem
+to like it amazingly.
+
+In the cold mornings of December or January it hangs about like the
+peat smoke in a Highland village. Round every house are great stacks
+and piles of cow-dung cakes. Before every house is a huge pile of
+ashes, and the villagers cower round this as the evening falls, or
+before the sun has dissipated the mist of the mornings. During the day
+the village dogs burrow in the ashes. Hovering in a dense cloud about
+the roofs and eaves, and along the lower branches of the trees in filmy
+layers, the smoke almost chokes one to ride through it. I have seen a
+native sit till half-choked in a dense column of this smoke. He is too
+lazy to shift his position; the fumes of pungent smoke half smother
+him; tears run from his eyes; he splutters and coughs, and abuses the
+smoke, and its grandfather, and maternal uncle, and all its other known
+relatives; but he prefers semi-suffocation to the trouble of budging an
+inch.
+
+Sometimes the energy of these people is surprising. To go to a fair or
+feast, or on a pilgrimage, they will walk miles upon miles, subsisting
+on parched peas or rice, and carrying heavy burdens. In company they
+sing and carol blithely enough. When alone they are very taciturn, man
+and woman walking together, the man first with his _lathee_ or staff,
+the woman behind carrying child or bundle, and often looking fagged and
+tired enough.
+
+Taking vegetables, or rice, or other commodities to the bazaar, the
+carrier often slings his burden to the two ends of a pole worn over the
+shoulder, much as Chinamen do. But they generally make their load into
+one bundle which they carry on the head, or which they sling, if not
+large and bulky, over their backs, rolled up in one of their cloths.
+
+During the rice-planting season they toil in mud and water from
+earliest morn till late into twilight. Bending and stooping all the
+day, their lower extremities up to the knee sometimes in water, and the
+scorching sun beating on their backs, they certainly show their patient
+plodding industry, for it is downright honest hard work.
+
+The young rice is taken from the nursery patch, where it has been sown
+thick some time previously. When the rice-field is ready--a sloppy,
+muddy, embanked little quagmire--the ryot gets his bundle of young
+rice-plants, and shoves in two or three at a time with his finger and
+thumb. These afterwards form the tufts of rice. Its growth is very
+rapid. Sometimes, in case of flood, the rice actually grows with the
+rise of the water, always keeping its tip above the stream. If wholly
+submerged for any length of time it dies. There are over a hundred
+varieties. Some are only suited for very deep marshy soils; others,
+such as the _s[=a]tee_, or sixty-days rice, can be grown on comparatively
+high land, and ripen early. If rain be scanty, the _s[=a]tee_ and other
+rice crops have to be weeded. It is cut with a jagged-edged sort of
+reaping-hook called a _hussooa_. The cut bundles are carried from the
+fields by women, girls, and lads. They could not take carts in many
+instances into the swamps.
+
+At such times you see every little dyke or embankment with a crowd of
+bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on his head,
+hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The women, with clothes
+tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at
+a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken--garnering
+the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over.
+Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor,
+dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a
+yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use
+leaving a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by
+such a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty
+stomachs in every village, a bundle of rice would be gone by the
+morning.
+
+As in Greece, where every man has to watch his vineyard at night, so
+here, the _kureehan_ or threshing-floor each has its watchman at night.
+For the protection of the growing crops, the villagers club together,
+and appoint a watchman or _chowkeydar_, whom they pay by giving him a
+small percentage on the yield; or a small fractional proportion of the
+area he has to guard, with its standing crop, may be made over to him
+as a recompense.
+
+They thresh out the rice when it has matured a little on the
+threshing-floor. Four to six bullocks are tied in a line to a post in
+the centre, and round this they slowly pace in a circle. They are not
+muzzled, and the poor brutes seem rather to enjoy the unwonted luxury
+of feeding while they work. When there is a good wind, the grain is
+winnowed; it is lifted either in bamboo scoops or in the two hands. The
+wind blows the chaff or _bhoosa_ on to a heap, and the fine fresh rice
+remains behind. The grain merchants now do a good business. Rice must
+be sold to pay the rent, the money-lender, and other clamouring
+creditors. The _bunniahs_ will take repayment in kind. They put on
+the interest, and cheat in the weighments and measurements. So much has
+to be given to the weigh-man as a perquisite. If seed had been borrowed,
+it has now to be returned at a ruinous rate of interest. Some seed must
+be saved for next year, and an average _poor_ ryot, the cultivator of
+but a little holding, very soon sees the result of his harvesting melt
+away, leaving little for wife and little ones to live on. He never
+gets free of the money-lender. He will have to go out and work hard
+for others, as well as get up his own little lands. No chance of a new
+bullock this year, and the old ones are getting worn out and thin. The
+wife must dispense with her promised ornament or dress. For the poor
+ryot it is a miserable hand-to-mouth existence when crops are poor.
+As a rule he is never out of debt. He lives on the scantiest fare;
+hunger often pinches him; he knows none of the luxuries of life.
+Notwithstanding all, the majority are patient, frugal, industrious,
+and to the full extent of their scanty means even charitable and
+benevolent. With the average ryot a little business goes a great way.
+There are some irreconcileable, discontented, worthless fellows in
+every village. All more or less count a lie as rather a good thing to
+be expert in; they lie naturally, simply, and instinctively: but with
+all his faults, and they are doubtless many, I confess to a great
+liking for the average Hindoo ryot.
+
+At times, however, their apathy and laziness is amazing. They are very
+childish, petted, and easily roused. In a quarrel, however, they
+generally confine themselves to vituperation and abuse, and seldom
+come to blows.
+
+As an instance of their fatalism or apathetic indolence, I can remember
+a village on the estate I was managing taking fire. It was quite close
+to the factory. I had my pony saddled at once, and galloped off for the
+burning village. It was a long, straggling one, with a good masonry
+well in the centre, shadowed by a mighty _peepul_ tree. The wind was
+blowing the fire right along, and if no obstruction was offered, would
+sweep off every hut in the place. The only soul who was trying to do a
+thing was a young Brahmin watchman belonging to the factory. He had
+succeeded in removing some brass jars of his own, and was saving some
+grain. One woman was rocking to and fro, beating her breast and crying.
+There sat the rest of the apathetic villagers in groups, not lifting a
+finger, not stirring a step, but calmly looking on, while the devouring
+element was licking up hut after hut, and destroying their little all.
+In a few minutes some of my servants, syces, and factory men had
+arrived. I tied up the pony, ordered my men to pull down a couple of
+huts in the centre, and tried to infuse some energy into the villagers.
+Not a bit of it; they would _not_ stir. They would not even draw a
+bucket of water. However, my men got earthen pots; I dug up fresh earth
+and threw it on the two dismantled huts, dragging away as much of the
+thatch and _debris_ as we could.
+
+The fire licked our faces, and actually got a footing on the first
+house beyond the frail opening we had tried to make, but we persevered,
+and ultimately stayed the fire, and saved about two thirds of the
+village. I never saw such an instance of complete apathy. Some of the
+inhabitants even had not untied the cattle in the sheds. They seemed
+quite prostrated. However, as we worked on, and they began to see that
+all was not yet lost, they began to buckle to; yet even then their
+principal object was to save their brass pots and cooking utensils,
+things that could not possibly burn, and which they might have left
+alone with perfect safety.
+
+A Hindoo village is as inflammable as touchwood. The houses are
+generally built of grass walls, connected with thin battens of bamboo.
+The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all the little
+courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are piled up round
+every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which smoulders all day. A
+stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit round the corner, and
+before one can half realise the catastrophe, the village is on fire.
+Then each only thinks of his own goods; there is no combined effort to
+stay the flames. In the hot west winds of March, April, and May, these
+fires are of very frequent occurrence. In Bhaugulpore, I have seen,
+from my verandah, three villages on fire at one and the same time. In
+some parts of Oudh, among the sal forests, village after village is
+burnt down annually, and I have seen the same catastrophe visit the
+same village several times in the course of one year. These fires arise
+from pure carelessness, sheer apathy, and laziness.
+
+Sanitary precautions too are very insufficient; practically there are
+none. Huge unsightly water-holes, filled during the rains with the
+drainage of all the dung-heaps and mounds of offal and filth that
+abound in the village, swelter under the hot summer sun. They get
+covered with a rank green scum, and if their inky depths be stirred,
+the foulest and most fearful odours issue forth. In these filthy pools
+the villagers often perform their ablutions; they do not scruple to
+drink the putrid water, which is no doubt a hotbed and regular nursery
+for fevers, and choleraic and other disorders.
+
+Many home readers are but little acquainted with the Indian village
+system, and I shall devote a chapter to the description of a Hindoo
+village, with its functionaries, its institutions, its inhabitants, and
+the more marked of their customs and avocations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
+--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
+village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
+village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
+system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
+justice.
+
+A typical village in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of thatched
+huts, apparently set down at random--as indeed it is, for every one
+erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or wherever he can
+get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved
+plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the huts and buildings. Several
+small orchards of mango surround the village; the roads leading to and
+from it are merely well-worn cattle tracks,--in the rains a perfect
+quagmire, and in the hot weather dusty, and confined between straggling
+hedges of aloe or prickly pear. These hedges are festooned with masses
+of clinging luxuriant creepers, among which sometimes struggles up a
+custard apple, an avocado pear, or a wild plum-tree. The latter is a
+prickly straggling tree, called the _bhyre_; the wood is very hard, and
+is often used for making ploughs. The fruit is a little hard yellow
+crisp fruit, with a big stone inside, and very sweet; when it is ripe,
+the village urchins throw sticks up among the branches, and feast on
+the golden shower.
+
+On many of the banks bordering the roads, thatching grass, or rather
+strong upright waving grass, with a beautiful feathery plume, is
+planted. This is used to make the walls of the houses, and these are
+then plastered outside and in with clay and cowdung. The tall hedge
+of dense grass keeps what little breeze there may be away from the
+traveller. The road is something like an Irish 'Boreen,' wanting only
+its beauty and freshness. On a hot day the atmosphere in one of these
+village roads is stifling and loaded with dust.
+
+These houses with their grass walls and thatched roof are called
+_kutcha_, as opposed to more pretentious structures of burnt brick,
+with maybe a tiled sloping or flat plastered roof, which are called
+_pucca. Pucca_ literally means 'ripe,' as opposed to _cutcha_, 'unripe';
+but the rich Oriental tongue has adapted it to almost every kind of
+secondary meaning. Thus a man who is true, upright, respected, a man
+to be depended on, is called a _pucca_ man. It is a word in constant
+use among Anglo-Indians. A _pucca_ road is one which is bridged and
+metalled. If you make an engagement with a friend, and he wants to
+impress you with its importance, he will ask you, Now is that _pucca_?'
+and so on.
+
+Other houses in the village are composed of unburnt bricks cemented
+with mud, or maybe composed of mud walls and thatched roof; these,
+being a compound sort of erection, are called _cutcha pucca_. In the
+_cutcha_ houses live the poorer castes, the _Chumars_ or workers in
+leathers, the _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, or _Gwallahs_.
+
+The _Dornes_, or scavengers, feeders on offal, have to live apart in a
+_tolah_, which might be called a small suburb, by themselves. The
+_Dornes_ drag from the village any animal that happens to die. They
+generally pursue the handicraft of basket making, or mat making, and
+the _Dorne tolah_ can always be known by the pigs and fowls prowling
+about in search of food, and the _Dorne_ and his family splitting up
+bamboo, and weaving mats and baskets at the doors of their miserable
+habitation. To the higher castes both pigs arid fowls are unclean and
+an abomination. _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, and other poor castes, such as
+_Dangurs_, keep however an army of gaunt, lean, hungry-looking pigs.
+These may be seen rooting and wallowing in the marshes when the rice
+has been cut, or foraging among the mango groves, to pick up any stray
+unripe fruit that may have escaped the keen eyes of the hungry and
+swarming children.
+
+There is yet another small _tolah_ or suburb, called the _Kusbee
+tolah_. Here live the miserable outcasts who minister to the worst
+passions of our nature. These degraded beings are banished from the
+more respectable portions of the community; but here, as in our own
+highly civilised and favoured land, vice hovers by the side of virtue,
+and the Hindoo village contains the same elements of happiness and
+misery, profligacy and probity, purity and degradation, as the fine
+home cities that are a name in the mouths of men.
+
+Every village forms a perfect little commonwealth; it contains all the
+elements of self-existence; it is quite a little commune, so far as
+social life is concerned. There is a hereditary blacksmith, washerman,
+potter, barber, and writer. The _dhobee_, or washerman, can always be
+known by the propinquity of his donkeys, diminutive animals which he
+uses to transport his bundle of unsavoury dirty clothes to the pool or
+tank where the linen is washed. On great country roads you may often
+see strings of donkeys laden with bags of grain, which they transport
+from far-away villages to the big bazaars; but if you see a laden
+donkey near a village, be sure the _dhobee_ is not far off.
+
+Here as elsewhere the _hajam_, or barber, is a great gossip, and
+generally a favourite. He uses no soap, and has a most uncouth-looking
+razor, yet he shaves the heads, beards, moustaches, and armpits of his
+customers with great deftness. The lower classes of natives shave the
+hair of the head and of the armpits for the sake of cleanliness and for
+other obvious reasons. The higher classes are very regular in their
+ablutions; every morning, be the water cold or warm, the Rajpoot and
+Brahmin, the respectable middle classes, and all in the village who lay
+any claim to social position, have their _goosal_ or bath. Some hie to
+the nearest tank or stream; at all hours of the day, at any ferry or
+landing stage, you will see swarthy fine-looking fellows up to mid
+waist in the water, scrubbing vigorously their bronzed arms, and neck
+and chest. They clean their teeth with the end of a stick, which they
+chew at one extremity, till they loosen the fibres, and with this
+improvised toothbrush and some wood ashes for paste, they make them
+look as white and clean as ivory.
+
+There is generally a large masonry well in the middle of the village,
+with a broad smooth _pucca_ platform all round it. It has been built by
+some former father of the hamlet, to perpetuate his memory, to fulfil a
+vow to the gods, perhaps simply from goodwill to his fellow townsmen.
+At all events there is generally one such in every village. It is
+generally shadowed by a huge _bhur, peepul_, or tamarind tree. Here may
+always be seen the busiest sight in the village. Pretty young women
+chatter, laugh, and talk, and assume all sorts of picturesque attitudes
+as they fill their waterpots; the village matrons gossip, and sometimes
+quarrel, as they pull away at the windlass over the deep cool well. On
+the platform are a group of fat Brahmins nearly nude, their lighter
+skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower classes. There
+are several groups. With damp drapery clinging to their glistening
+skins, they pour brass pots of cold water over their dripping bodies;
+they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again as the cool element pours
+over head and shoulders. They sit down while some young attendant or
+relation vigorously rubs them down the back; while sitting they clean
+their feet. Thus, amid much laughing and talking, and quaint gestures,
+and not a little expectoration, they perform their ablutions. Not
+unfrequently the more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil,
+which at all events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it
+does, though it is not fragrant. Round the well you get all the village
+news and scandal. It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings,
+and only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village
+into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the hand-mill,
+or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy damsel or
+matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool shadow of her
+hut, for the wants of her lord and master.
+
+Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by government,
+and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars subscribe liberally
+for a schoolmaster in their villages. Near the principal street then,
+in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old mango-tree, we come on the
+village school. The little fellows have all discarded their upper
+clothes on account of the heat, and with much noise, swaying the body
+backwards and forwards, and monotonously intoning, they grind away at
+the mill of learning, and try to get a knowledge of books. Other dusky
+urchins figure away with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces
+of wood to serve as copy-books. The din increases as the stranger
+passes: going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause
+a momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school. The little
+Hindoo scholar probably wishes to impress you with a sense of his
+assiduity. He raises his voice, sways the body more briskly, keeps his
+one eye firmly fixed on his task, while with the other he throws a keen
+swift glance over you, which embraces every detail of your costume, and
+not improbably includes a shrewd estimate of your disposition and
+character.
+
+Hindoo children never seem to me to be boys or girls; they are
+preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing
+together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most
+portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning candour and
+guileless innocence, when they are all the while plotting some petty
+scheme against you. They are certainly far more precocious than English
+children; they realise the hard struggle for life far more quickly. The
+poorer classes can hardly be said to have any childhood; as soon as
+they can toddle they are sent to weed, cut grass, gather fuel, tend
+herds, or do anything that will bring them in a small pittance, and
+ease the burden of the struggling parents. I think the children of the
+higher and middle classes very pretty; they have beautiful, dark,
+thoughtful eyes, and a most intelligent expression. Very young babies
+however are miserably nursed; their hair is allowed to get all tangled
+and matted into unsightly knots; their faces are seldom washed, and
+their eyes are painted with antimony about the lids, and are often
+rheumy and running with water. The use of the pocket handkerchief is
+sadly neglected.
+
+There is generally one open space or long street in our village, and in
+a hamlet of any importance there is weekly or bi-weekly a bazaar or
+market. From early morning in all directions, from solitary huts in
+the forest, from struggling little crofts in the rice lands, from
+fishermen's dwellings perched on the bank of the river, from lonely
+camps in the grass jungle where the herd and his family live with their
+cattle, from all the petty Thorpes about, come the women with their
+baskets of vegetables, their bundles of spun yarn, their piece of woven
+cloth, whatever they have to sell or barter. There is a lad with a pair
+of wooden shoes, which he has fashioned as he was tending the village
+cows; another with a grass mat, or bamboo staff, or some other strange
+outlandish-looking article, which he hopes to barter in the bazaar for
+something on which his heart is set. The _bunniahs_ hurry up their
+tottering, overladen ponies; the rice merchant twists his patient
+bullock's tail to make it move faster; the cloth merchant with his bale
+under his arm and measuring stick in hand, walks briskly along. Here
+comes a gang of charcoal-burners, with their loads of fuel slung on
+poles dangling from their shoulders. A _box wallah_ with his attendant
+coolie, staggering under the weight of a huge box of Manchester goods,
+hurries by. It is a busy sight in the bazaar. What a cackling! What a
+confused clatter of voices! Here also the women are the chief
+contributors to the din of tongues. There is no irate husband here or
+moody master to tell them to be still. Spread out on the ground are
+heaps of different grain, bags of flour, baskets of meal, pulse, or
+barley; sweetmeats occupy the attention of nearly all the buyers. All
+Hindoos indulge in sweets, which take the place of beer with us;
+instead of a 'nobbler,' they offer you a 'lollipop.' Trinkets, beads,
+bracelets, armlets, and anklets of pewter, there are in great bunches;
+fruits, vegetables, sticks of cane, skins full of oil, and sugar, and
+treacle. Stands with fresh 'paun' leaves, and piles of coarse looking
+masses of tobacco are largely patronised. It is like a hive of bees.
+The dust hovers over the moving mass; the smells are various, none of
+them 'blest odours of sweet Araby.' Drugs, condiments, spices, shoes,
+in fact, everything that a rustic population can require, is here. The
+_pice_ jingle as they change hands; the haggling and chaffering are
+without parallel in any market at home. Here is a man apparently in the
+last madness of intense passion, in fierce altercation with another,
+who tries his utmost to outbluster his furious declamation. In a moment
+they are smiling and to all appearance the best friends in the world.
+The bargain has been concluded; it was all about whether the one could
+give three _brinjals_ or four for one pice. It is a scene of
+indescribable bustle, noise, and confusion. By evening however, all
+will have been packed up again, and only the faint outlines of yet
+floating clouds of dust, and the hopping, cheeky crows, picking up the
+scattered litter and remnants of the market, will remain to tell that
+it has been bazaar day in our village.
+
+Generally, about the centre of it, there is a more pretentious
+structure, with verandahs supported on wooden pillars. High walls
+surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little
+doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs
+leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside verandahs.
+Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or walk slowly to and
+from the yard with seemingly purposeless indecision. In the outer
+verandah is an old _palkee_, with evidences in the tarnished gilding
+and frayed and tattered hangings, that it once had some pretensions to
+fashionable elegance.
+
+The walls of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and numerous
+young _peepul_ trees grow in the crevices, their insidious roots
+creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and expediting the work
+of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is the residence of the
+Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner of the lands adjoining.
+Probably he is descended from some noble house of ancient lineage. His
+forefathers, possibly, led armed retainers against some rival in yonder
+far off village, where the dim outlines of a mud fort yet tell of the
+insecurity of the days of old. Now he is old, and fat, and lazy.
+Possibly he has been too often to the money-lender. His lands are
+mortgaged to their full value. Though they respect and look up to their
+old Zemindar, the villagers are getting independent; they are not so
+humble, and pay less and less of feudal tribute than in the old days,
+when the golden palanquin was new, when the elephant had splendid
+housings, when mace, and javelin, and matchlock-men followed in his
+train. Alas! the elephant was sold long ago, and is now the property of
+a wealthy _Bunniah_ who has amassed money in the buying and selling of
+grain and oil. The Zemindar may be a man of progress and intelligence,
+but many are of this broken down and helpless type.
+
+Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant,
+conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages through
+a small staff of _peons_, or un-official police. The accounts are kept
+by another important village functionary--the _putwarrie_, or village
+accountant. _Putwarries_ belong to the writer or _Kayasth_ caste. They
+are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous as any
+class in India. They manage the most complicated accounts between ryot
+and landlord with great skill. Their memories are wonderful, but they
+can always forget conveniently. Where ryots are numerous, the
+landlord's wants pressing, and frequent calls made on the tenantry for
+payment, often made in various kinds of grain and produce, the rates
+and prices of which are constantly changing, it is easy to imagine the
+complications and intricacies of a _putwarrie's_ account. Each ryot
+pretty accurately remembers his own particular indebtedness, but woe to
+him if he pays the _putwarrie_ the value of a 'red cent' without taking
+a receipt. Certainly there may be a really honest _putwarrie_, but I
+very much doubt it. The name stands for chicanery and robbery. On
+the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up for money,
+questioning his accounts, and putting him not unfrequently to actual
+bodily coercion. The ryot on the other hand is constantly inventing
+excuses, getting up delays, and propounding innumerable reasons why
+he cannot pay. He will try to forge receipts, he will get up false
+evidence that he has already paid, and the wretched _putwarrie_ needs
+all his native and acquired sharpness, to hold his own. But all ryots
+are not alike, and when the _putwarrie_ gets hold of some unwary and
+ignorant bumpkin whom he can plunder, he _does_ plunder him
+systematically. All cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle
+lifters, and a _putwarrie_ after he has got over the stage of infancy,
+and has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can
+teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of villains. A
+popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:--
+
+  'Unda poortee, Cowa maro!
+  Iinnum me, billar:
+  Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!!
+  Humesha mara gwar!!'
+
+This is translated thus: 'When the shell is breaking kill the crow, and
+the wild cat at its birth.' A _Kayasth_, writer, or _putwarrie_, may be
+allowed to live till he is twelve years old, at which time he is sure
+to have learned rascality. Then kill him; but kill _gwars_ or cowherds
+any time, for they are invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim
+bucolic humour in this, and it very nearly hits the truth.
+
+The _putwarrie_, then, is an important personage. He has his
+_cutcherry_, or office, where he and his tribe (for there are always
+numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his books and accounts)
+squat on their mat on the ground. Each possesses the instruments of his
+calling in the shape of a small brass ink-pot, and an oblong box
+containing a knife, pencil, and several reeds for pens. Each has a
+bundle of papers and documents before him, this is called his _busta_,
+and contains all the papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce
+squabbles with the tenantry. There is always some noise about a
+putwarrie's cutcherry. He has generally some half dozen quarrels on
+hand, but he trusts to his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is
+essentially a man of peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a
+keen argument, and an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain.
+Another proverb says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming
+a soldier as a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.
+
+The _lohar_, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at home. Here
+is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks from the heated
+iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little to remind one of
+Longfellow's beautiful poem. The _lohar_ sits in the open air. His
+hammers and other implements of trade are very primitive. Like all
+native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work. His bellows are made of
+two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted alternately by the attendant
+coolie. As they lift they get inflated with air; they are then sharply
+forced down on their own folds, and the contained air ejected forcibly
+through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing
+charcoal which forms the fire. His principal work is making and
+sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat
+blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the
+_hussowahs_, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They
+are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in
+metal. They are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and
+even gun-locks, made by a common native village blacksmith, that could
+not be surpassed in delicacy of finish by any English smith. It is
+foreign to our ideas of the brawny blacksmith, to hear that he sits to
+his work, but this is the invariable custom. Even carpenters and masons
+squat down to theirs. Cheap labour is but an arbitrary term, and a
+country smith at home might do the work of ten or twelve men in India;
+but it is just as well to get an idea of existing differences. On many
+of the factories there are very intelligent _mistrees_, which is the
+term for the master blacksmith. These men, getting but twenty-four to
+thirty shillings a month, and supplying themselves with food and
+clothing, are nevertheless competent to work all the machinery, attend
+to the engine, and do all the ironwork necessary for the factory. They
+will superintend the staff of blacksmiths; and if the sewing-machine of
+the _mem sahib_, the gun-lock of the _luna sahib_, the lawn-mower,
+English pump, or other machine gets out of order, requiring any metal
+work, the _mistree_ is called in, and is generally competent to put
+things to rights.
+
+[Illustration: CARPENTERS AND BLACKSMITHS AT WORK]
+
+As I have said, every village is a self-contained little commune. All
+trades necessary to supplying the wants of the villagers are
+represented in it. Besides the profits from his actual calling, nearly
+every man except the daily labourer, has a little bit of land which he
+farms, so as to eke out his scanty income. All possess a cow or two, a
+few goats, and probably a pair of plough-bullocks.
+
+When a dispute arises in the village, should a person be suspected of
+theft, should his cattle trespass on his neighbour's growing crop,
+should he libel some one against whom he has a grudge, or, proceeding
+to stronger measures, take the law into his own hands and assault
+him, the aggrieved party complains to the head man of the village.
+In every village the head man is the fountain of justice. He holds
+his office sometimes by right of superior wealth, or intelligence,
+or hereditary succession, not unfrequently by the unanimous wish of
+his fellow-villagers. On a complaint being made to him, he summons
+both parties and their witnesses. The complainant is then allowed to
+nominate two men, to act as assessors or jurymen on his behalf, his
+nominations being liable to challenge by the opposite party. The
+defendant next names two to act on his behalf, and if these are
+agreed to by both parties, these four, with the head man, form what
+is called a _punchayiet_, or council of five, in fact, a jury. They
+examine the witnesses, and each party to the suit conducts his own
+case. The whole village not unfrequently attends to hear what goes on.
+In a mere caste or private quarrel, only the friends of the parties
+will attend. Every case is tried in public, and all the inhabitants of
+the village can hear the proceedings if they wish. Respectable
+inhabitants can remark on the proceedings, make suggestions, and give
+an opinion. Public feeling is thus pretty accurately gauged and
+tested, and the _punchayiet_ agree among themselves on the verdict. To
+the honour of their character for fair play be it said, that the
+decision of a _punchayiet_ is generally correct, and is very seldom
+appealed against. Our complicated system of law, with its delays, its
+technicalities, its uncertainties, and above all its expense, its
+stamp duties, its court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the
+innumerable vexations attendant on the administration of justice in
+our revenue and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of
+Hindostan. They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give
+them justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are
+far too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and
+complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the gate'
+is what they want. It is quite enough admission of the reality of our
+rule--that we are the paramount power--that they submit a case to us
+at all; and all impediments in the way of their getting cheap and
+speedy justice should be done away with. A codification of existing
+laws, a sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at
+present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less
+legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to efficiency
+and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be the aim of our
+Indian rulers. More especially should this be the case in rural
+districts where large interests are concerned, where cases involve
+delicate points of law. Our present courts, divested of their hungry
+crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough; but I would like
+to see rural courts for petty cases established, presided over by
+leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of probity, which would
+in a measure supplement the _punchayiet_ system, which would be easy
+of access, cheap in their procedure, and with all the impress of
+authority. It is a question I merely glance at, as it does not come
+within the scope of a book like this; but it is well known to every
+planter and European who has come much in contact with the rural
+classes of Hindostan, that there is a vast amount of smouldering
+disaffection, of deep-rooted dislike to, and contempt of, our present
+cumbrous costly machinery of law and justice.
+
+If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a
+plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready
+with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a _vakeel_,
+that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or
+round the factory to get some little business done, to neglect his
+work, to get his rent or produce account investigated, wherever there
+is worry, trouble, delay, or difficulty about anything concerning the
+relations between himself and the factory, the deepest and keenest
+expression of discontent and disgust his versatile and acute
+imagination can suggest, or his fluent tongue give utterance to is,
+that this is 'Adanlut lea mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.'
+Could there be a stronger commentary on our judicial institutions?
+
+The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages.
+Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing; communications are
+much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of
+besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering
+tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no
+difficulty in establishing in such village or district courts as I
+have indicated. All educated respectable Europeans with a stake in the
+country should be made Justices of the Peace, with limited powers to
+try petty cases. There is a vast material--loyalty, educated minds, an
+honest desire to do justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of
+everything pettifogging and underhand--that the Indian Government
+would do well to utilise. The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit
+him of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal
+facility to fall under pecuniary temptation. The educated gentleman
+planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering
+titles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the bench,
+and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our rulers'
+while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience, loyalty, honour,
+and integrity of those of our countrymen who might be willing to place
+their services at the disposal of Government. 'India for the Indians'
+is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it will not do to push it to
+its logical issue. Unless Indians can govern India wisely and well, in
+accordance with modern national ideas, they have no more right to
+India than Hottentots have to the Cape, or the black fellows to
+Australia. In my opinion, Hindoos would never govern Hindustan half,
+quarter, nay, one tithe as well as Englishmen. Make more of your
+Englishmen in India then, make not less of your Baboo if you please,
+but make more of your Englishmen. Keep them loyal and content. Treat
+them kindly and liberally. One Englishman contented, loyal, and
+industrious in an Indian district, is a greater pillar of strength to
+the Indian Government than ten dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them
+have as many titles, decorations, university degrees, or certificates
+of loyalty from junior civilians as they may. Not India for the
+Indians, but India for Imperial Britain say I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The
+temple.--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.
+--Their low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions
+and knavery.--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native
+officials.--The Hindoo unfit for self-government.
+
+One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the watchman or
+_chowkeydar_. He is generally a _Doosadh_, or other low caste man, and
+perambulates the village at night, at intervals uttering a loud cry or
+a fierce howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the _chowkeydars_
+of the neighbouring villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after
+cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into
+faintness. At times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out
+close to your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do
+not feel it to be so. The _chowkeydar_ has to see that no thieves
+enter the village by night. He protects the herds and property of the
+villagers. If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report it to
+the nearest police station. If you lose your way by night, you shout
+out for the nearest _chowkeydar_, and he is bound to pass you on to
+the next village. These men get a small gratuity from government, but
+the villagers also pay them a small sum, which they assess according
+to individual means. The _chowkeydar_ is generally a ragged, swarthy
+fellow with long matted hair, a huge iron-bound staff, and always a
+blue _puggra_. The blue is his official badge. Sometimes he has a
+brass badge, and carries a sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle
+of which is so small that scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found
+to fit it. It is more for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it
+has become so fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.
+
+[Illustration: HINDOO VILLAGE TEMPLES.]
+
+In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the village
+itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is often
+perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village tank.
+Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the sacred
+fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several oleaginous
+old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear only the
+_dhote_ or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton, and hanging about
+the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can be told by his
+sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder. His skin is much
+fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers. It is not
+unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as fair as many
+Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds, but lazy and
+self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is simply a sensual
+voluptuary. This is not the time or place to descant on their
+religion, which, with many gross practices, contains not a little that
+is pure and beautiful. The common idea at home that they are miserable
+pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and stones,' is, like many of the
+accepted ideas about India, very much exaggerated. That the masses,
+the crude uneducated Hindoos, place some faith in the idol, and expect
+in some mysterious way that it will influence their fate for good or
+evil, is not to be denied, but the more intelligent natives, and most
+of the Brahmins, only look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of
+the divinity. They want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to
+God, and the idol is a means to assist their thoughts heavenward. As
+works of art their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other
+symbols of the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same
+purpose. Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has
+perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the gods by erecting a
+temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shrine, which
+they visit at intervals and daub with red paint. They deposit flowers,
+pour libations of water or milk, and in other ways strive to shew that
+a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as I have
+observed, however, the vast mass of the poor toilers in India have
+little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing. They may have
+some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a holier life, but the
+fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and shelter, is too
+incessant for them to indulge much in contemplation. They have a dim
+idea of a future life, but none of them can give you anything but a
+very unsatisfactory idea of their religion. They observe certain forms
+and ceremonies, because their fathers did, and because the Brahmins
+tell them. Of real, vital, practical religion, as we know it, they
+have little or no knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low
+castes about immortality, about salvation, about the higher virtues,
+about the yearnings and wishes that every immortal soul at periods
+has, and he will simply tell you 'Khoda jane, hum greel admi,' i.e.
+'God knows; I am only a poor man!' There they take refuge always when
+you ask them anything puzzling. If you are rating them for a fault,
+asking them to perform a complicated task, or inquiring your way in a
+strange neighbourhood, the first answer you get will, ten to one, be
+'Hum greel admi.' It is said almost instinctively, and no doubt in
+many cases is the refuge of simple disinclination to think the matter
+out. Pure laziness suggests it. It is too much trouble to frame an
+answer, or give the desired information, and the 'greel admi' comes
+naturally to the lip. It is often deprecatory, meaning 'I am ignorant
+and uninformed,' you must not expect too 'much from a poor, rude,
+uncultivated man like me.' It is often, also, a delicate mode of
+flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and often conveying in a
+tone, a look, a gesture, that though the speaker is 'greel,' poor,
+humble, despised, it is only by contrast to you, the questioner, who
+are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For downright fawning
+obsequiousness, or delicate, implied, fine-strung, subtle flattery, I
+will back a Hindoo sycophant against the courtier or place-hunter of
+every other nation. It is very annoying at times, if you are in a
+hurry, and particularly want a direct answer to a plain question, to
+hear the old old story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it
+but patience. You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer
+classes are easily flurried; they will always give what information
+they have if kindly spoken to, but you must not fluster them. You must
+rouse their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of
+your inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your
+object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your motive,
+inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer that they
+think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are weary and tired,
+and you ask your distance from the place you may be wishing to reach,
+they will ridiculously underestimate the length of road. A man may
+have all the cardinal virtues, but if they think you do not like him,
+and you ask his character, they will paint him to you blacker than
+Satan himself. It is very hard to get the plain, unvarnished truth
+from a Hindoo. Many, indeed, are almost incapable of giving an
+intelligent answer to any question that does not nearly concern their
+own private and purely personal interests. They have a sordid,
+grubbing, vegetating life, many of them indeed are but little above
+the brute creation. They have no idea beyond the supply of the mere
+animal wants of the moment. The future never troubles them. They live
+their hard, unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no
+surprises. They have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and
+life is one long continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence.
+What wonder then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the
+mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to suffer,
+to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is _Kismet_--their
+fate. Many of them never strive to avert any impending calamity, such,
+for example, as sickness. A man sickens, he wraps himself in stolid
+apathy, he makes no effort to shake of his malady, he accepts it with
+sullen, despairing, pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends
+mourn in their dumb, despairing way, but they too accept the
+situation. He has no one to rouse him. If you ask him what is the
+matter, he only wails out, 'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am
+unwell. No attempt whatever to tell you of the origin of his illness,
+no wish even for sympathy or assistance. He accepts the fact of his
+illness. He struggles not with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight
+against it? Amen; so let it be. I have often been saddened to see poor
+toiling tenants struck down in this way. Even if you give them
+medicine, they often have not energy enough to take it. You must see
+them take it before your eyes. It is _your_ struggle not theirs. _You_
+must rouse them, by _your_ will. _Your_ energy must compel _them_ to
+make an attempt to combat their weakness. Once you rouse a man, and
+infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his disease, but it is a
+hard fight to get him to TRY. What a meaning in that one word TRY! TO
+ACT. TO DO. The average poor suffering native Hindoo knows nothing of
+it.
+
+Of course their moods vary. They have their 'high days and holidays,'
+feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the whole the average
+ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.
+
+In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or jungle
+lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture. The cow
+being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and butter.
+The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings of
+emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the evening
+wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust, having had
+but 'short commons' all the day on the parched and scanty herbage.
+
+The police are too often a source of annoyance, and become
+extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor. It seems
+to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority. I do not
+scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court peons,
+writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts, about the
+courts of justice, in the service of government officers, or in any
+way attached to the retinue of a government official, one and all are
+undeniably shamelessly venal and corrupt. They accept a bribe much
+more quickly than an attorney a fee, or a hungry dog a shin of beef.
+If a policeman only enters a village he expects a feast from the head
+man, and will ask a present with unblushing effrontery as a perquisite
+of his office. If a theft is reported, the inspector of the nearest
+police-station, or _thanna_ as it is called, sends one of his
+myrmidons, or, if the chance of bribes be good, he may attend himself.
+On arrival, ambling on his broken-kneed, wall-eyed pony, he seats
+himself in the verandah of the chief man of the village, who
+forthwith, with much inward trepidation, makes his appearance. The
+policeman assumes the air of a haughty conqueror receiving homage from
+a conquered foe. He assures the trembling wretch that, 'acting on
+information received,' he must search his dwelling for the missing
+goods, and that his women's apartments will have to be ransacked, and
+so annoys, goads, and insults the unfortunate man, that he is too glad
+to purchase immunity from further insolence by making the policeman a
+small present, perhaps a 'kid of the goats,' or something else. The
+guardian of the peace is then regaled with the best food in the house,
+after which he is 'wreathed with smiles.' If he sees a chance of a
+farther bribe, he takes his departure saying he will make his report
+to the _thanna_. He repeats his procedure with some of the other
+respectable inhabitants, and goes back a good deal richer than he
+came, to share the spoil with the _thannadar_ or inspector.
+
+Another man may then be sent, and the same course is followed, until
+all the force in the station have had their share. The ryot is afraid
+to resist. The police have tremendous powers for annoying and doing
+him harm. A crowd of subservient scoundrels always hangs round the
+station, dependents, relations, or accomplices. These harry the poor
+man who is unwise enough to resist the extortionate demands of the
+police. They take his cattle to the pound, foment strife between him
+and his neighbours, get up frivolous and false charges against him,
+harass him in a thousand ways, and if all else fails, get him summoned
+as a witness in some case. You might think a witness a person to be
+treated with respect, to be attended to, to have every facility
+offered him for giving his evidence at the least cost of time and
+trouble possible, consistent with the demands of justice, and the
+vindication of law and authority.
+
+Not so in India with the witness in a police case, when the force
+dislike him. If he has not previously satisfied their leech-like
+rapacity, he is tormented, tortured, bullied, and kicked 'from pillar
+to post,' till his life becomes a burden to him. He has to leave all
+his avocations, perhaps at the time when his affairs require his
+constant supervision. He has to trudge many a weary mile to attend the
+Court. The police get hold of him, and keep him often in real durance.
+He gets no opportunity for cooking or eating his food. His daily
+habits are upset and interfered with. In every little vexatious way
+(and they are masters of the art of petty torture) they so worry and
+goad him, that the very threat of being summoned as a witness in a
+police case, is often enough to make the horrified well-to-do native
+give a handsome gratuity to be allowed to sit quietly at home.
+
+This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the police.
+They exercise a real despotism. They have set up a reign of terror.
+The nature of the ryot is such, that he will submit to a great deal to
+avoid having to leave his home and his work. The police take full
+advantage of this feeling, and being perfectly unscrupulous,
+insatiably rapacious, and leagued together in villany, they make a
+golden harvest out of every case put into their hands. They have made
+the name of justice stink in the nostrils of the respectable and
+well-to-do middle classes of India.
+
+The District Superintendents are men of energy and probity, but after
+all they are only mortal. What with accounts, inspections, reports,
+forms, and innumerable writings, they cannot exercise a constant
+vigilance and personal supervision over every part of their district.
+A district may comprise many hundred villages, thousands of
+inhabitants, and leagues of intricate and densely peopled country. The
+mere physical exertion of riding over his district would be too much
+for any man in about a week. The subordinate police are all interested
+in keeping up the present system of extortion, and the inspectors and
+sub-inspectors, who wink at malpractices, come in for their share of
+the spoil. There is little combination among the peasantry. Each
+selfishly tries to save his own skin, and they know that if any one
+individual were to complain, or to dare to resist, he would have to
+bear the brunt of the battle alone. None of his neighbours would stir
+a finger to back him; he is too timid and too much in awe of the
+official European, and constitutionally too averse to resistance, to
+do aught but suffer in silence. No doubt he feels his wrongs most
+keenly, and a sullen feeling of hate and wrong is being garnered up,
+which may produce results disastrous for the peace and wellbeing of
+our empire in the East.
+
+As a case in point, I may mention one instance out of many which came
+under my own observation. I had a _moonshee_, or accountant, in one of
+my outworks in Purneah. Formerly, when the police had come through the
+factory, he had been in the habit of giving them a present and some
+food. Under my strict orders, however, that no policemen were to be
+allowed near the place unless they came on business, he had
+discontinued paying his black mail. This was too glaring an
+infringement of what they considered their vested rights to be passed
+over in silence. Example might spread. My man must be made an example
+of. I had a case in the Court of the Deputy Magistrate some twenty
+miles or so from the factory. The moonshee had been named as a witness
+to prove the writing of some papers filed in the suit. They got a
+citation for him to appear, a mere summons for his attendance as a
+witness. Armed with this, they appeared at the factory two or three
+days before the date fixed on for hearing the cause. I had just ridden
+in from Purneah, tired, hot, and dusty, and was sitting in the shade
+of the verandah with young D., my assistant. One policeman first came
+up, presented the summons, which I took, and he then stated that it
+was a _warrant_ for the production of my moonshee, and that he must
+take him away at once. I told the man it was merely a summons,
+requiring the attendance of the moonshee on a certain date, to give
+evidence in the case. He was very insolent in his manner. It is
+customary when a Hindoo of inferior rank appears before you, that he
+removes his shoes, and stands before you in a respectful attitude.
+This man's headdress was all disarranged, which in itself is a sign of
+disrespect. He spoke loudly and insolently; kept his shoes on; and sat
+down squatting on the grass before me. My assistant was very
+indignant, and wanted to speak to the man; but rightly judging that
+the object was to enrage me, and trap me into committing some overt
+act, that would be afterwards construed against me, I kept my temper,
+spoke very firmly but temperately, told him my moonshee was doing some
+work of great importance, that I could not spare his services then,
+but that I would myself see that the summons was attended to. The
+policeman became more boisterous and insolent. I offered to give him a
+letter to the magistrate, acknowledging the receipt of the summons,
+and I asked him his own name, which he refused to give. I asked him if
+he could read, and he said he could not. I then asked him if he could
+not read, how could he know what was in the paper which he had
+brought, and how he knew my moonshee was the party meant. He said a
+chowkeydar had told him so. I asked where was the chowkeydar, and
+seeing from my coolness and determination that the game was up, he
+shouted out, and from round the corner of the huts came another
+policeman, and two village chowkeydars from a distance. They had
+evidently been hiding, observing all that passed, and meaning to act
+as witnesses against me, if I had been led by the first scoundrel's
+behaviour to lose my temper. The second man was not such a brute as
+the first, and when I proceeded to ask their names and all about them,
+and told them I meant to report them to their superintendent, they
+became somewhat frightened, and tried to make excuses.
+
+I told them to be off the premises at once, offering to take the
+summons, and give a receipt for it, but they now saw that they had
+made a mistake in trying to bully me, and made off at once. Mark the
+sequel. The day before the case was fixed on for hearing, I sent off
+the moonshee who was a witness of my own, and his evidence was
+necessary to my proving my case. I supplied him with travelling
+expenses, and he started. On his way to the Court he had to pass the
+_thanna_, or police-station. The police were on the watch. He was
+seized as he passed. He was confined all that night and all the
+following day. For want of his evidence I lost my case, and having
+thus achieved one part of their object to pay me off, they let my
+moonshee go, after insult and abuse, and with threats of future
+vengeance should he ever dare to thwart or oppose them. This was
+pretty 'hot' you think, but it was not all. Fearing my complaint to
+the superintendent, or to the authorities, might get them into
+trouble, they laid a false charge against me, that I had obstructed
+them in the discharge of their duty, that I had showered abuse on
+them, used threatening language, and insulted the majesty of the law
+by tearing up and spitting upon the respected summons of Her Majesty.
+On this complaint I was accordingly summoned into Purneah. The charge
+was a tissue of the most barefaced lies, but I had to ride fifty-four
+miles in the burning sun, ford several rivers, and undergo much
+fatigue and discomfort. My work was of course seriously interfered
+with. I had to take in my assistant as witness, and one or two of the
+servants who had been present. I was put to immense trouble, and no
+little expense, to say nothing of the indignation which I naturally
+felt, and all because I had set my face against a well known evil, and
+was determined not to submit to impudent extortion. Of course the case
+broke down. They contradicted themselves in almost every particular.
+The second constable indeed admitted that I had offered them a letter
+to the magistrate, and had not moved out of the verandah during the
+colloquy. I was honourably acquitted, and had the satisfaction of
+seeing the lying rascals put into the dock by the indignant magistrate
+and prosecuted summarily for getting up a false charge and giving
+false evidence. It was a lesson to the police in those parts, and they
+did not dare to trouble me much afterwards; but it is only one
+instance out of hundreds I could give, and which every planter has
+witnessed of the barefaced audacity, the shameless extortion, the
+unblushing lawlessness of the rural police of India.
+
+It is a gigantic evil, but surely not irremediable. By adding more
+European officers to the force; by educating the people and making
+them more intelligent, independent, and self-reliant, much may be done
+to abate the evil, but at present it is admittedly a foul ulcer on the
+administration of justice under our rule. The menial who serves a
+summons, gets a decree of Court to execute, or is entrusted with any
+order of an official nature, expects to be bribed to do his duty. If
+he does not get his fee, he will throw such impediments in the way,
+raise such obstacles, and fashion such delays, that he completely
+foils every effort to procure justice through a legal channel. No
+wonder a native hates our English Courts. Our English officials, let
+it be plainly understood, are above suspicion. It needs not my poor
+testimony to uphold their character for high honour, loyal integrity,
+and zealous eagerness to do 'justly, and to walk uprightly.' They are
+unwearied in their efforts to get at truth, and govern wisely; but our
+system of law is totally unsuited for Orientals. It is made a medium
+for chicanery and trickery of the most atrocious form. Most of the
+native underlings are utterly venal and corrupt. Increased pay does
+not mean decrease of knavery. Cheating, and lying, and taking bribes,
+and abuse of authority are ingrained into their very souls; and all
+the cut and dry formulas of namby pamby philanthropists, the inane
+maunderings of stay-at-home sentimentalists, the wise saws of
+self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo as he
+really shews himself to us in daily and hourly contact with him, will
+ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule, would be
+productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless venality, or
+would end in anything but anarchy and chaos.
+
+It sounds very well in print, and increases the circulation of a paper
+or two among the Baboos, to cry out that our task is to elevate the
+oppressed and ignorant millions of the East, to educate them into
+self-government, to make them judges, officers, lawgivers, governors
+over all the land. To vacate our place and power, and let the Baboo
+and the Bunneah, to whom we have given the glories of Western
+civilization, rule in our place, and guide the fortunes of these
+toiling millions who owe protection and peace to our fostering rule.
+It is a noble sentiment to resign wealth, honour, glory, and power; to
+give up a settled government; to alter a policy that has welded the
+conflicting elements of Hindustan into one stable whole; to throw up
+our title of conqueror, and disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A
+sprinkling of thinly-veneered, half-educated natives, want a share of
+the loaves and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people
+of the 'man and brother' type, cry out at home to let them have their
+way.
+
+No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life and
+property; develop the resources of the country; foster all the virtues
+you can find in the native mind; but till you can give him the energy,
+the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly, honourable
+straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of meanness,
+trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do right; his
+contempt for oppression of the weak; his self-dependence; his probity.
+But why go on? When you make Hindoos honest, truthful, God-fearing
+Englishmen, you can let them govern themselves; but as soon 'may the
+leopard change his spots,' as the Hindoo his character. He is wholly
+unfit for self-government; utterly opposed to honest, truthful, stable
+government at all. Time brings strange changes, but the wisdom which
+has governed the country hitherto, will surely be able to meet the new
+demand that may be made upon it in the immediate present, or in the
+far distant future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Jungle wild fruits.--Curious method of catching quail.--Quail nets.
+--Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.--Native wrestling.--The
+trainer.--How they train for a match.--Rules of wrestling.--Grips.
+--A wrestling match.--Incidents of the struggle.--Description of a
+match between a Brahmin and a blacksmith.--Sparring for the grip.--The
+blacksmith has it.--The struggle.--The Brahmin getting the worst of
+it.--Two to one on the little 'un!--The Brahmin plays the waiting
+game, turns the tables _and_ the blacksmith.--Remarks on wrestling.
+
+A peculiarity in the sombre sal jungles is the scarcity of wild fruit.
+At home the woods are filled with berries and fruit-bearing bushes.
+Who among my readers has not a lively recollection of bramble hunting,
+nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries, wild strawberries,
+raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might walk many a mile through
+the sal jungles without meeting fruit of any kind, save the dry and
+tasteless wild fig, or the sickly mhowa.
+
+There are indeed very few jungle fruits that I have ever come across.
+There is one acid sort of plum called the _Omra_, which makes a good
+preserve, but is not very nice to eat raw. The _Gorkah_ is a small red
+berry, very sweet and pleasant, slightly acid, not unlike a red
+currant in fact, and with two small pips or stones. The Nepaulese call
+it _Bunchooree_. It grows on a small stunted-looking bush, with few
+branches, and a pointed leaf, in form resembling the acacia leaf, but
+not so large.
+
+The _Glaphur_ is a brown, round fruit; the skin rather crisp and hard,
+and of a dull earthy colour, not unlike that of a common boiled
+potato. The inside is a stringy, spongy-looking mass, with small seeds
+embedded in a gummy viscid substance. The taste is exactly like an
+almond, and it forms a pleasant mouthful if one is thirsty.
+
+Travelling one day along one of the glades I have mentioned as
+dividing the strips of jungle, I was surprised to see a man before me
+in a field of long stubble, with a cloth spread over his head, and two
+sticks projecting in front at an obtuse angle to his body, forming
+horn-like projections, on which the ends of his cloth twisted
+spirally, were tied. I thought from his curious antics and movements,
+that he must be mad, but I soon discovered that there was method in
+his madness. He was catching quail. The quail are often very numerous
+in the stubble fields, and the natives adopt very ingenious devices
+for their capture. This was one I was now witnessing. Covering
+themselves with their cloth as I have described, the projecting ends
+of the two sticks representing the horns, they simulate all the
+movements of a cow or bull. They pretend to paw up the earth, toss
+their make-believe horns, turn round and pretend to scratch
+themselves, and in fact identify themselves with the animal they are
+representing; and it is irresistibly comic to watch a solitary
+performer go through this _al fresco_ comedy. I have laughed often at
+some cunning old herdsman, or shekarry. When they see you watching
+them, they will redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old
+bull, going through all his pranks and practices, and throw you into
+convulsions of laughter.
+
+Round two sides of the field, they have previously put fine nets, and
+at the apex they have a large cage with a decoy quail inside, or
+perhaps a pair. The quail is a running bird, disinclined for flight
+except at night; in the day-time they prefer running to using their
+wings. The idiotic looking old cow, as we will call the hunter, has
+all his wits about him. He proceeds very slowly and warily, his keen
+eye detects the coveys of quail, which way they are running; his ruse
+generally succeeds wonderfully. He is no more like a cow, than that
+respectable animal is like a cucumber; but he paws, and tosses, and
+moves about, pretends to eat, to nibble here, and switch his tail
+there, and so manoeuvres as to keep the running quail away from the
+unprotected edges of the field. When they get to the verge protected
+by the net, they begin to take alarm; they are probably not very
+certain about the peculiar looking 'old cow' behind them, and running
+along the net, they see the decoy quails evidently feeding in great
+security and freedom. The V shaped mouth of the large basket cage
+looks invitingly open. The puzzling nets are barring the way, and the
+'old cow' is gradually closing up behind. As the hunter moves along, I
+should have told you, he rubs two pieces of dry hard sticks gently up
+and down his thigh with one hand, producing a peculiar crepitation, a
+crackling sound, not sufficient to startle the birds into flight, but
+alarming them enough to make them get out of the way of the 'old cow.'
+One bolder than the others, possibly the most timid of the covey,
+irritated by the queer crackling sound, now enters the basket, the
+others follow like a flock of sheep; and once in, the puzzling shape
+of the entrance prevents their exit. Not unfrequently the hunter bags
+twenty or even thirty brace of quail in one field, by this ridiculous
+looking but ingenious method.
+
+The small quail net is also sometimes used for the capture of hares.
+The natives stretch the net in the jungle, much as they do the large
+nets for deer described in a former chapter; forming a line, they then
+beat up the hares, of which there are no stint. My friend Pat once
+made a novel haul. His _lobarkhanna_ or blacksmith's shop was close to
+a patch of jungle, and Pat often noticed numbers of quail running
+through the loose chinks and crevices of the walls, in the morning
+when anyone went into the place for the first time; this was at a
+factory called Rajpore. Pat came to the conclusion, that as the
+blacksmith's fires smouldered some time after work was discontinued at
+night, and as the atmosphere of the hut was warmer and more genial
+than the cold, foggy, outside air, for it was in the cold season, the
+quail probably took up their quarters in the hut for the night, on
+account of the warmth and shelter. One night therefore he got some of
+his servants, and with great caution and as much silence as possible,
+they let down a quantity of nets all round the lobarkhanna, and in the
+morning they captured about twenty quails.
+
+The quail is very pugnacious, and as they are easily trained to fight,
+they are very common pets with the natives, who train and keep them to
+pit them against each other, and bet what they can afford on the
+result. A quail fight, a battle between two trained rams, a cock
+fight, even an encounter between trained tamed buffaloes, are very
+common spectacles in the villages; but the most popular sport is a
+good wrestling match.
+
+The dwellers in the Presidency towns, and indeed in most of the large
+stations, seldom see an exhibition of this kind; but away in the
+remote interior, near the frontier, it is very popular pastime, and
+wrestling is a favourite with all classes. Such manly sport is rather
+opposed to the commonly received idea at home, of the mild Hindoo. In
+nearly every village of Behar however, and all along the borders of
+Nepaul, there is, as a rule, a bit of land attached to the residence
+of some head man, or the common property of the commune, set apart for
+the practice of athletic sports, chief of which is the favourite
+_khoosthee_ or wrestling. There is generally some wary old veteran,
+who has won his spurs, or laurels, or belt, or whatever you choose to
+call it, in many a hard fought and well contested tussle for the
+championship of his little world; he is 'up to every dodge,' and knows
+every feint and guard, every wile and tactic of the wrestling ground.
+It is generally in some shady grove, secluded and cool; here of an
+evening when the labours of the day are over, the most stalwart sons
+of the hamlet meet, to test each others skill and endurance in a
+friendly _shake_. The old man puts them through the preliminary
+practice, shows them every trick at his command, and attends strictly
+to their training and various trials. The ground is dug knee deep, and
+forms a soft, good holding stand. I have often looked on at this
+evening practice, and it would astonish a stranger, who cannot
+understand strength, endurance, and activity being attributed to a
+'mere nigger,' to see the severe training these young lads impose upon
+themselves. They leap into the air, and suddenly assume a sitting
+position, then leap up again and squat down with a force that would
+seem to jerk every bone in their bodies out of its place; this gets up
+the muscles of the thighs. Some lie down at full length, only touching
+the ground with the extreme tips of their toes, their arms doubled up
+under them, and sustaining the full weight of the body on the extended
+palms of the hands. They then sway themselves backwards and forwards
+to their full length, never shifting hand or toe, till they are bathed
+in perspiration; they keep up a uniform steady backward and forward
+movement, so as to develop the muscles of the arms, chest, and back.
+They practice leaping, running, and lifting weights. Some standing at
+their full height, brace up the muscles of the shoulder and upper arm,
+and then leaping up, allow themselves to fall to earth on the tensely
+strung muscles of the shoulder. This severe exercise gets the muscles
+into perfect form, and few, very few indeed of our untrained youths,
+could cope in a dead lock, or fierce struggle, with a good village
+Hindoo or Mussulman in active training, and having any knowledge of
+the tricks of the wrestling school. No hitting is allowed. The Hindoo
+system of wrestling is the perfection of science and skill; mere dead
+weight of course will always tell in a close grip, but the catches,
+the holds, the twists and dodges that are practised, allow for the
+fullest development of cultivated skill, as against mere brute force.
+The system is purely a scientific one. The fundamental rule is 'catch
+where you can,' only you must not clutch the hair or strike with the
+fists.
+
+The loins are tightly girt with a long waist-belt or _kummerbund_ of
+cloth, which, passed repeatedly between the limbs and round the loins,
+sufficiently braces up and protects that part of the body. In some
+matches you are not allowed to clutch this waist cloth or belt, in
+some villages it is allowed; the custom varies in various places, but
+what is a fair grip, and what is not, is always made known before the
+competitors engage. A twist, or grip, or dodge, is known as a
+_paench_. This literally means a screw or twist, but in wrestling
+phraseology, means any grip by which you can get such an advantage
+over your opponent as to defeat him. For every paench there is a
+counter paench. A throw is considered satisfactory when BOTH shoulders
+of your opponent touch the ground simultaneously. The old _khalifa_ or
+trainer takes a great interest in the progress of his _chailas_ or
+pupils. _Chaila_ really means disciple or follower. Every khalifa has
+his favourite paenches or grips, which have stood him in good stead in
+his old battling days; he teaches these paenches to his pupils, so
+that when you get young fellows from different villages to meet, you
+see a really fine exhibition of wrestling skill. There is little
+tripping, as amongst our wrestlers at home; a dead-lock is uncommon.
+The rival wrestlers generally bound into the ring, slapping their
+thighs and arms with a loud resounding slap. They lift their legs high
+up from the ground with every step, and scheme and manoeuvre sometimes
+for a long while to get the best corner; they try to get the sun into
+their adversaries eyes; they scan the appearance and every movement of
+their opponent. The old wary fellows take it very coolly, and if they
+can't get the desired side of the ground, they keep hopping about like
+a solemn old ostrich, till the impetuosity or impatience of their foe
+leads him to attack. They remind you for all the world of a pair of
+game cocks, their bodies are bent, their heads almost touching. There
+is a deal of light play with the hands, each trying to get the other
+by the wrist or elbow, or at the back of the head round the neck. If
+one gets the other by a finger even, it is a great advantage, as he
+would whip nimbly round, and threaten to break the impounded finger;
+this would be considered quite fair. One will often suddenly drop on
+his knees and try to reach the ankles of his adversary. I have seen a
+slippery customer, stoop suddenly down, grasp up a handful of dust,
+and throw it into the eyes of his opponent. It was done with the
+quickness of thought, but it was detected, and on an appeal by the
+sufferer, the knave was well thrashed by the onlookers.
+
+There are many professionals who follow no other calling. Wrestlers
+are kept by Rajahs and wealthy men, who get up matches. Frequently one
+village will challenge another, like our village cricket clubs. The
+villagers often get up small subscriptions, and purchase a silver
+armlet or bracelet, the prize him who shall hold his own against all
+comers. The 'Champion's Belt' scarcely calls forth greater
+competition, keener rivalry, or better sport. It is at once the most
+manly and most scientific sport in which the native indulges. A
+disputed fall sometimes terminates in a general free fight, when the
+backers of the respective men lay on the stick to each other with
+mutual hate and hearty lustiness.
+
+It is not by any means always the strongest who wins. The man who
+knows the most paenches, who is agile, active, cool, and careful, will
+not unfrequently overthrow an antagonist twice his weight and
+strength. All the wrestlers in the country-side know each other's
+qualifications pretty accurately, and at a general match got up by a
+Zemindar or planter, or by public subscription, it is generally safe
+to let them handicap the men who are ready to compete for the prizes.
+We used generally to put down a few of the oldest professors, and let
+them pit couples against each other; the sport to the onlookers was
+most exciting. Between the men themselves as a rule, the utmost good
+humour reigns, they strive hard to win, but they accept a defeat with
+smiling resignation. It is only between rival village champions,
+different caste men, or worse still, men of differing religions, such
+as a Hindoo and a Mahommedan, that there is any danger of a fight. A
+disturbance is a rare exception, but I have seen a few wrestling
+matches end in a regular general scrimmage, with broken heads, and
+even fractured limbs. With good management however, and an efficient
+body of men to guard against a breach of the peace, this need never
+occur.
+
+It rarely takes much trouble to get up a match. If you tell your head
+men that you would like to see one, say on a Saturday afternoon, they
+pass the word to the different villages, and at the appointed time,
+all the finest young fellows and most of the male population, led by
+their head man, with the old trainer in attendance, are at the
+appointed place. The competitors are admitted within the enclosure,
+and round it the rows of spectators packed twenty deep squat on the
+ground, and watch the proceedings with deep interest.
+
+While the _Punchayiet_, a picked council, are taking down the names of
+intending competitors, finding out about their form and performances,
+and assigning to each his antagonist, the young men throw themselves
+with shouts and laughter into the ring, and go through all the
+evolutions and postures of the training ground. They bound about, try
+all sorts of antics and contortions, display wonderful agility and
+activity; it is a pretty sight to see, and one can't help admiring
+their vigorous frames, and graceful proportions. They are handsome,
+well made, supple, wiry fellows, although they be NIGGERS, and Hodge
+and Giles at home would not have a chance with them in a fair
+wrestling bout, conducted according to their own laws and customs.
+
+The entries are now all made, places and pairs are arranged, and to
+the ear-splitting thunder of two or three tom-toms, two pair of
+strapping youngsters step into the ring; they carefully scan each
+other, advance, shake hands, or salaam, leisurely tie up their back
+hair, slap their muscles, rub a little earth over their shoulders and
+arms, so that their adversary may have a fair grip, then step by step
+slowly and gradually they near each other. A few quick passages are
+now interchanged; the lithe supple fingers twist and intertwine, grips
+are formed on arm and neck. The postures change each moment, and are a
+study for an anatomist or sculptor. As they warm to their work they
+get more reckless; they are only the raw material, the untrained lads.
+There is a quick scuffle, heaving, swaying, rocking, and struggling,
+and the two victors, leaping into the air, and slapping their chests,
+bound back into the gratified circle of their comrades, while the two
+discomfited athletes, forcing a rueful smile, retire and 'take a back
+seat.' Two couple of more experienced hands now face each other. There
+is pretty play this time, as the varying changes of the contest bring
+forth ever varying displays of skill and science. The crowd shout as
+an advantage is gained, or cry out 'Hi, hi' in a doubtful manner, as
+their favourite seems to be getting the worst of it. The result
+however is much the same; after a longer or shorter time, two get
+fairly thrown and retire. If there is any dispute, it is at once
+referred to the judges, who sit grimly watching the struggle, and
+comparing the paenches displayed, with those they themselves have
+practised in many a well-won fight. On a reference being made, both
+combatants retain their exact hold and position, only cease straining.
+As soon as the matter is settled, they go at it again till victory
+determine in favour of the lucky man. In no similar contest in England
+I am convinced would there be so much fairness, quietness, and order.
+The only stimulants in the crowd are betel nut and tobacco. All is
+orderly and calm, and at any moment a word from the sahib will quell
+any rising turbulence. It is now time for a still more scientific
+exhibition.
+
+Pat has a man, a tall, wiry, handsome Brahmin, who has never yet been
+beaten. Young K. has long been jealous of his uniform success, and on
+several occasions has brought an antagonist to battle with Pat's
+champion. To-day he has got a sturdy young blacksmith, whom rumour
+hath much vaunted, and although he is not so tall as Pat's wrestler,
+his square, deep chest and stalwart limbs, give promise of great
+strength and endurance.
+
+As the two men strip and bound into the ring, there is the usual hush
+of anticipation. Keen eyes scan the appearance of the antagonists.
+They are both models of manly beauty. The blacksmith, though more
+awkward in his motions, has a cool, determined look about him. The
+Brahmin, conscious of his reputation, walks quickly up, with a smile
+of rather ostentatious condescension on his finely cut features, and
+offers his hand to the blacksmith. The little man is evidently
+suspicious. He thinks this may be a deeply laid trap to get a grip
+upon him. Nor does he like the bland patronising manner of
+'Roopuarain,' so he surlily draws back, at which there is a roar of
+laughter from the. crowd, in which we cannot help joining.
+
+K. now comes forward, and pats his 'fancy man' on the back. The two
+wrestlers thereupon shake hands, and then in the usual manner both
+warily move backwards and forwards, till amid cries from the
+onlookers, the blacksmith makes a sudden dash at the practised old
+player, and in a moment has him round the waist.
+
+He evidently depended on his superior strength. For a moment he fairly
+lifted Roopnarain clean off his legs, swayed him to and fro, and with
+a mighty strain tried to throw him to the ground. Bending to the
+notes, Roopnarain allowed himself to yield, till his feet touched the
+ground, then crouching like a panther, he bounded forward, and getting
+his leg behind that of the blacksmith, by a deft side twist he nearly
+threw him over. The little fellow, however, steadied himself on the
+ground with one hand, recovered his footing, and again had the Brahmin
+firmly locked in his tenacious hold. Roopuarain did not like the grip.
+These were not the tactics he was accustomed to. While the other
+tugged and strained, he, quietly yielding his lithe lissome frame to
+every effort, tried hard with obstinate endeavour to untwist the hands
+that held him firmly locked. It was beautiful play to see the mute
+hands of both the wrestlers feeling, tearing, twisting at each other,
+but the grasp was too firm, and, taking advantage of a momentary
+movement, Roopnarain got his elbow under the other's chin, then
+leaning forward, he pressed his opponent's head backward, and the
+strain began to tell. He fought fiercely, he struggled hard, but the
+determined elbow was not to be baulked, and to save himself from an
+overthrow the blacksmith was forced to relax his hold, and sprang
+nimbly back beyond reach, to mature another attack. Roopnarain quietly
+walked round, rubbed his shoulders with earth, and with the same
+mocking smile, stood leaning forward, his hands on his knees, waiting
+for a fresh onset.
+
+This time the young fellow was more cautious. He found he had no
+novice to deal with, and the Brahmin was not at all anxious to
+precipitate matters. By a splendid feint, after some pretty sparring
+for a grip, the youngster again succeeded in getting a hold on the
+Brahmin, and wheeling round quick as lightning, got behind Roopnarain,
+and with a dexterous trip threw the tall man heavily on his face. He
+then tried to get him by the ankle, and bending his leg up backwards,
+he would have got a purchase for turning him on his back. The old man
+was, however, 'up to this move.' He lay extended flat on his chest,
+his legs wide apart. As often as the little one bent down to grasp his
+ankle, he would put out a hand stealthily, and silently as a snake,
+and endeavour to get the little man's leg in his grasp. This
+necessitated a change of position, and round and round they spun, each
+trying to get hold of the other by the leg or foot. The blacksmith got
+his knee on the neck of the Brahmin, and by sheer strength tried
+several times with a mighty heave to turn his opponent. It was no use,
+however, it is next to impossible to throw a man when he is lying flat
+out as the Brahmin now was. It is difficult enough to turn the dead
+weight of a man in that position, and when he is straining every nerve
+to resist the accomplishment of your object it becomes altogether
+impracticable. The excitement in the crowd was intense. The very
+drummer--I ought to call him a tom-tomer--had ceased to beat his
+tom-tom. Pat's lips were firmly pressed together, and K. was trembling
+with suppressed excitement. The heaving chests and profuse
+perspiration bedewing the bodies of both combatants, told how severe
+had been their exertions. The blacksmith seemed gathering himself up
+for a mighty effort, when, quick as light, the Brahmin drew his limbs
+together, was seen to arch his back, and with a sudden backward
+movement, seemed to glide from under his dashing assailant, and
+quicker than it takes me to write it, the positions were reversed.
+
+The Brahmin was now above, and the blacksmith taking in the altered
+aspect of affairs at a glance, threw himself flat on the ground, and
+tried the same tactics as his opponent. The different play of the two
+men now came strongly into relief. Instead of exhausting himself with
+useless efforts, Roopnarain, while keeping a wary eye on every
+movement of his prostrate foe, contented himself while he took breath,
+with coolly and and yet determinedly making his grip secure. Putting
+out one leg then within reach of his opponent's hand, as a lure, he
+saw the blacksmith stretch forth to grasp the tempting hold.
+
+Quicker than the dart of the python, the fierce onset of the kingly
+tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering lightning, was the
+grasp made at the outstretched arm by the practised Brahmin. His
+tenacious fingers closed tightly round the other's wrist. One sudden
+wrench, and he had the blacksmith's arm bent back and powerless, held
+down on the little fellow's own shoulders. Pat smiled a derisive
+smile, K. uttered what was not a benison, while the Brahmins in the
+crowd, and all Pat's men, raised a truly Hindoo howl. The position of
+the men was now this. The stout little man was flat on his face, one
+of his arms bent helplessly round on his own back. Roopnarain, calm
+and cool as ever, was astride the prostrate blacksmith, placidly
+surveying the crowd. The little man writhed, and twisted, and
+struggled, he tried with his legs to entwine himself with those of the
+Brahmin. He tried to spin round; the Brahmin was watching with the eye
+of a hawk for a grip of the other arm, but it was closely drawn in,
+and firmly pressed in safety under the heaving chest of the
+blacksmith. The muscles were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that
+was seen at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete
+was surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm
+further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero,
+game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain tried
+to bend him over, till we thought either the poor fellow's neck must
+break, or his arm be torn from its socket.
+
+He endured all without a murmur. Not a chance did he throw away. Once
+or twice he made a splendid effort, once he tried to catch the Brahmin
+again by the leg. Roopnarain pounced down, but the arm was as quickly
+within its shield. It was now but a question of time and endurance.
+Every dodge that he was master of did the Brahmin bring into play.
+They were both in perfect training, muscles as hard as steel, every
+nerve and sinew strained to the utmost tension. Roopnarain actually
+tried tickling his man, but he would not give him a chance. At length
+he got his hand in the bent elbow of the free arm, and slowly, and
+laboriously forced it out. There were tremendous spurts and struggles,
+but patient determination was not to be baulked. Slowly the arm came
+up over the back, the struggle was tremendous, but at length both the
+poor fellow's arms were tightly pinioned behind his back. He was
+powerless now. The Brahmin drew the two arms backwards, towards the
+head of the poor little fellow, and he was bound to come over or have
+both his arms broken. With a hoarse cry of sobbing-pain and shame, the
+brave little man came over, both shoulders on the mould, and the
+scientific old veteran was again the victor.
+
+This is but a very faint description of a true wrestling bout among
+the robust dwellers in these remote villages. It may seem cruel, but
+it is to my mind the perfection of muscular strength and skill,
+combined with keen subtle, intellectual acuteness. It brings every
+faculty of mind and body into play, it begets a healthy, honest love
+of fair play, and an admiration of endurance and pluck, two qualities
+of which Englishmen certainly can boast. Strength without skill and
+training will not avail. It is a fine manly sport, and one which
+should be encouraged by all who wish well to our dusky fellow subjects
+in the far off plains and valleys of Hindostan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Indigo seed growing.--Seed buying and buyers.--Tricks of sellers.
+--Tests for good seed.--The threshing-floor.--Seed cleaning and
+packing.--Staff of servants.--Despatching the bags by boat.--The
+'Pooneah' or rent day.--Purneah planters--their hospitality.--The
+rent day a great festival.--Preparation.--Collection of rents.--Feast
+to retainers.--The reception in the evening.--Tribute.--Old customs.
+--Improvisatores and bards.--Nautches.--Dancing and music.--The dance
+of the Dangurs.--Jugglers and itinerary showmen.--'Bara Roopes,' or
+actors and mimics.--Their different styles of acting.
+
+Besides indigo planting proper, there is another large branch of
+industry in North Bhaugulpore, and along the Nepaul frontier there,
+and in Purneah, which is the growing of indigo seed for the Bengal
+planters. The system of advances and the mode of cultivation is much
+the same as that followed in indigo planting proper. The seed is sown
+in June or July, is weeded and tended all through the rains, and cut
+in December. The planters advance about four rupees a beegah to the
+ryot, who cuts his seed-plant, and brings it into the factory
+threshing ground, where it is beaten out, cleaned, weighed, and packed
+in bags. When the seed has been threshed out and cleaned, it is
+weighed, and the ryot or cultivator gets four rupees for every
+maund--a maund being eighty pounds avoirdupois. The previous advance
+is deducted. The rent or loan account is adjusted, and the balance
+made over in cash.
+
+Others grow the seed on their own account, without taking advances,
+and bring it to the factory for sale. If prices are ruling high, they
+may get much more than four rupees per maund for it, and they adopt
+all kinds of ingenious devices to adulterate the seed, and increase
+its weight. They mix dust with it, seeds of weeds, even grains of
+wheat, and mustard, pea, and other seeds. In buying seed, therefore,
+one has to be very careful, to reject all that looks bad, or that may
+have been adulterated. They will even get old useless seed, the refuse
+stock of former years, and mixing this with leaves of the neem tree
+and some turmeric powder, give it a gloss that makes it look like
+fresh seed.
+
+When you suspect that the seed has been tampered with in this manner,
+you wet some of it, and rub it on a piece of fresh clean linen, so as
+to bring off the dye. Where the attempt has been flagrant, you are
+sometimes tempted to take the law into your own hands, and administer
+a little of the castigation which the cheating rascal so richly
+deserves. In other cases it is necessary to submit the seed to a
+microscopic examination. If any old, worn seeds are detected, you
+reject the sample unhesitatingly. Even when the seed appears quite
+good, you subject it to yet another test. Take one or two hundred
+seeds, and putting them on a damp piece of the pith of a plantain
+tree, mixed with a little earth, set them in a warm place, and in two
+days you will be able to tell what percentage has germinated, and what
+is incapable of germination. If the percentage is good, the seed may
+be considered as fairly up to the sample, and it is purchased. There
+are native seed buyers, who try to get as much into their hands as
+they can, and rig the market. There are also European buyers, and
+there is a keen rivalry in all the bazaars.
+
+The threshing-floor, and seed-cleaning ground presents a busy sight
+when several thousand maunds of seed are being got ready for despatch
+by boats. The dirty seed, full of dust and other impurities, is heaped
+up in one corner. The floor is in the shape of a large square, nicely
+paved with cement, as hard and clean as marble. Crowds of nearly nude
+coolies, hurry to and fro with scoops of seed resting on their
+shoulders. When they get in line, at right angles to the direction in
+which the wind is blowing, they move slowly along, letting the seed
+descend on the heap below, while the wind winnows it, and carries the
+dust in dense clouds to leeward. This is repeated over and over again,
+till the seed is as clean as it can be made. It is put through bamboo
+sieves, so formed that any seed larger than indigo cannot pass
+through. What remains in the sieve is put aside, and afterwards
+cleaned, sorted, and sold as food, or if useless, thrown away or given
+to the fowls. The men and boys dart backwards and forwards, there is a
+steady drip, drip, of seed from the scoops, dense clouds of dust, and
+incessant noise and bustle. Peons or watchmen are stationed all around
+to see that none is wasted or stolen. Some are filling sacks full of
+the cleaned seed, and hauling them off to the weighman and his clerk.
+Two maunds are put in every sack, and when weighed the bags are hauled
+up close to the _godown_ or store-room. Here are an army of men with
+sailmaker's needles and twine. They sew up the bags, which are then
+hauled away to be marked with the factory brand. Carts are coming and
+going, carrying bags to the boats, which are lying at the river bank
+taking in their cargo, and the returning carts bring back loads of
+wood from the banks of the river. In one corner, under a shed, sits
+the sahib chaffering with a party of _paikars_ (seed merchants), who
+have brought seed for sale.
+
+Of course he decries the seed, says it is bad, will not hear of the
+price wanted, and laughs to scorn all the fervent protestations that
+the seed was grown on their own ground, and has never passed through
+any hands but their own. If you are satisfied that the seed is good,
+you secretly name your price to your head man, who forthwith takes up
+the work of depreciation. You move off to some other department of the
+work. The head man and the merchants sit down, perhaps smoke a
+_hookah_, each trying to outwit the other, but after a keen encounter
+of wits perhaps a bargain is made. A pretty fair price is arrived at,
+and away goes the purchased seed, to swell the heap at the other end
+of the yard. It has to be carefully weighed first, and the weighman
+gets a little from the vendor as his perquisite, which the factory
+takes from him at the market rate.
+
+You have buyers of your own out in the _dehaat_ (district), and the
+parcels they have bought come in hour by hour, with invoices detailing
+all particulars of quantity, quality, and price. The loads from the
+seed depots and outworks, come rolling up in the afternoon, and have
+all to be weighed, checked, noted down, and examined. Every man's hand
+is against you. You cannot trust your own servants. For a paltry bribe
+they will try to pass a bad parcel of seed, and even when you have
+your European assistants to help you, it is hard work to avoid being
+over-reached in some shape or other.
+
+You have to keep up a large staff of writers, who make out invoices
+and accounts, and keep the books. Your correspondence alone is enough
+work for one man, and you have to tally bags, count coolies, see them
+paid their daily wage, attend to lawsuits that may be going on, and
+yet find time to superintend the operations of the farm, and keep an
+eye to your rents and revenues from the villages. It is a busy, an
+anxious time. You have a vast responsibility on your shoulders, and
+when one takes into consideration the climate you have to contend
+with, the home comforts and domestic joys you have to do without, the
+constant tension of mind and irritation of body from dust, heat,
+insects, lies, bribery, robbers, and villany of every description,
+that meets you on all hands, it must be allowed that a planter at such
+a time has no easy life.
+
+The time at which you despatch the seed is also the very time when you
+are preparing your land for spring sowings. This requires almost as
+much surveillance as the seed-buying and despatching. You have not a
+moment you can call your own. If you had subordinates you could trust,
+who would be faithful and honest, you could safely leave part of the
+work to them, but from very sad experience I have found that trusting
+to a native is trusting to a very rotten stick. They are certainly not
+all bad, but there are just enough exceptions to prove the rule.
+
+One peculiar custom prevailed in this border district of North
+Bhaugulpore, which I have not observed elsewhere. At the beginning of
+the financial year, when the accounts of the past season had all been
+made up and arranged, and the collection of the rents for the new year
+was beginning, the planters and Zemindars held what was called the
+_Pooneah_. It is customary for all cultivators and tenants to pay a
+proportion of their rent in advance. The Pooneah might therefore be
+called 'rent-day.' A similar day is set apart for the same purpose in
+Tirhoot, called _tousee_ or collections, but it is not attended by the
+same ceremonious observances, and quaint customs, as attach to the
+Pooneah on the border land.
+
+When every man's account has been made up and checked by the books,
+the Pooneah day is fixed on. Invitations are sent to all your
+neighbouring friends, who look forward to each other's annual Pooneah
+as a great gala day. In North Bhaugulpore and Purneah, nearly all the
+planters and English-speaking population belong to old families who
+have been born in the district, and have settled and lived there long
+before the days of quick communication with home. Their rule among
+their dependants is patriarchal. Everyone is known among the natives,
+who have seen him since his birth living amongst them, by some pet
+name. The old men of the villages remember his father and his father's
+father, the younger villagers have had him pointed out to them on
+their visits to the factory as 'Willie Baba,' 'Freddy Baba,' or
+whatever his boyish name may have been, with the addition of 'Baba,'
+which is simply a pet name for a child. These planters know every
+village for miles and miles. They know most of the leading men in each
+village by name. The villagers know all about them, discuss their
+affairs with the utmost freedom, and not a single thing, ever so
+trivial, happens in the planter's home but it is known and commented
+on in all the villages that lie within the _ilaka_ (jurisdiction) of
+the factory.
+
+The hospitality of these planters is unbounded. They are most of them
+much liked by all the natives round. I came a 'stranger amongst them,'
+and in one sense, and not a flattering sense, they tried 'to take me
+in,' but only in one or two instances, which I shall not specify here.
+By nearly all I was welcomed and kindly treated, and I formed some
+very lasting friendships among them. Old traditions of princely
+hospitality still linger among them. They were clannish in the best
+sense of the word. The kindness and attention given to aged or
+indigent relations was one of their best traits. I am afraid the race
+is fast dying out. Lavish expenditure, and a too confiding faith in
+their native dependants has often brought the usual result. But many
+of my readers will associate with the name of Purneah or Bhaugulpore
+planter, recollections of hospitality and unostentatious kindness, and
+memories of glorious sport and warm-hearted friendships.
+
+On the Pooneah day then, or the night before, many of these friends
+would meet. The day has long been known to all the villages round, and
+nothing could better shew the patriarchal semi-feudal style in which
+they ruled over their villages than the customs in connection with
+this anniversary. Some days before it, requisitions have been made on
+all the villages in any way connected with the factory, for various
+articles of diet. The herdsmen have to send a tribute of milk, curds,
+and _ghee_ or clarified butter. Cultivators of root crops or fruit
+send in samples of their produce, in the shape of huge bundle of
+plantains, immense jack-fruits, or baskets of sweet potatoes, yams,
+and other vegetables. The _koomhar_ or potter has to send in earthen
+pots and jars. The _mochee_ or worker in leather, brings with him a
+sample of his work in the shape of a pair of shoes. These are pounced
+on by your servants and _omlah_, the omlah being the head men in the
+office. It is a fine time for them. Wooden shoes, umbrellas, brass
+pots, fowls, goats, fruits, in fact all the productions of your
+country side are sent or brought in. It is the old feudal tribute of
+the middle ages back again. During the day the _cutcherry_ or office
+is crowded with the more respectable villagers, paying in rents and
+settling accounts. The noise and bustle are great, but an immense
+quantity of work is got through.
+
+The village putwarries and head men are all there with their
+voluminous accounts. Your rent-collector, called a _tehseeldar_, has
+been busy in the villages with the tenants and putwarries, collecting
+rent for the great Pooneah day. There is a constant chink of money, a
+busy hum, a scratching of innumerable pens. Under every tree, 'neath
+the shade of every hut, busy groups are squatted round some acute
+accountant. Totals are being totted up on all hands. From greasy
+recesses in the waistband a dirty bundle is slowly pulled forth, and
+the desired sum reluctantly counted out.
+
+From early morn till dewy eve this work goes on, and you judge your
+Pooneah to have been a good or bad one by the amount you are able to
+collect. Peons, with their brass badges flashing in the sun, and their
+red puggrees shewing off their bronzed faces and black whiskers, are
+despatched in all directions for defaulters. There is a constant going
+to and fro, a hurrying and bustling in the crowd, a hum as of a
+distant fair pervading the place, and by evening the total of the
+day's collections is added up, and while the sahib and his friends
+take their sherry and bitters, the omlah and servants retire to wash
+and feast, and prepare for the night's festivities.
+
+During the day, at the houses of the omlah, culinary preparations on a
+vast scale have been going on. The large supplies of grain, rice,
+flour, fruit, vegetables, &c., which were brought in as _salamee_ or
+tribute, supplemented by additions from the sahib's own stores, have
+been made into savoury messes. Curries, and cakes, boiled flesh, and
+roast kid, are all ready, and the crowd, having divested themselves of
+their head-dress and outer garments, and cleaned their hands and feet
+by copious ablutions, sit down in a wide circle. The large leaves of
+the water-lily are now served out to each man, and perform the office
+of plates. Huge baskets of _chupatties_, a flat sort of
+'griddle-cake,' are now brought round, and each man gets four or five
+doled out. The cooking and attendance is all done by Brahmins. No
+inferior caste would answer, as Rajpoots and other high castes will
+only eat food that has been cooked by a Brahmin or one of their own
+class. The Brahmin attendants now come round with great _dekchees_ or
+cooking-pots, full of curried vegetables, boiled rice, and similar
+dishes. A ladle-full is handed out to each man, who receives it on his
+leaf. The rice is served out by the hands of the attendants. The
+guests manipulate a huge ball of rice and curry mixed between the
+fingers of the right hand, pass this solemnly into their widely-gaping
+mouths, with the head thrown back to receive the mess, like an
+adjutant-bird swallowing a frog, and then they masticate with much
+apparent enjoyment. Sugar, treacle, curds, milk, oil, butter,
+preserves, and chutnees are served out to the more wealthy and
+respectable. The amount they can consume is wonderful. Seeing the
+enormous supplies, you would think that even this great crowd could
+never get through them, but by the time repletion has set in, there is
+little or nothing left, and many of the inflated and distended old
+farmers could begin again and repeat 'another of the same' with ease.
+Each person has his own _lotah_, a brass drinking vessel, and when all
+have eaten they again wash their hands, rinse out their mouths, and
+don their gayest apparel.
+
+The gentlemen in the bungalow now get word that the evening's
+festivities are about to commence. Lighting our cigars, we sally out
+to the _shamiana_ which has been erected on the ridge, surrounding the
+deep tank which supplies the factory during the manufacturing season
+with water. The _shamiana_ is a large canopy or wall-less tent. It is
+festooned with flowers and green plantain trees, and evergreens have
+been planted all round it. Flaring flambeaux, torches, Chinese
+lanterns, and oil lamps flicker and glare, and make the interior
+almost as bright as day. When we arrive we find our chairs drawn up in
+state, one raised seat in the centre being the place of honour, and
+reserved for the manager of the factory.
+
+When we are seated, the _malee_ or gardener advances with a wooden
+tray filled with sand, in which are stuck heads of all the finest
+flowers the garden can afford, placed in the most symmetrical
+patterns, and really a pretty tasteful piece of workmanship. Two or
+three old Brahmins, principal among whom is 'Hureehar Jha,' a wicked
+old scoundrel, now advance, bearing gay garlands of flowers, muttering
+a strange gibberish in Sanskrit, supposed to be a blessing, but which
+might be a curse for all we understood of it, and decking our wrists
+and necks with these strings of flowers. For this service they get a
+small gratuity. The factory omlah headed by the dignified, portly
+_gornasta_ or confidential adviser, dressed in snowy turbans and
+spotless white, now come forward. A large brass tray stands on the
+table in front of you. They each present a _salamee_ or _nuzzur_, that
+is, a tribute or present, which you touch, and it is then deposited
+with a rattling jingle on the brass plate. The head men of villages,
+putwarries, and wealthy tenants, give two, three, and sometimes even
+four rupees. Every tenant of respectability thinks it incumbent on him
+to give something. Every man as he comes up makes a low salaam,
+deposits his _salamee_, his name is written down, and he retires. The
+putwarries present two rupees each, shouting out their names, and the
+names of their villages. Afterwards a small assessment is levied on
+the villagers, of a 'pice' or two 'pice' each, about a halfpenny of
+our money, and which recoups the putwarree for his outlay.
+
+This has nothing to do with the legitimate revenue of the factory. It
+never appears in the books. It is quite a voluntary offering, and I
+have never seen it in any other district. In the meantime the
+_Raj-bhats_, a wandering class of hereditary minstrels or bards, are
+singing your praises and those of your ancestors in ear-splitting
+strains. Some of them have really good voices, all possess the gift of
+improvisation, and are quick to seize on the salient points of the
+scene before them, and weave them into their song, sometimes in a very
+ingenious and humorous manner. They are often employed by rich
+natives, to while away a long night with one of their, treasured
+rhythmical tales or songs. One or two are kept in the retinue of every
+Rajah or noble, and they possess a mine of legendary information,
+which would be invaluable to the collector of folk-lore and
+antiquarian literature.
+
+At some of the Pooneahs the evening's gaiety winds up with a _nautch_
+or dance, by dancing girls or boys. I always thought this a most
+sleep-inspiring exhibition. It has been so often described that I need
+not trouble my readers with it. The women are gaily dressed in
+brocades and gauzy textures, and glitter with spangles and tawdry
+ornaments. The musical accompaniment of clanging zither, asthmatic
+fiddle, timber-toned drum, clanging cymbal, and harsh metallic
+triangle, is a sore affliction, and when the dusky prima donna throws
+back her head, extends her chest, gets up to her high note, with her
+hand behind her ear, and her poura-stained mouth and teeth wide
+expanded like the jaws of a fangless wolf, and the demoniac
+instruments and performers redouble their din, the noise is something
+too dreadful to experience often. The native women sit mute and
+hushed, seeming to like it. I have heard it said that the Germans eat
+ants. Finlanders relish penny candles. The Nepaulese gourmandise on
+putrid fish. I am fond of mouldy cheese, and organ-grinders are an
+object of affection with some of our home community. I _know_ that the
+general run of natives delight in a nautch. Tastes differ, but to me
+it is an inexplicable phenomenon.
+
+Amid all this noise we sit till we are wearied. Parin-leaves and betel
+nut are handed round by the servants. There is a very sudorific odour
+from the crowd. All are comfortably seated on the ground. The torches
+flare, and send up volumes of smoke to the ornamented roof of the
+canopy. The lights are reflected in the deep glassy bosom of the
+silent tank. The combined sounds and odours get oppressive, and we are
+glad to get back to the bungalow, to consume our 'peg' and our 'weed'
+in the congenial company of our friends.
+
+In some factories the night closes with a grand dance by all the
+inhabitants of the _dangur tola_. The men and women range themselves
+in two semicircles, standing opposite each other. The tallest of both
+lines at the one end, diminishing away at the other extremity to the
+children and little ones who can scarcely toddle. They have a wild,
+plaintive song, with swelling cadences and abrupt stops. They go
+through an extraordinary variety of evolutions, stamping with one foot
+and keeping perfect time. They sway their bodies, revolve, march, and
+countermarch, the men sometimes opening their ranks, and the women
+going through, and _vice versa_. They turn round like the winding
+convolutions of a shell, increase their pace as the song waxes quick
+and shrill, get excited, and finish off with a resounding stamp of the
+foot, and a guttural cry which seems to exhaust all the breath left in
+their bodies. The men then get some liquor, and the women a small
+money present. If the sahib is very liberal he gives them a pig on
+which to feast, and the _dangurs_ go away very happy and contented.
+Their dance is not unlike the _corroborry_ of the Australian
+aborigines. The two races are not unlike each other too in feature,
+although I cannot think that they are in any way connected.
+
+Next morning there is a jackal hunt, or cricket, or pony races, or
+shooting matches, or sport of some kind, while the rent collection
+still goes on. In the afternoon we have grand wrestling matches
+amongst the natives for small prizes, and generally witness some fine
+exhibitions of athletic skill and endurance.
+
+Some wandering juggler may have been attracted by the rumour of the
+gathering. A tight-rope dancer, a snake charmer, an itinerant showman
+with a performing goat, monkey, or dancing bear, may make his
+appearance before the admiring crowd.
+
+At times a party of mimes or actors come round, and a rare treat is
+not seldom afforded by the _bara roopees_. _Bara_ means twelve, and
+_roop_ is an impersonation, a character. These 'twelve characters'
+make up in all sorts of disguises. Their wardrobe is very limited, yet
+the number of people they personate, and their genuine acting talent
+would astonish you. With a projecting tooth and a few streaks of clay,
+they make up a withered, trembling old hag, afflicted with palsy,
+rheumatism, and a hacking cough. They make friends with your bearer,
+and an old hat and coat transforms them into a planter, a missionary,
+or an officer. They whiten their faces, using false hair and
+moustache, and while you are chatting with your neighbour, a strange
+sahib suddenly and mysteriously seats himself by your side. You stare,
+and look at your host, who is generally in the secret, but a stranger,
+or new comer, is often completely taken in. It is generally at night
+that they go through their personations, and when they have dressed
+for their part, they generally choose a moment when your attention is
+attracted by a cunning diversion. On looking up you are astounded to
+find some utter stranger standing behind your chair, or stalking
+solemnly round the room.
+
+They personate a woman, a white lady, a sepoy policeman, almost any
+character. Some are especially good at mimicking the Bengalee Baboo,
+or the merchant from Cabool or Afghanistan with his fruits and cloths.
+A favourite _roop_ with them is to paint one half of the face like a
+man. Everything is complete down to moustache, the folds of the
+puggree, the _lathee_ or staff, indeed to the slightest detail. You
+would fancy you saw a stalwart, strapping Hindoo before you. He turns
+round, and lo, a bashful maiden. Her eyes are stained with _henna_
+(myrtle juice) or antimony. Her long-hair neatly smoothed down is tied
+into a knot at the back, and glistens with the pearl-like ornaments.
+The taper arm is loaded with armlets and bracelets. The very toes are
+bedecked with rings. The bodice hides the taper waist and budding
+bosom, the tiny ear is loaded with jewelled ear-rings, the very nose
+is not forgotten, but is ornamented with a golden circle, bearing on
+its circumference a pearl of great price. The art, the posturing, the
+mimicry, is really admirable. A good _bara roopee_ is well worth
+seeing, and amply earns the two or three rupees he gets as his reward.
+
+The Pooneah seldom lasts more than the two days, but it is quite
+unique in its feudal character, and is one of the old-fashioned
+observances; a relic of the time when the planter was really looked
+upon as the father of his people, and when a little sentiment and
+mutual affection mingled with the purely business relations of
+landlord and tenant.
+
+I delighted my ryots by importing some of our own country recreations,
+and setting the ploughmen to compete against each other. I stuck a
+greasy bamboo firmly into the earth, putting a bag of copper coins at
+the top. Many tried to climb it, but when they came to the grease they
+came down 'by the run.' One fellow however filled his _kummerbund_
+with sand, and after much exertion managed to secure the prize.
+Wheeling the barrow blindfold also gave much amusement, and we made
+some boys bend their foreheads down to a stick and run round till they
+were giddy. Their ludicrous efforts then to jump over some water-pots,
+and run to a thorny bush, raised tumultuous peals of laughter. The
+poor boys generally smashed the pots, and ended by tumbling into the
+thorns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The Koosee jungles.--Ferries.--Jungle roads.--The rhinoceros.--We go
+to visit a neighbour.--We lose our way and get belated.--We fall into
+a quicksand.--No ferry boat.--Camping out on the sand.--Two tigers
+close by.--We light a fire.--The boat at last arrives.--Crossing the
+stream.--Set fire to the boatman's hut.--Swim the horses.--They are
+nearly drowned.--We again lose our way in the jungle.--The towing
+path, and how boats are towed up the river.--We at last reach the
+factory.--News of rhinoceros in the morning.--Off we start, but arrive
+too late.--Death of the rhinoceros.--His dimensions.--Description.
+--Habits.--Rhinoceros in Nepaul.--The old 'Major Capt[=a]n.'--Description
+of Nepaulese scenery.--Immigration of Nepaulese.--Their fondness for
+fish.--They eat it putrid.--Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul.
+--Resources of the country.--Must sooner or later be opened up.
+--Influences at work to elevate the people.--Planters and factories
+chief of these.--Character of the planter.--His claims to consideration
+from government.
+
+In the vast grass jungles that border the banks of the Koosee,
+stretching in great plains without an undulation for miles on either
+side, intersected by innumerable water-beds and dried up channels,
+there is plenty of game of all sorts. It is an impetuous,
+swiftly-flowing stream, dashing directly down from the mighty hills of
+Nepaul. So swift is its current and so erratic its course, that it
+frequently bursts its banks, and careers through the jungle, forming a
+new bed, and carrying away cattle and wild animals in its headlong
+rush.
+
+The _ghauts_ or ferries are constantly changing, and a long bamboo
+with a bit of white rag affixed, shows where the boats and boatmen are
+to be found. In many instances the track is a mere cattle path, and
+hundreds of cross openings, leading into the tall jungle grass, are
+apt to bewilder and mislead the traveller. During the dry season these
+jungles are the resort of great herds of cattle and tame buffaloes,
+which trample down the dry stalks, and force their way into the
+innermost recesses of the wilderness of grass, which grows ten to
+twelve feet high. If you once lose your path you may wander for miles,
+until your weary horse is almost unable to stumble on. In such a case,
+the best way is to take it coolly, and halloo till a herdsman or
+thatch-cutter comes to your rescue. The knowledge of the jungles
+displayed by these poor ignorant men is wonderful; they know every
+gully and watercourse, every ford and quicksand, and they betray not
+the slightest sign of fear, although they know that at any moment they
+may come across a herd of wild buffalo, a savage rhinoceros, or even a
+royal tiger.
+
+The tracks of rhinoceros are often seen, but although I have
+frequently had these pointed out to me when out tiger shooting, I only
+saw two while I lived in that district.
+
+The first occasion was after a night of discomfort such as I have
+fortunately seldom experienced. I had been away at a neighbouring
+factory in Purneah, some eighteen or twenty miles from my bungalow. My
+companion had been my predecessor in the management, and was supposed
+to be well acquainted with the country. We had gone over to one of the
+outworks across the river, and I had received charge of the place from
+him. It was a lonely solitary spot; the house was composed of grass
+walls plastered with mud, and had not been used for some time. F.
+proposed that we should ride over to see H., to whom he would
+introduce me as he would be one of my nearest neighbours, and would
+give us a comfortable dinner and bed, which there was no chance of our
+procuring where we were.
+
+We plunged at once into the mazy labyrinths of the jungle, and soon
+emerged on the high sandy downs, stretching mile beyond mile along the
+southern bank of the ever-changing river. Having lost our way, we got
+to the factory after dark, but a friendly villager volunteered his
+services as guide, and led us safely to our destination. After a
+cheerful evening with H., we persuaded him to accompany us back next
+day. He took out his dogs, and we had a good course after a hare,
+killing two jackals, and sending back the dogs by the sweeper. At
+Burgamma, the outwork, we stopped to _tiffin_ on some cold fowl we had
+brought with us. The old factory head man got us some milk, eggs, and
+_chupatties_; and about three in the afternoon we started for the head
+factory. In an evil moment F. proposed that, as we were near another
+outwork called _Fusseah_, we should diverge thither, I could take over
+charge, and we could thus save a ride on another day. Not knowing
+anything of the country I acquiesced, and we reached Fusseah in time
+to see the place, and do all that was needful. It was a miserable
+tumbledown little spot, with four pair of vats; it had formerly been a
+good working factory, but the river had cut away most of its best
+lands, and completely washed away some of the villages, while the
+whole of the cultivation was fast relapsing into jungle.
+
+'Debnarain Singh' the _gomorsta_ or head man, asked us to stay for the
+night, as he said we could never get home before dark. F. however
+scouted the idea, and we resumed our way. The track, for it could not
+be called a road, led us through one or two jungle villages completely
+hidden by the dense bamboo clumps and long jungle grass. You can't see
+a trace of habitation till you are fairly on the village, and as the
+rice-fields are bordered with long strips of tall grass, the whole
+country presents the appearance of a uniform jungle. We got through
+the rice swamps, the villages, and the grass in safety, and as it was
+getting dark, emerged on the great plain of undulating ridgy
+sandbanks, that form the bed of the river during the annual floods. We
+had our _syces_ (grooms) and two peons with us. We had to ride over
+nearly two miles of sand before we could reach the _ghat_ where we
+expected the ferry-boats, and, the main stream once crossed, we had
+only two miles further to reach the factory. We were getting both
+tired and hungry; a heavy dew was falling, and the night was raw and
+chill. It was dark, there was no moon to light our way, and the stars
+were obscured by the silently creeping fog, rising from the marshy
+hollows among the sand. All at once F., who was leading, called out
+that we were off the path, and before I could pull up, my poor old
+tired horse was floundering in a quicksand up to the girths; I threw
+myself off and tried to wheel him round. H. was behind us, and we
+cried to him to halt where he was. I was sinking at every movement up
+to the knees, when the syce came to my rescue, and took charge of the
+horse. F.'s syce ran to extricate his master and horse; the two peons
+kept calling, 'Oh! my father, my father,' the horses snorted, and
+struggled desperately in the tenacious and treacherous quicksand; but
+after a prolonged effort, we all got safely out, and rejoined H. on
+the firm ridge.
+
+We now hallooed and shouted for the boatmen, but beyond the swish of
+the rapid stream to our right, or the plash of a falling bank as the
+swift current undermined it, no sound answered our repeated calls. We
+were wet and weary, but to go either backward or forward was out of
+the question. We were off the path, and the first step in any
+direction might lead us into another quicksand, worse perhaps than
+that from which we had just extricated ourselves. The horses were
+trembling in every limb. The syces cowered together and shivered with
+the cold. We ordered the two peons to try and reach the ghat, and see
+what had become of the boats, while we awaited their return where we
+were. The fog and darkness soon swallowed them up, and putting the
+best face on our dismal circumstances that we could, we lit our pipes
+and extended our jaded limbs on the damp sand.
+
+For a time we could hear the shouts of the peons as they hallooed for
+the boatmen, and we listened anxiously for the response, but there was
+none. We could hear the purling swish of the rapid stream, the
+crumbling banks falling into the current with a distant splash.
+Occasionally a swift rushing of wings overhead told us of the arrowy
+flight of diver or teal. Far in the distance twinkled the gleam of a
+herdsman's fire, the faint tinkle of a distant bell, or the subdued
+barking of a village dog for a moment, alone broke the silence.
+
+At times the hideous chorus of a pack of jackals woke the echoes of
+the night. Then, at no great distance, rose a hoarse booming cry,
+swelling on the night air, and subsiding into a lengthened growl. The
+syces started to their feet, the horses snorted with fear; and as the
+roar was repeated, followed closely by another to our left, and
+seemingly nearer, H. exclaimed 'By Jove! there's a couple of tigers.'
+
+Sure enough, so it was. It was the first time I had heard the roar of
+the tiger in his own domain, and I must confess that my sensations
+were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting sticks and what
+roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats everything was
+wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about on our hands and
+knees, and pick up whatever we came across.
+
+With great difficulty we managed to light a small fire, and for about
+half-an-hour were nearly smothered by trying with inflated cheeks to
+coax it into a blaze. The tigers continued to call at intervals, but
+did not seem to be approaching us. It was a long weary wait, we were
+cold, wet, hungry, and tired; F., the cause of our misfortunes, had
+taken off his saddle, and with it for a pillow was now fast asleep. H.
+and I cowered over the miserable sputtering flame, and longed and
+wished for the morning. It was a miserable night, the hours seemed
+interminable, the dense volumes of smoke from the water-sodden wood
+nearly choked us. At last, after some hours spent in this miserable
+manner, we heard a faint halloo in the distance; it was now past
+eleven at night. We returned the hail, and bye-and-bye the peons
+returned bringing a boatman with them. The lazy rascals at the ghat
+where we had proposed crossing, had gone home at nightfall, leaving
+their boats on the further bank. Our trusty peons, had gone five miles
+up the river, through the thick jungle, and brought a boat down with
+them from the next ghat to that where we were.
+
+We now warily picked our way down to the edge of the bank. The boat
+seemed very fragile, and the current looked so swift and dangerous,
+that we determined to go across first ourselves, get the larger boat
+from the other side, light a fire, and then bring over the horses. We
+embarked accordingly, leaving the syces and horses behind us. The
+peons and boatman pulled the boat a long way up stream by a rope, then
+shooting out we were carried swiftly down stream, the dark shadow of
+the further bank seeming at a great distance. The boatman pushed
+vigorously at his bamboo pole, the water rippled and gurgled, and
+frothed and eddied around. Half-a-dozen times we thought our boat
+would topple over, but at length we got safely across, far below what
+we had proposed as our landing place.
+
+We found the boats all right, and the boatman's hut, a mere collection
+of dry grass and a few old bamboos. As it could be replaced in an
+hour, and the material lay all around, we fired the hut, which soon,
+blazed up, throwing a weird lurid glow on bank and stream, and
+disclosing far on the other bank our weary nags and shivering syces,
+looking very bedraggled and forlorn indeed. The leaping and crackling
+of the flames, and the genial warmth, invigorated us a little, and
+while I stayed behind to feed the fire, the others recrossed to bring
+the horses over.
+
+With the previous fright however, their long waiting, the blazing
+fire, and being unaccustomed to boats at night, the poor scared horses
+refused to enter the boat, The boats are flat-bottomed or broadly
+bulging, with a bamboo platform strewn with grass in the centre. As a
+rule, they have no protecting rails, and even in the daytime, when the
+current is strong and eddies numerous, they are very dangerous for
+horses. At all events, the poor brutes would not be led on to the
+platform, so there was nothing for it but to swim them across. The
+boat was therefore towed a long way up the bank, which on the farther
+side was nearly level with the current, but where the hut had stood
+was steep and slushy, and perhaps twenty feet high. This was where the
+deepest water ran, and where the current was swiftest. If the horses
+therefore missed the landing ghat or stage, which was cut sloping into
+the bank, there was a danger of their being swept away altogether and
+lost. However, we determined on making the attempt. Entering the
+water, and holding the horses tightly by the head, with a leading rope
+attached, to be paid out in case of necessity; the boat shot out, the
+horses pawed the water, entering deeper and deeper, foot by foot, into
+the swiftly rushing silent stream. So long as they were in their
+depth, and had footing, they were alright, but when they reached the
+middle of the river, the current, rushing with frightful velocity,
+swept them off their feet, and boat and horses began to go down
+stream. The horses, with lips apart showing their teeth firmly set,
+the lurid glare of the flame lighting up their straining eyeballs, the
+plashing of the water, the dark rapid current flowing noiselessly
+past; the rocking heaving boat, the dusky forms of syces, peons, and
+boatman, standing out clear in the ruddy fire-light against the utter
+blackness of the night, composed a weird picture I can never forget.
+
+The boat shot swiftly past the ghat, and came with a thump against the
+bank. It swung round into the stream again, but the boatman had
+luckily managed to scramble ashore, and his efforts and mine united,
+hauling on the mooring-rope, sufficed to bring her in to the bank. The
+three struggling horses were yet in the current, trying bravely to
+stem the furious rush of the river. The syces and my friends were
+holding hard to the tether-ropes, which were now at their full
+stretch. It was a most critical moment. Had they let go, the horses
+would have been swept away to form a meal for the alligators. They
+managed, however, to get in close to the bank, and here, although the
+water was still over their backs, they got a slight and precarious
+footing, and inch by inch struggled after the boat, which we were now
+pulling up to the landing place.
+
+After a sore struggle, during which we thought more than once the
+gallant nags would never emerge from the water, they staggered up the
+bank, dripping, trembling, and utterly overcome with their exertions.
+It was my first introduction to the treacherous Koosee, and I never
+again attempted to swim a horse across at night. We led the poor tired
+creatures up to the fire, heaping on fresh bundles of thatching-grass,
+of which there was plenty lying about, the syces then rubbed them
+down, and shampooed their legs, till they began to take a little
+heart, whinnying as we spoke to them and caressed them.
+
+After resting for nearly an hour, we replaced the saddles, and F., who
+by this time began to mistrust his knowledge of the jungles by night,
+allowed one of the peons, who was sure he knew every inch of the road,
+to lead the way. Leaving the smouldering flames to flicker and burn
+out in solitude, we again plunged into the darkness of the night,
+threading our way through the thick jungle grass, now loaded with dewy
+moisture, and dripping copious showers upon us from its high walls at
+either side of the narrow track. We crossed a rapid little stream, an
+arm of the main river, turned to the right, progressed a few hundred
+yards, turned to the left, and finally came to a dead stop, having
+again lost our way.
+
+We heaped execrations on the luckless peon's head, and I suggested
+that we should make for the main stream, follow up the bank till we
+reached the next ghat, where I knew there was a cart-road leading to
+the factory. Otherwise we might wander all night in the jungles,
+perhaps get into another quicksand, or come to some other signal
+grief. We accordingly turned round. We could hear the swish of the
+river at no great distance, and soon, stumbling over bushes and
+bursting through matted chumps of grass, dripping with wet, and
+utterly tired and dejected, we reached the bank of the stream.
+
+Here we had no difficulty in following the path. The river is so
+swift, that the only way boats are enabled to get up stream to take
+down the inland produce, is by having a few coolies or boatmen to drag
+the boat up against the current by towing-lines. This is called
+_gooning_. The goon-ropes are attached to the mast of the boat. At the
+free end is a round bit of bamboo. The towing-coolie places this
+against his shoulder, and slowly and laboriously drags the boat up
+against the current. We were now on this towing-path, and after riding
+for nearly four miles we reached the ghat, struck into the cart-road,
+and without further misadventure reached the factory about four in the
+morning, utterly fagged and worn out.
+
+About eight in the morning my bearer woke me out of a deep sleep, with
+the news that there was a _gaerha_, that is, a rhinoceros, close to
+the factory. We had some days previously heard it rumoured that there
+were _two_ rhinoceroses in the _Battabarree_ jungles, so I at once
+roused my soundly-sleeping friends. Swallowing a hasty morsel of toast
+and a cup of coffee, we mounted our ponies, sent our guns on ahead,
+and rode off for the village where the rhinoceros was reported. As we
+rode hurriedly along we could see natives running in the same
+direction as ourselves, and one of my men came up panting and
+breathless to confirm the news about the rhinoceros, with the
+unwelcome addition that Premnarain Singh, a young neighbouring
+Zemindar, had gone in pursuit of it with his elephant and guns. We
+hurried on, and just then heard the distant report of a shot, followed
+quickly by two more. We tried to take a short cut across country
+through some rice-fields, but our ponies sank in the boggy ground, and
+we had to retrace our way to the path.
+
+By the time we got to the village we found an excited crowd of over a
+thousand natives, dancing and gesticulating round the prostrate
+carcase of the rhinoceros. The Baboo and his party had found the poor
+brute firmly imbedded in a quicksand. With organised effort they might
+have secured the prize alive, and could have sold him in Calcutta for
+at least a thousand rupees, but they were too excited, and blazed away
+three shots into the helpless beast. 'Many hands make light work,' so
+the crowd soon had the dead animal extricated, rolled him into the
+creek, and floated him down to the village, where we found them
+already beginning to hack and hew the flesh, completely spoiling the
+skin, and properly completing the butchery. We were terribly vexed
+that we were too late, but endeavoured to stop the stupid destruction
+that was going on. The body measured eleven feet three inches from the
+snout to the tail, and stood six feet nine. The horn was six and a
+half inches long, and the girth a little over ten feet. We put the
+best face on the matter, congratulated the Baboo with very bad grace,
+and asked him to get the skin cut up properly.
+
+Cut in strips from the under part of the ribs and along the belly, the
+skin makes magnificent riding-whips. The bosses on the shoulder and
+sides are made into shields by the natives, elaborately ornamented and
+much prized. The horn, however, is the most coveted acquisition. It is
+believed to have peculiar virtues, and is popularly supposed by its
+mere presence in a house to mitigate the pains of maternity. A
+rhinoceros horn is often handed down from generation to generation as
+a heirloom, and when a birth is about to take place the anxious
+husband often gets a loan of the precious treasure, after which he has
+no fears for the safe issue of the labour.
+
+The flesh of the rhinoceros is eaten by all classes. It is one of the
+five animals that a Brahmin is allowed to eat by the _Shastras_. They
+were formerly much more common in these jungles, but of late years
+very few have been killed. When they take up their abode in a piece of
+jungle they are not easily dislodged. They are fierce, savage brutes,
+and do not scruple to attack an elephant when they are hard pressed by
+the hunter. When they wish to leave a locality where they have been
+disturbed, they will make for some distant point, and march on with
+dogged and inflexible purpose. Some have been known to travel eighty
+miles in the twenty-four hours, through thick jungle, over rivers, and
+through swamp and quicksand. Their sense of hearing is very acute, and
+they are very easily roused to fury. One peculiarity often noticed by
+sportsmen is, that they always go to the same spot when they want to
+obey the calls of nature. Mounds of their dung are sometimes seen in
+the jungle, and the tracks shew that the rhinoceros pays a daily visit
+to this one particular spot.
+
+In Nepaul, and along the _terai_ or wooded slopes of the frontier,
+they are more numerous; but 'Jung Bahadur,' the late ruler of Nepaul,
+would allow no one to shoot them but himself. I remember the wailing
+lament of a Nepaul officer with whom I was out shooting, when I
+happened to fire at and wound one of the protected beasts. It was in
+Nepaul, among a cluster of low woody hills, with a brawling stream
+dashing through the precipitous channel worn out of the rocky,
+boulder-covered dell. The rhinoceros was up the hill slightly above
+me, and we were beating up for a tiger that we had seen go ahead of
+the line.
+
+In my eagerness to bag a 'rhino' I quite forgot the interdict, and
+fired an Express bullet into the shoulder of the animal, as he stood
+broadside on, staring stupidly at me. He staggered, and made as if he
+would charge down the hill. The old 'Major Capt[=a]n,' as they called our
+sporting host, was shouting out to me not to fire. The _mahouts_ and
+beaters were petrified with horror at my presumption. I fancy they
+expected an immediate order for my decapitation, or for my ears to be
+cut off at the very least, but feeling I might as well be 'in for a
+pound as for a penny,' I fired again, and tumbled the huge brute over,
+with a bullet through the skull behind the ear. The old officer was
+horror-stricken, and would allow no one to go near the animal. He
+would not even let me get down to measure it, being terrified lest the
+affair should reach the ears of his formidable lord and ruler, that he
+hurried us off from the scene of my transgression as quickly as he
+could.
+
+The old Major Capt[=a]n was a curious character. The government of
+Nepaul is purely military. All executive and judicial functions are
+carried on by military officers. After serving a certain time in the
+army, they get rewarded for good service by being appointed to the
+executive charge of a district. So far as I could make out, they seem
+to farm the revenue much as is done in Turkey. They must send in
+so much to the Treasury, and anything over they keep for themselves.
+Their administration of justice is rough and ready. Fines, corporal
+punishment, and in the case of heinous crimes, mutilation and death are
+their penalties. There is a tax of _kind_ on all produce, and licenses
+to cut timber bring in a large revenue. A protective tariff is levied on
+all goods or produce passing the frontier from British territory, and no
+European is allowed to travel in the country, or to settle and trade
+there. In the lower valleys there are magnificent stretches of land
+suitable for indigo, tea, rice, and other crops. The streams are
+numerous, moisture is plentiful, the soil is fertile, and the slopes of
+the hills are covered with splendid timber, a great quantity of which is
+cut and floated down the Gunduch, Bagmuttee, Koosee, and other streams
+during the rainy season. It is used principally for beams, rafters, and
+railway sleepers.
+
+The people are jealous of intrusion and suspicious of strangers, but
+as I was with an official, they generally came out in great numbers to
+gaze as we passed through a village. The country does not seem so
+thickly populated as in our territory, and the cultivators had a more
+well-to-do look. They possess vast numbers of cattle. The houses have
+conical roofs, and great quadrangular sheds, roofed with a flat
+covering of thatch, are erected all round the houses, for the
+protection of the cattle at night. The taxes must weigh heavily on the
+population. The executive officer, when he gets charge of a district,
+removes all the subordinates who have been acting under his
+predecessor. When I asked the old Major if this would not interfere
+with the efficient administration of justice, and the smooth working
+of his revenue and executive functions, he gave a funny leer, almost a
+wink, and said it was much more satisfactory to have men of your own
+working under you, the fact being, that with his own men he could more
+securely wring from the ryots the uttermost farthing they could pay,
+and was more certain of getting his own share of the spoil.
+
+With practically irresponsible power, and only answerable directly to
+his immediate military superior, an unscrupulous man may harry and
+harass a district pretty much as he chooses. Our old Major seemed to
+be civil and lenient, but in some districts the exactions and
+extortions of the rulers have driven many of the hard-working
+Nepaulese over the border into our territory. Our landholders or
+Zemindars, having vast areas of untilled land, are only too glad to
+encourage this immigration, and give the exiles, whom they find
+hard-working industrious tenants, long leases on easy terms. The
+new-comers are very independent, and strenuously resist any
+encroachment on what they consider their rights. If an attempt is made
+to raise their rent, even equitably, the land having increased in
+value, they will resist the attempt 'tooth and nail,' and take every
+advantage the law affords to oppose it. They are very fond of
+litigation, and are mostly able to afford the expense of a lawsuit. I
+generally found it answer better to call them together and reason
+quietly with them, submitting any point in dispute to an arbitration
+of parties mutually selected.
+
+Nearly all the rivers in Nepaul are formed principally from the
+melting of the snow on the higher ranges. A vast body of water
+descends annually into the plains from the natural surface drainage of
+the country, but the melting of the snows is the main source of the
+river system. Many of the hill streams, and it is particularly
+observable at some seasons in the Koosee, have a regular daily rise
+and fall. In the early morning you can often ford a branch of the
+river, which by midday has become a swiftly-rolling torrent, filling
+the channel from bank to bank. The water is intensely cold, and few or
+no fish are to be found in the mountain streams of Nepaul. When the
+Nepaulese come down to the plains on business, pleasure, or pilgrimage
+their great treat is a mighty banquet of fish. For two or three
+_annas_ a fish of several pounds weight can easily be purchased. They
+revel on this unwonted fare, eating to repletion, and very frequently
+making themselves ill in consequence. When Jung Bahadur came down
+through Chumparun to attend the _durbar_ of the lamented Earl Mayo,
+cholera broke out in his camp, brought on simply by the enormous
+quantities of fish, often not very fresh or wholesome, which his
+guards and camp followers consumed.
+
+Large quantities of dried fish are sent up to Nepaul, and exchanged
+for rice and other grain, or horns, hides, and blankets. The
+fish-drying is done very simply in the sun. It is generally left till
+it is half putrid and taints the air for miles. The sweltering,
+half-rotting mass, packed in filthy bags, and slung on ponies or
+bullocks, is sent over the frontier to some village bazaar in Nepaul.
+The track of a consignment of this horrible filth can be recognised
+from very far away. The perfume hovers on the road, and as you are
+riding up and get the first sniff of the putrid odour, you know at
+once that the Nepaulese market is being recruited by a _fresh_
+accession of very _stale_ fish. If the taste is at all equal to the
+smell, the rankest witches broth ever brewed in reeking cauldron would
+probably be preferable. Over the frontier there seems to be few roads,
+merely bullock tracks. Most of the transporting of goods is done by
+bullocks, and intercommunication must be slow and costly. I believe
+that near Katmandoo, the capital, the roads and bridges are good, and
+kept in tolerable repair. There is an arsenal where they manufacture
+modern munitions of war. Their soldiers are well disciplined, fairly
+well equipped, and form excellent fighting material.
+
+Our policy of annexation, so far as India is concerned, may perhaps be
+now considered as finally abandoned. We have no desire to annex
+Nepaul, but surely this system of utter isolation, of jealous
+exclusion at all hazards of English enterprise and capital, might be
+broken down to a mutual community of interest, a full and free
+exchange of products, and a reception by Nepaul without fear and
+distrust of the benefits our capitalists and pioneers could give the
+country by opening out its resources, and establishing the industries
+of the West on its fertile slopes and plains. I am no politician, and
+know nothing of the secret springs of policy that regulate our
+dealings with Nepaul, but it does seem somewhat weak and puerile to
+allow the Nepaulese free access to our territories, and an unprotected
+market in our towns for all their produce, while the British subject
+is rigorously excluded from the country, his productions saddled with
+a heavy protective duty, and the representative of our Government
+himself, treated more as a prisoner in honourable confinement, than as
+the accredited ambassador of a mighty empire.
+
+I may be utterly wrong. There may be weighty reasons of State for this
+condition of things, but it is a general feeling among Englishmen in
+India that, _we_ have to do all the GIVE and our Oriental neighbours
+do all the TAKE. The un-official English mind in India does not see
+the necessity for the painfully deferential attitude we invariably
+take in our dealings with native states. The time has surely come,
+when Oriental mistrust of our intentions should be stoutly battled
+with. There is room in Nepaul for hundreds of factories, for
+tea-gardens, fruit-groves, spice-plantations, woollen-mills,
+saw-mills, and countless other industries. Mineral products are
+reported of unusual richness. In the great central valley the climate
+approaches that of England. The establishment of productive industries
+would be a work of time, but so long as this ridiculous policy of
+isolation is maintained, and the exclusion of English tourists,
+sportsmen, or observers carried out in all its present strictness, we
+can never form an adequate idea of the resources of the country. The
+Nepaulese themselves cannot progress. I am convinced that a frank and
+unconstrained intercourse between Europeans and natives would create
+no jealousy and antagonism, but would lead to the development of a
+country singularly blessed by nature, and open a wide field for
+Anglo-Saxon energy and enterprise. It does seem strange, with all our
+vast territory of Hindustan accurately mapped out and known, roads and
+railways, canals and embankments, intersecting it in all directions,
+that this interesting corner of the globe, lying contiguous to our
+territory for hundreds of miles, should be less known than the
+interior of Africa, or the barren solitudes of the ice-bound Arctic
+regions.
+
+In these rich valleys hundreds of miles of the finest and most fertile
+lands in Asia lie covered by dense jungle, waiting for labour and
+capital. For the present we have enough to do in our own possessions
+to reclaim the uncultured wastes; but considering the rapid increase
+of population, the avidity with which land is taken up, the daily
+increasing use of all modern labour-saving appliances, the time must
+very shortly come when capital and energy will need new outlets, and
+one of the most promising of these is in Nepaul. The rapid changes
+which have come over the face of rural India, especially in these
+border districts, within the last twenty years, might well make the
+most thoughtless pause. Land has increased in value more than
+two-fold. The price of labour and of produce has kept more than equal
+pace. Machinery is whirring and clanking, where a few years ago a
+steam whistle would have startled the natives out of their wits. With
+cheap, easy, and rapid communication, a journey to any of the great
+cities is now thought no more of than a trip to a distant village in
+the same district was thought of twenty years ago. Everywhere are the
+signs of progress. New industries are opening up. Jungle is fast
+disappearing. Agriculture has wonderfully improved; and wherever an
+indigo factory has been built, progress has taken the place of
+stagnation, industry and thrift that of listless indolence and
+shiftless apathy. A spirit has moved in the valley of dry bones, and
+has clothed with living flesh the gaunt skeletons produced by
+ignorance, disease, and want. The energy and intelligence of the
+planter has breathed on the stagnant waters of the Hindoo intellect
+the breath of life, and the living tide is heaving, full of activity,
+purging by its resistless ever-moving pulsations the formerly stagnant
+mass of its impurities, and making it a life-giving sea of active
+industry and progress.
+
+Let any unprejudiced observer see for himself if it be not so; let him
+go to those districts where British capital and energy are not employed;
+let him leave the planting districts, and go up to the wastes of
+Oudh, or the purely native districts of the North-west, where there
+are no Europeans but the officials in the _station_. He will find
+fewer and worse roads, fewer wells, worse constructed houses, much
+ruder cultivation, less activity and industry; more dirt, disease,
+and desolation; less intelligence; more intolerance; and a peasantry
+morally, mentally, physically, and in every way inferior to those who
+are brought into daily contact with the Anglo-Saxon planters and
+gentlemen, and have imbibed somewhat of their activity and spirit of
+progress. And yet these are the men whom successive Lieutenant-Governors,
+and Governments generally, have done their best to thwart and obstruct.
+They have been misrepresented, held up to obloquy, and foully slandered;
+they have been described as utterly base, fattening on the spoils of a
+cowed and terror-ridden peasantry. Utterly unscrupulous, fearing neither
+God nor man, hesitating at no crime, deterred by no consideration from
+oppressing their tenantry, and compassing their interested ends by the
+vilest frauds.
+
+Such was the picture drawn of the indigo planter not so many years
+ago. There may have been much in the past over which we would
+willingly draw the veil, but at the present moment I firmly believe
+that the planters of Behar--and I speak as an observant student of
+what has been going on in India--have done more to elevate the
+peasantry, to rouse them into vitality, and to improve them in every
+way, than all the other agencies that have been at work with the same
+end in view.
+
+The Indian Government to all appearance must always work in extremes.
+It never seems to hit the happy medium. The Lieutenant-Governor for
+the time being impresses every department under him too strongly with
+his own individuality. The planters, who are an intelligent and
+independent body of men, have seemingly always been obnoxious to the
+ideas of a perfectly despotic and irresponsible ruler. In spite
+however of all difficulties and drawbacks, they have held their own. I
+know that the poor people and small cultivators look up to them with
+respect and affection. They find in them ready and sympathizing
+friends, able and willing to shield them from the exactions of their
+own more powerful and uncharitable fellow-countrymen. Half, nay
+nine-tenths, of the stories against planters, are got up by the
+money-lenders, the petty Zemindars, and wealthy villagers, who find
+the planter competing with them for land and labour, and raising the
+price of both. The poor people look to the factory as a never failing
+resource when all else fails, and but for the assistance it gives in
+money, or seed, or plough bullocks and implements of husbandry, many a
+struggling hardworking tenant would inevitably go to the wall, or
+become inextricably entangled in the meshes of the Bunneah and
+money-lender.
+
+I assert as a fact that the great majority of villagers in Behar would
+rather go to the factory, and have their sahib adjudicate on their
+dispute, than take it into Court. The officials in the indigo
+districts know this, and as a rule are very friendly with the
+planters. But not long since, an official was afraid to dine at a
+planter's house, fearing he might be accused of planter proclivities.
+In no other country in the world would the same jealousy of men who
+open out and enrich a country, and who are loyal, intelligent, and
+educated citizens, be displayed; but there are high quarters in which
+the old feeling of the East India Company, that all who were not in
+the service must be adventurers and interlopers, seems not wholly to
+have died out.
+
+That there have been abuses no one denies; but for years past the
+majority of the planters in Tirhoot, Chupra, and Chumparun, and in the
+indigo districts generally, not merely the managers, but the
+proprietors and agents have been laudably and loyally stirring, in
+spite of failures, reduced prices, and frequent bad seasons, to
+elevate the standard of their peasantry, and establish the indigo
+system on a fair and equitable basis. During the years when I was an
+assistant and manager on indigo estates, the rates for payment of
+indigo to cultivators nearly doubled, although prices for the
+manufactured article remained stationary. In well managed factories,
+the forcible seizure of carts and ploughs, and the enforcement of
+labour, which is an old charge against planters, was unknown; and the
+payment of tribute, common under the old feudal system, and styled
+_furmaish_, had been allowed to fall into desuetude. The NATIVE
+Zemindars or landholders however, still jealously maintain their
+rights, and harsh exactions were often made by them on the cultivators
+on the occasions of domestic events, such as births, marriages,
+deaths, and such like, in the families of the landowners. For years
+these exactions or feudal payments by the ryot to the Zemindar have
+been commuted by the factories into a lump sum in cash, when villages
+have been taken in farm, and this sum has been paid to the Zemindar as
+an enhanced rent. In the majority of cases it has not been levied from
+the cultivators, but the whole expense has been borne by the factory.
+In individual instances resort may have been had to unworthy tricks to
+harass the ryots, the factory middle-men having often been oppressors
+and tyrants; but as a body, the indigo planters of the present day
+have sternly set their faces to put down these oppressions, and have
+honestly striven to mete out even-handed justice to their tenants and
+dependants. With the spread of education and intelligence, the
+development of agricultural knowledge and practical science, and the
+vastly improved communication by roads, bridges, and ferries, in
+bringing about all of which the planting community themselves have
+been largely instrumental, there can be little doubt that these old
+fashioned charges against the planters as a body will cease, and
+public opinion will be brought to bear on any one who may promote his
+own interests by cruelty or rapacity, instead of doing his business on
+an equitable commercial basis, giving every man his due, relying on
+skill, energy, industry, and integrity, to promote the best interests
+of his factory; gaining the esteem and affection of his people by
+liberality, kindness, and strict justice.
+
+It can never be expected that a ryot can grow indigo at a loss to
+himself, or at a lower rate of profit than that which the cultivation
+of his other ordinary crops would give him, without at least some
+compensating advantages. With all his poverty and supposed stupidity,
+he is keenly alive to his own interests, quite able to hold his own in
+matters affecting his pocket. I have no hesitation in saying that the
+steady efforts which have been made by all the best planters to treat
+the ryot fairly, to give him justice, to encourage him with liberal
+aid and sympathy, and to put their mutual relations on a fair business
+footing, are now bearing fruit, and will result in the cultivation and
+manufacture of indigo in Upper Bengal becoming, as it deserves to
+become, one of the most firmly established, fairly conducted, and
+justly administered industries in India. That it may be so is, as I
+know, the earnest wish, as it has long been the dearest object, of my
+best friends among the planters of Behar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+The tiger.--His habitat.--Shooting on foot.--Modes of shooting.--A
+tiger hunt on foot.--The scene of the hunt.-The beat.--Incidents of
+the hunt.--Fireworks.--The tiger charges.--The elephant bolts.--The
+tigress will not break.--We kill a half-grown cub.--Try again for
+the tigress.--Unsuccessful.--Exaggerations in tiger stories.--My
+authorities.--The brothers S.--Ferocity and structure of the tiger.
+--His devastations.--His frame-work, teeth, &c.--A tiger at bay.
+--His unsociable habits.--Fight between tiger and tigress.--Young
+tigers.--Power and strength of the tiger.--Examples.--His cowardice.
+--Charge of a wounded tiger.--Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+--A spined tiger.--Boldness of young tigers.--Cruelty.--Cunning.--Night
+scenes in the jungle.--Tiger killed by a wild boar.--His cautious
+habits.--General remarks.
+
+In the foregoing chapters I have tried to perform my promise, to give
+a general idea of our daily life in India; our toils and trials, our
+sports, our pastimes, and our general pursuits. No record of Indian
+sport, however, would be complete without some allusion to the kingly
+tiger, and no one can live long near the Nepaul frontier, without at
+some time or other having an encounter with the royal robber--the
+striped and whiskered monarch of the jungle.
+
+He is always to be found in the Terai forests, and although very
+occasionally indeed met with in Tirhoot, where the population is very
+dense, and waste lands infrequent, he is yet often to be encountered
+in the solitudes of Oudh or Goruchpore, has been shot at and killed
+near Bettiah, and at our pig-sticking ground near Kuderent. In North
+Bhaugulpore and Purneah he may be said to be ALWAYS at home, as he can
+be met there, if you search for him, at all seasons of the year.
+
+In some parts of India, notably in the Deccan, and in some districts
+on the Bombay side, and even in the Soonderbunds near Calcutta,
+sportsmen and shekarries go after the tiger on foot. I must confess
+that this seems to me a mad thing to do. With every advantage of
+weapon, with the most daring courage, and the most imperturbable
+coolness, I think a man no fair match for a tiger in his native
+jungles. There are men now living who have shot numbers of tigers on
+foot, but the numerous fatal accidents recorded every year, plainly
+shew the danger of such a mode of shooting.
+
+In Central India, in the North-west, indeed in most districts where
+elephants are not easily procurable, it is customary to erect
+_mychans_ or bamboo platforms on trees. A line of beaters, with
+tom-toms, drums, fireworks, and other means for creating a din, are
+then sent into the jungle, to beat the tigers up to the platform on
+which you sit and wait. This is often a successful mode if you secure
+an advantageous place, but accidents to the beaters are very common,
+and it is at best a weary and vexatious mode of shooting, as after all
+your trouble the tiger may not come near your _mychan_, or give you
+the slightest glimpse of his beautiful skin.
+
+I have only been out after tiger on foot on one occasion. It was in
+the sal jungles in Oudh. A neighbour of mine, a most intimate and dear
+friend, whom I had nicknamed the 'General,' and a young friend,
+Fullerton, were with me. A tigress and cub were reported to be in a
+dense patch of _nurkool_ jungle, on the banks of the creek which
+divided the General's cultivation from mine. The nurkool is a tall
+feathery-looking cane, very much relished by elephants. It grows in
+dense brakes, and generally in damp boggy ground, affording complete
+shade and shelter for wild animals, and is a favourite haunt of pig,
+wolf, tiger, and buffalo.
+
+We had only one elephant, the use of which Fullerton had got from a
+neighbouring Baboo. It was not a staunch animal, so we put one of our
+men in the howdah, with a plentiful supply of bombs, a kind of native
+firework, enclosed in a clay case, which burns like a huge squib, and
+sets fire to the jungle. Along with the elephant we had a line of
+about one hundred coolies, and several men with drums and tom-toms.
+Fullerton took the side nearest the river, as it was possible the
+brute might sneak out that way, and make her escape along the bank.
+The General's shekarry remained behind, in rear of the line of
+beaters, in case the tigress might break the line, and try to escape
+by the rear. My _Gomasta_, the General, and myself, then took up
+positions behind trees all along the side of the glade or dell in
+which was the bit of nurkool jungle.
+
+It was a small basin, sloping gently down to the creek from the sal
+jungle, which grew up dark and thick all around. A margin of close
+sward, as green and level as a billiard-table, encircled the glade,
+and in the basin the thick nurkool grew up close, dense, and high,
+like a rustling barrier of living green. In the centre was the
+decaying stump of a mighty forest monarch, with its withered arms
+stretching out their bleached and shattered lengths far over the
+waving feathery tops of the nurkool below.
+
+The General and I cut down, some branches, which we stuck in the
+ground before us. I had a fallen log in front of me, on which I rested
+my guns. I had a naked _kookree_ ready to hand, for we were sure that
+the tigress was in the swamp, and I did not know what might happen. I
+did not half like this style of shooting, and wished I was safely
+seated on the back of 'JORROCKS,' my faithful old Bhaugulpore
+elephant. The General whistled as a sign for the beat to begin. The
+coolies dashed into the thicket. The stately elephant slowly forced
+his ponderous body through the crashing swaying brake. The rattle of
+the tom-toms and rumble of the drums, mingled with the hoarse shouts
+and cries of the beaters, the fiery rush of sputtering flame, and the
+loud report as each bomb burst, with the huge volumes of blinding
+smoke, and the scent of gunpowder that came on the breeze, told us
+that the bombs were doing their work. The jungle was too green to
+burn; but the fireworks raised a dense sulphurous smoke, which
+penetrated among the tall stems of the nurkool, and by the waving and
+crashing of the tall swaying canes, the heaving of the howdah, with
+the red puggree of the peon, and the gleaming of the staves and
+weapons, we could see that the beat was advancing.
+
+As they neared the large withered tree in the centre of the brake, the
+elephant curled up his trunk and trumpeted. This was a sure sign there
+was game afoot. We could see the peon in the howdah leaning over the
+front bar, and eagerly peering into the recesses of the thicket before
+him. He lit one of the bombs, and hurled it right up against the hole
+of the tree. It hissed and sputtered, and the smoke came curling over
+the reeds in dense volumes. A roar followed that made the valley ring
+again. We heard a swift rush. The elephant turned tail, and fled madly
+away, crashing through the matted brake that crackled and tore under
+his tread. The howdah swayed wildly, and the peon clung tenaciously on
+to the top bar with all his desperate might. The _mahout_, or
+elephant-driver, tried in vain to check the rush of the frightened
+brute, but after repeated sounding whacks on the head he got her to
+stop, and again turn round. Meantime the cries and shouting had
+ceased, and the beaters came pouring from the jungle by twos and
+threes, like the frightened inhabitants of some hive or ant-heap. Some
+in their hurry came tumbling out headlong, others with their faces
+turned backwards to see if anything was in pursuit of them, got
+entangled in the reeds, and fell prone on their hands and knees. One
+fellow had just emerged from the thick cover, when another terrified
+compatriot dashed out in blind unreasoning fear close behind him. The
+first one thought the tiger was on him. With one howl of anguish and
+dismay he fled as fast as he could run, and the General and I, who had
+witnessed the episode, could not help uniting in a resounding peal of
+laughter, that did more to bring the scared coolies to their senses
+than anything else we could have done.
+
+There was no doubt now of the tiger's whereabouts. One of the beaters
+gave us a most graphic description of its appearance and proportions.
+According to him it was bigger than an elephant, had a mouth as wide
+as a coal scuttle, and eyes that glared like a thousand suns. From all
+this we inferred that there was a full grown tiger or tigress in the
+jungle. We re-formed the line of beaters, and once more got the
+elephant to enter the patch. The same story was repeated. No sooner
+did they get near the old tree, than the tigress again charged with a
+roar, and our valiant coolies and the chicken-hearted elephant vacated
+the jungle as fast as their legs could carry them. This happened twice
+or thrice. The tigress charged every time, but would not leave her
+safe cover. The elephant wheeled round at every charge, and would not
+shew fight. Fullerton got into the howdah, and fired two shots into
+the spot where the tigress was lying. He did not apparently wound her,
+but the reports brought her to the charge once more, and the elephant,
+by this time fairly tired of the game, and thoroughly demoralised with
+fear, bolted right away, and nearly cracked poor Fullerton's head
+against the branch of a tree.
+
+We could plainly see, that with only one elephant we could never
+dislodge the tigress, so making the coolies beat up the patch in
+lines, we shot several pig and a hog-deer, and adjourned for something
+to eat by the bank of the creek. We had been trying to oust the
+tigress for over four hours, but she was as wise as she was savage,
+and refused to become a mark for our bullets in the open. After lunch
+we made another grand attempt. We promised the coolies double pay if
+they roused the tigress to flight. The elephant was forced again into
+the nurkool very much against his will, and the mahout was promised a
+reward if we got the tigress. The din this time was prodigious, and
+strange to say they got quite close up to the big withered tree
+without the usual roar and charge. This seemed somewhat to stimulate
+the beaters and the old elephant. The coolies redoubled their cries,
+smote among the reeds with their heavy staves, and shouted
+encouragement to each other. Right in the middle of the line, as it
+seemed to us from the outside, there was then a fierce roar and a
+mighty commotion. Cries of fear and consternation arose, and forth
+poured the coolies again, helter skelter, like so many rabbits from a
+warren when the weasel or ferret has entered the burrow. Right before
+me a huge old boar and a couple of sows came plunging forth. I let
+them get on a little distance from the brake, and then with my
+'Express' I rolled over the tusker and one of his companions, and just
+then the General shouted out to me, 'There's the tiger!'
+
+I looked in the direction of his levelled gun, and there at the edge
+of the jungle was a handsome half-grown tiger cub, beautifully marked,
+his tail switching angrily from side to side, and his twitching
+retracted lips and bristling moustache drawn back like those of a
+vicious cat, showing his gleaming polished fangs and teeth.
+
+The General had a fine chance, took a steady aim, and shot the young
+savage right through the heart. The handsome young tiger gave one
+convulsive leap into the air and fell on his side stone dead. We could
+not help a cheer, and shouted for Fullerton, who soon came running up.
+We got some coolies together, but they were frightened to go near the
+dead animal, as we could plainly hear the old vixen inside snarling
+and snapping, for all the world like an angry terrier. We heard her
+half-suppressed growl and snarl. She was evidently in a fine temper.
+How we wished for a couple of staunch elephants to hunt her out of the
+cane. It was no use, however, the elephant would not go near the
+jungle again. The coolies were thoroughly scared, and had got plenty
+of pork and venison to eat, so did not care for anything else. We
+collected a lot of tame buffaloes, and tried to drive them through the
+jungle, but the coolies had lost heart, and would not exert
+themselves; so we had to content ourselves with the cub, who measured
+six feet three inches (a very handsome skin it was), and very
+reluctantly had to leave the savage mother alone. I never saw a brute
+charge so persistently as she did. She always rushed forward with a
+succession of roars, and was very wary and cunning. She never charged
+home, she did not even touch the elephant or any of the coolies, but
+evidently trusted to frighten her assailants away by a bold show and a
+fierce outcry.
+
+We went back two days after with five elephants, which with great
+difficulty we had got together[1], and thoroughly beat the patch of
+nurkool, killed a lot of pig and a couple of deer, shot an alligator,
+and destroyed over thirty of its eggs, which we discovered on the bank
+of the creek; and returning in the evening shot a nilghau and a black
+buck, but the tigress had disappeared. She was gone, and we grumbled
+sorely at our bad luck. That was the only occasion I was ever after
+tiger on foot. It was doubtless intensely exciting work, and both
+tigress and cub must have passed close to us several times, hidden by
+the jungle. We were only about thirty paces from the edge of the
+brake, and both animals must have seen us, although the dense cover
+hid them from our sight. I certainly prefer shooting from the howdah.
+
+Although it is beyond the scope of this book to enter into a detailed
+account of the tiger, discussing his structure, habits, and
+characteristics, it may aid the reader if I give a sketchy general
+outline of some of the more prominent points of interest connected
+with the monarch of the jungle, the cruel, cunning, ferocious king of
+the cat tribe, the beautiful but dreaded tiger.
+
+I should prefer to shew his character by incidents with which I have
+myself been connected, but as many statements have been made about
+tigers that are utterly absurd and untrue, and as tiger stories
+generally contain a good deal of exaggeration, and a natural
+scepticism unconsciously haunts the reader when tigers and tiger
+shooting are the topics, it may be as well to state once for all, that
+I shall put down nothing that cannot be abundantly substantiated by
+reference to my own sporting journals, on those of the brothers S.,
+friends and fellow-sportsmen of my own. To G.S. I am under great
+obligations for many interesting notes he has given me about tiger
+shooting. Joe, his brother, was long our captain in our annual
+shooting parties. Their father and _his_ brother, the latter still
+alive and a keen shot, were noted sportsmen at a time when game was
+more plentiful, shooting more generally practised, and when to be a
+good shot meant more than average excellence. The two brothers between
+them have shot, I daresay, more than four hundred and fifty male and
+female tigers, and serried rows of skulls ranged round the
+billiard-rooms in their respective factories, bear witness to their
+love of sport and the deadly accuracy of their aim. Under their
+auspices I began my tiger shooting, and as they knew every inch of the
+jungles, had for years been observant students of nature, were
+acquainted with all the haunts and habits of every wild creature, I
+acquired a fund of information about the tiger which I knew could be
+depended on. It was the result of actual observation and experience,
+and in most instances it was corroborated by my own experience in my
+more limited sphere of action. Every incident I adduce, every
+deduction I draw, every assertion I make regarding tigers and tiger
+shooting can be plentifully substantiated, and abundantly testified
+to, by my brother sportsmen of Purneah and Bhaugulpore. From their
+valuable information I have got most of the material for this part of
+my book.
+
+Of the order FERAE, the family _felidae_, there is perhaps no animal
+in the wide range of all zoology, so eminently fitted for destruction
+as the tiger. His whole structure and appearance, combining beauty and
+extreme agility with prodigious strength, his ferocity, and his
+cunning, mark him out as the very type of a beast of prey. He is the
+largest of the cat tribe, the most formidable race of quadrupeds on
+earth. He is the most bloodthirsty in habit, and the most dreaded by
+man. Whole tracts of fertile fields, reclaimed from the wild
+luxuriance of matted jungle, and waving with golden grain, have been
+deserted by the patient husbandmen, and allowed to relapse into
+tangled thicket and uncultured waste on account of the ravages of this
+formidable robber. Whole villages have been depopulated by tigers, the
+mouldering door-posts, and crumbling rafters, met with at intervals in
+the heart of the solitary jungle, alone marking the spot where a
+thriving hamlet once sent up the curling smoke from its humble
+hearths, until the scourge of the wilderness, the dreaded 'man-eater,'
+took up his station near it, and drove the inhabitants in terror from
+the spot. Whole herds of valuable cattle have been literally destroyed
+by the tiger. His habitat is in those jungles, and near those
+localities, which are most highly prized by the herdsmen of India for
+their pastures, and the numbers of cattle that yearly fall before his
+thirst for blood, and his greed for living prey, are almost
+incredible. I have scarcely known a day pass, during the hot months,
+on the banks of the Koosee, that news of a _kill_ has not been sent in
+from some of the villages in my _ilaka_, and as a tiger eats once in
+every four or five days, and oftener if he can get the chance, the
+number of animals that fall a prey to his insatiable appetite, over
+the extent of Hindustan, must be enormous. The annual destruction of
+tame animals by tigers alone is almost incredible, and when we add to
+this the wild buffalo, the deer, the pig, and other untamed animals,
+to say nothing of smaller creatures, we can form some conception of
+the destruction caused by the tiger in the course of a year.
+
+His whole frame is put together to effect destruction. In cutting up a
+tiger you are impressed with this. His tendons are masses of nerve and
+muscle as hard as steel. The muscular development is tremendous. Vast
+bands and layers of muscle overlap each other. Strong ligaments, which
+you can scarcely cut through, and which soon blunt the sharpest knife,
+unite the solid, freely-playing, loosely-jointed bones. The muzzle is
+broad, and short, and obtuse. The claws are completely retractile. The
+jaws are short. There are two false molars, two grinders above, and
+the same number below. The upper carnivorous tooth has three lobes,
+and an obtuse heel; the lower has two lobes, pointed and sharp, and no
+heel. There is one very small tuberculous tooth above as an auxiliary,
+and then the strong back teeth. The muscles of the jaws are of
+tremendous power. I have come across the remains of a buffalo killed
+by a tiger, and found all the large bones, even the big strong bones
+of the pelvis and large joints, cracked and crunched like so many
+walnuts, by the powerful jaws of the fierce brute.
+
+The eye is peculiarly brilliant, and when glaring with fury it is
+truly demoniac. With his bristles rigid, the snarling lips drawn back,
+disclosing the formidable fangs, the body crouching for his spring,
+and the lithe tail puffed up and swollen, and lashing restlessly from
+side to side, each muscle tense and strung, and an undulating movement
+perceptible like the motions of a huge snake, a crouching tiger at bay
+is a sight that strikes a certain chill to the heart of the onlooker.
+When he bounds forward, with a roar that reverberates among the mazy
+labyrinths of the interminable jungle, he tests the steadiest nerve
+and almost daunts the bravest heart.
+
+In their habits they are very unsociable, and are only seen together
+during the amatory season. When that is over the male tiger betakes
+him again to his solitary predatory life, and the tigress becomes, if
+possible, fiercer than he is, and buries herself in the gloomiest
+recesses of the jungle. When the young are born, the male tiger has
+often been known to devour his offspring, and at this time they are
+very savage and quarrelsome. Old G., a planter in Purneah, once came
+across a pair engaged in deadly combat. They writhed and struggled on
+the ground, the male tiger striking tremendous blows on the chest and
+flanks of his consort, and tearing her skin in strips, while the
+tigress buried her fangs in his neck, tearing and worrying with all
+the ferocity of her nature. She was battling for her young. G. shot
+both the enraged combatants, and found that one of the cubs had been
+mangled, evidently by his unnatural father. Another, which he picked
+up in a neighbouring bush, was unharmed, but did not survive long.
+Pairs have often been shot in the same jungle, but seldom in close
+proximity, and it accords with all experience that they betray an
+aversion to each other's society, except at the one season. This
+propensity of the father to devour his offspring seems to be due to
+jealousy or to blind unreasoning hate. To save her offspring the
+female always conceals her young, and will often move far from the
+jungle which she usually frequents.
+
+When the cubs are able to kill for themselves, she seems to lose all
+pleasure in their society, and by the time they are well grown she
+usually has another batch to provide for. I have, however, shot a
+tigress with a full-grown cub--the hunt described in the last chapter
+is an instance--and on several occasions, my friend George has shot
+the mother with three or four full-grown cubs in attendance. This is
+however rare, and only happens I believe when the mother has remained
+entirely separate from the company of the male.
+
+The strength of the tiger is amazing. The fore paw is the most
+formidable weapon of attack. With one stroke delivered with full
+effect he can completely disable a large buffalo. On one occasion, on
+the Koosee _derahs_, that is, the plains bordering the river, an
+enraged tiger, passing through a herd of buffaloes, broke the backs of
+two of the herd, giving each a stroke right and left as he went along.
+One blow is generally sufficient to kill the largest bullock or
+buffalo. Our captain, Joe, had once received _khubber_, that is, news
+or information, of a kill by a tiger. He went straight to the
+_baithan_, the herd's head-quarters, and on making enquiries, was told
+that the tiger was a veritable monster.
+
+'Did you see it?' asked Joe.
+
+'I did not,' responded the _goala_ or cowherd.
+
+'Then how do you know it was so large?'
+
+'Because,' said the man, 'it killed the biggest buffalo in my herd,
+and the poor brute only gave one groan.'
+
+George once tracked a tiger, following up the drag of a bullock that
+he had carried off. At one place the brute came to a ditch, which was
+measured and found to be five feet in width. Through this there was no
+drag, but the traces continued on the further side. The inference is,
+that the powerful thief had cleared the ditch, taking the bullock
+bodily with him at a bound. Others have been known to jump clear out
+of a cattle pen, over a fence some six feet high, taking on one
+occasion a large-sized calf, and another time a sheep.
+
+Another wounded tiger, with two bullets in his flanks, the wound being
+near the root of the tail, cleared a _nullah_, or dry watercourse, at
+one bound. The nullah was stepped by George, and found to be
+twenty-three paces wide. It is fortunate, with such tremendous powers
+for attack, that the tiger will try as a rule to slink out of the way
+if he can. He almost always avoids an encounter with man. His first
+instinct is flight. Only the exciting incidents of the chase are as a
+rule put upon record. A narrative of tiger shooting therefore is apt
+in this respect to be a little misleading. The victims who meet their
+death tamely and quietly (and they form the majority in every
+hunt),--those that are shot as they are tamely trying to escape--are
+simply enumerated, but the charging tiger, the old vixen that breaks
+the line, and scatters the beaters to right and left, that rouses the
+blood of the sportsmen to a fierce excitement, these are made the most
+of. Every incident is detailed and dwelt upon, and thus the idea has
+gained ground, that ALL tigers are courageous, and wait not for
+attack, but in most instances take the initiative. It is not the case.
+Most of the tigers I have seen killed would have escaped if they
+could. It is only when brought to bay, or very hard pressed, or in
+defence of its young, that a tiger or tigress displays its native
+ferocity. At such a moment indeed, nothing gives a better idea of
+savage determined fury and fiendish rage. With ears thrown back, brows
+contracted, mouth open, and glaring yellow eyes scintillating with
+fury, the cruel claws plucking at the earth, the ridgy hairs on the
+back stiff and erect as bristles, and the lithe lissome body quivering
+in every muscle and fibre with wrath and hate, the beast comes down to
+the charge with a defiant roar, which makes the pulse bound and the
+breath come short and quick. It requires all a man's nerve and
+coolness, to enable him to make steady shooting.
+
+Roused to fury by a wound, I have seen tigers wheel round with amazing
+swiftness, and dash headlong, roaring dreadfully as they charged, full
+upon the nearest elephant, scattering the line and lacerating the poor
+creature on whose flanks or head they may have fastened, their whole
+aspect betokening pitiless ferocity and fiendish rage.
+
+Even in death they do not forget their savage instincts. I knew of one
+case in which a seemingly dead tiger inflicted a fearful wound upon an
+elephant that had trodden on what appeared to be his inanimate
+carcase. Another elephant, that attacked and all but trampled a tiger
+to death, was severely bitten under one of the toe-nails. The wound
+mortified, and the unfortunate beast died in about a week after its
+infliction. Another monster, severely wounded, fell into a pool of
+water, and seized hold with its jaws of a hard knot of wood that was
+floating about. In its death agony, it made its powerful teeth meet in
+the hard wood, and not until it was being cut up, and we had divided
+the muscles of the jaws, could we extricate the wood from that
+formidable clench. In rage and fury, and mad with pain, the wounded
+tiger will often turn round and savagely bite the wound that causes
+its agony, and they very often bite their paws and shoulders, and tear
+the grass and earth around them.
+
+A tiger wounded in the spine, however, is the most exciting spectacle.
+Paralysed in the limbs, he wheels round, roaring and biting at
+everything within his reach. In 1874 I shot one in the spine, and
+watched his furious movements for some time before I put him out of
+his misery. I threw him a pad from one of the elephants, and the way
+he tore and gnawed it gave me some faint idea of his fury and
+ferocity. He looked the very personification of impotent viciousness;
+the incarnation of devilish rage.
+
+Urged by hunger the tiger fearlessly attacks his prey. The most
+courageous are young tigers about seven or eight feet long. They
+invariably give better sport than larger and older animals, being more
+ready to charge, and altogether bolder and more defiant. Up to the age
+of two years they have probably been with the mother, have never
+encountered a reverse or defeat, and having become bold by impunity,
+hesitate not to fly at any assailant whatever.
+
+Like all the cat tribe, they are very cruel in disposition, often most
+wantonly so. Having disabled his prey with the first onset, the tiger
+plays with it as a cat does with a mouse, and, unless very sharp set
+by hunger, he always indulges this love of torture. His attacks are by
+no means due only to the cravings of his appetite. He often slays the
+victims of a herd, in the wantonness of sport, merely to indulge his
+murderous propensities. Even when he has had a good meal he will often
+go on adding fresh victims, seemingly to gratify his sense of power,
+and his love of slaughter. In teaching her cubs to kill for
+themselves, the mother often displays great cruelty, frequently
+killing at a time five or six cows from one herd. The young savages
+are apt pupils, and 'try their prentice hand' on calves and weakly
+members of the herd, killing from the mere love of murder.
+
+Their cunning is as remarkable as their cruelty; what they lack in
+speed they make up in consummate subtlety. They take advantage of the
+direction of the wind, and of every irregularity of the ground. It is
+amazing what slight cover will suffice to conceal their lurking forms
+from the observation of the herd. During the day they generally
+retreat to some cool and shady spot, deep in the recesses of the
+jungle. Where the soft earth has been worn away with ragged hollows
+and deep shady water-courses, where the tallest and most impenetrable
+jungle conceals the winding and impervious paths, hidden in the gloom
+and obscurity of the densely-matted grass, the lordly tiger crouches,
+and blinks away the day. With the approach of night, however, his mood
+undergoes a change. He hears the tinkle of the bells, borne by some of
+the members of a retreating herd, that may have been feeding in close
+proximity to his haunt all day long, and from which he has determined
+to select a victim for his evening meal. He rouses himself and yawns,
+stretches himself like the great cruel cat he is, and then crawls and
+creeps silently along, by swampy watercourses, and through devious
+labyrinths known to himself alone. He hangs on the outskirts of the
+herd, prowling along and watching every motion of the returning
+cattle. He makes his selection, and with infinite cunning and patience
+contrives to separate it from the rest. He waits for a favourable
+moment, when, with a roar that sends the alarmed companions of the
+unfortunate victim scampering together to the front, he springs on his
+unhappy prey, deprives it of all power of resistance with one
+tremendous stroke, and bears it away to feast at his leisure on the
+warm and quivering carcase.
+
+He generally kills as the shades of evening are falling, and seldom
+ventures on a foraging expedition by day. After nightfall it is
+dangerous to be abroad in the jungles. It is then that dramas are
+acted of thrilling interest, and unimaginable sensation scenes take
+place. Some of the old shekarries and field-watchers frequently dig
+shallow pits, in which they take their stand. Their eye is on the
+level of the ground, and any object standing out in relief against the
+sky line can be readily detected. If they could relate their
+experiences, what absorbing narratives they could write. They see the
+tiger spring upon his terror-stricken prey, the mother and her hungry
+cubs prowling about for a victim, or two fierce tigers battling for
+the favours of some sleek, striped, remorseless, bloodthirsty
+forest-fiend. In pursuit of their quarry, they steal noiselessly
+along, and love to make their spring unawares. They generally select
+some weaker member of a herd, and are chary of attacking a strong
+big-boned, horned animal. They sometimes 'catch a Tartar,' and
+instances are known of a buffalo not only withstanding the attack of a
+tiger successfully, but actually gaining the victory over his more
+active assailant, whose life has paid the penalty of his rashness.
+
+Old G. told me, he had come across the bodies of a wild boar and an
+old tiger, lying dead together near Burgamma. The boar was fearfully
+mauled, but the clean-cut gaping gashes in the striped hide of the
+tiger, told how fearfully and gallantly he had battled for his life.
+
+In emerging from the jungle at night, they generally select the same
+path or spot, and approach the edge of the cover with great caution.
+They will follow the same track for days together. Hence in some
+places the tracks of the tigers are so numerous as to lead the tyro to
+imagine that dozens must have passed, when in truth the tracks all
+belong to one and the same brute. So acute is their perception, so
+narrowly do they scrutinize every minute object in their path, so
+suspicious is their nature, that anything new in their path, such as a
+pitfall, a screen of cut grass, a _mychan_, that is, a stage from
+which you might be intending to get a shot, nay, even the print of a
+footstep--a man's, a horse's, an elephant's--is often quite enough to
+turn them from a projected expedition, or at any rate to lead them to
+seek some new outlet from the jungle. In any case it increases their
+wariness, and under such circumstances it becomes almost impossible to
+get a shot at them from a pit or shooting-stage. Their vision, their
+sense of smell, of hearing, all their perceptions are so acute, that I
+think lying in wait for them is chiefly productive of weariness and
+vexation of spirit. It is certainly dangerous, and the chances of a
+successful shot are so problematical, while the _disagreeables_, and
+discomforts, and dangers are so real and tangible, that I am inclined
+to think this mode of attack 'hardly worth the candle.'
+
+With all his ferocity and cruelty, however, I am of opinion that the
+tiger is more cowardly than courageous. He will always try to escape a
+danger, and fly from attack, rather than attack in return or wait to
+meet it, and wherever he can, in pursuit of his prey, he will trust
+rather to his cunning than to his strength, and he always prefers an
+ambuscade to an open onslaught.
+
+
+[1] This was at the time the Prince of Wales was shooting in Nepaul,
+    not very far from where I was then stationed. Most of the
+    elephants in the district had been sent up to his Royal Highness's
+    camp, or were on their way to take part in the ceremonies of the
+    grand _Durbar_ in Delhi.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
+--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
+--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of
+tiger.--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His
+description.--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to
+measure tigers.--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.
+--Number of young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs
+to kill.--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and
+cunning of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of
+concealment.--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.
+--Caught by floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
+
+The tiger's mode of attack is very characteristic of his whole nature.
+To see him stealthily crouching, or crawling silently and sneakingly
+after a herd of cattle, dodging behind every clump of bushes or tuft
+of grass, running swiftly along the high bank of a watercourse, and
+sneaking under the shadowing border of a belt of jungle, is to
+understand his cunning and craftiness. His attitude, when he is
+crouching for the final bound, is the embodiment of suppleness and
+strength. All his actions are graceful, and half display and half
+conceal beneath their symmetry and elegance the tremendous power and
+deadly ferocity that lurks beneath. For a short distance he is
+possessed of great speed, and with a few short agile bounds he
+generally manages to overtake his prey. If baffled in his first
+attack, he retires growling to lie in wait for a less fortunate
+victim. His onset being so fierce and sudden, the animal he selects
+for his prey is generally taken at a great disadvantage, and is seldom
+in a position to make any strenuous or availing resistance.
+
+Delivering the numbing blow with his mighty fore paw, he fastens on
+the throat of the animal he has felled, and invariably tries to tear
+open the jugular vein. This is his practice in nearly every case, and
+it shews a wonderful instinct for selecting the most deadly spot in
+the whole body of his luckless prey. When he has got hold of his
+victim by the throat, he lies down, holding on to the bleeding
+carcase, snarling and growling, and fastening and withdrawing his
+claws, much as a cat does with a rat or mouse. Some writers say he
+then proceeds to drink the blood, but this is just one of those broad
+general assertions which require proof. In some cases he may quench
+his thirst and gratify his appetite for blood by drinking it from the
+gushing veins of his quivering victim, but in many cases I know from
+observation, that the blood is not drunk. If the tiger is very hungry
+he then begins his feast, tearing huge fragments of flesh from the
+dead body, and not unusually swallowing them whole. If he is not
+particularly hungry, he drags the carcase away, and hides it in some
+well-known spot. This is to preserve it from the hungry talons and
+teeth of vultures and jackals. He commonly remains on guard near his
+_cache_ until he has acquired an appetite. If he cannot conveniently
+carry away his quarry, because of its bulk, or the nature of the
+ground, or from being disturbed, he returns to the place at night and
+satisfies his appetite.
+
+Tigers can sneak crouchingly along as fast as they can trot, and it is
+wonderful how silently they can steal on their prey. They seem to have
+some stray provident fits, and on occasions make provision for future
+wants. There are instances on record of a tiger dragging a _kill_
+after him for miles, over water, and through slush and weeds, and
+feasting on the carcase days after he has killed it. It is a fact, now
+established beyond a doubt, that he will eat carrion and putrid flesh,
+but only from necessity and not from choice.
+
+On one occasion my friends put up a tigress during the rains, when
+there are few cattle in the _derahs_ or plains near the river. She had
+killed a pig, and was eagerly devouring the carcase when she was
+disturbed. Snarling and growling, she made off with a leg of pork in
+her mouth, when a bullet ended her career. They seem to prefer pork
+and venison to almost any other kind of food, and no doubt pig and
+deer are their natural and usual prey. The influx, however, of vast
+herds of cattle, and the consequent presence of man, drive away the
+wild animals, and at all events make them more wary and more difficult
+to kill. Finding domestic cattle unsuspicious, and not very formidable
+foes, the tiger contents himself at a pinch with beef, and judging
+from his ravages he comes to like it. Getting bolder by impunity, he
+ventures in some straits to attack man. He finds him a very easy prey;
+he finds the flesh too, perhaps, not unlike his favourite pig.
+Henceforth he becomes a 'man-eater,' the most dreaded scourge and
+pestilent plague of the district. He sometimes finds an old boar a
+tough customer, and never ventures to attack a buffalo unless it be
+grazing alone, and away from the rest of the herd. When buffaloes are
+attacked, they make common cause against their crafty and powerful
+foe, and uniting together in a crescent-shaped line, their horns all
+directed in a living _cheval-de-frise_ against the tiger, they rush
+tumultuously at him, and fairly hunt him from the jungle. The pig,
+having a short thick neck, and being tremendously muscular, is hard to
+kill; but the poor inoffensive cow, with her long-neck, is generally
+killed at the first blow, or so disabled that it requires little
+further effort to complete the work of slaughter.
+
+Two friends of mine once shot an enormous old tiger on a small island
+in the middle of the river, during the height of the annual rains. The
+brute had lost nearly all its hair from mange, and was an emaciated
+sorry-looking object. From the remains on the island--the skin,
+scales, and bones--they found that he must have slain and eaten
+several alligators during his enforced imprisonment on the island.
+They will eat alligators when pressed by hunger, and they have been
+known to subsist on turtles, tortoises, iguanas, and even jackals.
+Only the other day in Assam, a son of Dr. B. was severely mauled by a
+tiger which sprang into the verandah after a dog. There were three
+gentlemen in the verandah, and, as you may imagine, they were taken
+not a little by surprise. They succeeded in bagging the tiger, but not
+until poor B. was very severely hurt.
+
+After tearing the throat open, they walk round the prostrate carcase
+of their prey, growling and spitting like 'tabby' cats. They begin
+their operations in earnest, invariably on the buttock. A leopard
+generally eats the inner portion of the thigh first. A wolf tears open
+the belly, and eats the intestines first. A vulture, hawk, or kite,
+begins on the eyes; but a tiger invariably begins on the buttocks,
+whether of buffalo, cow, deer, or pig. He then eats the fatty covering
+round the intestines, follows that up with the liver and udder, and
+works his way round systematically to the fore-quarters, leaving the
+head to the last. It is frequently the only part of an animal that
+they do not eat.
+
+A 'man-eater' eats the buttocks, shoulders, and breasts first. So many
+carcases are found in the jungle of animals that have died from
+disease or old age, or succumbed to hurts and accidents, that the
+whitened skeletons meet the eye in hundreds. But one can always tell
+the kill of a tiger, and distinguish between it and the other bleached
+heaps. The large bones of a tiger's kill are always broken. The broad
+massive rib bones are crunched in two as easily as a dog would snap
+the drumstick of a fowl. Vultures and jackals, the scavengers of the
+jungle, are incapable of doing this; and when you see the fractured
+large bones, you can always tell that the whiskered monarch has been
+on the war-path. George S. writes me:--
+
+'I have known a tiger devour a whole bullock to his own cheek in one
+day. Early in the morning a man came to inform me he had seen a tiger
+pull down a bullock. I went after the fellow late in the afternoon,
+and found him in a bush not more than twenty feet square, the only
+jungle he had to hide in for some distance round, and in this he had
+polished off the bullock, nothing remaining save the head. The jungle
+being so very small, and he having lain the whole day in it, nothing
+in the way of vultures or jackals could have assisted him in finishing
+off the bullock.'
+
+When hungry they appear to bolt large masses of flesh without
+masticating it. The same correspondent writes:--
+
+'We cut out regular "fids" once from a tiger's stomach, also large
+pieces of bone. Joe heard a tremendous roaring one night, which
+continued till near morning, not far from Nipunneah. He went out at
+dawn to look for the tiger, which he found was dead. The brute had
+tried to swallow the knee-joint of a bullock, and it had stuck in his
+gullet. This made him roar from pain, and eventually choked him.'
+
+As there are two distinct varieties of wild pig in India, so there
+seems to be little doubt that there are two distinct kinds of tigers.
+As these have frequently crossed we find many hybrids. I cannot do
+better than again quote from my obliging and observant friend George.
+The two kinds he designates as 'The Royal Bengal,' and 'The Hill
+Tiger,' and goes on to say:--
+
+'As a rule the stripes of a Royal Bengal are single and dark. The
+skull is widely different from that of his brother the Hill tiger,
+being low in the crown, wider in the jaws, rather flat in comparison,
+and the brain-pan longer with a sloping curve at the end, the crest of
+the brain-pan being a concave curve.
+
+'The Hill tiger is much more massively built; squat and thick set,
+heavier in weight and larger in bulk, with shorter tail, and very
+large and powerful neck, head, and shoulders. The stripes generally
+are double, and of a more brownish tinge, with fawn colour between the
+double stripes. The skull is high in the crown, and not quite so wide.
+The brain-pan is shorter, and the crest slightly convex or nearly
+straight, and the curve at the end of the skull rather abrupt.
+
+'They never grow so long as the "Bengal," yet look twice as big.
+
+'The crosses are very numerous, and vary according to pedigree, in
+stripes, skulls, form, weight, bulk, and tail. This I find most
+remarkable when I look at my collection of over 160 skulls.
+
+'The difference is better marked in tigers than in tigresses. The
+Bengal variety are not as a rule as ferocious as the Hill tiger. Being
+more supple and cunning, they can easier evade their pursuers by
+flight and manoeuvre than, their less agile brothers. The former,
+owing to deficiency of strength, oftener meet with discomfiture, and
+consequently are more wary and cunning; while the latter, prone to
+carry everything before them, trust more to their strength and
+courage, anticipating victory as certain.
+
+'In some the stripes are doubled throughout, in others only partially
+so, while in some they are single throughout, and some have manes to a
+slight extent.'
+
+I have no doubt this classification is correct. The tigers I have seen
+in Nepaul near the hills, were sometimes almost a dull red, and at a
+distance looked like a huge dun cow, while those I have seen in the
+plains during our annual hunts, were of a bright tawny yellow, longer,
+more lanky, and not shewing half such a bold front as their bulkier
+and bolder brethren of the hills.
+
+The length of the tiger has often given rise to fierce discussions
+among sportsmen. The fertile imagination of the slayer of a solitary
+'stripes,' has frequently invested the brute he has himself shot, or
+seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been shot by a friend, or
+the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous length, inches swelling to
+feet, and dimensions growing at each repetition of the yarn, till, as
+in the case of boars, the twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch
+tusker, and the eight foot tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.
+
+Purists again, sticklers for stern truth, haters of bounce or
+exaggeration, have perhaps erred as much on the other side; and in
+their eagerness to give the exact measurement, and avoid the very
+appearance of exaggeration, they actually stretch their tape line and
+refuse to measure the curves of the body, taking it in straight lines.
+This I think is manifestly unfair.
+
+Our mode of measurement in Purneah was to take the tiger as he lay
+before he was put on the elephant, and measure from the tip of the
+nose, over the crest of the skull, along the undulations of the body,
+to the tip of the tail. That is, we followed the curvature of the
+spine along the dividing ridge of the back, and always were careful
+and fair in our attempts. I am of opinion that a tiger over ten feet
+long is an exceptionally long one, but when I read of sportsmen
+denying altogether that even that length can be attained, I can but
+pity the dogmatic scepticism that refuses credence to well ascertained
+and authenticated facts. I believe also that tigers are not got nearly
+so large as in former days. I believe that much longer and heavier
+tigers--animals larger in every way--were shot some twenty years ago
+than those we can get now, but I account for this by the fact that
+there is less land left waste and uncultivated. There are more roads,
+ferries, and bridges, more improved communications, and in consequence
+more travelling. Population and cultivation have increased; firearms
+are more numerous; sport is more generally followed; shooting is much
+more frequent and deadly; and, in a word, tigers have not the same
+chances as they had some twenty years ago of attaining a ripe old age,
+and reaching the extremest limit of their growth. The largest tigers
+being also the most suspicious and wary, are only found in the
+remotest recesses of the impenetrable jungles of Nepaul and the Terai,
+or in those parts of the Indian wilds where the crack of the European
+rifle is seldom or never heard.
+
+It has been so loudly asserted, and so boldly maintained that no tiger
+was ever shot reaching, when fairly measured (that is, measured with
+the skin on, as he lay), ten feet, that I will let Mr. George again
+speak for himself. Referring to the royal Bengal, he says:--
+
+'These grow to great lengths. They have been shot as long as twelve
+feet seven inches (my father shot one that length) or longer; twelve
+feet seven inches, twelve feet six inches, twelve feet three inches,
+twelve feet one inch, and twelve feet, have been shot and recorded in
+the old sporting magazines by gentlemen of undoubted veracity in
+Purneah.
+
+'I have seen the skin of one twelve feet one inch, compared with which
+the skin of one I have by me _that measured as he lay_ (the italics
+are mine) eleven feet one inch, looks like the skin of a cub. The old
+skin looks more like that of a huge antediluvian species in comparison
+with the other.
+
+'The twelve footer was so heavy that my uncle (C.A.S.) tells me no
+number of mahouts could lift it. Several men, if they could have
+approached at one and the same time, might have been able to do so,
+but a sufficient number of men could not lay hold simultaneously to
+move the body from the ground.
+
+'Eventually a number of bamboos had to be cut, and placed in an
+incline from the ground to the elephant's saddle while the elephant
+knelt down, and up this incline the tiger had to be regularly hauled
+and shoved, and so fastened on the elephant.
+
+'He (the tiger) mauled four elephants, one of whom died the same day,
+and one other had a narrow _batch_, i.e. escape, of its life.
+
+In another communication to me, my friend goes over the same ground,
+but as the matter is one of interest to sportsmen and naturalists, I
+will give the extract entire. It proceeds as follows:--
+
+'Tigers grow to great lengths, some assert to even fourteen feet. I do
+not say they do not, but such cases are very rare, and require
+authentication. The longest I have seen, measured as he lay, eleven
+feet one inch (see "Oriental Sporting Magazine," for July, 1871, p.
+308). He was seven feet nine inches from tip of nose to root of tail;
+root of tail one foot three inches in circumference; round chest four
+feet six inches; length of head one foot two inches; fore arm two feet
+two inches; round the head two feet ten inches; length of tail three
+feet four inches.
+
+'Besides this, I have shot another eleven feet, and one ten feet
+eleven inches.
+
+'The largest tigress I have shot was at Sahareah, which measured ten
+feet two inches. I shot another ten feet exactly.' (See O.S.M., Aug.,
+1874, p. 358.)
+
+'I have got the head of a tiger, shot by Joe, which measured eleven
+feet five inches. It was shot at Baraila.
+
+'The male is much bigger built in every way--length, weight, size,
+&c., than the female. The males are more savage, the females more
+cunning and agile. The arms, body, paws, head, skull, claws, teeth,
+&c., of the female, are smaller. The tail of tigress longer; hind legs
+more lanky; the prints look smaller and more contracted, and the toes
+nearer together. It is said that though a large tiger may venture to
+attack a buffalo, the tigress refrains from doing so, but I have found
+this otherwise in my experience.
+
+'I have kept a regular log of all tigers shot by me. The average
+length of fifty-two tigers recorded in my journal is nine feet six and
+a half inches (cubs excluded), and of sixty-eight tigresses (cubs
+excluded), eight feet four inches.
+
+'The average of tigers and tigresses is eight feet ten and a quarter
+inches. This is excluding cubs I have taken alive.'
+
+As to measurements, he goes on to make a few remarks, and as I cannot
+improve on them I reproduce the original passage:--
+
+'Several methods have been recommended for measuring tigers. I measure
+them on the ground, or when brought to camp before skinning, and run
+the tape tight along the line, beginning at the tip of the nose, along
+the middle of the skull, between the ears and neck, then along the
+spine to the end of the tail, taking any curves of the body.
+
+'No doubt measurements of skull, body, tail, legs, &c., ought all to
+be taken, to give an adequate idea of the tiger, and for comparing
+them with one another, but this is not always feasible.'
+
+Most of the leading sportsmen in India now-a-days are very particular
+in taking the dimensions of every limb of the dead tiger. They take
+his girth, length, and different proportions. Many even weigh the
+tiger when it gets into camp, and no doubt this test is one of the
+best that can be given for a comparison of the sizes of the different
+animals slain.
+
+Another much disputed point in the natural history of the animal, a
+point on which there has been much acrimonious discussion, is the
+number of young that are given at a birth. Some writers have asserted,
+and stoutly maintained, that two cubs, or at the most three, is the
+extreme number of young brought forth at one time.
+
+This may be the ordinary number, but the two gentlemen I have already
+alluded to have assured me, that on frequent occasions they have
+picked up four actually born, and have cut out five several times, and
+on one occasion six, from the womb of a tigress.
+
+I have myself picked up four male cubs, all in one spot, with their
+eyes just beginning to open, and none of their teeth through the gums.
+One had been trampled to death by buffaloes, the other three were
+alive and scatheless, huddled into a bush, like three immense kittens.
+I kept the three for a considerable time, and eventually took them to
+Calcutta and sold them for a very satisfactory price.
+
+It seems clear, however, that the tigress frequently has four and even
+five cubs. It is rare, indeed to find her accompanied by more than two
+well grown cubs, very seldom three; and the inference is, that one or
+two of the young tigers succumb in very early life.
+
+The young ones do not appear to grow very quickly; they are about a
+foot long when they are born; they are born blind, with very minute
+hair, almost none in fact, but with the stripes already perfectly
+marked on the soft supple skin; they open their eyes when they are
+eight or ten days old, at which time they measure about a foot and a
+half. At the age of nine months they have attained to five feet in
+length, and are waxing mischievous. Tiger cubs a year old average
+about five feet eight inches, tigresses some three inches or so less.
+In two years they grow respectively to--the male seven feet six
+inches, and the female seven feet. At about this time they leave the
+mother, if they have not already done so, and commence depredations on
+their own account. In fact, their education has been well attended to.
+The mother teaches them to kill when they are about a year old. A
+young cub that measured only six feet, and whose mother had been shot
+in one of the annual beats, was killed while attacking a full grown
+cow in the government pound at Dumdaha police station. When they reach
+the length of six feet six inches they can kill pretty easily, and
+numbers have been shot by George and other Purneah sportsmen close to
+their 'kills.'
+
+They are most daring and courageous when they have just left their
+mother's care, and are cast forth to fight the battle of life for
+themselves. While with the old tigress their lines have been cast in
+not unpleasant places, they have seldom known hunger, and have
+experienced no reverses. Accustomed to see every animal succumb to her
+well planned and audacious attacks, they fancy that nothing will
+withstand their onslaught. They have been known to attack a line of
+elephants, and to charge most determinedly, even in this adolescent
+stage.
+
+Bye-and-bye, however, as they receive a few rude shocks from
+buffaloes, or are worsted in a hand-to-hand encounter with some tough
+old bull, or savage old grey boar, more especially if they get an ugly
+rip or two from the sharp tusks of an infuriated fighting tusker, they
+begin to be less aggressive, they learn that discretion may be the
+better part of valour, and their cunning instincts are roused. In
+fact, their education is progressing, and in time they instinctively
+discover every wile and dodge and cunning stratagem, and display all
+the wondrous subtlety of their race in procuring their prey.
+
+Old tigers are invariably more wary, cautious, and suspicious than
+young ones, and till they are fairly put to it by hunger, hurt, or
+compulsion, they endeavour to keep their stripes concealed. When
+brought to bay, however, there is little to reproach them with on the
+score of cowardice, and it will be matter of rejoicing if you or your
+elephants do not come off second best in the encounter. Even in the
+last desperate case, a cunning old tiger will often make a feint, or
+sham rush, or pretended charge, when his whole object is flight. If he
+succeed in demoralising the line of elephants, roaring and dashing
+furiously about, he will then try in the confusion to double through,
+unless he is too badly wounded to be able to travel fast, in which
+case he will fight to the end.
+
+Old fellows are well acquainted with every maze and thicket in the
+jungles, and they no sooner hear the elephants enter the 'bush' or
+'cover' than they make off for some distant shelter. If there is no
+apparent chance of this being successful, they try to steal out
+laterally and outflank the line, or if that also is impossible, they
+hide in some secret recess like a fox, or crouch low in some clumpy
+bush, and trust to you or your elephant passing by without noticing
+their presence.
+
+It is marvellous in what sparse cover they will manage to lie up. So
+admirably do their stripes mingle with the withered and charred
+grass-stems and dried up stalks, that it is very difficult to detect
+the dreaded robber when he is lying flat, extended, close to the
+ground, so still and motionless that you cannot distinguish a tremor
+or even a vibration of the grass in which he is crouching.
+
+On one occasion George followed an old tiger through some stubble
+about three feet high. It had been well trampled down too by tame
+buffaloes. The tiger had been tracked into the field, and was known to
+be in it. George was within ten yards of the cunning brute, and
+although mounted on a tall elephant, and eagerly scanning the thin
+cover with his sharpest glance, he could not discern the concealed
+monster. His elephant was within four paces of it, when it sprang up
+at the charge, giving a mighty roar, which however also served as its
+death yell, as a bullet from George's trusty gun crashed through its
+ribs and heart.
+
+Tigers can lay themselves so flat on the ground, and lie so perfectly
+motionless, that it is often a very easy thing to overlook them. On
+another occasion, when the Purneah Hunt were out, a tigress that had
+been shot got under some cover that was trampled down by a line of
+about twenty elephants. The sportsmen knew that she had been severely
+wounded, as they could tell by the gouts of blood, but there was no
+sign of the body. She had disappeared. After a long search, beating
+the same ground over and over again, an elephant trod on the dead body
+lying under the trampled canes, and the mahout got down and discovered
+her lying quite dead. She was a large animal and full grown.
+
+On another occasion George was after a fine male tiger. He was
+following up fast, but coming to a broad nullah, full of water, he
+suddenly lost sight of his game. He looked up and down the bank, and
+on the opposite bank, but could see no traces of the tiger. Looking
+down, he saw in the water what at first he took to be a large
+bull-frog. There was not a ripple on the placid stagnant surface of
+the pool. He marvelled much, and just then his mahout pointed to the
+supposed bull-frog, and in an excited whisper implored George to fire.
+A keener look convinced George that it really was the tiger. It was
+totally immersed all but the face, and lying so still that not the
+faintest motion or ripple was perceptible. He fired and inflicted a
+terrible wound. The tiger bounded madly forward, and George gave it
+its quietus through the spine as it tried to spring up the opposite
+bank.
+
+A nearly similar case occurred to old Mr. C., one of the veteran
+sportsmen of Purneah. A tiger had bolted towards a small tank or pond,
+and though the line followed up in hot pursuit, the brute disappeared.
+Old C., keener than the others, was loth to give up the pursuit, and
+presently discerned a yellowish reflection in the clear water. Peering
+more intently, he could discover the yellowish tawny outline of the
+cunning animal, totally immersed in the water, save its eyes, ears,
+and nose. He shot the tiger dead, and it sank to the bottom like a
+stone. So perfectly had it concealed itself, that the other sportsmen
+could not for the life of them imagine what old C. had fired at, till
+his mahout got down and began to haul the dead animal out of the
+water.
+
+Tigers are not at all afraid of water, and are fast and powerful
+swimmers. They swim much after the fashion of a horse, only the head
+out of the water, and they make scarcely any ripple.
+
+'In another case,' writes George, 'though not five yards from the
+elephant, and right under me, a tiger was swimming with so slight a
+ripple that I mistook it for a rat, until I saw the stripes emerge,
+when I perforated his jacket with a bullet.'
+
+Only their head remaining out of water when they are swimming, they
+are very hard to hit, as shooting at an object on water is very
+deceptive work as to judging distance, and a tiger's head is but a
+small object to aim at when some little way off.
+
+Old C. had another adventure with a cunning rogue, which all but ended
+disastrously. He was in hot pursuit of the tiger, and, finding no
+safety on land, it took to swimming in a broad unfordable piece of
+water, a sort of deep lagoon. Old C. procured a boat that was handy,
+and got a coolie to paddle him out after the tiger. He fired several
+shots at the exposed head of the brute, but missed. He thought he
+would wait till he got nearer and make a sure shot, as he had only one
+bullet left in the boat. Suddenly the tiger turned round, and made
+straight for the boat. Here was a quandary. Even if lie killed the
+tiger with his single bullet it might upset the boat; the lagoon was
+full of alligators, to say nothing of weeds, and there was no time to
+get his heavy boots off. He felt his life might depend on the accuracy
+of his aim. He fired, and killed the tiger stone dead within four or
+five yards of the boat.
+
+On one occasion, when out with our worthy district magistrate, Mr. S.,
+I came on the tracks of what to all appearance, was a very large
+tiger. They led over the sand close to the water's edge, and were very
+distinct. I could see no returning marks, so I judged that the tiger
+must have taken to the water. The stream was rapid and deep, and
+midway to the further bank was a big, oblong-shaped, sandy islet, some
+five or six hundred yards long, and having a few scrubby bushes
+growing sparsely on it. We put our elephants into the rapid current,
+and got across. The river here was nearly a quarter of a mile wide on
+each side of the islet. As we emerged from the stream on to the island
+we found fresh tracks of the tiger. They led us completely round the
+circumference of the islet. The tiger had evidently been in quest of
+food. The prints were fresh and very well defined. Finding that all
+was barren on the sandy shore, he entered the current again, and
+following up we found his imprint once more on the further bank,
+several hundred yards down the stream.
+
+One tiger was killed stone dead by a single bullet during one of our
+annual hunts, and falling back into the water, it sank to the bottom
+like lead. Being unable to find the animal, we beat all round the
+place, till I suggested it might have been hit and fallen into the
+river. One of the men was ordered to dive down, and ascertain if the
+tiger was at the bottom. The river water is generally muddy, so that
+the bottom cannot be seen. Divesting himself of puggree, and girding
+up his loins, the diver sank gently to the bottom, but presently
+reappeared in a palpable funk, puffing and blowing, and declaring that
+the tiger was certainly at the bottom. The foolish fellow thought it
+might be still alive. We soon disabused his mind of that idea, and had
+the dead tiger hauled up to dry land.
+
+Surprised by floods, a tiger has been known to remain for days on an
+ant-hill, and even to take refuge on the branch of some large tree,
+but he takes to water readily, and can swim for over a mile, and he
+has been known to remain for days in from two to three feet depth of
+water.
+
+A time-honoured tiger story with old hands, used to tell how the
+Soonderbund tigers got carried out to sea. If the listener was a new
+arrival, or a _gobe mouche_, they would explain that the tigers in the
+Soonderbunds often get carried out to sea by the retiring tide. It
+would sweep them off as they were swimming from island to island in
+the vast delta of Father Ganges. Only the young ones, however,
+suffered this lamentable fate. The older and more wary fellows, taught
+perhaps by sad experience, used always to dip their tails in, before
+starting on a swim, so as to ascertain which way the tide was flowing.
+If it was the flow of the tide they would boldly venture in, but if it
+was ebb tide, and there was the slightest chance of their being
+carried out to sea, they would patiently lie down, meditate on the
+fleeting vanity of life, and like the hero of the song--
+
+  'Wait for the turn of the tide.'
+
+Without venturing an opinion on this story, I may confidently assert,
+that the tiger, unlike his humble prototype the domestic cat, is not
+really afraid of water, but will take to it readily to escape a
+threatened danger, or if he can achieve any object by 'paddling his
+own canoe.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives
+about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Clawmarks
+on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s
+howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.
+--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye
+out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers
+easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of shells on tiger and buffalo.--Best
+weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives
+prone to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for
+tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six
+elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.
+--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the
+Koosee.--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to
+shoot at moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of
+different animals in the grass.
+
+Tigers seem to have no regular breeding season. As a rule the male and
+female come together in the autumn and winter, and the young ones are
+born in the spring and summer. All the young tigers I have ever heard
+of have been found in March, April, and May, and so on through the
+rains.
+
+The natives have many singular beliefs and prejudices about tigers,
+and they are very often averse to give the slightest information as to
+their whereabouts. To a stranger they will either give no information
+at all, pleading entire ignorance, or they will wilfully mislead him,
+putting him on a totally wrong track. If you are well known to the
+villagers, and if they have confidence in your nerve and aim, they
+will eagerly tell you everything they know, and will accompany you on
+your elephant, to point out the exact spot where the tiger was last
+seen. In the event of a 'find' they always look for _backsheesh_, even
+though your exertions may have rid their neighbourhood of an
+acknowledged scourge.
+
+The _gwalla_, or cowherd caste, seem to know the habits of the yellow
+striped robber very accurately. Accompanied by their herd they will
+venture into the thickest jungle, even though they know that it is
+infested by one or more tigers. If any member of the herd is attacked,
+it is quite common for the _gwalla_ to rush up, and by shouts and even
+blows try to make the robber yield up his prey. This is no
+exaggeration, but a simple fact. A cowherd attacked by a tiger has
+been known to call up his herd by cries, and they have succeeded in
+driving off his fierce assailant. No tiger will willingly face a herd
+of buffaloes or cattle united for mutual defence. Surrounded by his
+trusty herd, the _gwalla_ traverses the densest jungle and most
+tiger-infested thickets without fear.
+
+They believe that to rub the fat of the tiger on the loins, and to eat
+a piece of the tongue or flesh, will cure impotency; and tiger fat,
+rubbed on a painful part of the body, is an accepted specific for
+rheumatic affections. It is a firmly settled belief, that the whiskers
+and teeth, worn on the body, will act as a charm, making the wearer
+proof against the attacks of tigers. The collar-bone too, is eagerly
+coveted for the same reason.
+
+During the rains tigers are sometimes forced, like others of the cat
+tribe, to take to trees. A Mr. McI. shot two large full grown, tigers
+in a tree at Gunghara, and a Baboo of my acquaintance bagged no less
+than eight in trees during one rainy season at Rampoor.
+
+Tigers generally prefer remaining near water, and drink a great deal,
+the quantity of raw meat they devour being no doubt provocative of
+thirst.
+
+The marks of their claws are often seen on trees in the vicinity of
+their haunts, and from this fact many ridiculous stories have got
+abroad regarding their habits. It has even been regarded by some
+writers as a sort of rude test, by which to arrive at an approximate
+estimate of the tiger's size. A tiger can stretch himself out some two
+or two and a half feet more than his measurable length. You have
+doubtless often seen a domestic cat whetting its claws on the mat, or
+scratching some rough substance, such as the bark of a tree; this is
+often done to clean the claws, and to get rid of chipped and ragged
+pieces, and it is sometimes mere playfulness. It is the same with the
+tiger, the scratching on the trees is frequently done in the mere
+wantonness of sport, but it is often resorted to to clear the claws
+from pieces of flesh, that may have adhered to them during a meal on
+some poor slaughtered bullock. These marks on the trees are a valuable
+sign for the hunter, as by their appearance, whether fresh or old, he
+can often tell the whereabouts of his quarry, and a good tracker will
+even be able to make a rough guess at its probable size and
+disposition.
+
+Like policemen, tigers stick to certain beats; even when disturbed,
+and forced to abandon a favourite spot, they frequently return to it;
+and although the jungle may be wholly destroyed, old tigers retain a
+partiality for the scenes of their youthful depredations; they are
+often shot in the most unlikely places, where there is little or no
+cover, and one would certainly never expect to find them; they migrate
+with the herds, and retire to the hills during the annual floods,
+always coming back to the same jungle when the rains are over.
+
+Experienced shekarries know this trait of the tiger's character well,
+and can tell you minutely the colour and general appearance of the
+animals in any particular jungle; they are aware of any peculiarity,
+such as lameness, scars, &c., and their observations must be very keen
+indeed, and amazingly accurate, as I have never known them wrong when
+they committed themselves to a positive statement.
+
+An old planter residing at Sultanpore, close on the Nepaul border, a
+noted sportsman and a crack shot, was charged on one occasion by a
+large tiger; the brute sprang right off the ground on to the
+elephant's head; his hind legs were completely off the ground, resting
+on the elephant's chest and neck; Mr. F. retained sufficient presence
+of mind to sit close down in his howdah; the tiger's forearm was
+extended completely over the front bar, and so close that it touched
+his hat. In this position he called out to his son who was on another
+elephant close by, to fire at the tiger; he was cool enough to warn
+him to take a careful aim, and not hit the elephant. His son acted
+gallantly up to his instructions, and shot the tiger through the
+heart, when it dropped down quite dead, to Mr. F.'s great relief.
+
+Some sportsmen are of opinion, that the tiger when charging never
+springs clear from the ground, but only rears itself on its hind legs;
+this however is a mistake. I saw a tiger leap right off the ground,
+and spring on to the rump of an elephant carrying young Sam S. The
+elephant proved staunch, and remained quite quiet, and Sam, turning
+round in his howdah, shot his assailant through the head.
+
+I may give another incident, to shew how closely tigers will sometimes
+stick to cover; they are sometimes as bad to dislodge as a quail or a
+hare; they will crouch down and conceal themselves till you almost
+trample on them. One day a party of the Purneah Club were out; they
+had shot two fine tigers out of several that had been seen; the others
+were known to have gone ahead into some jungle surrounded by water,
+and easy to beat. Before proceeding further it was proposed
+accordingly to have some refreshment. The _tiffin_ elephant was
+directed to a tree close by, beneath whose shade the hungry sportsmen
+were to plant themselves; the elephant had knelt down, one or two
+boxes had actually been removed, several of the servants were clearing
+away the dried grass and leaves. H.W.S. came up on the opposite side
+of the tree, and was in the act of leaping off his elephant, when an
+enormous tiger got up at his very feet, and before the astounded
+sportsmen could handle a gun, the formidable intruder had cleared the
+bushes with a bound, and disappeared in the thick jungle.
+
+The following adventure bears me out in my remark, that tigers get
+attached to, and like to remain in, one place. Mr. F. Simpson, a
+thorough-going sportsman of the good old type, had been out one day in
+the Koosee derahs; he had had a long and unsuccessful beat for tiger,
+and had given up all hope of bagging one that day; he thought
+therefore that he might as well turn his attention to more ignoble
+game. Extracting his bullets, he replaced them with No. 4 shot. In a
+few minutes a peacock got up in front of him, and he fired. The report
+roused a very fine tiger right in front of his elephant; to make the
+best of a bad bargain, he gave the retreating animal the full benefit
+of his remaining charge of shot, and peppered it well. About a year
+after, close to this very place, C.A.S. bagged a fine tiger. On
+examination, the marks of a charge of shot were found in the flanks,
+and on removing the pads of the feet, numbers of pellets of No. 4 shot
+were found embedded in them. It was evidently the animal that had been
+peppered a year before, and the pellets had worked their way downwards
+to the feet.
+
+On another occasion, a man came to the factory where George was then
+residing, to give information of a tiger. He bore on his back numerous
+bleeding scratches, ample evidence of the truth of his story. While
+cutting grass in the jungle, with a blanket on his back, the day being
+rainy, he had been attacked by a tiger from the rear. The blanket is
+generally folded several times, and worn over the head and back. It is
+a thick heavy covering, and in the first onset the tiger tore the
+blanket from the man's body, which was probably the means of saving
+his life. The man turned round, terribly scared, as may be imagined.
+In desperation he struck at the tiger with his sickle, and according
+to his own account, he succeeded in putting out one of its eyes. He
+said it was a young tiger, and his bleeding wounds, and the
+persistency with which he stuck to his story, impressed George with
+the belief that he was telling the truth. A search for the tiger was
+made. The man's blanket was found, torn to shreds, but no tiger,
+although the footprints of one were plainly visible. But some months
+after, near the same spot, George shot a half grown tiger with one of
+its eyes gone, which had evidently been roughly torn from the socket.
+This was doubtless the identical brute that had attacked the
+grass-cutter.
+
+It is sometimes wonderful how easily a large and powerful tiger may be
+killed. The most vulnerable parts are the back of the head, through
+the neck, and broadside on the chest. The neck is the most deadly spot
+of all, and a shot behind the shoulder, or on the spine, is sure to
+bring the game to bag. I have seen several shot with a single bullet
+from a smooth-bore, and on one occasion, George tells me he saw a
+tigress killed with a single smooth-bore bullet at over a hundred
+yards. The bullet was a _ricochet_, and struck the tigress below the
+chest, and travelled towards the heart, but without touching it. She
+fell twenty yards from where she had been hit. Another, which on
+skinning we found had been shot through the heart, with a single
+smooth-bore bullet at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards,
+travelled for thirty yards before falling dead. Meiselback, a
+neighbour of mine, shot three tigers successively, on one occasion,
+with a No. 18 Joe Manton smooth-bore. Each of the three was killed by
+a single bullet, one in the head, one in the neck, and one through the
+heart, the bullet entering behind the shoulder.
+
+On the other hand, I once fired no less than six Jacob's shells into a
+tiger, all behind the shoulder, before I could stop him. The shells
+seemed to explode on the surface the moment they came in contact with
+the body. There was a tremendous surface wound, big enough to put a
+pumpkin into, but very little internal hurt. On another occasion
+(April 4, 1874) during one of the most exciting and most glorious
+moments of my sporting life--buffaloes charging the line in all
+directions, burning jungle all around us, and bullets whistling on
+every side--I fired TWELVE shells into a large bull before I killed
+him. As every shell hit him, I heard the sharp detonation, and saw the
+tiny puff of smoke curl outward from the ghastly wound. The poor
+maddened brute would drop on his knees, stagger again to his feet,
+and, game to the last, attempt to charge my elephant. I was anxious
+really to test the effect of the Jacob's shell as against the solid
+conical bullet, and carefully watched the result of each shot. My
+weapon was a beautifully finished No. 12 smooth-bore, made expressly
+to order for an officer in the Royal Artillery, from whom I bought it.
+From that day I never fired another Jacob's shell.
+
+My remarks about the tiger springing clear off the ground when
+charging, are amply borne out by the experience of some of my sporting
+friends. I could quote pages, but will content myself with one
+extract. It is a point of some importance, as many good old sportsmen
+pooh-pooh the idea, and maintain that the tiger merely stretches
+himself out to his fullest length, and if he does leave the ground, it
+is by a purely physical effort, pulling himself up by his claws.
+
+My friend George writes me: 'In several cases I have known and seen
+the tiger spring, and leave the ground. In one case the tiger sprang
+from fully five yards off. He crouched at the distance of a few paces,
+as if about to spring, and then sprang clean on to the head of Joe's
+_tusker_. An eight feet nine inch tigress once got on to the head of
+my elephant, which was ten feet seven inches in height. Every one
+present saw her leave the ground. Once, when after a tiger in small
+stubble, about six feet high, I saw one bound over a bush so clean
+that I could see every bit of him.' And so on.
+
+For long range shooting the rifle is doubtless the best weapon. The
+Express is the most deadly. The smooth-bore is the gun for downright
+honest sport. Shells and hollow pointed bullets are the things, as one
+sportsman writes me, 'for mutilation and cowardly murder, and for
+spoiling the skin.' Poison is the resource of the poacher. No
+sportsman could descend so low. Grant that the tiger is a scourge, a
+pest, a nuisance, a cruel and implacable foe to man and beast; pile
+all the vilest epithets of your vocabulary on his head, and say that
+he deserves them all, still he is what opportunity and circumstance
+have made him. He is as nature fashioned him; and there are bold
+spirits, and keen sights, and steady nerves enough, God wot, among our
+Indian sportsmen, to cope with him on more equal and sportsmanlike
+terms than by poisoning him like a mangy dog. On this point, however,
+opinions differ. I do not envy the man who would prefer poisoning a
+tiger to the keen delight of patiently following him up, ousting him
+from cover to cover, watching his careful endeavours to elude your
+search; perhaps at the end of a long and fascinating beat, feeling the
+electric excitement thrill every nerve and fibre of your body, as the
+magnificent robber comes bounding down at the charge, the very
+embodiment of ferocity and strength, the perfection of symmetry, the
+acme of agility and grace.
+
+Natives are such notorious perverters of the truth, and so often hide
+what little there may be in their communications under such floods of
+Oriental hyperbole and exaggeration, that you are often disappointed
+in going out on what you consider trustworthy and certain information.
+They often remind me of the story of the Laird of Logan. He was riding
+slowly along a country road one day, when another equestrian joined
+him. Logan's eye fixed itself on a hole in the turf bank bounding the
+road, and with great gravity, and in trust-inspiring accents, he said,
+'I saw a _tod_ (or fox) gang in there.'
+
+'Did you, really;' cried the new comer.
+
+'I did,' responded the laird.
+
+'Will you hold my horse till I get a spade,' cried the now excited
+traveller.
+
+The laird assented. Away hurried the man, and soon returned with a
+spade. He set manfully to work to dig out the fox, and worked till the
+perspiration streamed down his face. The laird sat stolidly looking
+on, saying never a word; and as he seemed to be nearing the confines
+of the hole, the poor digger redoubled his exertions. When at length
+it became plain that there was no fox there, he wiped his streaming
+brow, and rather crossly exclaimed, 'I'm afraid there's no tod here.'
+
+'It would be a wonder if there was,' rejoined the laird, without the
+movement of a muscle, 'it's ten years since I saw him gang in there.'
+
+So it is sometimes with a native. He will fire your ardour, by telling
+you of some enormous tiger, to be found in some jungle close by, but
+when you come to enquire minutely into his story, you find that the
+tiger was seen perhaps the year before last, or that it _used_ to be
+there, or that somebody else had told him of its being there.
+
+Some tigers, too, are so cunning and wary, that they will make off
+long before the elephants have come near. I have seen others rise on
+their hind legs just like a hare or a kangaroo, and peer over the
+jungle trying to make out one's whereabouts. This is of course only in
+short light jungle.
+
+The plan we generally adopt in beating for tiger on or near the Nepaul
+border, is to use a line of elephants to beat the cover. It is a fine
+sight to watch the long line of stately monsters moving slowly and
+steadily forward. Several howdahs tower high above the line, the
+polished barrels of guns and rifles glittering in the fierce rays of
+the burning and vertical sun. Some of the shooters wear huge hats made
+from the light pith of the solah plant, others have long blue or white
+puggrees wound round their heads in truly Oriental style. These are
+very comfortable to wear, but rather trying to the sight, as they
+afford no protection to the eyes. For riding they are to my mind the
+most comfortable head-dress that can be worn, and they are certainly
+more graceful than the stiff unsightly solah hat.
+
+Between every two howdahs are four or five pad elephants. These beat
+up all the intervening bushes, and carry the game that may be shot.
+When a pig, deer, tiger, or other animal has been shot, and has
+received its _coup de grace_, it is quickly bundled on to the pad, and
+there secured. The elephant kneels down to receive the load, and while
+game is being padded the whole line waits, till the operation is
+complete, as it is bad policy to leave blanks. Where this simple
+precaution is neglected, many a tiger will sneak through the opening
+left by the pad elephant, and so silently and cautiously can they
+steal through the dense cover, and so cunning are they and acute, that
+they will take advantage of the slightest gap, and the keenest and
+best trained eye will fail to detect them.
+
+In most of our hunting parties on the Koosee, we had some twenty or
+thirty elephants, and frequently six or eight howdahs. These
+expeditions were very pleasant, and we lived luxuriously. For real
+sport ten elephants and two or three tried comrades--not more--is much
+better. With a short, easily-worked line, that can turn and double,
+and follow the tiger quickly, and dog his every movement, you can get
+far better sport, and bring more to bag, than with a long unwieldy
+line, that takes a considerable time to turn and wheel, and in whose
+onward march there is of necessity little of the silence and swiftness
+which are necessary elements in successful tiger shooting.
+
+I have been out with a line of seventy-six elephants and fourteen
+howdahs. This was on 16th March 1875. It was a magnificent sight to
+see the seventy-six huge brutes in the river together, splashing the
+water along their heated sides to cool themselves, and sending huge
+waves dashing against the crumbling banks of the rapid stream. It was
+no less magnificent to see their slow stately march through the
+swaying, crashing jungle. What an idea of irresistible power and
+ponderous strength the huge creatures gave us, as they heaved through
+the tangled brake, crushing everything in their resistless progress.
+It was a sight to be remembered, but as might have been expected, we
+found the jungles almost untenanted. Everything cleared out before us,
+long ere the line could reach its vicinity. We only killed one tiger,
+but next day we separated, the main body crossing the stream, while my
+friends and myself, with only fourteen elephants, rebeat the same
+jungle and bagged two.
+
+In every hunt, one member is told off to look after the forage and
+grain for the elephants. One attends to the cooking and requirements
+of the table, one acts as paymaster and keeper of accounts, while the
+most experienced is unanimously elected captain, and takes general
+direction of every movement of the line. He decides on the plan of
+operations for the day, gives each his place in the line, and for the
+time, becomes an irresponsible autocrat, whose word is law, and
+against whose decision there is no appeal.
+
+Scouts are sent out during the night, and bring in reports from all
+parts of the jungle in the early morning, while we are discussing
+_chota baziree_, our early morning meal. If tiger is reported, or a
+kill has been discovered, we form line in silence, and without noise
+bear down direct on the spot. In the captain's howdah are three flags.
+A blue flag flying means that only tiger or rhinoceros are to be shot
+at. A red flag signifies that we are to have general firing, in fact
+that we may blaze away at any game that may be afoot, and the white
+flag shews us that we are on our homeward way, and then also may shoot
+at anything we can get, break the line, or do whatever we choose. On
+the flanks are generally posted the best shots of the party. The
+captain, as a rule, keeps to the centre of the line. Frequently one
+man and elephant is sent on ahead to some opening or dry water-bed, to
+see that no cunning tiger sneaks away unseen. This vedette is called
+_naka_. All experienced sportsmen employ a naka, and not unfrequently
+where the ground is difficult, two are sent ahead. The naka is a most
+important post, and the holder will often get a lucky shot at some
+wary veteran trying to sneak off, and may perhaps bag the only tiger
+of the day. The mere knowledge that there is an elephant on ahead,
+will often keep tigers from trying to get away. They prefer to face
+the known danger of the line behind, to the unknown danger in front,
+and in all cases where there is a big party a naka should be sent on
+ahead.
+
+Tigers can be, and are, shot on the Koosee plains all the year round,
+but the big hunts take place in the months of March, April, and May,
+when the hot west winds are blowing, and when the jungle has got
+considerably trampled down by the herds of cattle grazing in the
+tangled wilderness of tall grass. Innumerable small paths shew where
+the cattle wander backward and forward through the labyrinths of the
+jungle. In the howdah we carry ample supplies of vesuvians. We light
+and drop these as they blaze into the dried grass and withered leaves
+as we move along, and soon a mighty wall of roaring flame behind us,
+attests the presence of the destroying element. We go diagonally up
+wind, and the flames and smoke thus surge and roar and curl and roll,
+in dense blinding volumes, to the rear and leeward of our line. The
+roaring of the flames sounds like the maddened surf of an angry sea,
+dashing in thunder against an iron-bound coast. The leaping flames
+mount up in fiery columns, illuminating the fleecy clouds of smoke
+with an unearthly glare. The noise is deafening; at times some of the
+elephants get quite nervous at the fierce roar of the flames behind,
+and try to bolt across country. The fire serves two good purposes. It
+burns up the old withered grass, making room for the fresh succulent
+sprouts to spring, and it keeps all the game in front of the line,
+driving the animals before us, as they are afraid to break back and
+face the roaring-wall of flame. A seething, surging sea of flame,
+several miles long, encircling the whole country in its fiery belt,
+sweeping along at night with the roar of a storm-tossed sea; the
+flames flickering, swelling, and leaping up in the dark night, the
+fiery particles rushing along amid clouds of lurid smoke, and the
+glare of the serpent-like line reddening the horizon, is one of those
+magnificent spectacles that can only be witnessed at rare intervals
+among the experiences of a sojourn in India. Words fail to depict its
+grandeur, and the utmost skill of Doré could not render on canvas, the
+weird, unearthly magnificence of a jungle fire, at the culmination of
+its force and fury.
+
+In beating, the elephants are several yards apart, and, standing in
+the howdah, you can see the slightest motion of the grass before you,
+unless indeed it be virgin jungle, quite untrodden, and perhaps higher
+than your elephant; in such high dense cover, tigers will sometimes
+lie up and allow you to go clean past them. In such a case you must
+fire the jungle, and allow the blaze to beat for you. It is common for
+young, over eager sportsmen, to fire at moving jungle, trusting to a
+lucky chance for hitting the moving animal; this is useless waste of
+powder; they fail to realize the great length of the swaying grass,
+and invariably shoot over the game; the animal hears the crashing of
+the bullet through the dense thicket overhead, and immediately stops,
+and you lose all idea of his whereabouts. When you see an animal
+moving before you in long jungle, it should be your object to follow
+him slowly and patiently, till you can get a sight of him, and see
+what sort of beast he is. Firing at the moving grass is worse than
+useless. Keep as close behind him as you can, make signs for the other
+elephants to close in; stick to your quarry, never lose sight of him
+for an instant, be ready to seize the first moment, when more open
+jungle, or some other favourable chance, may give you a glimpse of his
+skin.
+
+Another caution should be observed. Never fire down the line. It is
+astonishing how little will divert a bullet, and a careless shot is
+worse than a dozen charging tigers. If a tiger does break back, let
+him get well away behind the line, and then blaze at him as hard as
+you like. It is particularly unpleasant to hear a bullet come singing
+and booming down the line from some excited dunderhead on the far left
+or right.
+
+A tiger slouching along in front moves pretty fast, in a silent
+swinging trot; the tops of the reeds or grass sway very gently, with a
+wavering, side to side motion. A pig rushes boldly through, and a deer
+will cause the grass to rock violently to and fro. A buffalo or
+rhinoceros is known at once by the crashing of the dry stalks, as his
+huge frame plunges along; but the tiger can never be mistaken. When
+that gentle, undulating, noiseless motion is once seen, be ready with
+your trusty gun, and remove not your eye from the spot, for the mighty
+robber of the jungle is before you.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Howdahs and howdah-ropes.--Mussulman custom.--Killing animals for
+food.--Mysterious appearance of natives when an animal is killed.
+--Fastening dead tigers to the pad.--Present mode wants improving.
+--Incident illustrative of this.--Dangerous to go close to wounded
+tigers.--Examples.--Footprints of tigers.--Call of the tiger.--Natives
+and their powers of description.--How to beat successfully for tiger.
+--Description of a beat.--Disputes among the shooters.--Awarding
+tigers.--Cutting open the tiger.--Native idea about the liver of the
+tiger.--Signs of a tiger's presence in the jungle.--Vultures.--Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?--A vulture carrion feast.
+
+The best howdahs are light, single-seated ones, with strong, light
+frames of wood and cane-work, and a moveable seat with a leather
+strap, adjustable to any length, on which to lean back. They should
+have a strong iron rail all round the top, covered with leather, with
+convenient grooves to receive the barrels of the guns, as they rest in
+front, ready to either hand. In front there should be compartments for
+different kinds of cartridges; and pockets and lockers under the seat,
+and at the back, or wherever there is room. Outside should be a strong
+iron step, to get out and in by easily, and a strong iron ring,
+through which to pass the rope that binds the howdah to the elephant.
+
+You cannot be too careful with your howdah ropes. A chain is generally
+used as an auxiliary to the rope, which should be of cotton, strong
+and well twisted, and should be overhauled daily, to see that there is
+no chafing. It is passed round the foot-bars of the howdah, and
+several times round the belly of the elephant.
+
+Another rope acts as a crupper behind, being passed through rings in
+the terminal frame-work of the howdah, and under the elephant's tail;
+it frequently causes painful sores there, and some drivers give it a
+hitch round the tail, in the same way as you would hitch it round a
+post. Another steadying rope goes round the elephant's breast, like a
+chest-band. 'A merciful man is merciful to his beast.' You should
+always, therefore, have a sheet of soft well oiled leather to go
+between the chest and belly ropes and the elephant's hide; this
+prevents chafing, and is a great relief to the poor old _hathi_, as
+they call the elephant. _Hatnee_ is the female elephant. _Duntar_ is a
+fellow with large tusks, and _mukna_ is an elephant with small
+downward growing tusks.
+
+Many of the old fashioned howdahs are far too heavy; a firm, strong
+howdah should not weigh more than 28 lbs. In most of the old fashioned
+ones, there is a seat for an attendant. If your attendant be a
+Mussulman, he hurries down as soon as you shoot a deer, to cut its
+throat. The Mohammedan religion enjoins a variety of rules on its
+professors in regard to the slaying of animals for food. Chief of
+these is a prohibition, against eating the flesh of an animal that has
+died a natural death; the throat of every animal intended to be eaten
+should be cut, and at the moment of applying the knife, _Bismillah_
+should be said, that is, 'In the name of God.' If therefore your
+mahout, or attendant, belong to the religion of the _Koran_, he will
+hurry down to cut the throat of a wounded deer if possible before life
+is extinct; if it be already dead, he will leave it alone for the
+Hindoos, who have no such scruples.
+
+A number of _moosahurs, banturs, gwallas_, and other idlers, from the
+jungle villages, generally follow in the wake of the line. If you
+shoot many pigs, they carry off the dead bodies, and hold high
+carnival in their homes in the evening. To see them rush on a slain
+buffalo, and hack it to pieces, is a curious sight; they fight for
+pieces of flesh like so many vultures. Sportsmen generally content
+themselves with the head of a buffalo, but not a scrap of the carcase
+is ever wasted. The natives are attracted to the spot, like ants to a
+heap of grain, or wasps to an old sugar barrel; they seem to spring
+out of the earth, so rapidly do they make their appearance. If you
+were to kill a dozen buffaloes, I believe all the flesh would be taken
+away to the neighbouring villages within an hour.
+
+This appearance of men in the jungles is wonderful. You may think
+yourself in the centre of a vast wilderness, not a sign of human
+habitation for miles around; on all sides stretches a vast ocean of
+grass, the resort of ferocious wild animals, seemingly untrodden by a
+human foot. You shoot a deer, a pig, or other animal whose flesh is
+fit for food; the man behind you gives a cry, and in ten minutes you
+will have a group of brawny young fellows around your elephant, eager
+to carry away the game. The way these natives thread the dense jungle
+is to me a wonder; they seem to know every devious path and hidden
+recess, and they traverse the most gloomy and dangerous solitudes
+without betraying the slightest apprehension.
+
+In fastening dead game to the pad of the carrying elephant great care
+is necessary. Some elephants are very timid, and indeed all elephants
+are mistrustful and suspicious of anything behind them. They are
+pretty courageous in facing anything before them, but they do not like
+a rustling or indeed any motion in their rear. I have seen a dog put
+an elephant to flight, and if you have a lazy _hathi_, a good plan is
+to walk a horse behind him. He will then shuffle along at a prodigious
+pace constantly looking round from side to side, and no doubt in his
+heart anathematising the horse that forces the running so
+persistently.
+
+The present method of roughly lashing on dead game anyhow requires
+altering. Some ingenious sportsman could surely devise a system of
+slings by which the dead weight of the game could be more equally
+distributed. At present the dead bodies are hauled up at random, and
+fastened anyhow. The pad gets displaced, the elephant must stop till
+the burden is rearranged; the ropes, especially on a hot day, cut into
+the skin and rub off the hair, and many a good skin is quite spoiled
+by the present rough method of tying on the pad.
+
+One day, in taking off a dead tiger from the pad, near George's
+bungalow, the end of the rope (a new one) remained somehow fixed to
+the neck of the elephant. When he rose up, being relieved of the
+weight, he dragged the dead tiger with him. This put the elephant into
+a horrible funk, and despite all the efforts of the driver he started
+off at a trot, hauling the tiger after him. Every now and then he
+would turn round, and tread and kick the lifeless carcase. At length
+the rope gave way, and the elephant became more manageable, but not
+before a fine skin had been totally ruined, all owing to this
+primitive style of fastening by ropes to the pad. A proper pad, with
+leather straps and buckles, that could be hauled as tight as
+necessary--a sort of harness arrangement, could easily be devised, to
+secure dead game on the pad. I am certain it would save time in the
+hunting-field, and protect many a fine skin, that gets abraded and
+marked by the present rough and ready lashing.
+
+It is always dangerous to go too close up to a wounded tiger, and one
+should never rashly jump to the conclusion that a tiger is dead
+because he appears so Approach him cautiously, and make very certain
+that he is really and truly dead, before you venture to get down
+beside the body. It is a bad plan to take your elephant close up to a
+dead tiger at all. I have known cases where good staunch elephants
+have been spoiled for future sport, by being rashly taken up to a
+wounded tiger. In rolling about, the tiger may get hold of the
+elephants, and inflict injuries that will demoralise them, and make
+them quite unsteady on subsequent occasions.
+
+I have known cases where a tiger left for dead has had to be shot over
+again. I have seen a man get down to pull a seemingly dead tiger into
+the open, and get charged. Fortunately it was a dying effort, and I
+put a bullet through the skull before the tiger could reach the
+frightened peon. We have been several times grouped round a dying
+tiger, watching him breathe his last, when the brute has summoned up
+strength for a final effort, and charged the elephants.
+
+On one occasion W.D. had got down beside what he thought a dead tiger,
+had rolled him over, and, tape in hand, was about to measure the
+animal, when he staggered to his feet with a terrific growl, and made
+away through the jungle. He had only been stunned, and fortunately
+preferred running to fighting, or the consequences might have been
+more tragic; as it was, he was quickly followed up and killed. But
+instances like these might be indefinitely multiplied, all teaching,
+that seemingly dead tigers should be approached with the utmost
+respect. Never venture off your elephant without a loaded revolver.
+
+In beating for tiger, we have seen that the appearance of the kill,
+whether fresh or old, whether much torn and mangled or comparatively
+untouched, often affords valuable indications to the sportsman. The
+footprints are not less narrowly looked for, and scrutinized. If we
+are after tiger, and following them up, the captain will generally get
+down at any bare place, such as a dry nullah, the edge of a tank or
+water hole, or any other spot where footprints can be detected. Fresh
+prints can be very easily distinguished. The impression is like that
+made by a dog, only much larger, and the marks of the claws are not
+visible. The largest footprint I have heard of was measured by George
+S., and was found to be eight and a quarter inches wide from the
+outside of the first to the outside of the fourth toe. If a tiger has
+passed very recently, the prints will be fresh-looking, and if on damp
+ground there can be no mistaking them. If it has been raining
+recently, we particularly notice whether the rain has obliterated the
+track at all, in any place; which would lead us to the conclusion that
+the tiger had passed before it rained. If the water has lodged in the
+footprint, the tiger has passed after the shower. In fresh prints the
+water will be slightly puddly or muddy. In old prints it will be quite
+clear; and so on.
+
+The call of the male tiger is quite different from that of the female.
+The male calls with a hoarse harsh cry, something between the grunt of
+a pig and the bellow of a bull; the call of the tigress is more like
+the prolonged mew of a cat much intensified. During the pairing season
+the call is sharper and shorter, and ends in a sudden break. At that
+time, too, they cry at more frequent intervals. The roar of the tiger
+is quite unlike the call. Once heard it is not easily forgotten, The
+natives who live in the jungles can tell one tiger from another by
+colour, size, &c., and they can even distinguish one animal from
+another by his call. It is very absurd to hear a couple of natives get
+together and describe the appearance of some tiger they have seen.
+
+In describing a pig, they refer to his height, or the length of his
+tusks. They describe a fish by putting their fists together, and
+saying he was so thick, _itna mota_. The head of a tiger is always the
+most conspicuous part of the body seen in the jungle. They therefore
+invariably describe him by his head. One man will hold his two hands
+apart about two feet, and say that the head was _itna burra_, that is,
+so big. The other, not to be outdone, gives rein to his imagination,
+and adds another foot. The first immediately fancies discredit will
+attach to his veracity, and vehemently asserts that there must in that
+case have been two tigers; and so they go on, till they conclusively
+prove, that two tigers there must have been, and indeed, if you let
+them go on, they will soon assure you that, besides the pair of
+tigers, there must be at least a pair of half-grown cubs. Their
+imaginations are very fertile, and you must take the information of a
+native as to tigers with a very large pinch of salt.
+
+For successful tiger shooting much depends on the beating. When after
+tiger, general firing should on no account be allowed, and the line
+should move forward as silently as possible. In light cover, extending
+over a large area, the elephants should be kept a considerable
+distance apart, but in thick dense cover the line should be quite
+close, and beat up slowly and thoroughly, as a tiger may lay up and
+allow the line to pass him. On no account should an elephant be let to
+lag behind, and no one should be allowed to rush forward or go in
+advance. The elephants should move along, steady and even, like a
+moving wall, the fastest being on the flanks, and accommodating their
+pace to the general rate of progress. No matter what tempting chances
+at pig or deer you may have, you must on no account fire except at
+tiger.
+
+The captain should be in the centre, and the men on the flanks ought
+to be constantly on the _qui vive_, to see that no cunning tiger
+outflanks the line. The attention should never wander from the jungle
+before you, for at any moment a tiger may get up--and I know of no
+sport where it is necessary to be so continuously on the alert. Every
+moment is fraught with intense excitement, and when a tiger does
+really show his stripes before you, the all-absorbing eager excitement
+of a lifetime is packed in a few brief moments. Not a chance should be
+thrown away, a long, or even an uncertain shot, is better than none,
+and if you make one miss, you may not have another chance again that
+day: for the tiger is chary of showing his stripes, and thinks
+discretion the better part of valour.
+
+All the line of course are aware, as a rule, when a tiger is on the
+move, and a good captain (and Joe S., who generally took the direction
+of our beats, could not well be matched) will wheel the line, double,
+turn, march, and countermarch, and fairly run the tiger down. At such
+a time, although you may not actually see the tiger, the excitement is
+tremendous. You stand erect in the howdah, your favourite gun ready;
+your attendant behind is as excited as yourself, and sways from side
+to side to peer into the gloomy depths of the jungle; in front, the
+mahout wriggles on his seat, as if by his motion he could urge the
+elephant to a quicker advance. He digs his toes savagely into his
+elephant behind the ear; the line is closing up; every eye is fixed on
+the moving jungle ahead. The roaring of the flames behind, and the
+crashing of the dried reeds as the elephants force their ponderous
+frames through the intertwisted stems and foliage, are the only sounds
+that greet the ear. Suddenly you see the tawny yellow hide, as the
+tiger slouches along. Your gun rings out a reverberating challenge, as
+your fatal bullet speeds on its errand. To right and left the echoes
+ring, as shot after shot is fired at the bounding robber. Then the
+line closes up, and you form a circle round the stricken beast, and
+watch his mighty limbs quiver in the death-agony, and as he falls over
+dead, and powerless for further harm, you raise the heartfelt,
+pulse-stirring cheer, that finds an echo in every brother sportman's
+heart.
+
+Disputes sometimes arise as to whose bullet first drew blood. These
+are settled by the captain, and from his decision there is no appeal.
+Many sportsmen put peculiar marks on their bullets, by which they can
+be recognised, which is a good plan. In an exciting scrimmage every
+one blazes at the tiger, not one bullet perhaps in five or six takes
+effect, and every one is ready to claim the skin, as having been
+pierced with his particular bullet. Disputes are not very common, but
+an inspection of the wounds, and the bullets found in the body,
+generally settle the question. After hearing all the pros and cons,
+the captain generally succeeds in awarding the tiger to the right man.
+
+After a successful day, the news rapidly spreads through the adjacent
+country, and we may take the line a little out of our way to make a
+sort of triumphal procession through the villages. On reaching the
+camp there is sure to be a great crowd waiting to see the slain
+tigers, the despoilers of the people's flocks and herds.
+
+It is then you hear of all the depredations the dead robber has
+committed, and it is then you begin to form some faint conception of
+his enormous destructive powers. Villager after villager unfolds a
+tale of some favourite heifer, or buffalo, or cow having been struck
+down, and the copious vocabulary of Hindostanee Billingsgate is almost
+exhausted, and floods of abuse poured out on the prostrate head.
+
+On cutting open the tiger, parasites are frequently found in the
+flesh. These are long, white, thread-like worms, and are supposed by
+some to be Guinea worms. Huge masses of undigested bone and hair are
+sometimes taken from the intestines, shewing that the tiger does not
+waste much time on mastication, but tears and eats the flesh in large
+masses. The liver is found to have numbers of separate lobes, and the
+natives say that this is an infallible test of the age of a tiger, as
+a separate lobe forms on the liver for each year of the tiger's life.
+I have certainly found young tigers having but two and three lobes,
+and old tigers I have found with six, seven, and even eight, but the
+statement is entirely unsupported by careful observation, and requires
+authentication before it can be accepted.
+
+A reported kill is a pretty certain sign that there are tigers in the
+jungle, but there are other signs with which one soon gets familiar.
+When, for example, you hear deer calling repeatedly, and see them
+constantly on the move, it is a sign that tiger are in the
+neighbourhood. When cattle are reluctant to enter the jungle,
+restless, and unwilling to graze, you may be sure tiger are somewhere
+about, not far away. A kill is often known by the numbers of vultures
+that hover about in long, sailing, steady circles. What multitudes of
+vultures there are. Overhead, far up in the liquid ether, you see them
+circling round and round like dim specks in the distance; farther and
+farther away, till they seem like bees, then lessen and fade into the
+infinitude of space. No part of the sky is ever free from their
+presence. When a kill has been perceived, you see one come flying
+along, strong and swift in headlong flight. With the directness of a
+thunderbolt he speeds to where his loathsome meal lies sweltering in
+the noonday sun. As he comes nearer and nearer, his repulsive looking
+body assumes form and substance. The cruel, ugly bald head, drawn
+close in between the strong pointed shoulders, the broad powerful
+wings, with their wide sweep, measured and slow, bear him swiftly
+past. With a curve and a sweep he circles round, down come the long
+bony legs, the bald and hideous neck is extended, and with talons
+quivering for the rotting flesh, and cruel beak agape, he hurries on
+to his repast, the embodiment of everything ghoul-like and ghastly. In
+his wake comes another, then twos and threes, anon tens and twenties,
+till hundreds have collected, and the ground is covered with the
+hissing, tearing, fiercely clawing crowd. It is a horrible sight to
+see a heap of vultures battling over a dead bullock. I have seen them
+so piled up that the under ones were nearly smothered to death; and
+the writhing contortions of the long bare necks, as the fierce brutes
+battled with talons and claws, were like the twisting of monster
+snakes, or the furious writhing of gorgons and furies over some fated
+victim.
+
+It has been a much debated point with sportsmen and naturalists,
+whether the eye or the sense of smell guides the vulture to his feast
+of carrion. I have often watched them. They scan the vast surface
+spread below them with a piercing and never tiring gaze. They observe
+each other. When one is seen to cease his steady circling flight, far
+up in mid air, and to stretch his broad wings earthwards, the others
+know that he has espied a meal, and follow his lead; and these in turn
+are followed by others, till from all quarters flock crowds of these
+scavengers of the sky. They can detect a dog or jackal from a vast
+height, and they know by intuition that, where the carcase is there
+will the dogs and jackals be gathered. I think there can be no doubt
+that the vision is the sense they are most indebted to for directing
+them to their food.
+
+On one occasion I remember seeing a tumultuous heap of them, battling
+fiercely, as I have just tried to describe, over the carcases of two
+tigers we had killed near Dumdaha. The dead bodies were hidden
+partially in a grove of trees, and for a long time there were only
+some ten or a dozen vultures near. These gorged themselves so
+fearfully, that they could not rise from the ground, but lay with
+wings expanded, looking very aldermanic and apoplectic. Bye-and-bye,
+however, the rush began, and by the time we had struck the tents,
+there could not have been fewer than 150 vultures, hissing and
+spitting at each other like angry cats; trampling each other to the
+dust to get at the carcases; and tearing wildly with talon and beak
+for a place. In a very short time nothing but mangled bones remained.
+A great number of the vultures got on to the rotten limb of a huge
+mango tree. One other proved the last straw, for down came the rotten
+branch and several of the vultures, tearing at each other, fell
+heavily to the ground, where they lay quite helpless. As an experiment
+we shot a miserable mangy Pariah dog, that was prowling about the
+ground seeking garbage and offal. He was shot stone-dead, and for a
+time no vulture ventured near. A crow was the first to begin the feast
+of death. One of the hungriest of the vultures next approached, and in
+a few minutes the yet warm body of the poor dog was torn into a
+thousand fragments, till nothing remained but scattered and disjointed
+bones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul frontier.--Indian scenery near
+the border.--Lose our way.--Cold night.--The river by night.--Our boat
+and boatmen.--Tigers calling on the bank.--An anxious moment.--Fire at
+and wound the tigress.--Reach camp.--The Nepaulee's adventure with a
+tiger.--The old Major.--His appearance and manners.--The pompous
+Jemadar.--Nepaulese proverb.--Firing the jungle.--Start a tiger and
+shoot him.--Another in front.--Appearance of the fires by night.--The
+tiger escapes.--Too dark to follow up.--Coolie shot by mistake during
+a former hunt.
+
+Early in 1875 a military friend of mine was engaged in inspecting the
+boundary pillars near my factory, between our territory and that of
+Nepaul. Some of the pillars had been cut away by the river, and the
+survey map required a little alteration in consequence. Our district
+magistrate was in attendance, and sent me an invitation to go up and
+spend a week with them in camp. I had no need to send on tents, as
+they had every requisite for comfort. I sent off my bed and bedding on
+Geerdharee Jha's old elephant, a timid, useless brute, fit neither far
+beating jungle nor for carrying a howdah. My horse I sent on to the
+ghat or crossing, some ten miles up the river, and after lunch I
+started. It was a fine cool afternoon, and it was not long ere I
+reached the neighbouring factory of Im[=a]mnugger. Here I had a little
+refreshment with Old Tom, and after exchanging greetings, I resumed my
+way over a part of the country with which I was totally unacquainted.
+
+I rode on, past villages nestling in the mango groves, past huge
+tanks, excavated by the busy labour of generations long since
+departed; past decaying temples, overshadowed by mighty tamarind
+trees, with the _peepul_ and _pakur_ insinuating their twining roots
+amid the shattered and crumbling masonry. In one large village I
+passed through the bustling bazaar, where the din, and dust, and
+mingled odours, were almost overpowering. The country was now assuming
+quite an undulating character. The banks of the creeks were steep and
+rugged, and in some cases the water actually tumbled from rock to
+rock, with a purling pleasant ripple and plash, a welcome sound to a
+Scotch ear, and a pleasant surprise after the dull, dead, leaden,
+noiseless flow of the streams further down on the plains.
+
+Far in front lay the gloomy belt of Terai, or border forest, here
+called the _morung_, where the British territories had their extreme
+limit in that direction. Behind this belt, tier on tier, rose the
+mighty ranges of the majestic Himalayas, towering up in solemn
+grandeur from the bushy masses of forest-clad hills till their
+snow-capped summits seemed to pierce the sky. The country was covered
+by green crops, with here and there patches of dingy rice-stubble, and
+an occasional stretch of dense grass jungle. Quail, partridge, and
+plover rose from the ground in coveys, as my horse cantered through;
+and an occasional peafowl or florican scudded across the track as I
+ambled onward. I asked at a wretched little accumulation of weavers'
+huts where the ghat was, and if my elephant had gone on. To both my
+queries I received satisfactory replies, and as the day was now
+drawing in, I pushed my nag into a sharp canter and hurried forward.
+
+I soon perceived the bulky outline of my elephant ahead, and on coming
+up, found that my men had come too far up the river, had missed the
+ghat to which I had sent my spare horse, and were now making for
+another ferry still higher up. My horse was jaded, so I got on the
+elephant, and made one of the peons lead the horse behind. It was
+rapidly getting dark, and the mahout, or elephant driver, a miserable
+low caste stupid fellow, evidently knew nothing of the country, and
+was going at random. I halted at the next village, got hold of the
+chowkeydar, and by a promise of backsheesh, prevailed on him to
+accompany us and show us the way. We turned off from the direct
+northerly direction in which we had been going, and made straight for
+the river, which we could see in the distance, looking chill and grey
+in the fast fading twilight. We now got on the sandbanks, and had to
+go cautiously for fear of quicksands. By the time we reached the ghat
+it was quite dark and growing very cold.
+
+We were quite close to the hills, a heavy dew was falling, and I found
+that I should have to float down the liver for a mile, and then pole
+up stream in another channel for two miles before I could reach camp.
+
+I got my horse into the boat, ordering the elephant driver to travel
+all night if he could, as I should expect my things to be at camp
+early in the morning, and the boatmen pushed off the unwieldy
+ferry-boat, floating us quietly down the rapid 'drumly' stream. All is
+solemnly still and silent on an Indian river at night. The stream is
+swift but noiseless. Vast plains and heaps of sand stretch for miles
+on either bank. There are no villages near the stream. Faintly, far
+away in the distance, you hear a few subdued sounds, the only
+evidences of human habitation. There is the tinkle of a cow-bell, the
+barking of a pariah dog, the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub of a
+timber-toned tom-tom, muffled and slightly mellowed by the distance.
+The faint, far cries, and occasional halloos of the herd-boys calling
+to each other, gradually cease, but the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub
+continues till far into the night.
+
+It was now very cold, and I was glad to borrow a blanket from my peon.
+At such a time the pipe is a great solace. It soothes the whole
+system, and plunges one into an agreeable dreamy speculative mood,
+through which all sorts of fantastic notions resolve. Fancies chase
+each other quickly, and old memories rise, bitter or sweet, but all
+tinged and tinted by the seductive influence of the magic weed. Hail,
+blessed pipe! the invigorator of the weary, the uncomplaining faithful
+friend, the consoler of sorrows, and the dispeller of care, the
+much-prized companion of the solitary wayfarer!
+
+Now a jackal utters a howl on the bank, as our boat shoots past, and
+the diabolical noise is echoed from knoll to knoll, and from ridge to
+ridge, as these incarnate devils of the night join in and prolong the
+infernal chorus. An occasional splash, as a piece of the bank topples
+over into the stream, rouses the cormorant and gull from their placid
+dozing on the sandbanks. They squeak and gurgle out an unintelligible
+protest, then cosily settle their heads again beneath the sheltering
+wing, and sleep the slumber of the dreamless. A sharp sudden plump, or
+a lazy surging sound, accompanied by a wheezy blowing sort of hiss,
+tells us that a _seelun_ is disporting himself; or that a fat old
+'porpus' is bearing his clumsy bulk through the rushing current.
+
+The bank now looms out dark and mysterious, and as we turn the point
+another long stretch of the river opens out, reflecting the merry
+twinkle of the myriad stars, that glitter sharp and clear millions of
+miles overhead. There is now a clattering of bamboo poles. With a
+grunt of disgust, and a quick catching of the breath, as the cold
+water rushes up against his thighs, one of the boatmen splashes
+overboard, and they commence slowly and wearily pushing the boat up
+stream. We touch the bank a dozen times. The current swoops down and
+turns us round and round. The men have to put their shoulders under
+the gunwale, and heave and strain with all their might. The long
+bamboo poles are plunged into the dark depths of the river, and the
+men puff, and grunt, and blow, as they bend almost to the bottom of
+the boat while they push. It is a weary progress. We are dripping wet
+with dew. Quite close on the bank we hear the hoarse wailing call of a
+tigress. The call of the tiger comes echoing down between the banks.
+The men cease poling. I peer forward into the obscurity. My syce pats,
+and speaks soothingly to the trembling horse, while my peon with
+excited fingers fumbles at the straps of my gun-case. For a moment all
+is intensely still.
+
+I whisper to the boatmen to push out a little into the stream. Again
+the tigress calls, this time so close to us that we could almost fancy
+we could feel her breath. My gun is ready. The syce holds the horse
+firmly by the head, and as we leave the bank, we can distinctly see
+the outline of some large animal, standing out a dark bulky mass
+against the skyline. I take a steady aim and fire. A roar of
+astonishment, wrath, and pain follows the report. The horse struggles
+and snorts, the boatman calls out 'Oh, my father!' and ejaculates
+'hi-hi-hi!' in tones of piled up anguish and apprehension, the peon
+cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug, gea,' that bullet has told;
+oh your highness! and while the boat rocks violently to and fro, I
+abuse the boatmen, slang the syce, and rush to grasp a pole, while the
+peon seizes another; for we are drifting rapidly down stream, and may
+at any moment strike on a bank and topple over. We can hear by the
+growling and commotion on the bank, that my bullet has indeed told,
+and that something is hit. We soon get the frightened boatmen quieted
+down, and after another hour's weary work we spy the white outline of
+the tents above the bank. A lamp shines out a bright welcome; and
+although it is nearly twelve at night, the Captain and the magistrate
+are discussing hot toddy, and waiting my arrival. My spare horse had
+come on from the ghat, the syce had told them I was coming, and they
+had been indulging in all sorts of speculations over my non-arrival.
+
+A good supper, and a reeking jorum, soon banished all recollections of
+my weary journey, and men were ordered to go out at first break of
+dawn, and see about the wounded tiger. In the morning I was gratified
+beyond expression to find a fine tigress, measuring 8 feet 3 inches,
+had been brought in, the result of my lucky night shot; the marks of a
+large tiger were found about the spot, and we determined to beat up
+for him, and if possible secure his skin, as we already had that of
+his consort.
+
+Captain S. had some work to finish, and my elephant and bearer had not
+arrived, so our magistrate and myself walked down to the sandbanks,
+and amused ourselves for an hour shooting sandpipers and plover; we
+also shot a pair of mallard and a couple of teal, and then went back
+to the tents, and were soon busily discussing a hunter's breakfast.
+While at our meal, my elephant and things arrived, and just then also,
+the 'Major Capt[=a]n,' or Nepaulese functionary, my old friend, came up
+with eight elephants, and we hurried out to greet the fat,
+merry-featured old man.
+
+What a quaint, genial old customer he looked, as he bowed and salaamed
+to us from his elevated seat, his face beaming, and his little
+bead-like eyes twinkling with pleasure. He was full of an adventure he
+had as he came along. After crossing a brawling mountain-torrent, some
+miles from our camp, they entered some dense kair jungle. The kair is
+I believe a species of mimosa; it is a hard wood, growing in a thick
+scrubby form, with small pointed leaves, a yellowish sort of flower,
+and sharp thorns studding its branches; it is a favourite resort for
+pig, and although it is difficult to beat on account of the thorns,
+tigers are not unfrequently found among the gloomy recesses of a good
+kair scrub.
+
+As they entered this jungle, some of the men were loitering behind.
+When the elephants had passed about halfway through, the men came
+rushing up pell mell, with consternation on their faces, reporting
+that a huge tiger had sprung out on them, and carried off one of their
+number. The Major and the elephants hurried back, and met the man
+limping along, bleeding from several scratches, and with a nasty bite
+in his shoulder, but otherwise more frightened than hurt. The tiger
+had simply knocked him down, stood over him for a minute, seized him
+by the shoulder, and then dashed on through the scrub, leaving him
+behind half dead with pain and fear.
+
+It was most amusing to hear the fat little Major relate the story. He
+went through all the by-play incident to the piece, and as he got
+excited, stood right up on his narrow pad. His gesticulations were
+most vehement, and as the elephant was rather unsteady, and his
+footing to say the least precarious, he seemed every moment as if he
+must topple over. The old warrior, however, was equal to the occasion;
+without for an instant abating the vigour of his narrative, he would
+clutch at the greasy, matted locks of his mahout, and steady himself,
+while he volubly described incident after incident. As he warmed with
+his subject, and tried to shew us how the tiger must have pounced on
+the man, he would let go and use his hands in illustration; the old
+elephant would give another heave, and the fat little man would make
+another frantic grab at the patient mahout's hair. The whole scene was
+most comical, and we were in convulsions of laughter.
+
+The news, however, foreboded ample sport; we now had certain _khubber_
+of at least two tigers; we were soon under weigh; the wounded man had
+been sent back to the Major's head-quarters on an elephant, and in
+time recovered completely from his mauling. As we jogged along, we had
+a most interesting talk with the Major Capt[=a]n. He was wonderfully
+well informed, considering he had never been out of Nepaul. He knew all
+about England, our army, our mode of government, our parliament, and
+our Queen; whenever he alluded to Her Majesty he salaamed profoundly,
+whether as a tribute of respect to her, or in compliment to us as loyal
+subjects, we could not quite make out. He described to us the route
+home by the Suez canal, and the fun of his talk was much heightened by
+his applying the native names to everything; London was _Shuhur_, the
+word meaning 'a city,' and he told us it was built on the _Tham[=a]ss
+nuddee_, by which he meant the Thames river.
+
+Our magistrate had a Jemadar of Peons with him, a sort of head man
+among the servants. This man, abundantly bedecked with ear-rings,
+finger-rings, and other ornaments, was a useless, bullying sort of
+fellow; dressed to the full extent of Oriental foppishness, and
+because he was the magistrate's servant, he thought himself entitled
+to order the other servants about in the most lordly way. He was now
+making himself peculiarly officious, shouting to the drivers to go
+here and there, to do this and do that, and indulging in copious
+torrents of abuse, without which it seems impossible for a native
+subordinate to give directions on any subject. We were all rather
+amused, and could not help bursting into laughter, as, inflated with a
+sense of his own importance, he began abusing one of the native
+drivers of the Nepaulee chief; this man did not submit tamely to his
+insolence. To him the magistrate was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a
+perfect nonentity. He accordingly turned round and poured forth a
+perfect flood of invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar
+took a back seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his
+melodious voice in tones of imperious command.
+
+The old Major chuckled, and rubbed his fat little hands, and leaning
+over to me said, 'at home a lion, but abroad a lamb,' for, surrounded
+by his women at home, the man would twirl his moustaches, look fierce,
+and fancy himself a very tiger; but, no sooner did he go abroad, and
+mix with men as good, if not better than himself, than he was ready to
+eat any amount of humble pie.
+
+We determined first of all to beat for the tiger whose tracks had been
+seen near where I had fired my lucky shot the preceding night. A
+strong west wind was blowing, and dense clouds of sand were being
+swept athwart our line, from the vast plains of fine white sand
+bordering the river for miles. As we went along we fired the jungle in
+our rear, and the strong wind carried the flames raging and roaring
+through the dense jungle with amazing fury. One elephant got so
+frightened at the noise behind him, that he fairly bolted for the
+river, and could not be persuaded back into the line.
+
+Disturbed by the fire, we saw numerous deer and pig, but being after
+tiger we refrained from shooting at them. The Basinattea Tuppoo, which
+was the scene of our present hunt, were famous jungles, and many a
+tiger had been shot there by the Purneah Club in bygone days. The
+annual ravages of the impetuous river, had however much changed the
+face of the country; vast tracts of jungle had been obliterated by
+deposits of sand from its annual incursions. Great skeletons of trees
+stood everywhere, stretching out bare and unsightly branches, all
+bending to the south, shewing the mighty power of the current, when it
+made its annual progress of devastation over the surrounding country.
+Now, however, it was like a thin streak of silver, flashing back the
+fierce rays of the meridian sun. Through the blinding clouds of fine
+white sand we could at times, during a temporary lull, see its ruined
+surface. And we were glad when we came on the tracks of the tiger,
+which led straight from the stream, in the direction of some thick
+tree jungle at no great distance. We gladly turned our backs to the
+furious clouds of dust and gusts of scorching wind, and led by a
+Nepaulee tracker, were soon crashing heavily through the jungle.
+
+When hunting with elephants, the Nepaulese beat in a dense line, the
+heads of the elephants touching each other. In this manner we were now
+proceeding, when S. called out, 'There goes the tiger.'
+
+We looked up, and saw a very large tiger making off for a deep
+watercourse, which ran through the jungle some 200 yards ahead of the
+line. We hurried up as fast as we could, putting out a fast elephant
+on either flank, to see that the cunning brute did not sneak either up
+or down the nullah, under cover of the high banks. This, however, was
+not his object. We saw him descend into the nullah, and almost
+immediately top the further bank, and disappear into the jungle
+beyond.
+
+Pressing on at a rapid jolting trot, we dashed after him in hot
+pursuit. The jungle seemed somewhat lighter on ahead. In the distance
+we could see some dangurs at work breaking up land, and to the right
+was a small collection of huts with a beautiful riband of green crops,
+a perfect oasis in the wilderness of sand and parched up grass.
+Forming into line we pressed on. The tiger was evidently lying up,
+probably deterred from breaking across the open by the sight of the
+dangurs at work. My heart was bounding with excitement. We were all
+intensely eager, and thought no more of the hot wind and blinding
+dust. Just then Captain S. saw the brute sneaking along to the left of
+the line, trying to outflank us, and break back. He fired two shots
+rapidly with his Express, and the second one, taking effect in the
+neck of the tiger, bowled him over as he stood. He was a mangy-looking
+brute, badly marked, and measured eight feet eleven inches. He did not
+have a chance of charging, and probably had little heart for a fight.
+
+We soon had him padded, and then proceeded straight north, to the
+scene of the Major's encounter with the tiger in the morning. The
+jungle was well trampled down; there were numerous streams and pools
+of water, occasional clumps of bamboos, and abrupt ridgy undulations.
+It was the very jungle for tiger, and elated by our success in having
+bagged one already, we were all in high spirits. The line of fire we
+could see far in the distance, sweeping on like the march of fate, and
+we could have shot numerous deer, but reserved our fire for nobler
+game. It was getting well on in the afternoon when we came up to the
+kair jungle. We beat right up to where the man had been seized, and
+could see the marks of the struggle distinctly enough. We beat right
+through the jungle with no result, and as it was now getting rather
+late, the old Major signified his desire to bid us good evening. As
+this meant depriving us of eight elephants, we prevailed on him to try
+one spare straggling corner that we had not gone through. He laughed
+the idea to scorn of getting a tiger there, saying there was no cover.
+One elephant, however, was sent while we were talking. Our elephants
+were all standing in a group, and the mahout on his solitary elephant
+was listlessly jogging on in a purposeless and desultory manner, when
+we suddenly heard the elephant pipe out a shrill note of alarm, and
+the mahout yelled 'Bagh! Bagh!' tiger! tiger! The Captain was again
+the lucky man. The tiger, a much finer and stronger built animal than
+the one we had already killed, was standing not eighty paces off,
+shewing his teeth, his bristles erect, and evidently in a bad temper.
+He had been crouching among some low bushes, and seeing the elephant
+bearing directly down on him, he no doubt imagined his retreat had
+been discovered. At all events there he was, and he presented a
+splendid aim. He was a noble-looking specimen as he stood there grim
+and defiant. Captain S. took aim, and lodged an Express bullet in his
+chest. It made a fearful wound, and the ferocious brute writhed and
+rolled about in agony. We quickly surrounded him, and a bullet behind
+the ear from my No. 16 put an end to his misery.
+
+The old Major now bade us good evening, and after padding the second
+tiger, and much elated at our success, we began to beat homewards,
+shooting at everything that rose before us. A couple of tremendous pig
+got up before me, and dashed through a clear stream that was purling
+peacefully in its pebbly bed. As the boar was rushing up the farther
+bank, I deposited a pellet in his hind quarters. He gave an angry
+grunt and tottered on, but presently pulled up, and seemed determined
+to have some revenge for his hurt. As my elephant came up the bank,
+the gallant boar tried to charge, but already wounded and weak from
+loss of blood, he tottered and staggered about. My elephant would not
+face him, so I gave him another shot behind the shoulder, and padded
+him for the _moosahurs_ and sweepers in camp. Just then one of the
+policemen started a young hog-deer, and several of the men got down
+and tried to catch the little thing alive. They soon succeeded, and
+the cries of the poor little _butcha_, that is 'young one,' were most
+plaintive.
+
+The wind had now subsided, there was a red angry glare, as the level
+rays of the setting sun shimmered through the dense clouds of dust
+that loaded the atmosphere. It was like the dull, red, coppery hue
+which presages a storm. The vast morung jungle lay behind us, and
+beyond that the swelling wooded hills, beginning to show dark and
+indistinct against the gathering gloom. A long line of cattle were
+wending their way homeward to the batan, and the tinkle of the big
+copper bell fell pleasingly on our ears. In the distance, we could see
+the white canvas of the tents gleaming in the rays of the setting sun.
+A vast circular line of smouldering fire, flickering and flaring
+fitfully, and surmounted by huge volumes of curling smoke, shewed the
+remains of the fierce tornado of flame that had raged at noon, when we
+lit the jungle. The jungle was very light, and much trodden down, our
+three howdah elephants were not far apart, and we were chatting
+cheerfully together and discussing the incidents of the day. My bearer
+was sitting behind me in the back of the howdah, and I had taken out
+my ball cartridge from my No. 12 breechloader, and had replaced them
+with shot. Just then my mahout raised his hand, and in a hoarse
+excited whisper called out,
+
+'Look, sahib, a large tiger!'
+
+'Where?' we all exclaimed, getting excited at once. He pointed in
+front to a large object, looking for all the world like a huge dun
+cow.
+
+'Why, you fool, that is a bullock.' I exclaimed.
+
+My bearer, who had also been intently gazing, now said.
+
+'No, sahib! that is a tiger, and a large one.'
+
+At that moment, it turned partly round, and I at once saw that the men
+were right, and that it was a veritable tiger, and seemingly a monster
+in size. I at once called to Captain S. and the magistrate, who had by
+this time fallen a little behind.
+
+'Look out, you fellows! here's a tiger in front.'
+
+At first they thought I was joking, but a glance confirmed the truth
+of what I had said. When I first saw the brute, he was evidently
+sneaking after the cattle, and was about sixty paces from me. He was
+so intent on watching the herd, that he had not noticed our approach.
+He was now, however, evidently alarmed and making off. By the time I
+called out, he must have been over eighty yards away. I had my No. 12
+in my hand, loaded with shot; it was no use; I put it down and took up
+my No. 16; this occupied a few seconds; I fired both barrels; the
+first bullet was in excellent line but rather short, the second went
+over the animal's back, and neither touched him. It made him, however,
+quicken his retreat, and when Captain S. fired, he must have been
+fully one hundred and fifty yards away; as it was now somewhat dusky,
+he also missed. He fired another long shot with his rifle, but missed
+again. Oh that unlucky change of cartridges in my No. 12! But for
+that--but there--we are always wise after the event. We never expected
+to see a tiger in such open country, especially as we had been over
+the same ground before, firing pretty often as we came along.
+
+We followed up of course, but it was now fast getting dark, and though
+we beat about for some time, we could not get another glimpse of the
+tiger. He was seemingly a very large male, dark-coloured, and in
+splendid condition. We must have got him, had it been earlier, as he
+could not have gone far forward, for the lines of fire were beyond
+him, and we had him between the fire and the elephants. We got home
+about 6.30, rather disappointed at missing such a glorious prize, so
+true is it that a sportsman's soul is never satisfied. But we had rare
+and most unlooked-for luck, and we felt considerably better after a
+good dinner, and indulged in hopes of getting the big fellow next
+morning.
+
+In the same jungles, some years ago, a very sad accident occurred. A
+party were out tiger-shooting, and during one of the beats, a cowherd
+hearing the noise of the advancing elephants, crouched behind a bush,
+and covered himself with his blanket. At a distance he looked exactly
+like a pig, and one of the shooters mistook him for one. He fired, and
+hit the poor herd in the hip. As soon as the mistake was perceived,
+everything was done for the poor fellow. His wound was dressed as well
+as they could do it, and he was sent off to the doctor in a dhoolie, a
+a sort of covered litter, slung on a pole and carried on men's shoulders.
+It was too late, the poor coolie died on the road, from shock and loss
+of blood. Such mistakes occur very seldom, and this was such a natural
+one, that no one could blame the unfortunate sportsman, and certainly
+no one felt keener regret than he did. The coolie's family was amply
+provided for, which was all that remained to be done.
+
+This is the only instance I know, where fatal results have followed
+such an accident. I have known several cases of beaters peppered with
+shot, generally from their own carelessness, and disregard of orders,
+but a salve in the shape of a few rupees has generally proved the most
+effective ointment. I have known some rascals say, they were sorry
+they had not been lucky enough to be wounded, as they considered a
+punctured cuticle nothing to set against the magnificent douceur of
+four or five rupees. One impetuous scamp, being told not to go in
+front of the line during a beat near Burgamma, replied to the warning
+caution of his jemadar,
+
+'Oh never mind, if get shot I will get backsheesh.'
+
+Whether this was a compliment to the efficacy of our treatment (by the
+silver ointment), or to the inaccuracy and harmlessness of our shooting,
+I leave the reader to judge.
+
+Our bag during this lucky day, including the tigress killed by my shot
+on the river bank, was as follows: three tigers, one boar, four deer,
+including the young one taken alive, eight sandpipers, nine plovers,
+two mallards, and two teal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+We resume the beat.--The hog-deer.--Nepaulese villages.--Village
+granaries.--Tiger in front.--A hit! a hit!--Following up the wounded
+tiger.--Find him dead.--Tiffin in the village.--The Patair jungle.
+--Search for tiger.--Gone away!--An elephant steeplechase in pursuit.
+--Exciting chase.--The Morung jungle.--Magnificent scenery.--Skinning
+the tiger.--Incidents of tiger hunting.
+
+Next morning, both the magistrate and myself felt very ill, headachy
+and sick, with violent vomiting and retching; Captain S. attributed it
+to the fierce hot wind and exposure of the preceding day, but we, the
+sufferers, blamed the _dekchees_ or cooking pots. These _dekchees_ are
+generally made of copper, coated or tinned over with white metal once
+a month or oftener; if the tinning is omitted, or the copper becomes
+exposed by accident or neglect, the food cooked in the pots sometimes
+gets tainted with copper, and produces nausea and sickness in those
+who eat it. I have known, within my own experience, cases of copper
+poisoning that have terminated fatally. It is well always thoroughly
+to inspect the kitchen utensils, particularly when in camp; unless
+carefully watched and closely supervised, servants get very careless,
+and let food remain in these copper vessels. This is always dangerous,
+and should never be allowed.
+
+In consequence of our indisposition, we did not start till the
+forenoon was far advanced, and the hot west wind had again begun to
+sweep over the prairie-like stretches of sand and withered grass. We
+commenced beating up by the Batan or cattle stance, near which we had
+seen the big tiger, the preceding evening. S. however became so sick
+and giddy, that he had to return to camp, and Captain S. and I
+continued the beat alone. Having gone over the same ground only
+yesterday, we did not expect a tiger so near to camp, more especially
+as the fire had made fearful havoc with the tall grass. Hog-deer were
+very numerous; they are not as a rule easily disturbed; they are of a
+reddish brown colour, not unlike that of the Scotch red deer, and rush
+through the jungle, when alarmed, with a succession of bounding leaps;
+they make very pretty shooting, and when young, afford tender and
+well-flavoured venison. One hint I may give. When you shoot a buck,
+see that he is at once denuded of certain appendages, else the flesh
+will get rank and disagreeable to eat. The bucks have pretty antlers,
+but are not very noble looking. The does are somewhat lighter in
+colour, and do not seem to consort together in herds like antelopes;
+there are rarely more than five in a group, though I have certainly
+seen more on several occasions.
+
+This morning we were unlucky with our deer. I shot three, and Captain
+S. shot at and wounded three, not one of which however did we bag.
+This part of the country is exclusively inhabited by Parbutteas, the
+native name for Nepaulese settled in British territory. Over the
+frontier line, the villages are called Pahareeas, signifying
+mountaineers or hillmen, from Pahar, a mountain. We beat up to a
+Parbuttea village, with its conical roofed huts; men and women were
+engaged in plaiting long coils of rice straw into cable looking ropes.
+A few split bamboos are fastened into the ground, in a circle, and
+these ropes are then coiled round, in and out, between the stakes;
+this makes a huge circular vat-shaped repository, open at both ends;
+it is then lifted up and put on a platform coated with mud, and
+protected from rats and vermin by the pillars being placed on smooth,
+inverted earthen pots. The coils of straw are now plastered outside
+and in with a mixture of mud, chaff, and cowdung, and allowed to dry;
+when dried the hut is filled with grain, and securely roofed and
+thatched. This forms the invariable village granary, and looks at a
+distance not unlike a stack or rick of corn, round a farm at home. By
+the abundance of these granaries in a village, one can tell at a
+glance whether the season has been a good one, and whether the frugal
+inhabitants of the clustering little hamlet are in pretty comfortable
+circumstances. If they are under the sway of a grasping and
+unscrupulous landlord, they not unfrequently bury their grain in
+clay-lined chambers in the earth, and have always enough for current
+wants, stored up in the sun-baked clay repositories mentioned in a
+former chapter.
+
+Beyond the village we entered some thick Patair jungle. Its greenness
+was refreshing after the burnt up and withered grass jungle. We were
+now in a hollow bordering the stream, and somewhat protected from the
+scorching wind, and the stinging clouds of fine sand and red dust. The
+brook looked so cool and refreshing, and the water so clear and
+pellucid, that I was about to dismount to take a drink and lave my
+heated head and face, when a low whistle to my right made me look in
+that direction, and I saw the Captain waving his hand excitedly, and
+pointing ahead. He was higher up the bank than I was, and in very
+dense Patair; a ridge ran between his front of the line and mine, so
+that I could only see his howdah, and the bulk of the elephant's body
+was concealed from me by the grass on this ridge.
+
+I closed up diagonally across the ridge; S. still waving to me to
+hurry up; as I topped it, I spied a large tiger slouching along in the
+hollow immediately below me. He saw me at the same instant, and
+bounded on in front of S. His Express was at his shoulder on the
+instant; he fired, and a tremendous spurt of blood shewed a hit, a
+hit, a palpable hit. The tiger was nowhere visible, and not a cry or a
+motion could we hear or see, to give us any clue to the whereabouts of
+the wounded animal. We followed up however, quickly but cautiously,
+expecting every instant a furious charge.
+
+We must have gone at least a hundred yards, when right in front of me
+I descried the tiger, crouching down, its head resting on its fore
+paws, and to all appearance settling for a spring. It was about twenty
+yards from me, and taking a rather hasty aim, I quickly fired both
+barrels straight at the head. I could only see the head and paws, but
+these I saw quite distinctly. My elephant was very unsteady, and both
+my bullets went within an inch of the tiger's head, but fortunately
+missed completely. I say fortunately, for finding the brute still
+remaining quite motionless, we cautiously approached, and found it was
+stone dead. The perfect naturalness of the position, however, might
+well have deceived a more experienced sportsman. The beast was lying
+crouched on all fours, as if in the very act of preparing to spring.
+The one bullet had killed it; the wound was in the lungs, and the
+internal bleeding had suffocated it, but here was a wonderful instance
+of the tiger's tenacity of life, even when sorely wounded, for it had
+travelled over a hundred and thirty yards after S. had shot it.
+
+It was lucky I missed, for my bullets would have spoiled the skull.
+She was a very handsome, finely marked tigress, a large specimen, for
+on applying the tape we found she measured exactly nine feet. Before
+descending to measure her, we were joined by the old Major Capt[=a]n,
+whose elephants we had for some time descried in the distance. His
+congratulations were profuse, and no doubt sincere, and after padding
+the tigress, we hied to the welcome shelter of one of the village
+houses, where we discussed a hearty and substantial tiffin.
+
+During tiffin, we were surrounded by a bevy of really fair and buxom
+lasses. They wore petticoats of striped blue cloth, and had their arms
+and shoulders bare, and their ears loaded with silver ornaments. They
+were merry, laughing, comely damsels, with none of the exaggerated
+shyness, and affected prudery of the women of the plains. We were
+offered plantains, milk, and chupatties, and an old patriarch came out
+leaning on his staff, to revile and abuse the tigress. From some of
+the young men we heard of a fresh kill to the north of the village,
+and after tiffin we proceeded in that direction, following up the
+course of the limpid stream, whose gurgling ripple sounded so
+pleasantly in our ears.
+
+Far ahead to the right, and on the further bank of the stream, we
+could see dense curling volumes of smoke, and leaping pyramids of
+flame, where a jungle fire was raging in some thick acacia scrub. As
+we got nearer, the heat became excessive, and the flames, fanned into
+tremendous fury by the fierce west wind, tore through the dry thorny
+bushes. Our elephants were quite unsteady, and did not like facing the
+fire. We made a slight detour, and soon had the roaring wall of flame
+behind us. We were now entering on a moist, circular, basin-shaped
+hollow. Among the patair roots were the recent marks of great numbers
+of wild pigs, where they had been foraging among the stiff clay for
+these esculents. The patair is like a huge bulrush, and the elephants
+are very fond of its succulent, juicy, cool-looking leaves. Those in
+our line kept tearing up huge tufts of it, thrashing out the mud and
+dirt from the roots against their forelegs, and with a grunt of
+satisfaction, making it slowly disappear in their cavernous mouths.
+There was considerable noise, and the jungle was nearly as high as the
+howdahs, presenting the appearance of an impenetrable screen of vivid
+green. We beat and rebeat, across and across, but there was no sign of
+the tiger. The banks of the nullah were very steep, rotten looking,
+and dangerous. We had about eighteen elephants, namely, ten of our
+own, and eight belonging to the Nepaulese. We were beating very close,
+the elephants' heads almost touching. This is the way they always beat
+in Nepaul. We thought we had left not a spot in the basin untouched,
+and Captain S. was quite satisfied that there could be no tiger there.
+It was a splendid jungle for cover, so thick, dense, and cool. I was
+beating along the edge of the creek, which ran deep and silent,
+between the gloomy sedge-covered banks. In a placid little pool I saw
+a couple of widgeon all unconscious of danger, their glossy plumage
+reflected in the clear water. I called to Captain S. 'We are sold this
+time Captain, there's no tiger here!'
+
+'I am afraid not,' he answered.
+
+'Shall I bag those two widgeon?' I asked.
+
+'All right,' was the response.
+
+Putting in shot cartridge, I shot both the widgeon, but we were all
+astounded to see the tiger we had so carefully and perseveringly
+searched for, bound out of a crevice in the bank, almost right under
+my elephant. Off he went with a smothered roar, that set our elephants
+hurrying backwards and forwards. There was a commotion along the whole
+line. The jungle was too dense for us to see anything. It was one more
+proof how these hill tigers will lie close, even in the midst of a
+line.
+
+S. called out to me to remain quiet, and see if we could trace the
+tiger's progress by any rustling in the cover. Looking down we saw the
+kill, close to the edge of the water. A fast elephant was sent on
+ahead, to try and ascertain whether the tiger was likely to break
+beyond the circle of the little basin-shaped valley. We gathered round
+the kill; it was quite fresh; a young buffalo. The Major told us that
+in his experience, a male tiger always begins on the neck first. A
+female always at the hind quarters. A few mouthfuls only had been
+eaten, and according to the Major, it must have been a tigress, as the
+part devoured was from the hind quarters.
+
+While we were talking over these things, a frenzied shout from the
+driver of our naka elephant caused us to look in his direction. He was
+gesticulating wildly, and bawling at the top of his voice, 'Come, come
+quickly, sahibs, the tiger is running away.'
+
+Now commenced such a mad and hurried scramble as I have never
+witnessed before or since, from the back of an elephant. As we tore
+through the tangled dense green patair, the broad leaves crackled like
+crashing branches, the huge elephants surged ahead like ships rocking
+in a gale of wind, and the mahouts and attendants on the pad
+elephants, shouted and urged on their shuffling animals, by excited
+cries and resounding whacks.
+
+In the retinue of the Major, were several men with elephant spears or
+goads. These consist of a long, pliant, polished bamboo, with a sharp
+spike at the end, which they call a _jhetha_. These men now came
+hurrying round the ridge, among the opener grass, and as we emerged
+from the heavy cover, they began goading the elephants behind and
+urging them to their most furious pace. On ahead, nearly a quarter of
+a mile away, we could see a huge tiger making off for the distant
+morung, at a rapid sling trot. His lithe body shone before us, and
+urged us to the most desperate efforts. It was almost a bare plateau.
+There was scarcely any cover, only here and there a few stunted acacia
+bushes. The dense forest was two or three miles ahead, but there were
+several nasty steep banks, and precipitous gullies with deep water
+rushing between. Attached to each Nepaulee pad, by a stout
+curiously-plaited cord, ornamented with fancy knots and tassels of
+silk, was a small pestle-shaped instrument, not unlike an auctioneer's
+hammer. It was quaintly carved, and studded with short, blunt,
+shining, brass nails or spikes. I had noticed these hanging down from
+the pads, and had often wondered what they were for. I was now to see
+them used. While the mahouts in front rained a shower of blows on the
+elephants head, and the spear-men pricked him up from behind with
+their jhethas, the occupant of the pad, turning round with his face to
+the tail, belaboured the poor hathee with the auctioneer's hammer. The
+blows rattled on the elephant's rump. The brutes trumpeted with pain,
+but they _did_ put on the pace, and travelled as I never imagined an
+elephant _could_ travel. Past bush and brake, down precipitous ravine,
+over the stones, through the thorny scrub, dashing down a steep bank
+here, plunging madly through a deep stream there, we shuffled along.
+We must have been going fully seven miles an hour. The pestle-shaped
+hammer is called a _lohath_, and most unmercifully were they wielded.
+We were jostled and jolted, till every bone ached again. Clouds of
+dust were driven before our reeling waving line. How the Nepaulese
+shouted and capered. We were all mad with excitement. I shouted with
+the rest. The fat little Major kicked his heels against the sides of
+his elephant, as if he were spurring a Derby winner to victory. Our
+usually sedate captain yelled--actually yelled!--in an agony of
+excitement, and tried to execute a war dance of his own on the floor
+of his howdah. Our guns rattled, the chains clanked and jangled, the
+howdahs rocked and pitched from side to side. We made a desperate
+effort. The poor elephants made a gallant race of it. The foot men
+perspired and swore, but it was not to be. Our striped friend had the
+best of the start, and we gained not an inch upon him. To our
+unspeakable mortification, he reached the dense cover on ahead, where
+we might as well have sought for a needle in a haystack. Never,
+however, shall I forget that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant
+steeple-chase. Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for it next day.
+
+The old Major and his fleet racing elephants now left us, and our
+jaded beasts took us slowly back in the direction of our camp. It was
+a fine wild view on which we were now gazing. Behind us the dark
+gloomy impenetrable morung, the home of ever-abiding fever and ague.
+Behind that the countless multitude of hills, swelling here and
+receding there, a jumbled heap of mighty peaks and fretted pinnacles,
+with their glistening sides and dark shadowless ravines, their mighty
+scaurs and their abrupt serrated edges showing out clearly and boldly
+defined against the evening sky. Far to the right, the shining
+river--a riband of burnished steel, for its waters were a deep steely
+blue--rolled its swift flood along amid shining sand-banks. In front,
+the vast undulating plain, with grove, and rill, and smoking hamlet,
+stretched at our feet in a lovely panorama of blended and harmonious
+colour. We were now high up above the plain, and the scene was one of
+the finest I have ever witnessed in India. The wind had gone down, and
+the oblique rays of the sun lit up the whole vast panorama with a
+lurid light, which was heightened in effect by the dust-laden
+atmosphere, and the volumes of smoke from the now distant fires,
+hedging in the far horizon with curtains of threatening grandeur and
+gloom. That far away canopy of dust and smoke formed a wonderful
+contrast to the shining snow-capped hills behind. Altogether it was a
+day to be remembered. I have seen no such strange and unearthly
+combination of shade and colour in any landscape before or since.
+
+On the way home we bagged a florican and a very fine mallard, and
+reached the camp utterly fagged, to find our worthy magistrate very
+much recovered, and glad to congratulate us on our having bagged the
+tigress. After a plunge in the river, and a rare camp dinner--such a
+meal as only an Indian sportsman can procure--we lay back in our cane
+chairs, and while the fragrant smoke from the mild Manilla curled
+lovingly about the roof of the tent, we discussed the day's
+proceedings, and fought our battles over again.
+
+A rather animated discussion arose about the length of the tiger--as
+to its frame merely, and we wondered what difference the skin would
+make in the length of the animal. As it was a point we had never heard
+mooted before, we determined to see for ourselves. We accordingly went
+out into the beautiful moonlight, and superintended the skinning of
+the tigress. The skin was taken off most artistically. We had
+carefully measured the animal before skinning. She was exactly nine
+feet long. We found the skin made a difference of only four inches,
+the bare skeleton from tip of nose to extreme point of tail measuring
+eight feet eight inches.
+
+As an instance of tigers taking to trees, our worthy magistrate
+related that in Rajmehal he and a friend had wounded a tiger, and
+subsequently lost him in the jungle. In vain they searched in every
+conceivable direction, but could find no trace of him. They were about
+giving up in despair, when S., raising his hat, happened to look up,
+and there, on a large bough directly overhead, he saw the wounded
+tiger lying extended at full length, some eighteen feet from the
+ground. They were not long in leaving the dangerous vicinity, and it
+was not long either ere a well-directed shot brought the tiger down
+from his elevated perch.
+
+These after-dinner stories are not the least enjoyable part of a
+tiger-hunting party. Round the camp table in a snug, well-lighted
+tent, with all the 'materials' handy, I have listened to many a tale
+of thrilling adventure. S. was full of reminiscences, and having seen
+a deal of tiger shooting in various parts of India, his recollections
+were much appreciated. To shew that the principal danger in tiger
+shooting is not from the tiger himself, but from one's elephant
+becoming panic-stricken and bolting, he told how a Mr. Aubert, a
+Benares planter, lost his life. A tiger had been 'spined' by a shot,
+and the line gathered round the prostrate monster to watch its
+death-struggle. The elephant on which the unfortunate planter sat got
+demoralised and attempted to bolt. The mahout endeavoured to check its
+rush, and in desperation the elephant charged straight down, close
+past the tiger, which lay writhing and roaring under a huge
+overhanging tree. The elephant was rushing directly under this tree,
+and a large branch would have swept howdah and everything it contained
+clean off the elephant's back, as easily as one would brush off a fly.
+To save himself Aubert made a leap for the branch, the elephant
+forging madly ahead; and the howdah, being smashed like match-wood,
+fell on the tiger below, who was tearing and clawing at everything
+within his reach. Poor Aubert got hold of the branch with his hands,
+and clung with all the desperation of one fighting for his life. He
+was right above the wounded tiger, but his grasp on the tree was not a
+firm one. For a moment he hung suspended above the furious animal,
+which, mad with agony and fury, was a picture of demoniac rage. The
+poor fellow could hold no longer, and fell right on the tiger. It was
+nearly at its last gasp, but it caught hold of Aubert by the foot, and
+in a final paroxysm of pain and rage chawed the foot clean off, and
+the poor fellow died next day from the shock and loss of blood. He was
+one of four brothers who all met untimely deaths from accidents. This
+one was killed by the tiger, another was thrown from a vehicle and
+killed on the spot, the third was drowned, and the fourth shot by
+accident.
+
+Our bag to-day was one tiger, one florican, one mallard, and two
+widgeon. On cutting the tiger open, we found that the bullet had
+entered on the left side, and, as we suspected, had entered the lungs.
+It had, however, made a terrible wound. We found that it had
+penetrated the heart and liver, gone forward through the chest, and
+smashed the right shoulder. Notwithstanding this fearful wound,
+shewing the tremendous effects of the Express bullet, the tiger had
+gone on for the distance I have mentioned, after which it must have
+fallen stone-dead. It was a marvellous instance of vitality, even
+after the heart, liver, and lungs had been pierced. The liver had six
+lobes, and it was then I heard for the first time, that with the
+natives this was an infallible sign of the age of a tiger. The old
+Major firmly believed it, and told us it was quite an accepted article
+of faith with all native sportsmen. Facts subsequently came under my
+own observation which seemed to give great probability to the theory,
+but it is one on which I would not like to give a decided opinion,
+till after hearing the experiences of other sportsmen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Camp of the Nepaulee chief.--Quicksands.--Elephants crossing rivers.
+--Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.--We beat the forest for tiger.--Shoot
+a young tiger.--Red ants in the forest.--Bhowras or ground bees.--The
+_ursus labialis_ or long-lipped bear.--Recross the stream.--Florican.
+--Stag running the gauntlet of flame.--Our bag.--Start for factory.
+--Remarks on elephants.--Precautions useful for protection from the
+sun in tiger shooting.--The _puggree_.--Cattle breeding in India, and
+wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.--Nathpore.--Ravages of the
+river.--Mrs. Gray, an old resident in the jungles.--Description of her
+surroundings.
+
+Next morning we started beating due east, setting fire to the jungle
+as we went along. The roaring and crackling of the flames startled the
+elephant on which Captain S. was riding, and going away across country
+at a furious pace, it was with difficulty that it could be stopped. We
+crossed the frontier line a short distance from camp, and entered a
+dense jungle of thorny acacia, with long dry grass almost choking the
+trees. They were dry and stunted, and when we dropped a few lights
+amongst such combustible material, the fire was splendid beyond
+description. How the flames surged through the withered grass. We were
+forced to pause and admire the magnificent sight. The wall of flame
+tore along with inconceivable rapidity, and the blinding volumes of
+smoke obscured the country for miles. The jungle was full of deer and
+pig. One fine buck came bounding along past our line, but I stopped
+him with a single bullet through the neck. He fell over with a
+tremendous crash, and turning a complete somersault broke off both his
+horns with the force of the fall.
+
+We beat down a shallow sandy watercourse, and could see the camp of
+the old Major on the high bank beyond. Farther down the stream there
+was a small square fort, the whitewashed walls of which flashed back
+the rays of the sun, and grouped round it were some ruinous looking
+huts, several snowy tents, and a huge shamiana or canopy, under which
+we could see a host of attendants spreading carpets, placing chairs,
+and otherwise making ready for us. The banks of the stream were very
+steep, but the guide at length brought us to what seemed a safe and
+fordable passage. On the further side was a flat expanse of seemingly
+firm and dry sand, but no sooner had our elephants begun to cross it,
+than the whole sandbank for yards began to rock and tremble; the water
+welled up over the footmarks of the elephants, and S. called out to
+us, Fussun, Fussun! quicksand, quicksand! We scattered the elephants,
+and tried to hurry them over the dangerous bit of ground with shouts
+and cries of encouragement.
+
+The poor animals seemed thoroughly to appreciate the danger, and
+shuffled forward as quickly as they could. All got over in safety
+except the last three. The treacherous sand, rendered still more
+insecure by the heavy tread of so many ponderous animals, now gave way
+entirely, and the three hapless elephants were left floundering in the
+tenacious hold of the dreaded fussun. Two of the three were not far
+from the firm bank, and managed to extricate themselves after a short
+struggle; but the third had sunk up to the shoulders, and could
+scarcely move. All hands immediately began cutting long grass and
+forming it into bundles. These were thrown to the sinking elephant. He
+rolled from side to side, the sand quaking and undulating round him in
+all directions. At times he would roll over till nearly half his body
+was invisible. Some of the Nepaulese ventured near, and managed to
+undo the harness-ropes that were holding on the pad. The sagacious
+brute fully understood his danger, and the efforts we were making for
+his assistance. He managed to get several of the big bundles of grass
+under his feet, and stood there looking at us with a most pathetic
+pleading expression, and trembling, as if with an ague, from fear and
+exhaustion.
+
+The old Major came down to meet us, and a crowd of his men added their
+efforts to ours, to help the unfortunate elephant. We threw in bundle
+after bundle of grass, till we had the yielding sand covered with a
+thick passage of firmly bound fascines, on which the hathee,
+staggering and floundering painfully, managed to reach firm land. He
+was so completely exhausted that he could scarcely walk to the tents,
+and we left him there to the care of his attendants. This is a very
+common episode in tiger hunting, and does not always terminate so
+fortunately. In running water, the quicksand is not so dangerous, as
+the force of the stream keeps washing away the sand, and does not
+allow it to settle round the legs of the elephant; but on dry land, a
+dry fussun, as it is called, is justly feared; and many a valuable
+animal has been swallowed up in its slow, deadly, tenacious grasp.
+
+In crossing sand, the heaviest and slowest elephants should go first,
+preceded by a light, nimble pioneer. If the leading elephant shows
+signs of sinking, the others should at once turn back, and seek some
+safer place. In all cases the line should separate a little, and not
+follow in each other's footsteps. The indications of a quicksand are
+easily recognised. If the surface of the sand begins to oscillate and
+undulate with a tremulous rocking motion, it is always wise to seek
+some other passage. Looking back, after elephants have passed, you
+will often see what was a perfectly dry flat, covered with several
+inches of water. When water begins to ooze up in any quantity, after a
+few elephants have passed, it is much safer to make the remainder
+cross at some spot farther on.
+
+In crossing a deep swift river, the elephants should enter the water
+in a line, ranged up and down the river. That is, the line should be
+ranged along the bank, and enter the water at right angles to the
+current, and not in Indian file. The strongest elephants should be up
+stream, as they help to break the force of the current for the weaker
+and smaller animals down below. It is a fine sight to see some thirty
+or forty of these huge animals crossing a deep and rapid river. Some
+are reluctant to strike out, when they begin to enter the deepest
+channel, and try to turn back; the mahouts and 'mates' shout, and
+belabour them with bamboo poles. The trumpeting of the elephants, the
+waving of the trunks, disporting, like huge water-snakes, in the
+perturbed current, the splashing of the bamboos, the dark bodies of
+the natives swimming here and there round the animals, the unwieldy
+boat piled high with how-dahs and pads, the whole heap surmounted by a
+group of sportsmen with their gleaming weapons, and variegated
+puggrees, make up a picturesque and memorable sight. Some of the
+strong swimmers among the elephants seem to enjoy the whole affair
+immensely. They dip their huge heads entirely under the current, the
+sun flashes on the dark hide, glistening with the dripping water; the
+enormous head emerges again slowly, like some monstrous antediluvian
+creation, and with a succession of these ponderous appearances and
+disappearances, the mighty brutes forge through the surging water.
+When they reach a shallow part, they pipe with pleasure, and send
+volumes of fluid splashing against their heaving flanks, scattering
+the spray all round in mimic rainbows.
+
+At all times the Koosee was a dangerous stream to cross, but during
+the rains I have seen the strongest and best swimming elephants taken
+nearly a mile down stream; and in many instances they have been
+drowned, their vast bulk and marvellous strength being quite unable to
+cope with the tremendous force of the raging waters.
+
+When we had got comfortably seated under the shamiana, a crowd of
+attendants brought us baskets of fruit and a very nice cold collation
+of various Indian dishes and curries. We did ample justice to the old
+soldier's hospitable offerings, and then betel-nut, cardamums, cloves,
+and other spices, and pauri leaves, were handed round on a silver
+salver, beautifully embossed and carved with quaint devices. We lit
+our cigars, our beards and handkerchiefs were anointed with attar of
+roses; and the old Major then informed us that there was good khubber
+of tiger in the wood close by.
+
+The trees were splendid specimens of forest growth, enormously thick,
+beautifully umbrageous, and growing very close together. There was a
+dense undergrowth of tangled creeper, and the most lovely ferns and
+tropical plants in the richest luxuriance, and of every conceivable
+shade of amber and green. It was a charming spot. The patch of forest
+was separated from the unbroken line of morung jungle by a beautifully
+sheltered glade of several hundred acres, and further broken in three
+places by avenue-looking openings, disclosing peeps of the black and
+gloomy-looking mass of impenetrable forest beyond.
+
+In the first of these openings we were directed to take up a position,
+while the pad elephants and a crowd of beaters went to the edge of the
+patch of forest and began beating up to us. Immense numbers of genuine
+jungle fowl were calling in all directions, and flying right across
+the opening in numerous coveys. They are beautifully marked with black
+and golden plumes round the neck, and I determined to shoot a few by
+and bye to send home to friends, who I knew would prize them as
+invaluable material in dressing hooks for fly-fishing. The crashing of
+the trees, as the elephants forced their way through the thick forest,
+or tore off huge branches as they struggled amid the matted
+vegetation, kept us all on the alert. The first place was however a
+blank, and we moved on to the next. We had not long to wait, for a
+fierce din inside the jungle, and the excited cries of the beaters,
+apprised us that game of some sort was afoot. We were eagerly
+watching, and speculating on the cause of the uproar, when a very fine
+half-grown tiger cub sprang out of some closely growing fern, and
+dashed across the narrow opening so quickly, that ere we had time to
+raise a gun, he had disappeared in some heavy jhamun jungle on the
+further side of the path.
+
+We hurried round as fast as we could to intercept him, should he
+attempt to break on ahead; and leaving some men to rally the mahouts,
+and let them know that there was a tiger afoot, we were soon in our
+places, and ready to give the cub a warm reception, should he again
+show his stripes. It was not long ere he did so. I spied him stealing
+along the edge of the jungle, evidently intending to make a rush back
+past the opening he had just crossed, and outflank the line of beater
+elephants. I fired and hit him in the forearm; he rolled over roaring
+with rage, and then descrying his assailants, he bounded into the
+open, and as well as his wound would allow him, came furiously down at
+the charge. In less time however than it takes to write it, he had
+received three bullets in his body, and tumbled down a lifeless heap.
+We raised a cheer which brought the beaters and elephants quickly to
+the spot. In coming through a thickly wooded part of the forest, with
+numerous long and pliant creepers intertwisted into a confused tangle
+of rope-like ligaments, the old Juddeah elephant tore down one of the
+long lines, and dislodged an angry army of venomous red ants on the
+occupants of the guddee, or cushioned seat on the elephant's pad. The
+ants proved formidable assailants. There were two or three Baboos or
+native gentlemen, holding on to the ropes, chewing pan, and enjoying
+the scene, but the red ants were altogether more than they had
+bargained for. Recognising the Baboos as the immediate cause of their
+disturbance, they attacked them with indomitable courage. The mahout
+fairly yelled with pain, and one of the Baboos, smarting from the
+fiery bites of the furious insects, toppled clean backwards into the
+undergrowth, showing an undignified pair of heels. The other two
+danced on the guddee, sweeping and thrashing the air, the cushion, and
+their clothes, with their cummerbunds, in the vain effort to free
+themselves of their angry assailants. The guddee was literally covered
+with ants; it looked an animated red mass, and the wretched Baboos
+made frantic efforts to shake themselves clear. They were dreadfully
+bitten, and reaching the open, they slid off the elephant, and even on
+the ground continued their saltatory antics before finally getting rid
+of their ferocious assailants.
+
+In forest shooting the red ant is one of the most dreaded pests of the
+jungle. If a colony gets dislodged from some overhanging branch, and
+is landed in your howdah, the best plan is to evacuate your stronghold
+as quickly as you can, and let the attendants clear away the invaders.
+Their bite is very painful, and they take such tenacious hold, that
+rather than quit their grip, they allow themselves to be decapitated
+and leave their head and formidable forceps sticking in your flesh.
+
+Other dreaded foes in the forest jungle are the Bhowra or ground bees,
+which are more properly a kind of hornet. If by evil chance your
+elephant should tread on their mound-like nest, instantly an angry
+swarm of venomous and enraged hornets comes buzzing about your ears.
+Your only chance is to squat down, and envelope yourself completely in
+a blanket. Old sportsmen, shooting in forest jungle, invariably take a
+blanket Avith them in the howdah, to ensure themselves protection in
+the event of an attack by these blood-thirsty creatures. The thick
+matted creepers too are a great nuisance, for which a bill-hook or
+sharp kookree is an invaluable adjunct to the other paraphernalia of
+the march. I have seen a mahout swept clean off the elephant's back by
+these tenacious creepers, and the elephants themselves are sometimes
+unable to break through the tangle of sinewy, lithe cords, which drape
+the huge forest trees, hanging in slender festoons from every branch.
+Some of them are prickly, and as the elephant slowly forces his way
+through the mass of pendent swaying cords, they lacerate and tear the
+mahout's clothes and skin, and appropriate his puggree. As you crouch
+down within the shelter of your howdah, you can't help pitying the
+poor wretch, and incline to think that, after all, shooting in grass
+jungle has fewer drawbacks and is preferable to forest shooting.
+
+One of the drivers reported that he had seen a bear in the jungle, and
+we saw the earth of one not far from where the young tiger had fallen;
+it was the lair of the sloth bear or _Ursus labialis_, so called from
+his long pendent upper lip. His spoor is very easily distinguished
+from that of any other animal; the ball of the foot shows a distinct
+round impression, and about an inch to an inch and a half further on,
+the impression of the long curved claws are seen. He uses these
+long-curved claws to tear up ant hills, and open hollow decaying
+trees, to get at the honey within, of which he is very fond. We went
+after the bear, and were not long in discovering his whereabouts, and
+a well-directed shot from S. added him to our bag. The best bear
+shooting in India perhaps is in CHOTA NAGPOOR, but this does not come
+within the limits of my present volume. We now beat slowly through the
+wood, keeping a bright look out for ants and hornets, and getting fine
+shooting at the numerous jungle fowl which flew about in amazing
+numbers.
+
+The forest trees in this patch of jungle were very fine. The hill
+seerees, with its feathery foliage and delicate clusters of white
+bugle-shaped blossom; the semul or cotton tree, with its wonderful
+wealth of magnificent crimson flowers; the birch-looking sheeshum or
+sissod; the sombre looking sal; the shining, leathery-leafed bhur,
+with its immense over-arching limbs, and the crisp, curly-leafed
+elegant-looking jhamun or Indian olive, formed a paradise of sylvan
+beauty, on which the eye dwelt till it was sated with the woodland
+loveliness.
+
+In recrossing the dhar or water-course, we took care to avoid the
+quicksands, and as we did not expect to fall in with another tiger, we
+indulged in a little general firing. I shot a fine buck through the
+spine, and we bagged several deer, and no less than five florican;
+this bird is allied to the bustard family, and has beautiful drooping
+feathers, hanging in plumy pendants of deep black and pure white,
+intermingled in the most graceful and showy manner. The male is a
+magnificent bird, and has perhaps as fine plumage as any bird on the
+border; the flesh yields the most delicate eating of any game bird I
+know; the slices of mingled brown and white from the breast are
+delicious. The birds are rather shy, generally getting up a long way
+in front of the line, and moving with a slow, rather clumsy, flight,
+not unlike the flight of the white earth owl. They run with great
+swiftness, and are rather hard to kill, unless hit about the neck and
+head. There are two sorts, the lesser and the greater, the former also
+called the bastard florican. Altogether they are noble looking birds,
+and the sportsman is always glad to add as many florican as he can to
+his bag.
+
+We were now nearing the locality of the fierce fire of the morning; it
+was still blazing in a long extended line of flame, and we witnessed
+an incident without parallel in the experience of any of us. I fired
+at and wounded a large stag; it was wounded somewhere in the side, and
+seemed very hard hit indeed. Maddened probably by terror and pain, it
+made straight for the line of fire, and bounded unhesitatingly right
+into the flame. We saw it distinctly go clean though the flames, but
+we could not see whether it got away with its life, as the elephants
+would not go up to the fire. At all events, the stag went right
+through his fiery ordeal, and was lost to us. We started numerous
+hares close to camp, and S. bowled over several. They are very common
+in the short grass jungle, where the soil is sandy, and are frequently
+to be found among thin jowah jungle; they afford good sport for
+coursing, but are neither so fleet, nor so large, nor such good eating
+as the English hare. In fact, they are very dry eating, and the best
+way to cook them is to jug them, or make a hunter's pie, adding
+portions of partridge, quail, or plover, with a few mushrooms, and a
+modicum of ham or bacon if these are procurable.
+
+We reached camp pretty late, and sent off venison, birds, and other
+spoils to Mrs. S. and to Inamputte factory. Our bag shewed a diversity
+of spoil, consisting of one tiger, seven hog-deer, one bear _(Ursus
+labialis)_, seventeen jungle fowl, five florican, and six hares. It
+was no bad bag considering that during most of the day we had been
+beating solely for tiger. We could have shot many more deer and jungle
+fowl, but we never try to shoot more than are needed to satisfy the
+wants of the camp. Were we to attempt to shoot at all the deer and pig
+that we see, the figures would reach very large totals. As a rule
+therefore, the records of Indian sportsmen give no idea of the vast
+quantities of game that are put up and never fired at. It would be the
+very wantonness of destruction, to shoot animals not wanted for some
+specific purpose, unless indeed, you were raging an indiscriminate war
+of extermination, in a quarter where their numbers were a nuisance and
+prejudicial to crops. In that case, your proceedings would not be
+dignified by the name of sport.
+
+After a few more days shooting, the incidents of which were pretty
+much like those I have been describing, I started back for the
+factory. I sent my horse on ahead, and took five elephants with me to
+beat up for game on the homeward route. Close to camp a fine buck got
+up in front of me. I broke both his forelegs with my first shot, but
+the poor brute still managed to hobble along. It was in some very
+dense patair jungle, and I had considerable difficulty in bringing him
+to bag. When we reached the ghat or ferry, I ordered Geerdharee Jha's
+mahout to cross with his elephant. The brute, however, refused to
+cross the river alone, and in spite of all the driver could do, she
+insisted on following the rest. I got down, and some of the other
+drivers got out the hobbles and bound them round her legs. In spite of
+these she still seemed determined to follow us. She shook the bedding
+and other articles with which she was loaded off her back, and made a
+frantic effort to follow us through the deep sand. The iron chains cut
+into her legs, and, afraid that she might do herself an irreparable
+injury, I had her tied up to a tree, and left her trumpeting and
+making an indignant lamentation at being separated from the rest of
+the line.
+
+The elephant seems to be quite a social animal. I have frequently seen
+cases where, after having been in company together for a lengthened
+hunt, they have manifested great reluctance to separate. In leaving
+the line, I have often noticed the single elephant looking back at his
+comrades, and giving vent to his disappointment and disapproval, by
+grunts and trumpetings of indignant protest. We left the refractory
+hathee tied up to her tree, and as we crossed the long rolling billows
+of burning sand that lay athwart our course, she was soon lost to
+view. I shot a couple more hog-deer, and got several plover and teal
+in the patches of water that lay in some of the hollows among the
+sandbanks. I fired at a huge alligator basking in the sun, on a
+sandbank close to the stream. The bullet hit him somewhere in the
+forearm, and he made a tremendous sensation header into the current.
+From the agitation in the water, he seemed not to appreciate the
+leaden message which I had sent him.
+
+We found the journey through the soft yielding sand very fatiguing,
+and especially trying to the eyes. When not shooting, it is a very
+wise precaution to wear eye-preservers or 'goggles.' They are a great
+relief to the eyes, and the best, I think, are the neutral tinted.
+During the west winds, when the atmosphere is loaded with fine
+particles of irritating sand and dust, these goggles are very
+necessary, and are a great protection to the sight.
+
+Another prudent precaution is to have the back of one's shirt or coat
+slightly padded with cotton and quilted. The heat prevents one wearing
+thick clothes, and there is no doubt that the action of the direct
+rays of the burning sun all down the back on the spinal cord, is very
+injurious, and may be a fruitful cause of sunstroke. It is certainly
+productive of great lassitude and weariness. I used to wear a thin
+quilted sort of shield made of cotton-drill, which fastened round the
+shoulders and waist. It does not incommode one's action in any
+particular, and is, I think, a great protection against the fierce
+rays of the sun. Many prefer the puggree as a head-piece. It is
+undeniably a fine thing when one is riding on horseback, as it fits
+close to the head, does not catch the wind during a smart trot or
+canter, and is therefore not easily shaken off. For riding I think it
+preferable to all other headdresses. A good thick puggree is a great
+protection to the back of the head and neck, the part of the body
+which of all others requires protection from the sun. It feels rather
+heavy at first, but one gets used to it, and it does not shade the
+eyes and face. These are the two gravest objections to it, but for
+comfort, softness, and protection to the head and neck, I do not think
+it can be surpassed.
+
+After crossing the sand, we again entered some thin scrubby acacia
+jungle, with here and there a moist swampy nullah, with rank green
+patair jungle growing in the cool dank shade. Here we disturbed a
+colony of pigs, but the four mahouts being Mahommedans I did not fire.
+As we went along, one of my men called my attention to some footprints
+near a small lagoon. On inspection we found they were rhinoceros
+tracks, evidently of old date. These animals are often seen in this
+part of the country, but are more numerous farther north, in the great
+morung forest jungle.
+
+A very noticeable feature in these jungles was the immense quantity of
+bleached ghastly skeletons of cattle. This year had been a most
+disastrous one for cattle. Enormous numbers had been swept off by
+disease, and in many villages bordering on the morung the herds had
+been well-nigh exterminated. Little attention is paid to breeding. In
+some districts, such as the Mooteeharree and Mudhobunnee division,
+fine cart-bullocks are bred, carefully handled and tended, and fetch
+high prices. In Kurruchpore, beyond the Ganges in Bhaugulpore
+district, cattle of a small breed, hardy, active, staunch, and strong,
+are bred in great numbers, and are held in great estimation for
+agricultural requirements; but in these Koosee jungles the bulls are
+often ill-bred weedy brutes, and the cows being much in excess of a
+fair proportion of bulls, a deal of in-breeding takes place; unmatured
+young bulls roam about with the herd, and the result is a crowd of
+cattle that succumb to the first ailment, so that the land is littered
+with their bones.
+
+The bullock being indispensable to the Indian cultivator, bull calves
+are prized, taken care of, well nurtured, and well fed. The cow calves
+are pretty much left to take care of themselves; they are thin,
+miserable, half-starved brutes, and the short-sighted ryot seems
+altogether to forget that it is on these miserable withered specimens
+that he must depend for his supply of plough and cart-bullocks. The
+matter is most shamefully neglected. Government occasionally through
+its officers, experimental farms, etc., tries to get good sire stock
+for both horses and cattle, but as long as the dams are bad--mere
+weeds, without blood, bone, muscle, or stamina, the produce must be
+bad. As a pretty well established and general rule, the ryots look
+after their bullocks,--they recognise their value, and appreciate
+their utility, but the cows fare badly, and from all I have myself
+seen, and from the concurrent testimony of many observant friends in
+the rural districts, I should say that the breed has become much
+deteriorated.
+
+Old planters constantly tell you, that such cattle as they used to get
+are not now procurable for love or money. Within the last twenty years
+prices have more than doubled, because the demand for good
+plough-bullocks has been more urgent, as a consequence of increased
+cultivation, and the supply is not equal to the demand. Attention to
+the matter is imperative, and planters would be wise in their own
+interests to devote a little time and trouble to disseminating sound
+ideas about the selection of breeding stock, and the principles of
+rearing and raising stock among their ryots and dependants. Every
+factory should be able to breed its own cattle, and supply its own
+requirements for plough and cart-bullocks. It would be cheaper in the
+end, and it would undoubtedly be a blessing to the country to raise
+the standard of cattle used in agricultural work.
+
+To return from this digression. We plodded on and on, weary, hot, and
+thirsty, expecting every moment to see the ghat and my waiting horse.
+But the country here is so wild, the river takes such erratic courses
+during the annual floods, and the district is so secluded and so
+seldom visited by Europeans or factory servants, that my syce had
+evidently lost his way. After we had crossed innumerable streams, and
+laboriously traversed mile upon mile of burning sand, we gave up the
+attempt to find the ghat, and made for Nathpore.
+
+Nathpore was formerly a considerable town, not far from the Nepaul
+border, a flourishing grain mart and emporium for the fibres, gums,
+spices, timbers, and other productions of a wide frontier. There was a
+busy and crowded bazaar, long streets of shops and houses, and
+hundreds of boats lying in the stream beside the numerous ghats,
+taking in and discharging their cargoes. It may give a faint idea of
+the destructive force of an Indian stream like the Koosee when it is
+in full flood, to say that this once flourishing town is now but a
+handful of miserable huts. Miles of rich lands, once clothed with
+luxuriant crops of rice, indigo, and waving grain, are now barren
+reaches of burning sand. The bleached skeletons of mango, jackfruit,
+and other trees, stretch out their leafless and lifeless branches, to
+remind the spectator of the time when their foliage rustled in the
+breeze, when their lusty limbs bore rich clusters of luscious fruit,
+and when the din of the bazaar resounded beneath their welcome shade.
+A fine old lady still lived in a two-storied brick building, with
+quaint little darkened rooms, and a narrow verandah running all round
+the building. She was long past the allotted threescore years and ten,
+with a keen yet mildly beaming eye, and a wealth of beautiful hair as
+white as driven snow, neatly gathered back from her shapely forehead.
+She was the last remaining link connecting the present with the past
+glories of Nathpore. Her husband had been a planter and Zemindar.
+Where his vats had stood laden with rich indigo, the engulphing sand
+now reflected the rays of the torrid sun from its burning whiteness.
+She shewed me a picture of the town as it appeared to her when she had
+been brought there many a long and weary year ago, ere yet her step
+had lost its lightness, and when she was in the bloom of her bridal
+life. There was a fine broad boulevard, shadowed by splendid trees, on
+which she and her husband had driven in their carriage of an evening,
+through crowds of prosperous and contented traders and cultivators.
+The hungry river had swept all this away. Subsisting on a few
+precarious rents of some little plots of ground that it had spared,
+all that remained of a once princely estate, this good old lady lived
+her lonely life cheerful and contented, never murmuring or repining.
+The river had not spared even the graves of her departed dear ones.
+Since I left that part of the country I hear that she has been called
+away to join those who had gone before her.
+
+I arrived at her house late in the afternoon. I had never been at
+Nathpore before, although the place was well known to me by
+reputation. What a wreck it presented as our elephants marched
+through. Ruined, dismantled, crumbling temples; masses of masonry half
+submerged in the swift-running, treacherous, undermining stream; huge
+trees lying prostrate, twisted and jammed together where the angry
+flood had hurled them; bare unsightly poles and piles, sticking from
+the water at every angle, reminding us of the granaries and godowns
+that were wont to be filled with the agricultural wealth of the
+districts for miles around; hard metalled roads cut abruptly off, and
+bridges with only half an arch, standing lonely and ruined half way in
+the muddy current that swept noiselessly past the deserted city. It
+was a scene of utter waste and desolation.
+
+The lady I mentioned made me very welcome, and I was struck by her
+unaffected cheerfulness and gentleness. She was a gentlewoman indeed,
+and though reduced in circumstances, surrounded by misfortunes, and
+daily and hourly reminded by the scattered wreck around her of her
+former wealth and position, she bore all with exemplary fortitude, and
+to the full extent of her scanty means she relieved the sorrows and
+ailments of the natives. They all loved and respected, and I could not
+help admiring and honouring her.
+
+She pointed out to me, far away on the south-east horizon, the place
+where the river ran in its shallow channel when she first came to
+Nathpore. During her experience it had cut into and overspread more
+than twenty miles of country, turning fertile fields into arid wastes
+of sand; sweeping away factories, farms, and villages; and changing
+the whole face of the country from a fruitful landscape into a
+wilderness of sand and swamp.
+
+My horse came up in the evening, and I rode over to Inamputte,
+leaving my kindly hostess in her solitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+Exciting jungle scene.--The camp.--All quiet.--Advent of the cowherds.
+--A tiger close by.--Proceed to the spot.--Encounter between tigress
+and buffaloes.--Strange behaviour of the elephant.--Discovery and
+capture of four cubs.--Joyful return to camp.--Death of the tigress.
+--Night encounter with a leopard.--The haunts of the tiger and our
+shooting grounds.
+
+One of the most exciting and deeply interesting scenes I ever
+witnessed in the jungles, was on the occasion I have referred to in a
+former chapter, when speaking of the number of young given by the
+tigress at a birth. It was in the month of March, at the village of
+Ryseree, in Bhaugulpore. I had been encamped in the midst of
+twenty-four beautiful tanks, the history and construction of which
+were lost in the mists of tradition. The villagers had a story that
+these tanks were the work of a mighty giant, Bheema, with whose aid
+and that of his brethren they had been excavated in a single night.
+
+At all events, they were now covered with a wild tangle of water
+lilies and aquatic plants; well stocked with magnificent fish, and an
+occasional scaly monster of a saurian. They were the haunt of vast
+quantities of widgeon, teal, whistlers, mallard, ducks, snipe, curlew,
+blue fowl, and the usual varied _habitués_ of an exceptionally good
+Indian lake. In the vicinity hares were numerous, and in the thick
+jungle bordering the tanks in places, and consisting mostly of nurkool
+and wild rose, hog-deer and wild pig were abundant. The dried-up bed
+of an old arm of the Koosee was quite close to my camp, and abounded
+in sandpiper, and golden, grey, goggle-eyed, and stilted plover,
+besides other game.
+
+It was indeed a favourite camping spot, and the village was inhabited
+by a hardy, independent set of Gwallas, Koormees, and agriculturists,
+with whom I was a prime favourite.
+
+I was sitting in my tent, going over some village accounts with the
+village putwarrie, and my gomasta. A possé of villagers were grouped
+under the grateful shade of a gnarled old mango tree, whose contorted
+limbs bore evidence to the violence of many a _tufan_, or tempest,
+which it had weathered. The usual confused clamour of tongues was
+rising from this group, and the sub; ect of debate was the eternal
+'pice.' Behind the bank, and in rear of the tent, the cook and his
+mate were disembowelling a hapless _moorghee_, a fowl, whose
+decapitation had just been effected with a huge jagged old cavalry
+sword, of which my cook was not a little proud; and on the strength of
+which he adopted fierce military airs, and gave an extra turn to his
+well-oiled moustache when he went abroad for a holiday.
+
+Farther to the rear a line of horses were picketed, including my
+man-eating demon the white Cabool stallion, my gentle country-bred
+mare Motee--the pearl--and my handsome little pony mare, formerly my
+hockey or polo steed, a present from a gallant sportsman and rare good
+fellow, as good a judge of a horse, or a criminal, as ever sat on a
+bench.
+
+Behind the horses, each manacled by weighty chains, with his ponderous
+trunk and ragged-looking tail swaying too and fro with a never-ceasing
+motion, stood a line of ten elephants. Their huge leathery ears
+flapped lazily, and ever and anon one or other would seize a mighty
+branch, and belabour his corrugated sides to free himself of the
+detested and troublesome flies. The elephants were placidly munching
+their _chana_ (bait, or food), and occasionally giving each other a
+dry bath in the shape of a shower of sand. There was a monotonous
+clank of chains, and an occasional deep abdominal rumble like distant
+thunder. All over the camp there was a confused subdued medley of
+sound. A hum from the argumentative villagers, a lazy flop in the tank
+as a raho rose to the surface, an occasional outburst from the ducks,
+an angry clamour from the water-hens and blue-fowl. My dogs were lying
+round me blinking and winking, and making an occasional futile snap at
+an imaginary fly or flea. It was a drowsy and peaceful scene. I was
+nearly dropping off to sleep, from the heat and the monotonous drone
+of the putwarrie, who was intoning nasally some formidable document
+about fishery rights and privileges.
+
+Suddenly there was a hush. Every sound seemed to stop simultaneously
+as if by pre-arranged concert. Then three men were seen rushing madly
+along the elevated ridge surrounding one of the tanks. I recognised
+one of my peons, and with him two cowherds. Their head-dresses were
+all disarranged, and their parted lips, heaving chests, and eyes
+blazing with excitement, shewed that they were brimful of some unusual
+message.
+
+Now arose such a bustle in the camp as no description could adequately
+portray. The elephants trumpeted and piped; the _syces_, or grooms,
+came rushing up with eager queries; the villagers bustled about like
+so many ants aroused by the approach of a hostile foe; my pack of
+terriers yelped out in chorus; the pony neighed; the Cabool stallion
+plunged about; my servants came rushing from the shelter of the tent
+verandah with disordered dress; the ducks rose in a quacking crowd,
+and circled round and round the tent; and the cry arose of 'Bagh!
+Bagh! Khodamund! Arree Bap re Bap! Ram Ram, Seeta Ram!'
+
+Breathless with running, the men now tumbled up, hurriedly salaamed,
+arid then each with gasps and choking stops, and pell-mell volubility,
+and amid a running fire of cries, queries, and interjections from the
+mob, began to unfold their tale. There was an infuriated tigress at
+the other side of the nullah, or dry watercourse, she had attacked a
+herd of buffaloes, and it was believed that she had cubs.
+
+Already Debnarain Singh was getting his own pad elephant caparisoned,
+and my bearer was diving under my camp bed for my gun and cartridges.
+Knowing the little elephant to be a fast walker, and fairly staunch, I
+got on her back, and accompanied by the gomasta and mahout we set out,
+followed by the peon and herdsmen to shew us the way.
+
+I expected two friends, officers from Calcutta, that very day, and
+wished not to kill the tigress but to keep her for our combined
+shooting next day. We had not proceeded far when, on the other side of
+the nullah, we saw dense clouds of dust rising, and heard a confused,
+rushing, trampling sound, mingled with the clashing of horns, and the
+snorting of a herd of angry buffaloes.
+
+It was the wildest sight I have ever seen in connection with animal
+life. The buffaloes were drawn together in the form of a crescent;
+their eyes glared fiercely, and as they advanced in a series of short
+runs, stamping with their hoofs, and angrily lashing their tails,
+their horns would come together with a clanging, clattering crash, and
+they would paw the sand, snort and toss their heads, and behave in the
+most extraordinary manner.
+
+The cause of all this commotion was not far to seek. Directly in
+front, retreating slowly, with stealthy, prowling, crawling steps, and
+an occasional short, quick leap or bound to one side or the other, was
+a magnificent tigress, looking the very personification of baffled
+fury. Ever and anon she crouched down to the earth, tore up the sand
+with her claws, lashed her tail from side to side, and with lips
+retracted, long moustaches quivering with wrath, and hateful eyes
+scintillating with rage and fury, she seemed to meditate an attack on
+the angry buffaloes. The serried array of clashing horns, and the
+ponderous bulk of the herd, seemed however to daunt the snarling
+vixen; at their next rush she would bound back a few paces, crouch
+down, growl, and be forced to move back again, by the short,
+blundering rush of the crowd.
+
+All the calves and old cows were in the rear of the herd, and it was
+not a little comical to witness their ungainly attitudes. They would
+stretch their clumsy necks, and shake their heads, as if they did not
+rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they stopped too
+long to indulge their curiosity, there was a danger of their getting
+separated from the fighting members of the herd, they would make a
+stupid, headlong, lumbering lurch forward, and jostle each other, in
+their blundering panic.
+
+It was a grand sight. The tigress was the embodiment of lithe and
+savage beauty, but her features expressed the wildest baffled rage. I
+could have shot the striped vixen over and over again, but I wished to
+keep her for my friends, and I was thrilled with the excitement of
+such a novel scene.
+
+Suddenly our elephant trumpeted, and shied quickly to one side, from
+something lying on the ground. Curling up its trunk it began backing
+and piping at a prodigious rate.
+
+'Hullo! what's the matter now?' said I to Debnarain.
+
+'God only knows,' said he.
+
+'A young tiger!' 'Bagh ka butcha!' screams our mahout, and regardless
+of the elephant or of our cries to stop, he scuttled down the pad rope
+like a monkey down a backstay, and clutching a young dead tiger cub,
+threw it up to Debnarain; it was about the size of a small poodle, and
+had evidently been trampled by the pursuing herd of buffaloes.
+
+'There may be others,' said the gomasta; and peering into every bush,
+we went slowly on.
+
+The elephant now shewed decided symptoms of dislike and a reluctance
+to approach a particular dense clump of grass.
+
+A sounding whack on the head, however, made her quicken her steps, and
+thrusting the long stalks aside, she discovered for us three blinking
+little cubs, brothers of the defunct, and doubtless part of the same
+litter. Their eyes were scarcely open, and they lay huddled together
+like three enormous striped kittens, and spat at us and bristled their
+little moustaches much as an angry cat would do. All the four were
+males.
+
+It was not long ere I had them carefully wrapped in the mahout's
+blanket. Overjoyed at our good fortune, we left the excited buffaloes
+still executing their singular war-dance, and the angry tigress,
+robbed of her whelps, consuming her soul in baffled fury.
+
+We heard her roaring through the night, close to camp, and on my
+friends' arrival, we beat her up next morning, and she fell pierced by
+three bullets, after a fierce and determined charge. We came upon her
+across the nullah, and her mind was evidently made up to fight. Nearly
+all the villagers had turned out with the line of elephants. Before we
+had time to order them away, she came down upon the line, roaring
+furiously, and bounding over the long grass,--a most magnificent
+sight.
+
+My first bullet took her full in the chest, and before she could make
+good her charge, a ball each from Pat and Captain G. settled her
+career. She was beautifully striped, and rather large for a tigress,
+measuring nine feet three inches.
+
+It was now a question with me, how to rear the three interesting
+orphans; we thought a slut from some of the villages would prove the
+best wet nurse, and tried accordingly to get one, but could not. In
+the meantime an unhappy goat was pounced on and the three young-tigers
+took to her teats as if 'to the manner born.' The poor Nanny screamed
+tremendously at first sight of them, but she soon got accustomed to
+them, and when they grew a little bigger, she would often playfully
+butt at them with her horns.
+
+The little brutes throve wonderfully, and soon developed such an
+appetite that I had to get no less than six goats to satisfy their
+constant thirst. I kept the cubs for over two months, and I shall not
+soon forget the excitement I caused, when my boat stopped at
+Sahribgunge, and my goats, tiger cubs, and attendants, formed a
+procession from the ghat or landing-place, to the railway station.
+
+Soldiers, guards, engineers, travellers, and crowds of natives
+surrounded me, and at every station the guard's van, with my novel
+menagerie, was the centre of attraction. I sold the cubs to Jamrach's
+agent in Calcutta for a very satisfactory price. Two of them were very
+powerful, finely marked, handsome animals; the third had always been
+sickly, had frequent convulsions, and died a few days after I sold it.
+I was afterwards told that the milk diet was a mistake, and that I
+should have fed them on raw meat. However, I was very well satisfied
+on the whole with the result of my adventure.
+
+I had another in the same part of the country, which at the time was a
+pretty good test of the state of my nerves.
+
+I was camped out at the village of Purindaha, on the edge of a gloomy
+sal forest, which was reported to contain numerous leopards. The
+villagers were a mixed lot of low-caste Hindoos, and Nepaulese
+settlers. They had been fighting with the factory, and would not pay
+up their rents, and I was trying, with every probability of success,
+to make an amicable arrangement with them. At all events, I had so far
+won them round, that they were willing to talk to me. They came to the
+tent and listened quietly, and except on the subject of rent, we got
+on in the most friendly manner.
+
+It was the middle of April. The heat was intense. The whole atmosphere
+had that coppery look which denotes extreme heat, and the air was
+loaded with fine yellow dust, which the daily west wind bore on its
+fever laden wings, to disturb the lungs and tempers of all good
+Christians. The _kanats_, or canvas walls of the tent, had all been
+taken down for coolness, and my camp bed lay in one corner, open all
+round to the outside air, but only sheltered from the dew. It had been
+a busy day. I had been going over accounts, and talking to the
+villagers till I was really hoarse. After a light dinner I lay down on
+my bed, but it was too close and hot to sleep. By and bye the various
+sounds died out. The tom-toming ceased in the village. My servants
+suspended their low muttered gossip round the cook's fire, wrapped
+themselves in their white cloths, and dropped into slumber. 'Toby,'
+'Nettle,' 'Whisky,' 'Pincher,' and my other terriers, resembled so
+many curled-up hairy balls, and were in the land of dreams.
+Occasionally an owl would give a melancholy hoot from the forest, or a
+screech owl would raise a momentary and damnable din. At intervals,
+the tinkle of a cow-bell sounded faintly in the distance. I tossed
+restlessly, thinking of various things, till I must have dropped off
+into an uneasy fitful sleep. I know not how long I had been dozing,
+but of a sudden I felt myself wide awake, though with my eyes yet
+firmly closed.
+
+I was conscious of some terrible unknown impending danger. I had
+experienced the same feeling before on waking from a nightmare, but I
+knew that the danger now was real. I felt a shrinking horror, a
+terrible and nameless fear, and for the life of me I could not move
+hand or foot. I was lying on my side, and could distinctly hear the
+thumping of my heart. A cold sweat broke out behind my ears and over
+my neck and chest. I could analyse my every feeling, and I knew there
+was some PRESENCE in the tent, and that I was in instant and imminent
+peril. Suddenly in the distance a pariah dog gave a prolonged
+melancholy howl. As if this had broken the spell which had hitherto
+bound me, I opened my eyes, and within ten inches of my face, there
+was a handsome leopardess gazing steadily at me. Our eyes met, and how
+long we confronted each other I know not. It must have been some
+minutes. Her eyes contracted and expanded, the pupil elongated and
+then opened out into a round lustrous globe. I could see the lithe
+tail oscillating at its extreme tip, with a gentle waving motion, like
+that of a cat when hunting birds in the garden. I seemed to possess no
+will. I believe I was under a species of fascination, but we continued
+our steady stare at each other.
+
+Just then, there was a movement by some of the horses. The leopard
+slowly turned her head, and I grasped the revolver which lay under my
+pillow. The beautiful spotted monster turned her head for an instant,
+and shewed her teeth, and then with one bound went through the open
+side of the tent. I fired two shots, which were answered with a roar.
+The din that followed would have frightened the devil. It was a
+beautiful clear night, with a moon at the full, and everything shewed
+as plainly as at noonday. The servants uttered exclamations of terror.
+The terriers went into an agony of yelps and barks. The horses
+snorted, and tried to get loose, and my chowkeydar, who had been
+asleep on his watch, thinking a band of dacoits were on us, began
+laying round him with his staff, shouting, _Chor, Chor! lagga, lagga,
+lagga!_ that is, 'thief, thief! lay on, lay on, lay on!'
+
+The leopard was hit, and evidently in a terrible temper. She halted
+not thirty paces from the tent, beside a jhamun tree, and seemed
+undecided whether to go on or return and wreak her vengeance on me.
+That moment decided her fate. I snatched down my Express rifle, which
+was hanging in two loops above my bed, and shot her right through the
+heart.
+
+I never understood how she could have made her way past dogs,
+servants, horses, and watchman, right into the tent, without raising
+some alarm. It must have been more from curiosity than any hostile
+design. I know that my nerves were very rudely shaken, but I became
+the hero of the Purindaha villagers. I believe that my night adventure
+with the leopardess did more to bring them round to a settlement than
+all my eloquence and figures.
+
+The river Koosee, on the banks of which, and in the long grass plains
+adjacent, most of the incidents I have recorded took place, takes its
+rise at the base of Mount Everest, and, after draining nearly the
+whole of Eastern. Nepaul, emerges by a deep gorge from the hills at
+the north-west corner of Purneah. The stream runs with extreme
+velocity. It is known as a snow stream. The water is always cold, and
+generally of a milky colour, containing much fine white sand. No
+sooner does it leave its rocky bed than it tears through the flat
+country by numerous channels. It is subject to very sudden rises. A
+premonitory warning of these is generally given. The water becomes of
+a turbid, almost blood-like colour. Sometimes I have seen the river
+rise over thirty feet in twenty-four hours. The melting of the snow
+often makes a raging torrent, level from bank to bank, where only a
+few hours before a horse could have forded the stream without wetting
+the girths of the saddle.
+
+In 1876 the largest channel was a swift broad stream called the Dhaus.
+The river is very capricious, seldom flowing for any length of time in
+one channel. This is owing in great measure to the amount of silt it
+carries with it from the hills, in its impetuous progress to the
+plains.
+
+In these dry watercourses, among the sand ridges, beside the humid
+marshy hollows, and among the thick strips of grass jungle, tigers are
+always to be found. They are much less numerous now however than
+formerly. As a rule, there is no shelter in these water-worn,
+flood-ravaged tracts and sultry jungles. Occasionally a few straggling
+plantain trees, a clump of sickly-looking bamboos, a cluster of tall
+shadowless palms, marks the site of a deserted village. All else is
+waving grass, withered and dry. The villages, inhabited mostly by a
+few cowherds, boatmen, and rice-farmers are scattered at wide
+intervals. In the shooting season, and when the hot winds are blowing,
+the only shadow on the plain is that cast by the dense volumes of
+lurid smoke, rising in blinding clouds from the jungle fires.
+
+According to the season, animal life fluctuates strangely. During the
+rains, when the river is in full flood, and much of the country
+submerged, most of the animals migrate to the North, buffaloes and
+wild pig alone keeping possession, of the higher ridges in the
+neighbourhood of their usual haunts.
+
+The contrasts presented on these plains at different seasons of the
+year are most remarkable. In March and April they are parched up,
+brown, and dead; great black patches showing the track of a destroying
+fire, the fine brown ash from the burnt grass penetrating the eyes and
+nostrils, and sweeping along in eddying and blinding clouds. They then
+look the very picture of an untenable waste, a sea of desolation,
+whose limits blend in the extreme distance with the shimmering coppery
+horizon. In the rainy season these arid-looking wastes are covered
+with tall-plumed, reed-like, waving grass, varying from two to ten
+feet in height, stretching in an unbroken sweep as far as the eye can
+reach, except where an abrupt line shews that the swift river has its
+treacherous course. After the rains, progress through the jungle is
+dangerous. Quicksands and beds of tenacious mud impede one at every
+step. The rich vegetation springs up green and vigorous, with a
+rapidity only to be seen in the Tropics. But what a glorious hunting
+ground! What a preserve for Nimrod! Deer forest, or heathered moor,
+can never compete with the old Koosee Derahs for abundance of game and
+thrilling excitement in sport. My genial, happy, loyal comrades
+too--while memory lasts the recollection of your joyous, frank,
+warm-hearted comradeship shall never fade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Remarks on guns.--How to cure skins.--Different recipes.--Conclusion.
+
+My remarks on guns shall be brief. The true sportsman has many
+facilities for acquiring the best information on a choice of weapons.
+For large game perhaps nothing can equal the Express rifle. My own
+trusty weapon was a '500 bore, very plain, with a pistol grip, point
+blank up to 180 yards, made by Murcott of the Haymarket, from whom I
+have bought over twenty guns, every one of which turned out a splendid
+weapon.
+
+My next favourite was a No. 12 breachloader, very light, but strong
+and carefully finished. It had a side snap action with rebounding
+locks, and was the quickest gun to fire and reload I ever possessed. I
+bought it from the same maker, although it was manufactured by W.W.
+Greener.
+
+Avoid a cheap gun as you would avoid a cheap Jew pedlar. A good name
+is above riches so far as a gun is concerned, and when you have a good
+gun take as much care of it as you would of a good wife. They are both
+equally rare. An expensive gun is not necessarily a good one, but a
+cheap gun is very seldom trustworthy. Have a portable, handy black
+leather case. Keep your gun always clean, bright, and free from rust.
+After every day's shooting see that the barrels and locks are
+carefully cleaned and oiled. Nothing is better for this purpose than
+rangoon oil.
+
+For preserving horns, a little scraping and varnishing are all that is
+required. While in camp it is a good plan to rub them with deer, or
+pig, or tiger fat, as it keeps them from cracking.
+
+To clean a tiger's or other skull. If there be a nest of ants near the
+camp, place the skull in their immediate vicinity. Some recommend
+putting in water till the particles of flesh rot, or till the skull is
+cleared by the fishes. A strong solution of caustic water may be used
+if you wish to get the bones cleaned very quickly. Some put the skulls
+in quicklime, but it has a tendency to make the bones splinter, and it
+is difficult to keep the teeth from getting loose and dropping out.
+The best but slowest plan is to fix them in mechanically by wire or
+white lead. A good preservative is to wash or paint them with a very
+strong solution of fine lime and water.
+
+To cure skins. I know no better recipe than the one adopted by my
+trainers in the art of _shibar_, the brothers S. I cannot do better
+than give a description of the process in the words of George himself.
+
+'Skin the animal in the usual way. Cut from the corner of the mouth,
+down the throat, and along the belly. A white stripe or border
+generally runs along the belly. This should be left as nearly as
+possible equal on both sides. Carefully cut the fleshy parts off the
+lips and balls of the toes and feet. Clean away every particle of
+fatty or fleshy matter that may still adhere to the skin. Peg it out
+on the ground with the hair side undermost. When thoroughly scraped
+clean of all extraneous matter on the inner surface, get a bucket or
+tub of buttermilk, which is called by the natives _dahye_ or _mutha_.
+It is a favourite article of diet with them, cheap and plentiful. Dip
+the skin in this, and keep it well and entirely submerged by placing
+some heavy weight on it. It should be submerged fully three inches in
+the tub of buttermilk.
+
+'After two days in the milk bath, take it out and peg it as before.
+Now take a smooth oval rubbing-board about twelve inches long, five
+round, and about an inch thick in the middle, and scrub the skin
+heartily with this instrument. On its lower surface it should be cuts
+in grooves, semicircular in shape, half an inch wide, and one inch
+apart. During scrubbing use plenty of pure water to remove filth. In
+about half an hour the pinkish-white colour will disappear, and the
+skin will appear white, with a blackish tinge underneath. This is the
+true hide.
+
+'Again submerge in the buttermilk bath for twenty-four hours, and get
+a man to tread on it in every possible way, folding it and unfolding
+it, till all has been thoroughly worked.
+
+'Take it out again, peg out and scrub it as before, after which wash
+the whole hide well in clear water. Never mind if the skin looks
+rotten, it is really not so.
+
+'When washed put it into a tub, in which you have first placed a
+mixture consisting of half an ounce of alum to each gallon of water.
+Soak the skin in this mixture for about six hours, taking it up
+occasionally to drain a little. This is sufficient to cure your skin
+and clean it.'
+
+The tanning remains to be done.
+
+'Get four pounds of babool, tamarind, or dry oak bark. (The babool is
+a kind of acacia, and is easily procurable, as the tamarind also is).
+Boil the bark in two gallons of water till it is reduced to one half
+the quantity. Add to this nine gallons of fresh water, and in this
+solution souse the skin for two, or three, or four days.
+
+'The hairs having been set by the soaking in alum, the skin will tan
+more quickly, and if the tan is occasionally rubbed into the pores of
+the skin it will be an improvement. You can tell when the tanning is
+complete by the colour the skin assumes. When this satisfies the eye,
+take it out and drain on a rod. When nearly dry it should be curried
+with olive oil or clarified butter if required for wear, but if only
+for floor covering or carriage rug, the English curriers' common
+'dubbin,' sold by shopkeepers, is best. This operation, which must be
+done on the inner side only, is simple.
+
+'Another simple recipe, and one which answers well, is this. Mix
+together of the best English soap, four ounces; arsenic, two and a
+half grains; camphor, two ounces; alum, half an ounce; saltpetre, half
+an ounce. Boil the whole, and keep stirring, in a half-pint of
+distilled water, over a very slow fire, for from ten to fifteen
+minutes. Apply when cool with a sponge. A little sweet oil may be
+rubbed on the skins after they are dry.
+
+'Another good method is to apply arsenical soap, which may be made as
+follows: powdered arsenic, two pounds; camphor, five ounces; white
+soap, sliced thin, two pounds; salt of tartar, twelve drams; chalk, or
+powdered fine lime, four ounces; add a small quantity of water first
+to the soap, put over a gentle fire, and keep stirring. When melted,
+add the lime and tartar, and thoroughly mix; next add the arsenic,
+keeping up a constant motion, and lastly the camphor. The camphor
+should first be reduced to a powder by means of a little spirits of
+wine, and should be added to the mess after it has been taken off the
+fire.
+
+'This preparation must be kept in a well-stoppered jar, or properly
+closed pot. When ready, the soap should be of the consistency of
+Devonshire cream. To use, add water till it becomes of the consistency
+of clear rich soup.'
+
+I have now finished my book. It has been pleasant to me to write down
+these recollections. Ever since I began my task, death has been busy,
+and the ranks of my friends have been sadly thinned. Failing health
+has driven me from my old shooting grounds, and in sunny Australia I
+have been trying to recruit the energies enervated by the burning
+climate of India. That my dear old planter friends may have as kindly
+recollections of 'the Maori' as he has of them, is what I ardently
+hope; that I may yet get back to share in the sports, pastimes, joys,
+and social delights of Mofussil life in India, is what I chiefly
+desire. If this volume meets the approbation of the public, I may be
+tempted to draw further on a well-stocked memory, and gossip afresh on
+Indian life, Indian experiences, and Indian sport. Meantime, courteous
+reader, farewell.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+by James Inglis
+
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+Frontier by "Maori"</title>
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier, by James Inglis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+       Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter
+
+Author: James Inglis
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2004 [EBook #10818]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN NEPAUL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<h1>SPORT AND WORK<br>
+ON THE<br>
+NEPAUL FRONTIER</h1>
+<h2>OR</h2>
+<h1>TWELVE YEARS<br>
+SPORTING REMINISCENCES<br>
+OF AN INDIGO PLANTER</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>By "MAORI"</h2>
+<h2>1878</h2>
+<hr size="3" width="80%" align="center" noshade>
+<br>
+<a name="01"></a>
+<center><img src="Images/01.jpg" alt="Tiger Hunting--Return to
+the Camp" width="566" height="360" hspace="4" vspace="8"></center>
+
+<center><i>Tiger Hunting&mdash;Return to the Camp</i></center>
+
+<hr size="3" width="80%" align="center" noshade>
+
+
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+<p>I went home in 1875 for a few months, after some twelve years'
+residence in India. What first suggested the writing of such a book
+as this, was the amazing ignorance of ordinary Indian life betrayed
+by people at home. The questions asked me about India, and our
+daily life there, showed in many cases such an utter want of
+knowledge, that I thought, surely there is room here for a chatty,
+familiar, unpretentious book for friends at home, giving an account
+of our every-day life in India, our labours and amusements, our
+toils and relaxations, and a few pictures of our ordinary daily
+surroundings in the far, far East.</p>
+<p>Such then is the design of my book. I want to picture to my
+readers Planter Life in the Mofussil, or country districts of
+India; to tell them of our hunting, shooting, fishing, and other
+amusements; to describe our work, our play, and matter-of-fact
+incidents in our daily life; to describe the natives as they appear
+to us in our intimate every-day dealings with them; to illustrate
+their manners, customs, dispositions, observances and sayings, so
+far as these bear on our own social life.</p>
+<p>I am no politician, no learned ethnologist, no sage theorist. I
+simply try to describe what I have seen, and hope to enlist the
+attention and interest of my readers, in my reminiscences of sport
+and labour, in the villages and jungles on the far off frontier of
+Nepaul.</p>
+<p>I have tried to express my meaning as far as possible without
+Anglo-Indian and Hindustani words; where these have been used, as
+at times they could not but be, I have given a synonymous word or
+phrase in English, so that all my friends at home may know my
+meaning.</p>
+<p>I know that my friends will be lenient to my faults, and even
+the sternest critic, if he look for it, may find some pleasure and
+profit in my pages.</p>
+<p>JAS. INGLIS.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr align="center" size="2" width="70%" noshade>
+<center>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2></center>
+<a href="#ChapterI."><strong>CHAPTER I.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Province of
+Behar.&mdash;Boundaries.&mdash;General description.&mdash;District
+of Chumparun.&mdash;Mooteeharree.&mdash;The town and
+lake.&mdash;Native houses.&mdash;The Planters'
+Club.&mdash;Legoulie.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterII."><strong>CHAPTER II.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">My first charge.&mdash;How we get our
+lands.&mdash;Our home farm.&mdash;System of
+farming.&mdash;Collection of rents.&mdash;The planter's duties.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterIII."><strong>CHAPTER III.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">How to get our crop.&mdash;The
+'Dangurs.'&mdash;Farm servants and their duties.&mdash;Kassee
+Rai.&mdash;Hoeing.&mdash;Ploughing.&mdash;'Oustennie.'&mdash;Coolies
+at Work.&mdash;Sowing.&mdash;Difficulties the plant has to contend
+with.&mdash;Weeding.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterIV."><strong>CHAPTER IV.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Manufacture of Indigo.&mdash;Loading the
+vats.&mdash;Beating.&mdash;Boiling, straining, and
+pressing.&mdash;Scene in the Factory.&mdash;Fluctuation of
+produce.&mdash;Chemistry of Indigo.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterV."><strong>CHAPTER V.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Parewah factory.&mdash;A 'Bobbery
+Pack.'&mdash;Hunt through a village after a cat.&mdash;The pariah
+dog of India.&mdash;Fate of 'Pincher.'&mdash;Rampore
+hound.&mdash;Persian greyhound.&mdash;Caboolee dogs.&mdash;A jackal
+hunt.&mdash;Incidents of the chase.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterVI."><strong>CHAPTER VI.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Fishing in India.&mdash;Hereditary
+trades.&mdash;The boatmen and fishermen of India.&mdash;Their
+villages.&mdash;Nets.&mdash;Modes of fishing.&mdash;Curiosities
+relating thereto.&mdash;Catching an alligator with a
+hook.&mdash;Exciting capture.&mdash;Crocodiles.&mdash;Shooting an
+alligator.&mdash;Death of the man-eater.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterVII."><strong>CHAPTER VII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Native superstitions.&mdash;Charming a
+bewitched woman.&mdash;Exorcising ghosts from a
+field.&mdash;Witchcraft.&mdash;The witchfinder or
+'Ojah,'&mdash;Influence of fear.&mdash;Snake bites.&mdash;How to
+cure them.&mdash;How to discover a thief.&mdash;Ghosts and their
+habits.&mdash;The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.&mdash;Cruelty to
+animals by natives.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterVIII."><strong>CHAPTER VIII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Our annual race meet.&mdash;The
+arrivals.&mdash;The camps.&mdash;The 'ordinary,'&mdash;The
+course.&mdash;'They're off.'&mdash;The race.&mdash;The
+steeple-chase.&mdash;Incidents of the meet.&mdash;The ball.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterIX."><strong>CHAPTER IX.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Pig-sticking in India.&mdash;Varieties of
+boar.&mdash;Their size and height. &mdash;Ingenious mode of capture
+by the natives.&mdash;The 'Batan' or buffalo herd.&mdash;Pigs
+charging.&mdash;Their courage and ferocity.&mdash;Destruction of
+game.&mdash;A close season for game.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterX."><strong>CHAPTER X.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Kuderent jungle.&mdash;Charged by a
+pig.&mdash;The biter bit.&mdash;'Mac' after the big boar.&mdash;The
+horse for pig-sticking.&mdash;The line of beaters.&mdash;The boar
+breaks.&mdash;'Away! Away!'&mdash;First spear.&mdash;Pig-sticking
+at Peeprah.&mdash;The old 'lungra' or cripple.&mdash;A boar at
+bay.&mdash;Hurrah for pig-sticking!</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXI."><strong>CHAPTER XI.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">The sal forests.&mdash;The jungle
+goddess.&mdash;The trees in the jungle. &mdash;Appearance of the
+forests.&mdash;Birds.&mdash;Varieties of parrots.&mdash;A 'beat' in
+the forest.&mdash;The 'shekarry.'&mdash;Mehrman Singh and his
+gun.&mdash;The Banturs, a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.&mdash;Their
+habits.&mdash;A village feast.&mdash;We beat for deer.&mdash;Habits
+of the spotted deer.&mdash;Waiting for the game. &mdash;Mehrman
+Singh gets drunk.&mdash;Our bag.&mdash;Pea-fowl and their
+habits.&mdash;How to shoot them.&mdash;Curious custom of the
+Nepaulese.&mdash;How Juggroo was tricked, and his revenge.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXII."><strong>CHAPTER XII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">The leopard.&mdash;How to shoot
+him.&mdash;Gallant encounter with a wounded one.&mdash;Encounter
+with a leopard in a Dak bungalow.&mdash;Pat shoots two
+leopards.&mdash;Effects of the Express bullet.&mdash;The 'Sirwah
+Purrul,' or annual festival of huntsmen.&mdash;The Hindoo
+ryot.&mdash;Rice-planting and harvest.&mdash;Poverty of the
+ryot.&mdash;His apathy.&mdash;Village fires.&mdash;Want of
+sanitation.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXIII."><strong>CHAPTER XIII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Description of a native village.&mdash;Village
+functionaries.&mdash;The barber. &mdash;Bathing habits.&mdash;The
+village well.&mdash;The school.&mdash;The children.&mdash;The
+village bazaar.&mdash;The landowner and his dwelling.&mdash;The
+'Putwarrie' or village accountant.&mdash;The blacksmith.&mdash;The
+'Punchayiet' or village jury system.&mdash;Our legal system in
+India.&mdash;Remarks on the administration of justice.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXIV."><strong>CHAPTER XIV.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">A native village continued.&mdash;The watchman
+or 'chowkeydar.'&mdash;The temple.
+&mdash;Brahmins.&mdash;Idols.&mdash;Religion.&mdash;Humility of the
+poorer classes.&mdash;Their low condition.&mdash;Their
+apathy.&mdash;The police.&mdash;Their extortions and knavery.
+&mdash;An instance of police rascality.&mdash;Corruption of native
+officials.&mdash;The Hindoo unfit for self-government.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXV."><strong>CHAPTER XV.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Jungle wild fruits.&mdash;Curious method of
+catching quail.&mdash;Quail nets. &mdash;Quail caught in a
+blacksmith's shop.&mdash;Native wrestling.&mdash;The trainer.
+&mdash;How they train for a match.&mdash;Rules of
+wrestling.&mdash;Grips.&mdash;A wrestling match.&mdash;Incidents of
+the struggle.&mdash;Description of a match between a Brahmin and a
+blacksmith.&mdash;Sparring for the grip.&mdash;The blacksmith has
+it.&mdash;The struggle.&mdash;The Brahmin getting the worst of
+it.&mdash;Two to one on the little 'un!&mdash;The Brahmin plays the
+waiting game, turns the tables <i>and</i> the
+blacksmith.&mdash;Remarks on wrestling.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXVI."><strong>CHAPTER XVI.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Indigo seed growing.&mdash;Seed buying and
+buyers.&mdash;Tricks of sellers.&mdash;Tests for good
+seed.&mdash;The threshing-floor.&mdash;Seed cleaning and
+packing.&mdash;Staff of servants.&mdash;Despatching the bags by
+boat.&mdash;The 'Pooneah' or rent day. &mdash;Purneah
+planters&mdash;their hospitality.&mdash;The rent day a great
+festival. &mdash;Preparation.&mdash;Collection of
+rents.&mdash;Feast to retainers.&mdash;The reception in the
+evening.&mdash;Tribute.&mdash;Old customs.&mdash;Improvisatores and
+bards. &mdash;Nautches.&mdash;Dancing and music.&mdash;The dance of
+the Dangurs.&mdash;Jugglers and itinerary showmen.&mdash;'Bara
+Roopes,' or actors and mimics.&mdash;Their different styles of
+acting.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXVII."><strong>CHAPTER XVII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">The Koosee jungles.&mdash;Ferries.&mdash;Jungle
+roads.&mdash;The rhinoceros.&mdash;We go to visit a
+neighbour.&mdash;We lose our way and get belated.&mdash;We fall
+into a quicksand.&mdash;No ferry boat.&mdash;Camping out on the
+sand.&mdash;Two tigers close by.&mdash;We light a fire.&mdash;The
+boat at last arrives.&mdash;Crossing the stream. &mdash;Set fire to
+the boatman's hut.&mdash;Swim the horses.&mdash;They are nearly
+drowned.&mdash;We again lose our way in the jungle.&mdash;The
+towing path, and how boats are towed up the river.&mdash;We at last
+reach the factory.&mdash;News of rhinoceros in the
+morning.&mdash;Off we start, but arrive too late.&mdash;Death of
+the rhinoceros.&mdash;His
+dimensions.&mdash;Description.&mdash;Habits.&mdash;Rhinoceros in
+Nepaul.&mdash;The old 'Major Capt&#257;n.'&mdash;Description of
+Nepaulese scenery. &mdash;Immigration of Nepaulese.&mdash;Their
+fondness for fish.&mdash;They eat it putrid.&mdash;Exclusion of
+Europeans from Nepaul.&mdash;Resources of the country. &mdash;Must
+sooner or later be opened up.&mdash;Influences at work to elevate
+the people.&mdash;Planters and factories chief of
+these.&mdash;Character of the planter.&mdash;Has claims to
+consideration from government.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXVIII."><strong>CHAPTER XVIII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">The tiger.&mdash;His habitat.&mdash;Shooting on
+foot.&mdash;Modes of shooting.&mdash;A tiger hunt on
+foot.&mdash;The scene of the hunt.&mdash;The beat.&mdash;Incidents
+of the hunt.&mdash;Fireworks.&mdash;The tiger charges.&mdash;The
+elephant bolts.&mdash;The tigress will not break.&mdash;We kill a
+half-grown cub.&mdash;Try again for the
+tigress.&mdash;Unsuccessful.&mdash;Exaggerations in tiger
+stories.&mdash;My authorities.&mdash;The brothers S.&mdash;Ferocity
+and structure of the tiger.&mdash;His devastations.&mdash;His
+frame-work, teeth, &amp;c.&mdash;A tiger at bay.&mdash;His
+unsociable habits.&mdash;Fight between tiger and
+tigress.&mdash;Young tigers.&mdash;Power and strength of the
+tiger.&mdash;Examples.&mdash;His cowardice. &mdash;Charge of a
+wounded tiger.&mdash;Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+&mdash;A spined tiger.&mdash;Boldness of young
+tigers.&mdash;Cruelty.&mdash;Cunning.&mdash;Night scenes in the
+jungle.&mdash;Tiger killed by a wild boar.&mdash;His cautious
+habits.&mdash;General remarks.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXIX."><strong>CHAPTER XIX.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">The tiger's mode of attack.&mdash;The food he
+prefers.&mdash;Varieties of prey. &mdash;Examples.&mdash;What he
+eats first.&mdash;How to tell the kill of a tiger. &mdash;Appetite
+fierce.&mdash;Tiger choked by a bone.&mdash;Two varieties of tiger.
+&mdash;The royal Bengal.&mdash;Description.&mdash;The hill
+tiger.&mdash;His description. &mdash;The two compared.&mdash;Length
+of the tiger.&mdash;How to measure tigers.
+&mdash;Measurements.&mdash;Comparison between male and
+female.&mdash;Number of young at a birth.&mdash;The young
+cubs.&mdash;Mother teaching cubs to kill. &mdash;Education and
+progress of the young tiger.&mdash;Wariness and cunning of the
+tiger.&mdash;Hunting incidents shewing their powers of concealment.
+&mdash;Tigers taking to water.&mdash;Examples.&mdash;Swimming
+powers.&mdash;Caught by floods.&mdash;Story of the Soonderbund
+tigers.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXX."><strong>CHAPTER XX.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">No regular breeding season.&mdash;Beliefs and
+prejudices of the natives about tigers.&mdash;Bravery of the
+'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.&mdash;Claw-marks on
+trees.&mdash;Fondness for particular localities.&mdash;Tiger in Mr.
+F.'s howdah.&mdash;Springing powers of tigers.&mdash;Lying close in
+cover.&mdash;Incident. &mdash;Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.&mdash;Man
+clawed by a tiger.&mdash;Knocked its eye out with a
+sickle.&mdash;Same tiger subsequently shot in same
+place.&mdash;Tigers easily killed.&mdash;Instances.&mdash;Effect of
+shells on tiger and buffalo.&mdash;Best weapon and bullets for
+tiger.&mdash;Poisoning tigers denounced.&mdash;Natives prone to
+exaggerate in giving news of tiger.&mdash;Anecdote.&mdash;Beating
+for tiger.&mdash;Line of elephants.&mdash;Padding dead
+game.&mdash;Line of seventy-six elephants.&mdash;Captain of the
+hunt.&mdash;Flags for signals in the line. &mdash;'Naka,' or scout
+ahead.&mdash;Usual time for tiger shooting on the Koosee.
+&mdash;Firing the jungle.&mdash;The line of fire at
+night.&mdash;Foolish to shoot at moving jungle.&mdash;Never shoot
+down the line.&mdash;Motions of different animals in the grass.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXI."><strong>CHAPTER XXI.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Howdahs and howdah-ropes.&mdash;Mussulman
+custom.&mdash;Killing animals for food. &mdash;Mysterious
+appearance of natives when an animal is killed.&mdash;Fastening
+dead tigers to the pad.&mdash;Present mode wants
+improving.&mdash;Incident illustrative of this.&mdash;Dangerous to
+go close to wounded tigers. &mdash;Examples.&mdash;Footprints of
+tigers.&mdash;Call of the tiger.&mdash;Natives and their powers of
+description.&mdash;How to beat successfully for tiger.
+&mdash;Description of a beat.&mdash;Disputes among the
+shooters.&mdash;Awarding tigers.&mdash;Cutting open the
+tiger.&mdash;Native idea about the liver of the tiger.&mdash;Signs
+of a tiger's presence in the jungle.&mdash;Vultures.&mdash;Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?&mdash;A vulture carrion feast.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXII."><strong>CHAPTER XXII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul
+frontier.&mdash;Indian scenery near the border.&mdash;Lose our
+way.&mdash;Cold night.&mdash;The river by night.&mdash;Our boat and
+boatmen.&mdash;Tigers calling on the bank.&mdash;An anxious
+moment.&mdash;Fire at and wound the tigress.&mdash;Reach
+camp.&mdash;The Nepaulee's adventure with a tiger.&mdash;The old
+Major.&mdash;His appearance and manners.&mdash;The pompous
+Jemadar.&mdash;Nepaulese proverb.&mdash;Firing the
+jungle.&mdash;Start a tiger and shoot him.&mdash;Another in
+front.&mdash;Appearance of the fires by night.&mdash;The tiger
+escapes.&mdash;Too dark to follow up.&mdash;Coolie shot by mistake
+during a former hunt.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXIII."><strong>CHAPTER XXIII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">We resume the beat.&mdash;The
+hog-deer.&mdash;Nepaulese villages.&mdash;Village
+granaries.&mdash;Tiger in front.&mdash;A hit! a
+hit!&mdash;Following up the wounded tiger.&mdash;Find him
+dead.&mdash;Tiffin in the village.&mdash;The Patair jungle.
+&mdash;Search for tiger.&mdash;Gone away!&mdash;An elephant
+steeplechase in pursuit. &mdash;Exciting chase.&mdash;The Morung
+jungle.&mdash;Magnificent scenery.&mdash;Skinning the
+tiger.&mdash;Incidents of tiger hunting.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXIV."><strong>CHAPTER XXIV.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Camp of the Nepaulee
+chief.&mdash;Quicksands.&mdash;Elephants crossing rivers.
+&mdash;Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.&mdash;We beat the forest for
+tiger.&mdash;Shoot a young tiger.&mdash;Red ants in the
+forest.&mdash;Bhowras or ground bees.&mdash;The <i>ursus
+labialis</i> or long-lipped bear.&mdash;Recross the stream.
+&mdash;Florican.&mdash;Stag running the gauntlet of
+flame.&mdash;Our bag.&mdash;Start for factory.&mdash;Remarks on
+elephants.&mdash;Precautions useful for protection from the sun in
+tiger shooting.&mdash;The <i>puggree</i>.&mdash;Cattle breeding in
+India, and wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.&mdash;Nathpore.
+&mdash;Ravages of the river.&mdash;Mrs. Gray, an old resident in
+the jungles. &mdash;Description of her surroundings.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXV."><strong>CHAPTER XXV.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Exciting jungle scene.&mdash;The
+camp.&mdash;All quiet.&mdash;Advent of the cow-herds. &mdash;A
+tiger close by.&mdash;Proceed to the spot.&mdash;Encounter between
+tigress and buffaloes.&mdash;Strange behaviour of the
+elephant.&mdash;Discovery and capture of four cubs.&mdash;Joyful
+return to camp.&mdash;Death of the tigress. &mdash;Night encounter
+with a leopard.&mdash;The haunts of the tiger and our shooting
+grounds.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXVI."><strong>CHAPTER XXVI.</strong></a>
+<p>Remarks on guns.&mdash;How to cure skins.&mdash;Different
+Recipes.&mdash;Conclusion.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr align="center" size="2" width="70%" noshade>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+<p><a href="#01">Tiger Hunting&mdash;Return to the Camp</a></p>
+<p><a href="#02">Coolie's Hut</a></p>
+<p><a href="#03">Indigo Beating Vats</a></p>
+<p><a href="#04">Indigo Beaters at Work in the Vats</a></p>
+<p><a href="#05">Indian Factory Peon</a></p>
+<p><a href="#06">Indigo Planter's House</a></p>
+<p><a href="#07">Pig Stickers</a></p>
+<p><a href="#08">Carpenters and Blacksmiths at Work</a></p>
+<p><a href="#09">Hindoo Village Temples</a></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr align="center" size="2" width="70%" noshade>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Province of
+Behar.&mdash;Boundaries.&mdash;General description.&mdash;District
+of Chumparun.&mdash;Mooteeharree.&mdash;The town and
+lake.&mdash;Native houses.&mdash;The Planters'
+Club.&mdash;Legoulie.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Among the many beautiful and fertile provinces of India, none
+can, I think, much excel that of Behar for richness of soil,
+diversity of race, beauty of scenery, and the energy and
+intelligence of its inhabitants. Stretching from the Nepaul hills
+to the far distant plains of Gya, with the Gunduch, Bogmuttee and
+other noble streams watering its rich bosom, and swelling with
+their tribute the stately Ganges, it includes every variety of soil
+and climate; and its various races, with their strange costumes,
+creeds, and customs, might afford material to fill volumes.</p>
+<p>The northern part of this splendid province follows the
+Nepaulese boundary from the district of Goruchpore on the north, to
+that of Purneah on the south. In the forests and jungles along this
+boundary line live many strange tribes, whose customs, and even
+their names and language, are all but unknown to the English
+public. Strange wild animals dispute with these aborigines the
+possession of the gloomy jungle solitudes. Great trees of wondrous
+dimensions and strange foliage rear their stately heads to heaven,
+and are matted and entwined together by creepers of huge size and
+tenacious hold.</p>
+<p>To the south and east vast billows of golden grain roll in
+successive undulations to the mighty Ganges, the sacred stream of
+the Hindoos. Innumerable villages, nestling amid groves of
+plantains and feathery rustling bamboos, send up their wreaths of
+pale grey smoke into the still warm air. At frequent intervals the
+steely blue of some lovely lake, where thousands of water-fowl
+disport themselves, reflects from its polished surface the sheen of
+the noonday sun. Great masses of mango wood shew a sombre outline
+at intervals, and here and there the towering chimney of an indigo
+factory pierces the sky. Government roads and embankments intersect
+the face of the country in all directions, and vast sheets of the
+indigo plant refresh the eye with their plains of living green,
+forming a grateful contrast to the hard, dried, sun-baked surface
+of the stubble fields, where the rice crop has rustled in the
+breezes of the past season. In one of the loveliest and most
+fertile districts of this vast province, namely, Chumparun, I began
+my experiences as an indigo planter.</p>
+<p>Chumparun with its subdistrict of Bettiah, lies to the north of
+Tirhoot, and is bounded all along its northern extent by the Nepaul
+hills and forests. When I joined my appointment as assistant on one
+of the large indigo concerns there, there were not more than about
+thirty European residents altogether in the district. The chief
+town, Mooteeharree, consisted of a long <i>bazaar</i>, or market
+street, beautifully situated on the bank of a lovely lake, some two
+miles in length. From the main street, with its quaint little shops
+sheltered from the sun by makeshift verandahs of tattered sacking,
+weather-stained shingles, or rotting bamboo mats, various little
+lanes and alleys diverged, leading one into a collection of
+tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up apparently by chance, and
+presenting the most incongruous appearance that could possibly be
+conceived. One or two <i>pucca</i> houses, that is, houses of brick
+and masonry, shewed where some wealthy Bunneah (trader) or usurious
+banker lived, but the majority of the houses were of the usual mud
+and bamboo order. There is a small thatched hut where the meals
+were cooked, and where the owner and his family could sleep during
+the rains. Another smaller hut at right angles to this, gives
+shelter to the family goat, or, if they are rich enough to keep
+one, the cow. All round the villages in India there are generally
+large patches of common, where the village cows have free rights of
+pasture; and all who can, keep either a cow or a couple of goats,
+the milk from which forms a welcome addition to their usual scanty
+fare. In this second hut also is stored as much fuel, consisting of
+dried cow-dung, straw, maize-stalks, leaves, etc., as can be
+collected; and a ragged fence of bamboo or <i>rahur</i><a href=
+"#footnoteA1"><sup>1</sup></a> stalks encloses the two unprotected
+sides, thus forming inside a small court, quadrangle, or square.
+This court is the native's <i>sanctum sanctorum</i>. It is kept
+scrupulously clean, being swept and garnished religiously every
+day. In this the women prepare the rice for the day's consumption;
+here they cut up and clean their vegetables, or their fish, when
+the adjacent lake has been dragged by the village fishermen. Here
+the produce of their little garden, capsicums, Indian corn, onions
+or potatoes&mdash;perchance turmeric, ginger, or other roots or
+spices&mdash;are dried and made ready for storing in the earthen
+sun-baked repository for the reception of such produce appertaining
+to each household. Here the children play, and are washed and
+tended. Here the maiden combs out her long black hair, or decorates
+her bronzed visage with streaks of red paint down the nose, and a
+little antimony on the eyelids, or myrtle juice on the finger and
+toe nails. Here, too, the matron, or the withered old crone of a
+grandmother, spins her cotton thread; or, in the old scriptural
+hand-mill, grinds the corn for the family flour and meal; and the
+father and the young men (when the sun is high and hot in the
+heavens) take their noonday <i>siesta</i>, or, the day's labours
+over, cower round the smoking dung fire of a cold winter night, and
+discuss the prices ruling in the bazaar, the rise of rents, or the
+last village scandal.</p>
+<p>In the middle of the town, and surrounded by a spacious
+fenced-in compound, which sloped gently to the lake, stood the
+Planters' Club, a large low roofed bungalow, with a roomy wide
+verandah in front. Here we met, when business or pleasure brought
+us to 'the Station.' Here were held our annual balls, or an
+occasional public dinner party. To the north of the Club stood a
+long range of barrack-looking buildings, which were the opium
+godowns, where the opium was collected and stored during the
+season. Facing this again, and at the extremity of the lake, was
+the district jail, where all the rascals of the surrounding country
+were confined; its high walls tipped at intervals by a red puggree
+and flashing bayonet wherever a jail sepoy kept his 'lonely watch.'
+Near it, sheltered in a grove of shady trees, were the court
+houses, where the collector and magistrate daily dispensed justice,
+or where the native <i>moonsiff</i> disentangled knotty points of
+law. Here, too, came the sessions judge once a month or so, to try
+criminal cases and mete out justice to the law-breakers.</p>
+<p>We had thus a small European element in our 'Station,'
+consisting of our magistrate and collector, whose large and
+handsome house was built on the banks of another and yet lovelier
+lake, which joined the town lake by a narrow stream or strait at
+its southern end, an opium agent, a district superintendent of
+police, and last but not least, a doctor. These formed the official
+population of our little 'Station.' There was also a nice little
+church, but no resident pastor, and behind the town lay a quiet
+churchyard, rich in the dust of many a pioneer, who, far from home
+and friends, had here been gathered to his silent rest.</p>
+<p>About twelve miles to the north, and near the Nepaul boundary,
+was the small military station of Legoulie. Here there was always a
+native cavalry regiment, the officers of which were frequent and
+welcome guests at the factories in the district, and were always
+glad to see their indigo friends at their mess in cantonments. At
+Rettiah, still further to the north, was a rich rajah's palace,
+where a resident European manager dwelt, and had for his sole
+society an assistant magistrate who transacted the executive and
+judicial work of the subdistrict. These, with some twenty-five or
+thirty indigo managers and assistants, composed the whole European
+population of Chumparun.</p>
+<p>Never was there a more united community. We were all like
+brothers. Each knew all the rest. The assistants frequently visited
+each other, and the managers were kind and considerate to their
+subordinates. Hunting parties were common, cricket and hockey
+matches were frequent, and in the cold weather, which is our
+slackest season, fun, frolic, and sport was the order of the day.
+We had an annual race meet, when all the crack horses of the
+district met in keen rivalry to test their pace and endurance.
+During this high carnival, we lived for the most part under
+canvass, and had friends from far and near to share our
+hospitality. In a future chapter I must describe our racing
+meet.</p>
+<hr align="left" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<p align="justify"><a name="footnoteA1"><sup>1</sup></a> The
+<i>rahur</i> is a kind of pea, growing not unlike our English broom
+in appearance; it is sown with the maize crop during the rains, and
+garnered in the cold weather. It produces a small pea, which is
+largely used by the natives, and forms the nutritive article of
+diet known as <i>dhall</i>.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>My first charge.&mdash;How we get our
+lands.&mdash;Our home farm.&mdash;System of
+farming.&mdash;Collection of rents.&mdash;The planter's
+duties.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>My first charge was a small outwork of the large factory
+Seeraha. It was called Puttihee. There was no bungalow; that is,
+there was no regular house for the assistant, but a little
+one-roomed hut, built on the top of the indigo vats, served me for
+a residence. It had neither doors nor windows, and the rain used to
+beat through the room, while the eaves were inhabited by countless
+swarms of bats, who, in the evening flashed backwards and forwards
+in ghostly rapid flight, and were a most intolerable nuisance. To
+give some idea of the duties of an indigo assistant, I must explain
+the system on which we get our lands, and how we grow our crop.</p>
+<p>Water of course being a <i>sine qua non</i>, the first object in
+selecting a site for a factory is, to have water in plenty
+contiguous to the proposed buildings. Consequently Puttihee was
+built on the banks of a very pretty lake, shaped like a horseshoe,
+and covered with water lilies and broad-leaved green aquatic
+plants. The lake was kept by the native proprietor as a fish
+preserve, and literally teemed with fish of all sorts, shapes, and
+sizes. I had not been long at Puttihee before I had erected a
+staging, leading out into deep water, and many a happy hour I have
+spent there with my three or four rods out, pulling in the finny
+inhabitants.</p>
+<p>Having got water and a site, the next thing is to get land on
+which to grow your crop. By purchase, by getting a long lease, or
+otherwise, you become possessed of several hundred acres of the
+land immediately surrounding the factory. Of course some factories
+will have more and some less as circumstances happen. This land,
+however, is peculiarly factory property. It is in fact a sort of
+home farm, and goes by the name of <i>Zeraat</i>. It is ploughed by
+factory bullocks, worked by factory coolies, and is altogether
+apart and separate from the ordinary lands held by the ryots and
+worked by them. (A ryot means a cultivator.) In most factories the
+Zeraats are farmed in the most thorough manner. Many now use the
+light Howard's plough, and apply quantities of manure.</p>
+<p>The fields extend in vast unbroken plains all round the factory.
+The land is worked and pulverised, and reploughed, and harrowed,
+and cleaned, till not a lump the size of a pigeon's egg is to be
+seen. If necessary, it is carefully weeded several times before the
+crop is sown, and in fact, a fine clean stretch of Zeraat in
+Tirhoot or Chumparun, will compare most favourably with any field
+in the highest farming districts of England or Scotland. The
+ploughing and other farm labour is done by bullocks. A staff of
+these, varying of course with the amount of land under cultivation,
+is kept at each factory. For their support a certain amount of
+sugar-cane is planted, and in the cold weather carrots are sown,
+and <i>gennara</i>, a kind of millet, and maize.</p>
+<p>Both maize and gennara have broad green leaves, and long juicy
+succulent stalks. They grow to a good height, and when cut up and
+mixed with chopped straw and carrots, form a most excellent feed
+for cattle. Besides the bullocks, each factory keeps up a staff of
+generally excellent horses, for the use of the assistant or
+manager, on which he rides over his cultivation, and looks
+generally after the farm. Some of the native subordinates also have
+ponies, or Cabool horses, or country-breds; and for the feed of
+these animals some few acres of oats are sown every cold season. In
+most factories too, when any particular bit of the Zeraats gets
+exhausted by the constant repetition of indigo cropping, a rest is
+given it, by taking a crop of oil seeds or oats off the land. The
+oil seeds usually sown are mustard or rape. The oil is useful in
+the factory for oiling the screws or the machinery, and for other
+purposes.</p>
+<p>The factory roads through the Zeraats are kept in most perfect
+order; many of them are metalled. The ditches are cleaned once a
+year. All thistles and weeds by the sides of the roads and ditches,
+are ruthlessly cut down. The edges of all the fields are neatly
+trimmed and cut. Useless trees and clumps of jungle are cut down;
+and in fact the Zeraats round a factory shew a perfect picture of
+orderly thrift, careful management, and neat, scientific, and
+elaborate farming.</p>
+<p>Having got the Zeraats, the next thing is to extend the
+cultivation outside.</p>
+<p>The land in India is not, as with us at home, parcelled out into
+large farms. There are wealthy proprietors, rajahs, baboos, and so
+on, who hold vast tracts of land, either by grant, or purchase, or
+hereditary succession; but the tenants are literally the children
+of the soil. Wherever a village nestles among its plantain or mango
+groves, the land is parcelled out among the villagers. A large
+proprietor does not reckon up his farms as a landlord at home would
+do, but he counts his villages. In a village with a thousand acres
+belonging to it, there might be 100 or even 200 tenants farming the
+land. Each petty villager would have his acre or half acre, or
+four, or five, or ten, or twenty acres, as the case might be. He
+holds this by a 'tenant right,' and cannot be dispossessed as long
+as he pays his rent regularly. He can sell his tenant right, and
+the purchaser on paying the rent, becomes the <i>bona fide</i>
+possessor of the land to all intents and purposes.</p>
+<p>If the average rent of the village lands was, let me say, one
+rupee eight annas an acre, the rent roll of the 1000 acres would be
+1500 rupees. Out of this the government land revenue comes. Certain
+deductions have to be made&mdash;some ryots may be defaulters. The
+village temple, or the village Brahmin, may have to get something,
+the road-cess has to be paid, and so on. Taking everything into
+account, you arrive at a pretty fair view of what the rental is. If
+the proprietor of the village wants a loan of money, or if you
+offer to pay him the rent by half-yearly or quarterly instalments,
+you taking all the risk of collecting in turn from each ryot
+individually, he is often only too glad to accept your offer, and
+giving you a lease of the village for whatever term may be agreed
+on, you step in as virtually the landlord, and the ryots have to
+pay their rents to you.</p>
+<p>In many cases by careful management, by remeasuring lands,
+settling doubtful boundaries, and generally working up the estate,
+you can much increase the rental, and actually make a profit on
+your bargain with the landlord. This department of indigo work is
+called Zemindaree. Having, then, got the village in lease, you
+summon in all your tenants; shew them their rent accounts, arrange
+with them for the punctual payment of them, and get them to agree
+to cultivate a certain percentage of their land in indigo for
+you.</p>
+<p>This percentage varies very considerably. In some places it is
+one acre in five, in some one in twenty. It all depends on local
+circumstances. You select the land, you give the seed, but the ryot
+has to prepare the field for sowing, he has to plough, weed, and
+reap the crop, and deliver it at the factory. For the indigo he
+gets so much per acre, the price being as near as possible the
+average price of an acre of ordinary produce: taking the average
+out-turn and prices of, say, ten years. It used formerly to be much
+less, but the ryot nowadays gets nearly double for his indigo what
+he got some ten or fifteen years ago, and this, although prices
+have not risen for the manufactured article, and the prices of
+labour, stores, machinery, live stock, etc., have more than
+doubled. In some parts the ryot gets paid so much per bundle of
+plants delivered at the vats, but generally in Behar, at least in
+north Behar, he is paid so much per acre or <i>Beegah</i>. I use
+the word acre as being more easily understood by people at home
+than Beegah. The Beegah varies in different districts, but is
+generally about two-thirds of an acre.</p>
+<p>When his rent account, then, comes to be made out, the ryot gets
+credit for the price of his indigo grown and delivered; and this
+very often suffices, not only to clear his entire rent, but to
+leave a margin in hard cash for him to take home. Before the
+beginning of the indigo season, however, he comes into the factory
+and takes a cash advance on account of the indigo to be grown. This
+is often a great help to him, enabling him to get his seeds for his
+other lands, perhaps ploughs, or to buy a cart, or clothes for the
+family, or to replace a bullock that may have died; or to help to
+give a marriage portion to a son or daughter that he wants to get
+married.</p>
+<p>You will thus see that we have cultivation to look after in all
+the villages round about the factory which we can get in lease. The
+ryot, in return for his cash advance, agrees to cultivate so much
+indigo at a certain price, for which he gets credit in his rent.
+Such, shortly, is our indigo system. In some villages the ryot will
+estimate for us without our having the lease at all, and without
+taking advances. He grows the indigo as he would grow any other
+crop, as a pure speculation. If he has a good crop, he can get the
+price in hard cash from the factory, and a great deal is grown in
+this way in both Purneah and Bhaugulpore. This is called
+<i>Kooskee</i>, as against the system of advances, which is called
+<i>Tuccaree</i>.</p>
+<p>The planter, then, has to be constantly over his villages,
+looking out for good lands, giving up bad fields, and taking in new
+ones. He must watch what crops grow best in certain places. He must
+see that he does not take lands where water may lodge, and, on the
+other hand, avoid those that do not retain their moisture. He must
+attend also to the state of the other crops generally all over his
+cultivation, as the punctual payment of rents depends largely on
+the state of the crops. He must have his eyes open to everything
+going on, be able to tell the probable rent-roll of every village
+for miles around, know whether the ryots are lazy and discontented,
+or are industrious and hard-working. Up in the early morning,
+before the hot blazing sun has climbed on high, he is off on his
+trusty nag, through his Zeraats, with his greyhounds and terriers
+panting behind him. As he nears a village, the farm-servant in
+charge of that particular bit of cultivation, comes out with a low
+salaam, to report progress, or complain that so-and-so is not
+working up his field as he ought to do.</p>
+<p>Over all the lands he goes, seeing where re-ploughing is
+necessary, ordering harrowing here, weeding there, or rolling
+somewhere else. He sees where the ditches need deepening, where the
+roads want levelling or widening, where a new bridge will be
+necessary, where lands must be thrown up and new ones taken in. He
+knows nearly all his ryots, and has a kind word for every one he
+passes; asks after their crops, their bullocks, or their land;
+rouses up the indolent; gives a cheerful nod to the industrious;
+orders this one to be brought in to settle his account, or that one
+to make greater haste with the preparation of his land, that he may
+not lose his moisture. In fact, he has his hands full till the
+mounting sun warns him to go back to breakfast. And so, with a
+rattling burst after a jackal or fox, he gets back to his bungalow
+to bathe, dress, and break his fast with fowl cutlets, and curry
+and rice, washed down with a wholesome tumbler of Bass.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterIII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>How to get our crop.&mdash;The
+'Dangurs.'&mdash;Farm servants and their duties. &mdash;Kassee
+Rai.&mdash;Hoeing.&mdash;Ploughing.&mdash;'Oustennie.'&mdash;Coolies
+at work. &mdash;Sowing.&mdash;Difficulties the plant has to contend
+with.&mdash;Weeding.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Having now got our land, water, and buildings&mdash;which latter
+I will describe further on&mdash;the next thing is to set to work
+to get our crop. Manufacture being finished, and the crop all cut
+by the beginning or middle of October, when the annual rains are
+over, it is of importance to have the lands dug up as early as
+possible, that the rich moisture, on which the successful
+cultivation of the crop mainly depends, may be secured before the
+hot west winds and strong sun of early spring lick it up.</p>
+<p>Attached to every factory is a small settlement of labourers,
+belonging to a tribe of aborigines called <i>Dangurs</i>. These
+originally, I believe, came from Chota Nagpoor, which seems to have
+been their primal home. They are a cheerful industrious race, have
+a distinct language of their own, and only intermarry with each
+other. Long ago, when there were no post carriages to the hills,
+and but few roads, the Dangurs were largely employed as dale
+runners, or postmen. Some few of them settled with their families
+on lands near the foot of the hills in Purneah, and gradually
+others made their way northwards, until now there is scarcely a
+factory in Behar that has not its Dangur tola, or village.</p>
+<p>The men are tractable, merry-hearted, and faithful. The women
+betray none of the exaggerated modesty which is characteristic of
+Hindoo women generally. They never turn aside and hide their faces
+as you pass, but look up to you with a merry smile on their
+countenances, and exchange greetings with the utmost frankness. In
+a future chapter I may speak at greater length of the Dangurs; at
+present it suffices to say, that they form a sort of appanage to
+the factory, and are in fact treated as part of the permanent
+staff.</p>
+
+<a name="02"></a>
+
+<center>
+<img src="Images/02.jpg" alt="Coolie's Hut" width="472" height="365"
+hspace="4" vspace="8">
+<br>
+ <i>Coolie's Hut</i></center>
+
+<p>Each Dangur when he marries, gets some grass and bamboos from
+the factory to build a house, and a small plot of ground to serve
+as a garden, for which he pays a very small rent, or in many
+instances nothing at all. In return, he is always on the spot ready
+for any factory work that may be going on, for which he has his
+daily wage. Some factories pay by the month, but the general custom
+is to charge for hoeing by piece-work, and during manufacture, when
+the work is constant, there is paid a monthly wage.</p>
+<p>In the close foggy mornings of October and November, long before
+the sun is up, the Dangurs are hard at work in the Zeraats, turning
+up the soil with their <i>kodalies</i>, (a kind of cutting hoe,)
+and you can often hear their merry voices rising through the mist,
+as they crack jokes with each other to enliven their work, or troll
+one of their quaint native ditties.</p>
+<p>They are presided over by a 'mate,' generally one of the oldest
+men and first settlers in the village. If he has had a large
+family, his sons look up to him, and his sons-in-law obey his
+orders with the utmost fealty. The 'mate' settles all disputes,
+presents all grievances to the <i>sahib</i>, and all orders are
+given through him.</p>
+<p>The indigo stubble which has been left in the ground is perhaps
+about a foot high, and as they cut it out, their wives and children
+come to gather up the sticks for fuel, and this of course also
+helps to clean the land. By eleven o'clock, when the sluggish mist
+has been dissipated by the rays of the scorching sun, the day's
+labour is nearly concluded. You will then see the swarthy Dangur,
+with his favourite child on his shoulder, wending his way back to
+his hut, followed by his comely wife carrying his hoe, and a tribe
+of little ones bringing up the rear, each carrying bundles of the
+indigo stubble which the industrious father has dug up during the
+early hours of morning.</p>
+<p>In the afternoon out comes the <i>hengha</i>, which is simply a
+heavy flat log of wood, with a V shaped cut or groove all along
+under its flat surface. To each end of the hengha a pair of
+bullocks are yoked, and two men standing on the log, and holding on
+by the bullocks' tails, it is slowly dragged over the field
+wherever the hoeing has been going on. The lumps and clods are
+caught in the groove on the under surface, and dragged along and
+broken up and pulverized, and the whole surface of the field thus
+gets harrowed down, and forms a homogeneous mass of light friable
+soil, covering the weeds and dirt to let them rot, exposing the
+least surface for the wind and heat to act on, and thus keeping the
+moisture in the soil.</p>
+<p>Now is a busy time for the planter. Up early in the cold raw
+fog, he is over his Zeraats long before dawn, and round by his
+outlying villages to see the ryots at work in their fields. To each
+eighty or a hundred acres a man is attached called a
+<i>Tokedar</i>. His duty is to rouse out the ryots, see the hoes
+and ploughs at work, get the weeding done, and be responsible for
+the state of the cultivation generally. He will probably have two
+villages under him. If the village with its lands be very
+extensive, of course there will be a Tokedar for it alone, but
+frequently a Tokedar may have two or more villages under his
+charge. In the village, the head man&mdash;generally the most
+influential man in the community&mdash;also acts with the Tokedar,
+helping him to get ploughs, bullocks, and coolies when these are
+wanted; and under him, the village <i>chowkeydar</i>, or watchman,
+sees that stray cattle do not get into the fields, that the roads,
+bridges and fences are not damaged, and so on. Over the Tokedars,
+again, are Zillahdars. A 'zillah' is a small district. There may be
+eight or ten villages and three or four Tokedars under a Zillahdar.
+The Zillahdar looks out for good lands to change for bad ones,
+where this is necessary, and where no objection is made by the
+farmer; sees that the Tokedars do their work properly; reports
+rain, blight, locusts, and other visitations that might injure the
+crop; watches all that goes on in his zillah, and makes his report
+to the planter whenever anything of importance happens in his
+particular part of the cultivation. Over all again comes the
+JEMADAR&mdash;the head man over the whole cultivation&mdash;the
+planter's right-hand man.</p>
+<p>He is generally an old, experienced, and trusted servant. He
+knows all the lands for miles round, and the peculiar soils and
+products of all the villages far and near. He can tell what lands
+grow the best tobacco, what lands are free from inundation, what
+free from drought; the temper of the inhabitants of each village,
+and the history of each farm; where are the best ploughs, the best
+bullocks, and the best farming; in what villages you get most
+coolies for weeding; where you can get the best carts, the best
+straw, and the best of everything at the most favourable rates. He
+comes up each night when the day's work is done, and gets his
+orders for the morrow. You are often glad to take his advice on
+sowing, reaping, and other operations of the farm. He knows where
+the plant will ripen earliest, and where the leaf will be thickest,
+and to him you look for satisfaction if any screw gets loose in the
+outside farm-work.</p>
+<p>He generally accompanies you in your morning ride, shows you
+your new lands, consults with you about throwing up exhausted
+fields, and is generally a sort of farm-bailiff or confidential
+land-steward. Where he is an honest, intelligent, and loyal man, he
+takes half the care and work off your shoulders. Such men are
+however rare, and if not very closely looked after, they are apt to
+abuse their position, and often harass the ryots needlessly,
+looking more to the feathering of their own nests than the
+advancement of your interests.</p>
+<p>The only Jemadar I felt I could thoroughly trust, was my first
+one at Parewah, an old Rajpoot, called Kassee Rai. He was a fine,
+ruddy-faced, white-haired old man, as independent and
+straightforward an old farmer as you could meet anywhere, and I
+never had reason to regret taking his advice on any matter. I never
+found him out in a lie, or in a dishonest or underhand action.
+Though over seventy years of age he was upright as a dart. He could
+not keep up with me when we went out riding over the fields, but he
+would be out the whole day over the lands, and was always the first
+at his work in the morning and the last to leave off at night. The
+ryots all loved him, and would do anything for him; and when poor
+old Kassee died, the third year he had been under me, I felt as if
+an old friend had gone. I never spoke an angry word to him, and I
+never had a fault to find with him.</p>
+<p>When the hoeing has been finished in zeraat and zillah, and all
+the upturned soil battened down by the <i>hengha</i>, the next
+thing is to commence the ploughing. Your ploughmen are mostly low
+caste men&mdash;Doosadhs, Churnars, Moosahurs, Gwallahs, <i>et hoc
+genus omne</i>. The Indian plough, so like a big misshapen wooden
+pickaxe, has often been described. It however turns up the light
+soft soil very well considering its pretensions, and those made in
+the factory workshops are generally heavier and sharper than the
+ordinary village plough. Our bullocks too, being strong and well
+fed, the ploughing in the zeraats is generally good.</p>
+<p>The ploughing is immediately followed up by the <i>hengha</i>,
+which again triturates and breaks up the clods, rolls the sticks,
+leaves, and grass roots together, brings the refuse and dirt to the
+surface, and again levels the soil, and prevents the wind from
+taking away the moisture. The land now looks fine and fresh and
+level, but very dirty. A host of coolies are put on the fields with
+small sticks in their hands. All the Dangur women and children are
+there, with men, women, and children of all the poorest classes
+from the villages round, whom the attractions of wages or the
+exertions of headmen Tokedars and Zillahdars have brought together
+to earn their daily bread. With the sticks they beat and break up
+every clod, leaving not one behind the size of a walnut. They
+collect all the refuse, weeds, and dirt, which are heaped up and
+burnt on the field, and so they go on till the zeraats look as
+clean as a nobleman's garden, and you would think that surely this
+must satisfy the fastidious eye of the planter. But no, our work is
+not half begun yet.</p>
+<p>It is rather a strange sight to see some four or five hundred
+coolies squatted in a long irregular line, chattering, laughing,
+shouting, or squabbling. A dense cloud of dust rises over them, and
+through the dim obscurity one hears the ceaseless sound of the
+thwack! thwack! as their sticks rattle on the ground. White dust
+lies thick on each swarthy skin; their faces are like faces in a
+pantomime. There are the flashing eyes and the grinning rows of
+white teeth; all else is clouded in thick layers of dust, with
+black spots and stencillings showing here and there like a picture
+in sepia and chalk. As they near the end of the field they redouble
+their thwacking, shuffle along like land-crabs, and while the
+Mates, Peons, and Tokedars shout at them to encourage them, they
+raise a roar loud enough to wake the dead. The dust rises in denser
+clouds, the noise is deafening, a regular mad hurry-scurry, a wild
+boisterous scramble ensues, and amid much chaffing, noise, and
+laughter, they scramble off again to begin another length of land;
+and so the day's work goes on.</p>
+<p>The planter has to count his coolies several times a-day, or
+they would cheat him. Some come in the morning, get counted, and
+their names put on the roll, and then go off till paytime comes
+round. Some come for an hour or two, and send a relative in the
+evening when the pice are being paid out, to get the wage of work
+they have not done. All are paid in pice&mdash;little copper bits
+of coin, averaging about sixty-four to the rupee. However, you soon
+come to know the coolies by sight, and after some experience are
+rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get 'done' most
+thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the artless
+and unsophisticated coolie.</p>
+<p>The type of feature along a line of coolies is as a rule a very
+forbidding and degraded one. They are mostly of the very poorest
+class. Many of them are plainly half silly, or wholly idiotic; not
+a few are deaf and dumb; others are crippled or deformed, and
+numbers are leprous and scrofulous. Numbers of them are afflicted
+in some districts with goitre, caused probably by bad drinking
+water; all have a pinched, withered, wan look, that tells of hard
+work and insufficient fare. It is a pleasure to turn to the end of
+the line, where the Dangur women and boys and girls generally take
+their place. Here are the loudest laughter, and the sauciest faces.
+The children are merry, chubby, fat things, with well-distended
+stomachs and pleasant looks; a merry smile rippling over their
+broad fat cheeks as they slyly glance up at you. The
+women&mdash;with huge earrings in their ears, and a perfect load of
+heavy brass rings on their arms&mdash;chatter away, make believe to
+be shy, and show off a thousand coquettish airs. Their very toes
+are bedizened with brass rings; and long festoons of red, white,
+and blue beads hang pendent round their necks.</p>
+<p>In the evening the line is re-formed before the bungalow. A huge
+bag of copper coin is produced. The old Lallah, or writer, with
+spectacles on nose, squats down in the middle of the assembled
+coolies, and as each name is called, the mates count out the pice,
+and make it over to the coolie, who forthwith hurries off to get
+his little purchases made at the village Bunneah's shop; and so, on
+a poor supper of parched peas, or boiled rice, with no other relish
+but a pinch of salt, the poor coolie crawls to bed, only to dream
+of more hard work and scanty fare on the morrow. Poor thing! a
+village coolie has a hard time of it! During the hot months, if
+rice be cheap and plentiful, he can jog along pretty comfortably,
+but when the cold nights come on, and he cowers in his wretched
+hut, hungry, half naked, cold, and wearied, he is of all objects
+most pitiable. It is, however, a fact little creditable to his more
+prosperous fellow-countrymen, that he gets better paid for his
+labour in connection with factory work, than he does in many cases
+for tasks forced on him by the leading ryots of the village in
+connection with their own fields.</p>
+<p>This first cleaning of the fields&mdash;or, as it is called,
+<i>Oustennie</i>&mdash;being finished, the lands are all again
+re-ploughed, re-harrowed, and then once more re-cleaned by the
+coolies, till not a weed or spot of dirt remains; and till the
+whole surface is uniformly soft, friable, moist, and clean. We have
+now some breathing time; and as this is the most enjoyable season
+of the year, when the days are cool, and roaring wood fires at
+night remind us of home, we hunt, visit, race, dance, and generally
+enjoy ourselves. Should heavy rain fall, as it sometimes does about
+Christmas and early in February, the whole cultivation gets beaten
+down and caked over. In such a case amusements must for a time be
+thrown aside, till all the lands have been again re-ploughed. Of
+course we are never wholly idle. There are always rents to collect,
+matters to adjust in connexion with our villages and tenantry,
+law-suits to recover bad debts, to enforce contracts, or protect
+manorial or other rights,&mdash;but generally speaking, when the
+lands have been prepared, we have a slack season or breathing time
+for a month or so.</p>
+<p>Arrangements having been made for the supply of seed, which
+generally comes from about the neighbourhood of Cawnpore, as
+February draws near we make preparations for beginning our sowings.
+February is the usual month, but it depends on the moisture, and
+sometimes sowings may go on up till May and June. In Purneah and
+Bhaugulpore, where the cultivation is much rougher than in Tirhoot,
+the sowing is done broadcast. And in Bengal the sowing is often
+done upon the soft mud which is left on the banks of the rivers at
+the retiring of the annual floods. In Tirhoot, however, where the
+high farming I have been trying to describe is practised, the
+sowing is done by means of drills. Drills are got out, overhauled,
+and put in thorough repair. Bags of seed are sent out to the
+villages, advances for bullocks are given to the ryots, and on a
+certain day when all seems favourable&mdash;no sign of rain or high
+winds&mdash;the drills are set at work, and day and night the work
+goes on, till all the cultivation has been sown. As the drills go
+along, the hengha follows close behind, covering the seed in the
+furrows; and once again it is put over, till the fields are all
+level, shining, and clean, waiting for the first appearance of the
+young soft shoots.</p>
+<p>These, after some seven, nine, or perhaps fifteen days,
+according to the weather, begin to appear in long lines of delicate
+pale yellowish green. This is a most anxious time. Should rain
+fall, the whole surface of the earth gets caked and hard, and the
+delicate plant burns out, or being chafed against the hard surface
+crust, it withers and dies. If the wind gets into the east, it
+brings a peculiar blight which settles round the leaf and collar of
+the stem of the young plant, chokes it, and sweeps off miles and
+miles of it. If hot west winds blow, the plant gets black,
+discoloured, burnt up, and dead. A south wind often brings
+caterpillars&mdash;at least this pest often makes its appearance
+when the wind is southerly; but as often as not caterpillars find
+their way to the young plant in the most mysterious
+manner,&mdash;no one knowing whence they come. Daily, nay almost
+hourly, reports come in from all parts of the zillah: now you hear
+of 'Lahee,' blight on some field; now it is 'Ihirka,' scorching, or
+'Pilooa,' caterpillars. In some places the seed may have been bad
+or covered with too much earth, and the plant comes up straggling
+and thin. If there is abundant moisture, this must be re-sown. In
+fact, there is never-ending anxiety and work at this season, but
+when the plant has got into ten or fifteen leaf, and is an inch or
+two high, the most critical time is over, and one begins to think
+about the next operation, namely WEEDING.</p>
+<p>The coolies are again in requisition. Each comes armed with a
+<i>coorpee</i>,&mdash;this is a small metal spatula, broad-pointed,
+with which they dig out the weeds with amazing deftness. Sometimes
+they may inadvertently take out a single stem of indigo with the
+weeds: the eye of the mate or Tokedar espies this at once, and the
+careless coolie is treated to a volley of Hindoo Billingsgate, in
+which all his relations are abused to the seventh generation. By
+the time the first weeding is finished, the plant will be over a
+foot high, and if necessary a second weeding is then given. After
+the second weeding, and if any rain has fallen in the interim, the
+plant will be fully two feet high.</p>
+<p>It is now a noble-looking expanse of beautiful green waving
+foliage. As the wind ruffles its myriads of leaves, the sparkle of
+the sunbeams on the undulating mass produces the most wonderful
+combinations of light and shade; feathery sprays of a delicate pale
+green curl gracefully all over the field. It is like an ocean of
+vegetation, with billows of rich colour chasing each other, and
+blending in harmonious hues; the whole field looking a perfect
+oasis of beauty amid the surrounding dull brown tints of the
+season.</p>
+<p>It is now time to give the plant a light touch of the plough.
+This eases the soil about the roots, lets in air and light, tends
+to clean the undergrowth of weeds, and gives it a great impetus.
+The operation is called <i>Bedaheunee</i>. By the beginning of June
+the tiny red flower is peeping from its leafy sheath, the lower
+leaves are turning yellowish and crisp, and it is almost time to
+begin the grandest and most important operation of the season, the
+manufacture of the dye from the plant.</p>
+<p>To this you have been looking forward during the cold raw foggy
+days of November, when the ploughs were hard at work,&mdash;during
+the hot fierce winds of March, and the still, sultry, breathless
+early days of June, when the air was so still and oppressive that
+you could scarcely breathe. These sultry days are the lull before
+the storm&mdash;the pause before the moisture-laden clouds of the
+monsoon roll over the land 'rugged and brown,' and the wild rattle
+of thunder and the lurid glare of quivering never-ceasing lightning
+herald in the annual rains. The manufacture however deserves a
+chapter to itself.</p>
+
+<a name="03"></a>
+
+<center>
+<img src="Images/03.jpg" alt="Indigo Beating Vats" width="574" height="370" hspace="4" vspace="8" align="bottom"><br>
+<i>Indigo Beating Vats</i></center>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterIV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Manufacture of Indigo.&mdash;Loading the
+vats.&mdash;Beating.&mdash;Boiling, straining, and
+pressing.&mdash;Scene in the Factory.&mdash;Fluctuation of
+produce.&mdash;Chemistry of Indigo.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Indigo is manufactured solely from the leaf. When arrangements
+have been made for cutting and carting the plant from the fields,
+the vats and machinery are all made ready, and a day is appointed
+to begin 'Mahye' or manufacture. The apparatus consists of, first,
+a strong serviceable pump for pumping up water into the vats: this
+is now mostly done by machinery, but many small factories still use
+the old Persian wheel, which may be shortly described as simply an
+endless chain of buckets, working on a revolving wheel or drum. The
+machine is worked by bullocks, and as the buckets ascend full from
+the well, they are emptied during their revolution into a small
+trough at the top, and the water is conveyed into a huge masonry
+reservoir or tank, situated high up above the vats, which forms a
+splendid open air bath for the planter when he feels inclined for a
+swim. Many of these tanks, called <i>Kajhana</i>, are capable of
+containing 40,000 cubic feet of water or more.</p>
+<p>Below, and in a line with this reservoir, are the steeping vats,
+each capable of containing about 2000 cubic feet of water when
+full. Of course the vats vary in size, but what is called a
+<i>pucca</i> vat is of the above capacity. When the fresh green
+plant is brought in, the carts with their loads are ranged in line,
+opposite these loading vats. The loading coolies,
+'Bojhunneas'&mdash;so called from '<i>Bojh</i>,' a
+bundle&mdash;jump into the vats, and receive the plant from the
+cart-men, stacking it up in perpendicular layers, till the vat is
+full: a horizontal layer is put on top to make the surface look
+even. Bamboo battens are then placed over the plant, and these are
+pressed down, and held in their place by horizontal beams, working
+in upright posts. The uprights have holes at intervals of six
+inches. An iron pin is put in one of the holes; a lever is put
+under this pin, and the beam pressed down, till the next hole is
+reached and a fresh pin inserted, which keeps the beam down in its
+place. When sufficient pressure has been applied, the sluice in the
+reservoir is opened, and the water runs by a channel into the vat
+till it is full. Vat after vat is thus filled till all are
+finished, and the plant is allowed to steep from ten to thirteen or
+fourteen hours, according to the state of the weather, the
+temperature of the water, and other conditions and circumstances
+which have all to be carefully noted.</p>
+<p>At first a greenish yellow tinge appears in the water, gradually
+deepening to an intense blue. As the fermentation goes on, froth
+forms on the surface of the vat, the water swells up, bubbles of
+gas arise to the surface, and the whole range of vats presents a
+frothing, bubbling, sweltering appearance, indicative of the
+chemical action going on in the interior. If a torch be applied to
+the surface of a vat, the accumulated gas ignites with a loud
+report, and a blue lambent flame travels with amazing rapidity over
+the effervescent liquid. In very hot weather I have seen the water
+swell up over the mid walls of the vats, till the whole range would
+be one uniform surface of frothing liquid, and on applying a light,
+the report has been as loud as that of a small cannon, and the
+flame has leapt from vat to vat like the flitting will-o'-the-wisp
+on the surface of some miasmatic marsh.</p>
+<p>When fermentation has proceeded sufficiently, the temperature of
+the vat lowers somewhat, and the water, which has been globular and
+convex on the surface and at the sides, now becomes distinctly
+convex and recedes a very little. This is a sign that the plant has
+been steeped long enough, and that it is now time to open the vat.
+A pin is knocked out from the bottom, and the pent-up liquor rushes
+out in a golden yellow stream tinted with blue and green into the
+beating vat, which lies parallel to, but at a lower level than the
+loading vat.</p>
+<p>Of course as the vats are loaded at different hours, and the
+steeping varies with circumstances, they must be ready to open also
+at different intervals. There are two men specially engaged to look
+after the opening. The time of loading each one is carefully noted;
+the time it will take to steep is guessed at, and an hour for
+opening written down. When this hour arrives, the <i>Gunta
+parree</i>, or time-keeper, looks at the vat, and if it appears
+ready he gets the pinmen to knock out the pin and let the steeped
+liquor run into the beating vat.</p>
+<p>Where there are many vats, this goes on all night, and by the
+morning the beating vats are all full of steeped liquor, and ready
+to be beaten.</p>
+<p>The beating now is mostly done by machinery; but the old style
+was very different. A gang of coolies (generally Dangurs) were put
+into the vats, having long sticks with a disc at the end, with
+which, standing in two rows, they threw up the liquor into the air.
+The quantity forced up by the one coolie encounters in mid air that
+sent up by the man standing immediately opposite to him, and the
+two jets meeting and mixing confusedly together, tumble down in
+broken frothy masses into the vat. Beginning with a slow steady
+stroke the coolies gradually increase the pace, shouting out a
+hoarse wild song at intervals; till, what with the swish and splash
+of the falling water, the measured beat of the <i>furrovahs</i> or
+beating rods, and the yells and cries with which they excite each
+other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which at first is
+of a yellowish green, is now beginning to assume an intense blue
+tint; this is the result of the oxygenation going on. As the blue
+deepens, the exertions of the coolie increase, till with every
+muscle straining, head thrown back, chest expanded, his long black
+hair dripping with white foam, and his bronzed naked body
+glistening with blue liquor, he yells and shouts and twists and
+contorts his body till he looks like a true 'blue devil.' To see
+eight or ten vats full of yelling howling blue creatures, the water
+splashing high in mid air, the foam flecking the walls, and the
+measured beat of the <i>furrovahs</i> rising weird-like into the
+morning air, is almost enough to shake the nerve of a stranger, but
+it is music in the planter's ear, and he can scarce refrain from
+yelling out in sympathy with his coolies, and sharing in their
+frantic excitement. Indeed it is often necessary to encourage them
+if a vat proves obstinate, and the colour refuses to come&mdash;an
+event which occasionally does happen. It is very hard work beating,
+and when this constant violent exercise is kept up for about three
+hours (which is the time generally taken), the coolies are pretty
+well exhausted, and require a rest.</p>
+<a name="04"></a>
+
+<center><img src="Images/04.jpg" alt="Indigo Beaters at Work in
+the Vats" width="570" height="374" hspace="4" vspace="8"><br>
+
+<i>Indigo Beaters at Work in the Vats</i></center>
+
+<p>During the beating, two processes are going on simultaneously.
+One is chemical&mdash;oxygenation&mdash;turning the yellowish green
+dye into a deep intense blue: the other is mechanical&mdash;a
+separation of the particles of dye from the water in which it is
+held in solution. The beating seems to do this, causing the dye to
+granulate in larger particles.</p>
+<p>When the vat has been beaten, the coolies remove the froth and
+scum from the surface of the water, and then leave the contents to
+settle. The fecula or dye, or <i>mall</i>, as it is technically
+called, now settles at the bottom of the vat in a soft pulpy
+sediment, and the waste liquor left on the top is let off through
+graduated holes in the front. Pin after pin is gradually removed,
+and the clear sherry-coloured waste allowed to run out till the
+last hole in the series is reached, and nothing but dye remains in
+the vat. By this time the coolies have had a rest and food, and now
+they return to the works, and either lift up the <i>mall</i> in
+earthen jars and take it to the mall tank, or&mdash;as is now more
+commonly done&mdash;they run it along a channel to the tank, and
+then wash out and clean the vat to be ready for the renewed beating
+on the morrow. When all the <i>mall</i> has been collected in the
+mall tank, it is next pumped up into the straining room. It is here
+strained through successive layers of wire gauze and cloth, till,
+free from dirt, sand and impurity, it is run into the large iron
+boilers, to be subjected to the next process. This is the boiling.
+This operation usually takes two or three hours, after which it is
+run off along narrow channels, till it reaches the straining-table.
+It is a very important part of the manufacture, and has to be
+carefully done. The straining-table is an oblong shallow wooden
+frame, in the shape of a trough, but all composed of open woodwork.
+It is covered by a large straining-sheet, on which the mall
+settles; while the waste water trickles through and is carried away
+by a drain. When the mall has stood on the table all night, it is
+next morning lifted up by scoops and buckets and put into the
+presses. These are square boxes of iron or wood, with perforated
+sides and bottom and a removeable perforated lid. The insides of
+the boxes are lined with press cloths, and when filled these cloths
+are carefully folded over the <i>mall</i>, which is now of the
+consistence of starch; and a heavy beam, worked on two upright
+three-inch screws, is let down on the lid of the press. A long
+lever is now put on the screws, and the nut worked slowly round.
+The pressure is enormous, and all the water remaining in the
+<i>mall</i> is pressed through the cloth and perforations in the
+press-box till nothing but the pure indigo remains behind.</p>
+<p>The presses are now opened, and a square slab of dark moist
+indigo, about three or three and a half inches thick, is carried
+off on the bottom of the press (the top and sides having been
+removed), and carefully placed on the cutting frame. This frame
+corresponds in size to the bottom of the press, and is grooved in
+lines somewhat after the manner of a chess-board. A stiff iron rod
+with a brass wire attached is put through the groove under the
+slab, the wire is brought over the slab, and the rod being pulled
+smartly through brings the wire with it, cutting the indigo much in
+the same way as you would cut a bar of soap. When all the slab has
+been cut into bars, the wire and rod are next put into the grooves
+at right angles to the bars and again pulled through, thus dividing
+the bars into cubical cakes. Each cake is then stamped with the
+factory mark and number, and all are noted down in the books. They
+are then taken to the drying house; this is a large airy building,
+with strong shelves of bamboo reaching to the roof, and having
+narrow passages between the tiers of shelves. On these shelves or
+<i>mychans</i>, as they are called, the cakes are ranged to dry.
+The drying takes two or three months, and the cakes are turned and
+moved at frequent intervals, till thoroughly ready for packing. All
+the little pieces and corners and chips are carefully put by on
+separate shelves, and packed separately. Even the sweepings and
+refuse from the sheets and floor are all carefully collected, mixed
+with water, boiled separately, and made into cakes, which are
+called 'washings.'</p>
+<p>During the drying a thick mould forms on the cakes. This is
+carefully brushed off before packing, and, mixed with sweepings and
+tiny chips is all ground up in a hand-mill, packed in separate
+chests, and sold as dust. In October, when <i>mahye</i> is over,
+and the preparation of the land going on again, the packing begins.
+The cakes, each of separate date, are carefully scrutinised, and
+placed in order of quality. The finest qualities are packed first,
+in layers, in mango-wood boxes; the boxes are first weighed empty,
+re-weighed when full, and the difference gives the nett weight of
+the indigo. The tare, gross, and nett weights are printed legibly
+on the chests, along with the factory mark and number of the chest,
+and when all are ready, they are sent down to the brokers in
+Calcutta for sale. Such shortly is the system of manufacture.</p>
+<p>During <i>mahye</i> the factory is a busy scene. Long before
+break of day the ryots and coolies are busy cutting the plant,
+leaving it in green little heaps for the cartmen to load. In the
+early morning the carts are seen converging to the factory on every
+road, crawling along like huge green beetles. Here a cavalcade of
+twenty or thirty carts, there in clusters of twos or threes. When
+they reach the factory the loaders have several vats ready for the
+reception of the plant, while others are taking out the already
+steeped plant of yesterday; staggering under its weight, as,
+dripping with water, they toss it on the vast accumulating heap of
+refuse material.</p>
+<p>Down in the vats below, the beating coolies are splashing, and
+shouting, and yelling, or the revolving wheel (where machinery is
+used) is scattering clouds of spray and foam in the blinding
+sunshine. The firemen stripped to the waist, are feeding the
+furnaces with the dried stems of last year's crop, which forms our
+only fuel. The smoke hovers in volumes over the boiling-house. The
+pinmen are busy sorting their pins, rolling hemp round them to make
+them fit the holes more exactly. Inside the boiling-house, dimly
+discernible through the clouds of stifling steam, the boilermen are
+seen with long rods, stirring slowly the boiling mass of bubbling
+blue. The clank of the levers resounds through the pressing-house,
+or the hoarse guttural 'hah, hah!' as the huge lever is strained
+and pulled at by the press-house coolies. The straining-table is
+being cleaned by the table 'mate' and his coolies, while the
+washerman stamps on his sheets and press-cloths to extract all the
+colour from them, and the cake-house boys run to and fro between
+the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on their
+heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from the
+oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary
+to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of
+sounds. The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of
+wheels, the roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries,
+and yells of the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers
+as some terrified or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the
+objurgations of the 'mates' as some lazy fellow eases his stroke in
+the beating vats; the cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round
+the circle where the Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp,
+dilapidated wheel-house; the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on
+the drum, the arriving and departing carts; the clang of the anvil,
+as the blacksmith and his men hammer away at some huge screw which
+has been bent; the hurrying crowds of cartmen and loaders with
+their burdens of fresh green plant or dripping refuse;&mdash;form
+such a medley of sights and sounds as I have never seen equalled in
+any other industry.</p>
+<p align="justify">The planter has to be here, there, and
+everywhere. He sends carts to this village or to that, according as
+the crop ripens. Coolies must be counted and paid daily. The
+stubble must be ploughed to give the plant a start for the second
+growth whenever the weather will admit of it. Reports have to be
+sent to the agents and owners. The boiling must be narrowly
+watched, as also the beating and the straining. He has a large
+staff of native assistants, but if his <i>mahye</i> is to be
+successful, his eye must be over all. It is an anxious time, but
+the constant work is grateful, and when the produce is good, and
+everything working smoothly, it is perhaps the most enjoyable time
+of the whole year. Is it nothing to see the crop, on which so much
+care has been expended, which you have watched day by day through
+all the vicissitudes of the season, through drought, and flood, and
+blight; is it nothing to see it safely harvested, and your shelves
+filling day by day with fine sound cakes, the representatives of
+wealth, that will fill your pockets with commission, and build up
+your name as a careful and painstaking planter?</p>
+<p>'What's your produce?' is now the first query at this season,
+when planters meet. Calculations are made daily, nay hourly, to see
+how much is being got per beegah, or how much per vat. The presses
+are calculated to weigh so much. Some days you will get a press a
+vat, some days it will mount up to two presses a vat, and at other
+times it will recede to half a press a vat, or even less. Cold wet
+weather reduces the produce. Warm sunny weather will send it up
+again. Short stunted plant from poor lands will often reduce your
+average per acre, to be again sent up as fresh, hardy, leafy plant
+comes in from some favourite village, where you have new and
+fertile lands, or where the plant from the rich zeraats laden with
+broad strong leaf is tumbled into the loading vat.</p>
+<p>So far as I know, there seems to be no law of produce. It is the
+most erratic and incomprehensible thing about planting. One day
+your presses are full to straining, next day half of them lie
+empty. No doubt the state of the weather, the quality of your
+plant, the temperature of the water, the length of time steeping,
+and other things have an influence; but I know of no planter who
+can entirely and satisfactorily account for the sudden and
+incomprehensible fluctuations and variations which undoubtedly take
+place in the produce or yield of the plant. It is a matter of more
+interest to the planter than to the general public, but all I can
+say is, that if the circumstances attendant on any sudden change in
+the yielding powers of the plant were more accurately noted; if the
+chemical conditions of the water, the air, and the raw material
+itself, more especially in reference to the soil on which it grows,
+the time it takes in transit from the field to the vat, and other
+points, which will at once suggest themselves to a practical
+planter, were more carefully, methodically, and scientifically
+observed, some coherent theory resulting in plain practical results
+might be evolved.</p>
+<p>Planters should attend more to this. I believe the chemical
+history of indigo has yet to be written. The whole manufacture, so
+far as chemistry is concerned, is yet crude and ill-digested. I
+know that by careful experiment, and close scientific investigation
+and observation, the preparation of indigo could be much improved.
+So far as the mechanical appliances for the manufacture go, the
+last ten years have witnessed amazing and rapid improvements. What
+is now wanted, is, that what has been done for the mere mechanical
+appliances, should be done for the proper understanding of the
+chemical changes and conditions in the constitution of the plant,
+and in the various processes of its manufacture<a href=
+"#footnoteB1"><sup>1</sup></a>.</p>
+<hr align="left" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<p><a name="footnoteB1"><sup>1</sup></a> Since the above chapter
+was written Mons. P.I. Michea, a French chemist of some experience
+in Indigo matters, has patented an invention (the result of much
+study, experiment, and investigation), by the application of which
+an immense increase in the produce of the plant has been obtained
+during the last season, in several factories where it has been
+worked in Jessore, Purneah, Kishnaghur, and other places. This
+increase, varying according to circumstances, has in some instances
+reached the amazing extent of 30 to 47 per cent., and so far from
+being attended with a deterioration of quality the dye produced is
+said to be finer than that obtained under the old crude process
+described in the above chapter. This shows what a waste must have
+been going on, and what may yet be done, by properly organised
+scientific investigation. I firmly believe that with an intelligent
+application of the principles of chemistry and agricultural
+science, not only to the manufacture but to growth, cultivation,
+nature of the soil, application of manures, and other such
+departments of the business, quite a revolution will set in, and a
+new era in the history of this great industry will be inaugurated.
+Less area for crop will be required, working expenses will be
+reduced, a greater out-turn, and a more certain crop secured, and
+all classes, planter and ryot alike, will be benefited.</p>
+<a name="05"></a>
+<center>
+<img src="Images/05.jpg" alt="Indian Factory Peon" width="282" height="316"><br>
+<i>Indian Factory Peon</i></center>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="06"></a>
+<center><img src="Images/06.jpg" alt="Indigo Planter's House"
+width="475" height="304" hspace="4" vspace="8" align="bottom"><br>
+<i>Indigo Planter's House</i></center>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Parewah factory.&mdash;A 'Bobbery
+Pack.'&mdash;Hunt through a village after a cat.&mdash;The pariah
+dog of India.&mdash;Fate of 'Pincher.'&mdash;Rampore hound.
+&mdash;Persian greyhound.&mdash;Caboolee dogs.&mdash;A jackal
+hunt.&mdash;Incidents of the chase.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>After living at Puttihee for two years, I was transferred to
+another out-factory in the same concern, called Parewah. There was
+here a very nice little three-roomed bungalow, with airy verandahs
+all round. It was a pleasant change from Puttihee, and the
+situation was very pretty. A small stream, almost dry in the hot
+weather, but a swollen, deep, rapid torrent in the rains, meandered
+past the factory. Nearing the bullock-house it suddenly took a
+sweep to the left in the form of a wide horseshoe, and in this bend
+or pocket was situated the bungalow, with a pretty terraced garden
+sloping gently to the stream. Thus the river was in full view from
+both the front and the back verandahs. In front, and close on the
+bank of the river, stood the kitchen, fowl-house, and offices. To
+the right of the compound were the stables, while behind the
+bungalow, and some distance down the stream, the wheel-house, vats,
+press-house, boiling-house, cake-house, and workshops were grouped
+together. I was but nine miles from the bead-factory, and the same
+distance from the station of Mooteeharree, while over the river,
+and but three miles off, I had the factory of Meerpore, with its
+hospitable manager as my nearest neighbour. His lands and mine lay
+contiguous. In fact some of his villages lay beyond some of mine,
+and he had to ride through part of my cultivation to reach
+them.</p>
+<p>Not unfrequently we would meet in the zillah of a morning, when
+we would invariably make for the nearest patch of grass or jungle,
+and enjoy a hunt together. In the cool early mornings, when the
+heavy night dews still lie glittering on the grass, when the
+cobwebs seem strung with pearls, and faint lines of soft fleecy
+mist lie in the hollows by the watercourses; long ere the hot,
+fiery sun has left his crimson bed behind the cold grey horizon, we
+are out on our favourite horse, the wiry, long-limbed <i>syce</i>
+or groom trotting along behind us. The <i>mehter</i> or dog-keeper
+is also in attendance with a couple of greyhounds in leash, and a
+motley pack of wicked little terriers frisking and frolicking
+behind him. This mongrel collection is known as 'the Bobbery Pack,'
+and forms a certain adjunct to every assistant's bungalow in the
+district. I had one very noble-looking kangaroo hound that I had
+brought from Australia with me, and my 'bobbery pack' of terriers
+contained canine specimens of all sorts, sizes, and colours.</p>
+<p>On nearing a village, you would see one black fellow, 'Pincher,'
+set off at a round trot ahead, with seemingly the most innocent air
+in the world. 'Tilly,' 'Tiny,' and 'Nipper' follow.</p>
+<p>Then 'Dandy,' 'Curly,' 'Brandy,' and 'Nettle,' till spying a cat
+in the distance, the whole pack with a whimper of excitement dash
+off at a mad scramble, the hound straining meanwhile at the slip,
+till he almost pulls the <i>mehter</i> off his legs. Off goes the
+cat, round the corner of a hut with her tail puffed up to fully
+three times its normal size. Round in mad, eager pursuit rattle the
+terriers, thirsting for her blood. The <i>syce</i> dashes forward,
+vainly hoping to turn them from their quest. Now a village dog,
+roused from his morning nap, bounds out with a demoniac howl, which
+is caught up and echoed by all the curs in the village.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile the row inside the hut is fiendish. The sleeping
+family rudely roused by the yelping pack, utter the most discordant
+screams. The women with garments fluttering behind them, rush out
+beating their breasts, thinking the very devil is loose. The wails
+of the unfortunate cat mingle with the short snapping barks of the
+pack, or a howl of anguish as puss inflicts a caress on the face of
+some too careless or reckless dog. A howling village cur has rashly
+ventured too near. 'Pincher' has him by the hind leg before you
+could say 'Jack Robinson.' Leaving the dead cat for 'Toby' and
+'Nettle' to worry, the whole pack now fiercely attack the luckless
+<i>Pariah</i> dog. A dozen of his village mates dance madly outside
+the ring, but are too wise or too cowardly to come to closer
+quarters. The kangaroo hound has now fairly torn the rope from the
+keeper's hand, and with one mighty bound is in the middle of the
+fight, scattering the village dogs right and left. The whole
+village is now in commotion, the <i>syce</i> and keeper shout the
+names of the terriers in vain. Oaths, cries, shouts, and screams
+mingle with the yelping and growling of the combatants, till riding
+up, I disperse the worrying pack with a few cracks of my hunting
+whip, and so on again over the zillah, leaving the women and
+children to recover their scattered senses, the old men to grumble
+over their broken slumbers, and the boys and young men to wonder at
+the pluck and dash of the <i>Belaitee Kookoor</i>, or English
+dog.</p>
+<p>The common Pariah dog, or village dog of India, is a perfect
+cur; a mangy, carrion-loving, yellow-fanged, howling brute. A most
+unlovely and unloving beast. As you pass his village he will bounce
+out on you with the fiercest bark and the most menacing snarl; but
+lo! if a terrier the size of a teacup but boldly go at him, down
+goes his tail like a pump-handle, he turns white with fear, and
+like the arrant coward that he is, tumbles on his back and fairly
+screams for mercy. I have often been amused to see a great hulking
+cowardly brute come out like an avalanche at 'Pincher,' expecting
+to make one mouthful of him. What a look of bewilderment he would
+put on, as my gallant little 'Pincher,' with a short, sharp,
+defiant bark would go boldly at him. The huge yellow brute would
+stop dead short on all four legs, and as the rest of my pack would
+come scampering round the corner, he would find himself the centre
+of a ring of indomitable assailants.</p>
+<p>How he curses his short-sighted temerity. With one long howl of
+utter dismay and deadly fear, he manages to get away from the pack,
+leaving my little doggies to come proudly round my horse with their
+mouths full of fur, and each of their little tails as stiff as an
+iron ramrod.</p>
+<p>That 'Pincher,' in some respects, was a very fiend incarnate.
+There was no keeping him in. He was constantly getting into hot
+water himself, and leading the pack into all sorts of mischief. He
+was as bold as brass and as courageous as a lion. He stole food,
+worried sheep and goats, and was never out of a scrape. I tried
+thrashing him, tying him up, half starving him, but all to no
+purpose. He would be into every hut in a village whenever he had
+the chance, overturning brass pots, eating up rice and curries, and
+throwing the poor villager's household into dismay and confusion.
+He would never leave a cat if he once saw it. I've seen him
+scramble through the roofs of more than one hut, and oust the cat
+from its fancied stronghold.</p>
+<p>I put him into an indigo vat with a big dog jackal once, and he
+whipped the jackal single-handed. He did not kill it, but he
+worried it till the jackal shammed dead and would not 'come to the
+scratch.' 'Pincher's' ears were perfect shreds, and his scars were
+as numerous almost as his hairs. My gallant 'Pincher!' His was a
+sad end. He got eaten up by an alligator in the 'Dhans,' a sluggish
+stream in Bhaugulpore. I had all my pack in the boat with me, the
+stream was swollen and full of weeds. A jackal gave tongue on the
+bank, and 'Pincher' bounded over the side of the boat at once. I
+tried to 'grab' him, and nearly upset the boat in doing so. Our
+boat was going rapidly down stream, and 'Pincher' tried to get
+ashore but got among the weeds. He gave a bark, poor gallant little
+dog, for help, but just then we saw a dark square snout shoot
+athwart the stream. A half-smothered sobbing cry from 'Pincher,'
+and the bravest little dog I ever possessed was gone for ever.</p>
+<p>There is another breed of large, strong-limbed, big-boned dogs,
+called Rampore hounds. They are a cross breed from the original
+upcountry dog and the Persian greyhound. Some call them the Indian
+greyhound. They seem to be bred principally in the Rampore-Bareilly
+district, but one or more are generally to be found in every
+planter's pack. They are fast and strong enough, but I have often
+found them bad at tackling, and they are too fond of their keeper
+ever to make an affectionate faithful dog to the European.</p>
+<p>Another somewhat similar breed is the <i>Tazi</i>. This,
+although not so large a dog as the Rhamporee, is a much pluckier
+animal, and when well trained will tackle a jackal with the utmost
+determination. He has a wrinkled almost hairless skin, but a very
+uncertain temper, and he is not very amenable to discipline.
+<i>Tazi</i> is simply the Persian word for a greyhound, and refers
+to no particular breed. The common name for a dog is <i>Kutta</i>,
+pronounced <i>Cootta</i>, but the Tazi has certainly been an
+importation from the North-west, hence the Persian name. The
+wandering Caboolees, who come down to the plains once a year with
+dried fruits, spices, and other products of field or garden, also
+bring with them the dogs of their native country for sale, and on
+occasion they bring lovely long-haired white Persian cats, very
+beautiful animals. These Caboolee dogs are tall, long-limbed
+brutes, generally white, with a long thin snout, very long
+silky-haired drooping ears, and generally wearing tufts of hair on
+their legs and tail, somewhat like the feathering of a spaniel,
+which makes them look rather clumsy. They cannot stand the heat of
+the plains at all well, and are difficult to tame, but fleet and
+plucky, hunting well with an English pack.</p>
+<p>My neighbour Anthony at Meerpore had some very fine English
+greyhounds and bulldogs, and many a rattling burst have we had
+together after the fox or the jackal. Imagine a wide level plain,
+with one uniform dull covering of rice stubble, save where in the
+centre a mound rises some two acres in extent, covered with long
+thatching grass, a few scrubby acacia bushes, and other jungly
+brushwood. All round the circular horizon are dense forest masses
+of sombre looking foliage, save where some clump of palms uprear
+their stately heads, or the white shining walls of some temple,
+sacred to Shiva or Khristna glitter in the sunshine. Far to the
+left a sluggish creek winds slowly along through the plain, its
+banks fringed with acacias and wild rose jungle. On the far bank is
+a small patch of <i>Sal</i> forest jungle, with a thick rank
+undergrowth of ferns, thistles, and rank grass. As I am slowly
+riding along I hear a shout in the distance, and looking round
+behold Anthony advancing at a rapid hand gallop. His dogs and mine,
+being old friends, rapidly fraternise, and we determine on a
+hunt.</p>
+<p>'Let's try the old patch, Anthony!'</p>
+<p>'All right,' and away we go making straight for the mound. When
+we reach the grass the syces and keepers hold the hounds at the
+corners outside, while we ride through the grass urging on the
+terriers, who, quivering with excitement, utter short barks, and
+dash here and there among the thick grass, all eager for a
+find.</p>
+<p>'Gone away, gone away!' shouts Anthony, as a fleet fox dashes
+out, closely followed by 'Pincher' and half a dozen others. The
+hounds are slipped, and away go the pack in full pursuit, we on our
+horses riding along, one on each side of the chase. The fox has a
+good start, but now the hounds are nearing him, when with a sudden
+whisk he doubles round the ridge encircling a rice field, the
+hounds overshoot him, and ere they turn the fox has put the breadth
+of a good field between himself and his pursuers. He is now making
+back again for the grass, but encounters some of the terriers who
+have tailed off behind. With panting chests and lolling tongues,
+they are pegging stolidly along, when fortune gives them this
+welcome chance. Redoubling their efforts, they dash at the fox.
+'Bravo, Tilly! you tumbled him over that time;' but he is up and
+away again. Dodging, double-turning, and twisting, he has nearly
+run the gauntlet, and the friendly covert is close at hand, but the
+hounds are now up again and thirsting for his blood. 'Hurrah!
+Minnie has him!' cries Anthony, and riding up we divest poor
+Reynard of his brush, pat the dogs, ease the girths for a minute,
+and then again into the jungle for another beat.</p>
+<p>This time a fat old jackal breaks to the left, long before the
+dogs are up. Yelling to the <i>mehters</i> not to slip the hounds,
+we gather the terriers together, and pound over the stubble and
+ridges. He is going very leisurely, casting an occasional scared
+look over his shoulder. 'Curly' and 'Legs,' two of my fastest
+terriers, are now in full view, they are laying themselves well to
+the ground, and Master Jackal thinks it's high time to increase his
+pace. He puts on a spurt, but condition tells. He is fat and pursy,
+and must have had a good feed last night on some poor dead bullock.
+He is shewing his teeth now. Curly makes his rush, and they both
+roll over together. Up hurries Legs, and the jackal gets a grip,
+gives him a shake, and then hobbles slowly on. The two terriers now
+hamper him terribly. One minute they are at his heels, and as soon
+as he turns, they are at his ear or shoulder. The rest of the pack
+are fast coming up.</p>
+<p>Anthony has a magnificent bulldog, broad-chested, and a very
+Goliath among dogs. He is called 'Sailor.' Sailor always pounds
+along at the same steady pace; he never seems to get flurried.
+Sitting lazily at the door, he seems too indolent even to snap at a
+fly. He is a true philosopher, and nought seems to disturb his
+serenity. But see him after a jackal, his big red tongue hanging
+out, his eyes flashing fire, and his hair erected on his back like
+the bristles of a wild boar. He looks fiendish then, and he is a
+true bulldog. There is no flinching with Sailor. Once he gets his
+grip it's no use trying to make him let go.</p>
+<p>Up comes Sailor now.</p>
+<p>He has the jackal by the throat.</p>
+<p>A hoarse, rattling, gasping yell, and the jackal has gone to the
+happy hunting grounds.</p>
+<p>The sun is now mounting in the sky. The hounds and terriers feel
+the heat, so sending them home by the keeper, we diverge on our
+respective roads, ride over our cultivation, seeing the ploughing
+and preparations generally, till hot, tired, and dusty, we reach
+home about 11.30, tumble into our bath, and feeling refreshed, sit
+down contentedly to breakfast. If the <i>dak</i> or postman has
+come in we get our letters and papers, and the afternoon is devoted
+to office work and accounts, hearing complaints and reports from
+the villages, or looking over any labour that may be going on in
+the zeraats or at the workshops. In the evening we ride over the
+zeraats again, give orders for the morrow's work, consume a little
+tobacco, have an early dinner, and after a little reading, retire
+soon to bed to dream of far away friends and the happy memories of
+home. Many an evening it is very lonely work. No friendly face, and
+no congenial society within miles of your factory. Little wonder
+that the arrival of a brother planter sends a thrill through the
+frame, and that his advent is welcomed as the most agreeable break
+to the irksome monotony of our lonely life.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterVI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Fishing in India.&mdash;Hereditary
+trades.&mdash;The boatmen and fishermen of India.&mdash;Their
+villages.&mdash;Nets.&mdash;Modes of fishing.&mdash;Curiosities
+relating thereto.&mdash;Catching an alligator with a
+hook.&mdash;Exciting capture.&mdash;Crocodiles.&mdash;Shooting an
+alligator.&mdash;Death of the man-eater.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Not only in the wild jungles, on the undulating plains, and
+among the withered brown stubbles, does animal life abound in
+India; but the rivers, lakes, and creeks teem with fish of every
+conceivable size, shape, and colour. The varieties are legion. From
+the huge black porpoise, tumbling through the turgid stream of the
+Ganges, to the bright, sparkling, silvery shoals of delicate
+<i>chillooahs</i> or <i>poteeahs</i>, which one sees darting in and
+out among the rice stubbles in every paddy field during the rains.
+Here a huge <i>bhowarree</i> (pike), or ravenous <i>coira</i>,
+comes to the surface with a splash; there a <i>raho</i>, the Indian
+salmon, with its round sucker-like mouth, rises slowly to the
+surface, sucks in a fly and disappears as slowly as it rose; or a
+<i>pachgutchea</i>, a long sharp-nosed fish, darts rapidly by; a
+shoal of mullet with their heads out of the water swim athwart the
+stream, and far down in the cool depths of the tank or lake, a
+thousand different varieties disport themselves among the mazy
+labyrinths of the broad-leaved weeds.</p>
+<p>During the middle, and about the end of the rains, is the best
+time for fishing; the whole country is then a perfect network of
+streams. Every rice field is a shallow lake, with countless
+thousands of tiny fish darting here and there among the rice
+stalks. Every ditch teems with fish, and every hollow in every
+field is a well stocked aquarium.</p>
+<p>Round the edge of every lake or tank in the early morning, or
+when the fierce heat of the day begins to get tempered by the
+approaching shades of evening, one sees numbers of boys and men of
+the poorer classes, each with a couple of rough bamboo rods stuck
+in the ground in front of him, watching his primitive float with
+the greatest eagerness, and whipping out at intervals some luckless
+fish of about three or four ounces in weight with a tremendous
+haul, fit for the capture of a forty-pounder. They get a coarse
+sort of hook in the bazaar, rig up a roughly-twisted line, tie on a
+small piece of hollow reed for a float, and with a lively
+earth-worm for a bait, they can generally manage in a very short
+time to secure enough fish for a meal.</p>
+<p>With a short light rod, a good silk line, and an English hook
+attached to fine gut, I have enjoyed many a good hour's sport at
+Parewah. I used to have a cane chair sent down to the bank of the
+stream, a <i>punkah</i>, or hand fan, plenty of cooling drinks, and
+two coolie boys in attendance to remove the fish, renew baits, and
+keep the punkah in constant swing. There I used to sit enjoying my
+cigar, and pulling in little fish at the rate sometimes of a couple
+a minute.</p>
+<p>I remember hooking a turtle once, and a terrible job it was to
+land him. My light rod bent like a willow, but the tackle was good,
+and after ten minutes' hard work I got the turtle to the side,
+where my boys soon secured him. He weighed thirteen pounds.
+Sometimes you get among a colony of freshwater crabs.</p>
+<p>They are little brown brutes, and strip your hooks of the bait
+as fast as you fling them in. There is nothing for it in such a
+case but to shift your station. Many of the bottom fish&mdash;the
+<i>ghurai</i>, the <i>saourie</i>, the <i>barnee</i> (eel), and
+others, make no effort to escape the hook. You see them resting at
+the bottom, and drop the bait at their very nose. On the whole, the
+hand fishing is uninteresting, but it serves to wile away an odd
+hour when hunting and shooting are hardly practicable.</p>
+<p>Particular occupations in India are restricted to particular
+castes. All trades are hereditary. For example, a <i>tatmah</i>, or
+weaver, is always a weaver. He cannot become a blacksmith or
+carpenter. He has no choice. He must follow the hereditary trade.
+The peculiar system of land-tenure in India, which secures as far
+as possible a bit of land for every one, tends to perpetuate this
+hereditary selection of trades, by enabling every cultivator to be
+so far independent of his handicraft, thus restricting competition.
+There may be twenty <i>lohars</i>, or blacksmiths, in a village,
+but they do not all follow their calling. They till their lands,
+and are <i>de facto</i> petty farmers. They know the rudiments of
+their handicraft, but the actual blacksmith's work is done by the
+hereditary smith of the village, whose son in turn will succeed him
+when he dies, or if he leave no son, his fellow caste men will put
+in a successor.</p>
+<p>Nearly every villager during the rains may be found on the banks
+of the stream or lake, angling in an amateur sort of way, but the
+fishermen of Behar <i>par excellence</i> are the
+<i>mull&#257;hs</i>; they are also called <i>Gouhree, Beeu</i>, or
+<i>Muchooah</i>. In Bengal they are called <i>Nikaree</i>, and in
+some parts <i>Baeharee</i>, from the Persian word for a boat. In
+the same way <i>muchooah</i> is derived from <i>much</i>, a fish,
+and <i>mullah</i> means boatman, strictly speaking, rather than
+fisherman. All boatmen and fishermen belong to this caste, and
+their villages can be recognised at once by the instruments of
+their calling lying all around.</p>
+<p>Perched high on some bank overlooking the stream or lake, you
+see innumerable festoons of nets hanging out to dry on tall bamboo
+poles, or hanging like lace curtains of very coarse texture from
+the roofs and eaves of the huts. Hauled up on the beach are a whole
+fleet of boats of different sizes, from the small <i>dugout</i>,
+which will hold only one man, to the huge <i>dinghy</i>, in which
+the big nets and a dozen men can be stowed with ease. Great heaps
+of shells of the freshwater mussel show the source of great
+supplies of bait; while overhead a great hovering army of kites and
+vultures are constantly circling round, eagerly watching for the
+slightest scrap of offal from the nets. When the rains have fairly
+set in, and the fishermen have got their rice fields all planted
+out, they are at liberty to follow their hereditary avocation. A
+day is fixed for a drag, and the big nets are overhauled and got in
+readiness. The head <i>mullah</i>, a wary grizzled old veteran,
+gives the orders. The big drag-net is bundled into the boat, which
+is quickly pushed off into the stream, and at a certain distance
+from shore the net is cast from the boat. Being weighted at the
+lower end it rapidly sinks, and, buoyed on the upper side with
+pieces of cork, it makes a perpendicular wall in the water. Several
+long bamboo poles are now run through the ropes along the upper
+side of the net, to prevent the net being dragged under water
+altogether by the weight of the fish in a great haul. The little
+boats, a crowd of which are in attendance, now dart out,
+surrounding the net on all sides, and the boatmen beating their
+oars on the sides of the boats, create such a clatter as to
+frighten, the fish into the circumference of the big net. This is
+now being dragged slowly to shore by strong and willing arms. The
+women and children watch eagerly on the bank. At length the
+glittering haul is pulled up high and dry on the beach, the fish
+are divided among the men, the women fill their baskets, and away
+they hie to the nearest <i>bazaar</i>, or if it be not
+<i>bazaar</i> or market day, they hawk the fish through the nearest
+villages, like our fish-wives at home.</p>
+<p>There is another common mode of fishing adopted in narrow lakes
+and small streams, which are let out to the fishermen by the
+Zemindars or landholders. A barricade made of light reeds, all
+matted together by string, is stuck into the stream, and a portion
+of the water is fenced in, generally in a circular form. The reed
+fence being quite flexible is gradually moved in, narrowing the
+circle. As the circle narrows, the agitation inside is
+indescribable; fish jumping in all directions&mdash;a moving mass
+of glittering scales and fins. The larger ones try to leap the
+barrier, and are caught by the attendant <i>mullahs</i>, who pounce
+on them with swift dexterity. Eagles and kites dart and swoop down,
+bearing off a captive fish in their talons. The reed fence is
+doubled back on itself, and gradually pushed on till the whole of
+the fish inside are jammed together in a moving mass. The weeds and
+dirt are then removed, and the fish put into baskets and carried
+off to market.</p>
+<p>Others, again, use circular casting nets, which they throw with
+very great dexterity. Gathering the net into a bunch they rest it
+on the shoulder, then with a circular sweep round the head, they
+fling it far out. Being loaded, it sinks down rapidly in the water.
+A string is attached to the centre of the net, and the fisherman
+hauls it in with whatever prey he may be lucky enough to
+secure.</p>
+<p>As the waters recede during October, after the rains have ended,
+each runlet and purling stream becomes a scene of slaughter on a
+most reckless and improvident scale. The innumerable shoals of
+spawn and small fish that have been feeding in the rice fields,
+warned by some instinct seek the lakes and main streams. As they
+try to get their way back, however, they find at each outlet in
+each ditch and field a deadly wicker trap, in the shape of a square
+basket with a V-shaped opening leading into it, through which the
+stream makes its way. After entering this basket there is no egress
+except through the narrow opening, and they are trapped thus in
+countless thousands. Others of the natives in mere wantonness put a
+shelf of reeds or rushes in the bed of the stream, with an upward
+slope. As the water rushes along, the little fish are left high and
+dry on this shelf or screen, and the water runs off below. In this
+way scarcely a fish escapes, and as millions are too small to be
+eaten, it is a most serious waste. The attention of Government has
+been directed to the subject, and steps may be taken to stop such a
+reckless and wholesale destruction of a valuable food supply.</p>
+<p>In some parts of Purneah and Bhaugulpore I have seen a most
+ingenious method adopted by the <i>mullahs</i>. A gang of four or
+five enter the stream and travel slowly downwards, stirring up the
+mud at the bottom with their feet. The fish, ascending the stream
+to escape the mud, get entangled in the weeds. The fishermen feel
+them with their feet amongst the weeds, and immediately pounce on
+them with their hands. Each man has a <i>gila</i> or earthen pot
+attached by a string to his waist and floating behind him in the
+water. I have seen four men fill their earthen pots in less than an
+hour by this ingenious but primitive mode of fishing. Some of them
+can use their feet almost as well for grasping purposes as their
+hands.</p>
+<p>Another mode of capture is by a small net. A flat piece of
+netting is spread over a hoop, to which four or five pieces of
+bamboo are attached, rising up and meeting in the centre, so as to
+form a sort of miniature skeleton tent-like frame over the net. The
+hoop with the net stretched tight across is then pressed down flat
+on the bottom of the tank or stream. If any fish are beneath, their
+efforts to escape agitate the net. The motion is communicated to
+the fisherman by a string from the centre of the net which is
+rolled round the fisherman's thumb. When the jerking of his thumb
+announces a captive fish, he puts down his left hand and secures
+his victim. The <i>Banturs</i>, <i>Nepaulees</i>, and other jungle
+tribes, also often use the bow and arrow as a means of securing
+fish.</p>
+<p>Seated on the branch of some overhanging tree, while his keen
+eye scans the depths below, he watches for a large fish, and as it
+passes, he lets fly his arrow with unerring aim, and impales the
+luckless victim. Some tribes fish at night, by torchlight, spearing
+the fish who are attracted by the light. In Nepaul the bark of the
+<i>Hill Sirres</i> is often used to poison a stream or piece of
+water. Pounded up and thrown in, it seems to have some uncommon
+effect on the fish. After water has been treated in this way, the
+fish, seemingly quite stupefied, rise to the surface, on which they
+float in great numbers, and allow themselves to be caught. The
+strangest part of it is that they are perfectly innocuous as food,
+notwithstanding this treatment.</p>
+<p>Fish forms a very favourite article of diet with both Mussulmans
+and Hindoos. Many of the latter take a vow to touch no flesh of any
+kind. They are called <i>Kunthees</i> or <i>Boghuts</i>, but a
+<i>Boghut</i> is more of an ascetic than a <i>Kunthee</i>. However,
+the <i>Kunthee</i> is glad of a fish dinner when he can get it.
+They are restricted to no particular sect or caste, but all who
+have taken the vow wear a peculiar necklace, made generally of
+sandal-wood beads or <i>neem</i> beads round their throats. Hence
+the name, from <i>kunth</i> meaning the throat.</p>
+<p>The right to fish in any particular piece of water, is let out
+by the proprietor on whose land the water lies, or through which it
+flows. The letting is generally done by auction yearly. The fishing
+is called a <i>shilkur</i>; from <i>shal</i>, a net. It is
+generally taken by some rich <i>Bunneah</i> (grain seller) or
+village banker, who sub-lets it in turn to the fishermen.</p>
+<p>In some of the tanks which are not so let, and where the native
+proprietor preserves the fish, first-class sport can be had. A
+common native poaching dodge is this: if some oil cake be thrown
+into the water a few hours previous to your fishing, or better
+still, balls made of roasted linseed meal, mixed with bruised
+leaves of the 'sweet basil,' or <i>toolsee</i> plant, the fish
+assemble in hundreds round the spot, and devour the bait greedily.
+With a good eighteen-foot rod, fish of from twelve to twenty pounds
+are not uncommonly caught, and will give good play too. Fishing in
+the plains of India is, however, rather tame sport at the best of
+times.</p>
+<p>You have heard of the famous <i>mahseer</i>&mdash;some of them
+over eighty or a hundred pounds weight? We have none of these in
+Behar, but the huge porpoise gives splendid rifle or carbine
+practice as he rolls through the turgid streams. They are difficult
+to hit, but I have seen several killed with ball; and the oil
+extracted from their bodies is a splendid dressing for harness. But
+the most exciting fishing I have ever seen was&mdash;What do you
+think?&mdash;Alligator fishing! Yes, the formidable scaly monster,
+with his square snout and terrible jaws, his ponderous body covered
+with armour, and his serrated tail, with which he could break the
+leg of a bullock, or smash an outrigger as easily as a whale could
+smash a jolly-boat.</p>
+<p>I must try to describe one day's alligator fishing.</p>
+<p>When I was down in Bhaugulpore, I went out frequently fishing in
+the various tanks and streams near my factory. My friend Pat, who
+is a keen sportsman and very fond of angling, wrote to me one day
+when he and his brother Willie were going out to the Teljuga,
+asking me to join their party. The Teljuga is the boundary stream
+between Tirhoot and Bhaugulpore, and its sluggish muddy waters teem
+with alligators&mdash;the regular square-nosed <i>mugger</i>, the
+terrible man-eater. The <i>nakar</i> or long-nosed species may be
+seen in countless numbers in any of the large streams, stretched
+out on the banks basking in the noonday sun. Going down the Koosee
+particularly, you come across hundreds sometimes lying on one bank.
+As the boat nears them, they slide noiselessly and slowly into the
+stream. A large excrescence forms on the tip of the long snout,
+like a huge sponge; and this is often all that is seen on the
+surface of the water as the huge brute swims about waiting for his
+prey. These <i>nakars</i>, or long-nosed specimens, never attack
+human beings&mdash;at least such cases are very very rare&mdash;but
+live almost entirely on fish. I remember seeing one catch a
+paddy-bird on one occasion near the junction of the Koosee with the
+Ganges. My boat was fastened to the shore near a slimy creek, that
+came oozing into the river from some dense jungle near. I was
+washing my hands and face on the bank, and the boatmen were fishing
+with a small hand-net, for our breakfast. Numbers of attenuated
+melancholy-looking paddy-birds were stalking solemnly and stiltedly
+along the bank, also fishing for <i>theirs</i>. I noticed one who
+was particularly greedy, with his long legs half immersed in the
+water, constantly darting out his long bill and bringing up a
+hapless struggling fish. All of a sudden a long snout and the ugly
+serrated ridgy back of a <i>nakar</i> was shot like lightning at
+the hapless bird, and right before our eyes the poor paddy was
+crunched up. As a rule, however, alligators confine themselves to a
+fish diet, and are glad of any refuse or dead animal that may float
+their way. But with the <i>mugger</i>, the <i>boach</i>, or
+square-nosed variety, 'all is fish that comes to his net.' His soul
+delights in young dog or live pork. A fat duck comes not amiss; and
+impelled by hunger he hesitates not to attack man. Once regaled
+with the flavour of human flesh, he takes up his stand near some
+ferry, or bathing ghaut, where many hapless women and children
+often fall victims to his unholy appetite, before his career is cut
+short.</p>
+<p>I remember shooting one ghastly old scaly villain in a tank near
+Ryseree. He had made this tank his home, and with that fatalism
+which is so characteristic of the Hindoo, the usual ablutions and
+bathings went on as if no such monster existed. Several woman
+having been carried off, however, at short intervals, the villagers
+asked me to try and rid them of their foe. I took a ride down to
+the tank one Friday morning, and found the banks a scene of great
+excitement. A woman had been carried off some hours before as she
+was filling her water jar, and the monster was now reposing at the
+bottom of the tank digesting his horrible meal. The tank was
+covered with crimson water-lilies in full bloom, their broad brown
+and green leaves showing off the crimson beauty of the open flower.
+At the north corner some wild rose bushes dropped over the water,
+casting a dense matted shade. Here was the haunt of the
+<i>mugger</i>. He had excavated a huge gloomy-looking hole, into
+which he retired when gorged with prey. My first care was to cut
+away some of these bushes, and then, finding he was not at home, we
+drove some bamboo stakes through the bank to prevent him getting
+into his <i>manu</i>, which is what the natives term the den or
+hole. I then sat down under a <i>goolar</i> tree, to wait for his
+appearance. The <i>goolar</i> is a species of fig, and the leaves
+are much relished by cattle and goats. Gradually the village boys
+and young men went off to their ploughing, or grass cutting for the
+cows' evening meal. A woman came down occasionally to fill her
+waterpot in evident fear and trembling. A swarm of <i>minas</i>
+(the Indian starling) hopped and twittered round my feet. The
+cooing of a pair of amatory pigeons overhead nearly lulled me to
+slumber. A flock of green parrots came swiftly circling overhead,
+making for the fig-tree at the south end of the tank. An occasional
+<i>raho</i> lazily rose among the water-lilies, and disappeared
+with an indolent flap of his tail. The brilliant kingfisher,
+resplendent in crimson and emerald, sat on the withered branch of a
+prostrate mango-tree close by, pluming his feathers and doubtless
+meditating on the vanity of life. Suddenly, close by the massive
+post which marks the centre of every Hindoo tank, a huge scaly
+snout slowly and almost imperceptibly rose to the surface, then a
+broad, flat, forbidding forehead, topped by two grey fishy eyes
+with warty-looking callosities for eyebrows. Just then an eager
+urchin who had been squatted by me for hours, pointed to the brute.
+It was enough. Down sank the loathsome creature, and we had to
+resume our attitude of expectation and patient waiting. Another
+hour passed slowly. It was the middle of the afternoon, and very
+hot. I had sent my <i>tokedar</i> off for a 'peg' to the factory,
+and was beginning to get very drowsy, when, right in the same spot,
+the repulsive head again rose slowly to the surface. I had my
+trusty No. 12 to my shoulder on the instant, glanced carefully
+along the barrels, but just then only the eyes of the brute were
+invisible. A moment of intense excitement followed, and then,
+emboldened by the extreme stillness, he showed his whole head above
+the surface. I pulled the trigger, and a Meade shell crashed
+through the monster's skull, scattering his brains in the water and
+actually sending one splinter of the skull to the opposite edge of
+the tank, where my little Hindoo boy picked it up and brought it to
+me.</p>
+<p>There was a mighty agitation in the water; the water-lilies
+rocked to and fro, and the broad leaves glittered with the water
+drops thrown on them; then all was still. Hearing the report of my
+gun, the natives came flocking to the spot, and, telling them their
+enemy was slain, I departed, leaving instructions to let me know
+when the body came to the surface. It did so three days later.
+Getting some <i>chumars</i> and <i>domes</i> (two of the lowest
+castes, as none of the higher castes will touch a dead body under
+pain of losing caste), we hauled the putrid carcase to shore, and
+on cutting it open, found the glass armlets and brass ornaments of
+no less than five women and the silver ornaments of three children,
+all in a lump in the brute's stomach. Its skull was completely
+smashed and shattered to pieces by my shot. Its teeth were crusted
+with tartar, and worn almost to the very stumps. It measured
+nineteen feet.</p>
+<p>But during this digression my friends Pat and Willie have been
+waiting on the banks of the 'Teljuga.' I reached their tents late
+at night, found them both in high spirits after a good day's
+execution among the ducks and teal, and preparations being made for
+catching an alligator next day. Up early in the morning, we beat
+some grass close by the stream, and roused out an enormous boar
+that gave us a three mile spin and a good fight, after Pat had
+given him first spear. After breakfast we got our tackle ready.</p>
+<p>This was a large iron hook with a strong shank, to which was
+attached a stout iron ring. To this ring a long thick rope was
+fastened, and I noticed for several yards the strands were all
+loose and detached, and only knotted at intervals. I asked Pat the
+reason of this curious arrangement, and was told that if we were
+lucky enough to secure a <i>mugger</i>, the loose strands would
+entangle themselves amongst his formidable teeth, whereas were the
+rope in one strand only he might bite it through; the knottings at
+intervals were to give greater strength to the line. We now got our
+bait ready. On this occasion it was a live tame duck. Passing the
+bend of the hook round its neck, and the shank under its right
+wing, we tied the hook in this position with thread. We then made a
+small raft of the soft pith of the plantain-tree, tied the duck to
+the raft and committed it to the stream. Holding the rope as clear
+of the water as we could, the poor quacking duck floated slowly
+down the muddy current, making an occasional vain effort to get
+free. We saw at a distance an ugly snout rise to the surface for an
+instant and then noiselessly disappear.</p>
+<p>'There's one!' says Pat in a whisper.</p>
+<p>'Be sure and not strike too soon,' says Willie.</p>
+<p>'Look out there, you lazy rascals!' This in Hindostanee to the
+grooms and servants who were with us.</p>
+<p>Again the black mass rises to the surface, but this time nearer
+to the fated duck. As if aware of its peril it now struggles and
+quacks most vociferously. Nearer and nearer each time the black
+snout rises, and then each time silently disappears beneath the
+turgid muddy stream. Now it appears again; this time there are two,
+and there is another at a distance attracted by the quacking of the
+duck. We on the bank cower down and go as noiselessly as we can.
+Sometimes the rope dips on the water, and the huge snout and
+staring eyes immediately disappear. At length it rises within a few
+yards of the duck; then there is a mighty rush, two huge jaws open
+and shut with a snap like factory shears, and amid a whirl of foam
+and water and surging mud the poor duck and the hideous reptile
+disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense volumes of mud
+that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the tragedy
+that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim to
+and fro still further disturbing the muddy current.</p>
+<p>'Give him lots of time to swallow,' yells Pat, now fairly mad
+with excitement.</p>
+<p>The grooms and grass-cutters howl and dance. Willie and I dig
+each other in the ribs, and all generally act in an excited and
+insane way.</p>
+<p>Pat now puts the rope over his shoulder, we all take hold, and
+with a 'one, two, three!' we make a simultaneous rush from the
+bank, and as the rope suddenly tightens with a pull and strain that
+nearly jerks us all on our backs, we feel that we have hooked the
+monster, and our excitement reaches its culminating point.</p>
+<p>What a commotion now in the black depths of the muddy stream!
+The water, lashed by his powerful tail, surges and dashes in
+eddying whirls. He rises and darts backwards and forwards, snapping
+his horrible jaws, moving his head from side to side, his eyes
+glaring with fury. We hold stoutly on to the rope, although our
+wrists are strained and our arms ache. At length he begins to feel
+our steady pull, and inch by inch, struggling demoniacally, he
+nears the bank. When once he reaches it, however, the united
+efforts of twice our number would fail to bring him farther.
+Bleeding and foaming at the mouth, his horrid teeth glistening amid
+the frothy, blood-flecked foam, he plants his strong curved
+fore-legs against the shelving bank, and tugs and strains at the
+rope with devilish force and fury. It is no use&mdash;the rope has
+been tested, and answers bravely to the strain; and now with a long
+boar spear, Pat cautiously descends the bank, and gives him a
+deadly thrust under the fore arm. With a last fiendish glare of
+hate and defiance, he springs forward; we haul in the rope, Pat
+nimbly jumps back, and a pistol shot through the eye settles the
+monster for ever. This was the first alligator I ever saw hooked;
+he measured sixteen and a half feet exactly, but words can give no
+idea of half the excitement that attended the capture.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterVII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Native superstitions.&mdash;Charming a
+bewitched woman.&mdash;Exorcising ghosts from a
+field.&mdash;Witchcraft.&mdash;The witchfinder or
+'Ojah.'&mdash;Influence of fear.&mdash;Snake bites.&mdash;How to
+cure them.&mdash;How to discover a thief.&mdash;Ghosts and their
+habits.&mdash;The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.&mdash;Cruelty to
+animals by natives.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The natives as a rule, and especially the lower classes, are
+excessively superstitious. They are afraid to go out after
+nightfall, believing that then the spirits of the dead walk abroad.
+It is almost impossible to get a coolie, or even a fairly
+intelligent servant, to go a message at night, unless you give him
+another man for company.</p>
+<p>A belief in witches is quite prevalent, and there is scarcely a
+village in Behar that does not contain some withered old crone,
+reputed and firmly believed to be a witch. Others, either young or
+old are believed to have the evil eye; and, as in Scotland some
+centuries ago, there are also witch-finders and sorcerers, who will
+sell charms, cast nativities, give divinations, or ward off the
+evil efforts of wizards and witches by powerful spells. When a
+wealthy man has a child born, the Brahmins cast the nativity of the
+infant on some auspicious day. They fix on the name, and settle the
+date for the baptismal ceremony.</p>
+<p>I remember a man coming to me on one occasion from the village
+of Kuppoorpuckree. He rushed up to where I was sitting in the
+verandah, threw himself at my feet, with tears streaming down his
+cheeks, and amid loud cries for pity and help, told me that his
+wife had just been bewitched. Getting him somewhat soothed and
+pacified, I learned that a reputed witch lived next door to his
+house; that she and the man's wife had quarrelled in the morning
+about some capsicums which the witch was trying to steal from his
+garden; that in the evening, as his wife was washing herself inside
+the <i>angana</i>, or little courtyard appertaining to his house,
+she was seized with cramps and shivering fits, and was now in a
+raging fever; that the witch had been also bathing at the time, and
+that the water from her body had splashed over this man's fence,
+and part of it had come in contact with his wife's body&mdash;hence
+undoubtedly this strange possession. He wished me to send peons at
+once, and have the witch seized, beaten, and expelled from the
+village. It would have been no use my trying to persuade him that
+no witchcraft existed. So I gave him a good dose of quinine for his
+wife, which she was to take as soon as the fit subsided. Next I got
+my old <i>moonshee</i>, or native writer, to write some Persian
+characters on a piece of paper; I then gave him this paper,
+muttering a bit of English rhyme at the time, and telling him this
+was a powerful spell. I told him to take three hairs from his
+wife's head, and a paring from her thumb and big toe nails, and at
+the rising of the moon to burn them outside the walls of his hut.
+The poor fellow took the quinine and the paper with the deepest
+reverence, made me a most lowly <i>salaam</i> or obeisance, and
+departed with a light heart. He carried out my instructions to the
+letter, the quinine acted like a charm on the feverish woman, and I
+found myself quite a famous witch-doctor.</p>
+<p>There was a nice flat little field close to the water at
+Parewah, in which I thought I could get a good crop of oats during
+the cold weather. I sent for the 'dangur' mates, and asked them to
+have it dug up next day. They hummed and hawed and hesitated, as I
+thought, in rather a strange manner, but departed. In the evening
+back they came, to tell me that the dangurs would <i>not</i> dig up
+the field.</p>
+<p>'Why?' I asked.</p>
+<p>'Well you see, Sahib,' said old Teerbouan, who was the patriarch
+and chief spokesman of the village, 'this field has been used for
+years as a burning ghaut' (i.e. a place where the bodies of dead
+Hindoos were buried).</p>
+<p>'Well?' said I.</p>
+<p>'Well, Sahib, my men say that if they disturb this land, the
+"Bhoots" (ghosts) of all those who have been burned there, will
+haunt the village at night, and they hope you will not persist in
+asking them to dig up the land.'</p>
+<p>'Very well, bring down the men with their digging-hoes, and I
+will see.'</p>
+<p>Accordingly, next morning, I went down on my pony, found the
+dangurs all assembled, but no digging going on. I called them
+together, told them that it was a very reasonable fear they had,
+but that I would cast such a spell on the land as would settle the
+ghosts of the departed for ever. I then got a branch of a
+<i>bael</i><a href="#footnoteC1"><sup>1</sup></a> tree that grew
+close by, dipped it in the stream, and walking backwards round the
+ground, waved the dripping branch round my head, repeating at the
+same time the first gibberish that came into my recollection. My
+incantation or spell was as follows, an old Scotch rhyme I had
+often repeated when a child at school&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>'Eenerty, feenerty, fickerty, feg,<br>
+Ell, dell, domun's egg;<br>
+Irky, birky, story, rock,<br>
+An, tan, toose, Jock;<br>
+Black fish! white troot!<br>
+"Gibbie Gaw, ye're oot."'</blockquote>
+<p>It had the desired effect. No sooner was my charm uttered, than,
+after a few encouraging words to the men, telling them that there
+was now no fear, that my charm was powerful enough to lay all the
+spirits in the country, and that I would take all the
+responsibility, they set to work with a will, and had the whole
+field dug up by the evening.</p>
+<p>I have seen many such cases. A blight attacks the melon or
+cucumber beds; a fierce wind rises during the night, and shakes
+half the mangoes off the trees; the youngest child is attacked with
+teething convulsions; the plough-bullock is accidentally lamed, or
+the favourite cow refuses to give milk. In every case it is some
+'Dyne,' or witch, that has been at work with her damnable spells
+and charms. I remember a case in which a poor little child had bad
+convulsions. The 'Ojah,' or witch-finder, in this case a fat,
+greasy, oleaginous knave, was sent for. Full of importance and
+blowing like a porpoise, he came and caused the child to be brought
+to him, under a tree near the village. I was passing at the time,
+and stopped out of curiosity. He spread a tattered cloth in front
+of him, and muttered some unintelligible gibberish, unceasingly
+making strange passes with his arms. He put down a number of
+articles on his cloth&mdash;which was villainously tattered and
+greasy&mdash;an unripe plantain, a handful of rice, of parched
+peas, a thigh bone, two wooden cups, some balls, &amp;c., &amp;c.;
+all of which he kept constantly lifting and moving about, keeping
+up the passes and muttering all the time.</p>
+<p>The child was a sickly-looking, pining sort of creature, rocking
+about in evident pain, and moaning and fretting just as sick
+children do. Gradually its attention got fixed on the strange
+antics going on. The Ojah kept muttering away, quicker and quicker,
+constantly shifting the bone and cups and other articles on the
+cloth. His body was suffused with perspiration, but in about half
+an hour the child had gone off to sleep, and attended by some dozen
+old women, and the anxious father, was borne off in triumph to the
+house.</p>
+<p>Another time one of Mr. D.'s female servants got bitten by a
+scorpion. The poor woman was in great agony, with her arm swelled
+up, when an Ojah was called in. Setting her before him, he began
+his incantations in the usual manner, but made frequent passes over
+her body, and over the bitten place. A gentle perspiration began to
+break out on her skin, and in a very short time the Ojah had thrown
+her into a deep mesmeric sleep. After about an hour she awoke
+perfectly free from pain. In this case no doubt the Ojah was a
+mesmerist.</p>
+<p>The influence of fear on the ordinary native is most wonderful.
+I have known dozens of instances in which natives have been brought
+home at night for treatment in cases of snake-bite. They have
+arrived at the factory in a complete state of coma, with closed
+eyes, the pupils turned back in the head, the whole body rigid and
+cold, the lips pale white, and the tongue firmly locked between the
+teeth. I do not believe in recovery from a really poisonous bite,
+where the venom has been truly injected. I invariably asked first
+how long it was since the infliction of the bite; I would then
+examine the marks, and as a rule would find them very slight. When
+the patient had been brought some distance, I knew at once that it
+was a case of pure fright. The natives wrap themselves up in their
+cloths or blankets at night, and lie down on the floors of their
+huts. Turning about, or getting up for water or tobacco, or perhaps
+to put fuel on the fire, they unluckily tread on a snake, or during
+sleep they roll over on one. The snake gives them a nip, and
+scuttles off. They have not seen what sort of snake it is, but
+their imagination conjures up the very worst. After the first
+outcry, when the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly
+possessed by the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his
+fears work the effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye
+gets dull, his pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb,
+and unless forcibly roused by the bystanders he will actually
+succumb to pure fright, not to the snake-bite at all. My chief care
+when a case of this sort was brought me, was to assume a cheery
+demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears of the relatives, and tell them
+he would be all right in a few hours if they attended to my
+directions. This not uncommonly worked by sympathetic influence on
+the patient himself. I believe, so long as all round him thought he
+was going to die, and expected no other result, the same effect was
+produced on his own mind. As soon as hope sprang up in the breasts
+of all around him, his spirit also caught the contagion. As a rule,
+he would now make an effort to articulate. I would then administer
+a good dose of sal volatile, brandy, eau-de-luce, or other strong
+stimulant, cut into the supposed bite, and apply strong nitric acid
+to the wound. This generally made him wince, and I would hail it as
+a token of certain recovery. By this time some confidence would
+return, and the supposed dying man would soon walk back sound and
+whole among his companions after profuse expressions of gratitude
+to his preserver.</p>
+<p>I have treated dozens of cases in this way successfully, and
+only seen two deaths. One was a young woman, my chowkeydar's
+daughter; the other was an old man, who was already dead when they
+lifted him out of the basket in which they had slung him. I do not
+wish to be misunderstood. I believe that in all these cases of
+recovery it was pure fright working on the imagination, and not
+snake-bite at all. My opinion is shared by most planters, that
+there is no cure yet known for a cobra bite, or for that of any
+other poisonous snake, where the poison has once been fairly
+injected and allowed to mix with the blood<a href=
+"#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a>.</p>
+<p>There is another curious instance of the effects of fear on the
+native mind in the common method taken by an Ojah or Brahmin to
+discover a suspected thief. When a theft occurs, the Ojah is sent
+for, and the suspected parties are brought together. After various
+<i>muntras</i>, i.e. charms or incantations, have been muttered,
+the Ojah, who has meanwhile narrowly scrutinized each countenance,
+gives each of the suspected individuals a small quantity of dry
+rice to chew. If the thief be present, his superstitious fears are
+at work, and his conscience accuses him. He sees some terrible
+retribution for him in all these <i>muntras</i>, and his heart
+becomes like water within him, his tongue gets dry, his salivary
+glands refuse to act; the innocent munch away at their rice
+contentedly, but the guilty wretch feels as if he had ashes in his
+mouth. At a given signal all spit out their rice, and he whose rice
+comes out, chewed indeed, but dry as summer dust, is adjudged the
+thief. This ordeal is called <i>chowl chipao</i>, and is rarely
+unsuccessful. I have known several cases in my own experience in
+which a thief has been thus discovered.</p>
+<p>The <i>bhoots</i>, or ghosts, are popularly supposed to have
+favourite haunts, generally in some specially selected tree; the
+<i>neem</i> tree is supposed to be the most patronised. The most
+intelligent natives share this belief with the poorest and most
+ignorant; they fancy the ghosts throw stones at them, cast evil
+influences over them, lure them into quicksands, and play other
+devilish tricks and cantrips. Some roads are quite shunned and
+deserted at night, for no other reason than that a ghost is
+supposed to haunt the place. The most tempting bribe would not make
+a native walk alone over that road after sunset.</p>
+<p>Besides the witchfinder, another important village functionary
+who relies much on muntras and charms, is the <i>Huddick</i>, or
+cow doctor. He is the only veterinary surgeon of the native when
+his cow or bullock dislocates or breaks a limb, or falls ill. The
+Huddick passes his hands over the affected part, and mutters his
+<i>muntras</i>, which have most probably descended to him from his
+father. Usually knowing a little of the anatomical structure of the
+animal, he may be able to reduce a dislocation, or roughly to set a
+fracture; but if the ailment be internal, a draught of mustard oil,
+or some pounded spices and turmeric, or neem leaves administered
+along with the <i>muntra</i>, are supposed to be all that human
+skill and science can do.</p>
+<p>The natives are cruel to animals. Half-starved bullocks are
+shamefully overworked. When blows fail to make the ill-starred
+brute move, they give a twist and wrench to the tail, which must
+cause the animal exquisite torture, and unless the hapless beast be
+utterly exhausted, this generally induces it to make a further
+effort. Ploughmen very often deliberately make a raw open sore, one
+on each rump of the plough-bullock. They goad the poor wretch on
+this raw sore with a sharp-pointed stick when he lags, or when they
+think he needs stirring up. Ponies, too, are always worked far too
+young; and their miserable legs get frightfully twisted and bent.
+The petty shopkeepers, sellers of brass pots, grain, spices, and
+other bazaar wares, who attend the various bazaars, or weekly and
+bi-weekly markets, transport their goods by means of these
+ponies.</p>
+<p>The packs of merchandise are slung on rough pack-saddles, made
+of coarse sacking. Shambling along with knees bent together, sores
+on every joint, and frequently an eye knocked out, the poor pony's
+back gets cruelly galled; when the bazaar is reached, he is hobbled
+as tightly as possible, the coarse ropes cutting into the flesh,
+and he is then turned adrift to contemplate starvation on the
+burnt-up grass. Great open sores form on the back, on which a
+plaster of moist clay, or cowdung and pounded leaves, is roughly
+put. The wretched creature gets worn to a skeleton. A little common
+care and cleanliness would put him right, with a little kindly
+consideration from his brutal master, but what does the
+<i>Kulwar</i> or <i>Bunneah</i> care? he is too lazy.</p>
+<p>This unfeeling cruelty and callous indifference to the
+sufferings of the lower animals is a crying evil, and every
+magistrate, European, and educated native, might do much to ease
+their burdens. Tremendous numbers of bullocks and ponies die from
+sheer neglect and ill treatment every year. It is now becoming so
+serious a trouble, that in many villages plough-bullocks are too
+few in number for the area of land under cultivation. The tillage
+suffers, the crops deteriorate, this reacts on prices, the ryot
+sinks lower and lower, and gets more into the grasp of the
+rapacious money-lender. In many villages I have seen whole tracts
+of land relapsed into <i>purtee</i>, or untilled waste, simply from
+want of bullocks to draw the plough. Severe epidemics, like foot
+and mouth disease and pleuro, occasionally sweep off great numbers;
+but, I repeat, that annually the lives of hundreds of valuable
+animals are sacrificed by sheer sloth, dirt, inattention, and
+brutal cruelty.</p>
+<p>In some parts of India, cattle poisoning for the sake of the
+hides is extensively practised. The <i>Chumars</i>, that is, the
+shoemakers, furriers, tanners, and workers in leather and skins
+generally, frequently combine together in places, and wilfully
+poison cattle and buffaloes. There is actually a section in the
+penal code taking cognisance of the crime. The Hindoo will not
+touch a dead carcase, so that when a bullock mysteriously sickens
+and dies, the <i>Chumars</i> haul away the body, and appropriate
+the skin. Some luckless witch is blamed for the misfortune, when
+the rascally Chumars themselves are all the while the real
+culprits. The police, however, are pretty successful in detecting
+this crime, and it is not now of such frequent
+   occurrence<a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a>.</p>
+<p>Highly as the pious Hindoo venerates the sacred bull of Shira,
+his treatment of his mild patient beasts of burden is a foul blot
+on his character. Were you to shoot a cow, or were a Mussulman to
+wound a stray bullock which might have trespassed, and be trampling
+down his opium or his tobacco crop, and ruining his fields, the
+Hindoos would rise <i>en masse</i> to revenge the insult offered to
+their religion. Yet they scruple not to goad their bullocks, beat
+them, half starve them, and let their gaping wounds fester and
+become corrupt. When the poor brute becomes old and unable to work,
+and his worn-out teeth unfit to graze, he is ruthlessly turned out
+to die in a ditch, and be torn to pieces by jackals, kites, and
+vultures. The higher classes and well-to-do farmers show much
+consideration for high-priced well-conditioned animals, but when
+they get old or unwell, and demand redoubled care and attention,
+they are too often neglected, till, from sheer want of ordinary
+care, they rot and die.</p>
+<hr align="left" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<p><a name="footnoteC1"><sup>1</sup></a> The <i>bael</i> or
+wood-apple is a sacred wood with Hindoos. It is enjoined in the
+Shastras that the bodies of the dead should be consumed in a fire
+fed by logs of bael-tree; but where it is not procurable in
+sufficient quantity, the natives compound with their consciences by
+lighting the funeral pyre with a branch from the bael-tree. It is a
+fine yellow-coloured, pretty durable wood, and makes excellent
+furniture. A very fine sherbet can be made from the fruit, which
+acts as an excellent corrective and stomachic.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> Deaths from actual snake
+bite are sadly numerous; but it appears from returns furnished to
+the Indian Government that Europeans enjoy a very happy exemption.
+During the last forty years it would seem that only two Europeans
+have been killed by snake bite, at least only two well
+substantiated cases. The poorer classes are the most frequent
+victims. Their universal habit of walking about unshod, and
+sleeping on the ground, penetrating into the grasses or jungles in
+pursuit of their daily avocations, no doubt conduces much to the
+frequency of such accidents. A good plan to keep snakes out of the
+bungalow is to leave a space all round the rooms, of about four
+inches, between the walls and the edge of the mats. Have this
+washed over about once a week with a strong solution of carbolic
+acid and water. The smell may be unpleasant for a short time, but
+it proves equally so to the snakes; and I have proved by experience
+that it keeps them out of the rooms. Mats should also be all firmly
+fastened down to the floor with bamboo battens, and furniture
+should be often moved, and kept raised a little from the ground,
+and the space below carefully swept every day. At night a light
+should always be kept burning in occupied bedrooms, and on no
+account should one get out of bed in the dark, or walk about the
+rooms at night without slippers or shoes.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> Somewhat analogous to this
+is the custom which used to be a common one in some parts of Behar.
+<i>Koombars</i> and <i>Grann&eacute;s</i>, that is, tile-makers and
+thatchers, when trade was dull or rain impending, would scatter
+peas and grain in the interstices of the tiles on the houses of the
+well-to-do. The pigeons and crows, in their efforts to get at the
+peas, would loosen and perhaps overturn a few of the tiles. The
+grann&eacute;s would be sent for to replace these, would condemn
+the whole roof as leaky, and the tiles as old and unfit for use,
+and would provide a job for himself and the tile-maker, the
+nefarious profits of which they would share together.</p>
+<p>Cultivators of thatching-grass have been known deliberately and
+wantonly to set fire to villages simply to raise the price of
+thatch and bamboo.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterVIII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Our annual race meet.&mdash;The
+arrivals.&mdash;The camps.&mdash;The 'ordinary.'&mdash;The
+course.&mdash;'They're off.'&mdash;The race.&mdash;The
+steeple-chase.&mdash;Incidents of the meet.&mdash;The ball.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Our annual Race Meet is the one great occasion of the year when
+all the dwellers in the district meet. Our races in Chumparun
+generally took place some time about Christmas. Long before the
+date fixed on, arrangements would be made for the exercise of
+hearty hospitality. The residents in the 'station' ask as many
+guests as will fill their houses, and their 'compounds' are crowded
+with tents, each holding a number of visitors, generally bachelors.
+The principal managers of the factories in the district, with their
+assistants, form a mess for the racing week, and, not unfrequently,
+one or two ladies lend their refining presence to the several
+camps. Friends from other districts, from up country, from
+Calcutta, gather together; and as the weather is bracing and cool,
+and every one determined to enjoy himself, the meet is one of the
+pleasantest of reunions. There are always several races specially
+got up for assistants' horses, and long before, the youngsters are
+up in the early morning, giving their favourite nag a spin across
+the zeraats, or seeing the groom lead him out swathed in clothing
+and bandages, to get him into training for the Assistants'
+race.</p>
+<p>As the day draws near, great cases of tinned meats, hampers of
+beer and wine, and goodly supplies of all sorts are sent into the
+station to the various camps. Tents of snowy white canvas begin to
+peep out at you from among the trees. Great oblong booths of blue
+indigo sheeting show where the temporary stables for the horses are
+being erected; and at night the glittering of innumerable
+camp-fires betokens the presence of a whole army of grooms,
+grass-cutters, peons, watchmen, and other servants cooking their
+evening meal of rice, and discussing the chances of the horses of
+their respective masters in the approaching races. On the day
+before the first racing, the planters are up early, and in buggy,
+dogcart, or on horseback, singly, and by twos and threes, from all
+sides of the district, they find their way to the station. The
+Planter's Club is the general rendezvous. The first comers, having
+found out their waiting servants, and consigned the smoking steeds
+to their care, seat themselves in the verandah, and eagerly watch
+every fresh arrival.</p>
+<p>Up comes a buggy. 'Hullo, who's this?'</p>
+<p>'Oh, it's "Giblets!" How do you do, "Giblets," old man?'</p>
+<p>Down jumps 'Giblets,' and a general handshaking ensues.</p>
+<p>'Here comes "Boach" and the "Moonshee,"' yells out an observant
+youngster from the back verandah.</p>
+<p>The venerable buggy of the esteemed 'Boach' approaches, and
+another jubilation takes place; the handshaking being so vigorous
+that the 'Moonshee's' spectacles nearly come to grief. Now the
+arrivals ride and drive up fast and furious.</p>
+<p>'Hullo, "Anthony!"'</p>
+<p>'Aha, "Charley," how d'ye do?'</p>
+<p>'By Jove, "Ferdie," where have you turned up from?'</p>
+<p>'Has the "Skipper" arrived?'</p>
+<p>'Have any of you seen "Jamie?"'</p>
+<p>'Where's big "Mars'" tents?'</p>
+<p>'Have any of ye seen my "Bearer?"'</p>
+<p>'Has the "Bump" come in?' and so on.</p>
+<p>Such a scene of bustle and excitement. Friends meet that have
+not seen each other for a twelvemonth. Queries are exchanged as to
+absent friends. The chances of the meeting are discussed. Perhaps a
+passing allusion is made to some dear one who has left our ranks
+since last meet. All sorts of topics are started, and up till and
+during breakfast there is a regular medley of tongues, a confused
+clatter of voices, dishes, and glasses, a pervading atmosphere of
+dense curling volumes of tobacco smoke.</p>
+<p>To a stranger the names sound uncouth and meaningless, the fact
+being, that we all go by nicknames<a href=
+"#footnoteD1"><sup>1</sup></a> .</p>
+<p>'Giblets,' 'Diamond Digger,' 'Mangelwurzel,' 'Goggle-eyed
+Plover,' 'Gossein' or holy man, 'Blind Bartimeus,' 'Old Boots,'
+'Polly,' 'Bottle-nosed Whale,' 'Fin MacCoul,' 'Daddy,' 'The
+Exquisite,' 'The Mosquito,' 'Wee Bob,' and 'Napoleon,' are only a
+very few specimens of this strange nomenclature. These soubriquets
+quite usurp our baptismal appellations, and I have often been
+called 'Maori,' by people who did not actually know my real
+name.</p>
+<p>By the evening, all, barring the very late arrivals, have found
+out their various camps. There is a merry dinner, then each sahib,
+well muffled in ulster, plaid, or great coat, hies him to the club,
+where the 'ordinary' is to be held. The nights are now cold and
+foggy, and a tremendous dew falls. At the 'ordinary,' fresh
+greetings between those who now meet for the first time after long
+separation. The entries and bets are made for the morrow's races,
+although not much betting takes place as a rule; but the lotteries
+on the different races are rapidly filled, the dice circulate
+cheerily, and amid laughing, joking, smoking, noise, and
+excitement, there is a good deal of mild speculation. The 'horsey'
+ones visit the stables for the last time; and each retires to his
+camp bed to dream of the morrow.</p>
+<p>Very early, the respective <i>bearers</i> rouse the sleepy
+<i>sahibs</i>. Table servants rush hurriedly about the mess tent,
+bearing huge dishes of tempting viands. Grooms, and
+<i>grasscuts</i> are busy leading the horses off to the course. The
+cold raw fog of the morning fills every tent, and dim grey figures
+of cowering natives, wrapped up over the eyes in blankets, with
+moist blue noses and chattering teeth, are barely discernible in
+the thick mist.</p>
+<p>The racecourse is two miles from the club, on the other side of
+the lake, in the middle of a grassy plain, with a neat masonry
+structure at the further side, which serves as a grand stand.
+Already buggies, dogcarts in single harness and tandem, barouches,
+and waggonettes are merrily rolling through the thick mist, past
+the frowning jail, and round the corner of the lake. Natives in
+gaudy coloured shawls, and blankets, are pouring on to the
+racecourse by hundreds.</p>
+<p>Bullock carts, within which are black-eyed, bold beauties,
+profusely burdened with silver ornaments, are drawn up in lines.
+<i>Ekkas</i>&mdash;small jingling vehicles with a dome-shaped
+canopy and curtains at the sides&mdash;drawn by gaily caparisoned
+ponies, and containing fat, portly Baboos, jingle and rattle over
+the ruts on the side roads.</p>
+<p>Sweetmeat sellers, with trays of horrible looking filth, made
+seemingly of insects, clarified butter, and sugar, dodge through
+the crowd dispensing their abominable looking but seemingly much
+relished wares. Tall policemen, with blue jackets, red puggries,
+yellow belts, and white trousers, stalk up and down with conscious
+dignity.</p>
+<p>A madcap young assistant on his pony comes tearing along across
+country. The weighing for the first race is going on; horses are
+being saddled, some vicious brute occasionally lashing out, and
+scattering the crowd behind him. The ladies are seated round the
+terraced grand stand; long strings of horses are being led round
+and round in a circle, by the <i>syces</i>; vehicles of every
+description are lying round the building.</p>
+<p>Suddenly a bugle sounds; the judge enters his box; the ever
+popular old 'Bikram,' who officiates as starter, ambles off on his
+white cob, and after him go half-a-dozen handsome young fellows,
+their silks rustling and flashing through the fast rising mist.</p>
+<p>A hundred field-glasses scan the start; all is silent for a
+moment.</p>
+<p>'They're off!' shout a dozen lungs.</p>
+<p>'False start!' echo a dozen more.</p>
+<p>The gay colours of the riders flicker confusedly in a jumble.
+One horse careers madly along for half the distance, is with
+difficulty pulled up, and is then walked slowly back.</p>
+<p>The others left at the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about.
+At length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good
+start!' shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at
+last!' breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the
+six horses, all together, and at a rattling pace, tear up the hill,
+over the sand at the south corner, and up, till at the quarter mile
+post 'a blanket could cover the lot.'</p>
+<p>Two or three tails are now showing signals of distress; heels
+and whips are going. Two horses have shot ahead, a bay and a black.
+'Jamie' on the bay, 'Paddy' on the black.</p>
+<p>Still as marble sit those splendid riders, the horses are neck
+and neck; now the bay by a nose, now again the black. The distance
+post is passed with a rush like a whirlwind.</p>
+<p>'A dead heat, by Jove!'</p>
+<p>'Paddy wins!' 'Jamie has it!' 'Hooray, Pat!' 'Go it, Jamie!'
+'Well ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The
+ardent racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel
+whip hisses through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a
+winner by a nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The
+band strikes up a lively air, and the saddling for the next race
+goes on.</p>
+<p>The other races are much the same; there are lots of entries:
+the horses are in splendid condition, and the riding is superb.
+What is better, everything is emphatically 'on the square.' No
+<i>pulling</i> and <i>roping</i> here, no false entries, no dodging
+of any kind. Fine, gallant, English gentlemen meet each other in
+fair and honest emulation, and enjoy the favourite national sport
+in perfection. The 'Waler' race, for imported Australians, brings
+out fine, tall, strong-boned, clean-limbed horses, looking blood
+all over. The country breds, with slender limbs, small heads, and
+glossy coats, look dainty and delicate as antelopes. The lovely,
+compact Arabs, the pretty-looking ponies, and the thick-necked,
+coarse-looking Cabools, all have their respective trials, and then
+comes the great event&mdash;the race of the day&mdash;the
+Steeplechase.</p>
+<p>The course is marked out behind the grand stand, following a
+wide circle outside the flat course, which it enters at the
+quarter-mile post, so that the finish is on the flat before the
+grand stand. The fences, ditches, and water leap, are all
+artificial, but they are regular <i>howlers</i>, and no
+make-believes.</p>
+<p>Seven horses are despatched to a straggling start, and all
+negotiate the first bank safely. At the next fence a regular
+<i>snorter</i> of a 'post and rail'&mdash;topped with
+brushwood&mdash;two horses swerve, one rider being deposited on his
+racing seat upon mother earth, while the other sails away across
+country in a line for home, and is next heard of at the stables.
+The remaining five, three 'walers' and two country-breds, race
+together to the water jump, where one waler deposits his rider, and
+races home by himself, one country-bred refuses, and is henceforth
+out of the race, and the other three, taking the leap in beautiful
+style, put on racing pace to the next bank, and are in the air
+together. A lovely sight! The country is now stiff, and the stride
+of the waler tells. He is leading the country-breds a 'whacker,'
+but he stumbles and falls at the last fence but one from home. His
+gallant rider, the undaunted 'Roley,' remounts just as the two
+country-breds pass him like a flash of light. 'Nothing venture,
+nothing win,' however, so in go the spurs, and off darts the waler
+like an arrow in pursuit. He is gaining fast, and tops the last
+hurdle leading to the straight just as the hoofs of the other two
+reach the ground.</p>
+<p>It is now a matter of pace and good riding. It will be a close
+finish; the waler is first to feel the whip; there is a roar from
+the crowd; he is actually leading; whips and spurs are hard at work
+now; it is a mad, headlong rush; every muscle is strained, and the
+utmost effort made; the poor horses are doing their very best; amid
+a thunder of hoofs, clouds of dust, hats in air, waving of
+handkerchiefs from the grand stand, and a truly British cheer from
+the paddock, the 'waler' shoots in half a length ahead; and so end
+the morning's races.</p>
+<p>Back to camp now, to bathe and breakfast. A long line of dust
+marks the track from the course, for the sun is now high in the
+heavens, the lake is rippling in placid beauty under a gentle
+breeze, and the long lines of natives, as well as vehicles of all
+sorts, form a quaint but picturesque sight. After breakfast calls
+are made upon all the camps and bungalows round the station.
+Croquet, badminton, and other games go on until dinner-time. I
+could linger lovingly over a camp dinner; the rare dishes, the
+sparkling conversation, the racy anecdote, and the general jollity
+and brotherly feeling; but we must all dress for the ball, and so
+about 9 P.M. the buggies are again in requisition for the ball
+room&mdash;the fine, large, central apartment in the Planters'
+club.</p>
+<p>The walls are festooned with flowers, gay curtains, flags, and
+cloths. The floor is shining like silver, and as polished as a
+mirror. The band strikes up the Blue Danube waltz, and amid the
+usual bustle, flirtation, scandal, whispering, glancing, dancing,
+tripping, sipping, and hand-squeezing, the ball goes gaily on till
+the stewards announce supper. At this&mdash;to the
+wall-flowers&mdash;welcome announcement, we adjourn from the heated
+ball-room to the cool arbour-like supper tent, where every delicacy
+that can charm the eye or tempt the appetite is spread out.</p>
+<p>Next morning early we are out with the hounds, and enjoy a
+rattling burst round by the racecourse, where the horses are at
+exercise. Perchance we have heard of a boar in the sugar-cane, and
+away we go with beaters to rouse the grisly monster from his lair.
+In the afternoon there is hockey on horseback, or volunteer drill,
+with our gallant adjutant putting us through our evolutions. In the
+evening there is the usual drive, dinner, music, and the ordinary,
+and so the meet goes on. A constant succession of gaieties keeps
+everyone alive, till the time arrives for a return to our
+respective factories, and another year's hard work.</p>
+<hr align="left" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<p><a name="footnoteD1"><sup>1</sup></a> In such a limited society
+every peculiarity is noted; all our antecedents are known; personal
+predilections and little foibles of character are marked;
+eccentricities are watched, and no one, let him be as uninteresting
+as a miller's pig, is allowed to escape observation and remark.
+Some little peculiarity is hit upon, and a strange but often very
+happily expressive nickname stamps one's individuality and
+photographs him with a word.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterIX."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Pig-sticking in India.&mdash;Varieties of
+boar.&mdash;Their size and height. &mdash;Ingenious mode of capture
+by the natives,&mdash;The 'Batan' or buffalo herd.&mdash;Pigs
+charging.&mdash;Their courage and ferocity.&mdash;Destruction of
+game.&mdash;A close season for game.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The sport <i>par excellence</i> of India is pig-sticking. Call
+it hog-hunting if you will, I prefer the honest old-fashioned name.
+With a good horse under one, a fair country, with not too many
+pitfalls, and 'lots of pig,' this sport becomes the most exciting
+that can be practised. Some prefer tiger shooting from elephants,
+others like to stalk the lordly ibex on the steep Himalayan slopes,
+but anyone who has ever enjoyed a rattle after a pig over a good
+country, will recall the fierce, delight, the eager thrill, the
+wild, mad excitement, that flushed his whole frame, as he met the
+infuriate charge of a good thirty-inch fighting boar, and drove his
+trusty spear well home, laying low the gallant grey tusker, the
+indomitable, unconquerable grisly boar. The subject is well worn;
+and though the theme is a noble one, there are but few I fancy who
+have not read the record of some gallant fight, where the highest
+skill, the finest riding, the most undaunted pluck, and the cool,
+keen, daring of a practised hand are not <i>always</i> successful
+against the headlong rush and furious charge of a Bengal boar at
+bay.</p>
+<p>A record of planter life in India, however, such as this aims at
+being, would be incomplete without some reference to the gallant
+tusker, and so at the risk of tiring my readers, I must try to
+describe a pig-sticking party.</p>
+<p>There are two distinct kinds of boar in India, the black and the
+grey. Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer
+and more pugnacious. He is a vicious and implacable foe when
+roused, and always shews better fight than the black variety. The
+great difference, however, is in the shape of the skull; that of
+the black fellow being high over the frontal bone, and not very
+long in proportion to height, while the skull of the grey boar is
+never very high, but is long, and receding in proportion to
+height.</p>
+<p>The black boar grows to an enormous size, and the grey ones are,
+generally speaking, smaller made animals than the black. The young
+of the two also differ in at least one important particular; those
+of the grey pig are always born striped, but the young of the black
+variety are born of that colour, and are not striped but a uniform
+black colour throughout. The two kinds of pig sometimes interbreed,
+but crosses are not common; and, from the colour, size, shape of
+the head, and general behaviour, one can easily tell at a glance
+what kind of pig gets up before his spear, whether it is the heavy,
+sluggish black boar, or the veritable fiery, vicious, fighting grey
+tusker.</p>
+<p>Many stories are told of their enormous size, and a 'forty-inch
+tusker' is the established standard for a Goliath among boars. The
+best fighting boars, however, range from twenty-eight to thirty-two
+inches in height, and I make bold to say that very few of the
+Present generation of sportsmen have ever seen a veritable wild
+boar over thirty-eight inches high.</p>
+<p>G.S., who has had perhaps as much jungle experience as any man
+of his age in India, a careful observer, and a finished sportsman,
+tells me that the biggest <i>boar</i> he ever saw was only
+thirty-eight inches high; while the biggest <i>pig</i> he ever
+killed was a barren sow, with three-inch tusks sticking out of her
+gums; she measured thirty-nine-and-a-half inches, and fought like a
+demon. I have shot pig&mdash;in heavy jungle where spearing was
+impracticable&mdash;over thirty-six inches high, but the biggest
+pig I ever stuck to my own spear was only twenty-eight inches, and
+I do not think any pig has been killed in Chumparun, within the
+last ten or a dozen years at any rate, over thirty-eight
+inches.</p>
+<p>In some parts of India, where pigs are numerous and the jungle
+dense, the natives adopt a very ingenious mode of hunting. I have
+frequently seen it practised by the cowherds on the Koosee
+<i>derahs</i>, i.e. the flat swampy jungles on the banks of the
+Koosee. When the annual floods have subsided, leaving behind a
+thick deposit of mud, wrack, and brushwood, the long thick grass
+soon shoots up to an amazing height, and vast herds of cattle and
+tame buffaloes come down to the jungles from the interior of the
+country, where natural pasture is scarce. They are attended by the
+owner and his assistants, all generally belonging to the
+<i>gualla</i>, or cowherd caste, although, of course, there are
+other castes employed. The owner of the herd gets leave to graze
+his cattle in the jungle, by paying a certain fixed sum per head.
+He fixes on a high dry ridge of land, where he runs up a few grass
+huts for himself and men, and there he erects lines of grass and
+bamboo screens, behind which his cattle take shelter at night from
+the cold south-east wind. There are also a few huts of exceedingly
+frail construction for himself and his people. This small colony,
+in the midst of the universal jungle covering the country for miles
+round, is called a <i>batan</i>.</p>
+<p>At earliest dawn the buffaloes are milked, and then with their
+attendant herdsmen they wend their way to the jungle, where they
+spend the day, and return again to the batan at night, when they
+are again milked. The milk is made into <i>ghee</i>, or clarified
+butter, and large quantities are sent down to the towns by country
+boats. When we want to get up a hunt, we generally send to the
+nearest <i>batan</i> for <i>khubber</i>, i.e. news, information.
+The <i>Batanea</i>, or proprietor of the establishment, is well
+posted up. Every herdsman as he comes in at night tells what
+animals he has seen through the day, and thus at the <i>batan</i>
+you hear where tiger, and pig, and deer are to be met with; where
+an unlucky cow has been killed; in what ravine is the thickest
+jungle; where the path is free from clay, or quicksand; what fords
+are safest; and, in short, you get complete information on every
+point connected with the jungle and its wild inhabitants.</p>
+<p>To these men the mysterious jungle reveals its most hidden
+secrets. Surrounded by his herd of buffaloes, the <i>gualla</i>
+ventures into the darkest recesses and the most tangled thickets.
+They have strange wild calls by which they give each other notice
+of the approach of danger, and when two or three of them meet, each
+armed with his heavy, iron-shod or brass-bound <i>lathee</i> or
+quarter staff, they will not budge an inch out of their way for
+buffalo or boar; nay, they have been known to face the terrible
+tiger himself, and fairly beat him away from the quivering carcase
+of some unlucky member of their herd. They have generally some
+favourite buffalo on whose broad back they perch themselves, as it
+browses through the jungle, and from this elevated seat they survey
+the rest of the herd, and note the incidents of jungle life. When
+they wish a little excitement, or a change from their milk and rice
+diet, there are hundreds of pigs around.</p>
+<p>They have a broad, sharp spear-head, to which is attached a
+stout cord, often made of twisted hide or hair. Into the socket of
+the spear is thrust a bamboo pole or shaft, tough, pliant, and
+flexible. The cord is wound round the spear and shaft, and the
+loose end is then fastened to the middle of the pole. Having thus
+prepared his weapon, the herdsman mounts his buffalo, and guides it
+slowly, warily, and cautiously to the haunts of the pig. These are,
+of course, quite accustomed to see the buffaloes grazing round them
+on all sides, and take no notice until the <i>gualla</i> is within
+striking distance. When he has got close up to the pig he fancies,
+he throws his spear with all his force. The pig naturally bounds
+off, the shaft comes out of the socket, leaving the spearhead
+sticking in the wound. The rope uncoils of itself, but being firmly
+fastened to the bamboo, it brings up the pig at each bush, and
+tears and lacerates the wound, until either the spearhead comes
+out, or the wretched pig drops down dead from exhaustion and loss
+of blood. The <i>gualla</i> follows upon his buffalo, and
+frequently finishes the pig with a few strokes of his
+<i>lathee</i>. In any case he gets his pork, and it certainly is an
+ingenious and bold way of procuring it.</p>
+<p>Wild pig are very destructive to crops. During the night they
+revel in the cultivated fields contiguous to the jungle, and they
+destroy more by rooting up than by actually eating. It is common
+for the ryot to dig a shallow pit, and ensconce himself inside with
+his matchlock beside him. His head being on a level with the
+ground, he can discern any animal that comes between him and the
+sky-line. When a pig comes in sight, he waits till he is within
+sure distance, and then puts either a bullet or a charge of slugs
+into him.</p>
+<p>The pig is perhaps the most stubborn and courageous animal in
+India. Even when pierced with several spears, and bleeding from
+numerous wounds, he preserves a sullen silence. He disdains to
+utter a cry of fear and pain, but maintains a bold front to the
+last, and dies with his face to the foe, defiant and unconquered.
+When hard pressed he scorns to continue his flight, but wheeling
+round, he makes a determined charge, very frequently to the utter
+discomfiture of his pursuer.</p>
+<p>I have seen many a fine horse fearfully cut by a charging pig,
+and a determined boar over and over again break through a line of
+elephants, and make good his escape. There is no animal in all the
+vast jungle that the elephant dreads more than a lusty boar. I have
+seen elephants that would stand the repeated charges of a wounded
+tiger, turn tail and take to ignominious flight before the onset of
+an angry boar.</p>
+<p>His thick short neck, ponderous body, and wedge-like head are
+admirably fitted for crashing through the thick jungle he inhabits,
+and when he has made up his mind to charge, very few animals can
+withstand his furious rush. Instances are quite common of his
+having made good his charge against a line of elephants, cutting
+and ripping more than one severely. He has been known to encounter
+successfully even the kingly tiger himself. Can it be wondered,
+then, that we consider him a 'foeman worthy of our steel'?</p>
+<p>To be a good pig-sticker is a recommendation that wins
+acceptance everywhere in India. In a district like Chumparun where
+nearly every planter was an ardent sportsman, a good rider, and
+spent nearly half his time on horseback, pig-sticking was a
+favourite pastime. Every factory had at least one bit of likely
+jungle close by, where a pig could always be found. When I first
+went to India we used to take out our pig-spear over the
+<i>zillah</i> with us as a matter of course, as we never knew when
+we might hit on a boar.</p>
+<p>Things are very different now. Cultivation has much increased.
+Many of the old jungles have been reclaimed, and I fancy many more
+pigs are shot by natives than formerly. A gun can be had now for a
+few rupees, and every loafing 'ne'er do weel' in the village
+manages to procure one, and wages indiscriminate warfare on bird
+and beast. It is a growing evil, and threatens the total extinction
+of sport in some districts. I can remember when nearly every tank
+was good for a few brace of mallard, duck, or teal, where never a
+feather is now to be seen, save the ubiquitous paddy-bird. Jungles,
+where a pig was a certain find, only now contain a measly jackal,
+and not always that; and cover in which partridge, quail, and
+sometimes even florican were numerous, are now only tenanted by the
+great ground-owl, or a colony of field rats. I am far from wishing
+to limit sport to the European community. I would let every native
+that so wished sport his double barrels or handle his spear with
+the best of us, but he should follow and indulge in his sport with
+reason. The breeding seasons of all animals should be respected,
+and there should be no indiscriminate slaughter of male and female,
+young and old. Until all true sportsmen in India unite in this
+matter, the evil will increase, and bye-and-bye there will be no
+animals left to afford sport of any kind.</p>
+<p>There are cases where wild animals are so numerous and
+destructive that extraordinary measures have to be taken for
+protection from their ravages, but these are very rare. I remember
+having once to wage a war of extermination against a colony of pigs
+that had taken possession of some jungle lands near Maharjnugger, a
+village on the Koosee. I had a deal of indigo growing on cleared
+patches at intervals in the jungles, and there the pigs would root
+and revel in spite of watchmen, till at last I was forced in sheer
+self-defence to begin a crusade against them. We got a line of
+elephants, and two or three friends came to assist, and in one day,
+and round one village only, we shot sixty-three full grown pigs.
+The villagers must have killed and carried away nearly double that
+number of young and wounded. That was a very extreme case, and in a
+pure jungle country; but in settled districts like Tirhoot and
+Chumparun the weaker sex should always be spared, and a close
+season for winged game should be insisted on. To the credit of the
+planters be it said, that this necessity is quite recognised; but
+every pot-bellied native who can beg, borrow, or steal a gun, or in
+any way procure one, is constantly on the look out for a pot shot
+at some unlucky hen-partridge or quail. A whole village will turn
+out to compass the destruction of some wretched sow that may have
+shewn her bristles outside the jungle in the daytime.</p>
+<p>In districts where cultivated land is scarce and population
+scattered, it is almost impossible to enjoy pig-sticking. The
+breaks of open land between the jungles are too small and narrow to
+afford galloping space, and though you turn the pig out of one
+patch of jungle, he immediately finds safe shelter in the next. On
+the banks of some of the large rivers, however, such as the Gunduch
+and the Bagmuttee, there are vast stretches of undulating sand,
+crossed at intervals by narrow creeks, and spotted by patches of
+close, thick jungle. Here the grey tusker takes up his abode with
+his harem. When once you turn him out from his lair, there is grand
+hunting room before he can reach the distant patch of jungle to
+which he directs his flight. In some parts the <i>jowah</i> (a
+plant not unlike broom in appearance) is so thick, that even the
+elephants can scarcely force their way through, but as a rule the
+beating is pretty easy, and one is almost sure of a find.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterX."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Kuderent jungle.&mdash;Charged by a
+pig.&mdash;The biter bit.&mdash;'Mac' after the big boar.&mdash;The
+horse for pig-sticking.&mdash;The line of beaters.&mdash;The boar
+breaks.&mdash;'Away! Away!'&mdash;First spear.&mdash;Pig-sticking
+at Peeprah.&mdash;The old 'lungra' or cripple.&mdash;A boar at
+bay.&mdash;Hurrah for pig-sticking!</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>There was a very fine pig jungle at a place called Kuderent,
+belonging to a wealthy landowner who went by the name of the
+Mudhobunny Baboo. We occasionally had a pig-sticking meet here, and
+as the jungle was strictly preserved, we were never disappointed in
+finding plenty who gave us glorious sport. The jungles consisted of
+great grass plains, with thickly wooded patches of dense tree
+jungle, intersected here and there by deep ravines, with stagnant
+pools of water at intervals; the steep sides all thickly clothed
+with thorny clusters of the wild dog-rose. It was a difficult
+country to beat, and we had always to supplement the usual gang of
+beaters with as many elephants as we could collect. In the centre
+of the jungle was an eminence of considerable height, whence there
+was a magnificent view of the surrounding country.</p>
+<p>Far in the distance the giant Himalayas towered into the still
+clear air, the guardian barriers of an unknown land. The fretted
+pinnacles and tremendous ridges, clothed in their pure white mantle
+of everlasting snow, made a magnificent contrast to the dark,
+misty, wooded masses formed by the lower ranges of hills. In the
+early morning, when the first beams of the rising sun had but
+touched the mountain tops, leaving the country below shrouded in
+the dim mists and vapours of retiring night, the sight was most
+sublime. In presence of such hills and distances, such wondrous
+combinations of colour, scenery on such a gigantic scale, even the
+most thoughtless become impressed with the majesty of nature.</p>
+<p>Our camp was pitched on the banks of a clear running mountain
+stream, brawling over rocks and boulders; and to eyes so long
+accustomed to the never ending flatness of the rich alluvial
+plains, and the terrible sameness of the rice swamps, the stream
+was a source of unalloyed pleasure. There were only a few places
+where the abrupt banks gave facilities for fording, and when a pig
+had broken fairly from the jungle, and was making for the river (as
+they very frequently did), you would see the cluster of horsemen
+scattering over the plain like a covey of partridges when the hawk
+swoops down upon them. Each made for what he considered the most
+eligible ford, in hopes of being first up with the pig on the
+further bank, and securing the much coveted first spear.</p>
+<p>When a pig is hard pressed, and comes to any natural obstacle,
+as a ditch, bank, or stream, he almost invariably gets this
+obstacle between himself and his pursuer; then wheeling round he
+makes his stand, showing wonderful sagacity in choosing the moment
+of all others when he has his enemy at most disadvantage.
+Experienced hands are aware of this, and often try to outflank the
+boar, but the best men I have seen generally wait a little, till
+the pig is again under weigh, and then clearing the ditch or bank,
+put their horses at full speed, which is the best way to make good
+your attack. The rush of the boar is so sudden, fierce, and
+determined, that a horse at half speed, or going slow, has no
+chance of escape; but a well trained horse at full speed meets the
+pig in his rush, the spear is delivered with unerring aim, and
+slightly swerving to the left, you draw it out as you continue your
+course, and the poor pig is left weltering in his blood behind
+you.</p>
+<p>On one occasion I was very rudely made aware of this trait. It
+was a fine fleet young boar we were after, and we had had a long
+chase, but were now overhauling him fast. I had a good horse under
+me, and 'Jamie' and 'Giblets' were riding neck and neck. There was
+a small mango orchard in front surrounded by the usual ditch and
+bank. It was nothing of a leap; the boar took it with ease, and we
+could just see him top the bank not twenty spear lengths ahead. I
+was slightly leading, and full of eager anxiety and emulation.
+Jamie called on me to pull up, but I was too excited to mind him. I
+saw him and Giblets each take an outward wheel about, and gallop
+off to catch the boar coming out of the cluster of trees on the far
+side, as I thought. I could not see him, but I made no doubt he was
+in full flight through the trees. There was plenty of riding room
+between the rows, so lifting my game little horse at the bank, I
+felt my heart bound with emulation as I thought I was certain to
+come up first, and take the spear from two such noted heroes as my
+companions. I came up with the pig first, sure enough. <i>He</i>
+was waiting for <i>me</i>, and scarce giving my horse time to
+recover his stride after the jump, he came rushing at me, every
+bristle erect, with a vicious grunt of spite and rage. My spear was
+useless, I had it crosswise on my horse's neck; I intended to
+attack first, and finding my enemy turning the tables on me in this
+way was rather disconcerting. I tried to turn aside and avoid the
+charge, but a branch caught me across the face, and knocked my
+<i>puggree</i> off. In a trice the savage little brute was on me.
+Leaping up fairly from the ground, he got the heel of my riding
+boot in his mouth, and tore off the sole from the boot as if it had
+been so much paper. Jamie and Giblets were sitting outside watching
+the scene, laughing at my discomfiture. Fortunately the boar had
+poor tusks, and my fine little horse was unhurt, but I got out of
+that orchard as fast as I could, and ever after hesitated about
+attacking a boar when he had got a bank or ditch between him and
+me, and was waiting for me on the other side. The far better plan
+is to wait till he sees you are not pressing him, he then goes off
+at a surly sling trot, and you can resume the chase with every
+advantage in your favour. When the blood however is fairly up, and
+all one's sporting instincts roused, it is hard to listen to the
+dictates of prudence or the suggestions of caution and
+experience.</p>
+<p>The very same day we had another instance. My manager, 'Young
+Mac,' as we called him, had started a huge old boar. He was just
+over the boar, and about to deliver his thrust, when his horse
+stumbled in a rat hole (it was very rotten ground), and came
+floundering to earth, bringing his rider with him. Nothing daunted,
+Mac picked himself up, lost the horse, but so eager and excited was
+he, that he continued the chase on foot, calling to some of us to
+catch his horse while he stuck his boar. The old boar was quite
+blown, and took in the altered aspect of affairs at a glance; he
+turned to charge, and we loudly called on Mac to 'clear out.' Not a
+bit of it, he was too excited to realise his danger, but Pat
+fortunately interposed his horse and spear in time, and no doubt
+saved poor Mac from a gruesome mauling. It was very plucky, but it
+was very foolish, for heavily weighted with boots, breeches, spurs,
+and spear, a man could have no chance against the savage onset of
+an infuriated boar.</p>
+<p>In the long thick grass with which the plain was covered the
+riding was very dangerous. I remember seeing six riders come
+signally to grief over a blind ditch in this jungle. It adds not a
+little to the excitement, and really serious accidents are not so
+common as might be imagined. It is no joke however when a riderless
+horse comes ranging up alongside of you as you are sailing along,
+intent on war; biting and kicking at your own horse, he spoils your
+sport, throws you out of the chase, and you are lucky if you do not
+receive some ugly cut or bruise from his too active heels. There is
+the great beauty of a well trained Arab or country-bred; if you get
+a spill, he waits beside you till you recover your faculties, and
+get your bellows again in working order; if you are riding a
+Cabool, or even a waler, it is even betting that he turns to bite
+or kick you as you lie, or he rattles off in pursuit of your more
+firmly seated friends, spoiling their sport, and causing the most
+fearful explosions of vituperative wrath.</p>
+<p>There is something to me intensely exciting in all the varied
+incidents of a rattling burst across country after a fighting old
+grey boar. You see the long waving line of staves, and spear heads,
+and quaint shaped axes, glittering and fluctuating above the
+feathery tops of the swaying grass. There is an irregular line of
+stately elephants, each with its towering howdah and dusky mahout,
+moving slowly along through the rustling reeds. You hear the sharp
+report of fireworks, the rattling thunder of the big <i>doobla</i>
+or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of innumerable
+<i>tom-toms</i>. Shouts, oaths, and cries from a hundred noisy
+coolies, come floating down in bursts of clamour on the soft
+morning air. The din waxes and wanes as the excited beaters descry
+a 'sounder' of pig ahead; with a mighty roar that makes your blood
+tingle, the frantic coolies rally for the final burst. Like rockets
+from a tube, the boar and his progeny come crashing through the
+brake, and separate before you on the plain. With a wild cheer you
+dash after them in hot pursuit; no time now to think of pitfalls,
+banks, or ditches; your gallant steed strains his every muscle,
+every sense is on the alert, but you see not the bush and brake and
+tangled thicket that you leave behind you. Your eye is on the dusky
+glistening hide and the stiff erect bristles in front; the shining
+tusks and foam-flecked chest are your goal, and the wild excitement
+culminates as you feel your keen steel go straight through muscle,
+bone, and sinew, and you know that another grisly monster has
+fallen. As you ease your girths and wipe your heated brow, you feel
+that few pleasures of the chase come up to the noblest, most
+thrilling sport of all, that of pig-sticking.</p>
+<p>The plain is alive with shouting beaters hurrying up to secure
+the gory carcase of the slaughtered foe. A riderless horse is far
+away, making off alone for the distant grove, where the snowy tents
+are glistening through the foliage. On the distant horizon a small
+cluster of eager sportsmen are fast overhauling another luckless
+tusker, and enjoying in all their fierce excitement the same
+sensations you have just experienced. Now is the time to enjoy the
+soothing weed, and quaff the grateful 'peg'; and as the syces and
+other servants come up in groups of twos and threes, you listen
+with languid delight to all their remarks on the incidents of the
+chase; and as, with their acute Oriental imagination nations they
+dilate in terms of truly Eastern exaggeration on your wonderful
+pluck and daring, you almost fancy yourself really the hero they
+would make you out to be.</p>
+<p>Then the reunion round the festive board at night, when every
+one again lives through all the excitement of the day. Talk of
+fox-hunting after pig-sticking, it is like comparing a penny candle
+to a lighthouse, or a donkey race to the 'Grand National'!</p>
+<p>Peeprah Factory with its many patches of jungle, its various
+lakes and fine undulating country, was another favourite rendezvous
+for the votaries of pig-sticking. The house itself was quite
+palatial, built on the bank of a lovely horseshoe lake, and
+embosomed in a grove of trees of great rarity and beautiful
+foliage. It had been built long before the days of overland routes
+and Suez canals, when a planter made India his home, and spared no
+trouble nor expense to make his home comfortable. In the great
+garden were fruit trees from almost every clime; little channels of
+solid masonry led water from the well to all parts of the garden.
+Leading down to the lake was a broad flight of steps, guarded on
+the one side by an immense peepul tree, whose hollow trunk and wide
+stretching canopy of foliage had braved the storms of over half a
+century, on the other side by a most symmetrical almond tree,
+which, when in blossom, was the most beautiful object for miles
+around. A well-kept shrubbery surrounded the house, and tall
+casuarinas, and glossy dark green india-rubber and bhur trees,
+formed a thousand combinations of shade and colour. Here we often
+met to experience the warm, large-hearted hospitality of dear old
+Pat and his gentle little wife. At one time there was a pack of
+harriers, which would lead us a fine, sharp burst by the thickets
+near the river after a doubling hare; but as a rule a meet at
+Peeprah portended death to the gallant tusker, for the jungles were
+full of pigs, and only honest hard work was meant when the Peeprah
+beaters turned out.</p>
+<p>The whole country was covered with patches of grass and thorny
+jungle. Knowing they had another friendly cover close by, the pigs
+always broke at the first beat, and the riding had to be fast and
+furious if a spear was to be won. There were some nasty drop jumps,
+and deep, hidden ditches, and accidents were frequent. In one of
+these hot, sharp gallops poor 'Bonnie Morn,' a favourite horse
+belonging to 'Jamie,' was killed. Not seeing the ditch, it came
+with tremendous force against the bank, and of course its back was
+broken. Even in its death throes it recognised its master's voice,
+and turned round and licked his hand. We were all collected round,
+and let who will sneer, there were few dry eyes as we saw this last
+mute tribute of affection from the poor dying animal.</p>
+<blockquote>THE DEATH OF 'BONNIE MORN.'<br>
+<p>Alas, my 'Brave Bonnie!' the pride of my heart,<br>
+The moment has come when from thee I must part;<br>
+No more wilt thou hark to the huntsman's glad horn,<br>
+My brave little Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>How proudly you bore me at bright break of day,<br>
+How gallantly 'led,' when the boar broke away!<br>
+But no more, alas! thou the hunt shall adorn,<br>
+For now thou art dying, my dear 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>He'd neigh with delight when I'd enter his stall,<br>
+And canter up gladly on hearing my call;<br>
+Rub his head on my shoulder while munching his corn,<br>
+My dear gentle Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>Or out in the grass, when a pig was in view,<br>
+None so eager to start, when he heard a 'halloo';<br>
+Off, off like a flash, the ground spurning with scorn,<br>
+He aye led the van, did my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>O'er <i>nullah</i> and ditch, o'er hedge, fence, or bank,<br>
+No matter, <i>he'd</i> clear it, aye in the front rank;<br>
+A brave little hunter as ever was born<br>
+Was my grand Arab fav'rite, my good 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>Or when in the 'ranks,' who so steady and still?<br>
+None better than 'Bonnie,' more 'up' in his drill;<br>
+His fine head erect&mdash;eyes flashing with scorn&mdash;<br>
+Right fit for a charger was staunch 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>And then on the 'Course,' who so willing and true?<br>
+Past the 'stand' like an arrow the bonnie horse flew;<br>
+No spur his good rider need ever have worn,<br>
+For he aye did his best, did my fleet 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>And now here he lies, the good little horse,<br>
+No more he'll career in the hunt or on 'course':<br>
+Such a charger to lose makes me sad and forlorn;<br>
+I <i>can't</i> help a tear, 'tis for poor 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>Ah! blame not my grief, for 'tis deep and sincere,<br>
+As a friend and companion I held 'Bonnie' dear;<br>
+No true sportsman ever such feelings will scorn<br>
+As I heave a deep sigh for my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>And even in death, when in anguish he lay,<br>
+When his life's blood was drip&mdash;dripping&mdash;slowly
+away,<br>
+His last thought was still of the master he'd borne;<br>
+He neighed, licked my hand&mdash;and thus died 'Bonnie
+Morn.'</p></blockquote>
+<p>One tremendous old boar was killed here during one of our meets,
+which was long celebrated in our after-dinner talks on boars and
+hunting. It was called 'THE LUNGRA,' which means the cripple,
+because it had been wounded in the leg in some previous encounter,
+perhaps in its hot youth, before age had stiffened its joints and
+tinged its whiskers with grey. It was the most undaunted pig I have
+ever seen. It would not budge an inch for the beaters, and charged
+the elephants time after time, sending them flying from the jungle
+most ignominiously. At length its patience becoming exhausted, it
+slowly emerged from the jungle, coolly surveyed the scene and its
+surroundings, and then, disdaining flight, charged straight at the
+nearest horseman. Its hide was as tough as a Highland targe, and
+though L. delivered his spear, it turned the weapon aside as if it
+was merely a thrust from a wooden pole. The old <i>lungra</i> made
+good his charge, and ripped L's. horse on the shoulder. It next
+charged Pat, and ripped his horse, and cut another horse, a
+valuable black waler, across the knee, laming it for life. Rider
+after rider charged down upon the fierce old brute. Although
+repeatedly wounded none of the thrusts were very serious, and
+already it had put five horses <i>hors de combat</i>. It now took
+up a position under a big 'bhur' tree, close to some water, and
+while the boldest of us held back for a little, it took a
+deliberate mud bath under our very noses. Doubtless feeling much
+refreshed, it again took up its position under the tree, ready to
+face each fresh assailant, full of fight, and determined to die but
+not to yield an inch.</p>
+<p>Time after time we rode at the dauntless cripple. Each time he
+charged right down, and our spears made little mark upon his
+toughened hide. Our horses too were getting tired of such a
+customer, and little inclined to face his charge. At length 'Jamie'
+delivered a lucky spear and the grey old warrior fell. It had kept
+us at bay for fully an hour and a half, and among our number we
+reckoned some of the best riders and boldest pig-stickers in the
+district.</p>
+<p>Such was our sport in those good old days. Our meets came but
+seldom, so that sport never interfered with the interests of honest
+hard work; but meeting each other as we did, and engaging in
+exciting sport like pig-sticking, cemented our friendship, kept us
+in health, and encouraged all the hardy tendencies of our nature.
+It whetted our appetites, it roused all those robust virtues that
+have made Englishmen the men they are, it sent us back to work with
+lighter hearts and renewed energy. It built up many happy,
+cherished memories of kindly words and looks and deeds, that will
+only fade when we in turn have to bow before the hunter, and render
+up our spirits to God who gave them. Long live honest, hearty, true
+sportsmen, such as were the friends of those happy days. Long may
+Indian sportsmen find plenty of 'foemen worthy of their steel' in
+the old grey boar, the fighting tusker of Bengal.</p>
+<a name="07"></a>
+<center><img src="Images/07.jpg" alt="Pig-Stickers" width="416"
+height="337" hspace="4" vspace="8"><br>
+<i>Pig-Stickers</i></center>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>The sal forests.&mdash;The jungle
+goddess.&mdash;The trees in the jungle. &mdash;Appearance of the
+forests.&mdash;Birds.&mdash;Varieties of parrots.&mdash;A 'beat' in
+the forest.&mdash;The 'shekarry.'&mdash;Mehrman Singh and his
+gun.&mdash;The Banturs, a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.&mdash;Their
+habits.&mdash;A village feast.&mdash;We beat for deer.&mdash;Habits
+of the spotted deer.&mdash;Waiting for the game.&mdash;Mehrman
+Singh gets drunk.&mdash;Our bag.&mdash;Pea-fowl and their
+habits.&mdash;How to shoot them.&mdash;Curious custom of the
+Nepaulese.&mdash;How Juggroo was tricked, and his revenge.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Tirhoot is too generally under cultivation and too thickly
+inhabited for much land to remain under jungle, and except the wild
+pig of which I have spoken, and many varieties of wild fowl, there
+is little game to be met with. It is, however, different in North
+Bhaugulpore, where there are still vast tracts of forest jungle,
+the haunt of the spotted deer, nilghau, leopard, wolf, and other
+wild animals. Along the banks of the Koosee, a rapid mountain river
+that rolls its flood through numerous channels to join the Ganges,
+there are immense tracts of uncultivated land covered with tall
+elephant grass, and giving cover to tigers, hog deer, pig, wild
+buffalo, and even an occasional rhinoceros, to say nothing of
+smaller game and wildfowl, which are very plentiful.</p>
+<p>The sal forests in North Bhaugulpore generally keep to the high
+ridges, which are composed of a light, sandy soil, very friable,
+and not very fertile, except for oil and indigo seeds, which grow
+most luxuriantly wherever the forest land has been cleared. In the
+shallow valleys which lie between the ridges rice is chiefly
+cultivated, and gives large returns. The sal forests have been
+sadly thinned by unscientific and indiscriminate cutting, and very
+few fine trees now remain. The earth is teeming with insects, chief
+amongst which are the dreaded and destructive white ants. The high
+pointed nests of these destructive insects, formed of hardened mud,
+are the commonest objects one meets with in these forest
+solitudes.</p>
+<p>At intervals, beneath some wide spreading peepul or bhur tree,
+one comes on a rude forest shrine, daubed all over with red paint,
+and with gaudy festoons of imitation flowers, cut from the pith of
+the plantain tree, hanging on every surrounding bough. These
+shrines are sacred to <i>Chumpa buttee</i>, the Hindoo Diana,
+protectress of herds, deer, buffaloes, huntsmen, and herdsmen. She
+is the recognised jungle goddess, and is held in great veneration
+by all the wild tribes and half-civilized denizens of the gloomy
+sal jungle.</p>
+<p>The general colour of the forest is a dingy green, save when a
+deeper shade here and there shows where the mighty bhur uprears its
+towering height, or where the crimson flowers of the <i>seemul</i>
+or cotton tree, and the bronze-coloured foliage of the
+<i>sunpul</i> (a tree very like the ornamental beech in shrubberies
+at home) imparts a more varied colour to the generally pervading
+dark green of the universal sal.</p>
+<p>The varieties of trees are of course almost innumerable, but the
+sal is so out of all proportion more numerous than any other kind,
+that the forests well deserve their recognised name. The sal is a
+fine, hard wood of very slow growth. The leaves are broad and
+glistening, and in spring are beautifully tipped with a reddish
+bronze, which gradually tones down into the dingy green which is
+the prevailing tint. The <i>sheshum</i> or <i>sissod</i>, a tree
+with bright green leaves much resembling the birch, the wood of
+which is invaluable for cart wheels and such-like work, is
+occasionally met with. There is the <i>kormbhe</i>, a very tough
+wood with a red stringy bark, of which the jungle men make a kind
+of touchwood for their matchlocks, and the <i>parass</i>, whose
+peculiarity is that at times it bursts into a wondrous wealth of
+bright crimson blossom without a leaf being on the tree. The
+<i>parass</i> tree in full bloom is gorgeous. After the blossom
+falls the dark-green leaves come out, and are not much different in
+colour from the sal. Then there is the <i>mhowa</i>, with its
+lovely white blossoms, from which a strong spirit is distilled, and
+on which the deer, pigs, and wild bear love to feast. The peculiar
+sickly smell of the <i>mhowa</i> when in flower pervades the
+atmosphere for a great distance round, and reminds one forcibly of
+the peculiar sweet, sickly smell of a brewery. The hill
+<i>sirres</i> is a tall feathery-looking tree of most elegant
+shape, towering above the other forest trees, and the natives strip
+it of its bark, which they use to poison streams. It seems to have
+some narcotic or poisonous principle, easily soluble in water, for
+when put in any quantity in a stream or piece of water, it causes
+all the fish to become apparently paralyzed and rise to the
+surface, where they float about quite stupified and helpless, and
+become an easy prey to the poaching 'Banturs' and 'Moosahurs' who
+adopt this wretched mode of fishing.</p>
+<p>Along the banks of the streams vegetation gets very luxurious,
+and among the thick undergrowth are found some lovely ferns,
+broad-leaved plants, and flowers of every hue, all alike nearly
+scentless. Here is no odorous breath of violet or honeysuckle, no
+delicate perfume of primrose or sweetbriar, only a musty, dank,
+earthy smell which gets more and more pronounced as the mists rise
+along with the deadly vapours of the night. Sleeping in these
+forests is very unhealthy. There is a most fatal miasma all through
+the year, less during the hot months, but very bad during and
+immediately after the annual rains; and in September and October
+nearly every soul in the jungly tracts is smitten with fever. The
+vapour only rises to a certain height above the ground, and at the
+elevation of ten feet or so, I believe one could sleep in the
+jungles with impunity; but it is dangerous at all times to sleep in
+the forest, unless at a considerable elevation. The absence of all
+those delicious smells which make a walk through the woodlands at
+home so delightful, is conspicuous in the sal forests, and another
+of the most noticeable features is the extreme silence, the
+oppressive stillness that reigns.</p>
+<p>You know how full of melody is an English wood, when thrush,
+blackbird, mavis, linnet, and a thousand warblers flit from tree to
+tree. How the choir rings out its full anthem of sweetest sound,
+till every bush and tree seems a centre of sweet strains, soft,
+low, liquid trills, and full ripe gushes of melody and song. But it
+is not thus in an Indian forest. There are actually few birds. As
+you brush through the long grass and trample the tangled
+undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling branches, or dodging under
+the pliant arms of the creepers, you may flush a black or grey
+partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a quiet family party
+of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting about to make
+the vaulted arcades of the forest echo to their music.</p>
+<p>The hornbill darts with a succession of long bounding flights
+from one tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow
+tree close by, his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow
+in the sun. A flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your
+head, the <i>golden oriole</i> or mango bird, the <i>koel</i>, with
+here and there a red-tufted <i>bulbul</i>, make a faint attempt at
+a chirrup; but as a rule the deep silence is unbroken, save by the
+melancholy hoot of some blinking owl, and the soft monotonous coo
+of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The exquisite honey-sucker, as
+delicately formed as the petal of a fairy flower, flits noiselessly
+about from blossom to blossom. The natives call it the 'Muddpenah'
+or drinker of honey. There are innumerable butterflies of graceful
+shape and gorgeous colours; what few birds there are have beautiful
+plumage; there is a faint rustle of leaves, a faint, far hum of
+insect life; but it feels so silent, so unlike the woods at home.
+You are oppressed by the solemn stillness, and feel almost nervous
+as you push warily along, for at any moment a leopard, wolf, or
+hyena may get up before you, or you may disturb the siesta of a
+sounder of pig, or a herd of deer.</p>
+<p>Up in those forests on the borders of Nepaul, which are called
+the <i>morung</i>, there are a great many varieties of parrot, all
+of them very beautiful. There is first the common green parrot,
+with a red beak, and a circle of salmon-coloured feathers round its
+neck; they are very noisy and destructive, and flock together to
+the fields where they do great damage to the crops. The <i>lutkun
+sooga</i> is an exquisitely-coloured bird, about the size of a
+sparrow. The <i>ghur&#257;l</i>, a large red and green parrot, with
+a crimson beak. The <i>tota</i> a yellowish-green colour, and the
+male with a breast as red as blood; they call it the <i>amereet
+bhela</i>. Another lovely little parrot, the <i>taeteea sooga</i>,
+has a green body, red head, and black throat; but the most showy
+and brilliant of all the tribe is the <i>putsoogee</i>. The body is
+a rich living green, red wings, yellow beak, and black throat;
+there is a tuft of vivid red as a topknot, and the tail is a
+brilliant blue; the under feathers of the tail being a pure snowy
+white.</p>
+<p>At times the silence is broken by a loud, metallic, bell-like
+cry, very like the yodel you hear in the Alps. You hear it rise
+sharp and distinct, 'Looralei!' and as suddenly cease. This is the
+cry of the <i>kookoor gh&#275;t</i>, a bird not unlike a small
+pheasant, with a reddish-brown back and a fawn-coloured breast. The
+<i>sherra</i> is another green parrot, a little larger than the
+<i>putsoogee</i>, but not so beautifully coloured.</p>
+<p>There is generally a green, slime-covered, sluggish stream in
+all these forests, its channel choked with rotting leaves and
+decaying vegetable matter. The water should never be drunk until it
+has been boiled and filtered. At intervals the stream opens out and
+forms a clear rush-fringed pool, and the trees receding on either
+bank leave a lovely grassy glade, where the deer and nilghau come
+to drink. On the glassy bosom of the pool in the centre, fine duck,
+mallard, and teal, can frequently be found, and the rushes round
+the margin are to a certainty good for a couple of brace of
+snipe.</p>
+<p>Sometimes on a withered branch overhanging the stream, you can
+see perched the <i>ahur</i>, or great black fish-hawk. It has a
+grating, discordant cry, which it utters at intervals as it sits
+pluming its black feathers above the pool. The dark ibis and the
+ubiquitous paddy-bird are of course also found here; and where the
+land is low and marshy, and the stream crawls along through several
+channels, you are sure to come across a couple of red-headed
+<i>sarus</i>, serpent birds, a crane, and a solitary heron. The
+<i>moosahernee</i> is a black and white bird, I fancy a sort of
+ibis, and is good eating. The <i>dokahur</i> is another fine big
+bird, black body and white wings, and as its name (derived from
+<i>dokha</i>, a shell) implies, it is the shell-gatherer, or
+snail-eater, and gives good shooting.</p>
+<p>When you have determined to beat the forest, you first get your
+coolies and villagers assembled, and send them some mile or two
+miles ahead, under charge of some of the head men, to beat the
+jungle towards you, while you look out for a likely spot, shady,
+concealed, and cool, where you wait with your guns till the game is
+driven up to you. The whole arrangements are generally made, of
+course under your own supervision, by your <i>Shekarry</i>, or
+gamekeeper, as I suppose you might call him. He is generally a
+thin, wiry, silent man, well versed in all the lore of the woods,
+acquainted with the name, appearance, and habits of every bird and
+beast in the forest. He knows their haunts and when they are to be
+found at home. He will track a wounded deer like a bloodhound, and
+can tell the signs and almost impalpable evidences of an animal's
+whereabouts, the knowledge of which goes to make up the genuine
+hunter.</p>
+<p>When all is still around, and only the distant shouts of the
+beaters fall faintly at intervals on the ear, his keen hearing
+detects the light patter of hoof or paw on the crisp, withered
+leaves. His hawk-like glance can pick out from the deepest shade
+the sleek coat or hide of the leopard or the deer; and even before
+the animal has come in sight, his senses tell him whether it is
+young or old, whether it is alarmed, or walking in blind
+confidence. In fact, I have known a good shekarry tell you exactly
+what animal is coming, whether bear, leopard, fox, deer, pig, or
+monkey.</p>
+<p>The best shekarry I ever had was a Nepaulee called 'Mehrman
+Singh.' He had the regular Tartar physiognomy of the Nepaulese.
+Small, oblique, twinkling eyes, high cheekbones, flattish nose, and
+scanty moustache. He was a tall, wiry man, with a remarkably light
+springy step, a bold erect carriage, and was altogether a fine,
+manly, independent fellow. He had none of the fawning
+obsequiousness which is so common to the Hindoo, but was a merry
+laughing fellow, with a keen love of sport and a great appreciation
+of humour. His gun was fearfully and wonderfully made. It was a
+long, heavy flint gun, with a tremendously heavy barrel, and the
+stock all splices and splinters, tied in places with bits of
+string. I would rather not have been in the immediate vicinity of
+the weapon when he fired it, and yet he contrived to do some good
+shooting with it.</p>
+<p>He was wonderfully patient in stalking an animal or waiting for
+its near approach, as he never ventured on a long shot, and did not
+understand our objection to pot-shooting. His shot was composed of
+jagged little bits of iron, chipped from an old <i>kunthee</i>, or
+cooking-pot; and his powder was truly unique, being like lumps of
+charcoal, about the size of small raisins. A shekarry fills about
+four or five fingers' depth of this into his gun, then a handful of
+old iron, and with a little touch of English powder pricked in with
+a pin as priming, he is ready for execution on any game that may
+come within reach of a safe pot-shot. When the gun goes off there
+is a mighty splutter, a roar like that of a small cannon, and the
+slugs go hurtling through the bushes, carrying away twigs and
+leaves, and not unfrequently smashing up the game so that it is
+almost useless for the table.</p>
+<p>The <i>Banturs</i>, who principally inhabit these jungles, are
+mostly of Nepaulese origin. They are a sturdy, independent people,
+and the women have fair skins, and are very pretty. Unchastity is
+very rare, and the infidelity of a wife is almost unknown. If it is
+found out, mutilation and often death are the penalties exacted
+from the unfortunate woman. They wear one long loose flowing
+garment, much like the skirt of a gown; this is tightly twisted
+round the body above the bosoms, leaving the neck and arms quite
+bare. They are fond of ornaments&mdash;nose, ears, toes and arms,
+and even ancles, being loaded with silver rings and circlets. Some
+decorate their nose and the middle parting of the hair with a
+greasy-looking red pigment, while nearly every grown-up woman has
+her arms, neck, and low down on the collar bone most artistically
+tattooed in a variety of close, elaborate patterns. The women all
+work in the clearings; sowing, and weeding, and reaping the rice,
+barley, and other crops. They do most of the digging where that is
+necessary, the men confining themselves to ploughing and
+wood-cutting. At the latter employment they are most expert; they
+use the axe in the most masterly manner, but their mode of cutting
+is fearfully wasteful; they always leave some three feet of the
+best part of the wood in the ground, very rarely cutting a tree
+close down to the root. Many of them are good charcoal-burners, and
+indeed their principal occupation is supplying the adjacent
+villages with charcoal and firewood. They use small narrow-edged
+axes for felling, but for lopping they invariably use the Nepaulese
+national weapon&mdash;the <i>kookree</i>. This is a heavy, curved
+knife, with a broad blade, the edge very sharp, and the back thick
+and heavy. In using it they slash right and left with a quick
+downward stroke, drawing the blade quickly toward them as they
+strike. They are wonderfully dexterous with the <i>kookree</i>, and
+will clear away brush and underwood almost as quickly as a man can
+walk. They pack their charcoal, rice, or other commodities, in long
+narrow baskets, which they sling on a pole carried on their
+shoulders, as we see the Chinese doing in the well known pictures
+on tea-chests. They are all Hindoos in religion, but are very fond
+of rice-whiskey. Although not so abstemious in this respect as the
+Hindoos of the plains, they are a much finer race both physically
+and morally. As a rule they are truthful, honest, brave, and
+independent. They are always glad to see you, laugh out merrily at
+you as you pass, and are wonderfully hospitable. It would be a nice
+point for Sir Wilfrid Lawson to reconcile the use of rice-whiskey
+with this marked superiority in all moral virtues in the
+whiskey-drinking, as against the totally-abstaining Hindoo.</p>
+<p>To return to Mehrman Singh. His face was seamed with smallpox
+marks, and he had seven or eight black patches on it the first time
+I saw him, caused by the splintering of his flint when he let off
+his antediluvian gun. When he saw my breechloaders, the first he
+had ever beheld, his admiration was unbounded. He told me he had
+come on a leopard asleep in the forest one day, and crept up quite
+close to him. His faith in his old gun, however, was not so lively
+as to make him rashly attack so dangerous a customer, so he told
+me. 'Hum usko jans deydea oos wukt,' that is, 'I <i>gave</i> the
+brute its life that time, but,' he continued, 'had I had an English
+gun like this, your honour, I would have blown the <i>soor</i>
+(<i>Anglice</i>, pig) to hell.' Old Mehrman was rather strong in
+his expletives at times, but I was not a little amused at the cool
+way he spoke of <i>giving</i> the leopard its life. The probability
+is, that had he only wounded the animal, he would have lost his
+own.</p>
+<p>These Nepaulese are very fond of giving feasts to each other.
+Their dinner-parties, I assure you, are very often 'great affairs.'
+They are not mean in their arrangements, and the wants of the inner
+man are very amply provided for. Their crockery is simple and
+inexpensive. When the feast is prepared, each guest provides
+himself with a few broad leaves from the nearest sal tree, and
+forming these into a cup, he pins them together with thorns from
+the acacia. Squatting down in a circle, with half-a-dozen of these
+sylvan cups around, the attendant fills one with rice, another with
+<i>dhall</i>, a third with goat's-flesh, a fourth with
+<i>turkaree</i> or vegetables, a fifth with chutnee, pickle, or
+some kind of preserve. Curds, ghee, a little oil perhaps, sugar,
+plantains, and other fruit are not wanting, and the whole is washed
+down with copious draughts of fiery rice-whiskey, or where it can
+be procured, with palm-toddy. Not unfrequently dancing boys or
+girls are in attendance, and the horrid din of tom-toms, cymbals, a
+squeaking fiddle, or a twanging sitar, rattling castanets, and
+ear-piercing songs from the dusky <i>prima donna</i>, makes night
+hideous, until the grey dawn peeps over the dark forest line.</p>
+<p>Early in January, 1875, my camp was at a place in the sal
+jungles called Lohurneah. I had been collecting rents and looking
+after my seed cultivation, and Pat and our sporting District
+Engineer having joined me, we determined to have a beat for deer.
+Mehrman Singh had reported numerous herds in the vicinity of our
+camp. During the night we had been disturbed by the revellers at
+such a feast in the village as I have been describing. We had
+filled cartridges, seen to our guns, and made every preparation for
+the beat, and early in the morning the coolies and idlers of the
+forest villages all round were ranged in circles about our
+camp.</p>
+<p>Swallowing a hasty breakfast we mounted our ponies, and followed
+by our ragged escort, made off for the forest. On the way we met a
+crowd of Banturs with bundles of stakes and great coils of strong
+heavy netting. Sending the coolies on ahead under charge of several
+headmen and peons, we plunged into the gloom of the forest, leaving
+our ponies and grooms outside. When we came to a likely-looking
+spot, the Banturs began operations by fixing up the nets on the
+stakes and between trees, till a line of strong net extended across
+the forest for several hundred yards. We then went ahead, leaving
+the nets behind us, and each took up his station about 200 yards in
+front. The men with the nets then hid themselves behind trees, and
+crouched in the underwood. With our kookries we cut down several
+branches, stuck them in the ground in front, and ensconced
+ourselves in this artificial shelter. Behind us, and between us and
+the nets, was a narrow cart track leading through the forest, and
+the reason of our taking this position was given me by Pat, who was
+an old hand at jungle shooting.</p>
+<p>When deer are being driven, they are intensely suspicious, and
+of course frightened. They know every spot in the jungle, and are
+acquainted with all the paths, tracks, and open places in the
+forest. When they are nearing an open glade, or a road, they
+slacken their pace, and go slowly and warily forward, an old buck
+generally leading. When he has carefully reconnoitred and examined
+the suspected place in front, and found it clear to all appearance,
+they again put on the pace, and clear the open ground at their
+greatest speed. The best chance of a shot is when a path is in
+front of <i>them</i> and behind <i>you</i>, as then they are going
+slowly.</p>
+<p>At first when I used to go out after them, I often got an open
+glade, or road, in <i>front</i> of me; but experience soon told me
+that Pat's plan was the best. As this was a beat not so much for
+real sport, as to show me how the villagers managed these affairs,
+we were all under Pat's direction, and he could not have chosen
+better ground. I was on the extreme left, behind a clump of young
+trees, with the sluggish muddy stream on my left. Our Engineer to
+my right was about one hundred yards off, and Pat himself on the
+extreme right, at about the same distance from H. Behind us was the
+road, and in the rear the long line of nets, with their concealed
+watchers. The nets are so set up on the stakes, that when an animal
+bounds along and touches the net, it falls over him, and ere he can
+extricate himself from its meshes, the vigilant Banturs rush out
+and despatch him with spears and clubs.</p>
+<p>We waited a long time hearing nothing of the beaters, and
+watching the red and black ants hurrying to and fro. Huge
+green-bellied spiders oscillated backwards and forwards in their
+strong, systematically woven webs. A small mungoose kept peeping
+out at me from the roots of an old india-rubber tree, and aloft in
+the branches an amatory pair of hidden ringdoves were billing and
+cooing to each other. At this moment a stealthy step stole softly
+behind, and the next second Mr. Mehrman Singh crept quietly and
+noiselessly beside me, his face flushed with rapid walking, his eye
+flashing with excitement, his finger on his lip, and a look of
+portentous gravity and importance striving to spread itself over
+his speaking countenance. Mehrman had been up all night at the
+feast, and was as drunk as a piper. It was no use being angry with
+him, so I tried to keep him quiet and resumed my watch.</p>
+<p>A few minutes afterwards he grasped me by the wrist, rather
+startling me, but in a low hoarse whisper warning me that a troop
+of monkeys was coming. I could not hear the faintest rustle, but
+sure enough in a minute or two a troop of over twenty monkeys came
+hopping and shambling along, stopping every now and then to sit on
+their hams, look back, grin, jabber, and show their formidable
+teeth, until Mehrman rose up, waved his cloth at them, and turned
+them off from the direction of the nets toward the bank of the
+stream.</p>
+<p>Next came a fox, slouching warily and cautiously along; then a
+couple of lean, hungry-looking jackals; next a sharp patter on the
+crisp dry leaves, and several peafowl with resplendent plumage ran
+rapidly past. Another touch on the arm from Mehrman, and following
+the direction of his outstretched hand, I descried a splendid buck
+within thirty yards of me, his antlers and chest but barely visible
+above the brushwood. My gun was to my shoulder in an instant, but
+the shekarry in an excited whisper implored me not to fire. I
+hesitated, and just then the stately head turned round to look
+behind, and exposing the beautifully curving neck full to my aim, I
+fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the fine buck topple
+over, seemingly hard hit.</p>
+<p>A shot on my right, and two shots in rapid succession further
+on, shewed me that Pat and H. were also at work, and then the whole
+forest seemed alive with frightened, madly-plunging pig, deer, and
+other animals. I fired at, and wounded an enormous boar that came
+rushing past, and now the cries of the coolies in front as they
+came trooping on, mingled with the shouts of the men at the nets,
+where the work of death evidently was going on.</p>
+<p>It was most exciting while it lasted, but, after all, I do not
+think it was honest sport. The only apology I could make to myself
+was, that the deer and pig were far too numerous, and doing immense
+damage to the crops, and if not thinned out, they would soon have
+made the growing of any crop whatever an impossibility.</p>
+<p>The monkey being a sacred animal, is never molested by the
+natives, and the damage he does in a night to a crop of wheat or
+barley is astonishing. Peafowl too are very destructive, and what
+with these and the ravages of pig, deer, hares, and other
+plunderers, the poor ryot has to watch many a weary night, to
+secure any return from his fields.</p>
+<p>On rejoining each other at the nets, we found that five deer and
+two pigs had been killed. Pat had shot a boar and a porcupine, the
+latter with No. 4 shot. H. accounted for a deer, and I got my buck
+and the boar which I had wounded in the chest; Mehrman Singh had
+followed him up and tracked him to the river, where he took refuge
+among some long swamp reeds. Replying to his call, we went up, and
+a shot through the head settled the old boar for ever. Our bag was
+therefore for the first beat, seven deer, four pigs, and a
+porcupine.</p>
+<p>The coolies were now sent away out of the jungle, and on ahead
+for a mile or so, the nets were coiled up, our ponies regained, and
+off we set, to take another station. As we went along the river
+bank, frequently having to force our way through thick jungle, we
+started 'no end' of peafowl, and getting down we soon added a
+couple to the bag. Pat got a fine jack snipe, and I shot a
+<i>Jheela</i>, a very fine waterfowl with brown plumage, having a
+strong metallic, coppery lustre on the back, and a steely dark blue
+breast. The plumage was very thick and glossy, and it proved
+afterwards to be excellent eating.</p>
+<p>Peafowl generally retire to the thickest part of the jungles
+during the heat of the day, but if you go out very early, when they
+are slowly wending their way back from the fields, where they have
+been revelling all night, you can shoot numbers of them. I used to
+go about twenty or thirty yards into the jungle, and walk slowly
+along, keeping that distance from the edge. My syce and pony would
+then walk slowly by the edges of the fields, and when the syce saw
+a peafowl ahead, making for the jungle, he would shout and try to
+make it rise. He generally succeeded, and as I was a little in
+advance and concealed by the jungle, I would get a fine shot as the
+bird flew overhead. I have shot as many as eight and ten in a
+morning in this way. I always used No. 4 shot with about 3&frac12;
+drams of powder.</p>
+<p>Unless hard hit peafowl will often get away; they run with
+amazing swiftness, and in the heart of the jungle it is almost
+impossible to make them rise. A couple of sharp terriers, or a good
+retriever, will sometimes flush them, but the best way is to go
+along the edge of the jungle in the early morn, as I have
+described. The peachicks, about seven or eight months old, are
+deliciously tender and well flavoured. Old birds are very dry and
+tough, and require a great deal of that old-fashioned sauce,
+Hunger.</p>
+<p>The common name for a peafowl is <i>m&#333;r</i>, but the
+Nepaulese and Banturs call it <i>majoor</i>. Now <i>majoor</i> also
+means coolie, and a young fellow, S., was horrified one day hearing
+his attendant in the jungle telling him in the most excited way,
+'<i>Majoor, majoor</i>, Sahib; why don't you fire?' Poor S. thought
+it was a coolie the man meant, and that he must be going mad,
+wanting him to shoot a coolie, but he found out his mistake, and
+learnt the double meaning of the word, when he got home and
+consulted his <i>manager</i>.</p>
+<p>The generic name for all deer is in Hindustani HURIN, but the
+Nepaulese call it CHEETER. The male spotted deer they call KUBRA,
+the female KUBREE. These spotted deer keep almost exclusively to
+the forests, and are very seldom found far away from the friendly
+cover of the sal woods. They are the most handsome, graceful
+looking animals I know, their skins beautifully marked with white
+spots, and the horns wide and arching. When properly prepared the
+skin makes a beautiful mat for a drawing room, and the horns of a
+good buck are a handsome ornament to the hall or the verandah. When
+bounding along through the forest, his beautifully spotted skin
+flashing through the dark green foliage, his antlers laid back over
+his withers, he looks the very embodiment of grace and swiftness.
+He is very timid, and not easily stalked.</p>
+<p>In March and April, when a strong west wind is blowing, it
+rustles the myriads of leaves that, dry as tinder, encumber the
+earth. This perpetual rustle prevents the deer from hearing the
+footsteps of an approaching foe. They generally betake themselves
+then to some patch of grass, or long-crop outside the jungle
+altogether, and if you want them in those months, it is in such
+places, and not inside the forest at all, that you must search.
+Like all the deer tribe, they are very curious, and a bit of rag
+tied to a tree, or a cloth put over a bush, will not unfrequently
+entice them within range.</p>
+<p>Old shekarries will tell you that as long as the deer go on
+feeding and flapping their ears, you may continue your approach. As
+soon as they throw up the head, and keep the ears still, their
+suspicions have been aroused, and if you want venison, you must be
+as still as a rock, till your game is again lulled into security,
+As soon as the ears begin flapping again, you may continue your
+stalk, but at the slightest noise, the noble buck will be off like
+a flash of lightning. You should never go out in the forest with
+white clothes, as you are then a conspicuous mark for all the
+prying eyes that are invisible to you. The best colour is dun
+brown, dark grey, or dark green. When you see a deer has become
+suspicious, and no cover is near, stand perfectly erect and rigid,
+and do not leave your legs apart. The 'forked-parsnip' formation of
+the 'human form divine' is detected at a glance, but there's just a
+chance that if your legs are drawn together, and you remain
+perfectly motionless, you may be mistaken for the stump of a tree,
+or at the best some less dangerous enemy than man.</p>
+<p>As we rode slowly along, to allow the beaters to get ahead, and
+to let the heavily-laden men with the nets keep up with us, we were
+amused to hear the remarks of the syces and shekarries on the sport
+they had just witnessed. Pat's old man, Juggroo, a merry peep-eyed
+fellow, full of anecdote and humour, was rather hard on Mehrman
+Singh for having been up late the preceding night. Mehrman, whose
+head was by this time probably reminding him that there are 'lees
+to every cup,' did not seem to relish the humour. He began grasping
+one wrist with the other hand, working his hand slowly round his
+wrist, and I noticed that Juggroo immediately changed the subject.
+This, as I afterwards learned, is the invariable Nepaulese custom
+of showing anger. They grasp the wrist as I have said, and it is
+taken as a sign that, if you do not discontinue your banter, you
+will have a fight.</p>
+<p>The Nepaulese are rather vain of their personal appearance, and
+hanker greatly after a good thick moustache. This, nature has
+denied them, for the hair on their faces is scanty and stubbly in
+the extreme. One day Juggroo saw his master putting some bandoline
+on his moustache, which was a fine, handsome, silky one. He asked
+Pat's bearer, an old rogue, what it was.</p>
+<p>'Oh!' replied the bearer, 'that is the gum of the sal tree;
+master always uses that, and that is the reason he has such a fine
+moustache.'</p>
+<p>Juggroo's imagination fired up at the idea.</p>
+<p>'Will it make mine grow too?'</p>
+<p>'Certainly.'</p>
+<p>'How do you use it?'</p>
+<p>'Just rub it on, as you see master do.'</p>
+<p>Away went Juggroo to try the new recipe.</p>
+<p>Now, the gum of the sal tree is a very strong resin, and hardens
+in water. It is almost impossible to get it off your skin, as the
+more water you use, the harder it gets.</p>
+<p>Next day Juggroo's face presented a sorry sight. He had
+plentifully smeared the gum over his upper lip, so that when he
+washed his face, the gum <i>set</i>, making the lip as stiff as a
+board, and threatening to crack the skin every time the slightest
+muscle moved.</p>
+<p>Juggroo <i>was</i> 'sold' and no mistake, but he bore it all in
+grim silence, although he never forgot the old bearer. One day,
+long after, he brought in some berries from the wood, and was
+munching them, seemingly with great relish. The bearer wanted to
+know what they were, Juggroo with much apparent <i>nonchalance</i>
+told him they were some very sweet, juicy, wild berries he had
+found in the forest. The bearer asked to try one.</p>
+<p>Juggroo had <i>another</i> fruit ready, very much resembling
+those he was eating. It is filled with minute spikelets, or little
+hairy spinnacles, much resembling those found in ripe doghips at
+home. If these even touch the skin, they cause intense pain,
+stinging like nettles, and blistering every part they touch.</p>
+<p>The unsuspicious bearer popped the treacherous berry into his
+mouth, gave it a crunch, and then with a howl of agony, spluttered
+and spat, while the tears ran down his cheeks, as he implored
+Juggroo by all the gods to fetch him some water.</p>
+<p>Old Juggroo with a grim smile, walked coolly away, discharging a
+Parthian shaft, by telling him that these berries were very good
+for making the hair grow, and hoped he would soon have a good
+moustache.</p>
+<p>A man from the village now came running up to tell us that there
+was a leopard in the jungle we were about to beat, and that it had
+seized, but failed to carry away, a dog from the village during the
+night. Natives are so apt to tell stories of this kind that at
+first we did not credit him, but turning into the village he showed
+us the poor dog, with great wounds on its neck and throat where the
+leopard had pounced upon it. The noise, it seems, had brought some
+herdsmen to the place, and their cries had frightened the leopard
+and saved the wretched dog. As the man said he could show us the
+spot where the leopard generally remained, we determined to beat
+him up; so sending a man off on horseback for the beaters to
+slightly alter their intended line of beat, we rode off, attended
+by the villager, to get behind the leopard's lair, and see if we
+could not secure him. These fierce and courageous brutes, for they
+are both, are very common in the sal jungles; and as I have seen
+several killed, both in Bhaugulpore and Oudh, I must devote a
+chapter to the subject.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>The leopard.&mdash;How to shoot
+him.&mdash;Gallant encounter with a wounded one.&mdash;Encounter
+with a leopard in a dak bungalow.&mdash;Pat shoots two
+leopards.&mdash;Effects of the Express bullet.&mdash;The 'Sirwah
+Purrul,' or annual festival of huntsmen.&mdash;The Hindoo
+ryot.&mdash;Rice-planting and harvest.&mdash;Poverty of the
+ryot.&mdash;His apathy.&mdash;Village fires.&mdash;Want of
+sanitation.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Writing principally for friends at home, who are not familiar
+with Indian life, I must narrate facts that, although well known in
+Indian circles, are yet new to the general reader in England. My
+object is of course to represent the life we lead in the far East,
+and to give a series of pictures of what is going on there. If I
+occasionally touch on what may to Indian readers seem well-worn
+ground, they will forgive me.</p>
+<p>The leopard then, as a rule keeps to the wooded parts of India.
+In the long grassy jungles bordering the Koosee he is not generally
+met with. He is essentially a predatory animal, always on the
+outlook for a meal; round the villages, nestling amid their sal
+forests, he is continually on the prowl, looking out for a goat, a
+calf, or unwary dog. His appearance and habits are well known; he
+generally selects for his lair, a retired spot surrounded by dense
+jungle. The one we were after now had his home in a matted jungle,
+growing out of a pool of water, which had collected in a long
+hollow, forming the receptacle of the surface drainage from the
+adjacent slopes. This hollow stretched for miles towards the creek
+which we had been beating up; and the locality having moisture and
+other concurring elements in its favour, the vegetation had
+attained a luxuriance rarely seen in the dry uplands, where the
+west winds lick up the moisture, and the soil is arid and
+unpromising. The matted intertwining branches of the creepers had
+formed an almost impervious screen, and on the basis thus formed,
+amid the branches and creepers, the leopards had formed their lair.
+Beneath, was a still stagnant pool; above, was the leafy foliage.
+The tracks led down to a well-worn path.</p>
+<p>Climbing like a cat, as the leopards can do, they found no
+difficulty in gaining a footing on the mass of vegetation. They
+generally select some retired spot like this, and are very seldom
+seen in the daytime. With the approach of night, however, they
+begin their wandering in quest of prey. In a beat such as we were
+having 'all is fish that comes to the net,' and leopards, if they
+are in the jungle, have to yield to the advance of the beaters,
+like the other denizens of the forest.</p>
+<p>Experience tells you that the leopard is daring and ferocious.
+Old experienced hands warn you, that unless you can make sure of
+your shot, it is unwise to fire at a leopard approaching. It is
+better to wait till he has got past you, or at all events is
+'broadside on.' If you only wound him as he is approaching, he will
+almost to a certainty make straight at you, but if you shoot him as
+he is going past, he will, maddened by pain and anger, go straight
+forward, and you escape his charge. He is more courageous than a
+tiger, and a very dangerous customer at close quarters. Up in one
+of the forests in Oudh, a friend of mine was out one day after
+leopard, with a companion who belonged to the forest department. My
+friend's companion fired at a leopard as it was approaching him,
+and wounded it severely. Nothing daunted, and recognising whence
+its hurt had come, it charged directly down on the concealed
+sportsman, and before he could half realise the position, sprang on
+him, caught his left arm in its teeth, and began mauling him with
+its claws. His presence of mind did not desert him; noticing close
+by the stump of a sal tree, that had been eaten by white ants till
+the harder parts of the wood alone remained, standing up hard and
+sharp like so many spikes of steel; and knowing that the leopard
+was already badly wounded, and in all probability struggling for
+his life, he managed to drag the struggling animal up to the stump;
+jammed his left arm yet further into the open mouth of the wounded
+beast, and being a strong man, by pure physical force dashed the
+leopard's brains out on the jagged edges of the stump. It was a
+splendid instance of presence of mind. He was horribly mauled of
+course; in fact I believe he lost his arm, but he saved his life.
+It shows the danger of only wounding a leopard, especially if he is
+coming towards you; always wait till he has passed your station, if
+it is practicable. If you <i>must</i> shoot, take what care you can
+that the shot be a sure one.</p>
+<p>In some of the hill stations, and indeed in the villages on the
+plains, it is very common for a leopard to make his appearance in
+the house or verandah of an evening.</p>
+<p>One was shot in Bhaugulpore station by the genial and respected
+chaplain, on a Sunday morning two or three years ago. As we went
+along, H. told us a humorous story of an Assistant in the Public
+Works Department, who got mauled by a leopard at Dengra Ghat, Dak
+Bungalow. It had taken up its quarters in a disused room, and this
+young fellow burning, with ardour to distinguish himself, made
+straight for the room in which he was known to be. He opened the
+door, followed by a motley crowd of retainers, discharged his gun,
+and the sequel proved that he was <i>not</i> a dead shot. He had
+only wounded the leopard. With a bound the savage brute was on him,
+but in the hurry and confusion, he had changed front. The leopard
+had him by the back. You can imagine the scene! He roared for help!
+The leopard was badly hit, and a plucky <i>bearer</i> came to his
+rescue with a stout <i>lathee</i>. Between them they succeeded in
+killing the wounded animal, but not before it had left its marks on
+a very sensitive portion of his frame. The moral is, if you go
+after leopard, be sure you kill him at once.</p>
+<p>They seldom attack a strong, well-grown animal. Calves, however,
+goats, and dogs are frequently carried off by them. The young of
+deer and pig, too, fall victims, and when nothing else can be had,
+peafowl have been known to furnish them a meal. In my factory in
+Oudh I had a small, graceful, four-horned antelope. It was carried
+off by a leopard from the garden in broad daylight, and in face of
+a gang of coolies.</p>
+<p>The most commonly practised mode of leopard shooting, is to tie
+a goat up to a tree. You have a <i>mychan</i> erected, that is, a
+platform elevated on trees above the ground. Here you take your
+seat. Attracted by the bleating of the goat, the prowling leopard
+approaches his intended victim. If you are on the watch you can
+generally detect his approach. They steal on with extreme caution,
+being intensely wary and suspicious. At a village near where we now
+were, I had sat up for three nights for a leopard, but although I
+knew he was prowling in the vicinity, I had never got a look at
+him. We believed this leopard to be the same brute.</p>
+<p>I have already described our mode of beating. The jungle was
+close, and there was a great growth of young trees. I was again on
+the right, and near the edge of the forest. Beyond was a glade
+planted with rice. The incidents of the beat were much as you have
+just read. There was, however, unknown or at any rate unnoticed by
+us, more intense excitement. We knew that the leopard might at any
+moment pass before us. Pat was close to a mighty bhur tree, whose
+branches, sending down shoots from the parent stem, had planted
+round it a colony of vigorous supports. It was a magnificent tree
+with dense shade. All was solemn and still. Pat with his keen eye,
+his pulse bounding, and every sense on the alert, was keeping a
+careful look-out from behind an immense projecting buttress of the
+tree. All was deadly quiet. H. and myself were occupied watching
+the gambols of some monkeys in our front. The beaters were yet far
+off. Suddenly Pat heard a faint crackle on a dried leaf. He glanced
+in the direction of the sound, and his quick eye detected the
+glossy coats, the beautifully spotted hides of not <i>one</i>
+leopard, but <i>two</i>. In a moment the stillness was broken by
+the report of his rifle. Another report followed sharp and quick.
+We were on the alert, but to Pat the chief honour and glory
+belonged. He had shot one leopard dead through the heart. The
+female was badly hit and came bounding along in my direction. Of
+course we were now on the <i>qui vive</i>. Waiting for an instant,
+till I could get my aim clear of some intervening trees, I at
+length got a fair shot, and brought her down with a ball through
+the throat. H. and Pat came running up, and we congratulated
+ourselves on our success. By and bye Mehrman Singh and the rest of
+the beaters came up, and the joy of the villagers was gratifying.
+These were doubtless the two leopards we had heard so much about,
+for which I had sat up and watched. It was amusing to see some
+villager whose pet goat or valued calf had been carried off, now
+coming up, striking the dead body of the leopard, and abusing it in
+the most unmeasured terms. Such a crowding round as there was! such
+a noise, and such excitement!</p>
+<p>While waiting for the horses to be brought, and while the
+excited mob of beaters and coolies carried off the dead animals to
+the camp to be skinned, we amused ourselves by trying our rifles at
+a huge tree that grew on the further side of the rice swamp. We
+found the effects of the 'Express' bullet to be tremendous. It
+splintered up and burst the bark and body of the tree into
+fragments. Its effects on an animal are even more wonderful. On
+looking afterwards at the leopard which had been shot, we found
+that my bullet had touched the base of the shoulder, near the
+collar-bone. It had gone downwards through the neck, under the
+collar-bone, and struck the shoulder. There it had splintered up
+and made a frightful wound, scattering its fragments all over the
+chest, and cutting and lacerating everything in its way.</p>
+<p>For big game the 'Express' is simply invaluable. For all-round
+shooting perhaps a No. 12 smooth-bore is the best. It should be
+snap action with rebounding locks. You should have facilities and
+instruments for loading cartridges. A good cartridge belt is a good
+thing for carrying them, but go where you will now, where there is
+game to be killed, a No. 12 B. L. will enable you to participate in
+whatever shooting is going. Such a one as I have described would
+satisfy all the wishes of any young man who perhaps can only afford
+one gun.</p>
+<p>As we rode slowly along, we learned many curious facts of jungle
+and native life from the followers, and by noticing little
+incidents happening before our eyes. Pat, who is so well versed in
+jungle life and its traditions, told us of a curious moveable feast
+which the natives of these parts hold annually, generally in March
+or April, which is called the <i>Sirwah Purrub</i>.</p>
+<p>It seems to be somewhat like the old carnivals of the middle
+ages. I have read that in Sardinia, and Italy, and Switzerland
+something similar takes place. The <i>Sirwah Purrub</i> is a sort
+of festival held in honour of the native Diana&mdash;the <i>chumpa
+buttee</i> before referred to. On the appointed day all the males
+in the forest villages, without exception, go a-hunting. Old spears
+are furbished up; miraculous guns, of even yet more ancient lineage
+than Mehrman Singh's dangerous flintpiece, are brought out from
+dusty hiding-places. Battle-axes, bows and arrows, hatchets, clubs
+and weapons of all sorts, are looked up, and the motley crowd hies
+to the forest, the one party beating up the game to the other.</p>
+<p>Some go fishing, others try to secure a quail or partridge, but
+it is a point of honour that something must be slain. If game be
+not plentiful they will even go to another village and slay a goat,
+which, rather than return empty-handed, they will bear in triumph
+home. The women meet the returning hunters, and if there has been a
+fortunate beat, there is a great feast in the village during the
+evening and far on into the night. The nets are used, and in this
+way they generally have some game to divide in the village on their
+return from the hunt. Ordinarily they seethe the flesh, and pour
+the whole contents of the cooking-pot into a mess of boiled rice.
+With the addition of a little salt, this is to them very palatable
+fare. They are very good cooks, with very simple appliances; with a
+little mustard oil or clarified butter, a few vegetables or a
+cut-up fish, they can be very successful. The food, however, is
+generally smoked from the cow-dung fire. If you are much out in
+these villages this smoke constantly hangs about, clinging to your
+clothes and flavouring your food, but the natives seem to like it
+amazingly.</p>
+<p>In the cold mornings of December or January it hangs about like
+the peat smoke in a Highland village. Round every house are great
+stacks and piles of cow-dung cakes. Before every house is a huge
+pile of ashes, and the villagers cower round this as the evening
+falls, or before the sun has dissipated the mist of the mornings.
+During the day the village dogs burrow in the ashes. Hovering in a
+dense cloud about the roofs and eaves, and along the lower branches
+of the trees in filmy layers, the smoke almost chokes one to ride
+through it. I have seen a native sit till half-choked in a dense
+column of this smoke. He is too lazy to shift his position; the
+fumes of pungent smoke half smother him; tears run from his eyes;
+he splutters and coughs, and abuses the smoke, and its grandfather,
+and maternal uncle, and all its other known relatives; but he
+prefers semi-suffocation to the trouble of budging an inch.</p>
+<p>Sometimes the energy of these people is surprising. To go to a
+fair or feast, or on a pilgrimage, they will walk miles upon miles,
+subsisting on parched peas or rice, and carrying heavy burdens. In
+company they sing and carol blithely enough. When alone they are
+very taciturn, man and woman walking together, the man first with
+his <i>lathee</i> or staff, the woman behind carrying child or
+bundle, and often looking fagged and tired enough.</p>
+<p>Taking vegetables, or rice, or other commodities to the bazaar,
+the carrier often slings his burden to the two ends of a pole worn
+over the shoulder, much as Chinamen do. But they generally make
+their load into one bundle which they carry on the head, or which
+they sling, if not large and bulky, over their backs, rolled up in
+one of their cloths.</p>
+<p>During the rice-planting season they toil in mud and water from
+earliest morn till late into twilight. Bending and stooping all the
+day, their lower extremities up to the knee sometimes in water, and
+the scorching sun beating on their backs, they certainly show their
+patient plodding industry, for it is downright honest hard
+work.</p>
+<p>The young rice is taken from the nursery patch, where it has
+been sown thick some time previously. When the rice-field is
+ready&mdash;a sloppy, muddy, embanked little quagmire&mdash;the
+ryot gets his bundle of young rice-plants, and shoves in two or
+three at a time with his finger and thumb. These afterwards form
+the tufts of rice. Its growth is very rapid. Sometimes, in case of
+flood, the rice actually grows with the rise of the water, always
+keeping its tip above the stream. If wholly submerged for any
+length of time it dies. There are over a hundred varieties. Some
+are only suited for very deep marshy soils; others, such as the
+<i>s&#257;tee</i>, or sixty-days rice, can be grown on
+comparatively high land, and ripen early. If rain be scanty, the
+<i>s&#257;tee</i> and other rice crops have to be weeded. It is cut
+with a jagged-edged sort of reaping-hook called a <i>hussooa</i>.
+The cut bundles are carried from the fields by women, girls, and
+lads. They could not take carts in many instances into the
+swamps.</p>
+<p>At such times you see every little dyke or embankment with a
+crowd of bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on
+his head, hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The
+women, with clothes tucked up above the knee, plod and plash
+through the water. They go at a half run, a kind of fast trot, and
+hardly a word is spoken&mdash;garnering the rice crops is too
+important an operation to dawdle and gossip over. Each hurries off
+with his burden to the little family threshing-floor, dumps down
+his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a yawn,
+then off again to the field for another load. It is no use leaving
+a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by such
+a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty
+stomachs in every village, a bundle of rice would be gone by the
+morning.</p>
+<p>As in Greece, where every man has to watch his vineyard at
+night, so here, the <i>kureehan</i> or threshing-floor each has its
+watchman at night. For the protection of the growing crops, the
+villagers club together, and appoint a watchman or
+<i>chowkeydar</i>, whom they pay by giving him a small percentage
+on the yield; or a small fractional proportion of the area he has
+to guard, with its standing crop, may be made over to him as a
+recompense.</p>
+<p>They thresh out the rice when it has matured a little on the
+threshing-floor. Four to six bullocks are tied in a line to a post
+in the centre, and round this they slowly pace in a circle. They
+are not muzzled, and the poor brutes seem rather to enjoy the
+unwonted luxury of feeding while they work. When there is a good
+wind, the grain is winnowed; it is lifted either in bamboo scoops
+or in the two hands. The wind blows the chaff or <i>bhoosa</i> on
+to a heap, and the fine fresh rice remains behind. The grain
+merchants now do a good business. Rice must be sold to pay the
+rent, the money-lender, and other clamouring creditors. The
+<i>bunniahs</i> will take repayment in kind. They put on the
+interest, and cheat in the weighments and measurements. So much has
+to be given to the weigh-man as a perquisite. If seed had been
+borrowed, it has now to be returned at a ruinous rate of interest.
+Some seed must be saved for next year, and an average <i>poor</i>
+ryot, the cultivator of but a little holding, very soon sees the
+result of his harvesting melt away, leaving little for wife and
+little ones to live on. He never gets free of the money-lender. He
+will have to go out and work hard for others, as well as get up his
+own little lands. No chance of a new bullock this year, and the old
+ones are getting worn out and thin. The wife must dispense with her
+promised ornament or dress. For the poor ryot it is a miserable
+hand-to-mouth existence when crops are poor. As a rule he is never
+out of debt. He lives on the scantiest fare; hunger often pinches
+him; he knows none of the luxuries of life. Notwithstanding all,
+the majority are patient, frugal, industrious, and to the full
+extent of their scanty means even charitable and benevolent. With
+the average ryot a little business goes a great way. There are some
+irreconcileable, discontented, worthless fellows in every village.
+All more or less count a lie as rather a good thing to be expert
+in; they lie naturally, simply, and instinctively: but with all his
+faults, and they are doubtless many, I confess to a great liking
+for the average Hindoo ryot.</p>
+<p>At times, however, their apathy and laziness is amazing. They
+are very childish, petted, and easily roused. In a quarrel,
+however, they generally confine themselves to vituperation and
+abuse, and seldom come to blows.</p>
+<p>As an instance of their fatalism or apathetic indolence, I can
+remember a village on the estate I was managing taking fire. It was
+quite close to the factory. I had my pony saddled at once, and
+galloped off for the burning village. It was a long, straggling
+one, with a good masonry well in the centre, shadowed by a mighty
+<i>peepul</i> tree. The wind was blowing the fire right along, and
+if no obstruction was offered, would sweep off every hut in the
+place. The only soul who was trying to do a thing was a young
+Brahmin watchman belonging to the factory. He had succeeded in
+removing some brass jars of his own, and was saving some grain. One
+woman was rocking to and fro, beating her breast and crying. There
+sat the rest of the apathetic villagers in groups, not lifting a
+finger, not stirring a step, but calmly looking on, while the
+devouring element was licking up hut after hut, and destroying
+their little all. In a few minutes some of my servants, syces, and
+factory men had arrived. I tied up the pony, ordered my men to pull
+down a couple of huts in the centre, and tried to infuse some
+energy into the villagers. Not a bit of it; they would <i>not</i>
+stir. They would not even draw a bucket of water. However, my men
+got earthen pots; I dug up fresh earth and threw it on the two
+dismantled huts, dragging away as much of the thatch and
+<i>debris</i> as we could.</p>
+<p>The fire licked our faces, and actually got a footing on the
+first house beyond the frail opening we had tried to make, but we
+persevered, and ultimately stayed the fire, and saved about two
+thirds of the village. I never saw such an instance of complete
+apathy. Some of the inhabitants even had not untied the cattle in
+the sheds. They seemed quite prostrated. However, as we worked on,
+and they began to see that all was not yet lost, they began to
+buckle to; yet even then their principal object was to save their
+brass pots and cooking utensils, things that could not possibly
+burn, and which they might have left alone with perfect safety.</p>
+<p>A Hindoo village is as inflammable as touchwood. The houses are
+generally built of grass walls, connected with thin battens of
+bamboo. The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all
+the little courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are
+piled up round every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which
+smoulders all day. A stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit
+round the corner, and before one can half realise the catastrophe,
+the village is on fire. Then each only thinks of his own goods;
+there is no combined effort to stay the flames. In the hot west
+winds of March, April, and May, these fires are of very frequent
+occurrence. In Bhaugulpore, I have seen, from my verandah, three
+villages on fire at one and the same time. In some parts of Oudh,
+among the sal forests, village after village is burnt down
+annually, and I have seen the same catastrophe visit the same
+village several times in the course of one year. These fires arise
+from pure carelessness, sheer apathy, and laziness.</p>
+<p>Sanitary precautions too are very insufficient; practically
+there are none. Huge unsightly water-holes, filled during the rains
+with the drainage of all the dung-heaps and mounds of offal and
+filth that abound in the village, swelter under the hot summer sun.
+They get covered with a rank green scum, and if their inky depths
+be stirred, the foulest and most fearful odours issue forth. In
+these filthy pools the villagers often perform their ablutions;
+they do not scruple to drink the putrid water, which is no doubt a
+hotbed and regular nursery for fevers, and choleraic and other
+disorders.</p>
+<p>Many home readers are but little acquainted with the Indian
+village system, and I shall devote a chapter to the description of
+a Hindoo village, with its functionaries, its institutions, its
+inhabitants, and the more marked of their customs and
+avocations.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXIII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Description of a native
+village.&mdash;Village functionaries.&mdash;The barber.
+&mdash;Bathing habits.&mdash;The village well.&mdash;The
+school.&mdash;The children.&mdash;The village bazaar.&mdash;The
+landowner and his dwelling.&mdash;The 'Putwarrie' or village
+accountant.&mdash;The blacksmith.&mdash;The 'Punchayiet' or village
+jury system.&mdash;Our legal system in India.&mdash;Remarks on the
+administration of justice.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>A typical village in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of
+thatched huts, apparently set down at random&mdash;as indeed it is,
+for every one erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or
+wherever he can get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery
+bamboos and broad-leaved plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the
+huts and buildings. Several small orchards of mango surround the
+village; the roads leading to and from it are merely well-worn
+cattle tracks,&mdash;in the rains a perfect quagmire, and in the
+hot weather dusty, and confined between straggling hedges of aloe
+or prickly pear. These hedges are festooned with masses of clinging
+luxuriant creepers, among which sometimes struggles up a custard
+apple, an avocado pear, or a wild plum-tree. The latter is a
+prickly straggling tree, called the <i>bhyre</i>; the wood is very
+hard, and is often used for making ploughs. The fruit is a little
+hard yellow crisp fruit, with a big stone inside, and very sweet;
+when it is ripe, the village urchins throw sticks up among the
+branches, and feast on the golden shower.</p>
+<p>On many of the banks bordering the roads, thatching grass, or
+rather strong upright waving grass, with a beautiful feathery
+plume, is planted. This is used to make the walls of the houses,
+and these are then plastered outside and in with clay and cowdung.
+The tall hedge of dense grass keeps what little breeze there may be
+away from the traveller. The road is something like an Irish
+'Boreen,' wanting only its beauty and freshness. On a hot day the
+atmosphere in one of these village roads is stifling and loaded
+with dust.</p>
+<p>These houses with their grass walls and thatched roof are called
+<i>kutcha</i>, as opposed to more pretentious structures of burnt
+brick, with maybe a tiled sloping or flat plastered roof, which are
+called <i>pucca. Pucca</i> literally means 'ripe,' as opposed to
+<i>cutcha</i>, 'unripe'; but the rich Oriental tongue has adapted
+it to almost every kind of secondary meaning. Thus a man who is
+true, upright, respected, a man to be depended on, is called a
+<i>pucca</i> man. It is a word in constant use among Anglo-Indians.
+A <i>pucca</i> road is one which is bridged and metalled. If you
+make an engagement with a friend, and he wants to impress you with
+its importance, he will ask you, Now is that <i>pucca</i>?' and so
+on.</p>
+<p>Other houses in the village are composed of unburnt bricks
+cemented with mud, or maybe composed of mud walls and thatched
+roof; these, being a compound sort of erection, are called
+<i>cutcha pucca</i>. In the <i>cutcha</i> houses live the poorer
+castes, the <i>Chumars</i> or workers in leathers, the <i>Moosahms,
+Doosadhs</i>, or <i>Gwallahs</i>.</p>
+<p>The <i>Dornes</i>, or scavengers, feeders on offal, have to live
+apart in a <i>tolah</i>, which might be called a small suburb, by
+themselves. The <i>Dornes</i> drag from the village any animal that
+happens to die. They generally pursue the handicraft of basket
+making, or mat making, and the <i>Dorne tolah</i> can always be
+known by the pigs and fowls prowling about in search of food, and
+the <i>Dorne</i> and his family splitting up bamboo, and weaving
+mats and baskets at the doors of their miserable habitation. To the
+higher castes both pigs arid fowls are unclean and an abomination.
+<i>Moosahms, Doosadhs</i>, and other poor castes, such as
+<i>Dangurs</i>, keep however an army of gaunt, lean, hungry-looking
+pigs. These may be seen rooting and wallowing in the marshes when
+the rice has been cut, or foraging among the mango groves, to pick
+up any stray unripe fruit that may have escaped the keen eyes of
+the hungry and swarming children.</p>
+<p>There is yet another small <i>tolah</i> or suburb, called the
+<i>Kusbee tolah</i>. Here live the miserable outcasts who minister
+to the worst passions of our nature. These degraded beings are
+banished from the more respectable portions of the community; but
+here, as in our own highly civilised and favoured land, vice hovers
+by the side of virtue, and the Hindoo village contains the same
+elements of happiness and misery, profligacy and probity, purity
+and degradation, as the fine home cities that are a name in the
+mouths of men.</p>
+<p>Every village forms a perfect little commonwealth; it contains
+all the elements of self-existence; it is quite a little commune,
+so far as social life is concerned. There is a hereditary
+blacksmith, washerman, potter, barber, and writer. The
+<i>dhobee</i>, or washerman, can always be known by the propinquity
+of his donkeys, diminutive animals which he uses to transport his
+bundle of unsavoury dirty clothes to the pool or tank where the
+linen is washed. On great country roads you may often see strings
+of donkeys laden with bags of grain, which they transport from
+far-away villages to the big bazaars; but if you see a laden donkey
+near a village, be sure the <i>dhobee</i> is not far off.</p>
+<p>Here as elsewhere the <i>hajam</i>, or barber, is a great
+gossip, and generally a favourite. He uses no soap, and has a most
+uncouth-looking razor, yet he shaves the heads, beards, moustaches,
+and armpits of his customers with great deftness. The lower classes
+of natives shave the hair of the head and of the armpits for the
+sake of cleanliness and for other obvious reasons. The higher
+classes are very regular in their ablutions; every morning, be the
+water cold or warm, the Rajpoot and Brahmin, the respectable middle
+classes, and all in the village who lay any claim to social
+position, have their <i>goosal</i> or bath. Some hie to the nearest
+tank or stream; at all hours of the day, at any ferry or landing
+stage, you will see swarthy fine-looking fellows up to mid waist in
+the water, scrubbing vigorously their bronzed arms, and neck and
+chest. They clean their teeth with the end of a stick, which they
+chew at one extremity, till they loosen the fibres, and with this
+improvised toothbrush and some wood ashes for paste, they make them
+look as white and clean as ivory.</p>
+<p>There is generally a large masonry well in the middle of the
+village, with a broad smooth <i>pucca</i> platform all round it. It
+has been built by some former father of the hamlet, to perpetuate
+his memory, to fulfil a vow to the gods, perhaps simply from
+goodwill to his fellow townsmen. At all events there is generally
+one such in every village. It is generally shadowed by a huge
+<i>bhur, peepul</i>, or tamarind tree. Here may always be seen the
+busiest sight in the village. Pretty young women chatter, laugh,
+and talk, and assume all sorts of picturesque attitudes as they
+fill their waterpots; the village matrons gossip, and sometimes
+quarrel, as they pull away at the windlass over the deep cool well.
+On the platform are a group of fat Brahmins nearly nude, their
+lighter skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower
+classes. There are several groups. With damp drapery clinging to
+their glistening skins, they pour brass pots of cold water over
+their dripping bodies; they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again
+as the cool element pours over head and shoulders. They sit down
+while some young attendant or relation vigorously rubs them down
+the back; while sitting they clean their feet. Thus, amid much
+laughing and talking, and quaint gestures, and not a little
+expectoration, they perform their ablutions. Not unfrequently the
+more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil, which at all
+events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it does, though
+it is not fragrant. Round the well you get all the village news and
+scandal. It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings, and
+only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village
+into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the
+hand-mill, or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy
+damsel or matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool
+shadow of her hut, for the wants of her lord and master.</p>
+<p>Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by
+government, and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars
+subscribe liberally for a schoolmaster in their villages. Near the
+principal street then, in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old
+mango-tree, we come on the village school. The little fellows have
+all discarded their upper clothes on account of the heat, and with
+much noise, swaying the body backwards and forwards, and
+monotonously intoning, they grind away at the mill of learning, and
+try to get a knowledge of books. Other dusky urchins figure away
+with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces of wood to
+serve as copy-books. The din increases as the stranger passes:
+going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause a
+momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school. The
+little Hindoo scholar probably wishes to impress you with a sense
+of his assiduity. He raises his voice, sways the body more briskly,
+keeps his one eye firmly fixed on his task, while with the other he
+throws a keen swift glance over you, which embraces every detail of
+your costume, and not improbably includes a shrewd estimate of your
+disposition and character.</p>
+<p>Hindoo children never seem to me to be boys or girls; they are
+preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing
+together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with
+most portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning
+candour and guileless innocence, when they are all the while
+plotting some petty scheme against you. They are certainly far more
+precocious than English children; they realise the hard struggle
+for life far more quickly. The poorer classes can hardly be said to
+have any childhood; as soon as they can toddle they are sent to
+weed, cut grass, gather fuel, tend herds, or do anything that will
+bring them in a small pittance, and ease the burden of the
+struggling parents. I think the children of the higher and middle
+classes very pretty; they have beautiful, dark, thoughtful eyes,
+and a most intelligent expression. Very young babies however are
+miserably nursed; their hair is allowed to get all tangled and
+matted into unsightly knots; their faces are seldom washed, and
+their eyes are painted with antimony about the lids, and are often
+rheumy and running with water. The use of the pocket handkerchief
+is sadly neglected.</p>
+<p>There is generally one open space or long street in our village,
+and in a hamlet of any importance there is weekly or bi-weekly a
+bazaar or market. From early morning in all directions, from
+solitary huts in the forest, from struggling little crofts in the
+rice lands, from fishermen's dwellings perched on the bank of the
+river, from lonely camps in the grass jungle where the herd and his
+family live with their cattle, from all the petty Thorpes about,
+come the women with their baskets of vegetables, their bundles of
+spun yarn, their piece of woven cloth, whatever they have to sell
+or barter. There is a lad with a pair of wooden shoes, which he has
+fashioned as he was tending the village cows; another with a grass
+mat, or bamboo staff, or some other strange outlandish-looking
+article, which he hopes to barter in the bazaar for something on
+which his heart is set. The <i>bunniahs</i> hurry up their
+tottering, overladen ponies; the rice merchant twists his patient
+bullock's tail to make it move faster; the cloth merchant with his
+bale under his arm and measuring stick in hand, walks briskly
+along. Here comes a gang of charcoal-burners, with their loads of
+fuel slung on poles dangling from their shoulders. A <i>box
+wallah</i> with his attendant coolie, staggering under the weight
+of a huge box of Manchester goods, hurries by. It is a busy sight
+in the bazaar. What a cackling! What a confused clatter of voices!
+Here also the women are the chief contributors to the din of
+tongues. There is no irate husband here or moody master to tell
+them to be still. Spread out on the ground are heaps of different
+grain, bags of flour, baskets of meal, pulse, or barley; sweetmeats
+occupy the attention of nearly all the buyers. All Hindoos indulge
+in sweets, which take the place of beer with us; instead of a
+'nobbler,' they offer you a 'lollipop.' Trinkets, beads, bracelets,
+armlets, and anklets of pewter, there are in great bunches; fruits,
+vegetables, sticks of cane, skins full of oil, and sugar, and
+treacle. Stands with fresh 'paun' leaves, and piles of coarse
+looking masses of tobacco are largely patronised. It is like a hive
+of bees. The dust hovers over the moving mass; the smells are
+various, none of them 'blest odours of sweet Araby.' Drugs,
+condiments, spices, shoes, in fact, everything that a rustic
+population can require, is here. The <i>pice</i> jingle as they
+change hands; the haggling and chaffering are without parallel in
+any market at home. Here is a man apparently in the last madness of
+intense passion, in fierce altercation with another, who tries his
+utmost to outbluster his furious declamation. In a moment they are
+smiling and to all appearance the best friends in the world. The
+bargain has been concluded; it was all about whether the one could
+give three <i>brinjals</i> or four for one pice. It is a scene of
+indescribable bustle, noise, and confusion. By evening however, all
+will have been packed up again, and only the faint outlines of yet
+floating clouds of dust, and the hopping, cheeky crows, picking up
+the scattered litter and remnants of the market, will remain to
+tell that it has been bazaar day in our village.</p>
+<p>Generally, about the centre of it, there is a more pretentious
+structure, with verandahs supported on wooden pillars. High walls
+surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little
+doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs
+leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside
+verandahs. Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or
+walk slowly to and from the yard with seemingly purposeless
+indecision. In the outer verandah is an old <i>palkee</i>, with
+evidences in the tarnished gilding and frayed and tattered
+hangings, that it once had some pretensions to fashionable
+elegance.</p>
+<p>The walls of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and
+numerous young <i>peepul</i> trees grow in the crevices, their
+insidious roots creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and
+expediting the work of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is
+the residence of the Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner
+of the lands adjoining. Probably he is descended from some noble
+house of ancient lineage. His forefathers, possibly, led armed
+retainers against some rival in yonder far off village, where the
+dim outlines of a mud fort yet tell of the insecurity of the days
+of old. Now he is old, and fat, and lazy. Possibly he has been too
+often to the money-lender. His lands are mortgaged to their full
+value. Though they respect and look up to their old Zemindar, the
+villagers are getting independent; they are not so humble, and pay
+less and less of feudal tribute than in the old days, when the
+golden palanquin was new, when the elephant had splendid housings,
+when mace, and javelin, and matchlock-men followed in his train.
+Alas! the elephant was sold long ago, and is now the property of a
+wealthy <i>Bunniah</i> who has amassed money in the buying and
+selling of grain and oil. The Zemindar may be a man of progress and
+intelligence, but many are of this broken down and helpless
+type.</p>
+<p>Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant,
+conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages
+through a small staff of <i>peons</i>, or un-official police. The
+accounts are kept by another important village
+functionary&mdash;the <i>putwarrie</i>, or village accountant.
+<i>Putwarries</i> belong to the writer or <i>Kayasth</i> caste.
+They are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous
+as any class in India. They manage the most complicated accounts
+between ryot and landlord with great skill. Their memories are
+wonderful, but they can always forget conveniently. Where ryots are
+numerous, the landlord's wants pressing, and frequent calls made on
+the tenantry for payment, often made in various kinds of grain and
+produce, the rates and prices of which are constantly changing, it
+is easy to imagine the complications and intricacies of a
+<i>putwarrie's</i> account. Each ryot pretty accurately remembers
+his own particular indebtedness, but woe to him if he pays the
+<i>putwarrie</i> the value of a 'red cent' without taking a
+receipt. Certainly there may be a really honest <i>putwarrie</i>,
+but I very much doubt it. The name stands for chicanery and
+robbery. On the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up
+for money, questioning his accounts, and putting him not
+unfrequently to actual bodily coercion. The ryot on the other hand
+is constantly inventing excuses, getting up delays, and propounding
+innumerable reasons why he cannot pay. He will try to forge
+receipts, he will get up false evidence that he has already paid,
+and the wretched <i>putwarrie</i> needs all his native and acquired
+sharpness, to hold his own. But all ryots are not alike, and when
+the <i>putwarrie</i> gets hold of some unwary and ignorant bumpkin
+whom he can plunder, he <i>does</i> plunder him systematically. All
+cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle lifters, and a
+<i>putwarrie</i> after he has got over the stage of infancy, and
+has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can
+teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of
+villains. A popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>'Unda poortee, Cowa maro!<br>
+Iinnum me, billar:<br>
+Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!!<br>
+Humesha mara gwar!!'</blockquote>
+<p>This is translated thus: 'When the shell is breaking kill the
+crow, and the wild cat at its birth.' A <i>Kayasth</i>, writer, or
+<i>putwarrie</i>, may be allowed to live till he is twelve years
+old, at which time he is sure to have learned rascality. Then kill
+him; but kill <i>gwars</i> or cowherds any time, for they are
+invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim bucolic humour in this,
+and it very nearly hits the truth.</p>
+<p>The <i>putwarrie</i>, then, is an important personage. He has
+his <i>cutcherry</i>, or office, where he and his tribe (for there
+are always numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his
+books and accounts) squat on their mat on the ground. Each
+possesses the instruments of his calling in the shape of a small
+brass ink-pot, and an oblong box containing a knife, pencil, and
+several reeds for pens. Each has a bundle of papers and documents
+before him, this is called his <i>busta</i>, and contains all the
+papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce squabbles with the
+tenantry. There is always some noise about a putwarrie's cutcherry.
+He has generally some half dozen quarrels on hand, but he trusts to
+his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is essentially a man of
+peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a keen argument, and
+an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain. Another proverb
+says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming a soldier as
+a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.</p>
+<p>The <i>lohar</i>, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at
+home. Here is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks
+from the heated iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little
+to remind one of Longfellow's beautiful poem. The <i>lohar</i> sits
+in the open air. His hammers and other implements of trade are very
+primitive. Like all native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work.
+His bellows are made of two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted
+alternately by the attendant coolie. As they lift they get inflated
+with air; they are then sharply forced down on their own folds, and
+the contained air ejected forcibly through an iron or clay nozzle,
+into the very small heap of glowing charcoal which forms the fire.
+His principal work is making and sharpening the uncouth-looking
+ploughshares, which look more like flat blunt chisels than anything
+else. They also make and keep in repair the <i>hussowahs</i>, or
+serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They are slow at
+their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in metal. They
+are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and even
+gun-locks, made by a common native village blacksmith, that could
+not be surpassed in delicacy of finish by any English smith. It is
+foreign to our ideas of the brawny blacksmith, to hear that he sits
+to his work, but this is the invariable custom. Even carpenters and
+masons squat down to theirs. Cheap labour is but an arbitrary term,
+and a country smith at home might do the work of ten or twelve men
+in India; but it is just as well to get an idea of existing
+differences. On many of the factories there are very intelligent
+<i>mistrees</i>, which is the term for the master blacksmith. These
+men, getting but twenty-four to thirty shillings a month, and
+supplying themselves with food and clothing, are nevertheless
+competent to work all the machinery, attend to the engine, and do
+all the ironwork necessary for the factory. They will superintend
+the staff of blacksmiths; and if the sewing-machine of the <i>mem
+sahib</i>, the gun-lock of the <i>luna sahib</i>, the lawn-mower,
+English pump, or other machine gets out of order, requiring any
+metal work, the <i>mistree</i> is called in, and is generally
+competent to put things to rights.</p>
+<a name="08"></a>
+<center><img src="Images/08.jpg" alt="Carpenters and Blacksmiths at
+Work" width="475" height="308" hspace="4" vspace="8"><br>
+ <i>Carpenters and Blacksmiths at Work</i></center>
+<p>As I have said, every village is a self-contained little
+commune. All trades necessary to supplying the wants of the
+villagers are represented in it. Besides the profits from his
+actual calling, nearly every man except the daily labourer, has a
+little bit of land which he farms, so as to eke out his scanty
+income. All possess a cow or two, a few goats, and probably a pair
+of plough-bullocks.</p>
+<p>When a dispute arises in the village, should a person be
+suspected of theft, should his cattle trespass on his neighbour's
+growing crop, should he libel some one against whom he has a
+grudge, or, proceeding to stronger measures, take the law into his
+own hands and assault him, the aggrieved party complains to the
+head man of the village. In every village the head man is the
+fountain of justice. He holds his office sometimes by right of
+superior wealth, or intelligence, or hereditary succession, not
+unfrequently by the unanimous wish of his fellow-villagers. On a
+complaint being made to him, he summons both parties and their
+witnesses. The complainant is then allowed to nominate two men, to
+act as assessors or jurymen on his behalf, his nominations being
+liable to challenge by the opposite party. The defendant next names
+two to act on his behalf, and if these are agreed to by both
+parties, these four, with the head man, form what is called a
+<i>punchayiet</i>, or council of five, in fact, a jury. They
+examine the witnesses, and each party to the suit conducts his own
+case. The whole village not unfrequently attends to hear what goes
+on. In a mere caste or private quarrel, only the friends of the
+parties will attend. Every case is tried in public, and all the
+inhabitants of the village can hear the proceedings if they wish.
+Respectable inhabitants can remark on the proceedings, make
+suggestions, and give an opinion. Public feeling is thus pretty
+accurately gauged and tested, and the <i>punchayiet</i> agree among
+themselves on the verdict. To the honour of their character for
+fair play be it said, that the decision of a <i>punchayiet</i> is
+generally correct, and is very seldom appealed against. Our
+complicated system of law, with its delays, its technicalities, its
+uncertainties, and above all its expense, its stamp duties, its
+court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the innumerable
+vexations attendant on the administration of justice in our revenue
+and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of Hindostan.
+They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give them
+justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are far
+too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and
+complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the
+gate' is what they want. It is quite enough admission of the
+reality of our rule&mdash;that we are the paramount
+power&mdash;that they submit a case to us at all; and all
+impediments in the way of their getting cheap and speedy justice
+should be done away with. A codification of existing laws, a
+sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at
+present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less
+legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to
+efficiency and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be
+the aim of our Indian rulers. More especially should this be the
+case in rural districts where large interests are concerned, where
+cases involve delicate points of law. Our present courts, divested
+of their hungry crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough;
+but I would like to see rural courts for petty cases established,
+presided over by leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of
+probity, which would in a measure supplement the <i>punchayiet</i>
+system, which would be easy of access, cheap in their procedure,
+and with all the impress of authority. It is a question I merely
+glance at, as it does not come within the scope of a book like
+this; but it is well known to every planter and European who has
+come much in contact with the rural classes of Hindostan, that
+there is a vast amount of smouldering disaffection, of deep-rooted
+dislike to, and contempt of, our present cumbrous costly machinery
+of law and justice.</p>
+<p>If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of
+a plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance,
+ready with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a
+<i>vakeel</i>, that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in
+your office, or round the factory to get some little business done,
+to neglect his work, to get his rent or produce account
+investigated, wherever there is worry, trouble, delay, or
+difficulty about anything concerning the relations between himself
+and the factory, the deepest and keenest expression of discontent
+and disgust his versatile and acute imagination can suggest, or his
+fluent tongue give utterance to is, that this is 'Adanlut lea
+mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.' Could there be a
+stronger commentary on our judicial institutions?</p>
+<p>The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of
+ages. Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing;
+communications are much improved; the dissemination of news is
+rapid; the old race of besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping,
+avaricious, domineering tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and
+there could be no difficulty in establishing in such village or
+district courts as I have indicated. All educated respectable
+Europeans with a stake in the country should be made Justices of
+the Peace, with limited powers to try petty cases. There is a vast
+material&mdash;loyalty, educated minds, an honest desire to do
+justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of everything
+pettifogging and underhand&mdash;that the Indian Government would
+do well to utilise. The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit him
+of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal
+facility to fall under pecuniary temptation. The educated gentleman
+planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering
+titles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the
+bench, and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our
+rulers' while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience,
+loyalty, honour, and integrity of those of our countrymen who might
+be willing to place their services at the disposal of Government.
+'India for the Indians' is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it
+will not do to push it to its logical issue. Unless Indians can
+govern India wisely and well, in accordance with modern national
+ideas, they have no more right to India than Hottentots have to the
+Cape, or the black fellows to Australia. In my opinion, Hindoos
+would never govern Hindustan half, quarter, nay, one tithe as well
+as Englishmen. Make more of your Englishmen in India then, make not
+less of your Baboo if you please, but make more of your Englishmen.
+Keep them loyal and content. Treat them kindly and liberally. One
+Englishman contented, loyal, and industrious in an Indian district,
+is a greater pillar of strength to the Indian Government than ten
+dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them have as many titles,
+decorations, university degrees, or certificates of loyalty from
+junior civilians as they may. Not India for the Indians, but India
+for Imperial Britain say I.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXIV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>A native village continued.&mdash;The
+watchman or 'chowkeydar.'&mdash;The
+temple.&mdash;Brahmins.&mdash;Idols.&mdash;Religion.&mdash;Humility
+of the poorer classes. &mdash;Their low condition.&mdash;Their
+apathy.&mdash;The police.&mdash;Their extortions and
+knavery.&mdash;An instance of police rascality.&mdash;Corruption of
+native officials.&mdash;The Hindoo unfit for
+self-government.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the
+watchman or <i>chowkeydar</i>. He is generally a <i>Doosadh</i>, or
+other low caste man, and perambulates the village at night, at
+intervals uttering a loud cry or a fierce howl, which is caught up
+and echoed by all the <i>chowkeydars</i> of the neighbouring
+villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after cry echoing far
+away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into faintness. At
+times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out close to
+your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do not
+feel it to be so. The <i>chowkeydar</i> has to see that no thieves
+enter the village by night. He protects the herds and property of
+the villagers. If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report
+it to the nearest police station. If you lose your way by night,
+you shout out for the nearest <i>chowkeydar</i>, and he is bound to
+pass you on to the next village. These men get a small gratuity
+from government, but the villagers also pay them a small sum, which
+they assess according to individual means. The <i>chowkeydar</i> is
+generally a ragged, swarthy fellow with long matted hair, a huge
+iron-bound staff, and always a blue <i>puggra</i>. The blue is his
+official badge. Sometimes he has a brass badge, and carries a
+sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle of which is so small that
+scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found to fit it. It is more
+for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it has become so
+fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.</p>
+<a name="09"></a>
+<center><img src="Images/09.jpg" alt="Hindoo Village Temples" width="569" height="376" hspace="4" vspace="8"><br>
+<i>Hindoo Village Temples</i></center>
+<p>In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the
+village itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is
+often perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village
+tank. Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the
+sacred fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several
+oleaginous old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear
+only the <i>dhote</i> or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton,
+and hanging about the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can
+be told by his sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder.
+His skin is much fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers.
+It is not unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as
+fair as many Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds,
+but lazy and self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is
+simply a sensual voluptuary. This is not the time or place to
+descant on their religion, which, with many gross practices,
+contains not a little that is pure and beautiful. The common idea
+at home that they are miserable pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and
+stones,' is, like many of the accepted ideas about India, very much
+exaggerated. That the masses, the crude uneducated Hindoos, place
+some faith in the idol, and expect in some mysterious way that it
+will influence their fate for good or evil, is not to be denied,
+but the more intelligent natives, and most of the Brahmins, only
+look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of the divinity. They
+want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to God, and the idol
+is a means to assist their thoughts heavenward. As works of art
+their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other symbols of
+the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same purpose.
+Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has
+perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the gods by erecting a
+temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shrine,
+which they visit at intervals and daub with red paint. They deposit
+flowers, pour libations of water or milk, and in other ways strive
+to shew that a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as
+I have observed, however, the vast mass of the poor toilers in
+India have little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing.
+They may have some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a
+holier life, but the fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and
+shelter, is too incessant for them to indulge much in
+contemplation. They have a dim idea of a future life, but none of
+them can give you anything but a very unsatisfactory idea of their
+religion. They observe certain forms and ceremonies, because their
+fathers did, and because the Brahmins tell them. Of real, vital,
+practical religion, as we know it, they have little or no
+knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low castes about
+immortality, about salvation, about the higher virtues, about the
+yearnings and wishes that every immortal soul at periods has, and
+he will simply tell you 'Khoda jane, hum greel admi,' i.e. 'God
+knows; I am only a poor man!' There they take refuge always when
+you ask them anything puzzling. If you are rating them for a fault,
+asking them to perform a complicated task, or inquiring your way in
+a strange neighbourhood, the first answer you get will, ten to one,
+be 'Hum greel admi.' It is said almost instinctively, and no doubt
+in many cases is the refuge of simple disinclination to think the
+matter out. Pure laziness suggests it. It is too much trouble to
+frame an answer, or give the desired information, and the 'greel
+admi' comes naturally to the lip. It is often deprecatory, meaning
+'I am ignorant and uninformed,' you must not expect too 'much from
+a poor, rude, uncultivated man like me.' It is often, also, a
+delicate mode of flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and
+often conveying in a tone, a look, a gesture, that though the
+speaker is 'greel,' poor, humble, despised, it is only by contrast
+to you, the questioner, who are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For
+downright fawning obsequiousness, or delicate, implied,
+fine-strung, subtle flattery, I will back a Hindoo sycophant
+against the courtier or place-hunter of every other nation. It is
+very annoying at times, if you are in a hurry, and particularly
+want a direct answer to a plain question, to hear the old old
+story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it but patience.
+You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer classes are
+easily flurried; they will always give what information they have
+if kindly spoken to, but you must not fluster them. You must rouse
+their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of your
+inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your
+object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your
+motive, inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer
+that they think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are
+weary and tired, and you ask your distance from the place you may
+be wishing to reach, they will ridiculously underestimate the
+length of road. A man may have all the cardinal virtues, but if
+they think you do not like him, and you ask his character, they
+will paint him to you blacker than Satan himself. It is very hard
+to get the plain, unvarnished truth from a Hindoo. Many, indeed,
+are almost incapable of giving an intelligent answer to any
+question that does not nearly concern their own private and purely
+personal interests. They have a sordid, grubbing, vegetating life,
+many of them indeed are but little above the brute creation. They
+have no idea beyond the supply of the mere animal wants of the
+moment. The future never troubles them. They live their hard,
+unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no surprises. They
+have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and life is one long
+continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence. What wonder
+then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the
+mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to
+suffer, to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is
+<i>Kismet</i>&mdash;their fate. Many of them never strive to avert
+any impending calamity, such, for example, as sickness. A man
+sickens, he wraps himself in stolid apathy, he makes no effort to
+shake of his malady, he accepts it with sullen, despairing,
+pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends mourn in their dumb,
+despairing way, but they too accept the situation. He has no one to
+rouse him. If you ask him what is the matter, he only wails out,
+'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am unwell. No attempt whatever to
+tell you of the origin of his illness, no wish even for sympathy or
+assistance. He accepts the fact of his illness. He struggles not
+with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight against it? Amen; so let it
+be. I have often been saddened to see poor toiling tenants struck
+down in this way. Even if you give them medicine, they often have
+not energy enough to take it. You must see them take it before your
+eyes. It is <i>your</i> struggle not theirs. <i>You</i> must rouse
+them, by <i>your</i> will. <i>Your</i> energy must compel
+<i>them</i> to make an attempt to combat their weakness. Once you
+rouse a man, and infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his
+disease, but it is a hard fight to get him to TRY. What a meaning
+in that one word TRY! TO ACT. TO DO. The average poor suffering
+native Hindoo knows nothing of it.</p>
+<p>Of course their moods vary. They have their 'high days and
+holidays,' feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the
+whole the average ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.</p>
+<p>In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or
+jungle lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture.
+The cow being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and
+butter. The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings
+of emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the
+evening wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust,
+having had but 'short commons' all the day on the parched and
+scanty herbage.</p>
+<p>The police are too often a source of annoyance, and become
+extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor. It
+seems to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority. I do
+not scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court
+peons, writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts,
+about the courts of justice, in the service of government officers,
+or in any way attached to the retinue of a government official, one
+and all are undeniably shamelessly venal and corrupt. They accept a
+bribe much more quickly than an attorney a fee, or a hungry dog a
+shin of beef. If a policeman only enters a village he expects a
+feast from the head man, and will ask a present with unblushing
+effrontery as a perquisite of his office. If a theft is reported,
+the inspector of the nearest police-station, or <i>thanna</i> as it
+is called, sends one of his myrmidons, or, if the chance of bribes
+be good, he may attend himself. On arrival, ambling on his
+broken-kneed, wall-eyed pony, he seats himself in the verandah of
+the chief man of the village, who forthwith, with much inward
+trepidation, makes his appearance. The policeman assumes the air of
+a haughty conqueror receiving homage from a conquered foe. He
+assures the trembling wretch that, 'acting on information
+received,' he must search his dwelling for the missing goods, and
+that his women's apartments will have to be ransacked, and so
+annoys, goads, and insults the unfortunate man, that he is too glad
+to purchase immunity from further insolence by making the policeman
+a small present, perhaps a 'kid of the goats,' or something else.
+The guardian of the peace is then regaled with the best food in the
+house, after which he is 'wreathed with smiles.' If he sees a
+chance of a farther bribe, he takes his departure saying he will
+make his report to the <i>thanna</i>. He repeats his procedure with
+some of the other respectable inhabitants, and goes back a good
+deal richer than he came, to share the spoil with the
+<i>thannadar</i> or inspector.</p>
+<p>Another man may then be sent, and the same course is followed,
+until all the force in the station have had their share. The ryot
+is afraid to resist. The police have tremendous powers for annoying
+and doing him harm. A crowd of subservient scoundrels always hangs
+round the station, dependents, relations, or accomplices. These
+harry the poor man who is unwise enough to resist the extortionate
+demands of the police. They take his cattle to the pound, foment
+strife between him and his neighbours, get up frivolous and false
+charges against him, harass him in a thousand ways, and if all else
+fails, get him summoned as a witness in some case. You might think
+a witness a person to be treated with respect, to be attended to,
+to have every facility offered him for giving his evidence at the
+least cost of time and trouble possible, consistent with the
+demands of justice, and the vindication of law and authority.</p>
+<p>Not so in India with the witness in a police case, when the
+force dislike him. If he has not previously satisfied their
+leech-like rapacity, he is tormented, tortured, bullied, and kicked
+'from pillar to post,' till his life becomes a burden to him. He
+has to leave all his avocations, perhaps at the time when his
+affairs require his constant supervision. He has to trudge many a
+weary mile to attend the Court. The police get hold of him, and
+keep him often in real durance. He gets no opportunity for cooking
+or eating his food. His daily habits are upset and interfered with.
+In every little vexatious way (and they are masters of the art of
+petty torture) they so worry and goad him, that the very threat of
+being summoned as a witness in a police case, is often enough to
+make the horrified well-to-do native give a handsome gratuity to be
+allowed to sit quietly at home.</p>
+<p>This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the
+police. They exercise a real despotism. They have set up a reign of
+terror. The nature of the ryot is such, that he will submit to a
+great deal to avoid having to leave his home and his work. The
+police take full advantage of this feeling, and being perfectly
+unscrupulous, insatiably rapacious, and leagued together in
+villany, they make a golden harvest out of every case put into
+their hands. They have made the name of justice stink in the
+nostrils of the respectable and well-to-do middle classes of
+India.</p>
+<p>The District Superintendents are men of energy and probity, but
+after all they are only mortal. What with accounts, inspections,
+reports, forms, and innumerable writings, they cannot exercise a
+constant vigilance and personal supervision over every part of
+their district. A district may comprise many hundred villages,
+thousands of inhabitants, and leagues of intricate and densely
+peopled country. The mere physical exertion of riding over his
+district would be too much for any man in about a week. The
+subordinate police are all interested in keeping up the present
+system of extortion, and the inspectors and sub-inspectors, who
+wink at malpractices, come in for their share of the spoil. There
+is little combination among the peasantry. Each selfishly tries to
+save his own skin, and they know that if any one individual were to
+complain, or to dare to resist, he would have to bear the brunt of
+the battle alone. None of his neighbours would stir a finger to
+back him; he is too timid and too much in awe of the official
+European, and constitutionally too averse to resistance, to do
+aught but suffer in silence. No doubt he feels his wrongs most
+keenly, and a sullen feeling of hate and wrong is being garnered
+up, which may produce results disastrous for the peace and
+wellbeing of our empire in the East.</p>
+<p>As a case in point, I may mention one instance out of many which
+came under my own observation. I had a <i>moonshee</i>, or
+accountant, in one of my outworks in Purneah. Formerly, when the
+police had come through the factory, he had been in the habit of
+giving them a present and some food. Under my strict orders,
+however, that no policemen were to be allowed near the place unless
+they came on business, he had discontinued paying his black mail.
+This was too glaring an infringement of what they considered their
+vested rights to be passed over in silence. Example might spread.
+My man must be made an example of. I had a case in the Court of the
+Deputy Magistrate some twenty miles or so from the factory. The
+moonshee had been named as a witness to prove the writing of some
+papers filed in the suit. They got a citation for him to appear, a
+mere summons for his attendance as a witness. Armed with this, they
+appeared at the factory two or three days before the date fixed on
+for hearing the cause. I had just ridden in from Purneah, tired,
+hot, and dusty, and was sitting in the shade of the verandah with
+young D., my assistant. One policeman first came up, presented the
+summons, which I took, and he then stated that it was a
+<i>warrant</i> for the production of my moonshee, and that he must
+take him away at once. I told the man it was merely a summons,
+requiring the attendance of the moonshee on a certain date, to give
+evidence in the case. He was very insolent in his manner. It is
+customary when a Hindoo of inferior rank appears before you, that
+he removes his shoes, and stands before you in a respectful
+attitude. This man's headdress was all disarranged, which in itself
+is a sign of disrespect. He spoke loudly and insolently; kept his
+shoes on; and sat down squatting on the grass before me. My
+assistant was very indignant, and wanted to speak to the man; but
+rightly judging that the object was to enrage me, and trap me into
+committing some overt act, that would be afterwards construed
+against me, I kept my temper, spoke very firmly but temperately,
+told him my moonshee was doing some work of great importance, that
+I could not spare his services then, but that I would myself see
+that the summons was attended to. The policeman became more
+boisterous and insolent. I offered to give him a letter to the
+magistrate, acknowledging the receipt of the summons, and I asked
+him his own name, which he refused to give. I asked him if he could
+read, and he said he could not. I then asked him if he could not
+read, how could he know what was in the paper which he had brought,
+and how he knew my moonshee was the party meant. He said a
+chowkeydar had told him so. I asked where was the chowkeydar, and
+seeing from my coolness and determination that the game was up, he
+shouted out, and from round the corner of the huts came another
+policeman, and two village chowkeydars from a distance. They had
+evidently been hiding, observing all that passed, and meaning to
+act as witnesses against me, if I had been led by the first
+scoundrel's behaviour to lose my temper. The second man was not
+such a brute as the first, and when I proceeded to ask their names
+and all about them, and told them I meant to report them to their
+superintendent, they became somewhat frightened, and tried to make
+excuses.</p>
+<p>I told them to be off the premises at once, offering to take the
+summons, and give a receipt for it, but they now saw that they had
+made a mistake in trying to bully me, and made off at once. Mark
+the sequel. The day before the case was fixed on for hearing, I
+sent off the moonshee who was a witness of my own, and his evidence
+was necessary to my proving my case. I supplied him with travelling
+expenses, and he started. On his way to the Court he had to pass
+the <i>thanna</i>, or police-station. The police were on the watch.
+He was seized as he passed. He was confined all that night and all
+the following day. For want of his evidence I lost my case, and
+having thus achieved one part of their object to pay me off, they
+let my moonshee go, after insult and abuse, and with threats of
+future vengeance should he ever dare to thwart or oppose them. This
+was pretty 'hot' you think, but it was not all. Fearing my
+complaint to the superintendent, or to the authorities, might get
+them into trouble, they laid a false charge against me, that I had
+obstructed them in the discharge of their duty, that I had showered
+abuse on them, used threatening language, and insulted the majesty
+of the law by tearing up and spitting upon the respected summons of
+Her Majesty. On this complaint I was accordingly summoned into
+Purneah. The charge was a tissue of the most barefaced lies, but I
+had to ride fifty-four miles in the burning sun, ford several
+rivers, and undergo much fatigue and discomfort. My work was of
+course seriously interfered with. I had to take in my assistant as
+witness, and one or two of the servants who had been present. I was
+put to immense trouble, and no little expense, to say nothing of
+the indignation which I naturally felt, and all because I had set
+my face against a well known evil, and was determined not to submit
+to impudent extortion. Of course the case broke down. They
+contradicted themselves in almost every particular. The second
+constable indeed admitted that I had offered them a letter to the
+magistrate, and had not moved out of the verandah during the
+colloquy. I was honourably acquitted, and had the satisfaction of
+seeing the lying rascals put into the dock by the indignant
+magistrate and prosecuted summarily for getting up a false charge
+and giving false evidence. It was a lesson to the police in those
+parts, and they did not dare to trouble me much afterwards; but it
+is only one instance out of hundreds I could give, and which every
+planter has witnessed of the barefaced audacity, the shameless
+extortion, the unblushing lawlessness of the rural police of
+India.</p>
+<p>It is a gigantic evil, but surely not irremediable. By adding
+more European officers to the force; by educating the people and
+making them more intelligent, independent, and self-reliant, much
+may be done to abate the evil, but at present it is admittedly a
+foul ulcer on the administration of justice under our rule. The
+menial who serves a summons, gets a decree of Court to execute, or
+is entrusted with any order of an official nature, expects to be
+bribed to do his duty. If he does not get his fee, he will throw
+such impediments in the way, raise such obstacles, and fashion such
+delays, that he completely foils every effort to procure justice
+through a legal channel. No wonder a native hates our English
+Courts. Our English officials, let it be plainly understood, are
+above suspicion. It needs not my poor testimony to uphold their
+character for high honour, loyal integrity, and zealous eagerness
+to do 'justly, and to walk uprightly.' They are unwearied in their
+efforts to get at truth, and govern wisely; but our system of law
+is totally unsuited for Orientals. It is made a medium for
+chicanery and trickery of the most atrocious form. Most of the
+native underlings are utterly venal and corrupt. Increased pay does
+not mean decrease of knavery. Cheating, and lying, and taking
+bribes, and abuse of authority are ingrained into their very souls;
+and all the cut and dry formulas of namby pamby philanthropists,
+the inane maunderings of stay-at-home sentimentalists, the wise
+saws of self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo
+as he really shews himself to us in daily and hourly contact with
+him, will ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule,
+would be productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless
+venality, or would end in anything but anarchy and chaos.</p>
+<p>It sounds very well in print, and increases the circulation of a
+paper or two among the Baboos, to cry out that our task is to
+elevate the oppressed and ignorant millions of the East, to educate
+them into self-government, to make them judges, officers,
+lawgivers, governors over all the land. To vacate our place and
+power, and let the Baboo and the Bunneah, to whom we have given the
+glories of Western civilization, rule in our place, and guide the
+fortunes of these toiling millions who owe protection and peace to
+our fostering rule. It is a noble sentiment to resign wealth,
+honour, glory, and power; to give up a settled government; to alter
+a policy that has welded the conflicting elements of Hindustan into
+one stable whole; to throw up our title of conqueror, and
+disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A sprinkling of
+thinly-veneered, half-educated natives, want a share of the loaves
+and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people of the
+'man and brother' type, cry out at home to let them have their
+way.</p>
+<p>No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life
+and property; develop the resources of the country; foster all the
+virtues you can find in the native mind; but till you can give him
+the energy, the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly,
+honourable straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of
+meanness, trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do
+right; his contempt for oppression of the weak; his
+self-dependence; his probity. But why go on? When you make Hindoos
+honest, truthful, God-fearing Englishmen, you can let them govern
+themselves; but as soon 'may the leopard change his spots,' as the
+Hindoo his character. He is wholly unfit for self-government;
+utterly opposed to honest, truthful, stable government at all. Time
+brings strange changes, but the wisdom which has governed the
+country hitherto, will surely be able to meet the new demand that
+may be made upon it in the immediate present, or in the far distant
+future.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Jungle wild fruits.&mdash;Curious method of
+catching quail.&mdash;Quail nets. &mdash;Quail caught in a
+blacksmith's shop.&mdash;Native wrestling.&mdash;The
+trainer.&mdash;How they train for a match.&mdash;Rules of
+wrestling.&mdash;Grips. &mdash;A wrestling match.&mdash;Incidents
+of the struggle.&mdash;Description of a match between a Brahmin and
+a blacksmith.&mdash;Sparring for the grip.&mdash;The blacksmith has
+it.&mdash;The struggle.&mdash;The Brahmin getting the worst of
+it.&mdash;Two to one on the little 'un!&mdash;The Brahmin plays the
+waiting game, turns the tables <i>and</i> the
+blacksmith.&mdash;Remarks on wrestling.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>A peculiarity in the sombre sal jungles is the scarcity of wild
+fruit. At home the woods are filled with berries and fruit-bearing
+bushes. Who among my readers has not a lively recollection of
+bramble hunting, nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries,
+wild strawberries, raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might
+walk many a mile through the sal jungles without meeting fruit of
+any kind, save the dry and tasteless wild fig, or the sickly
+mhowa.</p>
+<p>There are indeed very few jungle fruits that I have ever come
+across. There is one acid sort of plum called the <i>Omra</i>,
+which makes a good preserve, but is not very nice to eat raw. The
+<i>Gorkah</i> is a small red berry, very sweet and pleasant,
+slightly acid, not unlike a red currant in fact, and with two small
+pips or stones. The Nepaulese call it <i>Bunchooree</i>. It grows
+on a small stunted-looking bush, with few branches, and a pointed
+leaf, in form resembling the acacia leaf, but not so large.</p>
+<p>The <i>Glaphur</i> is a brown, round fruit; the skin rather
+crisp and hard, and of a dull earthy colour, not unlike that of a
+common boiled potato. The inside is a stringy, spongy-looking mass,
+with small seeds embedded in a gummy viscid substance. The taste is
+exactly like an almond, and it forms a pleasant mouthful if one is
+thirsty.</p>
+<p>Travelling one day along one of the glades I have mentioned as
+dividing the strips of jungle, I was surprised to see a man before
+me in a field of long stubble, with a cloth spread over his head,
+and two sticks projecting in front at an obtuse angle to his body,
+forming horn-like projections, on which the ends of his cloth
+twisted spirally, were tied. I thought from his curious antics and
+movements, that he must be mad, but I soon discovered that there
+was method in his madness. He was catching quail. The quail are
+often very numerous in the stubble fields, and the natives adopt
+very ingenious devices for their capture. This was one I was now
+witnessing. Covering themselves with their cloth as I have
+described, the projecting ends of the two sticks representing the
+horns, they simulate all the movements of a cow or bull. They
+pretend to paw up the earth, toss their make-believe horns, turn
+round and pretend to scratch themselves, and in fact identify
+themselves with the animal they are representing; and it is
+irresistibly comic to watch a solitary performer go through this
+<i>al fresco</i> comedy. I have laughed often at some cunning old
+herdsman, or shekarry. When they see you watching them, they will
+redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old bull, going
+through all his pranks and practices, and throw you into
+convulsions of laughter.</p>
+<p>Round two sides of the field, they have previously put fine
+nets, and at the apex they have a large cage with a decoy quail
+inside, or perhaps a pair. The quail is a running bird, disinclined
+for flight except at night; in the day-time they prefer running to
+using their wings. The idiotic looking old cow, as we will call the
+hunter, has all his wits about him. He proceeds very slowly and
+warily, his keen eye detects the coveys of quail, which way they
+are running; his ruse generally succeeds wonderfully. He is no more
+like a cow, than that respectable animal is like a cucumber; but he
+paws, and tosses, and moves about, pretends to eat, to nibble here,
+and switch his tail there, and so manoeuvres as to keep the running
+quail away from the unprotected edges of the field. When they get
+to the verge protected by the net, they begin to take alarm; they
+are probably not very certain about the peculiar looking 'old cow'
+behind them, and running along the net, they see the decoy quails
+evidently feeding in great security and freedom. The V shaped mouth
+of the large basket cage looks invitingly open. The puzzling nets
+are barring the way, and the 'old cow' is gradually closing up
+behind. As the hunter moves along, I should have told you, he rubs
+two pieces of dry hard sticks gently up and down his thigh with one
+hand, producing a peculiar crepitation, a crackling sound, not
+sufficient to startle the birds into flight, but alarming them
+enough to make them get out of the way of the 'old cow.' One bolder
+than the others, possibly the most timid of the covey, irritated by
+the queer crackling sound, now enters the basket, the others follow
+like a flock of sheep; and once in, the puzzling shape of the
+entrance prevents their exit. Not unfrequently the hunter bags
+twenty or even thirty brace of quail in one field, by this
+ridiculous looking but ingenious method.</p>
+<p>The small quail net is also sometimes used for the capture of
+hares. The natives stretch the net in the jungle, much as they do
+the large nets for deer described in a former chapter; forming a
+line, they then beat up the hares, of which there are no stint. My
+friend Pat once made a novel haul. His <i>lobarkhanna</i> or
+blacksmith's shop was close to a patch of jungle, and Pat often
+noticed numbers of quail running through the loose chinks and
+crevices of the walls, in the morning when anyone went into the
+place for the first time; this was at a factory called Rajpore. Pat
+came to the conclusion, that as the blacksmith's fires smouldered
+some time after work was discontinued at night, and as the
+atmosphere of the hut was warmer and more genial than the cold,
+foggy, outside air, for it was in the cold season, the quail
+probably took up their quarters in the hut for the night, on
+account of the warmth and shelter. One night therefore he got some
+of his servants, and with great caution and as much silence as
+possible, they let down a quantity of nets all round the
+lobarkhanna, and in the morning they captured about twenty
+quails.</p>
+<p>The quail is very pugnacious, and as they are easily trained to
+fight, they are very common pets with the natives, who train and
+keep them to pit them against each other, and bet what they can
+afford on the result. A quail fight, a battle between two trained
+rams, a cock fight, even an encounter between trained tamed
+buffaloes, are very common spectacles in the villages; but the most
+popular sport is a good wrestling match.</p>
+<p>The dwellers in the Presidency towns, and indeed in most of the
+large stations, seldom see an exhibition of this kind; but away in
+the remote interior, near the frontier, it is very popular pastime,
+and wrestling is a favourite with all classes. Such manly sport is
+rather opposed to the commonly received idea at home, of the mild
+Hindoo. In nearly every village of Behar however, and all along the
+borders of Nepaul, there is, as a rule, a bit of land attached to
+the residence of some head man, or the common property of the
+commune, set apart for the practice of athletic sports, chief of
+which is the favourite <i>khoosthee</i> or wrestling. There is
+generally some wary old veteran, who has won his spurs, or laurels,
+or belt, or whatever you choose to call it, in many a hard fought
+and well contested tussle for the championship of his little world;
+he is 'up to every dodge,' and knows every feint and guard, every
+wile and tactic of the wrestling ground. It is generally in some
+shady grove, secluded and cool; here of an evening when the labours
+of the day are over, the most stalwart sons of the hamlet meet, to
+test each others skill and endurance in a friendly <i>shake</i>.
+The old man puts them through the preliminary practice, shows them
+every trick at his command, and attends strictly to their training
+and various trials. The ground is dug knee deep, and forms a soft,
+good holding stand. I have often looked on at this evening
+practice, and it would astonish a stranger, who cannot understand
+strength, endurance, and activity being attributed to a 'mere
+nigger,' to see the severe training these young lads impose upon
+themselves. They leap into the air, and suddenly assume a sitting
+position, then leap up again and squat down with a force that would
+seem to jerk every bone in their bodies out of its place; this gets
+up the muscles of the thighs. Some lie down at full length, only
+touching the ground with the extreme tips of their toes, their arms
+doubled up under them, and sustaining the full weight of the body
+on the extended palms of the hands. They then sway themselves
+backwards and forwards to their full length, never shifting hand or
+toe, till they are bathed in perspiration; they keep up a uniform
+steady backward and forward movement, so as to develop the muscles
+of the arms, chest, and back. They practice leaping, running, and
+lifting weights. Some standing at their full height, brace up the
+muscles of the shoulder and upper arm, and then leaping up, allow
+themselves to fall to earth on the tensely strung muscles of the
+shoulder. This severe exercise gets the muscles into perfect form,
+and few, very few indeed of our untrained youths, could cope in a
+dead lock, or fierce struggle, with a good village Hindoo or
+Mussulman in active training, and having any knowledge of the
+tricks of the wrestling school. No hitting is allowed. The Hindoo
+system of wrestling is the perfection of science and skill; mere
+dead weight of course will always tell in a close grip, but the
+catches, the holds, the twists and dodges that are practised, allow
+for the fullest development of cultivated skill, as against mere
+brute force. The system is purely a scientific one. The fundamental
+rule is 'catch where you can,' only you must not clutch the hair or
+strike with the fists.</p>
+<p>The loins are tightly girt with a long waist-belt or
+<i>kummerbund</i> of cloth, which, passed repeatedly between the
+limbs and round the loins, sufficiently braces up and protects that
+part of the body. In some matches you are not allowed to clutch
+this waist cloth or belt, in some villages it is allowed; the
+custom varies in various places, but what is a fair grip, and what
+is not, is always made known before the competitors engage. A
+twist, or grip, or dodge, is known as a <i>paench</i>. This
+literally means a screw or twist, but in wrestling phraseology,
+means any grip by which you can get such an advantage over your
+opponent as to defeat him. For every paench there is a counter
+paench. A throw is considered satisfactory when BOTH shoulders of
+your opponent touch the ground simultaneously. The old
+<i>khalifa</i> or trainer takes a great interest in the progress of
+his <i>chailas</i> or pupils. <i>Chaila</i> really means disciple
+or follower. Every khalifa has his favourite paenches or grips,
+which have stood him in good stead in his old battling days; he
+teaches these paenches to his pupils, so that when you get young
+fellows from different villages to meet, you see a really fine
+exhibition of wrestling skill. There is little tripping, as amongst
+our wrestlers at home; a dead-lock is uncommon. The rival wrestlers
+generally bound into the ring, slapping their thighs and arms with
+a loud resounding slap. They lift their legs high up from the
+ground with every step, and scheme and manoeuvre sometimes for a
+long while to get the best corner; they try to get the sun into
+their adversaries eyes; they scan the appearance and every movement
+of their opponent. The old wary fellows take it very coolly, and if
+they can't get the desired side of the ground, they keep hopping
+about like a solemn old ostrich, till the impetuosity or impatience
+of their foe leads him to attack. They remind you for all the world
+of a pair of game cocks, their bodies are bent, their heads almost
+touching. There is a deal of light play with the hands, each trying
+to get the other by the wrist or elbow, or at the back of the head
+round the neck. If one gets the other by a finger even, it is a
+great advantage, as he would whip nimbly round, and threaten to
+break the impounded finger; this would be considered quite fair.
+One will often suddenly drop on his knees and try to reach the
+ankles of his adversary. I have seen a slippery customer, stoop
+suddenly down, grasp up a handful of dust, and throw it into the
+eyes of his opponent. It was done with the quickness of thought,
+but it was detected, and on an appeal by the sufferer, the knave
+was well thrashed by the onlookers.</p>
+<p>There are many professionals who follow no other calling.
+Wrestlers are kept by Rajahs and wealthy men, who get up matches.
+Frequently one village will challenge another, like our village
+cricket clubs. The villagers often get up small subscriptions, and
+purchase a silver armlet or bracelet, the prize him who shall hold
+his own against all comers. The 'Champion's Belt' scarcely calls
+forth greater competition, keener rivalry, or better sport. It is
+at once the most manly and most scientific sport in which the
+native indulges. A disputed fall sometimes terminates in a general
+free fight, when the backers of the respective men lay on the stick
+to each other with mutual hate and hearty lustiness.</p>
+<p>It is not by any means always the strongest who wins. The man
+who knows the most paenches, who is agile, active, cool, and
+careful, will not unfrequently overthrow an antagonist twice his
+weight and strength. All the wrestlers in the country-side know
+each other's qualifications pretty accurately, and at a general
+match got up by a Zemindar or planter, or by public subscription,
+it is generally safe to let them handicap the men who are ready to
+compete for the prizes. We used generally to put down a few of the
+oldest professors, and let them pit couples against each other; the
+sport to the onlookers was most exciting. Between the men
+themselves as a rule, the utmost good humour reigns, they strive
+hard to win, but they accept a defeat with smiling resignation. It
+is only between rival village champions, different caste men, or
+worse still, men of differing religions, such as a Hindoo and a
+Mahommedan, that there is any danger of a fight. A disturbance is a
+rare exception, but I have seen a few wrestling matches end in a
+regular general scrimmage, with broken heads, and even fractured
+limbs. With good management however, and an efficient body of men
+to guard against a breach of the peace, this need never occur.</p>
+<p>It rarely takes much trouble to get up a match. If you tell your
+head men that you would like to see one, say on a Saturday
+afternoon, they pass the word to the different villages, and at the
+appointed time, all the finest young fellows and most of the male
+population, led by their head man, with the old trainer in
+attendance, are at the appointed place. The competitors are
+admitted within the enclosure, and round it the rows of spectators
+packed twenty deep squat on the ground, and watch the proceedings
+with deep interest.</p>
+<p>While the <i>Punchayiet</i>, a picked council, are taking down
+the names of intending competitors, finding out about their form
+and performances, and assigning to each his antagonist, the young
+men throw themselves with shouts and laughter into the ring, and go
+through all the evolutions and postures of the training ground.
+They bound about, try all sorts of antics and contortions, display
+wonderful agility and activity; it is a pretty sight to see, and
+one can't help admiring their vigorous frames, and graceful
+proportions. They are handsome, well made, supple, wiry fellows,
+although they be NIGGERS, and Hodge and Giles at home would not
+have a chance with them in a fair wrestling bout, conducted
+according to their own laws and customs.</p>
+<p>The entries are now all made, places and pairs are arranged, and
+to the ear-splitting thunder of two or three tom-toms, two pair of
+strapping youngsters step into the ring; they carefully scan each
+other, advance, shake hands, or salaam, leisurely tie up their back
+hair, slap their muscles, rub a little earth over their shoulders
+and arms, so that their adversary may have a fair grip, then step
+by step slowly and gradually they near each other. A few quick
+passages are now interchanged; the lithe supple fingers twist and
+intertwine, grips are formed on arm and neck. The postures change
+each moment, and are a study for an anatomist or sculptor. As they
+warm to their work they get more reckless; they are only the raw
+material, the untrained lads. There is a quick scuffle, heaving,
+swaying, rocking, and struggling, and the two victors, leaping into
+the air, and slapping their chests, bound back into the gratified
+circle of their comrades, while the two discomfited athletes,
+forcing a rueful smile, retire and 'take a back seat.' Two couple
+of more experienced hands now face each other. There is pretty play
+this time, as the varying changes of the contest bring forth ever
+varying displays of skill and science. The crowd shout as an
+advantage is gained, or cry out 'Hi, hi' in a doubtful manner, as
+their favourite seems to be getting the worst of it. The result
+however is much the same; after a longer or shorter time, two get
+fairly thrown and retire. If there is any dispute, it is at once
+referred to the judges, who sit grimly watching the struggle, and
+comparing the paenches displayed, with those they themselves have
+practised in many a well-won fight. On a reference being made, both
+combatants retain their exact hold and position, only cease
+straining. As soon as the matter is settled, they go at it again
+till victory determine in favour of the lucky man. In no similar
+contest in England I am convinced would there be so much fairness,
+quietness, and order. The only stimulants in the crowd are betel
+nut and tobacco. All is orderly and calm, and at any moment a word
+from the sahib will quell any rising turbulence. It is now time for
+a still more scientific exhibition.</p>
+<p>Pat has a man, a tall, wiry, handsome Brahmin, who has never yet
+been beaten. Young K. has long been jealous of his uniform success,
+and on several occasions has brought an antagonist to battle with
+Pat's champion. To-day he has got a sturdy young blacksmith, whom
+rumour hath much vaunted, and although he is not so tall as Pat's
+wrestler, his square, deep chest and stalwart limbs, give promise
+of great strength and endurance.</p>
+<p>As the two men strip and bound into the ring, there is the usual
+hush of anticipation. Keen eyes scan the appearance of the
+antagonists. They are both models of manly beauty. The blacksmith,
+though more awkward in his motions, has a cool, determined look
+about him. The Brahmin, conscious of his reputation, walks quickly
+up, with a smile of rather ostentatious condescension on his finely
+cut features, and offers his hand to the blacksmith. The little man
+is evidently suspicious. He thinks this may be a deeply laid trap
+to get a grip upon him. Nor does he like the bland patronising
+manner of 'Roopuarain,' so he surlily draws back, at which there is
+a roar of laughter from the. crowd, in which we cannot help
+joining.</p>
+<p>K. now comes forward, and pats his 'fancy man' on the back. The
+two wrestlers thereupon shake hands, and then in the usual manner
+both warily move backwards and forwards, till amid cries from the
+onlookers, the blacksmith makes a sudden dash at the practised old
+player, and in a moment has him round the waist.</p>
+<p>He evidently depended on his superior strength. For a moment he
+fairly lifted Roopnarain clean off his legs, swayed him to and fro,
+and with a mighty strain tried to throw him to the ground. Bending
+to the notes, Roopnarain allowed himself to yield, till his feet
+touched the ground, then crouching like a panther, he bounded
+forward, and getting his leg behind that of the blacksmith, by a
+deft side twist he nearly threw him over. The little fellow,
+however, steadied himself on the ground with one hand, recovered
+his footing, and again had the Brahmin firmly locked in his
+tenacious hold. Roopuarain did not like the grip. These were not
+the tactics he was accustomed to. While the other tugged and
+strained, he, quietly yielding his lithe lissome frame to every
+effort, tried hard with obstinate endeavour to untwist the hands
+that held him firmly locked. It was beautiful play to see the mute
+hands of both the wrestlers feeling, tearing, twisting at each
+other, but the grasp was too firm, and, taking advantage of a
+momentary movement, Roopnarain got his elbow under the other's
+chin, then leaning forward, he pressed his opponent's head
+backward, and the strain began to tell. He fought fiercely, he
+struggled hard, but the determined elbow was not to be baulked, and
+to save himself from an overthrow the blacksmith was forced to
+relax his hold, and sprang nimbly back beyond reach, to mature
+another attack. Roopnarain quietly walked round, rubbed his
+shoulders with earth, and with the same mocking smile, stood
+leaning forward, his hands on his knees, waiting for a fresh
+onset.</p>
+<p>This time the young fellow was more cautious. He found he had no
+novice to deal with, and the Brahmin was not at all anxious to
+precipitate matters. By a splendid feint, after some pretty
+sparring for a grip, the youngster again succeeded in getting a
+hold on the Brahmin, and wheeling round quick as lightning, got
+behind Roopnarain, and with a dexterous trip threw the tall man
+heavily on his face. He then tried to get him by the ankle, and
+bending his leg up backwards, he would have got a purchase for
+turning him on his back. The old man was, however, 'up to this
+move.' He lay extended flat on his chest, his legs wide apart. As
+often as the little one bent down to grasp his ankle, he would put
+out a hand stealthily, and silently as a snake, and endeavour to
+get the little man's leg in his grasp. This necessitated a change
+of position, and round and round they spun, each trying to get hold
+of the other by the leg or foot. The blacksmith got his knee on the
+neck of the Brahmin, and by sheer strength tried several times with
+a mighty heave to turn his opponent. It was no use, however, it is
+next to impossible to throw a man when he is lying flat out as the
+Brahmin now was. It is difficult enough to turn the dead weight of
+a man in that position, and when he is straining every nerve to
+resist the accomplishment of your object it becomes altogether
+impracticable. The excitement in the crowd was intense. The very
+drummer&mdash;I ought to call him a tom-tomer&mdash;had ceased to
+beat his tom-tom. Pat's lips were firmly pressed together, and K.
+was trembling with suppressed excitement. The heaving chests and
+profuse perspiration bedewing the bodies of both combatants, told
+how severe had been their exertions. The blacksmith seemed
+gathering himself up for a mighty effort, when, quick as light, the
+Brahmin drew his limbs together, was seen to arch his back, and
+with a sudden backward movement, seemed to glide from under his
+dashing assailant, and quicker than it takes me to write it, the
+positions were reversed.</p>
+<p>The Brahmin was now above, and the blacksmith taking in the
+altered aspect of affairs at a glance, threw himself flat on the
+ground, and tried the same tactics as his opponent. The different
+play of the two men now came strongly into relief. Instead of
+exhausting himself with useless efforts, Roopnarain, while keeping
+a wary eye on every movement of his prostrate foe, contented
+himself while he took breath, with coolly and and yet determinedly
+making his grip secure. Putting out one leg then within reach of
+his opponent's hand, as a lure, he saw the blacksmith stretch forth
+to grasp the tempting hold.</p>
+<p>Quicker than the dart of the python, the fierce onset of the
+kingly tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering
+lightning, was the grasp made at the outstretched arm by the
+practised Brahmin. His tenacious fingers closed tightly round the
+other's wrist. One sudden wrench, and he had the blacksmith's arm
+bent back and powerless, held down on the little fellow's own
+shoulders. Pat smiled a derisive smile, K. uttered what was not a
+benison, while the Brahmins in the crowd, and all Pat's men, raised
+a truly Hindoo howl. The position of the men was now this. The
+stout little man was flat on his face, one of his arms bent
+helplessly round on his own back. Roopnarain, calm and cool as
+ever, was astride the prostrate blacksmith, placidly surveying the
+crowd. The little man writhed, and twisted, and struggled, he tried
+with his legs to entwine himself with those of the Brahmin. He
+tried to spin round; the Brahmin was watching with the eye of a
+hawk for a grip of the other arm, but it was closely drawn in, and
+firmly pressed in safety under the heaving chest of the blacksmith.
+The muscles were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that was seen
+at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete was
+surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm
+further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero,
+game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain
+tried to bend him over, till we thought either the poor fellow's
+neck must break, or his arm be torn from its socket.</p>
+<p>He endured all without a murmur. Not a chance did he throw away.
+Once or twice he made a splendid effort, once he tried to catch the
+Brahmin again by the leg. Roopnarain pounced down, but the arm was
+as quickly within its shield. It was now but a question of time and
+endurance. Every dodge that he was master of did the Brahmin bring
+into play. They were both in perfect training, muscles as hard as
+steel, every nerve and sinew strained to the utmost tension.
+Roopnarain actually tried tickling his man, but he would not give
+him a chance. At length he got his hand in the bent elbow of the
+free arm, and slowly, and laboriously forced it out. There were
+tremendous spurts and struggles, but patient determination was not
+to be baulked. Slowly the arm came up over the back, the struggle
+was tremendous, but at length both the poor fellow's arms were
+tightly pinioned behind his back. He was powerless now. The Brahmin
+drew the two arms backwards, towards the head of the poor little
+fellow, and he was bound to come over or have both his arms broken.
+With a hoarse cry of sobbing-pain and shame, the brave little man
+came over, both shoulders on the mould, and the scientific old
+veteran was again the victor.</p>
+<p>This is but a very faint description of a true wrestling bout
+among the robust dwellers in these remote villages. It may seem
+cruel, but it is to my mind the perfection of muscular strength and
+skill, combined with keen subtle, intellectual acuteness. It brings
+every faculty of mind and body into play, it begets a healthy,
+honest love of fair play, and an admiration of endurance and pluck,
+two qualities of which Englishmen certainly can boast. Strength
+without skill and training will not avail. It is a fine manly
+sport, and one which should be encouraged by all who wish well to
+our dusky fellow subjects in the far off plains and valleys of
+Hindostan.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXVI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVI.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Indigo seed growing.&mdash;Seed buying and
+buyers.&mdash;Tricks of sellers. &mdash;Tests for good
+seed.&mdash;The threshing-floor.&mdash;Seed cleaning and
+packing.&mdash;Staff of servants.&mdash;Despatching the bags by
+boat.&mdash;The 'Pooneah' or rent day.&mdash;Purneah
+planters&mdash;their hospitality.&mdash;The rent day a great
+festival.&mdash;Preparation.&mdash;Collection of rents.&mdash;Feast
+to retainers.&mdash;The reception in the
+evening.&mdash;Tribute.&mdash;Old customs. &mdash;Improvisatores
+and bards.&mdash;Nautches.&mdash;Dancing and music.&mdash;The dance
+of the Dangurs.&mdash;Jugglers and itinerary showmen.&mdash;'Bara
+Roopes,' or actors and mimics.&mdash;Their different styles of
+acting.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Besides indigo planting proper, there is another large branch of
+industry in North Bhaugulpore, and along the Nepaul frontier there,
+and in Purneah, which is the growing of indigo seed for the Bengal
+planters. The system of advances and the mode of cultivation is
+much the same as that followed in indigo planting proper. The seed
+is sown in June or July, is weeded and tended all through the
+rains, and cut in December. The planters advance about four rupees
+a beegah to the ryot, who cuts his seed-plant, and brings it into
+the factory threshing ground, where it is beaten out, cleaned,
+weighed, and packed in bags. When the seed has been threshed out
+and cleaned, it is weighed, and the ryot or cultivator gets four
+rupees for every maund&mdash;a maund being eighty pounds
+avoirdupois. The previous advance is deducted. The rent or loan
+account is adjusted, and the balance made over in cash.</p>
+<p>Others grow the seed on their own account, without taking
+advances, and bring it to the factory for sale. If prices are
+ruling high, they may get much more than four rupees per maund for
+it, and they adopt all kinds of ingenious devices to adulterate the
+seed, and increase its weight. They mix dust with it, seeds of
+weeds, even grains of wheat, and mustard, pea, and other seeds. In
+buying seed, therefore, one has to be very careful, to reject all
+that looks bad, or that may have been adulterated. They will even
+get old useless seed, the refuse stock of former years, and mixing
+this with leaves of the neem tree and some turmeric powder, give it
+a gloss that makes it look like fresh seed.</p>
+<p>When you suspect that the seed has been tampered with in this
+manner, you wet some of it, and rub it on a piece of fresh clean
+linen, so as to bring off the dye. Where the attempt has been
+flagrant, you are sometimes tempted to take the law into your own
+hands, and administer a little of the castigation which the
+cheating rascal so richly deserves. In other cases it is necessary
+to submit the seed to a microscopic examination. If any old, worn
+seeds are detected, you reject the sample unhesitatingly. Even when
+the seed appears quite good, you subject it to yet another test.
+Take one or two hundred seeds, and putting them on a damp piece of
+the pith of a plantain tree, mixed with a little earth, set them in
+a warm place, and in two days you will be able to tell what
+percentage has germinated, and what is incapable of germination. If
+the percentage is good, the seed may be considered as fairly up to
+the sample, and it is purchased. There are native seed buyers, who
+try to get as much into their hands as they can, and rig the
+market. There are also European buyers, and there is a keen rivalry
+in all the bazaars.</p>
+<p>The threshing-floor, and seed-cleaning ground presents a busy
+sight when several thousand maunds of seed are being got ready for
+despatch by boats. The dirty seed, full of dust and other
+impurities, is heaped up in one corner. The floor is in the shape
+of a large square, nicely paved with cement, as hard and clean as
+marble. Crowds of nearly nude coolies, hurry to and fro with scoops
+of seed resting on their shoulders. When they get in line, at right
+angles to the direction in which the wind is blowing, they move
+slowly along, letting the seed descend on the heap below, while the
+wind winnows it, and carries the dust in dense clouds to leeward.
+This is repeated over and over again, till the seed is as clean as
+it can be made. It is put through bamboo sieves, so formed that any
+seed larger than indigo cannot pass through. What remains in the
+sieve is put aside, and afterwards cleaned, sorted, and sold as
+food, or if useless, thrown away or given to the fowls. The men and
+boys dart backwards and forwards, there is a steady drip, drip, of
+seed from the scoops, dense clouds of dust, and incessant noise and
+bustle. Peons or watchmen are stationed all around to see that none
+is wasted or stolen. Some are filling sacks full of the cleaned
+seed, and hauling them off to the weighman and his clerk. Two
+maunds are put in every sack, and when weighed the bags are hauled
+up close to the <i>godown</i> or store-room. Here are an army of
+men with sailmaker's needles and twine. They sew up the bags, which
+are then hauled away to be marked with the factory brand. Carts are
+coming and going, carrying bags to the boats, which are lying at
+the river bank taking in their cargo, and the returning carts bring
+back loads of wood from the banks of the river. In one corner,
+under a shed, sits the sahib chaffering with a party of
+<i>paikars</i> (seed merchants), who have brought seed for
+sale.</p>
+<p>Of course he decries the seed, says it is bad, will not hear of
+the price wanted, and laughs to scorn all the fervent protestations
+that the seed was grown on their own ground, and has never passed
+through any hands but their own. If you are satisfied that the seed
+is good, you secretly name your price to your head man, who
+forthwith takes up the work of depreciation. You move off to some
+other department of the work. The head man and the merchants sit
+down, perhaps smoke a <i>hookah</i>, each trying to outwit the
+other, but after a keen encounter of wits perhaps a bargain is
+made. A pretty fair price is arrived at, and away goes the
+purchased seed, to swell the heap at the other end of the yard. It
+has to be carefully weighed first, and the weighman gets a little
+from the vendor as his perquisite, which the factory takes from him
+at the market rate.</p>
+<p>You have buyers of your own out in the <i>dehaat</i> (district),
+and the parcels they have bought come in hour by hour, with
+invoices detailing all particulars of quantity, quality, and price.
+The loads from the seed depots and outworks, come rolling up in the
+afternoon, and have all to be weighed, checked, noted down, and
+examined. Every man's hand is against you. You cannot trust your
+own servants. For a paltry bribe they will try to pass a bad parcel
+of seed, and even when you have your European assistants to help
+you, it is hard work to avoid being over-reached in some shape or
+other.</p>
+<p>You have to keep up a large staff of writers, who make out
+invoices and accounts, and keep the books. Your correspondence
+alone is enough work for one man, and you have to tally bags, count
+coolies, see them paid their daily wage, attend to lawsuits that
+may be going on, and yet find time to superintend the operations of
+the farm, and keep an eye to your rents and revenues from the
+villages. It is a busy, an anxious time. You have a vast
+responsibility on your shoulders, and when one takes into
+consideration the climate you have to contend with, the home
+comforts and domestic joys you have to do without, the constant
+tension of mind and irritation of body from dust, heat, insects,
+lies, bribery, robbers, and villany of every description, that
+meets you on all hands, it must be allowed that a planter at such a
+time has no easy life.</p>
+<p>The time at which you despatch the seed is also the very time
+when you are preparing your land for spring sowings. This requires
+almost as much surveillance as the seed-buying and despatching. You
+have not a moment you can call your own. If you had subordinates
+you could trust, who would be faithful and honest, you could safely
+leave part of the work to them, but from very sad experience I have
+found that trusting to a native is trusting to a very rotten stick.
+They are certainly not all bad, but there are just enough
+exceptions to prove the rule.</p>
+<p>One peculiar custom prevailed in this border district of North
+Bhaugulpore, which I have not observed elsewhere. At the beginning
+of the financial year, when the accounts of the past season had all
+been made up and arranged, and the collection of the rents for the
+new year was beginning, the planters and Zemindars held what was
+called the <i>Pooneah</i>. It is customary for all cultivators and
+tenants to pay a proportion of their rent in advance. The Pooneah
+might therefore be called 'rent-day.' A similar day is set apart
+for the same purpose in Tirhoot, called <i>tousee</i> or
+collections, but it is not attended by the same ceremonious
+observances, and quaint customs, as attach to the Pooneah on the
+border land.</p>
+<p>When every man's account has been made up and checked by the
+books, the Pooneah day is fixed on. Invitations are sent to all
+your neighbouring friends, who look forward to each other's annual
+Pooneah as a great gala day. In North Bhaugulpore and Purneah,
+nearly all the planters and English-speaking population belong to
+old families who have been born in the district, and have settled
+and lived there long before the days of quick communication with
+home. Their rule among their dependants is patriarchal. Everyone is
+known among the natives, who have seen him since his birth living
+amongst them, by some pet name. The old men of the villages
+remember his father and his father's father, the younger villagers
+have had him pointed out to them on their visits to the factory as
+'Willie Baba,' 'Freddy Baba,' or whatever his boyish name may have
+been, with the addition of 'Baba,' which is simply a pet name for a
+child. These planters know every village for miles and miles. They
+know most of the leading men in each village by name. The villagers
+know all about them, discuss their affairs with the utmost freedom,
+and not a single thing, ever so trivial, happens in the planter's
+home but it is known and commented on in all the villages that lie
+within the <i>ilaka</i> (jurisdiction) of the factory.</p>
+<p>The hospitality of these planters is unbounded. They are most of
+them much liked by all the natives round. I came a 'stranger
+amongst them,' and in one sense, and not a flattering sense, they
+tried 'to take me in,' but only in one or two instances, which I
+shall not specify here. By nearly all I was welcomed and kindly
+treated, and I formed some very lasting friendships among them. Old
+traditions of princely hospitality still linger among them. They
+were clannish in the best sense of the word. The kindness and
+attention given to aged or indigent relations was one of their best
+traits. I am afraid the race is fast dying out. Lavish expenditure,
+and a too confiding faith in their native dependants has often
+brought the usual result. But many of my readers will associate
+with the name of Purneah or Bhaugulpore planter, recollections of
+hospitality and unostentatious kindness, and memories of glorious
+sport and warm-hearted friendships.</p>
+<p>On the Pooneah day then, or the night before, many of these
+friends would meet. The day has long been known to all the villages
+round, and nothing could better shew the patriarchal semi-feudal
+style in which they ruled over their villages than the customs in
+connection with this anniversary. Some days before it, requisitions
+have been made on all the villages in any way connected with the
+factory, for various articles of diet. The herdsmen have to send a
+tribute of milk, curds, and <i>ghee</i> or clarified butter.
+Cultivators of root crops or fruit send in samples of their
+produce, in the shape of huge bundle of plantains, immense
+jack-fruits, or baskets of sweet potatoes, yams, and other
+vegetables. The <i>koomhar</i> or potter has to send in earthen
+pots and jars. The <i>mochee</i> or worker in leather, brings with
+him a sample of his work in the shape of a pair of shoes. These are
+pounced on by your servants and <i>omlah</i>, the omlah being the
+head men in the office. It is a fine time for them. Wooden shoes,
+umbrellas, brass pots, fowls, goats, fruits, in fact all the
+productions of your country side are sent or brought in. It is the
+old feudal tribute of the middle ages back again. During the day
+the <i>cutcherry</i> or office is crowded with the more respectable
+villagers, paying in rents and settling accounts. The noise and
+bustle are great, but an immense quantity of work is got
+through.</p>
+<p>The village putwarries and head men are all there with their
+voluminous accounts. Your rent-collector, called a
+<i>tehseeldar</i>, has been busy in the villages with the tenants
+and putwarries, collecting rent for the great Pooneah day. There is
+a constant chink of money, a busy hum, a scratching of innumerable
+pens. Under every tree, 'neath the shade of every hut, busy groups
+are squatted round some acute accountant. Totals are being totted
+up on all hands. From greasy recesses in the waistband a dirty
+bundle is slowly pulled forth, and the desired sum reluctantly
+counted out.</p>
+<p>From early morn till dewy eve this work goes on, and you judge
+your Pooneah to have been a good or bad one by the amount you are
+able to collect. Peons, with their brass badges flashing in the
+sun, and their red puggrees shewing off their bronzed faces and
+black whiskers, are despatched in all directions for defaulters.
+There is a constant going to and fro, a hurrying and bustling in
+the crowd, a hum as of a distant fair pervading the place, and by
+evening the total of the day's collections is added up, and while
+the sahib and his friends take their sherry and bitters, the omlah
+and servants retire to wash and feast, and prepare for the night's
+festivities.</p>
+<p>During the day, at the houses of the omlah, culinary
+preparations on a vast scale have been going on. The large supplies
+of grain, rice, flour, fruit, vegetables, &amp;c., which were
+brought in as <i>salamee</i> or tribute, supplemented by additions
+from the sahib's own stores, have been made into savoury messes.
+Curries, and cakes, boiled flesh, and roast kid, are all ready, and
+the crowd, having divested themselves of their head-dress and outer
+garments, and cleaned their hands and feet by copious ablutions,
+sit down in a wide circle. The large leaves of the water-lily are
+now served out to each man, and perform the office of plates. Huge
+baskets of <i>chupatties</i>, a flat sort of 'griddle-cake,' are
+now brought round, and each man gets four or five doled out. The
+cooking and attendance is all done by Brahmins. No inferior caste
+would answer, as Rajpoots and other high castes will only eat food
+that has been cooked by a Brahmin or one of their own class. The
+Brahmin attendants now come round with great <i>dekchees</i> or
+cooking-pots, full of curried vegetables, boiled rice, and similar
+dishes. A ladle-full is handed out to each man, who receives it on
+his leaf. The rice is served out by the hands of the attendants.
+The guests manipulate a huge ball of rice and curry mixed between
+the fingers of the right hand, pass this solemnly into their
+widely-gaping mouths, with the head thrown back to receive the
+mess, like an adjutant-bird swallowing a frog, and then they
+masticate with much apparent enjoyment. Sugar, treacle, curds,
+milk, oil, butter, preserves, and chutnees are served out to the
+more wealthy and respectable. The amount they can consume is
+wonderful. Seeing the enormous supplies, you would think that even
+this great crowd could never get through them, but by the time
+repletion has set in, there is little or nothing left, and many of
+the inflated and distended old farmers could begin again and repeat
+'another of the same' with ease. Each person has his own
+<i>lotah</i>, a brass drinking vessel, and when all have eaten they
+again wash their hands, rinse out their mouths, and don their
+gayest apparel.</p>
+<p>The gentlemen in the bungalow now get word that the evening's
+festivities are about to commence. Lighting our cigars, we sally
+out to the <i>shamiana</i> which has been erected on the ridge,
+surrounding the deep tank which supplies the factory during the
+manufacturing season with water. The <i>shamiana</i> is a large
+canopy or wall-less tent. It is festooned with flowers and green
+plantain trees, and evergreens have been planted all round it.
+Flaring flambeaux, torches, Chinese lanterns, and oil lamps flicker
+and glare, and make the interior almost as bright as day. When we
+arrive we find our chairs drawn up in state, one raised seat in the
+centre being the place of honour, and reserved for the manager of
+the factory.</p>
+<p>When we are seated, the <i>malee</i> or gardener advances with a
+wooden tray filled with sand, in which are stuck heads of all the
+finest flowers the garden can afford, placed in the most
+symmetrical patterns, and really a pretty tasteful piece of
+workmanship. Two or three old Brahmins, principal among whom is
+'Hureehar Jha,' a wicked old scoundrel, now advance, bearing gay
+garlands of flowers, muttering a strange gibberish in Sanskrit,
+supposed to be a blessing, but which might be a curse for all we
+understood of it, and decking our wrists and necks with these
+strings of flowers. For this service they get a small gratuity. The
+factory omlah headed by the dignified, portly <i>gornasta</i> or
+confidential adviser, dressed in snowy turbans and spotless white,
+now come forward. A large brass tray stands on the table in front
+of you. They each present a <i>salamee</i> or <i>nuzzur</i>, that
+is, a tribute or present, which you touch, and it is then deposited
+with a rattling jingle on the brass plate. The head men of
+villages, putwarries, and wealthy tenants, give two, three, and
+sometimes even four rupees. Every tenant of respectability thinks
+it incumbent on him to give something. Every man as he comes up
+makes a low salaam, deposits his <i>salamee</i>, his name is
+written down, and he retires. The putwarries present two rupees
+each, shouting out their names, and the names of their villages.
+Afterwards a small assessment is levied on the villagers, of a
+'pice' or two 'pice' each, about a halfpenny of our money, and
+which recoups the putwarree for his outlay.</p>
+<p>This has nothing to do with the legitimate revenue of the
+factory. It never appears in the books. It is quite a voluntary
+offering, and I have never seen it in any other district. In the
+meantime the <i>Raj-bhats</i>, a wandering class of hereditary
+minstrels or bards, are singing your praises and those of your
+ancestors in ear-splitting strains. Some of them have really good
+voices, all possess the gift of improvisation, and are quick to
+seize on the salient points of the scene before them, and weave
+them into their song, sometimes in a very ingenious and humorous
+manner. They are often employed by rich natives, to while away a
+long night with one of their, treasured rhythmical tales or songs.
+One or two are kept in the retinue of every Rajah or noble, and
+they possess a mine of legendary information, which would be
+invaluable to the collector of folk-lore and antiquarian
+literature.</p>
+<p>At some of the Pooneahs the evening's gaiety winds up with a
+<i>nautch</i> or dance, by dancing girls or boys. I always thought
+this a most sleep-inspiring exhibition. It has been so often
+described that I need not trouble my readers with it. The women are
+gaily dressed in brocades and gauzy textures, and glitter with
+spangles and tawdry ornaments. The musical accompaniment of
+clanging zither, asthmatic fiddle, timber-toned drum, clanging
+cymbal, and harsh metallic triangle, is a sore affliction, and when
+the dusky prima donna throws back her head, extends her chest, gets
+up to her high note, with her hand behind her ear, and her
+poura-stained mouth and teeth wide expanded like the jaws of a
+fangless wolf, and the demoniac instruments and performers redouble
+their din, the noise is something too dreadful to experience often.
+The native women sit mute and hushed, seeming to like it. I have
+heard it said that the Germans eat ants. Finlanders relish penny
+candles. The Nepaulese gourmandise on putrid fish. I am fond of
+mouldy cheese, and organ-grinders are an object of affection with
+some of our home community. I <i>know</i> that the general run of
+natives delight in a nautch. Tastes differ, but to me it is an
+inexplicable phenomenon.</p>
+<p>Amid all this noise we sit till we are wearied. Parin-leaves and
+betel nut are handed round by the servants. There is a very
+sudorific odour from the crowd. All are comfortably seated on the
+ground. The torches flare, and send up volumes of smoke to the
+ornamented roof of the canopy. The lights are reflected in the deep
+glassy bosom of the silent tank. The combined sounds and odours get
+oppressive, and we are glad to get back to the bungalow, to consume
+our 'peg' and our 'weed' in the congenial company of our
+friends.</p>
+<p>In some factories the night closes with a grand dance by all the
+inhabitants of the <i>dangur tola</i>. The men and women range
+themselves in two semicircles, standing opposite each other. The
+tallest of both lines at the one end, diminishing away at the other
+extremity to the children and little ones who can scarcely toddle.
+They have a wild, plaintive song, with swelling cadences and abrupt
+stops. They go through an extraordinary variety of evolutions,
+stamping with one foot and keeping perfect time. They sway their
+bodies, revolve, march, and countermarch, the men sometimes opening
+their ranks, and the women going through, and <i>vice versa</i>.
+They turn round like the winding convolutions of a shell, increase
+their pace as the song waxes quick and shrill, get excited, and
+finish off with a resounding stamp of the foot, and a guttural cry
+which seems to exhaust all the breath left in their bodies. The men
+then get some liquor, and the women a small money present. If the
+sahib is very liberal he gives them a pig on which to feast, and
+the <i>dangurs</i> go away very happy and contented. Their dance is
+not unlike the <i>corroborry</i> of the Australian aborigines. The
+two races are not unlike each other too in feature, although I
+cannot think that they are in any way connected.</p>
+<p>Next morning there is a jackal hunt, or cricket, or pony races,
+or shooting matches, or sport of some kind, while the rent
+collection still goes on. In the afternoon we have grand wrestling
+matches amongst the natives for small prizes, and generally witness
+some fine exhibitions of athletic skill and endurance.</p>
+<p>Some wandering juggler may have been attracted by the rumour of
+the gathering. A tight-rope dancer, a snake charmer, an itinerant
+showman with a performing goat, monkey, or dancing bear, may make
+his appearance before the admiring crowd.</p>
+<p>At times a party of mimes or actors come round, and a rare treat
+is not seldom afforded by the <i>bara roopees</i>. <i>Bara</i>
+means twelve, and <i>roop</i> is an impersonation, a character.
+These 'twelve characters' make up in all sorts of disguises. Their
+wardrobe is very limited, yet the number of people they personate,
+and their genuine acting talent would astonish you. With a
+projecting tooth and a few streaks of clay, they make up a
+withered, trembling old hag, afflicted with palsy, rheumatism, and
+a hacking cough. They make friends with your bearer, and an old hat
+and coat transforms them into a planter, a missionary, or an
+officer. They whiten their faces, using false hair and moustache,
+and while you are chatting with your neighbour, a strange sahib
+suddenly and mysteriously seats himself by your side. You stare,
+and look at your host, who is generally in the secret, but a
+stranger, or new comer, is often completely taken in. It is
+generally at night that they go through their personations, and
+when they have dressed for their part, they generally choose a
+moment when your attention is attracted by a cunning diversion. On
+looking up you are astounded to find some utter stranger standing
+behind your chair, or stalking solemnly round the room.</p>
+<p>They personate a woman, a white lady, a sepoy policeman, almost
+any character. Some are especially good at mimicking the Bengalee
+Baboo, or the merchant from Cabool or Afghanistan with his fruits
+and cloths. A favourite <i>roop</i> with them is to paint one half
+of the face like a man. Everything is complete down to moustache,
+the folds of the puggree, the <i>lathee</i> or staff, indeed to the
+slightest detail. You would fancy you saw a stalwart, strapping
+Hindoo before you. He turns round, and lo, a bashful maiden. Her
+eyes are stained with <i>henna</i> (myrtle juice) or antimony. Her
+long-hair neatly smoothed down is tied into a knot at the back, and
+glistens with the pearl-like ornaments. The taper arm is loaded
+with armlets and bracelets. The very toes are bedecked with rings.
+The bodice hides the taper waist and budding bosom, the tiny ear is
+loaded with jewelled ear-rings, the very nose is not forgotten, but
+is ornamented with a golden circle, bearing on its circumference a
+pearl of great price. The art, the posturing, the mimicry, is
+really admirable. A good <i>bara roopee</i> is well worth seeing,
+and amply earns the two or three rupees he gets as his reward.</p>
+<p>The Pooneah seldom lasts more than the two days, but it is quite
+unique in its feudal character, and is one of the old-fashioned
+observances; a relic of the time when the planter was really looked
+upon as the father of his people, and when a little sentiment and
+mutual affection mingled with the purely business relations of
+landlord and tenant.</p>
+<p>I delighted my ryots by importing some of our own country
+recreations, and setting the ploughmen to compete against each
+other. I stuck a greasy bamboo firmly into the earth, putting a bag
+of copper coins at the top. Many tried to climb it, but when they
+came to the grease they came down 'by the run.' One fellow however
+filled his <i>kummerbund</i> with sand, and after much exertion
+managed to secure the prize. Wheeling the barrow blindfold also
+gave much amusement, and we made some boys bend their foreheads
+down to a stick and run round till they were giddy. Their ludicrous
+efforts then to jump over some water-pots, and run to a thorny
+bush, raised tumultuous peals of laughter. The poor boys generally
+smashed the pots, and ended by tumbling into the thorns.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXVII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>The Koosee
+jungles.&mdash;Ferries.&mdash;Jungle roads.&mdash;The
+rhinoceros.&mdash;We go to visit a neighbour.&mdash;We lose our way
+and get belated.&mdash;We fall into a quicksand.&mdash;No ferry
+boat.&mdash;Camping out on the sand.&mdash;Two tigers close
+by.&mdash;We light a fire.&mdash;The boat at last
+arrives.&mdash;Crossing the stream.&mdash;Set fire to the boatman's
+hut.&mdash;Swim the horses.&mdash;They are nearly drowned.&mdash;We
+again lose our way in the jungle.&mdash;The towing path, and how
+boats are towed up the river.&mdash;We at last reach the
+factory.&mdash;News of rhinoceros in the morning.&mdash;Off we
+start, but arrive too late.&mdash;Death of the
+rhinoceros.&mdash;His dimensions.&mdash;Description.
+&mdash;Habits.&mdash;Rhinoceros in Nepaul.&mdash;The old 'Major
+Captan.'&mdash;Description of Nepaulese scenery.&mdash;Immigration
+of Nepaulese.&mdash;Their fondness for fish.&mdash;They eat it
+putrid.&mdash;Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul. &mdash;Resources
+of the country.&mdash;Must sooner or later be opened up.
+&mdash;Influences at work to elevate the people.&mdash;Planters and
+factories chief of these.&mdash;Character of the planter.&mdash;His
+claims to consideration from government.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>In the vast grass jungles that border the banks of the Koosee,
+stretching in great plains without an undulation for miles on
+either side, intersected by innumerable water-beds and dried up
+channels, there is plenty of game of all sorts. It is an impetuous,
+swiftly-flowing stream, dashing directly down from the mighty hills
+of Nepaul. So swift is its current and so erratic its course, that
+it frequently bursts its banks, and careers through the jungle,
+forming a new bed, and carrying away cattle and wild animals in its
+headlong rush.</p>
+<p>The <i>ghauts</i> or ferries are constantly changing, and a long
+bamboo with a bit of white rag affixed, shows where the boats and
+boatmen are to be found. In many instances the track is a mere
+cattle path, and hundreds of cross openings, leading into the tall
+jungle grass, are apt to bewilder and mislead the traveller. During
+the dry season these jungles are the resort of great herds of
+cattle and tame buffaloes, which trample down the dry stalks, and
+force their way into the innermost recesses of the wilderness of
+grass, which grows ten to twelve feet high. If you once lose your
+path you may wander for miles, until your weary horse is almost
+unable to stumble on. In such a case, the best way is to take it
+coolly, and halloo till a herdsman or thatch-cutter comes to your
+rescue. The knowledge of the jungles displayed by these poor
+ignorant men is wonderful; they know every gully and watercourse,
+every ford and quicksand, and they betray not the slightest sign of
+fear, although they know that at any moment they may come across a
+herd of wild buffalo, a savage rhinoceros, or even a royal
+tiger.</p>
+<p>The tracks of rhinoceros are often seen, but although I have
+frequently had these pointed out to me when out tiger shooting, I
+only saw two while I lived in that district.</p>
+<p>The first occasion was after a night of discomfort such as I
+have fortunately seldom experienced. I had been away at a
+neighbouring factory in Purneah, some eighteen or twenty miles from
+my bungalow. My companion had been my predecessor in the
+management, and was supposed to be well acquainted with the
+country. We had gone over to one of the outworks across the river,
+and I had received charge of the place from him. It was a lonely
+solitary spot; the house was composed of grass walls plastered with
+mud, and had not been used for some time. F. proposed that we
+should ride over to see H., to whom he would introduce me as he
+would be one of my nearest neighbours, and would give us a
+comfortable dinner and bed, which there was no chance of our
+procuring where we were.</p>
+<p>We plunged at once into the mazy labyrinths of the jungle, and
+soon emerged on the high sandy downs, stretching mile beyond mile
+along the southern bank of the ever-changing river. Having lost our
+way, we got to the factory after dark, but a friendly villager
+volunteered his services as guide, and led us safely to our
+destination. After a cheerful evening with H., we persuaded him to
+accompany us back next day. He took out his dogs, and we had a good
+course after a hare, killing two jackals, and sending back the dogs
+by the sweeper. At Burgamma, the outwork, we stopped to
+<i>tiffin</i> on some cold fowl we had brought with us. The old
+factory head man got us some milk, eggs, and <i>chupatties</i>; and
+about three in the afternoon we started for the head factory. In an
+evil moment F. proposed that, as we were near another outwork
+called <i>Fusseah</i>, we should diverge thither, I could take over
+charge, and we could thus save a ride on another day. Not knowing
+anything of the country I acquiesced, and we reached Fusseah in
+time to see the place, and do all that was needful. It was a
+miserable tumbledown little spot, with four pair of vats; it had
+formerly been a good working factory, but the river had cut away
+most of its best lands, and completely washed away some of the
+villages, while the whole of the cultivation was fast relapsing
+into jungle.</p>
+<p>'Debnarain Singh' the <i>gomorsta</i> or head man, asked us to
+stay for the night, as he said we could never get home before dark.
+F. however scouted the idea, and we resumed our way. The track, for
+it could not be called a road, led us through one or two jungle
+villages completely hidden by the dense bamboo clumps and long
+jungle grass. You can't see a trace of habitation till you are
+fairly on the village, and as the rice-fields are bordered with
+long strips of tall grass, the whole country presents the
+appearance of a uniform jungle. We got through the rice swamps, the
+villages, and the grass in safety, and as it was getting dark,
+emerged on the great plain of undulating ridgy sandbanks, that form
+the bed of the river during the annual floods. We had our
+<i>syces</i> (grooms) and two peons with us. We had to ride over
+nearly two miles of sand before we could reach the <i>ghat</i>
+where we expected the ferry-boats, and, the main stream once
+crossed, we had only two miles further to reach the factory. We
+were getting both tired and hungry; a heavy dew was falling, and
+the night was raw and chill. It was dark, there was no moon to
+light our way, and the stars were obscured by the silently creeping
+fog, rising from the marshy hollows among the sand. All at once F.,
+who was leading, called out that we were off the path, and before I
+could pull up, my poor old tired horse was floundering in a
+quicksand up to the girths; I threw myself off and tried to wheel
+him round. H. was behind us, and we cried to him to halt where he
+was. I was sinking at every movement up to the knees, when the syce
+came to my rescue, and took charge of the horse. F.'s syce ran to
+extricate his master and horse; the two peons kept calling, 'Oh! my
+father, my father,' the horses snorted, and struggled desperately
+in the tenacious and treacherous quicksand; but after a prolonged
+effort, we all got safely out, and rejoined H. on the firm
+ridge.</p>
+<p>We now hallooed and shouted for the boatmen, but beyond the
+swish of the rapid stream to our right, or the plash of a falling
+bank as the swift current undermined it, no sound answered our
+repeated calls. We were wet and weary, but to go either backward or
+forward was out of the question. We were off the path, and the
+first step in any direction might lead us into another quicksand,
+worse perhaps than that from which we had just extricated
+ourselves. The horses were trembling in every limb. The syces
+cowered together and shivered with the cold. We ordered the two
+peons to try and reach the ghat, and see what had become of the
+boats, while we awaited their return where we were. The fog and
+darkness soon swallowed them up, and putting the best face on our
+dismal circumstances that we could, we lit our pipes and extended
+our jaded limbs on the damp sand.</p>
+<p>For a time we could hear the shouts of the peons as they
+hallooed for the boatmen, and we listened anxiously for the
+response, but there was none. We could hear the purling swish of
+the rapid stream, the crumbling banks falling into the current with
+a distant splash. Occasionally a swift rushing of wings overhead
+told us of the arrowy flight of diver or teal. Far in the distance
+twinkled the gleam of a herdsman's fire, the faint tinkle of a
+distant bell, or the subdued barking of a village dog for a moment,
+alone broke the silence.</p>
+<p>At times the hideous chorus of a pack of jackals woke the echoes
+of the night. Then, at no great distance, rose a hoarse booming
+cry, swelling on the night air, and subsiding into a lengthened
+growl. The syces started to their feet, the horses snorted with
+fear; and as the roar was repeated, followed closely by another to
+our left, and seemingly nearer, H. exclaimed 'By Jove! there's a
+couple of tigers.'</p>
+<p>Sure enough, so it was. It was the first time I had heard the
+roar of the tiger in his own domain, and I must confess that my
+sensations were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting
+sticks and what roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats
+everything was wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about
+on our hands and knees, and pick up whatever we came across.</p>
+<p>With great difficulty we managed to light a small fire, and for
+about half-an-hour were nearly smothered by trying with inflated
+cheeks to coax it into a blaze. The tigers continued to call at
+intervals, but did not seem to be approaching us. It was a long
+weary wait, we were cold, wet, hungry, and tired; F., the cause of
+our misfortunes, had taken off his saddle, and with it for a pillow
+was now fast asleep. H. and I cowered over the miserable sputtering
+flame, and longed and wished for the morning. It was a miserable
+night, the hours seemed interminable, the dense volumes of smoke
+from the water-sodden wood nearly choked us. At last, after some
+hours spent in this miserable manner, we heard a faint halloo in
+the distance; it was now past eleven at night. We returned the
+hail, and bye-and-bye the peons returned bringing a boatman with
+them. The lazy rascals at the ghat where we had proposed crossing,
+had gone home at nightfall, leaving their boats on the further
+bank. Our trusty peons, had gone five miles up the river, through
+the thick jungle, and brought a boat down with them from the next
+ghat to that where we were.</p>
+<p>We now warily picked our way down to the edge of the bank. The
+boat seemed very fragile, and the current looked so swift and
+dangerous, that we determined to go across first ourselves, get the
+larger boat from the other side, light a fire, and then bring over
+the horses. We embarked accordingly, leaving the syces and horses
+behind us. The peons and boatman pulled the boat a long way up
+stream by a rope, then shooting out we were carried swiftly down
+stream, the dark shadow of the further bank seeming at a great
+distance. The boatman pushed vigorously at his bamboo pole, the
+water rippled and gurgled, and frothed and eddied around.
+Half-a-dozen times we thought our boat would topple over, but at
+length we got safely across, far below what we had proposed as our
+landing place.</p>
+<p>We found the boats all right, and the boatman's hut, a mere
+collection of dry grass and a few old bamboos. As it could be
+replaced in an hour, and the material lay all around, we fired the
+hut, which soon, blazed up, throwing a weird lurid glow on bank and
+stream, and disclosing far on the other bank our weary nags and
+shivering syces, looking very bedraggled and forlorn indeed. The
+leaping and crackling of the flames, and the genial warmth,
+invigorated us a little, and while I stayed behind to feed the
+fire, the others recrossed to bring the horses over.</p>
+<p>With the previous fright however, their long waiting, the
+blazing fire, and being unaccustomed to boats at night, the poor
+scared horses refused to enter the boat, The boats are
+flat-bottomed or broadly bulging, with a bamboo platform strewn
+with grass in the centre. As a rule, they have no protecting rails,
+and even in the daytime, when the current is strong and eddies
+numerous, they are very dangerous for horses. At all events, the
+poor brutes would not be led on to the platform, so there was
+nothing for it but to swim them across. The boat was therefore
+towed a long way up the bank, which on the farther side was nearly
+level with the current, but where the hut had stood was steep and
+slushy, and perhaps twenty feet high. This was where the deepest
+water ran, and where the current was swiftest. If the horses
+therefore missed the landing ghat or stage, which was cut sloping
+into the bank, there was a danger of their being swept away
+altogether and lost. However, we determined on making the attempt.
+Entering the water, and holding the horses tightly by the head,
+with a leading rope attached, to be paid out in case of necessity;
+the boat shot out, the horses pawed the water, entering deeper and
+deeper, foot by foot, into the swiftly rushing silent stream. So
+long as they were in their depth, and had footing, they were
+alright, but when they reached the middle of the river, the
+current, rushing with frightful velocity, swept them off their
+feet, and boat and horses began to go down stream. The horses, with
+lips apart showing their teeth firmly set, the lurid glare of the
+flame lighting up their straining eyeballs, the plashing of the
+water, the dark rapid current flowing noiselessly past; the rocking
+heaving boat, the dusky forms of syces, peons, and boatman,
+standing out clear in the ruddy fire-light against the utter
+blackness of the night, composed a weird picture I can never
+forget.</p>
+<p>The boat shot swiftly past the ghat, and came with a thump
+against the bank. It swung round into the stream again, but the
+boatman had luckily managed to scramble ashore, and his efforts and
+mine united, hauling on the mooring-rope, sufficed to bring her in
+to the bank. The three struggling horses were yet in the current,
+trying bravely to stem the furious rush of the river. The syces and
+my friends were holding hard to the tether-ropes, which were now at
+their full stretch. It was a most critical moment. Had they let go,
+the horses would have been swept away to form a meal for the
+alligators. They managed, however, to get in close to the bank, and
+here, although the water was still over their backs, they got a
+slight and precarious footing, and inch by inch struggled after the
+boat, which we were now pulling up to the landing place.</p>
+<p>After a sore struggle, during which we thought more than once
+the gallant nags would never emerge from the water, they staggered
+up the bank, dripping, trembling, and utterly overcome with their
+exertions. It was my first introduction to the treacherous Koosee,
+and I never again attempted to swim a horse across at night. We led
+the poor tired creatures up to the fire, heaping on fresh bundles
+of thatching-grass, of which there was plenty lying about, the
+syces then rubbed them down, and shampooed their legs, till they
+began to take a little heart, whinnying as we spoke to them and
+caressed them.</p>
+<p>After resting for nearly an hour, we replaced the saddles, and
+F., who by this time began to mistrust his knowledge of the jungles
+by night, allowed one of the peons, who was sure he knew every inch
+of the road, to lead the way. Leaving the smouldering flames to
+flicker and burn out in solitude, we again plunged into the
+darkness of the night, threading our way through the thick jungle
+grass, now loaded with dewy moisture, and dripping copious showers
+upon us from its high walls at either side of the narrow track. We
+crossed a rapid little stream, an arm of the main river, turned to
+the right, progressed a few hundred yards, turned to the left, and
+finally came to a dead stop, having again lost our way.</p>
+<p>We heaped execrations on the luckless peon's head, and I
+suggested that we should make for the main stream, follow up the
+bank till we reached the next ghat, where I knew there was a
+cart-road leading to the factory. Otherwise we might wander all
+night in the jungles, perhaps get into another quicksand, or come
+to some other signal grief. We accordingly turned round. We could
+hear the swish of the river at no great distance, and soon,
+stumbling over bushes and bursting through matted chumps of grass,
+dripping with wet, and utterly tired and dejected, we reached the
+bank of the stream.</p>
+<p>Here we had no difficulty in following the path. The river is so
+swift, that the only way boats are enabled to get up stream to take
+down the inland produce, is by having a few coolies or boatmen to
+drag the boat up against the current by towing-lines. This is
+called <i>gooning</i>. The goon-ropes are attached to the mast of
+the boat. At the free end is a round bit of bamboo. The
+towing-coolie places this against his shoulder, and slowly and
+laboriously drags the boat up against the current. We were now on
+this towing-path, and after riding for nearly four miles we reached
+the ghat, struck into the cart-road, and without further
+misadventure reached the factory about four in the morning, utterly
+fagged and worn out.</p>
+<p>About eight in the morning my bearer woke me out of a deep
+sleep, with the news that there was a <i>gaerha</i>, that is, a
+rhinoceros, close to the factory. We had some days previously heard
+it rumoured that there were <i>two</i> rhinoceroses in the
+<i>Battabarree</i> jungles, so I at once roused my soundly-sleeping
+friends. Swallowing a hasty morsel of toast and a cup of coffee, we
+mounted our ponies, sent our guns on ahead, and rode off for the
+village where the rhinoceros was reported. As we rode hurriedly
+along we could see natives running in the same direction as
+ourselves, and one of my men came up panting and breathless to
+confirm the news about the rhinoceros, with the unwelcome addition
+that Premnarain Singh, a young neighbouring Zemindar, had gone in
+pursuit of it with his elephant and guns. We hurried on, and just
+then heard the distant report of a shot, followed quickly by two
+more. We tried to take a short cut across country through some
+rice-fields, but our ponies sank in the boggy ground, and we had to
+retrace our way to the path.</p>
+<p>By the time we got to the village we found an excited crowd of
+over a thousand natives, dancing and gesticulating round the
+prostrate carcase of the rhinoceros. The Baboo and his party had
+found the poor brute firmly imbedded in a quicksand. With organised
+effort they might have secured the prize alive, and could have sold
+him in Calcutta for at least a thousand rupees, but they were too
+excited, and blazed away three shots into the helpless beast. 'Many
+hands make light work,' so the crowd soon had the dead animal
+extricated, rolled him into the creek, and floated him down to the
+village, where we found them already beginning to hack and hew the
+flesh, completely spoiling the skin, and properly completing the
+butchery. We were terribly vexed that we were too late, but
+endeavoured to stop the stupid destruction that was going on. The
+body measured eleven feet three inches from the snout to the tail,
+and stood six feet nine. The horn was six and a half inches long,
+and the girth a little over ten feet. We put the best face on the
+matter, congratulated the Baboo with very bad grace, and asked him
+to get the skin cut up properly.</p>
+<p>Cut in strips from the under part of the ribs and along the
+belly, the skin makes magnificent riding-whips. The bosses on the
+shoulder and sides are made into shields by the natives,
+elaborately ornamented and much prized. The horn, however, is the
+most coveted acquisition. It is believed to have peculiar virtues,
+and is popularly supposed by its mere presence in a house to
+mitigate the pains of maternity. A rhinoceros horn is often handed
+down from generation to generation as a heirloom, and when a birth
+is about to take place the anxious husband often gets a loan of the
+precious treasure, after which he has no fears for the safe issue
+of the labour.</p>
+<p>The flesh of the rhinoceros is eaten by all classes. It is one
+of the five animals that a Brahmin is allowed to eat by the
+<i>Shastras</i>. They were formerly much more common in these
+jungles, but of late years very few have been killed. When they
+take up their abode in a piece of jungle they are not easily
+dislodged. They are fierce, savage brutes, and do not scruple to
+attack an elephant when they are hard pressed by the hunter. When
+they wish to leave a locality where they have been disturbed, they
+will make for some distant point, and march on with dogged and
+inflexible purpose. Some have been known to travel eighty miles in
+the twenty-four hours, through thick jungle, over rivers, and
+through swamp and quicksand. Their sense of hearing is very acute,
+and they are very easily roused to fury. One peculiarity often
+noticed by sportsmen is, that they always go to the same spot when
+they want to obey the calls of nature. Mounds of their dung are
+sometimes seen in the jungle, and the tracks shew that the
+rhinoceros pays a daily visit to this one particular spot.</p>
+<p>In Nepaul, and along the <i>terai</i> or wooded slopes of the
+frontier, they are more numerous; but 'Jung Bahadur,' the late
+ruler of Nepaul, would allow no one to shoot them but himself. I
+remember the wailing lament of a Nepaul officer with whom I was out
+shooting, when I happened to fire at and wound one of the protected
+beasts. It was in Nepaul, among a cluster of low woody hills, with
+a brawling stream dashing through the precipitous channel worn out
+of the rocky, boulder-covered dell. The rhinoceros was up the hill
+slightly above me, and we were beating up for a tiger that we had
+seen go ahead of the line.</p>
+<p>In my eagerness to bag a 'rhino' I quite forgot the interdict,
+and fired an Express bullet into the shoulder of the animal, as he
+stood broadside on, staring stupidly at me. He staggered, and made
+as if he would charge down the hill. The old '&#257;aptan,' as they
+called our sporting host, was shouting out to me not to fire. The
+<i>mahouts</i> and beaters were petrified with horror at my
+presumption. I fancy they expected an immediate order for my
+decapitation, or for my ears to be cut off at the very least, but
+feeling I might as well be 'in for a pound as for a penny,' I fired
+again, and tumbled the huge brute over, with a bullet through the
+skull behind the ear. The old officer was horror-stricken, and
+would allow no one to go near the animal. He would not even let me
+get down to measure it, being terrified lest the affair should
+reach the ears of his formidable lord and ruler, that he hurried us
+off from the scene of my transgression as quickly as he could.</p>
+<p>The old Major Capt&#257;n was a curious character. The
+government of Nepaul is purely military. All executive and judicial
+functions are carried on by military officers. After serving a
+certain time in the army, they get rewarded for good service by
+being appointed to the executive charge of a district. So far as I
+could make out, they seem to farm the revenue much as is done in
+Turkey. They must send in so much to the Treasury, and anything
+over they keep for themselves. Their administration of justice is
+rough and ready. Fines, corporal punishment, and in the case of
+heinous crimes, mutilation and death are their penalties. There is
+a tax of <i>kind</i> on all produce, and licenses to cut timber
+bring in a large revenue. A protective tariff is levied on all
+goods or produce passing the frontier from British territory, and
+no European is allowed to travel in the country, or to settle and
+trade there. In the lower valleys there are magnificent stretches
+of land suitable for indigo, tea, rice, and other crops. The
+streams are numerous, moisture is plentiful, the soil is fertile,
+and the slopes of the hills are covered with splendid timber, a
+great quantity of which is cut and floated down the Gunduch,
+Bagmuttee, Koosee, and other streams during the rainy season. It is
+used principally for beams, rafters, and railway sleepers.</p>
+<p>The people are jealous of intrusion and suspicious of strangers,
+but as I was with an official, they generally came out in great
+numbers to gaze as we passed through a village. The country does
+not seem so thickly populated as in our territory, and the
+cultivators had a more well-to-do look. They possess vast numbers
+of cattle. The houses have conical roofs, and great quadrangular
+sheds, roofed with a flat covering of thatch, are erected all round
+the houses, for the protection of the cattle at night. The taxes
+must weigh heavily on the population. The executive officer, when
+he gets charge of a district, removes all the subordinates who have
+been acting under his predecessor. When I asked the old Major if
+this would not interfere with the efficient administration of
+justice, and the smooth working of his revenue and executive
+functions, he gave a funny leer, almost a wink, and said it was
+much more satisfactory to have men of your own working under you,
+the fact being, that with his own men he could more securely wring
+from the ryots the uttermost farthing they could pay, and was more
+certain of getting his own share of the spoil.</p>
+<p>With practically irresponsible power, and only answerable
+directly to his immediate military superior, an unscrupulous man
+may harry and harass a district pretty much as he chooses. Our old
+Major seemed to be civil and lenient, but in some districts the
+exactions and extortions of the rulers have driven many of the
+hard-working Nepaulese over the border into our territory. Our
+landholders or Zemindars, having vast areas of untilled land, are
+only too glad to encourage this immigration, and give the exiles,
+whom they find hard-working industrious tenants, long leases on
+easy terms. The new-comers are very independent, and strenuously
+resist any encroachment on what they consider their rights. If an
+attempt is made to raise their rent, even equitably, the land
+having increased in value, they will resist the attempt 'tooth and
+nail,' and take every advantage the law affords to oppose it. They
+are very fond of litigation, and are mostly able to afford the
+expense of a lawsuit. I generally found it answer better to call
+them together and reason quietly with them, submitting any point in
+dispute to an arbitration of parties mutually selected.</p>
+<p>Nearly all the rivers in Nepaul are formed principally from the
+melting of the snow on the higher ranges. A vast body of water
+descends annually into the plains from the natural surface drainage
+of the country, but the melting of the snows is the main source of
+the river system. Many of the hill streams, and it is particularly
+observable at some seasons in the Koosee, have a regular daily rise
+and fall. In the early morning you can often ford a branch of the
+river, which by midday has become a swiftly-rolling torrent,
+filling the channel from bank to bank. The water is intensely cold,
+and few or no fish are to be found in the mountain streams of
+Nepaul. When the Nepaulese come down to the plains on business,
+pleasure, or pilgrimage their great treat is a mighty banquet of
+fish. For two or three <i>annas</i> a fish of several pounds weight
+can easily be purchased. They revel on this unwonted fare, eating
+to repletion, and very frequently making themselves ill in
+consequence. When Jung Bahadur came down through Chumparun to
+attend the <i>durbar</i> of the lamented Earl Mayo, cholera broke
+out in his camp, brought on simply by the enormous quantities of
+fish, often not very fresh or wholesome, which his guards and camp
+followers consumed.</p>
+<p>Large quantities of dried fish are sent up to Nepaul, and
+exchanged for rice and other grain, or horns, hides, and blankets.
+The fish-drying is done very simply in the sun. It is generally
+left till it is half putrid and taints the air for miles. The
+sweltering, half-rotting mass, packed in filthy bags, and slung on
+ponies or bullocks, is sent over the frontier to some village
+bazaar in Nepaul. The track of a consignment of this horrible filth
+can be recognised from very far away. The perfume hovers on the
+road, and as you are riding up and get the first sniff of the
+putrid odour, you know at once that the Nepaulese market is being
+recruited by a <i>fresh</i> accession of very <i>stale</i> fish. If
+the taste is at all equal to the smell, the rankest witches broth
+ever brewed in reeking cauldron would probably be preferable. Over
+the frontier there seems to be few roads, merely bullock tracks.
+Most of the transporting of goods is done by bullocks, and
+intercommunication must be slow and costly. I believe that near
+Katmandoo, the capital, the roads and bridges are good, and kept in
+tolerable repair. There is an arsenal where they manufacture modern
+munitions of war. Their soldiers are well disciplined, fairly well
+equipped, and form excellent fighting material.</p>
+<p>Our policy of annexation, so far as India is concerned, may
+perhaps be now considered as finally abandoned. We have no desire
+to annex Nepaul, but surely this system of utter isolation, of
+jealous exclusion at all hazards of English enterprise and capital,
+might be broken down to a mutual community of interest, a full and
+free exchange of products, and a reception by Nepaul without fear
+and distrust of the benefits our capitalists and pioneers could
+give the country by opening out its resources, and establishing the
+industries of the West on its fertile slopes and plains. I am no
+politician, and know nothing of the secret springs of policy that
+regulate our dealings with Nepaul, but it does seem somewhat weak
+and puerile to allow the Nepaulese free access to our territories,
+and an unprotected market in our towns for all their produce, while
+the British subject is rigorously excluded from the country, his
+productions saddled with a heavy protective duty, and the
+representative of our Government himself, treated more as a
+prisoner in honourable confinement, than as the accredited
+ambassador of a mighty empire.</p>
+<p>I may be utterly wrong. There may be weighty reasons of State
+for this condition of things, but it is a general feeling among
+Englishmen in India that, <i>we</i> have to do all the GIVE and our
+Oriental neighbours do all the TAKE. The un-official English mind
+in India does not see the necessity for the painfully deferential
+attitude we invariably take in our dealings with native states. The
+time has surely come, when Oriental mistrust of our intentions
+should be stoutly battled with. There is room in Nepaul for
+hundreds of factories, for tea-gardens, fruit-groves,
+spice-plantations, woollen-mills, saw-mills, and countless other
+industries. Mineral products are reported of unusual richness. In
+the great central valley the climate approaches that of England.
+The establishment of productive industries would be a work of time,
+but so long as this ridiculous policy of isolation is maintained,
+and the exclusion of English tourists, sportsmen, or observers
+carried out in all its present strictness, we can never form an
+adequate idea of the resources of the country. The Nepaulese
+themselves cannot progress. I am convinced that a frank and
+unconstrained intercourse between Europeans and natives would
+create no jealousy and antagonism, but would lead to the
+development of a country singularly blessed by nature, and open a
+wide field for Anglo-Saxon energy and enterprise. It does seem
+strange, with all our vast territory of Hindustan accurately mapped
+out and known, roads and railways, canals and embankments,
+intersecting it in all directions, that this interesting corner of
+the globe, lying contiguous to our territory for hundreds of miles,
+should be less known than the interior of Africa, or the barren
+solitudes of the ice-bound Arctic regions.</p>
+<p>In these rich valleys hundreds of miles of the finest and most
+fertile lands in Asia lie covered by dense jungle, waiting for
+labour and capital. For the present we have enough to do in our own
+possessions to reclaim the uncultured wastes; but considering the
+rapid increase of population, the avidity with which land is taken
+up, the daily increasing use of all modern labour-saving
+appliances, the time must very shortly come when capital and energy
+will need new outlets, and one of the most promising of these is in
+Nepaul. The rapid changes which have come over the face of rural
+India, especially in these border districts, within the last twenty
+years, might well make the most thoughtless pause. Land has
+increased in value more than two-fold. The price of labour and of
+produce has kept more than equal pace. Machinery is whirring and
+clanking, where a few years ago a steam whistle would have startled
+the natives out of their wits. With cheap, easy, and rapid
+communication, a journey to any of the great cities is now thought
+no more of than a trip to a distant village in the same district
+was thought of twenty years ago. Everywhere are the signs of
+progress. New industries are opening up. Jungle is fast
+disappearing. Agriculture has wonderfully improved; and wherever an
+indigo factory has been built, progress has taken the place of
+stagnation, industry and thrift that of listless indolence and
+shiftless apathy. A spirit has moved in the valley of dry bones,
+and has clothed with living flesh the gaunt skeletons produced by
+ignorance, disease, and want. The energy and intelligence of the
+planter has breathed on the stagnant waters of the Hindoo intellect
+the breath of life, and the living tide is heaving, full of
+activity, purging by its resistless ever-moving pulsations the
+formerly stagnant mass of its impurities, and making it a
+life-giving sea of active industry and progress.</p>
+<p>Let any unprejudiced observer see for himself if it be not so;
+let him go to those districts where British capital and energy are
+not employed; let him leave the planting districts, and go up to
+the wastes of Oudh, or the purely native districts of the
+North-west, where there are no Europeans but the officials in the
+<i>station</i>. He will find fewer and worse roads, fewer wells,
+worse constructed houses, much ruder cultivation, less activity and
+industry; more dirt, disease, and desolation; less intelligence;
+more intolerance; and a peasantry morally, mentally, physically,
+and in every way inferior to those who are brought into daily
+contact with the Anglo-Saxon planters and gentlemen, and have
+imbibed somewhat of their activity and spirit of progress. And yet
+these are the men whom successive Lieutenant-Governors, and
+Governments generally, have done their best to thwart and obstruct.
+They have been misrepresented, held up to obloquy, and foully
+slandered; they have been described as utterly base, fattening on
+the spoils of a cowed and terror-ridden peasantry. Utterly
+unscrupulous, fearing neither God nor man, hesitating at no crime,
+deterred by no consideration from oppressing their tenantry, and
+compassing their interested ends by the vilest frauds.</p>
+<p>Such was the picture drawn of the indigo planter not so many
+years ago. There may have been much in the past over which we would
+willingly draw the veil, but at the present moment I firmly believe
+that the planters of Behar&mdash;and I speak as an observant
+student of what has been going on in India&mdash;have done more to
+elevate the peasantry, to rouse them into vitality, and to improve
+them in every way, than all the other agencies that have been at
+work with the same end in view.</p>
+<p>The Indian Government to all appearance must always work in
+extremes. It never seems to hit the happy medium. The
+Lieutenant-Governor for the time being impresses every department
+under him too strongly with his own individuality. The planters,
+who are an intelligent and independent body of men, have seemingly
+always been obnoxious to the ideas of a perfectly despotic and
+irresponsible ruler. In spite however of all difficulties and
+drawbacks, they have held their own. I know that the poor people
+and small cultivators look up to them with respect and affection.
+They find in them ready and sympathizing friends, able and willing
+to shield them from the exactions of their own more powerful and
+uncharitable fellow-countrymen. Half, nay nine-tenths, of the
+stories against planters, are got up by the money-lenders, the
+petty Zemindars, and wealthy villagers, who find the planter
+competing with them for land and labour, and raising the price of
+both. The poor people look to the factory as a never failing
+resource when all else fails, and but for the assistance it gives
+in money, or seed, or plough bullocks and implements of husbandry,
+many a struggling hardworking tenant would inevitably go to the
+wall, or become inextricably entangled in the meshes of the Bunneah
+and money-lender.</p>
+<p>I assert as a fact that the great majority of villagers in Behar
+would rather go to the factory, and have their sahib adjudicate on
+their dispute, than take it into Court. The officials in the indigo
+districts know this, and as a rule are very friendly with the
+planters. But not long since, an official was afraid to dine at a
+planter's house, fearing he might be accused of planter
+proclivities. In no other country in the world would the same
+jealousy of men who open out and enrich a country, and who are
+loyal, intelligent, and educated citizens, be displayed; but there
+are high quarters in which the old feeling of the East India
+Company, that all who were not in the service must be adventurers
+and interlopers, seems not wholly to have died out.</p>
+<p>That there have been abuses no one denies; but for years past
+the majority of the planters in Tirhoot, Chupra, and Chumparun, and
+in the indigo districts generally, not merely the managers, but the
+proprietors and agents have been laudably and loyally stirring, in
+spite of failures, reduced prices, and frequent bad seasons, to
+elevate the standard of their peasantry, and establish the indigo
+system on a fair and equitable basis. During the years when I was
+an assistant and manager on indigo estates, the rates for payment
+of indigo to cultivators nearly doubled, although prices for the
+manufactured article remained stationary. In well managed
+factories, the forcible seizure of carts and ploughs, and the
+enforcement of labour, which is an old charge against planters, was
+unknown; and the payment of tribute, common under the old feudal
+system, and styled <i>furmaish</i>, had been allowed to fall into
+desuetude. The NATIVE Zemindars or landholders however, still
+jealously maintain their rights, and harsh exactions were often
+made by them on the cultivators on the occasions of domestic
+events, such as births, marriages, deaths, and such like, in the
+families of the landowners. For years these exactions or feudal
+payments by the ryot to the Zemindar have been commuted by the
+factories into a lump sum in cash, when villages have been taken in
+farm, and this sum has been paid to the Zemindar as an enhanced
+rent. In the majority of cases it has not been levied from the
+cultivators, but the whole expense has been borne by the factory.
+In individual instances resort may have been had to unworthy tricks
+to harass the ryots, the factory middle-men having often been
+oppressors and tyrants; but as a body, the indigo planters of the
+present day have sternly set their faces to put down these
+oppressions, and have honestly striven to mete out even-handed
+justice to their tenants and dependants. With the spread of
+education and intelligence, the development of agricultural
+knowledge and practical science, and the vastly improved
+communication by roads, bridges, and ferries, in bringing about all
+of which the planting community themselves have been largely
+instrumental, there can be little doubt that these old fashioned
+charges against the planters as a body will cease, and public
+opinion will be brought to bear on any one who may promote his own
+interests by cruelty or rapacity, instead of doing his business on
+an equitable commercial basis, giving every man his due, relying on
+skill, energy, industry, and integrity, to promote the best
+interests of his factory; gaining the esteem and affection of his
+people by liberality, kindness, and strict justice.</p>
+<p>It can never be expected that a ryot can grow indigo at a loss
+to himself, or at a lower rate of profit than that which the
+cultivation of his other ordinary crops would give him, without at
+least some compensating advantages. With all his poverty and
+supposed stupidity, he is keenly alive to his own interests, quite
+able to hold his own in matters affecting his pocket. I have no
+hesitation in saying that the steady efforts which have been made
+by all the best planters to treat the ryot fairly, to give him
+justice, to encourage him with liberal aid and sympathy, and to put
+their mutual relations on a fair business footing, are now bearing
+fruit, and will result in the cultivation and manufacture of indigo
+in Upper Bengal becoming, as it deserves to become, one of the most
+firmly established, fairly conducted, and justly administered
+industries in India. That it may be so is, as I know, the earnest
+wish, as it has long been the dearest object, of my best friends
+among the planters of Behar.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXVIII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVIII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>The tiger.&mdash;His habitat.&mdash;Shooting
+on foot.&mdash;Modes of shooting.&mdash;A tiger hunt on
+foot.&mdash;The scene of the hunt.-The beat.&mdash;Incidents of the
+hunt.&mdash;Fireworks.&mdash;The tiger charges.&mdash;The elephant
+bolts.&mdash;The tigress will not break.&mdash;We kill a half-grown
+cub.&mdash;Try again for the
+tigress.&mdash;Unsuccessful.&mdash;Exaggerations in tiger
+stories.&mdash;My authorities.&mdash;The brothers S.&mdash;Ferocity
+and structure of the tiger. &mdash;His devastations.&mdash;His
+frame-work, teeth, &amp;c.&mdash;A tiger at bay. &mdash;His
+unsociable habits.&mdash;Fight between tiger and
+tigress.&mdash;Young tigers.&mdash;Power and strength of the
+tiger.&mdash;Examples.&mdash;His cowardice. &mdash;Charge of a
+wounded tiger.&mdash;Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+&mdash;A spined tiger.&mdash;Boldness of young
+tigers.&mdash;Cruelty.&mdash;Cunning.&mdash;Night scenes in the
+jungle.&mdash;Tiger killed by a wild boar.&mdash;His cautious
+habits.&mdash;General remarks.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>In the foregoing chapters I have tried to perform my promise, to
+give a general idea of our daily life in India; our toils and
+trials, our sports, our pastimes, and our general pursuits. No
+record of Indian sport, however, would be complete without some
+allusion to the kingly tiger, and no one can live long near the
+Nepaul frontier, without at some time or other having an encounter
+with the royal robber&mdash;the striped and whiskered monarch of
+the jungle.</p>
+<p>He is always to be found in the Terai forests, and although very
+occasionally indeed met with in Tirhoot, where the population is
+very dense, and waste lands infrequent, he is yet often to be
+encountered in the solitudes of Oudh or Goruchpore, has been shot
+at and killed near Bettiah, and at our pig-sticking ground near
+Kuderent. In North Bhaugulpore and Purneah he may be said to be
+ALWAYS at home, as he can be met there, if you search for him, at
+all seasons of the year.</p>
+<p>In some parts of India, notably in the Deccan, and in some
+districts on the Bombay side, and even in the Soonderbunds near
+Calcutta, sportsmen and shekarries go after the tiger on foot. I
+must confess that this seems to me a mad thing to do. With every
+advantage of weapon, with the most daring courage, and the most
+imperturbable coolness, I think a man no fair match for a tiger in
+his native jungles. There are men now living who have shot numbers
+of tigers on foot, but the numerous fatal accidents recorded every
+year, plainly shew the danger of such a mode of shooting.</p>
+<p>In Central India, in the North-west, indeed in most districts
+where elephants are not easily procurable, it is customary to erect
+<i>mychans</i> or bamboo platforms on trees. A line of beaters,
+with tom-toms, drums, fireworks, and other means for creating a
+din, are then sent into the jungle, to beat the tigers up to the
+platform on which you sit and wait. This is often a successful mode
+if you secure an advantageous place, but accidents to the beaters
+are very common, and it is at best a weary and vexatious mode of
+shooting, as after all your trouble the tiger may not come near
+your <i>mychan</i>, or give you the slightest glimpse of his
+beautiful skin.</p>
+<p>I have only been out after tiger on foot on one occasion. It was
+in the sal jungles in Oudh. A neighbour of mine, a most intimate
+and dear friend, whom I had nicknamed the 'General,' and a young
+friend, Fullerton, were with me. A tigress and cub were reported to
+be in a dense patch of <i>nurkool</i> jungle, on the banks of the
+creek which divided the General's cultivation from mine. The
+nurkool is a tall feathery-looking cane, very much relished by
+elephants. It grows in dense brakes, and generally in damp boggy
+ground, affording complete shade and shelter for wild animals, and
+is a favourite haunt of pig, wolf, tiger, and buffalo.</p>
+<p>We had only one elephant, the use of which Fullerton had got
+from a neighbouring Baboo. It was not a staunch animal, so we put
+one of our men in the howdah, with a plentiful supply of bombs, a
+kind of native firework, enclosed in a clay case, which burns like
+a huge squib, and sets fire to the jungle. Along with the elephant
+we had a line of about one hundred coolies, and several men with
+drums and tom-toms. Fullerton took the side nearest the river, as
+it was possible the brute might sneak out that way, and make her
+escape along the bank. The General's shekarry remained behind, in
+rear of the line of beaters, in case the tigress might break the
+line, and try to escape by the rear. My <i>Gomasta</i>, the
+General, and myself, then took up positions behind trees all along
+the side of the glade or dell in which was the bit of nurkool
+jungle.</p>
+<p>It was a small basin, sloping gently down to the creek from the
+sal jungle, which grew up dark and thick all around. A margin of
+close sward, as green and level as a billiard-table, encircled the
+glade, and in the basin the thick nurkool grew up close, dense, and
+high, like a rustling barrier of living green. In the centre was
+the decaying stump of a mighty forest monarch, with its withered
+arms stretching out their bleached and shattered lengths far over
+the waving feathery tops of the nurkool below.</p>
+<p>The General and I cut down, some branches, which we stuck in the
+ground before us. I had a fallen log in front of me, on which I
+rested my guns. I had a naked <i>kookree</i> ready to hand, for we
+were sure that the tigress was in the swamp, and I did not know
+what might happen. I did not half like this style of shooting, and
+wished I was safely seated on the back of 'JORROCKS,' my faithful
+old Bhaugulpore elephant. The General whistled as a sign for the
+beat to begin. The coolies dashed into the thicket. The stately
+elephant slowly forced his ponderous body through the crashing
+swaying brake. The rattle of the tom-toms and rumble of the drums,
+mingled with the hoarse shouts and cries of the beaters, the fiery
+rush of sputtering flame, and the loud report as each bomb burst,
+with the huge volumes of blinding smoke, and the scent of gunpowder
+that came on the breeze, told us that the bombs were doing their
+work. The jungle was too green to burn; but the fireworks raised a
+dense sulphurous smoke, which penetrated among the tall stems of
+the nurkool, and by the waving and crashing of the tall swaying
+canes, the heaving of the howdah, with the red puggree of the peon,
+and the gleaming of the staves and weapons, we could see that the
+beat was advancing.</p>
+<p>As they neared the large withered tree in the centre of the
+brake, the elephant curled up his trunk and trumpeted. This was a
+sure sign there was game afoot. We could see the peon in the howdah
+leaning over the front bar, and eagerly peering into the recesses
+of the thicket before him. He lit one of the bombs, and hurled it
+right up against the hole of the tree. It hissed and sputtered, and
+the smoke came curling over the reeds in dense volumes. A roar
+followed that made the valley ring again. We heard a swift rush.
+The elephant turned tail, and fled madly away, crashing through the
+matted brake that crackled and tore under his tread. The howdah
+swayed wildly, and the peon clung tenaciously on to the top bar
+with all his desperate might. The <i>mahout</i>, or
+elephant-driver, tried in vain to check the rush of the frightened
+brute, but after repeated sounding whacks on the head he got her to
+stop, and again turn round. Meantime the cries and shouting had
+ceased, and the beaters came pouring from the jungle by twos and
+threes, like the frightened inhabitants of some hive or ant-heap.
+Some in their hurry came tumbling out headlong, others with their
+faces turned backwards to see if anything was in pursuit of them,
+got entangled in the reeds, and fell prone on their hands and
+knees. One fellow had just emerged from the thick cover, when
+another terrified compatriot dashed out in blind unreasoning fear
+close behind him. The first one thought the tiger was on him. With
+one howl of anguish and dismay he fled as fast as he could run, and
+the General and I, who had witnessed the episode, could not help
+uniting in a resounding peal of laughter, that did more to bring
+the scared coolies to their senses than anything else we could have
+done.</p>
+<p>There was no doubt now of the tiger's whereabouts. One of the
+beaters gave us a most graphic description of its appearance and
+proportions. According to him it was bigger than an elephant, had a
+mouth as wide as a coal scuttle, and eyes that glared like a
+thousand suns. From all this we inferred that there was a full
+grown tiger or tigress in the jungle. We re-formed the line of
+beaters, and once more got the elephant to enter the patch. The
+same story was repeated. No sooner did they get near the old tree,
+than the tigress again charged with a roar, and our valiant coolies
+and the chicken-hearted elephant vacated the jungle as fast as
+their legs could carry them. This happened twice or thrice. The
+tigress charged every time, but would not leave her safe cover. The
+elephant wheeled round at every charge, and would not shew fight.
+Fullerton got into the howdah, and fired two shots into the spot
+where the tigress was lying. He did not apparently wound her, but
+the reports brought her to the charge once more, and the elephant,
+by this time fairly tired of the game, and thoroughly demoralised
+with fear, bolted right away, and nearly cracked poor Fullerton's
+head against the branch of a tree.</p>
+<p>We could plainly see, that with only one elephant we could never
+dislodge the tigress, so making the coolies beat up the patch in
+lines, we shot several pig and a hog-deer, and adjourned for
+something to eat by the bank of the creek. We had been trying to
+oust the tigress for over four hours, but she was as wise as she
+was savage, and refused to become a mark for our bullets in the
+open. After lunch we made another grand attempt. We promised the
+coolies double pay if they roused the tigress to flight. The
+elephant was forced again into the nurkool very much against his
+will, and the mahout was promised a reward if we got the tigress.
+The din this time was prodigious, and strange to say they got quite
+close up to the big withered tree without the usual roar and
+charge. This seemed somewhat to stimulate the beaters and the old
+elephant. The coolies redoubled their cries, smote among the reeds
+with their heavy staves, and shouted encouragement to each other.
+Right in the middle of the line, as it seemed to us from the
+outside, there was then a fierce roar and a mighty commotion. Cries
+of fear and consternation arose, and forth poured the coolies
+again, helter skelter, like so many rabbits from a warren when the
+weasel or ferret has entered the burrow. Right before me a huge old
+boar and a couple of sows came plunging forth. I let them get on a
+little distance from the brake, and then with my 'Express' I rolled
+over the tusker and one of his companions, and just then the
+General shouted out to me, 'There's the tiger!'</p>
+<p>I looked in the direction of his levelled gun, and there at the
+edge of the jungle was a handsome half-grown tiger cub, beautifully
+marked, his tail switching angrily from side to side, and his
+twitching retracted lips and bristling moustache drawn back like
+those of a vicious cat, showing his gleaming polished fangs and
+teeth.</p>
+<p>The General had a fine chance, took a steady aim, and shot the
+young savage right through the heart. The handsome young tiger gave
+one convulsive leap into the air and fell on his side stone dead.
+We could not help a cheer, and shouted for Fullerton, who soon came
+running up. We got some coolies together, but they were frightened
+to go near the dead animal, as we could plainly hear the old vixen
+inside snarling and snapping, for all the world like an angry
+terrier. We heard her half-suppressed growl and snarl. She was
+evidently in a fine temper. How we wished for a couple of staunch
+elephants to hunt her out of the cane. It was no use, however, the
+elephant would not go near the jungle again. The coolies were
+thoroughly scared, and had got plenty of pork and venison to eat,
+so did not care for anything else. We collected a lot of tame
+buffaloes, and tried to drive them through the jungle, but the
+coolies had lost heart, and would not exert themselves; so we had
+to content ourselves with the cub, who measured six feet three
+inches (a very handsome skin it was), and very reluctantly had to
+leave the savage mother alone. I never saw a brute charge so
+persistently as she did. She always rushed forward with a
+succession of roars, and was very wary and cunning. She never
+charged home, she did not even touch the elephant or any of the
+coolies, but evidently trusted to frighten her assailants away by a
+bold show and a fierce outcry.</p>
+<p>We went back two days after with five elephants, which with
+great difficulty we had got together<a href=
+"#footnoteE1"><sup>1</sup></a>, and thoroughly beat the patch of
+nurkool, killed a lot of pig and a couple of deer, shot an
+alligator, and destroyed over thirty of its eggs, which we
+discovered on the bank of the creek; and returning in the evening
+shot a nilghau and a black buck, but the tigress had disappeared.
+She was gone, and we grumbled sorely at our bad luck. That was the
+only occasion I was ever after tiger on foot. It was doubtless
+intensely exciting work, and both tigress and cub must have passed
+close to us several times, hidden by the jungle. We were only about
+thirty paces from the edge of the brake, and both animals must have
+seen us, although the dense cover hid them from our sight. I
+certainly prefer shooting from the howdah.</p>
+<p>Although it is beyond the scope of this book to enter into a
+detailed account of the tiger, discussing his structure, habits,
+and characteristics, it may aid the reader if I give a sketchy
+general outline of some of the more prominent points of interest
+connected with the monarch of the jungle, the cruel, cunning,
+ferocious king of the cat tribe, the beautiful but dreaded
+tiger.</p>
+<p>I should prefer to shew his character by incidents with which I
+have myself been connected, but as many statements have been made
+about tigers that are utterly absurd and untrue, and as tiger
+stories generally contain a good deal of exaggeration, and a
+natural scepticism unconsciously haunts the reader when tigers and
+tiger shooting are the topics, it may be as well to state once for
+all, that I shall put down nothing that cannot be abundantly
+substantiated by reference to my own sporting journals, on those of
+the brothers S., friends and fellow-sportsmen of my own. To G.S. I
+am under great obligations for many interesting notes he has given
+me about tiger shooting. Joe, his brother, was long our captain in
+our annual shooting parties. Their father and <i>his</i> brother,
+the latter still alive and a keen shot, were noted sportsmen at a
+time when game was more plentiful, shooting more generally
+practised, and when to be a good shot meant more than average
+excellence. The two brothers between them have shot, I daresay,
+more than four hundred and fifty male and female tigers, and
+serried rows of skulls ranged round the billiard-rooms in their
+respective factories, bear witness to their love of sport and the
+deadly accuracy of their aim. Under their auspices I began my tiger
+shooting, and as they knew every inch of the jungles, had for years
+been observant students of nature, were acquainted with all the
+haunts and habits of every wild creature, I acquired a fund of
+information about the tiger which I knew could be depended on. It
+was the result of actual observation and experience, and in most
+instances it was corroborated by my own experience in my more
+limited sphere of action. Every incident I adduce, every deduction
+I draw, every assertion I make regarding tigers and tiger shooting
+can be plentifully substantiated, and abundantly testified to, by
+my brother sportsmen of Purneah and Bhaugulpore. From their
+valuable information I have got most of the material for this part
+of my book.</p>
+<p>Of the order FERAE, the family <i>felidae</i>, there is perhaps
+no animal in the wide range of all zoology, so eminently fitted for
+destruction as the tiger. His whole structure and appearance,
+combining beauty and extreme agility with prodigious strength, his
+ferocity, and his cunning, mark him out as the very type of a beast
+of prey. He is the largest of the cat tribe, the most formidable
+race of quadrupeds on earth. He is the most bloodthirsty in habit,
+and the most dreaded by man. Whole tracts of fertile fields,
+reclaimed from the wild luxuriance of matted jungle, and waving
+with golden grain, have been deserted by the patient husbandmen,
+and allowed to relapse into tangled thicket and uncultured waste on
+account of the ravages of this formidable robber. Whole villages
+have been depopulated by tigers, the mouldering door-posts, and
+crumbling rafters, met with at intervals in the heart of the
+solitary jungle, alone marking the spot where a thriving hamlet
+once sent up the curling smoke from its humble hearths, until the
+scourge of the wilderness, the dreaded 'man-eater,' took up his
+station near it, and drove the inhabitants in terror from the spot.
+Whole herds of valuable cattle have been literally destroyed by the
+tiger. His habitat is in those jungles, and near those localities,
+which are most highly prized by the herdsmen of India for their
+pastures, and the numbers of cattle that yearly fall before his
+thirst for blood, and his greed for living prey, are almost
+incredible. I have scarcely known a day pass, during the hot
+months, on the banks of the Koosee, that news of a <i>kill</i> has
+not been sent in from some of the villages in my <i>ilaka</i>, and
+as a tiger eats once in every four or five days, and oftener if he
+can get the chance, the number of animals that fall a prey to his
+insatiable appetite, over the extent of Hindustan, must be
+enormous. The annual destruction of tame animals by tigers alone is
+almost incredible, and when we add to this the wild buffalo, the
+deer, the pig, and other untamed animals, to say nothing of smaller
+creatures, we can form some conception of the destruction caused by
+the tiger in the course of a year.</p>
+<p>His whole frame is put together to effect destruction. In
+cutting up a tiger you are impressed with this. His tendons are
+masses of nerve and muscle as hard as steel. The muscular
+development is tremendous. Vast bands and layers of muscle overlap
+each other. Strong ligaments, which you can scarcely cut through,
+and which soon blunt the sharpest knife, unite the solid,
+freely-playing, loosely-jointed bones. The muzzle is broad, and
+short, and obtuse. The claws are completely retractile. The jaws
+are short. There are two false molars, two grinders above, and the
+same number below. The upper carnivorous tooth has three lobes, and
+an obtuse heel; the lower has two lobes, pointed and sharp, and no
+heel. There is one very small tuberculous tooth above as an
+auxiliary, and then the strong back teeth. The muscles of the jaws
+are of tremendous power. I have come across the remains of a
+buffalo killed by a tiger, and found all the large bones, even the
+big strong bones of the pelvis and large joints, cracked and
+crunched like so many walnuts, by the powerful jaws of the fierce
+brute.</p>
+<p>The eye is peculiarly brilliant, and when glaring with fury it
+is truly demoniac. With his bristles rigid, the snarling lips drawn
+back, disclosing the formidable fangs, the body crouching for his
+spring, and the lithe tail puffed up and swollen, and lashing
+restlessly from side to side, each muscle tense and strung, and an
+undulating movement perceptible like the motions of a huge snake, a
+crouching tiger at bay is a sight that strikes a certain chill to
+the heart of the onlooker. When he bounds forward, with a roar that
+reverberates among the mazy labyrinths of the interminable jungle,
+he tests the steadiest nerve and almost daunts the bravest
+heart.</p>
+<p>In their habits they are very unsociable, and are only seen
+together during the amatory season. When that is over the male
+tiger betakes him again to his solitary predatory life, and the
+tigress becomes, if possible, fiercer than he is, and buries
+herself in the gloomiest recesses of the jungle. When the young are
+born, the male tiger has often been known to devour his offspring,
+and at this time they are very savage and quarrelsome. Old G., a
+planter in Purneah, once came across a pair engaged in deadly
+combat. They writhed and struggled on the ground, the male tiger
+striking tremendous blows on the chest and flanks of his consort,
+and tearing her skin in strips, while the tigress buried her fangs
+in his neck, tearing and worrying with all the ferocity of her
+nature. She was battling for her young. G. shot both the enraged
+combatants, and found that one of the cubs had been mangled,
+evidently by his unnatural father. Another, which he picked up in a
+neighbouring bush, was unharmed, but did not survive long. Pairs
+have often been shot in the same jungle, but seldom in close
+proximity, and it accords with all experience that they betray an
+aversion to each other's society, except at the one season. This
+propensity of the father to devour his offspring seems to be due to
+jealousy or to blind unreasoning hate. To save her offspring the
+female always conceals her young, and will often move far from the
+jungle which she usually frequents.</p>
+<p>When the cubs are able to kill for themselves, she seems to lose
+all pleasure in their society, and by the time they are well grown
+she usually has another batch to provide for. I have, however, shot
+a tigress with a full-grown cub&mdash;the hunt described in the
+last chapter is an instance&mdash;and on several occasions, my
+friend George has shot the mother with three or four full-grown
+cubs in attendance. This is however rare, and only happens I
+believe when the mother has remained entirely separate from the
+company of the male.</p>
+<p>The strength of the tiger is amazing. The fore paw is the most
+formidable weapon of attack. With one stroke delivered with full
+effect he can completely disable a large buffalo. On one occasion,
+on the Koosee <i>derahs</i>, that is, the plains bordering the
+river, an enraged tiger, passing through a herd of buffaloes, broke
+the backs of two of the herd, giving each a stroke right and left
+as he went along. One blow is generally sufficient to kill the
+largest bullock or buffalo. Our captain, Joe, had once received
+<i>khubber</i>, that is, news or information, of a kill by a tiger.
+He went straight to the <i>baithan</i>, the herd's head-quarters,
+and on making enquiries, was told that the tiger was a veritable
+monster.</p>
+<p>'Did you see it?' asked Joe.</p>
+<p>'I did not,' responded the <i>goala</i> or cowherd.</p>
+<p>'Then how do you know it was so large?'</p>
+<p>'Because,' said the man, 'it killed the biggest buffalo in my
+herd, and the poor brute only gave one groan.'</p>
+<p>George once tracked a tiger, following up the drag of a bullock
+that he had carried off. At one place the brute came to a ditch,
+which was measured and found to be five feet in width. Through this
+there was no drag, but the traces continued on the further side.
+The inference is, that the powerful thief had cleared the ditch,
+taking the bullock bodily with him at a bound. Others have been
+known to jump clear out of a cattle pen, over a fence some six feet
+high, taking on one occasion a large-sized calf, and another time a
+sheep.</p>
+<p>Another wounded tiger, with two bullets in his flanks, the wound
+being near the root of the tail, cleared a <i>nullah</i>, or dry
+watercourse, at one bound. The nullah was stepped by George, and
+found to be twenty-three paces wide. It is fortunate, with such
+tremendous powers for attack, that the tiger will try as a rule to
+slink out of the way if he can. He almost always avoids an
+encounter with man. His first instinct is flight. Only the exciting
+incidents of the chase are as a rule put upon record. A narrative
+of tiger shooting therefore is apt in this respect to be a little
+misleading. The victims who meet their death tamely and quietly
+(and they form the majority in every hunt),&mdash;those that are
+shot as they are tamely trying to escape&mdash;are simply
+enumerated, but the charging tiger, the old vixen that breaks the
+line, and scatters the beaters to right and left, that rouses the
+blood of the sportsmen to a fierce excitement, these are made the
+most of. Every incident is detailed and dwelt upon, and thus the
+idea has gained ground, that ALL tigers are courageous, and wait
+not for attack, but in most instances take the initiative. It is
+not the case. Most of the tigers I have seen killed would have
+escaped if they could. It is only when brought to bay, or very hard
+pressed, or in defence of its young, that a tiger or tigress
+displays its native ferocity. At such a moment indeed, nothing
+gives a better idea of savage determined fury and fiendish rage.
+With ears thrown back, brows contracted, mouth open, and glaring
+yellow eyes scintillating with fury, the cruel claws plucking at
+the earth, the ridgy hairs on the back stiff and erect as bristles,
+and the lithe lissome body quivering in every muscle and fibre with
+wrath and hate, the beast comes down to the charge with a defiant
+roar, which makes the pulse bound and the breath come short and
+quick. It requires all a man's nerve and coolness, to enable him to
+make steady shooting.</p>
+<p>Roused to fury by a wound, I have seen tigers wheel round with
+amazing swiftness, and dash headlong, roaring dreadfully as they
+charged, full upon the nearest elephant, scattering the line and
+lacerating the poor creature on whose flanks or head they may have
+fastened, their whole aspect betokening pitiless ferocity and
+fiendish rage.</p>
+<p>Even in death they do not forget their savage instincts. I knew
+of one case in which a seemingly dead tiger inflicted a fearful
+wound upon an elephant that had trodden on what appeared to be his
+inanimate carcase. Another elephant, that attacked and all but
+trampled a tiger to death, was severely bitten under one of the
+toe-nails. The wound mortified, and the unfortunate beast died in
+about a week after its infliction. Another monster, severely
+wounded, fell into a pool of water, and seized hold with its jaws
+of a hard knot of wood that was floating about. In its death agony,
+it made its powerful teeth meet in the hard wood, and not until it
+was being cut up, and we had divided the muscles of the jaws, could
+we extricate the wood from that formidable clench. In rage and
+fury, and mad with pain, the wounded tiger will often turn round
+and savagely bite the wound that causes its agony, and they very
+often bite their paws and shoulders, and tear the grass and earth
+around them.</p>
+<p>A tiger wounded in the spine, however, is the most exciting
+spectacle. Paralysed in the limbs, he wheels round, roaring and
+biting at everything within his reach. In 1874 I shot one in the
+spine, and watched his furious movements for some time before I put
+him out of his misery. I threw him a pad from one of the elephants,
+and the way he tore and gnawed it gave me some faint idea of his
+fury and ferocity. He looked the very personification of impotent
+viciousness; the incarnation of devilish rage.</p>
+<p>Urged by hunger the tiger fearlessly attacks his prey. The most
+courageous are young tigers about seven or eight feet long. They
+invariably give better sport than larger and older animals, being
+more ready to charge, and altogether bolder and more defiant. Up to
+the age of two years they have probably been with the mother, have
+never encountered a reverse or defeat, and having become bold by
+impunity, hesitate not to fly at any assailant whatever.</p>
+<p>Like all the cat tribe, they are very cruel in disposition,
+often most wantonly so. Having disabled his prey with the first
+onset, the tiger plays with it as a cat does with a mouse, and,
+unless very sharp set by hunger, he always indulges this love of
+torture. His attacks are by no means due only to the cravings of
+his appetite. He often slays the victims of a herd, in the
+wantonness of sport, merely to indulge his murderous propensities.
+Even when he has had a good meal he will often go on adding fresh
+victims, seemingly to gratify his sense of power, and his love of
+slaughter. In teaching her cubs to kill for themselves, the mother
+often displays great cruelty, frequently killing at a time five or
+six cows from one herd. The young savages are apt pupils, and 'try
+their prentice hand' on calves and weakly members of the herd,
+killing from the mere love of murder.</p>
+<p>Their cunning is as remarkable as their cruelty; what they lack
+in speed they make up in consummate subtlety. They take advantage
+of the direction of the wind, and of every irregularity of the
+ground. It is amazing what slight cover will suffice to conceal
+their lurking forms from the observation of the herd. During the
+day they generally retreat to some cool and shady spot, deep in the
+recesses of the jungle. Where the soft earth has been worn away
+with ragged hollows and deep shady water-courses, where the tallest
+and most impenetrable jungle conceals the winding and impervious
+paths, hidden in the gloom and obscurity of the densely-matted
+grass, the lordly tiger crouches, and blinks away the day. With the
+approach of night, however, his mood undergoes a change. He hears
+the tinkle of the bells, borne by some of the members of a
+retreating herd, that may have been feeding in close proximity to
+his haunt all day long, and from which he has determined to select
+a victim for his evening meal. He rouses himself and yawns,
+stretches himself like the great cruel cat he is, and then crawls
+and creeps silently along, by swampy watercourses, and through
+devious labyrinths known to himself alone. He hangs on the
+outskirts of the herd, prowling along and watching every motion of
+the returning cattle. He makes his selection, and with infinite
+cunning and patience contrives to separate it from the rest. He
+waits for a favourable moment, when, with a roar that sends the
+alarmed companions of the unfortunate victim scampering together to
+the front, he springs on his unhappy prey, deprives it of all power
+of resistance with one tremendous stroke, and bears it away to
+feast at his leisure on the warm and quivering carcase.</p>
+<p>He generally kills as the shades of evening are falling, and
+seldom ventures on a foraging expedition by day. After nightfall it
+is dangerous to be abroad in the jungles. It is then that dramas
+are acted of thrilling interest, and unimaginable sensation scenes
+take place. Some of the old shekarries and field-watchers
+frequently dig shallow pits, in which they take their stand. Their
+eye is on the level of the ground, and any object standing out in
+relief against the sky line can be readily detected. If they could
+relate their experiences, what absorbing narratives they could
+write. They see the tiger spring upon his terror-stricken prey, the
+mother and her hungry cubs prowling about for a victim, or two
+fierce tigers battling for the favours of some sleek, striped,
+remorseless, bloodthirsty forest-fiend. In pursuit of their quarry,
+they steal noiselessly along, and love to make their spring
+unawares. They generally select some weaker member of a herd, and
+are chary of attacking a strong big-boned, horned animal. They
+sometimes 'catch a Tartar,' and instances are known of a buffalo
+not only withstanding the attack of a tiger successfully, but
+actually gaining the victory over his more active assailant, whose
+life has paid the penalty of his rashness.</p>
+<p>Old G. told me, he had come across the bodies of a wild boar and
+an old tiger, lying dead together near Burgamma. The boar was
+fearfully mauled, but the clean-cut gaping gashes in the striped
+hide of the tiger, told how fearfully and gallantly he had battled
+for his life.</p>
+<p>In emerging from the jungle at night, they generally select the
+same path or spot, and approach the edge of the cover with great
+caution. They will follow the same track for days together. Hence
+in some places the tracks of the tigers are so numerous as to lead
+the tyro to imagine that dozens must have passed, when in truth the
+tracks all belong to one and the same brute. So acute is their
+perception, so narrowly do they scrutinize every minute object in
+their path, so suspicious is their nature, that anything new in
+their path, such as a pitfall, a screen of cut grass, a
+<i>mychan</i>, that is, a stage from which you might be intending
+to get a shot, nay, even the print of a footstep&mdash;a man's, a
+horse's, an elephant's&mdash;is often quite enough to turn them
+from a projected expedition, or at any rate to lead them to seek
+some new outlet from the jungle. In any case it increases their
+wariness, and under such circumstances it becomes almost impossible
+to get a shot at them from a pit or shooting-stage. Their vision,
+their sense of smell, of hearing, all their perceptions are so
+acute, that I think lying in wait for them is chiefly productive of
+weariness and vexation of spirit. It is certainly dangerous, and
+the chances of a successful shot are so problematical, while the
+<i>disagreeables</i>, and discomforts, and dangers are so real and
+tangible, that I am inclined to think this mode of attack 'hardly
+worth the candle.'</p>
+<p>With all his ferocity and cruelty, however, I am of opinion that
+the tiger is more cowardly than courageous. He will always try to
+escape a danger, and fly from attack, rather than attack in return
+or wait to meet it, and wherever he can, in pursuit of his prey, he
+will trust rather to his cunning than to his strength, and he
+always prefers an ambuscade to an open onslaught.</p>
+<hr align="left" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<p><a name="footnoteE1"><sup>1</sup></a> This was at the time the
+Prince of Wales was shooting in Nepaul, not very far from where I
+was then stationed. Most of the elephants in the district had been
+sent up to his Royal Highness's camp, or were on their way to take
+part in the ceremonies of the grand <i>Durbar</i> in Delhi.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXIX."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIX.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>The tiger's mode of attack.&mdash;The food
+he prefers.&mdash;Varieties of prey. &mdash;Examples.&mdash;What he
+eats first.&mdash;How to tell the kill of a tiger. &mdash;Appetite
+fierce.&mdash;Tiger choked by a bone.&mdash;Two varieties of
+tiger.&mdash;The royal Bengal.&mdash;Description.&mdash;The hill
+tiger.&mdash;His description.&mdash;The two compared.&mdash;Length
+of the tiger.&mdash;How to measure
+tigers.&mdash;Measurements.&mdash;Comparison between male and
+female. &mdash;Number of young at a birth.&mdash;The young
+cubs.&mdash;Mother teaching cubs to kill.&mdash;Education and
+progress of the young tiger.&mdash;Wariness and cunning of the
+tiger.&mdash;Hunting incidents shewing their powers of
+concealment.&mdash;Tigers taking to
+water.&mdash;Examples.&mdash;Swimming powers. &mdash;Caught by
+floods.&mdash;Story of the Soonderbund tigers.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The tiger's mode of attack is very characteristic of his whole
+nature. To see him stealthily crouching, or crawling silently and
+sneakingly after a herd of cattle, dodging behind every clump of
+bushes or tuft of grass, running swiftly along the high bank of a
+watercourse, and sneaking under the shadowing border of a belt of
+jungle, is to understand his cunning and craftiness. His attitude,
+when he is crouching for the final bound, is the embodiment of
+suppleness and strength. All his actions are graceful, and half
+display and half conceal beneath their symmetry and elegance the
+tremendous power and deadly ferocity that lurks beneath. For a
+short distance he is possessed of great speed, and with a few short
+agile bounds he generally manages to overtake his prey. If baffled
+in his first attack, he retires growling to lie in wait for a less
+fortunate victim. His onset being so fierce and sudden, the animal
+he selects for his prey is generally taken at a great disadvantage,
+and is seldom in a position to make any strenuous or availing
+resistance.</p>
+<p>Delivering the numbing blow with his mighty fore paw, he fastens
+on the throat of the animal he has felled, and invariably tries to
+tear open the jugular vein. This is his practice in nearly every
+case, and it shews a wonderful instinct for selecting the most
+deadly spot in the whole body of his luckless prey. When he has got
+hold of his victim by the throat, he lies down, holding on to the
+bleeding carcase, snarling and growling, and fastening and
+withdrawing his claws, much as a cat does with a rat or mouse. Some
+writers say he then proceeds to drink the blood, but this is just
+one of those broad general assertions which require proof. In some
+cases he may quench his thirst and gratify his appetite for blood
+by drinking it from the gushing veins of his quivering victim, but
+in many cases I know from observation, that the blood is not drunk.
+If the tiger is very hungry he then begins his feast, tearing huge
+fragments of flesh from the dead body, and not unusually swallowing
+them whole. If he is not particularly hungry, he drags the carcase
+away, and hides it in some well-known spot. This is to preserve it
+from the hungry talons and teeth of vultures and jackals. He
+commonly remains on guard near his <i>cache</i> until he has
+acquired an appetite. If he cannot conveniently carry away his
+quarry, because of its bulk, or the nature of the ground, or from
+being disturbed, he returns to the place at night and satisfies his
+appetite.</p>
+<p>Tigers can sneak crouchingly along as fast as they can trot, and
+it is wonderful how silently they can steal on their prey. They
+seem to have some stray provident fits, and on occasions make
+provision for future wants. There are instances on record of a
+tiger dragging a <i>kill</i> after him for miles, over water, and
+through slush and weeds, and feasting on the carcase days after he
+has killed it. It is a fact, now established beyond a doubt, that
+he will eat carrion and putrid flesh, but only from necessity and
+not from choice.</p>
+<p>On one occasion my friends put up a tigress during the rains,
+when there are few cattle in the <i>derahs</i> or plains near the
+river. She had killed a pig, and was eagerly devouring the carcase
+when she was disturbed. Snarling and growling, she made off with a
+leg of pork in her mouth, when a bullet ended her career. They seem
+to prefer pork and venison to almost any other kind of food, and no
+doubt pig and deer are their natural and usual prey. The influx,
+however, of vast herds of cattle, and the consequent presence of
+man, drive away the wild animals, and at all events make them more
+wary and more difficult to kill. Finding domestic cattle
+unsuspicious, and not very formidable foes, the tiger contents
+himself at a pinch with beef, and judging from his ravages he comes
+to like it. Getting bolder by impunity, he ventures in some straits
+to attack man. He finds him a very easy prey; he finds the flesh
+too, perhaps, not unlike his favourite pig. Henceforth he becomes a
+'man-eater,' the most dreaded scourge and pestilent plague of the
+district. He sometimes finds an old boar a tough customer, and
+never ventures to attack a buffalo unless it be grazing alone, and
+away from the rest of the herd. When buffaloes are attacked, they
+make common cause against their crafty and powerful foe, and
+uniting together in a crescent-shaped line, their horns all
+directed in a living <i>cheval-de-frise</i> against the tiger, they
+rush tumultuously at him, and fairly hunt him from the jungle. The
+pig, having a short thick neck, and being tremendously muscular, is
+hard to kill; but the poor inoffensive cow, with her long-neck, is
+generally killed at the first blow, or so disabled that it requires
+little further effort to complete the work of slaughter.</p>
+<p>Two friends of mine once shot an enormous old tiger on a small
+island in the middle of the river, during the height of the annual
+rains. The brute had lost nearly all its hair from mange, and was
+an emaciated sorry-looking object. From the remains on the
+island&mdash;the skin, scales, and bones&mdash;they found that he
+must have slain and eaten several alligators during his enforced
+imprisonment on the island. They will eat alligators when pressed
+by hunger, and they have been known to subsist on turtles,
+tortoises, iguanas, and even jackals. Only the other day in Assam,
+a son of Dr. B. was severely mauled by a tiger which sprang into
+the verandah after a dog. There were three gentlemen in the
+verandah, and, as you may imagine, they were taken not a little by
+surprise. They succeeded in bagging the tiger, but not until poor
+B. was very severely hurt.</p>
+<p>After tearing the throat open, they walk round the prostrate
+carcase of their prey, growling and spitting like 'tabby' cats.
+They begin their operations in earnest, invariably on the buttock.
+A leopard generally eats the inner portion of the thigh first. A
+wolf tears open the belly, and eats the intestines first. A
+vulture, hawk, or kite, begins on the eyes; but a tiger invariably
+begins on the buttocks, whether of buffalo, cow, deer, or pig. He
+then eats the fatty covering round the intestines, follows that up
+with the liver and udder, and works his way round systematically to
+the fore-quarters, leaving the head to the last. It is frequently
+the only part of an animal that they do not eat.</p>
+<p>A 'man-eater' eats the buttocks, shoulders, and breasts first.
+So many carcases are found in the jungle of animals that have died
+from disease or old age, or succumbed to hurts and accidents, that
+the whitened skeletons meet the eye in hundreds. But one can always
+tell the kill of a tiger, and distinguish between it and the other
+bleached heaps. The large bones of a tiger's kill are always
+broken. The broad massive rib bones are crunched in two as easily
+as a dog would snap the drumstick of a fowl. Vultures and jackals,
+the scavengers of the jungle, are incapable of doing this; and when
+you see the fractured large bones, you can always tell that the
+whiskered monarch has been on the war-path. George S. writes
+me:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'I have known a tiger devour a whole bullock to his own cheek in
+one day. Early in the morning a man came to inform me he had seen a
+tiger pull down a bullock. I went after the fellow late in the
+afternoon, and found him in a bush not more than twenty feet
+square, the only jungle he had to hide in for some distance round,
+and in this he had polished off the bullock, nothing remaining save
+the head. The jungle being so very small, and he having lain the
+whole day in it, nothing in the way of vultures or jackals could
+have assisted him in finishing off the bullock.'</p>
+<p>When hungry they appear to bolt large masses of flesh without
+masticating it. The same correspondent writes:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'We cut out regular "fids" once from a tiger's stomach, also
+large pieces of bone. Joe heard a tremendous roaring one night,
+which continued till near morning, not far from Nipunneah. He went
+out at dawn to look for the tiger, which he found was dead. The
+brute had tried to swallow the knee-joint of a bullock, and it had
+stuck in his gullet. This made him roar from pain, and eventually
+choked him.'</p>
+<p>As there are two distinct varieties of wild pig in India, so
+there seems to be little doubt that there are two distinct kinds of
+tigers. As these have frequently crossed we find many hybrids. I
+cannot do better than again quote from my obliging and observant
+friend George. The two kinds he designates as 'The Royal Bengal,'
+and 'The Hill Tiger,' and goes on to say:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'As a rule the stripes of a Royal Bengal are single and dark.
+The skull is widely different from that of his brother the Hill
+tiger, being low in the crown, wider in the jaws, rather flat in
+comparison, and the brain-pan longer with a sloping curve at the
+end, the crest of the brain-pan being a concave curve.</p>
+<p>'The Hill tiger is much more massively built; squat and thick
+set, heavier in weight and larger in bulk, with shorter tail, and
+very large and powerful neck, head, and shoulders. The stripes
+generally are double, and of a more brownish tinge, with fawn
+colour between the double stripes. The skull is high in the crown,
+and not quite so wide. The brain-pan is shorter, and the crest
+slightly convex or nearly straight, and the curve at the end of the
+skull rather abrupt.</p>
+<p>'They never grow so long as the "Bengal," yet look twice as
+big.</p>
+<p>'The crosses are very numerous, and vary according to pedigree,
+in stripes, skulls, form, weight, bulk, and tail. This I find most
+remarkable when I look at my collection of over 160 skulls.</p>
+<p>'The difference is better marked in tigers than in tigresses.
+The Bengal variety are not as a rule as ferocious as the Hill
+tiger. Being more supple and cunning, they can easier evade their
+pursuers by flight and manoeuvre than, their less agile brothers.
+The former, owing to deficiency of strength, oftener meet with
+discomfiture, and consequently are more wary and cunning; while the
+latter, prone to carry everything before them, trust more to their
+strength and courage, anticipating victory as certain.</p>
+<p>'In some the stripes are doubled throughout, in others only
+partially so, while in some they are single throughout, and some
+have manes to a slight extent.'</p>
+<p>I have no doubt this classification is correct. The tigers I
+have seen in Nepaul near the hills, were sometimes almost a dull
+red, and at a distance looked like a huge dun cow, while those I
+have seen in the plains during our annual hunts, were of a bright
+tawny yellow, longer, more lanky, and not shewing half such a bold
+front as their bulkier and bolder brethren of the hills.</p>
+<p>The length of the tiger has often given rise to fierce
+discussions among sportsmen. The fertile imagination of the slayer
+of a solitary 'stripes,' has frequently invested the brute he has
+himself shot, or seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been
+shot by a friend, or the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous
+length, inches swelling to feet, and dimensions growing at each
+repetition of the yarn, till, as in the case of boars, the
+twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch tusker, and the eight foot
+tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.</p>
+<p>Purists again, sticklers for stern truth, haters of bounce or
+exaggeration, have perhaps erred as much on the other side; and in
+their eagerness to give the exact measurement, and avoid the very
+appearance of exaggeration, they actually stretch their tape line
+and refuse to measure the curves of the body, taking it in straight
+lines. This I think is manifestly unfair.</p>
+<p>Our mode of measurement in Purneah was to take the tiger as he
+lay before he was put on the elephant, and measure from the tip of
+the nose, over the crest of the skull, along the undulations of the
+body, to the tip of the tail. That is, we followed the curvature of
+the spine along the dividing ridge of the back, and always were
+careful and fair in our attempts. I am of opinion that a tiger over
+ten feet long is an exceptionally long one, but when I read of
+sportsmen denying altogether that even that length can be attained,
+I can but pity the dogmatic scepticism that refuses credence to
+well ascertained and authenticated facts. I believe also that
+tigers are not got nearly so large as in former days. I believe
+that much longer and heavier tigers&mdash;animals larger in every
+way&mdash;were shot some twenty years ago than those we can get
+now, but I account for this by the fact that there is less land
+left waste and uncultivated. There are more roads, ferries, and
+bridges, more improved communications, and in consequence more
+travelling. Population and cultivation have increased; firearms are
+more numerous; sport is more generally followed; shooting is much
+more frequent and deadly; and, in a word, tigers have not the same
+chances as they had some twenty years ago of attaining a ripe old
+age, and reaching the extremest limit of their growth. The largest
+tigers being also the most suspicious and wary, are only found in
+the remotest recesses of the impenetrable jungles of Nepaul and the
+Terai, or in those parts of the Indian wilds where the crack of the
+European rifle is seldom or never heard.</p>
+<p>It has been so loudly asserted, and so boldly maintained that no
+tiger was ever shot reaching, when fairly measured (that is,
+measured with the skin on, as he lay), ten feet, that I will let
+Mr. George again speak for himself. Referring to the royal Bengal,
+he says:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'These grow to great lengths. They have been shot as long as
+twelve feet seven inches (my father shot one that length) or
+longer; twelve feet seven inches, twelve feet six inches, twelve
+feet three inches, twelve feet one inch, and twelve feet, have been
+shot and recorded in the old sporting magazines by gentlemen of
+undoubted veracity in Purneah.</p>
+<p>'I have seen the skin of one twelve feet one inch, compared with
+which the skin of one I have by me <i>that measured as he lay</i>
+(the italics are mine) eleven feet one inch, looks like the skin of
+a cub. The old skin looks more like that of a huge antediluvian
+species in comparison with the other.</p>
+<p>'The twelve footer was so heavy that my uncle (C.A.S.) tells me
+no number of mahouts could lift it. Several men, if they could have
+approached at one and the same time, might have been able to do so,
+but a sufficient number of men could not lay hold simultaneously to
+move the body from the ground.</p>
+<p>'Eventually a number of bamboos had to be cut, and placed in an
+incline from the ground to the elephant's saddle while the elephant
+knelt down, and up this incline the tiger had to be regularly
+hauled and shoved, and so fastened on the elephant.</p>
+<p>'He (the tiger) mauled four elephants, one of whom died the same
+day, and one other had a narrow <i>batch</i>, i.e. escape, of its
+life.</p>
+<p>In another communication to me, my friend goes over the same
+ground, but as the matter is one of interest to sportsmen and
+naturalists, I will give the extract entire. It proceeds as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Tigers grow to great lengths, some assert to even fourteen
+feet. I do not say they do not, but such cases are very rare, and
+require authentication. The longest I have seen, measured as he
+lay, eleven feet one inch (see "Oriental Sporting Magazine," for
+July, 1871, p. 308). He was seven feet nine inches from tip of nose
+to root of tail; root of tail one foot three inches in
+circumference; round chest four feet six inches; length of head one
+foot two inches; fore arm two feet two inches; round the head two
+feet ten inches; length of tail three feet four inches.</p>
+<p>'Besides this, I have shot another eleven feet, and one ten feet
+eleven inches.</p>
+<p>'The largest tigress I have shot was at Sahareah, which measured
+ten feet two inches. I shot another ten feet exactly.' (See O.S.M.,
+Aug., 1874, p. 358.)</p>
+<p>'I have got the head of a tiger, shot by Joe, which measured
+eleven feet five inches. It was shot at Baraila.</p>
+<p>'The male is much bigger built in every way&mdash;length,
+weight, size, &amp;c., than the female. The males are more savage,
+the females more cunning and agile. The arms, body, paws, head,
+skull, claws, teeth, &amp;c., of the female, are smaller. The tail
+of tigress longer; hind legs more lanky; the prints look smaller
+and more contracted, and the toes nearer together. It is said that
+though a large tiger may venture to attack a buffalo, the tigress
+refrains from doing so, but I have found this otherwise in my
+experience.</p>
+<p>'I have kept a regular log of all tigers shot by me. The average
+length of fifty-two tigers recorded in my journal is nine feet six
+and a half inches (cubs excluded), and of sixty-eight tigresses
+(cubs excluded), eight feet four inches.</p>
+<p>'The average of tigers and tigresses is eight feet ten and a
+quarter inches. This is excluding cubs I have taken alive.'</p>
+<p>As to measurements, he goes on to make a few remarks, and as I
+cannot improve on them I reproduce the original passage:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Several methods have been recommended for measuring tigers. I
+measure them on the ground, or when brought to camp before
+skinning, and run the tape tight along the line, beginning at the
+tip of the nose, along the middle of the skull, between the ears
+and neck, then along the spine to the end of the tail, taking any
+curves of the body.</p>
+<p>'No doubt measurements of skull, body, tail, legs, &amp;c.,
+ought all to be taken, to give an adequate idea of the tiger, and
+for comparing them with one another, but this is not always
+feasible.'</p>
+<p>Most of the leading sportsmen in India now-a-days are very
+particular in taking the dimensions of every limb of the dead
+tiger. They take his girth, length, and different proportions. Many
+even weigh the tiger when it gets into camp, and no doubt this test
+is one of the best that can be given for a comparison of the sizes
+of the different animals slain.</p>
+<p>Another much disputed point in the natural history of the
+animal, a point on which there has been much acrimonious
+discussion, is the number of young that are given at a birth. Some
+writers have asserted, and stoutly maintained, that two cubs, or at
+the most three, is the extreme number of young brought forth at one
+time.</p>
+<p>This may be the ordinary number, but the two gentlemen I have
+already alluded to have assured me, that on frequent occasions they
+have picked up four actually born, and have cut out five several
+times, and on one occasion six, from the womb of a tigress.</p>
+<p>I have myself picked up four male cubs, all in one spot, with
+their eyes just beginning to open, and none of their teeth through
+the gums. One had been trampled to death by buffaloes, the other
+three were alive and scatheless, huddled into a bush, like three
+immense kittens. I kept the three for a considerable time, and
+eventually took them to Calcutta and sold them for a very
+satisfactory price.</p>
+<p>It seems clear, however, that the tigress frequently has four
+and even five cubs. It is rare, indeed to find her accompanied by
+more than two well grown cubs, very seldom three; and the inference
+is, that one or two of the young tigers succumb in very early
+life.</p>
+<p>The young ones do not appear to grow very quickly; they are
+about a foot long when they are born; they are born blind, with
+very minute hair, almost none in fact, but with the stripes already
+perfectly marked on the soft supple skin; they open their eyes when
+they are eight or ten days old, at which time they measure about a
+foot and a half. At the age of nine months they have attained to
+five feet in length, and are waxing mischievous. Tiger cubs a year
+old average about five feet eight inches, tigresses some three
+inches or so less. In two years they grow respectively to&mdash;the
+male seven feet six inches, and the female seven feet. At about
+this time they leave the mother, if they have not already done so,
+and commence depredations on their own account. In fact, their
+education has been well attended to. The mother teaches them to
+kill when they are about a year old. A young cub that measured only
+six feet, and whose mother had been shot in one of the annual
+beats, was killed while attacking a full grown cow in the
+government pound at Dumdaha police station. When they reach the
+length of six feet six inches they can kill pretty easily, and
+numbers have been shot by George and other Purneah sportsmen close
+to their 'kills.'</p>
+<p>They are most daring and courageous when they have just left
+their mother's care, and are cast forth to fight the battle of life
+for themselves. While with the old tigress their lines have been
+cast in not unpleasant places, they have seldom known hunger, and
+have experienced no reverses. Accustomed to see every animal
+succumb to her well planned and audacious attacks, they fancy that
+nothing will withstand their onslaught. They have been known to
+attack a line of elephants, and to charge most determinedly, even
+in this adolescent stage.</p>
+<p>Bye-and-bye, however, as they receive a few rude shocks from
+buffaloes, or are worsted in a hand-to-hand encounter with some
+tough old bull, or savage old grey boar, more especially if they
+get an ugly rip or two from the sharp tusks of an infuriated
+fighting tusker, they begin to be less aggressive, they learn that
+discretion may be the better part of valour, and their cunning
+instincts are roused. In fact, their education is progressing, and
+in time they instinctively discover every wile and dodge and
+cunning stratagem, and display all the wondrous subtlety of their
+race in procuring their prey.</p>
+<p>Old tigers are invariably more wary, cautious, and suspicious
+than young ones, and till they are fairly put to it by hunger,
+hurt, or compulsion, they endeavour to keep their stripes
+concealed. When brought to bay, however, there is little to
+reproach them with on the score of cowardice, and it will be matter
+of rejoicing if you or your elephants do not come off second best
+in the encounter. Even in the last desperate case, a cunning old
+tiger will often make a feint, or sham rush, or pretended charge,
+when his whole object is flight. If he succeed in demoralising the
+line of elephants, roaring and dashing furiously about, he will
+then try in the confusion to double through, unless he is too badly
+wounded to be able to travel fast, in which case he will fight to
+the end.</p>
+<p>Old fellows are well acquainted with every maze and thicket in
+the jungles, and they no sooner hear the elephants enter the 'bush'
+or 'cover' than they make off for some distant shelter. If there is
+no apparent chance of this being successful, they try to steal out
+laterally and outflank the line, or if that also is impossible,
+they hide in some secret recess like a fox, or crouch low in some
+clumpy bush, and trust to you or your elephant passing by without
+noticing their presence.</p>
+<p>It is marvellous in what sparse cover they will manage to lie
+up. So admirably do their stripes mingle with the withered and
+charred grass-stems and dried up stalks, that it is very difficult
+to detect the dreaded robber when he is lying flat, extended, close
+to the ground, so still and motionless that you cannot distinguish
+a tremor or even a vibration of the grass in which he is
+crouching.</p>
+<p>On one occasion George followed an old tiger through some
+stubble about three feet high. It had been well trampled down too
+by tame buffaloes. The tiger had been tracked into the field, and
+was known to be in it. George was within ten yards of the cunning
+brute, and although mounted on a tall elephant, and eagerly
+scanning the thin cover with his sharpest glance, he could not
+discern the concealed monster. His elephant was within four paces
+of it, when it sprang up at the charge, giving a mighty roar, which
+however also served as its death yell, as a bullet from George's
+trusty gun crashed through its ribs and heart.</p>
+<p>Tigers can lay themselves so flat on the ground, and lie so
+perfectly motionless, that it is often a very easy thing to
+overlook them. On another occasion, when the Purneah Hunt were out,
+a tigress that had been shot got under some cover that was trampled
+down by a line of about twenty elephants. The sportsmen knew that
+she had been severely wounded, as they could tell by the gouts of
+blood, but there was no sign of the body. She had disappeared.
+After a long search, beating the same ground over and over again,
+an elephant trod on the dead body lying under the trampled canes,
+and the mahout got down and discovered her lying quite dead. She
+was a large animal and full grown.</p>
+<p>On another occasion George was after a fine male tiger. He was
+following up fast, but coming to a broad nullah, full of water, he
+suddenly lost sight of his game. He looked up and down the bank,
+and on the opposite bank, but could see no traces of the tiger.
+Looking down, he saw in the water what at first he took to be a
+large bull-frog. There was not a ripple on the placid stagnant
+surface of the pool. He marvelled much, and just then his mahout
+pointed to the supposed bull-frog, and in an excited whisper
+implored George to fire. A keener look convinced George that it
+really was the tiger. It was totally immersed all but the face, and
+lying so still that not the faintest motion or ripple was
+perceptible. He fired and inflicted a terrible wound. The tiger
+bounded madly forward, and George gave it its quietus through the
+spine as it tried to spring up the opposite bank.</p>
+<p>A nearly similar case occurred to old Mr. C., one of the veteran
+sportsmen of Purneah. A tiger had bolted towards a small tank or
+pond, and though the line followed up in hot pursuit, the brute
+disappeared. Old C., keener than the others, was loth to give up
+the pursuit, and presently discerned a yellowish reflection in the
+clear water. Peering more intently, he could discover the yellowish
+tawny outline of the cunning animal, totally immersed in the water,
+save its eyes, ears, and nose. He shot the tiger dead, and it sank
+to the bottom like a stone. So perfectly had it concealed itself,
+that the other sportsmen could not for the life of them imagine
+what old C. had fired at, till his mahout got down and began to
+haul the dead animal out of the water.</p>
+<p>Tigers are not at all afraid of water, and are fast and powerful
+swimmers. They swim much after the fashion of a horse, only the
+head out of the water, and they make scarcely any ripple.</p>
+<p>'In another case,' writes George, 'though not five yards from
+the elephant, and right under me, a tiger was swimming with so
+slight a ripple that I mistook it for a rat, until I saw the
+stripes emerge, when I perforated his jacket with a bullet.'</p>
+<p>Only their head remaining out of water when they are swimming,
+they are very hard to hit, as shooting at an object on water is
+very deceptive work as to judging distance, and a tiger's head is
+but a small object to aim at when some little way off.</p>
+<p>Old C. had another adventure with a cunning rogue, which all but
+ended disastrously. He was in hot pursuit of the tiger, and,
+finding no safety on land, it took to swimming in a broad
+unfordable piece of water, a sort of deep lagoon. Old C. procured a
+boat that was handy, and got a coolie to paddle him out after the
+tiger. He fired several shots at the exposed head of the brute, but
+missed. He thought he would wait till he got nearer and make a sure
+shot, as he had only one bullet left in the boat. Suddenly the
+tiger turned round, and made straight for the boat. Here was a
+quandary. Even if lie killed the tiger with his single bullet it
+might upset the boat; the lagoon was full of alligators, to say
+nothing of weeds, and there was no time to get his heavy boots off.
+He felt his life might depend on the accuracy of his aim. He fired,
+and killed the tiger stone dead within four or five yards of the
+boat.</p>
+<p>On one occasion, when out with our worthy district magistrate,
+Mr. S., I came on the tracks of what to all appearance, was a very
+large tiger. They led over the sand close to the water's edge, and
+were very distinct. I could see no returning marks, so I judged
+that the tiger must have taken to the water. The stream was rapid
+and deep, and midway to the further bank was a big, oblong-shaped,
+sandy islet, some five or six hundred yards long, and having a few
+scrubby bushes growing sparsely on it. We put our elephants into
+the rapid current, and got across. The river here was nearly a
+quarter of a mile wide on each side of the islet. As we emerged
+from the stream on to the island we found fresh tracks of the
+tiger. They led us completely round the circumference of the islet.
+The tiger had evidently been in quest of food. The prints were
+fresh and very well defined. Finding that all was barren on the
+sandy shore, he entered the current again, and following up we
+found his imprint once more on the further bank, several hundred
+yards down the stream.</p>
+<p>One tiger was killed stone dead by a single bullet during one of
+our annual hunts, and falling back into the water, it sank to the
+bottom like lead. Being unable to find the animal, we beat all
+round the place, till I suggested it might have been hit and fallen
+into the river. One of the men was ordered to dive down, and
+ascertain if the tiger was at the bottom. The river water is
+generally muddy, so that the bottom cannot be seen. Divesting
+himself of puggree, and girding up his loins, the diver sank gently
+to the bottom, but presently reappeared in a palpable funk, puffing
+and blowing, and declaring that the tiger was certainly at the
+bottom. The foolish fellow thought it might be still alive. We soon
+disabused his mind of that idea, and had the dead tiger hauled up
+to dry land.</p>
+<p>Surprised by floods, a tiger has been known to remain for days
+on an ant-hill, and even to take refuge on the branch of some large
+tree, but he takes to water readily, and can swim for over a mile,
+and he has been known to remain for days in from two to three feet
+depth of water.</p>
+<p>A time-honoured tiger story with old hands, used to tell how the
+Soonderbund tigers got carried out to sea. If the listener was a
+new arrival, or a <i>gobe mouche</i>, they would explain that the
+tigers in the Soonderbunds often get carried out to sea by the
+retiring tide. It would sweep them off as they were swimming from
+island to island in the vast delta of Father Ganges. Only the young
+ones, however, suffered this lamentable fate. The older and more
+wary fellows, taught perhaps by sad experience, used always to dip
+their tails in, before starting on a swim, so as to ascertain which
+way the tide was flowing. If it was the flow of the tide they would
+boldly venture in, but if it was ebb tide, and there was the
+slightest chance of their being carried out to sea, they would
+patiently lie down, meditate on the fleeting vanity of life, and
+like the hero of the song&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>'Wait for the turn of the tide.'</blockquote>
+<p>Without venturing an opinion on this story, I may confidently
+assert, that the tiger, unlike his humble prototype the domestic
+cat, is not really afraid of water, but will take to it readily to
+escape a threatened danger, or if he can achieve any object by
+'paddling his own canoe.'</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXX."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XX.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>No regular breeding season.&mdash;Beliefs
+and prejudices of the natives about tigers.&mdash;Bravery of the
+'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.&mdash;Clawmarks on
+trees.&mdash;Fondness for particular localities.&mdash;Tiger in Mr.
+F.'s howdah.&mdash;Springing powers of tigers.&mdash;Lying close in
+cover.&mdash;Incident. &mdash;Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.&mdash;Man
+clawed by a tiger.&mdash;Knocked its eye out with a
+sickle.&mdash;Same tiger subsequently shot in same
+place.&mdash;Tigers easily killed.&mdash;Instances.&mdash;Effect of
+shells on tiger and buffalo.&mdash;Best weapon and bullets for
+tiger.&mdash;Poisoning tigers denounced.&mdash;Natives prone to
+exaggerate in giving news of tiger.&mdash;Anecdote.&mdash;Beating
+for tiger.&mdash;Line of elephants.&mdash;Padding dead
+game.&mdash;Line of seventy-six elephants.&mdash;Captain of the
+hunt.&mdash;Flags for signals in the line. &mdash;'Naka,' or scout
+ahead.&mdash;Usual time for tiger shooting on the
+Koosee.&mdash;Firing the jungle.&mdash;The line of fire at
+night.&mdash;Foolish to shoot at moving jungle.&mdash;Never shoot
+down the line.&mdash;Motions of different animals in the
+grass.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Tigers seem to have no regular breeding season. As a rule the
+male and female come together in the autumn and winter, and the
+young ones are born in the spring and summer. All the young tigers
+I have ever heard of have been found in March, April, and May, and
+so on through the rains.</p>
+<p>The natives have many singular beliefs and prejudices about
+tigers, and they are very often averse to give the slightest
+information as to their whereabouts. To a stranger they will either
+give no information at all, pleading entire ignorance, or they will
+wilfully mislead him, putting him on a totally wrong track. If you
+are well known to the villagers, and if they have confidence in
+your nerve and aim, they will eagerly tell you everything they
+know, and will accompany you on your elephant, to point out the
+exact spot where the tiger was last seen. In the event of a 'find'
+they always look for <i>backsheesh</i>, even though your exertions
+may have rid their neighbourhood of an acknowledged scourge.</p>
+<p>The <i>gwalla</i>, or cowherd caste, seem to know the habits of
+the yellow striped robber very accurately. Accompanied by their
+herd they will venture into the thickest jungle, even though they
+know that it is infested by one or more tigers. If any member of
+the herd is attacked, it is quite common for the <i>gwalla</i> to
+rush up, and by shouts and even blows try to make the robber yield
+up his prey. This is no exaggeration, but a simple fact. A cowherd
+attacked by a tiger has been known to call up his herd by cries,
+and they have succeeded in driving off his fierce assailant. No
+tiger will willingly face a herd of buffaloes or cattle united for
+mutual defence. Surrounded by his trusty herd, the <i>gwalla</i>
+traverses the densest jungle and most tiger-infested thickets
+without fear.</p>
+<p>They believe that to rub the fat of the tiger on the loins, and
+to eat a piece of the tongue or flesh, will cure impotency; and
+tiger fat, rubbed on a painful part of the body, is an accepted
+specific for rheumatic affections. It is a firmly settled belief,
+that the whiskers and teeth, worn on the body, will act as a charm,
+making the wearer proof against the attacks of tigers. The
+collar-bone too, is eagerly coveted for the same reason.</p>
+<p>During the rains tigers are sometimes forced, like others of the
+cat tribe, to take to trees. A Mr. McI. shot two large full grown,
+tigers in a tree at Gunghara, and a Baboo of my acquaintance bagged
+no less than eight in trees during one rainy season at Rampoor.</p>
+<p>Tigers generally prefer remaining near water, and drink a great
+deal, the quantity of raw meat they devour being no doubt
+provocative of thirst.</p>
+<p>The marks of their claws are often seen on trees in the vicinity
+of their haunts, and from this fact many ridiculous stories have
+got abroad regarding their habits. It has even been regarded by
+some writers as a sort of rude test, by which to arrive at an
+approximate estimate of the tiger's size. A tiger can stretch
+himself out some two or two and a half feet more than his
+measurable length. You have doubtless often seen a domestic cat
+whetting its claws on the mat, or scratching some rough substance,
+such as the bark of a tree; this is often done to clean the claws,
+and to get rid of chipped and ragged pieces, and it is sometimes
+mere playfulness. It is the same with the tiger, the scratching on
+the trees is frequently done in the mere wantonness of sport, but
+it is often resorted to to clear the claws from pieces of flesh,
+that may have adhered to them during a meal on some poor
+slaughtered bullock. These marks on the trees are a valuable sign
+for the hunter, as by their appearance, whether fresh or old, he
+can often tell the whereabouts of his quarry, and a good tracker
+will even be able to make a rough guess at its probable size and
+disposition.</p>
+<p>Like policemen, tigers stick to certain beats; even when
+disturbed, and forced to abandon a favourite spot, they frequently
+return to it; and although the jungle may be wholly destroyed, old
+tigers retain a partiality for the scenes of their youthful
+depredations; they are often shot in the most unlikely places,
+where there is little or no cover, and one would certainly never
+expect to find them; they migrate with the herds, and retire to the
+hills during the annual floods, always coming back to the same
+jungle when the rains are over.</p>
+<p>Experienced shekarries know this trait of the tiger's character
+well, and can tell you minutely the colour and general appearance
+of the animals in any particular jungle; they are aware of any
+peculiarity, such as lameness, scars, &amp;c., and their
+observations must be very keen indeed, and amazingly accurate, as I
+have never known them wrong when they committed themselves to a
+positive statement.</p>
+<p>An old planter residing at Sultanpore, close on the Nepaul
+border, a noted sportsman and a crack shot, was charged on one
+occasion by a large tiger; the brute sprang right off the ground on
+to the elephant's head; his hind legs were completely off the
+ground, resting on the elephant's chest and neck; Mr. F. retained
+sufficient presence of mind to sit close down in his howdah; the
+tiger's forearm was extended completely over the front bar, and so
+close that it touched his hat. In this position he called out to
+his son who was on another elephant close by, to fire at the tiger;
+he was cool enough to warn him to take a careful aim, and not hit
+the elephant. His son acted gallantly up to his instructions, and
+shot the tiger through the heart, when it dropped down quite dead,
+to Mr. F.'s great relief.</p>
+<p>Some sportsmen are of opinion, that the tiger when charging
+never springs clear from the ground, but only rears itself on its
+hind legs; this however is a mistake. I saw a tiger leap right off
+the ground, and spring on to the rump of an elephant carrying young
+Sam S. The elephant proved staunch, and remained quite quiet, and
+Sam, turning round in his howdah, shot his assailant through the
+head.</p>
+<p>I may give another incident, to shew how closely tigers will
+sometimes stick to cover; they are sometimes as bad to dislodge as
+a quail or a hare; they will crouch down and conceal themselves
+till you almost trample on them. One day a party of the Purneah
+Club were out; they had shot two fine tigers out of several that
+had been seen; the others were known to have gone ahead into some
+jungle surrounded by water, and easy to beat. Before proceeding
+further it was proposed accordingly to have some refreshment. The
+<i>tiffin</i> elephant was directed to a tree close by, beneath
+whose shade the hungry sportsmen were to plant themselves; the
+elephant had knelt down, one or two boxes had actually been
+removed, several of the servants were clearing away the dried grass
+and leaves. H.W.S. came up on the opposite side of the tree, and
+was in the act of leaping off his elephant, when an enormous tiger
+got up at his very feet, and before the astounded sportsmen could
+handle a gun, the formidable intruder had cleared the bushes with a
+bound, and disappeared in the thick jungle.</p>
+<p>The following adventure bears me out in my remark, that tigers
+get attached to, and like to remain in, one place. Mr. F. Simpson,
+a thorough-going sportsman of the good old type, had been out one
+day in the Koosee derahs; he had had a long and unsuccessful beat
+for tiger, and had given up all hope of bagging one that day; he
+thought therefore that he might as well turn his attention to more
+ignoble game. Extracting his bullets, he replaced them with No. 4
+shot. In a few minutes a peacock got up in front of him, and he
+fired. The report roused a very fine tiger right in front of his
+elephant; to make the best of a bad bargain, he gave the retreating
+animal the full benefit of his remaining charge of shot, and
+peppered it well. About a year after, close to this very place,
+C.A.S. bagged a fine tiger. On examination, the marks of a charge
+of shot were found in the flanks, and on removing the pads of the
+feet, numbers of pellets of No. 4 shot were found embedded in them.
+It was evidently the animal that had been peppered a year before,
+and the pellets had worked their way downwards to the feet.</p>
+<p>On another occasion, a man came to the factory where George was
+then residing, to give information of a tiger. He bore on his back
+numerous bleeding scratches, ample evidence of the truth of his
+story. While cutting grass in the jungle, with a blanket on his
+back, the day being rainy, he had been attacked by a tiger from the
+rear. The blanket is generally folded several times, and worn over
+the head and back. It is a thick heavy covering, and in the first
+onset the tiger tore the blanket from the man's body, which was
+probably the means of saving his life. The man turned round,
+terribly scared, as may be imagined. In desperation he struck at
+the tiger with his sickle, and according to his own account, he
+succeeded in putting out one of its eyes. He said it was a young
+tiger, and his bleeding wounds, and the persistency with which he
+stuck to his story, impressed George with the belief that he was
+telling the truth. A search for the tiger was made. The man's
+blanket was found, torn to shreds, but no tiger, although the
+footprints of one were plainly visible. But some months after, near
+the same spot, George shot a half grown tiger with one of its eyes
+gone, which had evidently been roughly torn from the socket. This
+was doubtless the identical brute that had attacked the
+grass-cutter.</p>
+<p>It is sometimes wonderful how easily a large and powerful tiger
+may be killed. The most vulnerable parts are the back of the head,
+through the neck, and broadside on the chest. The neck is the most
+deadly spot of all, and a shot behind the shoulder, or on the
+spine, is sure to bring the game to bag. I have seen several shot
+with a single bullet from a smooth-bore, and on one occasion,
+George tells me he saw a tigress killed with a single smooth-bore
+bullet at over a hundred yards. The bullet was a <i>ricochet</i>,
+and struck the tigress below the chest, and travelled towards the
+heart, but without touching it. She fell twenty yards from where
+she had been hit. Another, which on skinning we found had been shot
+through the heart, with a single smooth-bore bullet at a distance
+of one hundred and fifty yards, travelled for thirty yards before
+falling dead. Meiselback, a neighbour of mine, shot three tigers
+successively, on one occasion, with a No. 18 Joe Manton
+smooth-bore. Each of the three was killed by a single bullet, one
+in the head, one in the neck, and one through the heart, the bullet
+entering behind the shoulder.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, I once fired no less than six Jacob's shells
+into a tiger, all behind the shoulder, before I could stop him. The
+shells seemed to explode on the surface the moment they came in
+contact with the body. There was a tremendous surface wound, big
+enough to put a pumpkin into, but very little internal hurt. On
+another occasion (April 4, 1874) during one of the most exciting
+and most glorious moments of my sporting life&mdash;buffaloes
+charging the line in all directions, burning jungle all around us,
+and bullets whistling on every side&mdash;I fired TWELVE shells
+into a large bull before I killed him. As every shell hit him, I
+heard the sharp detonation, and saw the tiny puff of smoke curl
+outward from the ghastly wound. The poor maddened brute would drop
+on his knees, stagger again to his feet, and, game to the last,
+attempt to charge my elephant. I was anxious really to test the
+effect of the Jacob's shell as against the solid conical bullet,
+and carefully watched the result of each shot. My weapon was a
+beautifully finished No. 12 smooth-bore, made expressly to order
+for an officer in the Royal Artillery, from whom I bought it. From
+that day I never fired another Jacob's shell.</p>
+<p>My remarks about the tiger springing clear off the ground when
+charging, are amply borne out by the experience of some of my
+sporting friends. I could quote pages, but will content myself with
+one extract. It is a point of some importance, as many good old
+sportsmen pooh-pooh the idea, and maintain that the tiger merely
+stretches himself out to his fullest length, and if he does leave
+the ground, it is by a purely physical effort, pulling himself up
+by his claws.</p>
+<p>My friend George writes me: 'In several cases I have known and
+seen the tiger spring, and leave the ground. In one case the tiger
+sprang from fully five yards off. He crouched at the distance of a
+few paces, as if about to spring, and then sprang clean on to the
+head of Joe's <i>tusker</i>. An eight feet nine inch tigress once
+got on to the head of my elephant, which was ten feet seven inches
+in height. Every one present saw her leave the ground. Once, when
+after a tiger in small stubble, about six feet high, I saw one
+bound over a bush so clean that I could see every bit of him.' And
+so on.</p>
+<p>For long range shooting the rifle is doubtless the best weapon.
+The Express is the most deadly. The smooth-bore is the gun for
+downright honest sport. Shells and hollow pointed bullets are the
+things, as one sportsman writes me, 'for mutilation and cowardly
+murder, and for spoiling the skin.' Poison is the resource of the
+poacher. No sportsman could descend so low. Grant that the tiger is
+a scourge, a pest, a nuisance, a cruel and implacable foe to man
+and beast; pile all the vilest epithets of your vocabulary on his
+head, and say that he deserves them all, still he is what
+opportunity and circumstance have made him. He is as nature
+fashioned him; and there are bold spirits, and keen sights, and
+steady nerves enough, God wot, among our Indian sportsmen, to cope
+with him on more equal and sportsmanlike terms than by poisoning
+him like a mangy dog. On this point, however, opinions differ. I do
+not envy the man who would prefer poisoning a tiger to the keen
+delight of patiently following him up, ousting him from cover to
+cover, watching his careful endeavours to elude your search;
+perhaps at the end of a long and fascinating beat, feeling the
+electric excitement thrill every nerve and fibre of your body, as
+the magnificent robber comes bounding down at the charge, the very
+embodiment of ferocity and strength, the perfection of symmetry,
+the acme of agility and grace.</p>
+<p>Natives are such notorious perverters of the truth, and so often
+hide what little there may be in their communications under such
+floods of Oriental hyperbole and exaggeration, that you are often
+disappointed in going out on what you consider trustworthy and
+certain information. They often remind me of the story of the Laird
+of Logan. He was riding slowly along a country road one day, when
+another equestrian joined him. Logan's eye fixed itself on a hole
+in the turf bank bounding the road, and with great gravity, and in
+trust-inspiring accents, he said, 'I saw a <i>tod</i> (or fox) gang
+in there.'</p>
+<p>'Did you, really;' cried the new comer.</p>
+<p>'I did,' responded the laird.</p>
+<p>'Will you hold my horse till I get a spade,' cried the now
+excited traveller.</p>
+<p>The laird assented. Away hurried the man, and soon returned with
+a spade. He set manfully to work to dig out the fox, and worked
+till the perspiration streamed down his face. The laird sat
+stolidly looking on, saying never a word; and as he seemed to be
+nearing the confines of the hole, the poor digger redoubled his
+exertions. When at length it became plain that there was no fox
+there, he wiped his streaming brow, and rather crossly exclaimed,
+'I'm afraid there's no tod here.'</p>
+<p>'It would be a wonder if there was,' rejoined the laird, without
+the movement of a muscle, 'it's ten years since I saw him gang in
+there.'</p>
+<p>So it is sometimes with a native. He will fire your ardour, by
+telling you of some enormous tiger, to be found in some jungle
+close by, but when you come to enquire minutely into his story, you
+find that the tiger was seen perhaps the year before last, or that
+it <i>used</i> to be there, or that somebody else had told him of
+its being there.</p>
+<p>Some tigers, too, are so cunning and wary, that they will make
+off long before the elephants have come near. I have seen others
+rise on their hind legs just like a hare or a kangaroo, and peer
+over the jungle trying to make out one's whereabouts. This is of
+course only in short light jungle.</p>
+<p>The plan we generally adopt in beating for tiger on or near the
+Nepaul border, is to use a line of elephants to beat the cover. It
+is a fine sight to watch the long line of stately monsters moving
+slowly and steadily forward. Several howdahs tower high above the
+line, the polished barrels of guns and rifles glittering in the
+fierce rays of the burning and vertical sun. Some of the shooters
+wear huge hats made from the light pith of the solah plant, others
+have long blue or white puggrees wound round their heads in truly
+Oriental style. These are very comfortable to wear, but rather
+trying to the sight, as they afford no protection to the eyes. For
+riding they are to my mind the most comfortable head-dress that can
+be worn, and they are certainly more graceful than the stiff
+unsightly solah hat.</p>
+<p>Between every two howdahs are four or five pad elephants. These
+beat up all the intervening bushes, and carry the game that may be
+shot. When a pig, deer, tiger, or other animal has been shot, and
+has received its <i>coup de grace</i>, it is quickly bundled on to
+the pad, and there secured. The elephant kneels down to receive the
+load, and while game is being padded the whole line waits, till the
+operation is complete, as it is bad policy to leave blanks. Where
+this simple precaution is neglected, many a tiger will sneak
+through the opening left by the pad elephant, and so silently and
+cautiously can they steal through the dense cover, and so cunning
+are they and acute, that they will take advantage of the slightest
+gap, and the keenest and best trained eye will fail to detect
+them.</p>
+<p>In most of our hunting parties on the Koosee, we had some twenty
+or thirty elephants, and frequently six or eight howdahs. These
+expeditions were very pleasant, and we lived luxuriously. For real
+sport ten elephants and two or three tried comrades&mdash;not
+more&mdash;is much better. With a short, easily-worked line, that
+can turn and double, and follow the tiger quickly, and dog his
+every movement, you can get far better sport, and bring more to
+bag, than with a long unwieldy line, that takes a considerable time
+to turn and wheel, and in whose onward march there is of necessity
+little of the silence and swiftness which are necessary elements in
+successful tiger shooting.</p>
+<p>I have been out with a line of seventy-six elephants and
+fourteen howdahs. This was on 16th March 1875. It was a magnificent
+sight to see the seventy-six huge brutes in the river together,
+splashing the water along their heated sides to cool themselves,
+and sending huge waves dashing against the crumbling banks of the
+rapid stream. It was no less magnificent to see their slow stately
+march through the swaying, crashing jungle. What an idea of
+irresistible power and ponderous strength the huge creatures gave
+us, as they heaved through the tangled brake, crushing everything
+in their resistless progress. It was a sight to be remembered, but
+as might have been expected, we found the jungles almost
+untenanted. Everything cleared out before us, long ere the line
+could reach its vicinity. We only killed one tiger, but next day we
+separated, the main body crossing the stream, while my friends and
+myself, with only fourteen elephants, rebeat the same jungle and
+bagged two.</p>
+<p>In every hunt, one member is told off to look after the forage
+and grain for the elephants. One attends to the cooking and
+requirements of the table, one acts as paymaster and keeper of
+accounts, while the most experienced is unanimously elected
+captain, and takes general direction of every movement of the line.
+He decides on the plan of operations for the day, gives each his
+place in the line, and for the time, becomes an irresponsible
+autocrat, whose word is law, and against whose decision there is no
+appeal.</p>
+<p>Scouts are sent out during the night, and bring in reports from
+all parts of the jungle in the early morning, while we are
+discussing <i>chota baziree</i>, our early morning meal. If tiger
+is reported, or a kill has been discovered, we form line in
+silence, and without noise bear down direct on the spot. In the
+captain's howdah are three flags. A blue flag flying means that
+only tiger or rhinoceros are to be shot at. A red flag signifies
+that we are to have general firing, in fact that we may blaze away
+at any game that may be afoot, and the white flag shews us that we
+are on our homeward way, and then also may shoot at anything we can
+get, break the line, or do whatever we choose. On the flanks are
+generally posted the best shots of the party. The captain, as a
+rule, keeps to the centre of the line. Frequently one man and
+elephant is sent on ahead to some opening or dry water-bed, to see
+that no cunning tiger sneaks away unseen. This vedette is called
+<i>naka</i>. All experienced sportsmen employ a naka, and not
+unfrequently where the ground is difficult, two are sent ahead. The
+naka is a most important post, and the holder will often get a
+lucky shot at some wary veteran trying to sneak off, and may
+perhaps bag the only tiger of the day. The mere knowledge that
+there is an elephant on ahead, will often keep tigers from trying
+to get away. They prefer to face the known danger of the line
+behind, to the unknown danger in front, and in all cases where
+there is a big party a naka should be sent on ahead.</p>
+<p>Tigers can be, and are, shot on the Koosee plains all the year
+round, but the big hunts take place in the months of March, April,
+and May, when the hot west winds are blowing, and when the jungle
+has got considerably trampled down by the herds of cattle grazing
+in the tangled wilderness of tall grass. Innumerable small paths
+shew where the cattle wander backward and forward through the
+labyrinths of the jungle. In the howdah we carry ample supplies of
+vesuvians. We light and drop these as they blaze into the dried
+grass and withered leaves as we move along, and soon a mighty wall
+of roaring flame behind us, attests the presence of the destroying
+element. We go diagonally up wind, and the flames and smoke thus
+surge and roar and curl and roll, in dense blinding volumes, to the
+rear and leeward of our line. The roaring of the flames sounds like
+the maddened surf of an angry sea, dashing in thunder against an
+iron-bound coast. The leaping flames mount up in fiery columns,
+illuminating the fleecy clouds of smoke with an unearthly glare.
+The noise is deafening; at times some of the elephants get quite
+nervous at the fierce roar of the flames behind, and try to bolt
+across country. The fire serves two good purposes. It burns up the
+old withered grass, making room for the fresh succulent sprouts to
+spring, and it keeps all the game in front of the line, driving the
+animals before us, as they are afraid to break back and face the
+roaring-wall of flame. A seething, surging sea of flame, several
+miles long, encircling the whole country in its fiery belt,
+sweeping along at night with the roar of a storm-tossed sea; the
+flames flickering, swelling, and leaping up in the dark night, the
+fiery particles rushing along amid clouds of lurid smoke, and the
+glare of the serpent-like line reddening the horizon, is one of
+those magnificent spectacles that can only be witnessed at rare
+intervals among the experiences of a sojourn in India. Words fail
+to depict its grandeur, and the utmost skill of Dor&eacute; could
+not render on canvas, the weird, unearthly magnificence of a jungle
+fire, at the culmination of its force and fury.</p>
+<p>In beating, the elephants are several yards apart, and, standing
+in the howdah, you can see the slightest motion of the grass before
+you, unless indeed it be virgin jungle, quite untrodden, and
+perhaps higher than your elephant; in such high dense cover, tigers
+will sometimes lie up and allow you to go clean past them. In such
+a case you must fire the jungle, and allow the blaze to beat for
+you. It is common for young, over eager sportsmen, to fire at
+moving jungle, trusting to a lucky chance for hitting the moving
+animal; this is useless waste of powder; they fail to realize the
+great length of the swaying grass, and invariably shoot over the
+game; the animal hears the crashing of the bullet through the dense
+thicket overhead, and immediately stops, and you lose all idea of
+his whereabouts. When you see an animal moving before you in long
+jungle, it should be your object to follow him slowly and
+patiently, till you can get a sight of him, and see what sort of
+beast he is. Firing at the moving grass is worse than useless. Keep
+as close behind him as you can, make signs for the other elephants
+to close in; stick to your quarry, never lose sight of him for an
+instant, be ready to seize the first moment, when more open jungle,
+or some other favourable chance, may give you a glimpse of his
+skin.</p>
+<p>Another caution should be observed. Never fire down the line. It
+is astonishing how little will divert a bullet, and a careless shot
+is worse than a dozen charging tigers. If a tiger does break back,
+let him get well away behind the line, and then blaze at him as
+hard as you like. It is particularly unpleasant to hear a bullet
+come singing and booming down the line from some excited dunderhead
+on the far left or right.</p>
+<p>A tiger slouching along in front moves pretty fast, in a silent
+swinging trot; the tops of the reeds or grass sway very gently,
+with a wavering, side to side motion. A pig rushes boldly through,
+and a deer will cause the grass to rock violently to and fro. A
+buffalo or rhinoceros is known at once by the crashing of the dry
+stalks, as his huge frame plunges along; but the tiger can never be
+mistaken. When that gentle, undulating, noiseless motion is once
+seen, be ready with your trusty gun, and remove not your eye from
+the spot, for the mighty robber of the jungle is before you.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXI.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Howdahs and howdah-ropes.&mdash;Mussulman
+custom.&mdash;Killing animals for food.&mdash;Mysterious appearance
+of natives when an animal is killed. &mdash;Fastening dead tigers
+to the pad.&mdash;Present mode wants improving. &mdash;Incident
+illustrative of this.&mdash;Dangerous to go close to wounded
+tigers.&mdash;Examples.&mdash;Footprints of tigers.&mdash;Call of
+the tiger.&mdash;Natives and their powers of description.&mdash;How
+to beat successfully for tiger. &mdash;Description of a
+beat.&mdash;Disputes among the shooters.&mdash;Awarding
+tigers.&mdash;Cutting open the tiger.&mdash;Native idea about the
+liver of the tiger.&mdash;Signs of a tiger's presence in the
+jungle.&mdash;Vultures.&mdash;Do they scent their quarry or view
+it?&mdash;A vulture carrion feast.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The best howdahs are light, single-seated ones, with strong,
+light frames of wood and cane-work, and a moveable seat with a
+leather strap, adjustable to any length, on which to lean back.
+They should have a strong iron rail all round the top, covered with
+leather, with convenient grooves to receive the barrels of the
+guns, as they rest in front, ready to either hand. In front there
+should be compartments for different kinds of cartridges; and
+pockets and lockers under the seat, and at the back, or wherever
+there is room. Outside should be a strong iron step, to get out and
+in by easily, and a strong iron ring, through which to pass the
+rope that binds the howdah to the elephant.</p>
+<p>You cannot be too careful with your howdah ropes. A chain is
+generally used as an auxiliary to the rope, which should be of
+cotton, strong and well twisted, and should be overhauled daily, to
+see that there is no chafing. It is passed round the foot-bars of
+the howdah, and several times round the belly of the elephant.</p>
+<p>Another rope acts as a crupper behind, being passed through
+rings in the terminal frame-work of the howdah, and under the
+elephant's tail; it frequently causes painful sores there, and some
+drivers give it a hitch round the tail, in the same way as you
+would hitch it round a post. Another steadying rope goes round the
+elephant's breast, like a chest-band. 'A merciful man is merciful
+to his beast.' You should always, therefore, have a sheet of soft
+well oiled leather to go between the chest and belly ropes and the
+elephant's hide; this prevents chafing, and is a great relief to
+the poor old <i>hathi</i>, as they call the elephant. <i>Hatnee</i>
+is the female elephant. <i>Duntar</i> is a fellow with large tusks,
+and <i>mukna</i> is an elephant with small downward growing
+tusks.</p>
+<p>Many of the old fashioned howdahs are far too heavy; a firm,
+strong howdah should not weigh more than 28 lbs. In most of the old
+fashioned ones, there is a seat for an attendant. If your attendant
+be a Mussulman, he hurries down as soon as you shoot a deer, to cut
+its throat. The Mohammedan religion enjoins a variety of rules on
+its professors in regard to the slaying of animals for food. Chief
+of these is a prohibition, against eating the flesh of an animal
+that has died a natural death; the throat of every animal intended
+to be eaten should be cut, and at the moment of applying the knife,
+<i>Bismillah</i> should be said, that is, 'In the name of God.' If
+therefore your mahout, or attendant, belong to the religion of the
+<i>Koran</i>, he will hurry down to cut the throat of a wounded
+deer if possible before life is extinct; if it be already dead, he
+will leave it alone for the Hindoos, who have no such scruples.</p>
+<p>A number of <i>moosahurs, banturs, gwallas</i>, and other
+idlers, from the jungle villages, generally follow in the wake of
+the line. If you shoot many pigs, they carry off the dead bodies,
+and hold high carnival in their homes in the evening. To see them
+rush on a slain buffalo, and hack it to pieces, is a curious sight;
+they fight for pieces of flesh like so many vultures. Sportsmen
+generally content themselves with the head of a buffalo, but not a
+scrap of the carcase is ever wasted. The natives are attracted to
+the spot, like ants to a heap of grain, or wasps to an old sugar
+barrel; they seem to spring out of the earth, so rapidly do they
+make their appearance. If you were to kill a dozen buffaloes, I
+believe all the flesh would be taken away to the neighbouring
+villages within an hour.</p>
+<p>This appearance of men in the jungles is wonderful. You may
+think yourself in the centre of a vast wilderness, not a sign of
+human habitation for miles around; on all sides stretches a vast
+ocean of grass, the resort of ferocious wild animals, seemingly
+untrodden by a human foot. You shoot a deer, a pig, or other animal
+whose flesh is fit for food; the man behind you gives a cry, and in
+ten minutes you will have a group of brawny young fellows around
+your elephant, eager to carry away the game. The way these natives
+thread the dense jungle is to me a wonder; they seem to know every
+devious path and hidden recess, and they traverse the most gloomy
+and dangerous solitudes without betraying the slightest
+apprehension.</p>
+<p>In fastening dead game to the pad of the carrying elephant great
+care is necessary. Some elephants are very timid, and indeed all
+elephants are mistrustful and suspicious of anything behind them.
+They are pretty courageous in facing anything before them, but they
+do not like a rustling or indeed any motion in their rear. I have
+seen a dog put an elephant to flight, and if you have a lazy
+<i>hathi</i>, a good plan is to walk a horse behind him. He will
+then shuffle along at a prodigious pace constantly looking round
+from side to side, and no doubt in his heart anathematising the
+horse that forces the running so persistently.</p>
+<p>The present method of roughly lashing on dead game anyhow
+requires altering. Some ingenious sportsman could surely devise a
+system of slings by which the dead weight of the game could be more
+equally distributed. At present the dead bodies are hauled up at
+random, and fastened anyhow. The pad gets displaced, the elephant
+must stop till the burden is rearranged; the ropes, especially on a
+hot day, cut into the skin and rub off the hair, and many a good
+skin is quite spoiled by the present rough method of tying on the
+pad.</p>
+<p>One day, in taking off a dead tiger from the pad, near George's
+bungalow, the end of the rope (a new one) remained somehow fixed to
+the neck of the elephant. When he rose up, being relieved of the
+weight, he dragged the dead tiger with him. This put the elephant
+into a horrible funk, and despite all the efforts of the driver he
+started off at a trot, hauling the tiger after him. Every now and
+then he would turn round, and tread and kick the lifeless carcase.
+At length the rope gave way, and the elephant became more
+manageable, but not before a fine skin had been totally ruined, all
+owing to this primitive style of fastening by ropes to the pad. A
+proper pad, with leather straps and buckles, that could be hauled
+as tight as necessary&mdash;a sort of harness arrangement, could
+easily be devised, to secure dead game on the pad. I am certain it
+would save time in the hunting-field, and protect many a fine skin,
+that gets abraded and marked by the present rough and ready
+lashing.</p>
+<p>It is always dangerous to go too close up to a wounded tiger,
+and one should never rashly jump to the conclusion that a tiger is
+dead because he appears so Approach him cautiously, and make very
+certain that he is really and truly dead, before you venture to get
+down beside the body. It is a bad plan to take your elephant close
+up to a dead tiger at all. I have known cases where good staunch
+elephants have been spoiled for future sport, by being rashly taken
+up to a wounded tiger. In rolling about, the tiger may get hold of
+the elephants, and inflict injuries that will demoralise them, and
+make them quite unsteady on subsequent occasions.</p>
+<p>I have known cases where a tiger left for dead has had to be
+shot over again. I have seen a man get down to pull a seemingly
+dead tiger into the open, and get charged. Fortunately it was a
+dying effort, and I put a bullet through the skull before the tiger
+could reach the frightened peon. We have been several times grouped
+round a dying tiger, watching him breathe his last, when the brute
+has summoned up strength for a final effort, and charged the
+elephants.</p>
+<p>On one occasion W.D. had got down beside what he thought a dead
+tiger, had rolled him over, and, tape in hand, was about to measure
+the animal, when he staggered to his feet with a terrific growl,
+and made away through the jungle. He had only been stunned, and
+fortunately preferred running to fighting, or the consequences
+might have been more tragic; as it was, he was quickly followed up
+and killed. But instances like these might be indefinitely
+multiplied, all teaching, that seemingly dead tigers should be
+approached with the utmost respect. Never venture off your elephant
+without a loaded revolver.</p>
+<p>In beating for tiger, we have seen that the appearance of the
+kill, whether fresh or old, whether much torn and mangled or
+comparatively untouched, often affords valuable indications to the
+sportsman. The footprints are not less narrowly looked for, and
+scrutinized. If we are after tiger, and following them up, the
+captain will generally get down at any bare place, such as a dry
+nullah, the edge of a tank or water hole, or any other spot where
+footprints can be detected. Fresh prints can be very easily
+distinguished. The impression is like that made by a dog, only much
+larger, and the marks of the claws are not visible. The largest
+footprint I have heard of was measured by George S., and was found
+to be eight and a quarter inches wide from the outside of the first
+to the outside of the fourth toe. If a tiger has passed very
+recently, the prints will be fresh-looking, and if on damp ground
+there can be no mistaking them. If it has been raining recently, we
+particularly notice whether the rain has obliterated the track at
+all, in any place; which would lead us to the conclusion that the
+tiger had passed before it rained. If the water has lodged in the
+footprint, the tiger has passed after the shower. In fresh prints
+the water will be slightly puddly or muddy. In old prints it will
+be quite clear; and so on.</p>
+<p>The call of the male tiger is quite different from that of the
+female. The male calls with a hoarse harsh cry, something between
+the grunt of a pig and the bellow of a bull; the call of the
+tigress is more like the prolonged mew of a cat much intensified.
+During the pairing season the call is sharper and shorter, and ends
+in a sudden break. At that time, too, they cry at more frequent
+intervals. The roar of the tiger is quite unlike the call. Once
+heard it is not easily forgotten, The natives who live in the
+jungles can tell one tiger from another by colour, size, &amp;c.,
+and they can even distinguish one animal from another by his call.
+It is very absurd to hear a couple of natives get together and
+describe the appearance of some tiger they have seen.</p>
+<p>In describing a pig, they refer to his height, or the length of
+his tusks. They describe a fish by putting their fists together,
+and saying he was so thick, <i>itna mota</i>. The head of a tiger
+is always the most conspicuous part of the body seen in the jungle.
+They therefore invariably describe him by his head. One man will
+hold his two hands apart about two feet, and say that the head was
+<i>itna burra</i>, that is, so big. The other, not to be outdone,
+gives rein to his imagination, and adds another foot. The first
+immediately fancies discredit will attach to his veracity, and
+vehemently asserts that there must in that case have been two
+tigers; and so they go on, till they conclusively prove, that two
+tigers there must have been, and indeed, if you let them go on,
+they will soon assure you that, besides the pair of tigers, there
+must be at least a pair of half-grown cubs. Their imaginations are
+very fertile, and you must take the information of a native as to
+tigers with a very large pinch of salt.</p>
+<p>For successful tiger shooting much depends on the beating. When
+after tiger, general firing should on no account be allowed, and
+the line should move forward as silently as possible. In light
+cover, extending over a large area, the elephants should be kept a
+considerable distance apart, but in thick dense cover the line
+should be quite close, and beat up slowly and thoroughly, as a
+tiger may lay up and allow the line to pass him. On no account
+should an elephant be let to lag behind, and no one should be
+allowed to rush forward or go in advance. The elephants should move
+along, steady and even, like a moving wall, the fastest being on
+the flanks, and accommodating their pace to the general rate of
+progress. No matter what tempting chances at pig or deer you may
+have, you must on no account fire except at tiger.</p>
+<p>The captain should be in the centre, and the men on the flanks
+ought to be constantly on the <i>qui vive</i>, to see that no
+cunning tiger outflanks the line. The attention should never wander
+from the jungle before you, for at any moment a tiger may get
+up&mdash;and I know of no sport where it is necessary to be so
+continuously on the alert. Every moment is fraught with intense
+excitement, and when a tiger does really show his stripes before
+you, the all-absorbing eager excitement of a lifetime is packed in
+a few brief moments. Not a chance should be thrown away, a long, or
+even an uncertain shot, is better than none, and if you make one
+miss, you may not have another chance again that day: for the tiger
+is chary of showing his stripes, and thinks discretion the better
+part of valour.</p>
+<p>All the line of course are aware, as a rule, when a tiger is on
+the move, and a good captain (and Joe S., who generally took the
+direction of our beats, could not well be matched) will wheel the
+line, double, turn, march, and countermarch, and fairly run the
+tiger down. At such a time, although you may not actually see the
+tiger, the excitement is tremendous. You stand erect in the howdah,
+your favourite gun ready; your attendant behind is as excited as
+yourself, and sways from side to side to peer into the gloomy
+depths of the jungle; in front, the mahout wriggles on his seat, as
+if by his motion he could urge the elephant to a quicker advance.
+He digs his toes savagely into his elephant behind the ear; the
+line is closing up; every eye is fixed on the moving jungle ahead.
+The roaring of the flames behind, and the crashing of the dried
+reeds as the elephants force their ponderous frames through the
+intertwisted stems and foliage, are the only sounds that greet the
+ear. Suddenly you see the tawny yellow hide, as the tiger slouches
+along. Your gun rings out a reverberating challenge, as your fatal
+bullet speeds on its errand. To right and left the echoes ring, as
+shot after shot is fired at the bounding robber. Then the line
+closes up, and you form a circle round the stricken beast, and
+watch his mighty limbs quiver in the death-agony, and as he falls
+over dead, and powerless for further harm, you raise the heartfelt,
+pulse-stirring cheer, that finds an echo in every brother
+sportman's heart.</p>
+<p>Disputes sometimes arise as to whose bullet first drew blood.
+These are settled by the captain, and from his decision there is no
+appeal. Many sportsmen put peculiar marks on their bullets, by
+which they can be recognised, which is a good plan. In an exciting
+scrimmage every one blazes at the tiger, not one bullet perhaps in
+five or six takes effect, and every one is ready to claim the skin,
+as having been pierced with his particular bullet. Disputes are not
+very common, but an inspection of the wounds, and the bullets found
+in the body, generally settle the question. After hearing all the
+pros and cons, the captain generally succeeds in awarding the tiger
+to the right man.</p>
+<p>After a successful day, the news rapidly spreads through the
+adjacent country, and we may take the line a little out of our way
+to make a sort of triumphal procession through the villages. On
+reaching the camp there is sure to be a great crowd waiting to see
+the slain tigers, the despoilers of the people's flocks and
+herds.</p>
+<p>It is then you hear of all the depredations the dead robber has
+committed, and it is then you begin to form some faint conception
+of his enormous destructive powers. Villager after villager unfolds
+a tale of some favourite heifer, or buffalo, or cow having been
+struck down, and the copious vocabulary of Hindostanee Billingsgate
+is almost exhausted, and floods of abuse poured out on the
+prostrate head.</p>
+<p>On cutting open the tiger, parasites are frequently found in the
+flesh. These are long, white, thread-like worms, and are supposed
+by some to be Guinea worms. Huge masses of undigested bone and hair
+are sometimes taken from the intestines, shewing that the tiger
+does not waste much time on mastication, but tears and eats the
+flesh in large masses. The liver is found to have numbers of
+separate lobes, and the natives say that this is an infallible test
+of the age of a tiger, as a separate lobe forms on the liver for
+each year of the tiger's life. I have certainly found young tigers
+having but two and three lobes, and old tigers I have found with
+six, seven, and even eight, but the statement is entirely
+unsupported by careful observation, and requires authentication
+before it can be accepted.</p>
+<p>A reported kill is a pretty certain sign that there are tigers
+in the jungle, but there are other signs with which one soon gets
+familiar. When, for example, you hear deer calling repeatedly, and
+see them constantly on the move, it is a sign that tiger are in the
+neighbourhood. When cattle are reluctant to enter the jungle,
+restless, and unwilling to graze, you may be sure tiger are
+somewhere about, not far away. A kill is often known by the numbers
+of vultures that hover about in long, sailing, steady circles. What
+multitudes of vultures there are. Overhead, far up in the liquid
+ether, you see them circling round and round like dim specks in the
+distance; farther and farther away, till they seem like bees, then
+lessen and fade into the infinitude of space. No part of the sky is
+ever free from their presence. When a kill has been perceived, you
+see one come flying along, strong and swift in headlong flight.
+With the directness of a thunderbolt he speeds to where his
+loathsome meal lies sweltering in the noonday sun. As he comes
+nearer and nearer, his repulsive looking body assumes form and
+substance. The cruel, ugly bald head, drawn close in between the
+strong pointed shoulders, the broad powerful wings, with their wide
+sweep, measured and slow, bear him swiftly past. With a curve and a
+sweep he circles round, down come the long bony legs, the bald and
+hideous neck is extended, and with talons quivering for the rotting
+flesh, and cruel beak agape, he hurries on to his repast, the
+embodiment of everything ghoul-like and ghastly. In his wake comes
+another, then twos and threes, anon tens and twenties, till
+hundreds have collected, and the ground is covered with the
+hissing, tearing, fiercely clawing crowd. It is a horrible sight to
+see a heap of vultures battling over a dead bullock. I have seen
+them so piled up that the under ones were nearly smothered to
+death; and the writhing contortions of the long bare necks, as the
+fierce brutes battled with talons and claws, were like the twisting
+of monster snakes, or the furious writhing of gorgons and furies
+over some fated victim.</p>
+<p>It has been a much debated point with sportsmen and naturalists,
+whether the eye or the sense of smell guides the vulture to his
+feast of carrion. I have often watched them. They scan the vast
+surface spread below them with a piercing and never tiring gaze.
+They observe each other. When one is seen to cease his steady
+circling flight, far up in mid air, and to stretch his broad wings
+earthwards, the others know that he has espied a meal, and follow
+his lead; and these in turn are followed by others, till from all
+quarters flock crowds of these scavengers of the sky. They can
+detect a dog or jackal from a vast height, and they know by
+intuition that, where the carcase is there will the dogs and
+jackals be gathered. I think there can be no doubt that the vision
+is the sense they are most indebted to for directing them to their
+food.</p>
+<p>On one occasion I remember seeing a tumultuous heap of them,
+battling fiercely, as I have just tried to describe, over the
+carcases of two tigers we had killed near Dumdaha. The dead bodies
+were hidden partially in a grove of trees, and for a long time
+there were only some ten or a dozen vultures near. These gorged
+themselves so fearfully, that they could not rise from the ground,
+but lay with wings expanded, looking very aldermanic and
+apoplectic. Bye-and-bye, however, the rush began, and by the time
+we had struck the tents, there could not have been fewer than 150
+vultures, hissing and spitting at each other like angry cats;
+trampling each other to the dust to get at the carcases; and
+tearing wildly with talon and beak for a place. In a very short
+time nothing but mangled bones remained. A great number of the
+vultures got on to the rotten limb of a huge mango tree. One other
+proved the last straw, for down came the rotten branch and several
+of the vultures, tearing at each other, fell heavily to the ground,
+where they lay quite helpless. As an experiment we shot a miserable
+mangy Pariah dog, that was prowling about the ground seeking
+garbage and offal. He was shot stone-dead, and for a time no
+vulture ventured near. A crow was the first to begin the feast of
+death. One of the hungriest of the vultures next approached, and in
+a few minutes the yet warm body of the poor dog was torn into a
+thousand fragments, till nothing remained but scattered and
+disjointed bones.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul
+frontier.&mdash;Indian scenery near the border.&mdash;Lose our
+way.&mdash;Cold night.&mdash;The river by night.&mdash;Our boat and
+boatmen.&mdash;Tigers calling on the bank.&mdash;An anxious
+moment.&mdash;Fire at and wound the tigress.&mdash;Reach
+camp.&mdash;The Nepaulee's adventure with a tiger.&mdash;The old
+Major.&mdash;His appearance and manners.&mdash;The pompous
+Jemadar.&mdash;Nepaulese proverb.&mdash;Firing the
+jungle.&mdash;Start a tiger and shoot him.&mdash;Another in
+front.&mdash;Appearance of the fires by night.&mdash;The tiger
+escapes.&mdash;Too dark to follow up.&mdash;Coolie shot by mistake
+during a former hunt.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Early in 1875 a military friend of mine was engaged in
+inspecting the boundary pillars near my factory, between our
+territory and that of Nepaul. Some of the pillars had been cut away
+by the river, and the survey map required a little alteration in
+consequence. Our district magistrate was in attendance, and sent me
+an invitation to go up and spend a week with them in camp. I had no
+need to send on tents, as they had every requisite for comfort. I
+sent off my bed and bedding on Geerdharee Jha's old elephant, a
+timid, useless brute, fit neither far beating jungle nor for
+carrying a howdah. My horse I sent on to the ghat or crossing, some
+ten miles up the river, and after lunch I started. It was a fine
+cool afternoon, and it was not long ere I reached the neighbouring
+factory of Im&#257;mnugger. Here I had a little refreshment with
+Old Tom, and after exchanging greetings, I resumed my way over a
+part of the country with which I was totally unacquainted.</p>
+<p>I rode on, past villages nestling in the mango groves, past huge
+tanks, excavated by the busy labour of generations long since
+departed; past decaying temples, overshadowed by mighty tamarind
+trees, with the <i>peepul</i> and <i>pakur</i> insinuating their
+twining roots amid the shattered and crumbling masonry. In one
+large village I passed through the bustling bazaar, where the din,
+and dust, and mingled odours, were almost overpowering. The country
+was now assuming quite an undulating character. The banks of the
+creeks were steep and rugged, and in some cases the water actually
+tumbled from rock to rock, with a purling pleasant ripple and
+plash, a welcome sound to a Scotch ear, and a pleasant surprise
+after the dull, dead, leaden, noiseless flow of the streams further
+down on the plains.</p>
+<p>Far in front lay the gloomy belt of Terai, or border forest,
+here called the <i>morung</i>, where the British territories had
+their extreme limit in that direction. Behind this belt, tier on
+tier, rose the mighty ranges of the majestic Himalayas, towering up
+in solemn grandeur from the bushy masses of forest-clad hills till
+their snow-capped summits seemed to pierce the sky. The country was
+covered by green crops, with here and there patches of dingy
+rice-stubble, and an occasional stretch of dense grass jungle.
+Quail, partridge, and plover rose from the ground in coveys, as my
+horse cantered through; and an occasional peafowl or florican
+scudded across the track as I ambled onward. I asked at a wretched
+little accumulation of weavers' huts where the ghat was, and if my
+elephant had gone on. To both my queries I received satisfactory
+replies, and as the day was now drawing in, I pushed my nag into a
+sharp canter and hurried forward.</p>
+<p>I soon perceived the bulky outline of my elephant ahead, and on
+coming up, found that my men had come too far up the river, had
+missed the ghat to which I had sent my spare horse, and were now
+making for another ferry still higher up. My horse was jaded, so I
+got on the elephant, and made one of the peons lead the horse
+behind. It was rapidly getting dark, and the mahout, or elephant
+driver, a miserable low caste stupid fellow, evidently knew nothing
+of the country, and was going at random. I halted at the next
+village, got hold of the chowkeydar, and by a promise of
+backsheesh, prevailed on him to accompany us and show us the way.
+We turned off from the direct northerly direction in which we had
+been going, and made straight for the river, which we could see in
+the distance, looking chill and grey in the fast fading twilight.
+We now got on the sandbanks, and had to go cautiously for fear of
+quicksands. By the time we reached the ghat it was quite dark and
+growing very cold.</p>
+<p>We were quite close to the hills, a heavy dew was falling, and I
+found that I should have to float down the liver for a mile, and
+then pole up stream in another channel for two miles before I could
+reach camp.</p>
+<p>I got my horse into the boat, ordering the elephant driver to
+travel all night if he could, as I should expect my things to be at
+camp early in the morning, and the boatmen pushed off the unwieldy
+ferry-boat, floating us quietly down the rapid 'drumly' stream. All
+is solemnly still and silent on an Indian river at night. The
+stream is swift but noiseless. Vast plains and heaps of sand
+stretch for miles on either bank. There are no villages near the
+stream. Faintly, far away in the distance, you hear a few subdued
+sounds, the only evidences of human habitation. There is the tinkle
+of a cow-bell, the barking of a pariah dog, the monotonous
+dub-a-dub-dub of a timber-toned tom-tom, muffled and slightly
+mellowed by the distance. The faint, far cries, and occasional
+halloos of the herd-boys calling to each other, gradually cease,
+but the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub continues till far into the
+night.</p>
+<p>It was now very cold, and I was glad to borrow a blanket from my
+peon. At such a time the pipe is a great solace. It soothes the
+whole system, and plunges one into an agreeable dreamy speculative
+mood, through which all sorts of fantastic notions resolve. Fancies
+chase each other quickly, and old memories rise, bitter or sweet,
+but all tinged and tinted by the seductive influence of the magic
+weed. Hail, blessed pipe! the invigorator of the weary, the
+uncomplaining faithful friend, the consoler of sorrows, and the
+dispeller of care, the much-prized companion of the solitary
+wayfarer!</p>
+<p>Now a jackal utters a howl on the bank, as our boat shoots past,
+and the diabolical noise is echoed from knoll to knoll, and from
+ridge to ridge, as these incarnate devils of the night join in and
+prolong the infernal chorus. An occasional splash, as a piece of
+the bank topples over into the stream, rouses the cormorant and
+gull from their placid dozing on the sandbanks. They squeak and
+gurgle out an unintelligible protest, then cosily settle their
+heads again beneath the sheltering wing, and sleep the slumber of
+the dreamless. A sharp sudden plump, or a lazy surging sound,
+accompanied by a wheezy blowing sort of hiss, tells us that a
+<i>seelun</i> is disporting himself; or that a fat old 'porpus' is
+bearing his clumsy bulk through the rushing current.</p>
+<p>The bank now looms out dark and mysterious, and as we turn the
+point another long stretch of the river opens out, reflecting the
+merry twinkle of the myriad stars, that glitter sharp and clear
+millions of miles overhead. There is now a clattering of bamboo
+poles. With a grunt of disgust, and a quick catching of the breath,
+as the cold water rushes up against his thighs, one of the boatmen
+splashes overboard, and they commence slowly and wearily pushing
+the boat up stream. We touch the bank a dozen times. The current
+swoops down and turns us round and round. The men have to put their
+shoulders under the gunwale, and heave and strain with all their
+might. The long bamboo poles are plunged into the dark depths of
+the river, and the men puff, and grunt, and blow, as they bend
+almost to the bottom of the boat while they push. It is a weary
+progress. We are dripping wet with dew. Quite close on the bank we
+hear the hoarse wailing call of a tigress. The call of the tiger
+comes echoing down between the banks. The men cease poling. I peer
+forward into the obscurity. My syce pats, and speaks soothingly to
+the trembling horse, while my peon with excited fingers fumbles at
+the straps of my gun-case. For a moment all is intensely still.</p>
+<p>I whisper to the boatmen to push out a little into the stream.
+Again the tigress calls, this time so close to us that we could
+almost fancy we could feel her breath. My gun is ready. The syce
+holds the horse firmly by the head, and as we leave the bank, we
+can distinctly see the outline of some large animal, standing out a
+dark bulky mass against the skyline. I take a steady aim and fire.
+A roar of astonishment, wrath, and pain follows the report. The
+horse struggles and snorts, the boatman calls out 'Oh, my father!'
+and ejaculates 'hi-hi-hi!' in tones of piled up anguish and
+apprehension, the peon cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug,
+gea,' that bullet has told; oh your highness! and while the boat
+rocks violently to and fro, I abuse the boatmen, slang the syce,
+and rush to grasp a pole, while the peon seizes another; for we are
+drifting rapidly down stream, and may at any moment strike on a
+bank and topple over. We can hear by the growling and commotion on
+the bank, that my bullet has indeed told, and that something is
+hit. We soon get the frightened boatmen quieted down, and after
+another hour's weary work we spy the white outline of the tents
+above the bank. A lamp shines out a bright welcome; and although it
+is nearly twelve at night, the Captain and the magistrate are
+discussing hot toddy, and waiting my arrival. My spare horse had
+come on from the ghat, the syce had told them I was coming, and
+they had been indulging in all sorts of speculations over my
+non-arrival.</p>
+<p>A good supper, and a reeking jorum, soon banished all
+recollections of my weary journey, and men were ordered to go out
+at first break of dawn, and see about the wounded tiger. In the
+morning I was gratified beyond expression to find a fine tigress,
+measuring 8 feet 3 inches, had been brought in, the result of my
+lucky night shot; the marks of a large tiger were found about the
+spot, and we determined to beat up for him, and if possible secure
+his skin, as we already had that of his consort.</p>
+<p>Captain S. had some work to finish, and my elephant and bearer
+had not arrived, so our magistrate and myself walked down to the
+sandbanks, and amused ourselves for an hour shooting sandpipers and
+plover; we also shot a pair of mallard and a couple of teal, and
+then went back to the tents, and were soon busily discussing a
+hunter's breakfast. While at our meal, my elephant and things
+arrived, and just then also, the 'Major Capt&#257;n,' or Nepaulese
+functionary, my old friend, came up with eight elephants, and we
+hurried out to greet the fat, merry-featured old man.</p>
+<p>What a quaint, genial old customer he looked, as he bowed and
+salaamed to us from his elevated seat, his face beaming, and his
+little bead-like eyes twinkling with pleasure. He was full of an
+adventure he had as he came along. After crossing a brawling
+mountain-torrent, some miles from our camp, they entered some dense
+kair jungle. The kair is I believe a species of mimosa; it is a
+hard wood, growing in a thick scrubby form, with small pointed
+leaves, a yellowish sort of flower, and sharp thorns studding its
+branches; it is a favourite resort for pig, and although it is
+difficult to beat on account of the thorns, tigers are not
+unfrequently found among the gloomy recesses of a good kair
+scrub.</p>
+<p>As they entered this jungle, some of the men were loitering
+behind. When the elephants had passed about halfway through, the
+men came rushing up pell mell, with consternation on their faces,
+reporting that a huge tiger had sprung out on them, and carried off
+one of their number. The Major and the elephants hurried back, and
+met the man limping along, bleeding from several scratches, and
+with a nasty bite in his shoulder, but otherwise more frightened
+than hurt. The tiger had simply knocked him down, stood over him
+for a minute, seized him by the shoulder, and then dashed on
+through the scrub, leaving him behind half dead with pain and
+fear.</p>
+<p>It was most amusing to hear the fat little Major relate the
+story. He went through all the by-play incident to the piece, and
+as he got excited, stood right up on his narrow pad. His
+gesticulations were most vehement, and as the elephant was rather
+unsteady, and his footing to say the least precarious, he seemed
+every moment as if he must topple over. The old warrior, however,
+was equal to the occasion; without for an instant abating the
+vigour of his narrative, he would clutch at the greasy, matted
+locks of his mahout, and steady himself, while he volubly described
+incident after incident. As he warmed with his subject, and tried
+to shew us how the tiger must have pounced on the man, he would let
+go and use his hands in illustration; the old elephant would give
+another heave, and the fat little man would make another frantic
+grab at the patient mahout's hair. The whole scene was most
+comical, and we were in convulsions of laughter.</p>
+<p>The news, however, foreboded ample sport; we now had certain
+<i>khubber</i> of at least two tigers; we were soon under weigh;
+the wounded man had been sent back to the Major's head-quarters on
+an elephant, and in time recovered completely from his mauling. As
+we jogged along, we had a most interesting talk with the Major
+Capt&#257;n. He was wonderfully well informed, considering he had
+never been out of Nepaul. He knew all about England, our army, our
+mode of government, our parliament, and our Queen; whenever he
+alluded to Her Majesty he salaamed profoundly, whether as a tribute
+of respect to her, or in compliment to us as loyal subjects, we
+could not quite make out. He described to us the route home by the
+Suez canal, and the fun of his talk was much heightened by his
+applying the native names to everything; London was <i>Shuhur</i>,
+the word meaning 'a city,' and he told us it was built on the
+<i>Tham&#257;ss nuddee</i>, by which he meant the Thames river.</p>
+<p>Our magistrate had a Jemadar of Peons with him, a sort of head
+man among the servants. This man, abundantly bedecked with
+ear-rings, finger-rings, and other ornaments, was a useless,
+bullying sort of fellow; dressed to the full extent of Oriental
+foppishness, and because he was the magistrate's servant, he
+thought himself entitled to order the other servants about in the
+most lordly way. He was now making himself peculiarly officious,
+shouting to the drivers to go here and there, to do this and do
+that, and indulging in copious torrents of abuse, without which it
+seems impossible for a native subordinate to give directions on any
+subject. We were all rather amused, and could not help bursting
+into laughter, as, inflated with a sense of his own importance, he
+began abusing one of the native drivers of the Nepaulee chief; this
+man did not submit tamely to his insolence. To him the magistrate
+was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a perfect nonentity. He
+accordingly turned round and poured forth a perfect flood of
+invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar took a back
+seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his melodious voice
+in tones of imperious command.</p>
+<p>The old Major chuckled, and rubbed his fat little hands, and
+leaning over to me said, 'at home a lion, but abroad a lamb,' for,
+surrounded by his women at home, the man would twirl his
+moustaches, look fierce, and fancy himself a very tiger; but, no
+sooner did he go abroad, and mix with men as good, if not better
+than himself, than he was ready to eat any amount of humble
+pie.</p>
+<p>We determined first of all to beat for the tiger whose tracks
+had been seen near where I had fired my lucky shot the preceding
+night. A strong west wind was blowing, and dense clouds of sand
+were being swept athwart our line, from the vast plains of fine
+white sand bordering the river for miles. As we went along we fired
+the jungle in our rear, and the strong wind carried the flames
+raging and roaring through the dense jungle with amazing fury. One
+elephant got so frightened at the noise behind him, that he fairly
+bolted for the river, and could not be persuaded back into the
+line.</p>
+<p>Disturbed by the fire, we saw numerous deer and pig, but being
+after tiger we refrained from shooting at them. The Basinattea
+Tuppoo, which was the scene of our present hunt, were famous
+jungles, and many a tiger had been shot there by the Purneah Club
+in bygone days. The annual ravages of the impetuous river, had
+however much changed the face of the country; vast tracts of jungle
+had been obliterated by deposits of sand from its annual
+incursions. Great skeletons of trees stood everywhere, stretching
+out bare and unsightly branches, all bending to the south, shewing
+the mighty power of the current, when it made its annual progress
+of devastation over the surrounding country. Now, however, it was
+like a thin streak of silver, flashing back the fierce rays of the
+meridian sun. Through the blinding clouds of fine white sand we
+could at times, during a temporary lull, see its ruined surface.
+And we were glad when we came on the tracks of the tiger, which led
+straight from the stream, in the direction of some thick tree
+jungle at no great distance. We gladly turned our backs to the
+furious clouds of dust and gusts of scorching wind, and led by a
+Nepaulee tracker, were soon crashing heavily through the
+jungle.</p>
+<p>When hunting with elephants, the Nepaulese beat in a dense line,
+the heads of the elephants touching each other. In this manner we
+were now proceeding, when S. called out, 'There goes the
+tiger.'</p>
+<p>We looked up, and saw a very large tiger making off for a deep
+watercourse, which ran through the jungle some 200 yards ahead of
+the line. We hurried up as fast as we could, putting out a fast
+elephant on either flank, to see that the cunning brute did not
+sneak either up or down the nullah, under cover of the high banks.
+This, however, was not his object. We saw him descend into the
+nullah, and almost immediately top the further bank, and disappear
+into the jungle beyond.</p>
+<p>Pressing on at a rapid jolting trot, we dashed after him in hot
+pursuit. The jungle seemed somewhat lighter on ahead. In the
+distance we could see some dangurs at work breaking up land, and to
+the right was a small collection of huts with a beautiful riband of
+green crops, a perfect oasis in the wilderness of sand and parched
+up grass. Forming into line we pressed on. The tiger was evidently
+lying up, probably deterred from breaking across the open by the
+sight of the dangurs at work. My heart was bounding with
+excitement. We were all intensely eager, and thought no more of the
+hot wind and blinding dust. Just then Captain S. saw the brute
+sneaking along to the left of the line, trying to outflank us, and
+break back. He fired two shots rapidly with his Express, and the
+second one, taking effect in the neck of the tiger, bowled him over
+as he stood. He was a mangy-looking brute, badly marked, and
+measured eight feet eleven inches. He did not have a chance of
+charging, and probably had little heart for a fight.</p>
+<p>We soon had him padded, and then proceeded straight north, to
+the scene of the Major's encounter with the tiger in the morning.
+The jungle was well trampled down; there were numerous streams and
+pools of water, occasional clumps of bamboos, and abrupt ridgy
+undulations. It was the very jungle for tiger, and elated by our
+success in having bagged one already, we were all in high spirits.
+The line of fire we could see far in the distance, sweeping on like
+the march of fate, and we could have shot numerous deer, but
+reserved our fire for nobler game. It was getting well on in the
+afternoon when we came up to the kair jungle. We beat right up to
+where the man had been seized, and could see the marks of the
+struggle distinctly enough. We beat right through the jungle with
+no result, and as it was now getting rather late, the old Major
+signified his desire to bid us good evening. As this meant
+depriving us of eight elephants, we prevailed on him to try one
+spare straggling corner that we had not gone through. He laughed
+the idea to scorn of getting a tiger there, saying there was no
+cover. One elephant, however, was sent while we were talking. Our
+elephants were all standing in a group, and the mahout on his
+solitary elephant was listlessly jogging on in a purposeless and
+desultory manner, when we suddenly heard the elephant pipe out a
+shrill note of alarm, and the mahout yelled 'Bagh! Bagh!' tiger!
+tiger! The Captain was again the lucky man. The tiger, a much finer
+and stronger built animal than the one we had already killed, was
+standing not eighty paces off, shewing his teeth, his bristles
+erect, and evidently in a bad temper. He had been crouching among
+some low bushes, and seeing the elephant bearing directly down on
+him, he no doubt imagined his retreat had been discovered. At all
+events there he was, and he presented a splendid aim. He was a
+noble-looking specimen as he stood there grim and defiant. Captain
+S. took aim, and lodged an Express bullet in his chest. It made a
+fearful wound, and the ferocious brute writhed and rolled about in
+agony. We quickly surrounded him, and a bullet behind the ear from
+my No. 16 put an end to his misery.</p>
+<p>The old Major now bade us good evening, and after padding the
+second tiger, and much elated at our success, we began to beat
+homewards, shooting at everything that rose before us. A couple of
+tremendous pig got up before me, and dashed through a clear stream
+that was purling peacefully in its pebbly bed. As the boar was
+rushing up the farther bank, I deposited a pellet in his hind
+quarters. He gave an angry grunt and tottered on, but presently
+pulled up, and seemed determined to have some revenge for his hurt.
+As my elephant came up the bank, the gallant boar tried to charge,
+but already wounded and weak from loss of blood, he tottered and
+staggered about. My elephant would not face him, so I gave him
+another shot behind the shoulder, and padded him for the
+<i>moosahurs</i> and sweepers in camp. Just then one of the
+policemen started a young hog-deer, and several of the men got down
+and tried to catch the little thing alive. They soon succeeded, and
+the cries of the poor little <i>butcha</i>, that is 'young one,'
+were most plaintive.</p>
+<p>The wind had now subsided, there was a red angry glare, as the
+level rays of the setting sun shimmered through the dense clouds of
+dust that loaded the atmosphere. It was like the dull, red, coppery
+hue which presages a storm. The vast morung jungle lay behind us,
+and beyond that the swelling wooded hills, beginning to show dark
+and indistinct against the gathering gloom. A long line of cattle
+were wending their way homeward to the batan, and the tinkle of the
+big copper bell fell pleasingly on our ears. In the distance, we
+could see the white canvas of the tents gleaming in the rays of the
+setting sun. A vast circular line of smouldering fire, flickering
+and flaring fitfully, and surmounted by huge volumes of curling
+smoke, shewed the remains of the fierce tornado of flame that had
+raged at noon, when we lit the jungle. The jungle was very light,
+and much trodden down, our three howdah elephants were not far
+apart, and we were chatting cheerfully together and discussing the
+incidents of the day. My bearer was sitting behind me in the back
+of the howdah, and I had taken out my ball cartridge from my No. 12
+breechloader, and had replaced them with shot. Just then my mahout
+raised his hand, and in a hoarse excited whisper called out,</p>
+<p>'Look, sahib, a large tiger!'</p>
+<p>'Where?' we all exclaimed, getting excited at once. He pointed
+in front to a large object, looking for all the world like a huge
+dun cow.</p>
+<p>'Why, you fool, that is a bullock.' I exclaimed.</p>
+<p>My bearer, who had also been intently gazing, now said.</p>
+<p>'No, sahib! that is a tiger, and a large one.'</p>
+<p>At that moment, it turned partly round, and I at once saw that
+the men were right, and that it was a veritable tiger, and
+seemingly a monster in size. I at once called to Captain S. and the
+magistrate, who had by this time fallen a little behind.</p>
+<p>'Look out, you fellows! here's a tiger in front.'</p>
+<p>At first they thought I was joking, but a glance confirmed the
+truth of what I had said. When I first saw the brute, he was
+evidently sneaking after the cattle, and was about sixty paces from
+me. He was so intent on watching the herd, that he had not noticed
+our approach. He was now, however, evidently alarmed and making
+off. By the time I called out, he must have been over eighty yards
+away. I had my No. 12 in my hand, loaded with shot; it was no use;
+I put it down and took up my No. 16; this occupied a few seconds; I
+fired both barrels; the first bullet was in excellent line but
+rather short, the second went over the animal's back, and neither
+touched him. It made him, however, quicken his retreat, and when
+Captain S. fired, he must have been fully one hundred and fifty
+yards away; as it was now somewhat dusky, he also missed. He fired
+another long shot with his rifle, but missed again. Oh that unlucky
+change of cartridges in my No. 12! But for that&mdash;but
+there&mdash;we are always wise after the event. We never expected
+to see a tiger in such open country, especially as we had been over
+the same ground before, firing pretty often as we came along.</p>
+<p>We followed up of course, but it was now fast getting dark, and
+though we beat about for some time, we could not get another
+glimpse of the tiger. He was seemingly a very large male,
+dark-coloured, and in splendid condition. We must have got him, had
+it been earlier, as he could not have gone far forward, for the
+lines of fire were beyond him, and we had him between the fire and
+the elephants. We got home about 6.30, rather disappointed at
+missing such a glorious prize, so true is it that a sportsman's
+soul is never satisfied. But we had rare and most unlooked-for
+luck, and we felt considerably better after a good dinner, and
+indulged in hopes of getting the big fellow next morning.</p>
+<p>In the same jungles, some years ago, a very sad accident
+occurred. A party were out tiger-shooting, and during one of the
+beats, a cowherd hearing the noise of the advancing elephants,
+crouched behind a bush, and covered himself with his blanket. At a
+distance he looked exactly like a pig, and one of the shooters
+mistook him for one. He fired, and hit the poor herd in the hip. As
+soon as the mistake was perceived, everything was done for the poor
+fellow. His wound was dressed as well as they could do it, and he
+was sent off to the doctor in a dhoolie, a a sort of covered
+litter, slung on a pole and carried on men's shoulders. It was too
+late, the poor coolie died on the road, from shock and loss of
+blood. Such mistakes occur very seldom, and this was such a natural
+one, that no one could blame the unfortunate sportsman, and
+certainly no one felt keener regret than he did. The coolie's
+family was amply provided for, which was all that remained to be
+done.</p>
+<p>This is the only instance I know, where fatal results have
+followed such an accident. I have known several cases of beaters
+peppered with shot, generally from their own carelessness, and
+disregard of orders, but a salve in the shape of a few rupees has
+generally proved the most effective ointment. I have known some
+rascals say, they were sorry they had not been lucky enough to be
+wounded, as they considered a punctured cuticle nothing to set
+against the magnificent douceur of four or five rupees. One
+impetuous scamp, being told not to go in front of the line during a
+beat near Burgamma, replied to the warning caution of his
+jemadar,</p>
+<p>'Oh never mind, if get shot I will get backsheesh.'</p>
+<p>Whether this was a compliment to the efficacy of our treatment
+(by the silver ointment), or to the inaccuracy and harmlessness of
+our shooting, I leave the reader to judge.</p>
+<p>Our bag during this lucky day, including the tigress killed by
+my shot on the river bank, was as follows: three tigers, one boar,
+four deer, including the young one taken alive, eight sandpipers,
+nine plovers, two mallards, and two teal.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXIII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>We resume the beat.&mdash;The
+hog-deer.&mdash;Nepaulese villages.&mdash;Village
+granaries.&mdash;Tiger in front.&mdash;A hit! a
+hit!&mdash;Following up the wounded tiger.&mdash;Find him
+dead.&mdash;Tiffin in the village.&mdash;The Patair jungle.
+&mdash;Search for tiger.&mdash;Gone away!&mdash;An elephant
+steeplechase in pursuit. &mdash;Exciting chase.&mdash;The Morung
+jungle.&mdash;Magnificent scenery.&mdash;Skinning the
+tiger.&mdash;Incidents of tiger hunting.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Next morning, both the magistrate and myself felt very ill,
+headachy and sick, with violent vomiting and retching; Captain S.
+attributed it to the fierce hot wind and exposure of the preceding
+day, but we, the sufferers, blamed the <i>dekchees</i> or cooking
+pots. These <i>dekchees</i> are generally made of copper, coated or
+tinned over with white metal once a month or oftener; if the
+tinning is omitted, or the copper becomes exposed by accident or
+neglect, the food cooked in the pots sometimes gets tainted with
+copper, and produces nausea and sickness in those who eat it. I
+have known, within my own experience, cases of copper poisoning
+that have terminated fatally. It is well always thoroughly to
+inspect the kitchen utensils, particularly when in camp; unless
+carefully watched and closely supervised, servants get very
+careless, and let food remain in these copper vessels. This is
+always dangerous, and should never be allowed.</p>
+<p>In consequence of our indisposition, we did not start till the
+forenoon was far advanced, and the hot west wind had again begun to
+sweep over the prairie-like stretches of sand and withered grass.
+We commenced beating up by the Batan or cattle stance, near which
+we had seen the big tiger, the preceding evening. S. however became
+so sick and giddy, that he had to return to camp, and Captain S.
+and I continued the beat alone. Having gone over the same ground
+only yesterday, we did not expect a tiger so near to camp, more
+especially as the fire had made fearful havoc with the tall grass.
+Hog-deer were very numerous; they are not as a rule easily
+disturbed; they are of a reddish brown colour, not unlike that of
+the Scotch red deer, and rush through the jungle, when alarmed,
+with a succession of bounding leaps; they make very pretty
+shooting, and when young, afford tender and well-flavoured venison.
+One hint I may give. When you shoot a buck, see that he is at once
+denuded of certain appendages, else the flesh will get rank and
+disagreeable to eat. The bucks have pretty antlers, but are not
+very noble looking. The does are somewhat lighter in colour, and do
+not seem to consort together in herds like antelopes; there are
+rarely more than five in a group, though I have certainly seen more
+on several occasions.</p>
+<p>This morning we were unlucky with our deer. I shot three, and
+Captain S. shot at and wounded three, not one of which however did
+we bag. This part of the country is exclusively inhabited by
+Parbutteas, the native name for Nepaulese settled in British
+territory. Over the frontier line, the villages are called
+Pahareeas, signifying mountaineers or hillmen, from Pahar, a
+mountain. We beat up to a Parbuttea village, with its conical
+roofed huts; men and women were engaged in plaiting long coils of
+rice straw into cable looking ropes. A few split bamboos are
+fastened into the ground, in a circle, and these ropes are then
+coiled round, in and out, between the stakes; this makes a huge
+circular vat-shaped repository, open at both ends; it is then
+lifted up and put on a platform coated with mud, and protected from
+rats and vermin by the pillars being placed on smooth, inverted
+earthen pots. The coils of straw are now plastered outside and in
+with a mixture of mud, chaff, and cowdung, and allowed to dry; when
+dried the hut is filled with grain, and securely roofed and
+thatched. This forms the invariable village granary, and looks at a
+distance not unlike a stack or rick of corn, round a farm at home.
+By the abundance of these granaries in a village, one can tell at a
+glance whether the season has been a good one, and whether the
+frugal inhabitants of the clustering little hamlet are in pretty
+comfortable circumstances. If they are under the sway of a grasping
+and unscrupulous landlord, they not unfrequently bury their grain
+in clay-lined chambers in the earth, and have always enough for
+current wants, stored up in the sun-baked clay repositories
+mentioned in a former chapter.</p>
+<p>Beyond the village we entered some thick Patair jungle. Its
+greenness was refreshing after the burnt up and withered grass
+jungle. We were now in a hollow bordering the stream, and somewhat
+protected from the scorching wind, and the stinging clouds of fine
+sand and red dust. The brook looked so cool and refreshing, and the
+water so clear and pellucid, that I was about to dismount to take a
+drink and lave my heated head and face, when a low whistle to my
+right made me look in that direction, and I saw the Captain waving
+his hand excitedly, and pointing ahead. He was higher up the bank
+than I was, and in very dense Patair; a ridge ran between his front
+of the line and mine, so that I could only see his howdah, and the
+bulk of the elephant's body was concealed from me by the grass on
+this ridge.</p>
+<p>I closed up diagonally across the ridge; S. still waving to me
+to hurry up; as I topped it, I spied a large tiger slouching along
+in the hollow immediately below me. He saw me at the same instant,
+and bounded on in front of S. His Express was at his shoulder on
+the instant; he fired, and a tremendous spurt of blood shewed a
+hit, a hit, a palpable hit. The tiger was nowhere visible, and not
+a cry or a motion could we hear or see, to give us any clue to the
+whereabouts of the wounded animal. We followed up however, quickly
+but cautiously, expecting every instant a furious charge.</p>
+<p>We must have gone at least a hundred yards, when right in front
+of me I descried the tiger, crouching down, its head resting on its
+fore paws, and to all appearance settling for a spring. It was
+about twenty yards from me, and taking a rather hasty aim, I
+quickly fired both barrels straight at the head. I could only see
+the head and paws, but these I saw quite distinctly. My elephant
+was very unsteady, and both my bullets went within an inch of the
+tiger's head, but fortunately missed completely. I say fortunately,
+for finding the brute still remaining quite motionless, we
+cautiously approached, and found it was stone dead. The perfect
+naturalness of the position, however, might well have deceived a
+more experienced sportsman. The beast was lying crouched on all
+fours, as if in the very act of preparing to spring. The one bullet
+had killed it; the wound was in the lungs, and the internal
+bleeding had suffocated it, but here was a wonderful instance of
+the tiger's tenacity of life, even when sorely wounded, for it had
+travelled over a hundred and thirty yards after S. had shot it.</p>
+<p>It was lucky I missed, for my bullets would have spoiled the
+skull. She was a very handsome, finely marked tigress, a large
+specimen, for on applying the tape we found she measured exactly
+nine feet. Before descending to measure her, we were joined by the
+old Major Capt&#257;n, whose elephants we had for some time
+descried in the distance. His congratulations were profuse, and no
+doubt sincere, and after padding the tigress, we hied to the
+welcome shelter of one of the village houses, where we discussed a
+hearty and substantial tiffin.</p>
+<p>During tiffin, we were surrounded by a bevy of really fair and
+buxom lasses. They wore petticoats of striped blue cloth, and had
+their arms and shoulders bare, and their ears loaded with silver
+ornaments. They were merry, laughing, comely damsels, with none of
+the exaggerated shyness, and affected prudery of the women of the
+plains. We were offered plantains, milk, and chupatties, and an old
+patriarch came out leaning on his staff, to revile and abuse the
+tigress. From some of the young men we heard of a fresh kill to the
+north of the village, and after tiffin we proceeded in that
+direction, following up the course of the limpid stream, whose
+gurgling ripple sounded so pleasantly in our ears.</p>
+<p>Far ahead to the right, and on the further bank of the stream,
+we could see dense curling volumes of smoke, and leaping pyramids
+of flame, where a jungle fire was raging in some thick acacia
+scrub. As we got nearer, the heat became excessive, and the flames,
+fanned into tremendous fury by the fierce west wind, tore through
+the dry thorny bushes. Our elephants were quite unsteady, and did
+not like facing the fire. We made a slight detour, and soon had the
+roaring wall of flame behind us. We were now entering on a moist,
+circular, basin-shaped hollow. Among the patair roots were the
+recent marks of great numbers of wild pigs, where they had been
+foraging among the stiff clay for these esculents. The patair is
+like a huge bulrush, and the elephants are very fond of its
+succulent, juicy, cool-looking leaves. Those in our line kept
+tearing up huge tufts of it, thrashing out the mud and dirt from
+the roots against their forelegs, and with a grunt of satisfaction,
+making it slowly disappear in their cavernous mouths. There was
+considerable noise, and the jungle was nearly as high as the
+howdahs, presenting the appearance of an impenetrable screen of
+vivid green. We beat and rebeat, across and across, but there was
+no sign of the tiger. The banks of the nullah were very steep,
+rotten looking, and dangerous. We had about eighteen elephants,
+namely, ten of our own, and eight belonging to the Nepaulese. We
+were beating very close, the elephants' heads almost touching. This
+is the way they always beat in Nepaul. We thought we had left not a
+spot in the basin untouched, and Captain S. was quite satisfied
+that there could be no tiger there. It was a splendid jungle for
+cover, so thick, dense, and cool. I was beating along the edge of
+the creek, which ran deep and silent, between the gloomy
+sedge-covered banks. In a placid little pool I saw a couple of
+widgeon all unconscious of danger, their glossy plumage reflected
+in the clear water. I called to Captain S. 'We are sold this time
+Captain, there's no tiger here!'</p>
+<p>'I am afraid not,' he answered.</p>
+<p>'Shall I bag those two widgeon?' I asked.</p>
+<p>'All right,' was the response.</p>
+<p>Putting in shot cartridge, I shot both the widgeon, but we were
+all astounded to see the tiger we had so carefully and
+perseveringly searched for, bound out of a crevice in the bank,
+almost right under my elephant. Off he went with a smothered roar,
+that set our elephants hurrying backwards and forwards. There was a
+commotion along the whole line. The jungle was too dense for us to
+see anything. It was one more proof how these hill tigers will lie
+close, even in the midst of a line.</p>
+<p>S. called out to me to remain quiet, and see if we could trace
+the tiger's progress by any rustling in the cover. Looking down we
+saw the kill, close to the edge of the water. A fast elephant was
+sent on ahead, to try and ascertain whether the tiger was likely to
+break beyond the circle of the little basin-shaped valley. We
+gathered round the kill; it was quite fresh; a young buffalo. The
+Major told us that in his experience, a male tiger always begins on
+the neck first. A female always at the hind quarters. A few
+mouthfuls only had been eaten, and according to the Major, it must
+have been a tigress, as the part devoured was from the hind
+quarters.</p>
+<p>While we were talking over these things, a frenzied shout from
+the driver of our naka elephant caused us to look in his direction.
+He was gesticulating wildly, and bawling at the top of his voice,
+'Come, come quickly, sahibs, the tiger is running away.'</p>
+<p>Now commenced such a mad and hurried scramble as I have never
+witnessed before or since, from the back of an elephant. As we tore
+through the tangled dense green patair, the broad leaves crackled
+like crashing branches, the huge elephants surged ahead like ships
+rocking in a gale of wind, and the mahouts and attendants on the
+pad elephants, shouted and urged on their shuffling animals, by
+excited cries and resounding whacks.</p>
+<p>In the retinue of the Major, were several men with elephant
+spears or goads. These consist of a long, pliant, polished bamboo,
+with a sharp spike at the end, which they call a <i>jhetha</i>.
+These men now came hurrying round the ridge, among the opener
+grass, and as we emerged from the heavy cover, they began goading
+the elephants behind and urging them to their most furious pace. On
+ahead, nearly a quarter of a mile away, we could see a huge tiger
+making off for the distant morung, at a rapid sling trot. His lithe
+body shone before us, and urged us to the most desperate efforts.
+It was almost a bare plateau. There was scarcely any cover, only
+here and there a few stunted acacia bushes. The dense forest was
+two or three miles ahead, but there were several nasty steep banks,
+and precipitous gullies with deep water rushing between. Attached
+to each Nepaulee pad, by a stout curiously-plaited cord, ornamented
+with fancy knots and tassels of silk, was a small pestle-shaped
+instrument, not unlike an auctioneer's hammer. It was quaintly
+carved, and studded with short, blunt, shining, brass nails or
+spikes. I had noticed these hanging down from the pads, and had
+often wondered what they were for. I was now to see them used.
+While the mahouts in front rained a shower of blows on the
+elephants head, and the spear-men pricked him up from behind with
+their jhethas, the occupant of the pad, turning round with his face
+to the tail, belaboured the poor hathee with the auctioneer's
+hammer. The blows rattled on the elephant's rump. The brutes
+trumpeted with pain, but they <i>did</i> put on the pace, and
+travelled as I never imagined an elephant <i>could</i> travel. Past
+bush and brake, down precipitous ravine, over the stones, through
+the thorny scrub, dashing down a steep bank here, plunging madly
+through a deep stream there, we shuffled along. We must have been
+going fully seven miles an hour. The pestle-shaped hammer is called
+a <i>lohath</i>, and most unmercifully were they wielded. We were
+jostled and jolted, till every bone ached again. Clouds of dust
+were driven before our reeling waving line. How the Nepaulese
+shouted and capered. We were all mad with excitement. I shouted
+with the rest. The fat little Major kicked his heels against the
+sides of his elephant, as if he were spurring a Derby winner to
+victory. Our usually sedate captain yelled&mdash;actually
+yelled!&mdash;in an agony of excitement, and tried to execute a war
+dance of his own on the floor of his howdah. Our guns rattled, the
+chains clanked and jangled, the howdahs rocked and pitched from
+side to side. We made a desperate effort. The poor elephants made a
+gallant race of it. The foot men perspired and swore, but it was
+not to be. Our striped friend had the best of the start, and we
+gained not an inch upon him. To our unspeakable mortification, he
+reached the dense cover on ahead, where we might as well have
+sought for a needle in a haystack. Never, however, shall I forget
+that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant steeple-chase.
+Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for it next day.</p>
+<p>The old Major and his fleet racing elephants now left us, and
+our jaded beasts took us slowly back in the direction of our camp.
+It was a fine wild view on which we were now gazing. Behind us the
+dark gloomy impenetrable morung, the home of ever-abiding fever and
+ague. Behind that the countless multitude of hills, swelling here
+and receding there, a jumbled heap of mighty peaks and fretted
+pinnacles, with their glistening sides and dark shadowless ravines,
+their mighty scaurs and their abrupt serrated edges showing out
+clearly and boldly defined against the evening sky. Far to the
+right, the shining river&mdash;a riband of burnished steel, for its
+waters were a deep steely blue&mdash;rolled its swift flood along
+amid shining sand-banks. In front, the vast undulating plain, with
+grove, and rill, and smoking hamlet, stretched at our feet in a
+lovely panorama of blended and harmonious colour. We were now high
+up above the plain, and the scene was one of the finest I have ever
+witnessed in India. The wind had gone down, and the oblique rays of
+the sun lit up the whole vast panorama with a lurid light, which
+was heightened in effect by the dust-laden atmosphere, and the
+volumes of smoke from the now distant fires, hedging in the far
+horizon with curtains of threatening grandeur and gloom. That far
+away canopy of dust and smoke formed a wonderful contrast to the
+shining snow-capped hills behind. Altogether it was a day to be
+remembered. I have seen no such strange and unearthly combination
+of shade and colour in any landscape before or since.</p>
+<p>On the way home we bagged a florican and a very fine mallard,
+and reached the camp utterly fagged, to find our worthy magistrate
+very much recovered, and glad to congratulate us on our having
+bagged the tigress. After a plunge in the river, and a rare camp
+dinner&mdash;such a meal as only an Indian sportsman can
+procure&mdash;we lay back in our cane chairs, and while the
+fragrant smoke from the mild Manilla curled lovingly about the roof
+of the tent, we discussed the day's proceedings, and fought our
+battles over again.</p>
+<p>A rather animated discussion arose about the length of the
+tiger&mdash;as to its frame merely, and we wondered what difference
+the skin would make in the length of the animal. As it was a point
+we had never heard mooted before, we determined to see for
+ourselves. We accordingly went out into the beautiful moonlight,
+and superintended the skinning of the tigress. The skin was taken
+off most artistically. We had carefully measured the animal before
+skinning. She was exactly nine feet long. We found the skin made a
+difference of only four inches, the bare skeleton from tip of nose
+to extreme point of tail measuring eight feet eight inches.</p>
+<p>As an instance of tigers taking to trees, our worthy magistrate
+related that in Rajmehal he and a friend had wounded a tiger, and
+subsequently lost him in the jungle. In vain they searched in every
+conceivable direction, but could find no trace of him. They were
+about giving up in despair, when S., raising his hat, happened to
+look up, and there, on a large bough directly overhead, he saw the
+wounded tiger lying extended at full length, some eighteen feet
+from the ground. They were not long in leaving the dangerous
+vicinity, and it was not long either ere a well-directed shot
+brought the tiger down from his elevated perch.</p>
+<p>These after-dinner stories are not the least enjoyable part of a
+tiger-hunting party. Round the camp table in a snug, well-lighted
+tent, with all the 'materials' handy, I have listened to many a
+tale of thrilling adventure. S. was full of reminiscences, and
+having seen a deal of tiger shooting in various parts of India, his
+recollections were much appreciated. To shew that the principal
+danger in tiger shooting is not from the tiger himself, but from
+one's elephant becoming panic-stricken and bolting, he told how a
+Mr. Aubert, a Benares planter, lost his life. A tiger had been
+'spined' by a shot, and the line gathered round the prostrate
+monster to watch its death-struggle. The elephant on which the
+unfortunate planter sat got demoralised and attempted to bolt. The
+mahout endeavoured to check its rush, and in desperation the
+elephant charged straight down, close past the tiger, which lay
+writhing and roaring under a huge overhanging tree. The elephant
+was rushing directly under this tree, and a large branch would have
+swept howdah and everything it contained clean off the elephant's
+back, as easily as one would brush off a fly. To save himself
+Aubert made a leap for the branch, the elephant forging madly
+ahead; and the howdah, being smashed like match-wood, fell on the
+tiger below, who was tearing and clawing at everything within his
+reach. Poor Aubert got hold of the branch with his hands, and clung
+with all the desperation of one fighting for his life. He was right
+above the wounded tiger, but his grasp on the tree was not a firm
+one. For a moment he hung suspended above the furious animal,
+which, mad with agony and fury, was a picture of demoniac rage. The
+poor fellow could hold no longer, and fell right on the tiger. It
+was nearly at its last gasp, but it caught hold of Aubert by the
+foot, and in a final paroxysm of pain and rage chawed the foot
+clean off, and the poor fellow died next day from the shock and
+loss of blood. He was one of four brothers who all met untimely
+deaths from accidents. This one was killed by the tiger, another
+was thrown from a vehicle and killed on the spot, the third was
+drowned, and the fourth shot by accident.</p>
+<p>Our bag to-day was one tiger, one florican, one mallard, and two
+widgeon. On cutting the tiger open, we found that the bullet had
+entered on the left side, and, as we suspected, had entered the
+lungs. It had, however, made a terrible wound. We found that it had
+penetrated the heart and liver, gone forward through the chest, and
+smashed the right shoulder. Notwithstanding this fearful wound,
+shewing the tremendous effects of the Express bullet, the tiger had
+gone on for the distance I have mentioned, after which it must have
+fallen stone-dead. It was a marvellous instance of vitality, even
+after the heart, liver, and lungs had been pierced. The liver had
+six lobes, and it was then I heard for the first time, that with
+the natives this was an infallible sign of the age of a tiger. The
+old Major firmly believed it, and told us it was quite an accepted
+article of faith with all native sportsmen. Facts subsequently came
+under my own observation which seemed to give great probability to
+the theory, but it is one on which I would not like to give a
+decided opinion, till after hearing the experiences of other
+sportsmen.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXIV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIV.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Camp of the Nepaulee
+chief.&mdash;Quicksands.&mdash;Elephants crossing rivers.
+&mdash;Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.&mdash;We beat the forest for
+tiger.&mdash;Shoot a young tiger.&mdash;Red ants in the
+forest.&mdash;Bhowras or ground bees.&mdash;The <i>ursus
+labialis</i> or long-lipped bear.&mdash;Recross the
+stream.&mdash;Florican. &mdash;Stag running the gauntlet of
+flame.&mdash;Our bag.&mdash;Start for factory. &mdash;Remarks on
+elephants.&mdash;Precautions useful for protection from the sun in
+tiger shooting.&mdash;The <i>puggree</i>.&mdash;Cattle breeding in
+India, and wholesale deaths of cattle from
+disease.&mdash;Nathpore.&mdash;Ravages of the river.&mdash;Mrs.
+Gray, an old resident in the jungles.&mdash;Description of her
+surroundings.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Next morning we started beating due east, setting fire to the
+jungle as we went along. The roaring and crackling of the flames
+startled the elephant on which Captain S. was riding, and going
+away across country at a furious pace, it was with difficulty that
+it could be stopped. We crossed the frontier line a short distance
+from camp, and entered a dense jungle of thorny acacia, with long
+dry grass almost choking the trees. They were dry and stunted, and
+when we dropped a few lights amongst such combustible material, the
+fire was splendid beyond description. How the flames surged through
+the withered grass. We were forced to pause and admire the
+magnificent sight. The wall of flame tore along with inconceivable
+rapidity, and the blinding volumes of smoke obscured the country
+for miles. The jungle was full of deer and pig. One fine buck came
+bounding along past our line, but I stopped him with a single
+bullet through the neck. He fell over with a tremendous crash, and
+turning a complete somersault broke off both his horns with the
+force of the fall.</p>
+<p>We beat down a shallow sandy watercourse, and could see the camp
+of the old Major on the high bank beyond. Farther down the stream
+there was a small square fort, the whitewashed walls of which
+flashed back the rays of the sun, and grouped round it were some
+ruinous looking huts, several snowy tents, and a huge shamiana or
+canopy, under which we could see a host of attendants spreading
+carpets, placing chairs, and otherwise making ready for us. The
+banks of the stream were very steep, but the guide at length
+brought us to what seemed a safe and fordable passage. On the
+further side was a flat expanse of seemingly firm and dry sand, but
+no sooner had our elephants begun to cross it, than the whole
+sandbank for yards began to rock and tremble; the water welled up
+over the footmarks of the elephants, and S. called out to us,
+Fussun, Fussun! quicksand, quicksand! We scattered the elephants,
+and tried to hurry them over the dangerous bit of ground with
+shouts and cries of encouragement.</p>
+<p>The poor animals seemed thoroughly to appreciate the danger, and
+shuffled forward as quickly as they could. All got over in safety
+except the last three. The treacherous sand, rendered still more
+insecure by the heavy tread of so many ponderous animals, now gave
+way entirely, and the three hapless elephants were left floundering
+in the tenacious hold of the dreaded fussun. Two of the three were
+not far from the firm bank, and managed to extricate themselves
+after a short struggle; but the third had sunk up to the shoulders,
+and could scarcely move. All hands immediately began cutting long
+grass and forming it into bundles. These were thrown to the sinking
+elephant. He rolled from side to side, the sand quaking and
+undulating round him in all directions. At times he would roll over
+till nearly half his body was invisible. Some of the Nepaulese
+ventured near, and managed to undo the harness-ropes that were
+holding on the pad. The sagacious brute fully understood his
+danger, and the efforts we were making for his assistance. He
+managed to get several of the big bundles of grass under his feet,
+and stood there looking at us with a most pathetic pleading
+expression, and trembling, as if with an ague, from fear and
+exhaustion.</p>
+<p>The old Major came down to meet us, and a crowd of his men added
+their efforts to ours, to help the unfortunate elephant. We threw
+in bundle after bundle of grass, till we had the yielding sand
+covered with a thick passage of firmly bound fascines, on which the
+hathee, staggering and floundering painfully, managed to reach firm
+land. He was so completely exhausted that he could scarcely walk to
+the tents, and we left him there to the care of his attendants.
+This is a very common episode in tiger hunting, and does not always
+terminate so fortunately. In running water, the quicksand is not so
+dangerous, as the force of the stream keeps washing away the sand,
+and does not allow it to settle round the legs of the elephant; but
+on dry land, a dry fussun, as it is called, is justly feared; and
+many a valuable animal has been swallowed up in its slow, deadly,
+tenacious grasp.</p>
+<p>In crossing sand, the heaviest and slowest elephants should go
+first, preceded by a light, nimble pioneer. If the leading elephant
+shows signs of sinking, the others should at once turn back, and
+seek some safer place. In all cases the line should separate a
+little, and not follow in each other's footsteps. The indications
+of a quicksand are easily recognised. If the surface of the sand
+begins to oscillate and undulate with a tremulous rocking motion,
+it is always wise to seek some other passage. Looking back, after
+elephants have passed, you will often see what was a perfectly dry
+flat, covered with several inches of water. When water begins to
+ooze up in any quantity, after a few elephants have passed, it is
+much safer to make the remainder cross at some spot farther on.</p>
+<p>In crossing a deep swift river, the elephants should enter the
+water in a line, ranged up and down the river. That is, the line
+should be ranged along the bank, and enter the water at right
+angles to the current, and not in Indian file. The strongest
+elephants should be up stream, as they help to break the force of
+the current for the weaker and smaller animals down below. It is a
+fine sight to see some thirty or forty of these huge animals
+crossing a deep and rapid river. Some are reluctant to strike out,
+when they begin to enter the deepest channel, and try to turn back;
+the mahouts and 'mates' shout, and belabour them with bamboo poles.
+The trumpeting of the elephants, the waving of the trunks,
+disporting, like huge water-snakes, in the perturbed current, the
+splashing of the bamboos, the dark bodies of the natives swimming
+here and there round the animals, the unwieldy boat piled high with
+how-dahs and pads, the whole heap surmounted by a group of
+sportsmen with their gleaming weapons, and variegated puggrees,
+make up a picturesque and memorable sight. Some of the strong
+swimmers among the elephants seem to enjoy the whole affair
+immensely. They dip their huge heads entirely under the current,
+the sun flashes on the dark hide, glistening with the dripping
+water; the enormous head emerges again slowly, like some monstrous
+antediluvian creation, and with a succession of these ponderous
+appearances and disappearances, the mighty brutes forge through the
+surging water. When they reach a shallow part, they pipe with
+pleasure, and send volumes of fluid splashing against their heaving
+flanks, scattering the spray all round in mimic rainbows.</p>
+<p>At all times the Koosee was a dangerous stream to cross, but
+during the rains I have seen the strongest and best swimming
+elephants taken nearly a mile down stream; and in many instances
+they have been drowned, their vast bulk and marvellous strength
+being quite unable to cope with the tremendous force of the raging
+waters.</p>
+<p>When we had got comfortably seated under the shamiana, a crowd
+of attendants brought us baskets of fruit and a very nice cold
+collation of various Indian dishes and curries. We did ample
+justice to the old soldier's hospitable offerings, and then
+betel-nut, cardamums, cloves, and other spices, and pauri leaves,
+were handed round on a silver salver, beautifully embossed and
+carved with quaint devices. We lit our cigars, our beards and
+handkerchiefs were anointed with attar of roses; and the old Major
+then informed us that there was good khubber of tiger in the wood
+close by.</p>
+<p>The trees were splendid specimens of forest growth, enormously
+thick, beautifully umbrageous, and growing very close together.
+There was a dense undergrowth of tangled creeper, and the most
+lovely ferns and tropical plants in the richest luxuriance, and of
+every conceivable shade of amber and green. It was a charming spot.
+The patch of forest was separated from the unbroken line of morung
+jungle by a beautifully sheltered glade of several hundred acres,
+and further broken in three places by avenue-looking openings,
+disclosing peeps of the black and gloomy-looking mass of
+impenetrable forest beyond.</p>
+<p>In the first of these openings we were directed to take up a
+position, while the pad elephants and a crowd of beaters went to
+the edge of the patch of forest and began beating up to us. Immense
+numbers of genuine jungle fowl were calling in all directions, and
+flying right across the opening in numerous coveys. They are
+beautifully marked with black and golden plumes round the neck, and
+I determined to shoot a few by and bye to send home to friends, who
+I knew would prize them as invaluable material in dressing hooks
+for fly-fishing. The crashing of the trees, as the elephants forced
+their way through the thick forest, or tore off huge branches as
+they struggled amid the matted vegetation, kept us all on the
+alert. The first place was however a blank, and we moved on to the
+next. We had not long to wait, for a fierce din inside the jungle,
+and the excited cries of the beaters, apprised us that game of some
+sort was afoot. We were eagerly watching, and speculating on the
+cause of the uproar, when a very fine half-grown tiger cub sprang
+out of some closely growing fern, and dashed across the narrow
+opening so quickly, that ere we had time to raise a gun, he had
+disappeared in some heavy jhamun jungle on the further side of the
+path.</p>
+<p>We hurried round as fast as we could to intercept him, should he
+attempt to break on ahead; and leaving some men to rally the
+mahouts, and let them know that there was a tiger afoot, we were
+soon in our places, and ready to give the cub a warm reception,
+should he again show his stripes. It was not long ere he did so. I
+spied him stealing along the edge of the jungle, evidently
+intending to make a rush back past the opening he had just crossed,
+and outflank the line of beater elephants. I fired and hit him in
+the forearm; he rolled over roaring with rage, and then descrying
+his assailants, he bounded into the open, and as well as his wound
+would allow him, came furiously down at the charge. In less time
+however than it takes to write it, he had received three bullets in
+his body, and tumbled down a lifeless heap. We raised a cheer which
+brought the beaters and elephants quickly to the spot. In coming
+through a thickly wooded part of the forest, with numerous long and
+pliant creepers intertwisted into a confused tangle of rope-like
+ligaments, the old Juddeah elephant tore down one of the long
+lines, and dislodged an angry army of venomous red ants on the
+occupants of the guddee, or cushioned seat on the elephant's pad.
+The ants proved formidable assailants. There were two or three
+Baboos or native gentlemen, holding on to the ropes, chewing pan,
+and enjoying the scene, but the red ants were altogether more than
+they had bargained for. Recognising the Baboos as the immediate
+cause of their disturbance, they attacked them with indomitable
+courage. The mahout fairly yelled with pain, and one of the Baboos,
+smarting from the fiery bites of the furious insects, toppled clean
+backwards into the undergrowth, showing an undignified pair of
+heels. The other two danced on the guddee, sweeping and thrashing
+the air, the cushion, and their clothes, with their cummerbunds, in
+the vain effort to free themselves of their angry assailants. The
+guddee was literally covered with ants; it looked an animated red
+mass, and the wretched Baboos made frantic efforts to shake
+themselves clear. They were dreadfully bitten, and reaching the
+open, they slid off the elephant, and even on the ground continued
+their saltatory antics before finally getting rid of their
+ferocious assailants.</p>
+<p>In forest shooting the red ant is one of the most dreaded pests
+of the jungle. If a colony gets dislodged from some overhanging
+branch, and is landed in your howdah, the best plan is to evacuate
+your stronghold as quickly as you can, and let the attendants clear
+away the invaders. Their bite is very painful, and they take such
+tenacious hold, that rather than quit their grip, they allow
+themselves to be decapitated and leave their head and formidable
+forceps sticking in your flesh.</p>
+<p>Other dreaded foes in the forest jungle are the Bhowra or ground
+bees, which are more properly a kind of hornet. If by evil chance
+your elephant should tread on their mound-like nest, instantly an
+angry swarm of venomous and enraged hornets comes buzzing about
+your ears. Your only chance is to squat down, and envelope yourself
+completely in a blanket. Old sportsmen, shooting in forest jungle,
+invariably take a blanket Avith them in the howdah, to ensure
+themselves protection in the event of an attack by these
+blood-thirsty creatures. The thick matted creepers too are a great
+nuisance, for which a bill-hook or sharp kookree is an invaluable
+adjunct to the other paraphernalia of the march. I have seen a
+mahout swept clean off the elephant's back by these tenacious
+creepers, and the elephants themselves are sometimes unable to
+break through the tangle of sinewy, lithe cords, which drape the
+huge forest trees, hanging in slender festoons from every branch.
+Some of them are prickly, and as the elephant slowly forces his way
+through the mass of pendent swaying cords, they lacerate and tear
+the mahout's clothes and skin, and appropriate his puggree. As you
+crouch down within the shelter of your howdah, you can't help
+pitying the poor wretch, and incline to think that, after all,
+shooting in grass jungle has fewer drawbacks and is preferable to
+forest shooting.</p>
+<p>One of the drivers reported that he had seen a bear in the
+jungle, and we saw the earth of one not far from where the young
+tiger had fallen; it was the lair of the sloth bear or <i>Ursus
+labialis</i>, so called from his long pendent upper lip. His spoor
+is very easily distinguished from that of any other animal; the
+ball of the foot shows a distinct round impression, and about an
+inch to an inch and a half further on, the impression of the long
+curved claws are seen. He uses these long-curved claws to tear up
+ant hills, and open hollow decaying trees, to get at the honey
+within, of which he is very fond. We went after the bear, and were
+not long in discovering his whereabouts, and a well-directed shot
+from S. added him to our bag. The best bear shooting in India
+perhaps is in CHOTA NAGPOOR, but this does not come within the
+limits of my present volume. We now beat slowly through the wood,
+keeping a bright look out for ants and hornets, and getting fine
+shooting at the numerous jungle fowl which flew about in amazing
+numbers.</p>
+<p>The forest trees in this patch of jungle were very fine. The
+hill seerees, with its feathery foliage and delicate clusters of
+white bugle-shaped blossom; the semul or cotton tree, with its
+wonderful wealth of magnificent crimson flowers; the birch-looking
+sheeshum or sissod; the sombre looking sal; the shining,
+leathery-leafed bhur, with its immense over-arching limbs, and the
+crisp, curly-leafed elegant-looking jhamun or Indian olive, formed
+a paradise of sylvan beauty, on which the eye dwelt till it was
+sated with the woodland loveliness.</p>
+<p>In recrossing the dhar or water-course, we took care to avoid
+the quicksands, and as we did not expect to fall in with another
+tiger, we indulged in a little general firing. I shot a fine buck
+through the spine, and we bagged several deer, and no less than
+five florican; this bird is allied to the bustard family, and has
+beautiful drooping feathers, hanging in plumy pendants of deep
+black and pure white, intermingled in the most graceful and showy
+manner. The male is a magnificent bird, and has perhaps as fine
+plumage as any bird on the border; the flesh yields the most
+delicate eating of any game bird I know; the slices of mingled
+brown and white from the breast are delicious. The birds are rather
+shy, generally getting up a long way in front of the line, and
+moving with a slow, rather clumsy, flight, not unlike the flight of
+the white earth owl. They run with great swiftness, and are rather
+hard to kill, unless hit about the neck and head. There are two
+sorts, the lesser and the greater, the former also called the
+bastard florican. Altogether they are noble looking birds, and the
+sportsman is always glad to add as many florican as he can to his
+bag.</p>
+<p>We were now nearing the locality of the fierce fire of the
+morning; it was still blazing in a long extended line of flame, and
+we witnessed an incident without parallel in the experience of any
+of us. I fired at and wounded a large stag; it was wounded
+somewhere in the side, and seemed very hard hit indeed. Maddened
+probably by terror and pain, it made straight for the line of fire,
+and bounded unhesitatingly right into the flame. We saw it
+distinctly go clean though the flames, but we could not see whether
+it got away with its life, as the elephants would not go up to the
+fire. At all events, the stag went right through his fiery ordeal,
+and was lost to us. We started numerous hares close to camp, and S.
+bowled over several. They are very common in the short grass
+jungle, where the soil is sandy, and are frequently to be found
+among thin jowah jungle; they afford good sport for coursing, but
+are neither so fleet, nor so large, nor such good eating as the
+English hare. In fact, they are very dry eating, and the best way
+to cook them is to jug them, or make a hunter's pie, adding
+portions of partridge, quail, or plover, with a few mushrooms, and
+a modicum of ham or bacon if these are procurable.</p>
+<p>We reached camp pretty late, and sent off venison, birds, and
+other spoils to Mrs. S. and to Inamputte factory. Our bag shewed a
+diversity of spoil, consisting of one tiger, seven hog-deer, one
+bear <i>(Ursus labialis)</i>, seventeen jungle fowl, five florican,
+and six hares. It was no bad bag considering that during most of
+the day we had been beating solely for tiger. We could have shot
+many more deer and jungle fowl, but we never try to shoot more than
+are needed to satisfy the wants of the camp. Were we to attempt to
+shoot at all the deer and pig that we see, the figures would reach
+very large totals. As a rule therefore, the records of Indian
+sportsmen give no idea of the vast quantities of game that are put
+up and never fired at. It would be the very wantonness of
+destruction, to shoot animals not wanted for some specific purpose,
+unless indeed, you were raging an indiscriminate war of
+extermination, in a quarter where their numbers were a nuisance and
+prejudicial to crops. In that case, your proceedings would not be
+dignified by the name of sport.</p>
+<p>After a few more days shooting, the incidents of which were
+pretty much like those I have been describing, I started back for
+the factory. I sent my horse on ahead, and took five elephants with
+me to beat up for game on the homeward route. Close to camp a fine
+buck got up in front of me. I broke both his forelegs with my first
+shot, but the poor brute still managed to hobble along. It was in
+some very dense patair jungle, and I had considerable difficulty in
+bringing him to bag. When we reached the ghat or ferry, I ordered
+Geerdharee Jha's mahout to cross with his elephant. The brute,
+however, refused to cross the river alone, and in spite of all the
+driver could do, she insisted on following the rest. I got down,
+and some of the other drivers got out the hobbles and bound them
+round her legs. In spite of these she still seemed determined to
+follow us. She shook the bedding and other articles with which she
+was loaded off her back, and made a frantic effort to follow us
+through the deep sand. The iron chains cut into her legs, and,
+afraid that she might do herself an irreparable injury, I had her
+tied up to a tree, and left her trumpeting and making an indignant
+lamentation at being separated from the rest of the line.</p>
+<p>The elephant seems to be quite a social animal. I have
+frequently seen cases where, after having been in company together
+for a lengthened hunt, they have manifested great reluctance to
+separate. In leaving the line, I have often noticed the single
+elephant looking back at his comrades, and giving vent to his
+disappointment and disapproval, by grunts and trumpetings of
+indignant protest. We left the refractory hathee tied up to her
+tree, and as we crossed the long rolling billows of burning sand
+that lay athwart our course, she was soon lost to view. I shot a
+couple more hog-deer, and got several plover and teal in the
+patches of water that lay in some of the hollows among the
+sandbanks. I fired at a huge alligator basking in the sun, on a
+sandbank close to the stream. The bullet hit him somewhere in the
+forearm, and he made a tremendous sensation header into the
+current. From the agitation in the water, he seemed not to
+appreciate the leaden message which I had sent him.</p>
+<p>We found the journey through the soft yielding sand very
+fatiguing, and especially trying to the eyes. When not shooting, it
+is a very wise precaution to wear eye-preservers or 'goggles.' They
+are a great relief to the eyes, and the best, I think, are the
+neutral tinted. During the west winds, when the atmosphere is
+loaded with fine particles of irritating sand and dust, these
+goggles are very necessary, and are a great protection to the
+sight.</p>
+<p>Another prudent precaution is to have the back of one's shirt or
+coat slightly padded with cotton and quilted. The heat prevents one
+wearing thick clothes, and there is no doubt that the action of the
+direct rays of the burning sun all down the back on the spinal
+cord, is very injurious, and may be a fruitful cause of sunstroke.
+It is certainly productive of great lassitude and weariness. I used
+to wear a thin quilted sort of shield made of cotton-drill, which
+fastened round the shoulders and waist. It does not incommode one's
+action in any particular, and is, I think, a great protection
+against the fierce rays of the sun. Many prefer the puggree as a
+head-piece. It is undeniably a fine thing when one is riding on
+horseback, as it fits close to the head, does not catch the wind
+during a smart trot or canter, and is therefore not easily shaken
+off. For riding I think it preferable to all other headdresses. A
+good thick puggree is a great protection to the back of the head
+and neck, the part of the body which of all others requires
+protection from the sun. It feels rather heavy at first, but one
+gets used to it, and it does not shade the eyes and face. These are
+the two gravest objections to it, but for comfort, softness, and
+protection to the head and neck, I do not think it can be
+surpassed.</p>
+<p>After crossing the sand, we again entered some thin scrubby
+acacia jungle, with here and there a moist swampy nullah, with rank
+green patair jungle growing in the cool dank shade. Here we
+disturbed a colony of pigs, but the four mahouts being Mahommedans
+I did not fire. As we went along, one of my men called my attention
+to some footprints near a small lagoon. On inspection we found they
+were rhinoceros tracks, evidently of old date. These animals are
+often seen in this part of the country, but are more numerous
+farther north, in the great morung forest jungle.</p>
+<p>A very noticeable feature in these jungles was the immense
+quantity of bleached ghastly skeletons of cattle. This year had
+been a most disastrous one for cattle. Enormous numbers had been
+swept off by disease, and in many villages bordering on the morung
+the herds had been well-nigh exterminated. Little attention is paid
+to breeding. In some districts, such as the Mooteeharree and
+Mudhobunnee division, fine cart-bullocks are bred, carefully
+handled and tended, and fetch high prices. In Kurruchpore, beyond
+the Ganges in Bhaugulpore district, cattle of a small breed, hardy,
+active, staunch, and strong, are bred in great numbers, and are
+held in great estimation for agricultural requirements; but in
+these Koosee jungles the bulls are often ill-bred weedy brutes, and
+the cows being much in excess of a fair proportion of bulls, a deal
+of in-breeding takes place; unmatured young bulls roam about with
+the herd, and the result is a crowd of cattle that succumb to the
+first ailment, so that the land is littered with their bones.</p>
+<p>The bullock being indispensable to the Indian cultivator, bull
+calves are prized, taken care of, well nurtured, and well fed. The
+cow calves are pretty much left to take care of themselves; they
+are thin, miserable, half-starved brutes, and the short-sighted
+ryot seems altogether to forget that it is on these miserable
+withered specimens that he must depend for his supply of plough and
+cart-bullocks. The matter is most shamefully neglected. Government
+occasionally through its officers, experimental farms, etc., tries
+to get good sire stock for both horses and cattle, but as long as
+the dams are bad&mdash;mere weeds, without blood, bone, muscle, or
+stamina, the produce must be bad. As a pretty well established and
+general rule, the ryots look after their bullocks,&mdash;they
+recognise their value, and appreciate their utility, but the cows
+fare badly, and from all I have myself seen, and from the
+concurrent testimony of many observant friends in the rural
+districts, I should say that the breed has become much
+deteriorated.</p>
+<p>Old planters constantly tell you, that such cattle as they used
+to get are not now procurable for love or money. Within the last
+twenty years prices have more than doubled, because the demand for
+good plough-bullocks has been more urgent, as a consequence of
+increased cultivation, and the supply is not equal to the demand.
+Attention to the matter is imperative, and planters would be wise
+in their own interests to devote a little time and trouble to
+disseminating sound ideas about the selection of breeding stock,
+and the principles of rearing and raising stock among their ryots
+and dependants. Every factory should be able to breed its own
+cattle, and supply its own requirements for plough and
+cart-bullocks. It would be cheaper in the end, and it would
+undoubtedly be a blessing to the country to raise the standard of
+cattle used in agricultural work.</p>
+<p>To return from this digression. We plodded on and on, weary,
+hot, and thirsty, expecting every moment to see the ghat and my
+waiting horse. But the country here is so wild, the river takes
+such erratic courses during the annual floods, and the district is
+so secluded and so seldom visited by Europeans or factory servants,
+that my syce had evidently lost his way. After we had crossed
+innumerable streams, and laboriously traversed mile upon mile of
+burning sand, we gave up the attempt to find the ghat, and made for
+Nathpore.</p>
+<p>Nathpore was formerly a considerable town, not far from the
+Nepaul border, a flourishing grain mart and emporium for the
+fibres, gums, spices, timbers, and other productions of a wide
+frontier. There was a busy and crowded bazaar, long streets of
+shops and houses, and hundreds of boats lying in the stream beside
+the numerous ghats, taking in and discharging their cargoes. It may
+give a faint idea of the destructive force of an Indian stream like
+the Koosee when it is in full flood, to say that this once
+flourishing town is now but a handful of miserable huts. Miles of
+rich lands, once clothed with luxuriant crops of rice, indigo, and
+waving grain, are now barren reaches of burning sand. The bleached
+skeletons of mango, jackfruit, and other trees, stretch out their
+leafless and lifeless branches, to remind the spectator of the time
+when their foliage rustled in the breeze, when their lusty limbs
+bore rich clusters of luscious fruit, and when the din of the
+bazaar resounded beneath their welcome shade. A fine old lady still
+lived in a two-storied brick building, with quaint little darkened
+rooms, and a narrow verandah running all round the building. She
+was long past the allotted threescore years and ten, with a keen
+yet mildly beaming eye, and a wealth of beautiful hair as white as
+driven snow, neatly gathered back from her shapely forehead. She
+was the last remaining link connecting the present with the past
+glories of Nathpore. Her husband had been a planter and Zemindar.
+Where his vats had stood laden with rich indigo, the engulphing
+sand now reflected the rays of the torrid sun from its burning
+whiteness. She shewed me a picture of the town as it appeared to
+her when she had been brought there many a long and weary year ago,
+ere yet her step had lost its lightness, and when she was in the
+bloom of her bridal life. There was a fine broad boulevard,
+shadowed by splendid trees, on which she and her husband had driven
+in their carriage of an evening, through crowds of prosperous and
+contented traders and cultivators. The hungry river had swept all
+this away. Subsisting on a few precarious rents of some little
+plots of ground that it had spared, all that remained of a once
+princely estate, this good old lady lived her lonely life cheerful
+and contented, never murmuring or repining. The river had not
+spared even the graves of her departed dear ones. Since I left that
+part of the country I hear that she has been called away to join
+those who had gone before her.</p>
+<p>I arrived at her house late in the afternoon. I had never been
+at Nathpore before, although the place was well known to me by
+reputation. What a wreck it presented as our elephants marched
+through. Ruined, dismantled, crumbling temples; masses of masonry
+half submerged in the swift-running, treacherous, undermining
+stream; huge trees lying prostrate, twisted and jammed together
+where the angry flood had hurled them; bare unsightly poles and
+piles, sticking from the water at every angle, reminding us of the
+granaries and godowns that were wont to be filled with the
+agricultural wealth of the districts for miles around; hard
+metalled roads cut abruptly off, and bridges with only half an
+arch, standing lonely and ruined half way in the muddy current that
+swept noiselessly past the deserted city. It was a scene of utter
+waste and desolation.</p>
+<p>The lady I mentioned made me very welcome, and I was struck by
+her unaffected cheerfulness and gentleness. She was a gentlewoman
+indeed, and though reduced in circumstances, surrounded by
+misfortunes, and daily and hourly reminded by the scattered wreck
+around her of her former wealth and position, she bore all with
+exemplary fortitude, and to the full extent of her scanty means she
+relieved the sorrows and ailments of the natives. They all loved
+and respected, and I could not help admiring and honouring her.</p>
+<p>She pointed out to me, far away on the south-east horizon, the
+place where the river ran in its shallow channel when she first
+came to Nathpore. During her experience it had cut into and
+overspread more than twenty miles of country, turning fertile
+fields into arid wastes of sand; sweeping away factories, farms,
+and villages; and changing the whole face of the country from a
+fruitful landscape into a wilderness of sand and swamp.</p>
+<p>My horse came up in the evening, and I rode over to Inamputte,
+leaving my kindly hostess in her solitude.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXV.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Exciting jungle scene.&mdash;The
+camp.&mdash;All quiet.&mdash;Advent of the cowherds. &mdash;A tiger
+close by.&mdash;Proceed to the spot.&mdash;Encounter between
+tigress and buffaloes.&mdash;Strange behaviour of the
+elephant.&mdash;Discovery and capture of four cubs.&mdash;Joyful
+return to camp.&mdash;Death of the tigress. &mdash;Night encounter
+with a leopard.&mdash;The haunts of the tiger and our shooting
+grounds.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>One of the most exciting and deeply interesting scenes I ever
+witnessed in the jungles, was on the occasion I have referred to in
+a former chapter, when speaking of the number of young given by the
+tigress at a birth. It was in the month of March, at the village of
+Ryseree, in Bhaugulpore. I had been encamped in the midst of
+twenty-four beautiful tanks, the history and construction of which
+were lost in the mists of tradition. The villagers had a story that
+these tanks were the work of a mighty giant, Bheema, with whose aid
+and that of his brethren they had been excavated in a single
+night.</p>
+<p>At all events, they were now covered with a wild tangle of water
+lilies and aquatic plants; well stocked with magnificent fish, and
+an occasional scaly monster of a saurian. They were the haunt of
+vast quantities of widgeon, teal, whistlers, mallard, ducks, snipe,
+curlew, blue fowl, and the usual varied <i>habitu&eacute;s</i> of
+an exceptionally good Indian lake. In the vicinity hares were
+numerous, and in the thick jungle bordering the tanks in places,
+and consisting mostly of nurkool and wild rose, hog-deer and wild
+pig were abundant. The dried-up bed of an old arm of the Koosee was
+quite close to my camp, and abounded in sandpiper, and golden,
+grey, goggle-eyed, and stilted plover, besides other game.</p>
+<p>It was indeed a favourite camping spot, and the village was
+inhabited by a hardy, independent set of Gwallas, Koormees, and
+agriculturists, with whom I was a prime favourite.</p>
+<p>I was sitting in my tent, going over some village accounts with
+the village putwarrie, and my gomasta. A poss&eacute; of villagers
+were grouped under the grateful shade of a gnarled old mango tree,
+whose contorted limbs bore evidence to the violence of many a
+<i>tufan</i>, or tempest, which it had weathered. The usual
+confused clamour of tongues was rising from this group, and the
+sub; ect of debate was the eternal 'pice.' Behind the bank, and in
+rear of the tent, the cook and his mate were disembowelling a
+hapless <i>moorghee</i>, a fowl, whose decapitation had just been
+effected with a huge jagged old cavalry sword, of which my cook was
+not a little proud; and on the strength of which he adopted fierce
+military airs, and gave an extra turn to his well-oiled moustache
+when he went abroad for a holiday.</p>
+<p>Farther to the rear a line of horses were picketed, including my
+man-eating demon the white Cabool stallion, my gentle country-bred
+mare Motee&mdash;the pearl&mdash;and my handsome little pony mare,
+formerly my hockey or polo steed, a present from a gallant
+sportsman and rare good fellow, as good a judge of a horse, or a
+criminal, as ever sat on a bench.</p>
+<p>Behind the horses, each manacled by weighty chains, with his
+ponderous trunk and ragged-looking tail swaying too and fro with a
+never-ceasing motion, stood a line of ten elephants. Their huge
+leathery ears flapped lazily, and ever and anon one or other would
+seize a mighty branch, and belabour his corrugated sides to free
+himself of the detested and troublesome flies. The elephants were
+placidly munching their <i>chana</i> (bait, or food), and
+occasionally giving each other a dry bath in the shape of a shower
+of sand. There was a monotonous clank of chains, and an occasional
+deep abdominal rumble like distant thunder. All over the camp there
+was a confused subdued medley of sound. A hum from the
+argumentative villagers, a lazy flop in the tank as a raho rose to
+the surface, an occasional outburst from the ducks, an angry
+clamour from the water-hens and blue-fowl. My dogs were lying round
+me blinking and winking, and making an occasional futile snap at an
+imaginary fly or flea. It was a drowsy and peaceful scene. I was
+nearly dropping off to sleep, from the heat and the monotonous
+drone of the putwarrie, who was intoning nasally some formidable
+document about fishery rights and privileges.</p>
+<p>Suddenly there was a hush. Every sound seemed to stop
+simultaneously as if by pre-arranged concert. Then three men were
+seen rushing madly along the elevated ridge surrounding one of the
+tanks. I recognised one of my peons, and with him two cowherds.
+Their head-dresses were all disarranged, and their parted lips,
+heaving chests, and eyes blazing with excitement, shewed that they
+were brimful of some unusual message.</p>
+<p>Now arose such a bustle in the camp as no description could
+adequately portray. The elephants trumpeted and piped; the
+<i>syces</i>, or grooms, came rushing up with eager queries; the
+villagers bustled about like so many ants aroused by the approach
+of a hostile foe; my pack of terriers yelped out in chorus; the
+pony neighed; the Cabool stallion plunged about; my servants came
+rushing from the shelter of the tent verandah with disordered
+dress; the ducks rose in a quacking crowd, and circled round and
+round the tent; and the cry arose of 'Bagh! Bagh! Khodamund! Arree
+Bap re Bap! Ram Ram, Seeta Ram!'</p>
+<p>Breathless with running, the men now tumbled up, hurriedly
+salaamed, arid then each with gasps and choking stops, and
+pell-mell volubility, and amid a running fire of cries, queries,
+and interjections from the mob, began to unfold their tale. There
+was an infuriated tigress at the other side of the nullah, or dry
+watercourse, she had attacked a herd of buffaloes, and it was
+believed that she had cubs.</p>
+<p>Already Debnarain Singh was getting his own pad elephant
+caparisoned, and my bearer was diving under my camp bed for my gun
+and cartridges. Knowing the little elephant to be a fast walker,
+and fairly staunch, I got on her back, and accompanied by the
+gomasta and mahout we set out, followed by the peon and herdsmen to
+shew us the way.</p>
+<p>I expected two friends, officers from Calcutta, that very day,
+and wished not to kill the tigress but to keep her for our combined
+shooting next day. We had not proceeded far when, on the other side
+of the nullah, we saw dense clouds of dust rising, and heard a
+confused, rushing, trampling sound, mingled with the clashing of
+horns, and the snorting of a herd of angry buffaloes.</p>
+<p>It was the wildest sight I have ever seen in connection with
+animal life. The buffaloes were drawn together in the form of a
+crescent; their eyes glared fiercely, and as they advanced in a
+series of short runs, stamping with their hoofs, and angrily
+lashing their tails, their horns would come together with a
+clanging, clattering crash, and they would paw the sand, snort and
+toss their heads, and behave in the most extraordinary manner.</p>
+<p>The cause of all this commotion was not far to seek. Directly in
+front, retreating slowly, with stealthy, prowling, crawling steps,
+and an occasional short, quick leap or bound to one side or the
+other, was a magnificent tigress, looking the very personification
+of baffled fury. Ever and anon she crouched down to the earth, tore
+up the sand with her claws, lashed her tail from side to side, and
+with lips retracted, long moustaches quivering with wrath, and
+hateful eyes scintillating with rage and fury, she seemed to
+meditate an attack on the angry buffaloes. The serried array of
+clashing horns, and the ponderous bulk of the herd, seemed however
+to daunt the snarling vixen; at their next rush she would bound
+back a few paces, crouch down, growl, and be forced to move back
+again, by the short, blundering rush of the crowd.</p>
+<p>All the calves and old cows were in the rear of the herd, and it
+was not a little comical to witness their ungainly attitudes. They
+would stretch their clumsy necks, and shake their heads, as if they
+did not rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they
+stopped too long to indulge their curiosity, there was a danger of
+their getting separated from the fighting members of the herd, they
+would make a stupid, headlong, lumbering lurch forward, and jostle
+each other, in their blundering panic.</p>
+<p>It was a grand sight. The tigress was the embodiment of lithe
+and savage beauty, but her features expressed the wildest baffled
+rage. I could have shot the striped vixen over and over again, but
+I wished to keep her for my friends, and I was thrilled with the
+excitement of such a novel scene.</p>
+<p>Suddenly our elephant trumpeted, and shied quickly to one side,
+from something lying on the ground. Curling up its trunk it began
+backing and piping at a prodigious rate.</p>
+<p>'Hullo! what's the matter now?' said I to Debnarain.</p>
+<p>'God only knows,' said he.</p>
+<p>'A young tiger!' 'Bagh ka butcha!' screams our mahout, and
+regardless of the elephant or of our cries to stop, he scuttled
+down the pad rope like a monkey down a backstay, and clutching a
+young dead tiger cub, threw it up to Debnarain; it was about the
+size of a small poodle, and had evidently been trampled by the
+pursuing herd of buffaloes.</p>
+<p>'There may be others,' said the gomasta; and peering into every
+bush, we went slowly on.</p>
+<p>The elephant now shewed decided symptoms of dislike and a
+reluctance to approach a particular dense clump of grass.</p>
+<p>A sounding whack on the head, however, made her quicken her
+steps, and thrusting the long stalks aside, she discovered for us
+three blinking little cubs, brothers of the defunct, and doubtless
+part of the same litter. Their eyes were scarcely open, and they
+lay huddled together like three enormous striped kittens, and spat
+at us and bristled their little moustaches much as an angry cat
+would do. All the four were males.</p>
+<p>It was not long ere I had them carefully wrapped in the mahout's
+blanket. Overjoyed at our good fortune, we left the excited
+buffaloes still executing their singular war-dance, and the angry
+tigress, robbed of her whelps, consuming her soul in baffled
+fury.</p>
+<p>We heard her roaring through the night, close to camp, and on my
+friends' arrival, we beat her up next morning, and she fell pierced
+by three bullets, after a fierce and determined charge. We came
+upon her across the nullah, and her mind was evidently made up to
+fight. Nearly all the villagers had turned out with the line of
+elephants. Before we had time to order them away, she came down
+upon the line, roaring furiously, and bounding over the long
+grass,&mdash;a most magnificent sight.</p>
+<p>My first bullet took her full in the chest, and before she could
+make good her charge, a ball each from Pat and Captain G. settled
+her career. She was beautifully striped, and rather large for a
+tigress, measuring nine feet three inches.</p>
+<p>It was now a question with me, how to rear the three interesting
+orphans; we thought a slut from some of the villages would prove
+the best wet nurse, and tried accordingly to get one, but could
+not. In the meantime an unhappy goat was pounced on and the three
+young-tigers took to her teats as if 'to the manner born.' The poor
+Nanny screamed tremendously at first sight of them, but she soon
+got accustomed to them, and when they grew a little bigger, she
+would often playfully butt at them with her horns.</p>
+<p>The little brutes throve wonderfully, and soon developed such an
+appetite that I had to get no less than six goats to satisfy their
+constant thirst. I kept the cubs for over two months, and I shall
+not soon forget the excitement I caused, when my boat stopped at
+Sahribgunge, and my goats, tiger cubs, and attendants, formed a
+procession from the ghat or landing-place, to the railway
+station.</p>
+<p>Soldiers, guards, engineers, travellers, and crowds of natives
+surrounded me, and at every station the guard's van, with my novel
+menagerie, was the centre of attraction. I sold the cubs to
+Jamrach's agent in Calcutta for a very satisfactory price. Two of
+them were very powerful, finely marked, handsome animals; the third
+had always been sickly, had frequent convulsions, and died a few
+days after I sold it. I was afterwards told that the milk diet was
+a mistake, and that I should have fed them on raw meat. However, I
+was very well satisfied on the whole with the result of my
+adventure.</p>
+<p>I had another in the same part of the country, which at the time
+was a pretty good test of the state of my nerves.</p>
+<p>I was camped out at the village of Purindaha, on the edge of a
+gloomy sal forest, which was reported to contain numerous leopards.
+The villagers were a mixed lot of low-caste Hindoos, and Nepaulese
+settlers. They had been fighting with the factory, and would not
+pay up their rents, and I was trying, with every probability of
+success, to make an amicable arrangement with them. At all events,
+I had so far won them round, that they were willing to talk to me.
+They came to the tent and listened quietly, and except on the
+subject of rent, we got on in the most friendly manner.</p>
+<p>It was the middle of April. The heat was intense. The whole
+atmosphere had that coppery look which denotes extreme heat, and
+the air was loaded with fine yellow dust, which the daily west wind
+bore on its fever laden wings, to disturb the lungs and tempers of
+all good Christians. The <i>kanats</i>, or canvas walls of the
+tent, had all been taken down for coolness, and my camp bed lay in
+one corner, open all round to the outside air, but only sheltered
+from the dew. It had been a busy day. I had been going over
+accounts, and talking to the villagers till I was really hoarse.
+After a light dinner I lay down on my bed, but it was too close and
+hot to sleep. By and bye the various sounds died out. The
+tom-toming ceased in the village. My servants suspended their low
+muttered gossip round the cook's fire, wrapped themselves in their
+white cloths, and dropped into slumber. 'Toby,' 'Nettle,' 'Whisky,'
+'Pincher,' and my other terriers, resembled so many curled-up hairy
+balls, and were in the land of dreams. Occasionally an owl would
+give a melancholy hoot from the forest, or a screech owl would
+raise a momentary and damnable din. At intervals, the tinkle of a
+cow-bell sounded faintly in the distance. I tossed restlessly,
+thinking of various things, till I must have dropped off into an
+uneasy fitful sleep. I know not how long I had been dozing, but of
+a sudden I felt myself wide awake, though with my eyes yet firmly
+closed.</p>
+<p>I was conscious of some terrible unknown impending danger. I had
+experienced the same feeling before on waking from a nightmare, but
+I knew that the danger now was real. I felt a shrinking horror, a
+terrible and nameless fear, and for the life of me I could not move
+hand or foot. I was lying on my side, and could distinctly hear the
+thumping of my heart. A cold sweat broke out behind my ears and
+over my neck and chest. I could analyse my every feeling, and I
+knew there was some PRESENCE in the tent, and that I was in instant
+and imminent peril. Suddenly in the distance a pariah dog gave a
+prolonged melancholy howl. As if this had broken the spell which
+had hitherto bound me, I opened my eyes, and within ten inches of
+my face, there was a handsome leopardess gazing steadily at me. Our
+eyes met, and how long we confronted each other I know not. It must
+have been some minutes. Her eyes contracted and expanded, the pupil
+elongated and then opened out into a round lustrous globe. I could
+see the lithe tail oscillating at its extreme tip, with a gentle
+waving motion, like that of a cat when hunting birds in the garden.
+I seemed to possess no will. I believe I was under a species of
+fascination, but we continued our steady stare at each other.</p>
+<p>Just then, there was a movement by some of the horses. The
+leopard slowly turned her head, and I grasped the revolver which
+lay under my pillow. The beautiful spotted monster turned her head
+for an instant, and shewed her teeth, and then with one bound went
+through the open side of the tent. I fired two shots, which were
+answered with a roar. The din that followed would have frightened
+the devil. It was a beautiful clear night, with a moon at the full,
+and everything shewed as plainly as at noonday. The servants
+uttered exclamations of terror. The terriers went into an agony of
+yelps and barks. The horses snorted, and tried to get loose, and my
+chowkeydar, who had been asleep on his watch, thinking a band of
+dacoits were on us, began laying round him with his staff,
+shouting, <i>Chor, Chor! lagga, lagga, lagga!</i> that is, 'thief,
+thief! lay on, lay on, lay on!'</p>
+<p>The leopard was hit, and evidently in a terrible temper. She
+halted not thirty paces from the tent, beside a jhamun tree, and
+seemed undecided whether to go on or return and wreak her vengeance
+on me. That moment decided her fate. I snatched down my Express
+rifle, which was hanging in two loops above my bed, and shot her
+right through the heart.</p>
+<p>I never understood how she could have made her way past dogs,
+servants, horses, and watchman, right into the tent, without
+raising some alarm. It must have been more from curiosity than any
+hostile design. I know that my nerves were very rudely shaken, but
+I became the hero of the Purindaha villagers. I believe that my
+night adventure with the leopardess did more to bring them round to
+a settlement than all my eloquence and figures.</p>
+<p>The river Koosee, on the banks of which, and in the long grass
+plains adjacent, most of the incidents I have recorded took place,
+takes its rise at the base of Mount Everest, and, after draining
+nearly the whole of Eastern. Nepaul, emerges by a deep gorge from
+the hills at the north-west corner of Purneah. The stream runs with
+extreme velocity. It is known as a snow stream. The water is always
+cold, and generally of a milky colour, containing much fine white
+sand. No sooner does it leave its rocky bed than it tears through
+the flat country by numerous channels. It is subject to very sudden
+rises. A premonitory warning of these is generally given. The water
+becomes of a turbid, almost blood-like colour. Sometimes I have
+seen the river rise over thirty feet in twenty-four hours. The
+melting of the snow often makes a raging torrent, level from bank
+to bank, where only a few hours before a horse could have forded
+the stream without wetting the girths of the saddle.</p>
+<p>In 1876 the largest channel was a swift broad stream called the
+Dhaus. The river is very capricious, seldom flowing for any length
+of time in one channel. This is owing in great measure to the
+amount of silt it carries with it from the hills, in its impetuous
+progress to the plains.</p>
+<p>In these dry watercourses, among the sand ridges, beside the
+humid marshy hollows, and among the thick strips of grass jungle,
+tigers are always to be found. They are much less numerous now
+however than formerly. As a rule, there is no shelter in these
+water-worn, flood-ravaged tracts and sultry jungles. Occasionally a
+few straggling plantain trees, a clump of sickly-looking bamboos, a
+cluster of tall shadowless palms, marks the site of a deserted
+village. All else is waving grass, withered and dry. The villages,
+inhabited mostly by a few cowherds, boatmen, and rice-farmers are
+scattered at wide intervals. In the shooting season, and when the
+hot winds are blowing, the only shadow on the plain is that cast by
+the dense volumes of lurid smoke, rising in blinding clouds from
+the jungle fires.</p>
+<p>According to the season, animal life fluctuates strangely.
+During the rains, when the river is in full flood, and much of the
+country submerged, most of the animals migrate to the North,
+buffaloes and wild pig alone keeping possession, of the higher
+ridges in the neighbourhood of their usual haunts.</p>
+<p>The contrasts presented on these plains at different seasons of
+the year are most remarkable. In March and April they are parched
+up, brown, and dead; great black patches showing the track of a
+destroying fire, the fine brown ash from the burnt grass
+penetrating the eyes and nostrils, and sweeping along in eddying
+and blinding clouds. They then look the very picture of an
+untenable waste, a sea of desolation, whose limits blend in the
+extreme distance with the shimmering coppery horizon. In the rainy
+season these arid-looking wastes are covered with tall-plumed,
+reed-like, waving grass, varying from two to ten feet in height,
+stretching in an unbroken sweep as far as the eye can reach, except
+where an abrupt line shews that the swift river has its treacherous
+course. After the rains, progress through the jungle is dangerous.
+Quicksands and beds of tenacious mud impede one at every step. The
+rich vegetation springs up green and vigorous, with a rapidity only
+to be seen in the Tropics. But what a glorious hunting ground! What
+a preserve for Nimrod! Deer forest, or heathered moor, can never
+compete with the old Koosee Derahs for abundance of game and
+thrilling excitement in sport. My genial, happy, loyal comrades
+too&mdash;while memory lasts the recollection of your joyous,
+frank, warm-hearted comradeship shall never fade.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXVI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVI.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Remarks on guns.&mdash;How to cure
+skins.&mdash;Different recipes.&mdash;Conclusion.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>My remarks on guns shall be brief. The true sportsman has many
+facilities for acquiring the best information on a choice of
+weapons. For large game perhaps nothing can equal the Express
+rifle. My own trusty weapon was a '500 bore, very plain, with a
+pistol grip, point blank up to 180 yards, made by Murcott of the
+Haymarket, from whom I have bought over twenty guns, every one of
+which turned out a splendid weapon.</p>
+<p>My next favourite was a No. 12 breachloader, very light, but
+strong and carefully finished. It had a side snap action with
+rebounding locks, and was the quickest gun to fire and reload I
+ever possessed. I bought it from the same maker, although it was
+manufactured by W.W. Greener.</p>
+<p>Avoid a cheap gun as you would avoid a cheap Jew pedlar. A good
+name is above riches so far as a gun is concerned, and when you
+have a good gun take as much care of it as you would of a good
+wife. They are both equally rare. An expensive gun is not
+necessarily a good one, but a cheap gun is very seldom trustworthy.
+Have a portable, handy black leather case. Keep your gun always
+clean, bright, and free from rust. After every day's shooting see
+that the barrels and locks are carefully cleaned and oiled. Nothing
+is better for this purpose than rangoon oil.</p>
+<p>For preserving horns, a little scraping and varnishing are all
+that is required. While in camp it is a good plan to rub them with
+deer, or pig, or tiger fat, as it keeps them from cracking.</p>
+<p>To clean a tiger's or other skull. If there be a nest of ants
+near the camp, place the skull in their immediate vicinity. Some
+recommend putting in water till the particles of flesh rot, or till
+the skull is cleared by the fishes. A strong solution of caustic
+water may be used if you wish to get the bones cleaned very
+quickly. Some put the skulls in quicklime, but it has a tendency to
+make the bones splinter, and it is difficult to keep the teeth from
+getting loose and dropping out. The best but slowest plan is to fix
+them in mechanically by wire or white lead. A good preservative is
+to wash or paint them with a very strong solution of fine lime and
+water.</p>
+<p>To cure skins. I know no better recipe than the one adopted by
+my trainers in the art of <i>shibar</i>, the brothers S. I cannot
+do better than give a description of the process in the words of
+George himself.</p>
+<p>'Skin the animal in the usual way. Cut from the corner of the
+mouth, down the throat, and along the belly. A white stripe or
+border generally runs along the belly. This should be left as
+nearly as possible equal on both sides. Carefully cut the fleshy
+parts off the lips and balls of the toes and feet. Clean away every
+particle of fatty or fleshy matter that may still adhere to the
+skin. Peg it out on the ground with the hair side undermost. When
+thoroughly scraped clean of all extraneous matter on the inner
+surface, get a bucket or tub of buttermilk, which is called by the
+natives <i>dahye</i> or <i>mutha</i>. It is a favourite article of
+diet with them, cheap and plentiful. Dip the skin in this, and keep
+it well and entirely submerged by placing some heavy weight on it.
+It should be submerged fully three inches in the tub of
+buttermilk.</p>
+<p>'After two days in the milk bath, take it out and peg it as
+before. Now take a smooth oval rubbing-board about twelve inches
+long, five round, and about an inch thick in the middle, and scrub
+the skin heartily with this instrument. On its lower surface it
+should be cuts in grooves, semicircular in shape, half an inch
+wide, and one inch apart. During scrubbing use plenty of pure water
+to remove filth. In about half an hour the pinkish-white colour
+will disappear, and the skin will appear white, with a blackish
+tinge underneath. This is the true hide.</p>
+<p>'Again submerge in the buttermilk bath for twenty-four hours,
+and get a man to tread on it in every possible way, folding it and
+unfolding it, till all has been thoroughly worked.</p>
+<p>'Take it out again, peg out and scrub it as before, after which
+wash the whole hide well in clear water. Never mind if the skin
+looks rotten, it is really not so.</p>
+<p>'When washed put it into a tub, in which you have first placed a
+mixture consisting of half an ounce of alum to each gallon of
+water. Soak the skin in this mixture for about six hours, taking it
+up occasionally to drain a little. This is sufficient to cure your
+skin and clean it.'</p>
+<p>The tanning remains to be done.</p>
+<p>'Get four pounds of babool, tamarind, or dry oak bark. (The
+babool is a kind of acacia, and is easily procurable, as the
+tamarind also is). Boil the bark in two gallons of water till it is
+reduced to one half the quantity. Add to this nine gallons of fresh
+water, and in this solution souse the skin for two, or three, or
+four days.</p>
+<p>'The hairs having been set by the soaking in alum, the skin will
+tan more quickly, and if the tan is occasionally rubbed into the
+pores of the skin it will be an improvement. You can tell when the
+tanning is complete by the colour the skin assumes. When this
+satisfies the eye, take it out and drain on a rod. When nearly dry
+it should be curried with olive oil or clarified butter if required
+for wear, but if only for floor covering or carriage rug, the
+English curriers' common 'dubbin,' sold by shopkeepers, is best.
+This operation, which must be done on the inner side only, is
+simple.</p>
+<p>'Another simple recipe, and one which answers well, is this. Mix
+together of the best English soap, four ounces; arsenic, two and a
+half grains; camphor, two ounces; alum, half an ounce; saltpetre,
+half an ounce. Boil the whole, and keep stirring, in a half-pint of
+distilled water, over a very slow fire, for from ten to fifteen
+minutes. Apply when cool with a sponge. A little sweet oil may be
+rubbed on the skins after they are dry.</p>
+<p>'Another good method is to apply arsenical soap, which may be
+made as follows: powdered arsenic, two pounds; camphor, five
+ounces; white soap, sliced thin, two pounds; salt of tartar, twelve
+drams; chalk, or powdered fine lime, four ounces; add a small
+quantity of water first to the soap, put over a gentle fire, and
+keep stirring. When melted, add the lime and tartar, and thoroughly
+mix; next add the arsenic, keeping up a constant motion, and lastly
+the camphor. The camphor should first be reduced to a powder by
+means of a little spirits of wine, and should be added to the mess
+after it has been taken off the fire.</p>
+<p>'This preparation must be kept in a well-stoppered jar, or
+properly closed pot. When ready, the soap should be of the
+consistency of Devonshire cream. To use, add water till it becomes
+of the consistency of clear rich soup.'</p>
+<p>I have now finished my book. It has been pleasant to me to write
+down these recollections. Ever since I began my task, death has
+been busy, and the ranks of my friends have been sadly thinned.
+Failing health has driven me from my old shooting grounds, and in
+sunny Australia I have been trying to recruit the energies
+enervated by the burning climate of India. That my dear old planter
+friends may have as kindly recollections of 'the Maori' as he has
+of them, is what I ardently hope; that I may yet get back to share
+in the sports, pastimes, joys, and social delights of Mofussil life
+in India, is what I chiefly desire. If this volume meets the
+approbation of the public, I may be tempted to draw further on a
+well-stocked memory, and gossip afresh on Indian life, Indian
+experiences, and Indian sport. Meantime, courteous reader,
+farewell.</p>
+<hr align="center" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<hr align="center" noshade size="1" width="30%">
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+by James Inglis
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier, by James Inglis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+       Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter
+
+Author: James Inglis
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2004 [EBook #10818]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN NEPAUL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _Frontispiece_. TIGER HUNTING. RETURN TO THE CAMP.]
+
+
+SPORT AND WORK
+
+ON THE
+
+NEPAUL FRONTIER
+
+
+OR
+
+
+TWELVE YEARS SPORTING REMINISCENCES
+
+OF AN INDIGO PLANTER
+
+
+By "MAORI"
+
+
+1878
+
+
+
+
+[Note: Some words in this book have a macron over a vowel. A macron
+is a punctuation mark ( - ) and is represented herein as [=a], [=e]
+or [=o].]
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+I went home in 1875 for a few months, after some twelve years' residence
+in India. What first suggested the writing of such a book as this, was
+the amazing ignorance of ordinary Indian life betrayed by people at
+home. The questions asked me about India, and our daily life there,
+showed in many cases such an utter want of knowledge, that I thought,
+surely there is room here for a chatty, familiar, unpretentious book
+for friends at home, giving an account of our every-day life in India,
+our labours and amusements, our toils and relaxations, and a few
+pictures of our ordinary daily surroundings in the far, far East.
+
+Such then is the design of my book. I want to picture to my readers
+Planter Life in the Mofussil, or country districts of India; to tell
+them of our hunting, shooting, fishing, and other amusements; to
+describe our work, our play, and matter-of-fact incidents in our daily
+life; to describe the natives as they appear to us in our intimate
+every-day dealings with them; to illustrate their manners, customs,
+dispositions, observances and sayings, so far as these bear on our own
+social life.
+
+I am no politician, no learned ethnologist, no sage theorist. I simply
+try to describe what I have seen, and hope to enlist the attention and
+interest of my readers, in my reminiscences of sport and labour, in the
+villages and jungles on the far off frontier of Nepaul.
+
+I have tried to express my meaning as far as possible without Anglo-Indian
+and Hindustani words; where these have been used, as at times they could
+not but be, I have given a synonymous word or phrase in English, so that
+all my friends at home may know my meaning.
+
+I know that my friends will be lenient to my faults, and even the
+sternest critic, if he look for it, may find some pleasure and profit in
+my pages.
+
+JAS. INGLIS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Province of Behar.--Boundaries.--General description.--District of
+Chumparun.--Mooteeharree.--The town and lake.--Native houses.--The
+Planters' Club.--Legoulie.
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+My first charge.--How we get our lands.--Our home farm.--System of
+farming.--Collection of rents.--The planter's duties.
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
+--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at Work.
+--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Manufacture of Indigo.--Loading the vats.--Beating.--Boiling, straining,
+and pressing.--Scene in the Factory.--Fluctuation of produce.--Chemistry
+of Indigo.
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Parewah factory.--A 'Bobbery Pack.'--Hunt through a village after
+a cat.--The pariah dog of India.--Fate of 'Pincher.'--Rampore
+hound.--Persian greyhound.--Caboolee dogs.--A jackal hunt.--Incidents
+of the chase.
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Fishing in India.--Hereditary trades.--The boatmen and fishermen of
+India.--Their villages.--Nets.--Modes of fishing.--Curiosities relating
+thereto.--Catching an alligator with a hook.--Exciting capture.
+--Crocodiles.--Shooting an alligator.--Death of the man-eater.
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Native superstitions.--Charming a bewitched woman.--Exorcising ghosts
+from a field.--Witchcraft.--The witchfinder or 'Ojah,'--Influence of
+fear.--Snake bites.--How to cure them.--How to discover a thief.--Ghosts
+and their habits.--The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.--Cruelty to
+animals by natives.
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Our annual race meet.--The arrivals.--The camps.--The 'ordinary,'--The
+course.--'They're off.'--The race.--The steeple-chase.--Incidents of
+the meet.--The ball.
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Pig-sticking in India.--Varieties of boar.--Their size and height.
+--Ingenious mode of capture by the natives.--The 'Batan' or buffalo
+herd.--Pigs charging.--Their courage and ferocity.--Destruction of
+game.--A close season for game.
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Kuderent jungle.--Charged by a pig.--The biter bit.--'Mac' after the
+big boar.--The horse for pig-sticking.--The line of beaters.--The boar
+breaks.--'Away! Away!'--First spear.--Pig-sticking at Peeprah.--The
+old 'lungra' or cripple.--A boar at bay.--Hurrah for pig-sticking!
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The sal forests.--The jungle goddess.--The trees in the jungle.
+--Appearance of the forests.--Birds.--Varieties of parrots.--A 'beat'
+in the forest.--The 'shekarry.'--Mehrman Singh and his gun.--The Banturs,
+a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.--Their habits.--A village feast.--We
+beat for deer.--Habits of the spotted deer.--Waiting for the game.
+--Mehrman Singh gets drunk.--Our bag.--Pea-fowl and their habits.--How
+to shoot them.--Curious custom of the Nepaulese.--How Juggroo was
+tricked, and his revenge.
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
+one.--Encounter with a leopard in a Dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
+leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
+annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
+harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
+sanitation.
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
+--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
+village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
+village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
+system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
+justice.
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The temple.
+--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.--Their
+low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions and knavery.
+--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native officials.--The
+Hindoo unfit for self-government.
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Jungle wild fruits.--Curious method of catching quail.--Quail nets.
+--Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.--Native wrestling.--The trainer.
+--How they train for a match.--Rules of wrestling.--Grips.--A wrestling
+match.--Incidents of the struggle.--Description of a match between a
+Brahmin and a blacksmith.--Sparring for the grip.--The blacksmith has
+it.--The struggle.--The Brahmin getting the worst of it.--Two to one
+on the little 'un!--The Brahmin plays the waiting game, turns the tables
+_and_ the blacksmith.--Remarks on wrestling.
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Indigo seed growing.--Seed buying and buyers.--Tricks of sellers.--Tests
+for good seed.--The threshing-floor.--Seed cleaning and packing.--Staff
+of servants.--Despatching the bags by boat.--The 'Pooneah' or rent day.
+--Purneah planters--their hospitality.--The rent day a great festival.
+--Preparation.--Collection of rents.--Feast to retainers.--The reception
+in the evening.--Tribute.--Old customs.--Improvisatores and bards.
+--Nautches.--Dancing and music.--The dance of the Dangurs.--Jugglers
+and itinerary showmen.--'Bara Roopes,' or actors and mimics.--Their
+different styles of acting.
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The Koosee jungles.--Ferries.--Jungle roads.--The rhinoceros.--We go
+to visit a neighbour.--We lose our way and get belated.--We fall into
+a quicksand.--No ferry boat.--Camping out on the sand.--Two tigers close
+by.--We light a fire.--The boat at last arrives.--Crossing the stream.
+--Set fire to the boatman's hut.--Swim the horses.--They are nearly
+drowned.--We again lose our way in the jungle.--The towing path, and
+how boats are towed up the river.--We at last reach the factory.--News
+of rhinoceros in the morning.--Off we start, but arrive too late.--Death
+of the rhinoceros.--His dimensions.--Description.--Habits.--Rhinoceros
+in Nepaul.--The old 'Major Capt[=a]n.'--Description of Nepaulese scenery.
+--Immigration of Nepaulese.--Their fondness for fish.--They eat it
+putrid.--Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul.--Resources of the country.
+--Must sooner or later be opened up.--Influences at work to elevate
+the people.--Planters and factories chief of these.--Character of the
+planter.--Has claims to consideration from government.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The tiger.--His habitat.--Shooting on foot.--Modes of shooting.--A
+tiger hunt on foot.--The scene of the hunt.--The beat.--Incidents of
+the hunt.--Fireworks.--The tiger charges.--The elephant bolts.--The
+tigress will not break.--We kill a half-grown cub.--Try again for
+the tigress.--Unsuccessful.--Exaggerations in tiger stories.--My
+authorities.--The brothers S.--Ferocity and structure of the
+tiger.--His devastations.--His frame-work, teeth, &c.--A tiger at
+bay.--His unsociable habits.--Fight between tiger and tigress.--Young
+tigers.--Power and strength of the tiger.--Examples.--His cowardice.
+--Charge of a wounded tiger.--Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+--A spined tiger.--Boldness of young tigers.--Cruelty.--Cunning.--Night
+scenes in the jungle.--Tiger killed by a wild boar.--His cautious
+habits.--General remarks.
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
+--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
+--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of tiger.
+--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His description.
+--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to measure tigers.
+--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.--Number of
+young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs to kill.
+--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and cunning
+of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of concealment.
+--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.--Caught by
+floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives
+about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Claw-marks
+on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s
+howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.
+--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye
+out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers
+easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of shells on tiger and buffalo.--Best
+weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives
+prone to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for
+tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six
+elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.
+--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the Koosee.
+--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to shoot at
+moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of different animals
+in the grass.
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Howdahs and howdah-ropes.--Mussulman custom.--Killing animals for food.
+--Mysterious appearance of natives when an animal is killed.--Fastening
+dead tigers to the pad.--Present mode wants improving.--Incident
+illustrative of this.--Dangerous to go close to wounded tigers.
+--Examples.--Footprints of tigers.--Call of the tiger.--Natives and
+their powers of description.--How to beat successfully for tiger.
+--Description of a beat.--Disputes among the shooters.--Awarding
+tigers.--Cutting open the tiger.--Native idea about the liver of the
+tiger.--Signs of a tiger's presence in the jungle.--Vultures.--Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?--A vulture carrion feast.
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul frontier.--Indian scenery near
+the border.--Lose our way.--Cold night.--The river by night.--Our boat
+and boatmen.--Tigers calling on the bank.--An anxious moment.--Fire at
+and wound the tigress.--Reach camp.--The Nepaulee's adventure with a
+tiger.--The old Major.--His appearance and manners.--The pompous
+Jemadar.--Nepaulese proverb.--Firing the jungle.--Start a tiger and
+shoot him.--Another in front.--Appearance of the fires by night.--The
+tiger escapes.--Too dark to follow up.--Coolie shot by mistake during
+a former hunt.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+We resume the beat.--The hog-deer.--Nepaulese villages.--Village
+granaries.--Tiger in front.--A hit! a hit!--Following up the wounded
+tiger.--Find him dead.--Tiffin in the village.--The Patair jungle.
+--Search for tiger.--Gone away!--An elephant steeplechase in pursuit.
+--Exciting chase.--The Morung jungle.--Magnificent scenery.--Skinning
+the tiger.--Incidents of tiger hunting.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Camp of the Nepaulee chief.--Quicksands.--Elephants crossing rivers.
+--Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.--We beat the forest for tiger.--Shoot
+a young tiger.--Red ants in the forest.--Bhowras or ground bees.--The
+_ursus labialis_ or long-lipped bear.--Recross the stream.--Florican.
+--Stag running the gauntlet of flame.--Our bag.--Start for factory.
+--Remarks on elephants.--Precautions useful for protection from the
+sun in tiger shooting.--The _puggree_.--Cattle breeding in India, and
+wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.--Nathpore.--Ravages of the
+river.--Mrs. Gray, an old resident in the jungles.--Description of
+her surroundings.
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Exciting jungle scene.--The camp.--All quiet.--Advent of the cow-herds.
+--A tiger close by.--Proceed to the spot.--Encounter between tigress
+and buffaloes.--Strange behaviour of the elephant.--Discovery and
+capture of four cubs.--Joyful return to camp.--Death of the tigress.
+--Night encounter with a leopard.--The haunts of the tiger and our
+shooting grounds.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Remarks on guns.--How to cure skins.--Different Recipes.--Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+Tiger Hunting--Return to the Camp
+Coolie's Hut
+Indigo Beating Vats
+Indigo Beaters at work in the Vat
+Indian Factory Peon
+Indigo Planter's House
+Pig Stickers
+Carpenters and Blacksmiths at work
+Hindoo Village Temples
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Province of Behar.--Boundaries.--General description.--District of
+Chumparun.--Mooteeharree.--The town and lake.--Native houses.--The
+Planters' Club.--Legoulie.
+
+Among the many beautiful and fertile provinces of India, none can, I
+think, much excel that of Behar for richness of soil, diversity of
+race, beauty of scenery, and the energy and intelligence of its
+inhabitants. Stretching from the Nepaul hills to the far distant
+plains of Gya, with the Gunduch, Bogmuttee and other noble streams
+watering its rich bosom, and swelling with their tribute the stately
+Ganges, it includes every variety of soil and climate; and its various
+races, with their strange costumes, creeds, and customs, might afford
+material to fill volumes.
+
+The northern part of this splendid province follows the Nepaulese
+boundary from the district of Goruchpore on the north, to that of
+Purneah on the south. In the forests and jungles along this boundary
+line live many strange tribes, whose customs, and even their names and
+language, are all but unknown to the English public. Strange wild
+animals dispute with these aborigines the possession of the gloomy
+jungle solitudes. Great trees of wondrous dimensions and strange
+foliage rear their stately heads to heaven, and are matted and
+entwined together by creepers of huge size and tenacious hold.
+
+To the south and east vast billows of golden grain roll in successive
+undulations to the mighty Ganges, the sacred stream of the Hindoos.
+Innumerable villages, nestling amid groves of plantains and feathery
+rustling bamboos, send up their wreaths of pale grey smoke into the
+still warm air. At frequent intervals the steely blue of some lovely
+lake, where thousands of water-fowl disport themselves, reflects from
+its polished surface the sheen of the noonday sun. Great masses of
+mango wood shew a sombre outline at intervals, and here and there the
+towering chimney of an indigo factory pierces the sky. Government
+roads and embankments intersect the face of the country in all
+directions, and vast sheets of the indigo plant refresh the eye with
+their plains of living green, forming a grateful contrast to the hard,
+dried, sun-baked surface of the stubble fields, where the rice crop
+has rustled in the breezes of the past season. In one of the loveliest
+and most fertile districts of this vast province, namely, Chumparun, I
+began my experiences as an indigo planter.
+
+Chumparun with its subdistrict of Bettiah, lies to the north of
+Tirhoot, and is bounded all along its northern extent by the Nepaul
+hills and forests. When I joined my appointment as assistant on one
+of the large indigo concerns there, there were not more than about
+thirty European residents altogether in the district. The chief town,
+Mooteeharree, consisted of a long _bazaar_, or market street, beautifully
+situated on the bank of a lovely lake, some two miles in length. From
+the main street, with its quaint little shops sheltered from the sun
+by makeshift verandahs of tattered sacking, weather-stained shingles,
+or rotting bamboo mats, various little lanes and alleys diverged,
+leading one into a collection of tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up
+apparently by chance, and presenting the most incongruous appearance
+that could possibly be conceived. One or two _pucca_ houses, that is,
+houses of brick and masonry, shewed where some wealthy Bunneah
+(trader) or usurious banker lived, but the majority of the houses were
+of the usual mud and bamboo order. There is a small thatched hut where
+the meals were cooked, and where the owner and his family could sleep
+during the rains. Another smaller hut at right angles to this, gives
+shelter to the family goat, or, if they are rich enough to keep one,
+the cow. All round the villages in India there are generally large
+patches of common, where the village cows have free rights of pasture;
+and all who can, keep either a cow or a couple of goats, the milk from
+which forms a welcome addition to their usual scanty fare. In this
+second hut also is stored as much fuel, consisting of dried cow-dung,
+straw, maize-stalks, leaves, etc., as can be collected; and a ragged
+fence of bamboo or _rahur_[1] stalks encloses the two unprotected
+sides, thus forming inside a small court, quadrangle, or square. This
+court is the native's _sanctum sanctorum_. It is kept scrupulously
+clean, being swept and garnished religiously every day. In this the
+women prepare the rice for the day's consumption; here they cut up and
+clean their vegetables, or their fish, when the adjacent lake has been
+dragged by the village fishermen. Here the produce of their little
+garden, capsicums, Indian corn, onions or potatoes--perchance turmeric,
+ginger, or other roots or spices--are dried and made ready for storing
+in the earthen sun-baked repository for the reception of such produce
+appertaining to each household. Here the children play, and are washed
+and tended. Here the maiden combs out her long black hair, or decorates
+her bronzed visage with streaks of red paint down the nose, and a
+little antimony on the eyelids, or myrtle juice on the finger and toe
+nails. Here, too, the matron, or the withered old crone of a
+grandmother, spins her cotton thread; or, in the old scriptural
+hand-mill, grinds the corn for the family flour and meal; and the
+father and the young men (when the sun is high and hot in the heavens)
+take their noonday _siesta_, or, the day's labours over, cower round
+the smoking dung fire of a cold winter night, and discuss the prices
+ruling in the bazaar, the rise of rents, or the last village scandal.
+
+In the middle of the town, and surrounded by a spacious fenced-in
+compound, which sloped gently to the lake, stood the Planters' Club, a
+large low roofed bungalow, with a roomy wide verandah in front. Here
+we met, when business or pleasure brought us to 'the Station.' Here
+were held our annual balls, or an occasional public dinner party. To
+the north of the Club stood a long range of barrack-looking buildings,
+which were the opium godowns, where the opium was collected and stored
+during the season. Facing this again, and at the extremity of the
+lake, was the district jail, where all the rascals of the surrounding
+country were confined; its high walls tipped at intervals by a red
+puggree and flashing bayonet wherever a jail sepoy kept his 'lonely
+watch.' Near it, sheltered in a grove of shady trees, were the court
+houses, where the collector and magistrate daily dispensed justice, or
+where the native _moonsiff_ disentangled knotty points of law. Here,
+too, came the sessions judge once a month or so, to try criminal cases
+and mete out justice to the law-breakers.
+
+We had thus a small European element in our 'Station,' consisting of
+our magistrate and collector, whose large and handsome house was built
+on the banks of another and yet lovelier lake, which joined the town
+lake by a narrow stream or strait at its southern end, an opium agent,
+a district superintendent of police, and last but not least, a doctor.
+These formed the official population of our little 'Station.' There
+was also a nice little church, but no resident pastor, and behind the
+town lay a quiet churchyard, rich in the dust of many a pioneer, who,
+far from home and friends, had here been gathered to his silent rest.
+
+About twelve miles to the north, and near the Nepaul boundary, was the
+small military station of Legoulie. Here there was always a native
+cavalry regiment, the officers of which were frequent and welcome
+guests at the factories in the district, and were always glad to see
+their indigo friends at their mess in cantonments. At Rettiah, still
+further to the north, was a rich rajah's palace, where a resident
+European manager dwelt, and had for his sole society an assistant
+magistrate who transacted the executive and judicial work of the
+subdistrict. These, with some twenty-five or thirty indigo managers
+and assistants, composed the whole European population of Chumparun.
+
+Never was there a more united community. We were all like brothers.
+Each knew all the rest. The assistants frequently visited each other,
+and the managers were kind and considerate to their subordinates.
+Hunting parties were common, cricket and hockey matches were frequent,
+and in the cold weather, which is our slackest season, fun, frolic,
+and sport was the order of the day. We had an annual race meet, when
+all the crack horses of the district met in keen rivalry to test their
+pace and endurance. During this high carnival, we lived for the most
+part under canvass, and had friends from far and near to share our
+hospitality. In a future chapter I must describe our racing meet.
+
+
+[1] The _rahur_ is a kind of pea, growing not unlike our English broom
+    in appearance; it is sown with the maize crop during the rains,
+    and garnered in the cold weather. It produces a small pea, which
+    is largely used by the natives, and forms the nutritive article of
+    diet known as _dhall_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+My first charge.--How we get our lands.--Our home farm.--System of
+farming.--Collection of rents.--The planter's duties.
+
+My first charge was a small outwork of the large factory Seeraha. It
+was called Puttihee. There was no bungalow; that is, there was no
+regular house for the assistant, but a little one-roomed hut, built on
+the top of the indigo vats, served me for a residence. It had neither
+doors nor windows, and the rain used to beat through the room, while
+the eaves were inhabited by countless swarms of bats, who, in the
+evening flashed backwards and forwards in ghostly rapid flight, and
+were a most intolerable nuisance. To give some idea of the duties of
+an indigo assistant, I must explain the system on which we get our
+lands, and how we grow our crop.
+
+Water of course being a _sine qua non_, the first object in selecting
+a site for a factory is, to have water in plenty contiguous to the
+proposed buildings. Consequently Puttihee was built on the banks of a
+very pretty lake, shaped like a horseshoe, and covered with water
+lilies and broad-leaved green aquatic plants. The lake was kept by the
+native proprietor as a fish preserve, and literally teemed with fish
+of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. I had not been long at Puttihee
+before I had erected a staging, leading out into deep water, and many
+a happy hour I have spent there with my three or four rods out,
+pulling in the finny inhabitants.
+
+Having got water and a site, the next thing is to get land on which to
+grow your crop. By purchase, by getting a long lease, or otherwise,
+you become possessed of several hundred acres of the land immediately
+surrounding the factory. Of course some factories will have more and
+some less as circumstances happen. This land, however, is peculiarly
+factory property. It is in fact a sort of home farm, and goes by the
+name of _Zeraat_. It is ploughed by factory bullocks, worked by
+factory coolies, and is altogether apart and separate from the
+ordinary lands held by the ryots and worked by them. (A ryot means a
+cultivator.) In most factories the Zeraats are farmed in the most
+thorough manner. Many now use the light Howard's plough, and apply
+quantities of manure.
+
+The fields extend in vast unbroken plains all round the factory. The
+land is worked and pulverised, and reploughed, and harrowed, and
+cleaned, till not a lump the size of a pigeon's egg is to be seen. If
+necessary, it is carefully weeded several times before the crop is
+sown, and in fact, a fine clean stretch of Zeraat in Tirhoot or
+Chumparun, will compare most favourably with any field in the highest
+farming districts of England or Scotland. The ploughing and other farm
+labour is done by bullocks. A staff of these, varying of course with
+the amount of land under cultivation, is kept at each factory. For
+their support a certain amount of sugar-cane is planted, and in the
+cold weather carrots are sown, and _gennara_, a kind of millet, and
+maize.
+
+Both maize and gennara have broad green leaves, and long juicy
+succulent stalks. They grow to a good height, and when cut up and
+mixed with chopped straw and carrots, form a most excellent feed for
+cattle. Besides the bullocks, each factory keeps up a staff of
+generally excellent horses, for the use of the assistant or manager,
+on which he rides over his cultivation, and looks generally after the
+farm. Some of the native subordinates also have ponies, or Cabool
+horses, or country-breds; and for the feed of these animals some few
+acres of oats are sown every cold season. In most factories too, when
+any particular bit of the Zeraats gets exhausted by the constant
+repetition of indigo cropping, a rest is given it, by taking a crop of
+oil seeds or oats off the land. The oil seeds usually sown are mustard
+or rape. The oil is useful in the factory for oiling the screws or the
+machinery, and for other purposes.
+
+The factory roads through the Zeraats are kept in most perfect order;
+many of them are metalled. The ditches are cleaned once a year. All
+thistles and weeds by the sides of the roads and ditches, are
+ruthlessly cut down. The edges of all the fields are neatly trimmed
+and cut. Useless trees and clumps of jungle are cut down; and in fact
+the Zeraats round a factory shew a perfect picture of orderly thrift,
+careful management, and neat, scientific, and elaborate farming.
+
+Having got the Zeraats, the next thing is to extend the cultivation
+outside.
+
+The land in India is not, as with us at home, parcelled out into large
+farms. There are wealthy proprietors, rajahs, baboos, and so on, who
+hold vast tracts of land, either by grant, or purchase, or hereditary
+succession; but the tenants are literally the children of the soil.
+Wherever a village nestles among its plantain or mango groves, the
+land is parcelled out among the villagers. A large proprietor does not
+reckon up his farms as a landlord at home would do, but he counts his
+villages. In a village with a thousand acres belonging to it, there
+might be 100 or even 200 tenants farming the land. Each petty villager
+would have his acre or half acre, or four, or five, or ten, or twenty
+acres, as the case might be. He holds this by a 'tenant right,' and
+cannot be dispossessed as long as he pays his rent regularly. He can
+sell his tenant right, and the purchaser on paying the rent, becomes
+the _bona fide_ possessor of the land to all intents and purposes.
+
+If the average rent of the village lands was, let me say, one rupee
+eight annas an acre, the rent roll of the 1000 acres would be 1500
+rupees. Out of this the government land revenue comes. Certain
+deductions have to be made--some ryots may be defaulters. The village
+temple, or the village Brahmin, may have to get something, the
+road-cess has to be paid, and so on. Taking everything into account,
+you arrive at a pretty fair view of what the rental is. If the
+proprietor of the village wants a loan of money, or if you offer to
+pay him the rent by half-yearly or quarterly instalments, you taking
+all the risk of collecting in turn from each ryot individually, he is
+often only too glad to accept your offer, and giving you a lease of
+the village for whatever term may be agreed on, you step in as
+virtually the landlord, and the ryots have to pay their rents to you.
+
+In many cases by careful management, by remeasuring lands, settling
+doubtful boundaries, and generally working up the estate, you can much
+increase the rental, and actually make a profit on your bargain with
+the landlord. This department of indigo work is called Zemindaree.
+Having, then, got the village in lease, you summon in all your tenants;
+shew them their rent accounts, arrange with them for the punctual
+payment of them, and get them to agree to cultivate a certain
+percentage of their land in indigo for you.
+
+This percentage varies very considerably. In some places it is one
+acre in five, in some one in twenty. It all depends on local
+circumstances. You select the land, you give the seed, but the ryot
+has to prepare the field for sowing, he has to plough, weed, and reap
+the crop, and deliver it at the factory. For the indigo he gets so
+much per acre, the price being as near as possible the average price
+of an acre of ordinary produce: taking the average out-turn and prices
+of, say, ten years. It used formerly to be much less, but the ryot
+nowadays gets nearly double for his indigo what he got some ten or
+fifteen years ago, and this, although prices have not risen for the
+manufactured article, and the prices of labour, stores, machinery,
+live stock, etc., have more than doubled. In some parts the ryot gets
+paid so much per bundle of plants delivered at the vats, but generally
+in Behar, at least in north Behar, he is paid so much per acre or
+_Beegah_. I use the word acre as being more easily understood by
+people at home than Beegah. The Beegah varies in different districts,
+but is generally about two-thirds of an acre.
+
+When his rent account, then, comes to be made out, the ryot gets
+credit for the price of his indigo grown and delivered; and this very
+often suffices, not only to clear his entire rent, but to leave a
+margin in hard cash for him to take home. Before the beginning of the
+indigo season, however, he comes into the factory and takes a cash
+advance on account of the indigo to be grown. This is often a great
+help to him, enabling him to get his seeds for his other lands,
+perhaps ploughs, or to buy a cart, or clothes for the family, or to
+replace a bullock that may have died; or to help to give a marriage
+portion to a son or daughter that he wants to get married.
+
+You will thus see that we have cultivation to look after in all the
+villages round about the factory which we can get in lease. The ryot,
+in return for his cash advance, agrees to cultivate so much indigo at
+a certain price, for which he gets credit in his rent. Such, shortly,
+is our indigo system. In some villages the ryot will estimate for us
+without our having the lease at all, and without taking advances.
+He grows the indigo as he would grow any other crop, as a pure
+speculation. If he has a good crop, he can get the price in hard cash
+from the factory, and a great deal is grown in this way in both
+Purneah and Bhaugulpore. This is called _Kooskee_, as against the
+system of advances, which is called _Tuccaree_.
+
+The planter, then, has to be constantly over his villages, looking out
+for good lands, giving up bad fields, and taking in new ones. He must
+watch what crops grow best in certain places. He must see that he does
+not take lands where water may lodge, and, on the other hand, avoid
+those that do not retain their moisture. He must attend also to the
+state of the other crops generally all over his cultivation, as the
+punctual payment of rents depends largely on the state of the crops.
+He must have his eyes open to everything going on, be able to tell the
+probable rent-roll of every village for miles around, know whether the
+ryots are lazy and discontented, or are industrious and hard-working.
+Up in the early morning, before the hot blazing sun has climbed on
+high, he is off on his trusty nag, through his Zeraats, with his
+greyhounds and terriers panting behind him. As he nears a village, the
+farm-servant in charge of that particular bit of cultivation, comes
+out with a low salaam, to report progress, or complain that so-and-so
+is not working up his field as he ought to do.
+
+Over all the lands he goes, seeing where re-ploughing is necessary,
+ordering harrowing here, weeding there, or rolling somewhere else. He
+sees where the ditches need deepening, where the roads want levelling
+or widening, where a new bridge will be necessary, where lands must be
+thrown up and new ones taken in. He knows nearly all his ryots, and
+has a kind word for every one he passes; asks after their crops, their
+bullocks, or their land; rouses up the indolent; gives a cheerful nod
+to the industrious; orders this one to be brought in to settle his
+account, or that one to make greater haste with the preparation of his
+land, that he may not lose his moisture. In fact, he has his hands
+full till the mounting sun warns him to go back to breakfast. And so,
+with a rattling burst after a jackal or fox, he gets back to his
+bungalow to bathe, dress, and break his fast with fowl cutlets, and
+curry and rice, washed down with a wholesome tumbler of Bass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
+--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at work.
+--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
+
+Having now got our land, water, and buildings--which latter I will
+describe further on--the next thing is to set to work to get our crop.
+Manufacture being finished, and the crop all cut by the beginning or
+middle of October, when the annual rains are over, it is of importance
+to have the lands dug up as early as possible, that the rich moisture,
+on which the successful cultivation of the crop mainly depends, may be
+secured before the hot west winds and strong sun of early spring lick
+it up.
+
+Attached to every factory is a small settlement of labourers, belonging
+to a tribe of aborigines called _Dangurs_. These originally, I believe,
+came from Chota Nagpoor, which seems to have been their primal home.
+They are a cheerful industrious race, have a distinct language of their
+own, and only intermarry with each other. Long ago, when there were no
+post carriages to the hills, and but few roads, the Dangurs were
+largely employed as dale runners, or postmen. Some few of them settled
+with their families on lands near the foot of the hills in Purneah, and
+gradually others made their way northwards, until now there is scarcely
+a factory in Behar that has not its Dangur tola, or village.
+
+The men are tractable, merry-hearted, and faithful. The women betray
+none of the exaggerated modesty which is characteristic of Hindoo women
+generally. They never turn aside and hide their faces as you pass, but
+look up to you with a merry smile on their countenances, and exchange
+greetings with the utmost frankness. In a future chapter I may speak at
+greater length of the Dangurs; at present it suffices to say, that they
+form a sort of appanage to the factory, and are in fact treated as part
+of the permanent staff.
+
+Each Dangur when he marries, gets some grass and bamboos from the
+factory to build a house, and a small plot of ground to serve as a
+garden, for which he pays a very small rent, or in many instances
+nothing at all. In return, he is always on the spot ready for any
+factory work that may be going on, for which he has his daily wage.
+Some factories pay by the month, but the general custom is to charge
+for hoeing by piece-work, and during manufacture, when the work is
+constant, there is paid a monthly wage.
+
+In the close foggy mornings of October and November, long before the
+sun is up, the Dangurs are hard at work in the Zeraats, turning up the
+soil with their _kodalies_, (a kind of cutting hoe,) and you can often
+hear their merry voices rising through the mist, as they crack jokes
+with each other to enliven their work, or troll one of their quaint
+native ditties.
+
+They are presided over by a 'mate,' generally one of the oldest men and
+first settlers in the village. If he has had a large family, his sons
+look up to him, and his sons-in-law obey his orders with the utmost
+fealty. The 'mate' settles all disputes, presents all grievances to the
+_sahib_, and all orders are given through him.
+
+The indigo stubble which has been left in the ground is perhaps about a
+foot high, and as they cut it out, their wives and children come to
+gather up the sticks for fuel, and this of course also helps to clean
+the land. By eleven o'clock, when the sluggish mist has been dissipated
+by the rays of the scorching sun, the day's labour is nearly concluded.
+You will then see the swarthy Dangur, with his favourite child on his
+shoulder, wending his way back to his hut, followed by his comely wife
+carrying his hoe, and a tribe of little ones bringing up the rear, each
+carrying bundles of the indigo stubble which the industrious father has
+dug up during the early hours of morning.
+
+In the afternoon out comes the _hengha_, which is simply a heavy flat
+log of wood, with a V shaped cut or groove all along under its flat
+surface. To each end of the hengha a pair of bullocks are yoked, and
+two men standing on the log, and holding on by the bullocks' tails, it
+is slowly dragged over the field wherever the hoeing has been going on.
+The lumps and clods are caught in the groove on the under surface, and
+dragged along and broken up and pulverized, and the whole surface of
+the field thus gets harrowed down, and forms a homogeneous mass of
+light friable soil, covering the weeds and dirt to let them rot,
+exposing the least surface for the wind and heat to act on, and thus
+keeping the moisture in the soil.
+
+Now is a busy time for the planter. Up early in the cold raw fog, he is
+over his Zeraats long before dawn, and round by his outlying villages
+to see the ryots at work in their fields. To each eighty or a hundred
+acres a man is attached called a _Tokedar_. His duty is to rouse out
+the ryots, see the hoes and ploughs at work, get the weeding done, and
+be responsible for the state of the cultivation generally. He will
+probably have two villages under him. If the village with its lands be
+very extensive, of course there will be a Tokedar for it alone, but
+frequently a Tokedar may have two or more villages under his charge. In
+the village, the head man--generally the most influential man in the
+community--also acts with the Tokedar, helping him to get ploughs,
+bullocks, and coolies when these are wanted; and under him, the village
+_chowkeydar_, or watchman, sees that stray cattle do not get into the
+fields, that the roads, bridges and fences are not damaged, and so on.
+Over the Tokedars, again, are Zillahdars. A 'zillah' is a small
+district. There may be eight or ten villages and three or four Tokedars
+under a Zillahdar. The Zillahdar looks out for good lands to change for
+bad ones, where this is necessary, and where no objection is made by
+the farmer; sees that the Tokedars do their work properly; reports
+rain, blight, locusts, and other visitations that might injure the
+crop; watches all that goes on in his zillah, and makes his report to
+the planter whenever anything of importance happens in his particular
+part of the cultivation. Over all again comes the JEMADAR--the head man
+over the whole cultivation--the planter's right-hand man.
+
+He is generally an old, experienced, and trusted servant. He knows all
+the lands for miles round, and the peculiar soils and products of all
+the villages far and near. He can tell what lands grow the best
+tobacco, what lands are free from inundation, what free from drought;
+the temper of the inhabitants of each village, and the history of each
+farm; where are the best ploughs, the best bullocks, and the best
+farming; in what villages you get most coolies for weeding; where you
+can get the best carts, the best straw, and the best of everything at
+the most favourable rates. He comes up each night when the day's work
+is done, and gets his orders for the morrow. You are often glad to take
+his advice on sowing, reaping, and other operations of the farm. He
+knows where the plant will ripen earliest, and where the leaf will be
+thickest, and to him you look for satisfaction if any screw gets loose
+in the outside farm-work.
+
+He generally accompanies you in your morning ride, shows you your new
+lands, consults with you about throwing up exhausted fields, and is
+generally a sort of farm-bailiff or confidential land-steward. Where he
+is an honest, intelligent, and loyal man, he takes half the care and
+work off your shoulders. Such men are however rare, and if not very
+closely looked after, they are apt to abuse their position, and often
+harass the ryots needlessly, looking more to the feathering of their
+own nests than the advancement of your interests.
+
+The only Jemadar I felt I could thoroughly trust, was my first one at
+Parewah, an old Rajpoot, called Kassee Rai. He was a fine, ruddy-faced,
+white-haired old man, as independent and straightforward an old farmer
+as you could meet anywhere, and I never had reason to regret taking his
+advice on any matter. I never found him out in a lie, or in a dishonest
+or underhand action. Though over seventy years of age he was upright as
+a dart. He could not keep up with me when we went out riding over the
+fields, but he would be out the whole day over the lands, and was
+always the first at his work in the morning and the last to leave off
+at night. The ryots all loved him, and would do anything for him; and
+when poor old Kassee died, the third year he had been under me, I felt
+as if an old friend had gone. I never spoke an angry word to him, and I
+never had a fault to find with him.
+
+When the hoeing has been finished in zeraat and zillah, and all the
+upturned soil battened down by the _hengha_, the next thing is to
+commence the ploughing. Your ploughmen are mostly low caste
+men--Doosadhs, Churnars, Moosahurs, Gwallahs, _et hoc genus omne_.
+The Indian plough, so like a big misshapen wooden pickaxe, has often
+been described. It however turns up the light soft soil very well
+considering its pretensions, and those made in the factory workshops
+are generally heavier and sharper than the ordinary village plough.
+Our bullocks too, being strong and well fed, the ploughing in the
+zeraats is generally good.
+
+The ploughing is immediately followed up by the _hengha_, which again
+triturates and breaks up the clods, rolls the sticks, leaves, and grass
+roots together, brings the refuse and dirt to the surface, and again
+levels the soil, and prevents the wind from taking away the moisture.
+The land now looks fine and fresh and level, but very dirty. A host of
+coolies are put on the fields with small sticks in their hands. All the
+Dangur women and children are there, with men, women, and children of
+all the poorest classes from the villages round, whom the attractions
+of wages or the exertions of headmen Tokedars and Zillahdars have
+brought together to earn their daily bread. With the sticks they beat
+and break up every clod, leaving not one behind the size of a walnut.
+They collect all the refuse, weeds, and dirt, which are heaped up and
+burnt on the field, and so they go on till the zeraats look as clean as
+a nobleman's garden, and you would think that surely this must satisfy
+the fastidious eye of the planter. But no, our work is not half begun
+yet.
+
+It is rather a strange sight to see some four or five hundred coolies
+squatted in a long irregular line, chattering, laughing, shouting, or
+squabbling. A dense cloud of dust rises over them, and through the dim
+obscurity one hears the ceaseless sound of the thwack! thwack! as their
+sticks rattle on the ground. White dust lies thick on each swarthy
+skin; their faces are like faces in a pantomime. There are the flashing
+eyes and the grinning rows of white teeth; all else is clouded in thick
+layers of dust, with black spots and stencillings showing here and
+there like a picture in sepia and chalk. As they near the end of the
+field they redouble their thwacking, shuffle along like land-crabs, and
+while the Mates, Peons, and Tokedars shout at them to encourage them,
+they raise a roar loud enough to wake the dead. The dust rises in
+denser clouds, the noise is deafening, a regular mad hurry-scurry, a
+wild boisterous scramble ensues, and amid much chaffing, noise, and
+laughter, they scramble off again to begin another length of land; and
+so the day's work goes on.
+
+The planter has to count his coolies several times a-day, or they would
+cheat him. Some come in the morning, get counted, and their names put
+on the roll, and then go off till paytime comes round. Some come for an
+hour or two, and send a relative in the evening when the pice are being
+paid out, to get the wage of work they have not done. All are paid in
+pice--little copper bits of coin, averaging about sixty-four to the
+rupee. However, you soon come to know the coolies by sight, and after
+some experience are rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get
+'done' most thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the
+artless and unsophisticated coolie.
+
+The type of feature along a line of coolies is as a rule a very
+forbidding and degraded one. They are mostly of the very poorest class.
+Many of them are plainly half silly, or wholly idiotic; not a few are
+deaf and dumb; others are crippled or deformed, and numbers are leprous
+and scrofulous. Numbers of them are afflicted in some districts with
+goitre, caused probably by bad drinking water; all have a pinched,
+withered, wan look, that tells of hard work and insufficient fare. It
+is a pleasure to turn to the end of the line, where the Dangur women
+and boys and girls generally take their place. Here are the loudest
+laughter, and the sauciest faces. The children are merry, chubby, fat
+things, with well-distended stomachs and pleasant looks; a merry smile
+rippling over their broad fat cheeks as they slyly glance up at you.
+The women--with huge earrings in their ears, and a perfect load of
+heavy brass rings on their arms--chatter away, make believe to be shy,
+and show off a thousand coquettish airs. Their very toes are bedizened
+with brass rings; and long festoons of red, white, and blue beads hang
+pendent round their necks.
+
+In the evening the line is re-formed before the bungalow. A huge bag of
+copper coin is produced. The old Lallah, or writer, with spectacles on
+nose, squats down in the middle of the assembled coolies, and as each
+name is called, the mates count out the pice, and make it over to the
+coolie, who forthwith hurries off to get his little purchases made at
+the village Bunneah's shop; and so, on a poor supper of parched peas,
+or boiled rice, with no other relish but a pinch of salt, the poor
+coolie crawls to bed, only to dream of more hard work and scanty fare
+on the morrow. Poor thing! a village coolie has a hard time of it!
+During the hot months, if rice be cheap and plentiful, he can jog along
+pretty comfortably, but when the cold nights come on, and he cowers in
+his wretched hut, hungry, half naked, cold, and wearied, he is of all
+objects most pitiable. It is, however, a fact little creditable to his
+more prosperous fellow-countrymen, that he gets better paid for his
+labour in connection with factory work, than he does in many cases for
+tasks forced on him by the leading ryots of the village in connection
+with their own fields.
+
+[Illustration: COOLIE'S HUT.]
+
+This first cleaning of the fields--or, as it is called, _Oustennie_--being
+finished, the lands are all again re-ploughed, re-harrowed, and then
+once more re-cleaned by the coolies, till not a weed or spot of dirt
+remains; and till the whole surface is uniformly soft, friable, moist,
+and clean. We have now some breathing time; and as this is the most
+enjoyable season of the year, when the days are cool, and roaring wood
+fires at night remind us of home, we hunt, visit, race, dance, and
+generally enjoy ourselves. Should heavy rain fall, as it sometimes does
+about Christmas and early in February, the whole cultivation gets
+beaten down and caked over. In such a case amusements must for a time
+be thrown aside, till all the lands have been again re-ploughed. Of
+course we are never wholly idle. There are always rents to collect,
+matters to adjust in connexion with our villages and tenantry,
+law-suits to recover bad debts, to enforce contracts, or protect
+manorial or other rights,--but generally speaking, when the lands have
+been prepared, we have a slack season or breathing time for a month or
+so.
+
+Arrangements having been made for the supply of seed, which generally
+comes from about the neighbourhood of Cawnpore, as February draws near
+we make preparations for beginning our sowings. February is the usual
+month, but it depends on the moisture, and sometimes sowings may go on
+up till May and June. In Purneah and Bhaugulpore, where the cultivation
+is much rougher than in Tirhoot, the sowing is done broadcast. And in
+Bengal the sowing is often done upon the soft mud which is left on the
+banks of the rivers at the retiring of the annual floods. In Tirhoot,
+however, where the high farming I have been trying to describe is
+practised, the sowing is done by means of drills. Drills are got out,
+overhauled, and put in thorough repair. Bags of seed are sent out to
+the villages, advances for bullocks are given to the ryots, and on a
+certain day when all seems favourable--no sign of rain or high
+winds--the drills are set at work, and day and night the work goes on,
+till all the cultivation has been sown. As the drills go along, the
+hengha follows close behind, covering the seed in the furrows; and once
+again it is put over, till the fields are all level, shining, and
+clean, waiting for the first appearance of the young soft shoots.
+
+These, after some seven, nine, or perhaps fifteen days, according to
+the weather, begin to appear in long lines of delicate pale yellowish
+green. This is a most anxious time. Should rain fall, the whole surface
+of the earth gets caked and hard, and the delicate plant burns out, or
+being chafed against the hard surface crust, it withers and dies. If
+the wind gets into the east, it brings a peculiar blight which settles
+round the leaf and collar of the stem of the young plant, chokes it,
+and sweeps off miles and miles of it. If hot west winds blow, the plant
+gets black, discoloured, burnt up, and dead. A south wind often brings
+caterpillars--at least this pest often makes its appearance when the
+wind is southerly; but as often as not caterpillars find their way to
+the young plant in the most mysterious manner,--no one knowing whence
+they come. Daily, nay almost hourly, reports come in from all parts of
+the zillah: now you hear of 'Lahee,' blight on some field; now it is
+'Ihirka,' scorching, or 'Pilooa,' caterpillars. In some places the seed
+may have been bad or covered with too much earth, and the plant comes
+up straggling and thin. If there is abundant moisture, this must be
+re-sown. In fact, there is never-ending anxiety and work at this
+season, but when the plant has got into ten or fifteen leaf, and is an
+inch or two high, the most critical time is over, and one begins to
+think about the next operation, namely WEEDING.
+
+The coolies are again in requisition. Each comes armed with a
+_coorpee_,--this is a small metal spatula, broad-pointed, with which
+they dig out the weeds with amazing deftness. Sometimes they may
+inadvertently take out a single stem of indigo with the weeds: the eye
+of the mate or Tokedar espies this at once, and the careless coolie is
+treated to a volley of Hindoo Billingsgate, in which all his relations
+are abused to the seventh generation. By the time the first weeding is
+finished, the plant will be over a foot high, and if necessary a second
+weeding is then given. After the second weeding, and if any rain has
+fallen in the interim, the plant will be fully two feet high.
+
+It is now a noble-looking expanse of beautiful green waving foliage. As
+the wind ruffles its myriads of leaves, the sparkle of the sunbeams on
+the undulating mass produces the most wonderful combinations of light
+and shade; feathery sprays of a delicate pale green curl gracefully all
+over the field. It is like an ocean of vegetation, with billows of rich
+colour chasing each other, and blending in harmonious hues; the whole
+field looking a perfect oasis of beauty amid the surrounding dull brown
+tints of the season.
+
+It is now time to give the plant a light touch of the plough. This
+eases the soil about the roots, lets in air and light, tends to clean
+the undergrowth of weeds, and gives it a great impetus. The operation
+is called _Bedaheunee_. By the beginning of June the tiny red flower is
+peeping from its leafy sheath, the lower leaves are turning yellowish
+and crisp, and it is almost time to begin the grandest and most
+important operation of the season, the manufacture of the dye from the
+plant.
+
+To this you have been looking forward during the cold raw foggy days of
+November, when the ploughs were hard at work,--during the hot fierce
+winds of March, and the still, sultry, breathless early days of June,
+when the air was so still and oppressive that you could scarcely
+breathe. These sultry days are the lull before the storm--the pause
+before the moisture-laden clouds of the monsoon roll over the land
+'rugged and brown,' and the wild rattle of thunder and the lurid glare
+of quivering never-ceasing lightning herald in the annual rains. The
+manufacture however deserves a chapter to itself.
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO BEATING VATS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Manufacture of Indigo.--Loading the vats.--Beating.--Boiling,
+straining, and pressing.--Scene in the Factory.--Fluctuation of
+produce.--Chemistry of Indigo.
+
+Indigo is manufactured solely from the leaf. When arrangements have
+been made for cutting and carting the plant from the fields, the vats
+and machinery are all made ready, and a day is appointed to begin
+'Mahye' or manufacture. The apparatus consists of, first, a strong
+serviceable pump for pumping up water into the vats: this is now mostly
+done by machinery, but many small factories still use the old Persian
+wheel, which may be shortly described as simply an endless chain of
+buckets, working on a revolving wheel or drum. The machine is worked by
+bullocks, and as the buckets ascend full from the well, they are
+emptied during their revolution into a small trough at the top, and the
+water is conveyed into a huge masonry reservoir or tank, situated high
+up above the vats, which forms a splendid open air bath for the planter
+when he feels inclined for a swim. Many of these tanks, called
+_Kajhana_, are capable of containing 40,000 cubic feet of water or
+more.
+
+Below, and in a line with this reservoir, are the steeping vats, each
+capable of containing about 2000 cubic feet of water when full. Of
+course the vats vary in size, but what is called a _pucca_ vat is of
+the above capacity. When the fresh green plant is brought in, the carts
+with their loads are ranged in line, opposite these loading vats. The
+loading coolies, 'Bojhunneas'--so called from '_Bojh_,' a bundle--jump
+into the vats, and receive the plant from the cart-men, stacking it up
+in perpendicular layers, till the vat is full: a horizontal layer is
+put on top to make the surface look even. Bamboo battens are then
+placed over the plant, and these are pressed down, and held in their
+place by horizontal beams, working in upright posts. The uprights have
+holes at intervals of six inches. An iron pin is put in one of the
+holes; a lever is put under this pin, and the beam pressed down, till
+the next hole is reached and a fresh pin inserted, which keeps the beam
+down in its place. When sufficient pressure has been applied, the
+sluice in the reservoir is opened, and the water runs by a channel into
+the vat till it is full. Vat after vat is thus filled till all are
+finished, and the plant is allowed to steep from ten to thirteen or
+fourteen hours, according to the state of the weather, the temperature
+of the water, and other conditions and circumstances which have all to
+be carefully noted.
+
+At first a greenish yellow tinge appears in the water, gradually
+deepening to an intense blue. As the fermentation goes on, froth forms
+on the surface of the vat, the water swells up, bubbles of gas arise to
+the surface, and the whole range of vats presents a frothing, bubbling,
+sweltering appearance, indicative of the chemical action going on in
+the interior. If a torch be applied to the surface of a vat, the
+accumulated gas ignites with a loud report, and a blue lambent flame
+travels with amazing rapidity over the effervescent liquid. In very hot
+weather I have seen the water swell up over the mid walls of the vats,
+till the whole range would be one uniform surface of frothing liquid,
+and on applying a light, the report has been as loud as that of a small
+cannon, and the flame has leapt from vat to vat like the flitting
+will-o'-the-wisp on the surface of some miasmatic marsh.
+
+When fermentation has proceeded sufficiently, the temperature of the
+vat lowers somewhat, and the water, which has been globular and convex
+on the surface and at the sides, now becomes distinctly convex and
+recedes a very little. This is a sign that the plant has been steeped
+long enough, and that it is now time to open the vat. A pin is knocked
+out from the bottom, and the pent-up liquor rushes out in a golden
+yellow stream tinted with blue and green into the beating vat, which
+lies parallel to, but at a lower level than the loading vat.
+
+Of course as the vats are loaded at different hours, and the steeping
+varies with circumstances, they must be ready to open also at different
+intervals. There are two men specially engaged to look after the
+opening. The time of loading each one is carefully noted; the time it
+will take to steep is guessed at, and an hour for opening written down.
+When this hour arrives, the _Gunta parree_, or time-keeper, looks at
+the vat, and if it appears ready he gets the pinmen to knock out the
+pin and let the steeped liquor run into the beating vat.
+
+Where there are many vats, this goes on all night, and by the morning
+the beating vats are all full of steeped liquor, and ready to be
+beaten.
+
+The beating now is mostly done by machinery; but the old style was very
+different. A gang of coolies (generally Dangurs) were put into the
+vats, having long sticks with a disc at the end, with which, standing
+in two rows, they threw up the liquor into the air. The quantity forced
+up by the one coolie encounters in mid air that sent up by the man
+standing immediately opposite to him, and the two jets meeting and
+mixing confusedly together, tumble down in broken frothy masses into
+the vat. Beginning with a slow steady stroke the coolies gradually
+increase the pace, shouting out a hoarse wild song at intervals; till,
+what with the swish and splash of the falling water, the measured beat
+of the _furrovahs_ or beating rods, and the yells and cries with which
+they excite each other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which
+at first is of a yellowish green, is now beginning to assume an intense
+blue tint; this is the result of the oxygenation going on. As the blue
+deepens, the exertions of the coolie increase, till with every muscle
+straining, head thrown back, chest expanded, his long black hair
+dripping with white foam, and his bronzed naked body glistening with
+blue liquor, he yells and shouts and twists and contorts his body till
+he looks like a true 'blue devil.' To see eight or ten vats full of
+yelling howling blue creatures, the water splashing high in mid air,
+the foam flecking the walls, and the measured beat of the _furrovahs_
+rising weird-like into the morning air, is almost enough to shake the
+nerve of a stranger, but it is music in the planter's ear, and he can
+scarce refrain from yelling out in sympathy with his coolies, and
+sharing in their frantic excitement. Indeed it is often necessary to
+encourage them if a vat proves obstinate, and the colour refuses to
+come--an event which occasionally does happen. It is very hard work
+beating, and when this constant violent exercise is kept up for about
+three hours (which is the time generally taken), the coolies are pretty
+well exhausted, and require a rest.
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO BEATERS AT WORK IN THE VATS.]
+
+During the beating, two processes are going on simultaneously. One is
+chemical--oxygenation--turning the yellowish green dye into a deep
+intense blue: the other is mechanical--a separation of the particles of
+dye from the water in which it is held in solution. The beating seems
+to do this, causing the dye to granulate in larger particles.
+
+When the vat has been beaten, the coolies remove the froth and scum
+from the surface of the water, and then leave the contents to settle.
+The fecula or dye, or _mall_, as it is technically called, now settles
+at the bottom of the vat in a soft pulpy sediment, and the waste liquor
+left on the top is let off through graduated holes in the front. Pin
+after pin is gradually removed, and the clear sherry-coloured waste
+allowed to run out till the last hole in the series is reached, and
+nothing but dye remains in the vat. By this time the coolies have had a
+rest and food, and now they return to the works, and either lift up the
+_mall_ in earthen jars and take it to the mall tank, or--as is now more
+commonly done--they run it along a channel to the tank, and then wash
+out and clean the vat to be ready for the renewed beating on the
+morrow. When all the _mall_ has been collected in the mall tank, it is
+next pumped up into the straining room. It is here strained through
+successive layers of wire gauze and cloth, till, free from dirt, sand
+and impurity, it is run into the large iron boilers, to be subjected to
+the next process. This is the boiling. This operation usually takes two
+or three hours, after which it is run off along narrow channels, till
+it reaches the straining-table. It is a very important part of the
+manufacture, and has to be carefully done. The straining-table is an
+oblong shallow wooden frame, in the shape of a trough, but all composed
+of open woodwork. It is covered by a large straining-sheet, on which
+the mall settles; while the waste water trickles through and is carried
+away by a drain. When the mall has stood on the table all night, it is
+next morning lifted up by scoops and buckets and put into the presses.
+These are square boxes of iron or wood, with perforated sides and
+bottom and a removeable perforated lid. The insides of the boxes are
+lined with press cloths, and when filled these cloths are carefully
+folded over the _mall_, which is now of the consistence of starch; and
+a heavy beam, worked on two upright three-inch screws, is let down on
+the lid of the press. A long lever is now put on the screws, and the
+nut worked slowly round. The pressure is enormous, and all the water
+remaining in the _mall_ is pressed through the cloth and perforations
+in the press-box till nothing but the pure indigo remains behind.
+
+The presses are now opened, and a square slab of dark moist indigo,
+about three or three and a half inches thick, is carried off on the
+bottom of the press (the top and sides having been removed), and
+carefully placed on the cutting frame. This frame corresponds in size
+to the bottom of the press, and is grooved in lines somewhat after the
+manner of a chess-board. A stiff iron rod with a brass wire attached is
+put through the groove under the slab, the wire is brought over the
+slab, and the rod being pulled smartly through brings the wire with it,
+cutting the indigo much in the same way as you would cut a bar of soap.
+When all the slab has been cut into bars, the wire and rod are next put
+into the grooves at right angles to the bars and again pulled through,
+thus dividing the bars into cubical cakes. Each cake is then stamped
+with the factory mark and number, and all are noted down in the books.
+They are then taken to the drying house; this is a large airy building,
+with strong shelves of bamboo reaching to the roof, and having narrow
+passages between the tiers of shelves. On these shelves or _mychans_,
+as they are called, the cakes are ranged to dry. The drying takes two
+or three months, and the cakes are turned and moved at frequent
+intervals, till thoroughly ready for packing. All the little pieces and
+corners and chips are carefully put by on separate shelves, and packed
+separately. Even the sweepings and refuse from the sheets and floor are
+all carefully collected, mixed with water, boiled separately, and made
+into cakes, which are called 'washings.'
+
+During the drying a thick mould forms on the cakes. This is carefully
+brushed off before packing, and, mixed with sweepings and tiny chips is
+all ground up in a hand-mill, packed in separate chests, and sold as
+dust. In October, when _mahye_ is over, and the preparation of the land
+going on again, the packing begins. The cakes, each of separate date,
+are carefully scrutinised, and placed in order of quality. The finest
+qualities are packed first, in layers, in mango-wood boxes; the boxes
+are first weighed empty, re-weighed when full, and the difference gives
+the nett weight of the indigo. The tare, gross, and nett weights are
+printed legibly on the chests, along with the factory mark and number
+of the chest, and when all are ready, they are sent down to the brokers
+in Calcutta for sale. Such shortly is the system of manufacture.
+
+During _mahye_ the factory is a busy scene. Long before break of day
+the ryots and coolies are busy cutting the plant, leaving it in green
+little heaps for the cartmen to load. In the early morning the carts
+are seen converging to the factory on every road, crawling along like
+huge green beetles. Here a cavalcade of twenty or thirty carts, there
+in clusters of twos or threes. When they reach the factory the loaders
+have several vats ready for the reception of the plant, while others
+are taking out the already steeped plant of yesterday; staggering under
+its weight, as, dripping with water, they toss it on the vast
+accumulating heap of refuse material.
+
+Down in the vats below, the beating coolies are plashing, and shouting,
+and yelling, or the revolving wheel (where machinery is used) is
+scattering clouds of spray and foam in the blinding sunshine. The
+firemen stripped to the waist, are feeding the furnaces with the dried
+stems of last year's crop, which forms our only fuel. The smoke hovers
+in volumes over the boiling-house. The pinmen are busy sorting their
+pins, rolling hemp round them to make them fit the holes more exactly.
+Inside the boiling-house, dimly discernible through the clouds of
+stifling steam, the boilermen are seen with long rods, stirring slowly
+the boiling mass of bubbling blue. The clank of the levers resounds
+through the pressing-house, or the hoarse guttural 'hah, hah!' as the
+huge lever is strained and pulled at by the press-house coolies. The
+straining-table is being cleaned by the table 'mate' and his coolies,
+while the washerman stamps on his sheets and press-cloths to extract
+all the colour from them, and the cake-house boys run to and fro
+between the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on
+their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from
+the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary
+to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds.
+The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the
+roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of
+the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified
+or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the objurgations of the
+'mates' as some lazy fellow eases his stroke in the beating vats; the
+cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round the circle where the
+Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp, dilapidated wheel-house;
+the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on the drum, the arriving and
+departing carts; the clang of the anvil, as the blacksmith and his men
+hammer away at some huge screw which has been bent; the hurrying crowds
+of cartmen and loaders with their burdens of fresh green plant or
+dripping refuse;--form such a medley of sights and sounds as I have
+never seen equalled in any other industry.
+
+The planter has to be here, there, and everywhere. He sends carts to
+this village or to that, according as the crop ripens. Coolies must be
+counted and paid daily. The stubble must be ploughed to give the plant
+a start for the second growth whenever the weather will admit of it.
+Reports have to be sent to the agents and owners. The boiling must be
+narrowly watched, as also the beating and the straining. He has a large
+staff of native assistants, but if his _mahye_ is to be successful, his
+eye must be over all. It is an anxious time, but the constant work is
+grateful, and when the produce is good, and everything working
+smoothly, it is perhaps the most enjoyable time of the whole year. Is
+it nothing to see the crop, on which so much care has been expended,
+which you have watched day by day through all the vicissitudes of the
+season, through drought, and flood, and blight; is it nothing to see it
+safely harvested, and your shelves filling day by day with fine sound
+cakes, the representatives of wealth, that will fill your pockets with
+commission, and build up your name as a careful and painstaking
+planter?
+
+'What's your produce?' is now the first query at this season, when
+planters meet. Calculations are made daily, nay hourly, to see how much
+is being got per beegah, or how much per vat. The presses are calculated
+to weigh so much. Some days you will get a press a vat, some days it
+will mount up to two presses a vat, and at other times it will recede
+to half a press a vat, or even less. Cold wet weather reduces the
+produce. Warm sunny weather will send it up again. Short stunted plant
+from poor lands will often reduce your average per acre, to be again
+sent up as fresh, hardy, leafy plant comes in from some favourite
+village, where you have new and fertile lands, or where the plant from
+the rich zeraats laden with broad strong leaf is tumbled into the
+loading vat.
+
+So far as I know, there seems to be no law of produce. It is the most
+erratic and incomprehensible thing about planting. One day your presses
+are full to straining, next day half of them lie empty. No doubt the
+state of the weather, the quality of your plant, the temperature of the
+water, the length of time steeping, and other things have an influence;
+but I know of no planter who can entirely and satisfactorily account
+for the sudden and incomprehensible fluctuations and variations which
+undoubtedly take place in the produce or yield of the plant. It is a
+matter of more interest to the planter than to the general public, but
+all I can say is, that if the circumstances attendant on any sudden
+change in the yielding powers of the plant were more accurately noted;
+if the chemical conditions of the water, the air, and the raw material
+itself, more especially in reference to the soil on which it grows, the
+time it takes in transit from the field to the vat, and other points,
+which will at once suggest themselves to a practical planter, were more
+carefully, methodically, and scientifically observed, some coherent
+theory resulting in plain practical results might be evolved.
+
+Planters should attend more to this. I believe the chemical history of
+indigo has yet to be written. The whole manufacture, so far as
+chemistry is concerned, is yet crude and ill-digested. I know that by
+careful experiment, and close scientific investigation and observation,
+the preparation of indigo could be much improved. So far as the
+mechanical appliances for the manufacture go, the last ten years have
+witnessed amazing and rapid improvements. What is now wanted, is, that
+what has been done for the mere mechanical appliances, should be done
+for the proper understanding of the chemical changes and conditions in
+the constitution of the plant, and in the various processes of its
+manufacture[1].
+
+[1] Since the above chapter was written Mons. P.I. Michea, a French
+    chemist of some experience in Indigo matters, has patented
+    an invention (the result of much study, experiment, and
+    investigation), by the application of which an immense increase in
+    the produce of the plant has been obtained during the last season,
+    in several factories where it has been worked in Jessore, Purneah,
+    Kishnaghur, and other places. This increase, varying according to
+    circumstances, has in some instances reached the amazing extent
+    of 30 to 47 per cent., and so far from being attended with a
+    deterioration of quality the dye produced is said to be finer than
+    that obtained under the old crude process described in the above
+    chapter. This shows what a waste must have been going on, and what
+    may yet be done, by properly organised scientific investigation.
+    I firmly believe that with an intelligent application of the
+    principles of chemistry and agricultural science, not only to the
+    manufacture but to growth, cultivation, nature of the soil,
+    application of manures, and other such departments of the
+    business, quite a revolution will set in, and a new era in the
+    history of this great industry will be inaugurated. Less area for
+    crop will be required, working expenses will be reduced, a greater
+    out-turn, and a more certain crop secured, and all classes,
+    planter and ryot alike, will be benefited.
+
+[Illustration: INDIAN FACTORY PEON.]
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO PLANTER'S HOUSE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Parewah factory.--A 'Bobbery Pack.'--Hunt through a village after a
+cat.--The pariah dog of India.--Fate of 'Pincher.'--Rampore hound.
+--Persian greyhound.--Caboolee dogs.--A jackal hunt.--Incidents of
+the chase.
+
+After living at Puttihee for two years, I was transferred to another
+out-factory in the same concern, called Parewah. There was here a very
+nice little three-roomed bungalow, with airy verandahs all round. It
+was a pleasant change from Puttihee, and the situation was very pretty.
+A small stream, almost dry in the hot weather, but a swollen, deep,
+rapid torrent in the rains, meandered past the factory. Nearing the
+bullock-house it suddenly took a sweep to the left in the form of a
+wide horseshoe, and in this bend or pocket was situated the bungalow,
+with a pretty terraced garden sloping gently to the stream. Thus the
+river was in full view from both the front and the back verandahs.
+In front, and close on the bank of the river, stood the kitchen,
+fowl-house, and offices. To the right of the compound were the stables,
+while behind the bungalow, and some distance down the stream, the
+wheel-house, vats, press-house, boiling-house, cake-house, and
+workshops were grouped together. I was but nine miles from the
+bead-factory, and the same distance from the station of Mooteeharree,
+while over the river, and but three miles off, I had the factory of
+Meerpore, with its hospitable manager as my nearest neighbour. His
+lands and mine lay contiguous. In fact some of his villages lay beyond
+some of mine, and he had to ride through part of my cultivation to
+reach them.
+
+Not unfrequently we would meet in the zillah of a morning, when we
+would invariably make for the nearest patch of grass or jungle, and
+enjoy a hunt together. In the cool early mornings, when the heavy night
+dews still lie glittering on the grass, when the cobwebs seem strung
+with pearls, and faint lines of soft fleecy mist lie in the hollows by
+the watercourses; long ere the hot, fiery sun has left his crimson bed
+behind the cold grey horizon, we are out on our favourite horse, the
+wiry, long-limbed _syce_ or groom trotting along behind us. The
+_mehter_ or dog-keeper is also in attendance with a couple of
+greyhounds in leash, and a motley pack of wicked little terriers
+frisking and frolicking behind him. This mongrel collection is known as
+'the Bobbery Pack,' and forms a certain adjunct to every assistant's
+bungalow in the district. I had one very noble-looking kangaroo hound
+that I had brought from Australia with me, and my 'bobbery pack' of
+terriers contained canine specimens of all sorts, sizes, and colours.
+
+On nearing a village, you would see one black fellow, 'Pincher,' set
+off at a round trot ahead, with seemingly the most innocent air in the
+world. 'Tilly,' 'Tiny,' and 'Nipper' follow.
+
+Then 'Dandy,' 'Curly,' 'Brandy,' and 'Nettle,' till spying a cat in the
+distance, the whole pack with a whimper of excitement dash off at a mad
+scramble, the hound straining meanwhile at the slip, till he almost
+pulls the _mehter_ off his legs. Off goes the cat, round the corner of
+a hut with her tail puffed up to fully three times its normal size.
+Round in mad, eager pursuit rattle the terriers, thirsting for her
+blood. The _syce_ dashes forward, vainly hoping to turn them from their
+quest. Now a village dog, roused from his morning nap, bounds out with
+a demoniac howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the curs in the
+village.
+
+Meanwhile the row inside the hut is fiendish. The sleeping family
+rudely roused by the yelping pack, utter the most discordant screams.
+The women with garments fluttering behind them, rush out beating their
+breasts, thinking the very devil is loose. The wails of the unfortunate
+cat mingle with the short snapping barks of the pack, or a howl of
+anguish as puss inflicts a caress on the face of some too careless or
+reckless dog. A howling village cur has rashly ventured too near.
+'Pincher' has him by the hind leg before you could say 'Jack Robinson.'
+Leaving the dead cat for 'Toby' and 'Nettle' to worry, the whole pack
+now fiercely attack the luckless _Pariah_ dog. A dozen of his village
+mates dance madly outside the ring, but are too wise or too cowardly to
+come to closer quarters. The kangaroo hound has now fairly torn the
+rope from the keeper's hand, and with one mighty bound is in the middle
+of the fight, scattering the village dogs right and left. The whole
+village is now in commotion, the _syce_ and keeper shout the names of
+the terriers in vain. Oaths, cries, shouts, and screams mingle with the
+yelping and growling of the combatants, till riding up, I disperse the
+worrying pack with a few cracks of my hunting whip, and so on again
+over the zillah, leaving the women and children to recover their
+scattered senses, the old men to grumble over their broken slumbers,
+and the boys and young men to wonder at the pluck and dash of the
+_Belaitee Kookoor_, or English dog.
+
+The common Pariah dog, or village dog of India, is a perfect cur; a
+mangy, carrion-loving, yellow-fanged, howling brute. A most unlovely
+and unloving beast. As you pass his village he will bounce out on you
+with the fiercest bark and the most menacing snarl; but lo! if a
+terrier the size of a teacup but boldly go at him, down goes his tail
+like a pump-handle, he turns white with fear, and like the arrant
+coward that he is, tumbles on his back and fairly screams for mercy. I
+have often been amused to see a great hulking cowardly brute come out
+like an avalanche at 'Pincher,' expecting to make one mouthful of him.
+What a look of bewilderment he would put on, as my gallant little
+'Pincher,' with a short, sharp, defiant bark would go boldly at him.
+The huge yellow brute would stop dead short on all four legs, and as
+the rest of my pack would come scampering round the corner, he would
+find himself the centre of a ring of indomitable assailants.
+
+How he curses his short-sighted temerity. With one long howl of utter
+dismay and deadly fear, he manages to get away from the pack, leaving
+my little doggies to come proudly round my horse with their mouths full
+of fur, and each of their little tails as stiff as an iron ramrod.
+
+That 'Pincher,' in some respects, was a very fiend incarnate. There was
+no keeping him in. He was constantly getting into hot water himself,
+and leading the pack into all sorts of mischief. He was as bold as
+brass and as courageous as a lion. He stole food, worried sheep and
+goats, and was never out of a scrape. I tried thrashing him, tying him
+up, half starving him, but all to no purpose. He would be into every
+hut in a village whenever he had the chance, overturning brass pots,
+eating up rice and curries, and throwing the poor villager's household
+into dismay and confusion. He would never leave a cat if he once saw
+it. I've seen him scramble through the roofs of more than one hut, and
+oust the cat from its fancied stronghold.
+
+I put him into an indigo vat with a big dog jackal once, and he whipped
+the jackal single-handed. He did not kill it, but he worried it till
+the jackal shammed dead and would not 'come to the scratch.' 'Pincher's'
+ears were perfect shreds, and his scars were as numerous almost as his
+hairs. My gallant 'Pincher!' His was a sad end. He got eaten up by an
+alligator in the 'Dhans,' a sluggish stream in Bhaugulpore. I had all
+my pack in the boat with me, the stream was swollen and full of weeds.
+A jackal gave tongue on the bank, and 'Pincher' bounded over the side
+of the boat at once. I tried to 'grab' him, and nearly upset the boat
+in doing so. Our boat was going rapidly down stream, and 'Pincher'
+tried to get ashore but got among the weeds. He gave a bark, poor
+gallant little dog, for help, but just then we saw a dark square snout
+shoot athwart the stream. A half-smothered sobbing cry from 'Pincher,'
+and the bravest little dog I ever possessed was gone for ever.
+
+There is another breed of large, strong-limbed, big-boned dogs, called
+Rampore hounds. They are a cross breed from the original upcountry dog
+and the Persian greyhound. Some call them the Indian greyhound. They
+seem to be bred principally in the Rampore-Bareilly district, but one
+or more are generally to be found in every planter's pack. They are
+fast and strong enough, but I have often found them bad at tackling,
+and they are too fond of their keeper ever to make an affectionate
+faithful dog to the European.
+
+Another somewhat similar breed is the _Tazi_. This, although not so
+large a dog as the Rhamporee, is a much pluckier animal, and when well
+trained will tackle a jackal with the utmost determination. He has a
+wrinkled almost hairless skin, but a very uncertain temper, and he is
+not very amenable to discipline. _Tazi_ is simply the Persian word for
+a greyhound, and refers to no particular breed. The common name for a
+dog is _Kutta_, pronounced _Cootta_, but the Tazi has certainly been an
+importation from the North-west, hence the Persian name. The wandering
+Caboolees, who come down to the plains once a year with dried fruits,
+spices, and other products of field or garden, also bring with them the
+dogs of their native country for sale, and on occasion they bring
+lovely long-haired white Persian cats, very beautiful animals. These
+Caboolee dogs are tall, long-limbed brutes, generally white, with a
+long thin snout, very long silky-haired drooping ears, and generally
+wearing tufts of hair on their legs and tail, somewhat like the
+feathering of a spaniel, which makes them look rather clumsy. They
+cannot stand the heat of the plains at all well, and are difficult to
+tame, but fleet and plucky, hunting well with an English pack.
+
+My neighbour Anthony at Meerpore had some very fine English greyhounds
+and bulldogs, and many a rattling burst have we had together after the
+fox or the jackal. Imagine a wide level plain, with one uniform dull
+covering of rice stubble, save where in the centre a mound rises some
+two acres in extent, covered with long thatching grass, a few scrubby
+acacia bushes, and other jungly brushwood. All round the circular
+horizon are dense forest masses of sombre looking foliage, save where
+some clump of palms uprear their stately heads, or the white shining
+walls of some temple, sacred to Shiva or Khristna glitter in the
+sunshine. Far to the left a sluggish creek winds slowly along through
+the plain, its banks fringed with acacias and wild rose jungle. On the
+far bank is a small patch of _Sal_ forest jungle, with a thick rank
+undergrowth of ferns, thistles, and rank grass. As I am slowly riding
+along I hear a shout in the distance, and looking round behold Anthony
+advancing at a rapid hand gallop. His dogs and mine, being old friends,
+rapidly fraternise, and we determine on a hunt.
+
+'Let's try the old patch, Anthony!'
+
+'All right,' and away we go making straight for the mound. When we
+reach the grass the syces and keepers hold the hounds at the corners
+outside, while we ride through the grass urging on the terriers, who,
+quivering with excitement, utter short barks, and dash here and there
+among the thick grass, all eager for a find.
+
+'Gone away, gone away!' shouts Anthony, as a fleet fox dashes out,
+closely followed by 'Pincher' and half a dozen others. The hounds are
+slipped, and away go the pack in full pursuit, we on our horses riding
+along, one on each side of the chase. The fox has a good start, but now
+the hounds are nearing him, when with a sudden whisk he doubles round
+the ridge encircling a rice field, the hounds overshoot him, and ere
+they turn the fox has put the breadth of a good field between himself
+and his pursuers. He is now making back again for the grass, but
+encounters some of the terriers who have tailed off behind. With
+panting chests and lolling tongues, they are pegging stolidly along,
+when fortune gives them this welcome chance. Redoubling their efforts,
+they dash at the fox. 'Bravo, Tilly! you tumbled him over that time;'
+but he is up and away again. Dodging, double-turning, and twisting, he
+has nearly run the gauntlet, and the friendly covert is close at hand,
+but the hounds are now up again and thirsting for his blood. 'Hurrah!
+Minnie has him!' cries Anthony, and riding up we divest poor Reynard of
+his brush, pat the dogs, ease the girths for a minute, and then again
+into the jungle for another beat.
+
+This time a fat old jackal breaks to the left, long before the dogs are
+up. Yelling to the _mehters_ not to slip the hounds, we gather the
+terriers together, and pound over the stubble and ridges. He is going
+very leisurely, casting an occasional scared look over his shoulder.
+'Curly' and 'Legs,' two of my fastest terriers, are now in full view,
+they are laying themselves well to the ground, and Master Jackal thinks
+it's high time to increase his pace. He puts on a spurt, but condition
+tells. He is fat and pursy, and must have had a good feed last night on
+some poor dead bullock. He is shewing his teeth now. Curly makes his
+rush, and they both roll over together. Up hurries Legs, and the jackal
+gets a grip, gives him a shake, and then hobbles slowly on. The two
+terriers now hamper him terribly. One minute they are at his heels, and
+as soon as he turns, they are at his ear or shoulder. The rest of the
+pack are fast coming up.
+
+Anthony has a magnificent bulldog, broad-chested, and a very Goliath
+among dogs. He is called 'Sailor.' Sailor always pounds along at the
+same steady pace; he never seems to get flurried. Sitting lazily at the
+door, he seems too indolent even to snap at a fly. He is a true
+philosopher, and nought seems to disturb his serenity. But see him
+after a jackal, his big red tongue hanging out, his eyes flashing fire,
+and his hair erected on his back like the bristles of a wild boar. He
+looks fiendish then, and he is a true bulldog. There is no flinching
+with Sailor. Once he gets his grip it's no use trying to make him let
+go.
+
+Up comes Sailor now.
+
+He has the jackal by the throat.
+
+A hoarse, rattling, gasping yell, and the jackal has gone to the happy
+hunting grounds.
+
+The sun is now mounting in the sky. The hounds and terriers feel the
+heat, so sending them home by the keeper, we diverge on our respective
+roads, ride over our cultivation, seeing the ploughing and preparations
+generally, till hot, tired, and dusty, we reach home about 11.30,
+tumble into our bath, and feeling refreshed, sit down contentedly to
+breakfast. If the _dak_ or postman has come in we get our letters and
+papers, and the afternoon is devoted to office work and accounts,
+hearing complaints and reports from the villages, or looking over any
+labour that may be going on in the zeraats or at the workshops. In the
+evening we ride over the zeraats again, give orders for the morrow's
+work, consume a little tobacco, have an early dinner, and after a
+little reading, retire soon to bed to dream of far away friends and the
+happy memories of home. Many an evening it is very lonely work. No
+friendly face, and no congenial society within miles of your factory.
+Little wonder that the arrival of a brother planter sends a thrill
+through the frame, and that his advent is welcomed as the most
+agreeable break to the irksome monotony of our lonely life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Fishing in India.--Hereditary trades.--The boatmen and fishermen of
+India.--Their villages.--Nets.--Modes of fishing.--Curiosities
+relating thereto.--Catching an alligator with a hook.--Exciting
+capture.-Crocodiles.--Shooting an alligator.--Death of the man-eater.
+
+Not only in the wild jungles, on the undulating plains, and among the
+withered brown stubbles, does animal life abound in India; but the
+rivers, lakes, and creeks teem with fish of every conceivable size,
+shape, and colour. The varieties are legion. From the huge black
+porpoise, tumbling through the turgid stream of the Ganges, to the
+bright, sparkling, silvery shoals of delicate _chillooahs_ or
+_poteeahs_, which one sees darting in and out among the rice stubbles
+in every paddy field during the rains. Here a huge _bhowarree_ (pike),
+or ravenous _coira_, comes to the surface with a splash; there a
+_raho_, the Indian salmon, with its round sucker-like mouth, rises
+slowly to the surface, sucks in a fly and disappears as slowly as it
+rose; or a _pachgutchea_, a long sharp-nosed fish, darts rapidly by; a
+shoal of mullet with their heads out of the water swim athwart the
+stream, and far down in the cool depths of the tank or lake, a thousand
+different varieties disport themselves among the mazy labyrinths of the
+broad-leaved weeds.
+
+During the middle, and about the end of the rains, is the best time for
+fishing; the whole country is then a perfect network of streams. Every
+rice field is a shallow lake, with countless thousands of tiny fish
+darting here and there among the rice stalks. Every ditch teems with
+fish, and every hollow in every field is a well stocked aquarium.
+
+Round the edge of every lake or tank in the early morning, or when the
+fierce heat of the day begins to get tempered by the approaching shades
+of evening, one sees numbers of boys and men of the poorer classes,
+each with a couple of rough bamboo rods stuck in the ground in front of
+him, watching his primitive float with the greatest eagerness, and
+whipping out at intervals some luckless fish of about three or four
+ounces in weight with a tremendous haul, fit for the capture of a
+forty-pounder. They get a coarse sort of hook in the bazaar, rig up a
+roughly-twisted line, tie on a small piece of hollow reed for a float,
+and with a lively earth-worm for a bait, they can generally manage in a
+very short time to secure enough fish for a meal.
+
+With a short light rod, a good silk line, and an English hook attached
+to fine gut, I have enjoyed many a good hour's sport at Parewah. I used
+to have a cane chair sent down to the bank of the stream, a _punkah_,
+or hand fan, plenty of cooling drinks, and two coolie boys in
+attendance to remove the fish, renew baits, and keep the punkah in
+constant swing. There I used to sit enjoying my cigar, and pulling in
+little fish at the rate sometimes of a couple a minute.
+
+I remember hooking a turtle once, and a terrible job it was to land
+him. My light rod bent like a willow, but the tackle was good, and
+after ten minutes' hard work I got the turtle to the side, where my
+boys soon secured him. He weighed thirteen pounds. Sometimes you get
+among a colony of freshwater crabs.
+
+They are little brown brutes, and strip your hooks of the bait as fast
+as you fling them in. There is nothing for it in such a case but to
+shift your station. Many of the bottom fish--the _ghurai_, the
+_saourie_, the _barnee_ (eel), and others, make no effort to escape the
+hook. You see them resting at the bottom, and drop the bait at their
+very nose. On the whole, the hand fishing is uninteresting, but it
+serves to wile away an odd hour when hunting and shooting are hardly
+practicable.
+
+Particular occupations in India are restricted to particular castes.
+All trades are hereditary. For example, a _tatmah_, or weaver, is
+always a weaver. He cannot become a blacksmith or carpenter. He has no
+choice. He must follow the hereditary trade. The peculiar system of
+land-tenure in India, which secures as far as possible a bit of land
+for every one, tends to perpetuate this hereditary selection of trades,
+by enabling every cultivator to be so far independent of his
+handicraft, thus restricting competition. There may be twenty _lohars_,
+or blacksmiths, in a village, but they do not all follow their calling.
+They till their lands, and are _de facto_ petty farmers. They know the
+rudiments of their handicraft, but the actual blacksmith's work is done
+by the hereditary smith of the village, whose son in turn will succeed
+him when he dies, or if he leave no son, his fellow caste men will put
+in a successor.
+
+Nearly every villager during the rains may be found on the banks of the
+stream or lake, angling in an amateur sort of way, but the fishermen
+of Behar _par excellence_ are the _mull[=a]hs_; they are also called
+_Gouhree, Beeu_, or _Muchooah_. In Bengal they are called _Nikaree_,
+and in some parts _Baeharee_, from the Persian word for a boat. In the
+same way _muchooah_ is derived from _much_, a fish, and _mullah_ means
+boatman, strictly speaking, rather than fisherman. All boatmen and
+fishermen belong to this caste, and their villages can be recognised at
+once by the instruments of their calling lying all around.
+
+Perched high on some bank overlooking the stream or lake, you see
+innumerable festoons of nets hanging out to dry on tall bamboo poles,
+or hanging like lace curtains of very coarse texture from the roofs and
+eaves of the huts. Hauled up on the beach are a whole fleet of boats of
+different sizes, from the small _dugout_, which will hold only one man,
+to the huge _dinghy_, in which the big nets and a dozen men can be
+stowed with ease. Great heaps of shells of the freshwater mussel show
+the source of great supplies of bait; while overhead a great hovering
+army of kites and vultures are constantly circling round, eagerly
+watching for the slightest scrap of offal from the nets. When the rains
+have fairly set in, and the fishermen have got their rice fields all
+planted out, they are at liberty to follow their hereditary avocation.
+A day is fixed for a drag, and the big nets are overhauled and got in
+readiness. The head _mullah_, a wary grizzled old veteran, gives the
+orders. The big drag-net is bundled into the boat, which is quickly
+pushed off into the stream, and at a certain distance from shore the
+net is cast from the boat. Being weighted at the lower end it rapidly
+sinks, and, buoyed on the upper side with pieces of cork, it makes a
+perpendicular wall in the water. Several long bamboo poles are now run
+through the ropes along the upper side of the net, to prevent the net
+being dragged under water altogether by the weight of the fish in a
+great haul. The little boats, a crowd of which are in attendance, now
+dart out, surrounding the net on all sides, and the boatmen beating
+their oars on the sides of the boats, create such a clatter as to
+frighten, the fish into the circumference of the big net. This is now
+being dragged slowly to shore by strong and willing arms. The women and
+children watch eagerly on the bank. At length the glittering haul is
+pulled up high and dry on the beach, the fish are divided among the
+men, the women fill their baskets, and away they hie to the nearest
+_bazaar_, or if it be not _bazaar_ or market day, they hawk the fish
+through the nearest villages, like our fish-wives at home.
+
+There is another common mode of fishing adopted in narrow lakes and
+small streams, which are let out to the fishermen by the Zemindars or
+landholders. A barricade made of light reeds, all matted together by
+string, is stuck into the stream, and a portion of the water is fenced
+in, generally in a circular form. The reed fence being quite flexible
+is gradually moved in, narrowing the circle. As the circle narrows, the
+agitation inside is indescribable; fish jumping in all directions--a
+moving mass of glittering scales and fins. The larger ones try to leap
+the barrier, and are caught by the attendant _mullahs_, who pounce on
+them with swift dexterity. Eagles and kites dart and swoop down,
+bearing off a captive fish in their talons. The reed fence is doubled
+back on itself, and gradually pushed on till the whole of the fish
+inside are jammed together in a moving mass. The weeds and dirt are
+then removed, and the fish put into baskets and carried off to market.
+
+Others, again, use circular casting nets, which they throw with very
+great dexterity. Gathering the net into a bunch they rest it on the
+shoulder, then with a circular sweep round the head, they fling it far
+out. Being loaded, it sinks down rapidly in the water. A string is
+attached to the centre of the net, and the fisherman hauls it in with
+whatever prey he may be lucky enough to secure.
+
+As the waters recede during October, after the rains have ended, each
+runlet and purling stream becomes a scene of slaughter on a most
+reckless and improvident scale. The innumerable shoals of spawn and
+small fish that have been feeding in the rice fields, warned by some
+instinct seek the lakes and main streams. As they try to get their way
+back, however, they find at each outlet in each ditch and field a
+deadly wicker trap, in the shape of a square basket with a V-shaped
+opening leading into it, through which the stream makes its way. After
+entering this basket there is no egress except through the narrow
+opening, and they are trapped thus in countless thousands. Others of
+the natives in mere wantonness put a shelf of reeds or rushes in the
+bed of the stream, with an upward slope. As the water rushes along, the
+little fish are left high and dry on this shelf or screen, and the
+water runs off below. In this way scarcely a fish escapes, and as
+millions are too small to be eaten, it is a most serious waste. The
+attention of Government has been directed to the subject, and steps may
+be taken to stop such a reckless and wholesale destruction of a
+valuable food supply.
+
+In some parts of Purneah and Bhaugulpore I have seen a most ingenious
+method adopted by the _mullahs_. A gang of four or five enter the
+stream and travel slowly downwards, stirring up the mud at the bottom
+with their feet. The fish, ascending the stream to escape the mud, get
+entangled in the weeds. The fishermen feel them with their feet amongst
+the weeds, and immediately pounce on them with their hands. Each man
+has a _gila_ or earthen pot attached by a string to his waist and
+floating behind him in the water. I have seen four men fill their
+earthen pots in less than an hour by this ingenious but primitive mode
+of fishing. Some of them can use their feet almost as well for grasping
+purposes as their hands.
+
+Another mode of capture is by a small net. A flat piece of netting is
+spread over a hoop, to which four or five pieces of bamboo are
+attached, rising up and meeting in the centre, so as to form a sort of
+miniature skeleton tent-like frame over the net. The hoop with the net
+stretched tight across is then pressed down flat on the bottom of the
+tank or stream. If any fish are beneath, their efforts to escape
+agitate the net. The motion is communicated to the fisherman by a
+string from the centre of the net which is rolled round the fisherman's
+thumb. When the jerking of his thumb announces a captive fish, he puts
+down his left hand and secures his victim. The _Banturs_, _Nepaulees_,
+and other jungle tribes, also often use the bow and arrow as a means of
+securing fish.
+
+Seated on the branch of some overhanging tree, while his keen eye scans
+the depths below, he watches for a large fish, and as it passes, he
+lets fly his arrow with unerring aim, and impales the luckless victim.
+Some tribes fish at night, by torchlight, spearing the fish who are
+attracted by the light. In Nepaul the bark of the _Hill Sirres_ is
+often used to poison a stream or piece of water. Pounded up and thrown
+in, it seems to have some uncommon effect on the fish. After water has
+been treated in this way, the fish, seemingly quite stupefied, rise to
+the surface, on which they float in great numbers, and allow themselves
+to be caught. The strangest part of it is that they are perfectly
+innocuous as food, notwithstanding this treatment.
+
+Fish forms a very favourite article of diet with both Mussulmans and
+Hindoos. Many of the latter take a vow to touch no flesh of any kind.
+They are called _Kunthees_ or _Boghuts_, but a _Boghut_ is more of an
+ascetic than a _Kunthee_. However, the _Kunthee_ is glad of a fish
+dinner when he can get it. They are restricted to no particular sect or
+caste, but all who have taken the vow wear a peculiar necklace, made
+generally of sandal-wood beads or _neem_ beads round their throats.
+Hence the name, from _kunth_ meaning the throat.
+
+The right to fish in any particular piece of water, is let out by the
+proprietor on whose land the water lies, or through which it flows. The
+letting is generally done by auction yearly. The fishing is called a
+_shilkur_; from _shal_, a net. It is generally taken by some rich
+_Bunneah_ (grain seller) or village banker, who sub-lets it in turn to
+the fishermen.
+
+In some of the tanks which are not so let, and where the native
+proprietor preserves the fish, first-class sport can be had. A common
+native poaching dodge is this: if some oil cake be thrown into the
+water a few hours previous to your fishing, or better still, balls made
+of roasted linseed meal, mixed with bruised leaves of the 'sweet
+basil,' or _toolsee_ plant, the fish assemble in hundreds round the
+spot, and devour the bait greedily. With a good eighteen-foot rod, fish
+of from twelve to twenty pounds are not uncommonly caught, and will
+give good play too. Fishing in the plains of India is, however, rather
+tame sport at the best of times.
+
+You have heard of the famous _mahseer_--some of them over eighty or a
+hundred pounds weight? We have none of these in Behar, but the huge
+porpoise gives splendid rifle or carbine practice as he rolls through
+the turgid streams. They are difficult to hit, but I have seen several
+killed with ball; and the oil extracted from their bodies is a splendid
+dressing for harness. But the most exciting fishing I have ever seen
+was--What do you think?--Alligator fishing! Yes, the formidable scaly
+monster, with his square snout and terrible jaws, his ponderous body
+covered with armour, and his serrated tail, with which he could break
+the leg of a bullock, or smash an outrigger as easily as a whale could
+smash a jolly-boat.
+
+I must try to describe one day's alligator fishing.
+
+When I was down in Bhaugulpore, I went out frequently fishing in the
+various tanks and streams near my factory. My friend Pat, who is a keen
+sportsman and very fond of angling, wrote to me one day when he and his
+brother Willie were going out to the Teljuga, asking me to join their
+party. The Teljuga is the boundary stream between Tirhoot and
+Bhaugulpore, and its sluggish muddy waters teem with alligators--the
+regular square-nosed _mugger_, the terrible man-eater. The _nakar_ or
+long-nosed species may be seen in countless numbers in any of the large
+streams, stretched out on the banks basking in the noonday sun. Going
+down the Koosee particularly, you come across hundreds sometimes lying
+on one bank. As the boat nears them, they slide noiselessly and slowly
+into the stream. A large excrescence forms on the tip of the long
+snout, like a huge sponge; and this is often all that is seen on the
+surface of the water as the huge brute swims about waiting for his
+prey. These _nakars_, or long-nosed specimens, never attack human
+beings--at least such cases are very very rare--but live almost
+entirely on fish. I remember seeing one catch a paddy-bird on one
+occasion near the junction of the Koosee with the Ganges. My boat was
+fastened to the shore near a slimy creek, that came oozing into the
+river from some dense jungle near. I was washing my hands and face on
+the bank, and the boatmen were fishing with a small hand-net, for our
+breakfast. Numbers of attenuated melancholy-looking paddy-birds were
+stalking solemnly and stiltedly along the bank, also fishing for
+_theirs_. I noticed one who was particularly greedy, with his long legs
+half immersed in the water, constantly darting out his long bill and
+bringing up a hapless struggling fish. All of a sudden a long snout and
+the ugly serrated ridgy back of a _nakar_ was shot like lightning at
+the hapless bird, and right before our eyes the poor paddy was crunched
+up. As a rule, however, alligators confine themselves to a fish diet,
+and are glad of any refuse or dead animal that may float their way. But
+with the _mugger_, the _boach_, or square-nosed variety, 'all is fish
+that comes to his net.' His soul delights in young dog or live pork. A
+fat duck comes not amiss; and impelled by hunger he hesitates not to
+attack man. Once regaled with the flavour of human flesh, he takes up
+his stand near some ferry, or bathing ghaut, where many hapless women
+and children often fall victims to his unholy appetite, before his
+career is cut short.
+
+I remember shooting one ghastly old scaly villain in a tank near
+Ryseree. He had made this tank his home, and with that fatalism which
+is so characteristic of the Hindoo, the usual ablutions and bathings
+went on as if no such monster existed. Several woman having been
+carried off, however, at short intervals, the villagers asked me to try
+and rid them of their foe. I took a ride down to the tank one Friday
+morning, and found the banks a scene of great excitement. A woman had
+been carried off some hours before as she was filling her water jar,
+and the monster was now reposing at the bottom of the tank digesting
+his horrible meal. The tank was covered with crimson water-lilies in
+full bloom, their broad brown and green leaves showing off the crimson
+beauty of the open flower. At the north corner some wild rose bushes
+dropped over the water, casting a dense matted shade. Here was the
+haunt of the _mugger_. He had excavated a huge gloomy-looking hole,
+into which he retired when gorged with prey. My first care was to cut
+away some of these bushes, and then, finding he was not at home, we
+drove some bamboo stakes through the bank to prevent him getting into
+his _manu_, which is what the natives term the den or hole. I then sat
+down under a _goolar_ tree, to wait for his appearance. The _goolar_ is
+a species of fig, and the leaves are much relished by cattle and goats.
+Gradually the village boys and young men went off to their ploughing,
+or grass cutting for the cows' evening meal. A woman came down
+occasionally to fill her waterpot in evident fear and trembling. A
+swarm of _minas_ (the Indian starling) hopped and twittered round my
+feet. The cooing of a pair of amatory pigeons overhead nearly lulled me
+to slumber. A flock of green parrots came swiftly circling overhead,
+making for the fig-tree at the south end of the tank. An occasional
+_raho_ lazily rose among the water-lilies, and disappeared with an
+indolent flap of his tail. The brilliant kingfisher, resplendent in
+crimson and emerald, sat on the withered branch of a prostrate
+mango-tree close by, pluming his feathers and doubtless meditating on
+the vanity of life. Suddenly, close by the massive post which marks the
+centre of every Hindoo tank, a huge scaly snout slowly and almost
+imperceptibly rose to the surface, then a broad, flat, forbidding
+forehead, topped by two grey fishy eyes with warty-looking callosities
+for eyebrows. Just then an eager urchin who had been squatted by me for
+hours, pointed to the brute. It was enough. Down sank the loathsome
+creature, and we had to resume our attitude of expectation and patient
+waiting. Another hour passed slowly. It was the middle of the
+afternoon, and very hot. I had sent my _tokedar_ off for a 'peg' to the
+factory, and was beginning to get very drowsy, when, right in the same
+spot, the repulsive head again rose slowly to the surface. I had my
+trusty No. 12 to my shoulder on the instant, glanced carefully along
+the barrels, but just then only the eyes of the brute were invisible. A
+moment of intense excitement followed, and then, emboldened by the
+extreme stillness, he showed his whole head above the surface. I pulled
+the trigger, and a Meade shell crashed through the monster's skull,
+scattering his brains in the water and actually sending one splinter of
+the skull to the opposite edge of the tank, where my little Hindoo boy
+picked it up and brought it to me.
+
+There was a mighty agitation in the water; the water-lilies rocked to
+and fro, and the broad leaves glittered with the water drops thrown on
+them; then all was still. Hearing the report of my gun, the natives
+came flocking to the spot, and, telling them their enemy was slain, I
+departed, leaving instructions to let me know when the body came to the
+surface. It did so three days later. Getting some _chumars_ and _domes_
+(two of the lowest castes, as none of the higher castes will touch a
+dead body under pain of losing caste), we hauled the putrid carcase to
+shore, and on cutting it open, found the glass armlets and brass
+ornaments of no less than five women and the silver ornaments of three
+children, all in a lump in the brute's stomach. Its skull was
+completely smashed and shattered to pieces by my shot. Its teeth were
+crusted with tartar, and worn almost to the very stumps. It measured
+nineteen feet.
+
+But during this digression my friends Pat and Willie have been waiting
+on the banks of the 'Teljuga.' I reached their tents late at night,
+found them both in high spirits after a good day's execution among the
+ducks and teal, and preparations being made for catching an alligator
+next day. Up early in the morning, we beat some grass close by the
+stream, and roused out an enormous boar that gave us a three mile spin
+and a good fight, after Pat had given him first spear. After breakfast
+we got our tackle ready.
+
+This was a large iron hook with a strong shank, to which was attached a
+stout iron ring. To this ring a long thick rope was fastened, and I
+noticed for several yards the strands were all loose and detached, and
+only knotted at intervals. I asked Pat the reason of this curious
+arrangement, and was told that if we were lucky enough to secure a
+_mugger_, the loose strands would entangle themselves amongst his
+formidable teeth, whereas were the rope in one strand only he might
+bite it through; the knottings at intervals were to give greater
+strength to the line. We now got our bait ready. On this occasion it
+was a live tame duck. Passing the bend of the hook round its neck, and
+the shank under its right wing, we tied the hook in this position with
+thread. We then made a small raft of the soft pith of the
+plantain-tree, tied the duck to the raft and committed it to the
+stream. Holding the rope as clear of the water as we could, the poor
+quacking duck floated slowly down the muddy current, making an
+occasional vain effort to get free. We saw at a distance an ugly snout
+rise to the surface for an instant and then noiselessly disappear.
+
+'There's one!' says Pat in a whisper.
+
+'Be sure and not strike too soon,' says Willie.
+
+'Look out there, you lazy rascals!' This in Hindostanee to the grooms
+and servants who were with us.
+
+Again the black mass rises to the surface, but this time nearer to the
+fated duck. As if aware of its peril it now struggles and quacks most
+vociferously. Nearer and nearer each time the black snout rises, and
+then each time silently disappears beneath the turgid muddy stream. Now
+it appears again; this time there are two, and there is another at a
+distance attracted by the quacking of the duck. We on the bank cower
+down and go as noiselessly as we can. Sometimes the rope dips on the
+water, and the huge snout and staring eyes immediately disappear. At
+length it rises within a few yards of the duck; then there is a mighty
+rush, two huge jaws open and shut with a snap like factory shears, and
+amid a whirl of foam and water and surging mud the poor duck and the
+hideous reptile disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense
+volumes of mud that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the
+tragedy that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim
+to and fro still further disturbing the muddy current.
+
+'Give him lots of time to swallow,' yells Pat, now fairly mad with
+excitement.
+
+The grooms and grass-cutters howl and dance. Willie and I dig each
+other in the ribs, and all generally act in an excited and insane way.
+
+Pat now puts the rope over his shoulder, we all take hold, and with a
+'one, two, three!' we make a simultaneous rush from the bank, and as
+the rope suddenly tightens with a pull and strain that nearly jerks us
+all on our backs, we feel that we have hooked the monster, and our
+excitement reaches its culminating point.
+
+What a commotion now in the black depths of the muddy stream! The
+water, lashed by his powerful tail, surges and dashes in eddying
+whirls. He rises and darts backwards and forwards, snapping his
+horrible jaws, moving his head from side to side, his eyes glaring with
+fury. We hold stoutly on to the rope, although our wrists are strained
+and our arms ache. At length he begins to feel our steady pull, and
+inch by inch, struggling demoniacally, he nears the bank. When once he
+reaches it, however, the united efforts of twice our number would fail
+to bring him farther. Bleeding and foaming at the mouth, his horrid
+teeth glistening amid the frothy, blood-flecked foam, he plants his
+strong curved fore-legs against the shelving bank, and tugs and strains
+at the rope with devilish force and fury. It is no use--the rope has
+been tested, and answers bravely to the strain; and now with a long
+boar spear, Pat cautiously descends the bank, and gives him a deadly
+thrust under the fore arm. With a last fiendish glare of hate and
+defiance, he springs forward; we haul in the rope, Pat nimbly jumps
+back, and a pistol shot through the eye settles the monster for ever.
+This was the first alligator I ever saw hooked; he measured sixteen and
+a half feet exactly, but words can give no idea of half the excitement
+that attended the capture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Native superstitions.--Charming a bewitched woman.--Exorcising ghosts
+from a field.--Witchcraft.--The witchfinder or 'Ojah.'--Influence of
+fear.--Snake bites.--How to cure them.--How to discover a thief.--Ghosts
+and their habits.--The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.--Cruelty to
+animals by natives.
+
+The natives as a rule, and especially the lower classes, are
+excessively superstitious. They are afraid to go out after nightfall,
+believing that then the spirits of the dead walk abroad. It is almost
+impossible to get a coolie, or even a fairly intelligent servant, to go
+a message at night, unless you give him another man for company.
+
+A belief in witches is quite prevalent, and there is scarcely a village
+in Behar that does not contain some withered old crone, reputed and
+firmly believed to be a witch. Others, either young or old are believed
+to have the evil eye; and, as in Scotland some centuries ago, there are
+also witch-finders and sorcerers, who will sell charms, cast
+nativities, give divinations, or ward off the evil efforts of wizards
+and witches by powerful spells. When a wealthy man has a child born,
+the Brahmins cast the nativity of the infant on some auspicious day.
+They fix on the name, and settle the date for the baptismal ceremony.
+
+I remember a man coming to me on one occasion from the village of
+Kuppoorpuckree. He rushed up to where I was sitting in the verandah,
+threw himself at my feet, with tears streaming down his cheeks, and
+amid loud cries for pity and help, told me that his wife had just been
+bewitched. Getting him somewhat soothed and pacified, I learned that a
+reputed witch lived next door to his house; that she and the man's wife
+had quarrelled in the morning about some capsicums which the witch was
+trying to steal from his garden; that in the evening, as his wife was
+washing herself inside the _angana_, or little courtyard appertaining
+to his house, she was seized with cramps and shivering fits, and was
+now in a raging fever; that the witch had been also bathing at the
+time, and that the water from her body had splashed over this man's
+fence, and part of it had come in contact with his wife's body--hence
+undoubtedly this strange possession. He wished me to send peons at
+once, and have the witch seized, beaten, and expelled from the village.
+It would have been no use my trying to persuade him that no witchcraft
+existed. So I gave him a good dose of quinine for his wife, which she
+was to take as soon as the fit subsided. Next I got my old _moonshee_,
+or native writer, to write some Persian characters on a piece of paper;
+I then gave him this paper, muttering a bit of English rhyme at the
+time, and telling him this was a powerful spell. I told him to take
+three hairs from his wife's head, and a paring from her thumb and big
+toe nails, and at the rising of the moon to burn them outside the walls
+of his hut. The poor fellow took the quinine and the paper with the
+deepest reverence, made me a most lowly _salaam_ or obeisance, and
+departed with a light heart. He carried out my instructions to the
+letter, the quinine acted like a charm on the feverish woman, and I
+found myself quite a famous witch-doctor.
+
+There was a nice flat little field close to the water at Parewah, in
+which I thought I could get a good crop of oats during the cold
+weather. I sent for the 'dangur' mates, and asked them to have it dug
+up next day. They hummed and hawed and hesitated, as I thought, in
+rather a strange manner, but departed. In the evening back they came,
+to tell me that the dangurs would _not_ dig up the field.
+
+'Why?' I asked.
+
+'Well you see, Sahib,' said old Teerbouan, who was the patriarch and
+chief spokesman of the village, 'this field has been used for years as
+a burning ghaut' (i.e. a place where the bodies of dead Hindoos were
+buried).
+
+'Well?' said I.
+
+'Well, Sahib, my men say that if they disturb this land, the "Bhoots"
+(ghosts) of all those who have been burned there, will haunt the
+village at night, and they hope you will not persist in asking them to
+dig up the land.'
+
+'Very well, bring down the men with their digging-hoes, and I will
+see.'
+
+Accordingly, next morning, I went down on my pony, found the dangurs
+all assembled, but no digging going on. I called them together, told
+them that it was a very reasonable fear they had, but that I would cast
+such a spell on the land as would settle the ghosts of the departed for
+ever. I then got a branch of a _bael_[1] tree that grew close by,
+dipped it in the stream, and walking backwards round the ground, waved
+the dripping branch round my head, repeating at the same time the first
+gibberish that came into my recollection. My incantation or spell was
+as follows, an old Scotch rhyme I had often repeated when a child at
+school--
+
+  'Eenerty, feenerty, fickerty, feg,
+  Ell, dell, domun's egg;
+  Irky, birky, story, rock,
+  An, tan, toose, Jock;
+  Black fish! white troot!
+  "Gibbie Gaw, ye're oot."'
+
+It had the desired effect. No sooner was my charm uttered, than, after
+a few encouraging words to the men, telling them that there was now no
+fear, that my charm was powerful enough to lay all the spirits in the
+country, and that I would take all the responsibility, they set to work
+with a will, and had the whole field dug up by the evening.
+
+I have seen many such cases. A blight attacks the melon or cucumber
+beds; a fierce wind rises during the night, and shakes half the mangoes
+off the trees; the youngest child is attacked with teething
+convulsions; the plough-bullock is accidentally lamed, or the favourite
+cow refuses to give milk. In every case it is some 'Dyne,' or witch,
+that has been at work with her damnable spells and charms. I remember a
+case in which a poor little child had bad convulsions. The 'Ojah,' or
+witch-finder, in this case a fat, greasy, oleaginous knave, was sent
+for. Full of importance and blowing like a porpoise, he came and caused
+the child to be brought to him, under a tree near the village. I was
+passing at the time, and stopped out of curiosity. He spread a tattered
+cloth in front of him, and muttered some unintelligible gibberish,
+unceasingly making strange passes with his arms. He put down a number
+of articles on his cloth--which was villainously tattered and
+greasy--an unripe plantain, a handful of rice, of parched peas, a thigh
+bone, two wooden cups, some balls, &c., &c.; all of which he kept
+constantly lifting and moving about, keeping up the passes and
+muttering all the time.
+
+The child was a sickly-looking, pining sort of creature, rocking about
+in evident pain, and moaning and fretting just as sick children do.
+Gradually its attention got fixed on the strange antics going on. The
+Ojah kept muttering away, quicker and quicker, constantly shifting the
+bone and cups and other articles on the cloth. His body was suffused
+with perspiration, but in about half an hour the child had gone off to
+sleep, and attended by some dozen old women, and the anxious father,
+was borne off in triumph to the house.
+
+Another time one of Mr. D.'s female servants got bitten by a scorpion.
+The poor woman was in great agony, with her arm swelled up, when an
+Ojah was called in. Setting her before him, he began his incantations
+in the usual manner, but made frequent passes over her body, and over
+the bitten place. A gentle perspiration began to break out on her skin,
+and in a very short time the Ojah had thrown her into a deep mesmeric
+sleep. After about an hour she awoke perfectly free from pain. In this
+case no doubt the Ojah was a mesmerist.
+
+The influence of fear on the ordinary native is most wonderful. I have
+known dozens of instances in which natives have been brought home at
+night for treatment in cases of snake-bite. They have arrived at the
+factory in a complete state of coma, with closed eyes, the pupils
+turned back in the head, the whole body rigid and cold, the lips pale
+white, and the tongue firmly locked between the teeth. I do not believe
+in recovery from a really poisonous bite, where the venom has been
+truly injected. I invariably asked first how long it was since the
+infliction of the bite; I would then examine the marks, and as a rule
+would find them very slight. When the patient had been brought some
+distance, I knew at once that it was a case of pure fright. The natives
+wrap themselves up in their cloths or blankets at night, and lie down
+on the floors of their huts. Turning about, or getting up for water or
+tobacco, or perhaps to put fuel on the fire, they unluckily tread on a
+snake, or during sleep they roll over on one. The snake gives them a
+nip, and scuttles off. They have not seen what sort of snake it is, but
+their imagination conjures up the very worst. After the first outcry,
+when the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly possessed by
+the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his fears work the
+effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye gets dull, his
+pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb, and unless forcibly
+roused by the bystanders he will actually succumb to pure fright, not
+to the snake-bite at all. My chief care when a case of this sort was
+brought me, was to assume a cheery demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears
+of the relatives, and tell them he would be all right in a few hours if
+they attended to my directions. This not uncommonly worked by
+sympathetic influence on the patient himself. I believe, so long as all
+round him thought he was going to die, and expected no other result,
+the same effect was produced on his own mind. As soon as hope sprang up
+in the breasts of all around him, his spirit also caught the contagion.
+As a rule, he would now make an effort to articulate. I would then
+administer a good dose of sal volatile, brandy, eau-de-luce, or other
+strong stimulant, cut into the supposed bite, and apply strong nitric
+acid to the wound. This generally made him wince, and I would hail it
+as a token of certain recovery. By this time some confidence would
+return, and the supposed dying man would soon walk back sound and whole
+among his companions after profuse expressions of gratitude to his
+preserver.
+
+I have treated dozens of cases in this way successfully, and only seen
+two deaths. One was a young woman, my chowkeydar's daughter; the other
+was an old man, who was already dead when they lifted him out of the
+basket in which they had slung him. I do not wish to be misunderstood.
+I believe that in all these cases of recovery it was pure fright
+working on the imagination, and not snake-bite at all. My opinion is
+shared by most planters, that there is no cure yet known for a cobra
+bite, or for that of any other poisonous snake, where the poison has
+once been fairly injected and allowed to mix with the blood[2].
+
+There is another curious instance of the effects of fear on the native
+mind in the common method taken by an Ojah or Brahmin to discover a
+suspected thief. When a theft occurs, the Ojah is sent for, and the
+suspected parties are brought together. After various _muntras_, i.e.
+charms or incantations, have been muttered, the Ojah, who has meanwhile
+narrowly scrutinized each countenance, gives each of the suspected
+individuals a small quantity of dry rice to chew. If the thief be
+present, his superstitious fears are at work, and his conscience
+accuses him. He sees some terrible retribution for him in all these
+_muntras_, and his heart becomes like water within him, his tongue gets
+dry, his salivary glands refuse to act; the innocent munch away at
+their rice contentedly, but the guilty wretch feels as if he had ashes
+in his mouth. At a given signal all spit out their rice, and he whose
+rice comes out, chewed indeed, but dry as summer dust, is adjudged the
+thief. This ordeal is called _chowl chipao_, and is rarely
+unsuccessful. I have known several cases in my own experience in which
+a thief has been thus discovered.
+
+The _bhoots_, or ghosts, are popularly supposed to have favourite
+haunts, generally in some specially selected tree; the _neem_ tree is
+supposed to be the most patronised. The most intelligent natives share
+this belief with the poorest and most ignorant; they fancy the ghosts
+throw stones at them, cast evil influences over them, lure them into
+quicksands, and play other devilish tricks and cantrips. Some roads are
+quite shunned and deserted at night, for no other reason than that a
+ghost is supposed to haunt the place. The most tempting bribe would not
+make a native walk alone over that road after sunset.
+
+Besides the witchfinder, another important village functionary who
+relies much on muntras and charms, is the _Huddick_, or cow doctor. He
+is the only veterinary surgeon of the native when his cow or bullock
+dislocates or breaks a limb, or falls ill. The Huddick passes his hands
+over the affected part, and mutters his _muntras_, which have most
+probably descended to him from his father. Usually knowing a little of
+the anatomical structure of the animal, he may be able to reduce a
+dislocation, or roughly to set a fracture; but if the ailment be
+internal, a draught of mustard oil, or some pounded spices and
+turmeric, or neem leaves administered along with the _muntra_, are
+supposed to be all that human skill and science can do.
+
+The natives are cruel to animals. Half-starved bullocks are shamefully
+overworked. When blows fail to make the ill-starred brute move, they
+give a twist and wrench to the tail, which must cause the animal
+exquisite torture, and unless the hapless beast be utterly exhausted,
+this generally induces it to make a further effort. Ploughmen very
+often deliberately make a raw open sore, one on each rump of the
+plough-bullock. They goad the poor wretch on this raw sore with a
+sharp-pointed stick when he lags, or when they think he needs stirring
+up. Ponies, too, are always worked far too young; and their miserable
+legs get frightfully twisted and bent. The petty shopkeepers, sellers
+of brass pots, grain, spices, and other bazaar wares, who attend the
+various bazaars, or weekly and bi-weekly markets, transport their goods
+by means of these ponies.
+
+The packs of merchandise are slung on rough pack-saddles, made of
+coarse sacking. Shambling along with knees bent together, sores on
+every joint, and frequently an eye knocked out, the poor pony's back
+gets cruelly galled; when the bazaar is reached, he is hobbled as
+tightly as possible, the coarse ropes cutting into the flesh, and he is
+then turned adrift to contemplate starvation on the burnt-up grass.
+Great open sores form on the back, on which a plaster of moist clay, or
+cowdung and pounded leaves, is roughly put. The wretched creature gets
+worn to a skeleton. A little common care and cleanliness would put him
+right, with a little kindly consideration from his brutal master, but
+what does the _Kulwar_ or _Bunneah_ care? he is too lazy.
+
+This unfeeling cruelty and callous indifference to the sufferings of
+the lower animals is a crying evil, and every magistrate, European, and
+educated native, might do much to ease their burdens. Tremendous
+numbers of bullocks and ponies die from sheer neglect and ill treatment
+every year. It is now becoming so serious a trouble, that in many
+villages plough-bullocks are too few in number for the area of land
+under cultivation. The tillage suffers, the crops deteriorate, this
+reacts on prices, the ryot sinks lower and lower, and gets more into
+the grasp of the rapacious money-lender. In many villages I have seen
+whole tracts of land relapsed into _purtee_, or untilled waste, simply
+from want of bullocks to draw the plough. Severe epidemics, like foot
+and mouth disease and pleuro, occasionally sweep off great numbers;
+but, I repeat, that annually the lives of hundreds of valuable animals
+are sacrificed by sheer sloth, dirt, inattention, and brutal cruelty.
+
+In some parts of India, cattle poisoning for the sake of the hides is
+extensively practised. The _Chumars_, that is, the shoemakers,
+furriers, tanners, and workers in leather and skins generally,
+frequently combine together in places, and wilfully poison cattle and
+buffaloes. There is actually a section in the penal code taking
+cognisance of the crime. The Hindoo will not touch a dead carcase, so
+that when a bullock mysteriously sickens and dies, the _Chumars_ haul
+away the body, and appropriate the skin. Some luckless witch is blamed
+for the misfortune, when the rascally Chumars themselves are all the
+while the real culprits. The police, however, are pretty successful in
+detecting this crime, and it is not now of such frequent occurrence
+[3].
+
+Highly as the pious Hindoo venerates the sacred bull of Shira, his
+treatment of his mild patient beasts of burden is a foul blot on his
+character. Were you to shoot a cow, or were a Mussulman to wound a
+stray bullock which might have trespassed, and be trampling down his
+opium or his tobacco crop, and ruining his fields, the Hindoos would
+rise _en masse_ to revenge the insult offered to their religion. Yet
+they scruple not to goad their bullocks, beat them, half starve them,
+and let their gaping wounds fester and become corrupt. When the poor
+brute becomes old and unable to work, and his worn-out teeth unfit to
+graze, he is ruthlessly turned out to die in a ditch, and be torn to
+pieces by jackals, kites, and vultures. The higher classes and
+well-to-do farmers show much consideration for high-priced
+well-conditioned animals, but when they get old or unwell, and demand
+redoubled care and attention, they are too often neglected, till, from
+sheer want of ordinary care, they rot and die.
+
+
+[1] The _bael_ or wood-apple is a sacred wood with Hindoos. It is
+    enjoined in the Shastras that the bodies of the dead should be
+    consumed in a fire fed by logs of bael-tree; but where it is not
+    procurable in sufficient quantity, the natives compound with their
+    consciences by lighting the funeral pyre with a branch from the
+    bael-tree. It is a fine yellow-coloured, pretty durable wood, and
+    makes excellent furniture. A very fine sherbet can be made from
+    the fruit, which acts as an excellent corrective and stomachic.
+
+[2] Deaths from actual snake bite are sadly numerous; but it appears
+    from returns furnished to the Indian Government that Europeans
+    enjoy a very happy exemption. During the last forty years it would
+    seem that only two Europeans have been killed by snake bite, at
+    least only two well substantiated cases. The poorer classes are
+    the most frequent victims. Their universal habit of walking about
+    unshod, and sleeping on the ground, penetrating into the grasses
+    or jungles in pursuit of their daily avocations, no doubt conduces
+    much to the frequency of such accidents. A good plan to keep
+    snakes out of the bungalow is to leave a space all round the
+    rooms, of about four inches, between the walls and the edge of the
+    mats. Have this washed over about once a week with a strong
+    solution of carbolic acid and water. The smell may be unpleasant
+    for a short time, but it proves equally so to the snakes; and I
+    have proved by experience that it keeps them out of the rooms.
+    Mats should also be all firmly fastened down to the floor with
+    bamboo battens, and furniture should be often moved, and kept
+    raised a little from the ground, and the space below carefully
+    swept every day. At night a light should always be kept burning in
+    occupied bedrooms, and on no account should one get out of bed in
+    the dark, or walk about the rooms at night without slippers or
+    shoes.
+
+[3] Somewhat analogous to this is the custom which used to be a
+    common one in some parts of Behar. _Koombars_ and _Grannes_, that
+    is, tile-makers and thatchers, when trade was dull or rain
+    impending, would scatter peas and grain in the interstices of the
+    tiles on the houses of the well-to-do. The pigeons and crows, in
+    their efforts to get at the peas, would loosen and perhaps
+    overturn a few of the tiles. The grannes would be sent for to
+    replace these, would condemn the whole roof as leaky, and the
+    tiles as old and unfit for use, and would provide a job for
+    himself and the tile-maker, the nefarious profits of which they
+    would share together.
+
+    Cultivators of thatching-grass have been known deliberately and
+    wantonly to set fire to villages simply to raise the price of
+    thatch and bamboo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Our annual race meet.--The arrivals.--The camps.--The 'ordinary.'--The
+course.--'They're off.'--The race.--The steeple-chase.--Incidents of
+the meet.--The ball.
+
+Our annual Race Meet is the one great occasion of the year when all the
+dwellers in the district meet. Our races in Chumparun generally took
+place some time about Christmas. Long before the date fixed on,
+arrangements would be made for the exercise of hearty hospitality. The
+residents in the 'station' ask as many guests as will fill their
+houses, and their 'compounds' are crowded with tents, each holding a
+number of visitors, generally bachelors. The principal managers of the
+factories in the district, with their assistants, form a mess for the
+racing week, and, not unfrequently, one or two ladies lend their
+refining presence to the several camps. Friends from other districts,
+from up country, from Calcutta, gather together; and as the weather is
+bracing and cool, and every one determined to enjoy himself, the meet
+is one of the pleasantest of reunions. There are always several races
+specially got up for assistants' horses, and long before, the
+youngsters are up in the early morning, giving their favourite nag a
+spin across the zeraats, or seeing the groom lead him out swathed in
+clothing and bandages, to get him into training for the Assistants'
+race.
+
+As the day draws near, great cases of tinned meats, hampers of beer and
+wine, and goodly supplies of all sorts are sent into the station to the
+various camps. Tents of snowy white canvas begin to peep out at you
+from among the trees. Great oblong booths of blue indigo sheeting show
+where the temporary stables for the horses are being erected; and at
+night the glittering of innumerable camp-fires betokens the presence of
+a whole army of grooms, grass-cutters, peons, watchmen, and other
+servants cooking their evening meal of rice, and discussing the chances
+of the horses of their respective masters in the approaching races. On
+the day before the first racing, the planters are up early, and in
+buggy, dogcart, or on horseback, singly, and by twos and threes, from
+all sides of the district, they find their way to the station. The
+Planter's Club is the general rendezvous. The first comers, having
+found out their waiting servants, and consigned the smoking steeds to
+their care, seat themselves in the verandah, and eagerly watch every
+fresh arrival.
+
+Up comes a buggy. 'Hullo, who's this?'
+
+'Oh, it's "Giblets!" How do you do, "Giblets," old man?'
+
+Down jumps 'Giblets,' and a general handshaking ensues.
+
+'Here comes "Boach" and the "Moonshee,"' yells out an observant
+youngster from the back verandah.
+
+The venerable buggy of the esteemed 'Boach' approaches, and another
+jubilation takes place; the handshaking being so vigorous that the
+'Moonshee's' spectacles nearly come to grief. Now the arrivals ride and
+drive up fast and furious.
+
+'Hullo, "Anthony!"'
+
+'Aha, "Charley," how d'ye do?'
+
+'By Jove, "Ferdie," where have you turned up from?'
+
+'Has the "Skipper" arrived?'
+
+'Have any of you seen "Jamie?"'
+
+'Where's big "Mars'" tents?'
+
+'Have any of ye seen my "Bearer?"'
+
+'Has the "Bump" come in?' and so on.
+
+Such a scene of bustle and excitement. Friends meet that have not seen
+each other for a twelvemonth. Queries are exchanged as to absent
+friends. The chances of the meeting are discussed. Perhaps a passing
+allusion is made to some dear one who has left our ranks since last
+meet. All sorts of topics are started, and up till and during breakfast
+there is a regular medley of tongues, a confused clatter of voices,
+dishes, and glasses, a pervading atmosphere of dense curling volumes of
+tobacco smoke.
+
+To a stranger the names sound uncouth and meaningless, the fact being,
+that we all go by nicknames[1].
+
+'Giblets,' 'Diamond Digger,' 'Mangelwurzel,' 'Goggle-eyed Plover,'
+'Gossein' or holy man, 'Blind Bartimeus,' 'Old Boots,' 'Polly,'
+'Bottle-nosed Whale,' 'Fin MacCoul,' 'Daddy,' 'The Exquisite,' 'The
+Mosquito,' 'Wee Bob,' and 'Napoleon,' are only a very few specimens of
+this strange nomenclature. These soubriquets quite usurp our baptismal
+appellations, and I have often been called 'Maori,' by people who did
+not actually know my real name.
+
+By the evening, all, barring the very late arrivals, have found out
+their various camps. There is a merry dinner, then each sahib, well
+muffled in ulster, plaid, or great coat, hies him to the club, where
+the 'ordinary' is to be held. The nights are now cold and foggy, and a
+tremendous dew falls. At the 'ordinary,' fresh greetings between those
+who now meet for the first time after long separation. The entries and
+bets are made for the morrow's races, although not much betting takes
+place as a rule; but the lotteries on the different races are rapidly
+filled, the dice circulate cheerily, and amid laughing, joking,
+smoking, noise, and excitement, there is a good deal of mild
+speculation. The 'horsey' ones visit the stables for the last time; and
+each retires to his camp bed to dream of the morrow.
+
+Very early, the respective _bearers_ rouse the sleepy _sahibs_. Table
+servants rush hurriedly about the mess tent, bearing huge dishes of
+tempting viands. Grooms, and _grasscuts_ are busy leading the horses
+off to the course. The cold raw fog of the morning fills every tent,
+and dim grey figures of cowering natives, wrapped up over the eyes in
+blankets, with moist blue noses and chattering teeth, are barely
+discernible in the thick mist.
+
+The racecourse is two miles from the club, on the other side of the
+lake, in the middle of a grassy plain, with a neat masonry structure at
+the further side, which serves as a grand stand. Already buggies,
+dogcarts in single harness and tandem, barouches, and waggonettes are
+merrily rolling through the thick mist, past the frowning jail, and
+round the corner of the lake. Natives in gaudy coloured shawls, and
+blankets, are pouring on to the racecourse by hundreds.
+
+Bullock carts, within which are black-eyed, bold beauties, profusely
+burdened with silver ornaments, are drawn up in lines. _Ekkas_--small
+jingling vehicles with a dome-shaped canopy and curtains at the
+sides--drawn by gaily caparisoned ponies, and containing fat, portly
+Baboos, jingle and rattle over the ruts on the side roads.
+
+Sweetmeat sellers, with trays of horrible looking filth, made seemingly
+of insects, clarified butter, and sugar, dodge through the crowd
+dispensing their abominable looking but seemingly much relished wares.
+Tall policemen, with blue jackets, red puggries, yellow belts, and
+white trousers, stalk up and down with conscious dignity.
+
+A madcap young assistant on his pony comes tearing along across
+country. The weighing for the first race is going on; horses are being
+saddled, some vicious brute occasionally lashing out, and scattering
+the crowd behind him. The ladies are seated round the terraced grand
+stand; long strings of horses are being led round and round in a
+circle, by the _syces_; vehicles of every description are lying round
+the building.
+
+Suddenly a bugle sounds; the judge enters his box; the ever popular old
+'Bikram,' who officiates as starter, ambles off on his white cob, and
+after him go half-a-dozen handsome young fellows, their silks rustling
+and flashing through the fast rising mist.
+
+A hundred field-glasses scan the start; all is silent for a moment.
+
+'They're off!' shout a dozen lungs.
+
+'False start!' echo a dozen more.
+
+The gay colours of the riders flicker confusedly in a jumble. One horse
+careers madly along for half the distance, is with difficulty pulled
+up, and is then walked slowly back.
+
+The others left at the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At
+length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!'
+shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!'
+breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the six horses,
+all together, and at a rattling pace, tear up the hill, over the sand
+at the south corner, and up, till at the quarter mile post 'a blanket
+could cover the lot.'
+
+Two or three tails are now showing signals of distress; heels and whips
+are going. Two horses have shot ahead, a bay and a black. 'Jamie' on
+the bay, 'Paddy' on the black.
+
+Still as marble sit those splendid riders, the horses are neck and
+neck; now the bay by a nose, now again the black. The distance post is
+passed with a rush like a whirlwind.
+
+'A dead heat, by Jove!'
+
+'Paddy wins!' 'Jamie has it!' 'Hooray, Pat!' 'Go it, Jamie!' 'Well
+ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent
+racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses
+through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a
+nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up
+a lively air, and the saddling for the next race goes on.
+
+The other races are much the same; there are lots of entries: the
+horses are in splendid condition, and the riding is superb. What is
+better, everything is emphatically 'on the square.' No _pulling_ and
+_roping_ here, no false entries, no dodging of any kind. Fine, gallant,
+English gentlemen meet each other in fair and honest emulation, and
+enjoy the favourite national sport in perfection. The 'Waler' race, for
+imported Australians, brings out fine, tall, strong-boned, clean-limbed
+horses, looking blood all over. The country breds, with slender limbs,
+small heads, and glossy coats, look dainty and delicate as antelopes.
+The lovely, compact Arabs, the pretty-looking ponies, and the
+thick-necked, coarse-looking Cabools, all have their respective trials,
+and then comes the great event--the race of the day--the Steeplechase.
+
+The course is marked out behind the grand stand, following a wide
+circle outside the flat course, which it enters at the quarter-mile
+post, so that the finish is on the flat before the grand stand. The
+fences, ditches, and water leap, are all artificial, but they are
+regular _howlers_, and no make-believes.
+
+Seven horses are despatched to a straggling start, and all negotiate
+the first bank safely. At the next fence a regular _snorter_ of a 'post
+and rail'--topped with brushwood--two horses swerve, one rider being
+deposited on his racing seat upon mother earth, while the other sails
+away across country in a line for home, and is next heard of at the
+stables. The remaining five, three 'walers' and two country-breds, race
+together to the water jump, where one waler deposits his rider, and
+races home by himself, one country-bred refuses, and is henceforth out
+of the race, and the other three, taking the leap in beautiful style,
+put on racing pace to the next bank, and are in the air together. A
+lovely sight! The country is now stiff, and the stride of the waler
+tells. He is leading the country-breds a 'whacker,' but he stumbles and
+falls at the last fence but one from home. His gallant rider, the
+undaunted 'Roley,' remounts just as the two country-breds pass him like
+a flash of light. 'Nothing venture, nothing win,' however, so in go the
+spurs, and off darts the waler like an arrow in pursuit. He is gaining
+fast, and tops the last hurdle leading to the straight just as the
+hoofs of the other two reach the ground.
+
+It is now a matter of pace and good riding. It will be a close finish;
+the waler is first to feel the whip; there is a roar from the crowd; he
+is actually leading; whips and spurs are hard at work now; it is a mad,
+headlong rush; every muscle is strained, and the utmost effort made;
+the poor horses are doing their very best; amid a thunder of hoofs,
+clouds of dust, hats in air, waving of handkerchiefs from the grand
+stand, and a truly British cheer from the paddock, the 'waler' shoots
+in half a length ahead; and so end the morning's races.
+
+Back to camp now, to bathe and breakfast. A long line of dust marks the
+track from the course, for the sun is now high in the heavens, the lake
+is rippling in placid beauty under a gentle breeze, and the long lines
+of natives, as well as vehicles of all sorts, form a quaint but
+picturesque sight. After breakfast calls are made upon all the camps
+and bungalows round the station. Croquet, badminton, and other games go
+on until dinner-time. I could linger lovingly over a camp dinner; the
+rare dishes, the sparkling conversation, the racy anecdote, and the
+general jollity and brotherly feeling; but we must all dress for the
+ball, and so about 9 P.M. the buggies are again in requisition for the
+ball room--the fine, large, central apartment in the Planters' club.
+
+The walls are festooned with flowers, gay curtains, flags, and cloths.
+The floor is shining like silver, and as polished as a mirror. The band
+strikes up the Blue Danube waltz, and amid the usual bustle,
+flirtation, scandal, whispering, glancing, dancing, tripping, sipping,
+and hand-squeezing, the ball goes gaily on till the stewards announce
+supper. At this--to the wall-flowers--welcome announcement, we adjourn
+from the heated ball-room to the cool arbour-like supper tent, where
+every delicacy that can charm the eye or tempt the appetite is spread
+out.
+
+Next morning early we are out with the hounds, and enjoy a rattling
+burst round by the racecourse, where the horses are at exercise.
+Perchance we have heard of a boar in the sugar-cane, and away we go
+with beaters to rouse the grisly monster from his lair. In the
+afternoon there is hockey on horseback, or volunteer drill, with our
+gallant adjutant putting us through our evolutions. In the evening
+there is the usual drive, dinner, music, and the ordinary, and so the
+meet goes on. A constant succession of gaieties keeps everyone alive,
+till the time arrives for a return to our respective factories, and
+another year's hard work.
+
+
+[1] In such a limited society every peculiarity is noted; all our
+    antecedents are known; personal predilections and little foibles
+    of character are marked; eccentricities are watched, and no one,
+    let him be as uninteresting as a miller's pig, is allowed to
+    escape observation and remark. Some little peculiarity is hit
+    upon, and a strange but often very happily expressive nickname
+    stamps one's individuality and photographs him with a word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Pig-sticking in India.--Varieties of boar.--Their size and height.
+--Ingenious mode of capture by the natives,--The 'Batan' or buffalo
+herd.--Pigs charging.--Their courage and ferocity.--Destruction of
+game.--A close season for game.
+
+The sport _par excellence_ of India is pig-sticking. Call it
+hog-hunting if you will, I prefer the honest old-fashioned name. With a
+good horse under one, a fair country, with not too many pitfalls, and
+'lots of pig,' this sport becomes the most exciting that can be
+practised. Some prefer tiger shooting from elephants, others like to
+stalk the lordly ibex on the steep Himalayan slopes, but anyone who has
+ever enjoyed a rattle after a pig over a good country, will recall the
+fierce, delight, the eager thrill, the wild, mad excitement, that
+flushed his whole frame, as he met the infuriate charge of a good
+thirty-inch fighting boar, and drove his trusty spear well home, laying
+low the gallant grey tusker, the indomitable, unconquerable grisly
+boar. The subject is well worn; and though the theme is a noble one,
+there are but few I fancy who have not read the record of some gallant
+fight, where the highest skill, the finest riding, the most undaunted
+pluck, and the cool, keen, daring of a practised hand are not _always_
+successful against the headlong rush and furious charge of a Bengal
+boar at bay.
+
+A record of planter life in India, however, such as this aims at being,
+would be incomplete without some reference to the gallant tusker, and
+so at the risk of tiring my readers, I must try to describe a
+pig-sticking party.
+
+There are two distinct kinds of boar in India, the black and the grey.
+Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer and more
+pugnacious. He is a vicious and implacable foe when roused, and always
+shews better fight than the black variety. The great difference,
+however, is in the shape of the skull; that of the black fellow being
+high over the frontal bone, and not very long in proportion to height,
+while the skull of the grey boar is never very high, but is long, and
+receding in proportion to height.
+
+The black boar grows to an enormous size, and the grey ones are,
+generally speaking, smaller made animals than the black. The young of
+the two also differ in at least one important particular; those of the
+grey pig are always born striped, but the young of the black variety
+are born of that colour, and are not striped but a uniform black colour
+throughout. The two kinds of pig sometimes interbreed, but crosses are
+not common; and, from the colour, size, shape of the head, and general
+behaviour, one can easily tell at a glance what kind of pig gets up
+before his spear, whether it is the heavy, sluggish black boar, or the
+veritable fiery, vicious, fighting grey tusker.
+
+Many stories are told of their enormous size, and a 'forty-inch tusker'
+is the established standard for a Goliath among boars. The best
+fighting boars, however, range from twenty-eight to thirty-two inches
+in height, and I make bold to say that very few of the Present
+generation of sportsmen have ever seen a veritable wild boar over
+thirty-eight inches high.
+
+G.S., who has had perhaps as much jungle experience as any man of
+his age in India, a careful observer, and a finished sportsman,
+tells me that the biggest _boar_ he ever saw was only thirty-eight
+inches high; while the biggest _pig_ he ever killed was a barren
+sow, with three-inch tusks sticking out of her gums; she measured
+thirty-nine-and-a-half inches, and fought like a demon. I have shot
+pig--in heavy jungle where spearing was impracticable--over thirty-six
+inches high, but the biggest pig I ever stuck to my own spear was only
+twenty-eight inches, and I do not think any pig has been killed in
+Chumparun, within the last ten or a dozen years at any rate, over
+thirty-eight inches.
+
+In some parts of India, where pigs are numerous and the jungle dense,
+the natives adopt a very ingenious mode of hunting. I have frequently
+seen it practised by the cowherds on the Koosee _derahs_, i.e. the flat
+swampy jungles on the banks of the Koosee. When the annual floods have
+subsided, leaving behind a thick deposit of mud, wrack, and brushwood,
+the long thick grass soon shoots up to an amazing height, and vast
+herds of cattle and tame buffaloes come down to the jungles from the
+interior of the country, where natural pasture is scarce. They are
+attended by the owner and his assistants, all generally belonging to
+the _gualla_, or cowherd caste, although, of course, there are other
+castes employed. The owner of the herd gets leave to graze his cattle
+in the jungle, by paying a certain fixed sum per head. He fixes on a
+high dry ridge of land, where he runs up a few grass huts for himself
+and men, and there he erects lines of grass and bamboo screens, behind
+which his cattle take shelter at night from the cold south-east wind.
+There are also a few huts of exceedingly frail construction for himself
+and his people. This small colony, in the midst of the universal jungle
+covering the country for miles round, is called a _batan_.
+
+At earliest dawn the buffaloes are milked, and then with their
+attendant herdsmen they wend their way to the jungle, where they spend
+the day, and return again to the batan at night, when they are again
+milked. The milk is made into _ghee_, or clarified butter, and large
+quantities are sent down to the towns by country boats. When we want to
+get up a hunt, we generally send to the nearest _batan_ for _khubber_,
+i.e. news, information. The _Batanea_, or proprietor of the
+establishment, is well posted up. Every herdsman as he comes in at
+night tells what animals he has seen through the day, and thus at the
+_batan_ you hear where tiger, and pig, and deer are to be met with;
+where an unlucky cow has been killed; in what ravine is the thickest
+jungle; where the path is free from clay, or quicksand; what fords are
+safest; and, in short, you get complete information on every point
+connected with the jungle and its wild inhabitants.
+
+To these men the mysterious jungle reveals its most hidden secrets.
+Surrounded by his herd of buffaloes, the _gualla_ ventures into the
+darkest recesses and the most tangled thickets. They have strange wild
+calls by which they give each other notice of the approach of danger,
+and when two or three of them meet, each armed with his heavy,
+iron-shod or brass-bound _lathee_ or quarter staff, they will not budge
+an inch out of their way for buffalo or boar; nay, they have been known
+to face the terrible tiger himself, and fairly beat him away from the
+quivering carcase of some unlucky member of their herd. They have
+generally some favourite buffalo on whose broad back they perch
+themselves, as it browses through the jungle, and from this elevated
+seat they survey the rest of the herd, and note the incidents of jungle
+life. When they wish a little excitement, or a change from their milk
+and rice diet, there are hundreds of pigs around.
+
+They have a broad, sharp spear-head, to which is attached a stout cord,
+often made of twisted hide or hair. Into the socket of the spear is
+thrust a bamboo pole or shaft, tough, pliant, and flexible. The cord is
+wound round the spear and shaft, and the loose end is then fastened to
+the middle of the pole. Having thus prepared his weapon, the herdsman
+mounts his buffalo, and guides it slowly, warily, and cautiously to the
+haunts of the pig. These are, of course, quite accustomed to see the
+buffaloes grazing round them on all sides, and take no notice until the
+_gualla_ is within striking distance. When he has got close up to the
+pig he fancies, he throws his spear with all his force. The pig
+naturally bounds off, the shaft comes out of the socket, leaving the
+spearhead sticking in the wound. The rope uncoils of itself, but being
+firmly fastened to the bamboo, it brings up the pig at each bush, and
+tears and lacerates the wound, until either the spearhead comes out, or
+the wretched pig drops down dead from exhaustion and loss of blood. The
+_gualla_ follows upon his buffalo, and frequently finishes the pig with
+a few strokes of his _lathee_. In any case he gets his pork, and it
+certainly is an ingenious and bold way of procuring it.
+
+Wild pig are very destructive to crops. During the night they revel in
+the cultivated fields contiguous to the jungle, and they destroy more
+by rooting up than by actually eating. It is common for the ryot to dig
+a shallow pit, and ensconce himself inside with his matchlock beside
+him. His head being on a level with the ground, he can discern any
+animal that comes between him and the sky-line. When a pig comes in
+sight, he waits till he is within sure distance, and then puts either a
+bullet or a charge of slugs into him.
+
+The pig is perhaps the most stubborn and courageous animal in India.
+Even when pierced with several spears, and bleeding from numerous
+wounds, he preserves a sullen silence. He disdains to utter a cry of
+fear and pain, but maintains a bold front to the last, and dies with
+his face to the foe, defiant and unconquered. When hard pressed he
+scorns to continue his flight, but wheeling round, he makes a
+determined charge, very frequently to the utter discomfiture of his
+pursuer.
+
+I have seen many a fine horse fearfully cut by a charging pig, and a
+determined boar over and over again break through a line of elephants,
+and make good his escape. There is no animal in all the vast jungle
+that the elephant dreads more than a lusty boar. I have seen elephants
+that would stand the repeated charges of a wounded tiger, turn tail and
+take to ignominious flight before the onset of an angry boar.
+
+His thick short neck, ponderous body, and wedge-like head are admirably
+fitted for crashing through the thick jungle he inhabits, and when he
+has made up his mind to charge, very few animals can withstand his
+furious rush. Instances are quite common of his having made good his
+charge against a line of elephants, cutting and ripping more than one
+severely. He has been known to encounter successfully even the kingly
+tiger himself. Can it be wondered, then, that we consider him a 'foeman
+worthy of our steel'?
+
+To be a good pig-sticker is a recommendation that wins acceptance
+everywhere in India. In a district like Chumparun where nearly every
+planter was an ardent sportsman, a good rider, and spent nearly half
+his time on horseback, pig-sticking was a favourite pastime. Every
+factory had at least one bit of likely jungle close by, where a pig
+could always be found. When I first went to India we used to take out
+our pig-spear over the _zillah_ with us as a matter of course, as we
+never knew when we might hit on a boar.
+
+Things are very different now. Cultivation has much increased. Many of
+the old jungles have been reclaimed, and I fancy many more pigs are
+shot by natives than formerly. A gun can be had now for a few rupees,
+and every loafing 'ne'er do weel' in the village manages to procure
+one, and wages indiscriminate warfare on bird and beast. It is a
+growing evil, and threatens the total extinction of sport in some
+districts. I can remember when nearly every tank was good for a few
+brace of mallard, duck, or teal, where never a feather is now to be
+seen, save the ubiquitous paddy-bird. Jungles, where a pig was a
+certain find, only now contain a measly jackal, and not always that;
+and cover in which partridge, quail, and sometimes even florican were
+numerous, are now only tenanted by the great ground-owl, or a colony of
+field rats. I am far from wishing to limit sport to the European
+community. I would let every native that so wished sport his double
+barrels or handle his spear with the best of us, but he should follow
+and indulge in his sport with reason. The breeding seasons of all
+animals should be respected, and there should be no indiscriminate
+slaughter of male and female, young and old. Until all true sportsmen
+in India unite in this matter, the evil will increase, and bye-and-bye
+there will be no animals left to afford sport of any kind.
+
+There are cases where wild animals are so numerous and destructive
+that extraordinary measures have to be taken for protection from their
+ravages, but these are very rare. I remember having once to wage a war
+of extermination against a colony of pigs that had taken possession of
+some jungle lands near Maharjnugger, a village on the Koosee. I had a
+deal of indigo growing on cleared patches at intervals in the jungles,
+and there the pigs would root and revel in spite of watchmen, till at
+last I was forced in sheer self-defence to begin a crusade against
+them. We got a line of elephants, and two or three friends came to
+assist, and in one day, and round one village only, we shot sixty-three
+full grown pigs. The villagers must have killed and carried away nearly
+double that number of young and wounded. That was a very extreme case,
+and in a pure jungle country; but in settled districts like Tirhoot
+and Chumparun the weaker sex should always be spared, and a close
+season for winged game should be insisted on. To the credit of the
+planters be it said, that this necessity is quite recognised; but
+every pot-bellied native who can beg, borrow, or steal a gun, or in
+any way procure one, is constantly on the look out for a pot shot at
+some unlucky hen-partridge or quail. A whole village will turn out to
+compass the destruction of some wretched sow that may have shewn her
+bristles outside the jungle in the daytime.
+
+In districts where cultivated land is scarce and population scattered,
+it is almost impossible to enjoy pig-sticking. The breaks of open land
+between the jungles are too small and narrow to afford galloping space,
+and though you turn the pig out of one patch of jungle, he immediately
+finds safe shelter in the next. On the banks of some of the large
+rivers, however, such as the Gunduch and the Bagmuttee, there are vast
+stretches of undulating sand, crossed at intervals by narrow creeks,
+and spotted by patches of close, thick jungle. Here the grey tusker
+takes up his abode with his harem. When once you turn him out from his
+lair, there is grand hunting room before he can reach the distant patch
+of jungle to which he directs his flight. In some parts the _jowah_ (a
+plant not unlike broom in appearance) is so thick, that even the
+elephants can scarcely force their way through, but as a rule the
+beating is pretty easy, and one is almost sure of a find.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Kuderent jungle.--Charged by a pig.--The biter bit.--'Mac' after the
+big boar.--The horse for pig-sticking.--The line of beaters.--The boar
+breaks.--'Away! Away!'--First spear.--Pig-sticking at Peeprah.--The
+old 'lungra' or cripple.--A boar at bay.--Hurrah for pig-sticking!
+
+There was a very fine pig jungle at a place called Kuderent, belonging
+to a wealthy landowner who went by the name of the Mudhobunny Baboo. We
+occasionally had a pig-sticking meet here, and as the jungle was
+strictly preserved, we were never disappointed in finding plenty who
+gave us glorious sport. The jungles consisted of great grass plains,
+with thickly wooded patches of dense tree jungle, intersected here and
+there by deep ravines, with stagnant pools of water at intervals; the
+steep sides all thickly clothed with thorny clusters of the wild
+dog-rose. It was a difficult country to beat, and we had always to
+supplement the usual gang of beaters with as many elephants as we could
+collect. In the centre of the jungle was an eminence of considerable
+height, whence there was a magnificent view of the surrounding country.
+
+Far in the distance the giant Himalayas towered into the still clear
+air, the guardian barriers of an unknown land. The fretted pinnacles
+and tremendous ridges, clothed in their pure white mantle of
+everlasting snow, made a magnificent contrast to the dark, misty,
+wooded masses formed by the lower ranges of hills. In the early
+morning, when the first beams of the rising sun had but touched the
+mountain tops, leaving the country below shrouded in the dim mists and
+vapours of retiring night, the sight was most sublime. In presence of
+such hills and distances, such wondrous combinations of colour, scenery
+on such a gigantic scale, even the most thoughtless become impressed
+with the majesty of nature.
+
+Our camp was pitched on the banks of a clear running mountain stream,
+brawling over rocks and boulders; and to eyes so long accustomed to the
+never ending flatness of the rich alluvial plains, and the terrible
+sameness of the rice swamps, the stream was a source of unalloyed
+pleasure. There were only a few places where the abrupt banks gave
+facilities for fording, and when a pig had broken fairly from the
+jungle, and was making for the river (as they very frequently did),
+you would see the cluster of horsemen scattering over the plain like
+a covey of partridges when the hawk swoops down upon them. Each made
+for what he considered the most eligible ford, in hopes of being first
+up with the pig on the further bank, and securing the much coveted
+first spear.
+
+When a pig is hard pressed, and comes to any natural obstacle, as a
+ditch, bank, or stream, he almost invariably gets this obstacle between
+himself and his pursuer; then wheeling round he makes his stand,
+showing wonderful sagacity in choosing the moment of all others when he
+has his enemy at most disadvantage. Experienced hands are aware of
+this, and often try to outflank the boar, but the best men I have seen
+generally wait a little, till the pig is again under weigh, and then
+clearing the ditch or bank, put their horses at full speed, which is
+the best way to make good your attack. The rush of the boar is so
+sudden, fierce, and determined, that a horse at half speed, or going
+slow, has no chance of escape; but a well trained horse at full speed
+meets the pig in his rush, the spear is delivered with unerring aim,
+and slightly swerving to the left, you draw it out as you continue your
+course, and the poor pig is left weltering in his blood behind you.
+
+On one occasion I was very rudely made aware of this trait. It was a
+fine fleet young boar we were after, and we had had a long chase, but
+were now overhauling him fast. I had a good horse under me, and 'Jamie'
+and 'Giblets' were riding neck and neck. There was a small mango
+orchard in front surrounded by the usual ditch and bank. It was nothing
+of a leap; the boar took it with ease, and we could just see him top
+the bank not twenty spear lengths ahead. I was slightly leading, and
+full of eager anxiety and emulation. Jamie called on me to pull up, but
+I was too excited to mind him. I saw him and Giblets each take an
+outward wheel about, and gallop off to catch the boar coming out of the
+cluster of trees on the far side, as I thought. I could not see him,
+but I made no doubt he was in full flight through the trees. There was
+plenty of riding room between the rows, so lifting my game little horse
+at the bank, I felt my heart bound with emulation as I thought I was
+certain to come up first, and take the spear from two such noted heroes
+as my companions. I came up with the pig first, sure enough. _He_ was
+waiting for _me_, and scarce giving my horse time to recover his stride
+after the jump, he came rushing at me, every bristle erect, with a
+vicious grunt of spite and rage. My spear was useless, I had it
+crosswise on my horse's neck; I intended to attack first, and finding
+my enemy turning the tables on me in this way was rather disconcerting.
+I tried to turn aside and avoid the charge, but a branch caught me
+across the face, and knocked my _puggree_ off. In a trice the savage
+little brute was on me. Leaping up fairly from the ground, he got the
+heel of my riding boot in his mouth, and tore off the sole from the
+boot as if it had been so much paper. Jamie and Giblets were sitting
+outside watching the scene, laughing at my discomfiture. Fortunately
+the boar had poor tusks, and my fine little horse was unhurt, but I got
+out of that orchard as fast as I could, and ever after hesitated about
+attacking a boar when he had got a bank or ditch between him and me,
+and was waiting for me on the other side. The far better plan is to
+wait till he sees you are not pressing him, he then goes off at a surly
+sling trot, and you can resume the chase with every advantage in your
+favour. When the blood however is fairly up, and all one's sporting
+instincts roused, it is hard to listen to the dictates of prudence or
+the suggestions of caution and experience.
+
+The very same day we had another instance. My manager, 'Young Mac,' as
+we called him, had started a huge old boar. He was just over the boar,
+and about to deliver his thrust, when his horse stumbled in a rat hole
+(it was very rotten ground), and came floundering to earth, bringing
+his rider with him. Nothing daunted, Mac picked himself up, lost the
+horse, but so eager and excited was he, that he continued the chase on
+foot, calling to some of us to catch his horse while he stuck his boar.
+The old boar was quite blown, and took in the altered aspect of affairs
+at a glance; he turned to charge, and we loudly called on Mac to 'clear
+out.' Not a bit of it, he was too excited to realise his danger, but
+Pat fortunately interposed his horse and spear in time, and no doubt
+saved poor Mac from a gruesome mauling. It was very plucky, but it was
+very foolish, for heavily weighted with boots, breeches, spurs, and
+spear, a man could have no chance against the savage onset of an
+infuriated boar.
+
+In the long thick grass with which the plain was covered the riding was
+very dangerous. I remember seeing six riders come signally to grief
+over a blind ditch in this jungle. It adds not a little to the
+excitement, and really serious accidents are not so common as might be
+imagined. It is no joke however when a riderless horse comes ranging up
+alongside of you as you are sailing along, intent on war; biting and
+kicking at your own horse, he spoils your sport, throws you out of the
+chase, and you are lucky if you do not receive some ugly cut or bruise
+from his too active heels. There is the great beauty of a well trained
+Arab or country-bred; if you get a spill, he waits beside you till you
+recover your faculties, and get your bellows again in working order; if
+you are riding a Cabool, or even a waler, it is even betting that he
+turns to bite or kick you as you lie, or he rattles off in pursuit of
+your more firmly seated friends, spoiling their sport, and causing the
+most fearful explosions of vituperative wrath.
+
+There is something to me intensely exciting in all the varied incidents
+of a rattling burst across country after a fighting old grey boar. You
+see the long waving line of staves, and spear heads, and quaint shaped
+axes, glittering and fluctuating above the feathery tops of the swaying
+grass. There is an irregular line of stately elephants, each with its
+towering howdah and dusky mahout, moving slowly along through the
+rustling reeds. You hear the sharp report of fireworks, the rattling
+thunder of the big _doobla_ or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of
+innumerable _tom-toms_. Shouts, oaths, and cries from a hundred noisy
+coolies, come floating down in bursts of clamour on the soft morning
+air. The din waxes and wanes as the excited beaters descry a 'sounder'
+of pig ahead; with a mighty roar that makes your blood tingle, the
+frantic coolies rally for the final burst. Like rockets from a tube,
+the boar and his progeny come crashing through the brake, and separate
+before you on the plain. With a wild cheer you dash after them in hot
+pursuit; no time now to think of pitfalls, banks, or ditches; your
+gallant steed strains his every muscle, every sense is on the alert,
+but you see not the bush and brake and tangled thicket that you leave
+behind you. Your eye is on the dusky glistening hide and the stiff
+erect bristles in front; the shining tusks and foam-flecked chest are
+your goal, and the wild excitement culminates as you feel your keen
+steel go straight through muscle, bone, and sinew, and you know that
+another grisly monster has fallen. As you ease your girths and wipe
+your heated brow, you feel that few pleasures of the chase come up to
+the noblest, most thrilling sport of all, that of pig-sticking.
+
+The plain is alive with shouting beaters hurrying up to secure the gory
+carcase of the slaughtered foe. A riderless horse is far away, making
+off alone for the distant grove, where the snowy tents are glistening
+through the foliage. On the distant horizon a small cluster of eager
+sportsmen are fast overhauling another luckless tusker, and enjoying in
+all their fierce excitement the same sensations you have just
+experienced. Now is the time to enjoy the soothing weed, and quaff the
+grateful 'peg'; and as the syces and other servants come up in groups
+of twos and threes, you listen with languid delight to all their
+remarks on the incidents of the chase; and as, with their acute
+Oriental imagination nations they dilate in terms of truly Eastern
+exaggeration on your wonderful pluck and daring, you almost fancy
+yourself really the hero they would make you out to be.
+
+Then the reunion round the festive board at night, when every one again
+lives through all the excitement of the day. Talk of fox-hunting after
+pig-sticking, it is like comparing a penny candle to a lighthouse, or a
+donkey race to the 'Grand National'!
+
+Peeprah Factory with its many patches of jungle, its various lakes and
+fine undulating country, was another favourite rendezvous for the
+votaries of pig-sticking. The house itself was quite palatial, built on
+the bank of a lovely horseshoe lake, and embosomed in a grove of trees
+of great rarity and beautiful foliage. It had been built long before
+the days of overland routes and Suez canals, when a planter made India
+his home, and spared no trouble nor expense to make his home
+comfortable. In the great garden were fruit trees from almost every
+clime; little channels of solid masonry led water from the well to all
+parts of the garden. Leading down to the lake was a broad flight of
+steps, guarded on the one side by an immense peepul tree, whose hollow
+trunk and wide stretching canopy of foliage had braved the storms of
+over half a century, on the other side by a most symmetrical almond
+tree, which, when in blossom, was the most beautiful object for miles
+around. A well-kept shrubbery surrounded the house, and tall
+casuarinas, and glossy dark green india-rubber and bhur trees, formed a
+thousand combinations of shade and colour. Here we often met to
+experience the warm, large-hearted hospitality of dear old Pat and his
+gentle little wife. At one time there was a pack of harriers, which
+would lead us a fine, sharp burst by the thickets near the river after
+a doubling hare; but as a rule a meet at Peeprah portended death to the
+gallant tusker, for the jungles were full of pigs, and only honest hard
+work was meant when the Peeprah beaters turned out.
+
+The whole country was covered with patches of grass and thorny jungle.
+Knowing they had another friendly cover close by, the pigs always broke
+at the first beat, and the riding had to be fast and furious if a spear
+was to be won. There were some nasty drop jumps, and deep, hidden
+ditches, and accidents were frequent. In one of these hot, sharp
+gallops poor 'Bonnie Morn,' a favourite horse belonging to 'Jamie,' was
+killed. Not seeing the ditch, it came with tremendous force against the
+bank, and of course its back was broken. Even in its death throes it
+recognised its master's voice, and turned round and licked his hand. We
+were all collected round, and let who will sneer, there were few dry
+eyes as we saw this last mute tribute of affection from the poor dying
+animal.
+
+  THE DEATH OF 'BONNIE MORN.'
+
+  Alas, my 'Brave Bonnie!' the pride of my heart,
+  The moment has come when from thee I must part;
+  No more wilt thou hark to the huntsman's glad horn,
+  My brave little Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  How proudly you bore me at bright break of day,
+  How gallantly 'led,' when the boar broke away!
+  But no more, alas! thou the hunt shall adorn,
+  For now thou art dying, my dear 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  He'd neigh with delight when I'd enter his stall,
+  And canter up gladly on hearing my call;
+  Rub his head on my shoulder while munching his corn,
+  My dear gentle Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Or out in the grass, when a pig was in view,
+  None so eager to start, when he heard a 'halloo';
+  Off, off like a flash, the ground spurning with scorn,
+  He aye led the van, did my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  O'er _nullah_ and ditch, o'er hedge, fence, or bank,
+  No matter, _he'd_ clear it, aye in the front rank;
+  A brave little hunter as ever was born
+  Was my grand Arab fav'rite, my good 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Or when in the 'ranks,' who so steady and still?
+  None better than 'Bonnie,' more 'up' in his drill;
+  His fine head erect--eyes flashing with scorn--
+  Right fit for a charger was staunch 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And then on the 'Course,' who so willing and true?
+  Past the 'stand' like an arrow the bonnie horse flew;
+  No spur his good rider need ever have worn,
+  For he aye did his best, did my fleet 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And now here he lies, the good little horse,
+  No more he'll career in the hunt or on 'course':
+  Such a charger to lose makes me sad and forlorn;
+  I _can't_ help a tear, 'tis for poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Ah! blame not my grief, for 'tis deep and sincere,
+  As a friend and companion I held 'Bonnie' dear;
+  No true sportsman ever such feelings will scorn
+  As I heave a deep sigh for my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And even in death, when in anguish he lay,
+  When his life's blood was drip--dripping--slowly away,
+  His last thought was still of the master he'd borne;
+  He neighed, licked my hand--and thus died 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+One tremendous old boar was killed here during one of our meets, which
+was long celebrated in our after-dinner talks on boars and hunting. It
+was called 'THE LUNGRA,' which means the cripple, because it had been
+wounded in the leg in some previous encounter, perhaps in its hot
+youth, before age had stiffened its joints and tinged its whiskers with
+grey. It was the most undaunted pig I have ever seen. It would not
+budge an inch for the beaters, and charged the elephants time after
+time, sending them flying from the jungle most ignominiously. At length
+its patience becoming exhausted, it slowly emerged from the jungle,
+coolly surveyed the scene and its surroundings, and then, disdaining
+flight, charged straight at the nearest horseman. Its hide was as tough
+as a Highland targe, and though L. delivered his spear, it turned the
+weapon aside as if it was merely a thrust from a wooden pole. The old
+_lungra_ made good his charge, and ripped L's. horse on the shoulder.
+It next charged Pat, and ripped his horse, and cut another horse, a
+valuable black waler, across the knee, laming it for life. Rider after
+rider charged down upon the fierce old brute. Although repeatedly
+wounded none of the thrusts were very serious, and already it had put
+five horses _hors de combat_. It now took up a position under a big
+'bhur' tree, close to some water, and while the boldest of us held back
+for a little, it took a deliberate mud bath under our very noses.
+Doubtless feeling much refreshed, it again took up its position under
+the tree, ready to face each fresh assailant, full of fight, and
+determined to die but not to yield an inch.
+
+Time after time we rode at the dauntless cripple. Each time he charged
+right down, and our spears made little mark upon his toughened hide.
+Our horses too were getting tired of such a customer, and little
+inclined to face his charge. At length 'Jamie' delivered a lucky spear
+and the grey old warrior fell. It had kept us at bay for fully an hour
+and a half, and among our number we reckoned some of the best riders
+and boldest pig-stickers in the district.
+
+Such was our sport in those good old days. Our meets came but seldom,
+so that sport never interfered with the interests of honest hard work;
+but meeting each other as we did, and engaging in exciting sport like
+pig-sticking, cemented our friendship, kept us in health, and
+encouraged all the hardy tendencies of our nature. It whetted our
+appetites, it roused all those robust virtues that have made Englishmen
+the men they are, it sent us back to work with lighter hearts and
+renewed energy. It built up many happy, cherished memories of kindly
+words and looks and deeds, that will only fade when we in turn have to
+bow before the hunter, and render up our spirits to God who gave them.
+Long live honest, hearty, true sportsmen, such as were the friends of
+those happy days. Long may Indian sportsmen find plenty of 'foemen
+worthy of their steel' in the old grey boar, the fighting tusker of
+Bengal.
+
+[Illustration: PIG-STICKERS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The sal forests.--The jungle goddess.--The trees in the jungle.
+--Appearance of the forests.--Birds.--Varieties of parrots.--A 'beat'
+in the forest.--The 'shekarry.'--Mehrman Singh and his gun.--The
+Banturs, a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.--Their habits.--A village
+feast.--We beat for deer.--Habits of the spotted deer.--Waiting for
+the game.--Mehrman Singh gets drunk.--Our bag.--Pea-fowl and their
+habits.--How to shoot them.--Curious custom of the Nepaulese.--How
+Juggroo was tricked, and his revenge.
+
+Tirhoot is too generally under cultivation and too thickly inhabited
+for much land to remain under jungle, and except the wild pig of which
+I have spoken, and many varieties of wild fowl, there is little game to
+be met with. It is, however, different in North Bhaugulpore, where
+there are still vast tracts of forest jungle, the haunt of the spotted
+deer, nilghau, leopard, wolf, and other wild animals. Along the banks
+of the Koosee, a rapid mountain river that rolls its flood through
+numerous channels to join the Ganges, there are immense tracts of
+uncultivated land covered with tall elephant grass, and giving cover to
+tigers, hog deer, pig, wild buffalo, and even an occasional rhinoceros,
+to say nothing of smaller game and wildfowl, which are very plentiful.
+
+The sal forests in North Bhaugulpore generally keep to the high ridges,
+which are composed of a light, sandy soil, very friable, and not very
+fertile, except for oil and indigo seeds, which grow most luxuriantly
+wherever the forest land has been cleared. In the shallow valleys which
+lie between the ridges rice is chiefly cultivated, and gives large
+returns. The sal forests have been sadly thinned by unscientific and
+indiscriminate cutting, and very few fine trees now remain. The earth
+is teeming with insects, chief amongst which are the dreaded and
+destructive white ants. The high pointed nests of these destructive
+insects, formed of hardened mud, are the commonest objects one meets
+with in these forest solitudes.
+
+At intervals, beneath some wide spreading peepul or bhur tree, one
+comes on a rude forest shrine, daubed all over with red paint, and with
+gaudy festoons of imitation flowers, cut from the pith of the plantain
+tree, hanging on every surrounding bough. These shrines are sacred
+to _Chumpa buttee_, the Hindoo Diana, protectress of herds, deer,
+buffaloes, huntsmen, and herdsmen. She is the recognised jungle
+goddess, and is held in great veneration by all the wild tribes and
+half-civilized denizens of the gloomy sal jungle.
+
+The general colour of the forest is a dingy green, save when a deeper
+shade here and there shows where the mighty bhur uprears its towering
+height, or where the crimson flowers of the _seemul_ or cotton tree,
+and the bronze-coloured foliage of the _sunpul_ (a tree very like the
+ornamental beech in shrubberies at home) imparts a more varied colour
+to the generally pervading dark green of the universal sal.
+
+The varieties of trees are of course almost innumerable, but the sal is
+so out of all proportion more numerous than any other kind, that the
+forests well deserve their recognised name. The sal is a fine, hard
+wood of very slow growth. The leaves are broad and glistening, and in
+spring are beautifully tipped with a reddish bronze, which gradually
+tones down into the dingy green which is the prevailing tint. The
+_sheshum_ or _sissod_, a tree with bright green leaves much resembling
+the birch, the wood of which is invaluable for cart wheels and
+such-like work, is occasionally met with. There is the _kormbhe_, a
+very tough wood with a red stringy bark, of which the jungle men make
+a kind of touchwood for their matchlocks, and the _parass_, whose
+peculiarity is that at times it bursts into a wondrous wealth of bright
+crimson blossom without a leaf being on the tree. The _parass_ tree in
+full bloom is gorgeous. After the blossom falls the dark-green leaves
+come out, and are not much different in colour from the sal. Then there
+is the _mhowa_, with its lovely white blossoms, from which a strong
+spirit is distilled, and on which the deer, pigs, and wild bear love to
+feast. The peculiar sickly smell of the _mhowa_ when in flower pervades
+the atmosphere for a great distance round, and reminds one forcibly of
+the peculiar sweet, sickly smell of a brewery. The hill _sirres_ is a
+tall feathery-looking tree of most elegant shape, towering above the
+other forest trees, and the natives strip it of its bark, which they
+use to poison streams. It seems to have some narcotic or poisonous
+principle, easily soluble in water, for when put in any quantity in a
+stream or piece of water, it causes all the fish to become apparently
+paralyzed and rise to the surface, where they float about quite
+stupified and helpless, and become an easy prey to the poaching
+'Banturs' and 'Moosahurs' who adopt this wretched mode of fishing.
+
+Along the banks of the streams vegetation gets very luxurious, and
+among the thick undergrowth are found some lovely ferns, broad-leaved
+plants, and flowers of every hue, all alike nearly scentless. Here is
+no odorous breath of violet or honeysuckle, no delicate perfume of
+primrose or sweetbriar, only a musty, dank, earthy smell which gets
+more and more pronounced as the mists rise along with the deadly
+vapours of the night. Sleeping in these forests is very unhealthy.
+There is a most fatal miasma all through the year, less during the hot
+months, but very bad during and immediately after the annual rains; and
+in September and October nearly every soul in the jungly tracts is
+smitten with fever. The vapour only rises to a certain height above the
+ground, and at the elevation of ten feet or so, I believe one could
+sleep in the jungles with impunity; but it is dangerous at all times to
+sleep in the forest, unless at a considerable elevation. The absence of
+all those delicious smells which make a walk through the woodlands at
+home so delightful, is conspicuous in the sal forests, and another of
+the most noticeable features is the extreme silence, the oppressive
+stillness that reigns.
+
+You know how full of melody is an English wood, when thrush, blackbird,
+mavis, linnet, and a thousand warblers flit from tree to tree. How the
+choir rings out its full anthem of sweetest sound, till every bush and
+tree seems a centre of sweet strains, soft, low, liquid trills, and
+full ripe gushes of melody and song. But it is not thus in an Indian
+forest. There are actually few birds. As you brush through the long
+grass and trample the tangled undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling
+branches, or dodging under the pliant arms of the creepers, you may
+flush a black or grey partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a
+quiet family party of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting
+about to make the vaulted arcades of the forest echo to their music.
+
+The hornbill darts with a succession of long bounding flights from one
+tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow tree close by,
+his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A
+flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the _golden
+oriole_ or mango bird, the _koel_, with here and there a red-tufted
+_bulbul_, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep
+silence is unbroken, save by the melancholy hoot of some blinking owl,
+and the soft monotonous coo of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The
+exquisite honey-sucker, as delicately formed as the petal of a fairy
+flower, flits noiselessly about from blossom to blossom. The natives
+call it the 'Muddpenah' or drinker of honey. There are innumerable
+butterflies of graceful shape and gorgeous colours; what few birds
+there are have beautiful plumage; there is a faint rustle of leaves, a
+faint, far hum of insect life; but it feels so silent, so unlike the
+woods at home. You are oppressed by the solemn stillness, and feel
+almost nervous as you push warily along, for at any moment a leopard,
+wolf, or hyena may get up before you, or you may disturb the siesta of
+a sounder of pig, or a herd of deer.
+
+Up in those forests on the borders of Nepaul, which are called the
+_morung_, there are a great many varieties of parrot, all of them
+very beautiful. There is first the common green parrot, with a red
+beak, and a circle of salmon-coloured feathers round its neck; they
+are very noisy and destructive, and flock together to the fields
+where they do great damage to the crops. The _lutkun sooga_ is an
+exquisitely-coloured bird, about the size of a sparrow. The _ghur[=a]l_,
+a large red and green parrot, with a crimson beak. The _tota_ a
+yellowish-green colour, and the male with a breast as red as blood;
+they call it the _amereet bhela_. Another lovely little parrot, the
+_taeteea sooga_, has a green body, red head, and black throat; but the
+most showy and brilliant of all the tribe is the _putsoogee_. The body
+is a rich living green, red wings, yellow beak, and black throat; there
+is a tuft of vivid red as a topknot, and the tail is a brilliant blue;
+the under feathers of the tail being a pure snowy white.
+
+At times the silence is broken by a loud, metallic, bell-like cry,
+very like the yodel you hear in the Alps. You hear it rise sharp and
+distinct, 'Looralei!' and as suddenly cease. This is the cry of the
+_kookoor gh[=e]t_, a bird not unlike a small pheasant, with a
+reddish-brown back and a fawn-coloured breast. The _sherra_ is another
+green parrot, a little larger than the _putsoogee_, but not so
+beautifully coloured.
+
+There is generally a green, slime-covered, sluggish stream in all these
+forests, its channel choked with rotting leaves and decaying vegetable
+matter. The water should never be drunk until it has been boiled and
+filtered. At intervals the stream opens out and forms a clear
+rush-fringed pool, and the trees receding on either bank leave a lovely
+grassy glade, where the deer and nilghau come to drink. On the glassy
+bosom of the pool in the centre, fine duck, mallard, and teal, can
+frequently be found, and the rushes round the margin are to a certainty
+good for a couple of brace of snipe.
+
+Sometimes on a withered branch overhanging the stream, you can see
+perched the _ahur_, or great black fish-hawk. It has a grating,
+discordant cry, which it utters at intervals as it sits pluming its
+black feathers above the pool. The dark ibis and the ubiquitous
+paddy-bird are of course also found here; and where the land is low and
+marshy, and the stream crawls along through several channels, you are
+sure to come across a couple of red-headed _sarus_, serpent birds, a
+crane, and a solitary heron. The _moosahernee_ is a black and white
+bird, I fancy a sort of ibis, and is good eating. The _dokahur_ is
+another fine big bird, black body and white wings, and as its name
+(derived from _dokha_, a shell) implies, it is the shell-gatherer, or
+snail-eater, and gives good shooting.
+
+When you have determined to beat the forest, you first get your coolies
+and villagers assembled, and send them some mile or two miles ahead,
+under charge of some of the head men, to beat the jungle towards you,
+while you look out for a likely spot, shady, concealed, and cool, where
+you wait with your guns till the game is driven up to you. The whole
+arrangements are generally made, of course under your own supervision,
+by your _Shekarry_, or gamekeeper, as I suppose you might call him. He
+is generally a thin, wiry, silent man, well versed in all the lore of
+the woods, acquainted with the name, appearance, and habits of every
+bird and beast in the forest. He knows their haunts and when they are
+to be found at home. He will track a wounded deer like a bloodhound,
+and can tell the signs and almost impalpable evidences of an animal's
+whereabouts, the knowledge of which goes to make up the genuine hunter.
+
+When all is still around, and only the distant shouts of the beaters
+fall faintly at intervals on the ear, his keen hearing detects the
+light patter of hoof or paw on the crisp, withered leaves. His
+hawk-like glance can pick out from the deepest shade the sleek coat or
+hide of the leopard or the deer; and even before the animal has come in
+sight, his senses tell him whether it is young or old, whether it is
+alarmed, or walking in blind confidence. In fact, I have known a good
+shekarry tell you exactly what animal is coming, whether bear, leopard,
+fox, deer, pig, or monkey.
+
+The best shekarry I ever had was a Nepaulee called 'Mehrman Singh.' He
+had the regular Tartar physiognomy of the Nepaulese. Small, oblique,
+twinkling eyes, high cheekbones, flattish nose, and scanty moustache.
+He was a tall, wiry man, with a remarkably light springy step, a bold
+erect carriage, and was altogether a fine, manly, independent fellow.
+He had none of the fawning obsequiousness which is so common to the
+Hindoo, but was a merry laughing fellow, with a keen love of sport and
+a great appreciation of humour. His gun was fearfully and wonderfully
+made. It was a long, heavy flint gun, with a tremendously heavy barrel,
+and the stock all splices and splinters, tied in places with bits of
+string. I would rather not have been in the immediate vicinity of the
+weapon when he fired it, and yet he contrived to do some good shooting
+with it.
+
+He was wonderfully patient in stalking an animal or waiting for its
+near approach, as he never ventured on a long shot, and did not
+understand our objection to pot-shooting. His shot was composed of
+jagged little bits of iron, chipped from an old _kunthee_, or
+cooking-pot; and his powder was truly unique, being like lumps of
+charcoal, about the size of small raisins. A shekarry fills about four
+or five fingers' depth of this into his gun, then a handful of old
+iron, and with a little touch of English powder pricked in with a pin
+as priming, he is ready for execution on any game that may come within
+reach of a safe pot-shot. When the gun goes off there is a mighty
+splutter, a roar like that of a small cannon, and the slugs go hurtling
+through the bushes, carrying away twigs and leaves, and not
+unfrequently smashing up the game so that it is almost useless for the
+table.
+
+The _Banturs_, who principally inhabit these jungles, are mostly of
+Nepaulese origin. They are a sturdy, independent people, and the women
+have fair skins, and are very pretty. Unchastity is very rare, and the
+infidelity of a wife is almost unknown. If it is found out, mutilation
+and often death are the penalties exacted from the unfortunate woman.
+They wear one long loose flowing garment, much like the skirt of a
+gown; this is tightly twisted round the body above the bosoms, leaving
+the neck and arms quite bare. They are fond of ornaments--nose, ears,
+toes and arms, and even ancles, being loaded with silver rings and
+circlets. Some decorate their nose and the middle parting of the hair
+with a greasy-looking red pigment, while nearly every grown-up woman
+has her arms, neck, and low down on the collar bone most artistically
+tattooed in a variety of close, elaborate patterns. The women all work
+in the clearings; sowing, and weeding, and reaping the rice, barley,
+and other crops. They do most of the digging where that is necessary,
+the men confining themselves to ploughing and wood-cutting. At the
+latter employment they are most expert; they use the axe in the most
+masterly manner, but their mode of cutting is fearfully wasteful; they
+always leave some three feet of the best part of the wood in the
+ground, very rarely cutting a tree close down to the root. Many of
+them are good charcoal-burners, and indeed their principal occupation
+is supplying the adjacent villages with charcoal and firewood. They use
+small narrow-edged axes for felling, but for lopping they invariably
+use the Nepaulese national weapon--the _kookree_. This is a heavy,
+curved knife, with a broad blade, the edge very sharp, and the back
+thick and heavy. In using it they slash right and left with a quick
+downward stroke, drawing the blade quickly toward them as they strike.
+They are wonderfully dexterous with the _kookree_, and will clear
+away brush and underwood almost as quickly as a man can walk. They
+pack their charcoal, rice, or other commodities, in long narrow
+baskets, which they sling on a pole carried on their shoulders, as we
+see the Chinese doing in the well known pictures on tea-chests. They
+are all Hindoos in religion, but are very fond of rice-whiskey. Although
+not so abstemious in this respect as the Hindoos of the plains, they
+are a much finer race both physically and morally. As a rule they are
+truthful, honest, brave, and independent. They are always glad to see
+you, laugh out merrily at you as you pass, and are wonderfully
+hospitable. It would be a nice point for Sir Wilfrid Lawson to
+reconcile the use of rice-whiskey with this marked superiority in all
+moral virtues in the whiskey-drinking, as against the totally-abstaining
+Hindoo.
+
+To return to Mehrman Singh. His face was seamed with smallpox marks,
+and he had seven or eight black patches on it the first time I saw him,
+caused by the splintering of his flint when he let off his antediluvian
+gun. When he saw my breechloaders, the first he had ever beheld, his
+admiration was unbounded. He told me he had come on a leopard asleep in
+the forest one day, and crept up quite close to him. His faith in his
+old gun, however, was not so lively as to make him rashly attack so
+dangerous a customer, so he told me. 'Hum usko jans deydea oos wukt,'
+that is, 'I _gave_ the brute its life that time, but,' he continued,
+'had I had an English gun like this, your honour, I would have blown
+the _soor_ (_Anglice_, pig) to hell.' Old Mehrman was rather strong in
+his expletives at times, but I was not a little amused at the cool way
+he spoke of _giving_ the leopard its life. The probability is, that had
+he only wounded the animal, he would have lost his own.
+
+These Nepaulese are very fond of giving feasts to each other. Their
+dinner-parties, I assure you, are very often 'great affairs.' They are
+not mean in their arrangements, and the wants of the inner man are very
+amply provided for. Their crockery is simple and inexpensive. When the
+feast is prepared, each guest provides himself with a few broad leaves
+from the nearest sal tree, and forming these into a cup, he pins them
+together with thorns from the acacia. Squatting down in a circle, with
+half-a-dozen of these sylvan cups around, the attendant fills one with
+rice, another with _dhall_, a third with goat's-flesh, a fourth with
+_turkaree_ or vegetables, a fifth with chutnee, pickle, or some kind of
+preserve. Curds, ghee, a little oil perhaps, sugar, plantains, and
+other fruit are not wanting, and the whole is washed down with copious
+draughts of fiery rice-whiskey, or where it can be procured, with
+palm-toddy. Not unfrequently dancing boys or girls are in attendance,
+and the horrid din of tom-toms, cymbals, a squeaking fiddle, or a
+twanging sitar, rattling castanets, and ear-piercing songs from the
+dusky _prima donna_, makes night hideous, until the grey dawn peeps
+over the dark forest line.
+
+Early in January, 1875, my camp was at a place in the sal jungles
+called Lohurneah. I had been collecting rents and looking after my seed
+cultivation, and Pat and our sporting District Engineer having joined
+me, we determined to have a beat for deer. Mehrman Singh had reported
+numerous herds in the vicinity of our camp. During the night we had
+been disturbed by the revellers at such a feast in the village as I
+have been describing. We had filled cartridges, seen to our guns, and
+made every preparation for the beat, and early in the morning the
+coolies and idlers of the forest villages all round were ranged in
+circles about our camp.
+
+Swallowing a hasty breakfast we mounted our ponies, and followed by our
+ragged escort, made off for the forest. On the way we met a crowd of
+Banturs with bundles of stakes and great coils of strong heavy netting.
+Sending the coolies on ahead under charge of several headmen and peons,
+we plunged into the gloom of the forest, leaving our ponies and grooms
+outside. When we came to a likely-looking spot, the Banturs began
+operations by fixing up the nets on the stakes and between trees, till
+a line of strong net extended across the forest for several hundred
+yards. We then went ahead, leaving the nets behind us, and each took up
+his station about 200 yards in front. The men with the nets then hid
+themselves behind trees, and crouched in the underwood. With our
+kookries we cut down several branches, stuck them in the ground in
+front, and ensconced ourselves in this artificial shelter. Behind us,
+and between us and the nets, was a narrow cart track leading through
+the forest, and the reason of our taking this position was given me by
+Pat, who was an old hand at jungle shooting.
+
+When deer are being driven, they are intensely suspicious, and of
+course frightened. They know every spot in the jungle, and are
+acquainted with all the paths, tracks, and open places in the forest.
+When they are nearing an open glade, or a road, they slacken their
+pace, and go slowly and warily forward, an old buck generally leading.
+When he has carefully reconnoitred and examined the suspected place in
+front, and found it clear to all appearance, they again put on the
+pace, and clear the open ground at their greatest speed. The best
+chance of a shot is when a path is in front of _them_ and behind _you_,
+as then they are going slowly.
+
+At first when I used to go out after them, I often got an open glade,
+or road, in _front_ of me; but experience soon told me that Pat's plan
+was the best. As this was a beat not so much for real sport, as to show
+me how the villagers managed these affairs, we were all under Pat's
+direction, and he could not have chosen better ground. I was on the
+extreme left, behind a clump of young trees, with the sluggish muddy
+stream on my left. Our Engineer to my right was about one hundred yards
+off, and Pat himself on the extreme right, at about the same distance
+from H. Behind us was the road, and in the rear the long line of nets,
+with their concealed watchers. The nets are so set up on the stakes,
+that when an animal bounds along and touches the net, it falls over
+him, and ere he can extricate himself from its meshes, the vigilant
+Banturs rush out and despatch him with spears and clubs.
+
+We waited a long time hearing nothing of the beaters, and watching the
+red and black ants hurrying to and fro. Huge green-bellied spiders
+oscillated backwards and forwards in their strong, systematically woven
+webs. A small mungoose kept peeping out at me from the roots of an old
+india-rubber tree, and aloft in the branches an amatory pair of hidden
+ringdoves were billing and cooing to each other. At this moment a
+stealthy step stole softly behind, and the next second Mr. Mehrman
+Singh crept quietly and noiselessly beside me, his face flushed with
+rapid walking, his eye flashing with excitement, his finger on his lip,
+and a look of portentous gravity and importance striving to spread
+itself over his speaking countenance. Mehrman had been up all night at
+the feast, and was as drunk as a piper. It was no use being angry with
+him, so I tried to keep him quiet and resumed my watch.
+
+A few minutes afterwards he grasped me by the wrist, rather startling
+me, but in a low hoarse whisper warning me that a troop of monkeys was
+coming. I could not hear the faintest rustle, but sure enough in a
+minute or two a troop of over twenty monkeys came hopping and shambling
+along, stopping every now and then to sit on their hams, look back,
+grin, jabber, and show their formidable teeth, until Mehrman rose up,
+waved his cloth at them, and turned them off from the direction of the
+nets toward the bank of the stream.
+
+Next came a fox, slouching warily and cautiously along; then a couple
+of lean, hungry-looking jackals; next a sharp patter on the crisp dry
+leaves, and several peafowl with resplendent plumage ran rapidly past.
+Another touch on the arm from Mehrman, and following the direction of
+his outstretched hand, I descried a splendid buck within thirty yards
+of me, his antlers and chest but barely visible above the brushwood. My
+gun was to my shoulder in an instant, but the shekarry in an excited
+whisper implored me not to fire. I hesitated, and just then the stately
+head turned round to look behind, and exposing the beautifully curving
+neck full to my aim, I fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the
+fine buck topple over, seemingly hard hit.
+
+A shot on my right, and two shots in rapid succession further on,
+shewed me that Pat and H. were also at work, and then the whole forest
+seemed alive with frightened, madly-plunging pig, deer, and other
+animals. I fired at, and wounded an enormous boar that came rushing
+past, and now the cries of the coolies in front as they came trooping
+on, mingled with the shouts of the men at the nets, where the work of
+death evidently was going on.
+
+It was most exciting while it lasted, but, after all, I do not think it
+was honest sport. The only apology I could make to myself was, that the
+deer and pig were far too numerous, and doing immense damage to the
+crops, and if not thinned out, they would soon have made the growing of
+any crop whatever an impossibility.
+
+The monkey being a sacred animal, is never molested by the natives, and
+the damage he does in a night to a crop of wheat or barley is
+astonishing. Peafowl too are very destructive, and what with these and
+the ravages of pig, deer, hares, and other plunderers, the poor ryot
+has to watch many a weary night, to secure any return from his fields.
+
+On rejoining each other at the nets, we found that five deer and two
+pigs had been killed. Pat had shot a boar and a porcupine, the latter
+with No. 4 shot. H. accounted for a deer, and I got my buck and the
+boar which I had wounded in the chest; Mehrman Singh had followed him
+up and tracked him to the river, where he took refuge among some long
+swamp reeds. Replying to his call, we went up, and a shot through the
+head settled the old boar for ever. Our bag was therefore for the first
+beat, seven deer, four pigs, and a porcupine.
+
+The coolies were now sent away out of the jungle, and on ahead for a
+mile or so, the nets were coiled up, our ponies regained, and off we
+set, to take another station. As we went along the river bank,
+frequently having to force our way through thick jungle, we started 'no
+end' of peafowl, and getting down we soon added a couple to the bag.
+Pat got a fine jack snipe, and I shot a _Jheela_, a very fine waterfowl
+with brown plumage, having a strong metallic, coppery lustre on the
+back, and a steely dark blue breast. The plumage was very thick and
+glossy, and it proved afterwards to be excellent eating.
+
+Peafowl generally retire to the thickest part of the jungles during the
+heat of the day, but if you go out very early, when they are slowly
+wending their way back from the fields, where they have been revelling
+all night, you can shoot numbers of them. I used to go about twenty or
+thirty yards into the jungle, and walk slowly along, keeping that
+distance from the edge. My syce and pony would then walk slowly by the
+edges of the fields, and when the syce saw a peafowl ahead, making for
+the jungle, he would shout and try to make it rise. He generally
+succeeded, and as I was a little in advance and concealed by the
+jungle, I would get a fine shot as the bird flew overhead. I have shot
+as many as eight and ten in a morning in this way. I always used No. 4
+shot with about 3-1/2 drams of powder.
+
+Unless hard hit peafowl will often get away; they run with amazing
+swiftness, and in the heart of the jungle it is almost impossible to
+make them rise. A couple of sharp terriers, or a good retriever, will
+sometimes flush them, but the best way is to go along the edge of the
+jungle in the early morn, as I have described. The peachicks, about
+seven or eight months old, are deliciously tender and well flavoured.
+Old birds are very dry and tough, and require a great deal of that
+old-fashioned sauce, Hunger.
+
+The common name for a peafowl is _m[=o]r_, but the Nepaulese and Banturs
+call it _majoor_. Now _majoor_ also means coolie, and a young fellow,
+S., was horrified one day hearing his attendant in the jungle telling
+him in the most excited way, '_Majoor, majoor_, Sahib; why don't you
+fire?' Poor S. thought it was a coolie the man meant, and that he must
+be going mad, wanting him to shoot a coolie, but he found out his
+mistake, and learnt the double meaning of the word, when he got home
+and consulted his _manager_.
+
+The generic name for all deer is in Hindustani HURIN, but the Nepaulese
+call it CHEETER. The male spotted deer they call KUBRA, the female
+KUBREE. These spotted deer keep almost exclusively to the forests, and
+are very seldom found far away from the friendly cover of the sal
+woods. They are the most handsome, graceful looking animals I know,
+their skins beautifully marked with white spots, and the horns wide and
+arching. When properly prepared the skin makes a beautiful mat for a
+drawing room, and the horns of a good buck are a handsome ornament to
+the hall or the verandah. When bounding along through the forest, his
+beautifully spotted skin flashing through the dark green foliage, his
+antlers laid back over his withers, he looks the very embodiment of
+grace and swiftness. He is very timid, and not easily stalked.
+
+In March and April, when a strong west wind is blowing, it rustles the
+myriads of leaves that, dry as tinder, encumber the earth. This
+perpetual rustle prevents the deer from hearing the footsteps of an
+approaching foe. They generally betake themselves then to some patch of
+grass, or long-crop outside the jungle altogether, and if you want them
+in those months, it is in such places, and not inside the forest at
+all, that you must search. Like all the deer tribe, they are very
+curious, and a bit of rag tied to a tree, or a cloth put over a bush,
+will not unfrequently entice them within range.
+
+Old shekarries will tell you that as long as the deer go on feeding and
+flapping their ears, you may continue your approach. As soon as they
+throw up the head, and keep the ears still, their suspicions have been
+aroused, and if you want venison, you must be as still as a rock, till
+your game is again lulled into security, As soon as the ears begin
+flapping again, you may continue your stalk, but at the slightest
+noise, the noble buck will be off like a flash of lightning. You should
+never go out in the forest with white clothes, as you are then a
+conspicuous mark for all the prying eyes that are invisible to you. The
+best colour is dun brown, dark grey, or dark green. When you see a deer
+has become suspicious, and no cover is near, stand perfectly erect and
+rigid, and do not leave your legs apart. The 'forked-parsnip' formation
+of the 'human form divine' is detected at a glance, but there's just a
+chance that if your legs are drawn together, and you remain perfectly
+motionless, you may be mistaken for the stump of a tree, or at the best
+some less dangerous enemy than man.
+
+As we rode slowly along, to allow the beaters to get ahead, and to let
+the heavily-laden men with the nets keep up with us, we were amused to
+hear the remarks of the syces and shekarries on the sport they had just
+witnessed. Pat's old man, Juggroo, a merry peep-eyed fellow, full of
+anecdote and humour, was rather hard on Mehrman Singh for having been
+up late the preceding night. Mehrman, whose head was by this time
+probably reminding him that there are 'lees to every cup,' did not seem
+to relish the humour. He began grasping one wrist with the other hand,
+working his hand slowly round his wrist, and I noticed that Juggroo
+immediately changed the subject. This, as I afterwards learned, is the
+invariable Nepaulese custom of showing anger. They grasp the wrist as I
+have said, and it is taken as a sign that, if you do not discontinue
+your banter, you will have a fight.
+
+The Nepaulese are rather vain of their personal appearance, and hanker
+greatly after a good thick moustache. This, nature has denied them, for
+the hair on their faces is scanty and stubbly in the extreme. One day
+Juggroo saw his master putting some bandoline on his moustache, which
+was a fine, handsome, silky one. He asked Pat's bearer, an old rogue,
+what it was.
+
+'Oh!' replied the bearer, 'that is the gum of the sal tree; master
+always uses that, and that is the reason he has such a fine moustache.'
+
+Juggroo's imagination fired up at the idea.
+
+'Will it make mine grow too?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+'How do you use it?'
+
+'Just rub it on, as you see master do.'
+
+Away went Juggroo to try the new recipe.
+
+Now, the gum of the sal tree is a very strong resin, and hardens in
+water. It is almost impossible to get it off your skin, as the more
+water you use, the harder it gets.
+
+Next day Juggroo's face presented a sorry sight. He had plentifully
+smeared the gum over his upper lip, so that when he washed his face,
+the gum _set_, making the lip as stiff as a board, and threatening to
+crack the skin every time the slightest muscle moved.
+
+Juggroo _was_ 'sold' and no mistake, but he bore it all in grim
+silence, although he never forgot the old bearer. One day, long after,
+he brought in some berries from the wood, and was munching them,
+seemingly with great relish. The bearer wanted to know what they were,
+Juggroo with much apparent _nonchalance_ told him they were some very
+sweet, juicy, wild berries he had found in the forest. The bearer asked
+to try one.
+
+Juggroo had _another_ fruit ready, very much resembling those he was
+eating. It is filled with minute spikelets, or little hairy spinnacles,
+much resembling those found in ripe doghips at home. If these even
+touch the skin, they cause intense pain, stinging like nettles, and
+blistering every part they touch.
+
+The unsuspicious bearer popped the treacherous berry into his mouth,
+gave it a crunch, and then with a howl of agony, spluttered and spat,
+while the tears ran down his cheeks, as he implored Juggroo by all the
+gods to fetch him some water.
+
+Old Juggroo with a grim smile, walked coolly away, discharging a
+Parthian shaft, by telling him that these berries were very good for
+making the hair grow, and hoped he would soon have a good moustache.
+
+A man from the village now came running up to tell us that there was a
+leopard in the jungle we were about to beat, and that it had seized,
+but failed to carry away, a dog from the village during the night.
+Natives are so apt to tell stories of this kind that at first we did
+not credit him, but turning into the village he showed us the poor dog,
+with great wounds on its neck and throat where the leopard had pounced
+upon it. The noise, it seems, had brought some herdsmen to the place,
+and their cries had frightened the leopard and saved the wretched dog.
+As the man said he could show us the spot where the leopard generally
+remained, we determined to beat him up; so sending a man off on
+horseback for the beaters to slightly alter their intended line of
+beat, we rode off, attended by the villager, to get behind the
+leopard's lair, and see if we could not secure him. These fierce and
+courageous brutes, for they are both, are very common in the sal
+jungles; and as I have seen several killed, both in Bhaugulpore and
+Oudh, I must devote a chapter to the subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
+one.--Encounter with a leopard in a dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
+leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
+annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
+harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
+sanitation.
+
+Writing principally for friends at home, who are not familiar with
+Indian life, I must narrate facts that, although well known in Indian
+circles, are yet new to the general reader in England. My object is of
+course to represent the life we lead in the far East, and to give a
+series of pictures of what is going on there. If I occasionally touch
+on what may to Indian readers seem well-worn ground, they will forgive
+me.
+
+The leopard then, as a rule keeps to the wooded parts of India. In the
+long grassy jungles bordering the Koosee he is not generally met with.
+He is essentially a predatory animal, always on the outlook for a meal;
+round the villages, nestling amid their sal forests, he is continually
+on the prowl, looking out for a goat, a calf, or unwary dog. His
+appearance and habits are well known; he generally selects for his
+lair, a retired spot surrounded by dense jungle. The one we were after
+now had his home in a matted jungle, growing out of a pool of water,
+which had collected in a long hollow, forming the receptacle of the
+surface drainage from the adjacent slopes. This hollow stretched for
+miles towards the creek which we had been beating up; and the locality
+having moisture and other concurring elements in its favour, the
+vegetation had attained a luxuriance rarely seen in the dry uplands,
+where the west winds lick up the moisture, and the soil is arid and
+unpromising. The matted intertwining branches of the creepers had
+formed an almost impervious screen, and on the basis thus formed, amid
+the branches and creepers, the leopards had formed their lair. Beneath,
+was a still stagnant pool; above, was the leafy foliage. The tracks led
+down to a well-worn path.
+
+Climbing like a cat, as the leopards can do, they found no difficulty
+in gaining a footing on the mass of vegetation. They generally select
+some retired spot like this, and are very seldom seen in the daytime.
+With the approach of night, however, they begin their wandering in
+quest of prey. In a beat such as we were having 'all is fish that comes
+to the net,' and leopards, if they are in the jungle, have to yield to
+the advance of the beaters, like the other denizens of the forest.
+
+Experience tells you that the leopard is daring and ferocious. Old
+experienced hands warn you, that unless you can make sure of your shot,
+it is unwise to fire at a leopard approaching. It is better to wait
+till he has got past you, or at all events is 'broadside on.' If you
+only wound him as he is approaching, he will almost to a certainty make
+straight at you, but if you shoot him as he is going past, he will,
+maddened by pain and anger, go straight forward, and you escape his
+charge. He is more courageous than a tiger, and a very dangerous
+customer at close quarters. Up in one of the forests in Oudh, a friend
+of mine was out one day after leopard, with a companion who belonged to
+the forest department. My friend's companion fired at a leopard as it
+was approaching him, and wounded it severely. Nothing daunted, and
+recognising whence its hurt had come, it charged directly down on the
+concealed sportsman, and before he could half realise the position,
+sprang on him, caught his left arm in its teeth, and began mauling him
+with its claws. His presence of mind did not desert him; noticing close
+by the stump of a sal tree, that had been eaten by white ants till the
+harder parts of the wood alone remained, standing up hard and sharp
+like so many spikes of steel; and knowing that the leopard was already
+badly wounded, and in all probability struggling for his life, he
+managed to drag the struggling animal up to the stump; jammed his left
+arm yet further into the open mouth of the wounded beast, and being a
+strong man, by pure physical force dashed the leopard's brains out on
+the jagged edges of the stump. It was a splendid instance of presence
+of mind. He was horribly mauled of course; in fact I believe he lost
+his arm, but he saved his life. It shows the danger of only wounding a
+leopard, especially if he is coming towards you; always wait till he
+has passed your station, if it is practicable. If you _must_ shoot,
+take what care you can that the shot be a sure one.
+
+In some of the hill stations, and indeed in the villages on the plains,
+it is very common for a leopard to make his appearance in the house or
+verandah of an evening.
+
+One was shot in Bhaugulpore station by the genial and respected
+chaplain, on a Sunday morning two or three years ago. As we went along,
+H. told us a humorous story of an Assistant in the Public Works
+Department, who got mauled by a leopard at Dengra Ghat, Dak Bungalow.
+It had taken up its quarters in a disused room, and this young fellow
+burning, with ardour to distinguish himself, made straight for the room
+in which he was known to be. He opened the door, followed by a motley
+crowd of retainers, discharged his gun, and the sequel proved that he
+was _not_ a dead shot. He had only wounded the leopard. With a bound
+the savage brute was on him, but in the hurry and confusion, he had
+changed front. The leopard had him by the back. You can imagine the
+scene! He roared for help! The leopard was badly hit, and a plucky
+_bearer_ came to his rescue with a stout _lathee_. Between them they
+succeeded in killing the wounded animal, but not before it had left its
+marks on a very sensitive portion of his frame. The moral is, if you go
+after leopard, be sure you kill him at once.
+
+They seldom attack a strong, well-grown animal. Calves, however, goats,
+and dogs are frequently carried off by them. The young of deer and pig,
+too, fall victims, and when nothing else can be had, peafowl have been
+known to furnish them a meal. In my factory in Oudh I had a small,
+graceful, four-horned antelope. It was carried off by a leopard from
+the garden in broad daylight, and in face of a gang of coolies.
+
+The most commonly practised mode of leopard shooting, is to tie a goat
+up to a tree. You have a _mychan_ erected, that is, a platform elevated
+on trees above the ground. Here you take your seat. Attracted by the
+bleating of the goat, the prowling leopard approaches his intended
+victim. If you are on the watch you can generally detect his approach.
+They steal on with extreme caution, being intensely wary and
+suspicious. At a village near where we now were, I had sat up for three
+nights for a leopard, but although I knew he was prowling in the
+vicinity, I had never got a look at him. We believed this leopard to be
+the same brute.
+
+I have already described our mode of beating. The jungle was close, and
+there was a great growth of young trees. I was again on the right, and
+near the edge of the forest. Beyond was a glade planted with rice. The
+incidents of the beat were much as you have just read. There was,
+however, unknown or at any rate unnoticed by us, more intense
+excitement. We knew that the leopard might at any moment pass before
+us. Pat was close to a mighty bhur tree, whose branches, sending down
+shoots from the parent stem, had planted round it a colony of vigorous
+supports. It was a magnificent tree with dense shade. All was solemn
+and still. Pat with his keen eye, his pulse bounding, and every sense
+on the alert, was keeping a careful look-out from behind an immense
+projecting buttress of the tree. All was deadly quiet. H. and myself
+were occupied watching the gambols of some monkeys in our front. The
+beaters were yet far off. Suddenly Pat heard a faint crackle on a dried
+leaf. He glanced in the direction of the sound, and his quick eye
+detected the glossy coats, the beautifully spotted hides of not _one_
+leopard, but _two_. In a moment the stillness was broken by the report
+of his rifle. Another report followed sharp and quick. We were on the
+alert, but to Pat the chief honour and glory belonged. He had shot one
+leopard dead through the heart. The female was badly hit and came
+bounding along in my direction. Of course we were now on the _qui
+vive_. Waiting for an instant, till I could get my aim clear of some
+intervening trees, I at length got a fair shot, and brought her down
+with a ball through the throat. H. and Pat came running up, and we
+congratulated ourselves on our success. By and bye Mehrman Singh and
+the rest of the beaters came up, and the joy of the villagers was
+gratifying. These were doubtless the two leopards we had heard so much
+about, for which I had sat up and watched. It was amusing to see some
+villager whose pet goat or valued calf had been carried off, now coming
+up, striking the dead body of the leopard, and abusing it in the most
+unmeasured terms. Such a crowding round as there was! such a noise, and
+such excitement!
+
+While waiting for the horses to be brought, and while the excited mob
+of beaters and coolies carried off the dead animals to the camp to be
+skinned, we amused ourselves by trying our rifles at a huge tree that
+grew on the further side of the rice swamp. We found the effects of the
+'Express' bullet to be tremendous. It splintered up and burst the bark
+and body of the tree into fragments. Its effects on an animal are even
+more wonderful. On looking afterwards at the leopard which had been
+shot, we found that my bullet had touched the base of the shoulder,
+near the collar-bone. It had gone downwards through the neck, under the
+collar-bone, and struck the shoulder. There it had splintered up and
+made a frightful wound, scattering its fragments all over the chest,
+and cutting and lacerating everything in its way.
+
+For big game the 'Express' is simply invaluable. For all-round shooting
+perhaps a No. 12 smooth-bore is the best. It should be snap action with
+rebounding locks. You should have facilities and instruments for
+loading cartridges. A good cartridge belt is a good thing for carrying
+them, but go where you will now, where there is game to be killed, a
+No. 12 B. L. will enable you to participate in whatever shooting is
+going. Such a one as I have described would satisfy all the wishes of
+any young man who perhaps can only afford one gun.
+
+As we rode slowly along, we learned many curious facts of jungle and
+native life from the followers, and by noticing little incidents
+happening before our eyes. Pat, who is so well versed in jungle life
+and its traditions, told us of a curious moveable feast which the
+natives of these parts hold annually, generally in March or April,
+which is called the _Sirwah Purrub_.
+
+It seems to be somewhat like the old carnivals of the middle ages. I
+have read that in Sardinia, and Italy, and Switzerland something
+similar takes place. The _Sirwah Purrub_ is a sort of festival held in
+honour of the native Diana--the _chumpa buttee_ before referred to. On
+the appointed day all the males in the forest villages, without
+exception, go a-hunting. Old spears are furbished up; miraculous guns,
+of even yet more ancient lineage than Mehrman Singh's dangerous
+flintpiece, are brought out from dusty hiding-places. Battle-axes, bows
+and arrows, hatchets, clubs and weapons of all sorts, are looked up,
+and the motley crowd hies to the forest, the one party beating up the
+game to the other.
+
+Some go fishing, others try to secure a quail or partridge, but it is a
+point of honour that something must be slain. If game be not plentiful
+they will even go to another village and slay a goat, which, rather
+than return empty-handed, they will bear in triumph home. The women
+meet the returning hunters, and if there has been a fortunate beat,
+there is a great feast in the village during the evening and far on
+into the night. The nets are used, and in this way they generally have
+some game to divide in the village on their return from the hunt.
+Ordinarily they seethe the flesh, and pour the whole contents of the
+cooking-pot into a mess of boiled rice. With the addition of a little
+salt, this is to them very palatable fare. They are very good cooks,
+with very simple appliances; with a little mustard oil or clarified
+butter, a few vegetables or a cut-up fish, they can be very successful.
+The food, however, is generally smoked from the cow-dung fire. If you
+are much out in these villages this smoke constantly hangs about,
+clinging to your clothes and flavouring your food, but the natives seem
+to like it amazingly.
+
+In the cold mornings of December or January it hangs about like the
+peat smoke in a Highland village. Round every house are great stacks
+and piles of cow-dung cakes. Before every house is a huge pile of
+ashes, and the villagers cower round this as the evening falls, or
+before the sun has dissipated the mist of the mornings. During the day
+the village dogs burrow in the ashes. Hovering in a dense cloud about
+the roofs and eaves, and along the lower branches of the trees in filmy
+layers, the smoke almost chokes one to ride through it. I have seen a
+native sit till half-choked in a dense column of this smoke. He is too
+lazy to shift his position; the fumes of pungent smoke half smother
+him; tears run from his eyes; he splutters and coughs, and abuses the
+smoke, and its grandfather, and maternal uncle, and all its other known
+relatives; but he prefers semi-suffocation to the trouble of budging an
+inch.
+
+Sometimes the energy of these people is surprising. To go to a fair or
+feast, or on a pilgrimage, they will walk miles upon miles, subsisting
+on parched peas or rice, and carrying heavy burdens. In company they
+sing and carol blithely enough. When alone they are very taciturn, man
+and woman walking together, the man first with his _lathee_ or staff,
+the woman behind carrying child or bundle, and often looking fagged and
+tired enough.
+
+Taking vegetables, or rice, or other commodities to the bazaar, the
+carrier often slings his burden to the two ends of a pole worn over the
+shoulder, much as Chinamen do. But they generally make their load into
+one bundle which they carry on the head, or which they sling, if not
+large and bulky, over their backs, rolled up in one of their cloths.
+
+During the rice-planting season they toil in mud and water from
+earliest morn till late into twilight. Bending and stooping all the
+day, their lower extremities up to the knee sometimes in water, and the
+scorching sun beating on their backs, they certainly show their patient
+plodding industry, for it is downright honest hard work.
+
+The young rice is taken from the nursery patch, where it has been sown
+thick some time previously. When the rice-field is ready--a sloppy,
+muddy, embanked little quagmire--the ryot gets his bundle of young
+rice-plants, and shoves in two or three at a time with his finger and
+thumb. These afterwards form the tufts of rice. Its growth is very
+rapid. Sometimes, in case of flood, the rice actually grows with the
+rise of the water, always keeping its tip above the stream. If wholly
+submerged for any length of time it dies. There are over a hundred
+varieties. Some are only suited for very deep marshy soils; others,
+such as the _s[=a]tee_, or sixty-days rice, can be grown on comparatively
+high land, and ripen early. If rain be scanty, the _s[=a]tee_ and other
+rice crops have to be weeded. It is cut with a jagged-edged sort of
+reaping-hook called a _hussooa_. The cut bundles are carried from the
+fields by women, girls, and lads. They could not take carts in many
+instances into the swamps.
+
+At such times you see every little dyke or embankment with a crowd of
+bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on his head,
+hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The women, with clothes
+tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at
+a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken--garnering
+the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over.
+Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor,
+dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a
+yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use
+leaving a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by
+such a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty
+stomachs in every village, a bundle of rice would be gone by the
+morning.
+
+As in Greece, where every man has to watch his vineyard at night, so
+here, the _kureehan_ or threshing-floor each has its watchman at night.
+For the protection of the growing crops, the villagers club together,
+and appoint a watchman or _chowkeydar_, whom they pay by giving him a
+small percentage on the yield; or a small fractional proportion of the
+area he has to guard, with its standing crop, may be made over to him
+as a recompense.
+
+They thresh out the rice when it has matured a little on the
+threshing-floor. Four to six bullocks are tied in a line to a post in
+the centre, and round this they slowly pace in a circle. They are not
+muzzled, and the poor brutes seem rather to enjoy the unwonted luxury
+of feeding while they work. When there is a good wind, the grain is
+winnowed; it is lifted either in bamboo scoops or in the two hands. The
+wind blows the chaff or _bhoosa_ on to a heap, and the fine fresh rice
+remains behind. The grain merchants now do a good business. Rice must
+be sold to pay the rent, the money-lender, and other clamouring
+creditors. The _bunniahs_ will take repayment in kind. They put on
+the interest, and cheat in the weighments and measurements. So much has
+to be given to the weigh-man as a perquisite. If seed had been borrowed,
+it has now to be returned at a ruinous rate of interest. Some seed must
+be saved for next year, and an average _poor_ ryot, the cultivator of
+but a little holding, very soon sees the result of his harvesting melt
+away, leaving little for wife and little ones to live on. He never
+gets free of the money-lender. He will have to go out and work hard
+for others, as well as get up his own little lands. No chance of a new
+bullock this year, and the old ones are getting worn out and thin. The
+wife must dispense with her promised ornament or dress. For the poor
+ryot it is a miserable hand-to-mouth existence when crops are poor.
+As a rule he is never out of debt. He lives on the scantiest fare;
+hunger often pinches him; he knows none of the luxuries of life.
+Notwithstanding all, the majority are patient, frugal, industrious,
+and to the full extent of their scanty means even charitable and
+benevolent. With the average ryot a little business goes a great way.
+There are some irreconcileable, discontented, worthless fellows in
+every village. All more or less count a lie as rather a good thing to
+be expert in; they lie naturally, simply, and instinctively: but with
+all his faults, and they are doubtless many, I confess to a great
+liking for the average Hindoo ryot.
+
+At times, however, their apathy and laziness is amazing. They are very
+childish, petted, and easily roused. In a quarrel, however, they
+generally confine themselves to vituperation and abuse, and seldom
+come to blows.
+
+As an instance of their fatalism or apathetic indolence, I can remember
+a village on the estate I was managing taking fire. It was quite close
+to the factory. I had my pony saddled at once, and galloped off for the
+burning village. It was a long, straggling one, with a good masonry
+well in the centre, shadowed by a mighty _peepul_ tree. The wind was
+blowing the fire right along, and if no obstruction was offered, would
+sweep off every hut in the place. The only soul who was trying to do a
+thing was a young Brahmin watchman belonging to the factory. He had
+succeeded in removing some brass jars of his own, and was saving some
+grain. One woman was rocking to and fro, beating her breast and crying.
+There sat the rest of the apathetic villagers in groups, not lifting a
+finger, not stirring a step, but calmly looking on, while the devouring
+element was licking up hut after hut, and destroying their little all.
+In a few minutes some of my servants, syces, and factory men had
+arrived. I tied up the pony, ordered my men to pull down a couple of
+huts in the centre, and tried to infuse some energy into the villagers.
+Not a bit of it; they would _not_ stir. They would not even draw a
+bucket of water. However, my men got earthen pots; I dug up fresh earth
+and threw it on the two dismantled huts, dragging away as much of the
+thatch and _debris_ as we could.
+
+The fire licked our faces, and actually got a footing on the first
+house beyond the frail opening we had tried to make, but we persevered,
+and ultimately stayed the fire, and saved about two thirds of the
+village. I never saw such an instance of complete apathy. Some of the
+inhabitants even had not untied the cattle in the sheds. They seemed
+quite prostrated. However, as we worked on, and they began to see that
+all was not yet lost, they began to buckle to; yet even then their
+principal object was to save their brass pots and cooking utensils,
+things that could not possibly burn, and which they might have left
+alone with perfect safety.
+
+A Hindoo village is as inflammable as touchwood. The houses are
+generally built of grass walls, connected with thin battens of bamboo.
+The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all the little
+courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are piled up round
+every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which smoulders all day. A
+stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit round the corner, and
+before one can half realise the catastrophe, the village is on fire.
+Then each only thinks of his own goods; there is no combined effort to
+stay the flames. In the hot west winds of March, April, and May, these
+fires are of very frequent occurrence. In Bhaugulpore, I have seen,
+from my verandah, three villages on fire at one and the same time. In
+some parts of Oudh, among the sal forests, village after village is
+burnt down annually, and I have seen the same catastrophe visit the
+same village several times in the course of one year. These fires arise
+from pure carelessness, sheer apathy, and laziness.
+
+Sanitary precautions too are very insufficient; practically there are
+none. Huge unsightly water-holes, filled during the rains with the
+drainage of all the dung-heaps and mounds of offal and filth that
+abound in the village, swelter under the hot summer sun. They get
+covered with a rank green scum, and if their inky depths be stirred,
+the foulest and most fearful odours issue forth. In these filthy pools
+the villagers often perform their ablutions; they do not scruple to
+drink the putrid water, which is no doubt a hotbed and regular nursery
+for fevers, and choleraic and other disorders.
+
+Many home readers are but little acquainted with the Indian village
+system, and I shall devote a chapter to the description of a Hindoo
+village, with its functionaries, its institutions, its inhabitants, and
+the more marked of their customs and avocations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
+--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
+village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
+village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
+system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
+justice.
+
+A typical village in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of thatched
+huts, apparently set down at random--as indeed it is, for every one
+erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or wherever he can
+get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved
+plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the huts and buildings. Several
+small orchards of mango surround the village; the roads leading to and
+from it are merely well-worn cattle tracks,--in the rains a perfect
+quagmire, and in the hot weather dusty, and confined between straggling
+hedges of aloe or prickly pear. These hedges are festooned with masses
+of clinging luxuriant creepers, among which sometimes struggles up a
+custard apple, an avocado pear, or a wild plum-tree. The latter is a
+prickly straggling tree, called the _bhyre_; the wood is very hard, and
+is often used for making ploughs. The fruit is a little hard yellow
+crisp fruit, with a big stone inside, and very sweet; when it is ripe,
+the village urchins throw sticks up among the branches, and feast on
+the golden shower.
+
+On many of the banks bordering the roads, thatching grass, or rather
+strong upright waving grass, with a beautiful feathery plume, is
+planted. This is used to make the walls of the houses, and these are
+then plastered outside and in with clay and cowdung. The tall hedge
+of dense grass keeps what little breeze there may be away from the
+traveller. The road is something like an Irish 'Boreen,' wanting only
+its beauty and freshness. On a hot day the atmosphere in one of these
+village roads is stifling and loaded with dust.
+
+These houses with their grass walls and thatched roof are called
+_kutcha_, as opposed to more pretentious structures of burnt brick,
+with maybe a tiled sloping or flat plastered roof, which are called
+_pucca. Pucca_ literally means 'ripe,' as opposed to _cutcha_, 'unripe';
+but the rich Oriental tongue has adapted it to almost every kind of
+secondary meaning. Thus a man who is true, upright, respected, a man
+to be depended on, is called a _pucca_ man. It is a word in constant
+use among Anglo-Indians. A _pucca_ road is one which is bridged and
+metalled. If you make an engagement with a friend, and he wants to
+impress you with its importance, he will ask you, Now is that _pucca_?'
+and so on.
+
+Other houses in the village are composed of unburnt bricks cemented
+with mud, or maybe composed of mud walls and thatched roof; these,
+being a compound sort of erection, are called _cutcha pucca_. In the
+_cutcha_ houses live the poorer castes, the _Chumars_ or workers in
+leathers, the _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, or _Gwallahs_.
+
+The _Dornes_, or scavengers, feeders on offal, have to live apart in a
+_tolah_, which might be called a small suburb, by themselves. The
+_Dornes_ drag from the village any animal that happens to die. They
+generally pursue the handicraft of basket making, or mat making, and
+the _Dorne tolah_ can always be known by the pigs and fowls prowling
+about in search of food, and the _Dorne_ and his family splitting up
+bamboo, and weaving mats and baskets at the doors of their miserable
+habitation. To the higher castes both pigs arid fowls are unclean and
+an abomination. _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, and other poor castes, such as
+_Dangurs_, keep however an army of gaunt, lean, hungry-looking pigs.
+These may be seen rooting and wallowing in the marshes when the rice
+has been cut, or foraging among the mango groves, to pick up any stray
+unripe fruit that may have escaped the keen eyes of the hungry and
+swarming children.
+
+There is yet another small _tolah_ or suburb, called the _Kusbee
+tolah_. Here live the miserable outcasts who minister to the worst
+passions of our nature. These degraded beings are banished from the
+more respectable portions of the community; but here, as in our own
+highly civilised and favoured land, vice hovers by the side of virtue,
+and the Hindoo village contains the same elements of happiness and
+misery, profligacy and probity, purity and degradation, as the fine
+home cities that are a name in the mouths of men.
+
+Every village forms a perfect little commonwealth; it contains all the
+elements of self-existence; it is quite a little commune, so far as
+social life is concerned. There is a hereditary blacksmith, washerman,
+potter, barber, and writer. The _dhobee_, or washerman, can always be
+known by the propinquity of his donkeys, diminutive animals which he
+uses to transport his bundle of unsavoury dirty clothes to the pool or
+tank where the linen is washed. On great country roads you may often
+see strings of donkeys laden with bags of grain, which they transport
+from far-away villages to the big bazaars; but if you see a laden
+donkey near a village, be sure the _dhobee_ is not far off.
+
+Here as elsewhere the _hajam_, or barber, is a great gossip, and
+generally a favourite. He uses no soap, and has a most uncouth-looking
+razor, yet he shaves the heads, beards, moustaches, and armpits of his
+customers with great deftness. The lower classes of natives shave the
+hair of the head and of the armpits for the sake of cleanliness and for
+other obvious reasons. The higher classes are very regular in their
+ablutions; every morning, be the water cold or warm, the Rajpoot and
+Brahmin, the respectable middle classes, and all in the village who lay
+any claim to social position, have their _goosal_ or bath. Some hie to
+the nearest tank or stream; at all hours of the day, at any ferry or
+landing stage, you will see swarthy fine-looking fellows up to mid
+waist in the water, scrubbing vigorously their bronzed arms, and neck
+and chest. They clean their teeth with the end of a stick, which they
+chew at one extremity, till they loosen the fibres, and with this
+improvised toothbrush and some wood ashes for paste, they make them
+look as white and clean as ivory.
+
+There is generally a large masonry well in the middle of the village,
+with a broad smooth _pucca_ platform all round it. It has been built by
+some former father of the hamlet, to perpetuate his memory, to fulfil a
+vow to the gods, perhaps simply from goodwill to his fellow townsmen.
+At all events there is generally one such in every village. It is
+generally shadowed by a huge _bhur, peepul_, or tamarind tree. Here may
+always be seen the busiest sight in the village. Pretty young women
+chatter, laugh, and talk, and assume all sorts of picturesque attitudes
+as they fill their waterpots; the village matrons gossip, and sometimes
+quarrel, as they pull away at the windlass over the deep cool well. On
+the platform are a group of fat Brahmins nearly nude, their lighter
+skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower classes. There
+are several groups. With damp drapery clinging to their glistening
+skins, they pour brass pots of cold water over their dripping bodies;
+they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again as the cool element pours
+over head and shoulders. They sit down while some young attendant or
+relation vigorously rubs them down the back; while sitting they clean
+their feet. Thus, amid much laughing and talking, and quaint gestures,
+and not a little expectoration, they perform their ablutions. Not
+unfrequently the more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil,
+which at all events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it
+does, though it is not fragrant. Round the well you get all the village
+news and scandal. It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings,
+and only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village
+into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the hand-mill,
+or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy damsel or
+matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool shadow of her
+hut, for the wants of her lord and master.
+
+Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by government,
+and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars subscribe liberally
+for a schoolmaster in their villages. Near the principal street then,
+in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old mango-tree, we come on the
+village school. The little fellows have all discarded their upper
+clothes on account of the heat, and with much noise, swaying the body
+backwards and forwards, and monotonously intoning, they grind away at
+the mill of learning, and try to get a knowledge of books. Other dusky
+urchins figure away with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces
+of wood to serve as copy-books. The din increases as the stranger
+passes: going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause
+a momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school. The little
+Hindoo scholar probably wishes to impress you with a sense of his
+assiduity. He raises his voice, sways the body more briskly, keeps his
+one eye firmly fixed on his task, while with the other he throws a keen
+swift glance over you, which embraces every detail of your costume, and
+not improbably includes a shrewd estimate of your disposition and
+character.
+
+Hindoo children never seem to me to be boys or girls; they are
+preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing
+together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most
+portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning candour and
+guileless innocence, when they are all the while plotting some petty
+scheme against you. They are certainly far more precocious than English
+children; they realise the hard struggle for life far more quickly. The
+poorer classes can hardly be said to have any childhood; as soon as
+they can toddle they are sent to weed, cut grass, gather fuel, tend
+herds, or do anything that will bring them in a small pittance, and
+ease the burden of the struggling parents. I think the children of the
+higher and middle classes very pretty; they have beautiful, dark,
+thoughtful eyes, and a most intelligent expression. Very young babies
+however are miserably nursed; their hair is allowed to get all tangled
+and matted into unsightly knots; their faces are seldom washed, and
+their eyes are painted with antimony about the lids, and are often
+rheumy and running with water. The use of the pocket handkerchief is
+sadly neglected.
+
+There is generally one open space or long street in our village, and in
+a hamlet of any importance there is weekly or bi-weekly a bazaar or
+market. From early morning in all directions, from solitary huts in
+the forest, from struggling little crofts in the rice lands, from
+fishermen's dwellings perched on the bank of the river, from lonely
+camps in the grass jungle where the herd and his family live with their
+cattle, from all the petty Thorpes about, come the women with their
+baskets of vegetables, their bundles of spun yarn, their piece of woven
+cloth, whatever they have to sell or barter. There is a lad with a pair
+of wooden shoes, which he has fashioned as he was tending the village
+cows; another with a grass mat, or bamboo staff, or some other strange
+outlandish-looking article, which he hopes to barter in the bazaar for
+something on which his heart is set. The _bunniahs_ hurry up their
+tottering, overladen ponies; the rice merchant twists his patient
+bullock's tail to make it move faster; the cloth merchant with his bale
+under his arm and measuring stick in hand, walks briskly along. Here
+comes a gang of charcoal-burners, with their loads of fuel slung on
+poles dangling from their shoulders. A _box wallah_ with his attendant
+coolie, staggering under the weight of a huge box of Manchester goods,
+hurries by. It is a busy sight in the bazaar. What a cackling! What a
+confused clatter of voices! Here also the women are the chief
+contributors to the din of tongues. There is no irate husband here or
+moody master to tell them to be still. Spread out on the ground are
+heaps of different grain, bags of flour, baskets of meal, pulse, or
+barley; sweetmeats occupy the attention of nearly all the buyers. All
+Hindoos indulge in sweets, which take the place of beer with us;
+instead of a 'nobbler,' they offer you a 'lollipop.' Trinkets, beads,
+bracelets, armlets, and anklets of pewter, there are in great bunches;
+fruits, vegetables, sticks of cane, skins full of oil, and sugar, and
+treacle. Stands with fresh 'paun' leaves, and piles of coarse looking
+masses of tobacco are largely patronised. It is like a hive of bees.
+The dust hovers over the moving mass; the smells are various, none of
+them 'blest odours of sweet Araby.' Drugs, condiments, spices, shoes,
+in fact, everything that a rustic population can require, is here. The
+_pice_ jingle as they change hands; the haggling and chaffering are
+without parallel in any market at home. Here is a man apparently in the
+last madness of intense passion, in fierce altercation with another,
+who tries his utmost to outbluster his furious declamation. In a moment
+they are smiling and to all appearance the best friends in the world.
+The bargain has been concluded; it was all about whether the one could
+give three _brinjals_ or four for one pice. It is a scene of
+indescribable bustle, noise, and confusion. By evening however, all
+will have been packed up again, and only the faint outlines of yet
+floating clouds of dust, and the hopping, cheeky crows, picking up the
+scattered litter and remnants of the market, will remain to tell that
+it has been bazaar day in our village.
+
+Generally, about the centre of it, there is a more pretentious
+structure, with verandahs supported on wooden pillars. High walls
+surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little
+doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs
+leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside verandahs.
+Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or walk slowly to and
+from the yard with seemingly purposeless indecision. In the outer
+verandah is an old _palkee_, with evidences in the tarnished gilding
+and frayed and tattered hangings, that it once had some pretensions to
+fashionable elegance.
+
+The walls of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and numerous
+young _peepul_ trees grow in the crevices, their insidious roots
+creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and expediting the work
+of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is the residence of the
+Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner of the lands adjoining.
+Probably he is descended from some noble house of ancient lineage. His
+forefathers, possibly, led armed retainers against some rival in yonder
+far off village, where the dim outlines of a mud fort yet tell of the
+insecurity of the days of old. Now he is old, and fat, and lazy.
+Possibly he has been too often to the money-lender. His lands are
+mortgaged to their full value. Though they respect and look up to their
+old Zemindar, the villagers are getting independent; they are not so
+humble, and pay less and less of feudal tribute than in the old days,
+when the golden palanquin was new, when the elephant had splendid
+housings, when mace, and javelin, and matchlock-men followed in his
+train. Alas! the elephant was sold long ago, and is now the property of
+a wealthy _Bunniah_ who has amassed money in the buying and selling of
+grain and oil. The Zemindar may be a man of progress and intelligence,
+but many are of this broken down and helpless type.
+
+Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant,
+conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages through
+a small staff of _peons_, or un-official police. The accounts are kept
+by another important village functionary--the _putwarrie_, or village
+accountant. _Putwarries_ belong to the writer or _Kayasth_ caste. They
+are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous as any
+class in India. They manage the most complicated accounts between ryot
+and landlord with great skill. Their memories are wonderful, but they
+can always forget conveniently. Where ryots are numerous, the
+landlord's wants pressing, and frequent calls made on the tenantry for
+payment, often made in various kinds of grain and produce, the rates
+and prices of which are constantly changing, it is easy to imagine the
+complications and intricacies of a _putwarrie's_ account. Each ryot
+pretty accurately remembers his own particular indebtedness, but woe to
+him if he pays the _putwarrie_ the value of a 'red cent' without taking
+a receipt. Certainly there may be a really honest _putwarrie_, but I
+very much doubt it. The name stands for chicanery and robbery. On
+the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up for money,
+questioning his accounts, and putting him not unfrequently to actual
+bodily coercion. The ryot on the other hand is constantly inventing
+excuses, getting up delays, and propounding innumerable reasons why
+he cannot pay. He will try to forge receipts, he will get up false
+evidence that he has already paid, and the wretched _putwarrie_ needs
+all his native and acquired sharpness, to hold his own. But all ryots
+are not alike, and when the _putwarrie_ gets hold of some unwary and
+ignorant bumpkin whom he can plunder, he _does_ plunder him
+systematically. All cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle
+lifters, and a _putwarrie_ after he has got over the stage of infancy,
+and has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can
+teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of villains. A
+popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:--
+
+  'Unda poortee, Cowa maro!
+  Iinnum me, billar:
+  Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!!
+  Humesha mara gwar!!'
+
+This is translated thus: 'When the shell is breaking kill the crow, and
+the wild cat at its birth.' A _Kayasth_, writer, or _putwarrie_, may be
+allowed to live till he is twelve years old, at which time he is sure
+to have learned rascality. Then kill him; but kill _gwars_ or cowherds
+any time, for they are invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim
+bucolic humour in this, and it very nearly hits the truth.
+
+The _putwarrie_, then, is an important personage. He has his
+_cutcherry_, or office, where he and his tribe (for there are always
+numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his books and accounts)
+squat on their mat on the ground. Each possesses the instruments of his
+calling in the shape of a small brass ink-pot, and an oblong box
+containing a knife, pencil, and several reeds for pens. Each has a
+bundle of papers and documents before him, this is called his _busta_,
+and contains all the papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce
+squabbles with the tenantry. There is always some noise about a
+putwarrie's cutcherry. He has generally some half dozen quarrels on
+hand, but he trusts to his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is
+essentially a man of peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a
+keen argument, and an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain.
+Another proverb says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming
+a soldier as a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.
+
+The _lohar_, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at home. Here
+is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks from the heated
+iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little to remind one of
+Longfellow's beautiful poem. The _lohar_ sits in the open air. His
+hammers and other implements of trade are very primitive. Like all
+native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work. His bellows are made of
+two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted alternately by the attendant
+coolie. As they lift they get inflated with air; they are then sharply
+forced down on their own folds, and the contained air ejected forcibly
+through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing
+charcoal which forms the fire. His principal work is making and
+sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat
+blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the
+_hussowahs_, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They
+are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in
+metal. They are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and
+even gun-locks, made by a common native village blacksmith, that could
+not be surpassed in delicacy of finish by any English smith. It is
+foreign to our ideas of the brawny blacksmith, to hear that he sits to
+his work, but this is the invariable custom. Even carpenters and masons
+squat down to theirs. Cheap labour is but an arbitrary term, and a
+country smith at home might do the work of ten or twelve men in India;
+but it is just as well to get an idea of existing differences. On many
+of the factories there are very intelligent _mistrees_, which is the
+term for the master blacksmith. These men, getting but twenty-four to
+thirty shillings a month, and supplying themselves with food and
+clothing, are nevertheless competent to work all the machinery, attend
+to the engine, and do all the ironwork necessary for the factory. They
+will superintend the staff of blacksmiths; and if the sewing-machine of
+the _mem sahib_, the gun-lock of the _luna sahib_, the lawn-mower,
+English pump, or other machine gets out of order, requiring any metal
+work, the _mistree_ is called in, and is generally competent to put
+things to rights.
+
+[Illustration: CARPENTERS AND BLACKSMITHS AT WORK]
+
+As I have said, every village is a self-contained little commune. All
+trades necessary to supplying the wants of the villagers are
+represented in it. Besides the profits from his actual calling, nearly
+every man except the daily labourer, has a little bit of land which he
+farms, so as to eke out his scanty income. All possess a cow or two, a
+few goats, and probably a pair of plough-bullocks.
+
+When a dispute arises in the village, should a person be suspected of
+theft, should his cattle trespass on his neighbour's growing crop,
+should he libel some one against whom he has a grudge, or, proceeding
+to stronger measures, take the law into his own hands and assault
+him, the aggrieved party complains to the head man of the village.
+In every village the head man is the fountain of justice. He holds
+his office sometimes by right of superior wealth, or intelligence,
+or hereditary succession, not unfrequently by the unanimous wish of
+his fellow-villagers. On a complaint being made to him, he summons
+both parties and their witnesses. The complainant is then allowed to
+nominate two men, to act as assessors or jurymen on his behalf, his
+nominations being liable to challenge by the opposite party. The
+defendant next names two to act on his behalf, and if these are
+agreed to by both parties, these four, with the head man, form what
+is called a _punchayiet_, or council of five, in fact, a jury. They
+examine the witnesses, and each party to the suit conducts his own
+case. The whole village not unfrequently attends to hear what goes on.
+In a mere caste or private quarrel, only the friends of the parties
+will attend. Every case is tried in public, and all the inhabitants of
+the village can hear the proceedings if they wish. Respectable
+inhabitants can remark on the proceedings, make suggestions, and give
+an opinion. Public feeling is thus pretty accurately gauged and
+tested, and the _punchayiet_ agree among themselves on the verdict. To
+the honour of their character for fair play be it said, that the
+decision of a _punchayiet_ is generally correct, and is very seldom
+appealed against. Our complicated system of law, with its delays, its
+technicalities, its uncertainties, and above all its expense, its
+stamp duties, its court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the
+innumerable vexations attendant on the administration of justice in
+our revenue and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of
+Hindostan. They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give
+them justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are
+far too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and
+complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the gate'
+is what they want. It is quite enough admission of the reality of our
+rule--that we are the paramount power--that they submit a case to us
+at all; and all impediments in the way of their getting cheap and
+speedy justice should be done away with. A codification of existing
+laws, a sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at
+present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less
+legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to efficiency
+and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be the aim of our
+Indian rulers. More especially should this be the case in rural
+districts where large interests are concerned, where cases involve
+delicate points of law. Our present courts, divested of their hungry
+crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough; but I would like
+to see rural courts for petty cases established, presided over by
+leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of probity, which would
+in a measure supplement the _punchayiet_ system, which would be easy
+of access, cheap in their procedure, and with all the impress of
+authority. It is a question I merely glance at, as it does not come
+within the scope of a book like this; but it is well known to every
+planter and European who has come much in contact with the rural
+classes of Hindostan, that there is a vast amount of smouldering
+disaffection, of deep-rooted dislike to, and contempt of, our present
+cumbrous costly machinery of law and justice.
+
+If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a
+plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready
+with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a _vakeel_,
+that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or
+round the factory to get some little business done, to neglect his
+work, to get his rent or produce account investigated, wherever there
+is worry, trouble, delay, or difficulty about anything concerning the
+relations between himself and the factory, the deepest and keenest
+expression of discontent and disgust his versatile and acute
+imagination can suggest, or his fluent tongue give utterance to is,
+that this is 'Adanlut lea mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.'
+Could there be a stronger commentary on our judicial institutions?
+
+The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages.
+Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing; communications are
+much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of
+besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering
+tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no
+difficulty in establishing in such village or district courts as I
+have indicated. All educated respectable Europeans with a stake in the
+country should be made Justices of the Peace, with limited powers to
+try petty cases. There is a vast material--loyalty, educated minds, an
+honest desire to do justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of
+everything pettifogging and underhand--that the Indian Government
+would do well to utilise. The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit
+him of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal
+facility to fall under pecuniary temptation. The educated gentleman
+planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering
+titles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the bench,
+and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our rulers'
+while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience, loyalty, honour,
+and integrity of those of our countrymen who might be willing to place
+their services at the disposal of Government. 'India for the Indians'
+is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it will not do to push it to
+its logical issue. Unless Indians can govern India wisely and well, in
+accordance with modern national ideas, they have no more right to
+India than Hottentots have to the Cape, or the black fellows to
+Australia. In my opinion, Hindoos would never govern Hindustan half,
+quarter, nay, one tithe as well as Englishmen. Make more of your
+Englishmen in India then, make not less of your Baboo if you please,
+but make more of your Englishmen. Keep them loyal and content. Treat
+them kindly and liberally. One Englishman contented, loyal, and
+industrious in an Indian district, is a greater pillar of strength to
+the Indian Government than ten dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them
+have as many titles, decorations, university degrees, or certificates
+of loyalty from junior civilians as they may. Not India for the
+Indians, but India for Imperial Britain say I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The
+temple.--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.
+--Their low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions
+and knavery.--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native
+officials.--The Hindoo unfit for self-government.
+
+One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the watchman or
+_chowkeydar_. He is generally a _Doosadh_, or other low caste man, and
+perambulates the village at night, at intervals uttering a loud cry or
+a fierce howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the _chowkeydars_
+of the neighbouring villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after
+cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into
+faintness. At times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out
+close to your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do
+not feel it to be so. The _chowkeydar_ has to see that no thieves
+enter the village by night. He protects the herds and property of the
+villagers. If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report it to
+the nearest police station. If you lose your way by night, you shout
+out for the nearest _chowkeydar_, and he is bound to pass you on to
+the next village. These men get a small gratuity from government, but
+the villagers also pay them a small sum, which they assess according
+to individual means. The _chowkeydar_ is generally a ragged, swarthy
+fellow with long matted hair, a huge iron-bound staff, and always a
+blue _puggra_. The blue is his official badge. Sometimes he has a
+brass badge, and carries a sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle
+of which is so small that scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found
+to fit it. It is more for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it
+has become so fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.
+
+[Illustration: HINDOO VILLAGE TEMPLES.]
+
+In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the village
+itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is often
+perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village tank.
+Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the sacred
+fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several oleaginous
+old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear only the
+_dhote_ or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton, and hanging about
+the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can be told by his
+sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder. His skin is much
+fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers. It is not
+unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as fair as many
+Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds, but lazy and
+self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is simply a sensual
+voluptuary. This is not the time or place to descant on their
+religion, which, with many gross practices, contains not a little that
+is pure and beautiful. The common idea at home that they are miserable
+pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and stones,' is, like many of the
+accepted ideas about India, very much exaggerated. That the masses,
+the crude uneducated Hindoos, place some faith in the idol, and expect
+in some mysterious way that it will influence their fate for good or
+evil, is not to be denied, but the more intelligent natives, and most
+of the Brahmins, only look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of
+the divinity. They want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to
+God, and the idol is a means to assist their thoughts heavenward. As
+works of art their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other
+symbols of the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same
+purpose. Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has
+perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the gods by erecting a
+temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shrine, which
+they visit at intervals and daub with red paint. They deposit flowers,
+pour libations of water or milk, and in other ways strive to shew that
+a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as I have
+observed, however, the vast mass of the poor toilers in India have
+little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing. They may have
+some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a holier life, but the
+fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and shelter, is too
+incessant for them to indulge much in contemplation. They have a dim
+idea of a future life, but none of them can give you anything but a
+very unsatisfactory idea of their religion. They observe certain forms
+and ceremonies, because their fathers did, and because the Brahmins
+tell them. Of real, vital, practical religion, as we know it, they
+have little or no knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low
+castes about immortality, about salvation, about the higher virtues,
+about the yearnings and wishes that every immortal soul at periods
+has, and he will simply tell you 'Khoda jane, hum greel admi,' i.e.
+'God knows; I am only a poor man!' There they take refuge always when
+you ask them anything puzzling. If you are rating them for a fault,
+asking them to perform a complicated task, or inquiring your way in a
+strange neighbourhood, the first answer you get will, ten to one, be
+'Hum greel admi.' It is said almost instinctively, and no doubt in
+many cases is the refuge of simple disinclination to think the matter
+out. Pure laziness suggests it. It is too much trouble to frame an
+answer, or give the desired information, and the 'greel admi' comes
+naturally to the lip. It is often deprecatory, meaning 'I am ignorant
+and uninformed,' you must not expect too 'much from a poor, rude,
+uncultivated man like me.' It is often, also, a delicate mode of
+flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and often conveying in a
+tone, a look, a gesture, that though the speaker is 'greel,' poor,
+humble, despised, it is only by contrast to you, the questioner, who
+are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For downright fawning
+obsequiousness, or delicate, implied, fine-strung, subtle flattery, I
+will back a Hindoo sycophant against the courtier or place-hunter of
+every other nation. It is very annoying at times, if you are in a
+hurry, and particularly want a direct answer to a plain question, to
+hear the old old story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it
+but patience. You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer
+classes are easily flurried; they will always give what information
+they have if kindly spoken to, but you must not fluster them. You must
+rouse their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of
+your inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your
+object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your motive,
+inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer that they
+think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are weary and tired,
+and you ask your distance from the place you may be wishing to reach,
+they will ridiculously underestimate the length of road. A man may
+have all the cardinal virtues, but if they think you do not like him,
+and you ask his character, they will paint him to you blacker than
+Satan himself. It is very hard to get the plain, unvarnished truth
+from a Hindoo. Many, indeed, are almost incapable of giving an
+intelligent answer to any question that does not nearly concern their
+own private and purely personal interests. They have a sordid,
+grubbing, vegetating life, many of them indeed are but little above
+the brute creation. They have no idea beyond the supply of the mere
+animal wants of the moment. The future never troubles them. They live
+their hard, unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no
+surprises. They have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and
+life is one long continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence.
+What wonder then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the
+mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to suffer,
+to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is _Kismet_--their
+fate. Many of them never strive to avert any impending calamity, such,
+for example, as sickness. A man sickens, he wraps himself in stolid
+apathy, he makes no effort to shake of his malady, he accepts it with
+sullen, despairing, pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends
+mourn in their dumb, despairing way, but they too accept the
+situation. He has no one to rouse him. If you ask him what is the
+matter, he only wails out, 'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am
+unwell. No attempt whatever to tell you of the origin of his illness,
+no wish even for sympathy or assistance. He accepts the fact of his
+illness. He struggles not with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight
+against it? Amen; so let it be. I have often been saddened to see poor
+toiling tenants struck down in this way. Even if you give them
+medicine, they often have not energy enough to take it. You must see
+them take it before your eyes. It is _your_ struggle not theirs. _You_
+must rouse them, by _your_ will. _Your_ energy must compel _them_ to
+make an attempt to combat their weakness. Once you rouse a man, and
+infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his disease, but it is a
+hard fight to get him to TRY. What a meaning in that one word TRY! TO
+ACT. TO DO. The average poor suffering native Hindoo knows nothing of
+it.
+
+Of course their moods vary. They have their 'high days and holidays,'
+feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the whole the average
+ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.
+
+In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or jungle
+lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture. The cow
+being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and butter.
+The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings of
+emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the evening
+wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust, having had
+but 'short commons' all the day on the parched and scanty herbage.
+
+The police are too often a source of annoyance, and become
+extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor. It seems
+to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority. I do not
+scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court peons,
+writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts, about the
+courts of justice, in the service of government officers, or in any
+way attached to the retinue of a government official, one and all are
+undeniably shamelessly venal and corrupt. They accept a bribe much
+more quickly than an attorney a fee, or a hungry dog a shin of beef.
+If a policeman only enters a village he expects a feast from the head
+man, and will ask a present with unblushing effrontery as a perquisite
+of his office. If a theft is reported, the inspector of the nearest
+police-station, or _thanna_ as it is called, sends one of his
+myrmidons, or, if the chance of bribes be good, he may attend himself.
+On arrival, ambling on his broken-kneed, wall-eyed pony, he seats
+himself in the verandah of the chief man of the village, who
+forthwith, with much inward trepidation, makes his appearance. The
+policeman assumes the air of a haughty conqueror receiving homage from
+a conquered foe. He assures the trembling wretch that, 'acting on
+information received,' he must search his dwelling for the missing
+goods, and that his women's apartments will have to be ransacked, and
+so annoys, goads, and insults the unfortunate man, that he is too glad
+to purchase immunity from further insolence by making the policeman a
+small present, perhaps a 'kid of the goats,' or something else. The
+guardian of the peace is then regaled with the best food in the house,
+after which he is 'wreathed with smiles.' If he sees a chance of a
+farther bribe, he takes his departure saying he will make his report
+to the _thanna_. He repeats his procedure with some of the other
+respectable inhabitants, and goes back a good deal richer than he
+came, to share the spoil with the _thannadar_ or inspector.
+
+Another man may then be sent, and the same course is followed, until
+all the force in the station have had their share. The ryot is afraid
+to resist. The police have tremendous powers for annoying and doing
+him harm. A crowd of subservient scoundrels always hangs round the
+station, dependents, relations, or accomplices. These harry the poor
+man who is unwise enough to resist the extortionate demands of the
+police. They take his cattle to the pound, foment strife between him
+and his neighbours, get up frivolous and false charges against him,
+harass him in a thousand ways, and if all else fails, get him summoned
+as a witness in some case. You might think a witness a person to be
+treated with respect, to be attended to, to have every facility
+offered him for giving his evidence at the least cost of time and
+trouble possible, consistent with the demands of justice, and the
+vindication of law and authority.
+
+Not so in India with the witness in a police case, when the force
+dislike him. If he has not previously satisfied their leech-like
+rapacity, he is tormented, tortured, bullied, and kicked 'from pillar
+to post,' till his life becomes a burden to him. He has to leave all
+his avocations, perhaps at the time when his affairs require his
+constant supervision. He has to trudge many a weary mile to attend the
+Court. The police get hold of him, and keep him often in real durance.
+He gets no opportunity for cooking or eating his food. His daily
+habits are upset and interfered with. In every little vexatious way
+(and they are masters of the art of petty torture) they so worry and
+goad him, that the very threat of being summoned as a witness in a
+police case, is often enough to make the horrified well-to-do native
+give a handsome gratuity to be allowed to sit quietly at home.
+
+This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the police.
+They exercise a real despotism. They have set up a reign of terror.
+The nature of the ryot is such, that he will submit to a great deal to
+avoid having to leave his home and his work. The police take full
+advantage of this feeling, and being perfectly unscrupulous,
+insatiably rapacious, and leagued together in villany, they make a
+golden harvest out of every case put into their hands. They have made
+the name of justice stink in the nostrils of the respectable and
+well-to-do middle classes of India.
+
+The District Superintendents are men of energy and probity, but after
+all they are only mortal. What with accounts, inspections, reports,
+forms, and innumerable writings, they cannot exercise a constant
+vigilance and personal supervision over every part of their district.
+A district may comprise many hundred villages, thousands of
+inhabitants, and leagues of intricate and densely peopled country. The
+mere physical exertion of riding over his district would be too much
+for any man in about a week. The subordinate police are all interested
+in keeping up the present system of extortion, and the inspectors and
+sub-inspectors, who wink at malpractices, come in for their share of
+the spoil. There is little combination among the peasantry. Each
+selfishly tries to save his own skin, and they know that if any one
+individual were to complain, or to dare to resist, he would have to
+bear the brunt of the battle alone. None of his neighbours would stir
+a finger to back him; he is too timid and too much in awe of the
+official European, and constitutionally too averse to resistance, to
+do aught but suffer in silence. No doubt he feels his wrongs most
+keenly, and a sullen feeling of hate and wrong is being garnered up,
+which may produce results disastrous for the peace and wellbeing of
+our empire in the East.
+
+As a case in point, I may mention one instance out of many which came
+under my own observation. I had a _moonshee_, or accountant, in one of
+my outworks in Purneah. Formerly, when the police had come through the
+factory, he had been in the habit of giving them a present and some
+food. Under my strict orders, however, that no policemen were to be
+allowed near the place unless they came on business, he had
+discontinued paying his black mail. This was too glaring an
+infringement of what they considered their vested rights to be passed
+over in silence. Example might spread. My man must be made an example
+of. I had a case in the Court of the Deputy Magistrate some twenty
+miles or so from the factory. The moonshee had been named as a witness
+to prove the writing of some papers filed in the suit. They got a
+citation for him to appear, a mere summons for his attendance as a
+witness. Armed with this, they appeared at the factory two or three
+days before the date fixed on for hearing the cause. I had just ridden
+in from Purneah, tired, hot, and dusty, and was sitting in the shade
+of the verandah with young D., my assistant. One policeman first came
+up, presented the summons, which I took, and he then stated that it
+was a _warrant_ for the production of my moonshee, and that he must
+take him away at once. I told the man it was merely a summons,
+requiring the attendance of the moonshee on a certain date, to give
+evidence in the case. He was very insolent in his manner. It is
+customary when a Hindoo of inferior rank appears before you, that he
+removes his shoes, and stands before you in a respectful attitude.
+This man's headdress was all disarranged, which in itself is a sign of
+disrespect. He spoke loudly and insolently; kept his shoes on; and sat
+down squatting on the grass before me. My assistant was very
+indignant, and wanted to speak to the man; but rightly judging that
+the object was to enrage me, and trap me into committing some overt
+act, that would be afterwards construed against me, I kept my temper,
+spoke very firmly but temperately, told him my moonshee was doing some
+work of great importance, that I could not spare his services then,
+but that I would myself see that the summons was attended to. The
+policeman became more boisterous and insolent. I offered to give him a
+letter to the magistrate, acknowledging the receipt of the summons,
+and I asked him his own name, which he refused to give. I asked him if
+he could read, and he said he could not. I then asked him if he could
+not read, how could he know what was in the paper which he had
+brought, and how he knew my moonshee was the party meant. He said a
+chowkeydar had told him so. I asked where was the chowkeydar, and
+seeing from my coolness and determination that the game was up, he
+shouted out, and from round the corner of the huts came another
+policeman, and two village chowkeydars from a distance. They had
+evidently been hiding, observing all that passed, and meaning to act
+as witnesses against me, if I had been led by the first scoundrel's
+behaviour to lose my temper. The second man was not such a brute as
+the first, and when I proceeded to ask their names and all about them,
+and told them I meant to report them to their superintendent, they
+became somewhat frightened, and tried to make excuses.
+
+I told them to be off the premises at once, offering to take the
+summons, and give a receipt for it, but they now saw that they had
+made a mistake in trying to bully me, and made off at once. Mark the
+sequel. The day before the case was fixed on for hearing, I sent off
+the moonshee who was a witness of my own, and his evidence was
+necessary to my proving my case. I supplied him with travelling
+expenses, and he started. On his way to the Court he had to pass the
+_thanna_, or police-station. The police were on the watch. He was
+seized as he passed. He was confined all that night and all the
+following day. For want of his evidence I lost my case, and having
+thus achieved one part of their object to pay me off, they let my
+moonshee go, after insult and abuse, and with threats of future
+vengeance should he ever dare to thwart or oppose them. This was
+pretty 'hot' you think, but it was not all. Fearing my complaint to
+the superintendent, or to the authorities, might get them into
+trouble, they laid a false charge against me, that I had obstructed
+them in the discharge of their duty, that I had showered abuse on
+them, used threatening language, and insulted the majesty of the law
+by tearing up and spitting upon the respected summons of Her Majesty.
+On this complaint I was accordingly summoned into Purneah. The charge
+was a tissue of the most barefaced lies, but I had to ride fifty-four
+miles in the burning sun, ford several rivers, and undergo much
+fatigue and discomfort. My work was of course seriously interfered
+with. I had to take in my assistant as witness, and one or two of the
+servants who had been present. I was put to immense trouble, and no
+little expense, to say nothing of the indignation which I naturally
+felt, and all because I had set my face against a well known evil, and
+was determined not to submit to impudent extortion. Of course the case
+broke down. They contradicted themselves in almost every particular.
+The second constable indeed admitted that I had offered them a letter
+to the magistrate, and had not moved out of the verandah during the
+colloquy. I was honourably acquitted, and had the satisfaction of
+seeing the lying rascals put into the dock by the indignant magistrate
+and prosecuted summarily for getting up a false charge and giving
+false evidence. It was a lesson to the police in those parts, and they
+did not dare to trouble me much afterwards; but it is only one
+instance out of hundreds I could give, and which every planter has
+witnessed of the barefaced audacity, the shameless extortion, the
+unblushing lawlessness of the rural police of India.
+
+It is a gigantic evil, but surely not irremediable. By adding more
+European officers to the force; by educating the people and making
+them more intelligent, independent, and self-reliant, much may be done
+to abate the evil, but at present it is admittedly a foul ulcer on the
+administration of justice under our rule. The menial who serves a
+summons, gets a decree of Court to execute, or is entrusted with any
+order of an official nature, expects to be bribed to do his duty. If
+he does not get his fee, he will throw such impediments in the way,
+raise such obstacles, and fashion such delays, that he completely
+foils every effort to procure justice through a legal channel. No
+wonder a native hates our English Courts. Our English officials, let
+it be plainly understood, are above suspicion. It needs not my poor
+testimony to uphold their character for high honour, loyal integrity,
+and zealous eagerness to do 'justly, and to walk uprightly.' They are
+unwearied in their efforts to get at truth, and govern wisely; but our
+system of law is totally unsuited for Orientals. It is made a medium
+for chicanery and trickery of the most atrocious form. Most of the
+native underlings are utterly venal and corrupt. Increased pay does
+not mean decrease of knavery. Cheating, and lying, and taking bribes,
+and abuse of authority are ingrained into their very souls; and all
+the cut and dry formulas of namby pamby philanthropists, the inane
+maunderings of stay-at-home sentimentalists, the wise saws of
+self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo as he
+really shews himself to us in daily and hourly contact with him, will
+ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule, would be
+productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless venality, or
+would end in anything but anarchy and chaos.
+
+It sounds very well in print, and increases the circulation of a paper
+or two among the Baboos, to cry out that our task is to elevate the
+oppressed and ignorant millions of the East, to educate them into
+self-government, to make them judges, officers, lawgivers, governors
+over all the land. To vacate our place and power, and let the Baboo
+and the Bunneah, to whom we have given the glories of Western
+civilization, rule in our place, and guide the fortunes of these
+toiling millions who owe protection and peace to our fostering rule.
+It is a noble sentiment to resign wealth, honour, glory, and power; to
+give up a settled government; to alter a policy that has welded the
+conflicting elements of Hindustan into one stable whole; to throw up
+our title of conqueror, and disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A
+sprinkling of thinly-veneered, half-educated natives, want a share of
+the loaves and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people
+of the 'man and brother' type, cry out at home to let them have their
+way.
+
+No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life and
+property; develop the resources of the country; foster all the virtues
+you can find in the native mind; but till you can give him the energy,
+the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly, honourable
+straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of meanness,
+trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do right; his
+contempt for oppression of the weak; his self-dependence; his probity.
+But why go on? When you make Hindoos honest, truthful, God-fearing
+Englishmen, you can let them govern themselves; but as soon 'may the
+leopard change his spots,' as the Hindoo his character. He is wholly
+unfit for self-government; utterly opposed to honest, truthful, stable
+government at all. Time brings strange changes, but the wisdom which
+has governed the country hitherto, will surely be able to meet the new
+demand that may be made upon it in the immediate present, or in the
+far distant future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Jungle wild fruits.--Curious method of catching quail.--Quail nets.
+--Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.--Native wrestling.--The
+trainer.--How they train for a match.--Rules of wrestling.--Grips.
+--A wrestling match.--Incidents of the struggle.--Description of a
+match between a Brahmin and a blacksmith.--Sparring for the grip.--The
+blacksmith has it.--The struggle.--The Brahmin getting the worst of
+it.--Two to one on the little 'un!--The Brahmin plays the waiting
+game, turns the tables _and_ the blacksmith.--Remarks on wrestling.
+
+A peculiarity in the sombre sal jungles is the scarcity of wild fruit.
+At home the woods are filled with berries and fruit-bearing bushes.
+Who among my readers has not a lively recollection of bramble hunting,
+nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries, wild strawberries,
+raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might walk many a mile through
+the sal jungles without meeting fruit of any kind, save the dry and
+tasteless wild fig, or the sickly mhowa.
+
+There are indeed very few jungle fruits that I have ever come across.
+There is one acid sort of plum called the _Omra_, which makes a good
+preserve, but is not very nice to eat raw. The _Gorkah_ is a small red
+berry, very sweet and pleasant, slightly acid, not unlike a red
+currant in fact, and with two small pips or stones. The Nepaulese call
+it _Bunchooree_. It grows on a small stunted-looking bush, with few
+branches, and a pointed leaf, in form resembling the acacia leaf, but
+not so large.
+
+The _Glaphur_ is a brown, round fruit; the skin rather crisp and hard,
+and of a dull earthy colour, not unlike that of a common boiled
+potato. The inside is a stringy, spongy-looking mass, with small seeds
+embedded in a gummy viscid substance. The taste is exactly like an
+almond, and it forms a pleasant mouthful if one is thirsty.
+
+Travelling one day along one of the glades I have mentioned as
+dividing the strips of jungle, I was surprised to see a man before me
+in a field of long stubble, with a cloth spread over his head, and two
+sticks projecting in front at an obtuse angle to his body, forming
+horn-like projections, on which the ends of his cloth twisted
+spirally, were tied. I thought from his curious antics and movements,
+that he must be mad, but I soon discovered that there was method in
+his madness. He was catching quail. The quail are often very numerous
+in the stubble fields, and the natives adopt very ingenious devices
+for their capture. This was one I was now witnessing. Covering
+themselves with their cloth as I have described, the projecting ends
+of the two sticks representing the horns, they simulate all the
+movements of a cow or bull. They pretend to paw up the earth, toss
+their make-believe horns, turn round and pretend to scratch
+themselves, and in fact identify themselves with the animal they are
+representing; and it is irresistibly comic to watch a solitary
+performer go through this _al fresco_ comedy. I have laughed often at
+some cunning old herdsman, or shekarry. When they see you watching
+them, they will redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old
+bull, going through all his pranks and practices, and throw you into
+convulsions of laughter.
+
+Round two sides of the field, they have previously put fine nets, and
+at the apex they have a large cage with a decoy quail inside, or
+perhaps a pair. The quail is a running bird, disinclined for flight
+except at night; in the day-time they prefer running to using their
+wings. The idiotic looking old cow, as we will call the hunter, has
+all his wits about him. He proceeds very slowly and warily, his keen
+eye detects the coveys of quail, which way they are running; his ruse
+generally succeeds wonderfully. He is no more like a cow, than that
+respectable animal is like a cucumber; but he paws, and tosses, and
+moves about, pretends to eat, to nibble here, and switch his tail
+there, and so manoeuvres as to keep the running quail away from the
+unprotected edges of the field. When they get to the verge protected
+by the net, they begin to take alarm; they are probably not very
+certain about the peculiar looking 'old cow' behind them, and running
+along the net, they see the decoy quails evidently feeding in great
+security and freedom. The V shaped mouth of the large basket cage
+looks invitingly open. The puzzling nets are barring the way, and the
+'old cow' is gradually closing up behind. As the hunter moves along, I
+should have told you, he rubs two pieces of dry hard sticks gently up
+and down his thigh with one hand, producing a peculiar crepitation, a
+crackling sound, not sufficient to startle the birds into flight, but
+alarming them enough to make them get out of the way of the 'old cow.'
+One bolder than the others, possibly the most timid of the covey,
+irritated by the queer crackling sound, now enters the basket, the
+others follow like a flock of sheep; and once in, the puzzling shape
+of the entrance prevents their exit. Not unfrequently the hunter bags
+twenty or even thirty brace of quail in one field, by this ridiculous
+looking but ingenious method.
+
+The small quail net is also sometimes used for the capture of hares.
+The natives stretch the net in the jungle, much as they do the large
+nets for deer described in a former chapter; forming a line, they then
+beat up the hares, of which there are no stint. My friend Pat once
+made a novel haul. His _lobarkhanna_ or blacksmith's shop was close to
+a patch of jungle, and Pat often noticed numbers of quail running
+through the loose chinks and crevices of the walls, in the morning
+when anyone went into the place for the first time; this was at a
+factory called Rajpore. Pat came to the conclusion, that as the
+blacksmith's fires smouldered some time after work was discontinued at
+night, and as the atmosphere of the hut was warmer and more genial
+than the cold, foggy, outside air, for it was in the cold season, the
+quail probably took up their quarters in the hut for the night, on
+account of the warmth and shelter. One night therefore he got some of
+his servants, and with great caution and as much silence as possible,
+they let down a quantity of nets all round the lobarkhanna, and in the
+morning they captured about twenty quails.
+
+The quail is very pugnacious, and as they are easily trained to fight,
+they are very common pets with the natives, who train and keep them to
+pit them against each other, and bet what they can afford on the
+result. A quail fight, a battle between two trained rams, a cock
+fight, even an encounter between trained tamed buffaloes, are very
+common spectacles in the villages; but the most popular sport is a
+good wrestling match.
+
+The dwellers in the Presidency towns, and indeed in most of the large
+stations, seldom see an exhibition of this kind; but away in the
+remote interior, near the frontier, it is very popular pastime, and
+wrestling is a favourite with all classes. Such manly sport is rather
+opposed to the commonly received idea at home, of the mild Hindoo. In
+nearly every village of Behar however, and all along the borders of
+Nepaul, there is, as a rule, a bit of land attached to the residence
+of some head man, or the common property of the commune, set apart for
+the practice of athletic sports, chief of which is the favourite
+_khoosthee_ or wrestling. There is generally some wary old veteran,
+who has won his spurs, or laurels, or belt, or whatever you choose to
+call it, in many a hard fought and well contested tussle for the
+championship of his little world; he is 'up to every dodge,' and knows
+every feint and guard, every wile and tactic of the wrestling ground.
+It is generally in some shady grove, secluded and cool; here of an
+evening when the labours of the day are over, the most stalwart sons
+of the hamlet meet, to test each others skill and endurance in a
+friendly _shake_. The old man puts them through the preliminary
+practice, shows them every trick at his command, and attends strictly
+to their training and various trials. The ground is dug knee deep, and
+forms a soft, good holding stand. I have often looked on at this
+evening practice, and it would astonish a stranger, who cannot
+understand strength, endurance, and activity being attributed to a
+'mere nigger,' to see the severe training these young lads impose upon
+themselves. They leap into the air, and suddenly assume a sitting
+position, then leap up again and squat down with a force that would
+seem to jerk every bone in their bodies out of its place; this gets up
+the muscles of the thighs. Some lie down at full length, only touching
+the ground with the extreme tips of their toes, their arms doubled up
+under them, and sustaining the full weight of the body on the extended
+palms of the hands. They then sway themselves backwards and forwards
+to their full length, never shifting hand or toe, till they are bathed
+in perspiration; they keep up a uniform steady backward and forward
+movement, so as to develop the muscles of the arms, chest, and back.
+They practice leaping, running, and lifting weights. Some standing at
+their full height, brace up the muscles of the shoulder and upper arm,
+and then leaping up, allow themselves to fall to earth on the tensely
+strung muscles of the shoulder. This severe exercise gets the muscles
+into perfect form, and few, very few indeed of our untrained youths,
+could cope in a dead lock, or fierce struggle, with a good village
+Hindoo or Mussulman in active training, and having any knowledge of
+the tricks of the wrestling school. No hitting is allowed. The Hindoo
+system of wrestling is the perfection of science and skill; mere dead
+weight of course will always tell in a close grip, but the catches,
+the holds, the twists and dodges that are practised, allow for the
+fullest development of cultivated skill, as against mere brute force.
+The system is purely a scientific one. The fundamental rule is 'catch
+where you can,' only you must not clutch the hair or strike with the
+fists.
+
+The loins are tightly girt with a long waist-belt or _kummerbund_ of
+cloth, which, passed repeatedly between the limbs and round the loins,
+sufficiently braces up and protects that part of the body. In some
+matches you are not allowed to clutch this waist cloth or belt, in
+some villages it is allowed; the custom varies in various places, but
+what is a fair grip, and what is not, is always made known before the
+competitors engage. A twist, or grip, or dodge, is known as a
+_paench_. This literally means a screw or twist, but in wrestling
+phraseology, means any grip by which you can get such an advantage
+over your opponent as to defeat him. For every paench there is a
+counter paench. A throw is considered satisfactory when BOTH shoulders
+of your opponent touch the ground simultaneously. The old _khalifa_ or
+trainer takes a great interest in the progress of his _chailas_ or
+pupils. _Chaila_ really means disciple or follower. Every khalifa has
+his favourite paenches or grips, which have stood him in good stead in
+his old battling days; he teaches these paenches to his pupils, so
+that when you get young fellows from different villages to meet, you
+see a really fine exhibition of wrestling skill. There is little
+tripping, as amongst our wrestlers at home; a dead-lock is uncommon.
+The rival wrestlers generally bound into the ring, slapping their
+thighs and arms with a loud resounding slap. They lift their legs high
+up from the ground with every step, and scheme and manoeuvre sometimes
+for a long while to get the best corner; they try to get the sun into
+their adversaries eyes; they scan the appearance and every movement of
+their opponent. The old wary fellows take it very coolly, and if they
+can't get the desired side of the ground, they keep hopping about like
+a solemn old ostrich, till the impetuosity or impatience of their foe
+leads him to attack. They remind you for all the world of a pair of
+game cocks, their bodies are bent, their heads almost touching. There
+is a deal of light play with the hands, each trying to get the other
+by the wrist or elbow, or at the back of the head round the neck. If
+one gets the other by a finger even, it is a great advantage, as he
+would whip nimbly round, and threaten to break the impounded finger;
+this would be considered quite fair. One will often suddenly drop on
+his knees and try to reach the ankles of his adversary. I have seen a
+slippery customer, stoop suddenly down, grasp up a handful of dust,
+and throw it into the eyes of his opponent. It was done with the
+quickness of thought, but it was detected, and on an appeal by the
+sufferer, the knave was well thrashed by the onlookers.
+
+There are many professionals who follow no other calling. Wrestlers
+are kept by Rajahs and wealthy men, who get up matches. Frequently one
+village will challenge another, like our village cricket clubs. The
+villagers often get up small subscriptions, and purchase a silver
+armlet or bracelet, the prize him who shall hold his own against all
+comers. The 'Champion's Belt' scarcely calls forth greater
+competition, keener rivalry, or better sport. It is at once the most
+manly and most scientific sport in which the native indulges. A
+disputed fall sometimes terminates in a general free fight, when the
+backers of the respective men lay on the stick to each other with
+mutual hate and hearty lustiness.
+
+It is not by any means always the strongest who wins. The man who
+knows the most paenches, who is agile, active, cool, and careful, will
+not unfrequently overthrow an antagonist twice his weight and
+strength. All the wrestlers in the country-side know each other's
+qualifications pretty accurately, and at a general match got up by a
+Zemindar or planter, or by public subscription, it is generally safe
+to let them handicap the men who are ready to compete for the prizes.
+We used generally to put down a few of the oldest professors, and let
+them pit couples against each other; the sport to the onlookers was
+most exciting. Between the men themselves as a rule, the utmost good
+humour reigns, they strive hard to win, but they accept a defeat with
+smiling resignation. It is only between rival village champions,
+different caste men, or worse still, men of differing religions, such
+as a Hindoo and a Mahommedan, that there is any danger of a fight. A
+disturbance is a rare exception, but I have seen a few wrestling
+matches end in a regular general scrimmage, with broken heads, and
+even fractured limbs. With good management however, and an efficient
+body of men to guard against a breach of the peace, this need never
+occur.
+
+It rarely takes much trouble to get up a match. If you tell your head
+men that you would like to see one, say on a Saturday afternoon, they
+pass the word to the different villages, and at the appointed time,
+all the finest young fellows and most of the male population, led by
+their head man, with the old trainer in attendance, are at the
+appointed place. The competitors are admitted within the enclosure,
+and round it the rows of spectators packed twenty deep squat on the
+ground, and watch the proceedings with deep interest.
+
+While the _Punchayiet_, a picked council, are taking down the names of
+intending competitors, finding out about their form and performances,
+and assigning to each his antagonist, the young men throw themselves
+with shouts and laughter into the ring, and go through all the
+evolutions and postures of the training ground. They bound about, try
+all sorts of antics and contortions, display wonderful agility and
+activity; it is a pretty sight to see, and one can't help admiring
+their vigorous frames, and graceful proportions. They are handsome,
+well made, supple, wiry fellows, although they be NIGGERS, and Hodge
+and Giles at home would not have a chance with them in a fair
+wrestling bout, conducted according to their own laws and customs.
+
+The entries are now all made, places and pairs are arranged, and to
+the ear-splitting thunder of two or three tom-toms, two pair of
+strapping youngsters step into the ring; they carefully scan each
+other, advance, shake hands, or salaam, leisurely tie up their back
+hair, slap their muscles, rub a little earth over their shoulders and
+arms, so that their adversary may have a fair grip, then step by step
+slowly and gradually they near each other. A few quick passages are
+now interchanged; the lithe supple fingers twist and intertwine, grips
+are formed on arm and neck. The postures change each moment, and are a
+study for an anatomist or sculptor. As they warm to their work they
+get more reckless; they are only the raw material, the untrained lads.
+There is a quick scuffle, heaving, swaying, rocking, and struggling,
+and the two victors, leaping into the air, and slapping their chests,
+bound back into the gratified circle of their comrades, while the two
+discomfited athletes, forcing a rueful smile, retire and 'take a back
+seat.' Two couple of more experienced hands now face each other. There
+is pretty play this time, as the varying changes of the contest bring
+forth ever varying displays of skill and science. The crowd shout as
+an advantage is gained, or cry out 'Hi, hi' in a doubtful manner, as
+their favourite seems to be getting the worst of it. The result
+however is much the same; after a longer or shorter time, two get
+fairly thrown and retire. If there is any dispute, it is at once
+referred to the judges, who sit grimly watching the struggle, and
+comparing the paenches displayed, with those they themselves have
+practised in many a well-won fight. On a reference being made, both
+combatants retain their exact hold and position, only cease straining.
+As soon as the matter is settled, they go at it again till victory
+determine in favour of the lucky man. In no similar contest in England
+I am convinced would there be so much fairness, quietness, and order.
+The only stimulants in the crowd are betel nut and tobacco. All is
+orderly and calm, and at any moment a word from the sahib will quell
+any rising turbulence. It is now time for a still more scientific
+exhibition.
+
+Pat has a man, a tall, wiry, handsome Brahmin, who has never yet been
+beaten. Young K. has long been jealous of his uniform success, and on
+several occasions has brought an antagonist to battle with Pat's
+champion. To-day he has got a sturdy young blacksmith, whom rumour
+hath much vaunted, and although he is not so tall as Pat's wrestler,
+his square, deep chest and stalwart limbs, give promise of great
+strength and endurance.
+
+As the two men strip and bound into the ring, there is the usual hush
+of anticipation. Keen eyes scan the appearance of the antagonists.
+They are both models of manly beauty. The blacksmith, though more
+awkward in his motions, has a cool, determined look about him. The
+Brahmin, conscious of his reputation, walks quickly up, with a smile
+of rather ostentatious condescension on his finely cut features, and
+offers his hand to the blacksmith. The little man is evidently
+suspicious. He thinks this may be a deeply laid trap to get a grip
+upon him. Nor does he like the bland patronising manner of
+'Roopuarain,' so he surlily draws back, at which there is a roar of
+laughter from the. crowd, in which we cannot help joining.
+
+K. now comes forward, and pats his 'fancy man' on the back. The two
+wrestlers thereupon shake hands, and then in the usual manner both
+warily move backwards and forwards, till amid cries from the
+onlookers, the blacksmith makes a sudden dash at the practised old
+player, and in a moment has him round the waist.
+
+He evidently depended on his superior strength. For a moment he fairly
+lifted Roopnarain clean off his legs, swayed him to and fro, and with
+a mighty strain tried to throw him to the ground. Bending to the
+notes, Roopnarain allowed himself to yield, till his feet touched the
+ground, then crouching like a panther, he bounded forward, and getting
+his leg behind that of the blacksmith, by a deft side twist he nearly
+threw him over. The little fellow, however, steadied himself on the
+ground with one hand, recovered his footing, and again had the Brahmin
+firmly locked in his tenacious hold. Roopuarain did not like the grip.
+These were not the tactics he was accustomed to. While the other
+tugged and strained, he, quietly yielding his lithe lissome frame to
+every effort, tried hard with obstinate endeavour to untwist the hands
+that held him firmly locked. It was beautiful play to see the mute
+hands of both the wrestlers feeling, tearing, twisting at each other,
+but the grasp was too firm, and, taking advantage of a momentary
+movement, Roopnarain got his elbow under the other's chin, then
+leaning forward, he pressed his opponent's head backward, and the
+strain began to tell. He fought fiercely, he struggled hard, but the
+determined elbow was not to be baulked, and to save himself from an
+overthrow the blacksmith was forced to relax his hold, and sprang
+nimbly back beyond reach, to mature another attack. Roopnarain quietly
+walked round, rubbed his shoulders with earth, and with the same
+mocking smile, stood leaning forward, his hands on his knees, waiting
+for a fresh onset.
+
+This time the young fellow was more cautious. He found he had no
+novice to deal with, and the Brahmin was not at all anxious to
+precipitate matters. By a splendid feint, after some pretty sparring
+for a grip, the youngster again succeeded in getting a hold on the
+Brahmin, and wheeling round quick as lightning, got behind Roopnarain,
+and with a dexterous trip threw the tall man heavily on his face. He
+then tried to get him by the ankle, and bending his leg up backwards,
+he would have got a purchase for turning him on his back. The old man
+was, however, 'up to this move.' He lay extended flat on his chest,
+his legs wide apart. As often as the little one bent down to grasp his
+ankle, he would put out a hand stealthily, and silently as a snake,
+and endeavour to get the little man's leg in his grasp. This
+necessitated a change of position, and round and round they spun, each
+trying to get hold of the other by the leg or foot. The blacksmith got
+his knee on the neck of the Brahmin, and by sheer strength tried
+several times with a mighty heave to turn his opponent. It was no use,
+however, it is next to impossible to throw a man when he is lying flat
+out as the Brahmin now was. It is difficult enough to turn the dead
+weight of a man in that position, and when he is straining every nerve
+to resist the accomplishment of your object it becomes altogether
+impracticable. The excitement in the crowd was intense. The very
+drummer--I ought to call him a tom-tomer--had ceased to beat his
+tom-tom. Pat's lips were firmly pressed together, and K. was trembling
+with suppressed excitement. The heaving chests and profuse
+perspiration bedewing the bodies of both combatants, told how severe
+had been their exertions. The blacksmith seemed gathering himself up
+for a mighty effort, when, quick as light, the Brahmin drew his limbs
+together, was seen to arch his back, and with a sudden backward
+movement, seemed to glide from under his dashing assailant, and
+quicker than it takes me to write it, the positions were reversed.
+
+The Brahmin was now above, and the blacksmith taking in the altered
+aspect of affairs at a glance, threw himself flat on the ground, and
+tried the same tactics as his opponent. The different play of the two
+men now came strongly into relief. Instead of exhausting himself with
+useless efforts, Roopnarain, while keeping a wary eye on every
+movement of his prostrate foe, contented himself while he took breath,
+with coolly and and yet determinedly making his grip secure. Putting
+out one leg then within reach of his opponent's hand, as a lure, he
+saw the blacksmith stretch forth to grasp the tempting hold.
+
+Quicker than the dart of the python, the fierce onset of the kingly
+tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering lightning, was the
+grasp made at the outstretched arm by the practised Brahmin. His
+tenacious fingers closed tightly round the other's wrist. One sudden
+wrench, and he had the blacksmith's arm bent back and powerless, held
+down on the little fellow's own shoulders. Pat smiled a derisive
+smile, K. uttered what was not a benison, while the Brahmins in the
+crowd, and all Pat's men, raised a truly Hindoo howl. The position of
+the men was now this. The stout little man was flat on his face, one
+of his arms bent helplessly round on his own back. Roopnarain, calm
+and cool as ever, was astride the prostrate blacksmith, placidly
+surveying the crowd. The little man writhed, and twisted, and
+struggled, he tried with his legs to entwine himself with those of the
+Brahmin. He tried to spin round; the Brahmin was watching with the eye
+of a hawk for a grip of the other arm, but it was closely drawn in,
+and firmly pressed in safety under the heaving chest of the
+blacksmith. The muscles were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that
+was seen at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete
+was surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm
+further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero,
+game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain tried
+to bend him over, till we thought either the poor fellow's neck must
+break, or his arm be torn from its socket.
+
+He endured all without a murmur. Not a chance did he throw away. Once
+or twice he made a splendid effort, once he tried to catch the Brahmin
+again by the leg. Roopnarain pounced down, but the arm was as quickly
+within its shield. It was now but a question of time and endurance.
+Every dodge that he was master of did the Brahmin bring into play.
+They were both in perfect training, muscles as hard as steel, every
+nerve and sinew strained to the utmost tension. Roopnarain actually
+tried tickling his man, but he would not give him a chance. At length
+he got his hand in the bent elbow of the free arm, and slowly, and
+laboriously forced it out. There were tremendous spurts and struggles,
+but patient determination was not to be baulked. Slowly the arm came
+up over the back, the struggle was tremendous, but at length both the
+poor fellow's arms were tightly pinioned behind his back. He was
+powerless now. The Brahmin drew the two arms backwards, towards the
+head of the poor little fellow, and he was bound to come over or have
+both his arms broken. With a hoarse cry of sobbing-pain and shame, the
+brave little man came over, both shoulders on the mould, and the
+scientific old veteran was again the victor.
+
+This is but a very faint description of a true wrestling bout among
+the robust dwellers in these remote villages. It may seem cruel, but
+it is to my mind the perfection of muscular strength and skill,
+combined with keen subtle, intellectual acuteness. It brings every
+faculty of mind and body into play, it begets a healthy, honest love
+of fair play, and an admiration of endurance and pluck, two qualities
+of which Englishmen certainly can boast. Strength without skill and
+training will not avail. It is a fine manly sport, and one which
+should be encouraged by all who wish well to our dusky fellow subjects
+in the far off plains and valleys of Hindostan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Indigo seed growing.--Seed buying and buyers.--Tricks of sellers.
+--Tests for good seed.--The threshing-floor.--Seed cleaning and
+packing.--Staff of servants.--Despatching the bags by boat.--The
+'Pooneah' or rent day.--Purneah planters--their hospitality.--The
+rent day a great festival.--Preparation.--Collection of rents.--Feast
+to retainers.--The reception in the evening.--Tribute.--Old customs.
+--Improvisatores and bards.--Nautches.--Dancing and music.--The dance
+of the Dangurs.--Jugglers and itinerary showmen.--'Bara Roopes,' or
+actors and mimics.--Their different styles of acting.
+
+Besides indigo planting proper, there is another large branch of
+industry in North Bhaugulpore, and along the Nepaul frontier there,
+and in Purneah, which is the growing of indigo seed for the Bengal
+planters. The system of advances and the mode of cultivation is much
+the same as that followed in indigo planting proper. The seed is sown
+in June or July, is weeded and tended all through the rains, and cut
+in December. The planters advance about four rupees a beegah to the
+ryot, who cuts his seed-plant, and brings it into the factory
+threshing ground, where it is beaten out, cleaned, weighed, and packed
+in bags. When the seed has been threshed out and cleaned, it is
+weighed, and the ryot or cultivator gets four rupees for every
+maund--a maund being eighty pounds avoirdupois. The previous advance
+is deducted. The rent or loan account is adjusted, and the balance
+made over in cash.
+
+Others grow the seed on their own account, without taking advances,
+and bring it to the factory for sale. If prices are ruling high, they
+may get much more than four rupees per maund for it, and they adopt
+all kinds of ingenious devices to adulterate the seed, and increase
+its weight. They mix dust with it, seeds of weeds, even grains of
+wheat, and mustard, pea, and other seeds. In buying seed, therefore,
+one has to be very careful, to reject all that looks bad, or that may
+have been adulterated. They will even get old useless seed, the refuse
+stock of former years, and mixing this with leaves of the neem tree
+and some turmeric powder, give it a gloss that makes it look like
+fresh seed.
+
+When you suspect that the seed has been tampered with in this manner,
+you wet some of it, and rub it on a piece of fresh clean linen, so as
+to bring off the dye. Where the attempt has been flagrant, you are
+sometimes tempted to take the law into your own hands, and administer
+a little of the castigation which the cheating rascal so richly
+deserves. In other cases it is necessary to submit the seed to a
+microscopic examination. If any old, worn seeds are detected, you
+reject the sample unhesitatingly. Even when the seed appears quite
+good, you subject it to yet another test. Take one or two hundred
+seeds, and putting them on a damp piece of the pith of a plantain
+tree, mixed with a little earth, set them in a warm place, and in two
+days you will be able to tell what percentage has germinated, and what
+is incapable of germination. If the percentage is good, the seed may
+be considered as fairly up to the sample, and it is purchased. There
+are native seed buyers, who try to get as much into their hands as
+they can, and rig the market. There are also European buyers, and
+there is a keen rivalry in all the bazaars.
+
+The threshing-floor, and seed-cleaning ground presents a busy sight
+when several thousand maunds of seed are being got ready for despatch
+by boats. The dirty seed, full of dust and other impurities, is heaped
+up in one corner. The floor is in the shape of a large square, nicely
+paved with cement, as hard and clean as marble. Crowds of nearly nude
+coolies, hurry to and fro with scoops of seed resting on their
+shoulders. When they get in line, at right angles to the direction in
+which the wind is blowing, they move slowly along, letting the seed
+descend on the heap below, while the wind winnows it, and carries the
+dust in dense clouds to leeward. This is repeated over and over again,
+till the seed is as clean as it can be made. It is put through bamboo
+sieves, so formed that any seed larger than indigo cannot pass
+through. What remains in the sieve is put aside, and afterwards
+cleaned, sorted, and sold as food, or if useless, thrown away or given
+to the fowls. The men and boys dart backwards and forwards, there is a
+steady drip, drip, of seed from the scoops, dense clouds of dust, and
+incessant noise and bustle. Peons or watchmen are stationed all around
+to see that none is wasted or stolen. Some are filling sacks full of
+the cleaned seed, and hauling them off to the weighman and his clerk.
+Two maunds are put in every sack, and when weighed the bags are hauled
+up close to the _godown_ or store-room. Here are an army of men with
+sailmaker's needles and twine. They sew up the bags, which are then
+hauled away to be marked with the factory brand. Carts are coming and
+going, carrying bags to the boats, which are lying at the river bank
+taking in their cargo, and the returning carts bring back loads of
+wood from the banks of the river. In one corner, under a shed, sits
+the sahib chaffering with a party of _paikars_ (seed merchants), who
+have brought seed for sale.
+
+Of course he decries the seed, says it is bad, will not hear of the
+price wanted, and laughs to scorn all the fervent protestations that
+the seed was grown on their own ground, and has never passed through
+any hands but their own. If you are satisfied that the seed is good,
+you secretly name your price to your head man, who forthwith takes up
+the work of depreciation. You move off to some other department of the
+work. The head man and the merchants sit down, perhaps smoke a
+_hookah_, each trying to outwit the other, but after a keen encounter
+of wits perhaps a bargain is made. A pretty fair price is arrived at,
+and away goes the purchased seed, to swell the heap at the other end
+of the yard. It has to be carefully weighed first, and the weighman
+gets a little from the vendor as his perquisite, which the factory
+takes from him at the market rate.
+
+You have buyers of your own out in the _dehaat_ (district), and the
+parcels they have bought come in hour by hour, with invoices detailing
+all particulars of quantity, quality, and price. The loads from the
+seed depots and outworks, come rolling up in the afternoon, and have
+all to be weighed, checked, noted down, and examined. Every man's hand
+is against you. You cannot trust your own servants. For a paltry bribe
+they will try to pass a bad parcel of seed, and even when you have
+your European assistants to help you, it is hard work to avoid being
+over-reached in some shape or other.
+
+You have to keep up a large staff of writers, who make out invoices
+and accounts, and keep the books. Your correspondence alone is enough
+work for one man, and you have to tally bags, count coolies, see them
+paid their daily wage, attend to lawsuits that may be going on, and
+yet find time to superintend the operations of the farm, and keep an
+eye to your rents and revenues from the villages. It is a busy, an
+anxious time. You have a vast responsibility on your shoulders, and
+when one takes into consideration the climate you have to contend
+with, the home comforts and domestic joys you have to do without, the
+constant tension of mind and irritation of body from dust, heat,
+insects, lies, bribery, robbers, and villany of every description,
+that meets you on all hands, it must be allowed that a planter at such
+a time has no easy life.
+
+The time at which you despatch the seed is also the very time when you
+are preparing your land for spring sowings. This requires almost as
+much surveillance as the seed-buying and despatching. You have not a
+moment you can call your own. If you had subordinates you could trust,
+who would be faithful and honest, you could safely leave part of the
+work to them, but from very sad experience I have found that trusting
+to a native is trusting to a very rotten stick. They are certainly not
+all bad, but there are just enough exceptions to prove the rule.
+
+One peculiar custom prevailed in this border district of North
+Bhaugulpore, which I have not observed elsewhere. At the beginning of
+the financial year, when the accounts of the past season had all been
+made up and arranged, and the collection of the rents for the new year
+was beginning, the planters and Zemindars held what was called the
+_Pooneah_. It is customary for all cultivators and tenants to pay a
+proportion of their rent in advance. The Pooneah might therefore be
+called 'rent-day.' A similar day is set apart for the same purpose in
+Tirhoot, called _tousee_ or collections, but it is not attended by the
+same ceremonious observances, and quaint customs, as attach to the
+Pooneah on the border land.
+
+When every man's account has been made up and checked by the books,
+the Pooneah day is fixed on. Invitations are sent to all your
+neighbouring friends, who look forward to each other's annual Pooneah
+as a great gala day. In North Bhaugulpore and Purneah, nearly all the
+planters and English-speaking population belong to old families who
+have been born in the district, and have settled and lived there long
+before the days of quick communication with home. Their rule among
+their dependants is patriarchal. Everyone is known among the natives,
+who have seen him since his birth living amongst them, by some pet
+name. The old men of the villages remember his father and his father's
+father, the younger villagers have had him pointed out to them on
+their visits to the factory as 'Willie Baba,' 'Freddy Baba,' or
+whatever his boyish name may have been, with the addition of 'Baba,'
+which is simply a pet name for a child. These planters know every
+village for miles and miles. They know most of the leading men in each
+village by name. The villagers know all about them, discuss their
+affairs with the utmost freedom, and not a single thing, ever so
+trivial, happens in the planter's home but it is known and commented
+on in all the villages that lie within the _ilaka_ (jurisdiction) of
+the factory.
+
+The hospitality of these planters is unbounded. They are most of them
+much liked by all the natives round. I came a 'stranger amongst them,'
+and in one sense, and not a flattering sense, they tried 'to take me
+in,' but only in one or two instances, which I shall not specify here.
+By nearly all I was welcomed and kindly treated, and I formed some
+very lasting friendships among them. Old traditions of princely
+hospitality still linger among them. They were clannish in the best
+sense of the word. The kindness and attention given to aged or
+indigent relations was one of their best traits. I am afraid the race
+is fast dying out. Lavish expenditure, and a too confiding faith in
+their native dependants has often brought the usual result. But many
+of my readers will associate with the name of Purneah or Bhaugulpore
+planter, recollections of hospitality and unostentatious kindness, and
+memories of glorious sport and warm-hearted friendships.
+
+On the Pooneah day then, or the night before, many of these friends
+would meet. The day has long been known to all the villages round, and
+nothing could better shew the patriarchal semi-feudal style in which
+they ruled over their villages than the customs in connection with
+this anniversary. Some days before it, requisitions have been made on
+all the villages in any way connected with the factory, for various
+articles of diet. The herdsmen have to send a tribute of milk, curds,
+and _ghee_ or clarified butter. Cultivators of root crops or fruit
+send in samples of their produce, in the shape of huge bundle of
+plantains, immense jack-fruits, or baskets of sweet potatoes, yams,
+and other vegetables. The _koomhar_ or potter has to send in earthen
+pots and jars. The _mochee_ or worker in leather, brings with him a
+sample of his work in the shape of a pair of shoes. These are pounced
+on by your servants and _omlah_, the omlah being the head men in the
+office. It is a fine time for them. Wooden shoes, umbrellas, brass
+pots, fowls, goats, fruits, in fact all the productions of your
+country side are sent or brought in. It is the old feudal tribute of
+the middle ages back again. During the day the _cutcherry_ or office
+is crowded with the more respectable villagers, paying in rents and
+settling accounts. The noise and bustle are great, but an immense
+quantity of work is got through.
+
+The village putwarries and head men are all there with their
+voluminous accounts. Your rent-collector, called a _tehseeldar_, has
+been busy in the villages with the tenants and putwarries, collecting
+rent for the great Pooneah day. There is a constant chink of money, a
+busy hum, a scratching of innumerable pens. Under every tree, 'neath
+the shade of every hut, busy groups are squatted round some acute
+accountant. Totals are being totted up on all hands. From greasy
+recesses in the waistband a dirty bundle is slowly pulled forth, and
+the desired sum reluctantly counted out.
+
+From early morn till dewy eve this work goes on, and you judge your
+Pooneah to have been a good or bad one by the amount you are able to
+collect. Peons, with their brass badges flashing in the sun, and their
+red puggrees shewing off their bronzed faces and black whiskers, are
+despatched in all directions for defaulters. There is a constant going
+to and fro, a hurrying and bustling in the crowd, a hum as of a
+distant fair pervading the place, and by evening the total of the
+day's collections is added up, and while the sahib and his friends
+take their sherry and bitters, the omlah and servants retire to wash
+and feast, and prepare for the night's festivities.
+
+During the day, at the houses of the omlah, culinary preparations on a
+vast scale have been going on. The large supplies of grain, rice,
+flour, fruit, vegetables, &c., which were brought in as _salamee_ or
+tribute, supplemented by additions from the sahib's own stores, have
+been made into savoury messes. Curries, and cakes, boiled flesh, and
+roast kid, are all ready, and the crowd, having divested themselves of
+their head-dress and outer garments, and cleaned their hands and feet
+by copious ablutions, sit down in a wide circle. The large leaves of
+the water-lily are now served out to each man, and perform the office
+of plates. Huge baskets of _chupatties_, a flat sort of
+'griddle-cake,' are now brought round, and each man gets four or five
+doled out. The cooking and attendance is all done by Brahmins. No
+inferior caste would answer, as Rajpoots and other high castes will
+only eat food that has been cooked by a Brahmin or one of their own
+class. The Brahmin attendants now come round with great _dekchees_ or
+cooking-pots, full of curried vegetables, boiled rice, and similar
+dishes. A ladle-full is handed out to each man, who receives it on his
+leaf. The rice is served out by the hands of the attendants. The
+guests manipulate a huge ball of rice and curry mixed between the
+fingers of the right hand, pass this solemnly into their widely-gaping
+mouths, with the head thrown back to receive the mess, like an
+adjutant-bird swallowing a frog, and then they masticate with much
+apparent enjoyment. Sugar, treacle, curds, milk, oil, butter,
+preserves, and chutnees are served out to the more wealthy and
+respectable. The amount they can consume is wonderful. Seeing the
+enormous supplies, you would think that even this great crowd could
+never get through them, but by the time repletion has set in, there is
+little or nothing left, and many of the inflated and distended old
+farmers could begin again and repeat 'another of the same' with ease.
+Each person has his own _lotah_, a brass drinking vessel, and when all
+have eaten they again wash their hands, rinse out their mouths, and
+don their gayest apparel.
+
+The gentlemen in the bungalow now get word that the evening's
+festivities are about to commence. Lighting our cigars, we sally out
+to the _shamiana_ which has been erected on the ridge, surrounding the
+deep tank which supplies the factory during the manufacturing season
+with water. The _shamiana_ is a large canopy or wall-less tent. It is
+festooned with flowers and green plantain trees, and evergreens have
+been planted all round it. Flaring flambeaux, torches, Chinese
+lanterns, and oil lamps flicker and glare, and make the interior
+almost as bright as day. When we arrive we find our chairs drawn up in
+state, one raised seat in the centre being the place of honour, and
+reserved for the manager of the factory.
+
+When we are seated, the _malee_ or gardener advances with a wooden
+tray filled with sand, in which are stuck heads of all the finest
+flowers the garden can afford, placed in the most symmetrical
+patterns, and really a pretty tasteful piece of workmanship. Two or
+three old Brahmins, principal among whom is 'Hureehar Jha,' a wicked
+old scoundrel, now advance, bearing gay garlands of flowers, muttering
+a strange gibberish in Sanskrit, supposed to be a blessing, but which
+might be a curse for all we understood of it, and decking our wrists
+and necks with these strings of flowers. For this service they get a
+small gratuity. The factory omlah headed by the dignified, portly
+_gornasta_ or confidential adviser, dressed in snowy turbans and
+spotless white, now come forward. A large brass tray stands on the
+table in front of you. They each present a _salamee_ or _nuzzur_, that
+is, a tribute or present, which you touch, and it is then deposited
+with a rattling jingle on the brass plate. The head men of villages,
+putwarries, and wealthy tenants, give two, three, and sometimes even
+four rupees. Every tenant of respectability thinks it incumbent on him
+to give something. Every man as he comes up makes a low salaam,
+deposits his _salamee_, his name is written down, and he retires. The
+putwarries present two rupees each, shouting out their names, and the
+names of their villages. Afterwards a small assessment is levied on
+the villagers, of a 'pice' or two 'pice' each, about a halfpenny of
+our money, and which recoups the putwarree for his outlay.
+
+This has nothing to do with the legitimate revenue of the factory. It
+never appears in the books. It is quite a voluntary offering, and I
+have never seen it in any other district. In the meantime the
+_Raj-bhats_, a wandering class of hereditary minstrels or bards, are
+singing your praises and those of your ancestors in ear-splitting
+strains. Some of them have really good voices, all possess the gift of
+improvisation, and are quick to seize on the salient points of the
+scene before them, and weave them into their song, sometimes in a very
+ingenious and humorous manner. They are often employed by rich
+natives, to while away a long night with one of their, treasured
+rhythmical tales or songs. One or two are kept in the retinue of every
+Rajah or noble, and they possess a mine of legendary information,
+which would be invaluable to the collector of folk-lore and
+antiquarian literature.
+
+At some of the Pooneahs the evening's gaiety winds up with a _nautch_
+or dance, by dancing girls or boys. I always thought this a most
+sleep-inspiring exhibition. It has been so often described that I need
+not trouble my readers with it. The women are gaily dressed in
+brocades and gauzy textures, and glitter with spangles and tawdry
+ornaments. The musical accompaniment of clanging zither, asthmatic
+fiddle, timber-toned drum, clanging cymbal, and harsh metallic
+triangle, is a sore affliction, and when the dusky prima donna throws
+back her head, extends her chest, gets up to her high note, with her
+hand behind her ear, and her poura-stained mouth and teeth wide
+expanded like the jaws of a fangless wolf, and the demoniac
+instruments and performers redouble their din, the noise is something
+too dreadful to experience often. The native women sit mute and
+hushed, seeming to like it. I have heard it said that the Germans eat
+ants. Finlanders relish penny candles. The Nepaulese gourmandise on
+putrid fish. I am fond of mouldy cheese, and organ-grinders are an
+object of affection with some of our home community. I _know_ that the
+general run of natives delight in a nautch. Tastes differ, but to me
+it is an inexplicable phenomenon.
+
+Amid all this noise we sit till we are wearied. Parin-leaves and betel
+nut are handed round by the servants. There is a very sudorific odour
+from the crowd. All are comfortably seated on the ground. The torches
+flare, and send up volumes of smoke to the ornamented roof of the
+canopy. The lights are reflected in the deep glassy bosom of the
+silent tank. The combined sounds and odours get oppressive, and we are
+glad to get back to the bungalow, to consume our 'peg' and our 'weed'
+in the congenial company of our friends.
+
+In some factories the night closes with a grand dance by all the
+inhabitants of the _dangur tola_. The men and women range themselves
+in two semicircles, standing opposite each other. The tallest of both
+lines at the one end, diminishing away at the other extremity to the
+children and little ones who can scarcely toddle. They have a wild,
+plaintive song, with swelling cadences and abrupt stops. They go
+through an extraordinary variety of evolutions, stamping with one foot
+and keeping perfect time. They sway their bodies, revolve, march, and
+countermarch, the men sometimes opening their ranks, and the women
+going through, and _vice versa_. They turn round like the winding
+convolutions of a shell, increase their pace as the song waxes quick
+and shrill, get excited, and finish off with a resounding stamp of the
+foot, and a guttural cry which seems to exhaust all the breath left in
+their bodies. The men then get some liquor, and the women a small
+money present. If the sahib is very liberal he gives them a pig on
+which to feast, and the _dangurs_ go away very happy and contented.
+Their dance is not unlike the _corroborry_ of the Australian
+aborigines. The two races are not unlike each other too in feature,
+although I cannot think that they are in any way connected.
+
+Next morning there is a jackal hunt, or cricket, or pony races, or
+shooting matches, or sport of some kind, while the rent collection
+still goes on. In the afternoon we have grand wrestling matches
+amongst the natives for small prizes, and generally witness some fine
+exhibitions of athletic skill and endurance.
+
+Some wandering juggler may have been attracted by the rumour of the
+gathering. A tight-rope dancer, a snake charmer, an itinerant showman
+with a performing goat, monkey, or dancing bear, may make his
+appearance before the admiring crowd.
+
+At times a party of mimes or actors come round, and a rare treat is
+not seldom afforded by the _bara roopees_. _Bara_ means twelve, and
+_roop_ is an impersonation, a character. These 'twelve characters'
+make up in all sorts of disguises. Their wardrobe is very limited, yet
+the number of people they personate, and their genuine acting talent
+would astonish you. With a projecting tooth and a few streaks of clay,
+they make up a withered, trembling old hag, afflicted with palsy,
+rheumatism, and a hacking cough. They make friends with your bearer,
+and an old hat and coat transforms them into a planter, a missionary,
+or an officer. They whiten their faces, using false hair and
+moustache, and while you are chatting with your neighbour, a strange
+sahib suddenly and mysteriously seats himself by your side. You stare,
+and look at your host, who is generally in the secret, but a stranger,
+or new comer, is often completely taken in. It is generally at night
+that they go through their personations, and when they have dressed
+for their part, they generally choose a moment when your attention is
+attracted by a cunning diversion. On looking up you are astounded to
+find some utter stranger standing behind your chair, or stalking
+solemnly round the room.
+
+They personate a woman, a white lady, a sepoy policeman, almost any
+character. Some are especially good at mimicking the Bengalee Baboo,
+or the merchant from Cabool or Afghanistan with his fruits and cloths.
+A favourite _roop_ with them is to paint one half of the face like a
+man. Everything is complete down to moustache, the folds of the
+puggree, the _lathee_ or staff, indeed to the slightest detail. You
+would fancy you saw a stalwart, strapping Hindoo before you. He turns
+round, and lo, a bashful maiden. Her eyes are stained with _henna_
+(myrtle juice) or antimony. Her long-hair neatly smoothed down is tied
+into a knot at the back, and glistens with the pearl-like ornaments.
+The taper arm is loaded with armlets and bracelets. The very toes are
+bedecked with rings. The bodice hides the taper waist and budding
+bosom, the tiny ear is loaded with jewelled ear-rings, the very nose
+is not forgotten, but is ornamented with a golden circle, bearing on
+its circumference a pearl of great price. The art, the posturing, the
+mimicry, is really admirable. A good _bara roopee_ is well worth
+seeing, and amply earns the two or three rupees he gets as his reward.
+
+The Pooneah seldom lasts more than the two days, but it is quite
+unique in its feudal character, and is one of the old-fashioned
+observances; a relic of the time when the planter was really looked
+upon as the father of his people, and when a little sentiment and
+mutual affection mingled with the purely business relations of
+landlord and tenant.
+
+I delighted my ryots by importing some of our own country recreations,
+and setting the ploughmen to compete against each other. I stuck a
+greasy bamboo firmly into the earth, putting a bag of copper coins at
+the top. Many tried to climb it, but when they came to the grease they
+came down 'by the run.' One fellow however filled his _kummerbund_
+with sand, and after much exertion managed to secure the prize.
+Wheeling the barrow blindfold also gave much amusement, and we made
+some boys bend their foreheads down to a stick and run round till they
+were giddy. Their ludicrous efforts then to jump over some water-pots,
+and run to a thorny bush, raised tumultuous peals of laughter. The
+poor boys generally smashed the pots, and ended by tumbling into the
+thorns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The Koosee jungles.--Ferries.--Jungle roads.--The rhinoceros.--We go
+to visit a neighbour.--We lose our way and get belated.--We fall into
+a quicksand.--No ferry boat.--Camping out on the sand.--Two tigers
+close by.--We light a fire.--The boat at last arrives.--Crossing the
+stream.--Set fire to the boatman's hut.--Swim the horses.--They are
+nearly drowned.--We again lose our way in the jungle.--The towing
+path, and how boats are towed up the river.--We at last reach the
+factory.--News of rhinoceros in the morning.--Off we start, but arrive
+too late.--Death of the rhinoceros.--His dimensions.--Description.
+--Habits.--Rhinoceros in Nepaul.--The old 'Major Capt[=a]n.'--Description
+of Nepaulese scenery.--Immigration of Nepaulese.--Their fondness for
+fish.--They eat it putrid.--Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul.
+--Resources of the country.--Must sooner or later be opened up.
+--Influences at work to elevate the people.--Planters and factories
+chief of these.--Character of the planter.--His claims to consideration
+from government.
+
+In the vast grass jungles that border the banks of the Koosee,
+stretching in great plains without an undulation for miles on either
+side, intersected by innumerable water-beds and dried up channels,
+there is plenty of game of all sorts. It is an impetuous,
+swiftly-flowing stream, dashing directly down from the mighty hills of
+Nepaul. So swift is its current and so erratic its course, that it
+frequently bursts its banks, and careers through the jungle, forming a
+new bed, and carrying away cattle and wild animals in its headlong
+rush.
+
+The _ghauts_ or ferries are constantly changing, and a long bamboo
+with a bit of white rag affixed, shows where the boats and boatmen are
+to be found. In many instances the track is a mere cattle path, and
+hundreds of cross openings, leading into the tall jungle grass, are
+apt to bewilder and mislead the traveller. During the dry season these
+jungles are the resort of great herds of cattle and tame buffaloes,
+which trample down the dry stalks, and force their way into the
+innermost recesses of the wilderness of grass, which grows ten to
+twelve feet high. If you once lose your path you may wander for miles,
+until your weary horse is almost unable to stumble on. In such a case,
+the best way is to take it coolly, and halloo till a herdsman or
+thatch-cutter comes to your rescue. The knowledge of the jungles
+displayed by these poor ignorant men is wonderful; they know every
+gully and watercourse, every ford and quicksand, and they betray not
+the slightest sign of fear, although they know that at any moment they
+may come across a herd of wild buffalo, a savage rhinoceros, or even a
+royal tiger.
+
+The tracks of rhinoceros are often seen, but although I have
+frequently had these pointed out to me when out tiger shooting, I only
+saw two while I lived in that district.
+
+The first occasion was after a night of discomfort such as I have
+fortunately seldom experienced. I had been away at a neighbouring
+factory in Purneah, some eighteen or twenty miles from my bungalow. My
+companion had been my predecessor in the management, and was supposed
+to be well acquainted with the country. We had gone over to one of the
+outworks across the river, and I had received charge of the place from
+him. It was a lonely solitary spot; the house was composed of grass
+walls plastered with mud, and had not been used for some time. F.
+proposed that we should ride over to see H., to whom he would
+introduce me as he would be one of my nearest neighbours, and would
+give us a comfortable dinner and bed, which there was no chance of our
+procuring where we were.
+
+We plunged at once into the mazy labyrinths of the jungle, and soon
+emerged on the high sandy downs, stretching mile beyond mile along the
+southern bank of the ever-changing river. Having lost our way, we got
+to the factory after dark, but a friendly villager volunteered his
+services as guide, and led us safely to our destination. After a
+cheerful evening with H., we persuaded him to accompany us back next
+day. He took out his dogs, and we had a good course after a hare,
+killing two jackals, and sending back the dogs by the sweeper. At
+Burgamma, the outwork, we stopped to _tiffin_ on some cold fowl we had
+brought with us. The old factory head man got us some milk, eggs, and
+_chupatties_; and about three in the afternoon we started for the head
+factory. In an evil moment F. proposed that, as we were near another
+outwork called _Fusseah_, we should diverge thither, I could take over
+charge, and we could thus save a ride on another day. Not knowing
+anything of the country I acquiesced, and we reached Fusseah in time
+to see the place, and do all that was needful. It was a miserable
+tumbledown little spot, with four pair of vats; it had formerly been a
+good working factory, but the river had cut away most of its best
+lands, and completely washed away some of the villages, while the
+whole of the cultivation was fast relapsing into jungle.
+
+'Debnarain Singh' the _gomorsta_ or head man, asked us to stay for the
+night, as he said we could never get home before dark. F. however
+scouted the idea, and we resumed our way. The track, for it could not
+be called a road, led us through one or two jungle villages completely
+hidden by the dense bamboo clumps and long jungle grass. You can't see
+a trace of habitation till you are fairly on the village, and as the
+rice-fields are bordered with long strips of tall grass, the whole
+country presents the appearance of a uniform jungle. We got through
+the rice swamps, the villages, and the grass in safety, and as it was
+getting dark, emerged on the great plain of undulating ridgy
+sandbanks, that form the bed of the river during the annual floods. We
+had our _syces_ (grooms) and two peons with us. We had to ride over
+nearly two miles of sand before we could reach the _ghat_ where we
+expected the ferry-boats, and, the main stream once crossed, we had
+only two miles further to reach the factory. We were getting both
+tired and hungry; a heavy dew was falling, and the night was raw and
+chill. It was dark, there was no moon to light our way, and the stars
+were obscured by the silently creeping fog, rising from the marshy
+hollows among the sand. All at once F., who was leading, called out
+that we were off the path, and before I could pull up, my poor old
+tired horse was floundering in a quicksand up to the girths; I threw
+myself off and tried to wheel him round. H. was behind us, and we
+cried to him to halt where he was. I was sinking at every movement up
+to the knees, when the syce came to my rescue, and took charge of the
+horse. F.'s syce ran to extricate his master and horse; the two peons
+kept calling, 'Oh! my father, my father,' the horses snorted, and
+struggled desperately in the tenacious and treacherous quicksand; but
+after a prolonged effort, we all got safely out, and rejoined H. on
+the firm ridge.
+
+We now hallooed and shouted for the boatmen, but beyond the swish of
+the rapid stream to our right, or the plash of a falling bank as the
+swift current undermined it, no sound answered our repeated calls. We
+were wet and weary, but to go either backward or forward was out of
+the question. We were off the path, and the first step in any
+direction might lead us into another quicksand, worse perhaps than
+that from which we had just extricated ourselves. The horses were
+trembling in every limb. The syces cowered together and shivered with
+the cold. We ordered the two peons to try and reach the ghat, and see
+what had become of the boats, while we awaited their return where we
+were. The fog and darkness soon swallowed them up, and putting the
+best face on our dismal circumstances that we could, we lit our pipes
+and extended our jaded limbs on the damp sand.
+
+For a time we could hear the shouts of the peons as they hallooed for
+the boatmen, and we listened anxiously for the response, but there was
+none. We could hear the purling swish of the rapid stream, the
+crumbling banks falling into the current with a distant splash.
+Occasionally a swift rushing of wings overhead told us of the arrowy
+flight of diver or teal. Far in the distance twinkled the gleam of a
+herdsman's fire, the faint tinkle of a distant bell, or the subdued
+barking of a village dog for a moment, alone broke the silence.
+
+At times the hideous chorus of a pack of jackals woke the echoes of
+the night. Then, at no great distance, rose a hoarse booming cry,
+swelling on the night air, and subsiding into a lengthened growl. The
+syces started to their feet, the horses snorted with fear; and as the
+roar was repeated, followed closely by another to our left, and
+seemingly nearer, H. exclaimed 'By Jove! there's a couple of tigers.'
+
+Sure enough, so it was. It was the first time I had heard the roar of
+the tiger in his own domain, and I must confess that my sensations
+were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting sticks and what
+roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats everything was
+wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about on our hands and
+knees, and pick up whatever we came across.
+
+With great difficulty we managed to light a small fire, and for about
+half-an-hour were nearly smothered by trying with inflated cheeks to
+coax it into a blaze. The tigers continued to call at intervals, but
+did not seem to be approaching us. It was a long weary wait, we were
+cold, wet, hungry, and tired; F., the cause of our misfortunes, had
+taken off his saddle, and with it for a pillow was now fast asleep. H.
+and I cowered over the miserable sputtering flame, and longed and
+wished for the morning. It was a miserable night, the hours seemed
+interminable, the dense volumes of smoke from the water-sodden wood
+nearly choked us. At last, after some hours spent in this miserable
+manner, we heard a faint halloo in the distance; it was now past
+eleven at night. We returned the hail, and bye-and-bye the peons
+returned bringing a boatman with them. The lazy rascals at the ghat
+where we had proposed crossing, had gone home at nightfall, leaving
+their boats on the further bank. Our trusty peons, had gone five miles
+up the river, through the thick jungle, and brought a boat down with
+them from the next ghat to that where we were.
+
+We now warily picked our way down to the edge of the bank. The boat
+seemed very fragile, and the current looked so swift and dangerous,
+that we determined to go across first ourselves, get the larger boat
+from the other side, light a fire, and then bring over the horses. We
+embarked accordingly, leaving the syces and horses behind us. The
+peons and boatman pulled the boat a long way up stream by a rope, then
+shooting out we were carried swiftly down stream, the dark shadow of
+the further bank seeming at a great distance. The boatman pushed
+vigorously at his bamboo pole, the water rippled and gurgled, and
+frothed and eddied around. Half-a-dozen times we thought our boat
+would topple over, but at length we got safely across, far below what
+we had proposed as our landing place.
+
+We found the boats all right, and the boatman's hut, a mere collection
+of dry grass and a few old bamboos. As it could be replaced in an
+hour, and the material lay all around, we fired the hut, which soon,
+blazed up, throwing a weird lurid glow on bank and stream, and
+disclosing far on the other bank our weary nags and shivering syces,
+looking very bedraggled and forlorn indeed. The leaping and crackling
+of the flames, and the genial warmth, invigorated us a little, and
+while I stayed behind to feed the fire, the others recrossed to bring
+the horses over.
+
+With the previous fright however, their long waiting, the blazing
+fire, and being unaccustomed to boats at night, the poor scared horses
+refused to enter the boat, The boats are flat-bottomed or broadly
+bulging, with a bamboo platform strewn with grass in the centre. As a
+rule, they have no protecting rails, and even in the daytime, when the
+current is strong and eddies numerous, they are very dangerous for
+horses. At all events, the poor brutes would not be led on to the
+platform, so there was nothing for it but to swim them across. The
+boat was therefore towed a long way up the bank, which on the farther
+side was nearly level with the current, but where the hut had stood
+was steep and slushy, and perhaps twenty feet high. This was where the
+deepest water ran, and where the current was swiftest. If the horses
+therefore missed the landing ghat or stage, which was cut sloping into
+the bank, there was a danger of their being swept away altogether and
+lost. However, we determined on making the attempt. Entering the
+water, and holding the horses tightly by the head, with a leading rope
+attached, to be paid out in case of necessity; the boat shot out, the
+horses pawed the water, entering deeper and deeper, foot by foot, into
+the swiftly rushing silent stream. So long as they were in their
+depth, and had footing, they were alright, but when they reached the
+middle of the river, the current, rushing with frightful velocity,
+swept them off their feet, and boat and horses began to go down
+stream. The horses, with lips apart showing their teeth firmly set,
+the lurid glare of the flame lighting up their straining eyeballs, the
+plashing of the water, the dark rapid current flowing noiselessly
+past; the rocking heaving boat, the dusky forms of syces, peons, and
+boatman, standing out clear in the ruddy fire-light against the utter
+blackness of the night, composed a weird picture I can never forget.
+
+The boat shot swiftly past the ghat, and came with a thump against the
+bank. It swung round into the stream again, but the boatman had
+luckily managed to scramble ashore, and his efforts and mine united,
+hauling on the mooring-rope, sufficed to bring her in to the bank. The
+three struggling horses were yet in the current, trying bravely to
+stem the furious rush of the river. The syces and my friends were
+holding hard to the tether-ropes, which were now at their full
+stretch. It was a most critical moment. Had they let go, the horses
+would have been swept away to form a meal for the alligators. They
+managed, however, to get in close to the bank, and here, although the
+water was still over their backs, they got a slight and precarious
+footing, and inch by inch struggled after the boat, which we were now
+pulling up to the landing place.
+
+After a sore struggle, during which we thought more than once the
+gallant nags would never emerge from the water, they staggered up the
+bank, dripping, trembling, and utterly overcome with their exertions.
+It was my first introduction to the treacherous Koosee, and I never
+again attempted to swim a horse across at night. We led the poor tired
+creatures up to the fire, heaping on fresh bundles of thatching-grass,
+of which there was plenty lying about, the syces then rubbed them
+down, and shampooed their legs, till they began to take a little
+heart, whinnying as we spoke to them and caressed them.
+
+After resting for nearly an hour, we replaced the saddles, and F., who
+by this time began to mistrust his knowledge of the jungles by night,
+allowed one of the peons, who was sure he knew every inch of the road,
+to lead the way. Leaving the smouldering flames to flicker and burn
+out in solitude, we again plunged into the darkness of the night,
+threading our way through the thick jungle grass, now loaded with dewy
+moisture, and dripping copious showers upon us from its high walls at
+either side of the narrow track. We crossed a rapid little stream, an
+arm of the main river, turned to the right, progressed a few hundred
+yards, turned to the left, and finally came to a dead stop, having
+again lost our way.
+
+We heaped execrations on the luckless peon's head, and I suggested
+that we should make for the main stream, follow up the bank till we
+reached the next ghat, where I knew there was a cart-road leading to
+the factory. Otherwise we might wander all night in the jungles,
+perhaps get into another quicksand, or come to some other signal
+grief. We accordingly turned round. We could hear the swish of the
+river at no great distance, and soon, stumbling over bushes and
+bursting through matted chumps of grass, dripping with wet, and
+utterly tired and dejected, we reached the bank of the stream.
+
+Here we had no difficulty in following the path. The river is so
+swift, that the only way boats are enabled to get up stream to take
+down the inland produce, is by having a few coolies or boatmen to drag
+the boat up against the current by towing-lines. This is called
+_gooning_. The goon-ropes are attached to the mast of the boat. At the
+free end is a round bit of bamboo. The towing-coolie places this
+against his shoulder, and slowly and laboriously drags the boat up
+against the current. We were now on this towing-path, and after riding
+for nearly four miles we reached the ghat, struck into the cart-road,
+and without further misadventure reached the factory about four in the
+morning, utterly fagged and worn out.
+
+About eight in the morning my bearer woke me out of a deep sleep, with
+the news that there was a _gaerha_, that is, a rhinoceros, close to
+the factory. We had some days previously heard it rumoured that there
+were _two_ rhinoceroses in the _Battabarree_ jungles, so I at once
+roused my soundly-sleeping friends. Swallowing a hasty morsel of toast
+and a cup of coffee, we mounted our ponies, sent our guns on ahead,
+and rode off for the village where the rhinoceros was reported. As we
+rode hurriedly along we could see natives running in the same
+direction as ourselves, and one of my men came up panting and
+breathless to confirm the news about the rhinoceros, with the
+unwelcome addition that Premnarain Singh, a young neighbouring
+Zemindar, had gone in pursuit of it with his elephant and guns. We
+hurried on, and just then heard the distant report of a shot, followed
+quickly by two more. We tried to take a short cut across country
+through some rice-fields, but our ponies sank in the boggy ground, and
+we had to retrace our way to the path.
+
+By the time we got to the village we found an excited crowd of over a
+thousand natives, dancing and gesticulating round the prostrate
+carcase of the rhinoceros. The Baboo and his party had found the poor
+brute firmly imbedded in a quicksand. With organised effort they might
+have secured the prize alive, and could have sold him in Calcutta for
+at least a thousand rupees, but they were too excited, and blazed away
+three shots into the helpless beast. 'Many hands make light work,' so
+the crowd soon had the dead animal extricated, rolled him into the
+creek, and floated him down to the village, where we found them
+already beginning to hack and hew the flesh, completely spoiling the
+skin, and properly completing the butchery. We were terribly vexed
+that we were too late, but endeavoured to stop the stupid destruction
+that was going on. The body measured eleven feet three inches from the
+snout to the tail, and stood six feet nine. The horn was six and a
+half inches long, and the girth a little over ten feet. We put the
+best face on the matter, congratulated the Baboo with very bad grace,
+and asked him to get the skin cut up properly.
+
+Cut in strips from the under part of the ribs and along the belly, the
+skin makes magnificent riding-whips. The bosses on the shoulder and
+sides are made into shields by the natives, elaborately ornamented and
+much prized. The horn, however, is the most coveted acquisition. It is
+believed to have peculiar virtues, and is popularly supposed by its
+mere presence in a house to mitigate the pains of maternity. A
+rhinoceros horn is often handed down from generation to generation as
+a heirloom, and when a birth is about to take place the anxious
+husband often gets a loan of the precious treasure, after which he has
+no fears for the safe issue of the labour.
+
+The flesh of the rhinoceros is eaten by all classes. It is one of the
+five animals that a Brahmin is allowed to eat by the _Shastras_. They
+were formerly much more common in these jungles, but of late years
+very few have been killed. When they take up their abode in a piece of
+jungle they are not easily dislodged. They are fierce, savage brutes,
+and do not scruple to attack an elephant when they are hard pressed by
+the hunter. When they wish to leave a locality where they have been
+disturbed, they will make for some distant point, and march on with
+dogged and inflexible purpose. Some have been known to travel eighty
+miles in the twenty-four hours, through thick jungle, over rivers, and
+through swamp and quicksand. Their sense of hearing is very acute, and
+they are very easily roused to fury. One peculiarity often noticed by
+sportsmen is, that they always go to the same spot when they want to
+obey the calls of nature. Mounds of their dung are sometimes seen in
+the jungle, and the tracks shew that the rhinoceros pays a daily visit
+to this one particular spot.
+
+In Nepaul, and along the _terai_ or wooded slopes of the frontier,
+they are more numerous; but 'Jung Bahadur,' the late ruler of Nepaul,
+would allow no one to shoot them but himself. I remember the wailing
+lament of a Nepaul officer with whom I was out shooting, when I
+happened to fire at and wound one of the protected beasts. It was in
+Nepaul, among a cluster of low woody hills, with a brawling stream
+dashing through the precipitous channel worn out of the rocky,
+boulder-covered dell. The rhinoceros was up the hill slightly above
+me, and we were beating up for a tiger that we had seen go ahead of
+the line.
+
+In my eagerness to bag a 'rhino' I quite forgot the interdict, and
+fired an Express bullet into the shoulder of the animal, as he stood
+broadside on, staring stupidly at me. He staggered, and made as if he
+would charge down the hill. The old 'Major Capt[=a]n,' as they called our
+sporting host, was shouting out to me not to fire. The _mahouts_ and
+beaters were petrified with horror at my presumption. I fancy they
+expected an immediate order for my decapitation, or for my ears to be
+cut off at the very least, but feeling I might as well be 'in for a
+pound as for a penny,' I fired again, and tumbled the huge brute over,
+with a bullet through the skull behind the ear. The old officer was
+horror-stricken, and would allow no one to go near the animal. He
+would not even let me get down to measure it, being terrified lest the
+affair should reach the ears of his formidable lord and ruler, that he
+hurried us off from the scene of my transgression as quickly as he
+could.
+
+The old Major Capt[=a]n was a curious character. The government of
+Nepaul is purely military. All executive and judicial functions are
+carried on by military officers. After serving a certain time in the
+army, they get rewarded for good service by being appointed to the
+executive charge of a district. So far as I could make out, they seem
+to farm the revenue much as is done in Turkey. They must send in
+so much to the Treasury, and anything over they keep for themselves.
+Their administration of justice is rough and ready. Fines, corporal
+punishment, and in the case of heinous crimes, mutilation and death are
+their penalties. There is a tax of _kind_ on all produce, and licenses
+to cut timber bring in a large revenue. A protective tariff is levied on
+all goods or produce passing the frontier from British territory, and no
+European is allowed to travel in the country, or to settle and trade
+there. In the lower valleys there are magnificent stretches of land
+suitable for indigo, tea, rice, and other crops. The streams are
+numerous, moisture is plentiful, the soil is fertile, and the slopes of
+the hills are covered with splendid timber, a great quantity of which is
+cut and floated down the Gunduch, Bagmuttee, Koosee, and other streams
+during the rainy season. It is used principally for beams, rafters, and
+railway sleepers.
+
+The people are jealous of intrusion and suspicious of strangers, but
+as I was with an official, they generally came out in great numbers to
+gaze as we passed through a village. The country does not seem so
+thickly populated as in our territory, and the cultivators had a more
+well-to-do look. They possess vast numbers of cattle. The houses have
+conical roofs, and great quadrangular sheds, roofed with a flat
+covering of thatch, are erected all round the houses, for the
+protection of the cattle at night. The taxes must weigh heavily on the
+population. The executive officer, when he gets charge of a district,
+removes all the subordinates who have been acting under his
+predecessor. When I asked the old Major if this would not interfere
+with the efficient administration of justice, and the smooth working
+of his revenue and executive functions, he gave a funny leer, almost a
+wink, and said it was much more satisfactory to have men of your own
+working under you, the fact being, that with his own men he could more
+securely wring from the ryots the uttermost farthing they could pay,
+and was more certain of getting his own share of the spoil.
+
+With practically irresponsible power, and only answerable directly to
+his immediate military superior, an unscrupulous man may harry and
+harass a district pretty much as he chooses. Our old Major seemed to
+be civil and lenient, but in some districts the exactions and
+extortions of the rulers have driven many of the hard-working
+Nepaulese over the border into our territory. Our landholders or
+Zemindars, having vast areas of untilled land, are only too glad to
+encourage this immigration, and give the exiles, whom they find
+hard-working industrious tenants, long leases on easy terms. The
+new-comers are very independent, and strenuously resist any
+encroachment on what they consider their rights. If an attempt is made
+to raise their rent, even equitably, the land having increased in
+value, they will resist the attempt 'tooth and nail,' and take every
+advantage the law affords to oppose it. They are very fond of
+litigation, and are mostly able to afford the expense of a lawsuit. I
+generally found it answer better to call them together and reason
+quietly with them, submitting any point in dispute to an arbitration
+of parties mutually selected.
+
+Nearly all the rivers in Nepaul are formed principally from the
+melting of the snow on the higher ranges. A vast body of water
+descends annually into the plains from the natural surface drainage of
+the country, but the melting of the snows is the main source of the
+river system. Many of the hill streams, and it is particularly
+observable at some seasons in the Koosee, have a regular daily rise
+and fall. In the early morning you can often ford a branch of the
+river, which by midday has become a swiftly-rolling torrent, filling
+the channel from bank to bank. The water is intensely cold, and few or
+no fish are to be found in the mountain streams of Nepaul. When the
+Nepaulese come down to the plains on business, pleasure, or pilgrimage
+their great treat is a mighty banquet of fish. For two or three
+_annas_ a fish of several pounds weight can easily be purchased. They
+revel on this unwonted fare, eating to repletion, and very frequently
+making themselves ill in consequence. When Jung Bahadur came down
+through Chumparun to attend the _durbar_ of the lamented Earl Mayo,
+cholera broke out in his camp, brought on simply by the enormous
+quantities of fish, often not very fresh or wholesome, which his
+guards and camp followers consumed.
+
+Large quantities of dried fish are sent up to Nepaul, and exchanged
+for rice and other grain, or horns, hides, and blankets. The
+fish-drying is done very simply in the sun. It is generally left till
+it is half putrid and taints the air for miles. The sweltering,
+half-rotting mass, packed in filthy bags, and slung on ponies or
+bullocks, is sent over the frontier to some village bazaar in Nepaul.
+The track of a consignment of this horrible filth can be recognised
+from very far away. The perfume hovers on the road, and as you are
+riding up and get the first sniff of the putrid odour, you know at
+once that the Nepaulese market is being recruited by a _fresh_
+accession of very _stale_ fish. If the taste is at all equal to the
+smell, the rankest witches broth ever brewed in reeking cauldron would
+probably be preferable. Over the frontier there seems to be few roads,
+merely bullock tracks. Most of the transporting of goods is done by
+bullocks, and intercommunication must be slow and costly. I believe
+that near Katmandoo, the capital, the roads and bridges are good, and
+kept in tolerable repair. There is an arsenal where they manufacture
+modern munitions of war. Their soldiers are well disciplined, fairly
+well equipped, and form excellent fighting material.
+
+Our policy of annexation, so far as India is concerned, may perhaps be
+now considered as finally abandoned. We have no desire to annex
+Nepaul, but surely this system of utter isolation, of jealous
+exclusion at all hazards of English enterprise and capital, might be
+broken down to a mutual community of interest, a full and free
+exchange of products, and a reception by Nepaul without fear and
+distrust of the benefits our capitalists and pioneers could give the
+country by opening out its resources, and establishing the industries
+of the West on its fertile slopes and plains. I am no politician, and
+know nothing of the secret springs of policy that regulate our
+dealings with Nepaul, but it does seem somewhat weak and puerile to
+allow the Nepaulese free access to our territories, and an unprotected
+market in our towns for all their produce, while the British subject
+is rigorously excluded from the country, his productions saddled with
+a heavy protective duty, and the representative of our Government
+himself, treated more as a prisoner in honourable confinement, than as
+the accredited ambassador of a mighty empire.
+
+I may be utterly wrong. There may be weighty reasons of State for this
+condition of things, but it is a general feeling among Englishmen in
+India that, _we_ have to do all the GIVE and our Oriental neighbours
+do all the TAKE. The un-official English mind in India does not see
+the necessity for the painfully deferential attitude we invariably
+take in our dealings with native states. The time has surely come,
+when Oriental mistrust of our intentions should be stoutly battled
+with. There is room in Nepaul for hundreds of factories, for
+tea-gardens, fruit-groves, spice-plantations, woollen-mills,
+saw-mills, and countless other industries. Mineral products are
+reported of unusual richness. In the great central valley the climate
+approaches that of England. The establishment of productive industries
+would be a work of time, but so long as this ridiculous policy of
+isolation is maintained, and the exclusion of English tourists,
+sportsmen, or observers carried out in all its present strictness, we
+can never form an adequate idea of the resources of the country. The
+Nepaulese themselves cannot progress. I am convinced that a frank and
+unconstrained intercourse between Europeans and natives would create
+no jealousy and antagonism, but would lead to the development of a
+country singularly blessed by nature, and open a wide field for
+Anglo-Saxon energy and enterprise. It does seem strange, with all our
+vast territory of Hindustan accurately mapped out and known, roads and
+railways, canals and embankments, intersecting it in all directions,
+that this interesting corner of the globe, lying contiguous to our
+territory for hundreds of miles, should be less known than the
+interior of Africa, or the barren solitudes of the ice-bound Arctic
+regions.
+
+In these rich valleys hundreds of miles of the finest and most fertile
+lands in Asia lie covered by dense jungle, waiting for labour and
+capital. For the present we have enough to do in our own possessions
+to reclaim the uncultured wastes; but considering the rapid increase
+of population, the avidity with which land is taken up, the daily
+increasing use of all modern labour-saving appliances, the time must
+very shortly come when capital and energy will need new outlets, and
+one of the most promising of these is in Nepaul. The rapid changes
+which have come over the face of rural India, especially in these
+border districts, within the last twenty years, might well make the
+most thoughtless pause. Land has increased in value more than
+two-fold. The price of labour and of produce has kept more than equal
+pace. Machinery is whirring and clanking, where a few years ago a
+steam whistle would have startled the natives out of their wits. With
+cheap, easy, and rapid communication, a journey to any of the great
+cities is now thought no more of than a trip to a distant village in
+the same district was thought of twenty years ago. Everywhere are the
+signs of progress. New industries are opening up. Jungle is fast
+disappearing. Agriculture has wonderfully improved; and wherever an
+indigo factory has been built, progress has taken the place of
+stagnation, industry and thrift that of listless indolence and
+shiftless apathy. A spirit has moved in the valley of dry bones, and
+has clothed with living flesh the gaunt skeletons produced by
+ignorance, disease, and want. The energy and intelligence of the
+planter has breathed on the stagnant waters of the Hindoo intellect
+the breath of life, and the living tide is heaving, full of activity,
+purging by its resistless ever-moving pulsations the formerly stagnant
+mass of its impurities, and making it a life-giving sea of active
+industry and progress.
+
+Let any unprejudiced observer see for himself if it be not so; let him
+go to those districts where British capital and energy are not employed;
+let him leave the planting districts, and go up to the wastes of
+Oudh, or the purely native districts of the North-west, where there
+are no Europeans but the officials in the _station_. He will find
+fewer and worse roads, fewer wells, worse constructed houses, much
+ruder cultivation, less activity and industry; more dirt, disease,
+and desolation; less intelligence; more intolerance; and a peasantry
+morally, mentally, physically, and in every way inferior to those who
+are brought into daily contact with the Anglo-Saxon planters and
+gentlemen, and have imbibed somewhat of their activity and spirit of
+progress. And yet these are the men whom successive Lieutenant-Governors,
+and Governments generally, have done their best to thwart and obstruct.
+They have been misrepresented, held up to obloquy, and foully slandered;
+they have been described as utterly base, fattening on the spoils of a
+cowed and terror-ridden peasantry. Utterly unscrupulous, fearing neither
+God nor man, hesitating at no crime, deterred by no consideration from
+oppressing their tenantry, and compassing their interested ends by the
+vilest frauds.
+
+Such was the picture drawn of the indigo planter not so many years
+ago. There may have been much in the past over which we would
+willingly draw the veil, but at the present moment I firmly believe
+that the planters of Behar--and I speak as an observant student of
+what has been going on in India--have done more to elevate the
+peasantry, to rouse them into vitality, and to improve them in every
+way, than all the other agencies that have been at work with the same
+end in view.
+
+The Indian Government to all appearance must always work in extremes.
+It never seems to hit the happy medium. The Lieutenant-Governor for
+the time being impresses every department under him too strongly with
+his own individuality. The planters, who are an intelligent and
+independent body of men, have seemingly always been obnoxious to the
+ideas of a perfectly despotic and irresponsible ruler. In spite
+however of all difficulties and drawbacks, they have held their own. I
+know that the poor people and small cultivators look up to them with
+respect and affection. They find in them ready and sympathizing
+friends, able and willing to shield them from the exactions of their
+own more powerful and uncharitable fellow-countrymen. Half, nay
+nine-tenths, of the stories against planters, are got up by the
+money-lenders, the petty Zemindars, and wealthy villagers, who find
+the planter competing with them for land and labour, and raising the
+price of both. The poor people look to the factory as a never failing
+resource when all else fails, and but for the assistance it gives in
+money, or seed, or plough bullocks and implements of husbandry, many a
+struggling hardworking tenant would inevitably go to the wall, or
+become inextricably entangled in the meshes of the Bunneah and
+money-lender.
+
+I assert as a fact that the great majority of villagers in Behar would
+rather go to the factory, and have their sahib adjudicate on their
+dispute, than take it into Court. The officials in the indigo
+districts know this, and as a rule are very friendly with the
+planters. But not long since, an official was afraid to dine at a
+planter's house, fearing he might be accused of planter proclivities.
+In no other country in the world would the same jealousy of men who
+open out and enrich a country, and who are loyal, intelligent, and
+educated citizens, be displayed; but there are high quarters in which
+the old feeling of the East India Company, that all who were not in
+the service must be adventurers and interlopers, seems not wholly to
+have died out.
+
+That there have been abuses no one denies; but for years past the
+majority of the planters in Tirhoot, Chupra, and Chumparun, and in the
+indigo districts generally, not merely the managers, but the
+proprietors and agents have been laudably and loyally stirring, in
+spite of failures, reduced prices, and frequent bad seasons, to
+elevate the standard of their peasantry, and establish the indigo
+system on a fair and equitable basis. During the years when I was an
+assistant and manager on indigo estates, the rates for payment of
+indigo to cultivators nearly doubled, although prices for the
+manufactured article remained stationary. In well managed factories,
+the forcible seizure of carts and ploughs, and the enforcement of
+labour, which is an old charge against planters, was unknown; and the
+payment of tribute, common under the old feudal system, and styled
+_furmaish_, had been allowed to fall into desuetude. The NATIVE
+Zemindars or landholders however, still jealously maintain their
+rights, and harsh exactions were often made by them on the cultivators
+on the occasions of domestic events, such as births, marriages,
+deaths, and such like, in the families of the landowners. For years
+these exactions or feudal payments by the ryot to the Zemindar have
+been commuted by the factories into a lump sum in cash, when villages
+have been taken in farm, and this sum has been paid to the Zemindar as
+an enhanced rent. In the majority of cases it has not been levied from
+the cultivators, but the whole expense has been borne by the factory.
+In individual instances resort may have been had to unworthy tricks to
+harass the ryots, the factory middle-men having often been oppressors
+and tyrants; but as a body, the indigo planters of the present day
+have sternly set their faces to put down these oppressions, and have
+honestly striven to mete out even-handed justice to their tenants and
+dependants. With the spread of education and intelligence, the
+development of agricultural knowledge and practical science, and the
+vastly improved communication by roads, bridges, and ferries, in
+bringing about all of which the planting community themselves have
+been largely instrumental, there can be little doubt that these old
+fashioned charges against the planters as a body will cease, and
+public opinion will be brought to bear on any one who may promote his
+own interests by cruelty or rapacity, instead of doing his business on
+an equitable commercial basis, giving every man his due, relying on
+skill, energy, industry, and integrity, to promote the best interests
+of his factory; gaining the esteem and affection of his people by
+liberality, kindness, and strict justice.
+
+It can never be expected that a ryot can grow indigo at a loss to
+himself, or at a lower rate of profit than that which the cultivation
+of his other ordinary crops would give him, without at least some
+compensating advantages. With all his poverty and supposed stupidity,
+he is keenly alive to his own interests, quite able to hold his own in
+matters affecting his pocket. I have no hesitation in saying that the
+steady efforts which have been made by all the best planters to treat
+the ryot fairly, to give him justice, to encourage him with liberal
+aid and sympathy, and to put their mutual relations on a fair business
+footing, are now bearing fruit, and will result in the cultivation and
+manufacture of indigo in Upper Bengal becoming, as it deserves to
+become, one of the most firmly established, fairly conducted, and
+justly administered industries in India. That it may be so is, as I
+know, the earnest wish, as it has long been the dearest object, of my
+best friends among the planters of Behar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+The tiger.--His habitat.--Shooting on foot.--Modes of shooting.--A
+tiger hunt on foot.--The scene of the hunt.-The beat.--Incidents of
+the hunt.--Fireworks.--The tiger charges.--The elephant bolts.--The
+tigress will not break.--We kill a half-grown cub.--Try again for
+the tigress.--Unsuccessful.--Exaggerations in tiger stories.--My
+authorities.--The brothers S.--Ferocity and structure of the tiger.
+--His devastations.--His frame-work, teeth, &c.--A tiger at bay.
+--His unsociable habits.--Fight between tiger and tigress.--Young
+tigers.--Power and strength of the tiger.--Examples.--His cowardice.
+--Charge of a wounded tiger.--Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+--A spined tiger.--Boldness of young tigers.--Cruelty.--Cunning.--Night
+scenes in the jungle.--Tiger killed by a wild boar.--His cautious
+habits.--General remarks.
+
+In the foregoing chapters I have tried to perform my promise, to give
+a general idea of our daily life in India; our toils and trials, our
+sports, our pastimes, and our general pursuits. No record of Indian
+sport, however, would be complete without some allusion to the kingly
+tiger, and no one can live long near the Nepaul frontier, without at
+some time or other having an encounter with the royal robber--the
+striped and whiskered monarch of the jungle.
+
+He is always to be found in the Terai forests, and although very
+occasionally indeed met with in Tirhoot, where the population is very
+dense, and waste lands infrequent, he is yet often to be encountered
+in the solitudes of Oudh or Goruchpore, has been shot at and killed
+near Bettiah, and at our pig-sticking ground near Kuderent. In North
+Bhaugulpore and Purneah he may be said to be ALWAYS at home, as he can
+be met there, if you search for him, at all seasons of the year.
+
+In some parts of India, notably in the Deccan, and in some districts
+on the Bombay side, and even in the Soonderbunds near Calcutta,
+sportsmen and shekarries go after the tiger on foot. I must confess
+that this seems to me a mad thing to do. With every advantage of
+weapon, with the most daring courage, and the most imperturbable
+coolness, I think a man no fair match for a tiger in his native
+jungles. There are men now living who have shot numbers of tigers on
+foot, but the numerous fatal accidents recorded every year, plainly
+shew the danger of such a mode of shooting.
+
+In Central India, in the North-west, indeed in most districts where
+elephants are not easily procurable, it is customary to erect
+_mychans_ or bamboo platforms on trees. A line of beaters, with
+tom-toms, drums, fireworks, and other means for creating a din, are
+then sent into the jungle, to beat the tigers up to the platform on
+which you sit and wait. This is often a successful mode if you secure
+an advantageous place, but accidents to the beaters are very common,
+and it is at best a weary and vexatious mode of shooting, as after all
+your trouble the tiger may not come near your _mychan_, or give you
+the slightest glimpse of his beautiful skin.
+
+I have only been out after tiger on foot on one occasion. It was in
+the sal jungles in Oudh. A neighbour of mine, a most intimate and dear
+friend, whom I had nicknamed the 'General,' and a young friend,
+Fullerton, were with me. A tigress and cub were reported to be in a
+dense patch of _nurkool_ jungle, on the banks of the creek which
+divided the General's cultivation from mine. The nurkool is a tall
+feathery-looking cane, very much relished by elephants. It grows in
+dense brakes, and generally in damp boggy ground, affording complete
+shade and shelter for wild animals, and is a favourite haunt of pig,
+wolf, tiger, and buffalo.
+
+We had only one elephant, the use of which Fullerton had got from a
+neighbouring Baboo. It was not a staunch animal, so we put one of our
+men in the howdah, with a plentiful supply of bombs, a kind of native
+firework, enclosed in a clay case, which burns like a huge squib, and
+sets fire to the jungle. Along with the elephant we had a line of
+about one hundred coolies, and several men with drums and tom-toms.
+Fullerton took the side nearest the river, as it was possible the
+brute might sneak out that way, and make her escape along the bank.
+The General's shekarry remained behind, in rear of the line of
+beaters, in case the tigress might break the line, and try to escape
+by the rear. My _Gomasta_, the General, and myself, then took up
+positions behind trees all along the side of the glade or dell in
+which was the bit of nurkool jungle.
+
+It was a small basin, sloping gently down to the creek from the sal
+jungle, which grew up dark and thick all around. A margin of close
+sward, as green and level as a billiard-table, encircled the glade,
+and in the basin the thick nurkool grew up close, dense, and high,
+like a rustling barrier of living green. In the centre was the
+decaying stump of a mighty forest monarch, with its withered arms
+stretching out their bleached and shattered lengths far over the
+waving feathery tops of the nurkool below.
+
+The General and I cut down, some branches, which we stuck in the
+ground before us. I had a fallen log in front of me, on which I rested
+my guns. I had a naked _kookree_ ready to hand, for we were sure that
+the tigress was in the swamp, and I did not know what might happen. I
+did not half like this style of shooting, and wished I was safely
+seated on the back of 'JORROCKS,' my faithful old Bhaugulpore
+elephant. The General whistled as a sign for the beat to begin. The
+coolies dashed into the thicket. The stately elephant slowly forced
+his ponderous body through the crashing swaying brake. The rattle of
+the tom-toms and rumble of the drums, mingled with the hoarse shouts
+and cries of the beaters, the fiery rush of sputtering flame, and the
+loud report as each bomb burst, with the huge volumes of blinding
+smoke, and the scent of gunpowder that came on the breeze, told us
+that the bombs were doing their work. The jungle was too green to
+burn; but the fireworks raised a dense sulphurous smoke, which
+penetrated among the tall stems of the nurkool, and by the waving and
+crashing of the tall swaying canes, the heaving of the howdah, with
+the red puggree of the peon, and the gleaming of the staves and
+weapons, we could see that the beat was advancing.
+
+As they neared the large withered tree in the centre of the brake, the
+elephant curled up his trunk and trumpeted. This was a sure sign there
+was game afoot. We could see the peon in the howdah leaning over the
+front bar, and eagerly peering into the recesses of the thicket before
+him. He lit one of the bombs, and hurled it right up against the hole
+of the tree. It hissed and sputtered, and the smoke came curling over
+the reeds in dense volumes. A roar followed that made the valley ring
+again. We heard a swift rush. The elephant turned tail, and fled madly
+away, crashing through the matted brake that crackled and tore under
+his tread. The howdah swayed wildly, and the peon clung tenaciously on
+to the top bar with all his desperate might. The _mahout_, or
+elephant-driver, tried in vain to check the rush of the frightened
+brute, but after repeated sounding whacks on the head he got her to
+stop, and again turn round. Meantime the cries and shouting had
+ceased, and the beaters came pouring from the jungle by twos and
+threes, like the frightened inhabitants of some hive or ant-heap. Some
+in their hurry came tumbling out headlong, others with their faces
+turned backwards to see if anything was in pursuit of them, got
+entangled in the reeds, and fell prone on their hands and knees. One
+fellow had just emerged from the thick cover, when another terrified
+compatriot dashed out in blind unreasoning fear close behind him. The
+first one thought the tiger was on him. With one howl of anguish and
+dismay he fled as fast as he could run, and the General and I, who had
+witnessed the episode, could not help uniting in a resounding peal of
+laughter, that did more to bring the scared coolies to their senses
+than anything else we could have done.
+
+There was no doubt now of the tiger's whereabouts. One of the beaters
+gave us a most graphic description of its appearance and proportions.
+According to him it was bigger than an elephant, had a mouth as wide
+as a coal scuttle, and eyes that glared like a thousand suns. From all
+this we inferred that there was a full grown tiger or tigress in the
+jungle. We re-formed the line of beaters, and once more got the
+elephant to enter the patch. The same story was repeated. No sooner
+did they get near the old tree, than the tigress again charged with a
+roar, and our valiant coolies and the chicken-hearted elephant vacated
+the jungle as fast as their legs could carry them. This happened twice
+or thrice. The tigress charged every time, but would not leave her
+safe cover. The elephant wheeled round at every charge, and would not
+shew fight. Fullerton got into the howdah, and fired two shots into
+the spot where the tigress was lying. He did not apparently wound her,
+but the reports brought her to the charge once more, and the elephant,
+by this time fairly tired of the game, and thoroughly demoralised with
+fear, bolted right away, and nearly cracked poor Fullerton's head
+against the branch of a tree.
+
+We could plainly see, that with only one elephant we could never
+dislodge the tigress, so making the coolies beat up the patch in
+lines, we shot several pig and a hog-deer, and adjourned for something
+to eat by the bank of the creek. We had been trying to oust the
+tigress for over four hours, but she was as wise as she was savage,
+and refused to become a mark for our bullets in the open. After lunch
+we made another grand attempt. We promised the coolies double pay if
+they roused the tigress to flight. The elephant was forced again into
+the nurkool very much against his will, and the mahout was promised a
+reward if we got the tigress. The din this time was prodigious, and
+strange to say they got quite close up to the big withered tree
+without the usual roar and charge. This seemed somewhat to stimulate
+the beaters and the old elephant. The coolies redoubled their cries,
+smote among the reeds with their heavy staves, and shouted
+encouragement to each other. Right in the middle of the line, as it
+seemed to us from the outside, there was then a fierce roar and a
+mighty commotion. Cries of fear and consternation arose, and forth
+poured the coolies again, helter skelter, like so many rabbits from a
+warren when the weasel or ferret has entered the burrow. Right before
+me a huge old boar and a couple of sows came plunging forth. I let
+them get on a little distance from the brake, and then with my
+'Express' I rolled over the tusker and one of his companions, and just
+then the General shouted out to me, 'There's the tiger!'
+
+I looked in the direction of his levelled gun, and there at the edge
+of the jungle was a handsome half-grown tiger cub, beautifully marked,
+his tail switching angrily from side to side, and his twitching
+retracted lips and bristling moustache drawn back like those of a
+vicious cat, showing his gleaming polished fangs and teeth.
+
+The General had a fine chance, took a steady aim, and shot the young
+savage right through the heart. The handsome young tiger gave one
+convulsive leap into the air and fell on his side stone dead. We could
+not help a cheer, and shouted for Fullerton, who soon came running up.
+We got some coolies together, but they were frightened to go near the
+dead animal, as we could plainly hear the old vixen inside snarling
+and snapping, for all the world like an angry terrier. We heard her
+half-suppressed growl and snarl. She was evidently in a fine temper.
+How we wished for a couple of staunch elephants to hunt her out of the
+cane. It was no use, however, the elephant would not go near the
+jungle again. The coolies were thoroughly scared, and had got plenty
+of pork and venison to eat, so did not care for anything else. We
+collected a lot of tame buffaloes, and tried to drive them through the
+jungle, but the coolies had lost heart, and would not exert
+themselves; so we had to content ourselves with the cub, who measured
+six feet three inches (a very handsome skin it was), and very
+reluctantly had to leave the savage mother alone. I never saw a brute
+charge so persistently as she did. She always rushed forward with a
+succession of roars, and was very wary and cunning. She never charged
+home, she did not even touch the elephant or any of the coolies, but
+evidently trusted to frighten her assailants away by a bold show and a
+fierce outcry.
+
+We went back two days after with five elephants, which with great
+difficulty we had got together[1], and thoroughly beat the patch of
+nurkool, killed a lot of pig and a couple of deer, shot an alligator,
+and destroyed over thirty of its eggs, which we discovered on the bank
+of the creek; and returning in the evening shot a nilghau and a black
+buck, but the tigress had disappeared. She was gone, and we grumbled
+sorely at our bad luck. That was the only occasion I was ever after
+tiger on foot. It was doubtless intensely exciting work, and both
+tigress and cub must have passed close to us several times, hidden by
+the jungle. We were only about thirty paces from the edge of the
+brake, and both animals must have seen us, although the dense cover
+hid them from our sight. I certainly prefer shooting from the howdah.
+
+Although it is beyond the scope of this book to enter into a detailed
+account of the tiger, discussing his structure, habits, and
+characteristics, it may aid the reader if I give a sketchy general
+outline of some of the more prominent points of interest connected
+with the monarch of the jungle, the cruel, cunning, ferocious king of
+the cat tribe, the beautiful but dreaded tiger.
+
+I should prefer to shew his character by incidents with which I have
+myself been connected, but as many statements have been made about
+tigers that are utterly absurd and untrue, and as tiger stories
+generally contain a good deal of exaggeration, and a natural
+scepticism unconsciously haunts the reader when tigers and tiger
+shooting are the topics, it may be as well to state once for all, that
+I shall put down nothing that cannot be abundantly substantiated by
+reference to my own sporting journals, on those of the brothers S.,
+friends and fellow-sportsmen of my own. To G.S. I am under great
+obligations for many interesting notes he has given me about tiger
+shooting. Joe, his brother, was long our captain in our annual
+shooting parties. Their father and _his_ brother, the latter still
+alive and a keen shot, were noted sportsmen at a time when game was
+more plentiful, shooting more generally practised, and when to be a
+good shot meant more than average excellence. The two brothers between
+them have shot, I daresay, more than four hundred and fifty male and
+female tigers, and serried rows of skulls ranged round the
+billiard-rooms in their respective factories, bear witness to their
+love of sport and the deadly accuracy of their aim. Under their
+auspices I began my tiger shooting, and as they knew every inch of the
+jungles, had for years been observant students of nature, were
+acquainted with all the haunts and habits of every wild creature, I
+acquired a fund of information about the tiger which I knew could be
+depended on. It was the result of actual observation and experience,
+and in most instances it was corroborated by my own experience in my
+more limited sphere of action. Every incident I adduce, every
+deduction I draw, every assertion I make regarding tigers and tiger
+shooting can be plentifully substantiated, and abundantly testified
+to, by my brother sportsmen of Purneah and Bhaugulpore. From their
+valuable information I have got most of the material for this part of
+my book.
+
+Of the order FERAE, the family _felidae_, there is perhaps no animal
+in the wide range of all zoology, so eminently fitted for destruction
+as the tiger. His whole structure and appearance, combining beauty and
+extreme agility with prodigious strength, his ferocity, and his
+cunning, mark him out as the very type of a beast of prey. He is the
+largest of the cat tribe, the most formidable race of quadrupeds on
+earth. He is the most bloodthirsty in habit, and the most dreaded by
+man. Whole tracts of fertile fields, reclaimed from the wild
+luxuriance of matted jungle, and waving with golden grain, have been
+deserted by the patient husbandmen, and allowed to relapse into
+tangled thicket and uncultured waste on account of the ravages of this
+formidable robber. Whole villages have been depopulated by tigers, the
+mouldering door-posts, and crumbling rafters, met with at intervals in
+the heart of the solitary jungle, alone marking the spot where a
+thriving hamlet once sent up the curling smoke from its humble
+hearths, until the scourge of the wilderness, the dreaded 'man-eater,'
+took up his station near it, and drove the inhabitants in terror from
+the spot. Whole herds of valuable cattle have been literally destroyed
+by the tiger. His habitat is in those jungles, and near those
+localities, which are most highly prized by the herdsmen of India for
+their pastures, and the numbers of cattle that yearly fall before his
+thirst for blood, and his greed for living prey, are almost
+incredible. I have scarcely known a day pass, during the hot months,
+on the banks of the Koosee, that news of a _kill_ has not been sent in
+from some of the villages in my _ilaka_, and as a tiger eats once in
+every four or five days, and oftener if he can get the chance, the
+number of animals that fall a prey to his insatiable appetite, over
+the extent of Hindustan, must be enormous. The annual destruction of
+tame animals by tigers alone is almost incredible, and when we add to
+this the wild buffalo, the deer, the pig, and other untamed animals,
+to say nothing of smaller creatures, we can form some conception of
+the destruction caused by the tiger in the course of a year.
+
+His whole frame is put together to effect destruction. In cutting up a
+tiger you are impressed with this. His tendons are masses of nerve and
+muscle as hard as steel. The muscular development is tremendous. Vast
+bands and layers of muscle overlap each other. Strong ligaments, which
+you can scarcely cut through, and which soon blunt the sharpest knife,
+unite the solid, freely-playing, loosely-jointed bones. The muzzle is
+broad, and short, and obtuse. The claws are completely retractile. The
+jaws are short. There are two false molars, two grinders above, and
+the same number below. The upper carnivorous tooth has three lobes,
+and an obtuse heel; the lower has two lobes, pointed and sharp, and no
+heel. There is one very small tuberculous tooth above as an auxiliary,
+and then the strong back teeth. The muscles of the jaws are of
+tremendous power. I have come across the remains of a buffalo killed
+by a tiger, and found all the large bones, even the big strong bones
+of the pelvis and large joints, cracked and crunched like so many
+walnuts, by the powerful jaws of the fierce brute.
+
+The eye is peculiarly brilliant, and when glaring with fury it is
+truly demoniac. With his bristles rigid, the snarling lips drawn back,
+disclosing the formidable fangs, the body crouching for his spring,
+and the lithe tail puffed up and swollen, and lashing restlessly from
+side to side, each muscle tense and strung, and an undulating movement
+perceptible like the motions of a huge snake, a crouching tiger at bay
+is a sight that strikes a certain chill to the heart of the onlooker.
+When he bounds forward, with a roar that reverberates among the mazy
+labyrinths of the interminable jungle, he tests the steadiest nerve
+and almost daunts the bravest heart.
+
+In their habits they are very unsociable, and are only seen together
+during the amatory season. When that is over the male tiger betakes
+him again to his solitary predatory life, and the tigress becomes, if
+possible, fiercer than he is, and buries herself in the gloomiest
+recesses of the jungle. When the young are born, the male tiger has
+often been known to devour his offspring, and at this time they are
+very savage and quarrelsome. Old G., a planter in Purneah, once came
+across a pair engaged in deadly combat. They writhed and struggled on
+the ground, the male tiger striking tremendous blows on the chest and
+flanks of his consort, and tearing her skin in strips, while the
+tigress buried her fangs in his neck, tearing and worrying with all
+the ferocity of her nature. She was battling for her young. G. shot
+both the enraged combatants, and found that one of the cubs had been
+mangled, evidently by his unnatural father. Another, which he picked
+up in a neighbouring bush, was unharmed, but did not survive long.
+Pairs have often been shot in the same jungle, but seldom in close
+proximity, and it accords with all experience that they betray an
+aversion to each other's society, except at the one season. This
+propensity of the father to devour his offspring seems to be due to
+jealousy or to blind unreasoning hate. To save her offspring the
+female always conceals her young, and will often move far from the
+jungle which she usually frequents.
+
+When the cubs are able to kill for themselves, she seems to lose all
+pleasure in their society, and by the time they are well grown she
+usually has another batch to provide for. I have, however, shot a
+tigress with a full-grown cub--the hunt described in the last chapter
+is an instance--and on several occasions, my friend George has shot
+the mother with three or four full-grown cubs in attendance. This is
+however rare, and only happens I believe when the mother has remained
+entirely separate from the company of the male.
+
+The strength of the tiger is amazing. The fore paw is the most
+formidable weapon of attack. With one stroke delivered with full
+effect he can completely disable a large buffalo. On one occasion, on
+the Koosee _derahs_, that is, the plains bordering the river, an
+enraged tiger, passing through a herd of buffaloes, broke the backs of
+two of the herd, giving each a stroke right and left as he went along.
+One blow is generally sufficient to kill the largest bullock or
+buffalo. Our captain, Joe, had once received _khubber_, that is, news
+or information, of a kill by a tiger. He went straight to the
+_baithan_, the herd's head-quarters, and on making enquiries, was told
+that the tiger was a veritable monster.
+
+'Did you see it?' asked Joe.
+
+'I did not,' responded the _goala_ or cowherd.
+
+'Then how do you know it was so large?'
+
+'Because,' said the man, 'it killed the biggest buffalo in my herd,
+and the poor brute only gave one groan.'
+
+George once tracked a tiger, following up the drag of a bullock that
+he had carried off. At one place the brute came to a ditch, which was
+measured and found to be five feet in width. Through this there was no
+drag, but the traces continued on the further side. The inference is,
+that the powerful thief had cleared the ditch, taking the bullock
+bodily with him at a bound. Others have been known to jump clear out
+of a cattle pen, over a fence some six feet high, taking on one
+occasion a large-sized calf, and another time a sheep.
+
+Another wounded tiger, with two bullets in his flanks, the wound being
+near the root of the tail, cleared a _nullah_, or dry watercourse, at
+one bound. The nullah was stepped by George, and found to be
+twenty-three paces wide. It is fortunate, with such tremendous powers
+for attack, that the tiger will try as a rule to slink out of the way
+if he can. He almost always avoids an encounter with man. His first
+instinct is flight. Only the exciting incidents of the chase are as a
+rule put upon record. A narrative of tiger shooting therefore is apt
+in this respect to be a little misleading. The victims who meet their
+death tamely and quietly (and they form the majority in every
+hunt),--those that are shot as they are tamely trying to escape--are
+simply enumerated, but the charging tiger, the old vixen that breaks
+the line, and scatters the beaters to right and left, that rouses the
+blood of the sportsmen to a fierce excitement, these are made the most
+of. Every incident is detailed and dwelt upon, and thus the idea has
+gained ground, that ALL tigers are courageous, and wait not for
+attack, but in most instances take the initiative. It is not the case.
+Most of the tigers I have seen killed would have escaped if they
+could. It is only when brought to bay, or very hard pressed, or in
+defence of its young, that a tiger or tigress displays its native
+ferocity. At such a moment indeed, nothing gives a better idea of
+savage determined fury and fiendish rage. With ears thrown back, brows
+contracted, mouth open, and glaring yellow eyes scintillating with
+fury, the cruel claws plucking at the earth, the ridgy hairs on the
+back stiff and erect as bristles, and the lithe lissome body quivering
+in every muscle and fibre with wrath and hate, the beast comes down to
+the charge with a defiant roar, which makes the pulse bound and the
+breath come short and quick. It requires all a man's nerve and
+coolness, to enable him to make steady shooting.
+
+Roused to fury by a wound, I have seen tigers wheel round with amazing
+swiftness, and dash headlong, roaring dreadfully as they charged, full
+upon the nearest elephant, scattering the line and lacerating the poor
+creature on whose flanks or head they may have fastened, their whole
+aspect betokening pitiless ferocity and fiendish rage.
+
+Even in death they do not forget their savage instincts. I knew of one
+case in which a seemingly dead tiger inflicted a fearful wound upon an
+elephant that had trodden on what appeared to be his inanimate
+carcase. Another elephant, that attacked and all but trampled a tiger
+to death, was severely bitten under one of the toe-nails. The wound
+mortified, and the unfortunate beast died in about a week after its
+infliction. Another monster, severely wounded, fell into a pool of
+water, and seized hold with its jaws of a hard knot of wood that was
+floating about. In its death agony, it made its powerful teeth meet in
+the hard wood, and not until it was being cut up, and we had divided
+the muscles of the jaws, could we extricate the wood from that
+formidable clench. In rage and fury, and mad with pain, the wounded
+tiger will often turn round and savagely bite the wound that causes
+its agony, and they very often bite their paws and shoulders, and tear
+the grass and earth around them.
+
+A tiger wounded in the spine, however, is the most exciting spectacle.
+Paralysed in the limbs, he wheels round, roaring and biting at
+everything within his reach. In 1874 I shot one in the spine, and
+watched his furious movements for some time before I put him out of
+his misery. I threw him a pad from one of the elephants, and the way
+he tore and gnawed it gave me some faint idea of his fury and
+ferocity. He looked the very personification of impotent viciousness;
+the incarnation of devilish rage.
+
+Urged by hunger the tiger fearlessly attacks his prey. The most
+courageous are young tigers about seven or eight feet long. They
+invariably give better sport than larger and older animals, being more
+ready to charge, and altogether bolder and more defiant. Up to the age
+of two years they have probably been with the mother, have never
+encountered a reverse or defeat, and having become bold by impunity,
+hesitate not to fly at any assailant whatever.
+
+Like all the cat tribe, they are very cruel in disposition, often most
+wantonly so. Having disabled his prey with the first onset, the tiger
+plays with it as a cat does with a mouse, and, unless very sharp set
+by hunger, he always indulges this love of torture. His attacks are by
+no means due only to the cravings of his appetite. He often slays the
+victims of a herd, in the wantonness of sport, merely to indulge his
+murderous propensities. Even when he has had a good meal he will often
+go on adding fresh victims, seemingly to gratify his sense of power,
+and his love of slaughter. In teaching her cubs to kill for
+themselves, the mother often displays great cruelty, frequently
+killing at a time five or six cows from one herd. The young savages
+are apt pupils, and 'try their prentice hand' on calves and weakly
+members of the herd, killing from the mere love of murder.
+
+Their cunning is as remarkable as their cruelty; what they lack in
+speed they make up in consummate subtlety. They take advantage of the
+direction of the wind, and of every irregularity of the ground. It is
+amazing what slight cover will suffice to conceal their lurking forms
+from the observation of the herd. During the day they generally
+retreat to some cool and shady spot, deep in the recesses of the
+jungle. Where the soft earth has been worn away with ragged hollows
+and deep shady water-courses, where the tallest and most impenetrable
+jungle conceals the winding and impervious paths, hidden in the gloom
+and obscurity of the densely-matted grass, the lordly tiger crouches,
+and blinks away the day. With the approach of night, however, his mood
+undergoes a change. He hears the tinkle of the bells, borne by some of
+the members of a retreating herd, that may have been feeding in close
+proximity to his haunt all day long, and from which he has determined
+to select a victim for his evening meal. He rouses himself and yawns,
+stretches himself like the great cruel cat he is, and then crawls and
+creeps silently along, by swampy watercourses, and through devious
+labyrinths known to himself alone. He hangs on the outskirts of the
+herd, prowling along and watching every motion of the returning
+cattle. He makes his selection, and with infinite cunning and patience
+contrives to separate it from the rest. He waits for a favourable
+moment, when, with a roar that sends the alarmed companions of the
+unfortunate victim scampering together to the front, he springs on his
+unhappy prey, deprives it of all power of resistance with one
+tremendous stroke, and bears it away to feast at his leisure on the
+warm and quivering carcase.
+
+He generally kills as the shades of evening are falling, and seldom
+ventures on a foraging expedition by day. After nightfall it is
+dangerous to be abroad in the jungles. It is then that dramas are
+acted of thrilling interest, and unimaginable sensation scenes take
+place. Some of the old shekarries and field-watchers frequently dig
+shallow pits, in which they take their stand. Their eye is on the
+level of the ground, and any object standing out in relief against the
+sky line can be readily detected. If they could relate their
+experiences, what absorbing narratives they could write. They see the
+tiger spring upon his terror-stricken prey, the mother and her hungry
+cubs prowling about for a victim, or two fierce tigers battling for
+the favours of some sleek, striped, remorseless, bloodthirsty
+forest-fiend. In pursuit of their quarry, they steal noiselessly
+along, and love to make their spring unawares. They generally select
+some weaker member of a herd, and are chary of attacking a strong
+big-boned, horned animal. They sometimes 'catch a Tartar,' and
+instances are known of a buffalo not only withstanding the attack of a
+tiger successfully, but actually gaining the victory over his more
+active assailant, whose life has paid the penalty of his rashness.
+
+Old G. told me, he had come across the bodies of a wild boar and an
+old tiger, lying dead together near Burgamma. The boar was fearfully
+mauled, but the clean-cut gaping gashes in the striped hide of the
+tiger, told how fearfully and gallantly he had battled for his life.
+
+In emerging from the jungle at night, they generally select the same
+path or spot, and approach the edge of the cover with great caution.
+They will follow the same track for days together. Hence in some
+places the tracks of the tigers are so numerous as to lead the tyro to
+imagine that dozens must have passed, when in truth the tracks all
+belong to one and the same brute. So acute is their perception, so
+narrowly do they scrutinize every minute object in their path, so
+suspicious is their nature, that anything new in their path, such as a
+pitfall, a screen of cut grass, a _mychan_, that is, a stage from
+which you might be intending to get a shot, nay, even the print of a
+footstep--a man's, a horse's, an elephant's--is often quite enough to
+turn them from a projected expedition, or at any rate to lead them to
+seek some new outlet from the jungle. In any case it increases their
+wariness, and under such circumstances it becomes almost impossible to
+get a shot at them from a pit or shooting-stage. Their vision, their
+sense of smell, of hearing, all their perceptions are so acute, that I
+think lying in wait for them is chiefly productive of weariness and
+vexation of spirit. It is certainly dangerous, and the chances of a
+successful shot are so problematical, while the _disagreeables_, and
+discomforts, and dangers are so real and tangible, that I am inclined
+to think this mode of attack 'hardly worth the candle.'
+
+With all his ferocity and cruelty, however, I am of opinion that the
+tiger is more cowardly than courageous. He will always try to escape a
+danger, and fly from attack, rather than attack in return or wait to
+meet it, and wherever he can, in pursuit of his prey, he will trust
+rather to his cunning than to his strength, and he always prefers an
+ambuscade to an open onslaught.
+
+
+[1] This was at the time the Prince of Wales was shooting in Nepaul,
+    not very far from where I was then stationed. Most of the
+    elephants in the district had been sent up to his Royal Highness's
+    camp, or were on their way to take part in the ceremonies of the
+    grand _Durbar_ in Delhi.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
+--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
+--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of
+tiger.--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His
+description.--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to
+measure tigers.--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.
+--Number of young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs
+to kill.--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and
+cunning of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of
+concealment.--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.
+--Caught by floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
+
+The tiger's mode of attack is very characteristic of his whole nature.
+To see him stealthily crouching, or crawling silently and sneakingly
+after a herd of cattle, dodging behind every clump of bushes or tuft
+of grass, running swiftly along the high bank of a watercourse, and
+sneaking under the shadowing border of a belt of jungle, is to
+understand his cunning and craftiness. His attitude, when he is
+crouching for the final bound, is the embodiment of suppleness and
+strength. All his actions are graceful, and half display and half
+conceal beneath their symmetry and elegance the tremendous power and
+deadly ferocity that lurks beneath. For a short distance he is
+possessed of great speed, and with a few short agile bounds he
+generally manages to overtake his prey. If baffled in his first
+attack, he retires growling to lie in wait for a less fortunate
+victim. His onset being so fierce and sudden, the animal he selects
+for his prey is generally taken at a great disadvantage, and is seldom
+in a position to make any strenuous or availing resistance.
+
+Delivering the numbing blow with his mighty fore paw, he fastens on
+the throat of the animal he has felled, and invariably tries to tear
+open the jugular vein. This is his practice in nearly every case, and
+it shews a wonderful instinct for selecting the most deadly spot in
+the whole body of his luckless prey. When he has got hold of his
+victim by the throat, he lies down, holding on to the bleeding
+carcase, snarling and growling, and fastening and withdrawing his
+claws, much as a cat does with a rat or mouse. Some writers say he
+then proceeds to drink the blood, but this is just one of those broad
+general assertions which require proof. In some cases he may quench
+his thirst and gratify his appetite for blood by drinking it from the
+gushing veins of his quivering victim, but in many cases I know from
+observation, that the blood is not drunk. If the tiger is very hungry
+he then begins his feast, tearing huge fragments of flesh from the
+dead body, and not unusually swallowing them whole. If he is not
+particularly hungry, he drags the carcase away, and hides it in some
+well-known spot. This is to preserve it from the hungry talons and
+teeth of vultures and jackals. He commonly remains on guard near his
+_cache_ until he has acquired an appetite. If he cannot conveniently
+carry away his quarry, because of its bulk, or the nature of the
+ground, or from being disturbed, he returns to the place at night and
+satisfies his appetite.
+
+Tigers can sneak crouchingly along as fast as they can trot, and it is
+wonderful how silently they can steal on their prey. They seem to have
+some stray provident fits, and on occasions make provision for future
+wants. There are instances on record of a tiger dragging a _kill_
+after him for miles, over water, and through slush and weeds, and
+feasting on the carcase days after he has killed it. It is a fact, now
+established beyond a doubt, that he will eat carrion and putrid flesh,
+but only from necessity and not from choice.
+
+On one occasion my friends put up a tigress during the rains, when
+there are few cattle in the _derahs_ or plains near the river. She had
+killed a pig, and was eagerly devouring the carcase when she was
+disturbed. Snarling and growling, she made off with a leg of pork in
+her mouth, when a bullet ended her career. They seem to prefer pork
+and venison to almost any other kind of food, and no doubt pig and
+deer are their natural and usual prey. The influx, however, of vast
+herds of cattle, and the consequent presence of man, drive away the
+wild animals, and at all events make them more wary and more difficult
+to kill. Finding domestic cattle unsuspicious, and not very formidable
+foes, the tiger contents himself at a pinch with beef, and judging
+from his ravages he comes to like it. Getting bolder by impunity, he
+ventures in some straits to attack man. He finds him a very easy prey;
+he finds the flesh too, perhaps, not unlike his favourite pig.
+Henceforth he becomes a 'man-eater,' the most dreaded scourge and
+pestilent plague of the district. He sometimes finds an old boar a
+tough customer, and never ventures to attack a buffalo unless it be
+grazing alone, and away from the rest of the herd. When buffaloes are
+attacked, they make common cause against their crafty and powerful
+foe, and uniting together in a crescent-shaped line, their horns all
+directed in a living _cheval-de-frise_ against the tiger, they rush
+tumultuously at him, and fairly hunt him from the jungle. The pig,
+having a short thick neck, and being tremendously muscular, is hard to
+kill; but the poor inoffensive cow, with her long-neck, is generally
+killed at the first blow, or so disabled that it requires little
+further effort to complete the work of slaughter.
+
+Two friends of mine once shot an enormous old tiger on a small island
+in the middle of the river, during the height of the annual rains. The
+brute had lost nearly all its hair from mange, and was an emaciated
+sorry-looking object. From the remains on the island--the skin,
+scales, and bones--they found that he must have slain and eaten
+several alligators during his enforced imprisonment on the island.
+They will eat alligators when pressed by hunger, and they have been
+known to subsist on turtles, tortoises, iguanas, and even jackals.
+Only the other day in Assam, a son of Dr. B. was severely mauled by a
+tiger which sprang into the verandah after a dog. There were three
+gentlemen in the verandah, and, as you may imagine, they were taken
+not a little by surprise. They succeeded in bagging the tiger, but not
+until poor B. was very severely hurt.
+
+After tearing the throat open, they walk round the prostrate carcase
+of their prey, growling and spitting like 'tabby' cats. They begin
+their operations in earnest, invariably on the buttock. A leopard
+generally eats the inner portion of the thigh first. A wolf tears open
+the belly, and eats the intestines first. A vulture, hawk, or kite,
+begins on the eyes; but a tiger invariably begins on the buttocks,
+whether of buffalo, cow, deer, or pig. He then eats the fatty covering
+round the intestines, follows that up with the liver and udder, and
+works his way round systematically to the fore-quarters, leaving the
+head to the last. It is frequently the only part of an animal that
+they do not eat.
+
+A 'man-eater' eats the buttocks, shoulders, and breasts first. So many
+carcases are found in the jungle of animals that have died from
+disease or old age, or succumbed to hurts and accidents, that the
+whitened skeletons meet the eye in hundreds. But one can always tell
+the kill of a tiger, and distinguish between it and the other bleached
+heaps. The large bones of a tiger's kill are always broken. The broad
+massive rib bones are crunched in two as easily as a dog would snap
+the drumstick of a fowl. Vultures and jackals, the scavengers of the
+jungle, are incapable of doing this; and when you see the fractured
+large bones, you can always tell that the whiskered monarch has been
+on the war-path. George S. writes me:--
+
+'I have known a tiger devour a whole bullock to his own cheek in one
+day. Early in the morning a man came to inform me he had seen a tiger
+pull down a bullock. I went after the fellow late in the afternoon,
+and found him in a bush not more than twenty feet square, the only
+jungle he had to hide in for some distance round, and in this he had
+polished off the bullock, nothing remaining save the head. The jungle
+being so very small, and he having lain the whole day in it, nothing
+in the way of vultures or jackals could have assisted him in finishing
+off the bullock.'
+
+When hungry they appear to bolt large masses of flesh without
+masticating it. The same correspondent writes:--
+
+'We cut out regular "fids" once from a tiger's stomach, also large
+pieces of bone. Joe heard a tremendous roaring one night, which
+continued till near morning, not far from Nipunneah. He went out at
+dawn to look for the tiger, which he found was dead. The brute had
+tried to swallow the knee-joint of a bullock, and it had stuck in his
+gullet. This made him roar from pain, and eventually choked him.'
+
+As there are two distinct varieties of wild pig in India, so there
+seems to be little doubt that there are two distinct kinds of tigers.
+As these have frequently crossed we find many hybrids. I cannot do
+better than again quote from my obliging and observant friend George.
+The two kinds he designates as 'The Royal Bengal,' and 'The Hill
+Tiger,' and goes on to say:--
+
+'As a rule the stripes of a Royal Bengal are single and dark. The
+skull is widely different from that of his brother the Hill tiger,
+being low in the crown, wider in the jaws, rather flat in comparison,
+and the brain-pan longer with a sloping curve at the end, the crest of
+the brain-pan being a concave curve.
+
+'The Hill tiger is much more massively built; squat and thick set,
+heavier in weight and larger in bulk, with shorter tail, and very
+large and powerful neck, head, and shoulders. The stripes generally
+are double, and of a more brownish tinge, with fawn colour between the
+double stripes. The skull is high in the crown, and not quite so wide.
+The brain-pan is shorter, and the crest slightly convex or nearly
+straight, and the curve at the end of the skull rather abrupt.
+
+'They never grow so long as the "Bengal," yet look twice as big.
+
+'The crosses are very numerous, and vary according to pedigree, in
+stripes, skulls, form, weight, bulk, and tail. This I find most
+remarkable when I look at my collection of over 160 skulls.
+
+'The difference is better marked in tigers than in tigresses. The
+Bengal variety are not as a rule as ferocious as the Hill tiger. Being
+more supple and cunning, they can easier evade their pursuers by
+flight and manoeuvre than, their less agile brothers. The former,
+owing to deficiency of strength, oftener meet with discomfiture, and
+consequently are more wary and cunning; while the latter, prone to
+carry everything before them, trust more to their strength and
+courage, anticipating victory as certain.
+
+'In some the stripes are doubled throughout, in others only partially
+so, while in some they are single throughout, and some have manes to a
+slight extent.'
+
+I have no doubt this classification is correct. The tigers I have seen
+in Nepaul near the hills, were sometimes almost a dull red, and at a
+distance looked like a huge dun cow, while those I have seen in the
+plains during our annual hunts, were of a bright tawny yellow, longer,
+more lanky, and not shewing half such a bold front as their bulkier
+and bolder brethren of the hills.
+
+The length of the tiger has often given rise to fierce discussions
+among sportsmen. The fertile imagination of the slayer of a solitary
+'stripes,' has frequently invested the brute he has himself shot, or
+seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been shot by a friend, or
+the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous length, inches swelling to
+feet, and dimensions growing at each repetition of the yarn, till, as
+in the case of boars, the twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch
+tusker, and the eight foot tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.
+
+Purists again, sticklers for stern truth, haters of bounce or
+exaggeration, have perhaps erred as much on the other side; and in
+their eagerness to give the exact measurement, and avoid the very
+appearance of exaggeration, they actually stretch their tape line and
+refuse to measure the curves of the body, taking it in straight lines.
+This I think is manifestly unfair.
+
+Our mode of measurement in Purneah was to take the tiger as he lay
+before he was put on the elephant, and measure from the tip of the
+nose, over the crest of the skull, along the undulations of the body,
+to the tip of the tail. That is, we followed the curvature of the
+spine along the dividing ridge of the back, and always were careful
+and fair in our attempts. I am of opinion that a tiger over ten feet
+long is an exceptionally long one, but when I read of sportsmen
+denying altogether that even that length can be attained, I can but
+pity the dogmatic scepticism that refuses credence to well ascertained
+and authenticated facts. I believe also that tigers are not got nearly
+so large as in former days. I believe that much longer and heavier
+tigers--animals larger in every way--were shot some twenty years ago
+than those we can get now, but I account for this by the fact that
+there is less land left waste and uncultivated. There are more roads,
+ferries, and bridges, more improved communications, and in consequence
+more travelling. Population and cultivation have increased; firearms
+are more numerous; sport is more generally followed; shooting is much
+more frequent and deadly; and, in a word, tigers have not the same
+chances as they had some twenty years ago of attaining a ripe old age,
+and reaching the extremest limit of their growth. The largest tigers
+being also the most suspicious and wary, are only found in the
+remotest recesses of the impenetrable jungles of Nepaul and the Terai,
+or in those parts of the Indian wilds where the crack of the European
+rifle is seldom or never heard.
+
+It has been so loudly asserted, and so boldly maintained that no tiger
+was ever shot reaching, when fairly measured (that is, measured with
+the skin on, as he lay), ten feet, that I will let Mr. George again
+speak for himself. Referring to the royal Bengal, he says:--
+
+'These grow to great lengths. They have been shot as long as twelve
+feet seven inches (my father shot one that length) or longer; twelve
+feet seven inches, twelve feet six inches, twelve feet three inches,
+twelve feet one inch, and twelve feet, have been shot and recorded in
+the old sporting magazines by gentlemen of undoubted veracity in
+Purneah.
+
+'I have seen the skin of one twelve feet one inch, compared with which
+the skin of one I have by me _that measured as he lay_ (the italics
+are mine) eleven feet one inch, looks like the skin of a cub. The old
+skin looks more like that of a huge antediluvian species in comparison
+with the other.
+
+'The twelve footer was so heavy that my uncle (C.A.S.) tells me no
+number of mahouts could lift it. Several men, if they could have
+approached at one and the same time, might have been able to do so,
+but a sufficient number of men could not lay hold simultaneously to
+move the body from the ground.
+
+'Eventually a number of bamboos had to be cut, and placed in an
+incline from the ground to the elephant's saddle while the elephant
+knelt down, and up this incline the tiger had to be regularly hauled
+and shoved, and so fastened on the elephant.
+
+'He (the tiger) mauled four elephants, one of whom died the same day,
+and one other had a narrow _batch_, i.e. escape, of its life.
+
+In another communication to me, my friend goes over the same ground,
+but as the matter is one of interest to sportsmen and naturalists, I
+will give the extract entire. It proceeds as follows:--
+
+'Tigers grow to great lengths, some assert to even fourteen feet. I do
+not say they do not, but such cases are very rare, and require
+authentication. The longest I have seen, measured as he lay, eleven
+feet one inch (see "Oriental Sporting Magazine," for July, 1871, p.
+308). He was seven feet nine inches from tip of nose to root of tail;
+root of tail one foot three inches in circumference; round chest four
+feet six inches; length of head one foot two inches; fore arm two feet
+two inches; round the head two feet ten inches; length of tail three
+feet four inches.
+
+'Besides this, I have shot another eleven feet, and one ten feet
+eleven inches.
+
+'The largest tigress I have shot was at Sahareah, which measured ten
+feet two inches. I shot another ten feet exactly.' (See O.S.M., Aug.,
+1874, p. 358.)
+
+'I have got the head of a tiger, shot by Joe, which measured eleven
+feet five inches. It was shot at Baraila.
+
+'The male is much bigger built in every way--length, weight, size,
+&c., than the female. The males are more savage, the females more
+cunning and agile. The arms, body, paws, head, skull, claws, teeth,
+&c., of the female, are smaller. The tail of tigress longer; hind legs
+more lanky; the prints look smaller and more contracted, and the toes
+nearer together. It is said that though a large tiger may venture to
+attack a buffalo, the tigress refrains from doing so, but I have found
+this otherwise in my experience.
+
+'I have kept a regular log of all tigers shot by me. The average
+length of fifty-two tigers recorded in my journal is nine feet six and
+a half inches (cubs excluded), and of sixty-eight tigresses (cubs
+excluded), eight feet four inches.
+
+'The average of tigers and tigresses is eight feet ten and a quarter
+inches. This is excluding cubs I have taken alive.'
+
+As to measurements, he goes on to make a few remarks, and as I cannot
+improve on them I reproduce the original passage:--
+
+'Several methods have been recommended for measuring tigers. I measure
+them on the ground, or when brought to camp before skinning, and run
+the tape tight along the line, beginning at the tip of the nose, along
+the middle of the skull, between the ears and neck, then along the
+spine to the end of the tail, taking any curves of the body.
+
+'No doubt measurements of skull, body, tail, legs, &c., ought all to
+be taken, to give an adequate idea of the tiger, and for comparing
+them with one another, but this is not always feasible.'
+
+Most of the leading sportsmen in India now-a-days are very particular
+in taking the dimensions of every limb of the dead tiger. They take
+his girth, length, and different proportions. Many even weigh the
+tiger when it gets into camp, and no doubt this test is one of the
+best that can be given for a comparison of the sizes of the different
+animals slain.
+
+Another much disputed point in the natural history of the animal, a
+point on which there has been much acrimonious discussion, is the
+number of young that are given at a birth. Some writers have asserted,
+and stoutly maintained, that two cubs, or at the most three, is the
+extreme number of young brought forth at one time.
+
+This may be the ordinary number, but the two gentlemen I have already
+alluded to have assured me, that on frequent occasions they have
+picked up four actually born, and have cut out five several times, and
+on one occasion six, from the womb of a tigress.
+
+I have myself picked up four male cubs, all in one spot, with their
+eyes just beginning to open, and none of their teeth through the gums.
+One had been trampled to death by buffaloes, the other three were
+alive and scatheless, huddled into a bush, like three immense kittens.
+I kept the three for a considerable time, and eventually took them to
+Calcutta and sold them for a very satisfactory price.
+
+It seems clear, however, that the tigress frequently has four and even
+five cubs. It is rare, indeed to find her accompanied by more than two
+well grown cubs, very seldom three; and the inference is, that one or
+two of the young tigers succumb in very early life.
+
+The young ones do not appear to grow very quickly; they are about a
+foot long when they are born; they are born blind, with very minute
+hair, almost none in fact, but with the stripes already perfectly
+marked on the soft supple skin; they open their eyes when they are
+eight or ten days old, at which time they measure about a foot and a
+half. At the age of nine months they have attained to five feet in
+length, and are waxing mischievous. Tiger cubs a year old average
+about five feet eight inches, tigresses some three inches or so less.
+In two years they grow respectively to--the male seven feet six
+inches, and the female seven feet. At about this time they leave the
+mother, if they have not already done so, and commence depredations on
+their own account. In fact, their education has been well attended to.
+The mother teaches them to kill when they are about a year old. A
+young cub that measured only six feet, and whose mother had been shot
+in one of the annual beats, was killed while attacking a full grown
+cow in the government pound at Dumdaha police station. When they reach
+the length of six feet six inches they can kill pretty easily, and
+numbers have been shot by George and other Purneah sportsmen close to
+their 'kills.'
+
+They are most daring and courageous when they have just left their
+mother's care, and are cast forth to fight the battle of life for
+themselves. While with the old tigress their lines have been cast in
+not unpleasant places, they have seldom known hunger, and have
+experienced no reverses. Accustomed to see every animal succumb to her
+well planned and audacious attacks, they fancy that nothing will
+withstand their onslaught. They have been known to attack a line of
+elephants, and to charge most determinedly, even in this adolescent
+stage.
+
+Bye-and-bye, however, as they receive a few rude shocks from
+buffaloes, or are worsted in a hand-to-hand encounter with some tough
+old bull, or savage old grey boar, more especially if they get an ugly
+rip or two from the sharp tusks of an infuriated fighting tusker, they
+begin to be less aggressive, they learn that discretion may be the
+better part of valour, and their cunning instincts are roused. In
+fact, their education is progressing, and in time they instinctively
+discover every wile and dodge and cunning stratagem, and display all
+the wondrous subtlety of their race in procuring their prey.
+
+Old tigers are invariably more wary, cautious, and suspicious than
+young ones, and till they are fairly put to it by hunger, hurt, or
+compulsion, they endeavour to keep their stripes concealed. When
+brought to bay, however, there is little to reproach them with on the
+score of cowardice, and it will be matter of rejoicing if you or your
+elephants do not come off second best in the encounter. Even in the
+last desperate case, a cunning old tiger will often make a feint, or
+sham rush, or pretended charge, when his whole object is flight. If he
+succeed in demoralising the line of elephants, roaring and dashing
+furiously about, he will then try in the confusion to double through,
+unless he is too badly wounded to be able to travel fast, in which
+case he will fight to the end.
+
+Old fellows are well acquainted with every maze and thicket in the
+jungles, and they no sooner hear the elephants enter the 'bush' or
+'cover' than they make off for some distant shelter. If there is no
+apparent chance of this being successful, they try to steal out
+laterally and outflank the line, or if that also is impossible, they
+hide in some secret recess like a fox, or crouch low in some clumpy
+bush, and trust to you or your elephant passing by without noticing
+their presence.
+
+It is marvellous in what sparse cover they will manage to lie up. So
+admirably do their stripes mingle with the withered and charred
+grass-stems and dried up stalks, that it is very difficult to detect
+the dreaded robber when he is lying flat, extended, close to the
+ground, so still and motionless that you cannot distinguish a tremor
+or even a vibration of the grass in which he is crouching.
+
+On one occasion George followed an old tiger through some stubble
+about three feet high. It had been well trampled down too by tame
+buffaloes. The tiger had been tracked into the field, and was known to
+be in it. George was within ten yards of the cunning brute, and
+although mounted on a tall elephant, and eagerly scanning the thin
+cover with his sharpest glance, he could not discern the concealed
+monster. His elephant was within four paces of it, when it sprang up
+at the charge, giving a mighty roar, which however also served as its
+death yell, as a bullet from George's trusty gun crashed through its
+ribs and heart.
+
+Tigers can lay themselves so flat on the ground, and lie so perfectly
+motionless, that it is often a very easy thing to overlook them. On
+another occasion, when the Purneah Hunt were out, a tigress that had
+been shot got under some cover that was trampled down by a line of
+about twenty elephants. The sportsmen knew that she had been severely
+wounded, as they could tell by the gouts of blood, but there was no
+sign of the body. She had disappeared. After a long search, beating
+the same ground over and over again, an elephant trod on the dead body
+lying under the trampled canes, and the mahout got down and discovered
+her lying quite dead. She was a large animal and full grown.
+
+On another occasion George was after a fine male tiger. He was
+following up fast, but coming to a broad nullah, full of water, he
+suddenly lost sight of his game. He looked up and down the bank, and
+on the opposite bank, but could see no traces of the tiger. Looking
+down, he saw in the water what at first he took to be a large
+bull-frog. There was not a ripple on the placid stagnant surface of
+the pool. He marvelled much, and just then his mahout pointed to the
+supposed bull-frog, and in an excited whisper implored George to fire.
+A keener look convinced George that it really was the tiger. It was
+totally immersed all but the face, and lying so still that not the
+faintest motion or ripple was perceptible. He fired and inflicted a
+terrible wound. The tiger bounded madly forward, and George gave it
+its quietus through the spine as it tried to spring up the opposite
+bank.
+
+A nearly similar case occurred to old Mr. C., one of the veteran
+sportsmen of Purneah. A tiger had bolted towards a small tank or pond,
+and though the line followed up in hot pursuit, the brute disappeared.
+Old C., keener than the others, was loth to give up the pursuit, and
+presently discerned a yellowish reflection in the clear water. Peering
+more intently, he could discover the yellowish tawny outline of the
+cunning animal, totally immersed in the water, save its eyes, ears,
+and nose. He shot the tiger dead, and it sank to the bottom like a
+stone. So perfectly had it concealed itself, that the other sportsmen
+could not for the life of them imagine what old C. had fired at, till
+his mahout got down and began to haul the dead animal out of the
+water.
+
+Tigers are not at all afraid of water, and are fast and powerful
+swimmers. They swim much after the fashion of a horse, only the head
+out of the water, and they make scarcely any ripple.
+
+'In another case,' writes George, 'though not five yards from the
+elephant, and right under me, a tiger was swimming with so slight a
+ripple that I mistook it for a rat, until I saw the stripes emerge,
+when I perforated his jacket with a bullet.'
+
+Only their head remaining out of water when they are swimming, they
+are very hard to hit, as shooting at an object on water is very
+deceptive work as to judging distance, and a tiger's head is but a
+small object to aim at when some little way off.
+
+Old C. had another adventure with a cunning rogue, which all but ended
+disastrously. He was in hot pursuit of the tiger, and, finding no
+safety on land, it took to swimming in a broad unfordable piece of
+water, a sort of deep lagoon. Old C. procured a boat that was handy,
+and got a coolie to paddle him out after the tiger. He fired several
+shots at the exposed head of the brute, but missed. He thought he
+would wait till he got nearer and make a sure shot, as he had only one
+bullet left in the boat. Suddenly the tiger turned round, and made
+straight for the boat. Here was a quandary. Even if lie killed the
+tiger with his single bullet it might upset the boat; the lagoon was
+full of alligators, to say nothing of weeds, and there was no time to
+get his heavy boots off. He felt his life might depend on the accuracy
+of his aim. He fired, and killed the tiger stone dead within four or
+five yards of the boat.
+
+On one occasion, when out with our worthy district magistrate, Mr. S.,
+I came on the tracks of what to all appearance, was a very large
+tiger. They led over the sand close to the water's edge, and were very
+distinct. I could see no returning marks, so I judged that the tiger
+must have taken to the water. The stream was rapid and deep, and
+midway to the further bank was a big, oblong-shaped, sandy islet, some
+five or six hundred yards long, and having a few scrubby bushes
+growing sparsely on it. We put our elephants into the rapid current,
+and got across. The river here was nearly a quarter of a mile wide on
+each side of the islet. As we emerged from the stream on to the island
+we found fresh tracks of the tiger. They led us completely round the
+circumference of the islet. The tiger had evidently been in quest of
+food. The prints were fresh and very well defined. Finding that all
+was barren on the sandy shore, he entered the current again, and
+following up we found his imprint once more on the further bank,
+several hundred yards down the stream.
+
+One tiger was killed stone dead by a single bullet during one of our
+annual hunts, and falling back into the water, it sank to the bottom
+like lead. Being unable to find the animal, we beat all round the
+place, till I suggested it might have been hit and fallen into the
+river. One of the men was ordered to dive down, and ascertain if the
+tiger was at the bottom. The river water is generally muddy, so that
+the bottom cannot be seen. Divesting himself of puggree, and girding
+up his loins, the diver sank gently to the bottom, but presently
+reappeared in a palpable funk, puffing and blowing, and declaring that
+the tiger was certainly at the bottom. The foolish fellow thought it
+might be still alive. We soon disabused his mind of that idea, and had
+the dead tiger hauled up to dry land.
+
+Surprised by floods, a tiger has been known to remain for days on an
+ant-hill, and even to take refuge on the branch of some large tree,
+but he takes to water readily, and can swim for over a mile, and he
+has been known to remain for days in from two to three feet depth of
+water.
+
+A time-honoured tiger story with old hands, used to tell how the
+Soonderbund tigers got carried out to sea. If the listener was a new
+arrival, or a _gobe mouche_, they would explain that the tigers in the
+Soonderbunds often get carried out to sea by the retiring tide. It
+would sweep them off as they were swimming from island to island in
+the vast delta of Father Ganges. Only the young ones, however,
+suffered this lamentable fate. The older and more wary fellows, taught
+perhaps by sad experience, used always to dip their tails in, before
+starting on a swim, so as to ascertain which way the tide was flowing.
+If it was the flow of the tide they would boldly venture in, but if it
+was ebb tide, and there was the slightest chance of their being
+carried out to sea, they would patiently lie down, meditate on the
+fleeting vanity of life, and like the hero of the song--
+
+  'Wait for the turn of the tide.'
+
+Without venturing an opinion on this story, I may confidently assert,
+that the tiger, unlike his humble prototype the domestic cat, is not
+really afraid of water, but will take to it readily to escape a
+threatened danger, or if he can achieve any object by 'paddling his
+own canoe.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives
+about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Clawmarks
+on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s
+howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.
+--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye
+out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers
+easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of shells on tiger and buffalo.--Best
+weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives
+prone to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for
+tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six
+elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.
+--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the
+Koosee.--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to
+shoot at moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of
+different animals in the grass.
+
+Tigers seem to have no regular breeding season. As a rule the male and
+female come together in the autumn and winter, and the young ones are
+born in the spring and summer. All the young tigers I have ever heard
+of have been found in March, April, and May, and so on through the
+rains.
+
+The natives have many singular beliefs and prejudices about tigers,
+and they are very often averse to give the slightest information as to
+their whereabouts. To a stranger they will either give no information
+at all, pleading entire ignorance, or they will wilfully mislead him,
+putting him on a totally wrong track. If you are well known to the
+villagers, and if they have confidence in your nerve and aim, they
+will eagerly tell you everything they know, and will accompany you on
+your elephant, to point out the exact spot where the tiger was last
+seen. In the event of a 'find' they always look for _backsheesh_, even
+though your exertions may have rid their neighbourhood of an
+acknowledged scourge.
+
+The _gwalla_, or cowherd caste, seem to know the habits of the yellow
+striped robber very accurately. Accompanied by their herd they will
+venture into the thickest jungle, even though they know that it is
+infested by one or more tigers. If any member of the herd is attacked,
+it is quite common for the _gwalla_ to rush up, and by shouts and even
+blows try to make the robber yield up his prey. This is no
+exaggeration, but a simple fact. A cowherd attacked by a tiger has
+been known to call up his herd by cries, and they have succeeded in
+driving off his fierce assailant. No tiger will willingly face a herd
+of buffaloes or cattle united for mutual defence. Surrounded by his
+trusty herd, the _gwalla_ traverses the densest jungle and most
+tiger-infested thickets without fear.
+
+They believe that to rub the fat of the tiger on the loins, and to eat
+a piece of the tongue or flesh, will cure impotency; and tiger fat,
+rubbed on a painful part of the body, is an accepted specific for
+rheumatic affections. It is a firmly settled belief, that the whiskers
+and teeth, worn on the body, will act as a charm, making the wearer
+proof against the attacks of tigers. The collar-bone too, is eagerly
+coveted for the same reason.
+
+During the rains tigers are sometimes forced, like others of the cat
+tribe, to take to trees. A Mr. McI. shot two large full grown, tigers
+in a tree at Gunghara, and a Baboo of my acquaintance bagged no less
+than eight in trees during one rainy season at Rampoor.
+
+Tigers generally prefer remaining near water, and drink a great deal,
+the quantity of raw meat they devour being no doubt provocative of
+thirst.
+
+The marks of their claws are often seen on trees in the vicinity of
+their haunts, and from this fact many ridiculous stories have got
+abroad regarding their habits. It has even been regarded by some
+writers as a sort of rude test, by which to arrive at an approximate
+estimate of the tiger's size. A tiger can stretch himself out some two
+or two and a half feet more than his measurable length. You have
+doubtless often seen a domestic cat whetting its claws on the mat, or
+scratching some rough substance, such as the bark of a tree; this is
+often done to clean the claws, and to get rid of chipped and ragged
+pieces, and it is sometimes mere playfulness. It is the same with the
+tiger, the scratching on the trees is frequently done in the mere
+wantonness of sport, but it is often resorted to to clear the claws
+from pieces of flesh, that may have adhered to them during a meal on
+some poor slaughtered bullock. These marks on the trees are a valuable
+sign for the hunter, as by their appearance, whether fresh or old, he
+can often tell the whereabouts of his quarry, and a good tracker will
+even be able to make a rough guess at its probable size and
+disposition.
+
+Like policemen, tigers stick to certain beats; even when disturbed,
+and forced to abandon a favourite spot, they frequently return to it;
+and although the jungle may be wholly destroyed, old tigers retain a
+partiality for the scenes of their youthful depredations; they are
+often shot in the most unlikely places, where there is little or no
+cover, and one would certainly never expect to find them; they migrate
+with the herds, and retire to the hills during the annual floods,
+always coming back to the same jungle when the rains are over.
+
+Experienced shekarries know this trait of the tiger's character well,
+and can tell you minutely the colour and general appearance of the
+animals in any particular jungle; they are aware of any peculiarity,
+such as lameness, scars, &c., and their observations must be very keen
+indeed, and amazingly accurate, as I have never known them wrong when
+they committed themselves to a positive statement.
+
+An old planter residing at Sultanpore, close on the Nepaul border, a
+noted sportsman and a crack shot, was charged on one occasion by a
+large tiger; the brute sprang right off the ground on to the
+elephant's head; his hind legs were completely off the ground, resting
+on the elephant's chest and neck; Mr. F. retained sufficient presence
+of mind to sit close down in his howdah; the tiger's forearm was
+extended completely over the front bar, and so close that it touched
+his hat. In this position he called out to his son who was on another
+elephant close by, to fire at the tiger; he was cool enough to warn
+him to take a careful aim, and not hit the elephant. His son acted
+gallantly up to his instructions, and shot the tiger through the
+heart, when it dropped down quite dead, to Mr. F.'s great relief.
+
+Some sportsmen are of opinion, that the tiger when charging never
+springs clear from the ground, but only rears itself on its hind legs;
+this however is a mistake. I saw a tiger leap right off the ground,
+and spring on to the rump of an elephant carrying young Sam S. The
+elephant proved staunch, and remained quite quiet, and Sam, turning
+round in his howdah, shot his assailant through the head.
+
+I may give another incident, to shew how closely tigers will sometimes
+stick to cover; they are sometimes as bad to dislodge as a quail or a
+hare; they will crouch down and conceal themselves till you almost
+trample on them. One day a party of the Purneah Club were out; they
+had shot two fine tigers out of several that had been seen; the others
+were known to have gone ahead into some jungle surrounded by water,
+and easy to beat. Before proceeding further it was proposed
+accordingly to have some refreshment. The _tiffin_ elephant was
+directed to a tree close by, beneath whose shade the hungry sportsmen
+were to plant themselves; the elephant had knelt down, one or two
+boxes had actually been removed, several of the servants were clearing
+away the dried grass and leaves. H.W.S. came up on the opposite side
+of the tree, and was in the act of leaping off his elephant, when an
+enormous tiger got up at his very feet, and before the astounded
+sportsmen could handle a gun, the formidable intruder had cleared the
+bushes with a bound, and disappeared in the thick jungle.
+
+The following adventure bears me out in my remark, that tigers get
+attached to, and like to remain in, one place. Mr. F. Simpson, a
+thorough-going sportsman of the good old type, had been out one day in
+the Koosee derahs; he had had a long and unsuccessful beat for tiger,
+and had given up all hope of bagging one that day; he thought
+therefore that he might as well turn his attention to more ignoble
+game. Extracting his bullets, he replaced them with No. 4 shot. In a
+few minutes a peacock got up in front of him, and he fired. The report
+roused a very fine tiger right in front of his elephant; to make the
+best of a bad bargain, he gave the retreating animal the full benefit
+of his remaining charge of shot, and peppered it well. About a year
+after, close to this very place, C.A.S. bagged a fine tiger. On
+examination, the marks of a charge of shot were found in the flanks,
+and on removing the pads of the feet, numbers of pellets of No. 4 shot
+were found embedded in them. It was evidently the animal that had been
+peppered a year before, and the pellets had worked their way downwards
+to the feet.
+
+On another occasion, a man came to the factory where George was then
+residing, to give information of a tiger. He bore on his back numerous
+bleeding scratches, ample evidence of the truth of his story. While
+cutting grass in the jungle, with a blanket on his back, the day being
+rainy, he had been attacked by a tiger from the rear. The blanket is
+generally folded several times, and worn over the head and back. It is
+a thick heavy covering, and in the first onset the tiger tore the
+blanket from the man's body, which was probably the means of saving
+his life. The man turned round, terribly scared, as may be imagined.
+In desperation he struck at the tiger with his sickle, and according
+to his own account, he succeeded in putting out one of its eyes. He
+said it was a young tiger, and his bleeding wounds, and the
+persistency with which he stuck to his story, impressed George with
+the belief that he was telling the truth. A search for the tiger was
+made. The man's blanket was found, torn to shreds, but no tiger,
+although the footprints of one were plainly visible. But some months
+after, near the same spot, George shot a half grown tiger with one of
+its eyes gone, which had evidently been roughly torn from the socket.
+This was doubtless the identical brute that had attacked the
+grass-cutter.
+
+It is sometimes wonderful how easily a large and powerful tiger may be
+killed. The most vulnerable parts are the back of the head, through
+the neck, and broadside on the chest. The neck is the most deadly spot
+of all, and a shot behind the shoulder, or on the spine, is sure to
+bring the game to bag. I have seen several shot with a single bullet
+from a smooth-bore, and on one occasion, George tells me he saw a
+tigress killed with a single smooth-bore bullet at over a hundred
+yards. The bullet was a _ricochet_, and struck the tigress below the
+chest, and travelled towards the heart, but without touching it. She
+fell twenty yards from where she had been hit. Another, which on
+skinning we found had been shot through the heart, with a single
+smooth-bore bullet at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards,
+travelled for thirty yards before falling dead. Meiselback, a
+neighbour of mine, shot three tigers successively, on one occasion,
+with a No. 18 Joe Manton smooth-bore. Each of the three was killed by
+a single bullet, one in the head, one in the neck, and one through the
+heart, the bullet entering behind the shoulder.
+
+On the other hand, I once fired no less than six Jacob's shells into a
+tiger, all behind the shoulder, before I could stop him. The shells
+seemed to explode on the surface the moment they came in contact with
+the body. There was a tremendous surface wound, big enough to put a
+pumpkin into, but very little internal hurt. On another occasion
+(April 4, 1874) during one of the most exciting and most glorious
+moments of my sporting life--buffaloes charging the line in all
+directions, burning jungle all around us, and bullets whistling on
+every side--I fired TWELVE shells into a large bull before I killed
+him. As every shell hit him, I heard the sharp detonation, and saw the
+tiny puff of smoke curl outward from the ghastly wound. The poor
+maddened brute would drop on his knees, stagger again to his feet,
+and, game to the last, attempt to charge my elephant. I was anxious
+really to test the effect of the Jacob's shell as against the solid
+conical bullet, and carefully watched the result of each shot. My
+weapon was a beautifully finished No. 12 smooth-bore, made expressly
+to order for an officer in the Royal Artillery, from whom I bought it.
+From that day I never fired another Jacob's shell.
+
+My remarks about the tiger springing clear off the ground when
+charging, are amply borne out by the experience of some of my sporting
+friends. I could quote pages, but will content myself with one
+extract. It is a point of some importance, as many good old sportsmen
+pooh-pooh the idea, and maintain that the tiger merely stretches
+himself out to his fullest length, and if he does leave the ground, it
+is by a purely physical effort, pulling himself up by his claws.
+
+My friend George writes me: 'In several cases I have known and seen
+the tiger spring, and leave the ground. In one case the tiger sprang
+from fully five yards off. He crouched at the distance of a few paces,
+as if about to spring, and then sprang clean on to the head of Joe's
+_tusker_. An eight feet nine inch tigress once got on to the head of
+my elephant, which was ten feet seven inches in height. Every one
+present saw her leave the ground. Once, when after a tiger in small
+stubble, about six feet high, I saw one bound over a bush so clean
+that I could see every bit of him.' And so on.
+
+For long range shooting the rifle is doubtless the best weapon. The
+Express is the most deadly. The smooth-bore is the gun for downright
+honest sport. Shells and hollow pointed bullets are the things, as one
+sportsman writes me, 'for mutilation and cowardly murder, and for
+spoiling the skin.' Poison is the resource of the poacher. No
+sportsman could descend so low. Grant that the tiger is a scourge, a
+pest, a nuisance, a cruel and implacable foe to man and beast; pile
+all the vilest epithets of your vocabulary on his head, and say that
+he deserves them all, still he is what opportunity and circumstance
+have made him. He is as nature fashioned him; and there are bold
+spirits, and keen sights, and steady nerves enough, God wot, among our
+Indian sportsmen, to cope with him on more equal and sportsmanlike
+terms than by poisoning him like a mangy dog. On this point, however,
+opinions differ. I do not envy the man who would prefer poisoning a
+tiger to the keen delight of patiently following him up, ousting him
+from cover to cover, watching his careful endeavours to elude your
+search; perhaps at the end of a long and fascinating beat, feeling the
+electric excitement thrill every nerve and fibre of your body, as the
+magnificent robber comes bounding down at the charge, the very
+embodiment of ferocity and strength, the perfection of symmetry, the
+acme of agility and grace.
+
+Natives are such notorious perverters of the truth, and so often hide
+what little there may be in their communications under such floods of
+Oriental hyperbole and exaggeration, that you are often disappointed
+in going out on what you consider trustworthy and certain information.
+They often remind me of the story of the Laird of Logan. He was riding
+slowly along a country road one day, when another equestrian joined
+him. Logan's eye fixed itself on a hole in the turf bank bounding the
+road, and with great gravity, and in trust-inspiring accents, he said,
+'I saw a _tod_ (or fox) gang in there.'
+
+'Did you, really;' cried the new comer.
+
+'I did,' responded the laird.
+
+'Will you hold my horse till I get a spade,' cried the now excited
+traveller.
+
+The laird assented. Away hurried the man, and soon returned with a
+spade. He set manfully to work to dig out the fox, and worked till the
+perspiration streamed down his face. The laird sat stolidly looking
+on, saying never a word; and as he seemed to be nearing the confines
+of the hole, the poor digger redoubled his exertions. When at length
+it became plain that there was no fox there, he wiped his streaming
+brow, and rather crossly exclaimed, 'I'm afraid there's no tod here.'
+
+'It would be a wonder if there was,' rejoined the laird, without the
+movement of a muscle, 'it's ten years since I saw him gang in there.'
+
+So it is sometimes with a native. He will fire your ardour, by telling
+you of some enormous tiger, to be found in some jungle close by, but
+when you come to enquire minutely into his story, you find that the
+tiger was seen perhaps the year before last, or that it _used_ to be
+there, or that somebody else had told him of its being there.
+
+Some tigers, too, are so cunning and wary, that they will make off
+long before the elephants have come near. I have seen others rise on
+their hind legs just like a hare or a kangaroo, and peer over the
+jungle trying to make out one's whereabouts. This is of course only in
+short light jungle.
+
+The plan we generally adopt in beating for tiger on or near the Nepaul
+border, is to use a line of elephants to beat the cover. It is a fine
+sight to watch the long line of stately monsters moving slowly and
+steadily forward. Several howdahs tower high above the line, the
+polished barrels of guns and rifles glittering in the fierce rays of
+the burning and vertical sun. Some of the shooters wear huge hats made
+from the light pith of the solah plant, others have long blue or white
+puggrees wound round their heads in truly Oriental style. These are
+very comfortable to wear, but rather trying to the sight, as they
+afford no protection to the eyes. For riding they are to my mind the
+most comfortable head-dress that can be worn, and they are certainly
+more graceful than the stiff unsightly solah hat.
+
+Between every two howdahs are four or five pad elephants. These beat
+up all the intervening bushes, and carry the game that may be shot.
+When a pig, deer, tiger, or other animal has been shot, and has
+received its _coup de grace_, it is quickly bundled on to the pad, and
+there secured. The elephant kneels down to receive the load, and while
+game is being padded the whole line waits, till the operation is
+complete, as it is bad policy to leave blanks. Where this simple
+precaution is neglected, many a tiger will sneak through the opening
+left by the pad elephant, and so silently and cautiously can they
+steal through the dense cover, and so cunning are they and acute, that
+they will take advantage of the slightest gap, and the keenest and
+best trained eye will fail to detect them.
+
+In most of our hunting parties on the Koosee, we had some twenty or
+thirty elephants, and frequently six or eight howdahs. These
+expeditions were very pleasant, and we lived luxuriously. For real
+sport ten elephants and two or three tried comrades--not more--is much
+better. With a short, easily-worked line, that can turn and double,
+and follow the tiger quickly, and dog his every movement, you can get
+far better sport, and bring more to bag, than with a long unwieldy
+line, that takes a considerable time to turn and wheel, and in whose
+onward march there is of necessity little of the silence and swiftness
+which are necessary elements in successful tiger shooting.
+
+I have been out with a line of seventy-six elephants and fourteen
+howdahs. This was on 16th March 1875. It was a magnificent sight to
+see the seventy-six huge brutes in the river together, splashing the
+water along their heated sides to cool themselves, and sending huge
+waves dashing against the crumbling banks of the rapid stream. It was
+no less magnificent to see their slow stately march through the
+swaying, crashing jungle. What an idea of irresistible power and
+ponderous strength the huge creatures gave us, as they heaved through
+the tangled brake, crushing everything in their resistless progress.
+It was a sight to be remembered, but as might have been expected, we
+found the jungles almost untenanted. Everything cleared out before us,
+long ere the line could reach its vicinity. We only killed one tiger,
+but next day we separated, the main body crossing the stream, while my
+friends and myself, with only fourteen elephants, rebeat the same
+jungle and bagged two.
+
+In every hunt, one member is told off to look after the forage and
+grain for the elephants. One attends to the cooking and requirements
+of the table, one acts as paymaster and keeper of accounts, while the
+most experienced is unanimously elected captain, and takes general
+direction of every movement of the line. He decides on the plan of
+operations for the day, gives each his place in the line, and for the
+time, becomes an irresponsible autocrat, whose word is law, and
+against whose decision there is no appeal.
+
+Scouts are sent out during the night, and bring in reports from all
+parts of the jungle in the early morning, while we are discussing
+_chota baziree_, our early morning meal. If tiger is reported, or a
+kill has been discovered, we form line in silence, and without noise
+bear down direct on the spot. In the captain's howdah are three flags.
+A blue flag flying means that only tiger or rhinoceros are to be shot
+at. A red flag signifies that we are to have general firing, in fact
+that we may blaze away at any game that may be afoot, and the white
+flag shews us that we are on our homeward way, and then also may shoot
+at anything we can get, break the line, or do whatever we choose. On
+the flanks are generally posted the best shots of the party. The
+captain, as a rule, keeps to the centre of the line. Frequently one
+man and elephant is sent on ahead to some opening or dry water-bed, to
+see that no cunning tiger sneaks away unseen. This vedette is called
+_naka_. All experienced sportsmen employ a naka, and not unfrequently
+where the ground is difficult, two are sent ahead. The naka is a most
+important post, and the holder will often get a lucky shot at some
+wary veteran trying to sneak off, and may perhaps bag the only tiger
+of the day. The mere knowledge that there is an elephant on ahead,
+will often keep tigers from trying to get away. They prefer to face
+the known danger of the line behind, to the unknown danger in front,
+and in all cases where there is a big party a naka should be sent on
+ahead.
+
+Tigers can be, and are, shot on the Koosee plains all the year round,
+but the big hunts take place in the months of March, April, and May,
+when the hot west winds are blowing, and when the jungle has got
+considerably trampled down by the herds of cattle grazing in the
+tangled wilderness of tall grass. Innumerable small paths shew where
+the cattle wander backward and forward through the labyrinths of the
+jungle. In the howdah we carry ample supplies of vesuvians. We light
+and drop these as they blaze into the dried grass and withered leaves
+as we move along, and soon a mighty wall of roaring flame behind us,
+attests the presence of the destroying element. We go diagonally up
+wind, and the flames and smoke thus surge and roar and curl and roll,
+in dense blinding volumes, to the rear and leeward of our line. The
+roaring of the flames sounds like the maddened surf of an angry sea,
+dashing in thunder against an iron-bound coast. The leaping flames
+mount up in fiery columns, illuminating the fleecy clouds of smoke
+with an unearthly glare. The noise is deafening; at times some of the
+elephants get quite nervous at the fierce roar of the flames behind,
+and try to bolt across country. The fire serves two good purposes. It
+burns up the old withered grass, making room for the fresh succulent
+sprouts to spring, and it keeps all the game in front of the line,
+driving the animals before us, as they are afraid to break back and
+face the roaring-wall of flame. A seething, surging sea of flame,
+several miles long, encircling the whole country in its fiery belt,
+sweeping along at night with the roar of a storm-tossed sea; the
+flames flickering, swelling, and leaping up in the dark night, the
+fiery particles rushing along amid clouds of lurid smoke, and the
+glare of the serpent-like line reddening the horizon, is one of those
+magnificent spectacles that can only be witnessed at rare intervals
+among the experiences of a sojourn in India. Words fail to depict its
+grandeur, and the utmost skill of Dore could not render on canvas, the
+weird, unearthly magnificence of a jungle fire, at the culmination of
+its force and fury.
+
+In beating, the elephants are several yards apart, and, standing in
+the howdah, you can see the slightest motion of the grass before you,
+unless indeed it be virgin jungle, quite untrodden, and perhaps higher
+than your elephant; in such high dense cover, tigers will sometimes
+lie up and allow you to go clean past them. In such a case you must
+fire the jungle, and allow the blaze to beat for you. It is common for
+young, over eager sportsmen, to fire at moving jungle, trusting to a
+lucky chance for hitting the moving animal; this is useless waste of
+powder; they fail to realize the great length of the swaying grass,
+and invariably shoot over the game; the animal hears the crashing of
+the bullet through the dense thicket overhead, and immediately stops,
+and you lose all idea of his whereabouts. When you see an animal
+moving before you in long jungle, it should be your object to follow
+him slowly and patiently, till you can get a sight of him, and see
+what sort of beast he is. Firing at the moving grass is worse than
+useless. Keep as close behind him as you can, make signs for the other
+elephants to close in; stick to your quarry, never lose sight of him
+for an instant, be ready to seize the first moment, when more open
+jungle, or some other favourable chance, may give you a glimpse of his
+skin.
+
+Another caution should be observed. Never fire down the line. It is
+astonishing how little will divert a bullet, and a careless shot is
+worse than a dozen charging tigers. If a tiger does break back, let
+him get well away behind the line, and then blaze at him as hard as
+you like. It is particularly unpleasant to hear a bullet come singing
+and booming down the line from some excited dunderhead on the far left
+or right.
+
+A tiger slouching along in front moves pretty fast, in a silent
+swinging trot; the tops of the reeds or grass sway very gently, with a
+wavering, side to side motion. A pig rushes boldly through, and a deer
+will cause the grass to rock violently to and fro. A buffalo or
+rhinoceros is known at once by the crashing of the dry stalks, as his
+huge frame plunges along; but the tiger can never be mistaken. When
+that gentle, undulating, noiseless motion is once seen, be ready with
+your trusty gun, and remove not your eye from the spot, for the mighty
+robber of the jungle is before you.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Howdahs and howdah-ropes.--Mussulman custom.--Killing animals for
+food.--Mysterious appearance of natives when an animal is killed.
+--Fastening dead tigers to the pad.--Present mode wants improving.
+--Incident illustrative of this.--Dangerous to go close to wounded
+tigers.--Examples.--Footprints of tigers.--Call of the tiger.--Natives
+and their powers of description.--How to beat successfully for tiger.
+--Description of a beat.--Disputes among the shooters.--Awarding
+tigers.--Cutting open the tiger.--Native idea about the liver of the
+tiger.--Signs of a tiger's presence in the jungle.--Vultures.--Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?--A vulture carrion feast.
+
+The best howdahs are light, single-seated ones, with strong, light
+frames of wood and cane-work, and a moveable seat with a leather
+strap, adjustable to any length, on which to lean back. They should
+have a strong iron rail all round the top, covered with leather, with
+convenient grooves to receive the barrels of the guns, as they rest in
+front, ready to either hand. In front there should be compartments for
+different kinds of cartridges; and pockets and lockers under the seat,
+and at the back, or wherever there is room. Outside should be a strong
+iron step, to get out and in by easily, and a strong iron ring,
+through which to pass the rope that binds the howdah to the elephant.
+
+You cannot be too careful with your howdah ropes. A chain is generally
+used as an auxiliary to the rope, which should be of cotton, strong
+and well twisted, and should be overhauled daily, to see that there is
+no chafing. It is passed round the foot-bars of the howdah, and
+several times round the belly of the elephant.
+
+Another rope acts as a crupper behind, being passed through rings in
+the terminal frame-work of the howdah, and under the elephant's tail;
+it frequently causes painful sores there, and some drivers give it a
+hitch round the tail, in the same way as you would hitch it round a
+post. Another steadying rope goes round the elephant's breast, like a
+chest-band. 'A merciful man is merciful to his beast.' You should
+always, therefore, have a sheet of soft well oiled leather to go
+between the chest and belly ropes and the elephant's hide; this
+prevents chafing, and is a great relief to the poor old _hathi_, as
+they call the elephant. _Hatnee_ is the female elephant. _Duntar_ is a
+fellow with large tusks, and _mukna_ is an elephant with small
+downward growing tusks.
+
+Many of the old fashioned howdahs are far too heavy; a firm, strong
+howdah should not weigh more than 28 lbs. In most of the old fashioned
+ones, there is a seat for an attendant. If your attendant be a
+Mussulman, he hurries down as soon as you shoot a deer, to cut its
+throat. The Mohammedan religion enjoins a variety of rules on its
+professors in regard to the slaying of animals for food. Chief of
+these is a prohibition, against eating the flesh of an animal that has
+died a natural death; the throat of every animal intended to be eaten
+should be cut, and at the moment of applying the knife, _Bismillah_
+should be said, that is, 'In the name of God.' If therefore your
+mahout, or attendant, belong to the religion of the _Koran_, he will
+hurry down to cut the throat of a wounded deer if possible before life
+is extinct; if it be already dead, he will leave it alone for the
+Hindoos, who have no such scruples.
+
+A number of _moosahurs, banturs, gwallas_, and other idlers, from the
+jungle villages, generally follow in the wake of the line. If you
+shoot many pigs, they carry off the dead bodies, and hold high
+carnival in their homes in the evening. To see them rush on a slain
+buffalo, and hack it to pieces, is a curious sight; they fight for
+pieces of flesh like so many vultures. Sportsmen generally content
+themselves with the head of a buffalo, but not a scrap of the carcase
+is ever wasted. The natives are attracted to the spot, like ants to a
+heap of grain, or wasps to an old sugar barrel; they seem to spring
+out of the earth, so rapidly do they make their appearance. If you
+were to kill a dozen buffaloes, I believe all the flesh would be taken
+away to the neighbouring villages within an hour.
+
+This appearance of men in the jungles is wonderful. You may think
+yourself in the centre of a vast wilderness, not a sign of human
+habitation for miles around; on all sides stretches a vast ocean of
+grass, the resort of ferocious wild animals, seemingly untrodden by a
+human foot. You shoot a deer, a pig, or other animal whose flesh is
+fit for food; the man behind you gives a cry, and in ten minutes you
+will have a group of brawny young fellows around your elephant, eager
+to carry away the game. The way these natives thread the dense jungle
+is to me a wonder; they seem to know every devious path and hidden
+recess, and they traverse the most gloomy and dangerous solitudes
+without betraying the slightest apprehension.
+
+In fastening dead game to the pad of the carrying elephant great care
+is necessary. Some elephants are very timid, and indeed all elephants
+are mistrustful and suspicious of anything behind them. They are
+pretty courageous in facing anything before them, but they do not like
+a rustling or indeed any motion in their rear. I have seen a dog put
+an elephant to flight, and if you have a lazy _hathi_, a good plan is
+to walk a horse behind him. He will then shuffle along at a prodigious
+pace constantly looking round from side to side, and no doubt in his
+heart anathematising the horse that forces the running so
+persistently.
+
+The present method of roughly lashing on dead game anyhow requires
+altering. Some ingenious sportsman could surely devise a system of
+slings by which the dead weight of the game could be more equally
+distributed. At present the dead bodies are hauled up at random, and
+fastened anyhow. The pad gets displaced, the elephant must stop till
+the burden is rearranged; the ropes, especially on a hot day, cut into
+the skin and rub off the hair, and many a good skin is quite spoiled
+by the present rough method of tying on the pad.
+
+One day, in taking off a dead tiger from the pad, near George's
+bungalow, the end of the rope (a new one) remained somehow fixed to
+the neck of the elephant. When he rose up, being relieved of the
+weight, he dragged the dead tiger with him. This put the elephant into
+a horrible funk, and despite all the efforts of the driver he started
+off at a trot, hauling the tiger after him. Every now and then he
+would turn round, and tread and kick the lifeless carcase. At length
+the rope gave way, and the elephant became more manageable, but not
+before a fine skin had been totally ruined, all owing to this
+primitive style of fastening by ropes to the pad. A proper pad, with
+leather straps and buckles, that could be hauled as tight as
+necessary--a sort of harness arrangement, could easily be devised, to
+secure dead game on the pad. I am certain it would save time in the
+hunting-field, and protect many a fine skin, that gets abraded and
+marked by the present rough and ready lashing.
+
+It is always dangerous to go too close up to a wounded tiger, and one
+should never rashly jump to the conclusion that a tiger is dead
+because he appears so Approach him cautiously, and make very certain
+that he is really and truly dead, before you venture to get down
+beside the body. It is a bad plan to take your elephant close up to a
+dead tiger at all. I have known cases where good staunch elephants
+have been spoiled for future sport, by being rashly taken up to a
+wounded tiger. In rolling about, the tiger may get hold of the
+elephants, and inflict injuries that will demoralise them, and make
+them quite unsteady on subsequent occasions.
+
+I have known cases where a tiger left for dead has had to be shot over
+again. I have seen a man get down to pull a seemingly dead tiger into
+the open, and get charged. Fortunately it was a dying effort, and I
+put a bullet through the skull before the tiger could reach the
+frightened peon. We have been several times grouped round a dying
+tiger, watching him breathe his last, when the brute has summoned up
+strength for a final effort, and charged the elephants.
+
+On one occasion W.D. had got down beside what he thought a dead tiger,
+had rolled him over, and, tape in hand, was about to measure the
+animal, when he staggered to his feet with a terrific growl, and made
+away through the jungle. He had only been stunned, and fortunately
+preferred running to fighting, or the consequences might have been
+more tragic; as it was, he was quickly followed up and killed. But
+instances like these might be indefinitely multiplied, all teaching,
+that seemingly dead tigers should be approached with the utmost
+respect. Never venture off your elephant without a loaded revolver.
+
+In beating for tiger, we have seen that the appearance of the kill,
+whether fresh or old, whether much torn and mangled or comparatively
+untouched, often affords valuable indications to the sportsman. The
+footprints are not less narrowly looked for, and scrutinized. If we
+are after tiger, and following them up, the captain will generally get
+down at any bare place, such as a dry nullah, the edge of a tank or
+water hole, or any other spot where footprints can be detected. Fresh
+prints can be very easily distinguished. The impression is like that
+made by a dog, only much larger, and the marks of the claws are not
+visible. The largest footprint I have heard of was measured by George
+S., and was found to be eight and a quarter inches wide from the
+outside of the first to the outside of the fourth toe. If a tiger has
+passed very recently, the prints will be fresh-looking, and if on damp
+ground there can be no mistaking them. If it has been raining
+recently, we particularly notice whether the rain has obliterated the
+track at all, in any place; which would lead us to the conclusion that
+the tiger had passed before it rained. If the water has lodged in the
+footprint, the tiger has passed after the shower. In fresh prints the
+water will be slightly puddly or muddy. In old prints it will be quite
+clear; and so on.
+
+The call of the male tiger is quite different from that of the female.
+The male calls with a hoarse harsh cry, something between the grunt of
+a pig and the bellow of a bull; the call of the tigress is more like
+the prolonged mew of a cat much intensified. During the pairing season
+the call is sharper and shorter, and ends in a sudden break. At that
+time, too, they cry at more frequent intervals. The roar of the tiger
+is quite unlike the call. Once heard it is not easily forgotten, The
+natives who live in the jungles can tell one tiger from another by
+colour, size, &c., and they can even distinguish one animal from
+another by his call. It is very absurd to hear a couple of natives get
+together and describe the appearance of some tiger they have seen.
+
+In describing a pig, they refer to his height, or the length of his
+tusks. They describe a fish by putting their fists together, and
+saying he was so thick, _itna mota_. The head of a tiger is always the
+most conspicuous part of the body seen in the jungle. They therefore
+invariably describe him by his head. One man will hold his two hands
+apart about two feet, and say that the head was _itna burra_, that is,
+so big. The other, not to be outdone, gives rein to his imagination,
+and adds another foot. The first immediately fancies discredit will
+attach to his veracity, and vehemently asserts that there must in that
+case have been two tigers; and so they go on, till they conclusively
+prove, that two tigers there must have been, and indeed, if you let
+them go on, they will soon assure you that, besides the pair of
+tigers, there must be at least a pair of half-grown cubs. Their
+imaginations are very fertile, and you must take the information of a
+native as to tigers with a very large pinch of salt.
+
+For successful tiger shooting much depends on the beating. When after
+tiger, general firing should on no account be allowed, and the line
+should move forward as silently as possible. In light cover, extending
+over a large area, the elephants should be kept a considerable
+distance apart, but in thick dense cover the line should be quite
+close, and beat up slowly and thoroughly, as a tiger may lay up and
+allow the line to pass him. On no account should an elephant be let to
+lag behind, and no one should be allowed to rush forward or go in
+advance. The elephants should move along, steady and even, like a
+moving wall, the fastest being on the flanks, and accommodating their
+pace to the general rate of progress. No matter what tempting chances
+at pig or deer you may have, you must on no account fire except at
+tiger.
+
+The captain should be in the centre, and the men on the flanks ought
+to be constantly on the _qui vive_, to see that no cunning tiger
+outflanks the line. The attention should never wander from the jungle
+before you, for at any moment a tiger may get up--and I know of no
+sport where it is necessary to be so continuously on the alert. Every
+moment is fraught with intense excitement, and when a tiger does
+really show his stripes before you, the all-absorbing eager excitement
+of a lifetime is packed in a few brief moments. Not a chance should be
+thrown away, a long, or even an uncertain shot, is better than none,
+and if you make one miss, you may not have another chance again that
+day: for the tiger is chary of showing his stripes, and thinks
+discretion the better part of valour.
+
+All the line of course are aware, as a rule, when a tiger is on the
+move, and a good captain (and Joe S., who generally took the direction
+of our beats, could not well be matched) will wheel the line, double,
+turn, march, and countermarch, and fairly run the tiger down. At such
+a time, although you may not actually see the tiger, the excitement is
+tremendous. You stand erect in the howdah, your favourite gun ready;
+your attendant behind is as excited as yourself, and sways from side
+to side to peer into the gloomy depths of the jungle; in front, the
+mahout wriggles on his seat, as if by his motion he could urge the
+elephant to a quicker advance. He digs his toes savagely into his
+elephant behind the ear; the line is closing up; every eye is fixed on
+the moving jungle ahead. The roaring of the flames behind, and the
+crashing of the dried reeds as the elephants force their ponderous
+frames through the intertwisted stems and foliage, are the only sounds
+that greet the ear. Suddenly you see the tawny yellow hide, as the
+tiger slouches along. Your gun rings out a reverberating challenge, as
+your fatal bullet speeds on its errand. To right and left the echoes
+ring, as shot after shot is fired at the bounding robber. Then the
+line closes up, and you form a circle round the stricken beast, and
+watch his mighty limbs quiver in the death-agony, and as he falls over
+dead, and powerless for further harm, you raise the heartfelt,
+pulse-stirring cheer, that finds an echo in every brother sportman's
+heart.
+
+Disputes sometimes arise as to whose bullet first drew blood. These
+are settled by the captain, and from his decision there is no appeal.
+Many sportsmen put peculiar marks on their bullets, by which they can
+be recognised, which is a good plan. In an exciting scrimmage every
+one blazes at the tiger, not one bullet perhaps in five or six takes
+effect, and every one is ready to claim the skin, as having been
+pierced with his particular bullet. Disputes are not very common, but
+an inspection of the wounds, and the bullets found in the body,
+generally settle the question. After hearing all the pros and cons,
+the captain generally succeeds in awarding the tiger to the right man.
+
+After a successful day, the news rapidly spreads through the adjacent
+country, and we may take the line a little out of our way to make a
+sort of triumphal procession through the villages. On reaching the
+camp there is sure to be a great crowd waiting to see the slain
+tigers, the despoilers of the people's flocks and herds.
+
+It is then you hear of all the depredations the dead robber has
+committed, and it is then you begin to form some faint conception of
+his enormous destructive powers. Villager after villager unfolds a
+tale of some favourite heifer, or buffalo, or cow having been struck
+down, and the copious vocabulary of Hindostanee Billingsgate is almost
+exhausted, and floods of abuse poured out on the prostrate head.
+
+On cutting open the tiger, parasites are frequently found in the
+flesh. These are long, white, thread-like worms, and are supposed by
+some to be Guinea worms. Huge masses of undigested bone and hair are
+sometimes taken from the intestines, shewing that the tiger does not
+waste much time on mastication, but tears and eats the flesh in large
+masses. The liver is found to have numbers of separate lobes, and the
+natives say that this is an infallible test of the age of a tiger, as
+a separate lobe forms on the liver for each year of the tiger's life.
+I have certainly found young tigers having but two and three lobes,
+and old tigers I have found with six, seven, and even eight, but the
+statement is entirely unsupported by careful observation, and requires
+authentication before it can be accepted.
+
+A reported kill is a pretty certain sign that there are tigers in the
+jungle, but there are other signs with which one soon gets familiar.
+When, for example, you hear deer calling repeatedly, and see them
+constantly on the move, it is a sign that tiger are in the
+neighbourhood. When cattle are reluctant to enter the jungle,
+restless, and unwilling to graze, you may be sure tiger are somewhere
+about, not far away. A kill is often known by the numbers of vultures
+that hover about in long, sailing, steady circles. What multitudes of
+vultures there are. Overhead, far up in the liquid ether, you see them
+circling round and round like dim specks in the distance; farther and
+farther away, till they seem like bees, then lessen and fade into the
+infinitude of space. No part of the sky is ever free from their
+presence. When a kill has been perceived, you see one come flying
+along, strong and swift in headlong flight. With the directness of a
+thunderbolt he speeds to where his loathsome meal lies sweltering in
+the noonday sun. As he comes nearer and nearer, his repulsive looking
+body assumes form and substance. The cruel, ugly bald head, drawn
+close in between the strong pointed shoulders, the broad powerful
+wings, with their wide sweep, measured and slow, bear him swiftly
+past. With a curve and a sweep he circles round, down come the long
+bony legs, the bald and hideous neck is extended, and with talons
+quivering for the rotting flesh, and cruel beak agape, he hurries on
+to his repast, the embodiment of everything ghoul-like and ghastly. In
+his wake comes another, then twos and threes, anon tens and twenties,
+till hundreds have collected, and the ground is covered with the
+hissing, tearing, fiercely clawing crowd. It is a horrible sight to
+see a heap of vultures battling over a dead bullock. I have seen them
+so piled up that the under ones were nearly smothered to death; and
+the writhing contortions of the long bare necks, as the fierce brutes
+battled with talons and claws, were like the twisting of monster
+snakes, or the furious writhing of gorgons and furies over some fated
+victim.
+
+It has been a much debated point with sportsmen and naturalists,
+whether the eye or the sense of smell guides the vulture to his feast
+of carrion. I have often watched them. They scan the vast surface
+spread below them with a piercing and never tiring gaze. They observe
+each other. When one is seen to cease his steady circling flight, far
+up in mid air, and to stretch his broad wings earthwards, the others
+know that he has espied a meal, and follow his lead; and these in turn
+are followed by others, till from all quarters flock crowds of these
+scavengers of the sky. They can detect a dog or jackal from a vast
+height, and they know by intuition that, where the carcase is there
+will the dogs and jackals be gathered. I think there can be no doubt
+that the vision is the sense they are most indebted to for directing
+them to their food.
+
+On one occasion I remember seeing a tumultuous heap of them, battling
+fiercely, as I have just tried to describe, over the carcases of two
+tigers we had killed near Dumdaha. The dead bodies were hidden
+partially in a grove of trees, and for a long time there were only
+some ten or a dozen vultures near. These gorged themselves so
+fearfully, that they could not rise from the ground, but lay with
+wings expanded, looking very aldermanic and apoplectic. Bye-and-bye,
+however, the rush began, and by the time we had struck the tents,
+there could not have been fewer than 150 vultures, hissing and
+spitting at each other like angry cats; trampling each other to the
+dust to get at the carcases; and tearing wildly with talon and beak
+for a place. In a very short time nothing but mangled bones remained.
+A great number of the vultures got on to the rotten limb of a huge
+mango tree. One other proved the last straw, for down came the rotten
+branch and several of the vultures, tearing at each other, fell
+heavily to the ground, where they lay quite helpless. As an experiment
+we shot a miserable mangy Pariah dog, that was prowling about the
+ground seeking garbage and offal. He was shot stone-dead, and for a
+time no vulture ventured near. A crow was the first to begin the feast
+of death. One of the hungriest of the vultures next approached, and in
+a few minutes the yet warm body of the poor dog was torn into a
+thousand fragments, till nothing remained but scattered and disjointed
+bones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul frontier.--Indian scenery near
+the border.--Lose our way.--Cold night.--The river by night.--Our boat
+and boatmen.--Tigers calling on the bank.--An anxious moment.--Fire at
+and wound the tigress.--Reach camp.--The Nepaulee's adventure with a
+tiger.--The old Major.--His appearance and manners.--The pompous
+Jemadar.--Nepaulese proverb.--Firing the jungle.--Start a tiger and
+shoot him.--Another in front.--Appearance of the fires by night.--The
+tiger escapes.--Too dark to follow up.--Coolie shot by mistake during
+a former hunt.
+
+Early in 1875 a military friend of mine was engaged in inspecting the
+boundary pillars near my factory, between our territory and that of
+Nepaul. Some of the pillars had been cut away by the river, and the
+survey map required a little alteration in consequence. Our district
+magistrate was in attendance, and sent me an invitation to go up and
+spend a week with them in camp. I had no need to send on tents, as
+they had every requisite for comfort. I sent off my bed and bedding on
+Geerdharee Jha's old elephant, a timid, useless brute, fit neither far
+beating jungle nor for carrying a howdah. My horse I sent on to the
+ghat or crossing, some ten miles up the river, and after lunch I
+started. It was a fine cool afternoon, and it was not long ere I
+reached the neighbouring factory of Im[=a]mnugger. Here I had a little
+refreshment with Old Tom, and after exchanging greetings, I resumed my
+way over a part of the country with which I was totally unacquainted.
+
+I rode on, past villages nestling in the mango groves, past huge
+tanks, excavated by the busy labour of generations long since
+departed; past decaying temples, overshadowed by mighty tamarind
+trees, with the _peepul_ and _pakur_ insinuating their twining roots
+amid the shattered and crumbling masonry. In one large village I
+passed through the bustling bazaar, where the din, and dust, and
+mingled odours, were almost overpowering. The country was now assuming
+quite an undulating character. The banks of the creeks were steep and
+rugged, and in some cases the water actually tumbled from rock to
+rock, with a purling pleasant ripple and plash, a welcome sound to a
+Scotch ear, and a pleasant surprise after the dull, dead, leaden,
+noiseless flow of the streams further down on the plains.
+
+Far in front lay the gloomy belt of Terai, or border forest, here
+called the _morung_, where the British territories had their extreme
+limit in that direction. Behind this belt, tier on tier, rose the
+mighty ranges of the majestic Himalayas, towering up in solemn
+grandeur from the bushy masses of forest-clad hills till their
+snow-capped summits seemed to pierce the sky. The country was covered
+by green crops, with here and there patches of dingy rice-stubble, and
+an occasional stretch of dense grass jungle. Quail, partridge, and
+plover rose from the ground in coveys, as my horse cantered through;
+and an occasional peafowl or florican scudded across the track as I
+ambled onward. I asked at a wretched little accumulation of weavers'
+huts where the ghat was, and if my elephant had gone on. To both my
+queries I received satisfactory replies, and as the day was now
+drawing in, I pushed my nag into a sharp canter and hurried forward.
+
+I soon perceived the bulky outline of my elephant ahead, and on coming
+up, found that my men had come too far up the river, had missed the
+ghat to which I had sent my spare horse, and were now making for
+another ferry still higher up. My horse was jaded, so I got on the
+elephant, and made one of the peons lead the horse behind. It was
+rapidly getting dark, and the mahout, or elephant driver, a miserable
+low caste stupid fellow, evidently knew nothing of the country, and
+was going at random. I halted at the next village, got hold of the
+chowkeydar, and by a promise of backsheesh, prevailed on him to
+accompany us and show us the way. We turned off from the direct
+northerly direction in which we had been going, and made straight for
+the river, which we could see in the distance, looking chill and grey
+in the fast fading twilight. We now got on the sandbanks, and had to
+go cautiously for fear of quicksands. By the time we reached the ghat
+it was quite dark and growing very cold.
+
+We were quite close to the hills, a heavy dew was falling, and I found
+that I should have to float down the liver for a mile, and then pole
+up stream in another channel for two miles before I could reach camp.
+
+I got my horse into the boat, ordering the elephant driver to travel
+all night if he could, as I should expect my things to be at camp
+early in the morning, and the boatmen pushed off the unwieldy
+ferry-boat, floating us quietly down the rapid 'drumly' stream. All is
+solemnly still and silent on an Indian river at night. The stream is
+swift but noiseless. Vast plains and heaps of sand stretch for miles
+on either bank. There are no villages near the stream. Faintly, far
+away in the distance, you hear a few subdued sounds, the only
+evidences of human habitation. There is the tinkle of a cow-bell, the
+barking of a pariah dog, the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub of a
+timber-toned tom-tom, muffled and slightly mellowed by the distance.
+The faint, far cries, and occasional halloos of the herd-boys calling
+to each other, gradually cease, but the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub
+continues till far into the night.
+
+It was now very cold, and I was glad to borrow a blanket from my peon.
+At such a time the pipe is a great solace. It soothes the whole
+system, and plunges one into an agreeable dreamy speculative mood,
+through which all sorts of fantastic notions resolve. Fancies chase
+each other quickly, and old memories rise, bitter or sweet, but all
+tinged and tinted by the seductive influence of the magic weed. Hail,
+blessed pipe! the invigorator of the weary, the uncomplaining faithful
+friend, the consoler of sorrows, and the dispeller of care, the
+much-prized companion of the solitary wayfarer!
+
+Now a jackal utters a howl on the bank, as our boat shoots past, and
+the diabolical noise is echoed from knoll to knoll, and from ridge to
+ridge, as these incarnate devils of the night join in and prolong the
+infernal chorus. An occasional splash, as a piece of the bank topples
+over into the stream, rouses the cormorant and gull from their placid
+dozing on the sandbanks. They squeak and gurgle out an unintelligible
+protest, then cosily settle their heads again beneath the sheltering
+wing, and sleep the slumber of the dreamless. A sharp sudden plump, or
+a lazy surging sound, accompanied by a wheezy blowing sort of hiss,
+tells us that a _seelun_ is disporting himself; or that a fat old
+'porpus' is bearing his clumsy bulk through the rushing current.
+
+The bank now looms out dark and mysterious, and as we turn the point
+another long stretch of the river opens out, reflecting the merry
+twinkle of the myriad stars, that glitter sharp and clear millions of
+miles overhead. There is now a clattering of bamboo poles. With a
+grunt of disgust, and a quick catching of the breath, as the cold
+water rushes up against his thighs, one of the boatmen splashes
+overboard, and they commence slowly and wearily pushing the boat up
+stream. We touch the bank a dozen times. The current swoops down and
+turns us round and round. The men have to put their shoulders under
+the gunwale, and heave and strain with all their might. The long
+bamboo poles are plunged into the dark depths of the river, and the
+men puff, and grunt, and blow, as they bend almost to the bottom of
+the boat while they push. It is a weary progress. We are dripping wet
+with dew. Quite close on the bank we hear the hoarse wailing call of a
+tigress. The call of the tiger comes echoing down between the banks.
+The men cease poling. I peer forward into the obscurity. My syce pats,
+and speaks soothingly to the trembling horse, while my peon with
+excited fingers fumbles at the straps of my gun-case. For a moment all
+is intensely still.
+
+I whisper to the boatmen to push out a little into the stream. Again
+the tigress calls, this time so close to us that we could almost fancy
+we could feel her breath. My gun is ready. The syce holds the horse
+firmly by the head, and as we leave the bank, we can distinctly see
+the outline of some large animal, standing out a dark bulky mass
+against the skyline. I take a steady aim and fire. A roar of
+astonishment, wrath, and pain follows the report. The horse struggles
+and snorts, the boatman calls out 'Oh, my father!' and ejaculates
+'hi-hi-hi!' in tones of piled up anguish and apprehension, the peon
+cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug, gea,' that bullet has told;
+oh your highness! and while the boat rocks violently to and fro, I
+abuse the boatmen, slang the syce, and rush to grasp a pole, while the
+peon seizes another; for we are drifting rapidly down stream, and may
+at any moment strike on a bank and topple over. We can hear by the
+growling and commotion on the bank, that my bullet has indeed told,
+and that something is hit. We soon get the frightened boatmen quieted
+down, and after another hour's weary work we spy the white outline of
+the tents above the bank. A lamp shines out a bright welcome; and
+although it is nearly twelve at night, the Captain and the magistrate
+are discussing hot toddy, and waiting my arrival. My spare horse had
+come on from the ghat, the syce had told them I was coming, and they
+had been indulging in all sorts of speculations over my non-arrival.
+
+A good supper, and a reeking jorum, soon banished all recollections of
+my weary journey, and men were ordered to go out at first break of
+dawn, and see about the wounded tiger. In the morning I was gratified
+beyond expression to find a fine tigress, measuring 8 feet 3 inches,
+had been brought in, the result of my lucky night shot; the marks of a
+large tiger were found about the spot, and we determined to beat up
+for him, and if possible secure his skin, as we already had that of
+his consort.
+
+Captain S. had some work to finish, and my elephant and bearer had not
+arrived, so our magistrate and myself walked down to the sandbanks,
+and amused ourselves for an hour shooting sandpipers and plover; we
+also shot a pair of mallard and a couple of teal, and then went back
+to the tents, and were soon busily discussing a hunter's breakfast.
+While at our meal, my elephant and things arrived, and just then also,
+the 'Major Capt[=a]n,' or Nepaulese functionary, my old friend, came up
+with eight elephants, and we hurried out to greet the fat,
+merry-featured old man.
+
+What a quaint, genial old customer he looked, as he bowed and salaamed
+to us from his elevated seat, his face beaming, and his little
+bead-like eyes twinkling with pleasure. He was full of an adventure he
+had as he came along. After crossing a brawling mountain-torrent, some
+miles from our camp, they entered some dense kair jungle. The kair is
+I believe a species of mimosa; it is a hard wood, growing in a thick
+scrubby form, with small pointed leaves, a yellowish sort of flower,
+and sharp thorns studding its branches; it is a favourite resort for
+pig, and although it is difficult to beat on account of the thorns,
+tigers are not unfrequently found among the gloomy recesses of a good
+kair scrub.
+
+As they entered this jungle, some of the men were loitering behind.
+When the elephants had passed about halfway through, the men came
+rushing up pell mell, with consternation on their faces, reporting
+that a huge tiger had sprung out on them, and carried off one of their
+number. The Major and the elephants hurried back, and met the man
+limping along, bleeding from several scratches, and with a nasty bite
+in his shoulder, but otherwise more frightened than hurt. The tiger
+had simply knocked him down, stood over him for a minute, seized him
+by the shoulder, and then dashed on through the scrub, leaving him
+behind half dead with pain and fear.
+
+It was most amusing to hear the fat little Major relate the story. He
+went through all the by-play incident to the piece, and as he got
+excited, stood right up on his narrow pad. His gesticulations were
+most vehement, and as the elephant was rather unsteady, and his
+footing to say the least precarious, he seemed every moment as if he
+must topple over. The old warrior, however, was equal to the occasion;
+without for an instant abating the vigour of his narrative, he would
+clutch at the greasy, matted locks of his mahout, and steady himself,
+while he volubly described incident after incident. As he warmed with
+his subject, and tried to shew us how the tiger must have pounced on
+the man, he would let go and use his hands in illustration; the old
+elephant would give another heave, and the fat little man would make
+another frantic grab at the patient mahout's hair. The whole scene was
+most comical, and we were in convulsions of laughter.
+
+The news, however, foreboded ample sport; we now had certain _khubber_
+of at least two tigers; we were soon under weigh; the wounded man had
+been sent back to the Major's head-quarters on an elephant, and in
+time recovered completely from his mauling. As we jogged along, we had
+a most interesting talk with the Major Capt[=a]n. He was wonderfully
+well informed, considering he had never been out of Nepaul. He knew all
+about England, our army, our mode of government, our parliament, and
+our Queen; whenever he alluded to Her Majesty he salaamed profoundly,
+whether as a tribute of respect to her, or in compliment to us as loyal
+subjects, we could not quite make out. He described to us the route
+home by the Suez canal, and the fun of his talk was much heightened by
+his applying the native names to everything; London was _Shuhur_, the
+word meaning 'a city,' and he told us it was built on the _Tham[=a]ss
+nuddee_, by which he meant the Thames river.
+
+Our magistrate had a Jemadar of Peons with him, a sort of head man
+among the servants. This man, abundantly bedecked with ear-rings,
+finger-rings, and other ornaments, was a useless, bullying sort of
+fellow; dressed to the full extent of Oriental foppishness, and
+because he was the magistrate's servant, he thought himself entitled
+to order the other servants about in the most lordly way. He was now
+making himself peculiarly officious, shouting to the drivers to go
+here and there, to do this and do that, and indulging in copious
+torrents of abuse, without which it seems impossible for a native
+subordinate to give directions on any subject. We were all rather
+amused, and could not help bursting into laughter, as, inflated with a
+sense of his own importance, he began abusing one of the native
+drivers of the Nepaulee chief; this man did not submit tamely to his
+insolence. To him the magistrate was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a
+perfect nonentity. He accordingly turned round and poured forth a
+perfect flood of invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar
+took a back seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his
+melodious voice in tones of imperious command.
+
+The old Major chuckled, and rubbed his fat little hands, and leaning
+over to me said, 'at home a lion, but abroad a lamb,' for, surrounded
+by his women at home, the man would twirl his moustaches, look fierce,
+and fancy himself a very tiger; but, no sooner did he go abroad, and
+mix with men as good, if not better than himself, than he was ready to
+eat any amount of humble pie.
+
+We determined first of all to beat for the tiger whose tracks had been
+seen near where I had fired my lucky shot the preceding night. A
+strong west wind was blowing, and dense clouds of sand were being
+swept athwart our line, from the vast plains of fine white sand
+bordering the river for miles. As we went along we fired the jungle in
+our rear, and the strong wind carried the flames raging and roaring
+through the dense jungle with amazing fury. One elephant got so
+frightened at the noise behind him, that he fairly bolted for the
+river, and could not be persuaded back into the line.
+
+Disturbed by the fire, we saw numerous deer and pig, but being after
+tiger we refrained from shooting at them. The Basinattea Tuppoo, which
+was the scene of our present hunt, were famous jungles, and many a
+tiger had been shot there by the Purneah Club in bygone days. The
+annual ravages of the impetuous river, had however much changed the
+face of the country; vast tracts of jungle had been obliterated by
+deposits of sand from its annual incursions. Great skeletons of trees
+stood everywhere, stretching out bare and unsightly branches, all
+bending to the south, shewing the mighty power of the current, when it
+made its annual progress of devastation over the surrounding country.
+Now, however, it was like a thin streak of silver, flashing back the
+fierce rays of the meridian sun. Through the blinding clouds of fine
+white sand we could at times, during a temporary lull, see its ruined
+surface. And we were glad when we came on the tracks of the tiger,
+which led straight from the stream, in the direction of some thick
+tree jungle at no great distance. We gladly turned our backs to the
+furious clouds of dust and gusts of scorching wind, and led by a
+Nepaulee tracker, were soon crashing heavily through the jungle.
+
+When hunting with elephants, the Nepaulese beat in a dense line, the
+heads of the elephants touching each other. In this manner we were now
+proceeding, when S. called out, 'There goes the tiger.'
+
+We looked up, and saw a very large tiger making off for a deep
+watercourse, which ran through the jungle some 200 yards ahead of the
+line. We hurried up as fast as we could, putting out a fast elephant
+on either flank, to see that the cunning brute did not sneak either up
+or down the nullah, under cover of the high banks. This, however, was
+not his object. We saw him descend into the nullah, and almost
+immediately top the further bank, and disappear into the jungle
+beyond.
+
+Pressing on at a rapid jolting trot, we dashed after him in hot
+pursuit. The jungle seemed somewhat lighter on ahead. In the distance
+we could see some dangurs at work breaking up land, and to the right
+was a small collection of huts with a beautiful riband of green crops,
+a perfect oasis in the wilderness of sand and parched up grass.
+Forming into line we pressed on. The tiger was evidently lying up,
+probably deterred from breaking across the open by the sight of the
+dangurs at work. My heart was bounding with excitement. We were all
+intensely eager, and thought no more of the hot wind and blinding
+dust. Just then Captain S. saw the brute sneaking along to the left of
+the line, trying to outflank us, and break back. He fired two shots
+rapidly with his Express, and the second one, taking effect in the
+neck of the tiger, bowled him over as he stood. He was a mangy-looking
+brute, badly marked, and measured eight feet eleven inches. He did not
+have a chance of charging, and probably had little heart for a fight.
+
+We soon had him padded, and then proceeded straight north, to the
+scene of the Major's encounter with the tiger in the morning. The
+jungle was well trampled down; there were numerous streams and pools
+of water, occasional clumps of bamboos, and abrupt ridgy undulations.
+It was the very jungle for tiger, and elated by our success in having
+bagged one already, we were all in high spirits. The line of fire we
+could see far in the distance, sweeping on like the march of fate, and
+we could have shot numerous deer, but reserved our fire for nobler
+game. It was getting well on in the afternoon when we came up to the
+kair jungle. We beat right up to where the man had been seized, and
+could see the marks of the struggle distinctly enough. We beat right
+through the jungle with no result, and as it was now getting rather
+late, the old Major signified his desire to bid us good evening. As
+this meant depriving us of eight elephants, we prevailed on him to try
+one spare straggling corner that we had not gone through. He laughed
+the idea to scorn of getting a tiger there, saying there was no cover.
+One elephant, however, was sent while we were talking. Our elephants
+were all standing in a group, and the mahout on his solitary elephant
+was listlessly jogging on in a purposeless and desultory manner, when
+we suddenly heard the elephant pipe out a shrill note of alarm, and
+the mahout yelled 'Bagh! Bagh!' tiger! tiger! The Captain was again
+the lucky man. The tiger, a much finer and stronger built animal than
+the one we had already killed, was standing not eighty paces off,
+shewing his teeth, his bristles erect, and evidently in a bad temper.
+He had been crouching among some low bushes, and seeing the elephant
+bearing directly down on him, he no doubt imagined his retreat had
+been discovered. At all events there he was, and he presented a
+splendid aim. He was a noble-looking specimen as he stood there grim
+and defiant. Captain S. took aim, and lodged an Express bullet in his
+chest. It made a fearful wound, and the ferocious brute writhed and
+rolled about in agony. We quickly surrounded him, and a bullet behind
+the ear from my No. 16 put an end to his misery.
+
+The old Major now bade us good evening, and after padding the second
+tiger, and much elated at our success, we began to beat homewards,
+shooting at everything that rose before us. A couple of tremendous pig
+got up before me, and dashed through a clear stream that was purling
+peacefully in its pebbly bed. As the boar was rushing up the farther
+bank, I deposited a pellet in his hind quarters. He gave an angry
+grunt and tottered on, but presently pulled up, and seemed determined
+to have some revenge for his hurt. As my elephant came up the bank,
+the gallant boar tried to charge, but already wounded and weak from
+loss of blood, he tottered and staggered about. My elephant would not
+face him, so I gave him another shot behind the shoulder, and padded
+him for the _moosahurs_ and sweepers in camp. Just then one of the
+policemen started a young hog-deer, and several of the men got down
+and tried to catch the little thing alive. They soon succeeded, and
+the cries of the poor little _butcha_, that is 'young one,' were most
+plaintive.
+
+The wind had now subsided, there was a red angry glare, as the level
+rays of the setting sun shimmered through the dense clouds of dust
+that loaded the atmosphere. It was like the dull, red, coppery hue
+which presages a storm. The vast morung jungle lay behind us, and
+beyond that the swelling wooded hills, beginning to show dark and
+indistinct against the gathering gloom. A long line of cattle were
+wending their way homeward to the batan, and the tinkle of the big
+copper bell fell pleasingly on our ears. In the distance, we could see
+the white canvas of the tents gleaming in the rays of the setting sun.
+A vast circular line of smouldering fire, flickering and flaring
+fitfully, and surmounted by huge volumes of curling smoke, shewed the
+remains of the fierce tornado of flame that had raged at noon, when we
+lit the jungle. The jungle was very light, and much trodden down, our
+three howdah elephants were not far apart, and we were chatting
+cheerfully together and discussing the incidents of the day. My bearer
+was sitting behind me in the back of the howdah, and I had taken out
+my ball cartridge from my No. 12 breechloader, and had replaced them
+with shot. Just then my mahout raised his hand, and in a hoarse
+excited whisper called out,
+
+'Look, sahib, a large tiger!'
+
+'Where?' we all exclaimed, getting excited at once. He pointed in
+front to a large object, looking for all the world like a huge dun
+cow.
+
+'Why, you fool, that is a bullock.' I exclaimed.
+
+My bearer, who had also been intently gazing, now said.
+
+'No, sahib! that is a tiger, and a large one.'
+
+At that moment, it turned partly round, and I at once saw that the men
+were right, and that it was a veritable tiger, and seemingly a monster
+in size. I at once called to Captain S. and the magistrate, who had by
+this time fallen a little behind.
+
+'Look out, you fellows! here's a tiger in front.'
+
+At first they thought I was joking, but a glance confirmed the truth
+of what I had said. When I first saw the brute, he was evidently
+sneaking after the cattle, and was about sixty paces from me. He was
+so intent on watching the herd, that he had not noticed our approach.
+He was now, however, evidently alarmed and making off. By the time I
+called out, he must have been over eighty yards away. I had my No. 12
+in my hand, loaded with shot; it was no use; I put it down and took up
+my No. 16; this occupied a few seconds; I fired both barrels; the
+first bullet was in excellent line but rather short, the second went
+over the animal's back, and neither touched him. It made him, however,
+quicken his retreat, and when Captain S. fired, he must have been
+fully one hundred and fifty yards away; as it was now somewhat dusky,
+he also missed. He fired another long shot with his rifle, but missed
+again. Oh that unlucky change of cartridges in my No. 12! But for
+that--but there--we are always wise after the event. We never expected
+to see a tiger in such open country, especially as we had been over
+the same ground before, firing pretty often as we came along.
+
+We followed up of course, but it was now fast getting dark, and though
+we beat about for some time, we could not get another glimpse of the
+tiger. He was seemingly a very large male, dark-coloured, and in
+splendid condition. We must have got him, had it been earlier, as he
+could not have gone far forward, for the lines of fire were beyond
+him, and we had him between the fire and the elephants. We got home
+about 6.30, rather disappointed at missing such a glorious prize, so
+true is it that a sportsman's soul is never satisfied. But we had rare
+and most unlooked-for luck, and we felt considerably better after a
+good dinner, and indulged in hopes of getting the big fellow next
+morning.
+
+In the same jungles, some years ago, a very sad accident occurred. A
+party were out tiger-shooting, and during one of the beats, a cowherd
+hearing the noise of the advancing elephants, crouched behind a bush,
+and covered himself with his blanket. At a distance he looked exactly
+like a pig, and one of the shooters mistook him for one. He fired, and
+hit the poor herd in the hip. As soon as the mistake was perceived,
+everything was done for the poor fellow. His wound was dressed as well
+as they could do it, and he was sent off to the doctor in a dhoolie, a
+a sort of covered litter, slung on a pole and carried on men's shoulders.
+It was too late, the poor coolie died on the road, from shock and loss
+of blood. Such mistakes occur very seldom, and this was such a natural
+one, that no one could blame the unfortunate sportsman, and certainly
+no one felt keener regret than he did. The coolie's family was amply
+provided for, which was all that remained to be done.
+
+This is the only instance I know, where fatal results have followed
+such an accident. I have known several cases of beaters peppered with
+shot, generally from their own carelessness, and disregard of orders,
+but a salve in the shape of a few rupees has generally proved the most
+effective ointment. I have known some rascals say, they were sorry
+they had not been lucky enough to be wounded, as they considered a
+punctured cuticle nothing to set against the magnificent douceur of
+four or five rupees. One impetuous scamp, being told not to go in
+front of the line during a beat near Burgamma, replied to the warning
+caution of his jemadar,
+
+'Oh never mind, if get shot I will get backsheesh.'
+
+Whether this was a compliment to the efficacy of our treatment (by the
+silver ointment), or to the inaccuracy and harmlessness of our shooting,
+I leave the reader to judge.
+
+Our bag during this lucky day, including the tigress killed by my shot
+on the river bank, was as follows: three tigers, one boar, four deer,
+including the young one taken alive, eight sandpipers, nine plovers,
+two mallards, and two teal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+We resume the beat.--The hog-deer.--Nepaulese villages.--Village
+granaries.--Tiger in front.--A hit! a hit!--Following up the wounded
+tiger.--Find him dead.--Tiffin in the village.--The Patair jungle.
+--Search for tiger.--Gone away!--An elephant steeplechase in pursuit.
+--Exciting chase.--The Morung jungle.--Magnificent scenery.--Skinning
+the tiger.--Incidents of tiger hunting.
+
+Next morning, both the magistrate and myself felt very ill, headachy
+and sick, with violent vomiting and retching; Captain S. attributed it
+to the fierce hot wind and exposure of the preceding day, but we, the
+sufferers, blamed the _dekchees_ or cooking pots. These _dekchees_ are
+generally made of copper, coated or tinned over with white metal once
+a month or oftener; if the tinning is omitted, or the copper becomes
+exposed by accident or neglect, the food cooked in the pots sometimes
+gets tainted with copper, and produces nausea and sickness in those
+who eat it. I have known, within my own experience, cases of copper
+poisoning that have terminated fatally. It is well always thoroughly
+to inspect the kitchen utensils, particularly when in camp; unless
+carefully watched and closely supervised, servants get very careless,
+and let food remain in these copper vessels. This is always dangerous,
+and should never be allowed.
+
+In consequence of our indisposition, we did not start till the
+forenoon was far advanced, and the hot west wind had again begun to
+sweep over the prairie-like stretches of sand and withered grass. We
+commenced beating up by the Batan or cattle stance, near which we had
+seen the big tiger, the preceding evening. S. however became so sick
+and giddy, that he had to return to camp, and Captain S. and I
+continued the beat alone. Having gone over the same ground only
+yesterday, we did not expect a tiger so near to camp, more especially
+as the fire had made fearful havoc with the tall grass. Hog-deer were
+very numerous; they are not as a rule easily disturbed; they are of a
+reddish brown colour, not unlike that of the Scotch red deer, and rush
+through the jungle, when alarmed, with a succession of bounding leaps;
+they make very pretty shooting, and when young, afford tender and
+well-flavoured venison. One hint I may give. When you shoot a buck,
+see that he is at once denuded of certain appendages, else the flesh
+will get rank and disagreeable to eat. The bucks have pretty antlers,
+but are not very noble looking. The does are somewhat lighter in
+colour, and do not seem to consort together in herds like antelopes;
+there are rarely more than five in a group, though I have certainly
+seen more on several occasions.
+
+This morning we were unlucky with our deer. I shot three, and Captain
+S. shot at and wounded three, not one of which however did we bag.
+This part of the country is exclusively inhabited by Parbutteas, the
+native name for Nepaulese settled in British territory. Over the
+frontier line, the villages are called Pahareeas, signifying
+mountaineers or hillmen, from Pahar, a mountain. We beat up to a
+Parbuttea village, with its conical roofed huts; men and women were
+engaged in plaiting long coils of rice straw into cable looking ropes.
+A few split bamboos are fastened into the ground, in a circle, and
+these ropes are then coiled round, in and out, between the stakes;
+this makes a huge circular vat-shaped repository, open at both ends;
+it is then lifted up and put on a platform coated with mud, and
+protected from rats and vermin by the pillars being placed on smooth,
+inverted earthen pots. The coils of straw are now plastered outside
+and in with a mixture of mud, chaff, and cowdung, and allowed to dry;
+when dried the hut is filled with grain, and securely roofed and
+thatched. This forms the invariable village granary, and looks at a
+distance not unlike a stack or rick of corn, round a farm at home. By
+the abundance of these granaries in a village, one can tell at a
+glance whether the season has been a good one, and whether the frugal
+inhabitants of the clustering little hamlet are in pretty comfortable
+circumstances. If they are under the sway of a grasping and
+unscrupulous landlord, they not unfrequently bury their grain in
+clay-lined chambers in the earth, and have always enough for current
+wants, stored up in the sun-baked clay repositories mentioned in a
+former chapter.
+
+Beyond the village we entered some thick Patair jungle. Its greenness
+was refreshing after the burnt up and withered grass jungle. We were
+now in a hollow bordering the stream, and somewhat protected from the
+scorching wind, and the stinging clouds of fine sand and red dust. The
+brook looked so cool and refreshing, and the water so clear and
+pellucid, that I was about to dismount to take a drink and lave my
+heated head and face, when a low whistle to my right made me look in
+that direction, and I saw the Captain waving his hand excitedly, and
+pointing ahead. He was higher up the bank than I was, and in very
+dense Patair; a ridge ran between his front of the line and mine, so
+that I could only see his howdah, and the bulk of the elephant's body
+was concealed from me by the grass on this ridge.
+
+I closed up diagonally across the ridge; S. still waving to me to
+hurry up; as I topped it, I spied a large tiger slouching along in the
+hollow immediately below me. He saw me at the same instant, and
+bounded on in front of S. His Express was at his shoulder on the
+instant; he fired, and a tremendous spurt of blood shewed a hit, a
+hit, a palpable hit. The tiger was nowhere visible, and not a cry or a
+motion could we hear or see, to give us any clue to the whereabouts of
+the wounded animal. We followed up however, quickly but cautiously,
+expecting every instant a furious charge.
+
+We must have gone at least a hundred yards, when right in front of me
+I descried the tiger, crouching down, its head resting on its fore
+paws, and to all appearance settling for a spring. It was about twenty
+yards from me, and taking a rather hasty aim, I quickly fired both
+barrels straight at the head. I could only see the head and paws, but
+these I saw quite distinctly. My elephant was very unsteady, and both
+my bullets went within an inch of the tiger's head, but fortunately
+missed completely. I say fortunately, for finding the brute still
+remaining quite motionless, we cautiously approached, and found it was
+stone dead. The perfect naturalness of the position, however, might
+well have deceived a more experienced sportsman. The beast was lying
+crouched on all fours, as if in the very act of preparing to spring.
+The one bullet had killed it; the wound was in the lungs, and the
+internal bleeding had suffocated it, but here was a wonderful instance
+of the tiger's tenacity of life, even when sorely wounded, for it had
+travelled over a hundred and thirty yards after S. had shot it.
+
+It was lucky I missed, for my bullets would have spoiled the skull.
+She was a very handsome, finely marked tigress, a large specimen, for
+on applying the tape we found she measured exactly nine feet. Before
+descending to measure her, we were joined by the old Major Capt[=a]n,
+whose elephants we had for some time descried in the distance. His
+congratulations were profuse, and no doubt sincere, and after padding
+the tigress, we hied to the welcome shelter of one of the village
+houses, where we discussed a hearty and substantial tiffin.
+
+During tiffin, we were surrounded by a bevy of really fair and buxom
+lasses. They wore petticoats of striped blue cloth, and had their arms
+and shoulders bare, and their ears loaded with silver ornaments. They
+were merry, laughing, comely damsels, with none of the exaggerated
+shyness, and affected prudery of the women of the plains. We were
+offered plantains, milk, and chupatties, and an old patriarch came out
+leaning on his staff, to revile and abuse the tigress. From some of
+the young men we heard of a fresh kill to the north of the village,
+and after tiffin we proceeded in that direction, following up the
+course of the limpid stream, whose gurgling ripple sounded so
+pleasantly in our ears.
+
+Far ahead to the right, and on the further bank of the stream, we
+could see dense curling volumes of smoke, and leaping pyramids of
+flame, where a jungle fire was raging in some thick acacia scrub. As
+we got nearer, the heat became excessive, and the flames, fanned into
+tremendous fury by the fierce west wind, tore through the dry thorny
+bushes. Our elephants were quite unsteady, and did not like facing the
+fire. We made a slight detour, and soon had the roaring wall of flame
+behind us. We were now entering on a moist, circular, basin-shaped
+hollow. Among the patair roots were the recent marks of great numbers
+of wild pigs, where they had been foraging among the stiff clay for
+these esculents. The patair is like a huge bulrush, and the elephants
+are very fond of its succulent, juicy, cool-looking leaves. Those in
+our line kept tearing up huge tufts of it, thrashing out the mud and
+dirt from the roots against their forelegs, and with a grunt of
+satisfaction, making it slowly disappear in their cavernous mouths.
+There was considerable noise, and the jungle was nearly as high as the
+howdahs, presenting the appearance of an impenetrable screen of vivid
+green. We beat and rebeat, across and across, but there was no sign of
+the tiger. The banks of the nullah were very steep, rotten looking,
+and dangerous. We had about eighteen elephants, namely, ten of our
+own, and eight belonging to the Nepaulese. We were beating very close,
+the elephants' heads almost touching. This is the way they always beat
+in Nepaul. We thought we had left not a spot in the basin untouched,
+and Captain S. was quite satisfied that there could be no tiger there.
+It was a splendid jungle for cover, so thick, dense, and cool. I was
+beating along the edge of the creek, which ran deep and silent,
+between the gloomy sedge-covered banks. In a placid little pool I saw
+a couple of widgeon all unconscious of danger, their glossy plumage
+reflected in the clear water. I called to Captain S. 'We are sold this
+time Captain, there's no tiger here!'
+
+'I am afraid not,' he answered.
+
+'Shall I bag those two widgeon?' I asked.
+
+'All right,' was the response.
+
+Putting in shot cartridge, I shot both the widgeon, but we were all
+astounded to see the tiger we had so carefully and perseveringly
+searched for, bound out of a crevice in the bank, almost right under
+my elephant. Off he went with a smothered roar, that set our elephants
+hurrying backwards and forwards. There was a commotion along the whole
+line. The jungle was too dense for us to see anything. It was one more
+proof how these hill tigers will lie close, even in the midst of a
+line.
+
+S. called out to me to remain quiet, and see if we could trace the
+tiger's progress by any rustling in the cover. Looking down we saw the
+kill, close to the edge of the water. A fast elephant was sent on
+ahead, to try and ascertain whether the tiger was likely to break
+beyond the circle of the little basin-shaped valley. We gathered round
+the kill; it was quite fresh; a young buffalo. The Major told us that
+in his experience, a male tiger always begins on the neck first. A
+female always at the hind quarters. A few mouthfuls only had been
+eaten, and according to the Major, it must have been a tigress, as the
+part devoured was from the hind quarters.
+
+While we were talking over these things, a frenzied shout from the
+driver of our naka elephant caused us to look in his direction. He was
+gesticulating wildly, and bawling at the top of his voice, 'Come, come
+quickly, sahibs, the tiger is running away.'
+
+Now commenced such a mad and hurried scramble as I have never
+witnessed before or since, from the back of an elephant. As we tore
+through the tangled dense green patair, the broad leaves crackled like
+crashing branches, the huge elephants surged ahead like ships rocking
+in a gale of wind, and the mahouts and attendants on the pad
+elephants, shouted and urged on their shuffling animals, by excited
+cries and resounding whacks.
+
+In the retinue of the Major, were several men with elephant spears or
+goads. These consist of a long, pliant, polished bamboo, with a sharp
+spike at the end, which they call a _jhetha_. These men now came
+hurrying round the ridge, among the opener grass, and as we emerged
+from the heavy cover, they began goading the elephants behind and
+urging them to their most furious pace. On ahead, nearly a quarter of
+a mile away, we could see a huge tiger making off for the distant
+morung, at a rapid sling trot. His lithe body shone before us, and
+urged us to the most desperate efforts. It was almost a bare plateau.
+There was scarcely any cover, only here and there a few stunted acacia
+bushes. The dense forest was two or three miles ahead, but there were
+several nasty steep banks, and precipitous gullies with deep water
+rushing between. Attached to each Nepaulee pad, by a stout
+curiously-plaited cord, ornamented with fancy knots and tassels of
+silk, was a small pestle-shaped instrument, not unlike an auctioneer's
+hammer. It was quaintly carved, and studded with short, blunt,
+shining, brass nails or spikes. I had noticed these hanging down from
+the pads, and had often wondered what they were for. I was now to see
+them used. While the mahouts in front rained a shower of blows on the
+elephants head, and the spear-men pricked him up from behind with
+their jhethas, the occupant of the pad, turning round with his face to
+the tail, belaboured the poor hathee with the auctioneer's hammer. The
+blows rattled on the elephant's rump. The brutes trumpeted with pain,
+but they _did_ put on the pace, and travelled as I never imagined an
+elephant _could_ travel. Past bush and brake, down precipitous ravine,
+over the stones, through the thorny scrub, dashing down a steep bank
+here, plunging madly through a deep stream there, we shuffled along.
+We must have been going fully seven miles an hour. The pestle-shaped
+hammer is called a _lohath_, and most unmercifully were they wielded.
+We were jostled and jolted, till every bone ached again. Clouds of
+dust were driven before our reeling waving line. How the Nepaulese
+shouted and capered. We were all mad with excitement. I shouted with
+the rest. The fat little Major kicked his heels against the sides of
+his elephant, as if he were spurring a Derby winner to victory. Our
+usually sedate captain yelled--actually yelled!--in an agony of
+excitement, and tried to execute a war dance of his own on the floor
+of his howdah. Our guns rattled, the chains clanked and jangled, the
+howdahs rocked and pitched from side to side. We made a desperate
+effort. The poor elephants made a gallant race of it. The foot men
+perspired and swore, but it was not to be. Our striped friend had the
+best of the start, and we gained not an inch upon him. To our
+unspeakable mortification, he reached the dense cover on ahead, where
+we might as well have sought for a needle in a haystack. Never,
+however, shall I forget that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant
+steeple-chase. Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for it next day.
+
+The old Major and his fleet racing elephants now left us, and our
+jaded beasts took us slowly back in the direction of our camp. It was
+a fine wild view on which we were now gazing. Behind us the dark
+gloomy impenetrable morung, the home of ever-abiding fever and ague.
+Behind that the countless multitude of hills, swelling here and
+receding there, a jumbled heap of mighty peaks and fretted pinnacles,
+with their glistening sides and dark shadowless ravines, their mighty
+scaurs and their abrupt serrated edges showing out clearly and boldly
+defined against the evening sky. Far to the right, the shining
+river--a riband of burnished steel, for its waters were a deep steely
+blue--rolled its swift flood along amid shining sand-banks. In front,
+the vast undulating plain, with grove, and rill, and smoking hamlet,
+stretched at our feet in a lovely panorama of blended and harmonious
+colour. We were now high up above the plain, and the scene was one of
+the finest I have ever witnessed in India. The wind had gone down, and
+the oblique rays of the sun lit up the whole vast panorama with a
+lurid light, which was heightened in effect by the dust-laden
+atmosphere, and the volumes of smoke from the now distant fires,
+hedging in the far horizon with curtains of threatening grandeur and
+gloom. That far away canopy of dust and smoke formed a wonderful
+contrast to the shining snow-capped hills behind. Altogether it was a
+day to be remembered. I have seen no such strange and unearthly
+combination of shade and colour in any landscape before or since.
+
+On the way home we bagged a florican and a very fine mallard, and
+reached the camp utterly fagged, to find our worthy magistrate very
+much recovered, and glad to congratulate us on our having bagged the
+tigress. After a plunge in the river, and a rare camp dinner--such a
+meal as only an Indian sportsman can procure--we lay back in our cane
+chairs, and while the fragrant smoke from the mild Manilla curled
+lovingly about the roof of the tent, we discussed the day's
+proceedings, and fought our battles over again.
+
+A rather animated discussion arose about the length of the tiger--as
+to its frame merely, and we wondered what difference the skin would
+make in the length of the animal. As it was a point we had never heard
+mooted before, we determined to see for ourselves. We accordingly went
+out into the beautiful moonlight, and superintended the skinning of
+the tigress. The skin was taken off most artistically. We had
+carefully measured the animal before skinning. She was exactly nine
+feet long. We found the skin made a difference of only four inches,
+the bare skeleton from tip of nose to extreme point of tail measuring
+eight feet eight inches.
+
+As an instance of tigers taking to trees, our worthy magistrate
+related that in Rajmehal he and a friend had wounded a tiger, and
+subsequently lost him in the jungle. In vain they searched in every
+conceivable direction, but could find no trace of him. They were about
+giving up in despair, when S., raising his hat, happened to look up,
+and there, on a large bough directly overhead, he saw the wounded
+tiger lying extended at full length, some eighteen feet from the
+ground. They were not long in leaving the dangerous vicinity, and it
+was not long either ere a well-directed shot brought the tiger down
+from his elevated perch.
+
+These after-dinner stories are not the least enjoyable part of a
+tiger-hunting party. Round the camp table in a snug, well-lighted
+tent, with all the 'materials' handy, I have listened to many a tale
+of thrilling adventure. S. was full of reminiscences, and having seen
+a deal of tiger shooting in various parts of India, his recollections
+were much appreciated. To shew that the principal danger in tiger
+shooting is not from the tiger himself, but from one's elephant
+becoming panic-stricken and bolting, he told how a Mr. Aubert, a
+Benares planter, lost his life. A tiger had been 'spined' by a shot,
+and the line gathered round the prostrate monster to watch its
+death-struggle. The elephant on which the unfortunate planter sat got
+demoralised and attempted to bolt. The mahout endeavoured to check its
+rush, and in desperation the elephant charged straight down, close
+past the tiger, which lay writhing and roaring under a huge
+overhanging tree. The elephant was rushing directly under this tree,
+and a large branch would have swept howdah and everything it contained
+clean off the elephant's back, as easily as one would brush off a fly.
+To save himself Aubert made a leap for the branch, the elephant
+forging madly ahead; and the howdah, being smashed like match-wood,
+fell on the tiger below, who was tearing and clawing at everything
+within his reach. Poor Aubert got hold of the branch with his hands,
+and clung with all the desperation of one fighting for his life. He
+was right above the wounded tiger, but his grasp on the tree was not a
+firm one. For a moment he hung suspended above the furious animal,
+which, mad with agony and fury, was a picture of demoniac rage. The
+poor fellow could hold no longer, and fell right on the tiger. It was
+nearly at its last gasp, but it caught hold of Aubert by the foot, and
+in a final paroxysm of pain and rage chawed the foot clean off, and
+the poor fellow died next day from the shock and loss of blood. He was
+one of four brothers who all met untimely deaths from accidents. This
+one was killed by the tiger, another was thrown from a vehicle and
+killed on the spot, the third was drowned, and the fourth shot by
+accident.
+
+Our bag to-day was one tiger, one florican, one mallard, and two
+widgeon. On cutting the tiger open, we found that the bullet had
+entered on the left side, and, as we suspected, had entered the lungs.
+It had, however, made a terrible wound. We found that it had
+penetrated the heart and liver, gone forward through the chest, and
+smashed the right shoulder. Notwithstanding this fearful wound,
+shewing the tremendous effects of the Express bullet, the tiger had
+gone on for the distance I have mentioned, after which it must have
+fallen stone-dead. It was a marvellous instance of vitality, even
+after the heart, liver, and lungs had been pierced. The liver had six
+lobes, and it was then I heard for the first time, that with the
+natives this was an infallible sign of the age of a tiger. The old
+Major firmly believed it, and told us it was quite an accepted article
+of faith with all native sportsmen. Facts subsequently came under my
+own observation which seemed to give great probability to the theory,
+but it is one on which I would not like to give a decided opinion,
+till after hearing the experiences of other sportsmen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Camp of the Nepaulee chief.--Quicksands.--Elephants crossing rivers.
+--Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.--We beat the forest for tiger.--Shoot
+a young tiger.--Red ants in the forest.--Bhowras or ground bees.--The
+_ursus labialis_ or long-lipped bear.--Recross the stream.--Florican.
+--Stag running the gauntlet of flame.--Our bag.--Start for factory.
+--Remarks on elephants.--Precautions useful for protection from the
+sun in tiger shooting.--The _puggree_.--Cattle breeding in India, and
+wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.--Nathpore.--Ravages of the
+river.--Mrs. Gray, an old resident in the jungles.--Description of her
+surroundings.
+
+Next morning we started beating due east, setting fire to the jungle
+as we went along. The roaring and crackling of the flames startled the
+elephant on which Captain S. was riding, and going away across country
+at a furious pace, it was with difficulty that it could be stopped. We
+crossed the frontier line a short distance from camp, and entered a
+dense jungle of thorny acacia, with long dry grass almost choking the
+trees. They were dry and stunted, and when we dropped a few lights
+amongst such combustible material, the fire was splendid beyond
+description. How the flames surged through the withered grass. We were
+forced to pause and admire the magnificent sight. The wall of flame
+tore along with inconceivable rapidity, and the blinding volumes of
+smoke obscured the country for miles. The jungle was full of deer and
+pig. One fine buck came bounding along past our line, but I stopped
+him with a single bullet through the neck. He fell over with a
+tremendous crash, and turning a complete somersault broke off both his
+horns with the force of the fall.
+
+We beat down a shallow sandy watercourse, and could see the camp of
+the old Major on the high bank beyond. Farther down the stream there
+was a small square fort, the whitewashed walls of which flashed back
+the rays of the sun, and grouped round it were some ruinous looking
+huts, several snowy tents, and a huge shamiana or canopy, under which
+we could see a host of attendants spreading carpets, placing chairs,
+and otherwise making ready for us. The banks of the stream were very
+steep, but the guide at length brought us to what seemed a safe and
+fordable passage. On the further side was a flat expanse of seemingly
+firm and dry sand, but no sooner had our elephants begun to cross it,
+than the whole sandbank for yards began to rock and tremble; the water
+welled up over the footmarks of the elephants, and S. called out to
+us, Fussun, Fussun! quicksand, quicksand! We scattered the elephants,
+and tried to hurry them over the dangerous bit of ground with shouts
+and cries of encouragement.
+
+The poor animals seemed thoroughly to appreciate the danger, and
+shuffled forward as quickly as they could. All got over in safety
+except the last three. The treacherous sand, rendered still more
+insecure by the heavy tread of so many ponderous animals, now gave way
+entirely, and the three hapless elephants were left floundering in the
+tenacious hold of the dreaded fussun. Two of the three were not far
+from the firm bank, and managed to extricate themselves after a short
+struggle; but the third had sunk up to the shoulders, and could
+scarcely move. All hands immediately began cutting long grass and
+forming it into bundles. These were thrown to the sinking elephant. He
+rolled from side to side, the sand quaking and undulating round him in
+all directions. At times he would roll over till nearly half his body
+was invisible. Some of the Nepaulese ventured near, and managed to
+undo the harness-ropes that were holding on the pad. The sagacious
+brute fully understood his danger, and the efforts we were making for
+his assistance. He managed to get several of the big bundles of grass
+under his feet, and stood there looking at us with a most pathetic
+pleading expression, and trembling, as if with an ague, from fear and
+exhaustion.
+
+The old Major came down to meet us, and a crowd of his men added their
+efforts to ours, to help the unfortunate elephant. We threw in bundle
+after bundle of grass, till we had the yielding sand covered with a
+thick passage of firmly bound fascines, on which the hathee,
+staggering and floundering painfully, managed to reach firm land. He
+was so completely exhausted that he could scarcely walk to the tents,
+and we left him there to the care of his attendants. This is a very
+common episode in tiger hunting, and does not always terminate so
+fortunately. In running water, the quicksand is not so dangerous, as
+the force of the stream keeps washing away the sand, and does not
+allow it to settle round the legs of the elephant; but on dry land, a
+dry fussun, as it is called, is justly feared; and many a valuable
+animal has been swallowed up in its slow, deadly, tenacious grasp.
+
+In crossing sand, the heaviest and slowest elephants should go first,
+preceded by a light, nimble pioneer. If the leading elephant shows
+signs of sinking, the others should at once turn back, and seek some
+safer place. In all cases the line should separate a little, and not
+follow in each other's footsteps. The indications of a quicksand are
+easily recognised. If the surface of the sand begins to oscillate and
+undulate with a tremulous rocking motion, it is always wise to seek
+some other passage. Looking back, after elephants have passed, you
+will often see what was a perfectly dry flat, covered with several
+inches of water. When water begins to ooze up in any quantity, after a
+few elephants have passed, it is much safer to make the remainder
+cross at some spot farther on.
+
+In crossing a deep swift river, the elephants should enter the water
+in a line, ranged up and down the river. That is, the line should be
+ranged along the bank, and enter the water at right angles to the
+current, and not in Indian file. The strongest elephants should be up
+stream, as they help to break the force of the current for the weaker
+and smaller animals down below. It is a fine sight to see some thirty
+or forty of these huge animals crossing a deep and rapid river. Some
+are reluctant to strike out, when they begin to enter the deepest
+channel, and try to turn back; the mahouts and 'mates' shout, and
+belabour them with bamboo poles. The trumpeting of the elephants, the
+waving of the trunks, disporting, like huge water-snakes, in the
+perturbed current, the splashing of the bamboos, the dark bodies of
+the natives swimming here and there round the animals, the unwieldy
+boat piled high with how-dahs and pads, the whole heap surmounted by a
+group of sportsmen with their gleaming weapons, and variegated
+puggrees, make up a picturesque and memorable sight. Some of the
+strong swimmers among the elephants seem to enjoy the whole affair
+immensely. They dip their huge heads entirely under the current, the
+sun flashes on the dark hide, glistening with the dripping water; the
+enormous head emerges again slowly, like some monstrous antediluvian
+creation, and with a succession of these ponderous appearances and
+disappearances, the mighty brutes forge through the surging water.
+When they reach a shallow part, they pipe with pleasure, and send
+volumes of fluid splashing against their heaving flanks, scattering
+the spray all round in mimic rainbows.
+
+At all times the Koosee was a dangerous stream to cross, but during
+the rains I have seen the strongest and best swimming elephants taken
+nearly a mile down stream; and in many instances they have been
+drowned, their vast bulk and marvellous strength being quite unable to
+cope with the tremendous force of the raging waters.
+
+When we had got comfortably seated under the shamiana, a crowd of
+attendants brought us baskets of fruit and a very nice cold collation
+of various Indian dishes and curries. We did ample justice to the old
+soldier's hospitable offerings, and then betel-nut, cardamums, cloves,
+and other spices, and pauri leaves, were handed round on a silver
+salver, beautifully embossed and carved with quaint devices. We lit
+our cigars, our beards and handkerchiefs were anointed with attar of
+roses; and the old Major then informed us that there was good khubber
+of tiger in the wood close by.
+
+The trees were splendid specimens of forest growth, enormously thick,
+beautifully umbrageous, and growing very close together. There was a
+dense undergrowth of tangled creeper, and the most lovely ferns and
+tropical plants in the richest luxuriance, and of every conceivable
+shade of amber and green. It was a charming spot. The patch of forest
+was separated from the unbroken line of morung jungle by a beautifully
+sheltered glade of several hundred acres, and further broken in three
+places by avenue-looking openings, disclosing peeps of the black and
+gloomy-looking mass of impenetrable forest beyond.
+
+In the first of these openings we were directed to take up a position,
+while the pad elephants and a crowd of beaters went to the edge of the
+patch of forest and began beating up to us. Immense numbers of genuine
+jungle fowl were calling in all directions, and flying right across
+the opening in numerous coveys. They are beautifully marked with black
+and golden plumes round the neck, and I determined to shoot a few by
+and bye to send home to friends, who I knew would prize them as
+invaluable material in dressing hooks for fly-fishing. The crashing of
+the trees, as the elephants forced their way through the thick forest,
+or tore off huge branches as they struggled amid the matted
+vegetation, kept us all on the alert. The first place was however a
+blank, and we moved on to the next. We had not long to wait, for a
+fierce din inside the jungle, and the excited cries of the beaters,
+apprised us that game of some sort was afoot. We were eagerly
+watching, and speculating on the cause of the uproar, when a very fine
+half-grown tiger cub sprang out of some closely growing fern, and
+dashed across the narrow opening so quickly, that ere we had time to
+raise a gun, he had disappeared in some heavy jhamun jungle on the
+further side of the path.
+
+We hurried round as fast as we could to intercept him, should he
+attempt to break on ahead; and leaving some men to rally the mahouts,
+and let them know that there was a tiger afoot, we were soon in our
+places, and ready to give the cub a warm reception, should he again
+show his stripes. It was not long ere he did so. I spied him stealing
+along the edge of the jungle, evidently intending to make a rush back
+past the opening he had just crossed, and outflank the line of beater
+elephants. I fired and hit him in the forearm; he rolled over roaring
+with rage, and then descrying his assailants, he bounded into the
+open, and as well as his wound would allow him, came furiously down at
+the charge. In less time however than it takes to write it, he had
+received three bullets in his body, and tumbled down a lifeless heap.
+We raised a cheer which brought the beaters and elephants quickly to
+the spot. In coming through a thickly wooded part of the forest, with
+numerous long and pliant creepers intertwisted into a confused tangle
+of rope-like ligaments, the old Juddeah elephant tore down one of the
+long lines, and dislodged an angry army of venomous red ants on the
+occupants of the guddee, or cushioned seat on the elephant's pad. The
+ants proved formidable assailants. There were two or three Baboos or
+native gentlemen, holding on to the ropes, chewing pan, and enjoying
+the scene, but the red ants were altogether more than they had
+bargained for. Recognising the Baboos as the immediate cause of their
+disturbance, they attacked them with indomitable courage. The mahout
+fairly yelled with pain, and one of the Baboos, smarting from the
+fiery bites of the furious insects, toppled clean backwards into the
+undergrowth, showing an undignified pair of heels. The other two
+danced on the guddee, sweeping and thrashing the air, the cushion, and
+their clothes, with their cummerbunds, in the vain effort to free
+themselves of their angry assailants. The guddee was literally covered
+with ants; it looked an animated red mass, and the wretched Baboos
+made frantic efforts to shake themselves clear. They were dreadfully
+bitten, and reaching the open, they slid off the elephant, and even on
+the ground continued their saltatory antics before finally getting rid
+of their ferocious assailants.
+
+In forest shooting the red ant is one of the most dreaded pests of the
+jungle. If a colony gets dislodged from some overhanging branch, and
+is landed in your howdah, the best plan is to evacuate your stronghold
+as quickly as you can, and let the attendants clear away the invaders.
+Their bite is very painful, and they take such tenacious hold, that
+rather than quit their grip, they allow themselves to be decapitated
+and leave their head and formidable forceps sticking in your flesh.
+
+Other dreaded foes in the forest jungle are the Bhowra or ground bees,
+which are more properly a kind of hornet. If by evil chance your
+elephant should tread on their mound-like nest, instantly an angry
+swarm of venomous and enraged hornets comes buzzing about your ears.
+Your only chance is to squat down, and envelope yourself completely in
+a blanket. Old sportsmen, shooting in forest jungle, invariably take a
+blanket Avith them in the howdah, to ensure themselves protection in
+the event of an attack by these blood-thirsty creatures. The thick
+matted creepers too are a great nuisance, for which a bill-hook or
+sharp kookree is an invaluable adjunct to the other paraphernalia of
+the march. I have seen a mahout swept clean off the elephant's back by
+these tenacious creepers, and the elephants themselves are sometimes
+unable to break through the tangle of sinewy, lithe cords, which drape
+the huge forest trees, hanging in slender festoons from every branch.
+Some of them are prickly, and as the elephant slowly forces his way
+through the mass of pendent swaying cords, they lacerate and tear the
+mahout's clothes and skin, and appropriate his puggree. As you crouch
+down within the shelter of your howdah, you can't help pitying the
+poor wretch, and incline to think that, after all, shooting in grass
+jungle has fewer drawbacks and is preferable to forest shooting.
+
+One of the drivers reported that he had seen a bear in the jungle, and
+we saw the earth of one not far from where the young tiger had fallen;
+it was the lair of the sloth bear or _Ursus labialis_, so called from
+his long pendent upper lip. His spoor is very easily distinguished
+from that of any other animal; the ball of the foot shows a distinct
+round impression, and about an inch to an inch and a half further on,
+the impression of the long curved claws are seen. He uses these
+long-curved claws to tear up ant hills, and open hollow decaying
+trees, to get at the honey within, of which he is very fond. We went
+after the bear, and were not long in discovering his whereabouts, and
+a well-directed shot from S. added him to our bag. The best bear
+shooting in India perhaps is in CHOTA NAGPOOR, but this does not come
+within the limits of my present volume. We now beat slowly through the
+wood, keeping a bright look out for ants and hornets, and getting fine
+shooting at the numerous jungle fowl which flew about in amazing
+numbers.
+
+The forest trees in this patch of jungle were very fine. The hill
+seerees, with its feathery foliage and delicate clusters of white
+bugle-shaped blossom; the semul or cotton tree, with its wonderful
+wealth of magnificent crimson flowers; the birch-looking sheeshum or
+sissod; the sombre looking sal; the shining, leathery-leafed bhur,
+with its immense over-arching limbs, and the crisp, curly-leafed
+elegant-looking jhamun or Indian olive, formed a paradise of sylvan
+beauty, on which the eye dwelt till it was sated with the woodland
+loveliness.
+
+In recrossing the dhar or water-course, we took care to avoid the
+quicksands, and as we did not expect to fall in with another tiger, we
+indulged in a little general firing. I shot a fine buck through the
+spine, and we bagged several deer, and no less than five florican;
+this bird is allied to the bustard family, and has beautiful drooping
+feathers, hanging in plumy pendants of deep black and pure white,
+intermingled in the most graceful and showy manner. The male is a
+magnificent bird, and has perhaps as fine plumage as any bird on the
+border; the flesh yields the most delicate eating of any game bird I
+know; the slices of mingled brown and white from the breast are
+delicious. The birds are rather shy, generally getting up a long way
+in front of the line, and moving with a slow, rather clumsy, flight,
+not unlike the flight of the white earth owl. They run with great
+swiftness, and are rather hard to kill, unless hit about the neck and
+head. There are two sorts, the lesser and the greater, the former also
+called the bastard florican. Altogether they are noble looking birds,
+and the sportsman is always glad to add as many florican as he can to
+his bag.
+
+We were now nearing the locality of the fierce fire of the morning; it
+was still blazing in a long extended line of flame, and we witnessed
+an incident without parallel in the experience of any of us. I fired
+at and wounded a large stag; it was wounded somewhere in the side, and
+seemed very hard hit indeed. Maddened probably by terror and pain, it
+made straight for the line of fire, and bounded unhesitatingly right
+into the flame. We saw it distinctly go clean though the flames, but
+we could not see whether it got away with its life, as the elephants
+would not go up to the fire. At all events, the stag went right
+through his fiery ordeal, and was lost to us. We started numerous
+hares close to camp, and S. bowled over several. They are very common
+in the short grass jungle, where the soil is sandy, and are frequently
+to be found among thin jowah jungle; they afford good sport for
+coursing, but are neither so fleet, nor so large, nor such good eating
+as the English hare. In fact, they are very dry eating, and the best
+way to cook them is to jug them, or make a hunter's pie, adding
+portions of partridge, quail, or plover, with a few mushrooms, and a
+modicum of ham or bacon if these are procurable.
+
+We reached camp pretty late, and sent off venison, birds, and other
+spoils to Mrs. S. and to Inamputte factory. Our bag shewed a diversity
+of spoil, consisting of one tiger, seven hog-deer, one bear _(Ursus
+labialis)_, seventeen jungle fowl, five florican, and six hares. It
+was no bad bag considering that during most of the day we had been
+beating solely for tiger. We could have shot many more deer and jungle
+fowl, but we never try to shoot more than are needed to satisfy the
+wants of the camp. Were we to attempt to shoot at all the deer and pig
+that we see, the figures would reach very large totals. As a rule
+therefore, the records of Indian sportsmen give no idea of the vast
+quantities of game that are put up and never fired at. It would be the
+very wantonness of destruction, to shoot animals not wanted for some
+specific purpose, unless indeed, you were raging an indiscriminate war
+of extermination, in a quarter where their numbers were a nuisance and
+prejudicial to crops. In that case, your proceedings would not be
+dignified by the name of sport.
+
+After a few more days shooting, the incidents of which were pretty
+much like those I have been describing, I started back for the
+factory. I sent my horse on ahead, and took five elephants with me to
+beat up for game on the homeward route. Close to camp a fine buck got
+up in front of me. I broke both his forelegs with my first shot, but
+the poor brute still managed to hobble along. It was in some very
+dense patair jungle, and I had considerable difficulty in bringing him
+to bag. When we reached the ghat or ferry, I ordered Geerdharee Jha's
+mahout to cross with his elephant. The brute, however, refused to
+cross the river alone, and in spite of all the driver could do, she
+insisted on following the rest. I got down, and some of the other
+drivers got out the hobbles and bound them round her legs. In spite of
+these she still seemed determined to follow us. She shook the bedding
+and other articles with which she was loaded off her back, and made a
+frantic effort to follow us through the deep sand. The iron chains cut
+into her legs, and, afraid that she might do herself an irreparable
+injury, I had her tied up to a tree, and left her trumpeting and
+making an indignant lamentation at being separated from the rest of
+the line.
+
+The elephant seems to be quite a social animal. I have frequently seen
+cases where, after having been in company together for a lengthened
+hunt, they have manifested great reluctance to separate. In leaving
+the line, I have often noticed the single elephant looking back at his
+comrades, and giving vent to his disappointment and disapproval, by
+grunts and trumpetings of indignant protest. We left the refractory
+hathee tied up to her tree, and as we crossed the long rolling billows
+of burning sand that lay athwart our course, she was soon lost to
+view. I shot a couple more hog-deer, and got several plover and teal
+in the patches of water that lay in some of the hollows among the
+sandbanks. I fired at a huge alligator basking in the sun, on a
+sandbank close to the stream. The bullet hit him somewhere in the
+forearm, and he made a tremendous sensation header into the current.
+From the agitation in the water, he seemed not to appreciate the
+leaden message which I had sent him.
+
+We found the journey through the soft yielding sand very fatiguing,
+and especially trying to the eyes. When not shooting, it is a very
+wise precaution to wear eye-preservers or 'goggles.' They are a great
+relief to the eyes, and the best, I think, are the neutral tinted.
+During the west winds, when the atmosphere is loaded with fine
+particles of irritating sand and dust, these goggles are very
+necessary, and are a great protection to the sight.
+
+Another prudent precaution is to have the back of one's shirt or coat
+slightly padded with cotton and quilted. The heat prevents one wearing
+thick clothes, and there is no doubt that the action of the direct
+rays of the burning sun all down the back on the spinal cord, is very
+injurious, and may be a fruitful cause of sunstroke. It is certainly
+productive of great lassitude and weariness. I used to wear a thin
+quilted sort of shield made of cotton-drill, which fastened round the
+shoulders and waist. It does not incommode one's action in any
+particular, and is, I think, a great protection against the fierce
+rays of the sun. Many prefer the puggree as a head-piece. It is
+undeniably a fine thing when one is riding on horseback, as it fits
+close to the head, does not catch the wind during a smart trot or
+canter, and is therefore not easily shaken off. For riding I think it
+preferable to all other headdresses. A good thick puggree is a great
+protection to the back of the head and neck, the part of the body
+which of all others requires protection from the sun. It feels rather
+heavy at first, but one gets used to it, and it does not shade the
+eyes and face. These are the two gravest objections to it, but for
+comfort, softness, and protection to the head and neck, I do not think
+it can be surpassed.
+
+After crossing the sand, we again entered some thin scrubby acacia
+jungle, with here and there a moist swampy nullah, with rank green
+patair jungle growing in the cool dank shade. Here we disturbed a
+colony of pigs, but the four mahouts being Mahommedans I did not fire.
+As we went along, one of my men called my attention to some footprints
+near a small lagoon. On inspection we found they were rhinoceros
+tracks, evidently of old date. These animals are often seen in this
+part of the country, but are more numerous farther north, in the great
+morung forest jungle.
+
+A very noticeable feature in these jungles was the immense quantity of
+bleached ghastly skeletons of cattle. This year had been a most
+disastrous one for cattle. Enormous numbers had been swept off by
+disease, and in many villages bordering on the morung the herds had
+been well-nigh exterminated. Little attention is paid to breeding. In
+some districts, such as the Mooteeharree and Mudhobunnee division,
+fine cart-bullocks are bred, carefully handled and tended, and fetch
+high prices. In Kurruchpore, beyond the Ganges in Bhaugulpore
+district, cattle of a small breed, hardy, active, staunch, and strong,
+are bred in great numbers, and are held in great estimation for
+agricultural requirements; but in these Koosee jungles the bulls are
+often ill-bred weedy brutes, and the cows being much in excess of a
+fair proportion of bulls, a deal of in-breeding takes place; unmatured
+young bulls roam about with the herd, and the result is a crowd of
+cattle that succumb to the first ailment, so that the land is littered
+with their bones.
+
+The bullock being indispensable to the Indian cultivator, bull calves
+are prized, taken care of, well nurtured, and well fed. The cow calves
+are pretty much left to take care of themselves; they are thin,
+miserable, half-starved brutes, and the short-sighted ryot seems
+altogether to forget that it is on these miserable withered specimens
+that he must depend for his supply of plough and cart-bullocks. The
+matter is most shamefully neglected. Government occasionally through
+its officers, experimental farms, etc., tries to get good sire stock
+for both horses and cattle, but as long as the dams are bad--mere
+weeds, without blood, bone, muscle, or stamina, the produce must be
+bad. As a pretty well established and general rule, the ryots look
+after their bullocks,--they recognise their value, and appreciate
+their utility, but the cows fare badly, and from all I have myself
+seen, and from the concurrent testimony of many observant friends in
+the rural districts, I should say that the breed has become much
+deteriorated.
+
+Old planters constantly tell you, that such cattle as they used to get
+are not now procurable for love or money. Within the last twenty years
+prices have more than doubled, because the demand for good
+plough-bullocks has been more urgent, as a consequence of increased
+cultivation, and the supply is not equal to the demand. Attention to
+the matter is imperative, and planters would be wise in their own
+interests to devote a little time and trouble to disseminating sound
+ideas about the selection of breeding stock, and the principles of
+rearing and raising stock among their ryots and dependants. Every
+factory should be able to breed its own cattle, and supply its own
+requirements for plough and cart-bullocks. It would be cheaper in the
+end, and it would undoubtedly be a blessing to the country to raise
+the standard of cattle used in agricultural work.
+
+To return from this digression. We plodded on and on, weary, hot, and
+thirsty, expecting every moment to see the ghat and my waiting horse.
+But the country here is so wild, the river takes such erratic courses
+during the annual floods, and the district is so secluded and so
+seldom visited by Europeans or factory servants, that my syce had
+evidently lost his way. After we had crossed innumerable streams, and
+laboriously traversed mile upon mile of burning sand, we gave up the
+attempt to find the ghat, and made for Nathpore.
+
+Nathpore was formerly a considerable town, not far from the Nepaul
+border, a flourishing grain mart and emporium for the fibres, gums,
+spices, timbers, and other productions of a wide frontier. There was a
+busy and crowded bazaar, long streets of shops and houses, and
+hundreds of boats lying in the stream beside the numerous ghats,
+taking in and discharging their cargoes. It may give a faint idea of
+the destructive force of an Indian stream like the Koosee when it is
+in full flood, to say that this once flourishing town is now but a
+handful of miserable huts. Miles of rich lands, once clothed with
+luxuriant crops of rice, indigo, and waving grain, are now barren
+reaches of burning sand. The bleached skeletons of mango, jackfruit,
+and other trees, stretch out their leafless and lifeless branches, to
+remind the spectator of the time when their foliage rustled in the
+breeze, when their lusty limbs bore rich clusters of luscious fruit,
+and when the din of the bazaar resounded beneath their welcome shade.
+A fine old lady still lived in a two-storied brick building, with
+quaint little darkened rooms, and a narrow verandah running all round
+the building. She was long past the allotted threescore years and ten,
+with a keen yet mildly beaming eye, and a wealth of beautiful hair as
+white as driven snow, neatly gathered back from her shapely forehead.
+She was the last remaining link connecting the present with the past
+glories of Nathpore. Her husband had been a planter and Zemindar.
+Where his vats had stood laden with rich indigo, the engulphing sand
+now reflected the rays of the torrid sun from its burning whiteness.
+She shewed me a picture of the town as it appeared to her when she had
+been brought there many a long and weary year ago, ere yet her step
+had lost its lightness, and when she was in the bloom of her bridal
+life. There was a fine broad boulevard, shadowed by splendid trees, on
+which she and her husband had driven in their carriage of an evening,
+through crowds of prosperous and contented traders and cultivators.
+The hungry river had swept all this away. Subsisting on a few
+precarious rents of some little plots of ground that it had spared,
+all that remained of a once princely estate, this good old lady lived
+her lonely life cheerful and contented, never murmuring or repining.
+The river had not spared even the graves of her departed dear ones.
+Since I left that part of the country I hear that she has been called
+away to join those who had gone before her.
+
+I arrived at her house late in the afternoon. I had never been at
+Nathpore before, although the place was well known to me by
+reputation. What a wreck it presented as our elephants marched
+through. Ruined, dismantled, crumbling temples; masses of masonry half
+submerged in the swift-running, treacherous, undermining stream; huge
+trees lying prostrate, twisted and jammed together where the angry
+flood had hurled them; bare unsightly poles and piles, sticking from
+the water at every angle, reminding us of the granaries and godowns
+that were wont to be filled with the agricultural wealth of the
+districts for miles around; hard metalled roads cut abruptly off, and
+bridges with only half an arch, standing lonely and ruined half way in
+the muddy current that swept noiselessly past the deserted city. It
+was a scene of utter waste and desolation.
+
+The lady I mentioned made me very welcome, and I was struck by her
+unaffected cheerfulness and gentleness. She was a gentlewoman indeed,
+and though reduced in circumstances, surrounded by misfortunes, and
+daily and hourly reminded by the scattered wreck around her of her
+former wealth and position, she bore all with exemplary fortitude, and
+to the full extent of her scanty means she relieved the sorrows and
+ailments of the natives. They all loved and respected, and I could not
+help admiring and honouring her.
+
+She pointed out to me, far away on the south-east horizon, the place
+where the river ran in its shallow channel when she first came to
+Nathpore. During her experience it had cut into and overspread more
+than twenty miles of country, turning fertile fields into arid wastes
+of sand; sweeping away factories, farms, and villages; and changing
+the whole face of the country from a fruitful landscape into a
+wilderness of sand and swamp.
+
+My horse came up in the evening, and I rode over to Inamputte,
+leaving my kindly hostess in her solitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+Exciting jungle scene.--The camp.--All quiet.--Advent of the cowherds.
+--A tiger close by.--Proceed to the spot.--Encounter between tigress
+and buffaloes.--Strange behaviour of the elephant.--Discovery and
+capture of four cubs.--Joyful return to camp.--Death of the tigress.
+--Night encounter with a leopard.--The haunts of the tiger and our
+shooting grounds.
+
+One of the most exciting and deeply interesting scenes I ever
+witnessed in the jungles, was on the occasion I have referred to in a
+former chapter, when speaking of the number of young given by the
+tigress at a birth. It was in the month of March, at the village of
+Ryseree, in Bhaugulpore. I had been encamped in the midst of
+twenty-four beautiful tanks, the history and construction of which
+were lost in the mists of tradition. The villagers had a story that
+these tanks were the work of a mighty giant, Bheema, with whose aid
+and that of his brethren they had been excavated in a single night.
+
+At all events, they were now covered with a wild tangle of water
+lilies and aquatic plants; well stocked with magnificent fish, and an
+occasional scaly monster of a saurian. They were the haunt of vast
+quantities of widgeon, teal, whistlers, mallard, ducks, snipe, curlew,
+blue fowl, and the usual varied _habitues_ of an exceptionally good
+Indian lake. In the vicinity hares were numerous, and in the thick
+jungle bordering the tanks in places, and consisting mostly of nurkool
+and wild rose, hog-deer and wild pig were abundant. The dried-up bed
+of an old arm of the Koosee was quite close to my camp, and abounded
+in sandpiper, and golden, grey, goggle-eyed, and stilted plover,
+besides other game.
+
+It was indeed a favourite camping spot, and the village was inhabited
+by a hardy, independent set of Gwallas, Koormees, and agriculturists,
+with whom I was a prime favourite.
+
+I was sitting in my tent, going over some village accounts with the
+village putwarrie, and my gomasta. A posse of villagers were grouped
+under the grateful shade of a gnarled old mango tree, whose contorted
+limbs bore evidence to the violence of many a _tufan_, or tempest,
+which it had weathered. The usual confused clamour of tongues was
+rising from this group, and the sub; ect of debate was the eternal
+'pice.' Behind the bank, and in rear of the tent, the cook and his
+mate were disembowelling a hapless _moorghee_, a fowl, whose
+decapitation had just been effected with a huge jagged old cavalry
+sword, of which my cook was not a little proud; and on the strength of
+which he adopted fierce military airs, and gave an extra turn to his
+well-oiled moustache when he went abroad for a holiday.
+
+Farther to the rear a line of horses were picketed, including my
+man-eating demon the white Cabool stallion, my gentle country-bred
+mare Motee--the pearl--and my handsome little pony mare, formerly my
+hockey or polo steed, a present from a gallant sportsman and rare good
+fellow, as good a judge of a horse, or a criminal, as ever sat on a
+bench.
+
+Behind the horses, each manacled by weighty chains, with his ponderous
+trunk and ragged-looking tail swaying too and fro with a never-ceasing
+motion, stood a line of ten elephants. Their huge leathery ears
+flapped lazily, and ever and anon one or other would seize a mighty
+branch, and belabour his corrugated sides to free himself of the
+detested and troublesome flies. The elephants were placidly munching
+their _chana_ (bait, or food), and occasionally giving each other a
+dry bath in the shape of a shower of sand. There was a monotonous
+clank of chains, and an occasional deep abdominal rumble like distant
+thunder. All over the camp there was a confused subdued medley of
+sound. A hum from the argumentative villagers, a lazy flop in the tank
+as a raho rose to the surface, an occasional outburst from the ducks,
+an angry clamour from the water-hens and blue-fowl. My dogs were lying
+round me blinking and winking, and making an occasional futile snap at
+an imaginary fly or flea. It was a drowsy and peaceful scene. I was
+nearly dropping off to sleep, from the heat and the monotonous drone
+of the putwarrie, who was intoning nasally some formidable document
+about fishery rights and privileges.
+
+Suddenly there was a hush. Every sound seemed to stop simultaneously
+as if by pre-arranged concert. Then three men were seen rushing madly
+along the elevated ridge surrounding one of the tanks. I recognised
+one of my peons, and with him two cowherds. Their head-dresses were
+all disarranged, and their parted lips, heaving chests, and eyes
+blazing with excitement, shewed that they were brimful of some unusual
+message.
+
+Now arose such a bustle in the camp as no description could adequately
+portray. The elephants trumpeted and piped; the _syces_, or grooms,
+came rushing up with eager queries; the villagers bustled about like
+so many ants aroused by the approach of a hostile foe; my pack of
+terriers yelped out in chorus; the pony neighed; the Cabool stallion
+plunged about; my servants came rushing from the shelter of the tent
+verandah with disordered dress; the ducks rose in a quacking crowd,
+and circled round and round the tent; and the cry arose of 'Bagh!
+Bagh! Khodamund! Arree Bap re Bap! Ram Ram, Seeta Ram!'
+
+Breathless with running, the men now tumbled up, hurriedly salaamed,
+arid then each with gasps and choking stops, and pell-mell volubility,
+and amid a running fire of cries, queries, and interjections from the
+mob, began to unfold their tale. There was an infuriated tigress at
+the other side of the nullah, or dry watercourse, she had attacked a
+herd of buffaloes, and it was believed that she had cubs.
+
+Already Debnarain Singh was getting his own pad elephant caparisoned,
+and my bearer was diving under my camp bed for my gun and cartridges.
+Knowing the little elephant to be a fast walker, and fairly staunch, I
+got on her back, and accompanied by the gomasta and mahout we set out,
+followed by the peon and herdsmen to shew us the way.
+
+I expected two friends, officers from Calcutta, that very day, and
+wished not to kill the tigress but to keep her for our combined
+shooting next day. We had not proceeded far when, on the other side of
+the nullah, we saw dense clouds of dust rising, and heard a confused,
+rushing, trampling sound, mingled with the clashing of horns, and the
+snorting of a herd of angry buffaloes.
+
+It was the wildest sight I have ever seen in connection with animal
+life. The buffaloes were drawn together in the form of a crescent;
+their eyes glared fiercely, and as they advanced in a series of short
+runs, stamping with their hoofs, and angrily lashing their tails,
+their horns would come together with a clanging, clattering crash, and
+they would paw the sand, snort and toss their heads, and behave in the
+most extraordinary manner.
+
+The cause of all this commotion was not far to seek. Directly in
+front, retreating slowly, with stealthy, prowling, crawling steps, and
+an occasional short, quick leap or bound to one side or the other, was
+a magnificent tigress, looking the very personification of baffled
+fury. Ever and anon she crouched down to the earth, tore up the sand
+with her claws, lashed her tail from side to side, and with lips
+retracted, long moustaches quivering with wrath, and hateful eyes
+scintillating with rage and fury, she seemed to meditate an attack on
+the angry buffaloes. The serried array of clashing horns, and the
+ponderous bulk of the herd, seemed however to daunt the snarling
+vixen; at their next rush she would bound back a few paces, crouch
+down, growl, and be forced to move back again, by the short,
+blundering rush of the crowd.
+
+All the calves and old cows were in the rear of the herd, and it was
+not a little comical to witness their ungainly attitudes. They would
+stretch their clumsy necks, and shake their heads, as if they did not
+rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they stopped too
+long to indulge their curiosity, there was a danger of their getting
+separated from the fighting members of the herd, they would make a
+stupid, headlong, lumbering lurch forward, and jostle each other, in
+their blundering panic.
+
+It was a grand sight. The tigress was the embodiment of lithe and
+savage beauty, but her features expressed the wildest baffled rage. I
+could have shot the striped vixen over and over again, but I wished to
+keep her for my friends, and I was thrilled with the excitement of
+such a novel scene.
+
+Suddenly our elephant trumpeted, and shied quickly to one side, from
+something lying on the ground. Curling up its trunk it began backing
+and piping at a prodigious rate.
+
+'Hullo! what's the matter now?' said I to Debnarain.
+
+'God only knows,' said he.
+
+'A young tiger!' 'Bagh ka butcha!' screams our mahout, and regardless
+of the elephant or of our cries to stop, he scuttled down the pad rope
+like a monkey down a backstay, and clutching a young dead tiger cub,
+threw it up to Debnarain; it was about the size of a small poodle, and
+had evidently been trampled by the pursuing herd of buffaloes.
+
+'There may be others,' said the gomasta; and peering into every bush,
+we went slowly on.
+
+The elephant now shewed decided symptoms of dislike and a reluctance
+to approach a particular dense clump of grass.
+
+A sounding whack on the head, however, made her quicken her steps, and
+thrusting the long stalks aside, she discovered for us three blinking
+little cubs, brothers of the defunct, and doubtless part of the same
+litter. Their eyes were scarcely open, and they lay huddled together
+like three enormous striped kittens, and spat at us and bristled their
+little moustaches much as an angry cat would do. All the four were
+males.
+
+It was not long ere I had them carefully wrapped in the mahout's
+blanket. Overjoyed at our good fortune, we left the excited buffaloes
+still executing their singular war-dance, and the angry tigress,
+robbed of her whelps, consuming her soul in baffled fury.
+
+We heard her roaring through the night, close to camp, and on my
+friends' arrival, we beat her up next morning, and she fell pierced by
+three bullets, after a fierce and determined charge. We came upon her
+across the nullah, and her mind was evidently made up to fight. Nearly
+all the villagers had turned out with the line of elephants. Before we
+had time to order them away, she came down upon the line, roaring
+furiously, and bounding over the long grass,--a most magnificent
+sight.
+
+My first bullet took her full in the chest, and before she could make
+good her charge, a ball each from Pat and Captain G. settled her
+career. She was beautifully striped, and rather large for a tigress,
+measuring nine feet three inches.
+
+It was now a question with me, how to rear the three interesting
+orphans; we thought a slut from some of the villages would prove the
+best wet nurse, and tried accordingly to get one, but could not. In
+the meantime an unhappy goat was pounced on and the three young-tigers
+took to her teats as if 'to the manner born.' The poor Nanny screamed
+tremendously at first sight of them, but she soon got accustomed to
+them, and when they grew a little bigger, she would often playfully
+butt at them with her horns.
+
+The little brutes throve wonderfully, and soon developed such an
+appetite that I had to get no less than six goats to satisfy their
+constant thirst. I kept the cubs for over two months, and I shall not
+soon forget the excitement I caused, when my boat stopped at
+Sahribgunge, and my goats, tiger cubs, and attendants, formed a
+procession from the ghat or landing-place, to the railway station.
+
+Soldiers, guards, engineers, travellers, and crowds of natives
+surrounded me, and at every station the guard's van, with my novel
+menagerie, was the centre of attraction. I sold the cubs to Jamrach's
+agent in Calcutta for a very satisfactory price. Two of them were very
+powerful, finely marked, handsome animals; the third had always been
+sickly, had frequent convulsions, and died a few days after I sold it.
+I was afterwards told that the milk diet was a mistake, and that I
+should have fed them on raw meat. However, I was very well satisfied
+on the whole with the result of my adventure.
+
+I had another in the same part of the country, which at the time was a
+pretty good test of the state of my nerves.
+
+I was camped out at the village of Purindaha, on the edge of a gloomy
+sal forest, which was reported to contain numerous leopards. The
+villagers were a mixed lot of low-caste Hindoos, and Nepaulese
+settlers. They had been fighting with the factory, and would not pay
+up their rents, and I was trying, with every probability of success,
+to make an amicable arrangement with them. At all events, I had so far
+won them round, that they were willing to talk to me. They came to the
+tent and listened quietly, and except on the subject of rent, we got
+on in the most friendly manner.
+
+It was the middle of April. The heat was intense. The whole atmosphere
+had that coppery look which denotes extreme heat, and the air was
+loaded with fine yellow dust, which the daily west wind bore on its
+fever laden wings, to disturb the lungs and tempers of all good
+Christians. The _kanats_, or canvas walls of the tent, had all been
+taken down for coolness, and my camp bed lay in one corner, open all
+round to the outside air, but only sheltered from the dew. It had been
+a busy day. I had been going over accounts, and talking to the
+villagers till I was really hoarse. After a light dinner I lay down on
+my bed, but it was too close and hot to sleep. By and bye the various
+sounds died out. The tom-toming ceased in the village. My servants
+suspended their low muttered gossip round the cook's fire, wrapped
+themselves in their white cloths, and dropped into slumber. 'Toby,'
+'Nettle,' 'Whisky,' 'Pincher,' and my other terriers, resembled so
+many curled-up hairy balls, and were in the land of dreams.
+Occasionally an owl would give a melancholy hoot from the forest, or a
+screech owl would raise a momentary and damnable din. At intervals,
+the tinkle of a cow-bell sounded faintly in the distance. I tossed
+restlessly, thinking of various things, till I must have dropped off
+into an uneasy fitful sleep. I know not how long I had been dozing,
+but of a sudden I felt myself wide awake, though with my eyes yet
+firmly closed.
+
+I was conscious of some terrible unknown impending danger. I had
+experienced the same feeling before on waking from a nightmare, but I
+knew that the danger now was real. I felt a shrinking horror, a
+terrible and nameless fear, and for the life of me I could not move
+hand or foot. I was lying on my side, and could distinctly hear the
+thumping of my heart. A cold sweat broke out behind my ears and over
+my neck and chest. I could analyse my every feeling, and I knew there
+was some PRESENCE in the tent, and that I was in instant and imminent
+peril. Suddenly in the distance a pariah dog gave a prolonged
+melancholy howl. As if this had broken the spell which had hitherto
+bound me, I opened my eyes, and within ten inches of my face, there
+was a handsome leopardess gazing steadily at me. Our eyes met, and how
+long we confronted each other I know not. It must have been some
+minutes. Her eyes contracted and expanded, the pupil elongated and
+then opened out into a round lustrous globe. I could see the lithe
+tail oscillating at its extreme tip, with a gentle waving motion, like
+that of a cat when hunting birds in the garden. I seemed to possess no
+will. I believe I was under a species of fascination, but we continued
+our steady stare at each other.
+
+Just then, there was a movement by some of the horses. The leopard
+slowly turned her head, and I grasped the revolver which lay under my
+pillow. The beautiful spotted monster turned her head for an instant,
+and shewed her teeth, and then with one bound went through the open
+side of the tent. I fired two shots, which were answered with a roar.
+The din that followed would have frightened the devil. It was a
+beautiful clear night, with a moon at the full, and everything shewed
+as plainly as at noonday. The servants uttered exclamations of terror.
+The terriers went into an agony of yelps and barks. The horses
+snorted, and tried to get loose, and my chowkeydar, who had been
+asleep on his watch, thinking a band of dacoits were on us, began
+laying round him with his staff, shouting, _Chor, Chor! lagga, lagga,
+lagga!_ that is, 'thief, thief! lay on, lay on, lay on!'
+
+The leopard was hit, and evidently in a terrible temper. She halted
+not thirty paces from the tent, beside a jhamun tree, and seemed
+undecided whether to go on or return and wreak her vengeance on me.
+That moment decided her fate. I snatched down my Express rifle, which
+was hanging in two loops above my bed, and shot her right through the
+heart.
+
+I never understood how she could have made her way past dogs,
+servants, horses, and watchman, right into the tent, without raising
+some alarm. It must have been more from curiosity than any hostile
+design. I know that my nerves were very rudely shaken, but I became
+the hero of the Purindaha villagers. I believe that my night adventure
+with the leopardess did more to bring them round to a settlement than
+all my eloquence and figures.
+
+The river Koosee, on the banks of which, and in the long grass plains
+adjacent, most of the incidents I have recorded took place, takes its
+rise at the base of Mount Everest, and, after draining nearly the
+whole of Eastern. Nepaul, emerges by a deep gorge from the hills at
+the north-west corner of Purneah. The stream runs with extreme
+velocity. It is known as a snow stream. The water is always cold, and
+generally of a milky colour, containing much fine white sand. No
+sooner does it leave its rocky bed than it tears through the flat
+country by numerous channels. It is subject to very sudden rises. A
+premonitory warning of these is generally given. The water becomes of
+a turbid, almost blood-like colour. Sometimes I have seen the river
+rise over thirty feet in twenty-four hours. The melting of the snow
+often makes a raging torrent, level from bank to bank, where only a
+few hours before a horse could have forded the stream without wetting
+the girths of the saddle.
+
+In 1876 the largest channel was a swift broad stream called the Dhaus.
+The river is very capricious, seldom flowing for any length of time in
+one channel. This is owing in great measure to the amount of silt it
+carries with it from the hills, in its impetuous progress to the
+plains.
+
+In these dry watercourses, among the sand ridges, beside the humid
+marshy hollows, and among the thick strips of grass jungle, tigers are
+always to be found. They are much less numerous now however than
+formerly. As a rule, there is no shelter in these water-worn,
+flood-ravaged tracts and sultry jungles. Occasionally a few straggling
+plantain trees, a clump of sickly-looking bamboos, a cluster of tall
+shadowless palms, marks the site of a deserted village. All else is
+waving grass, withered and dry. The villages, inhabited mostly by a
+few cowherds, boatmen, and rice-farmers are scattered at wide
+intervals. In the shooting season, and when the hot winds are blowing,
+the only shadow on the plain is that cast by the dense volumes of
+lurid smoke, rising in blinding clouds from the jungle fires.
+
+According to the season, animal life fluctuates strangely. During the
+rains, when the river is in full flood, and much of the country
+submerged, most of the animals migrate to the North, buffaloes and
+wild pig alone keeping possession, of the higher ridges in the
+neighbourhood of their usual haunts.
+
+The contrasts presented on these plains at different seasons of the
+year are most remarkable. In March and April they are parched up,
+brown, and dead; great black patches showing the track of a destroying
+fire, the fine brown ash from the burnt grass penetrating the eyes and
+nostrils, and sweeping along in eddying and blinding clouds. They then
+look the very picture of an untenable waste, a sea of desolation,
+whose limits blend in the extreme distance with the shimmering coppery
+horizon. In the rainy season these arid-looking wastes are covered
+with tall-plumed, reed-like, waving grass, varying from two to ten
+feet in height, stretching in an unbroken sweep as far as the eye can
+reach, except where an abrupt line shews that the swift river has its
+treacherous course. After the rains, progress through the jungle is
+dangerous. Quicksands and beds of tenacious mud impede one at every
+step. The rich vegetation springs up green and vigorous, with a
+rapidity only to be seen in the Tropics. But what a glorious hunting
+ground! What a preserve for Nimrod! Deer forest, or heathered moor,
+can never compete with the old Koosee Derahs for abundance of game and
+thrilling excitement in sport. My genial, happy, loyal comrades
+too--while memory lasts the recollection of your joyous, frank,
+warm-hearted comradeship shall never fade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Remarks on guns.--How to cure skins.--Different recipes.--Conclusion.
+
+My remarks on guns shall be brief. The true sportsman has many
+facilities for acquiring the best information on a choice of weapons.
+For large game perhaps nothing can equal the Express rifle. My own
+trusty weapon was a '500 bore, very plain, with a pistol grip, point
+blank up to 180 yards, made by Murcott of the Haymarket, from whom I
+have bought over twenty guns, every one of which turned out a splendid
+weapon.
+
+My next favourite was a No. 12 breachloader, very light, but strong
+and carefully finished. It had a side snap action with rebounding
+locks, and was the quickest gun to fire and reload I ever possessed. I
+bought it from the same maker, although it was manufactured by W.W.
+Greener.
+
+Avoid a cheap gun as you would avoid a cheap Jew pedlar. A good name
+is above riches so far as a gun is concerned, and when you have a good
+gun take as much care of it as you would of a good wife. They are both
+equally rare. An expensive gun is not necessarily a good one, but a
+cheap gun is very seldom trustworthy. Have a portable, handy black
+leather case. Keep your gun always clean, bright, and free from rust.
+After every day's shooting see that the barrels and locks are
+carefully cleaned and oiled. Nothing is better for this purpose than
+rangoon oil.
+
+For preserving horns, a little scraping and varnishing are all that is
+required. While in camp it is a good plan to rub them with deer, or
+pig, or tiger fat, as it keeps them from cracking.
+
+To clean a tiger's or other skull. If there be a nest of ants near the
+camp, place the skull in their immediate vicinity. Some recommend
+putting in water till the particles of flesh rot, or till the skull is
+cleared by the fishes. A strong solution of caustic water may be used
+if you wish to get the bones cleaned very quickly. Some put the skulls
+in quicklime, but it has a tendency to make the bones splinter, and it
+is difficult to keep the teeth from getting loose and dropping out.
+The best but slowest plan is to fix them in mechanically by wire or
+white lead. A good preservative is to wash or paint them with a very
+strong solution of fine lime and water.
+
+To cure skins. I know no better recipe than the one adopted by my
+trainers in the art of _shibar_, the brothers S. I cannot do better
+than give a description of the process in the words of George himself.
+
+'Skin the animal in the usual way. Cut from the corner of the mouth,
+down the throat, and along the belly. A white stripe or border
+generally runs along the belly. This should be left as nearly as
+possible equal on both sides. Carefully cut the fleshy parts off the
+lips and balls of the toes and feet. Clean away every particle of
+fatty or fleshy matter that may still adhere to the skin. Peg it out
+on the ground with the hair side undermost. When thoroughly scraped
+clean of all extraneous matter on the inner surface, get a bucket or
+tub of buttermilk, which is called by the natives _dahye_ or _mutha_.
+It is a favourite article of diet with them, cheap and plentiful. Dip
+the skin in this, and keep it well and entirely submerged by placing
+some heavy weight on it. It should be submerged fully three inches in
+the tub of buttermilk.
+
+'After two days in the milk bath, take it out and peg it as before.
+Now take a smooth oval rubbing-board about twelve inches long, five
+round, and about an inch thick in the middle, and scrub the skin
+heartily with this instrument. On its lower surface it should be cuts
+in grooves, semicircular in shape, half an inch wide, and one inch
+apart. During scrubbing use plenty of pure water to remove filth. In
+about half an hour the pinkish-white colour will disappear, and the
+skin will appear white, with a blackish tinge underneath. This is the
+true hide.
+
+'Again submerge in the buttermilk bath for twenty-four hours, and get
+a man to tread on it in every possible way, folding it and unfolding
+it, till all has been thoroughly worked.
+
+'Take it out again, peg out and scrub it as before, after which wash
+the whole hide well in clear water. Never mind if the skin looks
+rotten, it is really not so.
+
+'When washed put it into a tub, in which you have first placed a
+mixture consisting of half an ounce of alum to each gallon of water.
+Soak the skin in this mixture for about six hours, taking it up
+occasionally to drain a little. This is sufficient to cure your skin
+and clean it.'
+
+The tanning remains to be done.
+
+'Get four pounds of babool, tamarind, or dry oak bark. (The babool is
+a kind of acacia, and is easily procurable, as the tamarind also is).
+Boil the bark in two gallons of water till it is reduced to one half
+the quantity. Add to this nine gallons of fresh water, and in this
+solution souse the skin for two, or three, or four days.
+
+'The hairs having been set by the soaking in alum, the skin will tan
+more quickly, and if the tan is occasionally rubbed into the pores of
+the skin it will be an improvement. You can tell when the tanning is
+complete by the colour the skin assumes. When this satisfies the eye,
+take it out and drain on a rod. When nearly dry it should be curried
+with olive oil or clarified butter if required for wear, but if only
+for floor covering or carriage rug, the English curriers' common
+'dubbin,' sold by shopkeepers, is best. This operation, which must be
+done on the inner side only, is simple.
+
+'Another simple recipe, and one which answers well, is this. Mix
+together of the best English soap, four ounces; arsenic, two and a
+half grains; camphor, two ounces; alum, half an ounce; saltpetre, half
+an ounce. Boil the whole, and keep stirring, in a half-pint of
+distilled water, over a very slow fire, for from ten to fifteen
+minutes. Apply when cool with a sponge. A little sweet oil may be
+rubbed on the skins after they are dry.
+
+'Another good method is to apply arsenical soap, which may be made as
+follows: powdered arsenic, two pounds; camphor, five ounces; white
+soap, sliced thin, two pounds; salt of tartar, twelve drams; chalk, or
+powdered fine lime, four ounces; add a small quantity of water first
+to the soap, put over a gentle fire, and keep stirring. When melted,
+add the lime and tartar, and thoroughly mix; next add the arsenic,
+keeping up a constant motion, and lastly the camphor. The camphor
+should first be reduced to a powder by means of a little spirits of
+wine, and should be added to the mess after it has been taken off the
+fire.
+
+'This preparation must be kept in a well-stoppered jar, or properly
+closed pot. When ready, the soap should be of the consistency of
+Devonshire cream. To use, add water till it becomes of the consistency
+of clear rich soup.'
+
+I have now finished my book. It has been pleasant to me to write down
+these recollections. Ever since I began my task, death has been busy,
+and the ranks of my friends have been sadly thinned. Failing health
+has driven me from my old shooting grounds, and in sunny Australia I
+have been trying to recruit the energies enervated by the burning
+climate of India. That my dear old planter friends may have as kindly
+recollections of 'the Maori' as he has of them, is what I ardently
+hope; that I may yet get back to share in the sports, pastimes, joys,
+and social delights of Mofussil life in India, is what I chiefly
+desire. If this volume meets the approbation of the public, I may be
+tempted to draw further on a well-stocked memory, and gossip afresh on
+Indian life, Indian experiences, and Indian sport. Meantime, courteous
+reader, farewell.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+by James Inglis
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10818 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10818)
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+Project Gutenberg's Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier, by James Inglis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+       Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter
+
+Author: James Inglis
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2004 [EBook #10818]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN NEPAUL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _Frontispiece_. TIGER HUNTING. RETURN TO THE CAMP.]
+
+
+SPORT AND WORK
+
+ON THE
+
+NEPAUL FRONTIER
+
+
+OR
+
+
+TWELVE YEARS SPORTING REMINISCENCES
+
+OF AN INDIGO PLANTER
+
+
+By "MAORI"
+
+
+1878
+
+
+
+
+[Note: Some words in this book have a macron over a vowel. A macron
+is a punctuation mark ( - ) and is represented herein as [=a], [=e]
+or [=o].]
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+I went home in 1875 for a few months, after some twelve years' residence
+in India. What first suggested the writing of such a book as this, was
+the amazing ignorance of ordinary Indian life betrayed by people at
+home. The questions asked me about India, and our daily life there,
+showed in many cases such an utter want of knowledge, that I thought,
+surely there is room here for a chatty, familiar, unpretentious book
+for friends at home, giving an account of our every-day life in India,
+our labours and amusements, our toils and relaxations, and a few
+pictures of our ordinary daily surroundings in the far, far East.
+
+Such then is the design of my book. I want to picture to my readers
+Planter Life in the Mofussil, or country districts of India; to tell
+them of our hunting, shooting, fishing, and other amusements; to
+describe our work, our play, and matter-of-fact incidents in our daily
+life; to describe the natives as they appear to us in our intimate
+every-day dealings with them; to illustrate their manners, customs,
+dispositions, observances and sayings, so far as these bear on our own
+social life.
+
+I am no politician, no learned ethnologist, no sage theorist. I simply
+try to describe what I have seen, and hope to enlist the attention and
+interest of my readers, in my reminiscences of sport and labour, in the
+villages and jungles on the far off frontier of Nepaul.
+
+I have tried to express my meaning as far as possible without Anglo-Indian
+and Hindustani words; where these have been used, as at times they could
+not but be, I have given a synonymous word or phrase in English, so that
+all my friends at home may know my meaning.
+
+I know that my friends will be lenient to my faults, and even the
+sternest critic, if he look for it, may find some pleasure and profit in
+my pages.
+
+JAS. INGLIS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Province of Behar.--Boundaries.--General description.--District of
+Chumparun.--Mooteeharree.--The town and lake.--Native houses.--The
+Planters' Club.--Legoulie.
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+My first charge.--How we get our lands.--Our home farm.--System of
+farming.--Collection of rents.--The planter's duties.
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
+--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at Work.
+--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Manufacture of Indigo.--Loading the vats.--Beating.--Boiling, straining,
+and pressing.--Scene in the Factory.--Fluctuation of produce.--Chemistry
+of Indigo.
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Parewah factory.--A 'Bobbery Pack.'--Hunt through a village after
+a cat.--The pariah dog of India.--Fate of 'Pincher.'--Rampore
+hound.--Persian greyhound.--Caboolee dogs.--A jackal hunt.--Incidents
+of the chase.
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Fishing in India.--Hereditary trades.--The boatmen and fishermen of
+India.--Their villages.--Nets.--Modes of fishing.--Curiosities relating
+thereto.--Catching an alligator with a hook.--Exciting capture.
+--Crocodiles.--Shooting an alligator.--Death of the man-eater.
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Native superstitions.--Charming a bewitched woman.--Exorcising ghosts
+from a field.--Witchcraft.--The witchfinder or 'Ojah,'--Influence of
+fear.--Snake bites.--How to cure them.--How to discover a thief.--Ghosts
+and their habits.--The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.--Cruelty to
+animals by natives.
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Our annual race meet.--The arrivals.--The camps.--The 'ordinary,'--The
+course.--'They're off.'--The race.--The steeple-chase.--Incidents of
+the meet.--The ball.
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Pig-sticking in India.--Varieties of boar.--Their size and height.
+--Ingenious mode of capture by the natives.--The 'Batan' or buffalo
+herd.--Pigs charging.--Their courage and ferocity.--Destruction of
+game.--A close season for game.
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Kuderent jungle.--Charged by a pig.--The biter bit.--'Mac' after the
+big boar.--The horse for pig-sticking.--The line of beaters.--The boar
+breaks.--'Away! Away!'--First spear.--Pig-sticking at Peeprah.--The
+old 'lungra' or cripple.--A boar at bay.--Hurrah for pig-sticking!
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The sal forests.--The jungle goddess.--The trees in the jungle.
+--Appearance of the forests.--Birds.--Varieties of parrots.--A 'beat'
+in the forest.--The 'shekarry.'--Mehrman Singh and his gun.--The Banturs,
+a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.--Their habits.--A village feast.--We
+beat for deer.--Habits of the spotted deer.--Waiting for the game.
+--Mehrman Singh gets drunk.--Our bag.--Pea-fowl and their habits.--How
+to shoot them.--Curious custom of the Nepaulese.--How Juggroo was
+tricked, and his revenge.
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
+one.--Encounter with a leopard in a Dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
+leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
+annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
+harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
+sanitation.
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
+--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
+village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
+village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
+system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
+justice.
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The temple.
+--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.--Their
+low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions and knavery.
+--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native officials.--The
+Hindoo unfit for self-government.
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Jungle wild fruits.--Curious method of catching quail.--Quail nets.
+--Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.--Native wrestling.--The trainer.
+--How they train for a match.--Rules of wrestling.--Grips.--A wrestling
+match.--Incidents of the struggle.--Description of a match between a
+Brahmin and a blacksmith.--Sparring for the grip.--The blacksmith has
+it.--The struggle.--The Brahmin getting the worst of it.--Two to one
+on the little 'un!--The Brahmin plays the waiting game, turns the tables
+_and_ the blacksmith.--Remarks on wrestling.
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Indigo seed growing.--Seed buying and buyers.--Tricks of sellers.--Tests
+for good seed.--The threshing-floor.--Seed cleaning and packing.--Staff
+of servants.--Despatching the bags by boat.--The 'Pooneah' or rent day.
+--Purneah planters--their hospitality.--The rent day a great festival.
+--Preparation.--Collection of rents.--Feast to retainers.--The reception
+in the evening.--Tribute.--Old customs.--Improvisatores and bards.
+--Nautches.--Dancing and music.--The dance of the Dangurs.--Jugglers
+and itinerary showmen.--'Bara Roopes,' or actors and mimics.--Their
+different styles of acting.
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The Koosee jungles.--Ferries.--Jungle roads.--The rhinoceros.--We go
+to visit a neighbour.--We lose our way and get belated.--We fall into
+a quicksand.--No ferry boat.--Camping out on the sand.--Two tigers close
+by.--We light a fire.--The boat at last arrives.--Crossing the stream.
+--Set fire to the boatman's hut.--Swim the horses.--They are nearly
+drowned.--We again lose our way in the jungle.--The towing path, and
+how boats are towed up the river.--We at last reach the factory.--News
+of rhinoceros in the morning.--Off we start, but arrive too late.--Death
+of the rhinoceros.--His dimensions.--Description.--Habits.--Rhinoceros
+in Nepaul.--The old 'Major Capt[=a]n.'--Description of Nepaulese scenery.
+--Immigration of Nepaulese.--Their fondness for fish.--They eat it
+putrid.--Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul.--Resources of the country.
+--Must sooner or later be opened up.--Influences at work to elevate
+the people.--Planters and factories chief of these.--Character of the
+planter.--Has claims to consideration from government.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The tiger.--His habitat.--Shooting on foot.--Modes of shooting.--A
+tiger hunt on foot.--The scene of the hunt.--The beat.--Incidents of
+the hunt.--Fireworks.--The tiger charges.--The elephant bolts.--The
+tigress will not break.--We kill a half-grown cub.--Try again for
+the tigress.--Unsuccessful.--Exaggerations in tiger stories.--My
+authorities.--The brothers S.--Ferocity and structure of the
+tiger.--His devastations.--His frame-work, teeth, &c.--A tiger at
+bay.--His unsociable habits.--Fight between tiger and tigress.--Young
+tigers.--Power and strength of the tiger.--Examples.--His cowardice.
+--Charge of a wounded tiger.--Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+--A spined tiger.--Boldness of young tigers.--Cruelty.--Cunning.--Night
+scenes in the jungle.--Tiger killed by a wild boar.--His cautious
+habits.--General remarks.
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
+--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
+--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of tiger.
+--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His description.
+--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to measure tigers.
+--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.--Number of
+young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs to kill.
+--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and cunning
+of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of concealment.
+--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.--Caught by
+floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives
+about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Claw-marks
+on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s
+howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.
+--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye
+out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers
+easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of shells on tiger and buffalo.--Best
+weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives
+prone to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for
+tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six
+elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.
+--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the Koosee.
+--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to shoot at
+moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of different animals
+in the grass.
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Howdahs and howdah-ropes.--Mussulman custom.--Killing animals for food.
+--Mysterious appearance of natives when an animal is killed.--Fastening
+dead tigers to the pad.--Present mode wants improving.--Incident
+illustrative of this.--Dangerous to go close to wounded tigers.
+--Examples.--Footprints of tigers.--Call of the tiger.--Natives and
+their powers of description.--How to beat successfully for tiger.
+--Description of a beat.--Disputes among the shooters.--Awarding
+tigers.--Cutting open the tiger.--Native idea about the liver of the
+tiger.--Signs of a tiger's presence in the jungle.--Vultures.--Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?--A vulture carrion feast.
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul frontier.--Indian scenery near
+the border.--Lose our way.--Cold night.--The river by night.--Our boat
+and boatmen.--Tigers calling on the bank.--An anxious moment.--Fire at
+and wound the tigress.--Reach camp.--The Nepaulee's adventure with a
+tiger.--The old Major.--His appearance and manners.--The pompous
+Jemadar.--Nepaulese proverb.--Firing the jungle.--Start a tiger and
+shoot him.--Another in front.--Appearance of the fires by night.--The
+tiger escapes.--Too dark to follow up.--Coolie shot by mistake during
+a former hunt.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+We resume the beat.--The hog-deer.--Nepaulese villages.--Village
+granaries.--Tiger in front.--A hit! a hit!--Following up the wounded
+tiger.--Find him dead.--Tiffin in the village.--The Patair jungle.
+--Search for tiger.--Gone away!--An elephant steeplechase in pursuit.
+--Exciting chase.--The Morung jungle.--Magnificent scenery.--Skinning
+the tiger.--Incidents of tiger hunting.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Camp of the Nepaulee chief.--Quicksands.--Elephants crossing rivers.
+--Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.--We beat the forest for tiger.--Shoot
+a young tiger.--Red ants in the forest.--Bhowras or ground bees.--The
+_ursus labialis_ or long-lipped bear.--Recross the stream.--Florican.
+--Stag running the gauntlet of flame.--Our bag.--Start for factory.
+--Remarks on elephants.--Precautions useful for protection from the
+sun in tiger shooting.--The _puggree_.--Cattle breeding in India, and
+wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.--Nathpore.--Ravages of the
+river.--Mrs. Gray, an old resident in the jungles.--Description of
+her surroundings.
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Exciting jungle scene.--The camp.--All quiet.--Advent of the cow-herds.
+--A tiger close by.--Proceed to the spot.--Encounter between tigress
+and buffaloes.--Strange behaviour of the elephant.--Discovery and
+capture of four cubs.--Joyful return to camp.--Death of the tigress.
+--Night encounter with a leopard.--The haunts of the tiger and our
+shooting grounds.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Remarks on guns.--How to cure skins.--Different Recipes.--Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+Tiger Hunting--Return to the Camp
+Coolie's Hut
+Indigo Beating Vats
+Indigo Beaters at work in the Vat
+Indian Factory Peon
+Indigo Planter's House
+Pig Stickers
+Carpenters and Blacksmiths at work
+Hindoo Village Temples
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Province of Behar.--Boundaries.--General description.--District of
+Chumparun.--Mooteeharree.--The town and lake.--Native houses.--The
+Planters' Club.--Legoulie.
+
+Among the many beautiful and fertile provinces of India, none can, I
+think, much excel that of Behar for richness of soil, diversity of
+race, beauty of scenery, and the energy and intelligence of its
+inhabitants. Stretching from the Nepaul hills to the far distant
+plains of Gya, with the Gunduch, Bogmuttee and other noble streams
+watering its rich bosom, and swelling with their tribute the stately
+Ganges, it includes every variety of soil and climate; and its various
+races, with their strange costumes, creeds, and customs, might afford
+material to fill volumes.
+
+The northern part of this splendid province follows the Nepaulese
+boundary from the district of Goruchpore on the north, to that of
+Purneah on the south. In the forests and jungles along this boundary
+line live many strange tribes, whose customs, and even their names and
+language, are all but unknown to the English public. Strange wild
+animals dispute with these aborigines the possession of the gloomy
+jungle solitudes. Great trees of wondrous dimensions and strange
+foliage rear their stately heads to heaven, and are matted and
+entwined together by creepers of huge size and tenacious hold.
+
+To the south and east vast billows of golden grain roll in successive
+undulations to the mighty Ganges, the sacred stream of the Hindoos.
+Innumerable villages, nestling amid groves of plantains and feathery
+rustling bamboos, send up their wreaths of pale grey smoke into the
+still warm air. At frequent intervals the steely blue of some lovely
+lake, where thousands of water-fowl disport themselves, reflects from
+its polished surface the sheen of the noonday sun. Great masses of
+mango wood shew a sombre outline at intervals, and here and there the
+towering chimney of an indigo factory pierces the sky. Government
+roads and embankments intersect the face of the country in all
+directions, and vast sheets of the indigo plant refresh the eye with
+their plains of living green, forming a grateful contrast to the hard,
+dried, sun-baked surface of the stubble fields, where the rice crop
+has rustled in the breezes of the past season. In one of the loveliest
+and most fertile districts of this vast province, namely, Chumparun, I
+began my experiences as an indigo planter.
+
+Chumparun with its subdistrict of Bettiah, lies to the north of
+Tirhoot, and is bounded all along its northern extent by the Nepaul
+hills and forests. When I joined my appointment as assistant on one
+of the large indigo concerns there, there were not more than about
+thirty European residents altogether in the district. The chief town,
+Mooteeharree, consisted of a long _bazaar_, or market street, beautifully
+situated on the bank of a lovely lake, some two miles in length. From
+the main street, with its quaint little shops sheltered from the sun
+by makeshift verandahs of tattered sacking, weather-stained shingles,
+or rotting bamboo mats, various little lanes and alleys diverged,
+leading one into a collection of tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up
+apparently by chance, and presenting the most incongruous appearance
+that could possibly be conceived. One or two _pucca_ houses, that is,
+houses of brick and masonry, shewed where some wealthy Bunneah
+(trader) or usurious banker lived, but the majority of the houses were
+of the usual mud and bamboo order. There is a small thatched hut where
+the meals were cooked, and where the owner and his family could sleep
+during the rains. Another smaller hut at right angles to this, gives
+shelter to the family goat, or, if they are rich enough to keep one,
+the cow. All round the villages in India there are generally large
+patches of common, where the village cows have free rights of pasture;
+and all who can, keep either a cow or a couple of goats, the milk from
+which forms a welcome addition to their usual scanty fare. In this
+second hut also is stored as much fuel, consisting of dried cow-dung,
+straw, maize-stalks, leaves, etc., as can be collected; and a ragged
+fence of bamboo or _rahur_[1] stalks encloses the two unprotected
+sides, thus forming inside a small court, quadrangle, or square. This
+court is the native's _sanctum sanctorum_. It is kept scrupulously
+clean, being swept and garnished religiously every day. In this the
+women prepare the rice for the day's consumption; here they cut up and
+clean their vegetables, or their fish, when the adjacent lake has been
+dragged by the village fishermen. Here the produce of their little
+garden, capsicums, Indian corn, onions or potatoes--perchance turmeric,
+ginger, or other roots or spices--are dried and made ready for storing
+in the earthen sun-baked repository for the reception of such produce
+appertaining to each household. Here the children play, and are washed
+and tended. Here the maiden combs out her long black hair, or decorates
+her bronzed visage with streaks of red paint down the nose, and a
+little antimony on the eyelids, or myrtle juice on the finger and toe
+nails. Here, too, the matron, or the withered old crone of a
+grandmother, spins her cotton thread; or, in the old scriptural
+hand-mill, grinds the corn for the family flour and meal; and the
+father and the young men (when the sun is high and hot in the heavens)
+take their noonday _siesta_, or, the day's labours over, cower round
+the smoking dung fire of a cold winter night, and discuss the prices
+ruling in the bazaar, the rise of rents, or the last village scandal.
+
+In the middle of the town, and surrounded by a spacious fenced-in
+compound, which sloped gently to the lake, stood the Planters' Club, a
+large low roofed bungalow, with a roomy wide verandah in front. Here
+we met, when business or pleasure brought us to 'the Station.' Here
+were held our annual balls, or an occasional public dinner party. To
+the north of the Club stood a long range of barrack-looking buildings,
+which were the opium godowns, where the opium was collected and stored
+during the season. Facing this again, and at the extremity of the
+lake, was the district jail, where all the rascals of the surrounding
+country were confined; its high walls tipped at intervals by a red
+puggree and flashing bayonet wherever a jail sepoy kept his 'lonely
+watch.' Near it, sheltered in a grove of shady trees, were the court
+houses, where the collector and magistrate daily dispensed justice, or
+where the native _moonsiff_ disentangled knotty points of law. Here,
+too, came the sessions judge once a month or so, to try criminal cases
+and mete out justice to the law-breakers.
+
+We had thus a small European element in our 'Station,' consisting of
+our magistrate and collector, whose large and handsome house was built
+on the banks of another and yet lovelier lake, which joined the town
+lake by a narrow stream or strait at its southern end, an opium agent,
+a district superintendent of police, and last but not least, a doctor.
+These formed the official population of our little 'Station.' There
+was also a nice little church, but no resident pastor, and behind the
+town lay a quiet churchyard, rich in the dust of many a pioneer, who,
+far from home and friends, had here been gathered to his silent rest.
+
+About twelve miles to the north, and near the Nepaul boundary, was the
+small military station of Legoulie. Here there was always a native
+cavalry regiment, the officers of which were frequent and welcome
+guests at the factories in the district, and were always glad to see
+their indigo friends at their mess in cantonments. At Rettiah, still
+further to the north, was a rich rajah's palace, where a resident
+European manager dwelt, and had for his sole society an assistant
+magistrate who transacted the executive and judicial work of the
+subdistrict. These, with some twenty-five or thirty indigo managers
+and assistants, composed the whole European population of Chumparun.
+
+Never was there a more united community. We were all like brothers.
+Each knew all the rest. The assistants frequently visited each other,
+and the managers were kind and considerate to their subordinates.
+Hunting parties were common, cricket and hockey matches were frequent,
+and in the cold weather, which is our slackest season, fun, frolic,
+and sport was the order of the day. We had an annual race meet, when
+all the crack horses of the district met in keen rivalry to test their
+pace and endurance. During this high carnival, we lived for the most
+part under canvass, and had friends from far and near to share our
+hospitality. In a future chapter I must describe our racing meet.
+
+
+[1] The _rahur_ is a kind of pea, growing not unlike our English broom
+    in appearance; it is sown with the maize crop during the rains,
+    and garnered in the cold weather. It produces a small pea, which
+    is largely used by the natives, and forms the nutritive article of
+    diet known as _dhall_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+My first charge.--How we get our lands.--Our home farm.--System of
+farming.--Collection of rents.--The planter's duties.
+
+My first charge was a small outwork of the large factory Seeraha. It
+was called Puttihee. There was no bungalow; that is, there was no
+regular house for the assistant, but a little one-roomed hut, built on
+the top of the indigo vats, served me for a residence. It had neither
+doors nor windows, and the rain used to beat through the room, while
+the eaves were inhabited by countless swarms of bats, who, in the
+evening flashed backwards and forwards in ghostly rapid flight, and
+were a most intolerable nuisance. To give some idea of the duties of
+an indigo assistant, I must explain the system on which we get our
+lands, and how we grow our crop.
+
+Water of course being a _sine qua non_, the first object in selecting
+a site for a factory is, to have water in plenty contiguous to the
+proposed buildings. Consequently Puttihee was built on the banks of a
+very pretty lake, shaped like a horseshoe, and covered with water
+lilies and broad-leaved green aquatic plants. The lake was kept by the
+native proprietor as a fish preserve, and literally teemed with fish
+of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. I had not been long at Puttihee
+before I had erected a staging, leading out into deep water, and many
+a happy hour I have spent there with my three or four rods out,
+pulling in the finny inhabitants.
+
+Having got water and a site, the next thing is to get land on which to
+grow your crop. By purchase, by getting a long lease, or otherwise,
+you become possessed of several hundred acres of the land immediately
+surrounding the factory. Of course some factories will have more and
+some less as circumstances happen. This land, however, is peculiarly
+factory property. It is in fact a sort of home farm, and goes by the
+name of _Zeraat_. It is ploughed by factory bullocks, worked by
+factory coolies, and is altogether apart and separate from the
+ordinary lands held by the ryots and worked by them. (A ryot means a
+cultivator.) In most factories the Zeraats are farmed in the most
+thorough manner. Many now use the light Howard's plough, and apply
+quantities of manure.
+
+The fields extend in vast unbroken plains all round the factory. The
+land is worked and pulverised, and reploughed, and harrowed, and
+cleaned, till not a lump the size of a pigeon's egg is to be seen. If
+necessary, it is carefully weeded several times before the crop is
+sown, and in fact, a fine clean stretch of Zeraat in Tirhoot or
+Chumparun, will compare most favourably with any field in the highest
+farming districts of England or Scotland. The ploughing and other farm
+labour is done by bullocks. A staff of these, varying of course with
+the amount of land under cultivation, is kept at each factory. For
+their support a certain amount of sugar-cane is planted, and in the
+cold weather carrots are sown, and _gennara_, a kind of millet, and
+maize.
+
+Both maize and gennara have broad green leaves, and long juicy
+succulent stalks. They grow to a good height, and when cut up and
+mixed with chopped straw and carrots, form a most excellent feed for
+cattle. Besides the bullocks, each factory keeps up a staff of
+generally excellent horses, for the use of the assistant or manager,
+on which he rides over his cultivation, and looks generally after the
+farm. Some of the native subordinates also have ponies, or Cabool
+horses, or country-breds; and for the feed of these animals some few
+acres of oats are sown every cold season. In most factories too, when
+any particular bit of the Zeraats gets exhausted by the constant
+repetition of indigo cropping, a rest is given it, by taking a crop of
+oil seeds or oats off the land. The oil seeds usually sown are mustard
+or rape. The oil is useful in the factory for oiling the screws or the
+machinery, and for other purposes.
+
+The factory roads through the Zeraats are kept in most perfect order;
+many of them are metalled. The ditches are cleaned once a year. All
+thistles and weeds by the sides of the roads and ditches, are
+ruthlessly cut down. The edges of all the fields are neatly trimmed
+and cut. Useless trees and clumps of jungle are cut down; and in fact
+the Zeraats round a factory shew a perfect picture of orderly thrift,
+careful management, and neat, scientific, and elaborate farming.
+
+Having got the Zeraats, the next thing is to extend the cultivation
+outside.
+
+The land in India is not, as with us at home, parcelled out into large
+farms. There are wealthy proprietors, rajahs, baboos, and so on, who
+hold vast tracts of land, either by grant, or purchase, or hereditary
+succession; but the tenants are literally the children of the soil.
+Wherever a village nestles among its plantain or mango groves, the
+land is parcelled out among the villagers. A large proprietor does not
+reckon up his farms as a landlord at home would do, but he counts his
+villages. In a village with a thousand acres belonging to it, there
+might be 100 or even 200 tenants farming the land. Each petty villager
+would have his acre or half acre, or four, or five, or ten, or twenty
+acres, as the case might be. He holds this by a 'tenant right,' and
+cannot be dispossessed as long as he pays his rent regularly. He can
+sell his tenant right, and the purchaser on paying the rent, becomes
+the _bona fide_ possessor of the land to all intents and purposes.
+
+If the average rent of the village lands was, let me say, one rupee
+eight annas an acre, the rent roll of the 1000 acres would be 1500
+rupees. Out of this the government land revenue comes. Certain
+deductions have to be made--some ryots may be defaulters. The village
+temple, or the village Brahmin, may have to get something, the
+road-cess has to be paid, and so on. Taking everything into account,
+you arrive at a pretty fair view of what the rental is. If the
+proprietor of the village wants a loan of money, or if you offer to
+pay him the rent by half-yearly or quarterly instalments, you taking
+all the risk of collecting in turn from each ryot individually, he is
+often only too glad to accept your offer, and giving you a lease of
+the village for whatever term may be agreed on, you step in as
+virtually the landlord, and the ryots have to pay their rents to you.
+
+In many cases by careful management, by remeasuring lands, settling
+doubtful boundaries, and generally working up the estate, you can much
+increase the rental, and actually make a profit on your bargain with
+the landlord. This department of indigo work is called Zemindaree.
+Having, then, got the village in lease, you summon in all your tenants;
+shew them their rent accounts, arrange with them for the punctual
+payment of them, and get them to agree to cultivate a certain
+percentage of their land in indigo for you.
+
+This percentage varies very considerably. In some places it is one
+acre in five, in some one in twenty. It all depends on local
+circumstances. You select the land, you give the seed, but the ryot
+has to prepare the field for sowing, he has to plough, weed, and reap
+the crop, and deliver it at the factory. For the indigo he gets so
+much per acre, the price being as near as possible the average price
+of an acre of ordinary produce: taking the average out-turn and prices
+of, say, ten years. It used formerly to be much less, but the ryot
+nowadays gets nearly double for his indigo what he got some ten or
+fifteen years ago, and this, although prices have not risen for the
+manufactured article, and the prices of labour, stores, machinery,
+live stock, etc., have more than doubled. In some parts the ryot gets
+paid so much per bundle of plants delivered at the vats, but generally
+in Behar, at least in north Behar, he is paid so much per acre or
+_Beegah_. I use the word acre as being more easily understood by
+people at home than Beegah. The Beegah varies in different districts,
+but is generally about two-thirds of an acre.
+
+When his rent account, then, comes to be made out, the ryot gets
+credit for the price of his indigo grown and delivered; and this very
+often suffices, not only to clear his entire rent, but to leave a
+margin in hard cash for him to take home. Before the beginning of the
+indigo season, however, he comes into the factory and takes a cash
+advance on account of the indigo to be grown. This is often a great
+help to him, enabling him to get his seeds for his other lands,
+perhaps ploughs, or to buy a cart, or clothes for the family, or to
+replace a bullock that may have died; or to help to give a marriage
+portion to a son or daughter that he wants to get married.
+
+You will thus see that we have cultivation to look after in all the
+villages round about the factory which we can get in lease. The ryot,
+in return for his cash advance, agrees to cultivate so much indigo at
+a certain price, for which he gets credit in his rent. Such, shortly,
+is our indigo system. In some villages the ryot will estimate for us
+without our having the lease at all, and without taking advances.
+He grows the indigo as he would grow any other crop, as a pure
+speculation. If he has a good crop, he can get the price in hard cash
+from the factory, and a great deal is grown in this way in both
+Purneah and Bhaugulpore. This is called _Kooskee_, as against the
+system of advances, which is called _Tuccaree_.
+
+The planter, then, has to be constantly over his villages, looking out
+for good lands, giving up bad fields, and taking in new ones. He must
+watch what crops grow best in certain places. He must see that he does
+not take lands where water may lodge, and, on the other hand, avoid
+those that do not retain their moisture. He must attend also to the
+state of the other crops generally all over his cultivation, as the
+punctual payment of rents depends largely on the state of the crops.
+He must have his eyes open to everything going on, be able to tell the
+probable rent-roll of every village for miles around, know whether the
+ryots are lazy and discontented, or are industrious and hard-working.
+Up in the early morning, before the hot blazing sun has climbed on
+high, he is off on his trusty nag, through his Zeraats, with his
+greyhounds and terriers panting behind him. As he nears a village, the
+farm-servant in charge of that particular bit of cultivation, comes
+out with a low salaam, to report progress, or complain that so-and-so
+is not working up his field as he ought to do.
+
+Over all the lands he goes, seeing where re-ploughing is necessary,
+ordering harrowing here, weeding there, or rolling somewhere else. He
+sees where the ditches need deepening, where the roads want levelling
+or widening, where a new bridge will be necessary, where lands must be
+thrown up and new ones taken in. He knows nearly all his ryots, and
+has a kind word for every one he passes; asks after their crops, their
+bullocks, or their land; rouses up the indolent; gives a cheerful nod
+to the industrious; orders this one to be brought in to settle his
+account, or that one to make greater haste with the preparation of his
+land, that he may not lose his moisture. In fact, he has his hands
+full till the mounting sun warns him to go back to breakfast. And so,
+with a rattling burst after a jackal or fox, he gets back to his
+bungalow to bathe, dress, and break his fast with fowl cutlets, and
+curry and rice, washed down with a wholesome tumbler of Bass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
+--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at work.
+--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
+
+Having now got our land, water, and buildings--which latter I will
+describe further on--the next thing is to set to work to get our crop.
+Manufacture being finished, and the crop all cut by the beginning or
+middle of October, when the annual rains are over, it is of importance
+to have the lands dug up as early as possible, that the rich moisture,
+on which the successful cultivation of the crop mainly depends, may be
+secured before the hot west winds and strong sun of early spring lick
+it up.
+
+Attached to every factory is a small settlement of labourers, belonging
+to a tribe of aborigines called _Dangurs_. These originally, I believe,
+came from Chota Nagpoor, which seems to have been their primal home.
+They are a cheerful industrious race, have a distinct language of their
+own, and only intermarry with each other. Long ago, when there were no
+post carriages to the hills, and but few roads, the Dangurs were
+largely employed as dale runners, or postmen. Some few of them settled
+with their families on lands near the foot of the hills in Purneah, and
+gradually others made their way northwards, until now there is scarcely
+a factory in Behar that has not its Dangur tola, or village.
+
+The men are tractable, merry-hearted, and faithful. The women betray
+none of the exaggerated modesty which is characteristic of Hindoo women
+generally. They never turn aside and hide their faces as you pass, but
+look up to you with a merry smile on their countenances, and exchange
+greetings with the utmost frankness. In a future chapter I may speak at
+greater length of the Dangurs; at present it suffices to say, that they
+form a sort of appanage to the factory, and are in fact treated as part
+of the permanent staff.
+
+Each Dangur when he marries, gets some grass and bamboos from the
+factory to build a house, and a small plot of ground to serve as a
+garden, for which he pays a very small rent, or in many instances
+nothing at all. In return, he is always on the spot ready for any
+factory work that may be going on, for which he has his daily wage.
+Some factories pay by the month, but the general custom is to charge
+for hoeing by piece-work, and during manufacture, when the work is
+constant, there is paid a monthly wage.
+
+In the close foggy mornings of October and November, long before the
+sun is up, the Dangurs are hard at work in the Zeraats, turning up the
+soil with their _kodalies_, (a kind of cutting hoe,) and you can often
+hear their merry voices rising through the mist, as they crack jokes
+with each other to enliven their work, or troll one of their quaint
+native ditties.
+
+They are presided over by a 'mate,' generally one of the oldest men and
+first settlers in the village. If he has had a large family, his sons
+look up to him, and his sons-in-law obey his orders with the utmost
+fealty. The 'mate' settles all disputes, presents all grievances to the
+_sahib_, and all orders are given through him.
+
+The indigo stubble which has been left in the ground is perhaps about a
+foot high, and as they cut it out, their wives and children come to
+gather up the sticks for fuel, and this of course also helps to clean
+the land. By eleven o'clock, when the sluggish mist has been dissipated
+by the rays of the scorching sun, the day's labour is nearly concluded.
+You will then see the swarthy Dangur, with his favourite child on his
+shoulder, wending his way back to his hut, followed by his comely wife
+carrying his hoe, and a tribe of little ones bringing up the rear, each
+carrying bundles of the indigo stubble which the industrious father has
+dug up during the early hours of morning.
+
+In the afternoon out comes the _hengha_, which is simply a heavy flat
+log of wood, with a V shaped cut or groove all along under its flat
+surface. To each end of the hengha a pair of bullocks are yoked, and
+two men standing on the log, and holding on by the bullocks' tails, it
+is slowly dragged over the field wherever the hoeing has been going on.
+The lumps and clods are caught in the groove on the under surface, and
+dragged along and broken up and pulverized, and the whole surface of
+the field thus gets harrowed down, and forms a homogeneous mass of
+light friable soil, covering the weeds and dirt to let them rot,
+exposing the least surface for the wind and heat to act on, and thus
+keeping the moisture in the soil.
+
+Now is a busy time for the planter. Up early in the cold raw fog, he is
+over his Zeraats long before dawn, and round by his outlying villages
+to see the ryots at work in their fields. To each eighty or a hundred
+acres a man is attached called a _Tokedar_. His duty is to rouse out
+the ryots, see the hoes and ploughs at work, get the weeding done, and
+be responsible for the state of the cultivation generally. He will
+probably have two villages under him. If the village with its lands be
+very extensive, of course there will be a Tokedar for it alone, but
+frequently a Tokedar may have two or more villages under his charge. In
+the village, the head man--generally the most influential man in the
+community--also acts with the Tokedar, helping him to get ploughs,
+bullocks, and coolies when these are wanted; and under him, the village
+_chowkeydar_, or watchman, sees that stray cattle do not get into the
+fields, that the roads, bridges and fences are not damaged, and so on.
+Over the Tokedars, again, are Zillahdars. A 'zillah' is a small
+district. There may be eight or ten villages and three or four Tokedars
+under a Zillahdar. The Zillahdar looks out for good lands to change for
+bad ones, where this is necessary, and where no objection is made by
+the farmer; sees that the Tokedars do their work properly; reports
+rain, blight, locusts, and other visitations that might injure the
+crop; watches all that goes on in his zillah, and makes his report to
+the planter whenever anything of importance happens in his particular
+part of the cultivation. Over all again comes the JEMADAR--the head man
+over the whole cultivation--the planter's right-hand man.
+
+He is generally an old, experienced, and trusted servant. He knows all
+the lands for miles round, and the peculiar soils and products of all
+the villages far and near. He can tell what lands grow the best
+tobacco, what lands are free from inundation, what free from drought;
+the temper of the inhabitants of each village, and the history of each
+farm; where are the best ploughs, the best bullocks, and the best
+farming; in what villages you get most coolies for weeding; where you
+can get the best carts, the best straw, and the best of everything at
+the most favourable rates. He comes up each night when the day's work
+is done, and gets his orders for the morrow. You are often glad to take
+his advice on sowing, reaping, and other operations of the farm. He
+knows where the plant will ripen earliest, and where the leaf will be
+thickest, and to him you look for satisfaction if any screw gets loose
+in the outside farm-work.
+
+He generally accompanies you in your morning ride, shows you your new
+lands, consults with you about throwing up exhausted fields, and is
+generally a sort of farm-bailiff or confidential land-steward. Where he
+is an honest, intelligent, and loyal man, he takes half the care and
+work off your shoulders. Such men are however rare, and if not very
+closely looked after, they are apt to abuse their position, and often
+harass the ryots needlessly, looking more to the feathering of their
+own nests than the advancement of your interests.
+
+The only Jemadar I felt I could thoroughly trust, was my first one at
+Parewah, an old Rajpoot, called Kassee Rai. He was a fine, ruddy-faced,
+white-haired old man, as independent and straightforward an old farmer
+as you could meet anywhere, and I never had reason to regret taking his
+advice on any matter. I never found him out in a lie, or in a dishonest
+or underhand action. Though over seventy years of age he was upright as
+a dart. He could not keep up with me when we went out riding over the
+fields, but he would be out the whole day over the lands, and was
+always the first at his work in the morning and the last to leave off
+at night. The ryots all loved him, and would do anything for him; and
+when poor old Kassee died, the third year he had been under me, I felt
+as if an old friend had gone. I never spoke an angry word to him, and I
+never had a fault to find with him.
+
+When the hoeing has been finished in zeraat and zillah, and all the
+upturned soil battened down by the _hengha_, the next thing is to
+commence the ploughing. Your ploughmen are mostly low caste
+men--Doosadhs, Churnars, Moosahurs, Gwallahs, _et hoc genus omne_.
+The Indian plough, so like a big misshapen wooden pickaxe, has often
+been described. It however turns up the light soft soil very well
+considering its pretensions, and those made in the factory workshops
+are generally heavier and sharper than the ordinary village plough.
+Our bullocks too, being strong and well fed, the ploughing in the
+zeraats is generally good.
+
+The ploughing is immediately followed up by the _hengha_, which again
+triturates and breaks up the clods, rolls the sticks, leaves, and grass
+roots together, brings the refuse and dirt to the surface, and again
+levels the soil, and prevents the wind from taking away the moisture.
+The land now looks fine and fresh and level, but very dirty. A host of
+coolies are put on the fields with small sticks in their hands. All the
+Dangur women and children are there, with men, women, and children of
+all the poorest classes from the villages round, whom the attractions
+of wages or the exertions of headmen Tokedars and Zillahdars have
+brought together to earn their daily bread. With the sticks they beat
+and break up every clod, leaving not one behind the size of a walnut.
+They collect all the refuse, weeds, and dirt, which are heaped up and
+burnt on the field, and so they go on till the zeraats look as clean as
+a nobleman's garden, and you would think that surely this must satisfy
+the fastidious eye of the planter. But no, our work is not half begun
+yet.
+
+It is rather a strange sight to see some four or five hundred coolies
+squatted in a long irregular line, chattering, laughing, shouting, or
+squabbling. A dense cloud of dust rises over them, and through the dim
+obscurity one hears the ceaseless sound of the thwack! thwack! as their
+sticks rattle on the ground. White dust lies thick on each swarthy
+skin; their faces are like faces in a pantomime. There are the flashing
+eyes and the grinning rows of white teeth; all else is clouded in thick
+layers of dust, with black spots and stencillings showing here and
+there like a picture in sepia and chalk. As they near the end of the
+field they redouble their thwacking, shuffle along like land-crabs, and
+while the Mates, Peons, and Tokedars shout at them to encourage them,
+they raise a roar loud enough to wake the dead. The dust rises in
+denser clouds, the noise is deafening, a regular mad hurry-scurry, a
+wild boisterous scramble ensues, and amid much chaffing, noise, and
+laughter, they scramble off again to begin another length of land; and
+so the day's work goes on.
+
+The planter has to count his coolies several times a-day, or they would
+cheat him. Some come in the morning, get counted, and their names put
+on the roll, and then go off till paytime comes round. Some come for an
+hour or two, and send a relative in the evening when the pice are being
+paid out, to get the wage of work they have not done. All are paid in
+pice--little copper bits of coin, averaging about sixty-four to the
+rupee. However, you soon come to know the coolies by sight, and after
+some experience are rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get
+'done' most thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the
+artless and unsophisticated coolie.
+
+The type of feature along a line of coolies is as a rule a very
+forbidding and degraded one. They are mostly of the very poorest class.
+Many of them are plainly half silly, or wholly idiotic; not a few are
+deaf and dumb; others are crippled or deformed, and numbers are leprous
+and scrofulous. Numbers of them are afflicted in some districts with
+goitre, caused probably by bad drinking water; all have a pinched,
+withered, wan look, that tells of hard work and insufficient fare. It
+is a pleasure to turn to the end of the line, where the Dangur women
+and boys and girls generally take their place. Here are the loudest
+laughter, and the sauciest faces. The children are merry, chubby, fat
+things, with well-distended stomachs and pleasant looks; a merry smile
+rippling over their broad fat cheeks as they slyly glance up at you.
+The women--with huge earrings in their ears, and a perfect load of
+heavy brass rings on their arms--chatter away, make believe to be shy,
+and show off a thousand coquettish airs. Their very toes are bedizened
+with brass rings; and long festoons of red, white, and blue beads hang
+pendent round their necks.
+
+In the evening the line is re-formed before the bungalow. A huge bag of
+copper coin is produced. The old Lallah, or writer, with spectacles on
+nose, squats down in the middle of the assembled coolies, and as each
+name is called, the mates count out the pice, and make it over to the
+coolie, who forthwith hurries off to get his little purchases made at
+the village Bunneah's shop; and so, on a poor supper of parched peas,
+or boiled rice, with no other relish but a pinch of salt, the poor
+coolie crawls to bed, only to dream of more hard work and scanty fare
+on the morrow. Poor thing! a village coolie has a hard time of it!
+During the hot months, if rice be cheap and plentiful, he can jog along
+pretty comfortably, but when the cold nights come on, and he cowers in
+his wretched hut, hungry, half naked, cold, and wearied, he is of all
+objects most pitiable. It is, however, a fact little creditable to his
+more prosperous fellow-countrymen, that he gets better paid for his
+labour in connection with factory work, than he does in many cases for
+tasks forced on him by the leading ryots of the village in connection
+with their own fields.
+
+[Illustration: COOLIE'S HUT.]
+
+This first cleaning of the fields--or, as it is called, _Oustennie_--being
+finished, the lands are all again re-ploughed, re-harrowed, and then
+once more re-cleaned by the coolies, till not a weed or spot of dirt
+remains; and till the whole surface is uniformly soft, friable, moist,
+and clean. We have now some breathing time; and as this is the most
+enjoyable season of the year, when the days are cool, and roaring wood
+fires at night remind us of home, we hunt, visit, race, dance, and
+generally enjoy ourselves. Should heavy rain fall, as it sometimes does
+about Christmas and early in February, the whole cultivation gets
+beaten down and caked over. In such a case amusements must for a time
+be thrown aside, till all the lands have been again re-ploughed. Of
+course we are never wholly idle. There are always rents to collect,
+matters to adjust in connexion with our villages and tenantry,
+law-suits to recover bad debts, to enforce contracts, or protect
+manorial or other rights,--but generally speaking, when the lands have
+been prepared, we have a slack season or breathing time for a month or
+so.
+
+Arrangements having been made for the supply of seed, which generally
+comes from about the neighbourhood of Cawnpore, as February draws near
+we make preparations for beginning our sowings. February is the usual
+month, but it depends on the moisture, and sometimes sowings may go on
+up till May and June. In Purneah and Bhaugulpore, where the cultivation
+is much rougher than in Tirhoot, the sowing is done broadcast. And in
+Bengal the sowing is often done upon the soft mud which is left on the
+banks of the rivers at the retiring of the annual floods. In Tirhoot,
+however, where the high farming I have been trying to describe is
+practised, the sowing is done by means of drills. Drills are got out,
+overhauled, and put in thorough repair. Bags of seed are sent out to
+the villages, advances for bullocks are given to the ryots, and on a
+certain day when all seems favourable--no sign of rain or high
+winds--the drills are set at work, and day and night the work goes on,
+till all the cultivation has been sown. As the drills go along, the
+hengha follows close behind, covering the seed in the furrows; and once
+again it is put over, till the fields are all level, shining, and
+clean, waiting for the first appearance of the young soft shoots.
+
+These, after some seven, nine, or perhaps fifteen days, according to
+the weather, begin to appear in long lines of delicate pale yellowish
+green. This is a most anxious time. Should rain fall, the whole surface
+of the earth gets caked and hard, and the delicate plant burns out, or
+being chafed against the hard surface crust, it withers and dies. If
+the wind gets into the east, it brings a peculiar blight which settles
+round the leaf and collar of the stem of the young plant, chokes it,
+and sweeps off miles and miles of it. If hot west winds blow, the plant
+gets black, discoloured, burnt up, and dead. A south wind often brings
+caterpillars--at least this pest often makes its appearance when the
+wind is southerly; but as often as not caterpillars find their way to
+the young plant in the most mysterious manner,--no one knowing whence
+they come. Daily, nay almost hourly, reports come in from all parts of
+the zillah: now you hear of 'Lahee,' blight on some field; now it is
+'Ihirka,' scorching, or 'Pilooa,' caterpillars. In some places the seed
+may have been bad or covered with too much earth, and the plant comes
+up straggling and thin. If there is abundant moisture, this must be
+re-sown. In fact, there is never-ending anxiety and work at this
+season, but when the plant has got into ten or fifteen leaf, and is an
+inch or two high, the most critical time is over, and one begins to
+think about the next operation, namely WEEDING.
+
+The coolies are again in requisition. Each comes armed with a
+_coorpee_,--this is a small metal spatula, broad-pointed, with which
+they dig out the weeds with amazing deftness. Sometimes they may
+inadvertently take out a single stem of indigo with the weeds: the eye
+of the mate or Tokedar espies this at once, and the careless coolie is
+treated to a volley of Hindoo Billingsgate, in which all his relations
+are abused to the seventh generation. By the time the first weeding is
+finished, the plant will be over a foot high, and if necessary a second
+weeding is then given. After the second weeding, and if any rain has
+fallen in the interim, the plant will be fully two feet high.
+
+It is now a noble-looking expanse of beautiful green waving foliage. As
+the wind ruffles its myriads of leaves, the sparkle of the sunbeams on
+the undulating mass produces the most wonderful combinations of light
+and shade; feathery sprays of a delicate pale green curl gracefully all
+over the field. It is like an ocean of vegetation, with billows of rich
+colour chasing each other, and blending in harmonious hues; the whole
+field looking a perfect oasis of beauty amid the surrounding dull brown
+tints of the season.
+
+It is now time to give the plant a light touch of the plough. This
+eases the soil about the roots, lets in air and light, tends to clean
+the undergrowth of weeds, and gives it a great impetus. The operation
+is called _Bedaheunee_. By the beginning of June the tiny red flower is
+peeping from its leafy sheath, the lower leaves are turning yellowish
+and crisp, and it is almost time to begin the grandest and most
+important operation of the season, the manufacture of the dye from the
+plant.
+
+To this you have been looking forward during the cold raw foggy days of
+November, when the ploughs were hard at work,--during the hot fierce
+winds of March, and the still, sultry, breathless early days of June,
+when the air was so still and oppressive that you could scarcely
+breathe. These sultry days are the lull before the storm--the pause
+before the moisture-laden clouds of the monsoon roll over the land
+'rugged and brown,' and the wild rattle of thunder and the lurid glare
+of quivering never-ceasing lightning herald in the annual rains. The
+manufacture however deserves a chapter to itself.
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO BEATING VATS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Manufacture of Indigo.--Loading the vats.--Beating.--Boiling,
+straining, and pressing.--Scene in the Factory.--Fluctuation of
+produce.--Chemistry of Indigo.
+
+Indigo is manufactured solely from the leaf. When arrangements have
+been made for cutting and carting the plant from the fields, the vats
+and machinery are all made ready, and a day is appointed to begin
+'Mahye' or manufacture. The apparatus consists of, first, a strong
+serviceable pump for pumping up water into the vats: this is now mostly
+done by machinery, but many small factories still use the old Persian
+wheel, which may be shortly described as simply an endless chain of
+buckets, working on a revolving wheel or drum. The machine is worked by
+bullocks, and as the buckets ascend full from the well, they are
+emptied during their revolution into a small trough at the top, and the
+water is conveyed into a huge masonry reservoir or tank, situated high
+up above the vats, which forms a splendid open air bath for the planter
+when he feels inclined for a swim. Many of these tanks, called
+_Kajhana_, are capable of containing 40,000 cubic feet of water or
+more.
+
+Below, and in a line with this reservoir, are the steeping vats, each
+capable of containing about 2000 cubic feet of water when full. Of
+course the vats vary in size, but what is called a _pucca_ vat is of
+the above capacity. When the fresh green plant is brought in, the carts
+with their loads are ranged in line, opposite these loading vats. The
+loading coolies, 'Bojhunneas'--so called from '_Bojh_,' a bundle--jump
+into the vats, and receive the plant from the cart-men, stacking it up
+in perpendicular layers, till the vat is full: a horizontal layer is
+put on top to make the surface look even. Bamboo battens are then
+placed over the plant, and these are pressed down, and held in their
+place by horizontal beams, working in upright posts. The uprights have
+holes at intervals of six inches. An iron pin is put in one of the
+holes; a lever is put under this pin, and the beam pressed down, till
+the next hole is reached and a fresh pin inserted, which keeps the beam
+down in its place. When sufficient pressure has been applied, the
+sluice in the reservoir is opened, and the water runs by a channel into
+the vat till it is full. Vat after vat is thus filled till all are
+finished, and the plant is allowed to steep from ten to thirteen or
+fourteen hours, according to the state of the weather, the temperature
+of the water, and other conditions and circumstances which have all to
+be carefully noted.
+
+At first a greenish yellow tinge appears in the water, gradually
+deepening to an intense blue. As the fermentation goes on, froth forms
+on the surface of the vat, the water swells up, bubbles of gas arise to
+the surface, and the whole range of vats presents a frothing, bubbling,
+sweltering appearance, indicative of the chemical action going on in
+the interior. If a torch be applied to the surface of a vat, the
+accumulated gas ignites with a loud report, and a blue lambent flame
+travels with amazing rapidity over the effervescent liquid. In very hot
+weather I have seen the water swell up over the mid walls of the vats,
+till the whole range would be one uniform surface of frothing liquid,
+and on applying a light, the report has been as loud as that of a small
+cannon, and the flame has leapt from vat to vat like the flitting
+will-o'-the-wisp on the surface of some miasmatic marsh.
+
+When fermentation has proceeded sufficiently, the temperature of the
+vat lowers somewhat, and the water, which has been globular and convex
+on the surface and at the sides, now becomes distinctly convex and
+recedes a very little. This is a sign that the plant has been steeped
+long enough, and that it is now time to open the vat. A pin is knocked
+out from the bottom, and the pent-up liquor rushes out in a golden
+yellow stream tinted with blue and green into the beating vat, which
+lies parallel to, but at a lower level than the loading vat.
+
+Of course as the vats are loaded at different hours, and the steeping
+varies with circumstances, they must be ready to open also at different
+intervals. There are two men specially engaged to look after the
+opening. The time of loading each one is carefully noted; the time it
+will take to steep is guessed at, and an hour for opening written down.
+When this hour arrives, the _Gunta parree_, or time-keeper, looks at
+the vat, and if it appears ready he gets the pinmen to knock out the
+pin and let the steeped liquor run into the beating vat.
+
+Where there are many vats, this goes on all night, and by the morning
+the beating vats are all full of steeped liquor, and ready to be
+beaten.
+
+The beating now is mostly done by machinery; but the old style was very
+different. A gang of coolies (generally Dangurs) were put into the
+vats, having long sticks with a disc at the end, with which, standing
+in two rows, they threw up the liquor into the air. The quantity forced
+up by the one coolie encounters in mid air that sent up by the man
+standing immediately opposite to him, and the two jets meeting and
+mixing confusedly together, tumble down in broken frothy masses into
+the vat. Beginning with a slow steady stroke the coolies gradually
+increase the pace, shouting out a hoarse wild song at intervals; till,
+what with the swish and splash of the falling water, the measured beat
+of the _furrovahs_ or beating rods, and the yells and cries with which
+they excite each other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which
+at first is of a yellowish green, is now beginning to assume an intense
+blue tint; this is the result of the oxygenation going on. As the blue
+deepens, the exertions of the coolie increase, till with every muscle
+straining, head thrown back, chest expanded, his long black hair
+dripping with white foam, and his bronzed naked body glistening with
+blue liquor, he yells and shouts and twists and contorts his body till
+he looks like a true 'blue devil.' To see eight or ten vats full of
+yelling howling blue creatures, the water splashing high in mid air,
+the foam flecking the walls, and the measured beat of the _furrovahs_
+rising weird-like into the morning air, is almost enough to shake the
+nerve of a stranger, but it is music in the planter's ear, and he can
+scarce refrain from yelling out in sympathy with his coolies, and
+sharing in their frantic excitement. Indeed it is often necessary to
+encourage them if a vat proves obstinate, and the colour refuses to
+come--an event which occasionally does happen. It is very hard work
+beating, and when this constant violent exercise is kept up for about
+three hours (which is the time generally taken), the coolies are pretty
+well exhausted, and require a rest.
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO BEATERS AT WORK IN THE VATS.]
+
+During the beating, two processes are going on simultaneously. One is
+chemical--oxygenation--turning the yellowish green dye into a deep
+intense blue: the other is mechanical--a separation of the particles of
+dye from the water in which it is held in solution. The beating seems
+to do this, causing the dye to granulate in larger particles.
+
+When the vat has been beaten, the coolies remove the froth and scum
+from the surface of the water, and then leave the contents to settle.
+The fecula or dye, or _mall_, as it is technically called, now settles
+at the bottom of the vat in a soft pulpy sediment, and the waste liquor
+left on the top is let off through graduated holes in the front. Pin
+after pin is gradually removed, and the clear sherry-coloured waste
+allowed to run out till the last hole in the series is reached, and
+nothing but dye remains in the vat. By this time the coolies have had a
+rest and food, and now they return to the works, and either lift up the
+_mall_ in earthen jars and take it to the mall tank, or--as is now more
+commonly done--they run it along a channel to the tank, and then wash
+out and clean the vat to be ready for the renewed beating on the
+morrow. When all the _mall_ has been collected in the mall tank, it is
+next pumped up into the straining room. It is here strained through
+successive layers of wire gauze and cloth, till, free from dirt, sand
+and impurity, it is run into the large iron boilers, to be subjected to
+the next process. This is the boiling. This operation usually takes two
+or three hours, after which it is run off along narrow channels, till
+it reaches the straining-table. It is a very important part of the
+manufacture, and has to be carefully done. The straining-table is an
+oblong shallow wooden frame, in the shape of a trough, but all composed
+of open woodwork. It is covered by a large straining-sheet, on which
+the mall settles; while the waste water trickles through and is carried
+away by a drain. When the mall has stood on the table all night, it is
+next morning lifted up by scoops and buckets and put into the presses.
+These are square boxes of iron or wood, with perforated sides and
+bottom and a removeable perforated lid. The insides of the boxes are
+lined with press cloths, and when filled these cloths are carefully
+folded over the _mall_, which is now of the consistence of starch; and
+a heavy beam, worked on two upright three-inch screws, is let down on
+the lid of the press. A long lever is now put on the screws, and the
+nut worked slowly round. The pressure is enormous, and all the water
+remaining in the _mall_ is pressed through the cloth and perforations
+in the press-box till nothing but the pure indigo remains behind.
+
+The presses are now opened, and a square slab of dark moist indigo,
+about three or three and a half inches thick, is carried off on the
+bottom of the press (the top and sides having been removed), and
+carefully placed on the cutting frame. This frame corresponds in size
+to the bottom of the press, and is grooved in lines somewhat after the
+manner of a chess-board. A stiff iron rod with a brass wire attached is
+put through the groove under the slab, the wire is brought over the
+slab, and the rod being pulled smartly through brings the wire with it,
+cutting the indigo much in the same way as you would cut a bar of soap.
+When all the slab has been cut into bars, the wire and rod are next put
+into the grooves at right angles to the bars and again pulled through,
+thus dividing the bars into cubical cakes. Each cake is then stamped
+with the factory mark and number, and all are noted down in the books.
+They are then taken to the drying house; this is a large airy building,
+with strong shelves of bamboo reaching to the roof, and having narrow
+passages between the tiers of shelves. On these shelves or _mychans_,
+as they are called, the cakes are ranged to dry. The drying takes two
+or three months, and the cakes are turned and moved at frequent
+intervals, till thoroughly ready for packing. All the little pieces and
+corners and chips are carefully put by on separate shelves, and packed
+separately. Even the sweepings and refuse from the sheets and floor are
+all carefully collected, mixed with water, boiled separately, and made
+into cakes, which are called 'washings.'
+
+During the drying a thick mould forms on the cakes. This is carefully
+brushed off before packing, and, mixed with sweepings and tiny chips is
+all ground up in a hand-mill, packed in separate chests, and sold as
+dust. In October, when _mahye_ is over, and the preparation of the land
+going on again, the packing begins. The cakes, each of separate date,
+are carefully scrutinised, and placed in order of quality. The finest
+qualities are packed first, in layers, in mango-wood boxes; the boxes
+are first weighed empty, re-weighed when full, and the difference gives
+the nett weight of the indigo. The tare, gross, and nett weights are
+printed legibly on the chests, along with the factory mark and number
+of the chest, and when all are ready, they are sent down to the brokers
+in Calcutta for sale. Such shortly is the system of manufacture.
+
+During _mahye_ the factory is a busy scene. Long before break of day
+the ryots and coolies are busy cutting the plant, leaving it in green
+little heaps for the cartmen to load. In the early morning the carts
+are seen converging to the factory on every road, crawling along like
+huge green beetles. Here a cavalcade of twenty or thirty carts, there
+in clusters of twos or threes. When they reach the factory the loaders
+have several vats ready for the reception of the plant, while others
+are taking out the already steeped plant of yesterday; staggering under
+its weight, as, dripping with water, they toss it on the vast
+accumulating heap of refuse material.
+
+Down in the vats below, the beating coolies are plashing, and shouting,
+and yelling, or the revolving wheel (where machinery is used) is
+scattering clouds of spray and foam in the blinding sunshine. The
+firemen stripped to the waist, are feeding the furnaces with the dried
+stems of last year's crop, which forms our only fuel. The smoke hovers
+in volumes over the boiling-house. The pinmen are busy sorting their
+pins, rolling hemp round them to make them fit the holes more exactly.
+Inside the boiling-house, dimly discernible through the clouds of
+stifling steam, the boilermen are seen with long rods, stirring slowly
+the boiling mass of bubbling blue. The clank of the levers resounds
+through the pressing-house, or the hoarse guttural 'hah, hah!' as the
+huge lever is strained and pulled at by the press-house coolies. The
+straining-table is being cleaned by the table 'mate' and his coolies,
+while the washerman stamps on his sheets and press-cloths to extract
+all the colour from them, and the cake-house boys run to and fro
+between the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on
+their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from
+the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary
+to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds.
+The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the
+roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of
+the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified
+or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the objurgations of the
+'mates' as some lazy fellow eases his stroke in the beating vats; the
+cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round the circle where the
+Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp, dilapidated wheel-house;
+the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on the drum, the arriving and
+departing carts; the clang of the anvil, as the blacksmith and his men
+hammer away at some huge screw which has been bent; the hurrying crowds
+of cartmen and loaders with their burdens of fresh green plant or
+dripping refuse;--form such a medley of sights and sounds as I have
+never seen equalled in any other industry.
+
+The planter has to be here, there, and everywhere. He sends carts to
+this village or to that, according as the crop ripens. Coolies must be
+counted and paid daily. The stubble must be ploughed to give the plant
+a start for the second growth whenever the weather will admit of it.
+Reports have to be sent to the agents and owners. The boiling must be
+narrowly watched, as also the beating and the straining. He has a large
+staff of native assistants, but if his _mahye_ is to be successful, his
+eye must be over all. It is an anxious time, but the constant work is
+grateful, and when the produce is good, and everything working
+smoothly, it is perhaps the most enjoyable time of the whole year. Is
+it nothing to see the crop, on which so much care has been expended,
+which you have watched day by day through all the vicissitudes of the
+season, through drought, and flood, and blight; is it nothing to see it
+safely harvested, and your shelves filling day by day with fine sound
+cakes, the representatives of wealth, that will fill your pockets with
+commission, and build up your name as a careful and painstaking
+planter?
+
+'What's your produce?' is now the first query at this season, when
+planters meet. Calculations are made daily, nay hourly, to see how much
+is being got per beegah, or how much per vat. The presses are calculated
+to weigh so much. Some days you will get a press a vat, some days it
+will mount up to two presses a vat, and at other times it will recede
+to half a press a vat, or even less. Cold wet weather reduces the
+produce. Warm sunny weather will send it up again. Short stunted plant
+from poor lands will often reduce your average per acre, to be again
+sent up as fresh, hardy, leafy plant comes in from some favourite
+village, where you have new and fertile lands, or where the plant from
+the rich zeraats laden with broad strong leaf is tumbled into the
+loading vat.
+
+So far as I know, there seems to be no law of produce. It is the most
+erratic and incomprehensible thing about planting. One day your presses
+are full to straining, next day half of them lie empty. No doubt the
+state of the weather, the quality of your plant, the temperature of the
+water, the length of time steeping, and other things have an influence;
+but I know of no planter who can entirely and satisfactorily account
+for the sudden and incomprehensible fluctuations and variations which
+undoubtedly take place in the produce or yield of the plant. It is a
+matter of more interest to the planter than to the general public, but
+all I can say is, that if the circumstances attendant on any sudden
+change in the yielding powers of the plant were more accurately noted;
+if the chemical conditions of the water, the air, and the raw material
+itself, more especially in reference to the soil on which it grows, the
+time it takes in transit from the field to the vat, and other points,
+which will at once suggest themselves to a practical planter, were more
+carefully, methodically, and scientifically observed, some coherent
+theory resulting in plain practical results might be evolved.
+
+Planters should attend more to this. I believe the chemical history of
+indigo has yet to be written. The whole manufacture, so far as
+chemistry is concerned, is yet crude and ill-digested. I know that by
+careful experiment, and close scientific investigation and observation,
+the preparation of indigo could be much improved. So far as the
+mechanical appliances for the manufacture go, the last ten years have
+witnessed amazing and rapid improvements. What is now wanted, is, that
+what has been done for the mere mechanical appliances, should be done
+for the proper understanding of the chemical changes and conditions in
+the constitution of the plant, and in the various processes of its
+manufacture[1].
+
+[1] Since the above chapter was written Mons. P.I. Michea, a French
+    chemist of some experience in Indigo matters, has patented
+    an invention (the result of much study, experiment, and
+    investigation), by the application of which an immense increase in
+    the produce of the plant has been obtained during the last season,
+    in several factories where it has been worked in Jessore, Purneah,
+    Kishnaghur, and other places. This increase, varying according to
+    circumstances, has in some instances reached the amazing extent
+    of 30 to 47 per cent., and so far from being attended with a
+    deterioration of quality the dye produced is said to be finer than
+    that obtained under the old crude process described in the above
+    chapter. This shows what a waste must have been going on, and what
+    may yet be done, by properly organised scientific investigation.
+    I firmly believe that with an intelligent application of the
+    principles of chemistry and agricultural science, not only to the
+    manufacture but to growth, cultivation, nature of the soil,
+    application of manures, and other such departments of the
+    business, quite a revolution will set in, and a new era in the
+    history of this great industry will be inaugurated. Less area for
+    crop will be required, working expenses will be reduced, a greater
+    out-turn, and a more certain crop secured, and all classes,
+    planter and ryot alike, will be benefited.
+
+[Illustration: INDIAN FACTORY PEON.]
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO PLANTER'S HOUSE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Parewah factory.--A 'Bobbery Pack.'--Hunt through a village after a
+cat.--The pariah dog of India.--Fate of 'Pincher.'--Rampore hound.
+--Persian greyhound.--Caboolee dogs.--A jackal hunt.--Incidents of
+the chase.
+
+After living at Puttihee for two years, I was transferred to another
+out-factory in the same concern, called Parewah. There was here a very
+nice little three-roomed bungalow, with airy verandahs all round. It
+was a pleasant change from Puttihee, and the situation was very pretty.
+A small stream, almost dry in the hot weather, but a swollen, deep,
+rapid torrent in the rains, meandered past the factory. Nearing the
+bullock-house it suddenly took a sweep to the left in the form of a
+wide horseshoe, and in this bend or pocket was situated the bungalow,
+with a pretty terraced garden sloping gently to the stream. Thus the
+river was in full view from both the front and the back verandahs.
+In front, and close on the bank of the river, stood the kitchen,
+fowl-house, and offices. To the right of the compound were the stables,
+while behind the bungalow, and some distance down the stream, the
+wheel-house, vats, press-house, boiling-house, cake-house, and
+workshops were grouped together. I was but nine miles from the
+bead-factory, and the same distance from the station of Mooteeharree,
+while over the river, and but three miles off, I had the factory of
+Meerpore, with its hospitable manager as my nearest neighbour. His
+lands and mine lay contiguous. In fact some of his villages lay beyond
+some of mine, and he had to ride through part of my cultivation to
+reach them.
+
+Not unfrequently we would meet in the zillah of a morning, when we
+would invariably make for the nearest patch of grass or jungle, and
+enjoy a hunt together. In the cool early mornings, when the heavy night
+dews still lie glittering on the grass, when the cobwebs seem strung
+with pearls, and faint lines of soft fleecy mist lie in the hollows by
+the watercourses; long ere the hot, fiery sun has left his crimson bed
+behind the cold grey horizon, we are out on our favourite horse, the
+wiry, long-limbed _syce_ or groom trotting along behind us. The
+_mehter_ or dog-keeper is also in attendance with a couple of
+greyhounds in leash, and a motley pack of wicked little terriers
+frisking and frolicking behind him. This mongrel collection is known as
+'the Bobbery Pack,' and forms a certain adjunct to every assistant's
+bungalow in the district. I had one very noble-looking kangaroo hound
+that I had brought from Australia with me, and my 'bobbery pack' of
+terriers contained canine specimens of all sorts, sizes, and colours.
+
+On nearing a village, you would see one black fellow, 'Pincher,' set
+off at a round trot ahead, with seemingly the most innocent air in the
+world. 'Tilly,' 'Tiny,' and 'Nipper' follow.
+
+Then 'Dandy,' 'Curly,' 'Brandy,' and 'Nettle,' till spying a cat in the
+distance, the whole pack with a whimper of excitement dash off at a mad
+scramble, the hound straining meanwhile at the slip, till he almost
+pulls the _mehter_ off his legs. Off goes the cat, round the corner of
+a hut with her tail puffed up to fully three times its normal size.
+Round in mad, eager pursuit rattle the terriers, thirsting for her
+blood. The _syce_ dashes forward, vainly hoping to turn them from their
+quest. Now a village dog, roused from his morning nap, bounds out with
+a demoniac howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the curs in the
+village.
+
+Meanwhile the row inside the hut is fiendish. The sleeping family
+rudely roused by the yelping pack, utter the most discordant screams.
+The women with garments fluttering behind them, rush out beating their
+breasts, thinking the very devil is loose. The wails of the unfortunate
+cat mingle with the short snapping barks of the pack, or a howl of
+anguish as puss inflicts a caress on the face of some too careless or
+reckless dog. A howling village cur has rashly ventured too near.
+'Pincher' has him by the hind leg before you could say 'Jack Robinson.'
+Leaving the dead cat for 'Toby' and 'Nettle' to worry, the whole pack
+now fiercely attack the luckless _Pariah_ dog. A dozen of his village
+mates dance madly outside the ring, but are too wise or too cowardly to
+come to closer quarters. The kangaroo hound has now fairly torn the
+rope from the keeper's hand, and with one mighty bound is in the middle
+of the fight, scattering the village dogs right and left. The whole
+village is now in commotion, the _syce_ and keeper shout the names of
+the terriers in vain. Oaths, cries, shouts, and screams mingle with the
+yelping and growling of the combatants, till riding up, I disperse the
+worrying pack with a few cracks of my hunting whip, and so on again
+over the zillah, leaving the women and children to recover their
+scattered senses, the old men to grumble over their broken slumbers,
+and the boys and young men to wonder at the pluck and dash of the
+_Belaitee Kookoor_, or English dog.
+
+The common Pariah dog, or village dog of India, is a perfect cur; a
+mangy, carrion-loving, yellow-fanged, howling brute. A most unlovely
+and unloving beast. As you pass his village he will bounce out on you
+with the fiercest bark and the most menacing snarl; but lo! if a
+terrier the size of a teacup but boldly go at him, down goes his tail
+like a pump-handle, he turns white with fear, and like the arrant
+coward that he is, tumbles on his back and fairly screams for mercy. I
+have often been amused to see a great hulking cowardly brute come out
+like an avalanche at 'Pincher,' expecting to make one mouthful of him.
+What a look of bewilderment he would put on, as my gallant little
+'Pincher,' with a short, sharp, defiant bark would go boldly at him.
+The huge yellow brute would stop dead short on all four legs, and as
+the rest of my pack would come scampering round the corner, he would
+find himself the centre of a ring of indomitable assailants.
+
+How he curses his short-sighted temerity. With one long howl of utter
+dismay and deadly fear, he manages to get away from the pack, leaving
+my little doggies to come proudly round my horse with their mouths full
+of fur, and each of their little tails as stiff as an iron ramrod.
+
+That 'Pincher,' in some respects, was a very fiend incarnate. There was
+no keeping him in. He was constantly getting into hot water himself,
+and leading the pack into all sorts of mischief. He was as bold as
+brass and as courageous as a lion. He stole food, worried sheep and
+goats, and was never out of a scrape. I tried thrashing him, tying him
+up, half starving him, but all to no purpose. He would be into every
+hut in a village whenever he had the chance, overturning brass pots,
+eating up rice and curries, and throwing the poor villager's household
+into dismay and confusion. He would never leave a cat if he once saw
+it. I've seen him scramble through the roofs of more than one hut, and
+oust the cat from its fancied stronghold.
+
+I put him into an indigo vat with a big dog jackal once, and he whipped
+the jackal single-handed. He did not kill it, but he worried it till
+the jackal shammed dead and would not 'come to the scratch.' 'Pincher's'
+ears were perfect shreds, and his scars were as numerous almost as his
+hairs. My gallant 'Pincher!' His was a sad end. He got eaten up by an
+alligator in the 'Dhans,' a sluggish stream in Bhaugulpore. I had all
+my pack in the boat with me, the stream was swollen and full of weeds.
+A jackal gave tongue on the bank, and 'Pincher' bounded over the side
+of the boat at once. I tried to 'grab' him, and nearly upset the boat
+in doing so. Our boat was going rapidly down stream, and 'Pincher'
+tried to get ashore but got among the weeds. He gave a bark, poor
+gallant little dog, for help, but just then we saw a dark square snout
+shoot athwart the stream. A half-smothered sobbing cry from 'Pincher,'
+and the bravest little dog I ever possessed was gone for ever.
+
+There is another breed of large, strong-limbed, big-boned dogs, called
+Rampore hounds. They are a cross breed from the original upcountry dog
+and the Persian greyhound. Some call them the Indian greyhound. They
+seem to be bred principally in the Rampore-Bareilly district, but one
+or more are generally to be found in every planter's pack. They are
+fast and strong enough, but I have often found them bad at tackling,
+and they are too fond of their keeper ever to make an affectionate
+faithful dog to the European.
+
+Another somewhat similar breed is the _Tazi_. This, although not so
+large a dog as the Rhamporee, is a much pluckier animal, and when well
+trained will tackle a jackal with the utmost determination. He has a
+wrinkled almost hairless skin, but a very uncertain temper, and he is
+not very amenable to discipline. _Tazi_ is simply the Persian word for
+a greyhound, and refers to no particular breed. The common name for a
+dog is _Kutta_, pronounced _Cootta_, but the Tazi has certainly been an
+importation from the North-west, hence the Persian name. The wandering
+Caboolees, who come down to the plains once a year with dried fruits,
+spices, and other products of field or garden, also bring with them the
+dogs of their native country for sale, and on occasion they bring
+lovely long-haired white Persian cats, very beautiful animals. These
+Caboolee dogs are tall, long-limbed brutes, generally white, with a
+long thin snout, very long silky-haired drooping ears, and generally
+wearing tufts of hair on their legs and tail, somewhat like the
+feathering of a spaniel, which makes them look rather clumsy. They
+cannot stand the heat of the plains at all well, and are difficult to
+tame, but fleet and plucky, hunting well with an English pack.
+
+My neighbour Anthony at Meerpore had some very fine English greyhounds
+and bulldogs, and many a rattling burst have we had together after the
+fox or the jackal. Imagine a wide level plain, with one uniform dull
+covering of rice stubble, save where in the centre a mound rises some
+two acres in extent, covered with long thatching grass, a few scrubby
+acacia bushes, and other jungly brushwood. All round the circular
+horizon are dense forest masses of sombre looking foliage, save where
+some clump of palms uprear their stately heads, or the white shining
+walls of some temple, sacred to Shiva or Khristna glitter in the
+sunshine. Far to the left a sluggish creek winds slowly along through
+the plain, its banks fringed with acacias and wild rose jungle. On the
+far bank is a small patch of _Sal_ forest jungle, with a thick rank
+undergrowth of ferns, thistles, and rank grass. As I am slowly riding
+along I hear a shout in the distance, and looking round behold Anthony
+advancing at a rapid hand gallop. His dogs and mine, being old friends,
+rapidly fraternise, and we determine on a hunt.
+
+'Let's try the old patch, Anthony!'
+
+'All right,' and away we go making straight for the mound. When we
+reach the grass the syces and keepers hold the hounds at the corners
+outside, while we ride through the grass urging on the terriers, who,
+quivering with excitement, utter short barks, and dash here and there
+among the thick grass, all eager for a find.
+
+'Gone away, gone away!' shouts Anthony, as a fleet fox dashes out,
+closely followed by 'Pincher' and half a dozen others. The hounds are
+slipped, and away go the pack in full pursuit, we on our horses riding
+along, one on each side of the chase. The fox has a good start, but now
+the hounds are nearing him, when with a sudden whisk he doubles round
+the ridge encircling a rice field, the hounds overshoot him, and ere
+they turn the fox has put the breadth of a good field between himself
+and his pursuers. He is now making back again for the grass, but
+encounters some of the terriers who have tailed off behind. With
+panting chests and lolling tongues, they are pegging stolidly along,
+when fortune gives them this welcome chance. Redoubling their efforts,
+they dash at the fox. 'Bravo, Tilly! you tumbled him over that time;'
+but he is up and away again. Dodging, double-turning, and twisting, he
+has nearly run the gauntlet, and the friendly covert is close at hand,
+but the hounds are now up again and thirsting for his blood. 'Hurrah!
+Minnie has him!' cries Anthony, and riding up we divest poor Reynard of
+his brush, pat the dogs, ease the girths for a minute, and then again
+into the jungle for another beat.
+
+This time a fat old jackal breaks to the left, long before the dogs are
+up. Yelling to the _mehters_ not to slip the hounds, we gather the
+terriers together, and pound over the stubble and ridges. He is going
+very leisurely, casting an occasional scared look over his shoulder.
+'Curly' and 'Legs,' two of my fastest terriers, are now in full view,
+they are laying themselves well to the ground, and Master Jackal thinks
+it's high time to increase his pace. He puts on a spurt, but condition
+tells. He is fat and pursy, and must have had a good feed last night on
+some poor dead bullock. He is shewing his teeth now. Curly makes his
+rush, and they both roll over together. Up hurries Legs, and the jackal
+gets a grip, gives him a shake, and then hobbles slowly on. The two
+terriers now hamper him terribly. One minute they are at his heels, and
+as soon as he turns, they are at his ear or shoulder. The rest of the
+pack are fast coming up.
+
+Anthony has a magnificent bulldog, broad-chested, and a very Goliath
+among dogs. He is called 'Sailor.' Sailor always pounds along at the
+same steady pace; he never seems to get flurried. Sitting lazily at the
+door, he seems too indolent even to snap at a fly. He is a true
+philosopher, and nought seems to disturb his serenity. But see him
+after a jackal, his big red tongue hanging out, his eyes flashing fire,
+and his hair erected on his back like the bristles of a wild boar. He
+looks fiendish then, and he is a true bulldog. There is no flinching
+with Sailor. Once he gets his grip it's no use trying to make him let
+go.
+
+Up comes Sailor now.
+
+He has the jackal by the throat.
+
+A hoarse, rattling, gasping yell, and the jackal has gone to the happy
+hunting grounds.
+
+The sun is now mounting in the sky. The hounds and terriers feel the
+heat, so sending them home by the keeper, we diverge on our respective
+roads, ride over our cultivation, seeing the ploughing and preparations
+generally, till hot, tired, and dusty, we reach home about 11.30,
+tumble into our bath, and feeling refreshed, sit down contentedly to
+breakfast. If the _dak_ or postman has come in we get our letters and
+papers, and the afternoon is devoted to office work and accounts,
+hearing complaints and reports from the villages, or looking over any
+labour that may be going on in the zeraats or at the workshops. In the
+evening we ride over the zeraats again, give orders for the morrow's
+work, consume a little tobacco, have an early dinner, and after a
+little reading, retire soon to bed to dream of far away friends and the
+happy memories of home. Many an evening it is very lonely work. No
+friendly face, and no congenial society within miles of your factory.
+Little wonder that the arrival of a brother planter sends a thrill
+through the frame, and that his advent is welcomed as the most
+agreeable break to the irksome monotony of our lonely life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Fishing in India.--Hereditary trades.--The boatmen and fishermen of
+India.--Their villages.--Nets.--Modes of fishing.--Curiosities
+relating thereto.--Catching an alligator with a hook.--Exciting
+capture.-Crocodiles.--Shooting an alligator.--Death of the man-eater.
+
+Not only in the wild jungles, on the undulating plains, and among the
+withered brown stubbles, does animal life abound in India; but the
+rivers, lakes, and creeks teem with fish of every conceivable size,
+shape, and colour. The varieties are legion. From the huge black
+porpoise, tumbling through the turgid stream of the Ganges, to the
+bright, sparkling, silvery shoals of delicate _chillooahs_ or
+_poteeahs_, which one sees darting in and out among the rice stubbles
+in every paddy field during the rains. Here a huge _bhowarree_ (pike),
+or ravenous _coira_, comes to the surface with a splash; there a
+_raho_, the Indian salmon, with its round sucker-like mouth, rises
+slowly to the surface, sucks in a fly and disappears as slowly as it
+rose; or a _pachgutchea_, a long sharp-nosed fish, darts rapidly by; a
+shoal of mullet with their heads out of the water swim athwart the
+stream, and far down in the cool depths of the tank or lake, a thousand
+different varieties disport themselves among the mazy labyrinths of the
+broad-leaved weeds.
+
+During the middle, and about the end of the rains, is the best time for
+fishing; the whole country is then a perfect network of streams. Every
+rice field is a shallow lake, with countless thousands of tiny fish
+darting here and there among the rice stalks. Every ditch teems with
+fish, and every hollow in every field is a well stocked aquarium.
+
+Round the edge of every lake or tank in the early morning, or when the
+fierce heat of the day begins to get tempered by the approaching shades
+of evening, one sees numbers of boys and men of the poorer classes,
+each with a couple of rough bamboo rods stuck in the ground in front of
+him, watching his primitive float with the greatest eagerness, and
+whipping out at intervals some luckless fish of about three or four
+ounces in weight with a tremendous haul, fit for the capture of a
+forty-pounder. They get a coarse sort of hook in the bazaar, rig up a
+roughly-twisted line, tie on a small piece of hollow reed for a float,
+and with a lively earth-worm for a bait, they can generally manage in a
+very short time to secure enough fish for a meal.
+
+With a short light rod, a good silk line, and an English hook attached
+to fine gut, I have enjoyed many a good hour's sport at Parewah. I used
+to have a cane chair sent down to the bank of the stream, a _punkah_,
+or hand fan, plenty of cooling drinks, and two coolie boys in
+attendance to remove the fish, renew baits, and keep the punkah in
+constant swing. There I used to sit enjoying my cigar, and pulling in
+little fish at the rate sometimes of a couple a minute.
+
+I remember hooking a turtle once, and a terrible job it was to land
+him. My light rod bent like a willow, but the tackle was good, and
+after ten minutes' hard work I got the turtle to the side, where my
+boys soon secured him. He weighed thirteen pounds. Sometimes you get
+among a colony of freshwater crabs.
+
+They are little brown brutes, and strip your hooks of the bait as fast
+as you fling them in. There is nothing for it in such a case but to
+shift your station. Many of the bottom fish--the _ghurai_, the
+_saourie_, the _barnee_ (eel), and others, make no effort to escape the
+hook. You see them resting at the bottom, and drop the bait at their
+very nose. On the whole, the hand fishing is uninteresting, but it
+serves to wile away an odd hour when hunting and shooting are hardly
+practicable.
+
+Particular occupations in India are restricted to particular castes.
+All trades are hereditary. For example, a _tatmah_, or weaver, is
+always a weaver. He cannot become a blacksmith or carpenter. He has no
+choice. He must follow the hereditary trade. The peculiar system of
+land-tenure in India, which secures as far as possible a bit of land
+for every one, tends to perpetuate this hereditary selection of trades,
+by enabling every cultivator to be so far independent of his
+handicraft, thus restricting competition. There may be twenty _lohars_,
+or blacksmiths, in a village, but they do not all follow their calling.
+They till their lands, and are _de facto_ petty farmers. They know the
+rudiments of their handicraft, but the actual blacksmith's work is done
+by the hereditary smith of the village, whose son in turn will succeed
+him when he dies, or if he leave no son, his fellow caste men will put
+in a successor.
+
+Nearly every villager during the rains may be found on the banks of the
+stream or lake, angling in an amateur sort of way, but the fishermen
+of Behar _par excellence_ are the _mull[=a]hs_; they are also called
+_Gouhree, Beeu_, or _Muchooah_. In Bengal they are called _Nikaree_,
+and in some parts _Baeharee_, from the Persian word for a boat. In the
+same way _muchooah_ is derived from _much_, a fish, and _mullah_ means
+boatman, strictly speaking, rather than fisherman. All boatmen and
+fishermen belong to this caste, and their villages can be recognised at
+once by the instruments of their calling lying all around.
+
+Perched high on some bank overlooking the stream or lake, you see
+innumerable festoons of nets hanging out to dry on tall bamboo poles,
+or hanging like lace curtains of very coarse texture from the roofs and
+eaves of the huts. Hauled up on the beach are a whole fleet of boats of
+different sizes, from the small _dugout_, which will hold only one man,
+to the huge _dinghy_, in which the big nets and a dozen men can be
+stowed with ease. Great heaps of shells of the freshwater mussel show
+the source of great supplies of bait; while overhead a great hovering
+army of kites and vultures are constantly circling round, eagerly
+watching for the slightest scrap of offal from the nets. When the rains
+have fairly set in, and the fishermen have got their rice fields all
+planted out, they are at liberty to follow their hereditary avocation.
+A day is fixed for a drag, and the big nets are overhauled and got in
+readiness. The head _mullah_, a wary grizzled old veteran, gives the
+orders. The big drag-net is bundled into the boat, which is quickly
+pushed off into the stream, and at a certain distance from shore the
+net is cast from the boat. Being weighted at the lower end it rapidly
+sinks, and, buoyed on the upper side with pieces of cork, it makes a
+perpendicular wall in the water. Several long bamboo poles are now run
+through the ropes along the upper side of the net, to prevent the net
+being dragged under water altogether by the weight of the fish in a
+great haul. The little boats, a crowd of which are in attendance, now
+dart out, surrounding the net on all sides, and the boatmen beating
+their oars on the sides of the boats, create such a clatter as to
+frighten, the fish into the circumference of the big net. This is now
+being dragged slowly to shore by strong and willing arms. The women and
+children watch eagerly on the bank. At length the glittering haul is
+pulled up high and dry on the beach, the fish are divided among the
+men, the women fill their baskets, and away they hie to the nearest
+_bazaar_, or if it be not _bazaar_ or market day, they hawk the fish
+through the nearest villages, like our fish-wives at home.
+
+There is another common mode of fishing adopted in narrow lakes and
+small streams, which are let out to the fishermen by the Zemindars or
+landholders. A barricade made of light reeds, all matted together by
+string, is stuck into the stream, and a portion of the water is fenced
+in, generally in a circular form. The reed fence being quite flexible
+is gradually moved in, narrowing the circle. As the circle narrows, the
+agitation inside is indescribable; fish jumping in all directions--a
+moving mass of glittering scales and fins. The larger ones try to leap
+the barrier, and are caught by the attendant _mullahs_, who pounce on
+them with swift dexterity. Eagles and kites dart and swoop down,
+bearing off a captive fish in their talons. The reed fence is doubled
+back on itself, and gradually pushed on till the whole of the fish
+inside are jammed together in a moving mass. The weeds and dirt are
+then removed, and the fish put into baskets and carried off to market.
+
+Others, again, use circular casting nets, which they throw with very
+great dexterity. Gathering the net into a bunch they rest it on the
+shoulder, then with a circular sweep round the head, they fling it far
+out. Being loaded, it sinks down rapidly in the water. A string is
+attached to the centre of the net, and the fisherman hauls it in with
+whatever prey he may be lucky enough to secure.
+
+As the waters recede during October, after the rains have ended, each
+runlet and purling stream becomes a scene of slaughter on a most
+reckless and improvident scale. The innumerable shoals of spawn and
+small fish that have been feeding in the rice fields, warned by some
+instinct seek the lakes and main streams. As they try to get their way
+back, however, they find at each outlet in each ditch and field a
+deadly wicker trap, in the shape of a square basket with a V-shaped
+opening leading into it, through which the stream makes its way. After
+entering this basket there is no egress except through the narrow
+opening, and they are trapped thus in countless thousands. Others of
+the natives in mere wantonness put a shelf of reeds or rushes in the
+bed of the stream, with an upward slope. As the water rushes along, the
+little fish are left high and dry on this shelf or screen, and the
+water runs off below. In this way scarcely a fish escapes, and as
+millions are too small to be eaten, it is a most serious waste. The
+attention of Government has been directed to the subject, and steps may
+be taken to stop such a reckless and wholesale destruction of a
+valuable food supply.
+
+In some parts of Purneah and Bhaugulpore I have seen a most ingenious
+method adopted by the _mullahs_. A gang of four or five enter the
+stream and travel slowly downwards, stirring up the mud at the bottom
+with their feet. The fish, ascending the stream to escape the mud, get
+entangled in the weeds. The fishermen feel them with their feet amongst
+the weeds, and immediately pounce on them with their hands. Each man
+has a _gila_ or earthen pot attached by a string to his waist and
+floating behind him in the water. I have seen four men fill their
+earthen pots in less than an hour by this ingenious but primitive mode
+of fishing. Some of them can use their feet almost as well for grasping
+purposes as their hands.
+
+Another mode of capture is by a small net. A flat piece of netting is
+spread over a hoop, to which four or five pieces of bamboo are
+attached, rising up and meeting in the centre, so as to form a sort of
+miniature skeleton tent-like frame over the net. The hoop with the net
+stretched tight across is then pressed down flat on the bottom of the
+tank or stream. If any fish are beneath, their efforts to escape
+agitate the net. The motion is communicated to the fisherman by a
+string from the centre of the net which is rolled round the fisherman's
+thumb. When the jerking of his thumb announces a captive fish, he puts
+down his left hand and secures his victim. The _Banturs_, _Nepaulees_,
+and other jungle tribes, also often use the bow and arrow as a means of
+securing fish.
+
+Seated on the branch of some overhanging tree, while his keen eye scans
+the depths below, he watches for a large fish, and as it passes, he
+lets fly his arrow with unerring aim, and impales the luckless victim.
+Some tribes fish at night, by torchlight, spearing the fish who are
+attracted by the light. In Nepaul the bark of the _Hill Sirres_ is
+often used to poison a stream or piece of water. Pounded up and thrown
+in, it seems to have some uncommon effect on the fish. After water has
+been treated in this way, the fish, seemingly quite stupefied, rise to
+the surface, on which they float in great numbers, and allow themselves
+to be caught. The strangest part of it is that they are perfectly
+innocuous as food, notwithstanding this treatment.
+
+Fish forms a very favourite article of diet with both Mussulmans and
+Hindoos. Many of the latter take a vow to touch no flesh of any kind.
+They are called _Kunthees_ or _Boghuts_, but a _Boghut_ is more of an
+ascetic than a _Kunthee_. However, the _Kunthee_ is glad of a fish
+dinner when he can get it. They are restricted to no particular sect or
+caste, but all who have taken the vow wear a peculiar necklace, made
+generally of sandal-wood beads or _neem_ beads round their throats.
+Hence the name, from _kunth_ meaning the throat.
+
+The right to fish in any particular piece of water, is let out by the
+proprietor on whose land the water lies, or through which it flows. The
+letting is generally done by auction yearly. The fishing is called a
+_shilkur_; from _shal_, a net. It is generally taken by some rich
+_Bunneah_ (grain seller) or village banker, who sub-lets it in turn to
+the fishermen.
+
+In some of the tanks which are not so let, and where the native
+proprietor preserves the fish, first-class sport can be had. A common
+native poaching dodge is this: if some oil cake be thrown into the
+water a few hours previous to your fishing, or better still, balls made
+of roasted linseed meal, mixed with bruised leaves of the 'sweet
+basil,' or _toolsee_ plant, the fish assemble in hundreds round the
+spot, and devour the bait greedily. With a good eighteen-foot rod, fish
+of from twelve to twenty pounds are not uncommonly caught, and will
+give good play too. Fishing in the plains of India is, however, rather
+tame sport at the best of times.
+
+You have heard of the famous _mahseer_--some of them over eighty or a
+hundred pounds weight? We have none of these in Behar, but the huge
+porpoise gives splendid rifle or carbine practice as he rolls through
+the turgid streams. They are difficult to hit, but I have seen several
+killed with ball; and the oil extracted from their bodies is a splendid
+dressing for harness. But the most exciting fishing I have ever seen
+was--What do you think?--Alligator fishing! Yes, the formidable scaly
+monster, with his square snout and terrible jaws, his ponderous body
+covered with armour, and his serrated tail, with which he could break
+the leg of a bullock, or smash an outrigger as easily as a whale could
+smash a jolly-boat.
+
+I must try to describe one day's alligator fishing.
+
+When I was down in Bhaugulpore, I went out frequently fishing in the
+various tanks and streams near my factory. My friend Pat, who is a keen
+sportsman and very fond of angling, wrote to me one day when he and his
+brother Willie were going out to the Teljuga, asking me to join their
+party. The Teljuga is the boundary stream between Tirhoot and
+Bhaugulpore, and its sluggish muddy waters teem with alligators--the
+regular square-nosed _mugger_, the terrible man-eater. The _nakar_ or
+long-nosed species may be seen in countless numbers in any of the large
+streams, stretched out on the banks basking in the noonday sun. Going
+down the Koosee particularly, you come across hundreds sometimes lying
+on one bank. As the boat nears them, they slide noiselessly and slowly
+into the stream. A large excrescence forms on the tip of the long
+snout, like a huge sponge; and this is often all that is seen on the
+surface of the water as the huge brute swims about waiting for his
+prey. These _nakars_, or long-nosed specimens, never attack human
+beings--at least such cases are very very rare--but live almost
+entirely on fish. I remember seeing one catch a paddy-bird on one
+occasion near the junction of the Koosee with the Ganges. My boat was
+fastened to the shore near a slimy creek, that came oozing into the
+river from some dense jungle near. I was washing my hands and face on
+the bank, and the boatmen were fishing with a small hand-net, for our
+breakfast. Numbers of attenuated melancholy-looking paddy-birds were
+stalking solemnly and stiltedly along the bank, also fishing for
+_theirs_. I noticed one who was particularly greedy, with his long legs
+half immersed in the water, constantly darting out his long bill and
+bringing up a hapless struggling fish. All of a sudden a long snout and
+the ugly serrated ridgy back of a _nakar_ was shot like lightning at
+the hapless bird, and right before our eyes the poor paddy was crunched
+up. As a rule, however, alligators confine themselves to a fish diet,
+and are glad of any refuse or dead animal that may float their way. But
+with the _mugger_, the _boach_, or square-nosed variety, 'all is fish
+that comes to his net.' His soul delights in young dog or live pork. A
+fat duck comes not amiss; and impelled by hunger he hesitates not to
+attack man. Once regaled with the flavour of human flesh, he takes up
+his stand near some ferry, or bathing ghaut, where many hapless women
+and children often fall victims to his unholy appetite, before his
+career is cut short.
+
+I remember shooting one ghastly old scaly villain in a tank near
+Ryseree. He had made this tank his home, and with that fatalism which
+is so characteristic of the Hindoo, the usual ablutions and bathings
+went on as if no such monster existed. Several woman having been
+carried off, however, at short intervals, the villagers asked me to try
+and rid them of their foe. I took a ride down to the tank one Friday
+morning, and found the banks a scene of great excitement. A woman had
+been carried off some hours before as she was filling her water jar,
+and the monster was now reposing at the bottom of the tank digesting
+his horrible meal. The tank was covered with crimson water-lilies in
+full bloom, their broad brown and green leaves showing off the crimson
+beauty of the open flower. At the north corner some wild rose bushes
+dropped over the water, casting a dense matted shade. Here was the
+haunt of the _mugger_. He had excavated a huge gloomy-looking hole,
+into which he retired when gorged with prey. My first care was to cut
+away some of these bushes, and then, finding he was not at home, we
+drove some bamboo stakes through the bank to prevent him getting into
+his _manu_, which is what the natives term the den or hole. I then sat
+down under a _goolar_ tree, to wait for his appearance. The _goolar_ is
+a species of fig, and the leaves are much relished by cattle and goats.
+Gradually the village boys and young men went off to their ploughing,
+or grass cutting for the cows' evening meal. A woman came down
+occasionally to fill her waterpot in evident fear and trembling. A
+swarm of _minas_ (the Indian starling) hopped and twittered round my
+feet. The cooing of a pair of amatory pigeons overhead nearly lulled me
+to slumber. A flock of green parrots came swiftly circling overhead,
+making for the fig-tree at the south end of the tank. An occasional
+_raho_ lazily rose among the water-lilies, and disappeared with an
+indolent flap of his tail. The brilliant kingfisher, resplendent in
+crimson and emerald, sat on the withered branch of a prostrate
+mango-tree close by, pluming his feathers and doubtless meditating on
+the vanity of life. Suddenly, close by the massive post which marks the
+centre of every Hindoo tank, a huge scaly snout slowly and almost
+imperceptibly rose to the surface, then a broad, flat, forbidding
+forehead, topped by two grey fishy eyes with warty-looking callosities
+for eyebrows. Just then an eager urchin who had been squatted by me for
+hours, pointed to the brute. It was enough. Down sank the loathsome
+creature, and we had to resume our attitude of expectation and patient
+waiting. Another hour passed slowly. It was the middle of the
+afternoon, and very hot. I had sent my _tokedar_ off for a 'peg' to the
+factory, and was beginning to get very drowsy, when, right in the same
+spot, the repulsive head again rose slowly to the surface. I had my
+trusty No. 12 to my shoulder on the instant, glanced carefully along
+the barrels, but just then only the eyes of the brute were invisible. A
+moment of intense excitement followed, and then, emboldened by the
+extreme stillness, he showed his whole head above the surface. I pulled
+the trigger, and a Meade shell crashed through the monster's skull,
+scattering his brains in the water and actually sending one splinter of
+the skull to the opposite edge of the tank, where my little Hindoo boy
+picked it up and brought it to me.
+
+There was a mighty agitation in the water; the water-lilies rocked to
+and fro, and the broad leaves glittered with the water drops thrown on
+them; then all was still. Hearing the report of my gun, the natives
+came flocking to the spot, and, telling them their enemy was slain, I
+departed, leaving instructions to let me know when the body came to the
+surface. It did so three days later. Getting some _chumars_ and _domes_
+(two of the lowest castes, as none of the higher castes will touch a
+dead body under pain of losing caste), we hauled the putrid carcase to
+shore, and on cutting it open, found the glass armlets and brass
+ornaments of no less than five women and the silver ornaments of three
+children, all in a lump in the brute's stomach. Its skull was
+completely smashed and shattered to pieces by my shot. Its teeth were
+crusted with tartar, and worn almost to the very stumps. It measured
+nineteen feet.
+
+But during this digression my friends Pat and Willie have been waiting
+on the banks of the 'Teljuga.' I reached their tents late at night,
+found them both in high spirits after a good day's execution among the
+ducks and teal, and preparations being made for catching an alligator
+next day. Up early in the morning, we beat some grass close by the
+stream, and roused out an enormous boar that gave us a three mile spin
+and a good fight, after Pat had given him first spear. After breakfast
+we got our tackle ready.
+
+This was a large iron hook with a strong shank, to which was attached a
+stout iron ring. To this ring a long thick rope was fastened, and I
+noticed for several yards the strands were all loose and detached, and
+only knotted at intervals. I asked Pat the reason of this curious
+arrangement, and was told that if we were lucky enough to secure a
+_mugger_, the loose strands would entangle themselves amongst his
+formidable teeth, whereas were the rope in one strand only he might
+bite it through; the knottings at intervals were to give greater
+strength to the line. We now got our bait ready. On this occasion it
+was a live tame duck. Passing the bend of the hook round its neck, and
+the shank under its right wing, we tied the hook in this position with
+thread. We then made a small raft of the soft pith of the
+plantain-tree, tied the duck to the raft and committed it to the
+stream. Holding the rope as clear of the water as we could, the poor
+quacking duck floated slowly down the muddy current, making an
+occasional vain effort to get free. We saw at a distance an ugly snout
+rise to the surface for an instant and then noiselessly disappear.
+
+'There's one!' says Pat in a whisper.
+
+'Be sure and not strike too soon,' says Willie.
+
+'Look out there, you lazy rascals!' This in Hindostanee to the grooms
+and servants who were with us.
+
+Again the black mass rises to the surface, but this time nearer to the
+fated duck. As if aware of its peril it now struggles and quacks most
+vociferously. Nearer and nearer each time the black snout rises, and
+then each time silently disappears beneath the turgid muddy stream. Now
+it appears again; this time there are two, and there is another at a
+distance attracted by the quacking of the duck. We on the bank cower
+down and go as noiselessly as we can. Sometimes the rope dips on the
+water, and the huge snout and staring eyes immediately disappear. At
+length it rises within a few yards of the duck; then there is a mighty
+rush, two huge jaws open and shut with a snap like factory shears, and
+amid a whirl of foam and water and surging mud the poor duck and the
+hideous reptile disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense
+volumes of mud that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the
+tragedy that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim
+to and fro still further disturbing the muddy current.
+
+'Give him lots of time to swallow,' yells Pat, now fairly mad with
+excitement.
+
+The grooms and grass-cutters howl and dance. Willie and I dig each
+other in the ribs, and all generally act in an excited and insane way.
+
+Pat now puts the rope over his shoulder, we all take hold, and with a
+'one, two, three!' we make a simultaneous rush from the bank, and as
+the rope suddenly tightens with a pull and strain that nearly jerks us
+all on our backs, we feel that we have hooked the monster, and our
+excitement reaches its culminating point.
+
+What a commotion now in the black depths of the muddy stream! The
+water, lashed by his powerful tail, surges and dashes in eddying
+whirls. He rises and darts backwards and forwards, snapping his
+horrible jaws, moving his head from side to side, his eyes glaring with
+fury. We hold stoutly on to the rope, although our wrists are strained
+and our arms ache. At length he begins to feel our steady pull, and
+inch by inch, struggling demoniacally, he nears the bank. When once he
+reaches it, however, the united efforts of twice our number would fail
+to bring him farther. Bleeding and foaming at the mouth, his horrid
+teeth glistening amid the frothy, blood-flecked foam, he plants his
+strong curved fore-legs against the shelving bank, and tugs and strains
+at the rope with devilish force and fury. It is no use--the rope has
+been tested, and answers bravely to the strain; and now with a long
+boar spear, Pat cautiously descends the bank, and gives him a deadly
+thrust under the fore arm. With a last fiendish glare of hate and
+defiance, he springs forward; we haul in the rope, Pat nimbly jumps
+back, and a pistol shot through the eye settles the monster for ever.
+This was the first alligator I ever saw hooked; he measured sixteen and
+a half feet exactly, but words can give no idea of half the excitement
+that attended the capture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Native superstitions.--Charming a bewitched woman.--Exorcising ghosts
+from a field.--Witchcraft.--The witchfinder or 'Ojah.'--Influence of
+fear.--Snake bites.--How to cure them.--How to discover a thief.--Ghosts
+and their habits.--The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.--Cruelty to
+animals by natives.
+
+The natives as a rule, and especially the lower classes, are
+excessively superstitious. They are afraid to go out after nightfall,
+believing that then the spirits of the dead walk abroad. It is almost
+impossible to get a coolie, or even a fairly intelligent servant, to go
+a message at night, unless you give him another man for company.
+
+A belief in witches is quite prevalent, and there is scarcely a village
+in Behar that does not contain some withered old crone, reputed and
+firmly believed to be a witch. Others, either young or old are believed
+to have the evil eye; and, as in Scotland some centuries ago, there are
+also witch-finders and sorcerers, who will sell charms, cast
+nativities, give divinations, or ward off the evil efforts of wizards
+and witches by powerful spells. When a wealthy man has a child born,
+the Brahmins cast the nativity of the infant on some auspicious day.
+They fix on the name, and settle the date for the baptismal ceremony.
+
+I remember a man coming to me on one occasion from the village of
+Kuppoorpuckree. He rushed up to where I was sitting in the verandah,
+threw himself at my feet, with tears streaming down his cheeks, and
+amid loud cries for pity and help, told me that his wife had just been
+bewitched. Getting him somewhat soothed and pacified, I learned that a
+reputed witch lived next door to his house; that she and the man's wife
+had quarrelled in the morning about some capsicums which the witch was
+trying to steal from his garden; that in the evening, as his wife was
+washing herself inside the _angana_, or little courtyard appertaining
+to his house, she was seized with cramps and shivering fits, and was
+now in a raging fever; that the witch had been also bathing at the
+time, and that the water from her body had splashed over this man's
+fence, and part of it had come in contact with his wife's body--hence
+undoubtedly this strange possession. He wished me to send peons at
+once, and have the witch seized, beaten, and expelled from the village.
+It would have been no use my trying to persuade him that no witchcraft
+existed. So I gave him a good dose of quinine for his wife, which she
+was to take as soon as the fit subsided. Next I got my old _moonshee_,
+or native writer, to write some Persian characters on a piece of paper;
+I then gave him this paper, muttering a bit of English rhyme at the
+time, and telling him this was a powerful spell. I told him to take
+three hairs from his wife's head, and a paring from her thumb and big
+toe nails, and at the rising of the moon to burn them outside the walls
+of his hut. The poor fellow took the quinine and the paper with the
+deepest reverence, made me a most lowly _salaam_ or obeisance, and
+departed with a light heart. He carried out my instructions to the
+letter, the quinine acted like a charm on the feverish woman, and I
+found myself quite a famous witch-doctor.
+
+There was a nice flat little field close to the water at Parewah, in
+which I thought I could get a good crop of oats during the cold
+weather. I sent for the 'dangur' mates, and asked them to have it dug
+up next day. They hummed and hawed and hesitated, as I thought, in
+rather a strange manner, but departed. In the evening back they came,
+to tell me that the dangurs would _not_ dig up the field.
+
+'Why?' I asked.
+
+'Well you see, Sahib,' said old Teerbouan, who was the patriarch and
+chief spokesman of the village, 'this field has been used for years as
+a burning ghaut' (i.e. a place where the bodies of dead Hindoos were
+buried).
+
+'Well?' said I.
+
+'Well, Sahib, my men say that if they disturb this land, the "Bhoots"
+(ghosts) of all those who have been burned there, will haunt the
+village at night, and they hope you will not persist in asking them to
+dig up the land.'
+
+'Very well, bring down the men with their digging-hoes, and I will
+see.'
+
+Accordingly, next morning, I went down on my pony, found the dangurs
+all assembled, but no digging going on. I called them together, told
+them that it was a very reasonable fear they had, but that I would cast
+such a spell on the land as would settle the ghosts of the departed for
+ever. I then got a branch of a _bael_[1] tree that grew close by,
+dipped it in the stream, and walking backwards round the ground, waved
+the dripping branch round my head, repeating at the same time the first
+gibberish that came into my recollection. My incantation or spell was
+as follows, an old Scotch rhyme I had often repeated when a child at
+school--
+
+  'Eenerty, feenerty, fickerty, feg,
+  Ell, dell, domun's egg;
+  Irky, birky, story, rock,
+  An, tan, toose, Jock;
+  Black fish! white troot!
+  "Gibbie Gaw, ye're oot."'
+
+It had the desired effect. No sooner was my charm uttered, than, after
+a few encouraging words to the men, telling them that there was now no
+fear, that my charm was powerful enough to lay all the spirits in the
+country, and that I would take all the responsibility, they set to work
+with a will, and had the whole field dug up by the evening.
+
+I have seen many such cases. A blight attacks the melon or cucumber
+beds; a fierce wind rises during the night, and shakes half the mangoes
+off the trees; the youngest child is attacked with teething
+convulsions; the plough-bullock is accidentally lamed, or the favourite
+cow refuses to give milk. In every case it is some 'Dyne,' or witch,
+that has been at work with her damnable spells and charms. I remember a
+case in which a poor little child had bad convulsions. The 'Ojah,' or
+witch-finder, in this case a fat, greasy, oleaginous knave, was sent
+for. Full of importance and blowing like a porpoise, he came and caused
+the child to be brought to him, under a tree near the village. I was
+passing at the time, and stopped out of curiosity. He spread a tattered
+cloth in front of him, and muttered some unintelligible gibberish,
+unceasingly making strange passes with his arms. He put down a number
+of articles on his cloth--which was villainously tattered and
+greasy--an unripe plantain, a handful of rice, of parched peas, a thigh
+bone, two wooden cups, some balls, &c., &c.; all of which he kept
+constantly lifting and moving about, keeping up the passes and
+muttering all the time.
+
+The child was a sickly-looking, pining sort of creature, rocking about
+in evident pain, and moaning and fretting just as sick children do.
+Gradually its attention got fixed on the strange antics going on. The
+Ojah kept muttering away, quicker and quicker, constantly shifting the
+bone and cups and other articles on the cloth. His body was suffused
+with perspiration, but in about half an hour the child had gone off to
+sleep, and attended by some dozen old women, and the anxious father,
+was borne off in triumph to the house.
+
+Another time one of Mr. D.'s female servants got bitten by a scorpion.
+The poor woman was in great agony, with her arm swelled up, when an
+Ojah was called in. Setting her before him, he began his incantations
+in the usual manner, but made frequent passes over her body, and over
+the bitten place. A gentle perspiration began to break out on her skin,
+and in a very short time the Ojah had thrown her into a deep mesmeric
+sleep. After about an hour she awoke perfectly free from pain. In this
+case no doubt the Ojah was a mesmerist.
+
+The influence of fear on the ordinary native is most wonderful. I have
+known dozens of instances in which natives have been brought home at
+night for treatment in cases of snake-bite. They have arrived at the
+factory in a complete state of coma, with closed eyes, the pupils
+turned back in the head, the whole body rigid and cold, the lips pale
+white, and the tongue firmly locked between the teeth. I do not believe
+in recovery from a really poisonous bite, where the venom has been
+truly injected. I invariably asked first how long it was since the
+infliction of the bite; I would then examine the marks, and as a rule
+would find them very slight. When the patient had been brought some
+distance, I knew at once that it was a case of pure fright. The natives
+wrap themselves up in their cloths or blankets at night, and lie down
+on the floors of their huts. Turning about, or getting up for water or
+tobacco, or perhaps to put fuel on the fire, they unluckily tread on a
+snake, or during sleep they roll over on one. The snake gives them a
+nip, and scuttles off. They have not seen what sort of snake it is, but
+their imagination conjures up the very worst. After the first outcry,
+when the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly possessed by
+the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his fears work the
+effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye gets dull, his
+pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb, and unless forcibly
+roused by the bystanders he will actually succumb to pure fright, not
+to the snake-bite at all. My chief care when a case of this sort was
+brought me, was to assume a cheery demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears
+of the relatives, and tell them he would be all right in a few hours if
+they attended to my directions. This not uncommonly worked by
+sympathetic influence on the patient himself. I believe, so long as all
+round him thought he was going to die, and expected no other result,
+the same effect was produced on his own mind. As soon as hope sprang up
+in the breasts of all around him, his spirit also caught the contagion.
+As a rule, he would now make an effort to articulate. I would then
+administer a good dose of sal volatile, brandy, eau-de-luce, or other
+strong stimulant, cut into the supposed bite, and apply strong nitric
+acid to the wound. This generally made him wince, and I would hail it
+as a token of certain recovery. By this time some confidence would
+return, and the supposed dying man would soon walk back sound and whole
+among his companions after profuse expressions of gratitude to his
+preserver.
+
+I have treated dozens of cases in this way successfully, and only seen
+two deaths. One was a young woman, my chowkeydar's daughter; the other
+was an old man, who was already dead when they lifted him out of the
+basket in which they had slung him. I do not wish to be misunderstood.
+I believe that in all these cases of recovery it was pure fright
+working on the imagination, and not snake-bite at all. My opinion is
+shared by most planters, that there is no cure yet known for a cobra
+bite, or for that of any other poisonous snake, where the poison has
+once been fairly injected and allowed to mix with the blood[2].
+
+There is another curious instance of the effects of fear on the native
+mind in the common method taken by an Ojah or Brahmin to discover a
+suspected thief. When a theft occurs, the Ojah is sent for, and the
+suspected parties are brought together. After various _muntras_, i.e.
+charms or incantations, have been muttered, the Ojah, who has meanwhile
+narrowly scrutinized each countenance, gives each of the suspected
+individuals a small quantity of dry rice to chew. If the thief be
+present, his superstitious fears are at work, and his conscience
+accuses him. He sees some terrible retribution for him in all these
+_muntras_, and his heart becomes like water within him, his tongue gets
+dry, his salivary glands refuse to act; the innocent munch away at
+their rice contentedly, but the guilty wretch feels as if he had ashes
+in his mouth. At a given signal all spit out their rice, and he whose
+rice comes out, chewed indeed, but dry as summer dust, is adjudged the
+thief. This ordeal is called _chowl chipao_, and is rarely
+unsuccessful. I have known several cases in my own experience in which
+a thief has been thus discovered.
+
+The _bhoots_, or ghosts, are popularly supposed to have favourite
+haunts, generally in some specially selected tree; the _neem_ tree is
+supposed to be the most patronised. The most intelligent natives share
+this belief with the poorest and most ignorant; they fancy the ghosts
+throw stones at them, cast evil influences over them, lure them into
+quicksands, and play other devilish tricks and cantrips. Some roads are
+quite shunned and deserted at night, for no other reason than that a
+ghost is supposed to haunt the place. The most tempting bribe would not
+make a native walk alone over that road after sunset.
+
+Besides the witchfinder, another important village functionary who
+relies much on muntras and charms, is the _Huddick_, or cow doctor. He
+is the only veterinary surgeon of the native when his cow or bullock
+dislocates or breaks a limb, or falls ill. The Huddick passes his hands
+over the affected part, and mutters his _muntras_, which have most
+probably descended to him from his father. Usually knowing a little of
+the anatomical structure of the animal, he may be able to reduce a
+dislocation, or roughly to set a fracture; but if the ailment be
+internal, a draught of mustard oil, or some pounded spices and
+turmeric, or neem leaves administered along with the _muntra_, are
+supposed to be all that human skill and science can do.
+
+The natives are cruel to animals. Half-starved bullocks are shamefully
+overworked. When blows fail to make the ill-starred brute move, they
+give a twist and wrench to the tail, which must cause the animal
+exquisite torture, and unless the hapless beast be utterly exhausted,
+this generally induces it to make a further effort. Ploughmen very
+often deliberately make a raw open sore, one on each rump of the
+plough-bullock. They goad the poor wretch on this raw sore with a
+sharp-pointed stick when he lags, or when they think he needs stirring
+up. Ponies, too, are always worked far too young; and their miserable
+legs get frightfully twisted and bent. The petty shopkeepers, sellers
+of brass pots, grain, spices, and other bazaar wares, who attend the
+various bazaars, or weekly and bi-weekly markets, transport their goods
+by means of these ponies.
+
+The packs of merchandise are slung on rough pack-saddles, made of
+coarse sacking. Shambling along with knees bent together, sores on
+every joint, and frequently an eye knocked out, the poor pony's back
+gets cruelly galled; when the bazaar is reached, he is hobbled as
+tightly as possible, the coarse ropes cutting into the flesh, and he is
+then turned adrift to contemplate starvation on the burnt-up grass.
+Great open sores form on the back, on which a plaster of moist clay, or
+cowdung and pounded leaves, is roughly put. The wretched creature gets
+worn to a skeleton. A little common care and cleanliness would put him
+right, with a little kindly consideration from his brutal master, but
+what does the _Kulwar_ or _Bunneah_ care? he is too lazy.
+
+This unfeeling cruelty and callous indifference to the sufferings of
+the lower animals is a crying evil, and every magistrate, European, and
+educated native, might do much to ease their burdens. Tremendous
+numbers of bullocks and ponies die from sheer neglect and ill treatment
+every year. It is now becoming so serious a trouble, that in many
+villages plough-bullocks are too few in number for the area of land
+under cultivation. The tillage suffers, the crops deteriorate, this
+reacts on prices, the ryot sinks lower and lower, and gets more into
+the grasp of the rapacious money-lender. In many villages I have seen
+whole tracts of land relapsed into _purtee_, or untilled waste, simply
+from want of bullocks to draw the plough. Severe epidemics, like foot
+and mouth disease and pleuro, occasionally sweep off great numbers;
+but, I repeat, that annually the lives of hundreds of valuable animals
+are sacrificed by sheer sloth, dirt, inattention, and brutal cruelty.
+
+In some parts of India, cattle poisoning for the sake of the hides is
+extensively practised. The _Chumars_, that is, the shoemakers,
+furriers, tanners, and workers in leather and skins generally,
+frequently combine together in places, and wilfully poison cattle and
+buffaloes. There is actually a section in the penal code taking
+cognisance of the crime. The Hindoo will not touch a dead carcase, so
+that when a bullock mysteriously sickens and dies, the _Chumars_ haul
+away the body, and appropriate the skin. Some luckless witch is blamed
+for the misfortune, when the rascally Chumars themselves are all the
+while the real culprits. The police, however, are pretty successful in
+detecting this crime, and it is not now of such frequent occurrence
+[3].
+
+Highly as the pious Hindoo venerates the sacred bull of Shira, his
+treatment of his mild patient beasts of burden is a foul blot on his
+character. Were you to shoot a cow, or were a Mussulman to wound a
+stray bullock which might have trespassed, and be trampling down his
+opium or his tobacco crop, and ruining his fields, the Hindoos would
+rise _en masse_ to revenge the insult offered to their religion. Yet
+they scruple not to goad their bullocks, beat them, half starve them,
+and let their gaping wounds fester and become corrupt. When the poor
+brute becomes old and unable to work, and his worn-out teeth unfit to
+graze, he is ruthlessly turned out to die in a ditch, and be torn to
+pieces by jackals, kites, and vultures. The higher classes and
+well-to-do farmers show much consideration for high-priced
+well-conditioned animals, but when they get old or unwell, and demand
+redoubled care and attention, they are too often neglected, till, from
+sheer want of ordinary care, they rot and die.
+
+
+[1] The _bael_ or wood-apple is a sacred wood with Hindoos. It is
+    enjoined in the Shastras that the bodies of the dead should be
+    consumed in a fire fed by logs of bael-tree; but where it is not
+    procurable in sufficient quantity, the natives compound with their
+    consciences by lighting the funeral pyre with a branch from the
+    bael-tree. It is a fine yellow-coloured, pretty durable wood, and
+    makes excellent furniture. A very fine sherbet can be made from
+    the fruit, which acts as an excellent corrective and stomachic.
+
+[2] Deaths from actual snake bite are sadly numerous; but it appears
+    from returns furnished to the Indian Government that Europeans
+    enjoy a very happy exemption. During the last forty years it would
+    seem that only two Europeans have been killed by snake bite, at
+    least only two well substantiated cases. The poorer classes are
+    the most frequent victims. Their universal habit of walking about
+    unshod, and sleeping on the ground, penetrating into the grasses
+    or jungles in pursuit of their daily avocations, no doubt conduces
+    much to the frequency of such accidents. A good plan to keep
+    snakes out of the bungalow is to leave a space all round the
+    rooms, of about four inches, between the walls and the edge of the
+    mats. Have this washed over about once a week with a strong
+    solution of carbolic acid and water. The smell may be unpleasant
+    for a short time, but it proves equally so to the snakes; and I
+    have proved by experience that it keeps them out of the rooms.
+    Mats should also be all firmly fastened down to the floor with
+    bamboo battens, and furniture should be often moved, and kept
+    raised a little from the ground, and the space below carefully
+    swept every day. At night a light should always be kept burning in
+    occupied bedrooms, and on no account should one get out of bed in
+    the dark, or walk about the rooms at night without slippers or
+    shoes.
+
+[3] Somewhat analogous to this is the custom which used to be a
+    common one in some parts of Behar. _Koombars_ and _Grannés_, that
+    is, tile-makers and thatchers, when trade was dull or rain
+    impending, would scatter peas and grain in the interstices of the
+    tiles on the houses of the well-to-do. The pigeons and crows, in
+    their efforts to get at the peas, would loosen and perhaps
+    overturn a few of the tiles. The grannés would be sent for to
+    replace these, would condemn the whole roof as leaky, and the
+    tiles as old and unfit for use, and would provide a job for
+    himself and the tile-maker, the nefarious profits of which they
+    would share together.
+
+    Cultivators of thatching-grass have been known deliberately and
+    wantonly to set fire to villages simply to raise the price of
+    thatch and bamboo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Our annual race meet.--The arrivals.--The camps.--The 'ordinary.'--The
+course.--'They're off.'--The race.--The steeple-chase.--Incidents of
+the meet.--The ball.
+
+Our annual Race Meet is the one great occasion of the year when all the
+dwellers in the district meet. Our races in Chumparun generally took
+place some time about Christmas. Long before the date fixed on,
+arrangements would be made for the exercise of hearty hospitality. The
+residents in the 'station' ask as many guests as will fill their
+houses, and their 'compounds' are crowded with tents, each holding a
+number of visitors, generally bachelors. The principal managers of the
+factories in the district, with their assistants, form a mess for the
+racing week, and, not unfrequently, one or two ladies lend their
+refining presence to the several camps. Friends from other districts,
+from up country, from Calcutta, gather together; and as the weather is
+bracing and cool, and every one determined to enjoy himself, the meet
+is one of the pleasantest of reunions. There are always several races
+specially got up for assistants' horses, and long before, the
+youngsters are up in the early morning, giving their favourite nag a
+spin across the zeraats, or seeing the groom lead him out swathed in
+clothing and bandages, to get him into training for the Assistants'
+race.
+
+As the day draws near, great cases of tinned meats, hampers of beer and
+wine, and goodly supplies of all sorts are sent into the station to the
+various camps. Tents of snowy white canvas begin to peep out at you
+from among the trees. Great oblong booths of blue indigo sheeting show
+where the temporary stables for the horses are being erected; and at
+night the glittering of innumerable camp-fires betokens the presence of
+a whole army of grooms, grass-cutters, peons, watchmen, and other
+servants cooking their evening meal of rice, and discussing the chances
+of the horses of their respective masters in the approaching races. On
+the day before the first racing, the planters are up early, and in
+buggy, dogcart, or on horseback, singly, and by twos and threes, from
+all sides of the district, they find their way to the station. The
+Planter's Club is the general rendezvous. The first comers, having
+found out their waiting servants, and consigned the smoking steeds to
+their care, seat themselves in the verandah, and eagerly watch every
+fresh arrival.
+
+Up comes a buggy. 'Hullo, who's this?'
+
+'Oh, it's "Giblets!" How do you do, "Giblets," old man?'
+
+Down jumps 'Giblets,' and a general handshaking ensues.
+
+'Here comes "Boach" and the "Moonshee,"' yells out an observant
+youngster from the back verandah.
+
+The venerable buggy of the esteemed 'Boach' approaches, and another
+jubilation takes place; the handshaking being so vigorous that the
+'Moonshee's' spectacles nearly come to grief. Now the arrivals ride and
+drive up fast and furious.
+
+'Hullo, "Anthony!"'
+
+'Aha, "Charley," how d'ye do?'
+
+'By Jove, "Ferdie," where have you turned up from?'
+
+'Has the "Skipper" arrived?'
+
+'Have any of you seen "Jamie?"'
+
+'Where's big "Mars'" tents?'
+
+'Have any of ye seen my "Bearer?"'
+
+'Has the "Bump" come in?' and so on.
+
+Such a scene of bustle and excitement. Friends meet that have not seen
+each other for a twelvemonth. Queries are exchanged as to absent
+friends. The chances of the meeting are discussed. Perhaps a passing
+allusion is made to some dear one who has left our ranks since last
+meet. All sorts of topics are started, and up till and during breakfast
+there is a regular medley of tongues, a confused clatter of voices,
+dishes, and glasses, a pervading atmosphere of dense curling volumes of
+tobacco smoke.
+
+To a stranger the names sound uncouth and meaningless, the fact being,
+that we all go by nicknames[1].
+
+'Giblets,' 'Diamond Digger,' 'Mangelwurzel,' 'Goggle-eyed Plover,'
+'Gossein' or holy man, 'Blind Bartimeus,' 'Old Boots,' 'Polly,'
+'Bottle-nosed Whale,' 'Fin MacCoul,' 'Daddy,' 'The Exquisite,' 'The
+Mosquito,' 'Wee Bob,' and 'Napoleon,' are only a very few specimens of
+this strange nomenclature. These soubriquets quite usurp our baptismal
+appellations, and I have often been called 'Maori,' by people who did
+not actually know my real name.
+
+By the evening, all, barring the very late arrivals, have found out
+their various camps. There is a merry dinner, then each sahib, well
+muffled in ulster, plaid, or great coat, hies him to the club, where
+the 'ordinary' is to be held. The nights are now cold and foggy, and a
+tremendous dew falls. At the 'ordinary,' fresh greetings between those
+who now meet for the first time after long separation. The entries and
+bets are made for the morrow's races, although not much betting takes
+place as a rule; but the lotteries on the different races are rapidly
+filled, the dice circulate cheerily, and amid laughing, joking,
+smoking, noise, and excitement, there is a good deal of mild
+speculation. The 'horsey' ones visit the stables for the last time; and
+each retires to his camp bed to dream of the morrow.
+
+Very early, the respective _bearers_ rouse the sleepy _sahibs_. Table
+servants rush hurriedly about the mess tent, bearing huge dishes of
+tempting viands. Grooms, and _grasscuts_ are busy leading the horses
+off to the course. The cold raw fog of the morning fills every tent,
+and dim grey figures of cowering natives, wrapped up over the eyes in
+blankets, with moist blue noses and chattering teeth, are barely
+discernible in the thick mist.
+
+The racecourse is two miles from the club, on the other side of the
+lake, in the middle of a grassy plain, with a neat masonry structure at
+the further side, which serves as a grand stand. Already buggies,
+dogcarts in single harness and tandem, barouches, and waggonettes are
+merrily rolling through the thick mist, past the frowning jail, and
+round the corner of the lake. Natives in gaudy coloured shawls, and
+blankets, are pouring on to the racecourse by hundreds.
+
+Bullock carts, within which are black-eyed, bold beauties, profusely
+burdened with silver ornaments, are drawn up in lines. _Ekkas_--small
+jingling vehicles with a dome-shaped canopy and curtains at the
+sides--drawn by gaily caparisoned ponies, and containing fat, portly
+Baboos, jingle and rattle over the ruts on the side roads.
+
+Sweetmeat sellers, with trays of horrible looking filth, made seemingly
+of insects, clarified butter, and sugar, dodge through the crowd
+dispensing their abominable looking but seemingly much relished wares.
+Tall policemen, with blue jackets, red puggries, yellow belts, and
+white trousers, stalk up and down with conscious dignity.
+
+A madcap young assistant on his pony comes tearing along across
+country. The weighing for the first race is going on; horses are being
+saddled, some vicious brute occasionally lashing out, and scattering
+the crowd behind him. The ladies are seated round the terraced grand
+stand; long strings of horses are being led round and round in a
+circle, by the _syces_; vehicles of every description are lying round
+the building.
+
+Suddenly a bugle sounds; the judge enters his box; the ever popular old
+'Bikram,' who officiates as starter, ambles off on his white cob, and
+after him go half-a-dozen handsome young fellows, their silks rustling
+and flashing through the fast rising mist.
+
+A hundred field-glasses scan the start; all is silent for a moment.
+
+'They're off!' shout a dozen lungs.
+
+'False start!' echo a dozen more.
+
+The gay colours of the riders flicker confusedly in a jumble. One horse
+careers madly along for half the distance, is with difficulty pulled
+up, and is then walked slowly back.
+
+The others left at the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At
+length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!'
+shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!'
+breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the six horses,
+all together, and at a rattling pace, tear up the hill, over the sand
+at the south corner, and up, till at the quarter mile post 'a blanket
+could cover the lot.'
+
+Two or three tails are now showing signals of distress; heels and whips
+are going. Two horses have shot ahead, a bay and a black. 'Jamie' on
+the bay, 'Paddy' on the black.
+
+Still as marble sit those splendid riders, the horses are neck and
+neck; now the bay by a nose, now again the black. The distance post is
+passed with a rush like a whirlwind.
+
+'A dead heat, by Jove!'
+
+'Paddy wins!' 'Jamie has it!' 'Hooray, Pat!' 'Go it, Jamie!' 'Well
+ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent
+racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses
+through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a
+nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up
+a lively air, and the saddling for the next race goes on.
+
+The other races are much the same; there are lots of entries: the
+horses are in splendid condition, and the riding is superb. What is
+better, everything is emphatically 'on the square.' No _pulling_ and
+_roping_ here, no false entries, no dodging of any kind. Fine, gallant,
+English gentlemen meet each other in fair and honest emulation, and
+enjoy the favourite national sport in perfection. The 'Waler' race, for
+imported Australians, brings out fine, tall, strong-boned, clean-limbed
+horses, looking blood all over. The country breds, with slender limbs,
+small heads, and glossy coats, look dainty and delicate as antelopes.
+The lovely, compact Arabs, the pretty-looking ponies, and the
+thick-necked, coarse-looking Cabools, all have their respective trials,
+and then comes the great event--the race of the day--the Steeplechase.
+
+The course is marked out behind the grand stand, following a wide
+circle outside the flat course, which it enters at the quarter-mile
+post, so that the finish is on the flat before the grand stand. The
+fences, ditches, and water leap, are all artificial, but they are
+regular _howlers_, and no make-believes.
+
+Seven horses are despatched to a straggling start, and all negotiate
+the first bank safely. At the next fence a regular _snorter_ of a 'post
+and rail'--topped with brushwood--two horses swerve, one rider being
+deposited on his racing seat upon mother earth, while the other sails
+away across country in a line for home, and is next heard of at the
+stables. The remaining five, three 'walers' and two country-breds, race
+together to the water jump, where one waler deposits his rider, and
+races home by himself, one country-bred refuses, and is henceforth out
+of the race, and the other three, taking the leap in beautiful style,
+put on racing pace to the next bank, and are in the air together. A
+lovely sight! The country is now stiff, and the stride of the waler
+tells. He is leading the country-breds a 'whacker,' but he stumbles and
+falls at the last fence but one from home. His gallant rider, the
+undaunted 'Roley,' remounts just as the two country-breds pass him like
+a flash of light. 'Nothing venture, nothing win,' however, so in go the
+spurs, and off darts the waler like an arrow in pursuit. He is gaining
+fast, and tops the last hurdle leading to the straight just as the
+hoofs of the other two reach the ground.
+
+It is now a matter of pace and good riding. It will be a close finish;
+the waler is first to feel the whip; there is a roar from the crowd; he
+is actually leading; whips and spurs are hard at work now; it is a mad,
+headlong rush; every muscle is strained, and the utmost effort made;
+the poor horses are doing their very best; amid a thunder of hoofs,
+clouds of dust, hats in air, waving of handkerchiefs from the grand
+stand, and a truly British cheer from the paddock, the 'waler' shoots
+in half a length ahead; and so end the morning's races.
+
+Back to camp now, to bathe and breakfast. A long line of dust marks the
+track from the course, for the sun is now high in the heavens, the lake
+is rippling in placid beauty under a gentle breeze, and the long lines
+of natives, as well as vehicles of all sorts, form a quaint but
+picturesque sight. After breakfast calls are made upon all the camps
+and bungalows round the station. Croquet, badminton, and other games go
+on until dinner-time. I could linger lovingly over a camp dinner; the
+rare dishes, the sparkling conversation, the racy anecdote, and the
+general jollity and brotherly feeling; but we must all dress for the
+ball, and so about 9 P.M. the buggies are again in requisition for the
+ball room--the fine, large, central apartment in the Planters' club.
+
+The walls are festooned with flowers, gay curtains, flags, and cloths.
+The floor is shining like silver, and as polished as a mirror. The band
+strikes up the Blue Danube waltz, and amid the usual bustle,
+flirtation, scandal, whispering, glancing, dancing, tripping, sipping,
+and hand-squeezing, the ball goes gaily on till the stewards announce
+supper. At this--to the wall-flowers--welcome announcement, we adjourn
+from the heated ball-room to the cool arbour-like supper tent, where
+every delicacy that can charm the eye or tempt the appetite is spread
+out.
+
+Next morning early we are out with the hounds, and enjoy a rattling
+burst round by the racecourse, where the horses are at exercise.
+Perchance we have heard of a boar in the sugar-cane, and away we go
+with beaters to rouse the grisly monster from his lair. In the
+afternoon there is hockey on horseback, or volunteer drill, with our
+gallant adjutant putting us through our evolutions. In the evening
+there is the usual drive, dinner, music, and the ordinary, and so the
+meet goes on. A constant succession of gaieties keeps everyone alive,
+till the time arrives for a return to our respective factories, and
+another year's hard work.
+
+
+[1] In such a limited society every peculiarity is noted; all our
+    antecedents are known; personal predilections and little foibles
+    of character are marked; eccentricities are watched, and no one,
+    let him be as uninteresting as a miller's pig, is allowed to
+    escape observation and remark. Some little peculiarity is hit
+    upon, and a strange but often very happily expressive nickname
+    stamps one's individuality and photographs him with a word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Pig-sticking in India.--Varieties of boar.--Their size and height.
+--Ingenious mode of capture by the natives,--The 'Batan' or buffalo
+herd.--Pigs charging.--Their courage and ferocity.--Destruction of
+game.--A close season for game.
+
+The sport _par excellence_ of India is pig-sticking. Call it
+hog-hunting if you will, I prefer the honest old-fashioned name. With a
+good horse under one, a fair country, with not too many pitfalls, and
+'lots of pig,' this sport becomes the most exciting that can be
+practised. Some prefer tiger shooting from elephants, others like to
+stalk the lordly ibex on the steep Himalayan slopes, but anyone who has
+ever enjoyed a rattle after a pig over a good country, will recall the
+fierce, delight, the eager thrill, the wild, mad excitement, that
+flushed his whole frame, as he met the infuriate charge of a good
+thirty-inch fighting boar, and drove his trusty spear well home, laying
+low the gallant grey tusker, the indomitable, unconquerable grisly
+boar. The subject is well worn; and though the theme is a noble one,
+there are but few I fancy who have not read the record of some gallant
+fight, where the highest skill, the finest riding, the most undaunted
+pluck, and the cool, keen, daring of a practised hand are not _always_
+successful against the headlong rush and furious charge of a Bengal
+boar at bay.
+
+A record of planter life in India, however, such as this aims at being,
+would be incomplete without some reference to the gallant tusker, and
+so at the risk of tiring my readers, I must try to describe a
+pig-sticking party.
+
+There are two distinct kinds of boar in India, the black and the grey.
+Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer and more
+pugnacious. He is a vicious and implacable foe when roused, and always
+shews better fight than the black variety. The great difference,
+however, is in the shape of the skull; that of the black fellow being
+high over the frontal bone, and not very long in proportion to height,
+while the skull of the grey boar is never very high, but is long, and
+receding in proportion to height.
+
+The black boar grows to an enormous size, and the grey ones are,
+generally speaking, smaller made animals than the black. The young of
+the two also differ in at least one important particular; those of the
+grey pig are always born striped, but the young of the black variety
+are born of that colour, and are not striped but a uniform black colour
+throughout. The two kinds of pig sometimes interbreed, but crosses are
+not common; and, from the colour, size, shape of the head, and general
+behaviour, one can easily tell at a glance what kind of pig gets up
+before his spear, whether it is the heavy, sluggish black boar, or the
+veritable fiery, vicious, fighting grey tusker.
+
+Many stories are told of their enormous size, and a 'forty-inch tusker'
+is the established standard for a Goliath among boars. The best
+fighting boars, however, range from twenty-eight to thirty-two inches
+in height, and I make bold to say that very few of the Present
+generation of sportsmen have ever seen a veritable wild boar over
+thirty-eight inches high.
+
+G.S., who has had perhaps as much jungle experience as any man of
+his age in India, a careful observer, and a finished sportsman,
+tells me that the biggest _boar_ he ever saw was only thirty-eight
+inches high; while the biggest _pig_ he ever killed was a barren
+sow, with three-inch tusks sticking out of her gums; she measured
+thirty-nine-and-a-half inches, and fought like a demon. I have shot
+pig--in heavy jungle where spearing was impracticable--over thirty-six
+inches high, but the biggest pig I ever stuck to my own spear was only
+twenty-eight inches, and I do not think any pig has been killed in
+Chumparun, within the last ten or a dozen years at any rate, over
+thirty-eight inches.
+
+In some parts of India, where pigs are numerous and the jungle dense,
+the natives adopt a very ingenious mode of hunting. I have frequently
+seen it practised by the cowherds on the Koosee _derahs_, i.e. the flat
+swampy jungles on the banks of the Koosee. When the annual floods have
+subsided, leaving behind a thick deposit of mud, wrack, and brushwood,
+the long thick grass soon shoots up to an amazing height, and vast
+herds of cattle and tame buffaloes come down to the jungles from the
+interior of the country, where natural pasture is scarce. They are
+attended by the owner and his assistants, all generally belonging to
+the _gualla_, or cowherd caste, although, of course, there are other
+castes employed. The owner of the herd gets leave to graze his cattle
+in the jungle, by paying a certain fixed sum per head. He fixes on a
+high dry ridge of land, where he runs up a few grass huts for himself
+and men, and there he erects lines of grass and bamboo screens, behind
+which his cattle take shelter at night from the cold south-east wind.
+There are also a few huts of exceedingly frail construction for himself
+and his people. This small colony, in the midst of the universal jungle
+covering the country for miles round, is called a _batan_.
+
+At earliest dawn the buffaloes are milked, and then with their
+attendant herdsmen they wend their way to the jungle, where they spend
+the day, and return again to the batan at night, when they are again
+milked. The milk is made into _ghee_, or clarified butter, and large
+quantities are sent down to the towns by country boats. When we want to
+get up a hunt, we generally send to the nearest _batan_ for _khubber_,
+i.e. news, information. The _Batanea_, or proprietor of the
+establishment, is well posted up. Every herdsman as he comes in at
+night tells what animals he has seen through the day, and thus at the
+_batan_ you hear where tiger, and pig, and deer are to be met with;
+where an unlucky cow has been killed; in what ravine is the thickest
+jungle; where the path is free from clay, or quicksand; what fords are
+safest; and, in short, you get complete information on every point
+connected with the jungle and its wild inhabitants.
+
+To these men the mysterious jungle reveals its most hidden secrets.
+Surrounded by his herd of buffaloes, the _gualla_ ventures into the
+darkest recesses and the most tangled thickets. They have strange wild
+calls by which they give each other notice of the approach of danger,
+and when two or three of them meet, each armed with his heavy,
+iron-shod or brass-bound _lathee_ or quarter staff, they will not budge
+an inch out of their way for buffalo or boar; nay, they have been known
+to face the terrible tiger himself, and fairly beat him away from the
+quivering carcase of some unlucky member of their herd. They have
+generally some favourite buffalo on whose broad back they perch
+themselves, as it browses through the jungle, and from this elevated
+seat they survey the rest of the herd, and note the incidents of jungle
+life. When they wish a little excitement, or a change from their milk
+and rice diet, there are hundreds of pigs around.
+
+They have a broad, sharp spear-head, to which is attached a stout cord,
+often made of twisted hide or hair. Into the socket of the spear is
+thrust a bamboo pole or shaft, tough, pliant, and flexible. The cord is
+wound round the spear and shaft, and the loose end is then fastened to
+the middle of the pole. Having thus prepared his weapon, the herdsman
+mounts his buffalo, and guides it slowly, warily, and cautiously to the
+haunts of the pig. These are, of course, quite accustomed to see the
+buffaloes grazing round them on all sides, and take no notice until the
+_gualla_ is within striking distance. When he has got close up to the
+pig he fancies, he throws his spear with all his force. The pig
+naturally bounds off, the shaft comes out of the socket, leaving the
+spearhead sticking in the wound. The rope uncoils of itself, but being
+firmly fastened to the bamboo, it brings up the pig at each bush, and
+tears and lacerates the wound, until either the spearhead comes out, or
+the wretched pig drops down dead from exhaustion and loss of blood. The
+_gualla_ follows upon his buffalo, and frequently finishes the pig with
+a few strokes of his _lathee_. In any case he gets his pork, and it
+certainly is an ingenious and bold way of procuring it.
+
+Wild pig are very destructive to crops. During the night they revel in
+the cultivated fields contiguous to the jungle, and they destroy more
+by rooting up than by actually eating. It is common for the ryot to dig
+a shallow pit, and ensconce himself inside with his matchlock beside
+him. His head being on a level with the ground, he can discern any
+animal that comes between him and the sky-line. When a pig comes in
+sight, he waits till he is within sure distance, and then puts either a
+bullet or a charge of slugs into him.
+
+The pig is perhaps the most stubborn and courageous animal in India.
+Even when pierced with several spears, and bleeding from numerous
+wounds, he preserves a sullen silence. He disdains to utter a cry of
+fear and pain, but maintains a bold front to the last, and dies with
+his face to the foe, defiant and unconquered. When hard pressed he
+scorns to continue his flight, but wheeling round, he makes a
+determined charge, very frequently to the utter discomfiture of his
+pursuer.
+
+I have seen many a fine horse fearfully cut by a charging pig, and a
+determined boar over and over again break through a line of elephants,
+and make good his escape. There is no animal in all the vast jungle
+that the elephant dreads more than a lusty boar. I have seen elephants
+that would stand the repeated charges of a wounded tiger, turn tail and
+take to ignominious flight before the onset of an angry boar.
+
+His thick short neck, ponderous body, and wedge-like head are admirably
+fitted for crashing through the thick jungle he inhabits, and when he
+has made up his mind to charge, very few animals can withstand his
+furious rush. Instances are quite common of his having made good his
+charge against a line of elephants, cutting and ripping more than one
+severely. He has been known to encounter successfully even the kingly
+tiger himself. Can it be wondered, then, that we consider him a 'foeman
+worthy of our steel'?
+
+To be a good pig-sticker is a recommendation that wins acceptance
+everywhere in India. In a district like Chumparun where nearly every
+planter was an ardent sportsman, a good rider, and spent nearly half
+his time on horseback, pig-sticking was a favourite pastime. Every
+factory had at least one bit of likely jungle close by, where a pig
+could always be found. When I first went to India we used to take out
+our pig-spear over the _zillah_ with us as a matter of course, as we
+never knew when we might hit on a boar.
+
+Things are very different now. Cultivation has much increased. Many of
+the old jungles have been reclaimed, and I fancy many more pigs are
+shot by natives than formerly. A gun can be had now for a few rupees,
+and every loafing 'ne'er do weel' in the village manages to procure
+one, and wages indiscriminate warfare on bird and beast. It is a
+growing evil, and threatens the total extinction of sport in some
+districts. I can remember when nearly every tank was good for a few
+brace of mallard, duck, or teal, where never a feather is now to be
+seen, save the ubiquitous paddy-bird. Jungles, where a pig was a
+certain find, only now contain a measly jackal, and not always that;
+and cover in which partridge, quail, and sometimes even florican were
+numerous, are now only tenanted by the great ground-owl, or a colony of
+field rats. I am far from wishing to limit sport to the European
+community. I would let every native that so wished sport his double
+barrels or handle his spear with the best of us, but he should follow
+and indulge in his sport with reason. The breeding seasons of all
+animals should be respected, and there should be no indiscriminate
+slaughter of male and female, young and old. Until all true sportsmen
+in India unite in this matter, the evil will increase, and bye-and-bye
+there will be no animals left to afford sport of any kind.
+
+There are cases where wild animals are so numerous and destructive
+that extraordinary measures have to be taken for protection from their
+ravages, but these are very rare. I remember having once to wage a war
+of extermination against a colony of pigs that had taken possession of
+some jungle lands near Maharjnugger, a village on the Koosee. I had a
+deal of indigo growing on cleared patches at intervals in the jungles,
+and there the pigs would root and revel in spite of watchmen, till at
+last I was forced in sheer self-defence to begin a crusade against
+them. We got a line of elephants, and two or three friends came to
+assist, and in one day, and round one village only, we shot sixty-three
+full grown pigs. The villagers must have killed and carried away nearly
+double that number of young and wounded. That was a very extreme case,
+and in a pure jungle country; but in settled districts like Tirhoot
+and Chumparun the weaker sex should always be spared, and a close
+season for winged game should be insisted on. To the credit of the
+planters be it said, that this necessity is quite recognised; but
+every pot-bellied native who can beg, borrow, or steal a gun, or in
+any way procure one, is constantly on the look out for a pot shot at
+some unlucky hen-partridge or quail. A whole village will turn out to
+compass the destruction of some wretched sow that may have shewn her
+bristles outside the jungle in the daytime.
+
+In districts where cultivated land is scarce and population scattered,
+it is almost impossible to enjoy pig-sticking. The breaks of open land
+between the jungles are too small and narrow to afford galloping space,
+and though you turn the pig out of one patch of jungle, he immediately
+finds safe shelter in the next. On the banks of some of the large
+rivers, however, such as the Gunduch and the Bagmuttee, there are vast
+stretches of undulating sand, crossed at intervals by narrow creeks,
+and spotted by patches of close, thick jungle. Here the grey tusker
+takes up his abode with his harem. When once you turn him out from his
+lair, there is grand hunting room before he can reach the distant patch
+of jungle to which he directs his flight. In some parts the _jowah_ (a
+plant not unlike broom in appearance) is so thick, that even the
+elephants can scarcely force their way through, but as a rule the
+beating is pretty easy, and one is almost sure of a find.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Kuderent jungle.--Charged by a pig.--The biter bit.--'Mac' after the
+big boar.--The horse for pig-sticking.--The line of beaters.--The boar
+breaks.--'Away! Away!'--First spear.--Pig-sticking at Peeprah.--The
+old 'lungra' or cripple.--A boar at bay.--Hurrah for pig-sticking!
+
+There was a very fine pig jungle at a place called Kuderent, belonging
+to a wealthy landowner who went by the name of the Mudhobunny Baboo. We
+occasionally had a pig-sticking meet here, and as the jungle was
+strictly preserved, we were never disappointed in finding plenty who
+gave us glorious sport. The jungles consisted of great grass plains,
+with thickly wooded patches of dense tree jungle, intersected here and
+there by deep ravines, with stagnant pools of water at intervals; the
+steep sides all thickly clothed with thorny clusters of the wild
+dog-rose. It was a difficult country to beat, and we had always to
+supplement the usual gang of beaters with as many elephants as we could
+collect. In the centre of the jungle was an eminence of considerable
+height, whence there was a magnificent view of the surrounding country.
+
+Far in the distance the giant Himalayas towered into the still clear
+air, the guardian barriers of an unknown land. The fretted pinnacles
+and tremendous ridges, clothed in their pure white mantle of
+everlasting snow, made a magnificent contrast to the dark, misty,
+wooded masses formed by the lower ranges of hills. In the early
+morning, when the first beams of the rising sun had but touched the
+mountain tops, leaving the country below shrouded in the dim mists and
+vapours of retiring night, the sight was most sublime. In presence of
+such hills and distances, such wondrous combinations of colour, scenery
+on such a gigantic scale, even the most thoughtless become impressed
+with the majesty of nature.
+
+Our camp was pitched on the banks of a clear running mountain stream,
+brawling over rocks and boulders; and to eyes so long accustomed to the
+never ending flatness of the rich alluvial plains, and the terrible
+sameness of the rice swamps, the stream was a source of unalloyed
+pleasure. There were only a few places where the abrupt banks gave
+facilities for fording, and when a pig had broken fairly from the
+jungle, and was making for the river (as they very frequently did),
+you would see the cluster of horsemen scattering over the plain like
+a covey of partridges when the hawk swoops down upon them. Each made
+for what he considered the most eligible ford, in hopes of being first
+up with the pig on the further bank, and securing the much coveted
+first spear.
+
+When a pig is hard pressed, and comes to any natural obstacle, as a
+ditch, bank, or stream, he almost invariably gets this obstacle between
+himself and his pursuer; then wheeling round he makes his stand,
+showing wonderful sagacity in choosing the moment of all others when he
+has his enemy at most disadvantage. Experienced hands are aware of
+this, and often try to outflank the boar, but the best men I have seen
+generally wait a little, till the pig is again under weigh, and then
+clearing the ditch or bank, put their horses at full speed, which is
+the best way to make good your attack. The rush of the boar is so
+sudden, fierce, and determined, that a horse at half speed, or going
+slow, has no chance of escape; but a well trained horse at full speed
+meets the pig in his rush, the spear is delivered with unerring aim,
+and slightly swerving to the left, you draw it out as you continue your
+course, and the poor pig is left weltering in his blood behind you.
+
+On one occasion I was very rudely made aware of this trait. It was a
+fine fleet young boar we were after, and we had had a long chase, but
+were now overhauling him fast. I had a good horse under me, and 'Jamie'
+and 'Giblets' were riding neck and neck. There was a small mango
+orchard in front surrounded by the usual ditch and bank. It was nothing
+of a leap; the boar took it with ease, and we could just see him top
+the bank not twenty spear lengths ahead. I was slightly leading, and
+full of eager anxiety and emulation. Jamie called on me to pull up, but
+I was too excited to mind him. I saw him and Giblets each take an
+outward wheel about, and gallop off to catch the boar coming out of the
+cluster of trees on the far side, as I thought. I could not see him,
+but I made no doubt he was in full flight through the trees. There was
+plenty of riding room between the rows, so lifting my game little horse
+at the bank, I felt my heart bound with emulation as I thought I was
+certain to come up first, and take the spear from two such noted heroes
+as my companions. I came up with the pig first, sure enough. _He_ was
+waiting for _me_, and scarce giving my horse time to recover his stride
+after the jump, he came rushing at me, every bristle erect, with a
+vicious grunt of spite and rage. My spear was useless, I had it
+crosswise on my horse's neck; I intended to attack first, and finding
+my enemy turning the tables on me in this way was rather disconcerting.
+I tried to turn aside and avoid the charge, but a branch caught me
+across the face, and knocked my _puggree_ off. In a trice the savage
+little brute was on me. Leaping up fairly from the ground, he got the
+heel of my riding boot in his mouth, and tore off the sole from the
+boot as if it had been so much paper. Jamie and Giblets were sitting
+outside watching the scene, laughing at my discomfiture. Fortunately
+the boar had poor tusks, and my fine little horse was unhurt, but I got
+out of that orchard as fast as I could, and ever after hesitated about
+attacking a boar when he had got a bank or ditch between him and me,
+and was waiting for me on the other side. The far better plan is to
+wait till he sees you are not pressing him, he then goes off at a surly
+sling trot, and you can resume the chase with every advantage in your
+favour. When the blood however is fairly up, and all one's sporting
+instincts roused, it is hard to listen to the dictates of prudence or
+the suggestions of caution and experience.
+
+The very same day we had another instance. My manager, 'Young Mac,' as
+we called him, had started a huge old boar. He was just over the boar,
+and about to deliver his thrust, when his horse stumbled in a rat hole
+(it was very rotten ground), and came floundering to earth, bringing
+his rider with him. Nothing daunted, Mac picked himself up, lost the
+horse, but so eager and excited was he, that he continued the chase on
+foot, calling to some of us to catch his horse while he stuck his boar.
+The old boar was quite blown, and took in the altered aspect of affairs
+at a glance; he turned to charge, and we loudly called on Mac to 'clear
+out.' Not a bit of it, he was too excited to realise his danger, but
+Pat fortunately interposed his horse and spear in time, and no doubt
+saved poor Mac from a gruesome mauling. It was very plucky, but it was
+very foolish, for heavily weighted with boots, breeches, spurs, and
+spear, a man could have no chance against the savage onset of an
+infuriated boar.
+
+In the long thick grass with which the plain was covered the riding was
+very dangerous. I remember seeing six riders come signally to grief
+over a blind ditch in this jungle. It adds not a little to the
+excitement, and really serious accidents are not so common as might be
+imagined. It is no joke however when a riderless horse comes ranging up
+alongside of you as you are sailing along, intent on war; biting and
+kicking at your own horse, he spoils your sport, throws you out of the
+chase, and you are lucky if you do not receive some ugly cut or bruise
+from his too active heels. There is the great beauty of a well trained
+Arab or country-bred; if you get a spill, he waits beside you till you
+recover your faculties, and get your bellows again in working order; if
+you are riding a Cabool, or even a waler, it is even betting that he
+turns to bite or kick you as you lie, or he rattles off in pursuit of
+your more firmly seated friends, spoiling their sport, and causing the
+most fearful explosions of vituperative wrath.
+
+There is something to me intensely exciting in all the varied incidents
+of a rattling burst across country after a fighting old grey boar. You
+see the long waving line of staves, and spear heads, and quaint shaped
+axes, glittering and fluctuating above the feathery tops of the swaying
+grass. There is an irregular line of stately elephants, each with its
+towering howdah and dusky mahout, moving slowly along through the
+rustling reeds. You hear the sharp report of fireworks, the rattling
+thunder of the big _doobla_ or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of
+innumerable _tom-toms_. Shouts, oaths, and cries from a hundred noisy
+coolies, come floating down in bursts of clamour on the soft morning
+air. The din waxes and wanes as the excited beaters descry a 'sounder'
+of pig ahead; with a mighty roar that makes your blood tingle, the
+frantic coolies rally for the final burst. Like rockets from a tube,
+the boar and his progeny come crashing through the brake, and separate
+before you on the plain. With a wild cheer you dash after them in hot
+pursuit; no time now to think of pitfalls, banks, or ditches; your
+gallant steed strains his every muscle, every sense is on the alert,
+but you see not the bush and brake and tangled thicket that you leave
+behind you. Your eye is on the dusky glistening hide and the stiff
+erect bristles in front; the shining tusks and foam-flecked chest are
+your goal, and the wild excitement culminates as you feel your keen
+steel go straight through muscle, bone, and sinew, and you know that
+another grisly monster has fallen. As you ease your girths and wipe
+your heated brow, you feel that few pleasures of the chase come up to
+the noblest, most thrilling sport of all, that of pig-sticking.
+
+The plain is alive with shouting beaters hurrying up to secure the gory
+carcase of the slaughtered foe. A riderless horse is far away, making
+off alone for the distant grove, where the snowy tents are glistening
+through the foliage. On the distant horizon a small cluster of eager
+sportsmen are fast overhauling another luckless tusker, and enjoying in
+all their fierce excitement the same sensations you have just
+experienced. Now is the time to enjoy the soothing weed, and quaff the
+grateful 'peg'; and as the syces and other servants come up in groups
+of twos and threes, you listen with languid delight to all their
+remarks on the incidents of the chase; and as, with their acute
+Oriental imagination nations they dilate in terms of truly Eastern
+exaggeration on your wonderful pluck and daring, you almost fancy
+yourself really the hero they would make you out to be.
+
+Then the reunion round the festive board at night, when every one again
+lives through all the excitement of the day. Talk of fox-hunting after
+pig-sticking, it is like comparing a penny candle to a lighthouse, or a
+donkey race to the 'Grand National'!
+
+Peeprah Factory with its many patches of jungle, its various lakes and
+fine undulating country, was another favourite rendezvous for the
+votaries of pig-sticking. The house itself was quite palatial, built on
+the bank of a lovely horseshoe lake, and embosomed in a grove of trees
+of great rarity and beautiful foliage. It had been built long before
+the days of overland routes and Suez canals, when a planter made India
+his home, and spared no trouble nor expense to make his home
+comfortable. In the great garden were fruit trees from almost every
+clime; little channels of solid masonry led water from the well to all
+parts of the garden. Leading down to the lake was a broad flight of
+steps, guarded on the one side by an immense peepul tree, whose hollow
+trunk and wide stretching canopy of foliage had braved the storms of
+over half a century, on the other side by a most symmetrical almond
+tree, which, when in blossom, was the most beautiful object for miles
+around. A well-kept shrubbery surrounded the house, and tall
+casuarinas, and glossy dark green india-rubber and bhur trees, formed a
+thousand combinations of shade and colour. Here we often met to
+experience the warm, large-hearted hospitality of dear old Pat and his
+gentle little wife. At one time there was a pack of harriers, which
+would lead us a fine, sharp burst by the thickets near the river after
+a doubling hare; but as a rule a meet at Peeprah portended death to the
+gallant tusker, for the jungles were full of pigs, and only honest hard
+work was meant when the Peeprah beaters turned out.
+
+The whole country was covered with patches of grass and thorny jungle.
+Knowing they had another friendly cover close by, the pigs always broke
+at the first beat, and the riding had to be fast and furious if a spear
+was to be won. There were some nasty drop jumps, and deep, hidden
+ditches, and accidents were frequent. In one of these hot, sharp
+gallops poor 'Bonnie Morn,' a favourite horse belonging to 'Jamie,' was
+killed. Not seeing the ditch, it came with tremendous force against the
+bank, and of course its back was broken. Even in its death throes it
+recognised its master's voice, and turned round and licked his hand. We
+were all collected round, and let who will sneer, there were few dry
+eyes as we saw this last mute tribute of affection from the poor dying
+animal.
+
+  THE DEATH OF 'BONNIE MORN.'
+
+  Alas, my 'Brave Bonnie!' the pride of my heart,
+  The moment has come when from thee I must part;
+  No more wilt thou hark to the huntsman's glad horn,
+  My brave little Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  How proudly you bore me at bright break of day,
+  How gallantly 'led,' when the boar broke away!
+  But no more, alas! thou the hunt shall adorn,
+  For now thou art dying, my dear 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  He'd neigh with delight when I'd enter his stall,
+  And canter up gladly on hearing my call;
+  Rub his head on my shoulder while munching his corn,
+  My dear gentle Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Or out in the grass, when a pig was in view,
+  None so eager to start, when he heard a 'halloo';
+  Off, off like a flash, the ground spurning with scorn,
+  He aye led the van, did my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  O'er _nullah_ and ditch, o'er hedge, fence, or bank,
+  No matter, _he'd_ clear it, aye in the front rank;
+  A brave little hunter as ever was born
+  Was my grand Arab fav'rite, my good 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Or when in the 'ranks,' who so steady and still?
+  None better than 'Bonnie,' more 'up' in his drill;
+  His fine head erect--eyes flashing with scorn--
+  Right fit for a charger was staunch 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And then on the 'Course,' who so willing and true?
+  Past the 'stand' like an arrow the bonnie horse flew;
+  No spur his good rider need ever have worn,
+  For he aye did his best, did my fleet 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And now here he lies, the good little horse,
+  No more he'll career in the hunt or on 'course':
+  Such a charger to lose makes me sad and forlorn;
+  I _can't_ help a tear, 'tis for poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Ah! blame not my grief, for 'tis deep and sincere,
+  As a friend and companion I held 'Bonnie' dear;
+  No true sportsman ever such feelings will scorn
+  As I heave a deep sigh for my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And even in death, when in anguish he lay,
+  When his life's blood was drip--dripping--slowly away,
+  His last thought was still of the master he'd borne;
+  He neighed, licked my hand--and thus died 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+One tremendous old boar was killed here during one of our meets, which
+was long celebrated in our after-dinner talks on boars and hunting. It
+was called 'THE LUNGRA,' which means the cripple, because it had been
+wounded in the leg in some previous encounter, perhaps in its hot
+youth, before age had stiffened its joints and tinged its whiskers with
+grey. It was the most undaunted pig I have ever seen. It would not
+budge an inch for the beaters, and charged the elephants time after
+time, sending them flying from the jungle most ignominiously. At length
+its patience becoming exhausted, it slowly emerged from the jungle,
+coolly surveyed the scene and its surroundings, and then, disdaining
+flight, charged straight at the nearest horseman. Its hide was as tough
+as a Highland targe, and though L. delivered his spear, it turned the
+weapon aside as if it was merely a thrust from a wooden pole. The old
+_lungra_ made good his charge, and ripped L's. horse on the shoulder.
+It next charged Pat, and ripped his horse, and cut another horse, a
+valuable black waler, across the knee, laming it for life. Rider after
+rider charged down upon the fierce old brute. Although repeatedly
+wounded none of the thrusts were very serious, and already it had put
+five horses _hors de combat_. It now took up a position under a big
+'bhur' tree, close to some water, and while the boldest of us held back
+for a little, it took a deliberate mud bath under our very noses.
+Doubtless feeling much refreshed, it again took up its position under
+the tree, ready to face each fresh assailant, full of fight, and
+determined to die but not to yield an inch.
+
+Time after time we rode at the dauntless cripple. Each time he charged
+right down, and our spears made little mark upon his toughened hide.
+Our horses too were getting tired of such a customer, and little
+inclined to face his charge. At length 'Jamie' delivered a lucky spear
+and the grey old warrior fell. It had kept us at bay for fully an hour
+and a half, and among our number we reckoned some of the best riders
+and boldest pig-stickers in the district.
+
+Such was our sport in those good old days. Our meets came but seldom,
+so that sport never interfered with the interests of honest hard work;
+but meeting each other as we did, and engaging in exciting sport like
+pig-sticking, cemented our friendship, kept us in health, and
+encouraged all the hardy tendencies of our nature. It whetted our
+appetites, it roused all those robust virtues that have made Englishmen
+the men they are, it sent us back to work with lighter hearts and
+renewed energy. It built up many happy, cherished memories of kindly
+words and looks and deeds, that will only fade when we in turn have to
+bow before the hunter, and render up our spirits to God who gave them.
+Long live honest, hearty, true sportsmen, such as were the friends of
+those happy days. Long may Indian sportsmen find plenty of 'foemen
+worthy of their steel' in the old grey boar, the fighting tusker of
+Bengal.
+
+[Illustration: PIG-STICKERS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The sal forests.--The jungle goddess.--The trees in the jungle.
+--Appearance of the forests.--Birds.--Varieties of parrots.--A 'beat'
+in the forest.--The 'shekarry.'--Mehrman Singh and his gun.--The
+Banturs, a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.--Their habits.--A village
+feast.--We beat for deer.--Habits of the spotted deer.--Waiting for
+the game.--Mehrman Singh gets drunk.--Our bag.--Pea-fowl and their
+habits.--How to shoot them.--Curious custom of the Nepaulese.--How
+Juggroo was tricked, and his revenge.
+
+Tirhoot is too generally under cultivation and too thickly inhabited
+for much land to remain under jungle, and except the wild pig of which
+I have spoken, and many varieties of wild fowl, there is little game to
+be met with. It is, however, different in North Bhaugulpore, where
+there are still vast tracts of forest jungle, the haunt of the spotted
+deer, nilghau, leopard, wolf, and other wild animals. Along the banks
+of the Koosee, a rapid mountain river that rolls its flood through
+numerous channels to join the Ganges, there are immense tracts of
+uncultivated land covered with tall elephant grass, and giving cover to
+tigers, hog deer, pig, wild buffalo, and even an occasional rhinoceros,
+to say nothing of smaller game and wildfowl, which are very plentiful.
+
+The sal forests in North Bhaugulpore generally keep to the high ridges,
+which are composed of a light, sandy soil, very friable, and not very
+fertile, except for oil and indigo seeds, which grow most luxuriantly
+wherever the forest land has been cleared. In the shallow valleys which
+lie between the ridges rice is chiefly cultivated, and gives large
+returns. The sal forests have been sadly thinned by unscientific and
+indiscriminate cutting, and very few fine trees now remain. The earth
+is teeming with insects, chief amongst which are the dreaded and
+destructive white ants. The high pointed nests of these destructive
+insects, formed of hardened mud, are the commonest objects one meets
+with in these forest solitudes.
+
+At intervals, beneath some wide spreading peepul or bhur tree, one
+comes on a rude forest shrine, daubed all over with red paint, and with
+gaudy festoons of imitation flowers, cut from the pith of the plantain
+tree, hanging on every surrounding bough. These shrines are sacred
+to _Chumpa buttee_, the Hindoo Diana, protectress of herds, deer,
+buffaloes, huntsmen, and herdsmen. She is the recognised jungle
+goddess, and is held in great veneration by all the wild tribes and
+half-civilized denizens of the gloomy sal jungle.
+
+The general colour of the forest is a dingy green, save when a deeper
+shade here and there shows where the mighty bhur uprears its towering
+height, or where the crimson flowers of the _seemul_ or cotton tree,
+and the bronze-coloured foliage of the _sunpul_ (a tree very like the
+ornamental beech in shrubberies at home) imparts a more varied colour
+to the generally pervading dark green of the universal sal.
+
+The varieties of trees are of course almost innumerable, but the sal is
+so out of all proportion more numerous than any other kind, that the
+forests well deserve their recognised name. The sal is a fine, hard
+wood of very slow growth. The leaves are broad and glistening, and in
+spring are beautifully tipped with a reddish bronze, which gradually
+tones down into the dingy green which is the prevailing tint. The
+_sheshum_ or _sissod_, a tree with bright green leaves much resembling
+the birch, the wood of which is invaluable for cart wheels and
+such-like work, is occasionally met with. There is the _kormbhe_, a
+very tough wood with a red stringy bark, of which the jungle men make
+a kind of touchwood for their matchlocks, and the _parass_, whose
+peculiarity is that at times it bursts into a wondrous wealth of bright
+crimson blossom without a leaf being on the tree. The _parass_ tree in
+full bloom is gorgeous. After the blossom falls the dark-green leaves
+come out, and are not much different in colour from the sal. Then there
+is the _mhowa_, with its lovely white blossoms, from which a strong
+spirit is distilled, and on which the deer, pigs, and wild bear love to
+feast. The peculiar sickly smell of the _mhowa_ when in flower pervades
+the atmosphere for a great distance round, and reminds one forcibly of
+the peculiar sweet, sickly smell of a brewery. The hill _sirres_ is a
+tall feathery-looking tree of most elegant shape, towering above the
+other forest trees, and the natives strip it of its bark, which they
+use to poison streams. It seems to have some narcotic or poisonous
+principle, easily soluble in water, for when put in any quantity in a
+stream or piece of water, it causes all the fish to become apparently
+paralyzed and rise to the surface, where they float about quite
+stupified and helpless, and become an easy prey to the poaching
+'Banturs' and 'Moosahurs' who adopt this wretched mode of fishing.
+
+Along the banks of the streams vegetation gets very luxurious, and
+among the thick undergrowth are found some lovely ferns, broad-leaved
+plants, and flowers of every hue, all alike nearly scentless. Here is
+no odorous breath of violet or honeysuckle, no delicate perfume of
+primrose or sweetbriar, only a musty, dank, earthy smell which gets
+more and more pronounced as the mists rise along with the deadly
+vapours of the night. Sleeping in these forests is very unhealthy.
+There is a most fatal miasma all through the year, less during the hot
+months, but very bad during and immediately after the annual rains; and
+in September and October nearly every soul in the jungly tracts is
+smitten with fever. The vapour only rises to a certain height above the
+ground, and at the elevation of ten feet or so, I believe one could
+sleep in the jungles with impunity; but it is dangerous at all times to
+sleep in the forest, unless at a considerable elevation. The absence of
+all those delicious smells which make a walk through the woodlands at
+home so delightful, is conspicuous in the sal forests, and another of
+the most noticeable features is the extreme silence, the oppressive
+stillness that reigns.
+
+You know how full of melody is an English wood, when thrush, blackbird,
+mavis, linnet, and a thousand warblers flit from tree to tree. How the
+choir rings out its full anthem of sweetest sound, till every bush and
+tree seems a centre of sweet strains, soft, low, liquid trills, and
+full ripe gushes of melody and song. But it is not thus in an Indian
+forest. There are actually few birds. As you brush through the long
+grass and trample the tangled undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling
+branches, or dodging under the pliant arms of the creepers, you may
+flush a black or grey partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a
+quiet family party of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting
+about to make the vaulted arcades of the forest echo to their music.
+
+The hornbill darts with a succession of long bounding flights from one
+tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow tree close by,
+his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A
+flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the _golden
+oriole_ or mango bird, the _koel_, with here and there a red-tufted
+_bulbul_, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep
+silence is unbroken, save by the melancholy hoot of some blinking owl,
+and the soft monotonous coo of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The
+exquisite honey-sucker, as delicately formed as the petal of a fairy
+flower, flits noiselessly about from blossom to blossom. The natives
+call it the 'Muddpenah' or drinker of honey. There are innumerable
+butterflies of graceful shape and gorgeous colours; what few birds
+there are have beautiful plumage; there is a faint rustle of leaves, a
+faint, far hum of insect life; but it feels so silent, so unlike the
+woods at home. You are oppressed by the solemn stillness, and feel
+almost nervous as you push warily along, for at any moment a leopard,
+wolf, or hyena may get up before you, or you may disturb the siesta of
+a sounder of pig, or a herd of deer.
+
+Up in those forests on the borders of Nepaul, which are called the
+_morung_, there are a great many varieties of parrot, all of them
+very beautiful. There is first the common green parrot, with a red
+beak, and a circle of salmon-coloured feathers round its neck; they
+are very noisy and destructive, and flock together to the fields
+where they do great damage to the crops. The _lutkun sooga_ is an
+exquisitely-coloured bird, about the size of a sparrow. The _ghur[=a]l_,
+a large red and green parrot, with a crimson beak. The _tota_ a
+yellowish-green colour, and the male with a breast as red as blood;
+they call it the _amereet bhela_. Another lovely little parrot, the
+_taeteea sooga_, has a green body, red head, and black throat; but the
+most showy and brilliant of all the tribe is the _putsoogee_. The body
+is a rich living green, red wings, yellow beak, and black throat; there
+is a tuft of vivid red as a topknot, and the tail is a brilliant blue;
+the under feathers of the tail being a pure snowy white.
+
+At times the silence is broken by a loud, metallic, bell-like cry,
+very like the yodel you hear in the Alps. You hear it rise sharp and
+distinct, 'Looralei!' and as suddenly cease. This is the cry of the
+_kookoor gh[=e]t_, a bird not unlike a small pheasant, with a
+reddish-brown back and a fawn-coloured breast. The _sherra_ is another
+green parrot, a little larger than the _putsoogee_, but not so
+beautifully coloured.
+
+There is generally a green, slime-covered, sluggish stream in all these
+forests, its channel choked with rotting leaves and decaying vegetable
+matter. The water should never be drunk until it has been boiled and
+filtered. At intervals the stream opens out and forms a clear
+rush-fringed pool, and the trees receding on either bank leave a lovely
+grassy glade, where the deer and nilghau come to drink. On the glassy
+bosom of the pool in the centre, fine duck, mallard, and teal, can
+frequently be found, and the rushes round the margin are to a certainty
+good for a couple of brace of snipe.
+
+Sometimes on a withered branch overhanging the stream, you can see
+perched the _ahur_, or great black fish-hawk. It has a grating,
+discordant cry, which it utters at intervals as it sits pluming its
+black feathers above the pool. The dark ibis and the ubiquitous
+paddy-bird are of course also found here; and where the land is low and
+marshy, and the stream crawls along through several channels, you are
+sure to come across a couple of red-headed _sarus_, serpent birds, a
+crane, and a solitary heron. The _moosahernee_ is a black and white
+bird, I fancy a sort of ibis, and is good eating. The _dokahur_ is
+another fine big bird, black body and white wings, and as its name
+(derived from _dokha_, a shell) implies, it is the shell-gatherer, or
+snail-eater, and gives good shooting.
+
+When you have determined to beat the forest, you first get your coolies
+and villagers assembled, and send them some mile or two miles ahead,
+under charge of some of the head men, to beat the jungle towards you,
+while you look out for a likely spot, shady, concealed, and cool, where
+you wait with your guns till the game is driven up to you. The whole
+arrangements are generally made, of course under your own supervision,
+by your _Shekarry_, or gamekeeper, as I suppose you might call him. He
+is generally a thin, wiry, silent man, well versed in all the lore of
+the woods, acquainted with the name, appearance, and habits of every
+bird and beast in the forest. He knows their haunts and when they are
+to be found at home. He will track a wounded deer like a bloodhound,
+and can tell the signs and almost impalpable evidences of an animal's
+whereabouts, the knowledge of which goes to make up the genuine hunter.
+
+When all is still around, and only the distant shouts of the beaters
+fall faintly at intervals on the ear, his keen hearing detects the
+light patter of hoof or paw on the crisp, withered leaves. His
+hawk-like glance can pick out from the deepest shade the sleek coat or
+hide of the leopard or the deer; and even before the animal has come in
+sight, his senses tell him whether it is young or old, whether it is
+alarmed, or walking in blind confidence. In fact, I have known a good
+shekarry tell you exactly what animal is coming, whether bear, leopard,
+fox, deer, pig, or monkey.
+
+The best shekarry I ever had was a Nepaulee called 'Mehrman Singh.' He
+had the regular Tartar physiognomy of the Nepaulese. Small, oblique,
+twinkling eyes, high cheekbones, flattish nose, and scanty moustache.
+He was a tall, wiry man, with a remarkably light springy step, a bold
+erect carriage, and was altogether a fine, manly, independent fellow.
+He had none of the fawning obsequiousness which is so common to the
+Hindoo, but was a merry laughing fellow, with a keen love of sport and
+a great appreciation of humour. His gun was fearfully and wonderfully
+made. It was a long, heavy flint gun, with a tremendously heavy barrel,
+and the stock all splices and splinters, tied in places with bits of
+string. I would rather not have been in the immediate vicinity of the
+weapon when he fired it, and yet he contrived to do some good shooting
+with it.
+
+He was wonderfully patient in stalking an animal or waiting for its
+near approach, as he never ventured on a long shot, and did not
+understand our objection to pot-shooting. His shot was composed of
+jagged little bits of iron, chipped from an old _kunthee_, or
+cooking-pot; and his powder was truly unique, being like lumps of
+charcoal, about the size of small raisins. A shekarry fills about four
+or five fingers' depth of this into his gun, then a handful of old
+iron, and with a little touch of English powder pricked in with a pin
+as priming, he is ready for execution on any game that may come within
+reach of a safe pot-shot. When the gun goes off there is a mighty
+splutter, a roar like that of a small cannon, and the slugs go hurtling
+through the bushes, carrying away twigs and leaves, and not
+unfrequently smashing up the game so that it is almost useless for the
+table.
+
+The _Banturs_, who principally inhabit these jungles, are mostly of
+Nepaulese origin. They are a sturdy, independent people, and the women
+have fair skins, and are very pretty. Unchastity is very rare, and the
+infidelity of a wife is almost unknown. If it is found out, mutilation
+and often death are the penalties exacted from the unfortunate woman.
+They wear one long loose flowing garment, much like the skirt of a
+gown; this is tightly twisted round the body above the bosoms, leaving
+the neck and arms quite bare. They are fond of ornaments--nose, ears,
+toes and arms, and even ancles, being loaded with silver rings and
+circlets. Some decorate their nose and the middle parting of the hair
+with a greasy-looking red pigment, while nearly every grown-up woman
+has her arms, neck, and low down on the collar bone most artistically
+tattooed in a variety of close, elaborate patterns. The women all work
+in the clearings; sowing, and weeding, and reaping the rice, barley,
+and other crops. They do most of the digging where that is necessary,
+the men confining themselves to ploughing and wood-cutting. At the
+latter employment they are most expert; they use the axe in the most
+masterly manner, but their mode of cutting is fearfully wasteful; they
+always leave some three feet of the best part of the wood in the
+ground, very rarely cutting a tree close down to the root. Many of
+them are good charcoal-burners, and indeed their principal occupation
+is supplying the adjacent villages with charcoal and firewood. They use
+small narrow-edged axes for felling, but for lopping they invariably
+use the Nepaulese national weapon--the _kookree_. This is a heavy,
+curved knife, with a broad blade, the edge very sharp, and the back
+thick and heavy. In using it they slash right and left with a quick
+downward stroke, drawing the blade quickly toward them as they strike.
+They are wonderfully dexterous with the _kookree_, and will clear
+away brush and underwood almost as quickly as a man can walk. They
+pack their charcoal, rice, or other commodities, in long narrow
+baskets, which they sling on a pole carried on their shoulders, as we
+see the Chinese doing in the well known pictures on tea-chests. They
+are all Hindoos in religion, but are very fond of rice-whiskey. Although
+not so abstemious in this respect as the Hindoos of the plains, they
+are a much finer race both physically and morally. As a rule they are
+truthful, honest, brave, and independent. They are always glad to see
+you, laugh out merrily at you as you pass, and are wonderfully
+hospitable. It would be a nice point for Sir Wilfrid Lawson to
+reconcile the use of rice-whiskey with this marked superiority in all
+moral virtues in the whiskey-drinking, as against the totally-abstaining
+Hindoo.
+
+To return to Mehrman Singh. His face was seamed with smallpox marks,
+and he had seven or eight black patches on it the first time I saw him,
+caused by the splintering of his flint when he let off his antediluvian
+gun. When he saw my breechloaders, the first he had ever beheld, his
+admiration was unbounded. He told me he had come on a leopard asleep in
+the forest one day, and crept up quite close to him. His faith in his
+old gun, however, was not so lively as to make him rashly attack so
+dangerous a customer, so he told me. 'Hum usko jans deydea oos wukt,'
+that is, 'I _gave_ the brute its life that time, but,' he continued,
+'had I had an English gun like this, your honour, I would have blown
+the _soor_ (_Anglice_, pig) to hell.' Old Mehrman was rather strong in
+his expletives at times, but I was not a little amused at the cool way
+he spoke of _giving_ the leopard its life. The probability is, that had
+he only wounded the animal, he would have lost his own.
+
+These Nepaulese are very fond of giving feasts to each other. Their
+dinner-parties, I assure you, are very often 'great affairs.' They are
+not mean in their arrangements, and the wants of the inner man are very
+amply provided for. Their crockery is simple and inexpensive. When the
+feast is prepared, each guest provides himself with a few broad leaves
+from the nearest sal tree, and forming these into a cup, he pins them
+together with thorns from the acacia. Squatting down in a circle, with
+half-a-dozen of these sylvan cups around, the attendant fills one with
+rice, another with _dhall_, a third with goat's-flesh, a fourth with
+_turkaree_ or vegetables, a fifth with chutnee, pickle, or some kind of
+preserve. Curds, ghee, a little oil perhaps, sugar, plantains, and
+other fruit are not wanting, and the whole is washed down with copious
+draughts of fiery rice-whiskey, or where it can be procured, with
+palm-toddy. Not unfrequently dancing boys or girls are in attendance,
+and the horrid din of tom-toms, cymbals, a squeaking fiddle, or a
+twanging sitar, rattling castanets, and ear-piercing songs from the
+dusky _prima donna_, makes night hideous, until the grey dawn peeps
+over the dark forest line.
+
+Early in January, 1875, my camp was at a place in the sal jungles
+called Lohurneah. I had been collecting rents and looking after my seed
+cultivation, and Pat and our sporting District Engineer having joined
+me, we determined to have a beat for deer. Mehrman Singh had reported
+numerous herds in the vicinity of our camp. During the night we had
+been disturbed by the revellers at such a feast in the village as I
+have been describing. We had filled cartridges, seen to our guns, and
+made every preparation for the beat, and early in the morning the
+coolies and idlers of the forest villages all round were ranged in
+circles about our camp.
+
+Swallowing a hasty breakfast we mounted our ponies, and followed by our
+ragged escort, made off for the forest. On the way we met a crowd of
+Banturs with bundles of stakes and great coils of strong heavy netting.
+Sending the coolies on ahead under charge of several headmen and peons,
+we plunged into the gloom of the forest, leaving our ponies and grooms
+outside. When we came to a likely-looking spot, the Banturs began
+operations by fixing up the nets on the stakes and between trees, till
+a line of strong net extended across the forest for several hundred
+yards. We then went ahead, leaving the nets behind us, and each took up
+his station about 200 yards in front. The men with the nets then hid
+themselves behind trees, and crouched in the underwood. With our
+kookries we cut down several branches, stuck them in the ground in
+front, and ensconced ourselves in this artificial shelter. Behind us,
+and between us and the nets, was a narrow cart track leading through
+the forest, and the reason of our taking this position was given me by
+Pat, who was an old hand at jungle shooting.
+
+When deer are being driven, they are intensely suspicious, and of
+course frightened. They know every spot in the jungle, and are
+acquainted with all the paths, tracks, and open places in the forest.
+When they are nearing an open glade, or a road, they slacken their
+pace, and go slowly and warily forward, an old buck generally leading.
+When he has carefully reconnoitred and examined the suspected place in
+front, and found it clear to all appearance, they again put on the
+pace, and clear the open ground at their greatest speed. The best
+chance of a shot is when a path is in front of _them_ and behind _you_,
+as then they are going slowly.
+
+At first when I used to go out after them, I often got an open glade,
+or road, in _front_ of me; but experience soon told me that Pat's plan
+was the best. As this was a beat not so much for real sport, as to show
+me how the villagers managed these affairs, we were all under Pat's
+direction, and he could not have chosen better ground. I was on the
+extreme left, behind a clump of young trees, with the sluggish muddy
+stream on my left. Our Engineer to my right was about one hundred yards
+off, and Pat himself on the extreme right, at about the same distance
+from H. Behind us was the road, and in the rear the long line of nets,
+with their concealed watchers. The nets are so set up on the stakes,
+that when an animal bounds along and touches the net, it falls over
+him, and ere he can extricate himself from its meshes, the vigilant
+Banturs rush out and despatch him with spears and clubs.
+
+We waited a long time hearing nothing of the beaters, and watching the
+red and black ants hurrying to and fro. Huge green-bellied spiders
+oscillated backwards and forwards in their strong, systematically woven
+webs. A small mungoose kept peeping out at me from the roots of an old
+india-rubber tree, and aloft in the branches an amatory pair of hidden
+ringdoves were billing and cooing to each other. At this moment a
+stealthy step stole softly behind, and the next second Mr. Mehrman
+Singh crept quietly and noiselessly beside me, his face flushed with
+rapid walking, his eye flashing with excitement, his finger on his lip,
+and a look of portentous gravity and importance striving to spread
+itself over his speaking countenance. Mehrman had been up all night at
+the feast, and was as drunk as a piper. It was no use being angry with
+him, so I tried to keep him quiet and resumed my watch.
+
+A few minutes afterwards he grasped me by the wrist, rather startling
+me, but in a low hoarse whisper warning me that a troop of monkeys was
+coming. I could not hear the faintest rustle, but sure enough in a
+minute or two a troop of over twenty monkeys came hopping and shambling
+along, stopping every now and then to sit on their hams, look back,
+grin, jabber, and show their formidable teeth, until Mehrman rose up,
+waved his cloth at them, and turned them off from the direction of the
+nets toward the bank of the stream.
+
+Next came a fox, slouching warily and cautiously along; then a couple
+of lean, hungry-looking jackals; next a sharp patter on the crisp dry
+leaves, and several peafowl with resplendent plumage ran rapidly past.
+Another touch on the arm from Mehrman, and following the direction of
+his outstretched hand, I descried a splendid buck within thirty yards
+of me, his antlers and chest but barely visible above the brushwood. My
+gun was to my shoulder in an instant, but the shekarry in an excited
+whisper implored me not to fire. I hesitated, and just then the stately
+head turned round to look behind, and exposing the beautifully curving
+neck full to my aim, I fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the
+fine buck topple over, seemingly hard hit.
+
+A shot on my right, and two shots in rapid succession further on,
+shewed me that Pat and H. were also at work, and then the whole forest
+seemed alive with frightened, madly-plunging pig, deer, and other
+animals. I fired at, and wounded an enormous boar that came rushing
+past, and now the cries of the coolies in front as they came trooping
+on, mingled with the shouts of the men at the nets, where the work of
+death evidently was going on.
+
+It was most exciting while it lasted, but, after all, I do not think it
+was honest sport. The only apology I could make to myself was, that the
+deer and pig were far too numerous, and doing immense damage to the
+crops, and if not thinned out, they would soon have made the growing of
+any crop whatever an impossibility.
+
+The monkey being a sacred animal, is never molested by the natives, and
+the damage he does in a night to a crop of wheat or barley is
+astonishing. Peafowl too are very destructive, and what with these and
+the ravages of pig, deer, hares, and other plunderers, the poor ryot
+has to watch many a weary night, to secure any return from his fields.
+
+On rejoining each other at the nets, we found that five deer and two
+pigs had been killed. Pat had shot a boar and a porcupine, the latter
+with No. 4 shot. H. accounted for a deer, and I got my buck and the
+boar which I had wounded in the chest; Mehrman Singh had followed him
+up and tracked him to the river, where he took refuge among some long
+swamp reeds. Replying to his call, we went up, and a shot through the
+head settled the old boar for ever. Our bag was therefore for the first
+beat, seven deer, four pigs, and a porcupine.
+
+The coolies were now sent away out of the jungle, and on ahead for a
+mile or so, the nets were coiled up, our ponies regained, and off we
+set, to take another station. As we went along the river bank,
+frequently having to force our way through thick jungle, we started 'no
+end' of peafowl, and getting down we soon added a couple to the bag.
+Pat got a fine jack snipe, and I shot a _Jheela_, a very fine waterfowl
+with brown plumage, having a strong metallic, coppery lustre on the
+back, and a steely dark blue breast. The plumage was very thick and
+glossy, and it proved afterwards to be excellent eating.
+
+Peafowl generally retire to the thickest part of the jungles during the
+heat of the day, but if you go out very early, when they are slowly
+wending their way back from the fields, where they have been revelling
+all night, you can shoot numbers of them. I used to go about twenty or
+thirty yards into the jungle, and walk slowly along, keeping that
+distance from the edge. My syce and pony would then walk slowly by the
+edges of the fields, and when the syce saw a peafowl ahead, making for
+the jungle, he would shout and try to make it rise. He generally
+succeeded, and as I was a little in advance and concealed by the
+jungle, I would get a fine shot as the bird flew overhead. I have shot
+as many as eight and ten in a morning in this way. I always used No. 4
+shot with about 3-1/2 drams of powder.
+
+Unless hard hit peafowl will often get away; they run with amazing
+swiftness, and in the heart of the jungle it is almost impossible to
+make them rise. A couple of sharp terriers, or a good retriever, will
+sometimes flush them, but the best way is to go along the edge of the
+jungle in the early morn, as I have described. The peachicks, about
+seven or eight months old, are deliciously tender and well flavoured.
+Old birds are very dry and tough, and require a great deal of that
+old-fashioned sauce, Hunger.
+
+The common name for a peafowl is _m[=o]r_, but the Nepaulese and Banturs
+call it _majoor_. Now _majoor_ also means coolie, and a young fellow,
+S., was horrified one day hearing his attendant in the jungle telling
+him in the most excited way, '_Majoor, majoor_, Sahib; why don't you
+fire?' Poor S. thought it was a coolie the man meant, and that he must
+be going mad, wanting him to shoot a coolie, but he found out his
+mistake, and learnt the double meaning of the word, when he got home
+and consulted his _manager_.
+
+The generic name for all deer is in Hindustani HURIN, but the Nepaulese
+call it CHEETER. The male spotted deer they call KUBRA, the female
+KUBREE. These spotted deer keep almost exclusively to the forests, and
+are very seldom found far away from the friendly cover of the sal
+woods. They are the most handsome, graceful looking animals I know,
+their skins beautifully marked with white spots, and the horns wide and
+arching. When properly prepared the skin makes a beautiful mat for a
+drawing room, and the horns of a good buck are a handsome ornament to
+the hall or the verandah. When bounding along through the forest, his
+beautifully spotted skin flashing through the dark green foliage, his
+antlers laid back over his withers, he looks the very embodiment of
+grace and swiftness. He is very timid, and not easily stalked.
+
+In March and April, when a strong west wind is blowing, it rustles the
+myriads of leaves that, dry as tinder, encumber the earth. This
+perpetual rustle prevents the deer from hearing the footsteps of an
+approaching foe. They generally betake themselves then to some patch of
+grass, or long-crop outside the jungle altogether, and if you want them
+in those months, it is in such places, and not inside the forest at
+all, that you must search. Like all the deer tribe, they are very
+curious, and a bit of rag tied to a tree, or a cloth put over a bush,
+will not unfrequently entice them within range.
+
+Old shekarries will tell you that as long as the deer go on feeding and
+flapping their ears, you may continue your approach. As soon as they
+throw up the head, and keep the ears still, their suspicions have been
+aroused, and if you want venison, you must be as still as a rock, till
+your game is again lulled into security, As soon as the ears begin
+flapping again, you may continue your stalk, but at the slightest
+noise, the noble buck will be off like a flash of lightning. You should
+never go out in the forest with white clothes, as you are then a
+conspicuous mark for all the prying eyes that are invisible to you. The
+best colour is dun brown, dark grey, or dark green. When you see a deer
+has become suspicious, and no cover is near, stand perfectly erect and
+rigid, and do not leave your legs apart. The 'forked-parsnip' formation
+of the 'human form divine' is detected at a glance, but there's just a
+chance that if your legs are drawn together, and you remain perfectly
+motionless, you may be mistaken for the stump of a tree, or at the best
+some less dangerous enemy than man.
+
+As we rode slowly along, to allow the beaters to get ahead, and to let
+the heavily-laden men with the nets keep up with us, we were amused to
+hear the remarks of the syces and shekarries on the sport they had just
+witnessed. Pat's old man, Juggroo, a merry peep-eyed fellow, full of
+anecdote and humour, was rather hard on Mehrman Singh for having been
+up late the preceding night. Mehrman, whose head was by this time
+probably reminding him that there are 'lees to every cup,' did not seem
+to relish the humour. He began grasping one wrist with the other hand,
+working his hand slowly round his wrist, and I noticed that Juggroo
+immediately changed the subject. This, as I afterwards learned, is the
+invariable Nepaulese custom of showing anger. They grasp the wrist as I
+have said, and it is taken as a sign that, if you do not discontinue
+your banter, you will have a fight.
+
+The Nepaulese are rather vain of their personal appearance, and hanker
+greatly after a good thick moustache. This, nature has denied them, for
+the hair on their faces is scanty and stubbly in the extreme. One day
+Juggroo saw his master putting some bandoline on his moustache, which
+was a fine, handsome, silky one. He asked Pat's bearer, an old rogue,
+what it was.
+
+'Oh!' replied the bearer, 'that is the gum of the sal tree; master
+always uses that, and that is the reason he has such a fine moustache.'
+
+Juggroo's imagination fired up at the idea.
+
+'Will it make mine grow too?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+'How do you use it?'
+
+'Just rub it on, as you see master do.'
+
+Away went Juggroo to try the new recipe.
+
+Now, the gum of the sal tree is a very strong resin, and hardens in
+water. It is almost impossible to get it off your skin, as the more
+water you use, the harder it gets.
+
+Next day Juggroo's face presented a sorry sight. He had plentifully
+smeared the gum over his upper lip, so that when he washed his face,
+the gum _set_, making the lip as stiff as a board, and threatening to
+crack the skin every time the slightest muscle moved.
+
+Juggroo _was_ 'sold' and no mistake, but he bore it all in grim
+silence, although he never forgot the old bearer. One day, long after,
+he brought in some berries from the wood, and was munching them,
+seemingly with great relish. The bearer wanted to know what they were,
+Juggroo with much apparent _nonchalance_ told him they were some very
+sweet, juicy, wild berries he had found in the forest. The bearer asked
+to try one.
+
+Juggroo had _another_ fruit ready, very much resembling those he was
+eating. It is filled with minute spikelets, or little hairy spinnacles,
+much resembling those found in ripe doghips at home. If these even
+touch the skin, they cause intense pain, stinging like nettles, and
+blistering every part they touch.
+
+The unsuspicious bearer popped the treacherous berry into his mouth,
+gave it a crunch, and then with a howl of agony, spluttered and spat,
+while the tears ran down his cheeks, as he implored Juggroo by all the
+gods to fetch him some water.
+
+Old Juggroo with a grim smile, walked coolly away, discharging a
+Parthian shaft, by telling him that these berries were very good for
+making the hair grow, and hoped he would soon have a good moustache.
+
+A man from the village now came running up to tell us that there was a
+leopard in the jungle we were about to beat, and that it had seized,
+but failed to carry away, a dog from the village during the night.
+Natives are so apt to tell stories of this kind that at first we did
+not credit him, but turning into the village he showed us the poor dog,
+with great wounds on its neck and throat where the leopard had pounced
+upon it. The noise, it seems, had brought some herdsmen to the place,
+and their cries had frightened the leopard and saved the wretched dog.
+As the man said he could show us the spot where the leopard generally
+remained, we determined to beat him up; so sending a man off on
+horseback for the beaters to slightly alter their intended line of
+beat, we rode off, attended by the villager, to get behind the
+leopard's lair, and see if we could not secure him. These fierce and
+courageous brutes, for they are both, are very common in the sal
+jungles; and as I have seen several killed, both in Bhaugulpore and
+Oudh, I must devote a chapter to the subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
+one.--Encounter with a leopard in a dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
+leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
+annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
+harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
+sanitation.
+
+Writing principally for friends at home, who are not familiar with
+Indian life, I must narrate facts that, although well known in Indian
+circles, are yet new to the general reader in England. My object is of
+course to represent the life we lead in the far East, and to give a
+series of pictures of what is going on there. If I occasionally touch
+on what may to Indian readers seem well-worn ground, they will forgive
+me.
+
+The leopard then, as a rule keeps to the wooded parts of India. In the
+long grassy jungles bordering the Koosee he is not generally met with.
+He is essentially a predatory animal, always on the outlook for a meal;
+round the villages, nestling amid their sal forests, he is continually
+on the prowl, looking out for a goat, a calf, or unwary dog. His
+appearance and habits are well known; he generally selects for his
+lair, a retired spot surrounded by dense jungle. The one we were after
+now had his home in a matted jungle, growing out of a pool of water,
+which had collected in a long hollow, forming the receptacle of the
+surface drainage from the adjacent slopes. This hollow stretched for
+miles towards the creek which we had been beating up; and the locality
+having moisture and other concurring elements in its favour, the
+vegetation had attained a luxuriance rarely seen in the dry uplands,
+where the west winds lick up the moisture, and the soil is arid and
+unpromising. The matted intertwining branches of the creepers had
+formed an almost impervious screen, and on the basis thus formed, amid
+the branches and creepers, the leopards had formed their lair. Beneath,
+was a still stagnant pool; above, was the leafy foliage. The tracks led
+down to a well-worn path.
+
+Climbing like a cat, as the leopards can do, they found no difficulty
+in gaining a footing on the mass of vegetation. They generally select
+some retired spot like this, and are very seldom seen in the daytime.
+With the approach of night, however, they begin their wandering in
+quest of prey. In a beat such as we were having 'all is fish that comes
+to the net,' and leopards, if they are in the jungle, have to yield to
+the advance of the beaters, like the other denizens of the forest.
+
+Experience tells you that the leopard is daring and ferocious. Old
+experienced hands warn you, that unless you can make sure of your shot,
+it is unwise to fire at a leopard approaching. It is better to wait
+till he has got past you, or at all events is 'broadside on.' If you
+only wound him as he is approaching, he will almost to a certainty make
+straight at you, but if you shoot him as he is going past, he will,
+maddened by pain and anger, go straight forward, and you escape his
+charge. He is more courageous than a tiger, and a very dangerous
+customer at close quarters. Up in one of the forests in Oudh, a friend
+of mine was out one day after leopard, with a companion who belonged to
+the forest department. My friend's companion fired at a leopard as it
+was approaching him, and wounded it severely. Nothing daunted, and
+recognising whence its hurt had come, it charged directly down on the
+concealed sportsman, and before he could half realise the position,
+sprang on him, caught his left arm in its teeth, and began mauling him
+with its claws. His presence of mind did not desert him; noticing close
+by the stump of a sal tree, that had been eaten by white ants till the
+harder parts of the wood alone remained, standing up hard and sharp
+like so many spikes of steel; and knowing that the leopard was already
+badly wounded, and in all probability struggling for his life, he
+managed to drag the struggling animal up to the stump; jammed his left
+arm yet further into the open mouth of the wounded beast, and being a
+strong man, by pure physical force dashed the leopard's brains out on
+the jagged edges of the stump. It was a splendid instance of presence
+of mind. He was horribly mauled of course; in fact I believe he lost
+his arm, but he saved his life. It shows the danger of only wounding a
+leopard, especially if he is coming towards you; always wait till he
+has passed your station, if it is practicable. If you _must_ shoot,
+take what care you can that the shot be a sure one.
+
+In some of the hill stations, and indeed in the villages on the plains,
+it is very common for a leopard to make his appearance in the house or
+verandah of an evening.
+
+One was shot in Bhaugulpore station by the genial and respected
+chaplain, on a Sunday morning two or three years ago. As we went along,
+H. told us a humorous story of an Assistant in the Public Works
+Department, who got mauled by a leopard at Dengra Ghat, Dak Bungalow.
+It had taken up its quarters in a disused room, and this young fellow
+burning, with ardour to distinguish himself, made straight for the room
+in which he was known to be. He opened the door, followed by a motley
+crowd of retainers, discharged his gun, and the sequel proved that he
+was _not_ a dead shot. He had only wounded the leopard. With a bound
+the savage brute was on him, but in the hurry and confusion, he had
+changed front. The leopard had him by the back. You can imagine the
+scene! He roared for help! The leopard was badly hit, and a plucky
+_bearer_ came to his rescue with a stout _lathee_. Between them they
+succeeded in killing the wounded animal, but not before it had left its
+marks on a very sensitive portion of his frame. The moral is, if you go
+after leopard, be sure you kill him at once.
+
+They seldom attack a strong, well-grown animal. Calves, however, goats,
+and dogs are frequently carried off by them. The young of deer and pig,
+too, fall victims, and when nothing else can be had, peafowl have been
+known to furnish them a meal. In my factory in Oudh I had a small,
+graceful, four-horned antelope. It was carried off by a leopard from
+the garden in broad daylight, and in face of a gang of coolies.
+
+The most commonly practised mode of leopard shooting, is to tie a goat
+up to a tree. You have a _mychan_ erected, that is, a platform elevated
+on trees above the ground. Here you take your seat. Attracted by the
+bleating of the goat, the prowling leopard approaches his intended
+victim. If you are on the watch you can generally detect his approach.
+They steal on with extreme caution, being intensely wary and
+suspicious. At a village near where we now were, I had sat up for three
+nights for a leopard, but although I knew he was prowling in the
+vicinity, I had never got a look at him. We believed this leopard to be
+the same brute.
+
+I have already described our mode of beating. The jungle was close, and
+there was a great growth of young trees. I was again on the right, and
+near the edge of the forest. Beyond was a glade planted with rice. The
+incidents of the beat were much as you have just read. There was,
+however, unknown or at any rate unnoticed by us, more intense
+excitement. We knew that the leopard might at any moment pass before
+us. Pat was close to a mighty bhur tree, whose branches, sending down
+shoots from the parent stem, had planted round it a colony of vigorous
+supports. It was a magnificent tree with dense shade. All was solemn
+and still. Pat with his keen eye, his pulse bounding, and every sense
+on the alert, was keeping a careful look-out from behind an immense
+projecting buttress of the tree. All was deadly quiet. H. and myself
+were occupied watching the gambols of some monkeys in our front. The
+beaters were yet far off. Suddenly Pat heard a faint crackle on a dried
+leaf. He glanced in the direction of the sound, and his quick eye
+detected the glossy coats, the beautifully spotted hides of not _one_
+leopard, but _two_. In a moment the stillness was broken by the report
+of his rifle. Another report followed sharp and quick. We were on the
+alert, but to Pat the chief honour and glory belonged. He had shot one
+leopard dead through the heart. The female was badly hit and came
+bounding along in my direction. Of course we were now on the _qui
+vive_. Waiting for an instant, till I could get my aim clear of some
+intervening trees, I at length got a fair shot, and brought her down
+with a ball through the throat. H. and Pat came running up, and we
+congratulated ourselves on our success. By and bye Mehrman Singh and
+the rest of the beaters came up, and the joy of the villagers was
+gratifying. These were doubtless the two leopards we had heard so much
+about, for which I had sat up and watched. It was amusing to see some
+villager whose pet goat or valued calf had been carried off, now coming
+up, striking the dead body of the leopard, and abusing it in the most
+unmeasured terms. Such a crowding round as there was! such a noise, and
+such excitement!
+
+While waiting for the horses to be brought, and while the excited mob
+of beaters and coolies carried off the dead animals to the camp to be
+skinned, we amused ourselves by trying our rifles at a huge tree that
+grew on the further side of the rice swamp. We found the effects of the
+'Express' bullet to be tremendous. It splintered up and burst the bark
+and body of the tree into fragments. Its effects on an animal are even
+more wonderful. On looking afterwards at the leopard which had been
+shot, we found that my bullet had touched the base of the shoulder,
+near the collar-bone. It had gone downwards through the neck, under the
+collar-bone, and struck the shoulder. There it had splintered up and
+made a frightful wound, scattering its fragments all over the chest,
+and cutting and lacerating everything in its way.
+
+For big game the 'Express' is simply invaluable. For all-round shooting
+perhaps a No. 12 smooth-bore is the best. It should be snap action with
+rebounding locks. You should have facilities and instruments for
+loading cartridges. A good cartridge belt is a good thing for carrying
+them, but go where you will now, where there is game to be killed, a
+No. 12 B. L. will enable you to participate in whatever shooting is
+going. Such a one as I have described would satisfy all the wishes of
+any young man who perhaps can only afford one gun.
+
+As we rode slowly along, we learned many curious facts of jungle and
+native life from the followers, and by noticing little incidents
+happening before our eyes. Pat, who is so well versed in jungle life
+and its traditions, told us of a curious moveable feast which the
+natives of these parts hold annually, generally in March or April,
+which is called the _Sirwah Purrub_.
+
+It seems to be somewhat like the old carnivals of the middle ages. I
+have read that in Sardinia, and Italy, and Switzerland something
+similar takes place. The _Sirwah Purrub_ is a sort of festival held in
+honour of the native Diana--the _chumpa buttee_ before referred to. On
+the appointed day all the males in the forest villages, without
+exception, go a-hunting. Old spears are furbished up; miraculous guns,
+of even yet more ancient lineage than Mehrman Singh's dangerous
+flintpiece, are brought out from dusty hiding-places. Battle-axes, bows
+and arrows, hatchets, clubs and weapons of all sorts, are looked up,
+and the motley crowd hies to the forest, the one party beating up the
+game to the other.
+
+Some go fishing, others try to secure a quail or partridge, but it is a
+point of honour that something must be slain. If game be not plentiful
+they will even go to another village and slay a goat, which, rather
+than return empty-handed, they will bear in triumph home. The women
+meet the returning hunters, and if there has been a fortunate beat,
+there is a great feast in the village during the evening and far on
+into the night. The nets are used, and in this way they generally have
+some game to divide in the village on their return from the hunt.
+Ordinarily they seethe the flesh, and pour the whole contents of the
+cooking-pot into a mess of boiled rice. With the addition of a little
+salt, this is to them very palatable fare. They are very good cooks,
+with very simple appliances; with a little mustard oil or clarified
+butter, a few vegetables or a cut-up fish, they can be very successful.
+The food, however, is generally smoked from the cow-dung fire. If you
+are much out in these villages this smoke constantly hangs about,
+clinging to your clothes and flavouring your food, but the natives seem
+to like it amazingly.
+
+In the cold mornings of December or January it hangs about like the
+peat smoke in a Highland village. Round every house are great stacks
+and piles of cow-dung cakes. Before every house is a huge pile of
+ashes, and the villagers cower round this as the evening falls, or
+before the sun has dissipated the mist of the mornings. During the day
+the village dogs burrow in the ashes. Hovering in a dense cloud about
+the roofs and eaves, and along the lower branches of the trees in filmy
+layers, the smoke almost chokes one to ride through it. I have seen a
+native sit till half-choked in a dense column of this smoke. He is too
+lazy to shift his position; the fumes of pungent smoke half smother
+him; tears run from his eyes; he splutters and coughs, and abuses the
+smoke, and its grandfather, and maternal uncle, and all its other known
+relatives; but he prefers semi-suffocation to the trouble of budging an
+inch.
+
+Sometimes the energy of these people is surprising. To go to a fair or
+feast, or on a pilgrimage, they will walk miles upon miles, subsisting
+on parched peas or rice, and carrying heavy burdens. In company they
+sing and carol blithely enough. When alone they are very taciturn, man
+and woman walking together, the man first with his _lathee_ or staff,
+the woman behind carrying child or bundle, and often looking fagged and
+tired enough.
+
+Taking vegetables, or rice, or other commodities to the bazaar, the
+carrier often slings his burden to the two ends of a pole worn over the
+shoulder, much as Chinamen do. But they generally make their load into
+one bundle which they carry on the head, or which they sling, if not
+large and bulky, over their backs, rolled up in one of their cloths.
+
+During the rice-planting season they toil in mud and water from
+earliest morn till late into twilight. Bending and stooping all the
+day, their lower extremities up to the knee sometimes in water, and the
+scorching sun beating on their backs, they certainly show their patient
+plodding industry, for it is downright honest hard work.
+
+The young rice is taken from the nursery patch, where it has been sown
+thick some time previously. When the rice-field is ready--a sloppy,
+muddy, embanked little quagmire--the ryot gets his bundle of young
+rice-plants, and shoves in two or three at a time with his finger and
+thumb. These afterwards form the tufts of rice. Its growth is very
+rapid. Sometimes, in case of flood, the rice actually grows with the
+rise of the water, always keeping its tip above the stream. If wholly
+submerged for any length of time it dies. There are over a hundred
+varieties. Some are only suited for very deep marshy soils; others,
+such as the _s[=a]tee_, or sixty-days rice, can be grown on comparatively
+high land, and ripen early. If rain be scanty, the _s[=a]tee_ and other
+rice crops have to be weeded. It is cut with a jagged-edged sort of
+reaping-hook called a _hussooa_. The cut bundles are carried from the
+fields by women, girls, and lads. They could not take carts in many
+instances into the swamps.
+
+At such times you see every little dyke or embankment with a crowd of
+bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on his head,
+hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The women, with clothes
+tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at
+a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken--garnering
+the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over.
+Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor,
+dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a
+yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use
+leaving a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by
+such a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty
+stomachs in every village, a bundle of rice would be gone by the
+morning.
+
+As in Greece, where every man has to watch his vineyard at night, so
+here, the _kureehan_ or threshing-floor each has its watchman at night.
+For the protection of the growing crops, the villagers club together,
+and appoint a watchman or _chowkeydar_, whom they pay by giving him a
+small percentage on the yield; or a small fractional proportion of the
+area he has to guard, with its standing crop, may be made over to him
+as a recompense.
+
+They thresh out the rice when it has matured a little on the
+threshing-floor. Four to six bullocks are tied in a line to a post in
+the centre, and round this they slowly pace in a circle. They are not
+muzzled, and the poor brutes seem rather to enjoy the unwonted luxury
+of feeding while they work. When there is a good wind, the grain is
+winnowed; it is lifted either in bamboo scoops or in the two hands. The
+wind blows the chaff or _bhoosa_ on to a heap, and the fine fresh rice
+remains behind. The grain merchants now do a good business. Rice must
+be sold to pay the rent, the money-lender, and other clamouring
+creditors. The _bunniahs_ will take repayment in kind. They put on
+the interest, and cheat in the weighments and measurements. So much has
+to be given to the weigh-man as a perquisite. If seed had been borrowed,
+it has now to be returned at a ruinous rate of interest. Some seed must
+be saved for next year, and an average _poor_ ryot, the cultivator of
+but a little holding, very soon sees the result of his harvesting melt
+away, leaving little for wife and little ones to live on. He never
+gets free of the money-lender. He will have to go out and work hard
+for others, as well as get up his own little lands. No chance of a new
+bullock this year, and the old ones are getting worn out and thin. The
+wife must dispense with her promised ornament or dress. For the poor
+ryot it is a miserable hand-to-mouth existence when crops are poor.
+As a rule he is never out of debt. He lives on the scantiest fare;
+hunger often pinches him; he knows none of the luxuries of life.
+Notwithstanding all, the majority are patient, frugal, industrious,
+and to the full extent of their scanty means even charitable and
+benevolent. With the average ryot a little business goes a great way.
+There are some irreconcileable, discontented, worthless fellows in
+every village. All more or less count a lie as rather a good thing to
+be expert in; they lie naturally, simply, and instinctively: but with
+all his faults, and they are doubtless many, I confess to a great
+liking for the average Hindoo ryot.
+
+At times, however, their apathy and laziness is amazing. They are very
+childish, petted, and easily roused. In a quarrel, however, they
+generally confine themselves to vituperation and abuse, and seldom
+come to blows.
+
+As an instance of their fatalism or apathetic indolence, I can remember
+a village on the estate I was managing taking fire. It was quite close
+to the factory. I had my pony saddled at once, and galloped off for the
+burning village. It was a long, straggling one, with a good masonry
+well in the centre, shadowed by a mighty _peepul_ tree. The wind was
+blowing the fire right along, and if no obstruction was offered, would
+sweep off every hut in the place. The only soul who was trying to do a
+thing was a young Brahmin watchman belonging to the factory. He had
+succeeded in removing some brass jars of his own, and was saving some
+grain. One woman was rocking to and fro, beating her breast and crying.
+There sat the rest of the apathetic villagers in groups, not lifting a
+finger, not stirring a step, but calmly looking on, while the devouring
+element was licking up hut after hut, and destroying their little all.
+In a few minutes some of my servants, syces, and factory men had
+arrived. I tied up the pony, ordered my men to pull down a couple of
+huts in the centre, and tried to infuse some energy into the villagers.
+Not a bit of it; they would _not_ stir. They would not even draw a
+bucket of water. However, my men got earthen pots; I dug up fresh earth
+and threw it on the two dismantled huts, dragging away as much of the
+thatch and _debris_ as we could.
+
+The fire licked our faces, and actually got a footing on the first
+house beyond the frail opening we had tried to make, but we persevered,
+and ultimately stayed the fire, and saved about two thirds of the
+village. I never saw such an instance of complete apathy. Some of the
+inhabitants even had not untied the cattle in the sheds. They seemed
+quite prostrated. However, as we worked on, and they began to see that
+all was not yet lost, they began to buckle to; yet even then their
+principal object was to save their brass pots and cooking utensils,
+things that could not possibly burn, and which they might have left
+alone with perfect safety.
+
+A Hindoo village is as inflammable as touchwood. The houses are
+generally built of grass walls, connected with thin battens of bamboo.
+The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all the little
+courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are piled up round
+every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which smoulders all day. A
+stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit round the corner, and
+before one can half realise the catastrophe, the village is on fire.
+Then each only thinks of his own goods; there is no combined effort to
+stay the flames. In the hot west winds of March, April, and May, these
+fires are of very frequent occurrence. In Bhaugulpore, I have seen,
+from my verandah, three villages on fire at one and the same time. In
+some parts of Oudh, among the sal forests, village after village is
+burnt down annually, and I have seen the same catastrophe visit the
+same village several times in the course of one year. These fires arise
+from pure carelessness, sheer apathy, and laziness.
+
+Sanitary precautions too are very insufficient; practically there are
+none. Huge unsightly water-holes, filled during the rains with the
+drainage of all the dung-heaps and mounds of offal and filth that
+abound in the village, swelter under the hot summer sun. They get
+covered with a rank green scum, and if their inky depths be stirred,
+the foulest and most fearful odours issue forth. In these filthy pools
+the villagers often perform their ablutions; they do not scruple to
+drink the putrid water, which is no doubt a hotbed and regular nursery
+for fevers, and choleraic and other disorders.
+
+Many home readers are but little acquainted with the Indian village
+system, and I shall devote a chapter to the description of a Hindoo
+village, with its functionaries, its institutions, its inhabitants, and
+the more marked of their customs and avocations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
+--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
+village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
+village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
+system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
+justice.
+
+A typical village in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of thatched
+huts, apparently set down at random--as indeed it is, for every one
+erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or wherever he can
+get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved
+plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the huts and buildings. Several
+small orchards of mango surround the village; the roads leading to and
+from it are merely well-worn cattle tracks,--in the rains a perfect
+quagmire, and in the hot weather dusty, and confined between straggling
+hedges of aloe or prickly pear. These hedges are festooned with masses
+of clinging luxuriant creepers, among which sometimes struggles up a
+custard apple, an avocado pear, or a wild plum-tree. The latter is a
+prickly straggling tree, called the _bhyre_; the wood is very hard, and
+is often used for making ploughs. The fruit is a little hard yellow
+crisp fruit, with a big stone inside, and very sweet; when it is ripe,
+the village urchins throw sticks up among the branches, and feast on
+the golden shower.
+
+On many of the banks bordering the roads, thatching grass, or rather
+strong upright waving grass, with a beautiful feathery plume, is
+planted. This is used to make the walls of the houses, and these are
+then plastered outside and in with clay and cowdung. The tall hedge
+of dense grass keeps what little breeze there may be away from the
+traveller. The road is something like an Irish 'Boreen,' wanting only
+its beauty and freshness. On a hot day the atmosphere in one of these
+village roads is stifling and loaded with dust.
+
+These houses with their grass walls and thatched roof are called
+_kutcha_, as opposed to more pretentious structures of burnt brick,
+with maybe a tiled sloping or flat plastered roof, which are called
+_pucca. Pucca_ literally means 'ripe,' as opposed to _cutcha_, 'unripe';
+but the rich Oriental tongue has adapted it to almost every kind of
+secondary meaning. Thus a man who is true, upright, respected, a man
+to be depended on, is called a _pucca_ man. It is a word in constant
+use among Anglo-Indians. A _pucca_ road is one which is bridged and
+metalled. If you make an engagement with a friend, and he wants to
+impress you with its importance, he will ask you, Now is that _pucca_?'
+and so on.
+
+Other houses in the village are composed of unburnt bricks cemented
+with mud, or maybe composed of mud walls and thatched roof; these,
+being a compound sort of erection, are called _cutcha pucca_. In the
+_cutcha_ houses live the poorer castes, the _Chumars_ or workers in
+leathers, the _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, or _Gwallahs_.
+
+The _Dornes_, or scavengers, feeders on offal, have to live apart in a
+_tolah_, which might be called a small suburb, by themselves. The
+_Dornes_ drag from the village any animal that happens to die. They
+generally pursue the handicraft of basket making, or mat making, and
+the _Dorne tolah_ can always be known by the pigs and fowls prowling
+about in search of food, and the _Dorne_ and his family splitting up
+bamboo, and weaving mats and baskets at the doors of their miserable
+habitation. To the higher castes both pigs arid fowls are unclean and
+an abomination. _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, and other poor castes, such as
+_Dangurs_, keep however an army of gaunt, lean, hungry-looking pigs.
+These may be seen rooting and wallowing in the marshes when the rice
+has been cut, or foraging among the mango groves, to pick up any stray
+unripe fruit that may have escaped the keen eyes of the hungry and
+swarming children.
+
+There is yet another small _tolah_ or suburb, called the _Kusbee
+tolah_. Here live the miserable outcasts who minister to the worst
+passions of our nature. These degraded beings are banished from the
+more respectable portions of the community; but here, as in our own
+highly civilised and favoured land, vice hovers by the side of virtue,
+and the Hindoo village contains the same elements of happiness and
+misery, profligacy and probity, purity and degradation, as the fine
+home cities that are a name in the mouths of men.
+
+Every village forms a perfect little commonwealth; it contains all the
+elements of self-existence; it is quite a little commune, so far as
+social life is concerned. There is a hereditary blacksmith, washerman,
+potter, barber, and writer. The _dhobee_, or washerman, can always be
+known by the propinquity of his donkeys, diminutive animals which he
+uses to transport his bundle of unsavoury dirty clothes to the pool or
+tank where the linen is washed. On great country roads you may often
+see strings of donkeys laden with bags of grain, which they transport
+from far-away villages to the big bazaars; but if you see a laden
+donkey near a village, be sure the _dhobee_ is not far off.
+
+Here as elsewhere the _hajam_, or barber, is a great gossip, and
+generally a favourite. He uses no soap, and has a most uncouth-looking
+razor, yet he shaves the heads, beards, moustaches, and armpits of his
+customers with great deftness. The lower classes of natives shave the
+hair of the head and of the armpits for the sake of cleanliness and for
+other obvious reasons. The higher classes are very regular in their
+ablutions; every morning, be the water cold or warm, the Rajpoot and
+Brahmin, the respectable middle classes, and all in the village who lay
+any claim to social position, have their _goosal_ or bath. Some hie to
+the nearest tank or stream; at all hours of the day, at any ferry or
+landing stage, you will see swarthy fine-looking fellows up to mid
+waist in the water, scrubbing vigorously their bronzed arms, and neck
+and chest. They clean their teeth with the end of a stick, which they
+chew at one extremity, till they loosen the fibres, and with this
+improvised toothbrush and some wood ashes for paste, they make them
+look as white and clean as ivory.
+
+There is generally a large masonry well in the middle of the village,
+with a broad smooth _pucca_ platform all round it. It has been built by
+some former father of the hamlet, to perpetuate his memory, to fulfil a
+vow to the gods, perhaps simply from goodwill to his fellow townsmen.
+At all events there is generally one such in every village. It is
+generally shadowed by a huge _bhur, peepul_, or tamarind tree. Here may
+always be seen the busiest sight in the village. Pretty young women
+chatter, laugh, and talk, and assume all sorts of picturesque attitudes
+as they fill their waterpots; the village matrons gossip, and sometimes
+quarrel, as they pull away at the windlass over the deep cool well. On
+the platform are a group of fat Brahmins nearly nude, their lighter
+skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower classes. There
+are several groups. With damp drapery clinging to their glistening
+skins, they pour brass pots of cold water over their dripping bodies;
+they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again as the cool element pours
+over head and shoulders. They sit down while some young attendant or
+relation vigorously rubs them down the back; while sitting they clean
+their feet. Thus, amid much laughing and talking, and quaint gestures,
+and not a little expectoration, they perform their ablutions. Not
+unfrequently the more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil,
+which at all events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it
+does, though it is not fragrant. Round the well you get all the village
+news and scandal. It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings,
+and only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village
+into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the hand-mill,
+or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy damsel or
+matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool shadow of her
+hut, for the wants of her lord and master.
+
+Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by government,
+and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars subscribe liberally
+for a schoolmaster in their villages. Near the principal street then,
+in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old mango-tree, we come on the
+village school. The little fellows have all discarded their upper
+clothes on account of the heat, and with much noise, swaying the body
+backwards and forwards, and monotonously intoning, they grind away at
+the mill of learning, and try to get a knowledge of books. Other dusky
+urchins figure away with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces
+of wood to serve as copy-books. The din increases as the stranger
+passes: going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause
+a momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school. The little
+Hindoo scholar probably wishes to impress you with a sense of his
+assiduity. He raises his voice, sways the body more briskly, keeps his
+one eye firmly fixed on his task, while with the other he throws a keen
+swift glance over you, which embraces every detail of your costume, and
+not improbably includes a shrewd estimate of your disposition and
+character.
+
+Hindoo children never seem to me to be boys or girls; they are
+preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing
+together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most
+portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning candour and
+guileless innocence, when they are all the while plotting some petty
+scheme against you. They are certainly far more precocious than English
+children; they realise the hard struggle for life far more quickly. The
+poorer classes can hardly be said to have any childhood; as soon as
+they can toddle they are sent to weed, cut grass, gather fuel, tend
+herds, or do anything that will bring them in a small pittance, and
+ease the burden of the struggling parents. I think the children of the
+higher and middle classes very pretty; they have beautiful, dark,
+thoughtful eyes, and a most intelligent expression. Very young babies
+however are miserably nursed; their hair is allowed to get all tangled
+and matted into unsightly knots; their faces are seldom washed, and
+their eyes are painted with antimony about the lids, and are often
+rheumy and running with water. The use of the pocket handkerchief is
+sadly neglected.
+
+There is generally one open space or long street in our village, and in
+a hamlet of any importance there is weekly or bi-weekly a bazaar or
+market. From early morning in all directions, from solitary huts in
+the forest, from struggling little crofts in the rice lands, from
+fishermen's dwellings perched on the bank of the river, from lonely
+camps in the grass jungle where the herd and his family live with their
+cattle, from all the petty Thorpes about, come the women with their
+baskets of vegetables, their bundles of spun yarn, their piece of woven
+cloth, whatever they have to sell or barter. There is a lad with a pair
+of wooden shoes, which he has fashioned as he was tending the village
+cows; another with a grass mat, or bamboo staff, or some other strange
+outlandish-looking article, which he hopes to barter in the bazaar for
+something on which his heart is set. The _bunniahs_ hurry up their
+tottering, overladen ponies; the rice merchant twists his patient
+bullock's tail to make it move faster; the cloth merchant with his bale
+under his arm and measuring stick in hand, walks briskly along. Here
+comes a gang of charcoal-burners, with their loads of fuel slung on
+poles dangling from their shoulders. A _box wallah_ with his attendant
+coolie, staggering under the weight of a huge box of Manchester goods,
+hurries by. It is a busy sight in the bazaar. What a cackling! What a
+confused clatter of voices! Here also the women are the chief
+contributors to the din of tongues. There is no irate husband here or
+moody master to tell them to be still. Spread out on the ground are
+heaps of different grain, bags of flour, baskets of meal, pulse, or
+barley; sweetmeats occupy the attention of nearly all the buyers. All
+Hindoos indulge in sweets, which take the place of beer with us;
+instead of a 'nobbler,' they offer you a 'lollipop.' Trinkets, beads,
+bracelets, armlets, and anklets of pewter, there are in great bunches;
+fruits, vegetables, sticks of cane, skins full of oil, and sugar, and
+treacle. Stands with fresh 'paun' leaves, and piles of coarse looking
+masses of tobacco are largely patronised. It is like a hive of bees.
+The dust hovers over the moving mass; the smells are various, none of
+them 'blest odours of sweet Araby.' Drugs, condiments, spices, shoes,
+in fact, everything that a rustic population can require, is here. The
+_pice_ jingle as they change hands; the haggling and chaffering are
+without parallel in any market at home. Here is a man apparently in the
+last madness of intense passion, in fierce altercation with another,
+who tries his utmost to outbluster his furious declamation. In a moment
+they are smiling and to all appearance the best friends in the world.
+The bargain has been concluded; it was all about whether the one could
+give three _brinjals_ or four for one pice. It is a scene of
+indescribable bustle, noise, and confusion. By evening however, all
+will have been packed up again, and only the faint outlines of yet
+floating clouds of dust, and the hopping, cheeky crows, picking up the
+scattered litter and remnants of the market, will remain to tell that
+it has been bazaar day in our village.
+
+Generally, about the centre of it, there is a more pretentious
+structure, with verandahs supported on wooden pillars. High walls
+surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little
+doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs
+leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside verandahs.
+Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or walk slowly to and
+from the yard with seemingly purposeless indecision. In the outer
+verandah is an old _palkee_, with evidences in the tarnished gilding
+and frayed and tattered hangings, that it once had some pretensions to
+fashionable elegance.
+
+The walls of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and numerous
+young _peepul_ trees grow in the crevices, their insidious roots
+creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and expediting the work
+of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is the residence of the
+Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner of the lands adjoining.
+Probably he is descended from some noble house of ancient lineage. His
+forefathers, possibly, led armed retainers against some rival in yonder
+far off village, where the dim outlines of a mud fort yet tell of the
+insecurity of the days of old. Now he is old, and fat, and lazy.
+Possibly he has been too often to the money-lender. His lands are
+mortgaged to their full value. Though they respect and look up to their
+old Zemindar, the villagers are getting independent; they are not so
+humble, and pay less and less of feudal tribute than in the old days,
+when the golden palanquin was new, when the elephant had splendid
+housings, when mace, and javelin, and matchlock-men followed in his
+train. Alas! the elephant was sold long ago, and is now the property of
+a wealthy _Bunniah_ who has amassed money in the buying and selling of
+grain and oil. The Zemindar may be a man of progress and intelligence,
+but many are of this broken down and helpless type.
+
+Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant,
+conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages through
+a small staff of _peons_, or un-official police. The accounts are kept
+by another important village functionary--the _putwarrie_, or village
+accountant. _Putwarries_ belong to the writer or _Kayasth_ caste. They
+are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous as any
+class in India. They manage the most complicated accounts between ryot
+and landlord with great skill. Their memories are wonderful, but they
+can always forget conveniently. Where ryots are numerous, the
+landlord's wants pressing, and frequent calls made on the tenantry for
+payment, often made in various kinds of grain and produce, the rates
+and prices of which are constantly changing, it is easy to imagine the
+complications and intricacies of a _putwarrie's_ account. Each ryot
+pretty accurately remembers his own particular indebtedness, but woe to
+him if he pays the _putwarrie_ the value of a 'red cent' without taking
+a receipt. Certainly there may be a really honest _putwarrie_, but I
+very much doubt it. The name stands for chicanery and robbery. On
+the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up for money,
+questioning his accounts, and putting him not unfrequently to actual
+bodily coercion. The ryot on the other hand is constantly inventing
+excuses, getting up delays, and propounding innumerable reasons why
+he cannot pay. He will try to forge receipts, he will get up false
+evidence that he has already paid, and the wretched _putwarrie_ needs
+all his native and acquired sharpness, to hold his own. But all ryots
+are not alike, and when the _putwarrie_ gets hold of some unwary and
+ignorant bumpkin whom he can plunder, he _does_ plunder him
+systematically. All cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle
+lifters, and a _putwarrie_ after he has got over the stage of infancy,
+and has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can
+teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of villains. A
+popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:--
+
+  'Unda poortee, Cowa maro!
+  Iinnum me, billar:
+  Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!!
+  Humesha mara gwar!!'
+
+This is translated thus: 'When the shell is breaking kill the crow, and
+the wild cat at its birth.' A _Kayasth_, writer, or _putwarrie_, may be
+allowed to live till he is twelve years old, at which time he is sure
+to have learned rascality. Then kill him; but kill _gwars_ or cowherds
+any time, for they are invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim
+bucolic humour in this, and it very nearly hits the truth.
+
+The _putwarrie_, then, is an important personage. He has his
+_cutcherry_, or office, where he and his tribe (for there are always
+numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his books and accounts)
+squat on their mat on the ground. Each possesses the instruments of his
+calling in the shape of a small brass ink-pot, and an oblong box
+containing a knife, pencil, and several reeds for pens. Each has a
+bundle of papers and documents before him, this is called his _busta_,
+and contains all the papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce
+squabbles with the tenantry. There is always some noise about a
+putwarrie's cutcherry. He has generally some half dozen quarrels on
+hand, but he trusts to his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is
+essentially a man of peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a
+keen argument, and an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain.
+Another proverb says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming
+a soldier as a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.
+
+The _lohar_, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at home. Here
+is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks from the heated
+iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little to remind one of
+Longfellow's beautiful poem. The _lohar_ sits in the open air. His
+hammers and other implements of trade are very primitive. Like all
+native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work. His bellows are made of
+two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted alternately by the attendant
+coolie. As they lift they get inflated with air; they are then sharply
+forced down on their own folds, and the contained air ejected forcibly
+through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing
+charcoal which forms the fire. His principal work is making and
+sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat
+blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the
+_hussowahs_, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They
+are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in
+metal. They are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and
+even gun-locks, made by a common native village blacksmith, that could
+not be surpassed in delicacy of finish by any English smith. It is
+foreign to our ideas of the brawny blacksmith, to hear that he sits to
+his work, but this is the invariable custom. Even carpenters and masons
+squat down to theirs. Cheap labour is but an arbitrary term, and a
+country smith at home might do the work of ten or twelve men in India;
+but it is just as well to get an idea of existing differences. On many
+of the factories there are very intelligent _mistrees_, which is the
+term for the master blacksmith. These men, getting but twenty-four to
+thirty shillings a month, and supplying themselves with food and
+clothing, are nevertheless competent to work all the machinery, attend
+to the engine, and do all the ironwork necessary for the factory. They
+will superintend the staff of blacksmiths; and if the sewing-machine of
+the _mem sahib_, the gun-lock of the _luna sahib_, the lawn-mower,
+English pump, or other machine gets out of order, requiring any metal
+work, the _mistree_ is called in, and is generally competent to put
+things to rights.
+
+[Illustration: CARPENTERS AND BLACKSMITHS AT WORK]
+
+As I have said, every village is a self-contained little commune. All
+trades necessary to supplying the wants of the villagers are
+represented in it. Besides the profits from his actual calling, nearly
+every man except the daily labourer, has a little bit of land which he
+farms, so as to eke out his scanty income. All possess a cow or two, a
+few goats, and probably a pair of plough-bullocks.
+
+When a dispute arises in the village, should a person be suspected of
+theft, should his cattle trespass on his neighbour's growing crop,
+should he libel some one against whom he has a grudge, or, proceeding
+to stronger measures, take the law into his own hands and assault
+him, the aggrieved party complains to the head man of the village.
+In every village the head man is the fountain of justice. He holds
+his office sometimes by right of superior wealth, or intelligence,
+or hereditary succession, not unfrequently by the unanimous wish of
+his fellow-villagers. On a complaint being made to him, he summons
+both parties and their witnesses. The complainant is then allowed to
+nominate two men, to act as assessors or jurymen on his behalf, his
+nominations being liable to challenge by the opposite party. The
+defendant next names two to act on his behalf, and if these are
+agreed to by both parties, these four, with the head man, form what
+is called a _punchayiet_, or council of five, in fact, a jury. They
+examine the witnesses, and each party to the suit conducts his own
+case. The whole village not unfrequently attends to hear what goes on.
+In a mere caste or private quarrel, only the friends of the parties
+will attend. Every case is tried in public, and all the inhabitants of
+the village can hear the proceedings if they wish. Respectable
+inhabitants can remark on the proceedings, make suggestions, and give
+an opinion. Public feeling is thus pretty accurately gauged and
+tested, and the _punchayiet_ agree among themselves on the verdict. To
+the honour of their character for fair play be it said, that the
+decision of a _punchayiet_ is generally correct, and is very seldom
+appealed against. Our complicated system of law, with its delays, its
+technicalities, its uncertainties, and above all its expense, its
+stamp duties, its court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the
+innumerable vexations attendant on the administration of justice in
+our revenue and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of
+Hindostan. They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give
+them justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are
+far too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and
+complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the gate'
+is what they want. It is quite enough admission of the reality of our
+rule--that we are the paramount power--that they submit a case to us
+at all; and all impediments in the way of their getting cheap and
+speedy justice should be done away with. A codification of existing
+laws, a sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at
+present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less
+legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to efficiency
+and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be the aim of our
+Indian rulers. More especially should this be the case in rural
+districts where large interests are concerned, where cases involve
+delicate points of law. Our present courts, divested of their hungry
+crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough; but I would like
+to see rural courts for petty cases established, presided over by
+leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of probity, which would
+in a measure supplement the _punchayiet_ system, which would be easy
+of access, cheap in their procedure, and with all the impress of
+authority. It is a question I merely glance at, as it does not come
+within the scope of a book like this; but it is well known to every
+planter and European who has come much in contact with the rural
+classes of Hindostan, that there is a vast amount of smouldering
+disaffection, of deep-rooted dislike to, and contempt of, our present
+cumbrous costly machinery of law and justice.
+
+If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a
+plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready
+with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a _vakeel_,
+that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or
+round the factory to get some little business done, to neglect his
+work, to get his rent or produce account investigated, wherever there
+is worry, trouble, delay, or difficulty about anything concerning the
+relations between himself and the factory, the deepest and keenest
+expression of discontent and disgust his versatile and acute
+imagination can suggest, or his fluent tongue give utterance to is,
+that this is 'Adanlut lea mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.'
+Could there be a stronger commentary on our judicial institutions?
+
+The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages.
+Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing; communications are
+much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of
+besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering
+tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no
+difficulty in establishing in such village or district courts as I
+have indicated. All educated respectable Europeans with a stake in the
+country should be made Justices of the Peace, with limited powers to
+try petty cases. There is a vast material--loyalty, educated minds, an
+honest desire to do justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of
+everything pettifogging and underhand--that the Indian Government
+would do well to utilise. The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit
+him of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal
+facility to fall under pecuniary temptation. The educated gentleman
+planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering
+titles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the bench,
+and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our rulers'
+while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience, loyalty, honour,
+and integrity of those of our countrymen who might be willing to place
+their services at the disposal of Government. 'India for the Indians'
+is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it will not do to push it to
+its logical issue. Unless Indians can govern India wisely and well, in
+accordance with modern national ideas, they have no more right to
+India than Hottentots have to the Cape, or the black fellows to
+Australia. In my opinion, Hindoos would never govern Hindustan half,
+quarter, nay, one tithe as well as Englishmen. Make more of your
+Englishmen in India then, make not less of your Baboo if you please,
+but make more of your Englishmen. Keep them loyal and content. Treat
+them kindly and liberally. One Englishman contented, loyal, and
+industrious in an Indian district, is a greater pillar of strength to
+the Indian Government than ten dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them
+have as many titles, decorations, university degrees, or certificates
+of loyalty from junior civilians as they may. Not India for the
+Indians, but India for Imperial Britain say I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The
+temple.--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.
+--Their low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions
+and knavery.--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native
+officials.--The Hindoo unfit for self-government.
+
+One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the watchman or
+_chowkeydar_. He is generally a _Doosadh_, or other low caste man, and
+perambulates the village at night, at intervals uttering a loud cry or
+a fierce howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the _chowkeydars_
+of the neighbouring villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after
+cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into
+faintness. At times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out
+close to your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do
+not feel it to be so. The _chowkeydar_ has to see that no thieves
+enter the village by night. He protects the herds and property of the
+villagers. If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report it to
+the nearest police station. If you lose your way by night, you shout
+out for the nearest _chowkeydar_, and he is bound to pass you on to
+the next village. These men get a small gratuity from government, but
+the villagers also pay them a small sum, which they assess according
+to individual means. The _chowkeydar_ is generally a ragged, swarthy
+fellow with long matted hair, a huge iron-bound staff, and always a
+blue _puggra_. The blue is his official badge. Sometimes he has a
+brass badge, and carries a sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle
+of which is so small that scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found
+to fit it. It is more for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it
+has become so fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.
+
+[Illustration: HINDOO VILLAGE TEMPLES.]
+
+In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the village
+itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is often
+perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village tank.
+Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the sacred
+fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several oleaginous
+old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear only the
+_dhote_ or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton, and hanging about
+the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can be told by his
+sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder. His skin is much
+fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers. It is not
+unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as fair as many
+Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds, but lazy and
+self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is simply a sensual
+voluptuary. This is not the time or place to descant on their
+religion, which, with many gross practices, contains not a little that
+is pure and beautiful. The common idea at home that they are miserable
+pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and stones,' is, like many of the
+accepted ideas about India, very much exaggerated. That the masses,
+the crude uneducated Hindoos, place some faith in the idol, and expect
+in some mysterious way that it will influence their fate for good or
+evil, is not to be denied, but the more intelligent natives, and most
+of the Brahmins, only look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of
+the divinity. They want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to
+God, and the idol is a means to assist their thoughts heavenward. As
+works of art their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other
+symbols of the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same
+purpose. Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has
+perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the gods by erecting a
+temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shrine, which
+they visit at intervals and daub with red paint. They deposit flowers,
+pour libations of water or milk, and in other ways strive to shew that
+a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as I have
+observed, however, the vast mass of the poor toilers in India have
+little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing. They may have
+some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a holier life, but the
+fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and shelter, is too
+incessant for them to indulge much in contemplation. They have a dim
+idea of a future life, but none of them can give you anything but a
+very unsatisfactory idea of their religion. They observe certain forms
+and ceremonies, because their fathers did, and because the Brahmins
+tell them. Of real, vital, practical religion, as we know it, they
+have little or no knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low
+castes about immortality, about salvation, about the higher virtues,
+about the yearnings and wishes that every immortal soul at periods
+has, and he will simply tell you 'Khoda jane, hum greel admi,' i.e.
+'God knows; I am only a poor man!' There they take refuge always when
+you ask them anything puzzling. If you are rating them for a fault,
+asking them to perform a complicated task, or inquiring your way in a
+strange neighbourhood, the first answer you get will, ten to one, be
+'Hum greel admi.' It is said almost instinctively, and no doubt in
+many cases is the refuge of simple disinclination to think the matter
+out. Pure laziness suggests it. It is too much trouble to frame an
+answer, or give the desired information, and the 'greel admi' comes
+naturally to the lip. It is often deprecatory, meaning 'I am ignorant
+and uninformed,' you must not expect too 'much from a poor, rude,
+uncultivated man like me.' It is often, also, a delicate mode of
+flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and often conveying in a
+tone, a look, a gesture, that though the speaker is 'greel,' poor,
+humble, despised, it is only by contrast to you, the questioner, who
+are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For downright fawning
+obsequiousness, or delicate, implied, fine-strung, subtle flattery, I
+will back a Hindoo sycophant against the courtier or place-hunter of
+every other nation. It is very annoying at times, if you are in a
+hurry, and particularly want a direct answer to a plain question, to
+hear the old old story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it
+but patience. You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer
+classes are easily flurried; they will always give what information
+they have if kindly spoken to, but you must not fluster them. You must
+rouse their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of
+your inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your
+object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your motive,
+inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer that they
+think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are weary and tired,
+and you ask your distance from the place you may be wishing to reach,
+they will ridiculously underestimate the length of road. A man may
+have all the cardinal virtues, but if they think you do not like him,
+and you ask his character, they will paint him to you blacker than
+Satan himself. It is very hard to get the plain, unvarnished truth
+from a Hindoo. Many, indeed, are almost incapable of giving an
+intelligent answer to any question that does not nearly concern their
+own private and purely personal interests. They have a sordid,
+grubbing, vegetating life, many of them indeed are but little above
+the brute creation. They have no idea beyond the supply of the mere
+animal wants of the moment. The future never troubles them. They live
+their hard, unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no
+surprises. They have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and
+life is one long continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence.
+What wonder then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the
+mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to suffer,
+to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is _Kismet_--their
+fate. Many of them never strive to avert any impending calamity, such,
+for example, as sickness. A man sickens, he wraps himself in stolid
+apathy, he makes no effort to shake of his malady, he accepts it with
+sullen, despairing, pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends
+mourn in their dumb, despairing way, but they too accept the
+situation. He has no one to rouse him. If you ask him what is the
+matter, he only wails out, 'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am
+unwell. No attempt whatever to tell you of the origin of his illness,
+no wish even for sympathy or assistance. He accepts the fact of his
+illness. He struggles not with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight
+against it? Amen; so let it be. I have often been saddened to see poor
+toiling tenants struck down in this way. Even if you give them
+medicine, they often have not energy enough to take it. You must see
+them take it before your eyes. It is _your_ struggle not theirs. _You_
+must rouse them, by _your_ will. _Your_ energy must compel _them_ to
+make an attempt to combat their weakness. Once you rouse a man, and
+infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his disease, but it is a
+hard fight to get him to TRY. What a meaning in that one word TRY! TO
+ACT. TO DO. The average poor suffering native Hindoo knows nothing of
+it.
+
+Of course their moods vary. They have their 'high days and holidays,'
+feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the whole the average
+ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.
+
+In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or jungle
+lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture. The cow
+being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and butter.
+The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings of
+emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the evening
+wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust, having had
+but 'short commons' all the day on the parched and scanty herbage.
+
+The police are too often a source of annoyance, and become
+extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor. It seems
+to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority. I do not
+scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court peons,
+writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts, about the
+courts of justice, in the service of government officers, or in any
+way attached to the retinue of a government official, one and all are
+undeniably shamelessly venal and corrupt. They accept a bribe much
+more quickly than an attorney a fee, or a hungry dog a shin of beef.
+If a policeman only enters a village he expects a feast from the head
+man, and will ask a present with unblushing effrontery as a perquisite
+of his office. If a theft is reported, the inspector of the nearest
+police-station, or _thanna_ as it is called, sends one of his
+myrmidons, or, if the chance of bribes be good, he may attend himself.
+On arrival, ambling on his broken-kneed, wall-eyed pony, he seats
+himself in the verandah of the chief man of the village, who
+forthwith, with much inward trepidation, makes his appearance. The
+policeman assumes the air of a haughty conqueror receiving homage from
+a conquered foe. He assures the trembling wretch that, 'acting on
+information received,' he must search his dwelling for the missing
+goods, and that his women's apartments will have to be ransacked, and
+so annoys, goads, and insults the unfortunate man, that he is too glad
+to purchase immunity from further insolence by making the policeman a
+small present, perhaps a 'kid of the goats,' or something else. The
+guardian of the peace is then regaled with the best food in the house,
+after which he is 'wreathed with smiles.' If he sees a chance of a
+farther bribe, he takes his departure saying he will make his report
+to the _thanna_. He repeats his procedure with some of the other
+respectable inhabitants, and goes back a good deal richer than he
+came, to share the spoil with the _thannadar_ or inspector.
+
+Another man may then be sent, and the same course is followed, until
+all the force in the station have had their share. The ryot is afraid
+to resist. The police have tremendous powers for annoying and doing
+him harm. A crowd of subservient scoundrels always hangs round the
+station, dependents, relations, or accomplices. These harry the poor
+man who is unwise enough to resist the extortionate demands of the
+police. They take his cattle to the pound, foment strife between him
+and his neighbours, get up frivolous and false charges against him,
+harass him in a thousand ways, and if all else fails, get him summoned
+as a witness in some case. You might think a witness a person to be
+treated with respect, to be attended to, to have every facility
+offered him for giving his evidence at the least cost of time and
+trouble possible, consistent with the demands of justice, and the
+vindication of law and authority.
+
+Not so in India with the witness in a police case, when the force
+dislike him. If he has not previously satisfied their leech-like
+rapacity, he is tormented, tortured, bullied, and kicked 'from pillar
+to post,' till his life becomes a burden to him. He has to leave all
+his avocations, perhaps at the time when his affairs require his
+constant supervision. He has to trudge many a weary mile to attend the
+Court. The police get hold of him, and keep him often in real durance.
+He gets no opportunity for cooking or eating his food. His daily
+habits are upset and interfered with. In every little vexatious way
+(and they are masters of the art of petty torture) they so worry and
+goad him, that the very threat of being summoned as a witness in a
+police case, is often enough to make the horrified well-to-do native
+give a handsome gratuity to be allowed to sit quietly at home.
+
+This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the police.
+They exercise a real despotism. They have set up a reign of terror.
+The nature of the ryot is such, that he will submit to a great deal to
+avoid having to leave his home and his work. The police take full
+advantage of this feeling, and being perfectly unscrupulous,
+insatiably rapacious, and leagued together in villany, they make a
+golden harvest out of every case put into their hands. They have made
+the name of justice stink in the nostrils of the respectable and
+well-to-do middle classes of India.
+
+The District Superintendents are men of energy and probity, but after
+all they are only mortal. What with accounts, inspections, reports,
+forms, and innumerable writings, they cannot exercise a constant
+vigilance and personal supervision over every part of their district.
+A district may comprise many hundred villages, thousands of
+inhabitants, and leagues of intricate and densely peopled country. The
+mere physical exertion of riding over his district would be too much
+for any man in about a week. The subordinate police are all interested
+in keeping up the present system of extortion, and the inspectors and
+sub-inspectors, who wink at malpractices, come in for their share of
+the spoil. There is little combination among the peasantry. Each
+selfishly tries to save his own skin, and they know that if any one
+individual were to complain, or to dare to resist, he would have to
+bear the brunt of the battle alone. None of his neighbours would stir
+a finger to back him; he is too timid and too much in awe of the
+official European, and constitutionally too averse to resistance, to
+do aught but suffer in silence. No doubt he feels his wrongs most
+keenly, and a sullen feeling of hate and wrong is being garnered up,
+which may produce results disastrous for the peace and wellbeing of
+our empire in the East.
+
+As a case in point, I may mention one instance out of many which came
+under my own observation. I had a _moonshee_, or accountant, in one of
+my outworks in Purneah. Formerly, when the police had come through the
+factory, he had been in the habit of giving them a present and some
+food. Under my strict orders, however, that no policemen were to be
+allowed near the place unless they came on business, he had
+discontinued paying his black mail. This was too glaring an
+infringement of what they considered their vested rights to be passed
+over in silence. Example might spread. My man must be made an example
+of. I had a case in the Court of the Deputy Magistrate some twenty
+miles or so from the factory. The moonshee had been named as a witness
+to prove the writing of some papers filed in the suit. They got a
+citation for him to appear, a mere summons for his attendance as a
+witness. Armed with this, they appeared at the factory two or three
+days before the date fixed on for hearing the cause. I had just ridden
+in from Purneah, tired, hot, and dusty, and was sitting in the shade
+of the verandah with young D., my assistant. One policeman first came
+up, presented the summons, which I took, and he then stated that it
+was a _warrant_ for the production of my moonshee, and that he must
+take him away at once. I told the man it was merely a summons,
+requiring the attendance of the moonshee on a certain date, to give
+evidence in the case. He was very insolent in his manner. It is
+customary when a Hindoo of inferior rank appears before you, that he
+removes his shoes, and stands before you in a respectful attitude.
+This man's headdress was all disarranged, which in itself is a sign of
+disrespect. He spoke loudly and insolently; kept his shoes on; and sat
+down squatting on the grass before me. My assistant was very
+indignant, and wanted to speak to the man; but rightly judging that
+the object was to enrage me, and trap me into committing some overt
+act, that would be afterwards construed against me, I kept my temper,
+spoke very firmly but temperately, told him my moonshee was doing some
+work of great importance, that I could not spare his services then,
+but that I would myself see that the summons was attended to. The
+policeman became more boisterous and insolent. I offered to give him a
+letter to the magistrate, acknowledging the receipt of the summons,
+and I asked him his own name, which he refused to give. I asked him if
+he could read, and he said he could not. I then asked him if he could
+not read, how could he know what was in the paper which he had
+brought, and how he knew my moonshee was the party meant. He said a
+chowkeydar had told him so. I asked where was the chowkeydar, and
+seeing from my coolness and determination that the game was up, he
+shouted out, and from round the corner of the huts came another
+policeman, and two village chowkeydars from a distance. They had
+evidently been hiding, observing all that passed, and meaning to act
+as witnesses against me, if I had been led by the first scoundrel's
+behaviour to lose my temper. The second man was not such a brute as
+the first, and when I proceeded to ask their names and all about them,
+and told them I meant to report them to their superintendent, they
+became somewhat frightened, and tried to make excuses.
+
+I told them to be off the premises at once, offering to take the
+summons, and give a receipt for it, but they now saw that they had
+made a mistake in trying to bully me, and made off at once. Mark the
+sequel. The day before the case was fixed on for hearing, I sent off
+the moonshee who was a witness of my own, and his evidence was
+necessary to my proving my case. I supplied him with travelling
+expenses, and he started. On his way to the Court he had to pass the
+_thanna_, or police-station. The police were on the watch. He was
+seized as he passed. He was confined all that night and all the
+following day. For want of his evidence I lost my case, and having
+thus achieved one part of their object to pay me off, they let my
+moonshee go, after insult and abuse, and with threats of future
+vengeance should he ever dare to thwart or oppose them. This was
+pretty 'hot' you think, but it was not all. Fearing my complaint to
+the superintendent, or to the authorities, might get them into
+trouble, they laid a false charge against me, that I had obstructed
+them in the discharge of their duty, that I had showered abuse on
+them, used threatening language, and insulted the majesty of the law
+by tearing up and spitting upon the respected summons of Her Majesty.
+On this complaint I was accordingly summoned into Purneah. The charge
+was a tissue of the most barefaced lies, but I had to ride fifty-four
+miles in the burning sun, ford several rivers, and undergo much
+fatigue and discomfort. My work was of course seriously interfered
+with. I had to take in my assistant as witness, and one or two of the
+servants who had been present. I was put to immense trouble, and no
+little expense, to say nothing of the indignation which I naturally
+felt, and all because I had set my face against a well known evil, and
+was determined not to submit to impudent extortion. Of course the case
+broke down. They contradicted themselves in almost every particular.
+The second constable indeed admitted that I had offered them a letter
+to the magistrate, and had not moved out of the verandah during the
+colloquy. I was honourably acquitted, and had the satisfaction of
+seeing the lying rascals put into the dock by the indignant magistrate
+and prosecuted summarily for getting up a false charge and giving
+false evidence. It was a lesson to the police in those parts, and they
+did not dare to trouble me much afterwards; but it is only one
+instance out of hundreds I could give, and which every planter has
+witnessed of the barefaced audacity, the shameless extortion, the
+unblushing lawlessness of the rural police of India.
+
+It is a gigantic evil, but surely not irremediable. By adding more
+European officers to the force; by educating the people and making
+them more intelligent, independent, and self-reliant, much may be done
+to abate the evil, but at present it is admittedly a foul ulcer on the
+administration of justice under our rule. The menial who serves a
+summons, gets a decree of Court to execute, or is entrusted with any
+order of an official nature, expects to be bribed to do his duty. If
+he does not get his fee, he will throw such impediments in the way,
+raise such obstacles, and fashion such delays, that he completely
+foils every effort to procure justice through a legal channel. No
+wonder a native hates our English Courts. Our English officials, let
+it be plainly understood, are above suspicion. It needs not my poor
+testimony to uphold their character for high honour, loyal integrity,
+and zealous eagerness to do 'justly, and to walk uprightly.' They are
+unwearied in their efforts to get at truth, and govern wisely; but our
+system of law is totally unsuited for Orientals. It is made a medium
+for chicanery and trickery of the most atrocious form. Most of the
+native underlings are utterly venal and corrupt. Increased pay does
+not mean decrease of knavery. Cheating, and lying, and taking bribes,
+and abuse of authority are ingrained into their very souls; and all
+the cut and dry formulas of namby pamby philanthropists, the inane
+maunderings of stay-at-home sentimentalists, the wise saws of
+self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo as he
+really shews himself to us in daily and hourly contact with him, will
+ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule, would be
+productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless venality, or
+would end in anything but anarchy and chaos.
+
+It sounds very well in print, and increases the circulation of a paper
+or two among the Baboos, to cry out that our task is to elevate the
+oppressed and ignorant millions of the East, to educate them into
+self-government, to make them judges, officers, lawgivers, governors
+over all the land. To vacate our place and power, and let the Baboo
+and the Bunneah, to whom we have given the glories of Western
+civilization, rule in our place, and guide the fortunes of these
+toiling millions who owe protection and peace to our fostering rule.
+It is a noble sentiment to resign wealth, honour, glory, and power; to
+give up a settled government; to alter a policy that has welded the
+conflicting elements of Hindustan into one stable whole; to throw up
+our title of conqueror, and disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A
+sprinkling of thinly-veneered, half-educated natives, want a share of
+the loaves and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people
+of the 'man and brother' type, cry out at home to let them have their
+way.
+
+No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life and
+property; develop the resources of the country; foster all the virtues
+you can find in the native mind; but till you can give him the energy,
+the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly, honourable
+straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of meanness,
+trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do right; his
+contempt for oppression of the weak; his self-dependence; his probity.
+But why go on? When you make Hindoos honest, truthful, God-fearing
+Englishmen, you can let them govern themselves; but as soon 'may the
+leopard change his spots,' as the Hindoo his character. He is wholly
+unfit for self-government; utterly opposed to honest, truthful, stable
+government at all. Time brings strange changes, but the wisdom which
+has governed the country hitherto, will surely be able to meet the new
+demand that may be made upon it in the immediate present, or in the
+far distant future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Jungle wild fruits.--Curious method of catching quail.--Quail nets.
+--Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.--Native wrestling.--The
+trainer.--How they train for a match.--Rules of wrestling.--Grips.
+--A wrestling match.--Incidents of the struggle.--Description of a
+match between a Brahmin and a blacksmith.--Sparring for the grip.--The
+blacksmith has it.--The struggle.--The Brahmin getting the worst of
+it.--Two to one on the little 'un!--The Brahmin plays the waiting
+game, turns the tables _and_ the blacksmith.--Remarks on wrestling.
+
+A peculiarity in the sombre sal jungles is the scarcity of wild fruit.
+At home the woods are filled with berries and fruit-bearing bushes.
+Who among my readers has not a lively recollection of bramble hunting,
+nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries, wild strawberries,
+raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might walk many a mile through
+the sal jungles without meeting fruit of any kind, save the dry and
+tasteless wild fig, or the sickly mhowa.
+
+There are indeed very few jungle fruits that I have ever come across.
+There is one acid sort of plum called the _Omra_, which makes a good
+preserve, but is not very nice to eat raw. The _Gorkah_ is a small red
+berry, very sweet and pleasant, slightly acid, not unlike a red
+currant in fact, and with two small pips or stones. The Nepaulese call
+it _Bunchooree_. It grows on a small stunted-looking bush, with few
+branches, and a pointed leaf, in form resembling the acacia leaf, but
+not so large.
+
+The _Glaphur_ is a brown, round fruit; the skin rather crisp and hard,
+and of a dull earthy colour, not unlike that of a common boiled
+potato. The inside is a stringy, spongy-looking mass, with small seeds
+embedded in a gummy viscid substance. The taste is exactly like an
+almond, and it forms a pleasant mouthful if one is thirsty.
+
+Travelling one day along one of the glades I have mentioned as
+dividing the strips of jungle, I was surprised to see a man before me
+in a field of long stubble, with a cloth spread over his head, and two
+sticks projecting in front at an obtuse angle to his body, forming
+horn-like projections, on which the ends of his cloth twisted
+spirally, were tied. I thought from his curious antics and movements,
+that he must be mad, but I soon discovered that there was method in
+his madness. He was catching quail. The quail are often very numerous
+in the stubble fields, and the natives adopt very ingenious devices
+for their capture. This was one I was now witnessing. Covering
+themselves with their cloth as I have described, the projecting ends
+of the two sticks representing the horns, they simulate all the
+movements of a cow or bull. They pretend to paw up the earth, toss
+their make-believe horns, turn round and pretend to scratch
+themselves, and in fact identify themselves with the animal they are
+representing; and it is irresistibly comic to watch a solitary
+performer go through this _al fresco_ comedy. I have laughed often at
+some cunning old herdsman, or shekarry. When they see you watching
+them, they will redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old
+bull, going through all his pranks and practices, and throw you into
+convulsions of laughter.
+
+Round two sides of the field, they have previously put fine nets, and
+at the apex they have a large cage with a decoy quail inside, or
+perhaps a pair. The quail is a running bird, disinclined for flight
+except at night; in the day-time they prefer running to using their
+wings. The idiotic looking old cow, as we will call the hunter, has
+all his wits about him. He proceeds very slowly and warily, his keen
+eye detects the coveys of quail, which way they are running; his ruse
+generally succeeds wonderfully. He is no more like a cow, than that
+respectable animal is like a cucumber; but he paws, and tosses, and
+moves about, pretends to eat, to nibble here, and switch his tail
+there, and so manoeuvres as to keep the running quail away from the
+unprotected edges of the field. When they get to the verge protected
+by the net, they begin to take alarm; they are probably not very
+certain about the peculiar looking 'old cow' behind them, and running
+along the net, they see the decoy quails evidently feeding in great
+security and freedom. The V shaped mouth of the large basket cage
+looks invitingly open. The puzzling nets are barring the way, and the
+'old cow' is gradually closing up behind. As the hunter moves along, I
+should have told you, he rubs two pieces of dry hard sticks gently up
+and down his thigh with one hand, producing a peculiar crepitation, a
+crackling sound, not sufficient to startle the birds into flight, but
+alarming them enough to make them get out of the way of the 'old cow.'
+One bolder than the others, possibly the most timid of the covey,
+irritated by the queer crackling sound, now enters the basket, the
+others follow like a flock of sheep; and once in, the puzzling shape
+of the entrance prevents their exit. Not unfrequently the hunter bags
+twenty or even thirty brace of quail in one field, by this ridiculous
+looking but ingenious method.
+
+The small quail net is also sometimes used for the capture of hares.
+The natives stretch the net in the jungle, much as they do the large
+nets for deer described in a former chapter; forming a line, they then
+beat up the hares, of which there are no stint. My friend Pat once
+made a novel haul. His _lobarkhanna_ or blacksmith's shop was close to
+a patch of jungle, and Pat often noticed numbers of quail running
+through the loose chinks and crevices of the walls, in the morning
+when anyone went into the place for the first time; this was at a
+factory called Rajpore. Pat came to the conclusion, that as the
+blacksmith's fires smouldered some time after work was discontinued at
+night, and as the atmosphere of the hut was warmer and more genial
+than the cold, foggy, outside air, for it was in the cold season, the
+quail probably took up their quarters in the hut for the night, on
+account of the warmth and shelter. One night therefore he got some of
+his servants, and with great caution and as much silence as possible,
+they let down a quantity of nets all round the lobarkhanna, and in the
+morning they captured about twenty quails.
+
+The quail is very pugnacious, and as they are easily trained to fight,
+they are very common pets with the natives, who train and keep them to
+pit them against each other, and bet what they can afford on the
+result. A quail fight, a battle between two trained rams, a cock
+fight, even an encounter between trained tamed buffaloes, are very
+common spectacles in the villages; but the most popular sport is a
+good wrestling match.
+
+The dwellers in the Presidency towns, and indeed in most of the large
+stations, seldom see an exhibition of this kind; but away in the
+remote interior, near the frontier, it is very popular pastime, and
+wrestling is a favourite with all classes. Such manly sport is rather
+opposed to the commonly received idea at home, of the mild Hindoo. In
+nearly every village of Behar however, and all along the borders of
+Nepaul, there is, as a rule, a bit of land attached to the residence
+of some head man, or the common property of the commune, set apart for
+the practice of athletic sports, chief of which is the favourite
+_khoosthee_ or wrestling. There is generally some wary old veteran,
+who has won his spurs, or laurels, or belt, or whatever you choose to
+call it, in many a hard fought and well contested tussle for the
+championship of his little world; he is 'up to every dodge,' and knows
+every feint and guard, every wile and tactic of the wrestling ground.
+It is generally in some shady grove, secluded and cool; here of an
+evening when the labours of the day are over, the most stalwart sons
+of the hamlet meet, to test each others skill and endurance in a
+friendly _shake_. The old man puts them through the preliminary
+practice, shows them every trick at his command, and attends strictly
+to their training and various trials. The ground is dug knee deep, and
+forms a soft, good holding stand. I have often looked on at this
+evening practice, and it would astonish a stranger, who cannot
+understand strength, endurance, and activity being attributed to a
+'mere nigger,' to see the severe training these young lads impose upon
+themselves. They leap into the air, and suddenly assume a sitting
+position, then leap up again and squat down with a force that would
+seem to jerk every bone in their bodies out of its place; this gets up
+the muscles of the thighs. Some lie down at full length, only touching
+the ground with the extreme tips of their toes, their arms doubled up
+under them, and sustaining the full weight of the body on the extended
+palms of the hands. They then sway themselves backwards and forwards
+to their full length, never shifting hand or toe, till they are bathed
+in perspiration; they keep up a uniform steady backward and forward
+movement, so as to develop the muscles of the arms, chest, and back.
+They practice leaping, running, and lifting weights. Some standing at
+their full height, brace up the muscles of the shoulder and upper arm,
+and then leaping up, allow themselves to fall to earth on the tensely
+strung muscles of the shoulder. This severe exercise gets the muscles
+into perfect form, and few, very few indeed of our untrained youths,
+could cope in a dead lock, or fierce struggle, with a good village
+Hindoo or Mussulman in active training, and having any knowledge of
+the tricks of the wrestling school. No hitting is allowed. The Hindoo
+system of wrestling is the perfection of science and skill; mere dead
+weight of course will always tell in a close grip, but the catches,
+the holds, the twists and dodges that are practised, allow for the
+fullest development of cultivated skill, as against mere brute force.
+The system is purely a scientific one. The fundamental rule is 'catch
+where you can,' only you must not clutch the hair or strike with the
+fists.
+
+The loins are tightly girt with a long waist-belt or _kummerbund_ of
+cloth, which, passed repeatedly between the limbs and round the loins,
+sufficiently braces up and protects that part of the body. In some
+matches you are not allowed to clutch this waist cloth or belt, in
+some villages it is allowed; the custom varies in various places, but
+what is a fair grip, and what is not, is always made known before the
+competitors engage. A twist, or grip, or dodge, is known as a
+_paench_. This literally means a screw or twist, but in wrestling
+phraseology, means any grip by which you can get such an advantage
+over your opponent as to defeat him. For every paench there is a
+counter paench. A throw is considered satisfactory when BOTH shoulders
+of your opponent touch the ground simultaneously. The old _khalifa_ or
+trainer takes a great interest in the progress of his _chailas_ or
+pupils. _Chaila_ really means disciple or follower. Every khalifa has
+his favourite paenches or grips, which have stood him in good stead in
+his old battling days; he teaches these paenches to his pupils, so
+that when you get young fellows from different villages to meet, you
+see a really fine exhibition of wrestling skill. There is little
+tripping, as amongst our wrestlers at home; a dead-lock is uncommon.
+The rival wrestlers generally bound into the ring, slapping their
+thighs and arms with a loud resounding slap. They lift their legs high
+up from the ground with every step, and scheme and manoeuvre sometimes
+for a long while to get the best corner; they try to get the sun into
+their adversaries eyes; they scan the appearance and every movement of
+their opponent. The old wary fellows take it very coolly, and if they
+can't get the desired side of the ground, they keep hopping about like
+a solemn old ostrich, till the impetuosity or impatience of their foe
+leads him to attack. They remind you for all the world of a pair of
+game cocks, their bodies are bent, their heads almost touching. There
+is a deal of light play with the hands, each trying to get the other
+by the wrist or elbow, or at the back of the head round the neck. If
+one gets the other by a finger even, it is a great advantage, as he
+would whip nimbly round, and threaten to break the impounded finger;
+this would be considered quite fair. One will often suddenly drop on
+his knees and try to reach the ankles of his adversary. I have seen a
+slippery customer, stoop suddenly down, grasp up a handful of dust,
+and throw it into the eyes of his opponent. It was done with the
+quickness of thought, but it was detected, and on an appeal by the
+sufferer, the knave was well thrashed by the onlookers.
+
+There are many professionals who follow no other calling. Wrestlers
+are kept by Rajahs and wealthy men, who get up matches. Frequently one
+village will challenge another, like our village cricket clubs. The
+villagers often get up small subscriptions, and purchase a silver
+armlet or bracelet, the prize him who shall hold his own against all
+comers. The 'Champion's Belt' scarcely calls forth greater
+competition, keener rivalry, or better sport. It is at once the most
+manly and most scientific sport in which the native indulges. A
+disputed fall sometimes terminates in a general free fight, when the
+backers of the respective men lay on the stick to each other with
+mutual hate and hearty lustiness.
+
+It is not by any means always the strongest who wins. The man who
+knows the most paenches, who is agile, active, cool, and careful, will
+not unfrequently overthrow an antagonist twice his weight and
+strength. All the wrestlers in the country-side know each other's
+qualifications pretty accurately, and at a general match got up by a
+Zemindar or planter, or by public subscription, it is generally safe
+to let them handicap the men who are ready to compete for the prizes.
+We used generally to put down a few of the oldest professors, and let
+them pit couples against each other; the sport to the onlookers was
+most exciting. Between the men themselves as a rule, the utmost good
+humour reigns, they strive hard to win, but they accept a defeat with
+smiling resignation. It is only between rival village champions,
+different caste men, or worse still, men of differing religions, such
+as a Hindoo and a Mahommedan, that there is any danger of a fight. A
+disturbance is a rare exception, but I have seen a few wrestling
+matches end in a regular general scrimmage, with broken heads, and
+even fractured limbs. With good management however, and an efficient
+body of men to guard against a breach of the peace, this need never
+occur.
+
+It rarely takes much trouble to get up a match. If you tell your head
+men that you would like to see one, say on a Saturday afternoon, they
+pass the word to the different villages, and at the appointed time,
+all the finest young fellows and most of the male population, led by
+their head man, with the old trainer in attendance, are at the
+appointed place. The competitors are admitted within the enclosure,
+and round it the rows of spectators packed twenty deep squat on the
+ground, and watch the proceedings with deep interest.
+
+While the _Punchayiet_, a picked council, are taking down the names of
+intending competitors, finding out about their form and performances,
+and assigning to each his antagonist, the young men throw themselves
+with shouts and laughter into the ring, and go through all the
+evolutions and postures of the training ground. They bound about, try
+all sorts of antics and contortions, display wonderful agility and
+activity; it is a pretty sight to see, and one can't help admiring
+their vigorous frames, and graceful proportions. They are handsome,
+well made, supple, wiry fellows, although they be NIGGERS, and Hodge
+and Giles at home would not have a chance with them in a fair
+wrestling bout, conducted according to their own laws and customs.
+
+The entries are now all made, places and pairs are arranged, and to
+the ear-splitting thunder of two or three tom-toms, two pair of
+strapping youngsters step into the ring; they carefully scan each
+other, advance, shake hands, or salaam, leisurely tie up their back
+hair, slap their muscles, rub a little earth over their shoulders and
+arms, so that their adversary may have a fair grip, then step by step
+slowly and gradually they near each other. A few quick passages are
+now interchanged; the lithe supple fingers twist and intertwine, grips
+are formed on arm and neck. The postures change each moment, and are a
+study for an anatomist or sculptor. As they warm to their work they
+get more reckless; they are only the raw material, the untrained lads.
+There is a quick scuffle, heaving, swaying, rocking, and struggling,
+and the two victors, leaping into the air, and slapping their chests,
+bound back into the gratified circle of their comrades, while the two
+discomfited athletes, forcing a rueful smile, retire and 'take a back
+seat.' Two couple of more experienced hands now face each other. There
+is pretty play this time, as the varying changes of the contest bring
+forth ever varying displays of skill and science. The crowd shout as
+an advantage is gained, or cry out 'Hi, hi' in a doubtful manner, as
+their favourite seems to be getting the worst of it. The result
+however is much the same; after a longer or shorter time, two get
+fairly thrown and retire. If there is any dispute, it is at once
+referred to the judges, who sit grimly watching the struggle, and
+comparing the paenches displayed, with those they themselves have
+practised in many a well-won fight. On a reference being made, both
+combatants retain their exact hold and position, only cease straining.
+As soon as the matter is settled, they go at it again till victory
+determine in favour of the lucky man. In no similar contest in England
+I am convinced would there be so much fairness, quietness, and order.
+The only stimulants in the crowd are betel nut and tobacco. All is
+orderly and calm, and at any moment a word from the sahib will quell
+any rising turbulence. It is now time for a still more scientific
+exhibition.
+
+Pat has a man, a tall, wiry, handsome Brahmin, who has never yet been
+beaten. Young K. has long been jealous of his uniform success, and on
+several occasions has brought an antagonist to battle with Pat's
+champion. To-day he has got a sturdy young blacksmith, whom rumour
+hath much vaunted, and although he is not so tall as Pat's wrestler,
+his square, deep chest and stalwart limbs, give promise of great
+strength and endurance.
+
+As the two men strip and bound into the ring, there is the usual hush
+of anticipation. Keen eyes scan the appearance of the antagonists.
+They are both models of manly beauty. The blacksmith, though more
+awkward in his motions, has a cool, determined look about him. The
+Brahmin, conscious of his reputation, walks quickly up, with a smile
+of rather ostentatious condescension on his finely cut features, and
+offers his hand to the blacksmith. The little man is evidently
+suspicious. He thinks this may be a deeply laid trap to get a grip
+upon him. Nor does he like the bland patronising manner of
+'Roopuarain,' so he surlily draws back, at which there is a roar of
+laughter from the. crowd, in which we cannot help joining.
+
+K. now comes forward, and pats his 'fancy man' on the back. The two
+wrestlers thereupon shake hands, and then in the usual manner both
+warily move backwards and forwards, till amid cries from the
+onlookers, the blacksmith makes a sudden dash at the practised old
+player, and in a moment has him round the waist.
+
+He evidently depended on his superior strength. For a moment he fairly
+lifted Roopnarain clean off his legs, swayed him to and fro, and with
+a mighty strain tried to throw him to the ground. Bending to the
+notes, Roopnarain allowed himself to yield, till his feet touched the
+ground, then crouching like a panther, he bounded forward, and getting
+his leg behind that of the blacksmith, by a deft side twist he nearly
+threw him over. The little fellow, however, steadied himself on the
+ground with one hand, recovered his footing, and again had the Brahmin
+firmly locked in his tenacious hold. Roopuarain did not like the grip.
+These were not the tactics he was accustomed to. While the other
+tugged and strained, he, quietly yielding his lithe lissome frame to
+every effort, tried hard with obstinate endeavour to untwist the hands
+that held him firmly locked. It was beautiful play to see the mute
+hands of both the wrestlers feeling, tearing, twisting at each other,
+but the grasp was too firm, and, taking advantage of a momentary
+movement, Roopnarain got his elbow under the other's chin, then
+leaning forward, he pressed his opponent's head backward, and the
+strain began to tell. He fought fiercely, he struggled hard, but the
+determined elbow was not to be baulked, and to save himself from an
+overthrow the blacksmith was forced to relax his hold, and sprang
+nimbly back beyond reach, to mature another attack. Roopnarain quietly
+walked round, rubbed his shoulders with earth, and with the same
+mocking smile, stood leaning forward, his hands on his knees, waiting
+for a fresh onset.
+
+This time the young fellow was more cautious. He found he had no
+novice to deal with, and the Brahmin was not at all anxious to
+precipitate matters. By a splendid feint, after some pretty sparring
+for a grip, the youngster again succeeded in getting a hold on the
+Brahmin, and wheeling round quick as lightning, got behind Roopnarain,
+and with a dexterous trip threw the tall man heavily on his face. He
+then tried to get him by the ankle, and bending his leg up backwards,
+he would have got a purchase for turning him on his back. The old man
+was, however, 'up to this move.' He lay extended flat on his chest,
+his legs wide apart. As often as the little one bent down to grasp his
+ankle, he would put out a hand stealthily, and silently as a snake,
+and endeavour to get the little man's leg in his grasp. This
+necessitated a change of position, and round and round they spun, each
+trying to get hold of the other by the leg or foot. The blacksmith got
+his knee on the neck of the Brahmin, and by sheer strength tried
+several times with a mighty heave to turn his opponent. It was no use,
+however, it is next to impossible to throw a man when he is lying flat
+out as the Brahmin now was. It is difficult enough to turn the dead
+weight of a man in that position, and when he is straining every nerve
+to resist the accomplishment of your object it becomes altogether
+impracticable. The excitement in the crowd was intense. The very
+drummer--I ought to call him a tom-tomer--had ceased to beat his
+tom-tom. Pat's lips were firmly pressed together, and K. was trembling
+with suppressed excitement. The heaving chests and profuse
+perspiration bedewing the bodies of both combatants, told how severe
+had been their exertions. The blacksmith seemed gathering himself up
+for a mighty effort, when, quick as light, the Brahmin drew his limbs
+together, was seen to arch his back, and with a sudden backward
+movement, seemed to glide from under his dashing assailant, and
+quicker than it takes me to write it, the positions were reversed.
+
+The Brahmin was now above, and the blacksmith taking in the altered
+aspect of affairs at a glance, threw himself flat on the ground, and
+tried the same tactics as his opponent. The different play of the two
+men now came strongly into relief. Instead of exhausting himself with
+useless efforts, Roopnarain, while keeping a wary eye on every
+movement of his prostrate foe, contented himself while he took breath,
+with coolly and and yet determinedly making his grip secure. Putting
+out one leg then within reach of his opponent's hand, as a lure, he
+saw the blacksmith stretch forth to grasp the tempting hold.
+
+Quicker than the dart of the python, the fierce onset of the kingly
+tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering lightning, was the
+grasp made at the outstretched arm by the practised Brahmin. His
+tenacious fingers closed tightly round the other's wrist. One sudden
+wrench, and he had the blacksmith's arm bent back and powerless, held
+down on the little fellow's own shoulders. Pat smiled a derisive
+smile, K. uttered what was not a benison, while the Brahmins in the
+crowd, and all Pat's men, raised a truly Hindoo howl. The position of
+the men was now this. The stout little man was flat on his face, one
+of his arms bent helplessly round on his own back. Roopnarain, calm
+and cool as ever, was astride the prostrate blacksmith, placidly
+surveying the crowd. The little man writhed, and twisted, and
+struggled, he tried with his legs to entwine himself with those of the
+Brahmin. He tried to spin round; the Brahmin was watching with the eye
+of a hawk for a grip of the other arm, but it was closely drawn in,
+and firmly pressed in safety under the heaving chest of the
+blacksmith. The muscles were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that
+was seen at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete
+was surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm
+further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero,
+game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain tried
+to bend him over, till we thought either the poor fellow's neck must
+break, or his arm be torn from its socket.
+
+He endured all without a murmur. Not a chance did he throw away. Once
+or twice he made a splendid effort, once he tried to catch the Brahmin
+again by the leg. Roopnarain pounced down, but the arm was as quickly
+within its shield. It was now but a question of time and endurance.
+Every dodge that he was master of did the Brahmin bring into play.
+They were both in perfect training, muscles as hard as steel, every
+nerve and sinew strained to the utmost tension. Roopnarain actually
+tried tickling his man, but he would not give him a chance. At length
+he got his hand in the bent elbow of the free arm, and slowly, and
+laboriously forced it out. There were tremendous spurts and struggles,
+but patient determination was not to be baulked. Slowly the arm came
+up over the back, the struggle was tremendous, but at length both the
+poor fellow's arms were tightly pinioned behind his back. He was
+powerless now. The Brahmin drew the two arms backwards, towards the
+head of the poor little fellow, and he was bound to come over or have
+both his arms broken. With a hoarse cry of sobbing-pain and shame, the
+brave little man came over, both shoulders on the mould, and the
+scientific old veteran was again the victor.
+
+This is but a very faint description of a true wrestling bout among
+the robust dwellers in these remote villages. It may seem cruel, but
+it is to my mind the perfection of muscular strength and skill,
+combined with keen subtle, intellectual acuteness. It brings every
+faculty of mind and body into play, it begets a healthy, honest love
+of fair play, and an admiration of endurance and pluck, two qualities
+of which Englishmen certainly can boast. Strength without skill and
+training will not avail. It is a fine manly sport, and one which
+should be encouraged by all who wish well to our dusky fellow subjects
+in the far off plains and valleys of Hindostan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Indigo seed growing.--Seed buying and buyers.--Tricks of sellers.
+--Tests for good seed.--The threshing-floor.--Seed cleaning and
+packing.--Staff of servants.--Despatching the bags by boat.--The
+'Pooneah' or rent day.--Purneah planters--their hospitality.--The
+rent day a great festival.--Preparation.--Collection of rents.--Feast
+to retainers.--The reception in the evening.--Tribute.--Old customs.
+--Improvisatores and bards.--Nautches.--Dancing and music.--The dance
+of the Dangurs.--Jugglers and itinerary showmen.--'Bara Roopes,' or
+actors and mimics.--Their different styles of acting.
+
+Besides indigo planting proper, there is another large branch of
+industry in North Bhaugulpore, and along the Nepaul frontier there,
+and in Purneah, which is the growing of indigo seed for the Bengal
+planters. The system of advances and the mode of cultivation is much
+the same as that followed in indigo planting proper. The seed is sown
+in June or July, is weeded and tended all through the rains, and cut
+in December. The planters advance about four rupees a beegah to the
+ryot, who cuts his seed-plant, and brings it into the factory
+threshing ground, where it is beaten out, cleaned, weighed, and packed
+in bags. When the seed has been threshed out and cleaned, it is
+weighed, and the ryot or cultivator gets four rupees for every
+maund--a maund being eighty pounds avoirdupois. The previous advance
+is deducted. The rent or loan account is adjusted, and the balance
+made over in cash.
+
+Others grow the seed on their own account, without taking advances,
+and bring it to the factory for sale. If prices are ruling high, they
+may get much more than four rupees per maund for it, and they adopt
+all kinds of ingenious devices to adulterate the seed, and increase
+its weight. They mix dust with it, seeds of weeds, even grains of
+wheat, and mustard, pea, and other seeds. In buying seed, therefore,
+one has to be very careful, to reject all that looks bad, or that may
+have been adulterated. They will even get old useless seed, the refuse
+stock of former years, and mixing this with leaves of the neem tree
+and some turmeric powder, give it a gloss that makes it look like
+fresh seed.
+
+When you suspect that the seed has been tampered with in this manner,
+you wet some of it, and rub it on a piece of fresh clean linen, so as
+to bring off the dye. Where the attempt has been flagrant, you are
+sometimes tempted to take the law into your own hands, and administer
+a little of the castigation which the cheating rascal so richly
+deserves. In other cases it is necessary to submit the seed to a
+microscopic examination. If any old, worn seeds are detected, you
+reject the sample unhesitatingly. Even when the seed appears quite
+good, you subject it to yet another test. Take one or two hundred
+seeds, and putting them on a damp piece of the pith of a plantain
+tree, mixed with a little earth, set them in a warm place, and in two
+days you will be able to tell what percentage has germinated, and what
+is incapable of germination. If the percentage is good, the seed may
+be considered as fairly up to the sample, and it is purchased. There
+are native seed buyers, who try to get as much into their hands as
+they can, and rig the market. There are also European buyers, and
+there is a keen rivalry in all the bazaars.
+
+The threshing-floor, and seed-cleaning ground presents a busy sight
+when several thousand maunds of seed are being got ready for despatch
+by boats. The dirty seed, full of dust and other impurities, is heaped
+up in one corner. The floor is in the shape of a large square, nicely
+paved with cement, as hard and clean as marble. Crowds of nearly nude
+coolies, hurry to and fro with scoops of seed resting on their
+shoulders. When they get in line, at right angles to the direction in
+which the wind is blowing, they move slowly along, letting the seed
+descend on the heap below, while the wind winnows it, and carries the
+dust in dense clouds to leeward. This is repeated over and over again,
+till the seed is as clean as it can be made. It is put through bamboo
+sieves, so formed that any seed larger than indigo cannot pass
+through. What remains in the sieve is put aside, and afterwards
+cleaned, sorted, and sold as food, or if useless, thrown away or given
+to the fowls. The men and boys dart backwards and forwards, there is a
+steady drip, drip, of seed from the scoops, dense clouds of dust, and
+incessant noise and bustle. Peons or watchmen are stationed all around
+to see that none is wasted or stolen. Some are filling sacks full of
+the cleaned seed, and hauling them off to the weighman and his clerk.
+Two maunds are put in every sack, and when weighed the bags are hauled
+up close to the _godown_ or store-room. Here are an army of men with
+sailmaker's needles and twine. They sew up the bags, which are then
+hauled away to be marked with the factory brand. Carts are coming and
+going, carrying bags to the boats, which are lying at the river bank
+taking in their cargo, and the returning carts bring back loads of
+wood from the banks of the river. In one corner, under a shed, sits
+the sahib chaffering with a party of _paikars_ (seed merchants), who
+have brought seed for sale.
+
+Of course he decries the seed, says it is bad, will not hear of the
+price wanted, and laughs to scorn all the fervent protestations that
+the seed was grown on their own ground, and has never passed through
+any hands but their own. If you are satisfied that the seed is good,
+you secretly name your price to your head man, who forthwith takes up
+the work of depreciation. You move off to some other department of the
+work. The head man and the merchants sit down, perhaps smoke a
+_hookah_, each trying to outwit the other, but after a keen encounter
+of wits perhaps a bargain is made. A pretty fair price is arrived at,
+and away goes the purchased seed, to swell the heap at the other end
+of the yard. It has to be carefully weighed first, and the weighman
+gets a little from the vendor as his perquisite, which the factory
+takes from him at the market rate.
+
+You have buyers of your own out in the _dehaat_ (district), and the
+parcels they have bought come in hour by hour, with invoices detailing
+all particulars of quantity, quality, and price. The loads from the
+seed depots and outworks, come rolling up in the afternoon, and have
+all to be weighed, checked, noted down, and examined. Every man's hand
+is against you. You cannot trust your own servants. For a paltry bribe
+they will try to pass a bad parcel of seed, and even when you have
+your European assistants to help you, it is hard work to avoid being
+over-reached in some shape or other.
+
+You have to keep up a large staff of writers, who make out invoices
+and accounts, and keep the books. Your correspondence alone is enough
+work for one man, and you have to tally bags, count coolies, see them
+paid their daily wage, attend to lawsuits that may be going on, and
+yet find time to superintend the operations of the farm, and keep an
+eye to your rents and revenues from the villages. It is a busy, an
+anxious time. You have a vast responsibility on your shoulders, and
+when one takes into consideration the climate you have to contend
+with, the home comforts and domestic joys you have to do without, the
+constant tension of mind and irritation of body from dust, heat,
+insects, lies, bribery, robbers, and villany of every description,
+that meets you on all hands, it must be allowed that a planter at such
+a time has no easy life.
+
+The time at which you despatch the seed is also the very time when you
+are preparing your land for spring sowings. This requires almost as
+much surveillance as the seed-buying and despatching. You have not a
+moment you can call your own. If you had subordinates you could trust,
+who would be faithful and honest, you could safely leave part of the
+work to them, but from very sad experience I have found that trusting
+to a native is trusting to a very rotten stick. They are certainly not
+all bad, but there are just enough exceptions to prove the rule.
+
+One peculiar custom prevailed in this border district of North
+Bhaugulpore, which I have not observed elsewhere. At the beginning of
+the financial year, when the accounts of the past season had all been
+made up and arranged, and the collection of the rents for the new year
+was beginning, the planters and Zemindars held what was called the
+_Pooneah_. It is customary for all cultivators and tenants to pay a
+proportion of their rent in advance. The Pooneah might therefore be
+called 'rent-day.' A similar day is set apart for the same purpose in
+Tirhoot, called _tousee_ or collections, but it is not attended by the
+same ceremonious observances, and quaint customs, as attach to the
+Pooneah on the border land.
+
+When every man's account has been made up and checked by the books,
+the Pooneah day is fixed on. Invitations are sent to all your
+neighbouring friends, who look forward to each other's annual Pooneah
+as a great gala day. In North Bhaugulpore and Purneah, nearly all the
+planters and English-speaking population belong to old families who
+have been born in the district, and have settled and lived there long
+before the days of quick communication with home. Their rule among
+their dependants is patriarchal. Everyone is known among the natives,
+who have seen him since his birth living amongst them, by some pet
+name. The old men of the villages remember his father and his father's
+father, the younger villagers have had him pointed out to them on
+their visits to the factory as 'Willie Baba,' 'Freddy Baba,' or
+whatever his boyish name may have been, with the addition of 'Baba,'
+which is simply a pet name for a child. These planters know every
+village for miles and miles. They know most of the leading men in each
+village by name. The villagers know all about them, discuss their
+affairs with the utmost freedom, and not a single thing, ever so
+trivial, happens in the planter's home but it is known and commented
+on in all the villages that lie within the _ilaka_ (jurisdiction) of
+the factory.
+
+The hospitality of these planters is unbounded. They are most of them
+much liked by all the natives round. I came a 'stranger amongst them,'
+and in one sense, and not a flattering sense, they tried 'to take me
+in,' but only in one or two instances, which I shall not specify here.
+By nearly all I was welcomed and kindly treated, and I formed some
+very lasting friendships among them. Old traditions of princely
+hospitality still linger among them. They were clannish in the best
+sense of the word. The kindness and attention given to aged or
+indigent relations was one of their best traits. I am afraid the race
+is fast dying out. Lavish expenditure, and a too confiding faith in
+their native dependants has often brought the usual result. But many
+of my readers will associate with the name of Purneah or Bhaugulpore
+planter, recollections of hospitality and unostentatious kindness, and
+memories of glorious sport and warm-hearted friendships.
+
+On the Pooneah day then, or the night before, many of these friends
+would meet. The day has long been known to all the villages round, and
+nothing could better shew the patriarchal semi-feudal style in which
+they ruled over their villages than the customs in connection with
+this anniversary. Some days before it, requisitions have been made on
+all the villages in any way connected with the factory, for various
+articles of diet. The herdsmen have to send a tribute of milk, curds,
+and _ghee_ or clarified butter. Cultivators of root crops or fruit
+send in samples of their produce, in the shape of huge bundle of
+plantains, immense jack-fruits, or baskets of sweet potatoes, yams,
+and other vegetables. The _koomhar_ or potter has to send in earthen
+pots and jars. The _mochee_ or worker in leather, brings with him a
+sample of his work in the shape of a pair of shoes. These are pounced
+on by your servants and _omlah_, the omlah being the head men in the
+office. It is a fine time for them. Wooden shoes, umbrellas, brass
+pots, fowls, goats, fruits, in fact all the productions of your
+country side are sent or brought in. It is the old feudal tribute of
+the middle ages back again. During the day the _cutcherry_ or office
+is crowded with the more respectable villagers, paying in rents and
+settling accounts. The noise and bustle are great, but an immense
+quantity of work is got through.
+
+The village putwarries and head men are all there with their
+voluminous accounts. Your rent-collector, called a _tehseeldar_, has
+been busy in the villages with the tenants and putwarries, collecting
+rent for the great Pooneah day. There is a constant chink of money, a
+busy hum, a scratching of innumerable pens. Under every tree, 'neath
+the shade of every hut, busy groups are squatted round some acute
+accountant. Totals are being totted up on all hands. From greasy
+recesses in the waistband a dirty bundle is slowly pulled forth, and
+the desired sum reluctantly counted out.
+
+From early morn till dewy eve this work goes on, and you judge your
+Pooneah to have been a good or bad one by the amount you are able to
+collect. Peons, with their brass badges flashing in the sun, and their
+red puggrees shewing off their bronzed faces and black whiskers, are
+despatched in all directions for defaulters. There is a constant going
+to and fro, a hurrying and bustling in the crowd, a hum as of a
+distant fair pervading the place, and by evening the total of the
+day's collections is added up, and while the sahib and his friends
+take their sherry and bitters, the omlah and servants retire to wash
+and feast, and prepare for the night's festivities.
+
+During the day, at the houses of the omlah, culinary preparations on a
+vast scale have been going on. The large supplies of grain, rice,
+flour, fruit, vegetables, &c., which were brought in as _salamee_ or
+tribute, supplemented by additions from the sahib's own stores, have
+been made into savoury messes. Curries, and cakes, boiled flesh, and
+roast kid, are all ready, and the crowd, having divested themselves of
+their head-dress and outer garments, and cleaned their hands and feet
+by copious ablutions, sit down in a wide circle. The large leaves of
+the water-lily are now served out to each man, and perform the office
+of plates. Huge baskets of _chupatties_, a flat sort of
+'griddle-cake,' are now brought round, and each man gets four or five
+doled out. The cooking and attendance is all done by Brahmins. No
+inferior caste would answer, as Rajpoots and other high castes will
+only eat food that has been cooked by a Brahmin or one of their own
+class. The Brahmin attendants now come round with great _dekchees_ or
+cooking-pots, full of curried vegetables, boiled rice, and similar
+dishes. A ladle-full is handed out to each man, who receives it on his
+leaf. The rice is served out by the hands of the attendants. The
+guests manipulate a huge ball of rice and curry mixed between the
+fingers of the right hand, pass this solemnly into their widely-gaping
+mouths, with the head thrown back to receive the mess, like an
+adjutant-bird swallowing a frog, and then they masticate with much
+apparent enjoyment. Sugar, treacle, curds, milk, oil, butter,
+preserves, and chutnees are served out to the more wealthy and
+respectable. The amount they can consume is wonderful. Seeing the
+enormous supplies, you would think that even this great crowd could
+never get through them, but by the time repletion has set in, there is
+little or nothing left, and many of the inflated and distended old
+farmers could begin again and repeat 'another of the same' with ease.
+Each person has his own _lotah_, a brass drinking vessel, and when all
+have eaten they again wash their hands, rinse out their mouths, and
+don their gayest apparel.
+
+The gentlemen in the bungalow now get word that the evening's
+festivities are about to commence. Lighting our cigars, we sally out
+to the _shamiana_ which has been erected on the ridge, surrounding the
+deep tank which supplies the factory during the manufacturing season
+with water. The _shamiana_ is a large canopy or wall-less tent. It is
+festooned with flowers and green plantain trees, and evergreens have
+been planted all round it. Flaring flambeaux, torches, Chinese
+lanterns, and oil lamps flicker and glare, and make the interior
+almost as bright as day. When we arrive we find our chairs drawn up in
+state, one raised seat in the centre being the place of honour, and
+reserved for the manager of the factory.
+
+When we are seated, the _malee_ or gardener advances with a wooden
+tray filled with sand, in which are stuck heads of all the finest
+flowers the garden can afford, placed in the most symmetrical
+patterns, and really a pretty tasteful piece of workmanship. Two or
+three old Brahmins, principal among whom is 'Hureehar Jha,' a wicked
+old scoundrel, now advance, bearing gay garlands of flowers, muttering
+a strange gibberish in Sanskrit, supposed to be a blessing, but which
+might be a curse for all we understood of it, and decking our wrists
+and necks with these strings of flowers. For this service they get a
+small gratuity. The factory omlah headed by the dignified, portly
+_gornasta_ or confidential adviser, dressed in snowy turbans and
+spotless white, now come forward. A large brass tray stands on the
+table in front of you. They each present a _salamee_ or _nuzzur_, that
+is, a tribute or present, which you touch, and it is then deposited
+with a rattling jingle on the brass plate. The head men of villages,
+putwarries, and wealthy tenants, give two, three, and sometimes even
+four rupees. Every tenant of respectability thinks it incumbent on him
+to give something. Every man as he comes up makes a low salaam,
+deposits his _salamee_, his name is written down, and he retires. The
+putwarries present two rupees each, shouting out their names, and the
+names of their villages. Afterwards a small assessment is levied on
+the villagers, of a 'pice' or two 'pice' each, about a halfpenny of
+our money, and which recoups the putwarree for his outlay.
+
+This has nothing to do with the legitimate revenue of the factory. It
+never appears in the books. It is quite a voluntary offering, and I
+have never seen it in any other district. In the meantime the
+_Raj-bhats_, a wandering class of hereditary minstrels or bards, are
+singing your praises and those of your ancestors in ear-splitting
+strains. Some of them have really good voices, all possess the gift of
+improvisation, and are quick to seize on the salient points of the
+scene before them, and weave them into their song, sometimes in a very
+ingenious and humorous manner. They are often employed by rich
+natives, to while away a long night with one of their, treasured
+rhythmical tales or songs. One or two are kept in the retinue of every
+Rajah or noble, and they possess a mine of legendary information,
+which would be invaluable to the collector of folk-lore and
+antiquarian literature.
+
+At some of the Pooneahs the evening's gaiety winds up with a _nautch_
+or dance, by dancing girls or boys. I always thought this a most
+sleep-inspiring exhibition. It has been so often described that I need
+not trouble my readers with it. The women are gaily dressed in
+brocades and gauzy textures, and glitter with spangles and tawdry
+ornaments. The musical accompaniment of clanging zither, asthmatic
+fiddle, timber-toned drum, clanging cymbal, and harsh metallic
+triangle, is a sore affliction, and when the dusky prima donna throws
+back her head, extends her chest, gets up to her high note, with her
+hand behind her ear, and her poura-stained mouth and teeth wide
+expanded like the jaws of a fangless wolf, and the demoniac
+instruments and performers redouble their din, the noise is something
+too dreadful to experience often. The native women sit mute and
+hushed, seeming to like it. I have heard it said that the Germans eat
+ants. Finlanders relish penny candles. The Nepaulese gourmandise on
+putrid fish. I am fond of mouldy cheese, and organ-grinders are an
+object of affection with some of our home community. I _know_ that the
+general run of natives delight in a nautch. Tastes differ, but to me
+it is an inexplicable phenomenon.
+
+Amid all this noise we sit till we are wearied. Parin-leaves and betel
+nut are handed round by the servants. There is a very sudorific odour
+from the crowd. All are comfortably seated on the ground. The torches
+flare, and send up volumes of smoke to the ornamented roof of the
+canopy. The lights are reflected in the deep glassy bosom of the
+silent tank. The combined sounds and odours get oppressive, and we are
+glad to get back to the bungalow, to consume our 'peg' and our 'weed'
+in the congenial company of our friends.
+
+In some factories the night closes with a grand dance by all the
+inhabitants of the _dangur tola_. The men and women range themselves
+in two semicircles, standing opposite each other. The tallest of both
+lines at the one end, diminishing away at the other extremity to the
+children and little ones who can scarcely toddle. They have a wild,
+plaintive song, with swelling cadences and abrupt stops. They go
+through an extraordinary variety of evolutions, stamping with one foot
+and keeping perfect time. They sway their bodies, revolve, march, and
+countermarch, the men sometimes opening their ranks, and the women
+going through, and _vice versa_. They turn round like the winding
+convolutions of a shell, increase their pace as the song waxes quick
+and shrill, get excited, and finish off with a resounding stamp of the
+foot, and a guttural cry which seems to exhaust all the breath left in
+their bodies. The men then get some liquor, and the women a small
+money present. If the sahib is very liberal he gives them a pig on
+which to feast, and the _dangurs_ go away very happy and contented.
+Their dance is not unlike the _corroborry_ of the Australian
+aborigines. The two races are not unlike each other too in feature,
+although I cannot think that they are in any way connected.
+
+Next morning there is a jackal hunt, or cricket, or pony races, or
+shooting matches, or sport of some kind, while the rent collection
+still goes on. In the afternoon we have grand wrestling matches
+amongst the natives for small prizes, and generally witness some fine
+exhibitions of athletic skill and endurance.
+
+Some wandering juggler may have been attracted by the rumour of the
+gathering. A tight-rope dancer, a snake charmer, an itinerant showman
+with a performing goat, monkey, or dancing bear, may make his
+appearance before the admiring crowd.
+
+At times a party of mimes or actors come round, and a rare treat is
+not seldom afforded by the _bara roopees_. _Bara_ means twelve, and
+_roop_ is an impersonation, a character. These 'twelve characters'
+make up in all sorts of disguises. Their wardrobe is very limited, yet
+the number of people they personate, and their genuine acting talent
+would astonish you. With a projecting tooth and a few streaks of clay,
+they make up a withered, trembling old hag, afflicted with palsy,
+rheumatism, and a hacking cough. They make friends with your bearer,
+and an old hat and coat transforms them into a planter, a missionary,
+or an officer. They whiten their faces, using false hair and
+moustache, and while you are chatting with your neighbour, a strange
+sahib suddenly and mysteriously seats himself by your side. You stare,
+and look at your host, who is generally in the secret, but a stranger,
+or new comer, is often completely taken in. It is generally at night
+that they go through their personations, and when they have dressed
+for their part, they generally choose a moment when your attention is
+attracted by a cunning diversion. On looking up you are astounded to
+find some utter stranger standing behind your chair, or stalking
+solemnly round the room.
+
+They personate a woman, a white lady, a sepoy policeman, almost any
+character. Some are especially good at mimicking the Bengalee Baboo,
+or the merchant from Cabool or Afghanistan with his fruits and cloths.
+A favourite _roop_ with them is to paint one half of the face like a
+man. Everything is complete down to moustache, the folds of the
+puggree, the _lathee_ or staff, indeed to the slightest detail. You
+would fancy you saw a stalwart, strapping Hindoo before you. He turns
+round, and lo, a bashful maiden. Her eyes are stained with _henna_
+(myrtle juice) or antimony. Her long-hair neatly smoothed down is tied
+into a knot at the back, and glistens with the pearl-like ornaments.
+The taper arm is loaded with armlets and bracelets. The very toes are
+bedecked with rings. The bodice hides the taper waist and budding
+bosom, the tiny ear is loaded with jewelled ear-rings, the very nose
+is not forgotten, but is ornamented with a golden circle, bearing on
+its circumference a pearl of great price. The art, the posturing, the
+mimicry, is really admirable. A good _bara roopee_ is well worth
+seeing, and amply earns the two or three rupees he gets as his reward.
+
+The Pooneah seldom lasts more than the two days, but it is quite
+unique in its feudal character, and is one of the old-fashioned
+observances; a relic of the time when the planter was really looked
+upon as the father of his people, and when a little sentiment and
+mutual affection mingled with the purely business relations of
+landlord and tenant.
+
+I delighted my ryots by importing some of our own country recreations,
+and setting the ploughmen to compete against each other. I stuck a
+greasy bamboo firmly into the earth, putting a bag of copper coins at
+the top. Many tried to climb it, but when they came to the grease they
+came down 'by the run.' One fellow however filled his _kummerbund_
+with sand, and after much exertion managed to secure the prize.
+Wheeling the barrow blindfold also gave much amusement, and we made
+some boys bend their foreheads down to a stick and run round till they
+were giddy. Their ludicrous efforts then to jump over some water-pots,
+and run to a thorny bush, raised tumultuous peals of laughter. The
+poor boys generally smashed the pots, and ended by tumbling into the
+thorns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The Koosee jungles.--Ferries.--Jungle roads.--The rhinoceros.--We go
+to visit a neighbour.--We lose our way and get belated.--We fall into
+a quicksand.--No ferry boat.--Camping out on the sand.--Two tigers
+close by.--We light a fire.--The boat at last arrives.--Crossing the
+stream.--Set fire to the boatman's hut.--Swim the horses.--They are
+nearly drowned.--We again lose our way in the jungle.--The towing
+path, and how boats are towed up the river.--We at last reach the
+factory.--News of rhinoceros in the morning.--Off we start, but arrive
+too late.--Death of the rhinoceros.--His dimensions.--Description.
+--Habits.--Rhinoceros in Nepaul.--The old 'Major Capt[=a]n.'--Description
+of Nepaulese scenery.--Immigration of Nepaulese.--Their fondness for
+fish.--They eat it putrid.--Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul.
+--Resources of the country.--Must sooner or later be opened up.
+--Influences at work to elevate the people.--Planters and factories
+chief of these.--Character of the planter.--His claims to consideration
+from government.
+
+In the vast grass jungles that border the banks of the Koosee,
+stretching in great plains without an undulation for miles on either
+side, intersected by innumerable water-beds and dried up channels,
+there is plenty of game of all sorts. It is an impetuous,
+swiftly-flowing stream, dashing directly down from the mighty hills of
+Nepaul. So swift is its current and so erratic its course, that it
+frequently bursts its banks, and careers through the jungle, forming a
+new bed, and carrying away cattle and wild animals in its headlong
+rush.
+
+The _ghauts_ or ferries are constantly changing, and a long bamboo
+with a bit of white rag affixed, shows where the boats and boatmen are
+to be found. In many instances the track is a mere cattle path, and
+hundreds of cross openings, leading into the tall jungle grass, are
+apt to bewilder and mislead the traveller. During the dry season these
+jungles are the resort of great herds of cattle and tame buffaloes,
+which trample down the dry stalks, and force their way into the
+innermost recesses of the wilderness of grass, which grows ten to
+twelve feet high. If you once lose your path you may wander for miles,
+until your weary horse is almost unable to stumble on. In such a case,
+the best way is to take it coolly, and halloo till a herdsman or
+thatch-cutter comes to your rescue. The knowledge of the jungles
+displayed by these poor ignorant men is wonderful; they know every
+gully and watercourse, every ford and quicksand, and they betray not
+the slightest sign of fear, although they know that at any moment they
+may come across a herd of wild buffalo, a savage rhinoceros, or even a
+royal tiger.
+
+The tracks of rhinoceros are often seen, but although I have
+frequently had these pointed out to me when out tiger shooting, I only
+saw two while I lived in that district.
+
+The first occasion was after a night of discomfort such as I have
+fortunately seldom experienced. I had been away at a neighbouring
+factory in Purneah, some eighteen or twenty miles from my bungalow. My
+companion had been my predecessor in the management, and was supposed
+to be well acquainted with the country. We had gone over to one of the
+outworks across the river, and I had received charge of the place from
+him. It was a lonely solitary spot; the house was composed of grass
+walls plastered with mud, and had not been used for some time. F.
+proposed that we should ride over to see H., to whom he would
+introduce me as he would be one of my nearest neighbours, and would
+give us a comfortable dinner and bed, which there was no chance of our
+procuring where we were.
+
+We plunged at once into the mazy labyrinths of the jungle, and soon
+emerged on the high sandy downs, stretching mile beyond mile along the
+southern bank of the ever-changing river. Having lost our way, we got
+to the factory after dark, but a friendly villager volunteered his
+services as guide, and led us safely to our destination. After a
+cheerful evening with H., we persuaded him to accompany us back next
+day. He took out his dogs, and we had a good course after a hare,
+killing two jackals, and sending back the dogs by the sweeper. At
+Burgamma, the outwork, we stopped to _tiffin_ on some cold fowl we had
+brought with us. The old factory head man got us some milk, eggs, and
+_chupatties_; and about three in the afternoon we started for the head
+factory. In an evil moment F. proposed that, as we were near another
+outwork called _Fusseah_, we should diverge thither, I could take over
+charge, and we could thus save a ride on another day. Not knowing
+anything of the country I acquiesced, and we reached Fusseah in time
+to see the place, and do all that was needful. It was a miserable
+tumbledown little spot, with four pair of vats; it had formerly been a
+good working factory, but the river had cut away most of its best
+lands, and completely washed away some of the villages, while the
+whole of the cultivation was fast relapsing into jungle.
+
+'Debnarain Singh' the _gomorsta_ or head man, asked us to stay for the
+night, as he said we could never get home before dark. F. however
+scouted the idea, and we resumed our way. The track, for it could not
+be called a road, led us through one or two jungle villages completely
+hidden by the dense bamboo clumps and long jungle grass. You can't see
+a trace of habitation till you are fairly on the village, and as the
+rice-fields are bordered with long strips of tall grass, the whole
+country presents the appearance of a uniform jungle. We got through
+the rice swamps, the villages, and the grass in safety, and as it was
+getting dark, emerged on the great plain of undulating ridgy
+sandbanks, that form the bed of the river during the annual floods. We
+had our _syces_ (grooms) and two peons with us. We had to ride over
+nearly two miles of sand before we could reach the _ghat_ where we
+expected the ferry-boats, and, the main stream once crossed, we had
+only two miles further to reach the factory. We were getting both
+tired and hungry; a heavy dew was falling, and the night was raw and
+chill. It was dark, there was no moon to light our way, and the stars
+were obscured by the silently creeping fog, rising from the marshy
+hollows among the sand. All at once F., who was leading, called out
+that we were off the path, and before I could pull up, my poor old
+tired horse was floundering in a quicksand up to the girths; I threw
+myself off and tried to wheel him round. H. was behind us, and we
+cried to him to halt where he was. I was sinking at every movement up
+to the knees, when the syce came to my rescue, and took charge of the
+horse. F.'s syce ran to extricate his master and horse; the two peons
+kept calling, 'Oh! my father, my father,' the horses snorted, and
+struggled desperately in the tenacious and treacherous quicksand; but
+after a prolonged effort, we all got safely out, and rejoined H. on
+the firm ridge.
+
+We now hallooed and shouted for the boatmen, but beyond the swish of
+the rapid stream to our right, or the plash of a falling bank as the
+swift current undermined it, no sound answered our repeated calls. We
+were wet and weary, but to go either backward or forward was out of
+the question. We were off the path, and the first step in any
+direction might lead us into another quicksand, worse perhaps than
+that from which we had just extricated ourselves. The horses were
+trembling in every limb. The syces cowered together and shivered with
+the cold. We ordered the two peons to try and reach the ghat, and see
+what had become of the boats, while we awaited their return where we
+were. The fog and darkness soon swallowed them up, and putting the
+best face on our dismal circumstances that we could, we lit our pipes
+and extended our jaded limbs on the damp sand.
+
+For a time we could hear the shouts of the peons as they hallooed for
+the boatmen, and we listened anxiously for the response, but there was
+none. We could hear the purling swish of the rapid stream, the
+crumbling banks falling into the current with a distant splash.
+Occasionally a swift rushing of wings overhead told us of the arrowy
+flight of diver or teal. Far in the distance twinkled the gleam of a
+herdsman's fire, the faint tinkle of a distant bell, or the subdued
+barking of a village dog for a moment, alone broke the silence.
+
+At times the hideous chorus of a pack of jackals woke the echoes of
+the night. Then, at no great distance, rose a hoarse booming cry,
+swelling on the night air, and subsiding into a lengthened growl. The
+syces started to their feet, the horses snorted with fear; and as the
+roar was repeated, followed closely by another to our left, and
+seemingly nearer, H. exclaimed 'By Jove! there's a couple of tigers.'
+
+Sure enough, so it was. It was the first time I had heard the roar of
+the tiger in his own domain, and I must confess that my sensations
+were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting sticks and what
+roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats everything was
+wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about on our hands and
+knees, and pick up whatever we came across.
+
+With great difficulty we managed to light a small fire, and for about
+half-an-hour were nearly smothered by trying with inflated cheeks to
+coax it into a blaze. The tigers continued to call at intervals, but
+did not seem to be approaching us. It was a long weary wait, we were
+cold, wet, hungry, and tired; F., the cause of our misfortunes, had
+taken off his saddle, and with it for a pillow was now fast asleep. H.
+and I cowered over the miserable sputtering flame, and longed and
+wished for the morning. It was a miserable night, the hours seemed
+interminable, the dense volumes of smoke from the water-sodden wood
+nearly choked us. At last, after some hours spent in this miserable
+manner, we heard a faint halloo in the distance; it was now past
+eleven at night. We returned the hail, and bye-and-bye the peons
+returned bringing a boatman with them. The lazy rascals at the ghat
+where we had proposed crossing, had gone home at nightfall, leaving
+their boats on the further bank. Our trusty peons, had gone five miles
+up the river, through the thick jungle, and brought a boat down with
+them from the next ghat to that where we were.
+
+We now warily picked our way down to the edge of the bank. The boat
+seemed very fragile, and the current looked so swift and dangerous,
+that we determined to go across first ourselves, get the larger boat
+from the other side, light a fire, and then bring over the horses. We
+embarked accordingly, leaving the syces and horses behind us. The
+peons and boatman pulled the boat a long way up stream by a rope, then
+shooting out we were carried swiftly down stream, the dark shadow of
+the further bank seeming at a great distance. The boatman pushed
+vigorously at his bamboo pole, the water rippled and gurgled, and
+frothed and eddied around. Half-a-dozen times we thought our boat
+would topple over, but at length we got safely across, far below what
+we had proposed as our landing place.
+
+We found the boats all right, and the boatman's hut, a mere collection
+of dry grass and a few old bamboos. As it could be replaced in an
+hour, and the material lay all around, we fired the hut, which soon,
+blazed up, throwing a weird lurid glow on bank and stream, and
+disclosing far on the other bank our weary nags and shivering syces,
+looking very bedraggled and forlorn indeed. The leaping and crackling
+of the flames, and the genial warmth, invigorated us a little, and
+while I stayed behind to feed the fire, the others recrossed to bring
+the horses over.
+
+With the previous fright however, their long waiting, the blazing
+fire, and being unaccustomed to boats at night, the poor scared horses
+refused to enter the boat, The boats are flat-bottomed or broadly
+bulging, with a bamboo platform strewn with grass in the centre. As a
+rule, they have no protecting rails, and even in the daytime, when the
+current is strong and eddies numerous, they are very dangerous for
+horses. At all events, the poor brutes would not be led on to the
+platform, so there was nothing for it but to swim them across. The
+boat was therefore towed a long way up the bank, which on the farther
+side was nearly level with the current, but where the hut had stood
+was steep and slushy, and perhaps twenty feet high. This was where the
+deepest water ran, and where the current was swiftest. If the horses
+therefore missed the landing ghat or stage, which was cut sloping into
+the bank, there was a danger of their being swept away altogether and
+lost. However, we determined on making the attempt. Entering the
+water, and holding the horses tightly by the head, with a leading rope
+attached, to be paid out in case of necessity; the boat shot out, the
+horses pawed the water, entering deeper and deeper, foot by foot, into
+the swiftly rushing silent stream. So long as they were in their
+depth, and had footing, they were alright, but when they reached the
+middle of the river, the current, rushing with frightful velocity,
+swept them off their feet, and boat and horses began to go down
+stream. The horses, with lips apart showing their teeth firmly set,
+the lurid glare of the flame lighting up their straining eyeballs, the
+plashing of the water, the dark rapid current flowing noiselessly
+past; the rocking heaving boat, the dusky forms of syces, peons, and
+boatman, standing out clear in the ruddy fire-light against the utter
+blackness of the night, composed a weird picture I can never forget.
+
+The boat shot swiftly past the ghat, and came with a thump against the
+bank. It swung round into the stream again, but the boatman had
+luckily managed to scramble ashore, and his efforts and mine united,
+hauling on the mooring-rope, sufficed to bring her in to the bank. The
+three struggling horses were yet in the current, trying bravely to
+stem the furious rush of the river. The syces and my friends were
+holding hard to the tether-ropes, which were now at their full
+stretch. It was a most critical moment. Had they let go, the horses
+would have been swept away to form a meal for the alligators. They
+managed, however, to get in close to the bank, and here, although the
+water was still over their backs, they got a slight and precarious
+footing, and inch by inch struggled after the boat, which we were now
+pulling up to the landing place.
+
+After a sore struggle, during which we thought more than once the
+gallant nags would never emerge from the water, they staggered up the
+bank, dripping, trembling, and utterly overcome with their exertions.
+It was my first introduction to the treacherous Koosee, and I never
+again attempted to swim a horse across at night. We led the poor tired
+creatures up to the fire, heaping on fresh bundles of thatching-grass,
+of which there was plenty lying about, the syces then rubbed them
+down, and shampooed their legs, till they began to take a little
+heart, whinnying as we spoke to them and caressed them.
+
+After resting for nearly an hour, we replaced the saddles, and F., who
+by this time began to mistrust his knowledge of the jungles by night,
+allowed one of the peons, who was sure he knew every inch of the road,
+to lead the way. Leaving the smouldering flames to flicker and burn
+out in solitude, we again plunged into the darkness of the night,
+threading our way through the thick jungle grass, now loaded with dewy
+moisture, and dripping copious showers upon us from its high walls at
+either side of the narrow track. We crossed a rapid little stream, an
+arm of the main river, turned to the right, progressed a few hundred
+yards, turned to the left, and finally came to a dead stop, having
+again lost our way.
+
+We heaped execrations on the luckless peon's head, and I suggested
+that we should make for the main stream, follow up the bank till we
+reached the next ghat, where I knew there was a cart-road leading to
+the factory. Otherwise we might wander all night in the jungles,
+perhaps get into another quicksand, or come to some other signal
+grief. We accordingly turned round. We could hear the swish of the
+river at no great distance, and soon, stumbling over bushes and
+bursting through matted chumps of grass, dripping with wet, and
+utterly tired and dejected, we reached the bank of the stream.
+
+Here we had no difficulty in following the path. The river is so
+swift, that the only way boats are enabled to get up stream to take
+down the inland produce, is by having a few coolies or boatmen to drag
+the boat up against the current by towing-lines. This is called
+_gooning_. The goon-ropes are attached to the mast of the boat. At the
+free end is a round bit of bamboo. The towing-coolie places this
+against his shoulder, and slowly and laboriously drags the boat up
+against the current. We were now on this towing-path, and after riding
+for nearly four miles we reached the ghat, struck into the cart-road,
+and without further misadventure reached the factory about four in the
+morning, utterly fagged and worn out.
+
+About eight in the morning my bearer woke me out of a deep sleep, with
+the news that there was a _gaerha_, that is, a rhinoceros, close to
+the factory. We had some days previously heard it rumoured that there
+were _two_ rhinoceroses in the _Battabarree_ jungles, so I at once
+roused my soundly-sleeping friends. Swallowing a hasty morsel of toast
+and a cup of coffee, we mounted our ponies, sent our guns on ahead,
+and rode off for the village where the rhinoceros was reported. As we
+rode hurriedly along we could see natives running in the same
+direction as ourselves, and one of my men came up panting and
+breathless to confirm the news about the rhinoceros, with the
+unwelcome addition that Premnarain Singh, a young neighbouring
+Zemindar, had gone in pursuit of it with his elephant and guns. We
+hurried on, and just then heard the distant report of a shot, followed
+quickly by two more. We tried to take a short cut across country
+through some rice-fields, but our ponies sank in the boggy ground, and
+we had to retrace our way to the path.
+
+By the time we got to the village we found an excited crowd of over a
+thousand natives, dancing and gesticulating round the prostrate
+carcase of the rhinoceros. The Baboo and his party had found the poor
+brute firmly imbedded in a quicksand. With organised effort they might
+have secured the prize alive, and could have sold him in Calcutta for
+at least a thousand rupees, but they were too excited, and blazed away
+three shots into the helpless beast. 'Many hands make light work,' so
+the crowd soon had the dead animal extricated, rolled him into the
+creek, and floated him down to the village, where we found them
+already beginning to hack and hew the flesh, completely spoiling the
+skin, and properly completing the butchery. We were terribly vexed
+that we were too late, but endeavoured to stop the stupid destruction
+that was going on. The body measured eleven feet three inches from the
+snout to the tail, and stood six feet nine. The horn was six and a
+half inches long, and the girth a little over ten feet. We put the
+best face on the matter, congratulated the Baboo with very bad grace,
+and asked him to get the skin cut up properly.
+
+Cut in strips from the under part of the ribs and along the belly, the
+skin makes magnificent riding-whips. The bosses on the shoulder and
+sides are made into shields by the natives, elaborately ornamented and
+much prized. The horn, however, is the most coveted acquisition. It is
+believed to have peculiar virtues, and is popularly supposed by its
+mere presence in a house to mitigate the pains of maternity. A
+rhinoceros horn is often handed down from generation to generation as
+a heirloom, and when a birth is about to take place the anxious
+husband often gets a loan of the precious treasure, after which he has
+no fears for the safe issue of the labour.
+
+The flesh of the rhinoceros is eaten by all classes. It is one of the
+five animals that a Brahmin is allowed to eat by the _Shastras_. They
+were formerly much more common in these jungles, but of late years
+very few have been killed. When they take up their abode in a piece of
+jungle they are not easily dislodged. They are fierce, savage brutes,
+and do not scruple to attack an elephant when they are hard pressed by
+the hunter. When they wish to leave a locality where they have been
+disturbed, they will make for some distant point, and march on with
+dogged and inflexible purpose. Some have been known to travel eighty
+miles in the twenty-four hours, through thick jungle, over rivers, and
+through swamp and quicksand. Their sense of hearing is very acute, and
+they are very easily roused to fury. One peculiarity often noticed by
+sportsmen is, that they always go to the same spot when they want to
+obey the calls of nature. Mounds of their dung are sometimes seen in
+the jungle, and the tracks shew that the rhinoceros pays a daily visit
+to this one particular spot.
+
+In Nepaul, and along the _terai_ or wooded slopes of the frontier,
+they are more numerous; but 'Jung Bahadur,' the late ruler of Nepaul,
+would allow no one to shoot them but himself. I remember the wailing
+lament of a Nepaul officer with whom I was out shooting, when I
+happened to fire at and wound one of the protected beasts. It was in
+Nepaul, among a cluster of low woody hills, with a brawling stream
+dashing through the precipitous channel worn out of the rocky,
+boulder-covered dell. The rhinoceros was up the hill slightly above
+me, and we were beating up for a tiger that we had seen go ahead of
+the line.
+
+In my eagerness to bag a 'rhino' I quite forgot the interdict, and
+fired an Express bullet into the shoulder of the animal, as he stood
+broadside on, staring stupidly at me. He staggered, and made as if he
+would charge down the hill. The old 'Major Capt[=a]n,' as they called our
+sporting host, was shouting out to me not to fire. The _mahouts_ and
+beaters were petrified with horror at my presumption. I fancy they
+expected an immediate order for my decapitation, or for my ears to be
+cut off at the very least, but feeling I might as well be 'in for a
+pound as for a penny,' I fired again, and tumbled the huge brute over,
+with a bullet through the skull behind the ear. The old officer was
+horror-stricken, and would allow no one to go near the animal. He
+would not even let me get down to measure it, being terrified lest the
+affair should reach the ears of his formidable lord and ruler, that he
+hurried us off from the scene of my transgression as quickly as he
+could.
+
+The old Major Capt[=a]n was a curious character. The government of
+Nepaul is purely military. All executive and judicial functions are
+carried on by military officers. After serving a certain time in the
+army, they get rewarded for good service by being appointed to the
+executive charge of a district. So far as I could make out, they seem
+to farm the revenue much as is done in Turkey. They must send in
+so much to the Treasury, and anything over they keep for themselves.
+Their administration of justice is rough and ready. Fines, corporal
+punishment, and in the case of heinous crimes, mutilation and death are
+their penalties. There is a tax of _kind_ on all produce, and licenses
+to cut timber bring in a large revenue. A protective tariff is levied on
+all goods or produce passing the frontier from British territory, and no
+European is allowed to travel in the country, or to settle and trade
+there. In the lower valleys there are magnificent stretches of land
+suitable for indigo, tea, rice, and other crops. The streams are
+numerous, moisture is plentiful, the soil is fertile, and the slopes of
+the hills are covered with splendid timber, a great quantity of which is
+cut and floated down the Gunduch, Bagmuttee, Koosee, and other streams
+during the rainy season. It is used principally for beams, rafters, and
+railway sleepers.
+
+The people are jealous of intrusion and suspicious of strangers, but
+as I was with an official, they generally came out in great numbers to
+gaze as we passed through a village. The country does not seem so
+thickly populated as in our territory, and the cultivators had a more
+well-to-do look. They possess vast numbers of cattle. The houses have
+conical roofs, and great quadrangular sheds, roofed with a flat
+covering of thatch, are erected all round the houses, for the
+protection of the cattle at night. The taxes must weigh heavily on the
+population. The executive officer, when he gets charge of a district,
+removes all the subordinates who have been acting under his
+predecessor. When I asked the old Major if this would not interfere
+with the efficient administration of justice, and the smooth working
+of his revenue and executive functions, he gave a funny leer, almost a
+wink, and said it was much more satisfactory to have men of your own
+working under you, the fact being, that with his own men he could more
+securely wring from the ryots the uttermost farthing they could pay,
+and was more certain of getting his own share of the spoil.
+
+With practically irresponsible power, and only answerable directly to
+his immediate military superior, an unscrupulous man may harry and
+harass a district pretty much as he chooses. Our old Major seemed to
+be civil and lenient, but in some districts the exactions and
+extortions of the rulers have driven many of the hard-working
+Nepaulese over the border into our territory. Our landholders or
+Zemindars, having vast areas of untilled land, are only too glad to
+encourage this immigration, and give the exiles, whom they find
+hard-working industrious tenants, long leases on easy terms. The
+new-comers are very independent, and strenuously resist any
+encroachment on what they consider their rights. If an attempt is made
+to raise their rent, even equitably, the land having increased in
+value, they will resist the attempt 'tooth and nail,' and take every
+advantage the law affords to oppose it. They are very fond of
+litigation, and are mostly able to afford the expense of a lawsuit. I
+generally found it answer better to call them together and reason
+quietly with them, submitting any point in dispute to an arbitration
+of parties mutually selected.
+
+Nearly all the rivers in Nepaul are formed principally from the
+melting of the snow on the higher ranges. A vast body of water
+descends annually into the plains from the natural surface drainage of
+the country, but the melting of the snows is the main source of the
+river system. Many of the hill streams, and it is particularly
+observable at some seasons in the Koosee, have a regular daily rise
+and fall. In the early morning you can often ford a branch of the
+river, which by midday has become a swiftly-rolling torrent, filling
+the channel from bank to bank. The water is intensely cold, and few or
+no fish are to be found in the mountain streams of Nepaul. When the
+Nepaulese come down to the plains on business, pleasure, or pilgrimage
+their great treat is a mighty banquet of fish. For two or three
+_annas_ a fish of several pounds weight can easily be purchased. They
+revel on this unwonted fare, eating to repletion, and very frequently
+making themselves ill in consequence. When Jung Bahadur came down
+through Chumparun to attend the _durbar_ of the lamented Earl Mayo,
+cholera broke out in his camp, brought on simply by the enormous
+quantities of fish, often not very fresh or wholesome, which his
+guards and camp followers consumed.
+
+Large quantities of dried fish are sent up to Nepaul, and exchanged
+for rice and other grain, or horns, hides, and blankets. The
+fish-drying is done very simply in the sun. It is generally left till
+it is half putrid and taints the air for miles. The sweltering,
+half-rotting mass, packed in filthy bags, and slung on ponies or
+bullocks, is sent over the frontier to some village bazaar in Nepaul.
+The track of a consignment of this horrible filth can be recognised
+from very far away. The perfume hovers on the road, and as you are
+riding up and get the first sniff of the putrid odour, you know at
+once that the Nepaulese market is being recruited by a _fresh_
+accession of very _stale_ fish. If the taste is at all equal to the
+smell, the rankest witches broth ever brewed in reeking cauldron would
+probably be preferable. Over the frontier there seems to be few roads,
+merely bullock tracks. Most of the transporting of goods is done by
+bullocks, and intercommunication must be slow and costly. I believe
+that near Katmandoo, the capital, the roads and bridges are good, and
+kept in tolerable repair. There is an arsenal where they manufacture
+modern munitions of war. Their soldiers are well disciplined, fairly
+well equipped, and form excellent fighting material.
+
+Our policy of annexation, so far as India is concerned, may perhaps be
+now considered as finally abandoned. We have no desire to annex
+Nepaul, but surely this system of utter isolation, of jealous
+exclusion at all hazards of English enterprise and capital, might be
+broken down to a mutual community of interest, a full and free
+exchange of products, and a reception by Nepaul without fear and
+distrust of the benefits our capitalists and pioneers could give the
+country by opening out its resources, and establishing the industries
+of the West on its fertile slopes and plains. I am no politician, and
+know nothing of the secret springs of policy that regulate our
+dealings with Nepaul, but it does seem somewhat weak and puerile to
+allow the Nepaulese free access to our territories, and an unprotected
+market in our towns for all their produce, while the British subject
+is rigorously excluded from the country, his productions saddled with
+a heavy protective duty, and the representative of our Government
+himself, treated more as a prisoner in honourable confinement, than as
+the accredited ambassador of a mighty empire.
+
+I may be utterly wrong. There may be weighty reasons of State for this
+condition of things, but it is a general feeling among Englishmen in
+India that, _we_ have to do all the GIVE and our Oriental neighbours
+do all the TAKE. The un-official English mind in India does not see
+the necessity for the painfully deferential attitude we invariably
+take in our dealings with native states. The time has surely come,
+when Oriental mistrust of our intentions should be stoutly battled
+with. There is room in Nepaul for hundreds of factories, for
+tea-gardens, fruit-groves, spice-plantations, woollen-mills,
+saw-mills, and countless other industries. Mineral products are
+reported of unusual richness. In the great central valley the climate
+approaches that of England. The establishment of productive industries
+would be a work of time, but so long as this ridiculous policy of
+isolation is maintained, and the exclusion of English tourists,
+sportsmen, or observers carried out in all its present strictness, we
+can never form an adequate idea of the resources of the country. The
+Nepaulese themselves cannot progress. I am convinced that a frank and
+unconstrained intercourse between Europeans and natives would create
+no jealousy and antagonism, but would lead to the development of a
+country singularly blessed by nature, and open a wide field for
+Anglo-Saxon energy and enterprise. It does seem strange, with all our
+vast territory of Hindustan accurately mapped out and known, roads and
+railways, canals and embankments, intersecting it in all directions,
+that this interesting corner of the globe, lying contiguous to our
+territory for hundreds of miles, should be less known than the
+interior of Africa, or the barren solitudes of the ice-bound Arctic
+regions.
+
+In these rich valleys hundreds of miles of the finest and most fertile
+lands in Asia lie covered by dense jungle, waiting for labour and
+capital. For the present we have enough to do in our own possessions
+to reclaim the uncultured wastes; but considering the rapid increase
+of population, the avidity with which land is taken up, the daily
+increasing use of all modern labour-saving appliances, the time must
+very shortly come when capital and energy will need new outlets, and
+one of the most promising of these is in Nepaul. The rapid changes
+which have come over the face of rural India, especially in these
+border districts, within the last twenty years, might well make the
+most thoughtless pause. Land has increased in value more than
+two-fold. The price of labour and of produce has kept more than equal
+pace. Machinery is whirring and clanking, where a few years ago a
+steam whistle would have startled the natives out of their wits. With
+cheap, easy, and rapid communication, a journey to any of the great
+cities is now thought no more of than a trip to a distant village in
+the same district was thought of twenty years ago. Everywhere are the
+signs of progress. New industries are opening up. Jungle is fast
+disappearing. Agriculture has wonderfully improved; and wherever an
+indigo factory has been built, progress has taken the place of
+stagnation, industry and thrift that of listless indolence and
+shiftless apathy. A spirit has moved in the valley of dry bones, and
+has clothed with living flesh the gaunt skeletons produced by
+ignorance, disease, and want. The energy and intelligence of the
+planter has breathed on the stagnant waters of the Hindoo intellect
+the breath of life, and the living tide is heaving, full of activity,
+purging by its resistless ever-moving pulsations the formerly stagnant
+mass of its impurities, and making it a life-giving sea of active
+industry and progress.
+
+Let any unprejudiced observer see for himself if it be not so; let him
+go to those districts where British capital and energy are not employed;
+let him leave the planting districts, and go up to the wastes of
+Oudh, or the purely native districts of the North-west, where there
+are no Europeans but the officials in the _station_. He will find
+fewer and worse roads, fewer wells, worse constructed houses, much
+ruder cultivation, less activity and industry; more dirt, disease,
+and desolation; less intelligence; more intolerance; and a peasantry
+morally, mentally, physically, and in every way inferior to those who
+are brought into daily contact with the Anglo-Saxon planters and
+gentlemen, and have imbibed somewhat of their activity and spirit of
+progress. And yet these are the men whom successive Lieutenant-Governors,
+and Governments generally, have done their best to thwart and obstruct.
+They have been misrepresented, held up to obloquy, and foully slandered;
+they have been described as utterly base, fattening on the spoils of a
+cowed and terror-ridden peasantry. Utterly unscrupulous, fearing neither
+God nor man, hesitating at no crime, deterred by no consideration from
+oppressing their tenantry, and compassing their interested ends by the
+vilest frauds.
+
+Such was the picture drawn of the indigo planter not so many years
+ago. There may have been much in the past over which we would
+willingly draw the veil, but at the present moment I firmly believe
+that the planters of Behar--and I speak as an observant student of
+what has been going on in India--have done more to elevate the
+peasantry, to rouse them into vitality, and to improve them in every
+way, than all the other agencies that have been at work with the same
+end in view.
+
+The Indian Government to all appearance must always work in extremes.
+It never seems to hit the happy medium. The Lieutenant-Governor for
+the time being impresses every department under him too strongly with
+his own individuality. The planters, who are an intelligent and
+independent body of men, have seemingly always been obnoxious to the
+ideas of a perfectly despotic and irresponsible ruler. In spite
+however of all difficulties and drawbacks, they have held their own. I
+know that the poor people and small cultivators look up to them with
+respect and affection. They find in them ready and sympathizing
+friends, able and willing to shield them from the exactions of their
+own more powerful and uncharitable fellow-countrymen. Half, nay
+nine-tenths, of the stories against planters, are got up by the
+money-lenders, the petty Zemindars, and wealthy villagers, who find
+the planter competing with them for land and labour, and raising the
+price of both. The poor people look to the factory as a never failing
+resource when all else fails, and but for the assistance it gives in
+money, or seed, or plough bullocks and implements of husbandry, many a
+struggling hardworking tenant would inevitably go to the wall, or
+become inextricably entangled in the meshes of the Bunneah and
+money-lender.
+
+I assert as a fact that the great majority of villagers in Behar would
+rather go to the factory, and have their sahib adjudicate on their
+dispute, than take it into Court. The officials in the indigo
+districts know this, and as a rule are very friendly with the
+planters. But not long since, an official was afraid to dine at a
+planter's house, fearing he might be accused of planter proclivities.
+In no other country in the world would the same jealousy of men who
+open out and enrich a country, and who are loyal, intelligent, and
+educated citizens, be displayed; but there are high quarters in which
+the old feeling of the East India Company, that all who were not in
+the service must be adventurers and interlopers, seems not wholly to
+have died out.
+
+That there have been abuses no one denies; but for years past the
+majority of the planters in Tirhoot, Chupra, and Chumparun, and in the
+indigo districts generally, not merely the managers, but the
+proprietors and agents have been laudably and loyally stirring, in
+spite of failures, reduced prices, and frequent bad seasons, to
+elevate the standard of their peasantry, and establish the indigo
+system on a fair and equitable basis. During the years when I was an
+assistant and manager on indigo estates, the rates for payment of
+indigo to cultivators nearly doubled, although prices for the
+manufactured article remained stationary. In well managed factories,
+the forcible seizure of carts and ploughs, and the enforcement of
+labour, which is an old charge against planters, was unknown; and the
+payment of tribute, common under the old feudal system, and styled
+_furmaish_, had been allowed to fall into desuetude. The NATIVE
+Zemindars or landholders however, still jealously maintain their
+rights, and harsh exactions were often made by them on the cultivators
+on the occasions of domestic events, such as births, marriages,
+deaths, and such like, in the families of the landowners. For years
+these exactions or feudal payments by the ryot to the Zemindar have
+been commuted by the factories into a lump sum in cash, when villages
+have been taken in farm, and this sum has been paid to the Zemindar as
+an enhanced rent. In the majority of cases it has not been levied from
+the cultivators, but the whole expense has been borne by the factory.
+In individual instances resort may have been had to unworthy tricks to
+harass the ryots, the factory middle-men having often been oppressors
+and tyrants; but as a body, the indigo planters of the present day
+have sternly set their faces to put down these oppressions, and have
+honestly striven to mete out even-handed justice to their tenants and
+dependants. With the spread of education and intelligence, the
+development of agricultural knowledge and practical science, and the
+vastly improved communication by roads, bridges, and ferries, in
+bringing about all of which the planting community themselves have
+been largely instrumental, there can be little doubt that these old
+fashioned charges against the planters as a body will cease, and
+public opinion will be brought to bear on any one who may promote his
+own interests by cruelty or rapacity, instead of doing his business on
+an equitable commercial basis, giving every man his due, relying on
+skill, energy, industry, and integrity, to promote the best interests
+of his factory; gaining the esteem and affection of his people by
+liberality, kindness, and strict justice.
+
+It can never be expected that a ryot can grow indigo at a loss to
+himself, or at a lower rate of profit than that which the cultivation
+of his other ordinary crops would give him, without at least some
+compensating advantages. With all his poverty and supposed stupidity,
+he is keenly alive to his own interests, quite able to hold his own in
+matters affecting his pocket. I have no hesitation in saying that the
+steady efforts which have been made by all the best planters to treat
+the ryot fairly, to give him justice, to encourage him with liberal
+aid and sympathy, and to put their mutual relations on a fair business
+footing, are now bearing fruit, and will result in the cultivation and
+manufacture of indigo in Upper Bengal becoming, as it deserves to
+become, one of the most firmly established, fairly conducted, and
+justly administered industries in India. That it may be so is, as I
+know, the earnest wish, as it has long been the dearest object, of my
+best friends among the planters of Behar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+The tiger.--His habitat.--Shooting on foot.--Modes of shooting.--A
+tiger hunt on foot.--The scene of the hunt.-The beat.--Incidents of
+the hunt.--Fireworks.--The tiger charges.--The elephant bolts.--The
+tigress will not break.--We kill a half-grown cub.--Try again for
+the tigress.--Unsuccessful.--Exaggerations in tiger stories.--My
+authorities.--The brothers S.--Ferocity and structure of the tiger.
+--His devastations.--His frame-work, teeth, &c.--A tiger at bay.
+--His unsociable habits.--Fight between tiger and tigress.--Young
+tigers.--Power and strength of the tiger.--Examples.--His cowardice.
+--Charge of a wounded tiger.--Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+--A spined tiger.--Boldness of young tigers.--Cruelty.--Cunning.--Night
+scenes in the jungle.--Tiger killed by a wild boar.--His cautious
+habits.--General remarks.
+
+In the foregoing chapters I have tried to perform my promise, to give
+a general idea of our daily life in India; our toils and trials, our
+sports, our pastimes, and our general pursuits. No record of Indian
+sport, however, would be complete without some allusion to the kingly
+tiger, and no one can live long near the Nepaul frontier, without at
+some time or other having an encounter with the royal robber--the
+striped and whiskered monarch of the jungle.
+
+He is always to be found in the Terai forests, and although very
+occasionally indeed met with in Tirhoot, where the population is very
+dense, and waste lands infrequent, he is yet often to be encountered
+in the solitudes of Oudh or Goruchpore, has been shot at and killed
+near Bettiah, and at our pig-sticking ground near Kuderent. In North
+Bhaugulpore and Purneah he may be said to be ALWAYS at home, as he can
+be met there, if you search for him, at all seasons of the year.
+
+In some parts of India, notably in the Deccan, and in some districts
+on the Bombay side, and even in the Soonderbunds near Calcutta,
+sportsmen and shekarries go after the tiger on foot. I must confess
+that this seems to me a mad thing to do. With every advantage of
+weapon, with the most daring courage, and the most imperturbable
+coolness, I think a man no fair match for a tiger in his native
+jungles. There are men now living who have shot numbers of tigers on
+foot, but the numerous fatal accidents recorded every year, plainly
+shew the danger of such a mode of shooting.
+
+In Central India, in the North-west, indeed in most districts where
+elephants are not easily procurable, it is customary to erect
+_mychans_ or bamboo platforms on trees. A line of beaters, with
+tom-toms, drums, fireworks, and other means for creating a din, are
+then sent into the jungle, to beat the tigers up to the platform on
+which you sit and wait. This is often a successful mode if you secure
+an advantageous place, but accidents to the beaters are very common,
+and it is at best a weary and vexatious mode of shooting, as after all
+your trouble the tiger may not come near your _mychan_, or give you
+the slightest glimpse of his beautiful skin.
+
+I have only been out after tiger on foot on one occasion. It was in
+the sal jungles in Oudh. A neighbour of mine, a most intimate and dear
+friend, whom I had nicknamed the 'General,' and a young friend,
+Fullerton, were with me. A tigress and cub were reported to be in a
+dense patch of _nurkool_ jungle, on the banks of the creek which
+divided the General's cultivation from mine. The nurkool is a tall
+feathery-looking cane, very much relished by elephants. It grows in
+dense brakes, and generally in damp boggy ground, affording complete
+shade and shelter for wild animals, and is a favourite haunt of pig,
+wolf, tiger, and buffalo.
+
+We had only one elephant, the use of which Fullerton had got from a
+neighbouring Baboo. It was not a staunch animal, so we put one of our
+men in the howdah, with a plentiful supply of bombs, a kind of native
+firework, enclosed in a clay case, which burns like a huge squib, and
+sets fire to the jungle. Along with the elephant we had a line of
+about one hundred coolies, and several men with drums and tom-toms.
+Fullerton took the side nearest the river, as it was possible the
+brute might sneak out that way, and make her escape along the bank.
+The General's shekarry remained behind, in rear of the line of
+beaters, in case the tigress might break the line, and try to escape
+by the rear. My _Gomasta_, the General, and myself, then took up
+positions behind trees all along the side of the glade or dell in
+which was the bit of nurkool jungle.
+
+It was a small basin, sloping gently down to the creek from the sal
+jungle, which grew up dark and thick all around. A margin of close
+sward, as green and level as a billiard-table, encircled the glade,
+and in the basin the thick nurkool grew up close, dense, and high,
+like a rustling barrier of living green. In the centre was the
+decaying stump of a mighty forest monarch, with its withered arms
+stretching out their bleached and shattered lengths far over the
+waving feathery tops of the nurkool below.
+
+The General and I cut down, some branches, which we stuck in the
+ground before us. I had a fallen log in front of me, on which I rested
+my guns. I had a naked _kookree_ ready to hand, for we were sure that
+the tigress was in the swamp, and I did not know what might happen. I
+did not half like this style of shooting, and wished I was safely
+seated on the back of 'JORROCKS,' my faithful old Bhaugulpore
+elephant. The General whistled as a sign for the beat to begin. The
+coolies dashed into the thicket. The stately elephant slowly forced
+his ponderous body through the crashing swaying brake. The rattle of
+the tom-toms and rumble of the drums, mingled with the hoarse shouts
+and cries of the beaters, the fiery rush of sputtering flame, and the
+loud report as each bomb burst, with the huge volumes of blinding
+smoke, and the scent of gunpowder that came on the breeze, told us
+that the bombs were doing their work. The jungle was too green to
+burn; but the fireworks raised a dense sulphurous smoke, which
+penetrated among the tall stems of the nurkool, and by the waving and
+crashing of the tall swaying canes, the heaving of the howdah, with
+the red puggree of the peon, and the gleaming of the staves and
+weapons, we could see that the beat was advancing.
+
+As they neared the large withered tree in the centre of the brake, the
+elephant curled up his trunk and trumpeted. This was a sure sign there
+was game afoot. We could see the peon in the howdah leaning over the
+front bar, and eagerly peering into the recesses of the thicket before
+him. He lit one of the bombs, and hurled it right up against the hole
+of the tree. It hissed and sputtered, and the smoke came curling over
+the reeds in dense volumes. A roar followed that made the valley ring
+again. We heard a swift rush. The elephant turned tail, and fled madly
+away, crashing through the matted brake that crackled and tore under
+his tread. The howdah swayed wildly, and the peon clung tenaciously on
+to the top bar with all his desperate might. The _mahout_, or
+elephant-driver, tried in vain to check the rush of the frightened
+brute, but after repeated sounding whacks on the head he got her to
+stop, and again turn round. Meantime the cries and shouting had
+ceased, and the beaters came pouring from the jungle by twos and
+threes, like the frightened inhabitants of some hive or ant-heap. Some
+in their hurry came tumbling out headlong, others with their faces
+turned backwards to see if anything was in pursuit of them, got
+entangled in the reeds, and fell prone on their hands and knees. One
+fellow had just emerged from the thick cover, when another terrified
+compatriot dashed out in blind unreasoning fear close behind him. The
+first one thought the tiger was on him. With one howl of anguish and
+dismay he fled as fast as he could run, and the General and I, who had
+witnessed the episode, could not help uniting in a resounding peal of
+laughter, that did more to bring the scared coolies to their senses
+than anything else we could have done.
+
+There was no doubt now of the tiger's whereabouts. One of the beaters
+gave us a most graphic description of its appearance and proportions.
+According to him it was bigger than an elephant, had a mouth as wide
+as a coal scuttle, and eyes that glared like a thousand suns. From all
+this we inferred that there was a full grown tiger or tigress in the
+jungle. We re-formed the line of beaters, and once more got the
+elephant to enter the patch. The same story was repeated. No sooner
+did they get near the old tree, than the tigress again charged with a
+roar, and our valiant coolies and the chicken-hearted elephant vacated
+the jungle as fast as their legs could carry them. This happened twice
+or thrice. The tigress charged every time, but would not leave her
+safe cover. The elephant wheeled round at every charge, and would not
+shew fight. Fullerton got into the howdah, and fired two shots into
+the spot where the tigress was lying. He did not apparently wound her,
+but the reports brought her to the charge once more, and the elephant,
+by this time fairly tired of the game, and thoroughly demoralised with
+fear, bolted right away, and nearly cracked poor Fullerton's head
+against the branch of a tree.
+
+We could plainly see, that with only one elephant we could never
+dislodge the tigress, so making the coolies beat up the patch in
+lines, we shot several pig and a hog-deer, and adjourned for something
+to eat by the bank of the creek. We had been trying to oust the
+tigress for over four hours, but she was as wise as she was savage,
+and refused to become a mark for our bullets in the open. After lunch
+we made another grand attempt. We promised the coolies double pay if
+they roused the tigress to flight. The elephant was forced again into
+the nurkool very much against his will, and the mahout was promised a
+reward if we got the tigress. The din this time was prodigious, and
+strange to say they got quite close up to the big withered tree
+without the usual roar and charge. This seemed somewhat to stimulate
+the beaters and the old elephant. The coolies redoubled their cries,
+smote among the reeds with their heavy staves, and shouted
+encouragement to each other. Right in the middle of the line, as it
+seemed to us from the outside, there was then a fierce roar and a
+mighty commotion. Cries of fear and consternation arose, and forth
+poured the coolies again, helter skelter, like so many rabbits from a
+warren when the weasel or ferret has entered the burrow. Right before
+me a huge old boar and a couple of sows came plunging forth. I let
+them get on a little distance from the brake, and then with my
+'Express' I rolled over the tusker and one of his companions, and just
+then the General shouted out to me, 'There's the tiger!'
+
+I looked in the direction of his levelled gun, and there at the edge
+of the jungle was a handsome half-grown tiger cub, beautifully marked,
+his tail switching angrily from side to side, and his twitching
+retracted lips and bristling moustache drawn back like those of a
+vicious cat, showing his gleaming polished fangs and teeth.
+
+The General had a fine chance, took a steady aim, and shot the young
+savage right through the heart. The handsome young tiger gave one
+convulsive leap into the air and fell on his side stone dead. We could
+not help a cheer, and shouted for Fullerton, who soon came running up.
+We got some coolies together, but they were frightened to go near the
+dead animal, as we could plainly hear the old vixen inside snarling
+and snapping, for all the world like an angry terrier. We heard her
+half-suppressed growl and snarl. She was evidently in a fine temper.
+How we wished for a couple of staunch elephants to hunt her out of the
+cane. It was no use, however, the elephant would not go near the
+jungle again. The coolies were thoroughly scared, and had got plenty
+of pork and venison to eat, so did not care for anything else. We
+collected a lot of tame buffaloes, and tried to drive them through the
+jungle, but the coolies had lost heart, and would not exert
+themselves; so we had to content ourselves with the cub, who measured
+six feet three inches (a very handsome skin it was), and very
+reluctantly had to leave the savage mother alone. I never saw a brute
+charge so persistently as she did. She always rushed forward with a
+succession of roars, and was very wary and cunning. She never charged
+home, she did not even touch the elephant or any of the coolies, but
+evidently trusted to frighten her assailants away by a bold show and a
+fierce outcry.
+
+We went back two days after with five elephants, which with great
+difficulty we had got together[1], and thoroughly beat the patch of
+nurkool, killed a lot of pig and a couple of deer, shot an alligator,
+and destroyed over thirty of its eggs, which we discovered on the bank
+of the creek; and returning in the evening shot a nilghau and a black
+buck, but the tigress had disappeared. She was gone, and we grumbled
+sorely at our bad luck. That was the only occasion I was ever after
+tiger on foot. It was doubtless intensely exciting work, and both
+tigress and cub must have passed close to us several times, hidden by
+the jungle. We were only about thirty paces from the edge of the
+brake, and both animals must have seen us, although the dense cover
+hid them from our sight. I certainly prefer shooting from the howdah.
+
+Although it is beyond the scope of this book to enter into a detailed
+account of the tiger, discussing his structure, habits, and
+characteristics, it may aid the reader if I give a sketchy general
+outline of some of the more prominent points of interest connected
+with the monarch of the jungle, the cruel, cunning, ferocious king of
+the cat tribe, the beautiful but dreaded tiger.
+
+I should prefer to shew his character by incidents with which I have
+myself been connected, but as many statements have been made about
+tigers that are utterly absurd and untrue, and as tiger stories
+generally contain a good deal of exaggeration, and a natural
+scepticism unconsciously haunts the reader when tigers and tiger
+shooting are the topics, it may be as well to state once for all, that
+I shall put down nothing that cannot be abundantly substantiated by
+reference to my own sporting journals, on those of the brothers S.,
+friends and fellow-sportsmen of my own. To G.S. I am under great
+obligations for many interesting notes he has given me about tiger
+shooting. Joe, his brother, was long our captain in our annual
+shooting parties. Their father and _his_ brother, the latter still
+alive and a keen shot, were noted sportsmen at a time when game was
+more plentiful, shooting more generally practised, and when to be a
+good shot meant more than average excellence. The two brothers between
+them have shot, I daresay, more than four hundred and fifty male and
+female tigers, and serried rows of skulls ranged round the
+billiard-rooms in their respective factories, bear witness to their
+love of sport and the deadly accuracy of their aim. Under their
+auspices I began my tiger shooting, and as they knew every inch of the
+jungles, had for years been observant students of nature, were
+acquainted with all the haunts and habits of every wild creature, I
+acquired a fund of information about the tiger which I knew could be
+depended on. It was the result of actual observation and experience,
+and in most instances it was corroborated by my own experience in my
+more limited sphere of action. Every incident I adduce, every
+deduction I draw, every assertion I make regarding tigers and tiger
+shooting can be plentifully substantiated, and abundantly testified
+to, by my brother sportsmen of Purneah and Bhaugulpore. From their
+valuable information I have got most of the material for this part of
+my book.
+
+Of the order FERAE, the family _felidae_, there is perhaps no animal
+in the wide range of all zoology, so eminently fitted for destruction
+as the tiger. His whole structure and appearance, combining beauty and
+extreme agility with prodigious strength, his ferocity, and his
+cunning, mark him out as the very type of a beast of prey. He is the
+largest of the cat tribe, the most formidable race of quadrupeds on
+earth. He is the most bloodthirsty in habit, and the most dreaded by
+man. Whole tracts of fertile fields, reclaimed from the wild
+luxuriance of matted jungle, and waving with golden grain, have been
+deserted by the patient husbandmen, and allowed to relapse into
+tangled thicket and uncultured waste on account of the ravages of this
+formidable robber. Whole villages have been depopulated by tigers, the
+mouldering door-posts, and crumbling rafters, met with at intervals in
+the heart of the solitary jungle, alone marking the spot where a
+thriving hamlet once sent up the curling smoke from its humble
+hearths, until the scourge of the wilderness, the dreaded 'man-eater,'
+took up his station near it, and drove the inhabitants in terror from
+the spot. Whole herds of valuable cattle have been literally destroyed
+by the tiger. His habitat is in those jungles, and near those
+localities, which are most highly prized by the herdsmen of India for
+their pastures, and the numbers of cattle that yearly fall before his
+thirst for blood, and his greed for living prey, are almost
+incredible. I have scarcely known a day pass, during the hot months,
+on the banks of the Koosee, that news of a _kill_ has not been sent in
+from some of the villages in my _ilaka_, and as a tiger eats once in
+every four or five days, and oftener if he can get the chance, the
+number of animals that fall a prey to his insatiable appetite, over
+the extent of Hindustan, must be enormous. The annual destruction of
+tame animals by tigers alone is almost incredible, and when we add to
+this the wild buffalo, the deer, the pig, and other untamed animals,
+to say nothing of smaller creatures, we can form some conception of
+the destruction caused by the tiger in the course of a year.
+
+His whole frame is put together to effect destruction. In cutting up a
+tiger you are impressed with this. His tendons are masses of nerve and
+muscle as hard as steel. The muscular development is tremendous. Vast
+bands and layers of muscle overlap each other. Strong ligaments, which
+you can scarcely cut through, and which soon blunt the sharpest knife,
+unite the solid, freely-playing, loosely-jointed bones. The muzzle is
+broad, and short, and obtuse. The claws are completely retractile. The
+jaws are short. There are two false molars, two grinders above, and
+the same number below. The upper carnivorous tooth has three lobes,
+and an obtuse heel; the lower has two lobes, pointed and sharp, and no
+heel. There is one very small tuberculous tooth above as an auxiliary,
+and then the strong back teeth. The muscles of the jaws are of
+tremendous power. I have come across the remains of a buffalo killed
+by a tiger, and found all the large bones, even the big strong bones
+of the pelvis and large joints, cracked and crunched like so many
+walnuts, by the powerful jaws of the fierce brute.
+
+The eye is peculiarly brilliant, and when glaring with fury it is
+truly demoniac. With his bristles rigid, the snarling lips drawn back,
+disclosing the formidable fangs, the body crouching for his spring,
+and the lithe tail puffed up and swollen, and lashing restlessly from
+side to side, each muscle tense and strung, and an undulating movement
+perceptible like the motions of a huge snake, a crouching tiger at bay
+is a sight that strikes a certain chill to the heart of the onlooker.
+When he bounds forward, with a roar that reverberates among the mazy
+labyrinths of the interminable jungle, he tests the steadiest nerve
+and almost daunts the bravest heart.
+
+In their habits they are very unsociable, and are only seen together
+during the amatory season. When that is over the male tiger betakes
+him again to his solitary predatory life, and the tigress becomes, if
+possible, fiercer than he is, and buries herself in the gloomiest
+recesses of the jungle. When the young are born, the male tiger has
+often been known to devour his offspring, and at this time they are
+very savage and quarrelsome. Old G., a planter in Purneah, once came
+across a pair engaged in deadly combat. They writhed and struggled on
+the ground, the male tiger striking tremendous blows on the chest and
+flanks of his consort, and tearing her skin in strips, while the
+tigress buried her fangs in his neck, tearing and worrying with all
+the ferocity of her nature. She was battling for her young. G. shot
+both the enraged combatants, and found that one of the cubs had been
+mangled, evidently by his unnatural father. Another, which he picked
+up in a neighbouring bush, was unharmed, but did not survive long.
+Pairs have often been shot in the same jungle, but seldom in close
+proximity, and it accords with all experience that they betray an
+aversion to each other's society, except at the one season. This
+propensity of the father to devour his offspring seems to be due to
+jealousy or to blind unreasoning hate. To save her offspring the
+female always conceals her young, and will often move far from the
+jungle which she usually frequents.
+
+When the cubs are able to kill for themselves, she seems to lose all
+pleasure in their society, and by the time they are well grown she
+usually has another batch to provide for. I have, however, shot a
+tigress with a full-grown cub--the hunt described in the last chapter
+is an instance--and on several occasions, my friend George has shot
+the mother with three or four full-grown cubs in attendance. This is
+however rare, and only happens I believe when the mother has remained
+entirely separate from the company of the male.
+
+The strength of the tiger is amazing. The fore paw is the most
+formidable weapon of attack. With one stroke delivered with full
+effect he can completely disable a large buffalo. On one occasion, on
+the Koosee _derahs_, that is, the plains bordering the river, an
+enraged tiger, passing through a herd of buffaloes, broke the backs of
+two of the herd, giving each a stroke right and left as he went along.
+One blow is generally sufficient to kill the largest bullock or
+buffalo. Our captain, Joe, had once received _khubber_, that is, news
+or information, of a kill by a tiger. He went straight to the
+_baithan_, the herd's head-quarters, and on making enquiries, was told
+that the tiger was a veritable monster.
+
+'Did you see it?' asked Joe.
+
+'I did not,' responded the _goala_ or cowherd.
+
+'Then how do you know it was so large?'
+
+'Because,' said the man, 'it killed the biggest buffalo in my herd,
+and the poor brute only gave one groan.'
+
+George once tracked a tiger, following up the drag of a bullock that
+he had carried off. At one place the brute came to a ditch, which was
+measured and found to be five feet in width. Through this there was no
+drag, but the traces continued on the further side. The inference is,
+that the powerful thief had cleared the ditch, taking the bullock
+bodily with him at a bound. Others have been known to jump clear out
+of a cattle pen, over a fence some six feet high, taking on one
+occasion a large-sized calf, and another time a sheep.
+
+Another wounded tiger, with two bullets in his flanks, the wound being
+near the root of the tail, cleared a _nullah_, or dry watercourse, at
+one bound. The nullah was stepped by George, and found to be
+twenty-three paces wide. It is fortunate, with such tremendous powers
+for attack, that the tiger will try as a rule to slink out of the way
+if he can. He almost always avoids an encounter with man. His first
+instinct is flight. Only the exciting incidents of the chase are as a
+rule put upon record. A narrative of tiger shooting therefore is apt
+in this respect to be a little misleading. The victims who meet their
+death tamely and quietly (and they form the majority in every
+hunt),--those that are shot as they are tamely trying to escape--are
+simply enumerated, but the charging tiger, the old vixen that breaks
+the line, and scatters the beaters to right and left, that rouses the
+blood of the sportsmen to a fierce excitement, these are made the most
+of. Every incident is detailed and dwelt upon, and thus the idea has
+gained ground, that ALL tigers are courageous, and wait not for
+attack, but in most instances take the initiative. It is not the case.
+Most of the tigers I have seen killed would have escaped if they
+could. It is only when brought to bay, or very hard pressed, or in
+defence of its young, that a tiger or tigress displays its native
+ferocity. At such a moment indeed, nothing gives a better idea of
+savage determined fury and fiendish rage. With ears thrown back, brows
+contracted, mouth open, and glaring yellow eyes scintillating with
+fury, the cruel claws plucking at the earth, the ridgy hairs on the
+back stiff and erect as bristles, and the lithe lissome body quivering
+in every muscle and fibre with wrath and hate, the beast comes down to
+the charge with a defiant roar, which makes the pulse bound and the
+breath come short and quick. It requires all a man's nerve and
+coolness, to enable him to make steady shooting.
+
+Roused to fury by a wound, I have seen tigers wheel round with amazing
+swiftness, and dash headlong, roaring dreadfully as they charged, full
+upon the nearest elephant, scattering the line and lacerating the poor
+creature on whose flanks or head they may have fastened, their whole
+aspect betokening pitiless ferocity and fiendish rage.
+
+Even in death they do not forget their savage instincts. I knew of one
+case in which a seemingly dead tiger inflicted a fearful wound upon an
+elephant that had trodden on what appeared to be his inanimate
+carcase. Another elephant, that attacked and all but trampled a tiger
+to death, was severely bitten under one of the toe-nails. The wound
+mortified, and the unfortunate beast died in about a week after its
+infliction. Another monster, severely wounded, fell into a pool of
+water, and seized hold with its jaws of a hard knot of wood that was
+floating about. In its death agony, it made its powerful teeth meet in
+the hard wood, and not until it was being cut up, and we had divided
+the muscles of the jaws, could we extricate the wood from that
+formidable clench. In rage and fury, and mad with pain, the wounded
+tiger will often turn round and savagely bite the wound that causes
+its agony, and they very often bite their paws and shoulders, and tear
+the grass and earth around them.
+
+A tiger wounded in the spine, however, is the most exciting spectacle.
+Paralysed in the limbs, he wheels round, roaring and biting at
+everything within his reach. In 1874 I shot one in the spine, and
+watched his furious movements for some time before I put him out of
+his misery. I threw him a pad from one of the elephants, and the way
+he tore and gnawed it gave me some faint idea of his fury and
+ferocity. He looked the very personification of impotent viciousness;
+the incarnation of devilish rage.
+
+Urged by hunger the tiger fearlessly attacks his prey. The most
+courageous are young tigers about seven or eight feet long. They
+invariably give better sport than larger and older animals, being more
+ready to charge, and altogether bolder and more defiant. Up to the age
+of two years they have probably been with the mother, have never
+encountered a reverse or defeat, and having become bold by impunity,
+hesitate not to fly at any assailant whatever.
+
+Like all the cat tribe, they are very cruel in disposition, often most
+wantonly so. Having disabled his prey with the first onset, the tiger
+plays with it as a cat does with a mouse, and, unless very sharp set
+by hunger, he always indulges this love of torture. His attacks are by
+no means due only to the cravings of his appetite. He often slays the
+victims of a herd, in the wantonness of sport, merely to indulge his
+murderous propensities. Even when he has had a good meal he will often
+go on adding fresh victims, seemingly to gratify his sense of power,
+and his love of slaughter. In teaching her cubs to kill for
+themselves, the mother often displays great cruelty, frequently
+killing at a time five or six cows from one herd. The young savages
+are apt pupils, and 'try their prentice hand' on calves and weakly
+members of the herd, killing from the mere love of murder.
+
+Their cunning is as remarkable as their cruelty; what they lack in
+speed they make up in consummate subtlety. They take advantage of the
+direction of the wind, and of every irregularity of the ground. It is
+amazing what slight cover will suffice to conceal their lurking forms
+from the observation of the herd. During the day they generally
+retreat to some cool and shady spot, deep in the recesses of the
+jungle. Where the soft earth has been worn away with ragged hollows
+and deep shady water-courses, where the tallest and most impenetrable
+jungle conceals the winding and impervious paths, hidden in the gloom
+and obscurity of the densely-matted grass, the lordly tiger crouches,
+and blinks away the day. With the approach of night, however, his mood
+undergoes a change. He hears the tinkle of the bells, borne by some of
+the members of a retreating herd, that may have been feeding in close
+proximity to his haunt all day long, and from which he has determined
+to select a victim for his evening meal. He rouses himself and yawns,
+stretches himself like the great cruel cat he is, and then crawls and
+creeps silently along, by swampy watercourses, and through devious
+labyrinths known to himself alone. He hangs on the outskirts of the
+herd, prowling along and watching every motion of the returning
+cattle. He makes his selection, and with infinite cunning and patience
+contrives to separate it from the rest. He waits for a favourable
+moment, when, with a roar that sends the alarmed companions of the
+unfortunate victim scampering together to the front, he springs on his
+unhappy prey, deprives it of all power of resistance with one
+tremendous stroke, and bears it away to feast at his leisure on the
+warm and quivering carcase.
+
+He generally kills as the shades of evening are falling, and seldom
+ventures on a foraging expedition by day. After nightfall it is
+dangerous to be abroad in the jungles. It is then that dramas are
+acted of thrilling interest, and unimaginable sensation scenes take
+place. Some of the old shekarries and field-watchers frequently dig
+shallow pits, in which they take their stand. Their eye is on the
+level of the ground, and any object standing out in relief against the
+sky line can be readily detected. If they could relate their
+experiences, what absorbing narratives they could write. They see the
+tiger spring upon his terror-stricken prey, the mother and her hungry
+cubs prowling about for a victim, or two fierce tigers battling for
+the favours of some sleek, striped, remorseless, bloodthirsty
+forest-fiend. In pursuit of their quarry, they steal noiselessly
+along, and love to make their spring unawares. They generally select
+some weaker member of a herd, and are chary of attacking a strong
+big-boned, horned animal. They sometimes 'catch a Tartar,' and
+instances are known of a buffalo not only withstanding the attack of a
+tiger successfully, but actually gaining the victory over his more
+active assailant, whose life has paid the penalty of his rashness.
+
+Old G. told me, he had come across the bodies of a wild boar and an
+old tiger, lying dead together near Burgamma. The boar was fearfully
+mauled, but the clean-cut gaping gashes in the striped hide of the
+tiger, told how fearfully and gallantly he had battled for his life.
+
+In emerging from the jungle at night, they generally select the same
+path or spot, and approach the edge of the cover with great caution.
+They will follow the same track for days together. Hence in some
+places the tracks of the tigers are so numerous as to lead the tyro to
+imagine that dozens must have passed, when in truth the tracks all
+belong to one and the same brute. So acute is their perception, so
+narrowly do they scrutinize every minute object in their path, so
+suspicious is their nature, that anything new in their path, such as a
+pitfall, a screen of cut grass, a _mychan_, that is, a stage from
+which you might be intending to get a shot, nay, even the print of a
+footstep--a man's, a horse's, an elephant's--is often quite enough to
+turn them from a projected expedition, or at any rate to lead them to
+seek some new outlet from the jungle. In any case it increases their
+wariness, and under such circumstances it becomes almost impossible to
+get a shot at them from a pit or shooting-stage. Their vision, their
+sense of smell, of hearing, all their perceptions are so acute, that I
+think lying in wait for them is chiefly productive of weariness and
+vexation of spirit. It is certainly dangerous, and the chances of a
+successful shot are so problematical, while the _disagreeables_, and
+discomforts, and dangers are so real and tangible, that I am inclined
+to think this mode of attack 'hardly worth the candle.'
+
+With all his ferocity and cruelty, however, I am of opinion that the
+tiger is more cowardly than courageous. He will always try to escape a
+danger, and fly from attack, rather than attack in return or wait to
+meet it, and wherever he can, in pursuit of his prey, he will trust
+rather to his cunning than to his strength, and he always prefers an
+ambuscade to an open onslaught.
+
+
+[1] This was at the time the Prince of Wales was shooting in Nepaul,
+    not very far from where I was then stationed. Most of the
+    elephants in the district had been sent up to his Royal Highness's
+    camp, or were on their way to take part in the ceremonies of the
+    grand _Durbar_ in Delhi.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
+--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
+--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of
+tiger.--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His
+description.--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to
+measure tigers.--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.
+--Number of young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs
+to kill.--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and
+cunning of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of
+concealment.--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.
+--Caught by floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
+
+The tiger's mode of attack is very characteristic of his whole nature.
+To see him stealthily crouching, or crawling silently and sneakingly
+after a herd of cattle, dodging behind every clump of bushes or tuft
+of grass, running swiftly along the high bank of a watercourse, and
+sneaking under the shadowing border of a belt of jungle, is to
+understand his cunning and craftiness. His attitude, when he is
+crouching for the final bound, is the embodiment of suppleness and
+strength. All his actions are graceful, and half display and half
+conceal beneath their symmetry and elegance the tremendous power and
+deadly ferocity that lurks beneath. For a short distance he is
+possessed of great speed, and with a few short agile bounds he
+generally manages to overtake his prey. If baffled in his first
+attack, he retires growling to lie in wait for a less fortunate
+victim. His onset being so fierce and sudden, the animal he selects
+for his prey is generally taken at a great disadvantage, and is seldom
+in a position to make any strenuous or availing resistance.
+
+Delivering the numbing blow with his mighty fore paw, he fastens on
+the throat of the animal he has felled, and invariably tries to tear
+open the jugular vein. This is his practice in nearly every case, and
+it shews a wonderful instinct for selecting the most deadly spot in
+the whole body of his luckless prey. When he has got hold of his
+victim by the throat, he lies down, holding on to the bleeding
+carcase, snarling and growling, and fastening and withdrawing his
+claws, much as a cat does with a rat or mouse. Some writers say he
+then proceeds to drink the blood, but this is just one of those broad
+general assertions which require proof. In some cases he may quench
+his thirst and gratify his appetite for blood by drinking it from the
+gushing veins of his quivering victim, but in many cases I know from
+observation, that the blood is not drunk. If the tiger is very hungry
+he then begins his feast, tearing huge fragments of flesh from the
+dead body, and not unusually swallowing them whole. If he is not
+particularly hungry, he drags the carcase away, and hides it in some
+well-known spot. This is to preserve it from the hungry talons and
+teeth of vultures and jackals. He commonly remains on guard near his
+_cache_ until he has acquired an appetite. If he cannot conveniently
+carry away his quarry, because of its bulk, or the nature of the
+ground, or from being disturbed, he returns to the place at night and
+satisfies his appetite.
+
+Tigers can sneak crouchingly along as fast as they can trot, and it is
+wonderful how silently they can steal on their prey. They seem to have
+some stray provident fits, and on occasions make provision for future
+wants. There are instances on record of a tiger dragging a _kill_
+after him for miles, over water, and through slush and weeds, and
+feasting on the carcase days after he has killed it. It is a fact, now
+established beyond a doubt, that he will eat carrion and putrid flesh,
+but only from necessity and not from choice.
+
+On one occasion my friends put up a tigress during the rains, when
+there are few cattle in the _derahs_ or plains near the river. She had
+killed a pig, and was eagerly devouring the carcase when she was
+disturbed. Snarling and growling, she made off with a leg of pork in
+her mouth, when a bullet ended her career. They seem to prefer pork
+and venison to almost any other kind of food, and no doubt pig and
+deer are their natural and usual prey. The influx, however, of vast
+herds of cattle, and the consequent presence of man, drive away the
+wild animals, and at all events make them more wary and more difficult
+to kill. Finding domestic cattle unsuspicious, and not very formidable
+foes, the tiger contents himself at a pinch with beef, and judging
+from his ravages he comes to like it. Getting bolder by impunity, he
+ventures in some straits to attack man. He finds him a very easy prey;
+he finds the flesh too, perhaps, not unlike his favourite pig.
+Henceforth he becomes a 'man-eater,' the most dreaded scourge and
+pestilent plague of the district. He sometimes finds an old boar a
+tough customer, and never ventures to attack a buffalo unless it be
+grazing alone, and away from the rest of the herd. When buffaloes are
+attacked, they make common cause against their crafty and powerful
+foe, and uniting together in a crescent-shaped line, their horns all
+directed in a living _cheval-de-frise_ against the tiger, they rush
+tumultuously at him, and fairly hunt him from the jungle. The pig,
+having a short thick neck, and being tremendously muscular, is hard to
+kill; but the poor inoffensive cow, with her long-neck, is generally
+killed at the first blow, or so disabled that it requires little
+further effort to complete the work of slaughter.
+
+Two friends of mine once shot an enormous old tiger on a small island
+in the middle of the river, during the height of the annual rains. The
+brute had lost nearly all its hair from mange, and was an emaciated
+sorry-looking object. From the remains on the island--the skin,
+scales, and bones--they found that he must have slain and eaten
+several alligators during his enforced imprisonment on the island.
+They will eat alligators when pressed by hunger, and they have been
+known to subsist on turtles, tortoises, iguanas, and even jackals.
+Only the other day in Assam, a son of Dr. B. was severely mauled by a
+tiger which sprang into the verandah after a dog. There were three
+gentlemen in the verandah, and, as you may imagine, they were taken
+not a little by surprise. They succeeded in bagging the tiger, but not
+until poor B. was very severely hurt.
+
+After tearing the throat open, they walk round the prostrate carcase
+of their prey, growling and spitting like 'tabby' cats. They begin
+their operations in earnest, invariably on the buttock. A leopard
+generally eats the inner portion of the thigh first. A wolf tears open
+the belly, and eats the intestines first. A vulture, hawk, or kite,
+begins on the eyes; but a tiger invariably begins on the buttocks,
+whether of buffalo, cow, deer, or pig. He then eats the fatty covering
+round the intestines, follows that up with the liver and udder, and
+works his way round systematically to the fore-quarters, leaving the
+head to the last. It is frequently the only part of an animal that
+they do not eat.
+
+A 'man-eater' eats the buttocks, shoulders, and breasts first. So many
+carcases are found in the jungle of animals that have died from
+disease or old age, or succumbed to hurts and accidents, that the
+whitened skeletons meet the eye in hundreds. But one can always tell
+the kill of a tiger, and distinguish between it and the other bleached
+heaps. The large bones of a tiger's kill are always broken. The broad
+massive rib bones are crunched in two as easily as a dog would snap
+the drumstick of a fowl. Vultures and jackals, the scavengers of the
+jungle, are incapable of doing this; and when you see the fractured
+large bones, you can always tell that the whiskered monarch has been
+on the war-path. George S. writes me:--
+
+'I have known a tiger devour a whole bullock to his own cheek in one
+day. Early in the morning a man came to inform me he had seen a tiger
+pull down a bullock. I went after the fellow late in the afternoon,
+and found him in a bush not more than twenty feet square, the only
+jungle he had to hide in for some distance round, and in this he had
+polished off the bullock, nothing remaining save the head. The jungle
+being so very small, and he having lain the whole day in it, nothing
+in the way of vultures or jackals could have assisted him in finishing
+off the bullock.'
+
+When hungry they appear to bolt large masses of flesh without
+masticating it. The same correspondent writes:--
+
+'We cut out regular "fids" once from a tiger's stomach, also large
+pieces of bone. Joe heard a tremendous roaring one night, which
+continued till near morning, not far from Nipunneah. He went out at
+dawn to look for the tiger, which he found was dead. The brute had
+tried to swallow the knee-joint of a bullock, and it had stuck in his
+gullet. This made him roar from pain, and eventually choked him.'
+
+As there are two distinct varieties of wild pig in India, so there
+seems to be little doubt that there are two distinct kinds of tigers.
+As these have frequently crossed we find many hybrids. I cannot do
+better than again quote from my obliging and observant friend George.
+The two kinds he designates as 'The Royal Bengal,' and 'The Hill
+Tiger,' and goes on to say:--
+
+'As a rule the stripes of a Royal Bengal are single and dark. The
+skull is widely different from that of his brother the Hill tiger,
+being low in the crown, wider in the jaws, rather flat in comparison,
+and the brain-pan longer with a sloping curve at the end, the crest of
+the brain-pan being a concave curve.
+
+'The Hill tiger is much more massively built; squat and thick set,
+heavier in weight and larger in bulk, with shorter tail, and very
+large and powerful neck, head, and shoulders. The stripes generally
+are double, and of a more brownish tinge, with fawn colour between the
+double stripes. The skull is high in the crown, and not quite so wide.
+The brain-pan is shorter, and the crest slightly convex or nearly
+straight, and the curve at the end of the skull rather abrupt.
+
+'They never grow so long as the "Bengal," yet look twice as big.
+
+'The crosses are very numerous, and vary according to pedigree, in
+stripes, skulls, form, weight, bulk, and tail. This I find most
+remarkable when I look at my collection of over 160 skulls.
+
+'The difference is better marked in tigers than in tigresses. The
+Bengal variety are not as a rule as ferocious as the Hill tiger. Being
+more supple and cunning, they can easier evade their pursuers by
+flight and manoeuvre than, their less agile brothers. The former,
+owing to deficiency of strength, oftener meet with discomfiture, and
+consequently are more wary and cunning; while the latter, prone to
+carry everything before them, trust more to their strength and
+courage, anticipating victory as certain.
+
+'In some the stripes are doubled throughout, in others only partially
+so, while in some they are single throughout, and some have manes to a
+slight extent.'
+
+I have no doubt this classification is correct. The tigers I have seen
+in Nepaul near the hills, were sometimes almost a dull red, and at a
+distance looked like a huge dun cow, while those I have seen in the
+plains during our annual hunts, were of a bright tawny yellow, longer,
+more lanky, and not shewing half such a bold front as their bulkier
+and bolder brethren of the hills.
+
+The length of the tiger has often given rise to fierce discussions
+among sportsmen. The fertile imagination of the slayer of a solitary
+'stripes,' has frequently invested the brute he has himself shot, or
+seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been shot by a friend, or
+the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous length, inches swelling to
+feet, and dimensions growing at each repetition of the yarn, till, as
+in the case of boars, the twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch
+tusker, and the eight foot tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.
+
+Purists again, sticklers for stern truth, haters of bounce or
+exaggeration, have perhaps erred as much on the other side; and in
+their eagerness to give the exact measurement, and avoid the very
+appearance of exaggeration, they actually stretch their tape line and
+refuse to measure the curves of the body, taking it in straight lines.
+This I think is manifestly unfair.
+
+Our mode of measurement in Purneah was to take the tiger as he lay
+before he was put on the elephant, and measure from the tip of the
+nose, over the crest of the skull, along the undulations of the body,
+to the tip of the tail. That is, we followed the curvature of the
+spine along the dividing ridge of the back, and always were careful
+and fair in our attempts. I am of opinion that a tiger over ten feet
+long is an exceptionally long one, but when I read of sportsmen
+denying altogether that even that length can be attained, I can but
+pity the dogmatic scepticism that refuses credence to well ascertained
+and authenticated facts. I believe also that tigers are not got nearly
+so large as in former days. I believe that much longer and heavier
+tigers--animals larger in every way--were shot some twenty years ago
+than those we can get now, but I account for this by the fact that
+there is less land left waste and uncultivated. There are more roads,
+ferries, and bridges, more improved communications, and in consequence
+more travelling. Population and cultivation have increased; firearms
+are more numerous; sport is more generally followed; shooting is much
+more frequent and deadly; and, in a word, tigers have not the same
+chances as they had some twenty years ago of attaining a ripe old age,
+and reaching the extremest limit of their growth. The largest tigers
+being also the most suspicious and wary, are only found in the
+remotest recesses of the impenetrable jungles of Nepaul and the Terai,
+or in those parts of the Indian wilds where the crack of the European
+rifle is seldom or never heard.
+
+It has been so loudly asserted, and so boldly maintained that no tiger
+was ever shot reaching, when fairly measured (that is, measured with
+the skin on, as he lay), ten feet, that I will let Mr. George again
+speak for himself. Referring to the royal Bengal, he says:--
+
+'These grow to great lengths. They have been shot as long as twelve
+feet seven inches (my father shot one that length) or longer; twelve
+feet seven inches, twelve feet six inches, twelve feet three inches,
+twelve feet one inch, and twelve feet, have been shot and recorded in
+the old sporting magazines by gentlemen of undoubted veracity in
+Purneah.
+
+'I have seen the skin of one twelve feet one inch, compared with which
+the skin of one I have by me _that measured as he lay_ (the italics
+are mine) eleven feet one inch, looks like the skin of a cub. The old
+skin looks more like that of a huge antediluvian species in comparison
+with the other.
+
+'The twelve footer was so heavy that my uncle (C.A.S.) tells me no
+number of mahouts could lift it. Several men, if they could have
+approached at one and the same time, might have been able to do so,
+but a sufficient number of men could not lay hold simultaneously to
+move the body from the ground.
+
+'Eventually a number of bamboos had to be cut, and placed in an
+incline from the ground to the elephant's saddle while the elephant
+knelt down, and up this incline the tiger had to be regularly hauled
+and shoved, and so fastened on the elephant.
+
+'He (the tiger) mauled four elephants, one of whom died the same day,
+and one other had a narrow _batch_, i.e. escape, of its life.
+
+In another communication to me, my friend goes over the same ground,
+but as the matter is one of interest to sportsmen and naturalists, I
+will give the extract entire. It proceeds as follows:--
+
+'Tigers grow to great lengths, some assert to even fourteen feet. I do
+not say they do not, but such cases are very rare, and require
+authentication. The longest I have seen, measured as he lay, eleven
+feet one inch (see "Oriental Sporting Magazine," for July, 1871, p.
+308). He was seven feet nine inches from tip of nose to root of tail;
+root of tail one foot three inches in circumference; round chest four
+feet six inches; length of head one foot two inches; fore arm two feet
+two inches; round the head two feet ten inches; length of tail three
+feet four inches.
+
+'Besides this, I have shot another eleven feet, and one ten feet
+eleven inches.
+
+'The largest tigress I have shot was at Sahareah, which measured ten
+feet two inches. I shot another ten feet exactly.' (See O.S.M., Aug.,
+1874, p. 358.)
+
+'I have got the head of a tiger, shot by Joe, which measured eleven
+feet five inches. It was shot at Baraila.
+
+'The male is much bigger built in every way--length, weight, size,
+&c., than the female. The males are more savage, the females more
+cunning and agile. The arms, body, paws, head, skull, claws, teeth,
+&c., of the female, are smaller. The tail of tigress longer; hind legs
+more lanky; the prints look smaller and more contracted, and the toes
+nearer together. It is said that though a large tiger may venture to
+attack a buffalo, the tigress refrains from doing so, but I have found
+this otherwise in my experience.
+
+'I have kept a regular log of all tigers shot by me. The average
+length of fifty-two tigers recorded in my journal is nine feet six and
+a half inches (cubs excluded), and of sixty-eight tigresses (cubs
+excluded), eight feet four inches.
+
+'The average of tigers and tigresses is eight feet ten and a quarter
+inches. This is excluding cubs I have taken alive.'
+
+As to measurements, he goes on to make a few remarks, and as I cannot
+improve on them I reproduce the original passage:--
+
+'Several methods have been recommended for measuring tigers. I measure
+them on the ground, or when brought to camp before skinning, and run
+the tape tight along the line, beginning at the tip of the nose, along
+the middle of the skull, between the ears and neck, then along the
+spine to the end of the tail, taking any curves of the body.
+
+'No doubt measurements of skull, body, tail, legs, &c., ought all to
+be taken, to give an adequate idea of the tiger, and for comparing
+them with one another, but this is not always feasible.'
+
+Most of the leading sportsmen in India now-a-days are very particular
+in taking the dimensions of every limb of the dead tiger. They take
+his girth, length, and different proportions. Many even weigh the
+tiger when it gets into camp, and no doubt this test is one of the
+best that can be given for a comparison of the sizes of the different
+animals slain.
+
+Another much disputed point in the natural history of the animal, a
+point on which there has been much acrimonious discussion, is the
+number of young that are given at a birth. Some writers have asserted,
+and stoutly maintained, that two cubs, or at the most three, is the
+extreme number of young brought forth at one time.
+
+This may be the ordinary number, but the two gentlemen I have already
+alluded to have assured me, that on frequent occasions they have
+picked up four actually born, and have cut out five several times, and
+on one occasion six, from the womb of a tigress.
+
+I have myself picked up four male cubs, all in one spot, with their
+eyes just beginning to open, and none of their teeth through the gums.
+One had been trampled to death by buffaloes, the other three were
+alive and scatheless, huddled into a bush, like three immense kittens.
+I kept the three for a considerable time, and eventually took them to
+Calcutta and sold them for a very satisfactory price.
+
+It seems clear, however, that the tigress frequently has four and even
+five cubs. It is rare, indeed to find her accompanied by more than two
+well grown cubs, very seldom three; and the inference is, that one or
+two of the young tigers succumb in very early life.
+
+The young ones do not appear to grow very quickly; they are about a
+foot long when they are born; they are born blind, with very minute
+hair, almost none in fact, but with the stripes already perfectly
+marked on the soft supple skin; they open their eyes when they are
+eight or ten days old, at which time they measure about a foot and a
+half. At the age of nine months they have attained to five feet in
+length, and are waxing mischievous. Tiger cubs a year old average
+about five feet eight inches, tigresses some three inches or so less.
+In two years they grow respectively to--the male seven feet six
+inches, and the female seven feet. At about this time they leave the
+mother, if they have not already done so, and commence depredations on
+their own account. In fact, their education has been well attended to.
+The mother teaches them to kill when they are about a year old. A
+young cub that measured only six feet, and whose mother had been shot
+in one of the annual beats, was killed while attacking a full grown
+cow in the government pound at Dumdaha police station. When they reach
+the length of six feet six inches they can kill pretty easily, and
+numbers have been shot by George and other Purneah sportsmen close to
+their 'kills.'
+
+They are most daring and courageous when they have just left their
+mother's care, and are cast forth to fight the battle of life for
+themselves. While with the old tigress their lines have been cast in
+not unpleasant places, they have seldom known hunger, and have
+experienced no reverses. Accustomed to see every animal succumb to her
+well planned and audacious attacks, they fancy that nothing will
+withstand their onslaught. They have been known to attack a line of
+elephants, and to charge most determinedly, even in this adolescent
+stage.
+
+Bye-and-bye, however, as they receive a few rude shocks from
+buffaloes, or are worsted in a hand-to-hand encounter with some tough
+old bull, or savage old grey boar, more especially if they get an ugly
+rip or two from the sharp tusks of an infuriated fighting tusker, they
+begin to be less aggressive, they learn that discretion may be the
+better part of valour, and their cunning instincts are roused. In
+fact, their education is progressing, and in time they instinctively
+discover every wile and dodge and cunning stratagem, and display all
+the wondrous subtlety of their race in procuring their prey.
+
+Old tigers are invariably more wary, cautious, and suspicious than
+young ones, and till they are fairly put to it by hunger, hurt, or
+compulsion, they endeavour to keep their stripes concealed. When
+brought to bay, however, there is little to reproach them with on the
+score of cowardice, and it will be matter of rejoicing if you or your
+elephants do not come off second best in the encounter. Even in the
+last desperate case, a cunning old tiger will often make a feint, or
+sham rush, or pretended charge, when his whole object is flight. If he
+succeed in demoralising the line of elephants, roaring and dashing
+furiously about, he will then try in the confusion to double through,
+unless he is too badly wounded to be able to travel fast, in which
+case he will fight to the end.
+
+Old fellows are well acquainted with every maze and thicket in the
+jungles, and they no sooner hear the elephants enter the 'bush' or
+'cover' than they make off for some distant shelter. If there is no
+apparent chance of this being successful, they try to steal out
+laterally and outflank the line, or if that also is impossible, they
+hide in some secret recess like a fox, or crouch low in some clumpy
+bush, and trust to you or your elephant passing by without noticing
+their presence.
+
+It is marvellous in what sparse cover they will manage to lie up. So
+admirably do their stripes mingle with the withered and charred
+grass-stems and dried up stalks, that it is very difficult to detect
+the dreaded robber when he is lying flat, extended, close to the
+ground, so still and motionless that you cannot distinguish a tremor
+or even a vibration of the grass in which he is crouching.
+
+On one occasion George followed an old tiger through some stubble
+about three feet high. It had been well trampled down too by tame
+buffaloes. The tiger had been tracked into the field, and was known to
+be in it. George was within ten yards of the cunning brute, and
+although mounted on a tall elephant, and eagerly scanning the thin
+cover with his sharpest glance, he could not discern the concealed
+monster. His elephant was within four paces of it, when it sprang up
+at the charge, giving a mighty roar, which however also served as its
+death yell, as a bullet from George's trusty gun crashed through its
+ribs and heart.
+
+Tigers can lay themselves so flat on the ground, and lie so perfectly
+motionless, that it is often a very easy thing to overlook them. On
+another occasion, when the Purneah Hunt were out, a tigress that had
+been shot got under some cover that was trampled down by a line of
+about twenty elephants. The sportsmen knew that she had been severely
+wounded, as they could tell by the gouts of blood, but there was no
+sign of the body. She had disappeared. After a long search, beating
+the same ground over and over again, an elephant trod on the dead body
+lying under the trampled canes, and the mahout got down and discovered
+her lying quite dead. She was a large animal and full grown.
+
+On another occasion George was after a fine male tiger. He was
+following up fast, but coming to a broad nullah, full of water, he
+suddenly lost sight of his game. He looked up and down the bank, and
+on the opposite bank, but could see no traces of the tiger. Looking
+down, he saw in the water what at first he took to be a large
+bull-frog. There was not a ripple on the placid stagnant surface of
+the pool. He marvelled much, and just then his mahout pointed to the
+supposed bull-frog, and in an excited whisper implored George to fire.
+A keener look convinced George that it really was the tiger. It was
+totally immersed all but the face, and lying so still that not the
+faintest motion or ripple was perceptible. He fired and inflicted a
+terrible wound. The tiger bounded madly forward, and George gave it
+its quietus through the spine as it tried to spring up the opposite
+bank.
+
+A nearly similar case occurred to old Mr. C., one of the veteran
+sportsmen of Purneah. A tiger had bolted towards a small tank or pond,
+and though the line followed up in hot pursuit, the brute disappeared.
+Old C., keener than the others, was loth to give up the pursuit, and
+presently discerned a yellowish reflection in the clear water. Peering
+more intently, he could discover the yellowish tawny outline of the
+cunning animal, totally immersed in the water, save its eyes, ears,
+and nose. He shot the tiger dead, and it sank to the bottom like a
+stone. So perfectly had it concealed itself, that the other sportsmen
+could not for the life of them imagine what old C. had fired at, till
+his mahout got down and began to haul the dead animal out of the
+water.
+
+Tigers are not at all afraid of water, and are fast and powerful
+swimmers. They swim much after the fashion of a horse, only the head
+out of the water, and they make scarcely any ripple.
+
+'In another case,' writes George, 'though not five yards from the
+elephant, and right under me, a tiger was swimming with so slight a
+ripple that I mistook it for a rat, until I saw the stripes emerge,
+when I perforated his jacket with a bullet.'
+
+Only their head remaining out of water when they are swimming, they
+are very hard to hit, as shooting at an object on water is very
+deceptive work as to judging distance, and a tiger's head is but a
+small object to aim at when some little way off.
+
+Old C. had another adventure with a cunning rogue, which all but ended
+disastrously. He was in hot pursuit of the tiger, and, finding no
+safety on land, it took to swimming in a broad unfordable piece of
+water, a sort of deep lagoon. Old C. procured a boat that was handy,
+and got a coolie to paddle him out after the tiger. He fired several
+shots at the exposed head of the brute, but missed. He thought he
+would wait till he got nearer and make a sure shot, as he had only one
+bullet left in the boat. Suddenly the tiger turned round, and made
+straight for the boat. Here was a quandary. Even if lie killed the
+tiger with his single bullet it might upset the boat; the lagoon was
+full of alligators, to say nothing of weeds, and there was no time to
+get his heavy boots off. He felt his life might depend on the accuracy
+of his aim. He fired, and killed the tiger stone dead within four or
+five yards of the boat.
+
+On one occasion, when out with our worthy district magistrate, Mr. S.,
+I came on the tracks of what to all appearance, was a very large
+tiger. They led over the sand close to the water's edge, and were very
+distinct. I could see no returning marks, so I judged that the tiger
+must have taken to the water. The stream was rapid and deep, and
+midway to the further bank was a big, oblong-shaped, sandy islet, some
+five or six hundred yards long, and having a few scrubby bushes
+growing sparsely on it. We put our elephants into the rapid current,
+and got across. The river here was nearly a quarter of a mile wide on
+each side of the islet. As we emerged from the stream on to the island
+we found fresh tracks of the tiger. They led us completely round the
+circumference of the islet. The tiger had evidently been in quest of
+food. The prints were fresh and very well defined. Finding that all
+was barren on the sandy shore, he entered the current again, and
+following up we found his imprint once more on the further bank,
+several hundred yards down the stream.
+
+One tiger was killed stone dead by a single bullet during one of our
+annual hunts, and falling back into the water, it sank to the bottom
+like lead. Being unable to find the animal, we beat all round the
+place, till I suggested it might have been hit and fallen into the
+river. One of the men was ordered to dive down, and ascertain if the
+tiger was at the bottom. The river water is generally muddy, so that
+the bottom cannot be seen. Divesting himself of puggree, and girding
+up his loins, the diver sank gently to the bottom, but presently
+reappeared in a palpable funk, puffing and blowing, and declaring that
+the tiger was certainly at the bottom. The foolish fellow thought it
+might be still alive. We soon disabused his mind of that idea, and had
+the dead tiger hauled up to dry land.
+
+Surprised by floods, a tiger has been known to remain for days on an
+ant-hill, and even to take refuge on the branch of some large tree,
+but he takes to water readily, and can swim for over a mile, and he
+has been known to remain for days in from two to three feet depth of
+water.
+
+A time-honoured tiger story with old hands, used to tell how the
+Soonderbund tigers got carried out to sea. If the listener was a new
+arrival, or a _gobe mouche_, they would explain that the tigers in the
+Soonderbunds often get carried out to sea by the retiring tide. It
+would sweep them off as they were swimming from island to island in
+the vast delta of Father Ganges. Only the young ones, however,
+suffered this lamentable fate. The older and more wary fellows, taught
+perhaps by sad experience, used always to dip their tails in, before
+starting on a swim, so as to ascertain which way the tide was flowing.
+If it was the flow of the tide they would boldly venture in, but if it
+was ebb tide, and there was the slightest chance of their being
+carried out to sea, they would patiently lie down, meditate on the
+fleeting vanity of life, and like the hero of the song--
+
+  'Wait for the turn of the tide.'
+
+Without venturing an opinion on this story, I may confidently assert,
+that the tiger, unlike his humble prototype the domestic cat, is not
+really afraid of water, but will take to it readily to escape a
+threatened danger, or if he can achieve any object by 'paddling his
+own canoe.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives
+about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Clawmarks
+on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s
+howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.
+--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye
+out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers
+easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of shells on tiger and buffalo.--Best
+weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives
+prone to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for
+tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six
+elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.
+--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the
+Koosee.--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to
+shoot at moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of
+different animals in the grass.
+
+Tigers seem to have no regular breeding season. As a rule the male and
+female come together in the autumn and winter, and the young ones are
+born in the spring and summer. All the young tigers I have ever heard
+of have been found in March, April, and May, and so on through the
+rains.
+
+The natives have many singular beliefs and prejudices about tigers,
+and they are very often averse to give the slightest information as to
+their whereabouts. To a stranger they will either give no information
+at all, pleading entire ignorance, or they will wilfully mislead him,
+putting him on a totally wrong track. If you are well known to the
+villagers, and if they have confidence in your nerve and aim, they
+will eagerly tell you everything they know, and will accompany you on
+your elephant, to point out the exact spot where the tiger was last
+seen. In the event of a 'find' they always look for _backsheesh_, even
+though your exertions may have rid their neighbourhood of an
+acknowledged scourge.
+
+The _gwalla_, or cowherd caste, seem to know the habits of the yellow
+striped robber very accurately. Accompanied by their herd they will
+venture into the thickest jungle, even though they know that it is
+infested by one or more tigers. If any member of the herd is attacked,
+it is quite common for the _gwalla_ to rush up, and by shouts and even
+blows try to make the robber yield up his prey. This is no
+exaggeration, but a simple fact. A cowherd attacked by a tiger has
+been known to call up his herd by cries, and they have succeeded in
+driving off his fierce assailant. No tiger will willingly face a herd
+of buffaloes or cattle united for mutual defence. Surrounded by his
+trusty herd, the _gwalla_ traverses the densest jungle and most
+tiger-infested thickets without fear.
+
+They believe that to rub the fat of the tiger on the loins, and to eat
+a piece of the tongue or flesh, will cure impotency; and tiger fat,
+rubbed on a painful part of the body, is an accepted specific for
+rheumatic affections. It is a firmly settled belief, that the whiskers
+and teeth, worn on the body, will act as a charm, making the wearer
+proof against the attacks of tigers. The collar-bone too, is eagerly
+coveted for the same reason.
+
+During the rains tigers are sometimes forced, like others of the cat
+tribe, to take to trees. A Mr. McI. shot two large full grown, tigers
+in a tree at Gunghara, and a Baboo of my acquaintance bagged no less
+than eight in trees during one rainy season at Rampoor.
+
+Tigers generally prefer remaining near water, and drink a great deal,
+the quantity of raw meat they devour being no doubt provocative of
+thirst.
+
+The marks of their claws are often seen on trees in the vicinity of
+their haunts, and from this fact many ridiculous stories have got
+abroad regarding their habits. It has even been regarded by some
+writers as a sort of rude test, by which to arrive at an approximate
+estimate of the tiger's size. A tiger can stretch himself out some two
+or two and a half feet more than his measurable length. You have
+doubtless often seen a domestic cat whetting its claws on the mat, or
+scratching some rough substance, such as the bark of a tree; this is
+often done to clean the claws, and to get rid of chipped and ragged
+pieces, and it is sometimes mere playfulness. It is the same with the
+tiger, the scratching on the trees is frequently done in the mere
+wantonness of sport, but it is often resorted to to clear the claws
+from pieces of flesh, that may have adhered to them during a meal on
+some poor slaughtered bullock. These marks on the trees are a valuable
+sign for the hunter, as by their appearance, whether fresh or old, he
+can often tell the whereabouts of his quarry, and a good tracker will
+even be able to make a rough guess at its probable size and
+disposition.
+
+Like policemen, tigers stick to certain beats; even when disturbed,
+and forced to abandon a favourite spot, they frequently return to it;
+and although the jungle may be wholly destroyed, old tigers retain a
+partiality for the scenes of their youthful depredations; they are
+often shot in the most unlikely places, where there is little or no
+cover, and one would certainly never expect to find them; they migrate
+with the herds, and retire to the hills during the annual floods,
+always coming back to the same jungle when the rains are over.
+
+Experienced shekarries know this trait of the tiger's character well,
+and can tell you minutely the colour and general appearance of the
+animals in any particular jungle; they are aware of any peculiarity,
+such as lameness, scars, &c., and their observations must be very keen
+indeed, and amazingly accurate, as I have never known them wrong when
+they committed themselves to a positive statement.
+
+An old planter residing at Sultanpore, close on the Nepaul border, a
+noted sportsman and a crack shot, was charged on one occasion by a
+large tiger; the brute sprang right off the ground on to the
+elephant's head; his hind legs were completely off the ground, resting
+on the elephant's chest and neck; Mr. F. retained sufficient presence
+of mind to sit close down in his howdah; the tiger's forearm was
+extended completely over the front bar, and so close that it touched
+his hat. In this position he called out to his son who was on another
+elephant close by, to fire at the tiger; he was cool enough to warn
+him to take a careful aim, and not hit the elephant. His son acted
+gallantly up to his instructions, and shot the tiger through the
+heart, when it dropped down quite dead, to Mr. F.'s great relief.
+
+Some sportsmen are of opinion, that the tiger when charging never
+springs clear from the ground, but only rears itself on its hind legs;
+this however is a mistake. I saw a tiger leap right off the ground,
+and spring on to the rump of an elephant carrying young Sam S. The
+elephant proved staunch, and remained quite quiet, and Sam, turning
+round in his howdah, shot his assailant through the head.
+
+I may give another incident, to shew how closely tigers will sometimes
+stick to cover; they are sometimes as bad to dislodge as a quail or a
+hare; they will crouch down and conceal themselves till you almost
+trample on them. One day a party of the Purneah Club were out; they
+had shot two fine tigers out of several that had been seen; the others
+were known to have gone ahead into some jungle surrounded by water,
+and easy to beat. Before proceeding further it was proposed
+accordingly to have some refreshment. The _tiffin_ elephant was
+directed to a tree close by, beneath whose shade the hungry sportsmen
+were to plant themselves; the elephant had knelt down, one or two
+boxes had actually been removed, several of the servants were clearing
+away the dried grass and leaves. H.W.S. came up on the opposite side
+of the tree, and was in the act of leaping off his elephant, when an
+enormous tiger got up at his very feet, and before the astounded
+sportsmen could handle a gun, the formidable intruder had cleared the
+bushes with a bound, and disappeared in the thick jungle.
+
+The following adventure bears me out in my remark, that tigers get
+attached to, and like to remain in, one place. Mr. F. Simpson, a
+thorough-going sportsman of the good old type, had been out one day in
+the Koosee derahs; he had had a long and unsuccessful beat for tiger,
+and had given up all hope of bagging one that day; he thought
+therefore that he might as well turn his attention to more ignoble
+game. Extracting his bullets, he replaced them with No. 4 shot. In a
+few minutes a peacock got up in front of him, and he fired. The report
+roused a very fine tiger right in front of his elephant; to make the
+best of a bad bargain, he gave the retreating animal the full benefit
+of his remaining charge of shot, and peppered it well. About a year
+after, close to this very place, C.A.S. bagged a fine tiger. On
+examination, the marks of a charge of shot were found in the flanks,
+and on removing the pads of the feet, numbers of pellets of No. 4 shot
+were found embedded in them. It was evidently the animal that had been
+peppered a year before, and the pellets had worked their way downwards
+to the feet.
+
+On another occasion, a man came to the factory where George was then
+residing, to give information of a tiger. He bore on his back numerous
+bleeding scratches, ample evidence of the truth of his story. While
+cutting grass in the jungle, with a blanket on his back, the day being
+rainy, he had been attacked by a tiger from the rear. The blanket is
+generally folded several times, and worn over the head and back. It is
+a thick heavy covering, and in the first onset the tiger tore the
+blanket from the man's body, which was probably the means of saving
+his life. The man turned round, terribly scared, as may be imagined.
+In desperation he struck at the tiger with his sickle, and according
+to his own account, he succeeded in putting out one of its eyes. He
+said it was a young tiger, and his bleeding wounds, and the
+persistency with which he stuck to his story, impressed George with
+the belief that he was telling the truth. A search for the tiger was
+made. The man's blanket was found, torn to shreds, but no tiger,
+although the footprints of one were plainly visible. But some months
+after, near the same spot, George shot a half grown tiger with one of
+its eyes gone, which had evidently been roughly torn from the socket.
+This was doubtless the identical brute that had attacked the
+grass-cutter.
+
+It is sometimes wonderful how easily a large and powerful tiger may be
+killed. The most vulnerable parts are the back of the head, through
+the neck, and broadside on the chest. The neck is the most deadly spot
+of all, and a shot behind the shoulder, or on the spine, is sure to
+bring the game to bag. I have seen several shot with a single bullet
+from a smooth-bore, and on one occasion, George tells me he saw a
+tigress killed with a single smooth-bore bullet at over a hundred
+yards. The bullet was a _ricochet_, and struck the tigress below the
+chest, and travelled towards the heart, but without touching it. She
+fell twenty yards from where she had been hit. Another, which on
+skinning we found had been shot through the heart, with a single
+smooth-bore bullet at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards,
+travelled for thirty yards before falling dead. Meiselback, a
+neighbour of mine, shot three tigers successively, on one occasion,
+with a No. 18 Joe Manton smooth-bore. Each of the three was killed by
+a single bullet, one in the head, one in the neck, and one through the
+heart, the bullet entering behind the shoulder.
+
+On the other hand, I once fired no less than six Jacob's shells into a
+tiger, all behind the shoulder, before I could stop him. The shells
+seemed to explode on the surface the moment they came in contact with
+the body. There was a tremendous surface wound, big enough to put a
+pumpkin into, but very little internal hurt. On another occasion
+(April 4, 1874) during one of the most exciting and most glorious
+moments of my sporting life--buffaloes charging the line in all
+directions, burning jungle all around us, and bullets whistling on
+every side--I fired TWELVE shells into a large bull before I killed
+him. As every shell hit him, I heard the sharp detonation, and saw the
+tiny puff of smoke curl outward from the ghastly wound. The poor
+maddened brute would drop on his knees, stagger again to his feet,
+and, game to the last, attempt to charge my elephant. I was anxious
+really to test the effect of the Jacob's shell as against the solid
+conical bullet, and carefully watched the result of each shot. My
+weapon was a beautifully finished No. 12 smooth-bore, made expressly
+to order for an officer in the Royal Artillery, from whom I bought it.
+From that day I never fired another Jacob's shell.
+
+My remarks about the tiger springing clear off the ground when
+charging, are amply borne out by the experience of some of my sporting
+friends. I could quote pages, but will content myself with one
+extract. It is a point of some importance, as many good old sportsmen
+pooh-pooh the idea, and maintain that the tiger merely stretches
+himself out to his fullest length, and if he does leave the ground, it
+is by a purely physical effort, pulling himself up by his claws.
+
+My friend George writes me: 'In several cases I have known and seen
+the tiger spring, and leave the ground. In one case the tiger sprang
+from fully five yards off. He crouched at the distance of a few paces,
+as if about to spring, and then sprang clean on to the head of Joe's
+_tusker_. An eight feet nine inch tigress once got on to the head of
+my elephant, which was ten feet seven inches in height. Every one
+present saw her leave the ground. Once, when after a tiger in small
+stubble, about six feet high, I saw one bound over a bush so clean
+that I could see every bit of him.' And so on.
+
+For long range shooting the rifle is doubtless the best weapon. The
+Express is the most deadly. The smooth-bore is the gun for downright
+honest sport. Shells and hollow pointed bullets are the things, as one
+sportsman writes me, 'for mutilation and cowardly murder, and for
+spoiling the skin.' Poison is the resource of the poacher. No
+sportsman could descend so low. Grant that the tiger is a scourge, a
+pest, a nuisance, a cruel and implacable foe to man and beast; pile
+all the vilest epithets of your vocabulary on his head, and say that
+he deserves them all, still he is what opportunity and circumstance
+have made him. He is as nature fashioned him; and there are bold
+spirits, and keen sights, and steady nerves enough, God wot, among our
+Indian sportsmen, to cope with him on more equal and sportsmanlike
+terms than by poisoning him like a mangy dog. On this point, however,
+opinions differ. I do not envy the man who would prefer poisoning a
+tiger to the keen delight of patiently following him up, ousting him
+from cover to cover, watching his careful endeavours to elude your
+search; perhaps at the end of a long and fascinating beat, feeling the
+electric excitement thrill every nerve and fibre of your body, as the
+magnificent robber comes bounding down at the charge, the very
+embodiment of ferocity and strength, the perfection of symmetry, the
+acme of agility and grace.
+
+Natives are such notorious perverters of the truth, and so often hide
+what little there may be in their communications under such floods of
+Oriental hyperbole and exaggeration, that you are often disappointed
+in going out on what you consider trustworthy and certain information.
+They often remind me of the story of the Laird of Logan. He was riding
+slowly along a country road one day, when another equestrian joined
+him. Logan's eye fixed itself on a hole in the turf bank bounding the
+road, and with great gravity, and in trust-inspiring accents, he said,
+'I saw a _tod_ (or fox) gang in there.'
+
+'Did you, really;' cried the new comer.
+
+'I did,' responded the laird.
+
+'Will you hold my horse till I get a spade,' cried the now excited
+traveller.
+
+The laird assented. Away hurried the man, and soon returned with a
+spade. He set manfully to work to dig out the fox, and worked till the
+perspiration streamed down his face. The laird sat stolidly looking
+on, saying never a word; and as he seemed to be nearing the confines
+of the hole, the poor digger redoubled his exertions. When at length
+it became plain that there was no fox there, he wiped his streaming
+brow, and rather crossly exclaimed, 'I'm afraid there's no tod here.'
+
+'It would be a wonder if there was,' rejoined the laird, without the
+movement of a muscle, 'it's ten years since I saw him gang in there.'
+
+So it is sometimes with a native. He will fire your ardour, by telling
+you of some enormous tiger, to be found in some jungle close by, but
+when you come to enquire minutely into his story, you find that the
+tiger was seen perhaps the year before last, or that it _used_ to be
+there, or that somebody else had told him of its being there.
+
+Some tigers, too, are so cunning and wary, that they will make off
+long before the elephants have come near. I have seen others rise on
+their hind legs just like a hare or a kangaroo, and peer over the
+jungle trying to make out one's whereabouts. This is of course only in
+short light jungle.
+
+The plan we generally adopt in beating for tiger on or near the Nepaul
+border, is to use a line of elephants to beat the cover. It is a fine
+sight to watch the long line of stately monsters moving slowly and
+steadily forward. Several howdahs tower high above the line, the
+polished barrels of guns and rifles glittering in the fierce rays of
+the burning and vertical sun. Some of the shooters wear huge hats made
+from the light pith of the solah plant, others have long blue or white
+puggrees wound round their heads in truly Oriental style. These are
+very comfortable to wear, but rather trying to the sight, as they
+afford no protection to the eyes. For riding they are to my mind the
+most comfortable head-dress that can be worn, and they are certainly
+more graceful than the stiff unsightly solah hat.
+
+Between every two howdahs are four or five pad elephants. These beat
+up all the intervening bushes, and carry the game that may be shot.
+When a pig, deer, tiger, or other animal has been shot, and has
+received its _coup de grace_, it is quickly bundled on to the pad, and
+there secured. The elephant kneels down to receive the load, and while
+game is being padded the whole line waits, till the operation is
+complete, as it is bad policy to leave blanks. Where this simple
+precaution is neglected, many a tiger will sneak through the opening
+left by the pad elephant, and so silently and cautiously can they
+steal through the dense cover, and so cunning are they and acute, that
+they will take advantage of the slightest gap, and the keenest and
+best trained eye will fail to detect them.
+
+In most of our hunting parties on the Koosee, we had some twenty or
+thirty elephants, and frequently six or eight howdahs. These
+expeditions were very pleasant, and we lived luxuriously. For real
+sport ten elephants and two or three tried comrades--not more--is much
+better. With a short, easily-worked line, that can turn and double,
+and follow the tiger quickly, and dog his every movement, you can get
+far better sport, and bring more to bag, than with a long unwieldy
+line, that takes a considerable time to turn and wheel, and in whose
+onward march there is of necessity little of the silence and swiftness
+which are necessary elements in successful tiger shooting.
+
+I have been out with a line of seventy-six elephants and fourteen
+howdahs. This was on 16th March 1875. It was a magnificent sight to
+see the seventy-six huge brutes in the river together, splashing the
+water along their heated sides to cool themselves, and sending huge
+waves dashing against the crumbling banks of the rapid stream. It was
+no less magnificent to see their slow stately march through the
+swaying, crashing jungle. What an idea of irresistible power and
+ponderous strength the huge creatures gave us, as they heaved through
+the tangled brake, crushing everything in their resistless progress.
+It was a sight to be remembered, but as might have been expected, we
+found the jungles almost untenanted. Everything cleared out before us,
+long ere the line could reach its vicinity. We only killed one tiger,
+but next day we separated, the main body crossing the stream, while my
+friends and myself, with only fourteen elephants, rebeat the same
+jungle and bagged two.
+
+In every hunt, one member is told off to look after the forage and
+grain for the elephants. One attends to the cooking and requirements
+of the table, one acts as paymaster and keeper of accounts, while the
+most experienced is unanimously elected captain, and takes general
+direction of every movement of the line. He decides on the plan of
+operations for the day, gives each his place in the line, and for the
+time, becomes an irresponsible autocrat, whose word is law, and
+against whose decision there is no appeal.
+
+Scouts are sent out during the night, and bring in reports from all
+parts of the jungle in the early morning, while we are discussing
+_chota baziree_, our early morning meal. If tiger is reported, or a
+kill has been discovered, we form line in silence, and without noise
+bear down direct on the spot. In the captain's howdah are three flags.
+A blue flag flying means that only tiger or rhinoceros are to be shot
+at. A red flag signifies that we are to have general firing, in fact
+that we may blaze away at any game that may be afoot, and the white
+flag shews us that we are on our homeward way, and then also may shoot
+at anything we can get, break the line, or do whatever we choose. On
+the flanks are generally posted the best shots of the party. The
+captain, as a rule, keeps to the centre of the line. Frequently one
+man and elephant is sent on ahead to some opening or dry water-bed, to
+see that no cunning tiger sneaks away unseen. This vedette is called
+_naka_. All experienced sportsmen employ a naka, and not unfrequently
+where the ground is difficult, two are sent ahead. The naka is a most
+important post, and the holder will often get a lucky shot at some
+wary veteran trying to sneak off, and may perhaps bag the only tiger
+of the day. The mere knowledge that there is an elephant on ahead,
+will often keep tigers from trying to get away. They prefer to face
+the known danger of the line behind, to the unknown danger in front,
+and in all cases where there is a big party a naka should be sent on
+ahead.
+
+Tigers can be, and are, shot on the Koosee plains all the year round,
+but the big hunts take place in the months of March, April, and May,
+when the hot west winds are blowing, and when the jungle has got
+considerably trampled down by the herds of cattle grazing in the
+tangled wilderness of tall grass. Innumerable small paths shew where
+the cattle wander backward and forward through the labyrinths of the
+jungle. In the howdah we carry ample supplies of vesuvians. We light
+and drop these as they blaze into the dried grass and withered leaves
+as we move along, and soon a mighty wall of roaring flame behind us,
+attests the presence of the destroying element. We go diagonally up
+wind, and the flames and smoke thus surge and roar and curl and roll,
+in dense blinding volumes, to the rear and leeward of our line. The
+roaring of the flames sounds like the maddened surf of an angry sea,
+dashing in thunder against an iron-bound coast. The leaping flames
+mount up in fiery columns, illuminating the fleecy clouds of smoke
+with an unearthly glare. The noise is deafening; at times some of the
+elephants get quite nervous at the fierce roar of the flames behind,
+and try to bolt across country. The fire serves two good purposes. It
+burns up the old withered grass, making room for the fresh succulent
+sprouts to spring, and it keeps all the game in front of the line,
+driving the animals before us, as they are afraid to break back and
+face the roaring-wall of flame. A seething, surging sea of flame,
+several miles long, encircling the whole country in its fiery belt,
+sweeping along at night with the roar of a storm-tossed sea; the
+flames flickering, swelling, and leaping up in the dark night, the
+fiery particles rushing along amid clouds of lurid smoke, and the
+glare of the serpent-like line reddening the horizon, is one of those
+magnificent spectacles that can only be witnessed at rare intervals
+among the experiences of a sojourn in India. Words fail to depict its
+grandeur, and the utmost skill of Doré could not render on canvas, the
+weird, unearthly magnificence of a jungle fire, at the culmination of
+its force and fury.
+
+In beating, the elephants are several yards apart, and, standing in
+the howdah, you can see the slightest motion of the grass before you,
+unless indeed it be virgin jungle, quite untrodden, and perhaps higher
+than your elephant; in such high dense cover, tigers will sometimes
+lie up and allow you to go clean past them. In such a case you must
+fire the jungle, and allow the blaze to beat for you. It is common for
+young, over eager sportsmen, to fire at moving jungle, trusting to a
+lucky chance for hitting the moving animal; this is useless waste of
+powder; they fail to realize the great length of the swaying grass,
+and invariably shoot over the game; the animal hears the crashing of
+the bullet through the dense thicket overhead, and immediately stops,
+and you lose all idea of his whereabouts. When you see an animal
+moving before you in long jungle, it should be your object to follow
+him slowly and patiently, till you can get a sight of him, and see
+what sort of beast he is. Firing at the moving grass is worse than
+useless. Keep as close behind him as you can, make signs for the other
+elephants to close in; stick to your quarry, never lose sight of him
+for an instant, be ready to seize the first moment, when more open
+jungle, or some other favourable chance, may give you a glimpse of his
+skin.
+
+Another caution should be observed. Never fire down the line. It is
+astonishing how little will divert a bullet, and a careless shot is
+worse than a dozen charging tigers. If a tiger does break back, let
+him get well away behind the line, and then blaze at him as hard as
+you like. It is particularly unpleasant to hear a bullet come singing
+and booming down the line from some excited dunderhead on the far left
+or right.
+
+A tiger slouching along in front moves pretty fast, in a silent
+swinging trot; the tops of the reeds or grass sway very gently, with a
+wavering, side to side motion. A pig rushes boldly through, and a deer
+will cause the grass to rock violently to and fro. A buffalo or
+rhinoceros is known at once by the crashing of the dry stalks, as his
+huge frame plunges along; but the tiger can never be mistaken. When
+that gentle, undulating, noiseless motion is once seen, be ready with
+your trusty gun, and remove not your eye from the spot, for the mighty
+robber of the jungle is before you.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Howdahs and howdah-ropes.--Mussulman custom.--Killing animals for
+food.--Mysterious appearance of natives when an animal is killed.
+--Fastening dead tigers to the pad.--Present mode wants improving.
+--Incident illustrative of this.--Dangerous to go close to wounded
+tigers.--Examples.--Footprints of tigers.--Call of the tiger.--Natives
+and their powers of description.--How to beat successfully for tiger.
+--Description of a beat.--Disputes among the shooters.--Awarding
+tigers.--Cutting open the tiger.--Native idea about the liver of the
+tiger.--Signs of a tiger's presence in the jungle.--Vultures.--Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?--A vulture carrion feast.
+
+The best howdahs are light, single-seated ones, with strong, light
+frames of wood and cane-work, and a moveable seat with a leather
+strap, adjustable to any length, on which to lean back. They should
+have a strong iron rail all round the top, covered with leather, with
+convenient grooves to receive the barrels of the guns, as they rest in
+front, ready to either hand. In front there should be compartments for
+different kinds of cartridges; and pockets and lockers under the seat,
+and at the back, or wherever there is room. Outside should be a strong
+iron step, to get out and in by easily, and a strong iron ring,
+through which to pass the rope that binds the howdah to the elephant.
+
+You cannot be too careful with your howdah ropes. A chain is generally
+used as an auxiliary to the rope, which should be of cotton, strong
+and well twisted, and should be overhauled daily, to see that there is
+no chafing. It is passed round the foot-bars of the howdah, and
+several times round the belly of the elephant.
+
+Another rope acts as a crupper behind, being passed through rings in
+the terminal frame-work of the howdah, and under the elephant's tail;
+it frequently causes painful sores there, and some drivers give it a
+hitch round the tail, in the same way as you would hitch it round a
+post. Another steadying rope goes round the elephant's breast, like a
+chest-band. 'A merciful man is merciful to his beast.' You should
+always, therefore, have a sheet of soft well oiled leather to go
+between the chest and belly ropes and the elephant's hide; this
+prevents chafing, and is a great relief to the poor old _hathi_, as
+they call the elephant. _Hatnee_ is the female elephant. _Duntar_ is a
+fellow with large tusks, and _mukna_ is an elephant with small
+downward growing tusks.
+
+Many of the old fashioned howdahs are far too heavy; a firm, strong
+howdah should not weigh more than 28 lbs. In most of the old fashioned
+ones, there is a seat for an attendant. If your attendant be a
+Mussulman, he hurries down as soon as you shoot a deer, to cut its
+throat. The Mohammedan religion enjoins a variety of rules on its
+professors in regard to the slaying of animals for food. Chief of
+these is a prohibition, against eating the flesh of an animal that has
+died a natural death; the throat of every animal intended to be eaten
+should be cut, and at the moment of applying the knife, _Bismillah_
+should be said, that is, 'In the name of God.' If therefore your
+mahout, or attendant, belong to the religion of the _Koran_, he will
+hurry down to cut the throat of a wounded deer if possible before life
+is extinct; if it be already dead, he will leave it alone for the
+Hindoos, who have no such scruples.
+
+A number of _moosahurs, banturs, gwallas_, and other idlers, from the
+jungle villages, generally follow in the wake of the line. If you
+shoot many pigs, they carry off the dead bodies, and hold high
+carnival in their homes in the evening. To see them rush on a slain
+buffalo, and hack it to pieces, is a curious sight; they fight for
+pieces of flesh like so many vultures. Sportsmen generally content
+themselves with the head of a buffalo, but not a scrap of the carcase
+is ever wasted. The natives are attracted to the spot, like ants to a
+heap of grain, or wasps to an old sugar barrel; they seem to spring
+out of the earth, so rapidly do they make their appearance. If you
+were to kill a dozen buffaloes, I believe all the flesh would be taken
+away to the neighbouring villages within an hour.
+
+This appearance of men in the jungles is wonderful. You may think
+yourself in the centre of a vast wilderness, not a sign of human
+habitation for miles around; on all sides stretches a vast ocean of
+grass, the resort of ferocious wild animals, seemingly untrodden by a
+human foot. You shoot a deer, a pig, or other animal whose flesh is
+fit for food; the man behind you gives a cry, and in ten minutes you
+will have a group of brawny young fellows around your elephant, eager
+to carry away the game. The way these natives thread the dense jungle
+is to me a wonder; they seem to know every devious path and hidden
+recess, and they traverse the most gloomy and dangerous solitudes
+without betraying the slightest apprehension.
+
+In fastening dead game to the pad of the carrying elephant great care
+is necessary. Some elephants are very timid, and indeed all elephants
+are mistrustful and suspicious of anything behind them. They are
+pretty courageous in facing anything before them, but they do not like
+a rustling or indeed any motion in their rear. I have seen a dog put
+an elephant to flight, and if you have a lazy _hathi_, a good plan is
+to walk a horse behind him. He will then shuffle along at a prodigious
+pace constantly looking round from side to side, and no doubt in his
+heart anathematising the horse that forces the running so
+persistently.
+
+The present method of roughly lashing on dead game anyhow requires
+altering. Some ingenious sportsman could surely devise a system of
+slings by which the dead weight of the game could be more equally
+distributed. At present the dead bodies are hauled up at random, and
+fastened anyhow. The pad gets displaced, the elephant must stop till
+the burden is rearranged; the ropes, especially on a hot day, cut into
+the skin and rub off the hair, and many a good skin is quite spoiled
+by the present rough method of tying on the pad.
+
+One day, in taking off a dead tiger from the pad, near George's
+bungalow, the end of the rope (a new one) remained somehow fixed to
+the neck of the elephant. When he rose up, being relieved of the
+weight, he dragged the dead tiger with him. This put the elephant into
+a horrible funk, and despite all the efforts of the driver he started
+off at a trot, hauling the tiger after him. Every now and then he
+would turn round, and tread and kick the lifeless carcase. At length
+the rope gave way, and the elephant became more manageable, but not
+before a fine skin had been totally ruined, all owing to this
+primitive style of fastening by ropes to the pad. A proper pad, with
+leather straps and buckles, that could be hauled as tight as
+necessary--a sort of harness arrangement, could easily be devised, to
+secure dead game on the pad. I am certain it would save time in the
+hunting-field, and protect many a fine skin, that gets abraded and
+marked by the present rough and ready lashing.
+
+It is always dangerous to go too close up to a wounded tiger, and one
+should never rashly jump to the conclusion that a tiger is dead
+because he appears so Approach him cautiously, and make very certain
+that he is really and truly dead, before you venture to get down
+beside the body. It is a bad plan to take your elephant close up to a
+dead tiger at all. I have known cases where good staunch elephants
+have been spoiled for future sport, by being rashly taken up to a
+wounded tiger. In rolling about, the tiger may get hold of the
+elephants, and inflict injuries that will demoralise them, and make
+them quite unsteady on subsequent occasions.
+
+I have known cases where a tiger left for dead has had to be shot over
+again. I have seen a man get down to pull a seemingly dead tiger into
+the open, and get charged. Fortunately it was a dying effort, and I
+put a bullet through the skull before the tiger could reach the
+frightened peon. We have been several times grouped round a dying
+tiger, watching him breathe his last, when the brute has summoned up
+strength for a final effort, and charged the elephants.
+
+On one occasion W.D. had got down beside what he thought a dead tiger,
+had rolled him over, and, tape in hand, was about to measure the
+animal, when he staggered to his feet with a terrific growl, and made
+away through the jungle. He had only been stunned, and fortunately
+preferred running to fighting, or the consequences might have been
+more tragic; as it was, he was quickly followed up and killed. But
+instances like these might be indefinitely multiplied, all teaching,
+that seemingly dead tigers should be approached with the utmost
+respect. Never venture off your elephant without a loaded revolver.
+
+In beating for tiger, we have seen that the appearance of the kill,
+whether fresh or old, whether much torn and mangled or comparatively
+untouched, often affords valuable indications to the sportsman. The
+footprints are not less narrowly looked for, and scrutinized. If we
+are after tiger, and following them up, the captain will generally get
+down at any bare place, such as a dry nullah, the edge of a tank or
+water hole, or any other spot where footprints can be detected. Fresh
+prints can be very easily distinguished. The impression is like that
+made by a dog, only much larger, and the marks of the claws are not
+visible. The largest footprint I have heard of was measured by George
+S., and was found to be eight and a quarter inches wide from the
+outside of the first to the outside of the fourth toe. If a tiger has
+passed very recently, the prints will be fresh-looking, and if on damp
+ground there can be no mistaking them. If it has been raining
+recently, we particularly notice whether the rain has obliterated the
+track at all, in any place; which would lead us to the conclusion that
+the tiger had passed before it rained. If the water has lodged in the
+footprint, the tiger has passed after the shower. In fresh prints the
+water will be slightly puddly or muddy. In old prints it will be quite
+clear; and so on.
+
+The call of the male tiger is quite different from that of the female.
+The male calls with a hoarse harsh cry, something between the grunt of
+a pig and the bellow of a bull; the call of the tigress is more like
+the prolonged mew of a cat much intensified. During the pairing season
+the call is sharper and shorter, and ends in a sudden break. At that
+time, too, they cry at more frequent intervals. The roar of the tiger
+is quite unlike the call. Once heard it is not easily forgotten, The
+natives who live in the jungles can tell one tiger from another by
+colour, size, &c., and they can even distinguish one animal from
+another by his call. It is very absurd to hear a couple of natives get
+together and describe the appearance of some tiger they have seen.
+
+In describing a pig, they refer to his height, or the length of his
+tusks. They describe a fish by putting their fists together, and
+saying he was so thick, _itna mota_. The head of a tiger is always the
+most conspicuous part of the body seen in the jungle. They therefore
+invariably describe him by his head. One man will hold his two hands
+apart about two feet, and say that the head was _itna burra_, that is,
+so big. The other, not to be outdone, gives rein to his imagination,
+and adds another foot. The first immediately fancies discredit will
+attach to his veracity, and vehemently asserts that there must in that
+case have been two tigers; and so they go on, till they conclusively
+prove, that two tigers there must have been, and indeed, if you let
+them go on, they will soon assure you that, besides the pair of
+tigers, there must be at least a pair of half-grown cubs. Their
+imaginations are very fertile, and you must take the information of a
+native as to tigers with a very large pinch of salt.
+
+For successful tiger shooting much depends on the beating. When after
+tiger, general firing should on no account be allowed, and the line
+should move forward as silently as possible. In light cover, extending
+over a large area, the elephants should be kept a considerable
+distance apart, but in thick dense cover the line should be quite
+close, and beat up slowly and thoroughly, as a tiger may lay up and
+allow the line to pass him. On no account should an elephant be let to
+lag behind, and no one should be allowed to rush forward or go in
+advance. The elephants should move along, steady and even, like a
+moving wall, the fastest being on the flanks, and accommodating their
+pace to the general rate of progress. No matter what tempting chances
+at pig or deer you may have, you must on no account fire except at
+tiger.
+
+The captain should be in the centre, and the men on the flanks ought
+to be constantly on the _qui vive_, to see that no cunning tiger
+outflanks the line. The attention should never wander from the jungle
+before you, for at any moment a tiger may get up--and I know of no
+sport where it is necessary to be so continuously on the alert. Every
+moment is fraught with intense excitement, and when a tiger does
+really show his stripes before you, the all-absorbing eager excitement
+of a lifetime is packed in a few brief moments. Not a chance should be
+thrown away, a long, or even an uncertain shot, is better than none,
+and if you make one miss, you may not have another chance again that
+day: for the tiger is chary of showing his stripes, and thinks
+discretion the better part of valour.
+
+All the line of course are aware, as a rule, when a tiger is on the
+move, and a good captain (and Joe S., who generally took the direction
+of our beats, could not well be matched) will wheel the line, double,
+turn, march, and countermarch, and fairly run the tiger down. At such
+a time, although you may not actually see the tiger, the excitement is
+tremendous. You stand erect in the howdah, your favourite gun ready;
+your attendant behind is as excited as yourself, and sways from side
+to side to peer into the gloomy depths of the jungle; in front, the
+mahout wriggles on his seat, as if by his motion he could urge the
+elephant to a quicker advance. He digs his toes savagely into his
+elephant behind the ear; the line is closing up; every eye is fixed on
+the moving jungle ahead. The roaring of the flames behind, and the
+crashing of the dried reeds as the elephants force their ponderous
+frames through the intertwisted stems and foliage, are the only sounds
+that greet the ear. Suddenly you see the tawny yellow hide, as the
+tiger slouches along. Your gun rings out a reverberating challenge, as
+your fatal bullet speeds on its errand. To right and left the echoes
+ring, as shot after shot is fired at the bounding robber. Then the
+line closes up, and you form a circle round the stricken beast, and
+watch his mighty limbs quiver in the death-agony, and as he falls over
+dead, and powerless for further harm, you raise the heartfelt,
+pulse-stirring cheer, that finds an echo in every brother sportman's
+heart.
+
+Disputes sometimes arise as to whose bullet first drew blood. These
+are settled by the captain, and from his decision there is no appeal.
+Many sportsmen put peculiar marks on their bullets, by which they can
+be recognised, which is a good plan. In an exciting scrimmage every
+one blazes at the tiger, not one bullet perhaps in five or six takes
+effect, and every one is ready to claim the skin, as having been
+pierced with his particular bullet. Disputes are not very common, but
+an inspection of the wounds, and the bullets found in the body,
+generally settle the question. After hearing all the pros and cons,
+the captain generally succeeds in awarding the tiger to the right man.
+
+After a successful day, the news rapidly spreads through the adjacent
+country, and we may take the line a little out of our way to make a
+sort of triumphal procession through the villages. On reaching the
+camp there is sure to be a great crowd waiting to see the slain
+tigers, the despoilers of the people's flocks and herds.
+
+It is then you hear of all the depredations the dead robber has
+committed, and it is then you begin to form some faint conception of
+his enormous destructive powers. Villager after villager unfolds a
+tale of some favourite heifer, or buffalo, or cow having been struck
+down, and the copious vocabulary of Hindostanee Billingsgate is almost
+exhausted, and floods of abuse poured out on the prostrate head.
+
+On cutting open the tiger, parasites are frequently found in the
+flesh. These are long, white, thread-like worms, and are supposed by
+some to be Guinea worms. Huge masses of undigested bone and hair are
+sometimes taken from the intestines, shewing that the tiger does not
+waste much time on mastication, but tears and eats the flesh in large
+masses. The liver is found to have numbers of separate lobes, and the
+natives say that this is an infallible test of the age of a tiger, as
+a separate lobe forms on the liver for each year of the tiger's life.
+I have certainly found young tigers having but two and three lobes,
+and old tigers I have found with six, seven, and even eight, but the
+statement is entirely unsupported by careful observation, and requires
+authentication before it can be accepted.
+
+A reported kill is a pretty certain sign that there are tigers in the
+jungle, but there are other signs with which one soon gets familiar.
+When, for example, you hear deer calling repeatedly, and see them
+constantly on the move, it is a sign that tiger are in the
+neighbourhood. When cattle are reluctant to enter the jungle,
+restless, and unwilling to graze, you may be sure tiger are somewhere
+about, not far away. A kill is often known by the numbers of vultures
+that hover about in long, sailing, steady circles. What multitudes of
+vultures there are. Overhead, far up in the liquid ether, you see them
+circling round and round like dim specks in the distance; farther and
+farther away, till they seem like bees, then lessen and fade into the
+infinitude of space. No part of the sky is ever free from their
+presence. When a kill has been perceived, you see one come flying
+along, strong and swift in headlong flight. With the directness of a
+thunderbolt he speeds to where his loathsome meal lies sweltering in
+the noonday sun. As he comes nearer and nearer, his repulsive looking
+body assumes form and substance. The cruel, ugly bald head, drawn
+close in between the strong pointed shoulders, the broad powerful
+wings, with their wide sweep, measured and slow, bear him swiftly
+past. With a curve and a sweep he circles round, down come the long
+bony legs, the bald and hideous neck is extended, and with talons
+quivering for the rotting flesh, and cruel beak agape, he hurries on
+to his repast, the embodiment of everything ghoul-like and ghastly. In
+his wake comes another, then twos and threes, anon tens and twenties,
+till hundreds have collected, and the ground is covered with the
+hissing, tearing, fiercely clawing crowd. It is a horrible sight to
+see a heap of vultures battling over a dead bullock. I have seen them
+so piled up that the under ones were nearly smothered to death; and
+the writhing contortions of the long bare necks, as the fierce brutes
+battled with talons and claws, were like the twisting of monster
+snakes, or the furious writhing of gorgons and furies over some fated
+victim.
+
+It has been a much debated point with sportsmen and naturalists,
+whether the eye or the sense of smell guides the vulture to his feast
+of carrion. I have often watched them. They scan the vast surface
+spread below them with a piercing and never tiring gaze. They observe
+each other. When one is seen to cease his steady circling flight, far
+up in mid air, and to stretch his broad wings earthwards, the others
+know that he has espied a meal, and follow his lead; and these in turn
+are followed by others, till from all quarters flock crowds of these
+scavengers of the sky. They can detect a dog or jackal from a vast
+height, and they know by intuition that, where the carcase is there
+will the dogs and jackals be gathered. I think there can be no doubt
+that the vision is the sense they are most indebted to for directing
+them to their food.
+
+On one occasion I remember seeing a tumultuous heap of them, battling
+fiercely, as I have just tried to describe, over the carcases of two
+tigers we had killed near Dumdaha. The dead bodies were hidden
+partially in a grove of trees, and for a long time there were only
+some ten or a dozen vultures near. These gorged themselves so
+fearfully, that they could not rise from the ground, but lay with
+wings expanded, looking very aldermanic and apoplectic. Bye-and-bye,
+however, the rush began, and by the time we had struck the tents,
+there could not have been fewer than 150 vultures, hissing and
+spitting at each other like angry cats; trampling each other to the
+dust to get at the carcases; and tearing wildly with talon and beak
+for a place. In a very short time nothing but mangled bones remained.
+A great number of the vultures got on to the rotten limb of a huge
+mango tree. One other proved the last straw, for down came the rotten
+branch and several of the vultures, tearing at each other, fell
+heavily to the ground, where they lay quite helpless. As an experiment
+we shot a miserable mangy Pariah dog, that was prowling about the
+ground seeking garbage and offal. He was shot stone-dead, and for a
+time no vulture ventured near. A crow was the first to begin the feast
+of death. One of the hungriest of the vultures next approached, and in
+a few minutes the yet warm body of the poor dog was torn into a
+thousand fragments, till nothing remained but scattered and disjointed
+bones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul frontier.--Indian scenery near
+the border.--Lose our way.--Cold night.--The river by night.--Our boat
+and boatmen.--Tigers calling on the bank.--An anxious moment.--Fire at
+and wound the tigress.--Reach camp.--The Nepaulee's adventure with a
+tiger.--The old Major.--His appearance and manners.--The pompous
+Jemadar.--Nepaulese proverb.--Firing the jungle.--Start a tiger and
+shoot him.--Another in front.--Appearance of the fires by night.--The
+tiger escapes.--Too dark to follow up.--Coolie shot by mistake during
+a former hunt.
+
+Early in 1875 a military friend of mine was engaged in inspecting the
+boundary pillars near my factory, between our territory and that of
+Nepaul. Some of the pillars had been cut away by the river, and the
+survey map required a little alteration in consequence. Our district
+magistrate was in attendance, and sent me an invitation to go up and
+spend a week with them in camp. I had no need to send on tents, as
+they had every requisite for comfort. I sent off my bed and bedding on
+Geerdharee Jha's old elephant, a timid, useless brute, fit neither far
+beating jungle nor for carrying a howdah. My horse I sent on to the
+ghat or crossing, some ten miles up the river, and after lunch I
+started. It was a fine cool afternoon, and it was not long ere I
+reached the neighbouring factory of Im[=a]mnugger. Here I had a little
+refreshment with Old Tom, and after exchanging greetings, I resumed my
+way over a part of the country with which I was totally unacquainted.
+
+I rode on, past villages nestling in the mango groves, past huge
+tanks, excavated by the busy labour of generations long since
+departed; past decaying temples, overshadowed by mighty tamarind
+trees, with the _peepul_ and _pakur_ insinuating their twining roots
+amid the shattered and crumbling masonry. In one large village I
+passed through the bustling bazaar, where the din, and dust, and
+mingled odours, were almost overpowering. The country was now assuming
+quite an undulating character. The banks of the creeks were steep and
+rugged, and in some cases the water actually tumbled from rock to
+rock, with a purling pleasant ripple and plash, a welcome sound to a
+Scotch ear, and a pleasant surprise after the dull, dead, leaden,
+noiseless flow of the streams further down on the plains.
+
+Far in front lay the gloomy belt of Terai, or border forest, here
+called the _morung_, where the British territories had their extreme
+limit in that direction. Behind this belt, tier on tier, rose the
+mighty ranges of the majestic Himalayas, towering up in solemn
+grandeur from the bushy masses of forest-clad hills till their
+snow-capped summits seemed to pierce the sky. The country was covered
+by green crops, with here and there patches of dingy rice-stubble, and
+an occasional stretch of dense grass jungle. Quail, partridge, and
+plover rose from the ground in coveys, as my horse cantered through;
+and an occasional peafowl or florican scudded across the track as I
+ambled onward. I asked at a wretched little accumulation of weavers'
+huts where the ghat was, and if my elephant had gone on. To both my
+queries I received satisfactory replies, and as the day was now
+drawing in, I pushed my nag into a sharp canter and hurried forward.
+
+I soon perceived the bulky outline of my elephant ahead, and on coming
+up, found that my men had come too far up the river, had missed the
+ghat to which I had sent my spare horse, and were now making for
+another ferry still higher up. My horse was jaded, so I got on the
+elephant, and made one of the peons lead the horse behind. It was
+rapidly getting dark, and the mahout, or elephant driver, a miserable
+low caste stupid fellow, evidently knew nothing of the country, and
+was going at random. I halted at the next village, got hold of the
+chowkeydar, and by a promise of backsheesh, prevailed on him to
+accompany us and show us the way. We turned off from the direct
+northerly direction in which we had been going, and made straight for
+the river, which we could see in the distance, looking chill and grey
+in the fast fading twilight. We now got on the sandbanks, and had to
+go cautiously for fear of quicksands. By the time we reached the ghat
+it was quite dark and growing very cold.
+
+We were quite close to the hills, a heavy dew was falling, and I found
+that I should have to float down the liver for a mile, and then pole
+up stream in another channel for two miles before I could reach camp.
+
+I got my horse into the boat, ordering the elephant driver to travel
+all night if he could, as I should expect my things to be at camp
+early in the morning, and the boatmen pushed off the unwieldy
+ferry-boat, floating us quietly down the rapid 'drumly' stream. All is
+solemnly still and silent on an Indian river at night. The stream is
+swift but noiseless. Vast plains and heaps of sand stretch for miles
+on either bank. There are no villages near the stream. Faintly, far
+away in the distance, you hear a few subdued sounds, the only
+evidences of human habitation. There is the tinkle of a cow-bell, the
+barking of a pariah dog, the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub of a
+timber-toned tom-tom, muffled and slightly mellowed by the distance.
+The faint, far cries, and occasional halloos of the herd-boys calling
+to each other, gradually cease, but the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub
+continues till far into the night.
+
+It was now very cold, and I was glad to borrow a blanket from my peon.
+At such a time the pipe is a great solace. It soothes the whole
+system, and plunges one into an agreeable dreamy speculative mood,
+through which all sorts of fantastic notions resolve. Fancies chase
+each other quickly, and old memories rise, bitter or sweet, but all
+tinged and tinted by the seductive influence of the magic weed. Hail,
+blessed pipe! the invigorator of the weary, the uncomplaining faithful
+friend, the consoler of sorrows, and the dispeller of care, the
+much-prized companion of the solitary wayfarer!
+
+Now a jackal utters a howl on the bank, as our boat shoots past, and
+the diabolical noise is echoed from knoll to knoll, and from ridge to
+ridge, as these incarnate devils of the night join in and prolong the
+infernal chorus. An occasional splash, as a piece of the bank topples
+over into the stream, rouses the cormorant and gull from their placid
+dozing on the sandbanks. They squeak and gurgle out an unintelligible
+protest, then cosily settle their heads again beneath the sheltering
+wing, and sleep the slumber of the dreamless. A sharp sudden plump, or
+a lazy surging sound, accompanied by a wheezy blowing sort of hiss,
+tells us that a _seelun_ is disporting himself; or that a fat old
+'porpus' is bearing his clumsy bulk through the rushing current.
+
+The bank now looms out dark and mysterious, and as we turn the point
+another long stretch of the river opens out, reflecting the merry
+twinkle of the myriad stars, that glitter sharp and clear millions of
+miles overhead. There is now a clattering of bamboo poles. With a
+grunt of disgust, and a quick catching of the breath, as the cold
+water rushes up against his thighs, one of the boatmen splashes
+overboard, and they commence slowly and wearily pushing the boat up
+stream. We touch the bank a dozen times. The current swoops down and
+turns us round and round. The men have to put their shoulders under
+the gunwale, and heave and strain with all their might. The long
+bamboo poles are plunged into the dark depths of the river, and the
+men puff, and grunt, and blow, as they bend almost to the bottom of
+the boat while they push. It is a weary progress. We are dripping wet
+with dew. Quite close on the bank we hear the hoarse wailing call of a
+tigress. The call of the tiger comes echoing down between the banks.
+The men cease poling. I peer forward into the obscurity. My syce pats,
+and speaks soothingly to the trembling horse, while my peon with
+excited fingers fumbles at the straps of my gun-case. For a moment all
+is intensely still.
+
+I whisper to the boatmen to push out a little into the stream. Again
+the tigress calls, this time so close to us that we could almost fancy
+we could feel her breath. My gun is ready. The syce holds the horse
+firmly by the head, and as we leave the bank, we can distinctly see
+the outline of some large animal, standing out a dark bulky mass
+against the skyline. I take a steady aim and fire. A roar of
+astonishment, wrath, and pain follows the report. The horse struggles
+and snorts, the boatman calls out 'Oh, my father!' and ejaculates
+'hi-hi-hi!' in tones of piled up anguish and apprehension, the peon
+cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug, gea,' that bullet has told;
+oh your highness! and while the boat rocks violently to and fro, I
+abuse the boatmen, slang the syce, and rush to grasp a pole, while the
+peon seizes another; for we are drifting rapidly down stream, and may
+at any moment strike on a bank and topple over. We can hear by the
+growling and commotion on the bank, that my bullet has indeed told,
+and that something is hit. We soon get the frightened boatmen quieted
+down, and after another hour's weary work we spy the white outline of
+the tents above the bank. A lamp shines out a bright welcome; and
+although it is nearly twelve at night, the Captain and the magistrate
+are discussing hot toddy, and waiting my arrival. My spare horse had
+come on from the ghat, the syce had told them I was coming, and they
+had been indulging in all sorts of speculations over my non-arrival.
+
+A good supper, and a reeking jorum, soon banished all recollections of
+my weary journey, and men were ordered to go out at first break of
+dawn, and see about the wounded tiger. In the morning I was gratified
+beyond expression to find a fine tigress, measuring 8 feet 3 inches,
+had been brought in, the result of my lucky night shot; the marks of a
+large tiger were found about the spot, and we determined to beat up
+for him, and if possible secure his skin, as we already had that of
+his consort.
+
+Captain S. had some work to finish, and my elephant and bearer had not
+arrived, so our magistrate and myself walked down to the sandbanks,
+and amused ourselves for an hour shooting sandpipers and plover; we
+also shot a pair of mallard and a couple of teal, and then went back
+to the tents, and were soon busily discussing a hunter's breakfast.
+While at our meal, my elephant and things arrived, and just then also,
+the 'Major Capt[=a]n,' or Nepaulese functionary, my old friend, came up
+with eight elephants, and we hurried out to greet the fat,
+merry-featured old man.
+
+What a quaint, genial old customer he looked, as he bowed and salaamed
+to us from his elevated seat, his face beaming, and his little
+bead-like eyes twinkling with pleasure. He was full of an adventure he
+had as he came along. After crossing a brawling mountain-torrent, some
+miles from our camp, they entered some dense kair jungle. The kair is
+I believe a species of mimosa; it is a hard wood, growing in a thick
+scrubby form, with small pointed leaves, a yellowish sort of flower,
+and sharp thorns studding its branches; it is a favourite resort for
+pig, and although it is difficult to beat on account of the thorns,
+tigers are not unfrequently found among the gloomy recesses of a good
+kair scrub.
+
+As they entered this jungle, some of the men were loitering behind.
+When the elephants had passed about halfway through, the men came
+rushing up pell mell, with consternation on their faces, reporting
+that a huge tiger had sprung out on them, and carried off one of their
+number. The Major and the elephants hurried back, and met the man
+limping along, bleeding from several scratches, and with a nasty bite
+in his shoulder, but otherwise more frightened than hurt. The tiger
+had simply knocked him down, stood over him for a minute, seized him
+by the shoulder, and then dashed on through the scrub, leaving him
+behind half dead with pain and fear.
+
+It was most amusing to hear the fat little Major relate the story. He
+went through all the by-play incident to the piece, and as he got
+excited, stood right up on his narrow pad. His gesticulations were
+most vehement, and as the elephant was rather unsteady, and his
+footing to say the least precarious, he seemed every moment as if he
+must topple over. The old warrior, however, was equal to the occasion;
+without for an instant abating the vigour of his narrative, he would
+clutch at the greasy, matted locks of his mahout, and steady himself,
+while he volubly described incident after incident. As he warmed with
+his subject, and tried to shew us how the tiger must have pounced on
+the man, he would let go and use his hands in illustration; the old
+elephant would give another heave, and the fat little man would make
+another frantic grab at the patient mahout's hair. The whole scene was
+most comical, and we were in convulsions of laughter.
+
+The news, however, foreboded ample sport; we now had certain _khubber_
+of at least two tigers; we were soon under weigh; the wounded man had
+been sent back to the Major's head-quarters on an elephant, and in
+time recovered completely from his mauling. As we jogged along, we had
+a most interesting talk with the Major Capt[=a]n. He was wonderfully
+well informed, considering he had never been out of Nepaul. He knew all
+about England, our army, our mode of government, our parliament, and
+our Queen; whenever he alluded to Her Majesty he salaamed profoundly,
+whether as a tribute of respect to her, or in compliment to us as loyal
+subjects, we could not quite make out. He described to us the route
+home by the Suez canal, and the fun of his talk was much heightened by
+his applying the native names to everything; London was _Shuhur_, the
+word meaning 'a city,' and he told us it was built on the _Tham[=a]ss
+nuddee_, by which he meant the Thames river.
+
+Our magistrate had a Jemadar of Peons with him, a sort of head man
+among the servants. This man, abundantly bedecked with ear-rings,
+finger-rings, and other ornaments, was a useless, bullying sort of
+fellow; dressed to the full extent of Oriental foppishness, and
+because he was the magistrate's servant, he thought himself entitled
+to order the other servants about in the most lordly way. He was now
+making himself peculiarly officious, shouting to the drivers to go
+here and there, to do this and do that, and indulging in copious
+torrents of abuse, without which it seems impossible for a native
+subordinate to give directions on any subject. We were all rather
+amused, and could not help bursting into laughter, as, inflated with a
+sense of his own importance, he began abusing one of the native
+drivers of the Nepaulee chief; this man did not submit tamely to his
+insolence. To him the magistrate was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a
+perfect nonentity. He accordingly turned round and poured forth a
+perfect flood of invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar
+took a back seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his
+melodious voice in tones of imperious command.
+
+The old Major chuckled, and rubbed his fat little hands, and leaning
+over to me said, 'at home a lion, but abroad a lamb,' for, surrounded
+by his women at home, the man would twirl his moustaches, look fierce,
+and fancy himself a very tiger; but, no sooner did he go abroad, and
+mix with men as good, if not better than himself, than he was ready to
+eat any amount of humble pie.
+
+We determined first of all to beat for the tiger whose tracks had been
+seen near where I had fired my lucky shot the preceding night. A
+strong west wind was blowing, and dense clouds of sand were being
+swept athwart our line, from the vast plains of fine white sand
+bordering the river for miles. As we went along we fired the jungle in
+our rear, and the strong wind carried the flames raging and roaring
+through the dense jungle with amazing fury. One elephant got so
+frightened at the noise behind him, that he fairly bolted for the
+river, and could not be persuaded back into the line.
+
+Disturbed by the fire, we saw numerous deer and pig, but being after
+tiger we refrained from shooting at them. The Basinattea Tuppoo, which
+was the scene of our present hunt, were famous jungles, and many a
+tiger had been shot there by the Purneah Club in bygone days. The
+annual ravages of the impetuous river, had however much changed the
+face of the country; vast tracts of jungle had been obliterated by
+deposits of sand from its annual incursions. Great skeletons of trees
+stood everywhere, stretching out bare and unsightly branches, all
+bending to the south, shewing the mighty power of the current, when it
+made its annual progress of devastation over the surrounding country.
+Now, however, it was like a thin streak of silver, flashing back the
+fierce rays of the meridian sun. Through the blinding clouds of fine
+white sand we could at times, during a temporary lull, see its ruined
+surface. And we were glad when we came on the tracks of the tiger,
+which led straight from the stream, in the direction of some thick
+tree jungle at no great distance. We gladly turned our backs to the
+furious clouds of dust and gusts of scorching wind, and led by a
+Nepaulee tracker, were soon crashing heavily through the jungle.
+
+When hunting with elephants, the Nepaulese beat in a dense line, the
+heads of the elephants touching each other. In this manner we were now
+proceeding, when S. called out, 'There goes the tiger.'
+
+We looked up, and saw a very large tiger making off for a deep
+watercourse, which ran through the jungle some 200 yards ahead of the
+line. We hurried up as fast as we could, putting out a fast elephant
+on either flank, to see that the cunning brute did not sneak either up
+or down the nullah, under cover of the high banks. This, however, was
+not his object. We saw him descend into the nullah, and almost
+immediately top the further bank, and disappear into the jungle
+beyond.
+
+Pressing on at a rapid jolting trot, we dashed after him in hot
+pursuit. The jungle seemed somewhat lighter on ahead. In the distance
+we could see some dangurs at work breaking up land, and to the right
+was a small collection of huts with a beautiful riband of green crops,
+a perfect oasis in the wilderness of sand and parched up grass.
+Forming into line we pressed on. The tiger was evidently lying up,
+probably deterred from breaking across the open by the sight of the
+dangurs at work. My heart was bounding with excitement. We were all
+intensely eager, and thought no more of the hot wind and blinding
+dust. Just then Captain S. saw the brute sneaking along to the left of
+the line, trying to outflank us, and break back. He fired two shots
+rapidly with his Express, and the second one, taking effect in the
+neck of the tiger, bowled him over as he stood. He was a mangy-looking
+brute, badly marked, and measured eight feet eleven inches. He did not
+have a chance of charging, and probably had little heart for a fight.
+
+We soon had him padded, and then proceeded straight north, to the
+scene of the Major's encounter with the tiger in the morning. The
+jungle was well trampled down; there were numerous streams and pools
+of water, occasional clumps of bamboos, and abrupt ridgy undulations.
+It was the very jungle for tiger, and elated by our success in having
+bagged one already, we were all in high spirits. The line of fire we
+could see far in the distance, sweeping on like the march of fate, and
+we could have shot numerous deer, but reserved our fire for nobler
+game. It was getting well on in the afternoon when we came up to the
+kair jungle. We beat right up to where the man had been seized, and
+could see the marks of the struggle distinctly enough. We beat right
+through the jungle with no result, and as it was now getting rather
+late, the old Major signified his desire to bid us good evening. As
+this meant depriving us of eight elephants, we prevailed on him to try
+one spare straggling corner that we had not gone through. He laughed
+the idea to scorn of getting a tiger there, saying there was no cover.
+One elephant, however, was sent while we were talking. Our elephants
+were all standing in a group, and the mahout on his solitary elephant
+was listlessly jogging on in a purposeless and desultory manner, when
+we suddenly heard the elephant pipe out a shrill note of alarm, and
+the mahout yelled 'Bagh! Bagh!' tiger! tiger! The Captain was again
+the lucky man. The tiger, a much finer and stronger built animal than
+the one we had already killed, was standing not eighty paces off,
+shewing his teeth, his bristles erect, and evidently in a bad temper.
+He had been crouching among some low bushes, and seeing the elephant
+bearing directly down on him, he no doubt imagined his retreat had
+been discovered. At all events there he was, and he presented a
+splendid aim. He was a noble-looking specimen as he stood there grim
+and defiant. Captain S. took aim, and lodged an Express bullet in his
+chest. It made a fearful wound, and the ferocious brute writhed and
+rolled about in agony. We quickly surrounded him, and a bullet behind
+the ear from my No. 16 put an end to his misery.
+
+The old Major now bade us good evening, and after padding the second
+tiger, and much elated at our success, we began to beat homewards,
+shooting at everything that rose before us. A couple of tremendous pig
+got up before me, and dashed through a clear stream that was purling
+peacefully in its pebbly bed. As the boar was rushing up the farther
+bank, I deposited a pellet in his hind quarters. He gave an angry
+grunt and tottered on, but presently pulled up, and seemed determined
+to have some revenge for his hurt. As my elephant came up the bank,
+the gallant boar tried to charge, but already wounded and weak from
+loss of blood, he tottered and staggered about. My elephant would not
+face him, so I gave him another shot behind the shoulder, and padded
+him for the _moosahurs_ and sweepers in camp. Just then one of the
+policemen started a young hog-deer, and several of the men got down
+and tried to catch the little thing alive. They soon succeeded, and
+the cries of the poor little _butcha_, that is 'young one,' were most
+plaintive.
+
+The wind had now subsided, there was a red angry glare, as the level
+rays of the setting sun shimmered through the dense clouds of dust
+that loaded the atmosphere. It was like the dull, red, coppery hue
+which presages a storm. The vast morung jungle lay behind us, and
+beyond that the swelling wooded hills, beginning to show dark and
+indistinct against the gathering gloom. A long line of cattle were
+wending their way homeward to the batan, and the tinkle of the big
+copper bell fell pleasingly on our ears. In the distance, we could see
+the white canvas of the tents gleaming in the rays of the setting sun.
+A vast circular line of smouldering fire, flickering and flaring
+fitfully, and surmounted by huge volumes of curling smoke, shewed the
+remains of the fierce tornado of flame that had raged at noon, when we
+lit the jungle. The jungle was very light, and much trodden down, our
+three howdah elephants were not far apart, and we were chatting
+cheerfully together and discussing the incidents of the day. My bearer
+was sitting behind me in the back of the howdah, and I had taken out
+my ball cartridge from my No. 12 breechloader, and had replaced them
+with shot. Just then my mahout raised his hand, and in a hoarse
+excited whisper called out,
+
+'Look, sahib, a large tiger!'
+
+'Where?' we all exclaimed, getting excited at once. He pointed in
+front to a large object, looking for all the world like a huge dun
+cow.
+
+'Why, you fool, that is a bullock.' I exclaimed.
+
+My bearer, who had also been intently gazing, now said.
+
+'No, sahib! that is a tiger, and a large one.'
+
+At that moment, it turned partly round, and I at once saw that the men
+were right, and that it was a veritable tiger, and seemingly a monster
+in size. I at once called to Captain S. and the magistrate, who had by
+this time fallen a little behind.
+
+'Look out, you fellows! here's a tiger in front.'
+
+At first they thought I was joking, but a glance confirmed the truth
+of what I had said. When I first saw the brute, he was evidently
+sneaking after the cattle, and was about sixty paces from me. He was
+so intent on watching the herd, that he had not noticed our approach.
+He was now, however, evidently alarmed and making off. By the time I
+called out, he must have been over eighty yards away. I had my No. 12
+in my hand, loaded with shot; it was no use; I put it down and took up
+my No. 16; this occupied a few seconds; I fired both barrels; the
+first bullet was in excellent line but rather short, the second went
+over the animal's back, and neither touched him. It made him, however,
+quicken his retreat, and when Captain S. fired, he must have been
+fully one hundred and fifty yards away; as it was now somewhat dusky,
+he also missed. He fired another long shot with his rifle, but missed
+again. Oh that unlucky change of cartridges in my No. 12! But for
+that--but there--we are always wise after the event. We never expected
+to see a tiger in such open country, especially as we had been over
+the same ground before, firing pretty often as we came along.
+
+We followed up of course, but it was now fast getting dark, and though
+we beat about for some time, we could not get another glimpse of the
+tiger. He was seemingly a very large male, dark-coloured, and in
+splendid condition. We must have got him, had it been earlier, as he
+could not have gone far forward, for the lines of fire were beyond
+him, and we had him between the fire and the elephants. We got home
+about 6.30, rather disappointed at missing such a glorious prize, so
+true is it that a sportsman's soul is never satisfied. But we had rare
+and most unlooked-for luck, and we felt considerably better after a
+good dinner, and indulged in hopes of getting the big fellow next
+morning.
+
+In the same jungles, some years ago, a very sad accident occurred. A
+party were out tiger-shooting, and during one of the beats, a cowherd
+hearing the noise of the advancing elephants, crouched behind a bush,
+and covered himself with his blanket. At a distance he looked exactly
+like a pig, and one of the shooters mistook him for one. He fired, and
+hit the poor herd in the hip. As soon as the mistake was perceived,
+everything was done for the poor fellow. His wound was dressed as well
+as they could do it, and he was sent off to the doctor in a dhoolie, a
+a sort of covered litter, slung on a pole and carried on men's shoulders.
+It was too late, the poor coolie died on the road, from shock and loss
+of blood. Such mistakes occur very seldom, and this was such a natural
+one, that no one could blame the unfortunate sportsman, and certainly
+no one felt keener regret than he did. The coolie's family was amply
+provided for, which was all that remained to be done.
+
+This is the only instance I know, where fatal results have followed
+such an accident. I have known several cases of beaters peppered with
+shot, generally from their own carelessness, and disregard of orders,
+but a salve in the shape of a few rupees has generally proved the most
+effective ointment. I have known some rascals say, they were sorry
+they had not been lucky enough to be wounded, as they considered a
+punctured cuticle nothing to set against the magnificent douceur of
+four or five rupees. One impetuous scamp, being told not to go in
+front of the line during a beat near Burgamma, replied to the warning
+caution of his jemadar,
+
+'Oh never mind, if get shot I will get backsheesh.'
+
+Whether this was a compliment to the efficacy of our treatment (by the
+silver ointment), or to the inaccuracy and harmlessness of our shooting,
+I leave the reader to judge.
+
+Our bag during this lucky day, including the tigress killed by my shot
+on the river bank, was as follows: three tigers, one boar, four deer,
+including the young one taken alive, eight sandpipers, nine plovers,
+two mallards, and two teal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+We resume the beat.--The hog-deer.--Nepaulese villages.--Village
+granaries.--Tiger in front.--A hit! a hit!--Following up the wounded
+tiger.--Find him dead.--Tiffin in the village.--The Patair jungle.
+--Search for tiger.--Gone away!--An elephant steeplechase in pursuit.
+--Exciting chase.--The Morung jungle.--Magnificent scenery.--Skinning
+the tiger.--Incidents of tiger hunting.
+
+Next morning, both the magistrate and myself felt very ill, headachy
+and sick, with violent vomiting and retching; Captain S. attributed it
+to the fierce hot wind and exposure of the preceding day, but we, the
+sufferers, blamed the _dekchees_ or cooking pots. These _dekchees_ are
+generally made of copper, coated or tinned over with white metal once
+a month or oftener; if the tinning is omitted, or the copper becomes
+exposed by accident or neglect, the food cooked in the pots sometimes
+gets tainted with copper, and produces nausea and sickness in those
+who eat it. I have known, within my own experience, cases of copper
+poisoning that have terminated fatally. It is well always thoroughly
+to inspect the kitchen utensils, particularly when in camp; unless
+carefully watched and closely supervised, servants get very careless,
+and let food remain in these copper vessels. This is always dangerous,
+and should never be allowed.
+
+In consequence of our indisposition, we did not start till the
+forenoon was far advanced, and the hot west wind had again begun to
+sweep over the prairie-like stretches of sand and withered grass. We
+commenced beating up by the Batan or cattle stance, near which we had
+seen the big tiger, the preceding evening. S. however became so sick
+and giddy, that he had to return to camp, and Captain S. and I
+continued the beat alone. Having gone over the same ground only
+yesterday, we did not expect a tiger so near to camp, more especially
+as the fire had made fearful havoc with the tall grass. Hog-deer were
+very numerous; they are not as a rule easily disturbed; they are of a
+reddish brown colour, not unlike that of the Scotch red deer, and rush
+through the jungle, when alarmed, with a succession of bounding leaps;
+they make very pretty shooting, and when young, afford tender and
+well-flavoured venison. One hint I may give. When you shoot a buck,
+see that he is at once denuded of certain appendages, else the flesh
+will get rank and disagreeable to eat. The bucks have pretty antlers,
+but are not very noble looking. The does are somewhat lighter in
+colour, and do not seem to consort together in herds like antelopes;
+there are rarely more than five in a group, though I have certainly
+seen more on several occasions.
+
+This morning we were unlucky with our deer. I shot three, and Captain
+S. shot at and wounded three, not one of which however did we bag.
+This part of the country is exclusively inhabited by Parbutteas, the
+native name for Nepaulese settled in British territory. Over the
+frontier line, the villages are called Pahareeas, signifying
+mountaineers or hillmen, from Pahar, a mountain. We beat up to a
+Parbuttea village, with its conical roofed huts; men and women were
+engaged in plaiting long coils of rice straw into cable looking ropes.
+A few split bamboos are fastened into the ground, in a circle, and
+these ropes are then coiled round, in and out, between the stakes;
+this makes a huge circular vat-shaped repository, open at both ends;
+it is then lifted up and put on a platform coated with mud, and
+protected from rats and vermin by the pillars being placed on smooth,
+inverted earthen pots. The coils of straw are now plastered outside
+and in with a mixture of mud, chaff, and cowdung, and allowed to dry;
+when dried the hut is filled with grain, and securely roofed and
+thatched. This forms the invariable village granary, and looks at a
+distance not unlike a stack or rick of corn, round a farm at home. By
+the abundance of these granaries in a village, one can tell at a
+glance whether the season has been a good one, and whether the frugal
+inhabitants of the clustering little hamlet are in pretty comfortable
+circumstances. If they are under the sway of a grasping and
+unscrupulous landlord, they not unfrequently bury their grain in
+clay-lined chambers in the earth, and have always enough for current
+wants, stored up in the sun-baked clay repositories mentioned in a
+former chapter.
+
+Beyond the village we entered some thick Patair jungle. Its greenness
+was refreshing after the burnt up and withered grass jungle. We were
+now in a hollow bordering the stream, and somewhat protected from the
+scorching wind, and the stinging clouds of fine sand and red dust. The
+brook looked so cool and refreshing, and the water so clear and
+pellucid, that I was about to dismount to take a drink and lave my
+heated head and face, when a low whistle to my right made me look in
+that direction, and I saw the Captain waving his hand excitedly, and
+pointing ahead. He was higher up the bank than I was, and in very
+dense Patair; a ridge ran between his front of the line and mine, so
+that I could only see his howdah, and the bulk of the elephant's body
+was concealed from me by the grass on this ridge.
+
+I closed up diagonally across the ridge; S. still waving to me to
+hurry up; as I topped it, I spied a large tiger slouching along in the
+hollow immediately below me. He saw me at the same instant, and
+bounded on in front of S. His Express was at his shoulder on the
+instant; he fired, and a tremendous spurt of blood shewed a hit, a
+hit, a palpable hit. The tiger was nowhere visible, and not a cry or a
+motion could we hear or see, to give us any clue to the whereabouts of
+the wounded animal. We followed up however, quickly but cautiously,
+expecting every instant a furious charge.
+
+We must have gone at least a hundred yards, when right in front of me
+I descried the tiger, crouching down, its head resting on its fore
+paws, and to all appearance settling for a spring. It was about twenty
+yards from me, and taking a rather hasty aim, I quickly fired both
+barrels straight at the head. I could only see the head and paws, but
+these I saw quite distinctly. My elephant was very unsteady, and both
+my bullets went within an inch of the tiger's head, but fortunately
+missed completely. I say fortunately, for finding the brute still
+remaining quite motionless, we cautiously approached, and found it was
+stone dead. The perfect naturalness of the position, however, might
+well have deceived a more experienced sportsman. The beast was lying
+crouched on all fours, as if in the very act of preparing to spring.
+The one bullet had killed it; the wound was in the lungs, and the
+internal bleeding had suffocated it, but here was a wonderful instance
+of the tiger's tenacity of life, even when sorely wounded, for it had
+travelled over a hundred and thirty yards after S. had shot it.
+
+It was lucky I missed, for my bullets would have spoiled the skull.
+She was a very handsome, finely marked tigress, a large specimen, for
+on applying the tape we found she measured exactly nine feet. Before
+descending to measure her, we were joined by the old Major Capt[=a]n,
+whose elephants we had for some time descried in the distance. His
+congratulations were profuse, and no doubt sincere, and after padding
+the tigress, we hied to the welcome shelter of one of the village
+houses, where we discussed a hearty and substantial tiffin.
+
+During tiffin, we were surrounded by a bevy of really fair and buxom
+lasses. They wore petticoats of striped blue cloth, and had their arms
+and shoulders bare, and their ears loaded with silver ornaments. They
+were merry, laughing, comely damsels, with none of the exaggerated
+shyness, and affected prudery of the women of the plains. We were
+offered plantains, milk, and chupatties, and an old patriarch came out
+leaning on his staff, to revile and abuse the tigress. From some of
+the young men we heard of a fresh kill to the north of the village,
+and after tiffin we proceeded in that direction, following up the
+course of the limpid stream, whose gurgling ripple sounded so
+pleasantly in our ears.
+
+Far ahead to the right, and on the further bank of the stream, we
+could see dense curling volumes of smoke, and leaping pyramids of
+flame, where a jungle fire was raging in some thick acacia scrub. As
+we got nearer, the heat became excessive, and the flames, fanned into
+tremendous fury by the fierce west wind, tore through the dry thorny
+bushes. Our elephants were quite unsteady, and did not like facing the
+fire. We made a slight detour, and soon had the roaring wall of flame
+behind us. We were now entering on a moist, circular, basin-shaped
+hollow. Among the patair roots were the recent marks of great numbers
+of wild pigs, where they had been foraging among the stiff clay for
+these esculents. The patair is like a huge bulrush, and the elephants
+are very fond of its succulent, juicy, cool-looking leaves. Those in
+our line kept tearing up huge tufts of it, thrashing out the mud and
+dirt from the roots against their forelegs, and with a grunt of
+satisfaction, making it slowly disappear in their cavernous mouths.
+There was considerable noise, and the jungle was nearly as high as the
+howdahs, presenting the appearance of an impenetrable screen of vivid
+green. We beat and rebeat, across and across, but there was no sign of
+the tiger. The banks of the nullah were very steep, rotten looking,
+and dangerous. We had about eighteen elephants, namely, ten of our
+own, and eight belonging to the Nepaulese. We were beating very close,
+the elephants' heads almost touching. This is the way they always beat
+in Nepaul. We thought we had left not a spot in the basin untouched,
+and Captain S. was quite satisfied that there could be no tiger there.
+It was a splendid jungle for cover, so thick, dense, and cool. I was
+beating along the edge of the creek, which ran deep and silent,
+between the gloomy sedge-covered banks. In a placid little pool I saw
+a couple of widgeon all unconscious of danger, their glossy plumage
+reflected in the clear water. I called to Captain S. 'We are sold this
+time Captain, there's no tiger here!'
+
+'I am afraid not,' he answered.
+
+'Shall I bag those two widgeon?' I asked.
+
+'All right,' was the response.
+
+Putting in shot cartridge, I shot both the widgeon, but we were all
+astounded to see the tiger we had so carefully and perseveringly
+searched for, bound out of a crevice in the bank, almost right under
+my elephant. Off he went with a smothered roar, that set our elephants
+hurrying backwards and forwards. There was a commotion along the whole
+line. The jungle was too dense for us to see anything. It was one more
+proof how these hill tigers will lie close, even in the midst of a
+line.
+
+S. called out to me to remain quiet, and see if we could trace the
+tiger's progress by any rustling in the cover. Looking down we saw the
+kill, close to the edge of the water. A fast elephant was sent on
+ahead, to try and ascertain whether the tiger was likely to break
+beyond the circle of the little basin-shaped valley. We gathered round
+the kill; it was quite fresh; a young buffalo. The Major told us that
+in his experience, a male tiger always begins on the neck first. A
+female always at the hind quarters. A few mouthfuls only had been
+eaten, and according to the Major, it must have been a tigress, as the
+part devoured was from the hind quarters.
+
+While we were talking over these things, a frenzied shout from the
+driver of our naka elephant caused us to look in his direction. He was
+gesticulating wildly, and bawling at the top of his voice, 'Come, come
+quickly, sahibs, the tiger is running away.'
+
+Now commenced such a mad and hurried scramble as I have never
+witnessed before or since, from the back of an elephant. As we tore
+through the tangled dense green patair, the broad leaves crackled like
+crashing branches, the huge elephants surged ahead like ships rocking
+in a gale of wind, and the mahouts and attendants on the pad
+elephants, shouted and urged on their shuffling animals, by excited
+cries and resounding whacks.
+
+In the retinue of the Major, were several men with elephant spears or
+goads. These consist of a long, pliant, polished bamboo, with a sharp
+spike at the end, which they call a _jhetha_. These men now came
+hurrying round the ridge, among the opener grass, and as we emerged
+from the heavy cover, they began goading the elephants behind and
+urging them to their most furious pace. On ahead, nearly a quarter of
+a mile away, we could see a huge tiger making off for the distant
+morung, at a rapid sling trot. His lithe body shone before us, and
+urged us to the most desperate efforts. It was almost a bare plateau.
+There was scarcely any cover, only here and there a few stunted acacia
+bushes. The dense forest was two or three miles ahead, but there were
+several nasty steep banks, and precipitous gullies with deep water
+rushing between. Attached to each Nepaulee pad, by a stout
+curiously-plaited cord, ornamented with fancy knots and tassels of
+silk, was a small pestle-shaped instrument, not unlike an auctioneer's
+hammer. It was quaintly carved, and studded with short, blunt,
+shining, brass nails or spikes. I had noticed these hanging down from
+the pads, and had often wondered what they were for. I was now to see
+them used. While the mahouts in front rained a shower of blows on the
+elephants head, and the spear-men pricked him up from behind with
+their jhethas, the occupant of the pad, turning round with his face to
+the tail, belaboured the poor hathee with the auctioneer's hammer. The
+blows rattled on the elephant's rump. The brutes trumpeted with pain,
+but they _did_ put on the pace, and travelled as I never imagined an
+elephant _could_ travel. Past bush and brake, down precipitous ravine,
+over the stones, through the thorny scrub, dashing down a steep bank
+here, plunging madly through a deep stream there, we shuffled along.
+We must have been going fully seven miles an hour. The pestle-shaped
+hammer is called a _lohath_, and most unmercifully were they wielded.
+We were jostled and jolted, till every bone ached again. Clouds of
+dust were driven before our reeling waving line. How the Nepaulese
+shouted and capered. We were all mad with excitement. I shouted with
+the rest. The fat little Major kicked his heels against the sides of
+his elephant, as if he were spurring a Derby winner to victory. Our
+usually sedate captain yelled--actually yelled!--in an agony of
+excitement, and tried to execute a war dance of his own on the floor
+of his howdah. Our guns rattled, the chains clanked and jangled, the
+howdahs rocked and pitched from side to side. We made a desperate
+effort. The poor elephants made a gallant race of it. The foot men
+perspired and swore, but it was not to be. Our striped friend had the
+best of the start, and we gained not an inch upon him. To our
+unspeakable mortification, he reached the dense cover on ahead, where
+we might as well have sought for a needle in a haystack. Never,
+however, shall I forget that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant
+steeple-chase. Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for it next day.
+
+The old Major and his fleet racing elephants now left us, and our
+jaded beasts took us slowly back in the direction of our camp. It was
+a fine wild view on which we were now gazing. Behind us the dark
+gloomy impenetrable morung, the home of ever-abiding fever and ague.
+Behind that the countless multitude of hills, swelling here and
+receding there, a jumbled heap of mighty peaks and fretted pinnacles,
+with their glistening sides and dark shadowless ravines, their mighty
+scaurs and their abrupt serrated edges showing out clearly and boldly
+defined against the evening sky. Far to the right, the shining
+river--a riband of burnished steel, for its waters were a deep steely
+blue--rolled its swift flood along amid shining sand-banks. In front,
+the vast undulating plain, with grove, and rill, and smoking hamlet,
+stretched at our feet in a lovely panorama of blended and harmonious
+colour. We were now high up above the plain, and the scene was one of
+the finest I have ever witnessed in India. The wind had gone down, and
+the oblique rays of the sun lit up the whole vast panorama with a
+lurid light, which was heightened in effect by the dust-laden
+atmosphere, and the volumes of smoke from the now distant fires,
+hedging in the far horizon with curtains of threatening grandeur and
+gloom. That far away canopy of dust and smoke formed a wonderful
+contrast to the shining snow-capped hills behind. Altogether it was a
+day to be remembered. I have seen no such strange and unearthly
+combination of shade and colour in any landscape before or since.
+
+On the way home we bagged a florican and a very fine mallard, and
+reached the camp utterly fagged, to find our worthy magistrate very
+much recovered, and glad to congratulate us on our having bagged the
+tigress. After a plunge in the river, and a rare camp dinner--such a
+meal as only an Indian sportsman can procure--we lay back in our cane
+chairs, and while the fragrant smoke from the mild Manilla curled
+lovingly about the roof of the tent, we discussed the day's
+proceedings, and fought our battles over again.
+
+A rather animated discussion arose about the length of the tiger--as
+to its frame merely, and we wondered what difference the skin would
+make in the length of the animal. As it was a point we had never heard
+mooted before, we determined to see for ourselves. We accordingly went
+out into the beautiful moonlight, and superintended the skinning of
+the tigress. The skin was taken off most artistically. We had
+carefully measured the animal before skinning. She was exactly nine
+feet long. We found the skin made a difference of only four inches,
+the bare skeleton from tip of nose to extreme point of tail measuring
+eight feet eight inches.
+
+As an instance of tigers taking to trees, our worthy magistrate
+related that in Rajmehal he and a friend had wounded a tiger, and
+subsequently lost him in the jungle. In vain they searched in every
+conceivable direction, but could find no trace of him. They were about
+giving up in despair, when S., raising his hat, happened to look up,
+and there, on a large bough directly overhead, he saw the wounded
+tiger lying extended at full length, some eighteen feet from the
+ground. They were not long in leaving the dangerous vicinity, and it
+was not long either ere a well-directed shot brought the tiger down
+from his elevated perch.
+
+These after-dinner stories are not the least enjoyable part of a
+tiger-hunting party. Round the camp table in a snug, well-lighted
+tent, with all the 'materials' handy, I have listened to many a tale
+of thrilling adventure. S. was full of reminiscences, and having seen
+a deal of tiger shooting in various parts of India, his recollections
+were much appreciated. To shew that the principal danger in tiger
+shooting is not from the tiger himself, but from one's elephant
+becoming panic-stricken and bolting, he told how a Mr. Aubert, a
+Benares planter, lost his life. A tiger had been 'spined' by a shot,
+and the line gathered round the prostrate monster to watch its
+death-struggle. The elephant on which the unfortunate planter sat got
+demoralised and attempted to bolt. The mahout endeavoured to check its
+rush, and in desperation the elephant charged straight down, close
+past the tiger, which lay writhing and roaring under a huge
+overhanging tree. The elephant was rushing directly under this tree,
+and a large branch would have swept howdah and everything it contained
+clean off the elephant's back, as easily as one would brush off a fly.
+To save himself Aubert made a leap for the branch, the elephant
+forging madly ahead; and the howdah, being smashed like match-wood,
+fell on the tiger below, who was tearing and clawing at everything
+within his reach. Poor Aubert got hold of the branch with his hands,
+and clung with all the desperation of one fighting for his life. He
+was right above the wounded tiger, but his grasp on the tree was not a
+firm one. For a moment he hung suspended above the furious animal,
+which, mad with agony and fury, was a picture of demoniac rage. The
+poor fellow could hold no longer, and fell right on the tiger. It was
+nearly at its last gasp, but it caught hold of Aubert by the foot, and
+in a final paroxysm of pain and rage chawed the foot clean off, and
+the poor fellow died next day from the shock and loss of blood. He was
+one of four brothers who all met untimely deaths from accidents. This
+one was killed by the tiger, another was thrown from a vehicle and
+killed on the spot, the third was drowned, and the fourth shot by
+accident.
+
+Our bag to-day was one tiger, one florican, one mallard, and two
+widgeon. On cutting the tiger open, we found that the bullet had
+entered on the left side, and, as we suspected, had entered the lungs.
+It had, however, made a terrible wound. We found that it had
+penetrated the heart and liver, gone forward through the chest, and
+smashed the right shoulder. Notwithstanding this fearful wound,
+shewing the tremendous effects of the Express bullet, the tiger had
+gone on for the distance I have mentioned, after which it must have
+fallen stone-dead. It was a marvellous instance of vitality, even
+after the heart, liver, and lungs had been pierced. The liver had six
+lobes, and it was then I heard for the first time, that with the
+natives this was an infallible sign of the age of a tiger. The old
+Major firmly believed it, and told us it was quite an accepted article
+of faith with all native sportsmen. Facts subsequently came under my
+own observation which seemed to give great probability to the theory,
+but it is one on which I would not like to give a decided opinion,
+till after hearing the experiences of other sportsmen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Camp of the Nepaulee chief.--Quicksands.--Elephants crossing rivers.
+--Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.--We beat the forest for tiger.--Shoot
+a young tiger.--Red ants in the forest.--Bhowras or ground bees.--The
+_ursus labialis_ or long-lipped bear.--Recross the stream.--Florican.
+--Stag running the gauntlet of flame.--Our bag.--Start for factory.
+--Remarks on elephants.--Precautions useful for protection from the
+sun in tiger shooting.--The _puggree_.--Cattle breeding in India, and
+wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.--Nathpore.--Ravages of the
+river.--Mrs. Gray, an old resident in the jungles.--Description of her
+surroundings.
+
+Next morning we started beating due east, setting fire to the jungle
+as we went along. The roaring and crackling of the flames startled the
+elephant on which Captain S. was riding, and going away across country
+at a furious pace, it was with difficulty that it could be stopped. We
+crossed the frontier line a short distance from camp, and entered a
+dense jungle of thorny acacia, with long dry grass almost choking the
+trees. They were dry and stunted, and when we dropped a few lights
+amongst such combustible material, the fire was splendid beyond
+description. How the flames surged through the withered grass. We were
+forced to pause and admire the magnificent sight. The wall of flame
+tore along with inconceivable rapidity, and the blinding volumes of
+smoke obscured the country for miles. The jungle was full of deer and
+pig. One fine buck came bounding along past our line, but I stopped
+him with a single bullet through the neck. He fell over with a
+tremendous crash, and turning a complete somersault broke off both his
+horns with the force of the fall.
+
+We beat down a shallow sandy watercourse, and could see the camp of
+the old Major on the high bank beyond. Farther down the stream there
+was a small square fort, the whitewashed walls of which flashed back
+the rays of the sun, and grouped round it were some ruinous looking
+huts, several snowy tents, and a huge shamiana or canopy, under which
+we could see a host of attendants spreading carpets, placing chairs,
+and otherwise making ready for us. The banks of the stream were very
+steep, but the guide at length brought us to what seemed a safe and
+fordable passage. On the further side was a flat expanse of seemingly
+firm and dry sand, but no sooner had our elephants begun to cross it,
+than the whole sandbank for yards began to rock and tremble; the water
+welled up over the footmarks of the elephants, and S. called out to
+us, Fussun, Fussun! quicksand, quicksand! We scattered the elephants,
+and tried to hurry them over the dangerous bit of ground with shouts
+and cries of encouragement.
+
+The poor animals seemed thoroughly to appreciate the danger, and
+shuffled forward as quickly as they could. All got over in safety
+except the last three. The treacherous sand, rendered still more
+insecure by the heavy tread of so many ponderous animals, now gave way
+entirely, and the three hapless elephants were left floundering in the
+tenacious hold of the dreaded fussun. Two of the three were not far
+from the firm bank, and managed to extricate themselves after a short
+struggle; but the third had sunk up to the shoulders, and could
+scarcely move. All hands immediately began cutting long grass and
+forming it into bundles. These were thrown to the sinking elephant. He
+rolled from side to side, the sand quaking and undulating round him in
+all directions. At times he would roll over till nearly half his body
+was invisible. Some of the Nepaulese ventured near, and managed to
+undo the harness-ropes that were holding on the pad. The sagacious
+brute fully understood his danger, and the efforts we were making for
+his assistance. He managed to get several of the big bundles of grass
+under his feet, and stood there looking at us with a most pathetic
+pleading expression, and trembling, as if with an ague, from fear and
+exhaustion.
+
+The old Major came down to meet us, and a crowd of his men added their
+efforts to ours, to help the unfortunate elephant. We threw in bundle
+after bundle of grass, till we had the yielding sand covered with a
+thick passage of firmly bound fascines, on which the hathee,
+staggering and floundering painfully, managed to reach firm land. He
+was so completely exhausted that he could scarcely walk to the tents,
+and we left him there to the care of his attendants. This is a very
+common episode in tiger hunting, and does not always terminate so
+fortunately. In running water, the quicksand is not so dangerous, as
+the force of the stream keeps washing away the sand, and does not
+allow it to settle round the legs of the elephant; but on dry land, a
+dry fussun, as it is called, is justly feared; and many a valuable
+animal has been swallowed up in its slow, deadly, tenacious grasp.
+
+In crossing sand, the heaviest and slowest elephants should go first,
+preceded by a light, nimble pioneer. If the leading elephant shows
+signs of sinking, the others should at once turn back, and seek some
+safer place. In all cases the line should separate a little, and not
+follow in each other's footsteps. The indications of a quicksand are
+easily recognised. If the surface of the sand begins to oscillate and
+undulate with a tremulous rocking motion, it is always wise to seek
+some other passage. Looking back, after elephants have passed, you
+will often see what was a perfectly dry flat, covered with several
+inches of water. When water begins to ooze up in any quantity, after a
+few elephants have passed, it is much safer to make the remainder
+cross at some spot farther on.
+
+In crossing a deep swift river, the elephants should enter the water
+in a line, ranged up and down the river. That is, the line should be
+ranged along the bank, and enter the water at right angles to the
+current, and not in Indian file. The strongest elephants should be up
+stream, as they help to break the force of the current for the weaker
+and smaller animals down below. It is a fine sight to see some thirty
+or forty of these huge animals crossing a deep and rapid river. Some
+are reluctant to strike out, when they begin to enter the deepest
+channel, and try to turn back; the mahouts and 'mates' shout, and
+belabour them with bamboo poles. The trumpeting of the elephants, the
+waving of the trunks, disporting, like huge water-snakes, in the
+perturbed current, the splashing of the bamboos, the dark bodies of
+the natives swimming here and there round the animals, the unwieldy
+boat piled high with how-dahs and pads, the whole heap surmounted by a
+group of sportsmen with their gleaming weapons, and variegated
+puggrees, make up a picturesque and memorable sight. Some of the
+strong swimmers among the elephants seem to enjoy the whole affair
+immensely. They dip their huge heads entirely under the current, the
+sun flashes on the dark hide, glistening with the dripping water; the
+enormous head emerges again slowly, like some monstrous antediluvian
+creation, and with a succession of these ponderous appearances and
+disappearances, the mighty brutes forge through the surging water.
+When they reach a shallow part, they pipe with pleasure, and send
+volumes of fluid splashing against their heaving flanks, scattering
+the spray all round in mimic rainbows.
+
+At all times the Koosee was a dangerous stream to cross, but during
+the rains I have seen the strongest and best swimming elephants taken
+nearly a mile down stream; and in many instances they have been
+drowned, their vast bulk and marvellous strength being quite unable to
+cope with the tremendous force of the raging waters.
+
+When we had got comfortably seated under the shamiana, a crowd of
+attendants brought us baskets of fruit and a very nice cold collation
+of various Indian dishes and curries. We did ample justice to the old
+soldier's hospitable offerings, and then betel-nut, cardamums, cloves,
+and other spices, and pauri leaves, were handed round on a silver
+salver, beautifully embossed and carved with quaint devices. We lit
+our cigars, our beards and handkerchiefs were anointed with attar of
+roses; and the old Major then informed us that there was good khubber
+of tiger in the wood close by.
+
+The trees were splendid specimens of forest growth, enormously thick,
+beautifully umbrageous, and growing very close together. There was a
+dense undergrowth of tangled creeper, and the most lovely ferns and
+tropical plants in the richest luxuriance, and of every conceivable
+shade of amber and green. It was a charming spot. The patch of forest
+was separated from the unbroken line of morung jungle by a beautifully
+sheltered glade of several hundred acres, and further broken in three
+places by avenue-looking openings, disclosing peeps of the black and
+gloomy-looking mass of impenetrable forest beyond.
+
+In the first of these openings we were directed to take up a position,
+while the pad elephants and a crowd of beaters went to the edge of the
+patch of forest and began beating up to us. Immense numbers of genuine
+jungle fowl were calling in all directions, and flying right across
+the opening in numerous coveys. They are beautifully marked with black
+and golden plumes round the neck, and I determined to shoot a few by
+and bye to send home to friends, who I knew would prize them as
+invaluable material in dressing hooks for fly-fishing. The crashing of
+the trees, as the elephants forced their way through the thick forest,
+or tore off huge branches as they struggled amid the matted
+vegetation, kept us all on the alert. The first place was however a
+blank, and we moved on to the next. We had not long to wait, for a
+fierce din inside the jungle, and the excited cries of the beaters,
+apprised us that game of some sort was afoot. We were eagerly
+watching, and speculating on the cause of the uproar, when a very fine
+half-grown tiger cub sprang out of some closely growing fern, and
+dashed across the narrow opening so quickly, that ere we had time to
+raise a gun, he had disappeared in some heavy jhamun jungle on the
+further side of the path.
+
+We hurried round as fast as we could to intercept him, should he
+attempt to break on ahead; and leaving some men to rally the mahouts,
+and let them know that there was a tiger afoot, we were soon in our
+places, and ready to give the cub a warm reception, should he again
+show his stripes. It was not long ere he did so. I spied him stealing
+along the edge of the jungle, evidently intending to make a rush back
+past the opening he had just crossed, and outflank the line of beater
+elephants. I fired and hit him in the forearm; he rolled over roaring
+with rage, and then descrying his assailants, he bounded into the
+open, and as well as his wound would allow him, came furiously down at
+the charge. In less time however than it takes to write it, he had
+received three bullets in his body, and tumbled down a lifeless heap.
+We raised a cheer which brought the beaters and elephants quickly to
+the spot. In coming through a thickly wooded part of the forest, with
+numerous long and pliant creepers intertwisted into a confused tangle
+of rope-like ligaments, the old Juddeah elephant tore down one of the
+long lines, and dislodged an angry army of venomous red ants on the
+occupants of the guddee, or cushioned seat on the elephant's pad. The
+ants proved formidable assailants. There were two or three Baboos or
+native gentlemen, holding on to the ropes, chewing pan, and enjoying
+the scene, but the red ants were altogether more than they had
+bargained for. Recognising the Baboos as the immediate cause of their
+disturbance, they attacked them with indomitable courage. The mahout
+fairly yelled with pain, and one of the Baboos, smarting from the
+fiery bites of the furious insects, toppled clean backwards into the
+undergrowth, showing an undignified pair of heels. The other two
+danced on the guddee, sweeping and thrashing the air, the cushion, and
+their clothes, with their cummerbunds, in the vain effort to free
+themselves of their angry assailants. The guddee was literally covered
+with ants; it looked an animated red mass, and the wretched Baboos
+made frantic efforts to shake themselves clear. They were dreadfully
+bitten, and reaching the open, they slid off the elephant, and even on
+the ground continued their saltatory antics before finally getting rid
+of their ferocious assailants.
+
+In forest shooting the red ant is one of the most dreaded pests of the
+jungle. If a colony gets dislodged from some overhanging branch, and
+is landed in your howdah, the best plan is to evacuate your stronghold
+as quickly as you can, and let the attendants clear away the invaders.
+Their bite is very painful, and they take such tenacious hold, that
+rather than quit their grip, they allow themselves to be decapitated
+and leave their head and formidable forceps sticking in your flesh.
+
+Other dreaded foes in the forest jungle are the Bhowra or ground bees,
+which are more properly a kind of hornet. If by evil chance your
+elephant should tread on their mound-like nest, instantly an angry
+swarm of venomous and enraged hornets comes buzzing about your ears.
+Your only chance is to squat down, and envelope yourself completely in
+a blanket. Old sportsmen, shooting in forest jungle, invariably take a
+blanket Avith them in the howdah, to ensure themselves protection in
+the event of an attack by these blood-thirsty creatures. The thick
+matted creepers too are a great nuisance, for which a bill-hook or
+sharp kookree is an invaluable adjunct to the other paraphernalia of
+the march. I have seen a mahout swept clean off the elephant's back by
+these tenacious creepers, and the elephants themselves are sometimes
+unable to break through the tangle of sinewy, lithe cords, which drape
+the huge forest trees, hanging in slender festoons from every branch.
+Some of them are prickly, and as the elephant slowly forces his way
+through the mass of pendent swaying cords, they lacerate and tear the
+mahout's clothes and skin, and appropriate his puggree. As you crouch
+down within the shelter of your howdah, you can't help pitying the
+poor wretch, and incline to think that, after all, shooting in grass
+jungle has fewer drawbacks and is preferable to forest shooting.
+
+One of the drivers reported that he had seen a bear in the jungle, and
+we saw the earth of one not far from where the young tiger had fallen;
+it was the lair of the sloth bear or _Ursus labialis_, so called from
+his long pendent upper lip. His spoor is very easily distinguished
+from that of any other animal; the ball of the foot shows a distinct
+round impression, and about an inch to an inch and a half further on,
+the impression of the long curved claws are seen. He uses these
+long-curved claws to tear up ant hills, and open hollow decaying
+trees, to get at the honey within, of which he is very fond. We went
+after the bear, and were not long in discovering his whereabouts, and
+a well-directed shot from S. added him to our bag. The best bear
+shooting in India perhaps is in CHOTA NAGPOOR, but this does not come
+within the limits of my present volume. We now beat slowly through the
+wood, keeping a bright look out for ants and hornets, and getting fine
+shooting at the numerous jungle fowl which flew about in amazing
+numbers.
+
+The forest trees in this patch of jungle were very fine. The hill
+seerees, with its feathery foliage and delicate clusters of white
+bugle-shaped blossom; the semul or cotton tree, with its wonderful
+wealth of magnificent crimson flowers; the birch-looking sheeshum or
+sissod; the sombre looking sal; the shining, leathery-leafed bhur,
+with its immense over-arching limbs, and the crisp, curly-leafed
+elegant-looking jhamun or Indian olive, formed a paradise of sylvan
+beauty, on which the eye dwelt till it was sated with the woodland
+loveliness.
+
+In recrossing the dhar or water-course, we took care to avoid the
+quicksands, and as we did not expect to fall in with another tiger, we
+indulged in a little general firing. I shot a fine buck through the
+spine, and we bagged several deer, and no less than five florican;
+this bird is allied to the bustard family, and has beautiful drooping
+feathers, hanging in plumy pendants of deep black and pure white,
+intermingled in the most graceful and showy manner. The male is a
+magnificent bird, and has perhaps as fine plumage as any bird on the
+border; the flesh yields the most delicate eating of any game bird I
+know; the slices of mingled brown and white from the breast are
+delicious. The birds are rather shy, generally getting up a long way
+in front of the line, and moving with a slow, rather clumsy, flight,
+not unlike the flight of the white earth owl. They run with great
+swiftness, and are rather hard to kill, unless hit about the neck and
+head. There are two sorts, the lesser and the greater, the former also
+called the bastard florican. Altogether they are noble looking birds,
+and the sportsman is always glad to add as many florican as he can to
+his bag.
+
+We were now nearing the locality of the fierce fire of the morning; it
+was still blazing in a long extended line of flame, and we witnessed
+an incident without parallel in the experience of any of us. I fired
+at and wounded a large stag; it was wounded somewhere in the side, and
+seemed very hard hit indeed. Maddened probably by terror and pain, it
+made straight for the line of fire, and bounded unhesitatingly right
+into the flame. We saw it distinctly go clean though the flames, but
+we could not see whether it got away with its life, as the elephants
+would not go up to the fire. At all events, the stag went right
+through his fiery ordeal, and was lost to us. We started numerous
+hares close to camp, and S. bowled over several. They are very common
+in the short grass jungle, where the soil is sandy, and are frequently
+to be found among thin jowah jungle; they afford good sport for
+coursing, but are neither so fleet, nor so large, nor such good eating
+as the English hare. In fact, they are very dry eating, and the best
+way to cook them is to jug them, or make a hunter's pie, adding
+portions of partridge, quail, or plover, with a few mushrooms, and a
+modicum of ham or bacon if these are procurable.
+
+We reached camp pretty late, and sent off venison, birds, and other
+spoils to Mrs. S. and to Inamputte factory. Our bag shewed a diversity
+of spoil, consisting of one tiger, seven hog-deer, one bear _(Ursus
+labialis)_, seventeen jungle fowl, five florican, and six hares. It
+was no bad bag considering that during most of the day we had been
+beating solely for tiger. We could have shot many more deer and jungle
+fowl, but we never try to shoot more than are needed to satisfy the
+wants of the camp. Were we to attempt to shoot at all the deer and pig
+that we see, the figures would reach very large totals. As a rule
+therefore, the records of Indian sportsmen give no idea of the vast
+quantities of game that are put up and never fired at. It would be the
+very wantonness of destruction, to shoot animals not wanted for some
+specific purpose, unless indeed, you were raging an indiscriminate war
+of extermination, in a quarter where their numbers were a nuisance and
+prejudicial to crops. In that case, your proceedings would not be
+dignified by the name of sport.
+
+After a few more days shooting, the incidents of which were pretty
+much like those I have been describing, I started back for the
+factory. I sent my horse on ahead, and took five elephants with me to
+beat up for game on the homeward route. Close to camp a fine buck got
+up in front of me. I broke both his forelegs with my first shot, but
+the poor brute still managed to hobble along. It was in some very
+dense patair jungle, and I had considerable difficulty in bringing him
+to bag. When we reached the ghat or ferry, I ordered Geerdharee Jha's
+mahout to cross with his elephant. The brute, however, refused to
+cross the river alone, and in spite of all the driver could do, she
+insisted on following the rest. I got down, and some of the other
+drivers got out the hobbles and bound them round her legs. In spite of
+these she still seemed determined to follow us. She shook the bedding
+and other articles with which she was loaded off her back, and made a
+frantic effort to follow us through the deep sand. The iron chains cut
+into her legs, and, afraid that she might do herself an irreparable
+injury, I had her tied up to a tree, and left her trumpeting and
+making an indignant lamentation at being separated from the rest of
+the line.
+
+The elephant seems to be quite a social animal. I have frequently seen
+cases where, after having been in company together for a lengthened
+hunt, they have manifested great reluctance to separate. In leaving
+the line, I have often noticed the single elephant looking back at his
+comrades, and giving vent to his disappointment and disapproval, by
+grunts and trumpetings of indignant protest. We left the refractory
+hathee tied up to her tree, and as we crossed the long rolling billows
+of burning sand that lay athwart our course, she was soon lost to
+view. I shot a couple more hog-deer, and got several plover and teal
+in the patches of water that lay in some of the hollows among the
+sandbanks. I fired at a huge alligator basking in the sun, on a
+sandbank close to the stream. The bullet hit him somewhere in the
+forearm, and he made a tremendous sensation header into the current.
+From the agitation in the water, he seemed not to appreciate the
+leaden message which I had sent him.
+
+We found the journey through the soft yielding sand very fatiguing,
+and especially trying to the eyes. When not shooting, it is a very
+wise precaution to wear eye-preservers or 'goggles.' They are a great
+relief to the eyes, and the best, I think, are the neutral tinted.
+During the west winds, when the atmosphere is loaded with fine
+particles of irritating sand and dust, these goggles are very
+necessary, and are a great protection to the sight.
+
+Another prudent precaution is to have the back of one's shirt or coat
+slightly padded with cotton and quilted. The heat prevents one wearing
+thick clothes, and there is no doubt that the action of the direct
+rays of the burning sun all down the back on the spinal cord, is very
+injurious, and may be a fruitful cause of sunstroke. It is certainly
+productive of great lassitude and weariness. I used to wear a thin
+quilted sort of shield made of cotton-drill, which fastened round the
+shoulders and waist. It does not incommode one's action in any
+particular, and is, I think, a great protection against the fierce
+rays of the sun. Many prefer the puggree as a head-piece. It is
+undeniably a fine thing when one is riding on horseback, as it fits
+close to the head, does not catch the wind during a smart trot or
+canter, and is therefore not easily shaken off. For riding I think it
+preferable to all other headdresses. A good thick puggree is a great
+protection to the back of the head and neck, the part of the body
+which of all others requires protection from the sun. It feels rather
+heavy at first, but one gets used to it, and it does not shade the
+eyes and face. These are the two gravest objections to it, but for
+comfort, softness, and protection to the head and neck, I do not think
+it can be surpassed.
+
+After crossing the sand, we again entered some thin scrubby acacia
+jungle, with here and there a moist swampy nullah, with rank green
+patair jungle growing in the cool dank shade. Here we disturbed a
+colony of pigs, but the four mahouts being Mahommedans I did not fire.
+As we went along, one of my men called my attention to some footprints
+near a small lagoon. On inspection we found they were rhinoceros
+tracks, evidently of old date. These animals are often seen in this
+part of the country, but are more numerous farther north, in the great
+morung forest jungle.
+
+A very noticeable feature in these jungles was the immense quantity of
+bleached ghastly skeletons of cattle. This year had been a most
+disastrous one for cattle. Enormous numbers had been swept off by
+disease, and in many villages bordering on the morung the herds had
+been well-nigh exterminated. Little attention is paid to breeding. In
+some districts, such as the Mooteeharree and Mudhobunnee division,
+fine cart-bullocks are bred, carefully handled and tended, and fetch
+high prices. In Kurruchpore, beyond the Ganges in Bhaugulpore
+district, cattle of a small breed, hardy, active, staunch, and strong,
+are bred in great numbers, and are held in great estimation for
+agricultural requirements; but in these Koosee jungles the bulls are
+often ill-bred weedy brutes, and the cows being much in excess of a
+fair proportion of bulls, a deal of in-breeding takes place; unmatured
+young bulls roam about with the herd, and the result is a crowd of
+cattle that succumb to the first ailment, so that the land is littered
+with their bones.
+
+The bullock being indispensable to the Indian cultivator, bull calves
+are prized, taken care of, well nurtured, and well fed. The cow calves
+are pretty much left to take care of themselves; they are thin,
+miserable, half-starved brutes, and the short-sighted ryot seems
+altogether to forget that it is on these miserable withered specimens
+that he must depend for his supply of plough and cart-bullocks. The
+matter is most shamefully neglected. Government occasionally through
+its officers, experimental farms, etc., tries to get good sire stock
+for both horses and cattle, but as long as the dams are bad--mere
+weeds, without blood, bone, muscle, or stamina, the produce must be
+bad. As a pretty well established and general rule, the ryots look
+after their bullocks,--they recognise their value, and appreciate
+their utility, but the cows fare badly, and from all I have myself
+seen, and from the concurrent testimony of many observant friends in
+the rural districts, I should say that the breed has become much
+deteriorated.
+
+Old planters constantly tell you, that such cattle as they used to get
+are not now procurable for love or money. Within the last twenty years
+prices have more than doubled, because the demand for good
+plough-bullocks has been more urgent, as a consequence of increased
+cultivation, and the supply is not equal to the demand. Attention to
+the matter is imperative, and planters would be wise in their own
+interests to devote a little time and trouble to disseminating sound
+ideas about the selection of breeding stock, and the principles of
+rearing and raising stock among their ryots and dependants. Every
+factory should be able to breed its own cattle, and supply its own
+requirements for plough and cart-bullocks. It would be cheaper in the
+end, and it would undoubtedly be a blessing to the country to raise
+the standard of cattle used in agricultural work.
+
+To return from this digression. We plodded on and on, weary, hot, and
+thirsty, expecting every moment to see the ghat and my waiting horse.
+But the country here is so wild, the river takes such erratic courses
+during the annual floods, and the district is so secluded and so
+seldom visited by Europeans or factory servants, that my syce had
+evidently lost his way. After we had crossed innumerable streams, and
+laboriously traversed mile upon mile of burning sand, we gave up the
+attempt to find the ghat, and made for Nathpore.
+
+Nathpore was formerly a considerable town, not far from the Nepaul
+border, a flourishing grain mart and emporium for the fibres, gums,
+spices, timbers, and other productions of a wide frontier. There was a
+busy and crowded bazaar, long streets of shops and houses, and
+hundreds of boats lying in the stream beside the numerous ghats,
+taking in and discharging their cargoes. It may give a faint idea of
+the destructive force of an Indian stream like the Koosee when it is
+in full flood, to say that this once flourishing town is now but a
+handful of miserable huts. Miles of rich lands, once clothed with
+luxuriant crops of rice, indigo, and waving grain, are now barren
+reaches of burning sand. The bleached skeletons of mango, jackfruit,
+and other trees, stretch out their leafless and lifeless branches, to
+remind the spectator of the time when their foliage rustled in the
+breeze, when their lusty limbs bore rich clusters of luscious fruit,
+and when the din of the bazaar resounded beneath their welcome shade.
+A fine old lady still lived in a two-storied brick building, with
+quaint little darkened rooms, and a narrow verandah running all round
+the building. She was long past the allotted threescore years and ten,
+with a keen yet mildly beaming eye, and a wealth of beautiful hair as
+white as driven snow, neatly gathered back from her shapely forehead.
+She was the last remaining link connecting the present with the past
+glories of Nathpore. Her husband had been a planter and Zemindar.
+Where his vats had stood laden with rich indigo, the engulphing sand
+now reflected the rays of the torrid sun from its burning whiteness.
+She shewed me a picture of the town as it appeared to her when she had
+been brought there many a long and weary year ago, ere yet her step
+had lost its lightness, and when she was in the bloom of her bridal
+life. There was a fine broad boulevard, shadowed by splendid trees, on
+which she and her husband had driven in their carriage of an evening,
+through crowds of prosperous and contented traders and cultivators.
+The hungry river had swept all this away. Subsisting on a few
+precarious rents of some little plots of ground that it had spared,
+all that remained of a once princely estate, this good old lady lived
+her lonely life cheerful and contented, never murmuring or repining.
+The river had not spared even the graves of her departed dear ones.
+Since I left that part of the country I hear that she has been called
+away to join those who had gone before her.
+
+I arrived at her house late in the afternoon. I had never been at
+Nathpore before, although the place was well known to me by
+reputation. What a wreck it presented as our elephants marched
+through. Ruined, dismantled, crumbling temples; masses of masonry half
+submerged in the swift-running, treacherous, undermining stream; huge
+trees lying prostrate, twisted and jammed together where the angry
+flood had hurled them; bare unsightly poles and piles, sticking from
+the water at every angle, reminding us of the granaries and godowns
+that were wont to be filled with the agricultural wealth of the
+districts for miles around; hard metalled roads cut abruptly off, and
+bridges with only half an arch, standing lonely and ruined half way in
+the muddy current that swept noiselessly past the deserted city. It
+was a scene of utter waste and desolation.
+
+The lady I mentioned made me very welcome, and I was struck by her
+unaffected cheerfulness and gentleness. She was a gentlewoman indeed,
+and though reduced in circumstances, surrounded by misfortunes, and
+daily and hourly reminded by the scattered wreck around her of her
+former wealth and position, she bore all with exemplary fortitude, and
+to the full extent of her scanty means she relieved the sorrows and
+ailments of the natives. They all loved and respected, and I could not
+help admiring and honouring her.
+
+She pointed out to me, far away on the south-east horizon, the place
+where the river ran in its shallow channel when she first came to
+Nathpore. During her experience it had cut into and overspread more
+than twenty miles of country, turning fertile fields into arid wastes
+of sand; sweeping away factories, farms, and villages; and changing
+the whole face of the country from a fruitful landscape into a
+wilderness of sand and swamp.
+
+My horse came up in the evening, and I rode over to Inamputte,
+leaving my kindly hostess in her solitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+Exciting jungle scene.--The camp.--All quiet.--Advent of the cowherds.
+--A tiger close by.--Proceed to the spot.--Encounter between tigress
+and buffaloes.--Strange behaviour of the elephant.--Discovery and
+capture of four cubs.--Joyful return to camp.--Death of the tigress.
+--Night encounter with a leopard.--The haunts of the tiger and our
+shooting grounds.
+
+One of the most exciting and deeply interesting scenes I ever
+witnessed in the jungles, was on the occasion I have referred to in a
+former chapter, when speaking of the number of young given by the
+tigress at a birth. It was in the month of March, at the village of
+Ryseree, in Bhaugulpore. I had been encamped in the midst of
+twenty-four beautiful tanks, the history and construction of which
+were lost in the mists of tradition. The villagers had a story that
+these tanks were the work of a mighty giant, Bheema, with whose aid
+and that of his brethren they had been excavated in a single night.
+
+At all events, they were now covered with a wild tangle of water
+lilies and aquatic plants; well stocked with magnificent fish, and an
+occasional scaly monster of a saurian. They were the haunt of vast
+quantities of widgeon, teal, whistlers, mallard, ducks, snipe, curlew,
+blue fowl, and the usual varied _habitués_ of an exceptionally good
+Indian lake. In the vicinity hares were numerous, and in the thick
+jungle bordering the tanks in places, and consisting mostly of nurkool
+and wild rose, hog-deer and wild pig were abundant. The dried-up bed
+of an old arm of the Koosee was quite close to my camp, and abounded
+in sandpiper, and golden, grey, goggle-eyed, and stilted plover,
+besides other game.
+
+It was indeed a favourite camping spot, and the village was inhabited
+by a hardy, independent set of Gwallas, Koormees, and agriculturists,
+with whom I was a prime favourite.
+
+I was sitting in my tent, going over some village accounts with the
+village putwarrie, and my gomasta. A possé of villagers were grouped
+under the grateful shade of a gnarled old mango tree, whose contorted
+limbs bore evidence to the violence of many a _tufan_, or tempest,
+which it had weathered. The usual confused clamour of tongues was
+rising from this group, and the sub; ect of debate was the eternal
+'pice.' Behind the bank, and in rear of the tent, the cook and his
+mate were disembowelling a hapless _moorghee_, a fowl, whose
+decapitation had just been effected with a huge jagged old cavalry
+sword, of which my cook was not a little proud; and on the strength of
+which he adopted fierce military airs, and gave an extra turn to his
+well-oiled moustache when he went abroad for a holiday.
+
+Farther to the rear a line of horses were picketed, including my
+man-eating demon the white Cabool stallion, my gentle country-bred
+mare Motee--the pearl--and my handsome little pony mare, formerly my
+hockey or polo steed, a present from a gallant sportsman and rare good
+fellow, as good a judge of a horse, or a criminal, as ever sat on a
+bench.
+
+Behind the horses, each manacled by weighty chains, with his ponderous
+trunk and ragged-looking tail swaying too and fro with a never-ceasing
+motion, stood a line of ten elephants. Their huge leathery ears
+flapped lazily, and ever and anon one or other would seize a mighty
+branch, and belabour his corrugated sides to free himself of the
+detested and troublesome flies. The elephants were placidly munching
+their _chana_ (bait, or food), and occasionally giving each other a
+dry bath in the shape of a shower of sand. There was a monotonous
+clank of chains, and an occasional deep abdominal rumble like distant
+thunder. All over the camp there was a confused subdued medley of
+sound. A hum from the argumentative villagers, a lazy flop in the tank
+as a raho rose to the surface, an occasional outburst from the ducks,
+an angry clamour from the water-hens and blue-fowl. My dogs were lying
+round me blinking and winking, and making an occasional futile snap at
+an imaginary fly or flea. It was a drowsy and peaceful scene. I was
+nearly dropping off to sleep, from the heat and the monotonous drone
+of the putwarrie, who was intoning nasally some formidable document
+about fishery rights and privileges.
+
+Suddenly there was a hush. Every sound seemed to stop simultaneously
+as if by pre-arranged concert. Then three men were seen rushing madly
+along the elevated ridge surrounding one of the tanks. I recognised
+one of my peons, and with him two cowherds. Their head-dresses were
+all disarranged, and their parted lips, heaving chests, and eyes
+blazing with excitement, shewed that they were brimful of some unusual
+message.
+
+Now arose such a bustle in the camp as no description could adequately
+portray. The elephants trumpeted and piped; the _syces_, or grooms,
+came rushing up with eager queries; the villagers bustled about like
+so many ants aroused by the approach of a hostile foe; my pack of
+terriers yelped out in chorus; the pony neighed; the Cabool stallion
+plunged about; my servants came rushing from the shelter of the tent
+verandah with disordered dress; the ducks rose in a quacking crowd,
+and circled round and round the tent; and the cry arose of 'Bagh!
+Bagh! Khodamund! Arree Bap re Bap! Ram Ram, Seeta Ram!'
+
+Breathless with running, the men now tumbled up, hurriedly salaamed,
+arid then each with gasps and choking stops, and pell-mell volubility,
+and amid a running fire of cries, queries, and interjections from the
+mob, began to unfold their tale. There was an infuriated tigress at
+the other side of the nullah, or dry watercourse, she had attacked a
+herd of buffaloes, and it was believed that she had cubs.
+
+Already Debnarain Singh was getting his own pad elephant caparisoned,
+and my bearer was diving under my camp bed for my gun and cartridges.
+Knowing the little elephant to be a fast walker, and fairly staunch, I
+got on her back, and accompanied by the gomasta and mahout we set out,
+followed by the peon and herdsmen to shew us the way.
+
+I expected two friends, officers from Calcutta, that very day, and
+wished not to kill the tigress but to keep her for our combined
+shooting next day. We had not proceeded far when, on the other side of
+the nullah, we saw dense clouds of dust rising, and heard a confused,
+rushing, trampling sound, mingled with the clashing of horns, and the
+snorting of a herd of angry buffaloes.
+
+It was the wildest sight I have ever seen in connection with animal
+life. The buffaloes were drawn together in the form of a crescent;
+their eyes glared fiercely, and as they advanced in a series of short
+runs, stamping with their hoofs, and angrily lashing their tails,
+their horns would come together with a clanging, clattering crash, and
+they would paw the sand, snort and toss their heads, and behave in the
+most extraordinary manner.
+
+The cause of all this commotion was not far to seek. Directly in
+front, retreating slowly, with stealthy, prowling, crawling steps, and
+an occasional short, quick leap or bound to one side or the other, was
+a magnificent tigress, looking the very personification of baffled
+fury. Ever and anon she crouched down to the earth, tore up the sand
+with her claws, lashed her tail from side to side, and with lips
+retracted, long moustaches quivering with wrath, and hateful eyes
+scintillating with rage and fury, she seemed to meditate an attack on
+the angry buffaloes. The serried array of clashing horns, and the
+ponderous bulk of the herd, seemed however to daunt the snarling
+vixen; at their next rush she would bound back a few paces, crouch
+down, growl, and be forced to move back again, by the short,
+blundering rush of the crowd.
+
+All the calves and old cows were in the rear of the herd, and it was
+not a little comical to witness their ungainly attitudes. They would
+stretch their clumsy necks, and shake their heads, as if they did not
+rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they stopped too
+long to indulge their curiosity, there was a danger of their getting
+separated from the fighting members of the herd, they would make a
+stupid, headlong, lumbering lurch forward, and jostle each other, in
+their blundering panic.
+
+It was a grand sight. The tigress was the embodiment of lithe and
+savage beauty, but her features expressed the wildest baffled rage. I
+could have shot the striped vixen over and over again, but I wished to
+keep her for my friends, and I was thrilled with the excitement of
+such a novel scene.
+
+Suddenly our elephant trumpeted, and shied quickly to one side, from
+something lying on the ground. Curling up its trunk it began backing
+and piping at a prodigious rate.
+
+'Hullo! what's the matter now?' said I to Debnarain.
+
+'God only knows,' said he.
+
+'A young tiger!' 'Bagh ka butcha!' screams our mahout, and regardless
+of the elephant or of our cries to stop, he scuttled down the pad rope
+like a monkey down a backstay, and clutching a young dead tiger cub,
+threw it up to Debnarain; it was about the size of a small poodle, and
+had evidently been trampled by the pursuing herd of buffaloes.
+
+'There may be others,' said the gomasta; and peering into every bush,
+we went slowly on.
+
+The elephant now shewed decided symptoms of dislike and a reluctance
+to approach a particular dense clump of grass.
+
+A sounding whack on the head, however, made her quicken her steps, and
+thrusting the long stalks aside, she discovered for us three blinking
+little cubs, brothers of the defunct, and doubtless part of the same
+litter. Their eyes were scarcely open, and they lay huddled together
+like three enormous striped kittens, and spat at us and bristled their
+little moustaches much as an angry cat would do. All the four were
+males.
+
+It was not long ere I had them carefully wrapped in the mahout's
+blanket. Overjoyed at our good fortune, we left the excited buffaloes
+still executing their singular war-dance, and the angry tigress,
+robbed of her whelps, consuming her soul in baffled fury.
+
+We heard her roaring through the night, close to camp, and on my
+friends' arrival, we beat her up next morning, and she fell pierced by
+three bullets, after a fierce and determined charge. We came upon her
+across the nullah, and her mind was evidently made up to fight. Nearly
+all the villagers had turned out with the line of elephants. Before we
+had time to order them away, she came down upon the line, roaring
+furiously, and bounding over the long grass,--a most magnificent
+sight.
+
+My first bullet took her full in the chest, and before she could make
+good her charge, a ball each from Pat and Captain G. settled her
+career. She was beautifully striped, and rather large for a tigress,
+measuring nine feet three inches.
+
+It was now a question with me, how to rear the three interesting
+orphans; we thought a slut from some of the villages would prove the
+best wet nurse, and tried accordingly to get one, but could not. In
+the meantime an unhappy goat was pounced on and the three young-tigers
+took to her teats as if 'to the manner born.' The poor Nanny screamed
+tremendously at first sight of them, but she soon got accustomed to
+them, and when they grew a little bigger, she would often playfully
+butt at them with her horns.
+
+The little brutes throve wonderfully, and soon developed such an
+appetite that I had to get no less than six goats to satisfy their
+constant thirst. I kept the cubs for over two months, and I shall not
+soon forget the excitement I caused, when my boat stopped at
+Sahribgunge, and my goats, tiger cubs, and attendants, formed a
+procession from the ghat or landing-place, to the railway station.
+
+Soldiers, guards, engineers, travellers, and crowds of natives
+surrounded me, and at every station the guard's van, with my novel
+menagerie, was the centre of attraction. I sold the cubs to Jamrach's
+agent in Calcutta for a very satisfactory price. Two of them were very
+powerful, finely marked, handsome animals; the third had always been
+sickly, had frequent convulsions, and died a few days after I sold it.
+I was afterwards told that the milk diet was a mistake, and that I
+should have fed them on raw meat. However, I was very well satisfied
+on the whole with the result of my adventure.
+
+I had another in the same part of the country, which at the time was a
+pretty good test of the state of my nerves.
+
+I was camped out at the village of Purindaha, on the edge of a gloomy
+sal forest, which was reported to contain numerous leopards. The
+villagers were a mixed lot of low-caste Hindoos, and Nepaulese
+settlers. They had been fighting with the factory, and would not pay
+up their rents, and I was trying, with every probability of success,
+to make an amicable arrangement with them. At all events, I had so far
+won them round, that they were willing to talk to me. They came to the
+tent and listened quietly, and except on the subject of rent, we got
+on in the most friendly manner.
+
+It was the middle of April. The heat was intense. The whole atmosphere
+had that coppery look which denotes extreme heat, and the air was
+loaded with fine yellow dust, which the daily west wind bore on its
+fever laden wings, to disturb the lungs and tempers of all good
+Christians. The _kanats_, or canvas walls of the tent, had all been
+taken down for coolness, and my camp bed lay in one corner, open all
+round to the outside air, but only sheltered from the dew. It had been
+a busy day. I had been going over accounts, and talking to the
+villagers till I was really hoarse. After a light dinner I lay down on
+my bed, but it was too close and hot to sleep. By and bye the various
+sounds died out. The tom-toming ceased in the village. My servants
+suspended their low muttered gossip round the cook's fire, wrapped
+themselves in their white cloths, and dropped into slumber. 'Toby,'
+'Nettle,' 'Whisky,' 'Pincher,' and my other terriers, resembled so
+many curled-up hairy balls, and were in the land of dreams.
+Occasionally an owl would give a melancholy hoot from the forest, or a
+screech owl would raise a momentary and damnable din. At intervals,
+the tinkle of a cow-bell sounded faintly in the distance. I tossed
+restlessly, thinking of various things, till I must have dropped off
+into an uneasy fitful sleep. I know not how long I had been dozing,
+but of a sudden I felt myself wide awake, though with my eyes yet
+firmly closed.
+
+I was conscious of some terrible unknown impending danger. I had
+experienced the same feeling before on waking from a nightmare, but I
+knew that the danger now was real. I felt a shrinking horror, a
+terrible and nameless fear, and for the life of me I could not move
+hand or foot. I was lying on my side, and could distinctly hear the
+thumping of my heart. A cold sweat broke out behind my ears and over
+my neck and chest. I could analyse my every feeling, and I knew there
+was some PRESENCE in the tent, and that I was in instant and imminent
+peril. Suddenly in the distance a pariah dog gave a prolonged
+melancholy howl. As if this had broken the spell which had hitherto
+bound me, I opened my eyes, and within ten inches of my face, there
+was a handsome leopardess gazing steadily at me. Our eyes met, and how
+long we confronted each other I know not. It must have been some
+minutes. Her eyes contracted and expanded, the pupil elongated and
+then opened out into a round lustrous globe. I could see the lithe
+tail oscillating at its extreme tip, with a gentle waving motion, like
+that of a cat when hunting birds in the garden. I seemed to possess no
+will. I believe I was under a species of fascination, but we continued
+our steady stare at each other.
+
+Just then, there was a movement by some of the horses. The leopard
+slowly turned her head, and I grasped the revolver which lay under my
+pillow. The beautiful spotted monster turned her head for an instant,
+and shewed her teeth, and then with one bound went through the open
+side of the tent. I fired two shots, which were answered with a roar.
+The din that followed would have frightened the devil. It was a
+beautiful clear night, with a moon at the full, and everything shewed
+as plainly as at noonday. The servants uttered exclamations of terror.
+The terriers went into an agony of yelps and barks. The horses
+snorted, and tried to get loose, and my chowkeydar, who had been
+asleep on his watch, thinking a band of dacoits were on us, began
+laying round him with his staff, shouting, _Chor, Chor! lagga, lagga,
+lagga!_ that is, 'thief, thief! lay on, lay on, lay on!'
+
+The leopard was hit, and evidently in a terrible temper. She halted
+not thirty paces from the tent, beside a jhamun tree, and seemed
+undecided whether to go on or return and wreak her vengeance on me.
+That moment decided her fate. I snatched down my Express rifle, which
+was hanging in two loops above my bed, and shot her right through the
+heart.
+
+I never understood how she could have made her way past dogs,
+servants, horses, and watchman, right into the tent, without raising
+some alarm. It must have been more from curiosity than any hostile
+design. I know that my nerves were very rudely shaken, but I became
+the hero of the Purindaha villagers. I believe that my night adventure
+with the leopardess did more to bring them round to a settlement than
+all my eloquence and figures.
+
+The river Koosee, on the banks of which, and in the long grass plains
+adjacent, most of the incidents I have recorded took place, takes its
+rise at the base of Mount Everest, and, after draining nearly the
+whole of Eastern. Nepaul, emerges by a deep gorge from the hills at
+the north-west corner of Purneah. The stream runs with extreme
+velocity. It is known as a snow stream. The water is always cold, and
+generally of a milky colour, containing much fine white sand. No
+sooner does it leave its rocky bed than it tears through the flat
+country by numerous channels. It is subject to very sudden rises. A
+premonitory warning of these is generally given. The water becomes of
+a turbid, almost blood-like colour. Sometimes I have seen the river
+rise over thirty feet in twenty-four hours. The melting of the snow
+often makes a raging torrent, level from bank to bank, where only a
+few hours before a horse could have forded the stream without wetting
+the girths of the saddle.
+
+In 1876 the largest channel was a swift broad stream called the Dhaus.
+The river is very capricious, seldom flowing for any length of time in
+one channel. This is owing in great measure to the amount of silt it
+carries with it from the hills, in its impetuous progress to the
+plains.
+
+In these dry watercourses, among the sand ridges, beside the humid
+marshy hollows, and among the thick strips of grass jungle, tigers are
+always to be found. They are much less numerous now however than
+formerly. As a rule, there is no shelter in these water-worn,
+flood-ravaged tracts and sultry jungles. Occasionally a few straggling
+plantain trees, a clump of sickly-looking bamboos, a cluster of tall
+shadowless palms, marks the site of a deserted village. All else is
+waving grass, withered and dry. The villages, inhabited mostly by a
+few cowherds, boatmen, and rice-farmers are scattered at wide
+intervals. In the shooting season, and when the hot winds are blowing,
+the only shadow on the plain is that cast by the dense volumes of
+lurid smoke, rising in blinding clouds from the jungle fires.
+
+According to the season, animal life fluctuates strangely. During the
+rains, when the river is in full flood, and much of the country
+submerged, most of the animals migrate to the North, buffaloes and
+wild pig alone keeping possession, of the higher ridges in the
+neighbourhood of their usual haunts.
+
+The contrasts presented on these plains at different seasons of the
+year are most remarkable. In March and April they are parched up,
+brown, and dead; great black patches showing the track of a destroying
+fire, the fine brown ash from the burnt grass penetrating the eyes and
+nostrils, and sweeping along in eddying and blinding clouds. They then
+look the very picture of an untenable waste, a sea of desolation,
+whose limits blend in the extreme distance with the shimmering coppery
+horizon. In the rainy season these arid-looking wastes are covered
+with tall-plumed, reed-like, waving grass, varying from two to ten
+feet in height, stretching in an unbroken sweep as far as the eye can
+reach, except where an abrupt line shews that the swift river has its
+treacherous course. After the rains, progress through the jungle is
+dangerous. Quicksands and beds of tenacious mud impede one at every
+step. The rich vegetation springs up green and vigorous, with a
+rapidity only to be seen in the Tropics. But what a glorious hunting
+ground! What a preserve for Nimrod! Deer forest, or heathered moor,
+can never compete with the old Koosee Derahs for abundance of game and
+thrilling excitement in sport. My genial, happy, loyal comrades
+too--while memory lasts the recollection of your joyous, frank,
+warm-hearted comradeship shall never fade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Remarks on guns.--How to cure skins.--Different recipes.--Conclusion.
+
+My remarks on guns shall be brief. The true sportsman has many
+facilities for acquiring the best information on a choice of weapons.
+For large game perhaps nothing can equal the Express rifle. My own
+trusty weapon was a '500 bore, very plain, with a pistol grip, point
+blank up to 180 yards, made by Murcott of the Haymarket, from whom I
+have bought over twenty guns, every one of which turned out a splendid
+weapon.
+
+My next favourite was a No. 12 breachloader, very light, but strong
+and carefully finished. It had a side snap action with rebounding
+locks, and was the quickest gun to fire and reload I ever possessed. I
+bought it from the same maker, although it was manufactured by W.W.
+Greener.
+
+Avoid a cheap gun as you would avoid a cheap Jew pedlar. A good name
+is above riches so far as a gun is concerned, and when you have a good
+gun take as much care of it as you would of a good wife. They are both
+equally rare. An expensive gun is not necessarily a good one, but a
+cheap gun is very seldom trustworthy. Have a portable, handy black
+leather case. Keep your gun always clean, bright, and free from rust.
+After every day's shooting see that the barrels and locks are
+carefully cleaned and oiled. Nothing is better for this purpose than
+rangoon oil.
+
+For preserving horns, a little scraping and varnishing are all that is
+required. While in camp it is a good plan to rub them with deer, or
+pig, or tiger fat, as it keeps them from cracking.
+
+To clean a tiger's or other skull. If there be a nest of ants near the
+camp, place the skull in their immediate vicinity. Some recommend
+putting in water till the particles of flesh rot, or till the skull is
+cleared by the fishes. A strong solution of caustic water may be used
+if you wish to get the bones cleaned very quickly. Some put the skulls
+in quicklime, but it has a tendency to make the bones splinter, and it
+is difficult to keep the teeth from getting loose and dropping out.
+The best but slowest plan is to fix them in mechanically by wire or
+white lead. A good preservative is to wash or paint them with a very
+strong solution of fine lime and water.
+
+To cure skins. I know no better recipe than the one adopted by my
+trainers in the art of _shibar_, the brothers S. I cannot do better
+than give a description of the process in the words of George himself.
+
+'Skin the animal in the usual way. Cut from the corner of the mouth,
+down the throat, and along the belly. A white stripe or border
+generally runs along the belly. This should be left as nearly as
+possible equal on both sides. Carefully cut the fleshy parts off the
+lips and balls of the toes and feet. Clean away every particle of
+fatty or fleshy matter that may still adhere to the skin. Peg it out
+on the ground with the hair side undermost. When thoroughly scraped
+clean of all extraneous matter on the inner surface, get a bucket or
+tub of buttermilk, which is called by the natives _dahye_ or _mutha_.
+It is a favourite article of diet with them, cheap and plentiful. Dip
+the skin in this, and keep it well and entirely submerged by placing
+some heavy weight on it. It should be submerged fully three inches in
+the tub of buttermilk.
+
+'After two days in the milk bath, take it out and peg it as before.
+Now take a smooth oval rubbing-board about twelve inches long, five
+round, and about an inch thick in the middle, and scrub the skin
+heartily with this instrument. On its lower surface it should be cuts
+in grooves, semicircular in shape, half an inch wide, and one inch
+apart. During scrubbing use plenty of pure water to remove filth. In
+about half an hour the pinkish-white colour will disappear, and the
+skin will appear white, with a blackish tinge underneath. This is the
+true hide.
+
+'Again submerge in the buttermilk bath for twenty-four hours, and get
+a man to tread on it in every possible way, folding it and unfolding
+it, till all has been thoroughly worked.
+
+'Take it out again, peg out and scrub it as before, after which wash
+the whole hide well in clear water. Never mind if the skin looks
+rotten, it is really not so.
+
+'When washed put it into a tub, in which you have first placed a
+mixture consisting of half an ounce of alum to each gallon of water.
+Soak the skin in this mixture for about six hours, taking it up
+occasionally to drain a little. This is sufficient to cure your skin
+and clean it.'
+
+The tanning remains to be done.
+
+'Get four pounds of babool, tamarind, or dry oak bark. (The babool is
+a kind of acacia, and is easily procurable, as the tamarind also is).
+Boil the bark in two gallons of water till it is reduced to one half
+the quantity. Add to this nine gallons of fresh water, and in this
+solution souse the skin for two, or three, or four days.
+
+'The hairs having been set by the soaking in alum, the skin will tan
+more quickly, and if the tan is occasionally rubbed into the pores of
+the skin it will be an improvement. You can tell when the tanning is
+complete by the colour the skin assumes. When this satisfies the eye,
+take it out and drain on a rod. When nearly dry it should be curried
+with olive oil or clarified butter if required for wear, but if only
+for floor covering or carriage rug, the English curriers' common
+'dubbin,' sold by shopkeepers, is best. This operation, which must be
+done on the inner side only, is simple.
+
+'Another simple recipe, and one which answers well, is this. Mix
+together of the best English soap, four ounces; arsenic, two and a
+half grains; camphor, two ounces; alum, half an ounce; saltpetre, half
+an ounce. Boil the whole, and keep stirring, in a half-pint of
+distilled water, over a very slow fire, for from ten to fifteen
+minutes. Apply when cool with a sponge. A little sweet oil may be
+rubbed on the skins after they are dry.
+
+'Another good method is to apply arsenical soap, which may be made as
+follows: powdered arsenic, two pounds; camphor, five ounces; white
+soap, sliced thin, two pounds; salt of tartar, twelve drams; chalk, or
+powdered fine lime, four ounces; add a small quantity of water first
+to the soap, put over a gentle fire, and keep stirring. When melted,
+add the lime and tartar, and thoroughly mix; next add the arsenic,
+keeping up a constant motion, and lastly the camphor. The camphor
+should first be reduced to a powder by means of a little spirits of
+wine, and should be added to the mess after it has been taken off the
+fire.
+
+'This preparation must be kept in a well-stoppered jar, or properly
+closed pot. When ready, the soap should be of the consistency of
+Devonshire cream. To use, add water till it becomes of the consistency
+of clear rich soup.'
+
+I have now finished my book. It has been pleasant to me to write down
+these recollections. Ever since I began my task, death has been busy,
+and the ranks of my friends have been sadly thinned. Failing health
+has driven me from my old shooting grounds, and in sunny Australia I
+have been trying to recruit the energies enervated by the burning
+climate of India. That my dear old planter friends may have as kindly
+recollections of 'the Maori' as he has of them, is what I ardently
+hope; that I may yet get back to share in the sports, pastimes, joys,
+and social delights of Mofussil life in India, is what I chiefly
+desire. If this volume meets the approbation of the public, I may be
+tempted to draw further on a well-stocked memory, and gossip afresh on
+Indian life, Indian experiences, and Indian sport. Meantime, courteous
+reader, farewell.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+by James Inglis
+
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+Frontier by "Maori"</title>
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+
+Project Gutenberg's Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier, by James Inglis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+       Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter
+
+Author: James Inglis
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2004 [EBook #10818]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN NEPAUL ***
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+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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+
+<h1>SPORT AND WORK<br>
+ON THE<br>
+NEPAUL FRONTIER</h1>
+<h2>OR</h2>
+<h1>TWELVE YEARS<br>
+SPORTING REMINISCENCES<br>
+OF AN INDIGO PLANTER</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>By "MAORI"</h2>
+<h2>1878</h2>
+<hr size="3" width="80%" align="center" noshade>
+<br>
+<a name="01"></a>
+<center><img src="Images/01.jpg" alt="Tiger Hunting--Return to
+the Camp" width="566" height="360" hspace="4" vspace="8"></center>
+
+<center><i>Tiger Hunting&mdash;Return to the Camp</i></center>
+
+<hr size="3" width="80%" align="center" noshade>
+
+
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+<p>I went home in 1875 for a few months, after some twelve years'
+residence in India. What first suggested the writing of such a book
+as this, was the amazing ignorance of ordinary Indian life betrayed
+by people at home. The questions asked me about India, and our
+daily life there, showed in many cases such an utter want of
+knowledge, that I thought, surely there is room here for a chatty,
+familiar, unpretentious book for friends at home, giving an account
+of our every-day life in India, our labours and amusements, our
+toils and relaxations, and a few pictures of our ordinary daily
+surroundings in the far, far East.</p>
+<p>Such then is the design of my book. I want to picture to my
+readers Planter Life in the Mofussil, or country districts of
+India; to tell them of our hunting, shooting, fishing, and other
+amusements; to describe our work, our play, and matter-of-fact
+incidents in our daily life; to describe the natives as they appear
+to us in our intimate every-day dealings with them; to illustrate
+their manners, customs, dispositions, observances and sayings, so
+far as these bear on our own social life.</p>
+<p>I am no politician, no learned ethnologist, no sage theorist. I
+simply try to describe what I have seen, and hope to enlist the
+attention and interest of my readers, in my reminiscences of sport
+and labour, in the villages and jungles on the far off frontier of
+Nepaul.</p>
+<p>I have tried to express my meaning as far as possible without
+Anglo-Indian and Hindustani words; where these have been used, as
+at times they could not but be, I have given a synonymous word or
+phrase in English, so that all my friends at home may know my
+meaning.</p>
+<p>I know that my friends will be lenient to my faults, and even
+the sternest critic, if he look for it, may find some pleasure and
+profit in my pages.</p>
+<p>JAS. INGLIS.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr align="center" size="2" width="70%" noshade>
+<center>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2></center>
+<a href="#ChapterI."><strong>CHAPTER I.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Province of
+Behar.&mdash;Boundaries.&mdash;General description.&mdash;District
+of Chumparun.&mdash;Mooteeharree.&mdash;The town and
+lake.&mdash;Native houses.&mdash;The Planters'
+Club.&mdash;Legoulie.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterII."><strong>CHAPTER II.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">My first charge.&mdash;How we get our
+lands.&mdash;Our home farm.&mdash;System of
+farming.&mdash;Collection of rents.&mdash;The planter's duties.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterIII."><strong>CHAPTER III.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">How to get our crop.&mdash;The
+'Dangurs.'&mdash;Farm servants and their duties.&mdash;Kassee
+Rai.&mdash;Hoeing.&mdash;Ploughing.&mdash;'Oustennie.'&mdash;Coolies
+at Work.&mdash;Sowing.&mdash;Difficulties the plant has to contend
+with.&mdash;Weeding.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterIV."><strong>CHAPTER IV.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Manufacture of Indigo.&mdash;Loading the
+vats.&mdash;Beating.&mdash;Boiling, straining, and
+pressing.&mdash;Scene in the Factory.&mdash;Fluctuation of
+produce.&mdash;Chemistry of Indigo.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterV."><strong>CHAPTER V.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Parewah factory.&mdash;A 'Bobbery
+Pack.'&mdash;Hunt through a village after a cat.&mdash;The pariah
+dog of India.&mdash;Fate of 'Pincher.'&mdash;Rampore
+hound.&mdash;Persian greyhound.&mdash;Caboolee dogs.&mdash;A jackal
+hunt.&mdash;Incidents of the chase.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterVI."><strong>CHAPTER VI.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Fishing in India.&mdash;Hereditary
+trades.&mdash;The boatmen and fishermen of India.&mdash;Their
+villages.&mdash;Nets.&mdash;Modes of fishing.&mdash;Curiosities
+relating thereto.&mdash;Catching an alligator with a
+hook.&mdash;Exciting capture.&mdash;Crocodiles.&mdash;Shooting an
+alligator.&mdash;Death of the man-eater.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterVII."><strong>CHAPTER VII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Native superstitions.&mdash;Charming a
+bewitched woman.&mdash;Exorcising ghosts from a
+field.&mdash;Witchcraft.&mdash;The witchfinder or
+'Ojah,'&mdash;Influence of fear.&mdash;Snake bites.&mdash;How to
+cure them.&mdash;How to discover a thief.&mdash;Ghosts and their
+habits.&mdash;The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.&mdash;Cruelty to
+animals by natives.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterVIII."><strong>CHAPTER VIII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Our annual race meet.&mdash;The
+arrivals.&mdash;The camps.&mdash;The 'ordinary,'&mdash;The
+course.&mdash;'They're off.'&mdash;The race.&mdash;The
+steeple-chase.&mdash;Incidents of the meet.&mdash;The ball.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterIX."><strong>CHAPTER IX.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Pig-sticking in India.&mdash;Varieties of
+boar.&mdash;Their size and height. &mdash;Ingenious mode of capture
+by the natives.&mdash;The 'Batan' or buffalo herd.&mdash;Pigs
+charging.&mdash;Their courage and ferocity.&mdash;Destruction of
+game.&mdash;A close season for game.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterX."><strong>CHAPTER X.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Kuderent jungle.&mdash;Charged by a
+pig.&mdash;The biter bit.&mdash;'Mac' after the big boar.&mdash;The
+horse for pig-sticking.&mdash;The line of beaters.&mdash;The boar
+breaks.&mdash;'Away! Away!'&mdash;First spear.&mdash;Pig-sticking
+at Peeprah.&mdash;The old 'lungra' or cripple.&mdash;A boar at
+bay.&mdash;Hurrah for pig-sticking!</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXI."><strong>CHAPTER XI.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">The sal forests.&mdash;The jungle
+goddess.&mdash;The trees in the jungle. &mdash;Appearance of the
+forests.&mdash;Birds.&mdash;Varieties of parrots.&mdash;A 'beat' in
+the forest.&mdash;The 'shekarry.'&mdash;Mehrman Singh and his
+gun.&mdash;The Banturs, a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.&mdash;Their
+habits.&mdash;A village feast.&mdash;We beat for deer.&mdash;Habits
+of the spotted deer.&mdash;Waiting for the game. &mdash;Mehrman
+Singh gets drunk.&mdash;Our bag.&mdash;Pea-fowl and their
+habits.&mdash;How to shoot them.&mdash;Curious custom of the
+Nepaulese.&mdash;How Juggroo was tricked, and his revenge.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXII."><strong>CHAPTER XII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">The leopard.&mdash;How to shoot
+him.&mdash;Gallant encounter with a wounded one.&mdash;Encounter
+with a leopard in a Dak bungalow.&mdash;Pat shoots two
+leopards.&mdash;Effects of the Express bullet.&mdash;The 'Sirwah
+Purrul,' or annual festival of huntsmen.&mdash;The Hindoo
+ryot.&mdash;Rice-planting and harvest.&mdash;Poverty of the
+ryot.&mdash;His apathy.&mdash;Village fires.&mdash;Want of
+sanitation.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXIII."><strong>CHAPTER XIII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Description of a native village.&mdash;Village
+functionaries.&mdash;The barber. &mdash;Bathing habits.&mdash;The
+village well.&mdash;The school.&mdash;The children.&mdash;The
+village bazaar.&mdash;The landowner and his dwelling.&mdash;The
+'Putwarrie' or village accountant.&mdash;The blacksmith.&mdash;The
+'Punchayiet' or village jury system.&mdash;Our legal system in
+India.&mdash;Remarks on the administration of justice.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXIV."><strong>CHAPTER XIV.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">A native village continued.&mdash;The watchman
+or 'chowkeydar.'&mdash;The temple.
+&mdash;Brahmins.&mdash;Idols.&mdash;Religion.&mdash;Humility of the
+poorer classes.&mdash;Their low condition.&mdash;Their
+apathy.&mdash;The police.&mdash;Their extortions and knavery.
+&mdash;An instance of police rascality.&mdash;Corruption of native
+officials.&mdash;The Hindoo unfit for self-government.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXV."><strong>CHAPTER XV.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Jungle wild fruits.&mdash;Curious method of
+catching quail.&mdash;Quail nets. &mdash;Quail caught in a
+blacksmith's shop.&mdash;Native wrestling.&mdash;The trainer.
+&mdash;How they train for a match.&mdash;Rules of
+wrestling.&mdash;Grips.&mdash;A wrestling match.&mdash;Incidents of
+the struggle.&mdash;Description of a match between a Brahmin and a
+blacksmith.&mdash;Sparring for the grip.&mdash;The blacksmith has
+it.&mdash;The struggle.&mdash;The Brahmin getting the worst of
+it.&mdash;Two to one on the little 'un!&mdash;The Brahmin plays the
+waiting game, turns the tables <i>and</i> the
+blacksmith.&mdash;Remarks on wrestling.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXVI."><strong>CHAPTER XVI.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Indigo seed growing.&mdash;Seed buying and
+buyers.&mdash;Tricks of sellers.&mdash;Tests for good
+seed.&mdash;The threshing-floor.&mdash;Seed cleaning and
+packing.&mdash;Staff of servants.&mdash;Despatching the bags by
+boat.&mdash;The 'Pooneah' or rent day. &mdash;Purneah
+planters&mdash;their hospitality.&mdash;The rent day a great
+festival. &mdash;Preparation.&mdash;Collection of
+rents.&mdash;Feast to retainers.&mdash;The reception in the
+evening.&mdash;Tribute.&mdash;Old customs.&mdash;Improvisatores and
+bards. &mdash;Nautches.&mdash;Dancing and music.&mdash;The dance of
+the Dangurs.&mdash;Jugglers and itinerary showmen.&mdash;'Bara
+Roopes,' or actors and mimics.&mdash;Their different styles of
+acting.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXVII."><strong>CHAPTER XVII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">The Koosee jungles.&mdash;Ferries.&mdash;Jungle
+roads.&mdash;The rhinoceros.&mdash;We go to visit a
+neighbour.&mdash;We lose our way and get belated.&mdash;We fall
+into a quicksand.&mdash;No ferry boat.&mdash;Camping out on the
+sand.&mdash;Two tigers close by.&mdash;We light a fire.&mdash;The
+boat at last arrives.&mdash;Crossing the stream. &mdash;Set fire to
+the boatman's hut.&mdash;Swim the horses.&mdash;They are nearly
+drowned.&mdash;We again lose our way in the jungle.&mdash;The
+towing path, and how boats are towed up the river.&mdash;We at last
+reach the factory.&mdash;News of rhinoceros in the
+morning.&mdash;Off we start, but arrive too late.&mdash;Death of
+the rhinoceros.&mdash;His
+dimensions.&mdash;Description.&mdash;Habits.&mdash;Rhinoceros in
+Nepaul.&mdash;The old 'Major Capt&#257;n.'&mdash;Description of
+Nepaulese scenery. &mdash;Immigration of Nepaulese.&mdash;Their
+fondness for fish.&mdash;They eat it putrid.&mdash;Exclusion of
+Europeans from Nepaul.&mdash;Resources of the country. &mdash;Must
+sooner or later be opened up.&mdash;Influences at work to elevate
+the people.&mdash;Planters and factories chief of
+these.&mdash;Character of the planter.&mdash;Has claims to
+consideration from government.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXVIII."><strong>CHAPTER XVIII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">The tiger.&mdash;His habitat.&mdash;Shooting on
+foot.&mdash;Modes of shooting.&mdash;A tiger hunt on
+foot.&mdash;The scene of the hunt.&mdash;The beat.&mdash;Incidents
+of the hunt.&mdash;Fireworks.&mdash;The tiger charges.&mdash;The
+elephant bolts.&mdash;The tigress will not break.&mdash;We kill a
+half-grown cub.&mdash;Try again for the
+tigress.&mdash;Unsuccessful.&mdash;Exaggerations in tiger
+stories.&mdash;My authorities.&mdash;The brothers S.&mdash;Ferocity
+and structure of the tiger.&mdash;His devastations.&mdash;His
+frame-work, teeth, &amp;c.&mdash;A tiger at bay.&mdash;His
+unsociable habits.&mdash;Fight between tiger and
+tigress.&mdash;Young tigers.&mdash;Power and strength of the
+tiger.&mdash;Examples.&mdash;His cowardice. &mdash;Charge of a
+wounded tiger.&mdash;Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+&mdash;A spined tiger.&mdash;Boldness of young
+tigers.&mdash;Cruelty.&mdash;Cunning.&mdash;Night scenes in the
+jungle.&mdash;Tiger killed by a wild boar.&mdash;His cautious
+habits.&mdash;General remarks.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXIX."><strong>CHAPTER XIX.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">The tiger's mode of attack.&mdash;The food he
+prefers.&mdash;Varieties of prey. &mdash;Examples.&mdash;What he
+eats first.&mdash;How to tell the kill of a tiger. &mdash;Appetite
+fierce.&mdash;Tiger choked by a bone.&mdash;Two varieties of tiger.
+&mdash;The royal Bengal.&mdash;Description.&mdash;The hill
+tiger.&mdash;His description. &mdash;The two compared.&mdash;Length
+of the tiger.&mdash;How to measure tigers.
+&mdash;Measurements.&mdash;Comparison between male and
+female.&mdash;Number of young at a birth.&mdash;The young
+cubs.&mdash;Mother teaching cubs to kill. &mdash;Education and
+progress of the young tiger.&mdash;Wariness and cunning of the
+tiger.&mdash;Hunting incidents shewing their powers of concealment.
+&mdash;Tigers taking to water.&mdash;Examples.&mdash;Swimming
+powers.&mdash;Caught by floods.&mdash;Story of the Soonderbund
+tigers.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXX."><strong>CHAPTER XX.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">No regular breeding season.&mdash;Beliefs and
+prejudices of the natives about tigers.&mdash;Bravery of the
+'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.&mdash;Claw-marks on
+trees.&mdash;Fondness for particular localities.&mdash;Tiger in Mr.
+F.'s howdah.&mdash;Springing powers of tigers.&mdash;Lying close in
+cover.&mdash;Incident. &mdash;Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.&mdash;Man
+clawed by a tiger.&mdash;Knocked its eye out with a
+sickle.&mdash;Same tiger subsequently shot in same
+place.&mdash;Tigers easily killed.&mdash;Instances.&mdash;Effect of
+shells on tiger and buffalo.&mdash;Best weapon and bullets for
+tiger.&mdash;Poisoning tigers denounced.&mdash;Natives prone to
+exaggerate in giving news of tiger.&mdash;Anecdote.&mdash;Beating
+for tiger.&mdash;Line of elephants.&mdash;Padding dead
+game.&mdash;Line of seventy-six elephants.&mdash;Captain of the
+hunt.&mdash;Flags for signals in the line. &mdash;'Naka,' or scout
+ahead.&mdash;Usual time for tiger shooting on the Koosee.
+&mdash;Firing the jungle.&mdash;The line of fire at
+night.&mdash;Foolish to shoot at moving jungle.&mdash;Never shoot
+down the line.&mdash;Motions of different animals in the grass.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXI."><strong>CHAPTER XXI.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Howdahs and howdah-ropes.&mdash;Mussulman
+custom.&mdash;Killing animals for food. &mdash;Mysterious
+appearance of natives when an animal is killed.&mdash;Fastening
+dead tigers to the pad.&mdash;Present mode wants
+improving.&mdash;Incident illustrative of this.&mdash;Dangerous to
+go close to wounded tigers. &mdash;Examples.&mdash;Footprints of
+tigers.&mdash;Call of the tiger.&mdash;Natives and their powers of
+description.&mdash;How to beat successfully for tiger.
+&mdash;Description of a beat.&mdash;Disputes among the
+shooters.&mdash;Awarding tigers.&mdash;Cutting open the
+tiger.&mdash;Native idea about the liver of the tiger.&mdash;Signs
+of a tiger's presence in the jungle.&mdash;Vultures.&mdash;Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?&mdash;A vulture carrion feast.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXII."><strong>CHAPTER XXII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul
+frontier.&mdash;Indian scenery near the border.&mdash;Lose our
+way.&mdash;Cold night.&mdash;The river by night.&mdash;Our boat and
+boatmen.&mdash;Tigers calling on the bank.&mdash;An anxious
+moment.&mdash;Fire at and wound the tigress.&mdash;Reach
+camp.&mdash;The Nepaulee's adventure with a tiger.&mdash;The old
+Major.&mdash;His appearance and manners.&mdash;The pompous
+Jemadar.&mdash;Nepaulese proverb.&mdash;Firing the
+jungle.&mdash;Start a tiger and shoot him.&mdash;Another in
+front.&mdash;Appearance of the fires by night.&mdash;The tiger
+escapes.&mdash;Too dark to follow up.&mdash;Coolie shot by mistake
+during a former hunt.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXIII."><strong>CHAPTER XXIII.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">We resume the beat.&mdash;The
+hog-deer.&mdash;Nepaulese villages.&mdash;Village
+granaries.&mdash;Tiger in front.&mdash;A hit! a
+hit!&mdash;Following up the wounded tiger.&mdash;Find him
+dead.&mdash;Tiffin in the village.&mdash;The Patair jungle.
+&mdash;Search for tiger.&mdash;Gone away!&mdash;An elephant
+steeplechase in pursuit. &mdash;Exciting chase.&mdash;The Morung
+jungle.&mdash;Magnificent scenery.&mdash;Skinning the
+tiger.&mdash;Incidents of tiger hunting.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXIV."><strong>CHAPTER XXIV.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Camp of the Nepaulee
+chief.&mdash;Quicksands.&mdash;Elephants crossing rivers.
+&mdash;Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.&mdash;We beat the forest for
+tiger.&mdash;Shoot a young tiger.&mdash;Red ants in the
+forest.&mdash;Bhowras or ground bees.&mdash;The <i>ursus
+labialis</i> or long-lipped bear.&mdash;Recross the stream.
+&mdash;Florican.&mdash;Stag running the gauntlet of
+flame.&mdash;Our bag.&mdash;Start for factory.&mdash;Remarks on
+elephants.&mdash;Precautions useful for protection from the sun in
+tiger shooting.&mdash;The <i>puggree</i>.&mdash;Cattle breeding in
+India, and wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.&mdash;Nathpore.
+&mdash;Ravages of the river.&mdash;Mrs. Gray, an old resident in
+the jungles. &mdash;Description of her surroundings.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXV."><strong>CHAPTER XXV.</strong></a>
+<p class="indented">Exciting jungle scene.&mdash;The
+camp.&mdash;All quiet.&mdash;Advent of the cow-herds. &mdash;A
+tiger close by.&mdash;Proceed to the spot.&mdash;Encounter between
+tigress and buffaloes.&mdash;Strange behaviour of the
+elephant.&mdash;Discovery and capture of four cubs.&mdash;Joyful
+return to camp.&mdash;Death of the tigress. &mdash;Night encounter
+with a leopard.&mdash;The haunts of the tiger and our shooting
+grounds.</p>
+<a href="#ChapterXXVI."><strong>CHAPTER XXVI.</strong></a>
+<p>Remarks on guns.&mdash;How to cure skins.&mdash;Different
+Recipes.&mdash;Conclusion.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr align="center" size="2" width="70%" noshade>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+<p><a href="#01">Tiger Hunting&mdash;Return to the Camp</a></p>
+<p><a href="#02">Coolie's Hut</a></p>
+<p><a href="#03">Indigo Beating Vats</a></p>
+<p><a href="#04">Indigo Beaters at Work in the Vats</a></p>
+<p><a href="#05">Indian Factory Peon</a></p>
+<p><a href="#06">Indigo Planter's House</a></p>
+<p><a href="#07">Pig Stickers</a></p>
+<p><a href="#08">Carpenters and Blacksmiths at Work</a></p>
+<p><a href="#09">Hindoo Village Temples</a></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr align="center" size="2" width="70%" noshade>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Province of
+Behar.&mdash;Boundaries.&mdash;General description.&mdash;District
+of Chumparun.&mdash;Mooteeharree.&mdash;The town and
+lake.&mdash;Native houses.&mdash;The Planters'
+Club.&mdash;Legoulie.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Among the many beautiful and fertile provinces of India, none
+can, I think, much excel that of Behar for richness of soil,
+diversity of race, beauty of scenery, and the energy and
+intelligence of its inhabitants. Stretching from the Nepaul hills
+to the far distant plains of Gya, with the Gunduch, Bogmuttee and
+other noble streams watering its rich bosom, and swelling with
+their tribute the stately Ganges, it includes every variety of soil
+and climate; and its various races, with their strange costumes,
+creeds, and customs, might afford material to fill volumes.</p>
+<p>The northern part of this splendid province follows the
+Nepaulese boundary from the district of Goruchpore on the north, to
+that of Purneah on the south. In the forests and jungles along this
+boundary line live many strange tribes, whose customs, and even
+their names and language, are all but unknown to the English
+public. Strange wild animals dispute with these aborigines the
+possession of the gloomy jungle solitudes. Great trees of wondrous
+dimensions and strange foliage rear their stately heads to heaven,
+and are matted and entwined together by creepers of huge size and
+tenacious hold.</p>
+<p>To the south and east vast billows of golden grain roll in
+successive undulations to the mighty Ganges, the sacred stream of
+the Hindoos. Innumerable villages, nestling amid groves of
+plantains and feathery rustling bamboos, send up their wreaths of
+pale grey smoke into the still warm air. At frequent intervals the
+steely blue of some lovely lake, where thousands of water-fowl
+disport themselves, reflects from its polished surface the sheen of
+the noonday sun. Great masses of mango wood shew a sombre outline
+at intervals, and here and there the towering chimney of an indigo
+factory pierces the sky. Government roads and embankments intersect
+the face of the country in all directions, and vast sheets of the
+indigo plant refresh the eye with their plains of living green,
+forming a grateful contrast to the hard, dried, sun-baked surface
+of the stubble fields, where the rice crop has rustled in the
+breezes of the past season. In one of the loveliest and most
+fertile districts of this vast province, namely, Chumparun, I began
+my experiences as an indigo planter.</p>
+<p>Chumparun with its subdistrict of Bettiah, lies to the north of
+Tirhoot, and is bounded all along its northern extent by the Nepaul
+hills and forests. When I joined my appointment as assistant on one
+of the large indigo concerns there, there were not more than about
+thirty European residents altogether in the district. The chief
+town, Mooteeharree, consisted of a long <i>bazaar</i>, or market
+street, beautifully situated on the bank of a lovely lake, some two
+miles in length. From the main street, with its quaint little shops
+sheltered from the sun by makeshift verandahs of tattered sacking,
+weather-stained shingles, or rotting bamboo mats, various little
+lanes and alleys diverged, leading one into a collection of
+tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up apparently by chance, and
+presenting the most incongruous appearance that could possibly be
+conceived. One or two <i>pucca</i> houses, that is, houses of brick
+and masonry, shewed where some wealthy Bunneah (trader) or usurious
+banker lived, but the majority of the houses were of the usual mud
+and bamboo order. There is a small thatched hut where the meals
+were cooked, and where the owner and his family could sleep during
+the rains. Another smaller hut at right angles to this, gives
+shelter to the family goat, or, if they are rich enough to keep
+one, the cow. All round the villages in India there are generally
+large patches of common, where the village cows have free rights of
+pasture; and all who can, keep either a cow or a couple of goats,
+the milk from which forms a welcome addition to their usual scanty
+fare. In this second hut also is stored as much fuel, consisting of
+dried cow-dung, straw, maize-stalks, leaves, etc., as can be
+collected; and a ragged fence of bamboo or <i>rahur</i><a href=
+"#footnoteA1"><sup>1</sup></a> stalks encloses the two unprotected
+sides, thus forming inside a small court, quadrangle, or square.
+This court is the native's <i>sanctum sanctorum</i>. It is kept
+scrupulously clean, being swept and garnished religiously every
+day. In this the women prepare the rice for the day's consumption;
+here they cut up and clean their vegetables, or their fish, when
+the adjacent lake has been dragged by the village fishermen. Here
+the produce of their little garden, capsicums, Indian corn, onions
+or potatoes&mdash;perchance turmeric, ginger, or other roots or
+spices&mdash;are dried and made ready for storing in the earthen
+sun-baked repository for the reception of such produce appertaining
+to each household. Here the children play, and are washed and
+tended. Here the maiden combs out her long black hair, or decorates
+her bronzed visage with streaks of red paint down the nose, and a
+little antimony on the eyelids, or myrtle juice on the finger and
+toe nails. Here, too, the matron, or the withered old crone of a
+grandmother, spins her cotton thread; or, in the old scriptural
+hand-mill, grinds the corn for the family flour and meal; and the
+father and the young men (when the sun is high and hot in the
+heavens) take their noonday <i>siesta</i>, or, the day's labours
+over, cower round the smoking dung fire of a cold winter night, and
+discuss the prices ruling in the bazaar, the rise of rents, or the
+last village scandal.</p>
+<p>In the middle of the town, and surrounded by a spacious
+fenced-in compound, which sloped gently to the lake, stood the
+Planters' Club, a large low roofed bungalow, with a roomy wide
+verandah in front. Here we met, when business or pleasure brought
+us to 'the Station.' Here were held our annual balls, or an
+occasional public dinner party. To the north of the Club stood a
+long range of barrack-looking buildings, which were the opium
+godowns, where the opium was collected and stored during the
+season. Facing this again, and at the extremity of the lake, was
+the district jail, where all the rascals of the surrounding country
+were confined; its high walls tipped at intervals by a red puggree
+and flashing bayonet wherever a jail sepoy kept his 'lonely watch.'
+Near it, sheltered in a grove of shady trees, were the court
+houses, where the collector and magistrate daily dispensed justice,
+or where the native <i>moonsiff</i> disentangled knotty points of
+law. Here, too, came the sessions judge once a month or so, to try
+criminal cases and mete out justice to the law-breakers.</p>
+<p>We had thus a small European element in our 'Station,'
+consisting of our magistrate and collector, whose large and
+handsome house was built on the banks of another and yet lovelier
+lake, which joined the town lake by a narrow stream or strait at
+its southern end, an opium agent, a district superintendent of
+police, and last but not least, a doctor. These formed the official
+population of our little 'Station.' There was also a nice little
+church, but no resident pastor, and behind the town lay a quiet
+churchyard, rich in the dust of many a pioneer, who, far from home
+and friends, had here been gathered to his silent rest.</p>
+<p>About twelve miles to the north, and near the Nepaul boundary,
+was the small military station of Legoulie. Here there was always a
+native cavalry regiment, the officers of which were frequent and
+welcome guests at the factories in the district, and were always
+glad to see their indigo friends at their mess in cantonments. At
+Rettiah, still further to the north, was a rich rajah's palace,
+where a resident European manager dwelt, and had for his sole
+society an assistant magistrate who transacted the executive and
+judicial work of the subdistrict. These, with some twenty-five or
+thirty indigo managers and assistants, composed the whole European
+population of Chumparun.</p>
+<p>Never was there a more united community. We were all like
+brothers. Each knew all the rest. The assistants frequently visited
+each other, and the managers were kind and considerate to their
+subordinates. Hunting parties were common, cricket and hockey
+matches were frequent, and in the cold weather, which is our
+slackest season, fun, frolic, and sport was the order of the day.
+We had an annual race meet, when all the crack horses of the
+district met in keen rivalry to test their pace and endurance.
+During this high carnival, we lived for the most part under
+canvass, and had friends from far and near to share our
+hospitality. In a future chapter I must describe our racing
+meet.</p>
+<hr align="left" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<p align="justify"><a name="footnoteA1"><sup>1</sup></a> The
+<i>rahur</i> is a kind of pea, growing not unlike our English broom
+in appearance; it is sown with the maize crop during the rains, and
+garnered in the cold weather. It produces a small pea, which is
+largely used by the natives, and forms the nutritive article of
+diet known as <i>dhall</i>.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>My first charge.&mdash;How we get our
+lands.&mdash;Our home farm.&mdash;System of
+farming.&mdash;Collection of rents.&mdash;The planter's
+duties.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>My first charge was a small outwork of the large factory
+Seeraha. It was called Puttihee. There was no bungalow; that is,
+there was no regular house for the assistant, but a little
+one-roomed hut, built on the top of the indigo vats, served me for
+a residence. It had neither doors nor windows, and the rain used to
+beat through the room, while the eaves were inhabited by countless
+swarms of bats, who, in the evening flashed backwards and forwards
+in ghostly rapid flight, and were a most intolerable nuisance. To
+give some idea of the duties of an indigo assistant, I must explain
+the system on which we get our lands, and how we grow our crop.</p>
+<p>Water of course being a <i>sine qua non</i>, the first object in
+selecting a site for a factory is, to have water in plenty
+contiguous to the proposed buildings. Consequently Puttihee was
+built on the banks of a very pretty lake, shaped like a horseshoe,
+and covered with water lilies and broad-leaved green aquatic
+plants. The lake was kept by the native proprietor as a fish
+preserve, and literally teemed with fish of all sorts, shapes, and
+sizes. I had not been long at Puttihee before I had erected a
+staging, leading out into deep water, and many a happy hour I have
+spent there with my three or four rods out, pulling in the finny
+inhabitants.</p>
+<p>Having got water and a site, the next thing is to get land on
+which to grow your crop. By purchase, by getting a long lease, or
+otherwise, you become possessed of several hundred acres of the
+land immediately surrounding the factory. Of course some factories
+will have more and some less as circumstances happen. This land,
+however, is peculiarly factory property. It is in fact a sort of
+home farm, and goes by the name of <i>Zeraat</i>. It is ploughed by
+factory bullocks, worked by factory coolies, and is altogether
+apart and separate from the ordinary lands held by the ryots and
+worked by them. (A ryot means a cultivator.) In most factories the
+Zeraats are farmed in the most thorough manner. Many now use the
+light Howard's plough, and apply quantities of manure.</p>
+<p>The fields extend in vast unbroken plains all round the factory.
+The land is worked and pulverised, and reploughed, and harrowed,
+and cleaned, till not a lump the size of a pigeon's egg is to be
+seen. If necessary, it is carefully weeded several times before the
+crop is sown, and in fact, a fine clean stretch of Zeraat in
+Tirhoot or Chumparun, will compare most favourably with any field
+in the highest farming districts of England or Scotland. The
+ploughing and other farm labour is done by bullocks. A staff of
+these, varying of course with the amount of land under cultivation,
+is kept at each factory. For their support a certain amount of
+sugar-cane is planted, and in the cold weather carrots are sown,
+and <i>gennara</i>, a kind of millet, and maize.</p>
+<p>Both maize and gennara have broad green leaves, and long juicy
+succulent stalks. They grow to a good height, and when cut up and
+mixed with chopped straw and carrots, form a most excellent feed
+for cattle. Besides the bullocks, each factory keeps up a staff of
+generally excellent horses, for the use of the assistant or
+manager, on which he rides over his cultivation, and looks
+generally after the farm. Some of the native subordinates also have
+ponies, or Cabool horses, or country-breds; and for the feed of
+these animals some few acres of oats are sown every cold season. In
+most factories too, when any particular bit of the Zeraats gets
+exhausted by the constant repetition of indigo cropping, a rest is
+given it, by taking a crop of oil seeds or oats off the land. The
+oil seeds usually sown are mustard or rape. The oil is useful in
+the factory for oiling the screws or the machinery, and for other
+purposes.</p>
+<p>The factory roads through the Zeraats are kept in most perfect
+order; many of them are metalled. The ditches are cleaned once a
+year. All thistles and weeds by the sides of the roads and ditches,
+are ruthlessly cut down. The edges of all the fields are neatly
+trimmed and cut. Useless trees and clumps of jungle are cut down;
+and in fact the Zeraats round a factory shew a perfect picture of
+orderly thrift, careful management, and neat, scientific, and
+elaborate farming.</p>
+<p>Having got the Zeraats, the next thing is to extend the
+cultivation outside.</p>
+<p>The land in India is not, as with us at home, parcelled out into
+large farms. There are wealthy proprietors, rajahs, baboos, and so
+on, who hold vast tracts of land, either by grant, or purchase, or
+hereditary succession; but the tenants are literally the children
+of the soil. Wherever a village nestles among its plantain or mango
+groves, the land is parcelled out among the villagers. A large
+proprietor does not reckon up his farms as a landlord at home would
+do, but he counts his villages. In a village with a thousand acres
+belonging to it, there might be 100 or even 200 tenants farming the
+land. Each petty villager would have his acre or half acre, or
+four, or five, or ten, or twenty acres, as the case might be. He
+holds this by a 'tenant right,' and cannot be dispossessed as long
+as he pays his rent regularly. He can sell his tenant right, and
+the purchaser on paying the rent, becomes the <i>bona fide</i>
+possessor of the land to all intents and purposes.</p>
+<p>If the average rent of the village lands was, let me say, one
+rupee eight annas an acre, the rent roll of the 1000 acres would be
+1500 rupees. Out of this the government land revenue comes. Certain
+deductions have to be made&mdash;some ryots may be defaulters. The
+village temple, or the village Brahmin, may have to get something,
+the road-cess has to be paid, and so on. Taking everything into
+account, you arrive at a pretty fair view of what the rental is. If
+the proprietor of the village wants a loan of money, or if you
+offer to pay him the rent by half-yearly or quarterly instalments,
+you taking all the risk of collecting in turn from each ryot
+individually, he is often only too glad to accept your offer, and
+giving you a lease of the village for whatever term may be agreed
+on, you step in as virtually the landlord, and the ryots have to
+pay their rents to you.</p>
+<p>In many cases by careful management, by remeasuring lands,
+settling doubtful boundaries, and generally working up the estate,
+you can much increase the rental, and actually make a profit on
+your bargain with the landlord. This department of indigo work is
+called Zemindaree. Having, then, got the village in lease, you
+summon in all your tenants; shew them their rent accounts, arrange
+with them for the punctual payment of them, and get them to agree
+to cultivate a certain percentage of their land in indigo for
+you.</p>
+<p>This percentage varies very considerably. In some places it is
+one acre in five, in some one in twenty. It all depends on local
+circumstances. You select the land, you give the seed, but the ryot
+has to prepare the field for sowing, he has to plough, weed, and
+reap the crop, and deliver it at the factory. For the indigo he
+gets so much per acre, the price being as near as possible the
+average price of an acre of ordinary produce: taking the average
+out-turn and prices of, say, ten years. It used formerly to be much
+less, but the ryot nowadays gets nearly double for his indigo what
+he got some ten or fifteen years ago, and this, although prices
+have not risen for the manufactured article, and the prices of
+labour, stores, machinery, live stock, etc., have more than
+doubled. In some parts the ryot gets paid so much per bundle of
+plants delivered at the vats, but generally in Behar, at least in
+north Behar, he is paid so much per acre or <i>Beegah</i>. I use
+the word acre as being more easily understood by people at home
+than Beegah. The Beegah varies in different districts, but is
+generally about two-thirds of an acre.</p>
+<p>When his rent account, then, comes to be made out, the ryot gets
+credit for the price of his indigo grown and delivered; and this
+very often suffices, not only to clear his entire rent, but to
+leave a margin in hard cash for him to take home. Before the
+beginning of the indigo season, however, he comes into the factory
+and takes a cash advance on account of the indigo to be grown. This
+is often a great help to him, enabling him to get his seeds for his
+other lands, perhaps ploughs, or to buy a cart, or clothes for the
+family, or to replace a bullock that may have died; or to help to
+give a marriage portion to a son or daughter that he wants to get
+married.</p>
+<p>You will thus see that we have cultivation to look after in all
+the villages round about the factory which we can get in lease. The
+ryot, in return for his cash advance, agrees to cultivate so much
+indigo at a certain price, for which he gets credit in his rent.
+Such, shortly, is our indigo system. In some villages the ryot will
+estimate for us without our having the lease at all, and without
+taking advances. He grows the indigo as he would grow any other
+crop, as a pure speculation. If he has a good crop, he can get the
+price in hard cash from the factory, and a great deal is grown in
+this way in both Purneah and Bhaugulpore. This is called
+<i>Kooskee</i>, as against the system of advances, which is called
+<i>Tuccaree</i>.</p>
+<p>The planter, then, has to be constantly over his villages,
+looking out for good lands, giving up bad fields, and taking in new
+ones. He must watch what crops grow best in certain places. He must
+see that he does not take lands where water may lodge, and, on the
+other hand, avoid those that do not retain their moisture. He must
+attend also to the state of the other crops generally all over his
+cultivation, as the punctual payment of rents depends largely on
+the state of the crops. He must have his eyes open to everything
+going on, be able to tell the probable rent-roll of every village
+for miles around, know whether the ryots are lazy and discontented,
+or are industrious and hard-working. Up in the early morning,
+before the hot blazing sun has climbed on high, he is off on his
+trusty nag, through his Zeraats, with his greyhounds and terriers
+panting behind him. As he nears a village, the farm-servant in
+charge of that particular bit of cultivation, comes out with a low
+salaam, to report progress, or complain that so-and-so is not
+working up his field as he ought to do.</p>
+<p>Over all the lands he goes, seeing where re-ploughing is
+necessary, ordering harrowing here, weeding there, or rolling
+somewhere else. He sees where the ditches need deepening, where the
+roads want levelling or widening, where a new bridge will be
+necessary, where lands must be thrown up and new ones taken in. He
+knows nearly all his ryots, and has a kind word for every one he
+passes; asks after their crops, their bullocks, or their land;
+rouses up the indolent; gives a cheerful nod to the industrious;
+orders this one to be brought in to settle his account, or that one
+to make greater haste with the preparation of his land, that he may
+not lose his moisture. In fact, he has his hands full till the
+mounting sun warns him to go back to breakfast. And so, with a
+rattling burst after a jackal or fox, he gets back to his bungalow
+to bathe, dress, and break his fast with fowl cutlets, and curry
+and rice, washed down with a wholesome tumbler of Bass.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterIII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>How to get our crop.&mdash;The
+'Dangurs.'&mdash;Farm servants and their duties. &mdash;Kassee
+Rai.&mdash;Hoeing.&mdash;Ploughing.&mdash;'Oustennie.'&mdash;Coolies
+at work. &mdash;Sowing.&mdash;Difficulties the plant has to contend
+with.&mdash;Weeding.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Having now got our land, water, and buildings&mdash;which latter
+I will describe further on&mdash;the next thing is to set to work
+to get our crop. Manufacture being finished, and the crop all cut
+by the beginning or middle of October, when the annual rains are
+over, it is of importance to have the lands dug up as early as
+possible, that the rich moisture, on which the successful
+cultivation of the crop mainly depends, may be secured before the
+hot west winds and strong sun of early spring lick it up.</p>
+<p>Attached to every factory is a small settlement of labourers,
+belonging to a tribe of aborigines called <i>Dangurs</i>. These
+originally, I believe, came from Chota Nagpoor, which seems to have
+been their primal home. They are a cheerful industrious race, have
+a distinct language of their own, and only intermarry with each
+other. Long ago, when there were no post carriages to the hills,
+and but few roads, the Dangurs were largely employed as dale
+runners, or postmen. Some few of them settled with their families
+on lands near the foot of the hills in Purneah, and gradually
+others made their way northwards, until now there is scarcely a
+factory in Behar that has not its Dangur tola, or village.</p>
+<p>The men are tractable, merry-hearted, and faithful. The women
+betray none of the exaggerated modesty which is characteristic of
+Hindoo women generally. They never turn aside and hide their faces
+as you pass, but look up to you with a merry smile on their
+countenances, and exchange greetings with the utmost frankness. In
+a future chapter I may speak at greater length of the Dangurs; at
+present it suffices to say, that they form a sort of appanage to
+the factory, and are in fact treated as part of the permanent
+staff.</p>
+
+<a name="02"></a>
+
+<center>
+<img src="Images/02.jpg" alt="Coolie's Hut" width="472" height="365"
+hspace="4" vspace="8">
+<br>
+ <i>Coolie's Hut</i></center>
+
+<p>Each Dangur when he marries, gets some grass and bamboos from
+the factory to build a house, and a small plot of ground to serve
+as a garden, for which he pays a very small rent, or in many
+instances nothing at all. In return, he is always on the spot ready
+for any factory work that may be going on, for which he has his
+daily wage. Some factories pay by the month, but the general custom
+is to charge for hoeing by piece-work, and during manufacture, when
+the work is constant, there is paid a monthly wage.</p>
+<p>In the close foggy mornings of October and November, long before
+the sun is up, the Dangurs are hard at work in the Zeraats, turning
+up the soil with their <i>kodalies</i>, (a kind of cutting hoe,)
+and you can often hear their merry voices rising through the mist,
+as they crack jokes with each other to enliven their work, or troll
+one of their quaint native ditties.</p>
+<p>They are presided over by a 'mate,' generally one of the oldest
+men and first settlers in the village. If he has had a large
+family, his sons look up to him, and his sons-in-law obey his
+orders with the utmost fealty. The 'mate' settles all disputes,
+presents all grievances to the <i>sahib</i>, and all orders are
+given through him.</p>
+<p>The indigo stubble which has been left in the ground is perhaps
+about a foot high, and as they cut it out, their wives and children
+come to gather up the sticks for fuel, and this of course also
+helps to clean the land. By eleven o'clock, when the sluggish mist
+has been dissipated by the rays of the scorching sun, the day's
+labour is nearly concluded. You will then see the swarthy Dangur,
+with his favourite child on his shoulder, wending his way back to
+his hut, followed by his comely wife carrying his hoe, and a tribe
+of little ones bringing up the rear, each carrying bundles of the
+indigo stubble which the industrious father has dug up during the
+early hours of morning.</p>
+<p>In the afternoon out comes the <i>hengha</i>, which is simply a
+heavy flat log of wood, with a V shaped cut or groove all along
+under its flat surface. To each end of the hengha a pair of
+bullocks are yoked, and two men standing on the log, and holding on
+by the bullocks' tails, it is slowly dragged over the field
+wherever the hoeing has been going on. The lumps and clods are
+caught in the groove on the under surface, and dragged along and
+broken up and pulverized, and the whole surface of the field thus
+gets harrowed down, and forms a homogeneous mass of light friable
+soil, covering the weeds and dirt to let them rot, exposing the
+least surface for the wind and heat to act on, and thus keeping the
+moisture in the soil.</p>
+<p>Now is a busy time for the planter. Up early in the cold raw
+fog, he is over his Zeraats long before dawn, and round by his
+outlying villages to see the ryots at work in their fields. To each
+eighty or a hundred acres a man is attached called a
+<i>Tokedar</i>. His duty is to rouse out the ryots, see the hoes
+and ploughs at work, get the weeding done, and be responsible for
+the state of the cultivation generally. He will probably have two
+villages under him. If the village with its lands be very
+extensive, of course there will be a Tokedar for it alone, but
+frequently a Tokedar may have two or more villages under his
+charge. In the village, the head man&mdash;generally the most
+influential man in the community&mdash;also acts with the Tokedar,
+helping him to get ploughs, bullocks, and coolies when these are
+wanted; and under him, the village <i>chowkeydar</i>, or watchman,
+sees that stray cattle do not get into the fields, that the roads,
+bridges and fences are not damaged, and so on. Over the Tokedars,
+again, are Zillahdars. A 'zillah' is a small district. There may be
+eight or ten villages and three or four Tokedars under a Zillahdar.
+The Zillahdar looks out for good lands to change for bad ones,
+where this is necessary, and where no objection is made by the
+farmer; sees that the Tokedars do their work properly; reports
+rain, blight, locusts, and other visitations that might injure the
+crop; watches all that goes on in his zillah, and makes his report
+to the planter whenever anything of importance happens in his
+particular part of the cultivation. Over all again comes the
+JEMADAR&mdash;the head man over the whole cultivation&mdash;the
+planter's right-hand man.</p>
+<p>He is generally an old, experienced, and trusted servant. He
+knows all the lands for miles round, and the peculiar soils and
+products of all the villages far and near. He can tell what lands
+grow the best tobacco, what lands are free from inundation, what
+free from drought; the temper of the inhabitants of each village,
+and the history of each farm; where are the best ploughs, the best
+bullocks, and the best farming; in what villages you get most
+coolies for weeding; where you can get the best carts, the best
+straw, and the best of everything at the most favourable rates. He
+comes up each night when the day's work is done, and gets his
+orders for the morrow. You are often glad to take his advice on
+sowing, reaping, and other operations of the farm. He knows where
+the plant will ripen earliest, and where the leaf will be thickest,
+and to him you look for satisfaction if any screw gets loose in the
+outside farm-work.</p>
+<p>He generally accompanies you in your morning ride, shows you
+your new lands, consults with you about throwing up exhausted
+fields, and is generally a sort of farm-bailiff or confidential
+land-steward. Where he is an honest, intelligent, and loyal man, he
+takes half the care and work off your shoulders. Such men are
+however rare, and if not very closely looked after, they are apt to
+abuse their position, and often harass the ryots needlessly,
+looking more to the feathering of their own nests than the
+advancement of your interests.</p>
+<p>The only Jemadar I felt I could thoroughly trust, was my first
+one at Parewah, an old Rajpoot, called Kassee Rai. He was a fine,
+ruddy-faced, white-haired old man, as independent and
+straightforward an old farmer as you could meet anywhere, and I
+never had reason to regret taking his advice on any matter. I never
+found him out in a lie, or in a dishonest or underhand action.
+Though over seventy years of age he was upright as a dart. He could
+not keep up with me when we went out riding over the fields, but he
+would be out the whole day over the lands, and was always the first
+at his work in the morning and the last to leave off at night. The
+ryots all loved him, and would do anything for him; and when poor
+old Kassee died, the third year he had been under me, I felt as if
+an old friend had gone. I never spoke an angry word to him, and I
+never had a fault to find with him.</p>
+<p>When the hoeing has been finished in zeraat and zillah, and all
+the upturned soil battened down by the <i>hengha</i>, the next
+thing is to commence the ploughing. Your ploughmen are mostly low
+caste men&mdash;Doosadhs, Churnars, Moosahurs, Gwallahs, <i>et hoc
+genus omne</i>. The Indian plough, so like a big misshapen wooden
+pickaxe, has often been described. It however turns up the light
+soft soil very well considering its pretensions, and those made in
+the factory workshops are generally heavier and sharper than the
+ordinary village plough. Our bullocks too, being strong and well
+fed, the ploughing in the zeraats is generally good.</p>
+<p>The ploughing is immediately followed up by the <i>hengha</i>,
+which again triturates and breaks up the clods, rolls the sticks,
+leaves, and grass roots together, brings the refuse and dirt to the
+surface, and again levels the soil, and prevents the wind from
+taking away the moisture. The land now looks fine and fresh and
+level, but very dirty. A host of coolies are put on the fields with
+small sticks in their hands. All the Dangur women and children are
+there, with men, women, and children of all the poorest classes
+from the villages round, whom the attractions of wages or the
+exertions of headmen Tokedars and Zillahdars have brought together
+to earn their daily bread. With the sticks they beat and break up
+every clod, leaving not one behind the size of a walnut. They
+collect all the refuse, weeds, and dirt, which are heaped up and
+burnt on the field, and so they go on till the zeraats look as
+clean as a nobleman's garden, and you would think that surely this
+must satisfy the fastidious eye of the planter. But no, our work is
+not half begun yet.</p>
+<p>It is rather a strange sight to see some four or five hundred
+coolies squatted in a long irregular line, chattering, laughing,
+shouting, or squabbling. A dense cloud of dust rises over them, and
+through the dim obscurity one hears the ceaseless sound of the
+thwack! thwack! as their sticks rattle on the ground. White dust
+lies thick on each swarthy skin; their faces are like faces in a
+pantomime. There are the flashing eyes and the grinning rows of
+white teeth; all else is clouded in thick layers of dust, with
+black spots and stencillings showing here and there like a picture
+in sepia and chalk. As they near the end of the field they redouble
+their thwacking, shuffle along like land-crabs, and while the
+Mates, Peons, and Tokedars shout at them to encourage them, they
+raise a roar loud enough to wake the dead. The dust rises in denser
+clouds, the noise is deafening, a regular mad hurry-scurry, a wild
+boisterous scramble ensues, and amid much chaffing, noise, and
+laughter, they scramble off again to begin another length of land;
+and so the day's work goes on.</p>
+<p>The planter has to count his coolies several times a-day, or
+they would cheat him. Some come in the morning, get counted, and
+their names put on the roll, and then go off till paytime comes
+round. Some come for an hour or two, and send a relative in the
+evening when the pice are being paid out, to get the wage of work
+they have not done. All are paid in pice&mdash;little copper bits
+of coin, averaging about sixty-four to the rupee. However, you soon
+come to know the coolies by sight, and after some experience are
+rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get 'done' most
+thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the artless
+and unsophisticated coolie.</p>
+<p>The type of feature along a line of coolies is as a rule a very
+forbidding and degraded one. They are mostly of the very poorest
+class. Many of them are plainly half silly, or wholly idiotic; not
+a few are deaf and dumb; others are crippled or deformed, and
+numbers are leprous and scrofulous. Numbers of them are afflicted
+in some districts with goitre, caused probably by bad drinking
+water; all have a pinched, withered, wan look, that tells of hard
+work and insufficient fare. It is a pleasure to turn to the end of
+the line, where the Dangur women and boys and girls generally take
+their place. Here are the loudest laughter, and the sauciest faces.
+The children are merry, chubby, fat things, with well-distended
+stomachs and pleasant looks; a merry smile rippling over their
+broad fat cheeks as they slyly glance up at you. The
+women&mdash;with huge earrings in their ears, and a perfect load of
+heavy brass rings on their arms&mdash;chatter away, make believe to
+be shy, and show off a thousand coquettish airs. Their very toes
+are bedizened with brass rings; and long festoons of red, white,
+and blue beads hang pendent round their necks.</p>
+<p>In the evening the line is re-formed before the bungalow. A huge
+bag of copper coin is produced. The old Lallah, or writer, with
+spectacles on nose, squats down in the middle of the assembled
+coolies, and as each name is called, the mates count out the pice,
+and make it over to the coolie, who forthwith hurries off to get
+his little purchases made at the village Bunneah's shop; and so, on
+a poor supper of parched peas, or boiled rice, with no other relish
+but a pinch of salt, the poor coolie crawls to bed, only to dream
+of more hard work and scanty fare on the morrow. Poor thing! a
+village coolie has a hard time of it! During the hot months, if
+rice be cheap and plentiful, he can jog along pretty comfortably,
+but when the cold nights come on, and he cowers in his wretched
+hut, hungry, half naked, cold, and wearied, he is of all objects
+most pitiable. It is, however, a fact little creditable to his more
+prosperous fellow-countrymen, that he gets better paid for his
+labour in connection with factory work, than he does in many cases
+for tasks forced on him by the leading ryots of the village in
+connection with their own fields.</p>
+<p>This first cleaning of the fields&mdash;or, as it is called,
+<i>Oustennie</i>&mdash;being finished, the lands are all again
+re-ploughed, re-harrowed, and then once more re-cleaned by the
+coolies, till not a weed or spot of dirt remains; and till the
+whole surface is uniformly soft, friable, moist, and clean. We have
+now some breathing time; and as this is the most enjoyable season
+of the year, when the days are cool, and roaring wood fires at
+night remind us of home, we hunt, visit, race, dance, and generally
+enjoy ourselves. Should heavy rain fall, as it sometimes does about
+Christmas and early in February, the whole cultivation gets beaten
+down and caked over. In such a case amusements must for a time be
+thrown aside, till all the lands have been again re-ploughed. Of
+course we are never wholly idle. There are always rents to collect,
+matters to adjust in connexion with our villages and tenantry,
+law-suits to recover bad debts, to enforce contracts, or protect
+manorial or other rights,&mdash;but generally speaking, when the
+lands have been prepared, we have a slack season or breathing time
+for a month or so.</p>
+<p>Arrangements having been made for the supply of seed, which
+generally comes from about the neighbourhood of Cawnpore, as
+February draws near we make preparations for beginning our sowings.
+February is the usual month, but it depends on the moisture, and
+sometimes sowings may go on up till May and June. In Purneah and
+Bhaugulpore, where the cultivation is much rougher than in Tirhoot,
+the sowing is done broadcast. And in Bengal the sowing is often
+done upon the soft mud which is left on the banks of the rivers at
+the retiring of the annual floods. In Tirhoot, however, where the
+high farming I have been trying to describe is practised, the
+sowing is done by means of drills. Drills are got out, overhauled,
+and put in thorough repair. Bags of seed are sent out to the
+villages, advances for bullocks are given to the ryots, and on a
+certain day when all seems favourable&mdash;no sign of rain or high
+winds&mdash;the drills are set at work, and day and night the work
+goes on, till all the cultivation has been sown. As the drills go
+along, the hengha follows close behind, covering the seed in the
+furrows; and once again it is put over, till the fields are all
+level, shining, and clean, waiting for the first appearance of the
+young soft shoots.</p>
+<p>These, after some seven, nine, or perhaps fifteen days,
+according to the weather, begin to appear in long lines of delicate
+pale yellowish green. This is a most anxious time. Should rain
+fall, the whole surface of the earth gets caked and hard, and the
+delicate plant burns out, or being chafed against the hard surface
+crust, it withers and dies. If the wind gets into the east, it
+brings a peculiar blight which settles round the leaf and collar of
+the stem of the young plant, chokes it, and sweeps off miles and
+miles of it. If hot west winds blow, the plant gets black,
+discoloured, burnt up, and dead. A south wind often brings
+caterpillars&mdash;at least this pest often makes its appearance
+when the wind is southerly; but as often as not caterpillars find
+their way to the young plant in the most mysterious
+manner,&mdash;no one knowing whence they come. Daily, nay almost
+hourly, reports come in from all parts of the zillah: now you hear
+of 'Lahee,' blight on some field; now it is 'Ihirka,' scorching, or
+'Pilooa,' caterpillars. In some places the seed may have been bad
+or covered with too much earth, and the plant comes up straggling
+and thin. If there is abundant moisture, this must be re-sown. In
+fact, there is never-ending anxiety and work at this season, but
+when the plant has got into ten or fifteen leaf, and is an inch or
+two high, the most critical time is over, and one begins to think
+about the next operation, namely WEEDING.</p>
+<p>The coolies are again in requisition. Each comes armed with a
+<i>coorpee</i>,&mdash;this is a small metal spatula, broad-pointed,
+with which they dig out the weeds with amazing deftness. Sometimes
+they may inadvertently take out a single stem of indigo with the
+weeds: the eye of the mate or Tokedar espies this at once, and the
+careless coolie is treated to a volley of Hindoo Billingsgate, in
+which all his relations are abused to the seventh generation. By
+the time the first weeding is finished, the plant will be over a
+foot high, and if necessary a second weeding is then given. After
+the second weeding, and if any rain has fallen in the interim, the
+plant will be fully two feet high.</p>
+<p>It is now a noble-looking expanse of beautiful green waving
+foliage. As the wind ruffles its myriads of leaves, the sparkle of
+the sunbeams on the undulating mass produces the most wonderful
+combinations of light and shade; feathery sprays of a delicate pale
+green curl gracefully all over the field. It is like an ocean of
+vegetation, with billows of rich colour chasing each other, and
+blending in harmonious hues; the whole field looking a perfect
+oasis of beauty amid the surrounding dull brown tints of the
+season.</p>
+<p>It is now time to give the plant a light touch of the plough.
+This eases the soil about the roots, lets in air and light, tends
+to clean the undergrowth of weeds, and gives it a great impetus.
+The operation is called <i>Bedaheunee</i>. By the beginning of June
+the tiny red flower is peeping from its leafy sheath, the lower
+leaves are turning yellowish and crisp, and it is almost time to
+begin the grandest and most important operation of the season, the
+manufacture of the dye from the plant.</p>
+<p>To this you have been looking forward during the cold raw foggy
+days of November, when the ploughs were hard at work,&mdash;during
+the hot fierce winds of March, and the still, sultry, breathless
+early days of June, when the air was so still and oppressive that
+you could scarcely breathe. These sultry days are the lull before
+the storm&mdash;the pause before the moisture-laden clouds of the
+monsoon roll over the land 'rugged and brown,' and the wild rattle
+of thunder and the lurid glare of quivering never-ceasing lightning
+herald in the annual rains. The manufacture however deserves a
+chapter to itself.</p>
+
+<a name="03"></a>
+
+<center>
+<img src="Images/03.jpg" alt="Indigo Beating Vats" width="574" height="370" hspace="4" vspace="8" align="bottom"><br>
+<i>Indigo Beating Vats</i></center>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterIV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Manufacture of Indigo.&mdash;Loading the
+vats.&mdash;Beating.&mdash;Boiling, straining, and
+pressing.&mdash;Scene in the Factory.&mdash;Fluctuation of
+produce.&mdash;Chemistry of Indigo.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Indigo is manufactured solely from the leaf. When arrangements
+have been made for cutting and carting the plant from the fields,
+the vats and machinery are all made ready, and a day is appointed
+to begin 'Mahye' or manufacture. The apparatus consists of, first,
+a strong serviceable pump for pumping up water into the vats: this
+is now mostly done by machinery, but many small factories still use
+the old Persian wheel, which may be shortly described as simply an
+endless chain of buckets, working on a revolving wheel or drum. The
+machine is worked by bullocks, and as the buckets ascend full from
+the well, they are emptied during their revolution into a small
+trough at the top, and the water is conveyed into a huge masonry
+reservoir or tank, situated high up above the vats, which forms a
+splendid open air bath for the planter when he feels inclined for a
+swim. Many of these tanks, called <i>Kajhana</i>, are capable of
+containing 40,000 cubic feet of water or more.</p>
+<p>Below, and in a line with this reservoir, are the steeping vats,
+each capable of containing about 2000 cubic feet of water when
+full. Of course the vats vary in size, but what is called a
+<i>pucca</i> vat is of the above capacity. When the fresh green
+plant is brought in, the carts with their loads are ranged in line,
+opposite these loading vats. The loading coolies,
+'Bojhunneas'&mdash;so called from '<i>Bojh</i>,' a
+bundle&mdash;jump into the vats, and receive the plant from the
+cart-men, stacking it up in perpendicular layers, till the vat is
+full: a horizontal layer is put on top to make the surface look
+even. Bamboo battens are then placed over the plant, and these are
+pressed down, and held in their place by horizontal beams, working
+in upright posts. The uprights have holes at intervals of six
+inches. An iron pin is put in one of the holes; a lever is put
+under this pin, and the beam pressed down, till the next hole is
+reached and a fresh pin inserted, which keeps the beam down in its
+place. When sufficient pressure has been applied, the sluice in the
+reservoir is opened, and the water runs by a channel into the vat
+till it is full. Vat after vat is thus filled till all are
+finished, and the plant is allowed to steep from ten to thirteen or
+fourteen hours, according to the state of the weather, the
+temperature of the water, and other conditions and circumstances
+which have all to be carefully noted.</p>
+<p>At first a greenish yellow tinge appears in the water, gradually
+deepening to an intense blue. As the fermentation goes on, froth
+forms on the surface of the vat, the water swells up, bubbles of
+gas arise to the surface, and the whole range of vats presents a
+frothing, bubbling, sweltering appearance, indicative of the
+chemical action going on in the interior. If a torch be applied to
+the surface of a vat, the accumulated gas ignites with a loud
+report, and a blue lambent flame travels with amazing rapidity over
+the effervescent liquid. In very hot weather I have seen the water
+swell up over the mid walls of the vats, till the whole range would
+be one uniform surface of frothing liquid, and on applying a light,
+the report has been as loud as that of a small cannon, and the
+flame has leapt from vat to vat like the flitting will-o'-the-wisp
+on the surface of some miasmatic marsh.</p>
+<p>When fermentation has proceeded sufficiently, the temperature of
+the vat lowers somewhat, and the water, which has been globular and
+convex on the surface and at the sides, now becomes distinctly
+convex and recedes a very little. This is a sign that the plant has
+been steeped long enough, and that it is now time to open the vat.
+A pin is knocked out from the bottom, and the pent-up liquor rushes
+out in a golden yellow stream tinted with blue and green into the
+beating vat, which lies parallel to, but at a lower level than the
+loading vat.</p>
+<p>Of course as the vats are loaded at different hours, and the
+steeping varies with circumstances, they must be ready to open also
+at different intervals. There are two men specially engaged to look
+after the opening. The time of loading each one is carefully noted;
+the time it will take to steep is guessed at, and an hour for
+opening written down. When this hour arrives, the <i>Gunta
+parree</i>, or time-keeper, looks at the vat, and if it appears
+ready he gets the pinmen to knock out the pin and let the steeped
+liquor run into the beating vat.</p>
+<p>Where there are many vats, this goes on all night, and by the
+morning the beating vats are all full of steeped liquor, and ready
+to be beaten.</p>
+<p>The beating now is mostly done by machinery; but the old style
+was very different. A gang of coolies (generally Dangurs) were put
+into the vats, having long sticks with a disc at the end, with
+which, standing in two rows, they threw up the liquor into the air.
+The quantity forced up by the one coolie encounters in mid air that
+sent up by the man standing immediately opposite to him, and the
+two jets meeting and mixing confusedly together, tumble down in
+broken frothy masses into the vat. Beginning with a slow steady
+stroke the coolies gradually increase the pace, shouting out a
+hoarse wild song at intervals; till, what with the swish and splash
+of the falling water, the measured beat of the <i>furrovahs</i> or
+beating rods, and the yells and cries with which they excite each
+other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which at first is
+of a yellowish green, is now beginning to assume an intense blue
+tint; this is the result of the oxygenation going on. As the blue
+deepens, the exertions of the coolie increase, till with every
+muscle straining, head thrown back, chest expanded, his long black
+hair dripping with white foam, and his bronzed naked body
+glistening with blue liquor, he yells and shouts and twists and
+contorts his body till he looks like a true 'blue devil.' To see
+eight or ten vats full of yelling howling blue creatures, the water
+splashing high in mid air, the foam flecking the walls, and the
+measured beat of the <i>furrovahs</i> rising weird-like into the
+morning air, is almost enough to shake the nerve of a stranger, but
+it is music in the planter's ear, and he can scarce refrain from
+yelling out in sympathy with his coolies, and sharing in their
+frantic excitement. Indeed it is often necessary to encourage them
+if a vat proves obstinate, and the colour refuses to come&mdash;an
+event which occasionally does happen. It is very hard work beating,
+and when this constant violent exercise is kept up for about three
+hours (which is the time generally taken), the coolies are pretty
+well exhausted, and require a rest.</p>
+<a name="04"></a>
+
+<center><img src="Images/04.jpg" alt="Indigo Beaters at Work in
+the Vats" width="570" height="374" hspace="4" vspace="8"><br>
+
+<i>Indigo Beaters at Work in the Vats</i></center>
+
+<p>During the beating, two processes are going on simultaneously.
+One is chemical&mdash;oxygenation&mdash;turning the yellowish green
+dye into a deep intense blue: the other is mechanical&mdash;a
+separation of the particles of dye from the water in which it is
+held in solution. The beating seems to do this, causing the dye to
+granulate in larger particles.</p>
+<p>When the vat has been beaten, the coolies remove the froth and
+scum from the surface of the water, and then leave the contents to
+settle. The fecula or dye, or <i>mall</i>, as it is technically
+called, now settles at the bottom of the vat in a soft pulpy
+sediment, and the waste liquor left on the top is let off through
+graduated holes in the front. Pin after pin is gradually removed,
+and the clear sherry-coloured waste allowed to run out till the
+last hole in the series is reached, and nothing but dye remains in
+the vat. By this time the coolies have had a rest and food, and now
+they return to the works, and either lift up the <i>mall</i> in
+earthen jars and take it to the mall tank, or&mdash;as is now more
+commonly done&mdash;they run it along a channel to the tank, and
+then wash out and clean the vat to be ready for the renewed beating
+on the morrow. When all the <i>mall</i> has been collected in the
+mall tank, it is next pumped up into the straining room. It is here
+strained through successive layers of wire gauze and cloth, till,
+free from dirt, sand and impurity, it is run into the large iron
+boilers, to be subjected to the next process. This is the boiling.
+This operation usually takes two or three hours, after which it is
+run off along narrow channels, till it reaches the straining-table.
+It is a very important part of the manufacture, and has to be
+carefully done. The straining-table is an oblong shallow wooden
+frame, in the shape of a trough, but all composed of open woodwork.
+It is covered by a large straining-sheet, on which the mall
+settles; while the waste water trickles through and is carried away
+by a drain. When the mall has stood on the table all night, it is
+next morning lifted up by scoops and buckets and put into the
+presses. These are square boxes of iron or wood, with perforated
+sides and bottom and a removeable perforated lid. The insides of
+the boxes are lined with press cloths, and when filled these cloths
+are carefully folded over the <i>mall</i>, which is now of the
+consistence of starch; and a heavy beam, worked on two upright
+three-inch screws, is let down on the lid of the press. A long
+lever is now put on the screws, and the nut worked slowly round.
+The pressure is enormous, and all the water remaining in the
+<i>mall</i> is pressed through the cloth and perforations in the
+press-box till nothing but the pure indigo remains behind.</p>
+<p>The presses are now opened, and a square slab of dark moist
+indigo, about three or three and a half inches thick, is carried
+off on the bottom of the press (the top and sides having been
+removed), and carefully placed on the cutting frame. This frame
+corresponds in size to the bottom of the press, and is grooved in
+lines somewhat after the manner of a chess-board. A stiff iron rod
+with a brass wire attached is put through the groove under the
+slab, the wire is brought over the slab, and the rod being pulled
+smartly through brings the wire with it, cutting the indigo much in
+the same way as you would cut a bar of soap. When all the slab has
+been cut into bars, the wire and rod are next put into the grooves
+at right angles to the bars and again pulled through, thus dividing
+the bars into cubical cakes. Each cake is then stamped with the
+factory mark and number, and all are noted down in the books. They
+are then taken to the drying house; this is a large airy building,
+with strong shelves of bamboo reaching to the roof, and having
+narrow passages between the tiers of shelves. On these shelves or
+<i>mychans</i>, as they are called, the cakes are ranged to dry.
+The drying takes two or three months, and the cakes are turned and
+moved at frequent intervals, till thoroughly ready for packing. All
+the little pieces and corners and chips are carefully put by on
+separate shelves, and packed separately. Even the sweepings and
+refuse from the sheets and floor are all carefully collected, mixed
+with water, boiled separately, and made into cakes, which are
+called 'washings.'</p>
+<p>During the drying a thick mould forms on the cakes. This is
+carefully brushed off before packing, and, mixed with sweepings and
+tiny chips is all ground up in a hand-mill, packed in separate
+chests, and sold as dust. In October, when <i>mahye</i> is over,
+and the preparation of the land going on again, the packing begins.
+The cakes, each of separate date, are carefully scrutinised, and
+placed in order of quality. The finest qualities are packed first,
+in layers, in mango-wood boxes; the boxes are first weighed empty,
+re-weighed when full, and the difference gives the nett weight of
+the indigo. The tare, gross, and nett weights are printed legibly
+on the chests, along with the factory mark and number of the chest,
+and when all are ready, they are sent down to the brokers in
+Calcutta for sale. Such shortly is the system of manufacture.</p>
+<p>During <i>mahye</i> the factory is a busy scene. Long before
+break of day the ryots and coolies are busy cutting the plant,
+leaving it in green little heaps for the cartmen to load. In the
+early morning the carts are seen converging to the factory on every
+road, crawling along like huge green beetles. Here a cavalcade of
+twenty or thirty carts, there in clusters of twos or threes. When
+they reach the factory the loaders have several vats ready for the
+reception of the plant, while others are taking out the already
+steeped plant of yesterday; staggering under its weight, as,
+dripping with water, they toss it on the vast accumulating heap of
+refuse material.</p>
+<p>Down in the vats below, the beating coolies are splashing, and
+shouting, and yelling, or the revolving wheel (where machinery is
+used) is scattering clouds of spray and foam in the blinding
+sunshine. The firemen stripped to the waist, are feeding the
+furnaces with the dried stems of last year's crop, which forms our
+only fuel. The smoke hovers in volumes over the boiling-house. The
+pinmen are busy sorting their pins, rolling hemp round them to make
+them fit the holes more exactly. Inside the boiling-house, dimly
+discernible through the clouds of stifling steam, the boilermen are
+seen with long rods, stirring slowly the boiling mass of bubbling
+blue. The clank of the levers resounds through the pressing-house,
+or the hoarse guttural 'hah, hah!' as the huge lever is strained
+and pulled at by the press-house coolies. The straining-table is
+being cleaned by the table 'mate' and his coolies, while the
+washerman stamps on his sheets and press-cloths to extract all the
+colour from them, and the cake-house boys run to and fro between
+the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on their
+heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from the
+oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary
+to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of
+sounds. The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of
+wheels, the roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries,
+and yells of the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers
+as some terrified or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the
+objurgations of the 'mates' as some lazy fellow eases his stroke in
+the beating vats; the cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round
+the circle where the Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp,
+dilapidated wheel-house; the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on
+the drum, the arriving and departing carts; the clang of the anvil,
+as the blacksmith and his men hammer away at some huge screw which
+has been bent; the hurrying crowds of cartmen and loaders with
+their burdens of fresh green plant or dripping refuse;&mdash;form
+such a medley of sights and sounds as I have never seen equalled in
+any other industry.</p>
+<p align="justify">The planter has to be here, there, and
+everywhere. He sends carts to this village or to that, according as
+the crop ripens. Coolies must be counted and paid daily. The
+stubble must be ploughed to give the plant a start for the second
+growth whenever the weather will admit of it. Reports have to be
+sent to the agents and owners. The boiling must be narrowly
+watched, as also the beating and the straining. He has a large
+staff of native assistants, but if his <i>mahye</i> is to be
+successful, his eye must be over all. It is an anxious time, but
+the constant work is grateful, and when the produce is good, and
+everything working smoothly, it is perhaps the most enjoyable time
+of the whole year. Is it nothing to see the crop, on which so much
+care has been expended, which you have watched day by day through
+all the vicissitudes of the season, through drought, and flood, and
+blight; is it nothing to see it safely harvested, and your shelves
+filling day by day with fine sound cakes, the representatives of
+wealth, that will fill your pockets with commission, and build up
+your name as a careful and painstaking planter?</p>
+<p>'What's your produce?' is now the first query at this season,
+when planters meet. Calculations are made daily, nay hourly, to see
+how much is being got per beegah, or how much per vat. The presses
+are calculated to weigh so much. Some days you will get a press a
+vat, some days it will mount up to two presses a vat, and at other
+times it will recede to half a press a vat, or even less. Cold wet
+weather reduces the produce. Warm sunny weather will send it up
+again. Short stunted plant from poor lands will often reduce your
+average per acre, to be again sent up as fresh, hardy, leafy plant
+comes in from some favourite village, where you have new and
+fertile lands, or where the plant from the rich zeraats laden with
+broad strong leaf is tumbled into the loading vat.</p>
+<p>So far as I know, there seems to be no law of produce. It is the
+most erratic and incomprehensible thing about planting. One day
+your presses are full to straining, next day half of them lie
+empty. No doubt the state of the weather, the quality of your
+plant, the temperature of the water, the length of time steeping,
+and other things have an influence; but I know of no planter who
+can entirely and satisfactorily account for the sudden and
+incomprehensible fluctuations and variations which undoubtedly take
+place in the produce or yield of the plant. It is a matter of more
+interest to the planter than to the general public, but all I can
+say is, that if the circumstances attendant on any sudden change in
+the yielding powers of the plant were more accurately noted; if the
+chemical conditions of the water, the air, and the raw material
+itself, more especially in reference to the soil on which it grows,
+the time it takes in transit from the field to the vat, and other
+points, which will at once suggest themselves to a practical
+planter, were more carefully, methodically, and scientifically
+observed, some coherent theory resulting in plain practical results
+might be evolved.</p>
+<p>Planters should attend more to this. I believe the chemical
+history of indigo has yet to be written. The whole manufacture, so
+far as chemistry is concerned, is yet crude and ill-digested. I
+know that by careful experiment, and close scientific investigation
+and observation, the preparation of indigo could be much improved.
+So far as the mechanical appliances for the manufacture go, the
+last ten years have witnessed amazing and rapid improvements. What
+is now wanted, is, that what has been done for the mere mechanical
+appliances, should be done for the proper understanding of the
+chemical changes and conditions in the constitution of the plant,
+and in the various processes of its manufacture<a href=
+"#footnoteB1"><sup>1</sup></a>.</p>
+<hr align="left" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<p><a name="footnoteB1"><sup>1</sup></a> Since the above chapter
+was written Mons. P.I. Michea, a French chemist of some experience
+in Indigo matters, has patented an invention (the result of much
+study, experiment, and investigation), by the application of which
+an immense increase in the produce of the plant has been obtained
+during the last season, in several factories where it has been
+worked in Jessore, Purneah, Kishnaghur, and other places. This
+increase, varying according to circumstances, has in some instances
+reached the amazing extent of 30 to 47 per cent., and so far from
+being attended with a deterioration of quality the dye produced is
+said to be finer than that obtained under the old crude process
+described in the above chapter. This shows what a waste must have
+been going on, and what may yet be done, by properly organised
+scientific investigation. I firmly believe that with an intelligent
+application of the principles of chemistry and agricultural
+science, not only to the manufacture but to growth, cultivation,
+nature of the soil, application of manures, and other such
+departments of the business, quite a revolution will set in, and a
+new era in the history of this great industry will be inaugurated.
+Less area for crop will be required, working expenses will be
+reduced, a greater out-turn, and a more certain crop secured, and
+all classes, planter and ryot alike, will be benefited.</p>
+<a name="05"></a>
+<center>
+<img src="Images/05.jpg" alt="Indian Factory Peon" width="282" height="316"><br>
+<i>Indian Factory Peon</i></center>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="06"></a>
+<center><img src="Images/06.jpg" alt="Indigo Planter's House"
+width="475" height="304" hspace="4" vspace="8" align="bottom"><br>
+<i>Indigo Planter's House</i></center>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Parewah factory.&mdash;A 'Bobbery
+Pack.'&mdash;Hunt through a village after a cat.&mdash;The pariah
+dog of India.&mdash;Fate of 'Pincher.'&mdash;Rampore hound.
+&mdash;Persian greyhound.&mdash;Caboolee dogs.&mdash;A jackal
+hunt.&mdash;Incidents of the chase.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>After living at Puttihee for two years, I was transferred to
+another out-factory in the same concern, called Parewah. There was
+here a very nice little three-roomed bungalow, with airy verandahs
+all round. It was a pleasant change from Puttihee, and the
+situation was very pretty. A small stream, almost dry in the hot
+weather, but a swollen, deep, rapid torrent in the rains, meandered
+past the factory. Nearing the bullock-house it suddenly took a
+sweep to the left in the form of a wide horseshoe, and in this bend
+or pocket was situated the bungalow, with a pretty terraced garden
+sloping gently to the stream. Thus the river was in full view from
+both the front and the back verandahs. In front, and close on the
+bank of the river, stood the kitchen, fowl-house, and offices. To
+the right of the compound were the stables, while behind the
+bungalow, and some distance down the stream, the wheel-house, vats,
+press-house, boiling-house, cake-house, and workshops were grouped
+together. I was but nine miles from the bead-factory, and the same
+distance from the station of Mooteeharree, while over the river,
+and but three miles off, I had the factory of Meerpore, with its
+hospitable manager as my nearest neighbour. His lands and mine lay
+contiguous. In fact some of his villages lay beyond some of mine,
+and he had to ride through part of my cultivation to reach
+them.</p>
+<p>Not unfrequently we would meet in the zillah of a morning, when
+we would invariably make for the nearest patch of grass or jungle,
+and enjoy a hunt together. In the cool early mornings, when the
+heavy night dews still lie glittering on the grass, when the
+cobwebs seem strung with pearls, and faint lines of soft fleecy
+mist lie in the hollows by the watercourses; long ere the hot,
+fiery sun has left his crimson bed behind the cold grey horizon, we
+are out on our favourite horse, the wiry, long-limbed <i>syce</i>
+or groom trotting along behind us. The <i>mehter</i> or dog-keeper
+is also in attendance with a couple of greyhounds in leash, and a
+motley pack of wicked little terriers frisking and frolicking
+behind him. This mongrel collection is known as 'the Bobbery Pack,'
+and forms a certain adjunct to every assistant's bungalow in the
+district. I had one very noble-looking kangaroo hound that I had
+brought from Australia with me, and my 'bobbery pack' of terriers
+contained canine specimens of all sorts, sizes, and colours.</p>
+<p>On nearing a village, you would see one black fellow, 'Pincher,'
+set off at a round trot ahead, with seemingly the most innocent air
+in the world. 'Tilly,' 'Tiny,' and 'Nipper' follow.</p>
+<p>Then 'Dandy,' 'Curly,' 'Brandy,' and 'Nettle,' till spying a cat
+in the distance, the whole pack with a whimper of excitement dash
+off at a mad scramble, the hound straining meanwhile at the slip,
+till he almost pulls the <i>mehter</i> off his legs. Off goes the
+cat, round the corner of a hut with her tail puffed up to fully
+three times its normal size. Round in mad, eager pursuit rattle the
+terriers, thirsting for her blood. The <i>syce</i> dashes forward,
+vainly hoping to turn them from their quest. Now a village dog,
+roused from his morning nap, bounds out with a demoniac howl, which
+is caught up and echoed by all the curs in the village.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile the row inside the hut is fiendish. The sleeping
+family rudely roused by the yelping pack, utter the most discordant
+screams. The women with garments fluttering behind them, rush out
+beating their breasts, thinking the very devil is loose. The wails
+of the unfortunate cat mingle with the short snapping barks of the
+pack, or a howl of anguish as puss inflicts a caress on the face of
+some too careless or reckless dog. A howling village cur has rashly
+ventured too near. 'Pincher' has him by the hind leg before you
+could say 'Jack Robinson.' Leaving the dead cat for 'Toby' and
+'Nettle' to worry, the whole pack now fiercely attack the luckless
+<i>Pariah</i> dog. A dozen of his village mates dance madly outside
+the ring, but are too wise or too cowardly to come to closer
+quarters. The kangaroo hound has now fairly torn the rope from the
+keeper's hand, and with one mighty bound is in the middle of the
+fight, scattering the village dogs right and left. The whole
+village is now in commotion, the <i>syce</i> and keeper shout the
+names of the terriers in vain. Oaths, cries, shouts, and screams
+mingle with the yelping and growling of the combatants, till riding
+up, I disperse the worrying pack with a few cracks of my hunting
+whip, and so on again over the zillah, leaving the women and
+children to recover their scattered senses, the old men to grumble
+over their broken slumbers, and the boys and young men to wonder at
+the pluck and dash of the <i>Belaitee Kookoor</i>, or English
+dog.</p>
+<p>The common Pariah dog, or village dog of India, is a perfect
+cur; a mangy, carrion-loving, yellow-fanged, howling brute. A most
+unlovely and unloving beast. As you pass his village he will bounce
+out on you with the fiercest bark and the most menacing snarl; but
+lo! if a terrier the size of a teacup but boldly go at him, down
+goes his tail like a pump-handle, he turns white with fear, and
+like the arrant coward that he is, tumbles on his back and fairly
+screams for mercy. I have often been amused to see a great hulking
+cowardly brute come out like an avalanche at 'Pincher,' expecting
+to make one mouthful of him. What a look of bewilderment he would
+put on, as my gallant little 'Pincher,' with a short, sharp,
+defiant bark would go boldly at him. The huge yellow brute would
+stop dead short on all four legs, and as the rest of my pack would
+come scampering round the corner, he would find himself the centre
+of a ring of indomitable assailants.</p>
+<p>How he curses his short-sighted temerity. With one long howl of
+utter dismay and deadly fear, he manages to get away from the pack,
+leaving my little doggies to come proudly round my horse with their
+mouths full of fur, and each of their little tails as stiff as an
+iron ramrod.</p>
+<p>That 'Pincher,' in some respects, was a very fiend incarnate.
+There was no keeping him in. He was constantly getting into hot
+water himself, and leading the pack into all sorts of mischief. He
+was as bold as brass and as courageous as a lion. He stole food,
+worried sheep and goats, and was never out of a scrape. I tried
+thrashing him, tying him up, half starving him, but all to no
+purpose. He would be into every hut in a village whenever he had
+the chance, overturning brass pots, eating up rice and curries, and
+throwing the poor villager's household into dismay and confusion.
+He would never leave a cat if he once saw it. I've seen him
+scramble through the roofs of more than one hut, and oust the cat
+from its fancied stronghold.</p>
+<p>I put him into an indigo vat with a big dog jackal once, and he
+whipped the jackal single-handed. He did not kill it, but he
+worried it till the jackal shammed dead and would not 'come to the
+scratch.' 'Pincher's' ears were perfect shreds, and his scars were
+as numerous almost as his hairs. My gallant 'Pincher!' His was a
+sad end. He got eaten up by an alligator in the 'Dhans,' a sluggish
+stream in Bhaugulpore. I had all my pack in the boat with me, the
+stream was swollen and full of weeds. A jackal gave tongue on the
+bank, and 'Pincher' bounded over the side of the boat at once. I
+tried to 'grab' him, and nearly upset the boat in doing so. Our
+boat was going rapidly down stream, and 'Pincher' tried to get
+ashore but got among the weeds. He gave a bark, poor gallant little
+dog, for help, but just then we saw a dark square snout shoot
+athwart the stream. A half-smothered sobbing cry from 'Pincher,'
+and the bravest little dog I ever possessed was gone for ever.</p>
+<p>There is another breed of large, strong-limbed, big-boned dogs,
+called Rampore hounds. They are a cross breed from the original
+upcountry dog and the Persian greyhound. Some call them the Indian
+greyhound. They seem to be bred principally in the Rampore-Bareilly
+district, but one or more are generally to be found in every
+planter's pack. They are fast and strong enough, but I have often
+found them bad at tackling, and they are too fond of their keeper
+ever to make an affectionate faithful dog to the European.</p>
+<p>Another somewhat similar breed is the <i>Tazi</i>. This,
+although not so large a dog as the Rhamporee, is a much pluckier
+animal, and when well trained will tackle a jackal with the utmost
+determination. He has a wrinkled almost hairless skin, but a very
+uncertain temper, and he is not very amenable to discipline.
+<i>Tazi</i> is simply the Persian word for a greyhound, and refers
+to no particular breed. The common name for a dog is <i>Kutta</i>,
+pronounced <i>Cootta</i>, but the Tazi has certainly been an
+importation from the North-west, hence the Persian name. The
+wandering Caboolees, who come down to the plains once a year with
+dried fruits, spices, and other products of field or garden, also
+bring with them the dogs of their native country for sale, and on
+occasion they bring lovely long-haired white Persian cats, very
+beautiful animals. These Caboolee dogs are tall, long-limbed
+brutes, generally white, with a long thin snout, very long
+silky-haired drooping ears, and generally wearing tufts of hair on
+their legs and tail, somewhat like the feathering of a spaniel,
+which makes them look rather clumsy. They cannot stand the heat of
+the plains at all well, and are difficult to tame, but fleet and
+plucky, hunting well with an English pack.</p>
+<p>My neighbour Anthony at Meerpore had some very fine English
+greyhounds and bulldogs, and many a rattling burst have we had
+together after the fox or the jackal. Imagine a wide level plain,
+with one uniform dull covering of rice stubble, save where in the
+centre a mound rises some two acres in extent, covered with long
+thatching grass, a few scrubby acacia bushes, and other jungly
+brushwood. All round the circular horizon are dense forest masses
+of sombre looking foliage, save where some clump of palms uprear
+their stately heads, or the white shining walls of some temple,
+sacred to Shiva or Khristna glitter in the sunshine. Far to the
+left a sluggish creek winds slowly along through the plain, its
+banks fringed with acacias and wild rose jungle. On the far bank is
+a small patch of <i>Sal</i> forest jungle, with a thick rank
+undergrowth of ferns, thistles, and rank grass. As I am slowly
+riding along I hear a shout in the distance, and looking round
+behold Anthony advancing at a rapid hand gallop. His dogs and mine,
+being old friends, rapidly fraternise, and we determine on a
+hunt.</p>
+<p>'Let's try the old patch, Anthony!'</p>
+<p>'All right,' and away we go making straight for the mound. When
+we reach the grass the syces and keepers hold the hounds at the
+corners outside, while we ride through the grass urging on the
+terriers, who, quivering with excitement, utter short barks, and
+dash here and there among the thick grass, all eager for a
+find.</p>
+<p>'Gone away, gone away!' shouts Anthony, as a fleet fox dashes
+out, closely followed by 'Pincher' and half a dozen others. The
+hounds are slipped, and away go the pack in full pursuit, we on our
+horses riding along, one on each side of the chase. The fox has a
+good start, but now the hounds are nearing him, when with a sudden
+whisk he doubles round the ridge encircling a rice field, the
+hounds overshoot him, and ere they turn the fox has put the breadth
+of a good field between himself and his pursuers. He is now making
+back again for the grass, but encounters some of the terriers who
+have tailed off behind. With panting chests and lolling tongues,
+they are pegging stolidly along, when fortune gives them this
+welcome chance. Redoubling their efforts, they dash at the fox.
+'Bravo, Tilly! you tumbled him over that time;' but he is up and
+away again. Dodging, double-turning, and twisting, he has nearly
+run the gauntlet, and the friendly covert is close at hand, but the
+hounds are now up again and thirsting for his blood. 'Hurrah!
+Minnie has him!' cries Anthony, and riding up we divest poor
+Reynard of his brush, pat the dogs, ease the girths for a minute,
+and then again into the jungle for another beat.</p>
+<p>This time a fat old jackal breaks to the left, long before the
+dogs are up. Yelling to the <i>mehters</i> not to slip the hounds,
+we gather the terriers together, and pound over the stubble and
+ridges. He is going very leisurely, casting an occasional scared
+look over his shoulder. 'Curly' and 'Legs,' two of my fastest
+terriers, are now in full view, they are laying themselves well to
+the ground, and Master Jackal thinks it's high time to increase his
+pace. He puts on a spurt, but condition tells. He is fat and pursy,
+and must have had a good feed last night on some poor dead bullock.
+He is shewing his teeth now. Curly makes his rush, and they both
+roll over together. Up hurries Legs, and the jackal gets a grip,
+gives him a shake, and then hobbles slowly on. The two terriers now
+hamper him terribly. One minute they are at his heels, and as soon
+as he turns, they are at his ear or shoulder. The rest of the pack
+are fast coming up.</p>
+<p>Anthony has a magnificent bulldog, broad-chested, and a very
+Goliath among dogs. He is called 'Sailor.' Sailor always pounds
+along at the same steady pace; he never seems to get flurried.
+Sitting lazily at the door, he seems too indolent even to snap at a
+fly. He is a true philosopher, and nought seems to disturb his
+serenity. But see him after a jackal, his big red tongue hanging
+out, his eyes flashing fire, and his hair erected on his back like
+the bristles of a wild boar. He looks fiendish then, and he is a
+true bulldog. There is no flinching with Sailor. Once he gets his
+grip it's no use trying to make him let go.</p>
+<p>Up comes Sailor now.</p>
+<p>He has the jackal by the throat.</p>
+<p>A hoarse, rattling, gasping yell, and the jackal has gone to the
+happy hunting grounds.</p>
+<p>The sun is now mounting in the sky. The hounds and terriers feel
+the heat, so sending them home by the keeper, we diverge on our
+respective roads, ride over our cultivation, seeing the ploughing
+and preparations generally, till hot, tired, and dusty, we reach
+home about 11.30, tumble into our bath, and feeling refreshed, sit
+down contentedly to breakfast. If the <i>dak</i> or postman has
+come in we get our letters and papers, and the afternoon is devoted
+to office work and accounts, hearing complaints and reports from
+the villages, or looking over any labour that may be going on in
+the zeraats or at the workshops. In the evening we ride over the
+zeraats again, give orders for the morrow's work, consume a little
+tobacco, have an early dinner, and after a little reading, retire
+soon to bed to dream of far away friends and the happy memories of
+home. Many an evening it is very lonely work. No friendly face, and
+no congenial society within miles of your factory. Little wonder
+that the arrival of a brother planter sends a thrill through the
+frame, and that his advent is welcomed as the most agreeable break
+to the irksome monotony of our lonely life.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterVI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Fishing in India.&mdash;Hereditary
+trades.&mdash;The boatmen and fishermen of India.&mdash;Their
+villages.&mdash;Nets.&mdash;Modes of fishing.&mdash;Curiosities
+relating thereto.&mdash;Catching an alligator with a
+hook.&mdash;Exciting capture.&mdash;Crocodiles.&mdash;Shooting an
+alligator.&mdash;Death of the man-eater.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Not only in the wild jungles, on the undulating plains, and
+among the withered brown stubbles, does animal life abound in
+India; but the rivers, lakes, and creeks teem with fish of every
+conceivable size, shape, and colour. The varieties are legion. From
+the huge black porpoise, tumbling through the turgid stream of the
+Ganges, to the bright, sparkling, silvery shoals of delicate
+<i>chillooahs</i> or <i>poteeahs</i>, which one sees darting in and
+out among the rice stubbles in every paddy field during the rains.
+Here a huge <i>bhowarree</i> (pike), or ravenous <i>coira</i>,
+comes to the surface with a splash; there a <i>raho</i>, the Indian
+salmon, with its round sucker-like mouth, rises slowly to the
+surface, sucks in a fly and disappears as slowly as it rose; or a
+<i>pachgutchea</i>, a long sharp-nosed fish, darts rapidly by; a
+shoal of mullet with their heads out of the water swim athwart the
+stream, and far down in the cool depths of the tank or lake, a
+thousand different varieties disport themselves among the mazy
+labyrinths of the broad-leaved weeds.</p>
+<p>During the middle, and about the end of the rains, is the best
+time for fishing; the whole country is then a perfect network of
+streams. Every rice field is a shallow lake, with countless
+thousands of tiny fish darting here and there among the rice
+stalks. Every ditch teems with fish, and every hollow in every
+field is a well stocked aquarium.</p>
+<p>Round the edge of every lake or tank in the early morning, or
+when the fierce heat of the day begins to get tempered by the
+approaching shades of evening, one sees numbers of boys and men of
+the poorer classes, each with a couple of rough bamboo rods stuck
+in the ground in front of him, watching his primitive float with
+the greatest eagerness, and whipping out at intervals some luckless
+fish of about three or four ounces in weight with a tremendous
+haul, fit for the capture of a forty-pounder. They get a coarse
+sort of hook in the bazaar, rig up a roughly-twisted line, tie on a
+small piece of hollow reed for a float, and with a lively
+earth-worm for a bait, they can generally manage in a very short
+time to secure enough fish for a meal.</p>
+<p>With a short light rod, a good silk line, and an English hook
+attached to fine gut, I have enjoyed many a good hour's sport at
+Parewah. I used to have a cane chair sent down to the bank of the
+stream, a <i>punkah</i>, or hand fan, plenty of cooling drinks, and
+two coolie boys in attendance to remove the fish, renew baits, and
+keep the punkah in constant swing. There I used to sit enjoying my
+cigar, and pulling in little fish at the rate sometimes of a couple
+a minute.</p>
+<p>I remember hooking a turtle once, and a terrible job it was to
+land him. My light rod bent like a willow, but the tackle was good,
+and after ten minutes' hard work I got the turtle to the side,
+where my boys soon secured him. He weighed thirteen pounds.
+Sometimes you get among a colony of freshwater crabs.</p>
+<p>They are little brown brutes, and strip your hooks of the bait
+as fast as you fling them in. There is nothing for it in such a
+case but to shift your station. Many of the bottom fish&mdash;the
+<i>ghurai</i>, the <i>saourie</i>, the <i>barnee</i> (eel), and
+others, make no effort to escape the hook. You see them resting at
+the bottom, and drop the bait at their very nose. On the whole, the
+hand fishing is uninteresting, but it serves to wile away an odd
+hour when hunting and shooting are hardly practicable.</p>
+<p>Particular occupations in India are restricted to particular
+castes. All trades are hereditary. For example, a <i>tatmah</i>, or
+weaver, is always a weaver. He cannot become a blacksmith or
+carpenter. He has no choice. He must follow the hereditary trade.
+The peculiar system of land-tenure in India, which secures as far
+as possible a bit of land for every one, tends to perpetuate this
+hereditary selection of trades, by enabling every cultivator to be
+so far independent of his handicraft, thus restricting competition.
+There may be twenty <i>lohars</i>, or blacksmiths, in a village,
+but they do not all follow their calling. They till their lands,
+and are <i>de facto</i> petty farmers. They know the rudiments of
+their handicraft, but the actual blacksmith's work is done by the
+hereditary smith of the village, whose son in turn will succeed him
+when he dies, or if he leave no son, his fellow caste men will put
+in a successor.</p>
+<p>Nearly every villager during the rains may be found on the banks
+of the stream or lake, angling in an amateur sort of way, but the
+fishermen of Behar <i>par excellence</i> are the
+<i>mull&#257;hs</i>; they are also called <i>Gouhree, Beeu</i>, or
+<i>Muchooah</i>. In Bengal they are called <i>Nikaree</i>, and in
+some parts <i>Baeharee</i>, from the Persian word for a boat. In
+the same way <i>muchooah</i> is derived from <i>much</i>, a fish,
+and <i>mullah</i> means boatman, strictly speaking, rather than
+fisherman. All boatmen and fishermen belong to this caste, and
+their villages can be recognised at once by the instruments of
+their calling lying all around.</p>
+<p>Perched high on some bank overlooking the stream or lake, you
+see innumerable festoons of nets hanging out to dry on tall bamboo
+poles, or hanging like lace curtains of very coarse texture from
+the roofs and eaves of the huts. Hauled up on the beach are a whole
+fleet of boats of different sizes, from the small <i>dugout</i>,
+which will hold only one man, to the huge <i>dinghy</i>, in which
+the big nets and a dozen men can be stowed with ease. Great heaps
+of shells of the freshwater mussel show the source of great
+supplies of bait; while overhead a great hovering army of kites and
+vultures are constantly circling round, eagerly watching for the
+slightest scrap of offal from the nets. When the rains have fairly
+set in, and the fishermen have got their rice fields all planted
+out, they are at liberty to follow their hereditary avocation. A
+day is fixed for a drag, and the big nets are overhauled and got in
+readiness. The head <i>mullah</i>, a wary grizzled old veteran,
+gives the orders. The big drag-net is bundled into the boat, which
+is quickly pushed off into the stream, and at a certain distance
+from shore the net is cast from the boat. Being weighted at the
+lower end it rapidly sinks, and, buoyed on the upper side with
+pieces of cork, it makes a perpendicular wall in the water. Several
+long bamboo poles are now run through the ropes along the upper
+side of the net, to prevent the net being dragged under water
+altogether by the weight of the fish in a great haul. The little
+boats, a crowd of which are in attendance, now dart out,
+surrounding the net on all sides, and the boatmen beating their
+oars on the sides of the boats, create such a clatter as to
+frighten, the fish into the circumference of the big net. This is
+now being dragged slowly to shore by strong and willing arms. The
+women and children watch eagerly on the bank. At length the
+glittering haul is pulled up high and dry on the beach, the fish
+are divided among the men, the women fill their baskets, and away
+they hie to the nearest <i>bazaar</i>, or if it be not
+<i>bazaar</i> or market day, they hawk the fish through the nearest
+villages, like our fish-wives at home.</p>
+<p>There is another common mode of fishing adopted in narrow lakes
+and small streams, which are let out to the fishermen by the
+Zemindars or landholders. A barricade made of light reeds, all
+matted together by string, is stuck into the stream, and a portion
+of the water is fenced in, generally in a circular form. The reed
+fence being quite flexible is gradually moved in, narrowing the
+circle. As the circle narrows, the agitation inside is
+indescribable; fish jumping in all directions&mdash;a moving mass
+of glittering scales and fins. The larger ones try to leap the
+barrier, and are caught by the attendant <i>mullahs</i>, who pounce
+on them with swift dexterity. Eagles and kites dart and swoop down,
+bearing off a captive fish in their talons. The reed fence is
+doubled back on itself, and gradually pushed on till the whole of
+the fish inside are jammed together in a moving mass. The weeds and
+dirt are then removed, and the fish put into baskets and carried
+off to market.</p>
+<p>Others, again, use circular casting nets, which they throw with
+very great dexterity. Gathering the net into a bunch they rest it
+on the shoulder, then with a circular sweep round the head, they
+fling it far out. Being loaded, it sinks down rapidly in the water.
+A string is attached to the centre of the net, and the fisherman
+hauls it in with whatever prey he may be lucky enough to
+secure.</p>
+<p>As the waters recede during October, after the rains have ended,
+each runlet and purling stream becomes a scene of slaughter on a
+most reckless and improvident scale. The innumerable shoals of
+spawn and small fish that have been feeding in the rice fields,
+warned by some instinct seek the lakes and main streams. As they
+try to get their way back, however, they find at each outlet in
+each ditch and field a deadly wicker trap, in the shape of a square
+basket with a V-shaped opening leading into it, through which the
+stream makes its way. After entering this basket there is no egress
+except through the narrow opening, and they are trapped thus in
+countless thousands. Others of the natives in mere wantonness put a
+shelf of reeds or rushes in the bed of the stream, with an upward
+slope. As the water rushes along, the little fish are left high and
+dry on this shelf or screen, and the water runs off below. In this
+way scarcely a fish escapes, and as millions are too small to be
+eaten, it is a most serious waste. The attention of Government has
+been directed to the subject, and steps may be taken to stop such a
+reckless and wholesale destruction of a valuable food supply.</p>
+<p>In some parts of Purneah and Bhaugulpore I have seen a most
+ingenious method adopted by the <i>mullahs</i>. A gang of four or
+five enter the stream and travel slowly downwards, stirring up the
+mud at the bottom with their feet. The fish, ascending the stream
+to escape the mud, get entangled in the weeds. The fishermen feel
+them with their feet amongst the weeds, and immediately pounce on
+them with their hands. Each man has a <i>gila</i> or earthen pot
+attached by a string to his waist and floating behind him in the
+water. I have seen four men fill their earthen pots in less than an
+hour by this ingenious but primitive mode of fishing. Some of them
+can use their feet almost as well for grasping purposes as their
+hands.</p>
+<p>Another mode of capture is by a small net. A flat piece of
+netting is spread over a hoop, to which four or five pieces of
+bamboo are attached, rising up and meeting in the centre, so as to
+form a sort of miniature skeleton tent-like frame over the net. The
+hoop with the net stretched tight across is then pressed down flat
+on the bottom of the tank or stream. If any fish are beneath, their
+efforts to escape agitate the net. The motion is communicated to
+the fisherman by a string from the centre of the net which is
+rolled round the fisherman's thumb. When the jerking of his thumb
+announces a captive fish, he puts down his left hand and secures
+his victim. The <i>Banturs</i>, <i>Nepaulees</i>, and other jungle
+tribes, also often use the bow and arrow as a means of securing
+fish.</p>
+<p>Seated on the branch of some overhanging tree, while his keen
+eye scans the depths below, he watches for a large fish, and as it
+passes, he lets fly his arrow with unerring aim, and impales the
+luckless victim. Some tribes fish at night, by torchlight, spearing
+the fish who are attracted by the light. In Nepaul the bark of the
+<i>Hill Sirres</i> is often used to poison a stream or piece of
+water. Pounded up and thrown in, it seems to have some uncommon
+effect on the fish. After water has been treated in this way, the
+fish, seemingly quite stupefied, rise to the surface, on which they
+float in great numbers, and allow themselves to be caught. The
+strangest part of it is that they are perfectly innocuous as food,
+notwithstanding this treatment.</p>
+<p>Fish forms a very favourite article of diet with both Mussulmans
+and Hindoos. Many of the latter take a vow to touch no flesh of any
+kind. They are called <i>Kunthees</i> or <i>Boghuts</i>, but a
+<i>Boghut</i> is more of an ascetic than a <i>Kunthee</i>. However,
+the <i>Kunthee</i> is glad of a fish dinner when he can get it.
+They are restricted to no particular sect or caste, but all who
+have taken the vow wear a peculiar necklace, made generally of
+sandal-wood beads or <i>neem</i> beads round their throats. Hence
+the name, from <i>kunth</i> meaning the throat.</p>
+<p>The right to fish in any particular piece of water, is let out
+by the proprietor on whose land the water lies, or through which it
+flows. The letting is generally done by auction yearly. The fishing
+is called a <i>shilkur</i>; from <i>shal</i>, a net. It is
+generally taken by some rich <i>Bunneah</i> (grain seller) or
+village banker, who sub-lets it in turn to the fishermen.</p>
+<p>In some of the tanks which are not so let, and where the native
+proprietor preserves the fish, first-class sport can be had. A
+common native poaching dodge is this: if some oil cake be thrown
+into the water a few hours previous to your fishing, or better
+still, balls made of roasted linseed meal, mixed with bruised
+leaves of the 'sweet basil,' or <i>toolsee</i> plant, the fish
+assemble in hundreds round the spot, and devour the bait greedily.
+With a good eighteen-foot rod, fish of from twelve to twenty pounds
+are not uncommonly caught, and will give good play too. Fishing in
+the plains of India is, however, rather tame sport at the best of
+times.</p>
+<p>You have heard of the famous <i>mahseer</i>&mdash;some of them
+over eighty or a hundred pounds weight? We have none of these in
+Behar, but the huge porpoise gives splendid rifle or carbine
+practice as he rolls through the turgid streams. They are difficult
+to hit, but I have seen several killed with ball; and the oil
+extracted from their bodies is a splendid dressing for harness. But
+the most exciting fishing I have ever seen was&mdash;What do you
+think?&mdash;Alligator fishing! Yes, the formidable scaly monster,
+with his square snout and terrible jaws, his ponderous body covered
+with armour, and his serrated tail, with which he could break the
+leg of a bullock, or smash an outrigger as easily as a whale could
+smash a jolly-boat.</p>
+<p>I must try to describe one day's alligator fishing.</p>
+<p>When I was down in Bhaugulpore, I went out frequently fishing in
+the various tanks and streams near my factory. My friend Pat, who
+is a keen sportsman and very fond of angling, wrote to me one day
+when he and his brother Willie were going out to the Teljuga,
+asking me to join their party. The Teljuga is the boundary stream
+between Tirhoot and Bhaugulpore, and its sluggish muddy waters teem
+with alligators&mdash;the regular square-nosed <i>mugger</i>, the
+terrible man-eater. The <i>nakar</i> or long-nosed species may be
+seen in countless numbers in any of the large streams, stretched
+out on the banks basking in the noonday sun. Going down the Koosee
+particularly, you come across hundreds sometimes lying on one bank.
+As the boat nears them, they slide noiselessly and slowly into the
+stream. A large excrescence forms on the tip of the long snout,
+like a huge sponge; and this is often all that is seen on the
+surface of the water as the huge brute swims about waiting for his
+prey. These <i>nakars</i>, or long-nosed specimens, never attack
+human beings&mdash;at least such cases are very very rare&mdash;but
+live almost entirely on fish. I remember seeing one catch a
+paddy-bird on one occasion near the junction of the Koosee with the
+Ganges. My boat was fastened to the shore near a slimy creek, that
+came oozing into the river from some dense jungle near. I was
+washing my hands and face on the bank, and the boatmen were fishing
+with a small hand-net, for our breakfast. Numbers of attenuated
+melancholy-looking paddy-birds were stalking solemnly and stiltedly
+along the bank, also fishing for <i>theirs</i>. I noticed one who
+was particularly greedy, with his long legs half immersed in the
+water, constantly darting out his long bill and bringing up a
+hapless struggling fish. All of a sudden a long snout and the ugly
+serrated ridgy back of a <i>nakar</i> was shot like lightning at
+the hapless bird, and right before our eyes the poor paddy was
+crunched up. As a rule, however, alligators confine themselves to a
+fish diet, and are glad of any refuse or dead animal that may float
+their way. But with the <i>mugger</i>, the <i>boach</i>, or
+square-nosed variety, 'all is fish that comes to his net.' His soul
+delights in young dog or live pork. A fat duck comes not amiss; and
+impelled by hunger he hesitates not to attack man. Once regaled
+with the flavour of human flesh, he takes up his stand near some
+ferry, or bathing ghaut, where many hapless women and children
+often fall victims to his unholy appetite, before his career is cut
+short.</p>
+<p>I remember shooting one ghastly old scaly villain in a tank near
+Ryseree. He had made this tank his home, and with that fatalism
+which is so characteristic of the Hindoo, the usual ablutions and
+bathings went on as if no such monster existed. Several woman
+having been carried off, however, at short intervals, the villagers
+asked me to try and rid them of their foe. I took a ride down to
+the tank one Friday morning, and found the banks a scene of great
+excitement. A woman had been carried off some hours before as she
+was filling her water jar, and the monster was now reposing at the
+bottom of the tank digesting his horrible meal. The tank was
+covered with crimson water-lilies in full bloom, their broad brown
+and green leaves showing off the crimson beauty of the open flower.
+At the north corner some wild rose bushes dropped over the water,
+casting a dense matted shade. Here was the haunt of the
+<i>mugger</i>. He had excavated a huge gloomy-looking hole, into
+which he retired when gorged with prey. My first care was to cut
+away some of these bushes, and then, finding he was not at home, we
+drove some bamboo stakes through the bank to prevent him getting
+into his <i>manu</i>, which is what the natives term the den or
+hole. I then sat down under a <i>goolar</i> tree, to wait for his
+appearance. The <i>goolar</i> is a species of fig, and the leaves
+are much relished by cattle and goats. Gradually the village boys
+and young men went off to their ploughing, or grass cutting for the
+cows' evening meal. A woman came down occasionally to fill her
+waterpot in evident fear and trembling. A swarm of <i>minas</i>
+(the Indian starling) hopped and twittered round my feet. The
+cooing of a pair of amatory pigeons overhead nearly lulled me to
+slumber. A flock of green parrots came swiftly circling overhead,
+making for the fig-tree at the south end of the tank. An occasional
+<i>raho</i> lazily rose among the water-lilies, and disappeared
+with an indolent flap of his tail. The brilliant kingfisher,
+resplendent in crimson and emerald, sat on the withered branch of a
+prostrate mango-tree close by, pluming his feathers and doubtless
+meditating on the vanity of life. Suddenly, close by the massive
+post which marks the centre of every Hindoo tank, a huge scaly
+snout slowly and almost imperceptibly rose to the surface, then a
+broad, flat, forbidding forehead, topped by two grey fishy eyes
+with warty-looking callosities for eyebrows. Just then an eager
+urchin who had been squatted by me for hours, pointed to the brute.
+It was enough. Down sank the loathsome creature, and we had to
+resume our attitude of expectation and patient waiting. Another
+hour passed slowly. It was the middle of the afternoon, and very
+hot. I had sent my <i>tokedar</i> off for a 'peg' to the factory,
+and was beginning to get very drowsy, when, right in the same spot,
+the repulsive head again rose slowly to the surface. I had my
+trusty No. 12 to my shoulder on the instant, glanced carefully
+along the barrels, but just then only the eyes of the brute were
+invisible. A moment of intense excitement followed, and then,
+emboldened by the extreme stillness, he showed his whole head above
+the surface. I pulled the trigger, and a Meade shell crashed
+through the monster's skull, scattering his brains in the water and
+actually sending one splinter of the skull to the opposite edge of
+the tank, where my little Hindoo boy picked it up and brought it to
+me.</p>
+<p>There was a mighty agitation in the water; the water-lilies
+rocked to and fro, and the broad leaves glittered with the water
+drops thrown on them; then all was still. Hearing the report of my
+gun, the natives came flocking to the spot, and, telling them their
+enemy was slain, I departed, leaving instructions to let me know
+when the body came to the surface. It did so three days later.
+Getting some <i>chumars</i> and <i>domes</i> (two of the lowest
+castes, as none of the higher castes will touch a dead body under
+pain of losing caste), we hauled the putrid carcase to shore, and
+on cutting it open, found the glass armlets and brass ornaments of
+no less than five women and the silver ornaments of three children,
+all in a lump in the brute's stomach. Its skull was completely
+smashed and shattered to pieces by my shot. Its teeth were crusted
+with tartar, and worn almost to the very stumps. It measured
+nineteen feet.</p>
+<p>But during this digression my friends Pat and Willie have been
+waiting on the banks of the 'Teljuga.' I reached their tents late
+at night, found them both in high spirits after a good day's
+execution among the ducks and teal, and preparations being made for
+catching an alligator next day. Up early in the morning, we beat
+some grass close by the stream, and roused out an enormous boar
+that gave us a three mile spin and a good fight, after Pat had
+given him first spear. After breakfast we got our tackle ready.</p>
+<p>This was a large iron hook with a strong shank, to which was
+attached a stout iron ring. To this ring a long thick rope was
+fastened, and I noticed for several yards the strands were all
+loose and detached, and only knotted at intervals. I asked Pat the
+reason of this curious arrangement, and was told that if we were
+lucky enough to secure a <i>mugger</i>, the loose strands would
+entangle themselves amongst his formidable teeth, whereas were the
+rope in one strand only he might bite it through; the knottings at
+intervals were to give greater strength to the line. We now got our
+bait ready. On this occasion it was a live tame duck. Passing the
+bend of the hook round its neck, and the shank under its right
+wing, we tied the hook in this position with thread. We then made a
+small raft of the soft pith of the plantain-tree, tied the duck to
+the raft and committed it to the stream. Holding the rope as clear
+of the water as we could, the poor quacking duck floated slowly
+down the muddy current, making an occasional vain effort to get
+free. We saw at a distance an ugly snout rise to the surface for an
+instant and then noiselessly disappear.</p>
+<p>'There's one!' says Pat in a whisper.</p>
+<p>'Be sure and not strike too soon,' says Willie.</p>
+<p>'Look out there, you lazy rascals!' This in Hindostanee to the
+grooms and servants who were with us.</p>
+<p>Again the black mass rises to the surface, but this time nearer
+to the fated duck. As if aware of its peril it now struggles and
+quacks most vociferously. Nearer and nearer each time the black
+snout rises, and then each time silently disappears beneath the
+turgid muddy stream. Now it appears again; this time there are two,
+and there is another at a distance attracted by the quacking of the
+duck. We on the bank cower down and go as noiselessly as we can.
+Sometimes the rope dips on the water, and the huge snout and
+staring eyes immediately disappear. At length it rises within a few
+yards of the duck; then there is a mighty rush, two huge jaws open
+and shut with a snap like factory shears, and amid a whirl of foam
+and water and surging mud the poor duck and the hideous reptile
+disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense volumes of mud
+that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the tragedy
+that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim to
+and fro still further disturbing the muddy current.</p>
+<p>'Give him lots of time to swallow,' yells Pat, now fairly mad
+with excitement.</p>
+<p>The grooms and grass-cutters howl and dance. Willie and I dig
+each other in the ribs, and all generally act in an excited and
+insane way.</p>
+<p>Pat now puts the rope over his shoulder, we all take hold, and
+with a 'one, two, three!' we make a simultaneous rush from the
+bank, and as the rope suddenly tightens with a pull and strain that
+nearly jerks us all on our backs, we feel that we have hooked the
+monster, and our excitement reaches its culminating point.</p>
+<p>What a commotion now in the black depths of the muddy stream!
+The water, lashed by his powerful tail, surges and dashes in
+eddying whirls. He rises and darts backwards and forwards, snapping
+his horrible jaws, moving his head from side to side, his eyes
+glaring with fury. We hold stoutly on to the rope, although our
+wrists are strained and our arms ache. At length he begins to feel
+our steady pull, and inch by inch, struggling demoniacally, he
+nears the bank. When once he reaches it, however, the united
+efforts of twice our number would fail to bring him farther.
+Bleeding and foaming at the mouth, his horrid teeth glistening amid
+the frothy, blood-flecked foam, he plants his strong curved
+fore-legs against the shelving bank, and tugs and strains at the
+rope with devilish force and fury. It is no use&mdash;the rope has
+been tested, and answers bravely to the strain; and now with a long
+boar spear, Pat cautiously descends the bank, and gives him a
+deadly thrust under the fore arm. With a last fiendish glare of
+hate and defiance, he springs forward; we haul in the rope, Pat
+nimbly jumps back, and a pistol shot through the eye settles the
+monster for ever. This was the first alligator I ever saw hooked;
+he measured sixteen and a half feet exactly, but words can give no
+idea of half the excitement that attended the capture.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterVII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Native superstitions.&mdash;Charming a
+bewitched woman.&mdash;Exorcising ghosts from a
+field.&mdash;Witchcraft.&mdash;The witchfinder or
+'Ojah.'&mdash;Influence of fear.&mdash;Snake bites.&mdash;How to
+cure them.&mdash;How to discover a thief.&mdash;Ghosts and their
+habits.&mdash;The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.&mdash;Cruelty to
+animals by natives.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The natives as a rule, and especially the lower classes, are
+excessively superstitious. They are afraid to go out after
+nightfall, believing that then the spirits of the dead walk abroad.
+It is almost impossible to get a coolie, or even a fairly
+intelligent servant, to go a message at night, unless you give him
+another man for company.</p>
+<p>A belief in witches is quite prevalent, and there is scarcely a
+village in Behar that does not contain some withered old crone,
+reputed and firmly believed to be a witch. Others, either young or
+old are believed to have the evil eye; and, as in Scotland some
+centuries ago, there are also witch-finders and sorcerers, who will
+sell charms, cast nativities, give divinations, or ward off the
+evil efforts of wizards and witches by powerful spells. When a
+wealthy man has a child born, the Brahmins cast the nativity of the
+infant on some auspicious day. They fix on the name, and settle the
+date for the baptismal ceremony.</p>
+<p>I remember a man coming to me on one occasion from the village
+of Kuppoorpuckree. He rushed up to where I was sitting in the
+verandah, threw himself at my feet, with tears streaming down his
+cheeks, and amid loud cries for pity and help, told me that his
+wife had just been bewitched. Getting him somewhat soothed and
+pacified, I learned that a reputed witch lived next door to his
+house; that she and the man's wife had quarrelled in the morning
+about some capsicums which the witch was trying to steal from his
+garden; that in the evening, as his wife was washing herself inside
+the <i>angana</i>, or little courtyard appertaining to his house,
+she was seized with cramps and shivering fits, and was now in a
+raging fever; that the witch had been also bathing at the time, and
+that the water from her body had splashed over this man's fence,
+and part of it had come in contact with his wife's body&mdash;hence
+undoubtedly this strange possession. He wished me to send peons at
+once, and have the witch seized, beaten, and expelled from the
+village. It would have been no use my trying to persuade him that
+no witchcraft existed. So I gave him a good dose of quinine for his
+wife, which she was to take as soon as the fit subsided. Next I got
+my old <i>moonshee</i>, or native writer, to write some Persian
+characters on a piece of paper; I then gave him this paper,
+muttering a bit of English rhyme at the time, and telling him this
+was a powerful spell. I told him to take three hairs from his
+wife's head, and a paring from her thumb and big toe nails, and at
+the rising of the moon to burn them outside the walls of his hut.
+The poor fellow took the quinine and the paper with the deepest
+reverence, made me a most lowly <i>salaam</i> or obeisance, and
+departed with a light heart. He carried out my instructions to the
+letter, the quinine acted like a charm on the feverish woman, and I
+found myself quite a famous witch-doctor.</p>
+<p>There was a nice flat little field close to the water at
+Parewah, in which I thought I could get a good crop of oats during
+the cold weather. I sent for the 'dangur' mates, and asked them to
+have it dug up next day. They hummed and hawed and hesitated, as I
+thought, in rather a strange manner, but departed. In the evening
+back they came, to tell me that the dangurs would <i>not</i> dig up
+the field.</p>
+<p>'Why?' I asked.</p>
+<p>'Well you see, Sahib,' said old Teerbouan, who was the patriarch
+and chief spokesman of the village, 'this field has been used for
+years as a burning ghaut' (i.e. a place where the bodies of dead
+Hindoos were buried).</p>
+<p>'Well?' said I.</p>
+<p>'Well, Sahib, my men say that if they disturb this land, the
+"Bhoots" (ghosts) of all those who have been burned there, will
+haunt the village at night, and they hope you will not persist in
+asking them to dig up the land.'</p>
+<p>'Very well, bring down the men with their digging-hoes, and I
+will see.'</p>
+<p>Accordingly, next morning, I went down on my pony, found the
+dangurs all assembled, but no digging going on. I called them
+together, told them that it was a very reasonable fear they had,
+but that I would cast such a spell on the land as would settle the
+ghosts of the departed for ever. I then got a branch of a
+<i>bael</i><a href="#footnoteC1"><sup>1</sup></a> tree that grew
+close by, dipped it in the stream, and walking backwards round the
+ground, waved the dripping branch round my head, repeating at the
+same time the first gibberish that came into my recollection. My
+incantation or spell was as follows, an old Scotch rhyme I had
+often repeated when a child at school&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>'Eenerty, feenerty, fickerty, feg,<br>
+Ell, dell, domun's egg;<br>
+Irky, birky, story, rock,<br>
+An, tan, toose, Jock;<br>
+Black fish! white troot!<br>
+"Gibbie Gaw, ye're oot."'</blockquote>
+<p>It had the desired effect. No sooner was my charm uttered, than,
+after a few encouraging words to the men, telling them that there
+was now no fear, that my charm was powerful enough to lay all the
+spirits in the country, and that I would take all the
+responsibility, they set to work with a will, and had the whole
+field dug up by the evening.</p>
+<p>I have seen many such cases. A blight attacks the melon or
+cucumber beds; a fierce wind rises during the night, and shakes
+half the mangoes off the trees; the youngest child is attacked with
+teething convulsions; the plough-bullock is accidentally lamed, or
+the favourite cow refuses to give milk. In every case it is some
+'Dyne,' or witch, that has been at work with her damnable spells
+and charms. I remember a case in which a poor little child had bad
+convulsions. The 'Ojah,' or witch-finder, in this case a fat,
+greasy, oleaginous knave, was sent for. Full of importance and
+blowing like a porpoise, he came and caused the child to be brought
+to him, under a tree near the village. I was passing at the time,
+and stopped out of curiosity. He spread a tattered cloth in front
+of him, and muttered some unintelligible gibberish, unceasingly
+making strange passes with his arms. He put down a number of
+articles on his cloth&mdash;which was villainously tattered and
+greasy&mdash;an unripe plantain, a handful of rice, of parched
+peas, a thigh bone, two wooden cups, some balls, &amp;c., &amp;c.;
+all of which he kept constantly lifting and moving about, keeping
+up the passes and muttering all the time.</p>
+<p>The child was a sickly-looking, pining sort of creature, rocking
+about in evident pain, and moaning and fretting just as sick
+children do. Gradually its attention got fixed on the strange
+antics going on. The Ojah kept muttering away, quicker and quicker,
+constantly shifting the bone and cups and other articles on the
+cloth. His body was suffused with perspiration, but in about half
+an hour the child had gone off to sleep, and attended by some dozen
+old women, and the anxious father, was borne off in triumph to the
+house.</p>
+<p>Another time one of Mr. D.'s female servants got bitten by a
+scorpion. The poor woman was in great agony, with her arm swelled
+up, when an Ojah was called in. Setting her before him, he began
+his incantations in the usual manner, but made frequent passes over
+her body, and over the bitten place. A gentle perspiration began to
+break out on her skin, and in a very short time the Ojah had thrown
+her into a deep mesmeric sleep. After about an hour she awoke
+perfectly free from pain. In this case no doubt the Ojah was a
+mesmerist.</p>
+<p>The influence of fear on the ordinary native is most wonderful.
+I have known dozens of instances in which natives have been brought
+home at night for treatment in cases of snake-bite. They have
+arrived at the factory in a complete state of coma, with closed
+eyes, the pupils turned back in the head, the whole body rigid and
+cold, the lips pale white, and the tongue firmly locked between the
+teeth. I do not believe in recovery from a really poisonous bite,
+where the venom has been truly injected. I invariably asked first
+how long it was since the infliction of the bite; I would then
+examine the marks, and as a rule would find them very slight. When
+the patient had been brought some distance, I knew at once that it
+was a case of pure fright. The natives wrap themselves up in their
+cloths or blankets at night, and lie down on the floors of their
+huts. Turning about, or getting up for water or tobacco, or perhaps
+to put fuel on the fire, they unluckily tread on a snake, or during
+sleep they roll over on one. The snake gives them a nip, and
+scuttles off. They have not seen what sort of snake it is, but
+their imagination conjures up the very worst. After the first
+outcry, when the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly
+possessed by the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his
+fears work the effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye
+gets dull, his pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb,
+and unless forcibly roused by the bystanders he will actually
+succumb to pure fright, not to the snake-bite at all. My chief care
+when a case of this sort was brought me, was to assume a cheery
+demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears of the relatives, and tell them
+he would be all right in a few hours if they attended to my
+directions. This not uncommonly worked by sympathetic influence on
+the patient himself. I believe, so long as all round him thought he
+was going to die, and expected no other result, the same effect was
+produced on his own mind. As soon as hope sprang up in the breasts
+of all around him, his spirit also caught the contagion. As a rule,
+he would now make an effort to articulate. I would then administer
+a good dose of sal volatile, brandy, eau-de-luce, or other strong
+stimulant, cut into the supposed bite, and apply strong nitric acid
+to the wound. This generally made him wince, and I would hail it as
+a token of certain recovery. By this time some confidence would
+return, and the supposed dying man would soon walk back sound and
+whole among his companions after profuse expressions of gratitude
+to his preserver.</p>
+<p>I have treated dozens of cases in this way successfully, and
+only seen two deaths. One was a young woman, my chowkeydar's
+daughter; the other was an old man, who was already dead when they
+lifted him out of the basket in which they had slung him. I do not
+wish to be misunderstood. I believe that in all these cases of
+recovery it was pure fright working on the imagination, and not
+snake-bite at all. My opinion is shared by most planters, that
+there is no cure yet known for a cobra bite, or for that of any
+other poisonous snake, where the poison has once been fairly
+injected and allowed to mix with the blood<a href=
+"#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a>.</p>
+<p>There is another curious instance of the effects of fear on the
+native mind in the common method taken by an Ojah or Brahmin to
+discover a suspected thief. When a theft occurs, the Ojah is sent
+for, and the suspected parties are brought together. After various
+<i>muntras</i>, i.e. charms or incantations, have been muttered,
+the Ojah, who has meanwhile narrowly scrutinized each countenance,
+gives each of the suspected individuals a small quantity of dry
+rice to chew. If the thief be present, his superstitious fears are
+at work, and his conscience accuses him. He sees some terrible
+retribution for him in all these <i>muntras</i>, and his heart
+becomes like water within him, his tongue gets dry, his salivary
+glands refuse to act; the innocent munch away at their rice
+contentedly, but the guilty wretch feels as if he had ashes in his
+mouth. At a given signal all spit out their rice, and he whose rice
+comes out, chewed indeed, but dry as summer dust, is adjudged the
+thief. This ordeal is called <i>chowl chipao</i>, and is rarely
+unsuccessful. I have known several cases in my own experience in
+which a thief has been thus discovered.</p>
+<p>The <i>bhoots</i>, or ghosts, are popularly supposed to have
+favourite haunts, generally in some specially selected tree; the
+<i>neem</i> tree is supposed to be the most patronised. The most
+intelligent natives share this belief with the poorest and most
+ignorant; they fancy the ghosts throw stones at them, cast evil
+influences over them, lure them into quicksands, and play other
+devilish tricks and cantrips. Some roads are quite shunned and
+deserted at night, for no other reason than that a ghost is
+supposed to haunt the place. The most tempting bribe would not make
+a native walk alone over that road after sunset.</p>
+<p>Besides the witchfinder, another important village functionary
+who relies much on muntras and charms, is the <i>Huddick</i>, or
+cow doctor. He is the only veterinary surgeon of the native when
+his cow or bullock dislocates or breaks a limb, or falls ill. The
+Huddick passes his hands over the affected part, and mutters his
+<i>muntras</i>, which have most probably descended to him from his
+father. Usually knowing a little of the anatomical structure of the
+animal, he may be able to reduce a dislocation, or roughly to set a
+fracture; but if the ailment be internal, a draught of mustard oil,
+or some pounded spices and turmeric, or neem leaves administered
+along with the <i>muntra</i>, are supposed to be all that human
+skill and science can do.</p>
+<p>The natives are cruel to animals. Half-starved bullocks are
+shamefully overworked. When blows fail to make the ill-starred
+brute move, they give a twist and wrench to the tail, which must
+cause the animal exquisite torture, and unless the hapless beast be
+utterly exhausted, this generally induces it to make a further
+effort. Ploughmen very often deliberately make a raw open sore, one
+on each rump of the plough-bullock. They goad the poor wretch on
+this raw sore with a sharp-pointed stick when he lags, or when they
+think he needs stirring up. Ponies, too, are always worked far too
+young; and their miserable legs get frightfully twisted and bent.
+The petty shopkeepers, sellers of brass pots, grain, spices, and
+other bazaar wares, who attend the various bazaars, or weekly and
+bi-weekly markets, transport their goods by means of these
+ponies.</p>
+<p>The packs of merchandise are slung on rough pack-saddles, made
+of coarse sacking. Shambling along with knees bent together, sores
+on every joint, and frequently an eye knocked out, the poor pony's
+back gets cruelly galled; when the bazaar is reached, he is hobbled
+as tightly as possible, the coarse ropes cutting into the flesh,
+and he is then turned adrift to contemplate starvation on the
+burnt-up grass. Great open sores form on the back, on which a
+plaster of moist clay, or cowdung and pounded leaves, is roughly
+put. The wretched creature gets worn to a skeleton. A little common
+care and cleanliness would put him right, with a little kindly
+consideration from his brutal master, but what does the
+<i>Kulwar</i> or <i>Bunneah</i> care? he is too lazy.</p>
+<p>This unfeeling cruelty and callous indifference to the
+sufferings of the lower animals is a crying evil, and every
+magistrate, European, and educated native, might do much to ease
+their burdens. Tremendous numbers of bullocks and ponies die from
+sheer neglect and ill treatment every year. It is now becoming so
+serious a trouble, that in many villages plough-bullocks are too
+few in number for the area of land under cultivation. The tillage
+suffers, the crops deteriorate, this reacts on prices, the ryot
+sinks lower and lower, and gets more into the grasp of the
+rapacious money-lender. In many villages I have seen whole tracts
+of land relapsed into <i>purtee</i>, or untilled waste, simply from
+want of bullocks to draw the plough. Severe epidemics, like foot
+and mouth disease and pleuro, occasionally sweep off great numbers;
+but, I repeat, that annually the lives of hundreds of valuable
+animals are sacrificed by sheer sloth, dirt, inattention, and
+brutal cruelty.</p>
+<p>In some parts of India, cattle poisoning for the sake of the
+hides is extensively practised. The <i>Chumars</i>, that is, the
+shoemakers, furriers, tanners, and workers in leather and skins
+generally, frequently combine together in places, and wilfully
+poison cattle and buffaloes. There is actually a section in the
+penal code taking cognisance of the crime. The Hindoo will not
+touch a dead carcase, so that when a bullock mysteriously sickens
+and dies, the <i>Chumars</i> haul away the body, and appropriate
+the skin. Some luckless witch is blamed for the misfortune, when
+the rascally Chumars themselves are all the while the real
+culprits. The police, however, are pretty successful in detecting
+this crime, and it is not now of such frequent
+   occurrence<a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a>.</p>
+<p>Highly as the pious Hindoo venerates the sacred bull of Shira,
+his treatment of his mild patient beasts of burden is a foul blot
+on his character. Were you to shoot a cow, or were a Mussulman to
+wound a stray bullock which might have trespassed, and be trampling
+down his opium or his tobacco crop, and ruining his fields, the
+Hindoos would rise <i>en masse</i> to revenge the insult offered to
+their religion. Yet they scruple not to goad their bullocks, beat
+them, half starve them, and let their gaping wounds fester and
+become corrupt. When the poor brute becomes old and unable to work,
+and his worn-out teeth unfit to graze, he is ruthlessly turned out
+to die in a ditch, and be torn to pieces by jackals, kites, and
+vultures. The higher classes and well-to-do farmers show much
+consideration for high-priced well-conditioned animals, but when
+they get old or unwell, and demand redoubled care and attention,
+they are too often neglected, till, from sheer want of ordinary
+care, they rot and die.</p>
+<hr align="left" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<p><a name="footnoteC1"><sup>1</sup></a> The <i>bael</i> or
+wood-apple is a sacred wood with Hindoos. It is enjoined in the
+Shastras that the bodies of the dead should be consumed in a fire
+fed by logs of bael-tree; but where it is not procurable in
+sufficient quantity, the natives compound with their consciences by
+lighting the funeral pyre with a branch from the bael-tree. It is a
+fine yellow-coloured, pretty durable wood, and makes excellent
+furniture. A very fine sherbet can be made from the fruit, which
+acts as an excellent corrective and stomachic.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> Deaths from actual snake
+bite are sadly numerous; but it appears from returns furnished to
+the Indian Government that Europeans enjoy a very happy exemption.
+During the last forty years it would seem that only two Europeans
+have been killed by snake bite, at least only two well
+substantiated cases. The poorer classes are the most frequent
+victims. Their universal habit of walking about unshod, and
+sleeping on the ground, penetrating into the grasses or jungles in
+pursuit of their daily avocations, no doubt conduces much to the
+frequency of such accidents. A good plan to keep snakes out of the
+bungalow is to leave a space all round the rooms, of about four
+inches, between the walls and the edge of the mats. Have this
+washed over about once a week with a strong solution of carbolic
+acid and water. The smell may be unpleasant for a short time, but
+it proves equally so to the snakes; and I have proved by experience
+that it keeps them out of the rooms. Mats should also be all firmly
+fastened down to the floor with bamboo battens, and furniture
+should be often moved, and kept raised a little from the ground,
+and the space below carefully swept every day. At night a light
+should always be kept burning in occupied bedrooms, and on no
+account should one get out of bed in the dark, or walk about the
+rooms at night without slippers or shoes.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> Somewhat analogous to this
+is the custom which used to be a common one in some parts of Behar.
+<i>Koombars</i> and <i>Grann&eacute;s</i>, that is, tile-makers and
+thatchers, when trade was dull or rain impending, would scatter
+peas and grain in the interstices of the tiles on the houses of the
+well-to-do. The pigeons and crows, in their efforts to get at the
+peas, would loosen and perhaps overturn a few of the tiles. The
+grann&eacute;s would be sent for to replace these, would condemn
+the whole roof as leaky, and the tiles as old and unfit for use,
+and would provide a job for himself and the tile-maker, the
+nefarious profits of which they would share together.</p>
+<p>Cultivators of thatching-grass have been known deliberately and
+wantonly to set fire to villages simply to raise the price of
+thatch and bamboo.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterVIII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Our annual race meet.&mdash;The
+arrivals.&mdash;The camps.&mdash;The 'ordinary.'&mdash;The
+course.&mdash;'They're off.'&mdash;The race.&mdash;The
+steeple-chase.&mdash;Incidents of the meet.&mdash;The ball.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Our annual Race Meet is the one great occasion of the year when
+all the dwellers in the district meet. Our races in Chumparun
+generally took place some time about Christmas. Long before the
+date fixed on, arrangements would be made for the exercise of
+hearty hospitality. The residents in the 'station' ask as many
+guests as will fill their houses, and their 'compounds' are crowded
+with tents, each holding a number of visitors, generally bachelors.
+The principal managers of the factories in the district, with their
+assistants, form a mess for the racing week, and, not unfrequently,
+one or two ladies lend their refining presence to the several
+camps. Friends from other districts, from up country, from
+Calcutta, gather together; and as the weather is bracing and cool,
+and every one determined to enjoy himself, the meet is one of the
+pleasantest of reunions. There are always several races specially
+got up for assistants' horses, and long before, the youngsters are
+up in the early morning, giving their favourite nag a spin across
+the zeraats, or seeing the groom lead him out swathed in clothing
+and bandages, to get him into training for the Assistants'
+race.</p>
+<p>As the day draws near, great cases of tinned meats, hampers of
+beer and wine, and goodly supplies of all sorts are sent into the
+station to the various camps. Tents of snowy white canvas begin to
+peep out at you from among the trees. Great oblong booths of blue
+indigo sheeting show where the temporary stables for the horses are
+being erected; and at night the glittering of innumerable
+camp-fires betokens the presence of a whole army of grooms,
+grass-cutters, peons, watchmen, and other servants cooking their
+evening meal of rice, and discussing the chances of the horses of
+their respective masters in the approaching races. On the day
+before the first racing, the planters are up early, and in buggy,
+dogcart, or on horseback, singly, and by twos and threes, from all
+sides of the district, they find their way to the station. The
+Planter's Club is the general rendezvous. The first comers, having
+found out their waiting servants, and consigned the smoking steeds
+to their care, seat themselves in the verandah, and eagerly watch
+every fresh arrival.</p>
+<p>Up comes a buggy. 'Hullo, who's this?'</p>
+<p>'Oh, it's "Giblets!" How do you do, "Giblets," old man?'</p>
+<p>Down jumps 'Giblets,' and a general handshaking ensues.</p>
+<p>'Here comes "Boach" and the "Moonshee,"' yells out an observant
+youngster from the back verandah.</p>
+<p>The venerable buggy of the esteemed 'Boach' approaches, and
+another jubilation takes place; the handshaking being so vigorous
+that the 'Moonshee's' spectacles nearly come to grief. Now the
+arrivals ride and drive up fast and furious.</p>
+<p>'Hullo, "Anthony!"'</p>
+<p>'Aha, "Charley," how d'ye do?'</p>
+<p>'By Jove, "Ferdie," where have you turned up from?'</p>
+<p>'Has the "Skipper" arrived?'</p>
+<p>'Have any of you seen "Jamie?"'</p>
+<p>'Where's big "Mars'" tents?'</p>
+<p>'Have any of ye seen my "Bearer?"'</p>
+<p>'Has the "Bump" come in?' and so on.</p>
+<p>Such a scene of bustle and excitement. Friends meet that have
+not seen each other for a twelvemonth. Queries are exchanged as to
+absent friends. The chances of the meeting are discussed. Perhaps a
+passing allusion is made to some dear one who has left our ranks
+since last meet. All sorts of topics are started, and up till and
+during breakfast there is a regular medley of tongues, a confused
+clatter of voices, dishes, and glasses, a pervading atmosphere of
+dense curling volumes of tobacco smoke.</p>
+<p>To a stranger the names sound uncouth and meaningless, the fact
+being, that we all go by nicknames<a href=
+"#footnoteD1"><sup>1</sup></a> .</p>
+<p>'Giblets,' 'Diamond Digger,' 'Mangelwurzel,' 'Goggle-eyed
+Plover,' 'Gossein' or holy man, 'Blind Bartimeus,' 'Old Boots,'
+'Polly,' 'Bottle-nosed Whale,' 'Fin MacCoul,' 'Daddy,' 'The
+Exquisite,' 'The Mosquito,' 'Wee Bob,' and 'Napoleon,' are only a
+very few specimens of this strange nomenclature. These soubriquets
+quite usurp our baptismal appellations, and I have often been
+called 'Maori,' by people who did not actually know my real
+name.</p>
+<p>By the evening, all, barring the very late arrivals, have found
+out their various camps. There is a merry dinner, then each sahib,
+well muffled in ulster, plaid, or great coat, hies him to the club,
+where the 'ordinary' is to be held. The nights are now cold and
+foggy, and a tremendous dew falls. At the 'ordinary,' fresh
+greetings between those who now meet for the first time after long
+separation. The entries and bets are made for the morrow's races,
+although not much betting takes place as a rule; but the lotteries
+on the different races are rapidly filled, the dice circulate
+cheerily, and amid laughing, joking, smoking, noise, and
+excitement, there is a good deal of mild speculation. The 'horsey'
+ones visit the stables for the last time; and each retires to his
+camp bed to dream of the morrow.</p>
+<p>Very early, the respective <i>bearers</i> rouse the sleepy
+<i>sahibs</i>. Table servants rush hurriedly about the mess tent,
+bearing huge dishes of tempting viands. Grooms, and
+<i>grasscuts</i> are busy leading the horses off to the course. The
+cold raw fog of the morning fills every tent, and dim grey figures
+of cowering natives, wrapped up over the eyes in blankets, with
+moist blue noses and chattering teeth, are barely discernible in
+the thick mist.</p>
+<p>The racecourse is two miles from the club, on the other side of
+the lake, in the middle of a grassy plain, with a neat masonry
+structure at the further side, which serves as a grand stand.
+Already buggies, dogcarts in single harness and tandem, barouches,
+and waggonettes are merrily rolling through the thick mist, past
+the frowning jail, and round the corner of the lake. Natives in
+gaudy coloured shawls, and blankets, are pouring on to the
+racecourse by hundreds.</p>
+<p>Bullock carts, within which are black-eyed, bold beauties,
+profusely burdened with silver ornaments, are drawn up in lines.
+<i>Ekkas</i>&mdash;small jingling vehicles with a dome-shaped
+canopy and curtains at the sides&mdash;drawn by gaily caparisoned
+ponies, and containing fat, portly Baboos, jingle and rattle over
+the ruts on the side roads.</p>
+<p>Sweetmeat sellers, with trays of horrible looking filth, made
+seemingly of insects, clarified butter, and sugar, dodge through
+the crowd dispensing their abominable looking but seemingly much
+relished wares. Tall policemen, with blue jackets, red puggries,
+yellow belts, and white trousers, stalk up and down with conscious
+dignity.</p>
+<p>A madcap young assistant on his pony comes tearing along across
+country. The weighing for the first race is going on; horses are
+being saddled, some vicious brute occasionally lashing out, and
+scattering the crowd behind him. The ladies are seated round the
+terraced grand stand; long strings of horses are being led round
+and round in a circle, by the <i>syces</i>; vehicles of every
+description are lying round the building.</p>
+<p>Suddenly a bugle sounds; the judge enters his box; the ever
+popular old 'Bikram,' who officiates as starter, ambles off on his
+white cob, and after him go half-a-dozen handsome young fellows,
+their silks rustling and flashing through the fast rising mist.</p>
+<p>A hundred field-glasses scan the start; all is silent for a
+moment.</p>
+<p>'They're off!' shout a dozen lungs.</p>
+<p>'False start!' echo a dozen more.</p>
+<p>The gay colours of the riders flicker confusedly in a jumble.
+One horse careers madly along for half the distance, is with
+difficulty pulled up, and is then walked slowly back.</p>
+<p>The others left at the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about.
+At length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good
+start!' shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at
+last!' breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the
+six horses, all together, and at a rattling pace, tear up the hill,
+over the sand at the south corner, and up, till at the quarter mile
+post 'a blanket could cover the lot.'</p>
+<p>Two or three tails are now showing signals of distress; heels
+and whips are going. Two horses have shot ahead, a bay and a black.
+'Jamie' on the bay, 'Paddy' on the black.</p>
+<p>Still as marble sit those splendid riders, the horses are neck
+and neck; now the bay by a nose, now again the black. The distance
+post is passed with a rush like a whirlwind.</p>
+<p>'A dead heat, by Jove!'</p>
+<p>'Paddy wins!' 'Jamie has it!' 'Hooray, Pat!' 'Go it, Jamie!'
+'Well ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The
+ardent racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel
+whip hisses through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a
+winner by a nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The
+band strikes up a lively air, and the saddling for the next race
+goes on.</p>
+<p>The other races are much the same; there are lots of entries:
+the horses are in splendid condition, and the riding is superb.
+What is better, everything is emphatically 'on the square.' No
+<i>pulling</i> and <i>roping</i> here, no false entries, no dodging
+of any kind. Fine, gallant, English gentlemen meet each other in
+fair and honest emulation, and enjoy the favourite national sport
+in perfection. The 'Waler' race, for imported Australians, brings
+out fine, tall, strong-boned, clean-limbed horses, looking blood
+all over. The country breds, with slender limbs, small heads, and
+glossy coats, look dainty and delicate as antelopes. The lovely,
+compact Arabs, the pretty-looking ponies, and the thick-necked,
+coarse-looking Cabools, all have their respective trials, and then
+comes the great event&mdash;the race of the day&mdash;the
+Steeplechase.</p>
+<p>The course is marked out behind the grand stand, following a
+wide circle outside the flat course, which it enters at the
+quarter-mile post, so that the finish is on the flat before the
+grand stand. The fences, ditches, and water leap, are all
+artificial, but they are regular <i>howlers</i>, and no
+make-believes.</p>
+<p>Seven horses are despatched to a straggling start, and all
+negotiate the first bank safely. At the next fence a regular
+<i>snorter</i> of a 'post and rail'&mdash;topped with
+brushwood&mdash;two horses swerve, one rider being deposited on his
+racing seat upon mother earth, while the other sails away across
+country in a line for home, and is next heard of at the stables.
+The remaining five, three 'walers' and two country-breds, race
+together to the water jump, where one waler deposits his rider, and
+races home by himself, one country-bred refuses, and is henceforth
+out of the race, and the other three, taking the leap in beautiful
+style, put on racing pace to the next bank, and are in the air
+together. A lovely sight! The country is now stiff, and the stride
+of the waler tells. He is leading the country-breds a 'whacker,'
+but he stumbles and falls at the last fence but one from home. His
+gallant rider, the undaunted 'Roley,' remounts just as the two
+country-breds pass him like a flash of light. 'Nothing venture,
+nothing win,' however, so in go the spurs, and off darts the waler
+like an arrow in pursuit. He is gaining fast, and tops the last
+hurdle leading to the straight just as the hoofs of the other two
+reach the ground.</p>
+<p>It is now a matter of pace and good riding. It will be a close
+finish; the waler is first to feel the whip; there is a roar from
+the crowd; he is actually leading; whips and spurs are hard at work
+now; it is a mad, headlong rush; every muscle is strained, and the
+utmost effort made; the poor horses are doing their very best; amid
+a thunder of hoofs, clouds of dust, hats in air, waving of
+handkerchiefs from the grand stand, and a truly British cheer from
+the paddock, the 'waler' shoots in half a length ahead; and so end
+the morning's races.</p>
+<p>Back to camp now, to bathe and breakfast. A long line of dust
+marks the track from the course, for the sun is now high in the
+heavens, the lake is rippling in placid beauty under a gentle
+breeze, and the long lines of natives, as well as vehicles of all
+sorts, form a quaint but picturesque sight. After breakfast calls
+are made upon all the camps and bungalows round the station.
+Croquet, badminton, and other games go on until dinner-time. I
+could linger lovingly over a camp dinner; the rare dishes, the
+sparkling conversation, the racy anecdote, and the general jollity
+and brotherly feeling; but we must all dress for the ball, and so
+about 9 P.M. the buggies are again in requisition for the ball
+room&mdash;the fine, large, central apartment in the Planters'
+club.</p>
+<p>The walls are festooned with flowers, gay curtains, flags, and
+cloths. The floor is shining like silver, and as polished as a
+mirror. The band strikes up the Blue Danube waltz, and amid the
+usual bustle, flirtation, scandal, whispering, glancing, dancing,
+tripping, sipping, and hand-squeezing, the ball goes gaily on till
+the stewards announce supper. At this&mdash;to the
+wall-flowers&mdash;welcome announcement, we adjourn from the heated
+ball-room to the cool arbour-like supper tent, where every delicacy
+that can charm the eye or tempt the appetite is spread out.</p>
+<p>Next morning early we are out with the hounds, and enjoy a
+rattling burst round by the racecourse, where the horses are at
+exercise. Perchance we have heard of a boar in the sugar-cane, and
+away we go with beaters to rouse the grisly monster from his lair.
+In the afternoon there is hockey on horseback, or volunteer drill,
+with our gallant adjutant putting us through our evolutions. In the
+evening there is the usual drive, dinner, music, and the ordinary,
+and so the meet goes on. A constant succession of gaieties keeps
+everyone alive, till the time arrives for a return to our
+respective factories, and another year's hard work.</p>
+<hr align="left" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<p><a name="footnoteD1"><sup>1</sup></a> In such a limited society
+every peculiarity is noted; all our antecedents are known; personal
+predilections and little foibles of character are marked;
+eccentricities are watched, and no one, let him be as uninteresting
+as a miller's pig, is allowed to escape observation and remark.
+Some little peculiarity is hit upon, and a strange but often very
+happily expressive nickname stamps one's individuality and
+photographs him with a word.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterIX."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Pig-sticking in India.&mdash;Varieties of
+boar.&mdash;Their size and height. &mdash;Ingenious mode of capture
+by the natives,&mdash;The 'Batan' or buffalo herd.&mdash;Pigs
+charging.&mdash;Their courage and ferocity.&mdash;Destruction of
+game.&mdash;A close season for game.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The sport <i>par excellence</i> of India is pig-sticking. Call
+it hog-hunting if you will, I prefer the honest old-fashioned name.
+With a good horse under one, a fair country, with not too many
+pitfalls, and 'lots of pig,' this sport becomes the most exciting
+that can be practised. Some prefer tiger shooting from elephants,
+others like to stalk the lordly ibex on the steep Himalayan slopes,
+but anyone who has ever enjoyed a rattle after a pig over a good
+country, will recall the fierce, delight, the eager thrill, the
+wild, mad excitement, that flushed his whole frame, as he met the
+infuriate charge of a good thirty-inch fighting boar, and drove his
+trusty spear well home, laying low the gallant grey tusker, the
+indomitable, unconquerable grisly boar. The subject is well worn;
+and though the theme is a noble one, there are but few I fancy who
+have not read the record of some gallant fight, where the highest
+skill, the finest riding, the most undaunted pluck, and the cool,
+keen, daring of a practised hand are not <i>always</i> successful
+against the headlong rush and furious charge of a Bengal boar at
+bay.</p>
+<p>A record of planter life in India, however, such as this aims at
+being, would be incomplete without some reference to the gallant
+tusker, and so at the risk of tiring my readers, I must try to
+describe a pig-sticking party.</p>
+<p>There are two distinct kinds of boar in India, the black and the
+grey. Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer
+and more pugnacious. He is a vicious and implacable foe when
+roused, and always shews better fight than the black variety. The
+great difference, however, is in the shape of the skull; that of
+the black fellow being high over the frontal bone, and not very
+long in proportion to height, while the skull of the grey boar is
+never very high, but is long, and receding in proportion to
+height.</p>
+<p>The black boar grows to an enormous size, and the grey ones are,
+generally speaking, smaller made animals than the black. The young
+of the two also differ in at least one important particular; those
+of the grey pig are always born striped, but the young of the black
+variety are born of that colour, and are not striped but a uniform
+black colour throughout. The two kinds of pig sometimes interbreed,
+but crosses are not common; and, from the colour, size, shape of
+the head, and general behaviour, one can easily tell at a glance
+what kind of pig gets up before his spear, whether it is the heavy,
+sluggish black boar, or the veritable fiery, vicious, fighting grey
+tusker.</p>
+<p>Many stories are told of their enormous size, and a 'forty-inch
+tusker' is the established standard for a Goliath among boars. The
+best fighting boars, however, range from twenty-eight to thirty-two
+inches in height, and I make bold to say that very few of the
+Present generation of sportsmen have ever seen a veritable wild
+boar over thirty-eight inches high.</p>
+<p>G.S., who has had perhaps as much jungle experience as any man
+of his age in India, a careful observer, and a finished sportsman,
+tells me that the biggest <i>boar</i> he ever saw was only
+thirty-eight inches high; while the biggest <i>pig</i> he ever
+killed was a barren sow, with three-inch tusks sticking out of her
+gums; she measured thirty-nine-and-a-half inches, and fought like a
+demon. I have shot pig&mdash;in heavy jungle where spearing was
+impracticable&mdash;over thirty-six inches high, but the biggest
+pig I ever stuck to my own spear was only twenty-eight inches, and
+I do not think any pig has been killed in Chumparun, within the
+last ten or a dozen years at any rate, over thirty-eight
+inches.</p>
+<p>In some parts of India, where pigs are numerous and the jungle
+dense, the natives adopt a very ingenious mode of hunting. I have
+frequently seen it practised by the cowherds on the Koosee
+<i>derahs</i>, i.e. the flat swampy jungles on the banks of the
+Koosee. When the annual floods have subsided, leaving behind a
+thick deposit of mud, wrack, and brushwood, the long thick grass
+soon shoots up to an amazing height, and vast herds of cattle and
+tame buffaloes come down to the jungles from the interior of the
+country, where natural pasture is scarce. They are attended by the
+owner and his assistants, all generally belonging to the
+<i>gualla</i>, or cowherd caste, although, of course, there are
+other castes employed. The owner of the herd gets leave to graze
+his cattle in the jungle, by paying a certain fixed sum per head.
+He fixes on a high dry ridge of land, where he runs up a few grass
+huts for himself and men, and there he erects lines of grass and
+bamboo screens, behind which his cattle take shelter at night from
+the cold south-east wind. There are also a few huts of exceedingly
+frail construction for himself and his people. This small colony,
+in the midst of the universal jungle covering the country for miles
+round, is called a <i>batan</i>.</p>
+<p>At earliest dawn the buffaloes are milked, and then with their
+attendant herdsmen they wend their way to the jungle, where they
+spend the day, and return again to the batan at night, when they
+are again milked. The milk is made into <i>ghee</i>, or clarified
+butter, and large quantities are sent down to the towns by country
+boats. When we want to get up a hunt, we generally send to the
+nearest <i>batan</i> for <i>khubber</i>, i.e. news, information.
+The <i>Batanea</i>, or proprietor of the establishment, is well
+posted up. Every herdsman as he comes in at night tells what
+animals he has seen through the day, and thus at the <i>batan</i>
+you hear where tiger, and pig, and deer are to be met with; where
+an unlucky cow has been killed; in what ravine is the thickest
+jungle; where the path is free from clay, or quicksand; what fords
+are safest; and, in short, you get complete information on every
+point connected with the jungle and its wild inhabitants.</p>
+<p>To these men the mysterious jungle reveals its most hidden
+secrets. Surrounded by his herd of buffaloes, the <i>gualla</i>
+ventures into the darkest recesses and the most tangled thickets.
+They have strange wild calls by which they give each other notice
+of the approach of danger, and when two or three of them meet, each
+armed with his heavy, iron-shod or brass-bound <i>lathee</i> or
+quarter staff, they will not budge an inch out of their way for
+buffalo or boar; nay, they have been known to face the terrible
+tiger himself, and fairly beat him away from the quivering carcase
+of some unlucky member of their herd. They have generally some
+favourite buffalo on whose broad back they perch themselves, as it
+browses through the jungle, and from this elevated seat they survey
+the rest of the herd, and note the incidents of jungle life. When
+they wish a little excitement, or a change from their milk and rice
+diet, there are hundreds of pigs around.</p>
+<p>They have a broad, sharp spear-head, to which is attached a
+stout cord, often made of twisted hide or hair. Into the socket of
+the spear is thrust a bamboo pole or shaft, tough, pliant, and
+flexible. The cord is wound round the spear and shaft, and the
+loose end is then fastened to the middle of the pole. Having thus
+prepared his weapon, the herdsman mounts his buffalo, and guides it
+slowly, warily, and cautiously to the haunts of the pig. These are,
+of course, quite accustomed to see the buffaloes grazing round them
+on all sides, and take no notice until the <i>gualla</i> is within
+striking distance. When he has got close up to the pig he fancies,
+he throws his spear with all his force. The pig naturally bounds
+off, the shaft comes out of the socket, leaving the spearhead
+sticking in the wound. The rope uncoils of itself, but being firmly
+fastened to the bamboo, it brings up the pig at each bush, and
+tears and lacerates the wound, until either the spearhead comes
+out, or the wretched pig drops down dead from exhaustion and loss
+of blood. The <i>gualla</i> follows upon his buffalo, and
+frequently finishes the pig with a few strokes of his
+<i>lathee</i>. In any case he gets his pork, and it certainly is an
+ingenious and bold way of procuring it.</p>
+<p>Wild pig are very destructive to crops. During the night they
+revel in the cultivated fields contiguous to the jungle, and they
+destroy more by rooting up than by actually eating. It is common
+for the ryot to dig a shallow pit, and ensconce himself inside with
+his matchlock beside him. His head being on a level with the
+ground, he can discern any animal that comes between him and the
+sky-line. When a pig comes in sight, he waits till he is within
+sure distance, and then puts either a bullet or a charge of slugs
+into him.</p>
+<p>The pig is perhaps the most stubborn and courageous animal in
+India. Even when pierced with several spears, and bleeding from
+numerous wounds, he preserves a sullen silence. He disdains to
+utter a cry of fear and pain, but maintains a bold front to the
+last, and dies with his face to the foe, defiant and unconquered.
+When hard pressed he scorns to continue his flight, but wheeling
+round, he makes a determined charge, very frequently to the utter
+discomfiture of his pursuer.</p>
+<p>I have seen many a fine horse fearfully cut by a charging pig,
+and a determined boar over and over again break through a line of
+elephants, and make good his escape. There is no animal in all the
+vast jungle that the elephant dreads more than a lusty boar. I have
+seen elephants that would stand the repeated charges of a wounded
+tiger, turn tail and take to ignominious flight before the onset of
+an angry boar.</p>
+<p>His thick short neck, ponderous body, and wedge-like head are
+admirably fitted for crashing through the thick jungle he inhabits,
+and when he has made up his mind to charge, very few animals can
+withstand his furious rush. Instances are quite common of his
+having made good his charge against a line of elephants, cutting
+and ripping more than one severely. He has been known to encounter
+successfully even the kingly tiger himself. Can it be wondered,
+then, that we consider him a 'foeman worthy of our steel'?</p>
+<p>To be a good pig-sticker is a recommendation that wins
+acceptance everywhere in India. In a district like Chumparun where
+nearly every planter was an ardent sportsman, a good rider, and
+spent nearly half his time on horseback, pig-sticking was a
+favourite pastime. Every factory had at least one bit of likely
+jungle close by, where a pig could always be found. When I first
+went to India we used to take out our pig-spear over the
+<i>zillah</i> with us as a matter of course, as we never knew when
+we might hit on a boar.</p>
+<p>Things are very different now. Cultivation has much increased.
+Many of the old jungles have been reclaimed, and I fancy many more
+pigs are shot by natives than formerly. A gun can be had now for a
+few rupees, and every loafing 'ne'er do weel' in the village
+manages to procure one, and wages indiscriminate warfare on bird
+and beast. It is a growing evil, and threatens the total extinction
+of sport in some districts. I can remember when nearly every tank
+was good for a few brace of mallard, duck, or teal, where never a
+feather is now to be seen, save the ubiquitous paddy-bird. Jungles,
+where a pig was a certain find, only now contain a measly jackal,
+and not always that; and cover in which partridge, quail, and
+sometimes even florican were numerous, are now only tenanted by the
+great ground-owl, or a colony of field rats. I am far from wishing
+to limit sport to the European community. I would let every native
+that so wished sport his double barrels or handle his spear with
+the best of us, but he should follow and indulge in his sport with
+reason. The breeding seasons of all animals should be respected,
+and there should be no indiscriminate slaughter of male and female,
+young and old. Until all true sportsmen in India unite in this
+matter, the evil will increase, and bye-and-bye there will be no
+animals left to afford sport of any kind.</p>
+<p>There are cases where wild animals are so numerous and
+destructive that extraordinary measures have to be taken for
+protection from their ravages, but these are very rare. I remember
+having once to wage a war of extermination against a colony of pigs
+that had taken possession of some jungle lands near Maharjnugger, a
+village on the Koosee. I had a deal of indigo growing on cleared
+patches at intervals in the jungles, and there the pigs would root
+and revel in spite of watchmen, till at last I was forced in sheer
+self-defence to begin a crusade against them. We got a line of
+elephants, and two or three friends came to assist, and in one day,
+and round one village only, we shot sixty-three full grown pigs.
+The villagers must have killed and carried away nearly double that
+number of young and wounded. That was a very extreme case, and in a
+pure jungle country; but in settled districts like Tirhoot and
+Chumparun the weaker sex should always be spared, and a close
+season for winged game should be insisted on. To the credit of the
+planters be it said, that this necessity is quite recognised; but
+every pot-bellied native who can beg, borrow, or steal a gun, or in
+any way procure one, is constantly on the look out for a pot shot
+at some unlucky hen-partridge or quail. A whole village will turn
+out to compass the destruction of some wretched sow that may have
+shewn her bristles outside the jungle in the daytime.</p>
+<p>In districts where cultivated land is scarce and population
+scattered, it is almost impossible to enjoy pig-sticking. The
+breaks of open land between the jungles are too small and narrow to
+afford galloping space, and though you turn the pig out of one
+patch of jungle, he immediately finds safe shelter in the next. On
+the banks of some of the large rivers, however, such as the Gunduch
+and the Bagmuttee, there are vast stretches of undulating sand,
+crossed at intervals by narrow creeks, and spotted by patches of
+close, thick jungle. Here the grey tusker takes up his abode with
+his harem. When once you turn him out from his lair, there is grand
+hunting room before he can reach the distant patch of jungle to
+which he directs his flight. In some parts the <i>jowah</i> (a
+plant not unlike broom in appearance) is so thick, that even the
+elephants can scarcely force their way through, but as a rule the
+beating is pretty easy, and one is almost sure of a find.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterX."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Kuderent jungle.&mdash;Charged by a
+pig.&mdash;The biter bit.&mdash;'Mac' after the big boar.&mdash;The
+horse for pig-sticking.&mdash;The line of beaters.&mdash;The boar
+breaks.&mdash;'Away! Away!'&mdash;First spear.&mdash;Pig-sticking
+at Peeprah.&mdash;The old 'lungra' or cripple.&mdash;A boar at
+bay.&mdash;Hurrah for pig-sticking!</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>There was a very fine pig jungle at a place called Kuderent,
+belonging to a wealthy landowner who went by the name of the
+Mudhobunny Baboo. We occasionally had a pig-sticking meet here, and
+as the jungle was strictly preserved, we were never disappointed in
+finding plenty who gave us glorious sport. The jungles consisted of
+great grass plains, with thickly wooded patches of dense tree
+jungle, intersected here and there by deep ravines, with stagnant
+pools of water at intervals; the steep sides all thickly clothed
+with thorny clusters of the wild dog-rose. It was a difficult
+country to beat, and we had always to supplement the usual gang of
+beaters with as many elephants as we could collect. In the centre
+of the jungle was an eminence of considerable height, whence there
+was a magnificent view of the surrounding country.</p>
+<p>Far in the distance the giant Himalayas towered into the still
+clear air, the guardian barriers of an unknown land. The fretted
+pinnacles and tremendous ridges, clothed in their pure white mantle
+of everlasting snow, made a magnificent contrast to the dark,
+misty, wooded masses formed by the lower ranges of hills. In the
+early morning, when the first beams of the rising sun had but
+touched the mountain tops, leaving the country below shrouded in
+the dim mists and vapours of retiring night, the sight was most
+sublime. In presence of such hills and distances, such wondrous
+combinations of colour, scenery on such a gigantic scale, even the
+most thoughtless become impressed with the majesty of nature.</p>
+<p>Our camp was pitched on the banks of a clear running mountain
+stream, brawling over rocks and boulders; and to eyes so long
+accustomed to the never ending flatness of the rich alluvial
+plains, and the terrible sameness of the rice swamps, the stream
+was a source of unalloyed pleasure. There were only a few places
+where the abrupt banks gave facilities for fording, and when a pig
+had broken fairly from the jungle, and was making for the river (as
+they very frequently did), you would see the cluster of horsemen
+scattering over the plain like a covey of partridges when the hawk
+swoops down upon them. Each made for what he considered the most
+eligible ford, in hopes of being first up with the pig on the
+further bank, and securing the much coveted first spear.</p>
+<p>When a pig is hard pressed, and comes to any natural obstacle,
+as a ditch, bank, or stream, he almost invariably gets this
+obstacle between himself and his pursuer; then wheeling round he
+makes his stand, showing wonderful sagacity in choosing the moment
+of all others when he has his enemy at most disadvantage.
+Experienced hands are aware of this, and often try to outflank the
+boar, but the best men I have seen generally wait a little, till
+the pig is again under weigh, and then clearing the ditch or bank,
+put their horses at full speed, which is the best way to make good
+your attack. The rush of the boar is so sudden, fierce, and
+determined, that a horse at half speed, or going slow, has no
+chance of escape; but a well trained horse at full speed meets the
+pig in his rush, the spear is delivered with unerring aim, and
+slightly swerving to the left, you draw it out as you continue your
+course, and the poor pig is left weltering in his blood behind
+you.</p>
+<p>On one occasion I was very rudely made aware of this trait. It
+was a fine fleet young boar we were after, and we had had a long
+chase, but were now overhauling him fast. I had a good horse under
+me, and 'Jamie' and 'Giblets' were riding neck and neck. There was
+a small mango orchard in front surrounded by the usual ditch and
+bank. It was nothing of a leap; the boar took it with ease, and we
+could just see him top the bank not twenty spear lengths ahead. I
+was slightly leading, and full of eager anxiety and emulation.
+Jamie called on me to pull up, but I was too excited to mind him. I
+saw him and Giblets each take an outward wheel about, and gallop
+off to catch the boar coming out of the cluster of trees on the far
+side, as I thought. I could not see him, but I made no doubt he was
+in full flight through the trees. There was plenty of riding room
+between the rows, so lifting my game little horse at the bank, I
+felt my heart bound with emulation as I thought I was certain to
+come up first, and take the spear from two such noted heroes as my
+companions. I came up with the pig first, sure enough. <i>He</i>
+was waiting for <i>me</i>, and scarce giving my horse time to
+recover his stride after the jump, he came rushing at me, every
+bristle erect, with a vicious grunt of spite and rage. My spear was
+useless, I had it crosswise on my horse's neck; I intended to
+attack first, and finding my enemy turning the tables on me in this
+way was rather disconcerting. I tried to turn aside and avoid the
+charge, but a branch caught me across the face, and knocked my
+<i>puggree</i> off. In a trice the savage little brute was on me.
+Leaping up fairly from the ground, he got the heel of my riding
+boot in his mouth, and tore off the sole from the boot as if it had
+been so much paper. Jamie and Giblets were sitting outside watching
+the scene, laughing at my discomfiture. Fortunately the boar had
+poor tusks, and my fine little horse was unhurt, but I got out of
+that orchard as fast as I could, and ever after hesitated about
+attacking a boar when he had got a bank or ditch between him and
+me, and was waiting for me on the other side. The far better plan
+is to wait till he sees you are not pressing him, he then goes off
+at a surly sling trot, and you can resume the chase with every
+advantage in your favour. When the blood however is fairly up, and
+all one's sporting instincts roused, it is hard to listen to the
+dictates of prudence or the suggestions of caution and
+experience.</p>
+<p>The very same day we had another instance. My manager, 'Young
+Mac,' as we called him, had started a huge old boar. He was just
+over the boar, and about to deliver his thrust, when his horse
+stumbled in a rat hole (it was very rotten ground), and came
+floundering to earth, bringing his rider with him. Nothing daunted,
+Mac picked himself up, lost the horse, but so eager and excited was
+he, that he continued the chase on foot, calling to some of us to
+catch his horse while he stuck his boar. The old boar was quite
+blown, and took in the altered aspect of affairs at a glance; he
+turned to charge, and we loudly called on Mac to 'clear out.' Not a
+bit of it, he was too excited to realise his danger, but Pat
+fortunately interposed his horse and spear in time, and no doubt
+saved poor Mac from a gruesome mauling. It was very plucky, but it
+was very foolish, for heavily weighted with boots, breeches, spurs,
+and spear, a man could have no chance against the savage onset of
+an infuriated boar.</p>
+<p>In the long thick grass with which the plain was covered the
+riding was very dangerous. I remember seeing six riders come
+signally to grief over a blind ditch in this jungle. It adds not a
+little to the excitement, and really serious accidents are not so
+common as might be imagined. It is no joke however when a riderless
+horse comes ranging up alongside of you as you are sailing along,
+intent on war; biting and kicking at your own horse, he spoils your
+sport, throws you out of the chase, and you are lucky if you do not
+receive some ugly cut or bruise from his too active heels. There is
+the great beauty of a well trained Arab or country-bred; if you get
+a spill, he waits beside you till you recover your faculties, and
+get your bellows again in working order; if you are riding a
+Cabool, or even a waler, it is even betting that he turns to bite
+or kick you as you lie, or he rattles off in pursuit of your more
+firmly seated friends, spoiling their sport, and causing the most
+fearful explosions of vituperative wrath.</p>
+<p>There is something to me intensely exciting in all the varied
+incidents of a rattling burst across country after a fighting old
+grey boar. You see the long waving line of staves, and spear heads,
+and quaint shaped axes, glittering and fluctuating above the
+feathery tops of the swaying grass. There is an irregular line of
+stately elephants, each with its towering howdah and dusky mahout,
+moving slowly along through the rustling reeds. You hear the sharp
+report of fireworks, the rattling thunder of the big <i>doobla</i>
+or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of innumerable
+<i>tom-toms</i>. Shouts, oaths, and cries from a hundred noisy
+coolies, come floating down in bursts of clamour on the soft
+morning air. The din waxes and wanes as the excited beaters descry
+a 'sounder' of pig ahead; with a mighty roar that makes your blood
+tingle, the frantic coolies rally for the final burst. Like rockets
+from a tube, the boar and his progeny come crashing through the
+brake, and separate before you on the plain. With a wild cheer you
+dash after them in hot pursuit; no time now to think of pitfalls,
+banks, or ditches; your gallant steed strains his every muscle,
+every sense is on the alert, but you see not the bush and brake and
+tangled thicket that you leave behind you. Your eye is on the dusky
+glistening hide and the stiff erect bristles in front; the shining
+tusks and foam-flecked chest are your goal, and the wild excitement
+culminates as you feel your keen steel go straight through muscle,
+bone, and sinew, and you know that another grisly monster has
+fallen. As you ease your girths and wipe your heated brow, you feel
+that few pleasures of the chase come up to the noblest, most
+thrilling sport of all, that of pig-sticking.</p>
+<p>The plain is alive with shouting beaters hurrying up to secure
+the gory carcase of the slaughtered foe. A riderless horse is far
+away, making off alone for the distant grove, where the snowy tents
+are glistening through the foliage. On the distant horizon a small
+cluster of eager sportsmen are fast overhauling another luckless
+tusker, and enjoying in all their fierce excitement the same
+sensations you have just experienced. Now is the time to enjoy the
+soothing weed, and quaff the grateful 'peg'; and as the syces and
+other servants come up in groups of twos and threes, you listen
+with languid delight to all their remarks on the incidents of the
+chase; and as, with their acute Oriental imagination nations they
+dilate in terms of truly Eastern exaggeration on your wonderful
+pluck and daring, you almost fancy yourself really the hero they
+would make you out to be.</p>
+<p>Then the reunion round the festive board at night, when every
+one again lives through all the excitement of the day. Talk of
+fox-hunting after pig-sticking, it is like comparing a penny candle
+to a lighthouse, or a donkey race to the 'Grand National'!</p>
+<p>Peeprah Factory with its many patches of jungle, its various
+lakes and fine undulating country, was another favourite rendezvous
+for the votaries of pig-sticking. The house itself was quite
+palatial, built on the bank of a lovely horseshoe lake, and
+embosomed in a grove of trees of great rarity and beautiful
+foliage. It had been built long before the days of overland routes
+and Suez canals, when a planter made India his home, and spared no
+trouble nor expense to make his home comfortable. In the great
+garden were fruit trees from almost every clime; little channels of
+solid masonry led water from the well to all parts of the garden.
+Leading down to the lake was a broad flight of steps, guarded on
+the one side by an immense peepul tree, whose hollow trunk and wide
+stretching canopy of foliage had braved the storms of over half a
+century, on the other side by a most symmetrical almond tree,
+which, when in blossom, was the most beautiful object for miles
+around. A well-kept shrubbery surrounded the house, and tall
+casuarinas, and glossy dark green india-rubber and bhur trees,
+formed a thousand combinations of shade and colour. Here we often
+met to experience the warm, large-hearted hospitality of dear old
+Pat and his gentle little wife. At one time there was a pack of
+harriers, which would lead us a fine, sharp burst by the thickets
+near the river after a doubling hare; but as a rule a meet at
+Peeprah portended death to the gallant tusker, for the jungles were
+full of pigs, and only honest hard work was meant when the Peeprah
+beaters turned out.</p>
+<p>The whole country was covered with patches of grass and thorny
+jungle. Knowing they had another friendly cover close by, the pigs
+always broke at the first beat, and the riding had to be fast and
+furious if a spear was to be won. There were some nasty drop jumps,
+and deep, hidden ditches, and accidents were frequent. In one of
+these hot, sharp gallops poor 'Bonnie Morn,' a favourite horse
+belonging to 'Jamie,' was killed. Not seeing the ditch, it came
+with tremendous force against the bank, and of course its back was
+broken. Even in its death throes it recognised its master's voice,
+and turned round and licked his hand. We were all collected round,
+and let who will sneer, there were few dry eyes as we saw this last
+mute tribute of affection from the poor dying animal.</p>
+<blockquote>THE DEATH OF 'BONNIE MORN.'<br>
+<p>Alas, my 'Brave Bonnie!' the pride of my heart,<br>
+The moment has come when from thee I must part;<br>
+No more wilt thou hark to the huntsman's glad horn,<br>
+My brave little Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>How proudly you bore me at bright break of day,<br>
+How gallantly 'led,' when the boar broke away!<br>
+But no more, alas! thou the hunt shall adorn,<br>
+For now thou art dying, my dear 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>He'd neigh with delight when I'd enter his stall,<br>
+And canter up gladly on hearing my call;<br>
+Rub his head on my shoulder while munching his corn,<br>
+My dear gentle Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>Or out in the grass, when a pig was in view,<br>
+None so eager to start, when he heard a 'halloo';<br>
+Off, off like a flash, the ground spurning with scorn,<br>
+He aye led the van, did my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>O'er <i>nullah</i> and ditch, o'er hedge, fence, or bank,<br>
+No matter, <i>he'd</i> clear it, aye in the front rank;<br>
+A brave little hunter as ever was born<br>
+Was my grand Arab fav'rite, my good 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>Or when in the 'ranks,' who so steady and still?<br>
+None better than 'Bonnie,' more 'up' in his drill;<br>
+His fine head erect&mdash;eyes flashing with scorn&mdash;<br>
+Right fit for a charger was staunch 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>And then on the 'Course,' who so willing and true?<br>
+Past the 'stand' like an arrow the bonnie horse flew;<br>
+No spur his good rider need ever have worn,<br>
+For he aye did his best, did my fleet 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>And now here he lies, the good little horse,<br>
+No more he'll career in the hunt or on 'course':<br>
+Such a charger to lose makes me sad and forlorn;<br>
+I <i>can't</i> help a tear, 'tis for poor 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>Ah! blame not my grief, for 'tis deep and sincere,<br>
+As a friend and companion I held 'Bonnie' dear;<br>
+No true sportsman ever such feelings will scorn<br>
+As I heave a deep sigh for my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'</p>
+<p>And even in death, when in anguish he lay,<br>
+When his life's blood was drip&mdash;dripping&mdash;slowly
+away,<br>
+His last thought was still of the master he'd borne;<br>
+He neighed, licked my hand&mdash;and thus died 'Bonnie
+Morn.'</p></blockquote>
+<p>One tremendous old boar was killed here during one of our meets,
+which was long celebrated in our after-dinner talks on boars and
+hunting. It was called 'THE LUNGRA,' which means the cripple,
+because it had been wounded in the leg in some previous encounter,
+perhaps in its hot youth, before age had stiffened its joints and
+tinged its whiskers with grey. It was the most undaunted pig I have
+ever seen. It would not budge an inch for the beaters, and charged
+the elephants time after time, sending them flying from the jungle
+most ignominiously. At length its patience becoming exhausted, it
+slowly emerged from the jungle, coolly surveyed the scene and its
+surroundings, and then, disdaining flight, charged straight at the
+nearest horseman. Its hide was as tough as a Highland targe, and
+though L. delivered his spear, it turned the weapon aside as if it
+was merely a thrust from a wooden pole. The old <i>lungra</i> made
+good his charge, and ripped L's. horse on the shoulder. It next
+charged Pat, and ripped his horse, and cut another horse, a
+valuable black waler, across the knee, laming it for life. Rider
+after rider charged down upon the fierce old brute. Although
+repeatedly wounded none of the thrusts were very serious, and
+already it had put five horses <i>hors de combat</i>. It now took
+up a position under a big 'bhur' tree, close to some water, and
+while the boldest of us held back for a little, it took a
+deliberate mud bath under our very noses. Doubtless feeling much
+refreshed, it again took up its position under the tree, ready to
+face each fresh assailant, full of fight, and determined to die but
+not to yield an inch.</p>
+<p>Time after time we rode at the dauntless cripple. Each time he
+charged right down, and our spears made little mark upon his
+toughened hide. Our horses too were getting tired of such a
+customer, and little inclined to face his charge. At length 'Jamie'
+delivered a lucky spear and the grey old warrior fell. It had kept
+us at bay for fully an hour and a half, and among our number we
+reckoned some of the best riders and boldest pig-stickers in the
+district.</p>
+<p>Such was our sport in those good old days. Our meets came but
+seldom, so that sport never interfered with the interests of honest
+hard work; but meeting each other as we did, and engaging in
+exciting sport like pig-sticking, cemented our friendship, kept us
+in health, and encouraged all the hardy tendencies of our nature.
+It whetted our appetites, it roused all those robust virtues that
+have made Englishmen the men they are, it sent us back to work with
+lighter hearts and renewed energy. It built up many happy,
+cherished memories of kindly words and looks and deeds, that will
+only fade when we in turn have to bow before the hunter, and render
+up our spirits to God who gave them. Long live honest, hearty, true
+sportsmen, such as were the friends of those happy days. Long may
+Indian sportsmen find plenty of 'foemen worthy of their steel' in
+the old grey boar, the fighting tusker of Bengal.</p>
+<a name="07"></a>
+<center><img src="Images/07.jpg" alt="Pig-Stickers" width="416"
+height="337" hspace="4" vspace="8"><br>
+<i>Pig-Stickers</i></center>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>The sal forests.&mdash;The jungle
+goddess.&mdash;The trees in the jungle. &mdash;Appearance of the
+forests.&mdash;Birds.&mdash;Varieties of parrots.&mdash;A 'beat' in
+the forest.&mdash;The 'shekarry.'&mdash;Mehrman Singh and his
+gun.&mdash;The Banturs, a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.&mdash;Their
+habits.&mdash;A village feast.&mdash;We beat for deer.&mdash;Habits
+of the spotted deer.&mdash;Waiting for the game.&mdash;Mehrman
+Singh gets drunk.&mdash;Our bag.&mdash;Pea-fowl and their
+habits.&mdash;How to shoot them.&mdash;Curious custom of the
+Nepaulese.&mdash;How Juggroo was tricked, and his revenge.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Tirhoot is too generally under cultivation and too thickly
+inhabited for much land to remain under jungle, and except the wild
+pig of which I have spoken, and many varieties of wild fowl, there
+is little game to be met with. It is, however, different in North
+Bhaugulpore, where there are still vast tracts of forest jungle,
+the haunt of the spotted deer, nilghau, leopard, wolf, and other
+wild animals. Along the banks of the Koosee, a rapid mountain river
+that rolls its flood through numerous channels to join the Ganges,
+there are immense tracts of uncultivated land covered with tall
+elephant grass, and giving cover to tigers, hog deer, pig, wild
+buffalo, and even an occasional rhinoceros, to say nothing of
+smaller game and wildfowl, which are very plentiful.</p>
+<p>The sal forests in North Bhaugulpore generally keep to the high
+ridges, which are composed of a light, sandy soil, very friable,
+and not very fertile, except for oil and indigo seeds, which grow
+most luxuriantly wherever the forest land has been cleared. In the
+shallow valleys which lie between the ridges rice is chiefly
+cultivated, and gives large returns. The sal forests have been
+sadly thinned by unscientific and indiscriminate cutting, and very
+few fine trees now remain. The earth is teeming with insects, chief
+amongst which are the dreaded and destructive white ants. The high
+pointed nests of these destructive insects, formed of hardened mud,
+are the commonest objects one meets with in these forest
+solitudes.</p>
+<p>At intervals, beneath some wide spreading peepul or bhur tree,
+one comes on a rude forest shrine, daubed all over with red paint,
+and with gaudy festoons of imitation flowers, cut from the pith of
+the plantain tree, hanging on every surrounding bough. These
+shrines are sacred to <i>Chumpa buttee</i>, the Hindoo Diana,
+protectress of herds, deer, buffaloes, huntsmen, and herdsmen. She
+is the recognised jungle goddess, and is held in great veneration
+by all the wild tribes and half-civilized denizens of the gloomy
+sal jungle.</p>
+<p>The general colour of the forest is a dingy green, save when a
+deeper shade here and there shows where the mighty bhur uprears its
+towering height, or where the crimson flowers of the <i>seemul</i>
+or cotton tree, and the bronze-coloured foliage of the
+<i>sunpul</i> (a tree very like the ornamental beech in shrubberies
+at home) imparts a more varied colour to the generally pervading
+dark green of the universal sal.</p>
+<p>The varieties of trees are of course almost innumerable, but the
+sal is so out of all proportion more numerous than any other kind,
+that the forests well deserve their recognised name. The sal is a
+fine, hard wood of very slow growth. The leaves are broad and
+glistening, and in spring are beautifully tipped with a reddish
+bronze, which gradually tones down into the dingy green which is
+the prevailing tint. The <i>sheshum</i> or <i>sissod</i>, a tree
+with bright green leaves much resembling the birch, the wood of
+which is invaluable for cart wheels and such-like work, is
+occasionally met with. There is the <i>kormbhe</i>, a very tough
+wood with a red stringy bark, of which the jungle men make a kind
+of touchwood for their matchlocks, and the <i>parass</i>, whose
+peculiarity is that at times it bursts into a wondrous wealth of
+bright crimson blossom without a leaf being on the tree. The
+<i>parass</i> tree in full bloom is gorgeous. After the blossom
+falls the dark-green leaves come out, and are not much different in
+colour from the sal. Then there is the <i>mhowa</i>, with its
+lovely white blossoms, from which a strong spirit is distilled, and
+on which the deer, pigs, and wild bear love to feast. The peculiar
+sickly smell of the <i>mhowa</i> when in flower pervades the
+atmosphere for a great distance round, and reminds one forcibly of
+the peculiar sweet, sickly smell of a brewery. The hill
+<i>sirres</i> is a tall feathery-looking tree of most elegant
+shape, towering above the other forest trees, and the natives strip
+it of its bark, which they use to poison streams. It seems to have
+some narcotic or poisonous principle, easily soluble in water, for
+when put in any quantity in a stream or piece of water, it causes
+all the fish to become apparently paralyzed and rise to the
+surface, where they float about quite stupified and helpless, and
+become an easy prey to the poaching 'Banturs' and 'Moosahurs' who
+adopt this wretched mode of fishing.</p>
+<p>Along the banks of the streams vegetation gets very luxurious,
+and among the thick undergrowth are found some lovely ferns,
+broad-leaved plants, and flowers of every hue, all alike nearly
+scentless. Here is no odorous breath of violet or honeysuckle, no
+delicate perfume of primrose or sweetbriar, only a musty, dank,
+earthy smell which gets more and more pronounced as the mists rise
+along with the deadly vapours of the night. Sleeping in these
+forests is very unhealthy. There is a most fatal miasma all through
+the year, less during the hot months, but very bad during and
+immediately after the annual rains; and in September and October
+nearly every soul in the jungly tracts is smitten with fever. The
+vapour only rises to a certain height above the ground, and at the
+elevation of ten feet or so, I believe one could sleep in the
+jungles with impunity; but it is dangerous at all times to sleep in
+the forest, unless at a considerable elevation. The absence of all
+those delicious smells which make a walk through the woodlands at
+home so delightful, is conspicuous in the sal forests, and another
+of the most noticeable features is the extreme silence, the
+oppressive stillness that reigns.</p>
+<p>You know how full of melody is an English wood, when thrush,
+blackbird, mavis, linnet, and a thousand warblers flit from tree to
+tree. How the choir rings out its full anthem of sweetest sound,
+till every bush and tree seems a centre of sweet strains, soft,
+low, liquid trills, and full ripe gushes of melody and song. But it
+is not thus in an Indian forest. There are actually few birds. As
+you brush through the long grass and trample the tangled
+undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling branches, or dodging under
+the pliant arms of the creepers, you may flush a black or grey
+partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a quiet family party
+of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting about to make
+the vaulted arcades of the forest echo to their music.</p>
+<p>The hornbill darts with a succession of long bounding flights
+from one tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow
+tree close by, his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow
+in the sun. A flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your
+head, the <i>golden oriole</i> or mango bird, the <i>koel</i>, with
+here and there a red-tufted <i>bulbul</i>, make a faint attempt at
+a chirrup; but as a rule the deep silence is unbroken, save by the
+melancholy hoot of some blinking owl, and the soft monotonous coo
+of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The exquisite honey-sucker, as
+delicately formed as the petal of a fairy flower, flits noiselessly
+about from blossom to blossom. The natives call it the 'Muddpenah'
+or drinker of honey. There are innumerable butterflies of graceful
+shape and gorgeous colours; what few birds there are have beautiful
+plumage; there is a faint rustle of leaves, a faint, far hum of
+insect life; but it feels so silent, so unlike the woods at home.
+You are oppressed by the solemn stillness, and feel almost nervous
+as you push warily along, for at any moment a leopard, wolf, or
+hyena may get up before you, or you may disturb the siesta of a
+sounder of pig, or a herd of deer.</p>
+<p>Up in those forests on the borders of Nepaul, which are called
+the <i>morung</i>, there are a great many varieties of parrot, all
+of them very beautiful. There is first the common green parrot,
+with a red beak, and a circle of salmon-coloured feathers round its
+neck; they are very noisy and destructive, and flock together to
+the fields where they do great damage to the crops. The <i>lutkun
+sooga</i> is an exquisitely-coloured bird, about the size of a
+sparrow. The <i>ghur&#257;l</i>, a large red and green parrot, with
+a crimson beak. The <i>tota</i> a yellowish-green colour, and the
+male with a breast as red as blood; they call it the <i>amereet
+bhela</i>. Another lovely little parrot, the <i>taeteea sooga</i>,
+has a green body, red head, and black throat; but the most showy
+and brilliant of all the tribe is the <i>putsoogee</i>. The body is
+a rich living green, red wings, yellow beak, and black throat;
+there is a tuft of vivid red as a topknot, and the tail is a
+brilliant blue; the under feathers of the tail being a pure snowy
+white.</p>
+<p>At times the silence is broken by a loud, metallic, bell-like
+cry, very like the yodel you hear in the Alps. You hear it rise
+sharp and distinct, 'Looralei!' and as suddenly cease. This is the
+cry of the <i>kookoor gh&#275;t</i>, a bird not unlike a small
+pheasant, with a reddish-brown back and a fawn-coloured breast. The
+<i>sherra</i> is another green parrot, a little larger than the
+<i>putsoogee</i>, but not so beautifully coloured.</p>
+<p>There is generally a green, slime-covered, sluggish stream in
+all these forests, its channel choked with rotting leaves and
+decaying vegetable matter. The water should never be drunk until it
+has been boiled and filtered. At intervals the stream opens out and
+forms a clear rush-fringed pool, and the trees receding on either
+bank leave a lovely grassy glade, where the deer and nilghau come
+to drink. On the glassy bosom of the pool in the centre, fine duck,
+mallard, and teal, can frequently be found, and the rushes round
+the margin are to a certainty good for a couple of brace of
+snipe.</p>
+<p>Sometimes on a withered branch overhanging the stream, you can
+see perched the <i>ahur</i>, or great black fish-hawk. It has a
+grating, discordant cry, which it utters at intervals as it sits
+pluming its black feathers above the pool. The dark ibis and the
+ubiquitous paddy-bird are of course also found here; and where the
+land is low and marshy, and the stream crawls along through several
+channels, you are sure to come across a couple of red-headed
+<i>sarus</i>, serpent birds, a crane, and a solitary heron. The
+<i>moosahernee</i> is a black and white bird, I fancy a sort of
+ibis, and is good eating. The <i>dokahur</i> is another fine big
+bird, black body and white wings, and as its name (derived from
+<i>dokha</i>, a shell) implies, it is the shell-gatherer, or
+snail-eater, and gives good shooting.</p>
+<p>When you have determined to beat the forest, you first get your
+coolies and villagers assembled, and send them some mile or two
+miles ahead, under charge of some of the head men, to beat the
+jungle towards you, while you look out for a likely spot, shady,
+concealed, and cool, where you wait with your guns till the game is
+driven up to you. The whole arrangements are generally made, of
+course under your own supervision, by your <i>Shekarry</i>, or
+gamekeeper, as I suppose you might call him. He is generally a
+thin, wiry, silent man, well versed in all the lore of the woods,
+acquainted with the name, appearance, and habits of every bird and
+beast in the forest. He knows their haunts and when they are to be
+found at home. He will track a wounded deer like a bloodhound, and
+can tell the signs and almost impalpable evidences of an animal's
+whereabouts, the knowledge of which goes to make up the genuine
+hunter.</p>
+<p>When all is still around, and only the distant shouts of the
+beaters fall faintly at intervals on the ear, his keen hearing
+detects the light patter of hoof or paw on the crisp, withered
+leaves. His hawk-like glance can pick out from the deepest shade
+the sleek coat or hide of the leopard or the deer; and even before
+the animal has come in sight, his senses tell him whether it is
+young or old, whether it is alarmed, or walking in blind
+confidence. In fact, I have known a good shekarry tell you exactly
+what animal is coming, whether bear, leopard, fox, deer, pig, or
+monkey.</p>
+<p>The best shekarry I ever had was a Nepaulee called 'Mehrman
+Singh.' He had the regular Tartar physiognomy of the Nepaulese.
+Small, oblique, twinkling eyes, high cheekbones, flattish nose, and
+scanty moustache. He was a tall, wiry man, with a remarkably light
+springy step, a bold erect carriage, and was altogether a fine,
+manly, independent fellow. He had none of the fawning
+obsequiousness which is so common to the Hindoo, but was a merry
+laughing fellow, with a keen love of sport and a great appreciation
+of humour. His gun was fearfully and wonderfully made. It was a
+long, heavy flint gun, with a tremendously heavy barrel, and the
+stock all splices and splinters, tied in places with bits of
+string. I would rather not have been in the immediate vicinity of
+the weapon when he fired it, and yet he contrived to do some good
+shooting with it.</p>
+<p>He was wonderfully patient in stalking an animal or waiting for
+its near approach, as he never ventured on a long shot, and did not
+understand our objection to pot-shooting. His shot was composed of
+jagged little bits of iron, chipped from an old <i>kunthee</i>, or
+cooking-pot; and his powder was truly unique, being like lumps of
+charcoal, about the size of small raisins. A shekarry fills about
+four or five fingers' depth of this into his gun, then a handful of
+old iron, and with a little touch of English powder pricked in with
+a pin as priming, he is ready for execution on any game that may
+come within reach of a safe pot-shot. When the gun goes off there
+is a mighty splutter, a roar like that of a small cannon, and the
+slugs go hurtling through the bushes, carrying away twigs and
+leaves, and not unfrequently smashing up the game so that it is
+almost useless for the table.</p>
+<p>The <i>Banturs</i>, who principally inhabit these jungles, are
+mostly of Nepaulese origin. They are a sturdy, independent people,
+and the women have fair skins, and are very pretty. Unchastity is
+very rare, and the infidelity of a wife is almost unknown. If it is
+found out, mutilation and often death are the penalties exacted
+from the unfortunate woman. They wear one long loose flowing
+garment, much like the skirt of a gown; this is tightly twisted
+round the body above the bosoms, leaving the neck and arms quite
+bare. They are fond of ornaments&mdash;nose, ears, toes and arms,
+and even ancles, being loaded with silver rings and circlets. Some
+decorate their nose and the middle parting of the hair with a
+greasy-looking red pigment, while nearly every grown-up woman has
+her arms, neck, and low down on the collar bone most artistically
+tattooed in a variety of close, elaborate patterns. The women all
+work in the clearings; sowing, and weeding, and reaping the rice,
+barley, and other crops. They do most of the digging where that is
+necessary, the men confining themselves to ploughing and
+wood-cutting. At the latter employment they are most expert; they
+use the axe in the most masterly manner, but their mode of cutting
+is fearfully wasteful; they always leave some three feet of the
+best part of the wood in the ground, very rarely cutting a tree
+close down to the root. Many of them are good charcoal-burners, and
+indeed their principal occupation is supplying the adjacent
+villages with charcoal and firewood. They use small narrow-edged
+axes for felling, but for lopping they invariably use the Nepaulese
+national weapon&mdash;the <i>kookree</i>. This is a heavy, curved
+knife, with a broad blade, the edge very sharp, and the back thick
+and heavy. In using it they slash right and left with a quick
+downward stroke, drawing the blade quickly toward them as they
+strike. They are wonderfully dexterous with the <i>kookree</i>, and
+will clear away brush and underwood almost as quickly as a man can
+walk. They pack their charcoal, rice, or other commodities, in long
+narrow baskets, which they sling on a pole carried on their
+shoulders, as we see the Chinese doing in the well known pictures
+on tea-chests. They are all Hindoos in religion, but are very fond
+of rice-whiskey. Although not so abstemious in this respect as the
+Hindoos of the plains, they are a much finer race both physically
+and morally. As a rule they are truthful, honest, brave, and
+independent. They are always glad to see you, laugh out merrily at
+you as you pass, and are wonderfully hospitable. It would be a nice
+point for Sir Wilfrid Lawson to reconcile the use of rice-whiskey
+with this marked superiority in all moral virtues in the
+whiskey-drinking, as against the totally-abstaining Hindoo.</p>
+<p>To return to Mehrman Singh. His face was seamed with smallpox
+marks, and he had seven or eight black patches on it the first time
+I saw him, caused by the splintering of his flint when he let off
+his antediluvian gun. When he saw my breechloaders, the first he
+had ever beheld, his admiration was unbounded. He told me he had
+come on a leopard asleep in the forest one day, and crept up quite
+close to him. His faith in his old gun, however, was not so lively
+as to make him rashly attack so dangerous a customer, so he told
+me. 'Hum usko jans deydea oos wukt,' that is, 'I <i>gave</i> the
+brute its life that time, but,' he continued, 'had I had an English
+gun like this, your honour, I would have blown the <i>soor</i>
+(<i>Anglice</i>, pig) to hell.' Old Mehrman was rather strong in
+his expletives at times, but I was not a little amused at the cool
+way he spoke of <i>giving</i> the leopard its life. The probability
+is, that had he only wounded the animal, he would have lost his
+own.</p>
+<p>These Nepaulese are very fond of giving feasts to each other.
+Their dinner-parties, I assure you, are very often 'great affairs.'
+They are not mean in their arrangements, and the wants of the inner
+man are very amply provided for. Their crockery is simple and
+inexpensive. When the feast is prepared, each guest provides
+himself with a few broad leaves from the nearest sal tree, and
+forming these into a cup, he pins them together with thorns from
+the acacia. Squatting down in a circle, with half-a-dozen of these
+sylvan cups around, the attendant fills one with rice, another with
+<i>dhall</i>, a third with goat's-flesh, a fourth with
+<i>turkaree</i> or vegetables, a fifth with chutnee, pickle, or
+some kind of preserve. Curds, ghee, a little oil perhaps, sugar,
+plantains, and other fruit are not wanting, and the whole is washed
+down with copious draughts of fiery rice-whiskey, or where it can
+be procured, with palm-toddy. Not unfrequently dancing boys or
+girls are in attendance, and the horrid din of tom-toms, cymbals, a
+squeaking fiddle, or a twanging sitar, rattling castanets, and
+ear-piercing songs from the dusky <i>prima donna</i>, makes night
+hideous, until the grey dawn peeps over the dark forest line.</p>
+<p>Early in January, 1875, my camp was at a place in the sal
+jungles called Lohurneah. I had been collecting rents and looking
+after my seed cultivation, and Pat and our sporting District
+Engineer having joined me, we determined to have a beat for deer.
+Mehrman Singh had reported numerous herds in the vicinity of our
+camp. During the night we had been disturbed by the revellers at
+such a feast in the village as I have been describing. We had
+filled cartridges, seen to our guns, and made every preparation for
+the beat, and early in the morning the coolies and idlers of the
+forest villages all round were ranged in circles about our
+camp.</p>
+<p>Swallowing a hasty breakfast we mounted our ponies, and followed
+by our ragged escort, made off for the forest. On the way we met a
+crowd of Banturs with bundles of stakes and great coils of strong
+heavy netting. Sending the coolies on ahead under charge of several
+headmen and peons, we plunged into the gloom of the forest, leaving
+our ponies and grooms outside. When we came to a likely-looking
+spot, the Banturs began operations by fixing up the nets on the
+stakes and between trees, till a line of strong net extended across
+the forest for several hundred yards. We then went ahead, leaving
+the nets behind us, and each took up his station about 200 yards in
+front. The men with the nets then hid themselves behind trees, and
+crouched in the underwood. With our kookries we cut down several
+branches, stuck them in the ground in front, and ensconced
+ourselves in this artificial shelter. Behind us, and between us and
+the nets, was a narrow cart track leading through the forest, and
+the reason of our taking this position was given me by Pat, who was
+an old hand at jungle shooting.</p>
+<p>When deer are being driven, they are intensely suspicious, and
+of course frightened. They know every spot in the jungle, and are
+acquainted with all the paths, tracks, and open places in the
+forest. When they are nearing an open glade, or a road, they
+slacken their pace, and go slowly and warily forward, an old buck
+generally leading. When he has carefully reconnoitred and examined
+the suspected place in front, and found it clear to all appearance,
+they again put on the pace, and clear the open ground at their
+greatest speed. The best chance of a shot is when a path is in
+front of <i>them</i> and behind <i>you</i>, as then they are going
+slowly.</p>
+<p>At first when I used to go out after them, I often got an open
+glade, or road, in <i>front</i> of me; but experience soon told me
+that Pat's plan was the best. As this was a beat not so much for
+real sport, as to show me how the villagers managed these affairs,
+we were all under Pat's direction, and he could not have chosen
+better ground. I was on the extreme left, behind a clump of young
+trees, with the sluggish muddy stream on my left. Our Engineer to
+my right was about one hundred yards off, and Pat himself on the
+extreme right, at about the same distance from H. Behind us was the
+road, and in the rear the long line of nets, with their concealed
+watchers. The nets are so set up on the stakes, that when an animal
+bounds along and touches the net, it falls over him, and ere he can
+extricate himself from its meshes, the vigilant Banturs rush out
+and despatch him with spears and clubs.</p>
+<p>We waited a long time hearing nothing of the beaters, and
+watching the red and black ants hurrying to and fro. Huge
+green-bellied spiders oscillated backwards and forwards in their
+strong, systematically woven webs. A small mungoose kept peeping
+out at me from the roots of an old india-rubber tree, and aloft in
+the branches an amatory pair of hidden ringdoves were billing and
+cooing to each other. At this moment a stealthy step stole softly
+behind, and the next second Mr. Mehrman Singh crept quietly and
+noiselessly beside me, his face flushed with rapid walking, his eye
+flashing with excitement, his finger on his lip, and a look of
+portentous gravity and importance striving to spread itself over
+his speaking countenance. Mehrman had been up all night at the
+feast, and was as drunk as a piper. It was no use being angry with
+him, so I tried to keep him quiet and resumed my watch.</p>
+<p>A few minutes afterwards he grasped me by the wrist, rather
+startling me, but in a low hoarse whisper warning me that a troop
+of monkeys was coming. I could not hear the faintest rustle, but
+sure enough in a minute or two a troop of over twenty monkeys came
+hopping and shambling along, stopping every now and then to sit on
+their hams, look back, grin, jabber, and show their formidable
+teeth, until Mehrman rose up, waved his cloth at them, and turned
+them off from the direction of the nets toward the bank of the
+stream.</p>
+<p>Next came a fox, slouching warily and cautiously along; then a
+couple of lean, hungry-looking jackals; next a sharp patter on the
+crisp dry leaves, and several peafowl with resplendent plumage ran
+rapidly past. Another touch on the arm from Mehrman, and following
+the direction of his outstretched hand, I descried a splendid buck
+within thirty yards of me, his antlers and chest but barely visible
+above the brushwood. My gun was to my shoulder in an instant, but
+the shekarry in an excited whisper implored me not to fire. I
+hesitated, and just then the stately head turned round to look
+behind, and exposing the beautifully curving neck full to my aim, I
+fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the fine buck topple
+over, seemingly hard hit.</p>
+<p>A shot on my right, and two shots in rapid succession further
+on, shewed me that Pat and H. were also at work, and then the whole
+forest seemed alive with frightened, madly-plunging pig, deer, and
+other animals. I fired at, and wounded an enormous boar that came
+rushing past, and now the cries of the coolies in front as they
+came trooping on, mingled with the shouts of the men at the nets,
+where the work of death evidently was going on.</p>
+<p>It was most exciting while it lasted, but, after all, I do not
+think it was honest sport. The only apology I could make to myself
+was, that the deer and pig were far too numerous, and doing immense
+damage to the crops, and if not thinned out, they would soon have
+made the growing of any crop whatever an impossibility.</p>
+<p>The monkey being a sacred animal, is never molested by the
+natives, and the damage he does in a night to a crop of wheat or
+barley is astonishing. Peafowl too are very destructive, and what
+with these and the ravages of pig, deer, hares, and other
+plunderers, the poor ryot has to watch many a weary night, to
+secure any return from his fields.</p>
+<p>On rejoining each other at the nets, we found that five deer and
+two pigs had been killed. Pat had shot a boar and a porcupine, the
+latter with No. 4 shot. H. accounted for a deer, and I got my buck
+and the boar which I had wounded in the chest; Mehrman Singh had
+followed him up and tracked him to the river, where he took refuge
+among some long swamp reeds. Replying to his call, we went up, and
+a shot through the head settled the old boar for ever. Our bag was
+therefore for the first beat, seven deer, four pigs, and a
+porcupine.</p>
+<p>The coolies were now sent away out of the jungle, and on ahead
+for a mile or so, the nets were coiled up, our ponies regained, and
+off we set, to take another station. As we went along the river
+bank, frequently having to force our way through thick jungle, we
+started 'no end' of peafowl, and getting down we soon added a
+couple to the bag. Pat got a fine jack snipe, and I shot a
+<i>Jheela</i>, a very fine waterfowl with brown plumage, having a
+strong metallic, coppery lustre on the back, and a steely dark blue
+breast. The plumage was very thick and glossy, and it proved
+afterwards to be excellent eating.</p>
+<p>Peafowl generally retire to the thickest part of the jungles
+during the heat of the day, but if you go out very early, when they
+are slowly wending their way back from the fields, where they have
+been revelling all night, you can shoot numbers of them. I used to
+go about twenty or thirty yards into the jungle, and walk slowly
+along, keeping that distance from the edge. My syce and pony would
+then walk slowly by the edges of the fields, and when the syce saw
+a peafowl ahead, making for the jungle, he would shout and try to
+make it rise. He generally succeeded, and as I was a little in
+advance and concealed by the jungle, I would get a fine shot as the
+bird flew overhead. I have shot as many as eight and ten in a
+morning in this way. I always used No. 4 shot with about 3&frac12;
+drams of powder.</p>
+<p>Unless hard hit peafowl will often get away; they run with
+amazing swiftness, and in the heart of the jungle it is almost
+impossible to make them rise. A couple of sharp terriers, or a good
+retriever, will sometimes flush them, but the best way is to go
+along the edge of the jungle in the early morn, as I have
+described. The peachicks, about seven or eight months old, are
+deliciously tender and well flavoured. Old birds are very dry and
+tough, and require a great deal of that old-fashioned sauce,
+Hunger.</p>
+<p>The common name for a peafowl is <i>m&#333;r</i>, but the
+Nepaulese and Banturs call it <i>majoor</i>. Now <i>majoor</i> also
+means coolie, and a young fellow, S., was horrified one day hearing
+his attendant in the jungle telling him in the most excited way,
+'<i>Majoor, majoor</i>, Sahib; why don't you fire?' Poor S. thought
+it was a coolie the man meant, and that he must be going mad,
+wanting him to shoot a coolie, but he found out his mistake, and
+learnt the double meaning of the word, when he got home and
+consulted his <i>manager</i>.</p>
+<p>The generic name for all deer is in Hindustani HURIN, but the
+Nepaulese call it CHEETER. The male spotted deer they call KUBRA,
+the female KUBREE. These spotted deer keep almost exclusively to
+the forests, and are very seldom found far away from the friendly
+cover of the sal woods. They are the most handsome, graceful
+looking animals I know, their skins beautifully marked with white
+spots, and the horns wide and arching. When properly prepared the
+skin makes a beautiful mat for a drawing room, and the horns of a
+good buck are a handsome ornament to the hall or the verandah. When
+bounding along through the forest, his beautifully spotted skin
+flashing through the dark green foliage, his antlers laid back over
+his withers, he looks the very embodiment of grace and swiftness.
+He is very timid, and not easily stalked.</p>
+<p>In March and April, when a strong west wind is blowing, it
+rustles the myriads of leaves that, dry as tinder, encumber the
+earth. This perpetual rustle prevents the deer from hearing the
+footsteps of an approaching foe. They generally betake themselves
+then to some patch of grass, or long-crop outside the jungle
+altogether, and if you want them in those months, it is in such
+places, and not inside the forest at all, that you must search.
+Like all the deer tribe, they are very curious, and a bit of rag
+tied to a tree, or a cloth put over a bush, will not unfrequently
+entice them within range.</p>
+<p>Old shekarries will tell you that as long as the deer go on
+feeding and flapping their ears, you may continue your approach. As
+soon as they throw up the head, and keep the ears still, their
+suspicions have been aroused, and if you want venison, you must be
+as still as a rock, till your game is again lulled into security,
+As soon as the ears begin flapping again, you may continue your
+stalk, but at the slightest noise, the noble buck will be off like
+a flash of lightning. You should never go out in the forest with
+white clothes, as you are then a conspicuous mark for all the
+prying eyes that are invisible to you. The best colour is dun
+brown, dark grey, or dark green. When you see a deer has become
+suspicious, and no cover is near, stand perfectly erect and rigid,
+and do not leave your legs apart. The 'forked-parsnip' formation of
+the 'human form divine' is detected at a glance, but there's just a
+chance that if your legs are drawn together, and you remain
+perfectly motionless, you may be mistaken for the stump of a tree,
+or at the best some less dangerous enemy than man.</p>
+<p>As we rode slowly along, to allow the beaters to get ahead, and
+to let the heavily-laden men with the nets keep up with us, we were
+amused to hear the remarks of the syces and shekarries on the sport
+they had just witnessed. Pat's old man, Juggroo, a merry peep-eyed
+fellow, full of anecdote and humour, was rather hard on Mehrman
+Singh for having been up late the preceding night. Mehrman, whose
+head was by this time probably reminding him that there are 'lees
+to every cup,' did not seem to relish the humour. He began grasping
+one wrist with the other hand, working his hand slowly round his
+wrist, and I noticed that Juggroo immediately changed the subject.
+This, as I afterwards learned, is the invariable Nepaulese custom
+of showing anger. They grasp the wrist as I have said, and it is
+taken as a sign that, if you do not discontinue your banter, you
+will have a fight.</p>
+<p>The Nepaulese are rather vain of their personal appearance, and
+hanker greatly after a good thick moustache. This, nature has
+denied them, for the hair on their faces is scanty and stubbly in
+the extreme. One day Juggroo saw his master putting some bandoline
+on his moustache, which was a fine, handsome, silky one. He asked
+Pat's bearer, an old rogue, what it was.</p>
+<p>'Oh!' replied the bearer, 'that is the gum of the sal tree;
+master always uses that, and that is the reason he has such a fine
+moustache.'</p>
+<p>Juggroo's imagination fired up at the idea.</p>
+<p>'Will it make mine grow too?'</p>
+<p>'Certainly.'</p>
+<p>'How do you use it?'</p>
+<p>'Just rub it on, as you see master do.'</p>
+<p>Away went Juggroo to try the new recipe.</p>
+<p>Now, the gum of the sal tree is a very strong resin, and hardens
+in water. It is almost impossible to get it off your skin, as the
+more water you use, the harder it gets.</p>
+<p>Next day Juggroo's face presented a sorry sight. He had
+plentifully smeared the gum over his upper lip, so that when he
+washed his face, the gum <i>set</i>, making the lip as stiff as a
+board, and threatening to crack the skin every time the slightest
+muscle moved.</p>
+<p>Juggroo <i>was</i> 'sold' and no mistake, but he bore it all in
+grim silence, although he never forgot the old bearer. One day,
+long after, he brought in some berries from the wood, and was
+munching them, seemingly with great relish. The bearer wanted to
+know what they were, Juggroo with much apparent <i>nonchalance</i>
+told him they were some very sweet, juicy, wild berries he had
+found in the forest. The bearer asked to try one.</p>
+<p>Juggroo had <i>another</i> fruit ready, very much resembling
+those he was eating. It is filled with minute spikelets, or little
+hairy spinnacles, much resembling those found in ripe doghips at
+home. If these even touch the skin, they cause intense pain,
+stinging like nettles, and blistering every part they touch.</p>
+<p>The unsuspicious bearer popped the treacherous berry into his
+mouth, gave it a crunch, and then with a howl of agony, spluttered
+and spat, while the tears ran down his cheeks, as he implored
+Juggroo by all the gods to fetch him some water.</p>
+<p>Old Juggroo with a grim smile, walked coolly away, discharging a
+Parthian shaft, by telling him that these berries were very good
+for making the hair grow, and hoped he would soon have a good
+moustache.</p>
+<p>A man from the village now came running up to tell us that there
+was a leopard in the jungle we were about to beat, and that it had
+seized, but failed to carry away, a dog from the village during the
+night. Natives are so apt to tell stories of this kind that at
+first we did not credit him, but turning into the village he showed
+us the poor dog, with great wounds on its neck and throat where the
+leopard had pounced upon it. The noise, it seems, had brought some
+herdsmen to the place, and their cries had frightened the leopard
+and saved the wretched dog. As the man said he could show us the
+spot where the leopard generally remained, we determined to beat
+him up; so sending a man off on horseback for the beaters to
+slightly alter their intended line of beat, we rode off, attended
+by the villager, to get behind the leopard's lair, and see if we
+could not secure him. These fierce and courageous brutes, for they
+are both, are very common in the sal jungles; and as I have seen
+several killed, both in Bhaugulpore and Oudh, I must devote a
+chapter to the subject.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>The leopard.&mdash;How to shoot
+him.&mdash;Gallant encounter with a wounded one.&mdash;Encounter
+with a leopard in a dak bungalow.&mdash;Pat shoots two
+leopards.&mdash;Effects of the Express bullet.&mdash;The 'Sirwah
+Purrul,' or annual festival of huntsmen.&mdash;The Hindoo
+ryot.&mdash;Rice-planting and harvest.&mdash;Poverty of the
+ryot.&mdash;His apathy.&mdash;Village fires.&mdash;Want of
+sanitation.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Writing principally for friends at home, who are not familiar
+with Indian life, I must narrate facts that, although well known in
+Indian circles, are yet new to the general reader in England. My
+object is of course to represent the life we lead in the far East,
+and to give a series of pictures of what is going on there. If I
+occasionally touch on what may to Indian readers seem well-worn
+ground, they will forgive me.</p>
+<p>The leopard then, as a rule keeps to the wooded parts of India.
+In the long grassy jungles bordering the Koosee he is not generally
+met with. He is essentially a predatory animal, always on the
+outlook for a meal; round the villages, nestling amid their sal
+forests, he is continually on the prowl, looking out for a goat, a
+calf, or unwary dog. His appearance and habits are well known; he
+generally selects for his lair, a retired spot surrounded by dense
+jungle. The one we were after now had his home in a matted jungle,
+growing out of a pool of water, which had collected in a long
+hollow, forming the receptacle of the surface drainage from the
+adjacent slopes. This hollow stretched for miles towards the creek
+which we had been beating up; and the locality having moisture and
+other concurring elements in its favour, the vegetation had
+attained a luxuriance rarely seen in the dry uplands, where the
+west winds lick up the moisture, and the soil is arid and
+unpromising. The matted intertwining branches of the creepers had
+formed an almost impervious screen, and on the basis thus formed,
+amid the branches and creepers, the leopards had formed their lair.
+Beneath, was a still stagnant pool; above, was the leafy foliage.
+The tracks led down to a well-worn path.</p>
+<p>Climbing like a cat, as the leopards can do, they found no
+difficulty in gaining a footing on the mass of vegetation. They
+generally select some retired spot like this, and are very seldom
+seen in the daytime. With the approach of night, however, they
+begin their wandering in quest of prey. In a beat such as we were
+having 'all is fish that comes to the net,' and leopards, if they
+are in the jungle, have to yield to the advance of the beaters,
+like the other denizens of the forest.</p>
+<p>Experience tells you that the leopard is daring and ferocious.
+Old experienced hands warn you, that unless you can make sure of
+your shot, it is unwise to fire at a leopard approaching. It is
+better to wait till he has got past you, or at all events is
+'broadside on.' If you only wound him as he is approaching, he will
+almost to a certainty make straight at you, but if you shoot him as
+he is going past, he will, maddened by pain and anger, go straight
+forward, and you escape his charge. He is more courageous than a
+tiger, and a very dangerous customer at close quarters. Up in one
+of the forests in Oudh, a friend of mine was out one day after
+leopard, with a companion who belonged to the forest department. My
+friend's companion fired at a leopard as it was approaching him,
+and wounded it severely. Nothing daunted, and recognising whence
+its hurt had come, it charged directly down on the concealed
+sportsman, and before he could half realise the position, sprang on
+him, caught his left arm in its teeth, and began mauling him with
+its claws. His presence of mind did not desert him; noticing close
+by the stump of a sal tree, that had been eaten by white ants till
+the harder parts of the wood alone remained, standing up hard and
+sharp like so many spikes of steel; and knowing that the leopard
+was already badly wounded, and in all probability struggling for
+his life, he managed to drag the struggling animal up to the stump;
+jammed his left arm yet further into the open mouth of the wounded
+beast, and being a strong man, by pure physical force dashed the
+leopard's brains out on the jagged edges of the stump. It was a
+splendid instance of presence of mind. He was horribly mauled of
+course; in fact I believe he lost his arm, but he saved his life.
+It shows the danger of only wounding a leopard, especially if he is
+coming towards you; always wait till he has passed your station, if
+it is practicable. If you <i>must</i> shoot, take what care you can
+that the shot be a sure one.</p>
+<p>In some of the hill stations, and indeed in the villages on the
+plains, it is very common for a leopard to make his appearance in
+the house or verandah of an evening.</p>
+<p>One was shot in Bhaugulpore station by the genial and respected
+chaplain, on a Sunday morning two or three years ago. As we went
+along, H. told us a humorous story of an Assistant in the Public
+Works Department, who got mauled by a leopard at Dengra Ghat, Dak
+Bungalow. It had taken up its quarters in a disused room, and this
+young fellow burning, with ardour to distinguish himself, made
+straight for the room in which he was known to be. He opened the
+door, followed by a motley crowd of retainers, discharged his gun,
+and the sequel proved that he was <i>not</i> a dead shot. He had
+only wounded the leopard. With a bound the savage brute was on him,
+but in the hurry and confusion, he had changed front. The leopard
+had him by the back. You can imagine the scene! He roared for help!
+The leopard was badly hit, and a plucky <i>bearer</i> came to his
+rescue with a stout <i>lathee</i>. Between them they succeeded in
+killing the wounded animal, but not before it had left its marks on
+a very sensitive portion of his frame. The moral is, if you go
+after leopard, be sure you kill him at once.</p>
+<p>They seldom attack a strong, well-grown animal. Calves, however,
+goats, and dogs are frequently carried off by them. The young of
+deer and pig, too, fall victims, and when nothing else can be had,
+peafowl have been known to furnish them a meal. In my factory in
+Oudh I had a small, graceful, four-horned antelope. It was carried
+off by a leopard from the garden in broad daylight, and in face of
+a gang of coolies.</p>
+<p>The most commonly practised mode of leopard shooting, is to tie
+a goat up to a tree. You have a <i>mychan</i> erected, that is, a
+platform elevated on trees above the ground. Here you take your
+seat. Attracted by the bleating of the goat, the prowling leopard
+approaches his intended victim. If you are on the watch you can
+generally detect his approach. They steal on with extreme caution,
+being intensely wary and suspicious. At a village near where we now
+were, I had sat up for three nights for a leopard, but although I
+knew he was prowling in the vicinity, I had never got a look at
+him. We believed this leopard to be the same brute.</p>
+<p>I have already described our mode of beating. The jungle was
+close, and there was a great growth of young trees. I was again on
+the right, and near the edge of the forest. Beyond was a glade
+planted with rice. The incidents of the beat were much as you have
+just read. There was, however, unknown or at any rate unnoticed by
+us, more intense excitement. We knew that the leopard might at any
+moment pass before us. Pat was close to a mighty bhur tree, whose
+branches, sending down shoots from the parent stem, had planted
+round it a colony of vigorous supports. It was a magnificent tree
+with dense shade. All was solemn and still. Pat with his keen eye,
+his pulse bounding, and every sense on the alert, was keeping a
+careful look-out from behind an immense projecting buttress of the
+tree. All was deadly quiet. H. and myself were occupied watching
+the gambols of some monkeys in our front. The beaters were yet far
+off. Suddenly Pat heard a faint crackle on a dried leaf. He glanced
+in the direction of the sound, and his quick eye detected the
+glossy coats, the beautifully spotted hides of not <i>one</i>
+leopard, but <i>two</i>. In a moment the stillness was broken by
+the report of his rifle. Another report followed sharp and quick.
+We were on the alert, but to Pat the chief honour and glory
+belonged. He had shot one leopard dead through the heart. The
+female was badly hit and came bounding along in my direction. Of
+course we were now on the <i>qui vive</i>. Waiting for an instant,
+till I could get my aim clear of some intervening trees, I at
+length got a fair shot, and brought her down with a ball through
+the throat. H. and Pat came running up, and we congratulated
+ourselves on our success. By and bye Mehrman Singh and the rest of
+the beaters came up, and the joy of the villagers was gratifying.
+These were doubtless the two leopards we had heard so much about,
+for which I had sat up and watched. It was amusing to see some
+villager whose pet goat or valued calf had been carried off, now
+coming up, striking the dead body of the leopard, and abusing it in
+the most unmeasured terms. Such a crowding round as there was! such
+a noise, and such excitement!</p>
+<p>While waiting for the horses to be brought, and while the
+excited mob of beaters and coolies carried off the dead animals to
+the camp to be skinned, we amused ourselves by trying our rifles at
+a huge tree that grew on the further side of the rice swamp. We
+found the effects of the 'Express' bullet to be tremendous. It
+splintered up and burst the bark and body of the tree into
+fragments. Its effects on an animal are even more wonderful. On
+looking afterwards at the leopard which had been shot, we found
+that my bullet had touched the base of the shoulder, near the
+collar-bone. It had gone downwards through the neck, under the
+collar-bone, and struck the shoulder. There it had splintered up
+and made a frightful wound, scattering its fragments all over the
+chest, and cutting and lacerating everything in its way.</p>
+<p>For big game the 'Express' is simply invaluable. For all-round
+shooting perhaps a No. 12 smooth-bore is the best. It should be
+snap action with rebounding locks. You should have facilities and
+instruments for loading cartridges. A good cartridge belt is a good
+thing for carrying them, but go where you will now, where there is
+game to be killed, a No. 12 B. L. will enable you to participate in
+whatever shooting is going. Such a one as I have described would
+satisfy all the wishes of any young man who perhaps can only afford
+one gun.</p>
+<p>As we rode slowly along, we learned many curious facts of jungle
+and native life from the followers, and by noticing little
+incidents happening before our eyes. Pat, who is so well versed in
+jungle life and its traditions, told us of a curious moveable feast
+which the natives of these parts hold annually, generally in March
+or April, which is called the <i>Sirwah Purrub</i>.</p>
+<p>It seems to be somewhat like the old carnivals of the middle
+ages. I have read that in Sardinia, and Italy, and Switzerland
+something similar takes place. The <i>Sirwah Purrub</i> is a sort
+of festival held in honour of the native Diana&mdash;the <i>chumpa
+buttee</i> before referred to. On the appointed day all the males
+in the forest villages, without exception, go a-hunting. Old spears
+are furbished up; miraculous guns, of even yet more ancient lineage
+than Mehrman Singh's dangerous flintpiece, are brought out from
+dusty hiding-places. Battle-axes, bows and arrows, hatchets, clubs
+and weapons of all sorts, are looked up, and the motley crowd hies
+to the forest, the one party beating up the game to the other.</p>
+<p>Some go fishing, others try to secure a quail or partridge, but
+it is a point of honour that something must be slain. If game be
+not plentiful they will even go to another village and slay a goat,
+which, rather than return empty-handed, they will bear in triumph
+home. The women meet the returning hunters, and if there has been a
+fortunate beat, there is a great feast in the village during the
+evening and far on into the night. The nets are used, and in this
+way they generally have some game to divide in the village on their
+return from the hunt. Ordinarily they seethe the flesh, and pour
+the whole contents of the cooking-pot into a mess of boiled rice.
+With the addition of a little salt, this is to them very palatable
+fare. They are very good cooks, with very simple appliances; with a
+little mustard oil or clarified butter, a few vegetables or a
+cut-up fish, they can be very successful. The food, however, is
+generally smoked from the cow-dung fire. If you are much out in
+these villages this smoke constantly hangs about, clinging to your
+clothes and flavouring your food, but the natives seem to like it
+amazingly.</p>
+<p>In the cold mornings of December or January it hangs about like
+the peat smoke in a Highland village. Round every house are great
+stacks and piles of cow-dung cakes. Before every house is a huge
+pile of ashes, and the villagers cower round this as the evening
+falls, or before the sun has dissipated the mist of the mornings.
+During the day the village dogs burrow in the ashes. Hovering in a
+dense cloud about the roofs and eaves, and along the lower branches
+of the trees in filmy layers, the smoke almost chokes one to ride
+through it. I have seen a native sit till half-choked in a dense
+column of this smoke. He is too lazy to shift his position; the
+fumes of pungent smoke half smother him; tears run from his eyes;
+he splutters and coughs, and abuses the smoke, and its grandfather,
+and maternal uncle, and all its other known relatives; but he
+prefers semi-suffocation to the trouble of budging an inch.</p>
+<p>Sometimes the energy of these people is surprising. To go to a
+fair or feast, or on a pilgrimage, they will walk miles upon miles,
+subsisting on parched peas or rice, and carrying heavy burdens. In
+company they sing and carol blithely enough. When alone they are
+very taciturn, man and woman walking together, the man first with
+his <i>lathee</i> or staff, the woman behind carrying child or
+bundle, and often looking fagged and tired enough.</p>
+<p>Taking vegetables, or rice, or other commodities to the bazaar,
+the carrier often slings his burden to the two ends of a pole worn
+over the shoulder, much as Chinamen do. But they generally make
+their load into one bundle which they carry on the head, or which
+they sling, if not large and bulky, over their backs, rolled up in
+one of their cloths.</p>
+<p>During the rice-planting season they toil in mud and water from
+earliest morn till late into twilight. Bending and stooping all the
+day, their lower extremities up to the knee sometimes in water, and
+the scorching sun beating on their backs, they certainly show their
+patient plodding industry, for it is downright honest hard
+work.</p>
+<p>The young rice is taken from the nursery patch, where it has
+been sown thick some time previously. When the rice-field is
+ready&mdash;a sloppy, muddy, embanked little quagmire&mdash;the
+ryot gets his bundle of young rice-plants, and shoves in two or
+three at a time with his finger and thumb. These afterwards form
+the tufts of rice. Its growth is very rapid. Sometimes, in case of
+flood, the rice actually grows with the rise of the water, always
+keeping its tip above the stream. If wholly submerged for any
+length of time it dies. There are over a hundred varieties. Some
+are only suited for very deep marshy soils; others, such as the
+<i>s&#257;tee</i>, or sixty-days rice, can be grown on
+comparatively high land, and ripen early. If rain be scanty, the
+<i>s&#257;tee</i> and other rice crops have to be weeded. It is cut
+with a jagged-edged sort of reaping-hook called a <i>hussooa</i>.
+The cut bundles are carried from the fields by women, girls, and
+lads. They could not take carts in many instances into the
+swamps.</p>
+<p>At such times you see every little dyke or embankment with a
+crowd of bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on
+his head, hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The
+women, with clothes tucked up above the knee, plod and plash
+through the water. They go at a half run, a kind of fast trot, and
+hardly a word is spoken&mdash;garnering the rice crops is too
+important an operation to dawdle and gossip over. Each hurries off
+with his burden to the little family threshing-floor, dumps down
+his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a yawn,
+then off again to the field for another load. It is no use leaving
+a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by such
+a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty
+stomachs in every village, a bundle of rice would be gone by the
+morning.</p>
+<p>As in Greece, where every man has to watch his vineyard at
+night, so here, the <i>kureehan</i> or threshing-floor each has its
+watchman at night. For the protection of the growing crops, the
+villagers club together, and appoint a watchman or
+<i>chowkeydar</i>, whom they pay by giving him a small percentage
+on the yield; or a small fractional proportion of the area he has
+to guard, with its standing crop, may be made over to him as a
+recompense.</p>
+<p>They thresh out the rice when it has matured a little on the
+threshing-floor. Four to six bullocks are tied in a line to a post
+in the centre, and round this they slowly pace in a circle. They
+are not muzzled, and the poor brutes seem rather to enjoy the
+unwonted luxury of feeding while they work. When there is a good
+wind, the grain is winnowed; it is lifted either in bamboo scoops
+or in the two hands. The wind blows the chaff or <i>bhoosa</i> on
+to a heap, and the fine fresh rice remains behind. The grain
+merchants now do a good business. Rice must be sold to pay the
+rent, the money-lender, and other clamouring creditors. The
+<i>bunniahs</i> will take repayment in kind. They put on the
+interest, and cheat in the weighments and measurements. So much has
+to be given to the weigh-man as a perquisite. If seed had been
+borrowed, it has now to be returned at a ruinous rate of interest.
+Some seed must be saved for next year, and an average <i>poor</i>
+ryot, the cultivator of but a little holding, very soon sees the
+result of his harvesting melt away, leaving little for wife and
+little ones to live on. He never gets free of the money-lender. He
+will have to go out and work hard for others, as well as get up his
+own little lands. No chance of a new bullock this year, and the old
+ones are getting worn out and thin. The wife must dispense with her
+promised ornament or dress. For the poor ryot it is a miserable
+hand-to-mouth existence when crops are poor. As a rule he is never
+out of debt. He lives on the scantiest fare; hunger often pinches
+him; he knows none of the luxuries of life. Notwithstanding all,
+the majority are patient, frugal, industrious, and to the full
+extent of their scanty means even charitable and benevolent. With
+the average ryot a little business goes a great way. There are some
+irreconcileable, discontented, worthless fellows in every village.
+All more or less count a lie as rather a good thing to be expert
+in; they lie naturally, simply, and instinctively: but with all his
+faults, and they are doubtless many, I confess to a great liking
+for the average Hindoo ryot.</p>
+<p>At times, however, their apathy and laziness is amazing. They
+are very childish, petted, and easily roused. In a quarrel,
+however, they generally confine themselves to vituperation and
+abuse, and seldom come to blows.</p>
+<p>As an instance of their fatalism or apathetic indolence, I can
+remember a village on the estate I was managing taking fire. It was
+quite close to the factory. I had my pony saddled at once, and
+galloped off for the burning village. It was a long, straggling
+one, with a good masonry well in the centre, shadowed by a mighty
+<i>peepul</i> tree. The wind was blowing the fire right along, and
+if no obstruction was offered, would sweep off every hut in the
+place. The only soul who was trying to do a thing was a young
+Brahmin watchman belonging to the factory. He had succeeded in
+removing some brass jars of his own, and was saving some grain. One
+woman was rocking to and fro, beating her breast and crying. There
+sat the rest of the apathetic villagers in groups, not lifting a
+finger, not stirring a step, but calmly looking on, while the
+devouring element was licking up hut after hut, and destroying
+their little all. In a few minutes some of my servants, syces, and
+factory men had arrived. I tied up the pony, ordered my men to pull
+down a couple of huts in the centre, and tried to infuse some
+energy into the villagers. Not a bit of it; they would <i>not</i>
+stir. They would not even draw a bucket of water. However, my men
+got earthen pots; I dug up fresh earth and threw it on the two
+dismantled huts, dragging away as much of the thatch and
+<i>debris</i> as we could.</p>
+<p>The fire licked our faces, and actually got a footing on the
+first house beyond the frail opening we had tried to make, but we
+persevered, and ultimately stayed the fire, and saved about two
+thirds of the village. I never saw such an instance of complete
+apathy. Some of the inhabitants even had not untied the cattle in
+the sheds. They seemed quite prostrated. However, as we worked on,
+and they began to see that all was not yet lost, they began to
+buckle to; yet even then their principal object was to save their
+brass pots and cooking utensils, things that could not possibly
+burn, and which they might have left alone with perfect safety.</p>
+<p>A Hindoo village is as inflammable as touchwood. The houses are
+generally built of grass walls, connected with thin battens of
+bamboo. The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all
+the little courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are
+piled up round every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which
+smoulders all day. A stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit
+round the corner, and before one can half realise the catastrophe,
+the village is on fire. Then each only thinks of his own goods;
+there is no combined effort to stay the flames. In the hot west
+winds of March, April, and May, these fires are of very frequent
+occurrence. In Bhaugulpore, I have seen, from my verandah, three
+villages on fire at one and the same time. In some parts of Oudh,
+among the sal forests, village after village is burnt down
+annually, and I have seen the same catastrophe visit the same
+village several times in the course of one year. These fires arise
+from pure carelessness, sheer apathy, and laziness.</p>
+<p>Sanitary precautions too are very insufficient; practically
+there are none. Huge unsightly water-holes, filled during the rains
+with the drainage of all the dung-heaps and mounds of offal and
+filth that abound in the village, swelter under the hot summer sun.
+They get covered with a rank green scum, and if their inky depths
+be stirred, the foulest and most fearful odours issue forth. In
+these filthy pools the villagers often perform their ablutions;
+they do not scruple to drink the putrid water, which is no doubt a
+hotbed and regular nursery for fevers, and choleraic and other
+disorders.</p>
+<p>Many home readers are but little acquainted with the Indian
+village system, and I shall devote a chapter to the description of
+a Hindoo village, with its functionaries, its institutions, its
+inhabitants, and the more marked of their customs and
+avocations.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXIII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Description of a native
+village.&mdash;Village functionaries.&mdash;The barber.
+&mdash;Bathing habits.&mdash;The village well.&mdash;The
+school.&mdash;The children.&mdash;The village bazaar.&mdash;The
+landowner and his dwelling.&mdash;The 'Putwarrie' or village
+accountant.&mdash;The blacksmith.&mdash;The 'Punchayiet' or village
+jury system.&mdash;Our legal system in India.&mdash;Remarks on the
+administration of justice.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>A typical village in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of
+thatched huts, apparently set down at random&mdash;as indeed it is,
+for every one erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or
+wherever he can get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery
+bamboos and broad-leaved plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the
+huts and buildings. Several small orchards of mango surround the
+village; the roads leading to and from it are merely well-worn
+cattle tracks,&mdash;in the rains a perfect quagmire, and in the
+hot weather dusty, and confined between straggling hedges of aloe
+or prickly pear. These hedges are festooned with masses of clinging
+luxuriant creepers, among which sometimes struggles up a custard
+apple, an avocado pear, or a wild plum-tree. The latter is a
+prickly straggling tree, called the <i>bhyre</i>; the wood is very
+hard, and is often used for making ploughs. The fruit is a little
+hard yellow crisp fruit, with a big stone inside, and very sweet;
+when it is ripe, the village urchins throw sticks up among the
+branches, and feast on the golden shower.</p>
+<p>On many of the banks bordering the roads, thatching grass, or
+rather strong upright waving grass, with a beautiful feathery
+plume, is planted. This is used to make the walls of the houses,
+and these are then plastered outside and in with clay and cowdung.
+The tall hedge of dense grass keeps what little breeze there may be
+away from the traveller. The road is something like an Irish
+'Boreen,' wanting only its beauty and freshness. On a hot day the
+atmosphere in one of these village roads is stifling and loaded
+with dust.</p>
+<p>These houses with their grass walls and thatched roof are called
+<i>kutcha</i>, as opposed to more pretentious structures of burnt
+brick, with maybe a tiled sloping or flat plastered roof, which are
+called <i>pucca. Pucca</i> literally means 'ripe,' as opposed to
+<i>cutcha</i>, 'unripe'; but the rich Oriental tongue has adapted
+it to almost every kind of secondary meaning. Thus a man who is
+true, upright, respected, a man to be depended on, is called a
+<i>pucca</i> man. It is a word in constant use among Anglo-Indians.
+A <i>pucca</i> road is one which is bridged and metalled. If you
+make an engagement with a friend, and he wants to impress you with
+its importance, he will ask you, Now is that <i>pucca</i>?' and so
+on.</p>
+<p>Other houses in the village are composed of unburnt bricks
+cemented with mud, or maybe composed of mud walls and thatched
+roof; these, being a compound sort of erection, are called
+<i>cutcha pucca</i>. In the <i>cutcha</i> houses live the poorer
+castes, the <i>Chumars</i> or workers in leathers, the <i>Moosahms,
+Doosadhs</i>, or <i>Gwallahs</i>.</p>
+<p>The <i>Dornes</i>, or scavengers, feeders on offal, have to live
+apart in a <i>tolah</i>, which might be called a small suburb, by
+themselves. The <i>Dornes</i> drag from the village any animal that
+happens to die. They generally pursue the handicraft of basket
+making, or mat making, and the <i>Dorne tolah</i> can always be
+known by the pigs and fowls prowling about in search of food, and
+the <i>Dorne</i> and his family splitting up bamboo, and weaving
+mats and baskets at the doors of their miserable habitation. To the
+higher castes both pigs arid fowls are unclean and an abomination.
+<i>Moosahms, Doosadhs</i>, and other poor castes, such as
+<i>Dangurs</i>, keep however an army of gaunt, lean, hungry-looking
+pigs. These may be seen rooting and wallowing in the marshes when
+the rice has been cut, or foraging among the mango groves, to pick
+up any stray unripe fruit that may have escaped the keen eyes of
+the hungry and swarming children.</p>
+<p>There is yet another small <i>tolah</i> or suburb, called the
+<i>Kusbee tolah</i>. Here live the miserable outcasts who minister
+to the worst passions of our nature. These degraded beings are
+banished from the more respectable portions of the community; but
+here, as in our own highly civilised and favoured land, vice hovers
+by the side of virtue, and the Hindoo village contains the same
+elements of happiness and misery, profligacy and probity, purity
+and degradation, as the fine home cities that are a name in the
+mouths of men.</p>
+<p>Every village forms a perfect little commonwealth; it contains
+all the elements of self-existence; it is quite a little commune,
+so far as social life is concerned. There is a hereditary
+blacksmith, washerman, potter, barber, and writer. The
+<i>dhobee</i>, or washerman, can always be known by the propinquity
+of his donkeys, diminutive animals which he uses to transport his
+bundle of unsavoury dirty clothes to the pool or tank where the
+linen is washed. On great country roads you may often see strings
+of donkeys laden with bags of grain, which they transport from
+far-away villages to the big bazaars; but if you see a laden donkey
+near a village, be sure the <i>dhobee</i> is not far off.</p>
+<p>Here as elsewhere the <i>hajam</i>, or barber, is a great
+gossip, and generally a favourite. He uses no soap, and has a most
+uncouth-looking razor, yet he shaves the heads, beards, moustaches,
+and armpits of his customers with great deftness. The lower classes
+of natives shave the hair of the head and of the armpits for the
+sake of cleanliness and for other obvious reasons. The higher
+classes are very regular in their ablutions; every morning, be the
+water cold or warm, the Rajpoot and Brahmin, the respectable middle
+classes, and all in the village who lay any claim to social
+position, have their <i>goosal</i> or bath. Some hie to the nearest
+tank or stream; at all hours of the day, at any ferry or landing
+stage, you will see swarthy fine-looking fellows up to mid waist in
+the water, scrubbing vigorously their bronzed arms, and neck and
+chest. They clean their teeth with the end of a stick, which they
+chew at one extremity, till they loosen the fibres, and with this
+improvised toothbrush and some wood ashes for paste, they make them
+look as white and clean as ivory.</p>
+<p>There is generally a large masonry well in the middle of the
+village, with a broad smooth <i>pucca</i> platform all round it. It
+has been built by some former father of the hamlet, to perpetuate
+his memory, to fulfil a vow to the gods, perhaps simply from
+goodwill to his fellow townsmen. At all events there is generally
+one such in every village. It is generally shadowed by a huge
+<i>bhur, peepul</i>, or tamarind tree. Here may always be seen the
+busiest sight in the village. Pretty young women chatter, laugh,
+and talk, and assume all sorts of picturesque attitudes as they
+fill their waterpots; the village matrons gossip, and sometimes
+quarrel, as they pull away at the windlass over the deep cool well.
+On the platform are a group of fat Brahmins nearly nude, their
+lighter skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower
+classes. There are several groups. With damp drapery clinging to
+their glistening skins, they pour brass pots of cold water over
+their dripping bodies; they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again
+as the cool element pours over head and shoulders. They sit down
+while some young attendant or relation vigorously rubs them down
+the back; while sitting they clean their feet. Thus, amid much
+laughing and talking, and quaint gestures, and not a little
+expectoration, they perform their ablutions. Not unfrequently the
+more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil, which at all
+events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it does, though
+it is not fragrant. Round the well you get all the village news and
+scandal. It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings, and
+only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village
+into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the
+hand-mill, or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy
+damsel or matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool
+shadow of her hut, for the wants of her lord and master.</p>
+<p>Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by
+government, and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars
+subscribe liberally for a schoolmaster in their villages. Near the
+principal street then, in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old
+mango-tree, we come on the village school. The little fellows have
+all discarded their upper clothes on account of the heat, and with
+much noise, swaying the body backwards and forwards, and
+monotonously intoning, they grind away at the mill of learning, and
+try to get a knowledge of books. Other dusky urchins figure away
+with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces of wood to
+serve as copy-books. The din increases as the stranger passes:
+going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause a
+momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school. The
+little Hindoo scholar probably wishes to impress you with a sense
+of his assiduity. He raises his voice, sways the body more briskly,
+keeps his one eye firmly fixed on his task, while with the other he
+throws a keen swift glance over you, which embraces every detail of
+your costume, and not improbably includes a shrewd estimate of your
+disposition and character.</p>
+<p>Hindoo children never seem to me to be boys or girls; they are
+preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing
+together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with
+most portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning
+candour and guileless innocence, when they are all the while
+plotting some petty scheme against you. They are certainly far more
+precocious than English children; they realise the hard struggle
+for life far more quickly. The poorer classes can hardly be said to
+have any childhood; as soon as they can toddle they are sent to
+weed, cut grass, gather fuel, tend herds, or do anything that will
+bring them in a small pittance, and ease the burden of the
+struggling parents. I think the children of the higher and middle
+classes very pretty; they have beautiful, dark, thoughtful eyes,
+and a most intelligent expression. Very young babies however are
+miserably nursed; their hair is allowed to get all tangled and
+matted into unsightly knots; their faces are seldom washed, and
+their eyes are painted with antimony about the lids, and are often
+rheumy and running with water. The use of the pocket handkerchief
+is sadly neglected.</p>
+<p>There is generally one open space or long street in our village,
+and in a hamlet of any importance there is weekly or bi-weekly a
+bazaar or market. From early morning in all directions, from
+solitary huts in the forest, from struggling little crofts in the
+rice lands, from fishermen's dwellings perched on the bank of the
+river, from lonely camps in the grass jungle where the herd and his
+family live with their cattle, from all the petty Thorpes about,
+come the women with their baskets of vegetables, their bundles of
+spun yarn, their piece of woven cloth, whatever they have to sell
+or barter. There is a lad with a pair of wooden shoes, which he has
+fashioned as he was tending the village cows; another with a grass
+mat, or bamboo staff, or some other strange outlandish-looking
+article, which he hopes to barter in the bazaar for something on
+which his heart is set. The <i>bunniahs</i> hurry up their
+tottering, overladen ponies; the rice merchant twists his patient
+bullock's tail to make it move faster; the cloth merchant with his
+bale under his arm and measuring stick in hand, walks briskly
+along. Here comes a gang of charcoal-burners, with their loads of
+fuel slung on poles dangling from their shoulders. A <i>box
+wallah</i> with his attendant coolie, staggering under the weight
+of a huge box of Manchester goods, hurries by. It is a busy sight
+in the bazaar. What a cackling! What a confused clatter of voices!
+Here also the women are the chief contributors to the din of
+tongues. There is no irate husband here or moody master to tell
+them to be still. Spread out on the ground are heaps of different
+grain, bags of flour, baskets of meal, pulse, or barley; sweetmeats
+occupy the attention of nearly all the buyers. All Hindoos indulge
+in sweets, which take the place of beer with us; instead of a
+'nobbler,' they offer you a 'lollipop.' Trinkets, beads, bracelets,
+armlets, and anklets of pewter, there are in great bunches; fruits,
+vegetables, sticks of cane, skins full of oil, and sugar, and
+treacle. Stands with fresh 'paun' leaves, and piles of coarse
+looking masses of tobacco are largely patronised. It is like a hive
+of bees. The dust hovers over the moving mass; the smells are
+various, none of them 'blest odours of sweet Araby.' Drugs,
+condiments, spices, shoes, in fact, everything that a rustic
+population can require, is here. The <i>pice</i> jingle as they
+change hands; the haggling and chaffering are without parallel in
+any market at home. Here is a man apparently in the last madness of
+intense passion, in fierce altercation with another, who tries his
+utmost to outbluster his furious declamation. In a moment they are
+smiling and to all appearance the best friends in the world. The
+bargain has been concluded; it was all about whether the one could
+give three <i>brinjals</i> or four for one pice. It is a scene of
+indescribable bustle, noise, and confusion. By evening however, all
+will have been packed up again, and only the faint outlines of yet
+floating clouds of dust, and the hopping, cheeky crows, picking up
+the scattered litter and remnants of the market, will remain to
+tell that it has been bazaar day in our village.</p>
+<p>Generally, about the centre of it, there is a more pretentious
+structure, with verandahs supported on wooden pillars. High walls
+surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little
+doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs
+leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside
+verandahs. Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or
+walk slowly to and from the yard with seemingly purposeless
+indecision. In the outer verandah is an old <i>palkee</i>, with
+evidences in the tarnished gilding and frayed and tattered
+hangings, that it once had some pretensions to fashionable
+elegance.</p>
+<p>The walls of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and
+numerous young <i>peepul</i> trees grow in the crevices, their
+insidious roots creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and
+expediting the work of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is
+the residence of the Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner
+of the lands adjoining. Probably he is descended from some noble
+house of ancient lineage. His forefathers, possibly, led armed
+retainers against some rival in yonder far off village, where the
+dim outlines of a mud fort yet tell of the insecurity of the days
+of old. Now he is old, and fat, and lazy. Possibly he has been too
+often to the money-lender. His lands are mortgaged to their full
+value. Though they respect and look up to their old Zemindar, the
+villagers are getting independent; they are not so humble, and pay
+less and less of feudal tribute than in the old days, when the
+golden palanquin was new, when the elephant had splendid housings,
+when mace, and javelin, and matchlock-men followed in his train.
+Alas! the elephant was sold long ago, and is now the property of a
+wealthy <i>Bunniah</i> who has amassed money in the buying and
+selling of grain and oil. The Zemindar may be a man of progress and
+intelligence, but many are of this broken down and helpless
+type.</p>
+<p>Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant,
+conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages
+through a small staff of <i>peons</i>, or un-official police. The
+accounts are kept by another important village
+functionary&mdash;the <i>putwarrie</i>, or village accountant.
+<i>Putwarries</i> belong to the writer or <i>Kayasth</i> caste.
+They are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous
+as any class in India. They manage the most complicated accounts
+between ryot and landlord with great skill. Their memories are
+wonderful, but they can always forget conveniently. Where ryots are
+numerous, the landlord's wants pressing, and frequent calls made on
+the tenantry for payment, often made in various kinds of grain and
+produce, the rates and prices of which are constantly changing, it
+is easy to imagine the complications and intricacies of a
+<i>putwarrie's</i> account. Each ryot pretty accurately remembers
+his own particular indebtedness, but woe to him if he pays the
+<i>putwarrie</i> the value of a 'red cent' without taking a
+receipt. Certainly there may be a really honest <i>putwarrie</i>,
+but I very much doubt it. The name stands for chicanery and
+robbery. On the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up
+for money, questioning his accounts, and putting him not
+unfrequently to actual bodily coercion. The ryot on the other hand
+is constantly inventing excuses, getting up delays, and propounding
+innumerable reasons why he cannot pay. He will try to forge
+receipts, he will get up false evidence that he has already paid,
+and the wretched <i>putwarrie</i> needs all his native and acquired
+sharpness, to hold his own. But all ryots are not alike, and when
+the <i>putwarrie</i> gets hold of some unwary and ignorant bumpkin
+whom he can plunder, he <i>does</i> plunder him systematically. All
+cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle lifters, and a
+<i>putwarrie</i> after he has got over the stage of infancy, and
+has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can
+teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of
+villains. A popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>'Unda poortee, Cowa maro!<br>
+Iinnum me, billar:<br>
+Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!!<br>
+Humesha mara gwar!!'</blockquote>
+<p>This is translated thus: 'When the shell is breaking kill the
+crow, and the wild cat at its birth.' A <i>Kayasth</i>, writer, or
+<i>putwarrie</i>, may be allowed to live till he is twelve years
+old, at which time he is sure to have learned rascality. Then kill
+him; but kill <i>gwars</i> or cowherds any time, for they are
+invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim bucolic humour in this,
+and it very nearly hits the truth.</p>
+<p>The <i>putwarrie</i>, then, is an important personage. He has
+his <i>cutcherry</i>, or office, where he and his tribe (for there
+are always numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his
+books and accounts) squat on their mat on the ground. Each
+possesses the instruments of his calling in the shape of a small
+brass ink-pot, and an oblong box containing a knife, pencil, and
+several reeds for pens. Each has a bundle of papers and documents
+before him, this is called his <i>busta</i>, and contains all the
+papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce squabbles with the
+tenantry. There is always some noise about a putwarrie's cutcherry.
+He has generally some half dozen quarrels on hand, but he trusts to
+his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is essentially a man of
+peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a keen argument, and
+an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain. Another proverb
+says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming a soldier as
+a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.</p>
+<p>The <i>lohar</i>, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at
+home. Here is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks
+from the heated iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little
+to remind one of Longfellow's beautiful poem. The <i>lohar</i> sits
+in the open air. His hammers and other implements of trade are very
+primitive. Like all native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work.
+His bellows are made of two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted
+alternately by the attendant coolie. As they lift they get inflated
+with air; they are then sharply forced down on their own folds, and
+the contained air ejected forcibly through an iron or clay nozzle,
+into the very small heap of glowing charcoal which forms the fire.
+His principal work is making and sharpening the uncouth-looking
+ploughshares, which look more like flat blunt chisels than anything
+else. They also make and keep in repair the <i>hussowahs</i>, or
+serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They are slow at
+their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in metal. They
+are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and even
+gun-locks, made by a common native village blacksmith, that could
+not be surpassed in delicacy of finish by any English smith. It is
+foreign to our ideas of the brawny blacksmith, to hear that he sits
+to his work, but this is the invariable custom. Even carpenters and
+masons squat down to theirs. Cheap labour is but an arbitrary term,
+and a country smith at home might do the work of ten or twelve men
+in India; but it is just as well to get an idea of existing
+differences. On many of the factories there are very intelligent
+<i>mistrees</i>, which is the term for the master blacksmith. These
+men, getting but twenty-four to thirty shillings a month, and
+supplying themselves with food and clothing, are nevertheless
+competent to work all the machinery, attend to the engine, and do
+all the ironwork necessary for the factory. They will superintend
+the staff of blacksmiths; and if the sewing-machine of the <i>mem
+sahib</i>, the gun-lock of the <i>luna sahib</i>, the lawn-mower,
+English pump, or other machine gets out of order, requiring any
+metal work, the <i>mistree</i> is called in, and is generally
+competent to put things to rights.</p>
+<a name="08"></a>
+<center><img src="Images/08.jpg" alt="Carpenters and Blacksmiths at
+Work" width="475" height="308" hspace="4" vspace="8"><br>
+ <i>Carpenters and Blacksmiths at Work</i></center>
+<p>As I have said, every village is a self-contained little
+commune. All trades necessary to supplying the wants of the
+villagers are represented in it. Besides the profits from his
+actual calling, nearly every man except the daily labourer, has a
+little bit of land which he farms, so as to eke out his scanty
+income. All possess a cow or two, a few goats, and probably a pair
+of plough-bullocks.</p>
+<p>When a dispute arises in the village, should a person be
+suspected of theft, should his cattle trespass on his neighbour's
+growing crop, should he libel some one against whom he has a
+grudge, or, proceeding to stronger measures, take the law into his
+own hands and assault him, the aggrieved party complains to the
+head man of the village. In every village the head man is the
+fountain of justice. He holds his office sometimes by right of
+superior wealth, or intelligence, or hereditary succession, not
+unfrequently by the unanimous wish of his fellow-villagers. On a
+complaint being made to him, he summons both parties and their
+witnesses. The complainant is then allowed to nominate two men, to
+act as assessors or jurymen on his behalf, his nominations being
+liable to challenge by the opposite party. The defendant next names
+two to act on his behalf, and if these are agreed to by both
+parties, these four, with the head man, form what is called a
+<i>punchayiet</i>, or council of five, in fact, a jury. They
+examine the witnesses, and each party to the suit conducts his own
+case. The whole village not unfrequently attends to hear what goes
+on. In a mere caste or private quarrel, only the friends of the
+parties will attend. Every case is tried in public, and all the
+inhabitants of the village can hear the proceedings if they wish.
+Respectable inhabitants can remark on the proceedings, make
+suggestions, and give an opinion. Public feeling is thus pretty
+accurately gauged and tested, and the <i>punchayiet</i> agree among
+themselves on the verdict. To the honour of their character for
+fair play be it said, that the decision of a <i>punchayiet</i> is
+generally correct, and is very seldom appealed against. Our
+complicated system of law, with its delays, its technicalities, its
+uncertainties, and above all its expense, its stamp duties, its
+court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the innumerable
+vexations attendant on the administration of justice in our revenue
+and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of Hindostan.
+They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give them
+justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are far
+too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and
+complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the
+gate' is what they want. It is quite enough admission of the
+reality of our rule&mdash;that we are the paramount
+power&mdash;that they submit a case to us at all; and all
+impediments in the way of their getting cheap and speedy justice
+should be done away with. A codification of existing laws, a
+sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at
+present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less
+legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to
+efficiency and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be
+the aim of our Indian rulers. More especially should this be the
+case in rural districts where large interests are concerned, where
+cases involve delicate points of law. Our present courts, divested
+of their hungry crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough;
+but I would like to see rural courts for petty cases established,
+presided over by leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of
+probity, which would in a measure supplement the <i>punchayiet</i>
+system, which would be easy of access, cheap in their procedure,
+and with all the impress of authority. It is a question I merely
+glance at, as it does not come within the scope of a book like
+this; but it is well known to every planter and European who has
+come much in contact with the rural classes of Hindostan, that
+there is a vast amount of smouldering disaffection, of deep-rooted
+dislike to, and contempt of, our present cumbrous costly machinery
+of law and justice.</p>
+<p>If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of
+a plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance,
+ready with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a
+<i>vakeel</i>, that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in
+your office, or round the factory to get some little business done,
+to neglect his work, to get his rent or produce account
+investigated, wherever there is worry, trouble, delay, or
+difficulty about anything concerning the relations between himself
+and the factory, the deepest and keenest expression of discontent
+and disgust his versatile and acute imagination can suggest, or his
+fluent tongue give utterance to is, that this is 'Adanlut lea
+mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.' Could there be a
+stronger commentary on our judicial institutions?</p>
+<p>The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of
+ages. Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing;
+communications are much improved; the dissemination of news is
+rapid; the old race of besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping,
+avaricious, domineering tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and
+there could be no difficulty in establishing in such village or
+district courts as I have indicated. All educated respectable
+Europeans with a stake in the country should be made Justices of
+the Peace, with limited powers to try petty cases. There is a vast
+material&mdash;loyalty, educated minds, an honest desire to do
+justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of everything
+pettifogging and underhand&mdash;that the Indian Government would
+do well to utilise. The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit him
+of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal
+facility to fall under pecuniary temptation. The educated gentleman
+planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering
+titles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the
+bench, and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our
+rulers' while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience,
+loyalty, honour, and integrity of those of our countrymen who might
+be willing to place their services at the disposal of Government.
+'India for the Indians' is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it
+will not do to push it to its logical issue. Unless Indians can
+govern India wisely and well, in accordance with modern national
+ideas, they have no more right to India than Hottentots have to the
+Cape, or the black fellows to Australia. In my opinion, Hindoos
+would never govern Hindustan half, quarter, nay, one tithe as well
+as Englishmen. Make more of your Englishmen in India then, make not
+less of your Baboo if you please, but make more of your Englishmen.
+Keep them loyal and content. Treat them kindly and liberally. One
+Englishman contented, loyal, and industrious in an Indian district,
+is a greater pillar of strength to the Indian Government than ten
+dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them have as many titles,
+decorations, university degrees, or certificates of loyalty from
+junior civilians as they may. Not India for the Indians, but India
+for Imperial Britain say I.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXIV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>A native village continued.&mdash;The
+watchman or 'chowkeydar.'&mdash;The
+temple.&mdash;Brahmins.&mdash;Idols.&mdash;Religion.&mdash;Humility
+of the poorer classes. &mdash;Their low condition.&mdash;Their
+apathy.&mdash;The police.&mdash;Their extortions and
+knavery.&mdash;An instance of police rascality.&mdash;Corruption of
+native officials.&mdash;The Hindoo unfit for
+self-government.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the
+watchman or <i>chowkeydar</i>. He is generally a <i>Doosadh</i>, or
+other low caste man, and perambulates the village at night, at
+intervals uttering a loud cry or a fierce howl, which is caught up
+and echoed by all the <i>chowkeydars</i> of the neighbouring
+villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after cry echoing far
+away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into faintness. At
+times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out close to
+your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do not
+feel it to be so. The <i>chowkeydar</i> has to see that no thieves
+enter the village by night. He protects the herds and property of
+the villagers. If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report
+it to the nearest police station. If you lose your way by night,
+you shout out for the nearest <i>chowkeydar</i>, and he is bound to
+pass you on to the next village. These men get a small gratuity
+from government, but the villagers also pay them a small sum, which
+they assess according to individual means. The <i>chowkeydar</i> is
+generally a ragged, swarthy fellow with long matted hair, a huge
+iron-bound staff, and always a blue <i>puggra</i>. The blue is his
+official badge. Sometimes he has a brass badge, and carries a
+sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle of which is so small that
+scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found to fit it. It is more
+for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it has become so
+fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.</p>
+<a name="09"></a>
+<center><img src="Images/09.jpg" alt="Hindoo Village Temples" width="569" height="376" hspace="4" vspace="8"><br>
+<i>Hindoo Village Temples</i></center>
+<p>In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the
+village itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is
+often perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village
+tank. Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the
+sacred fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several
+oleaginous old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear
+only the <i>dhote</i> or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton,
+and hanging about the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can
+be told by his sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder.
+His skin is much fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers.
+It is not unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as
+fair as many Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds,
+but lazy and self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is
+simply a sensual voluptuary. This is not the time or place to
+descant on their religion, which, with many gross practices,
+contains not a little that is pure and beautiful. The common idea
+at home that they are miserable pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and
+stones,' is, like many of the accepted ideas about India, very much
+exaggerated. That the masses, the crude uneducated Hindoos, place
+some faith in the idol, and expect in some mysterious way that it
+will influence their fate for good or evil, is not to be denied,
+but the more intelligent natives, and most of the Brahmins, only
+look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of the divinity. They
+want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to God, and the idol
+is a means to assist their thoughts heavenward. As works of art
+their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other symbols of
+the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same purpose.
+Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has
+perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the gods by erecting a
+temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shrine,
+which they visit at intervals and daub with red paint. They deposit
+flowers, pour libations of water or milk, and in other ways strive
+to shew that a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as
+I have observed, however, the vast mass of the poor toilers in
+India have little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing.
+They may have some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a
+holier life, but the fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and
+shelter, is too incessant for them to indulge much in
+contemplation. They have a dim idea of a future life, but none of
+them can give you anything but a very unsatisfactory idea of their
+religion. They observe certain forms and ceremonies, because their
+fathers did, and because the Brahmins tell them. Of real, vital,
+practical religion, as we know it, they have little or no
+knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low castes about
+immortality, about salvation, about the higher virtues, about the
+yearnings and wishes that every immortal soul at periods has, and
+he will simply tell you 'Khoda jane, hum greel admi,' i.e. 'God
+knows; I am only a poor man!' There they take refuge always when
+you ask them anything puzzling. If you are rating them for a fault,
+asking them to perform a complicated task, or inquiring your way in
+a strange neighbourhood, the first answer you get will, ten to one,
+be 'Hum greel admi.' It is said almost instinctively, and no doubt
+in many cases is the refuge of simple disinclination to think the
+matter out. Pure laziness suggests it. It is too much trouble to
+frame an answer, or give the desired information, and the 'greel
+admi' comes naturally to the lip. It is often deprecatory, meaning
+'I am ignorant and uninformed,' you must not expect too 'much from
+a poor, rude, uncultivated man like me.' It is often, also, a
+delicate mode of flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and
+often conveying in a tone, a look, a gesture, that though the
+speaker is 'greel,' poor, humble, despised, it is only by contrast
+to you, the questioner, who are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For
+downright fawning obsequiousness, or delicate, implied,
+fine-strung, subtle flattery, I will back a Hindoo sycophant
+against the courtier or place-hunter of every other nation. It is
+very annoying at times, if you are in a hurry, and particularly
+want a direct answer to a plain question, to hear the old old
+story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it but patience.
+You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer classes are
+easily flurried; they will always give what information they have
+if kindly spoken to, but you must not fluster them. You must rouse
+their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of your
+inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your
+object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your
+motive, inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer
+that they think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are
+weary and tired, and you ask your distance from the place you may
+be wishing to reach, they will ridiculously underestimate the
+length of road. A man may have all the cardinal virtues, but if
+they think you do not like him, and you ask his character, they
+will paint him to you blacker than Satan himself. It is very hard
+to get the plain, unvarnished truth from a Hindoo. Many, indeed,
+are almost incapable of giving an intelligent answer to any
+question that does not nearly concern their own private and purely
+personal interests. They have a sordid, grubbing, vegetating life,
+many of them indeed are but little above the brute creation. They
+have no idea beyond the supply of the mere animal wants of the
+moment. The future never troubles them. They live their hard,
+unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no surprises. They
+have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and life is one long
+continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence. What wonder
+then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the
+mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to
+suffer, to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is
+<i>Kismet</i>&mdash;their fate. Many of them never strive to avert
+any impending calamity, such, for example, as sickness. A man
+sickens, he wraps himself in stolid apathy, he makes no effort to
+shake of his malady, he accepts it with sullen, despairing,
+pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends mourn in their dumb,
+despairing way, but they too accept the situation. He has no one to
+rouse him. If you ask him what is the matter, he only wails out,
+'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am unwell. No attempt whatever to
+tell you of the origin of his illness, no wish even for sympathy or
+assistance. He accepts the fact of his illness. He struggles not
+with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight against it? Amen; so let it
+be. I have often been saddened to see poor toiling tenants struck
+down in this way. Even if you give them medicine, they often have
+not energy enough to take it. You must see them take it before your
+eyes. It is <i>your</i> struggle not theirs. <i>You</i> must rouse
+them, by <i>your</i> will. <i>Your</i> energy must compel
+<i>them</i> to make an attempt to combat their weakness. Once you
+rouse a man, and infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his
+disease, but it is a hard fight to get him to TRY. What a meaning
+in that one word TRY! TO ACT. TO DO. The average poor suffering
+native Hindoo knows nothing of it.</p>
+<p>Of course their moods vary. They have their 'high days and
+holidays,' feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the
+whole the average ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.</p>
+<p>In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or
+jungle lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture.
+The cow being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and
+butter. The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings
+of emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the
+evening wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust,
+having had but 'short commons' all the day on the parched and
+scanty herbage.</p>
+<p>The police are too often a source of annoyance, and become
+extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor. It
+seems to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority. I do
+not scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court
+peons, writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts,
+about the courts of justice, in the service of government officers,
+or in any way attached to the retinue of a government official, one
+and all are undeniably shamelessly venal and corrupt. They accept a
+bribe much more quickly than an attorney a fee, or a hungry dog a
+shin of beef. If a policeman only enters a village he expects a
+feast from the head man, and will ask a present with unblushing
+effrontery as a perquisite of his office. If a theft is reported,
+the inspector of the nearest police-station, or <i>thanna</i> as it
+is called, sends one of his myrmidons, or, if the chance of bribes
+be good, he may attend himself. On arrival, ambling on his
+broken-kneed, wall-eyed pony, he seats himself in the verandah of
+the chief man of the village, who forthwith, with much inward
+trepidation, makes his appearance. The policeman assumes the air of
+a haughty conqueror receiving homage from a conquered foe. He
+assures the trembling wretch that, 'acting on information
+received,' he must search his dwelling for the missing goods, and
+that his women's apartments will have to be ransacked, and so
+annoys, goads, and insults the unfortunate man, that he is too glad
+to purchase immunity from further insolence by making the policeman
+a small present, perhaps a 'kid of the goats,' or something else.
+The guardian of the peace is then regaled with the best food in the
+house, after which he is 'wreathed with smiles.' If he sees a
+chance of a farther bribe, he takes his departure saying he will
+make his report to the <i>thanna</i>. He repeats his procedure with
+some of the other respectable inhabitants, and goes back a good
+deal richer than he came, to share the spoil with the
+<i>thannadar</i> or inspector.</p>
+<p>Another man may then be sent, and the same course is followed,
+until all the force in the station have had their share. The ryot
+is afraid to resist. The police have tremendous powers for annoying
+and doing him harm. A crowd of subservient scoundrels always hangs
+round the station, dependents, relations, or accomplices. These
+harry the poor man who is unwise enough to resist the extortionate
+demands of the police. They take his cattle to the pound, foment
+strife between him and his neighbours, get up frivolous and false
+charges against him, harass him in a thousand ways, and if all else
+fails, get him summoned as a witness in some case. You might think
+a witness a person to be treated with respect, to be attended to,
+to have every facility offered him for giving his evidence at the
+least cost of time and trouble possible, consistent with the
+demands of justice, and the vindication of law and authority.</p>
+<p>Not so in India with the witness in a police case, when the
+force dislike him. If he has not previously satisfied their
+leech-like rapacity, he is tormented, tortured, bullied, and kicked
+'from pillar to post,' till his life becomes a burden to him. He
+has to leave all his avocations, perhaps at the time when his
+affairs require his constant supervision. He has to trudge many a
+weary mile to attend the Court. The police get hold of him, and
+keep him often in real durance. He gets no opportunity for cooking
+or eating his food. His daily habits are upset and interfered with.
+In every little vexatious way (and they are masters of the art of
+petty torture) they so worry and goad him, that the very threat of
+being summoned as a witness in a police case, is often enough to
+make the horrified well-to-do native give a handsome gratuity to be
+allowed to sit quietly at home.</p>
+<p>This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the
+police. They exercise a real despotism. They have set up a reign of
+terror. The nature of the ryot is such, that he will submit to a
+great deal to avoid having to leave his home and his work. The
+police take full advantage of this feeling, and being perfectly
+unscrupulous, insatiably rapacious, and leagued together in
+villany, they make a golden harvest out of every case put into
+their hands. They have made the name of justice stink in the
+nostrils of the respectable and well-to-do middle classes of
+India.</p>
+<p>The District Superintendents are men of energy and probity, but
+after all they are only mortal. What with accounts, inspections,
+reports, forms, and innumerable writings, they cannot exercise a
+constant vigilance and personal supervision over every part of
+their district. A district may comprise many hundred villages,
+thousands of inhabitants, and leagues of intricate and densely
+peopled country. The mere physical exertion of riding over his
+district would be too much for any man in about a week. The
+subordinate police are all interested in keeping up the present
+system of extortion, and the inspectors and sub-inspectors, who
+wink at malpractices, come in for their share of the spoil. There
+is little combination among the peasantry. Each selfishly tries to
+save his own skin, and they know that if any one individual were to
+complain, or to dare to resist, he would have to bear the brunt of
+the battle alone. None of his neighbours would stir a finger to
+back him; he is too timid and too much in awe of the official
+European, and constitutionally too averse to resistance, to do
+aught but suffer in silence. No doubt he feels his wrongs most
+keenly, and a sullen feeling of hate and wrong is being garnered
+up, which may produce results disastrous for the peace and
+wellbeing of our empire in the East.</p>
+<p>As a case in point, I may mention one instance out of many which
+came under my own observation. I had a <i>moonshee</i>, or
+accountant, in one of my outworks in Purneah. Formerly, when the
+police had come through the factory, he had been in the habit of
+giving them a present and some food. Under my strict orders,
+however, that no policemen were to be allowed near the place unless
+they came on business, he had discontinued paying his black mail.
+This was too glaring an infringement of what they considered their
+vested rights to be passed over in silence. Example might spread.
+My man must be made an example of. I had a case in the Court of the
+Deputy Magistrate some twenty miles or so from the factory. The
+moonshee had been named as a witness to prove the writing of some
+papers filed in the suit. They got a citation for him to appear, a
+mere summons for his attendance as a witness. Armed with this, they
+appeared at the factory two or three days before the date fixed on
+for hearing the cause. I had just ridden in from Purneah, tired,
+hot, and dusty, and was sitting in the shade of the verandah with
+young D., my assistant. One policeman first came up, presented the
+summons, which I took, and he then stated that it was a
+<i>warrant</i> for the production of my moonshee, and that he must
+take him away at once. I told the man it was merely a summons,
+requiring the attendance of the moonshee on a certain date, to give
+evidence in the case. He was very insolent in his manner. It is
+customary when a Hindoo of inferior rank appears before you, that
+he removes his shoes, and stands before you in a respectful
+attitude. This man's headdress was all disarranged, which in itself
+is a sign of disrespect. He spoke loudly and insolently; kept his
+shoes on; and sat down squatting on the grass before me. My
+assistant was very indignant, and wanted to speak to the man; but
+rightly judging that the object was to enrage me, and trap me into
+committing some overt act, that would be afterwards construed
+against me, I kept my temper, spoke very firmly but temperately,
+told him my moonshee was doing some work of great importance, that
+I could not spare his services then, but that I would myself see
+that the summons was attended to. The policeman became more
+boisterous and insolent. I offered to give him a letter to the
+magistrate, acknowledging the receipt of the summons, and I asked
+him his own name, which he refused to give. I asked him if he could
+read, and he said he could not. I then asked him if he could not
+read, how could he know what was in the paper which he had brought,
+and how he knew my moonshee was the party meant. He said a
+chowkeydar had told him so. I asked where was the chowkeydar, and
+seeing from my coolness and determination that the game was up, he
+shouted out, and from round the corner of the huts came another
+policeman, and two village chowkeydars from a distance. They had
+evidently been hiding, observing all that passed, and meaning to
+act as witnesses against me, if I had been led by the first
+scoundrel's behaviour to lose my temper. The second man was not
+such a brute as the first, and when I proceeded to ask their names
+and all about them, and told them I meant to report them to their
+superintendent, they became somewhat frightened, and tried to make
+excuses.</p>
+<p>I told them to be off the premises at once, offering to take the
+summons, and give a receipt for it, but they now saw that they had
+made a mistake in trying to bully me, and made off at once. Mark
+the sequel. The day before the case was fixed on for hearing, I
+sent off the moonshee who was a witness of my own, and his evidence
+was necessary to my proving my case. I supplied him with travelling
+expenses, and he started. On his way to the Court he had to pass
+the <i>thanna</i>, or police-station. The police were on the watch.
+He was seized as he passed. He was confined all that night and all
+the following day. For want of his evidence I lost my case, and
+having thus achieved one part of their object to pay me off, they
+let my moonshee go, after insult and abuse, and with threats of
+future vengeance should he ever dare to thwart or oppose them. This
+was pretty 'hot' you think, but it was not all. Fearing my
+complaint to the superintendent, or to the authorities, might get
+them into trouble, they laid a false charge against me, that I had
+obstructed them in the discharge of their duty, that I had showered
+abuse on them, used threatening language, and insulted the majesty
+of the law by tearing up and spitting upon the respected summons of
+Her Majesty. On this complaint I was accordingly summoned into
+Purneah. The charge was a tissue of the most barefaced lies, but I
+had to ride fifty-four miles in the burning sun, ford several
+rivers, and undergo much fatigue and discomfort. My work was of
+course seriously interfered with. I had to take in my assistant as
+witness, and one or two of the servants who had been present. I was
+put to immense trouble, and no little expense, to say nothing of
+the indignation which I naturally felt, and all because I had set
+my face against a well known evil, and was determined not to submit
+to impudent extortion. Of course the case broke down. They
+contradicted themselves in almost every particular. The second
+constable indeed admitted that I had offered them a letter to the
+magistrate, and had not moved out of the verandah during the
+colloquy. I was honourably acquitted, and had the satisfaction of
+seeing the lying rascals put into the dock by the indignant
+magistrate and prosecuted summarily for getting up a false charge
+and giving false evidence. It was a lesson to the police in those
+parts, and they did not dare to trouble me much afterwards; but it
+is only one instance out of hundreds I could give, and which every
+planter has witnessed of the barefaced audacity, the shameless
+extortion, the unblushing lawlessness of the rural police of
+India.</p>
+<p>It is a gigantic evil, but surely not irremediable. By adding
+more European officers to the force; by educating the people and
+making them more intelligent, independent, and self-reliant, much
+may be done to abate the evil, but at present it is admittedly a
+foul ulcer on the administration of justice under our rule. The
+menial who serves a summons, gets a decree of Court to execute, or
+is entrusted with any order of an official nature, expects to be
+bribed to do his duty. If he does not get his fee, he will throw
+such impediments in the way, raise such obstacles, and fashion such
+delays, that he completely foils every effort to procure justice
+through a legal channel. No wonder a native hates our English
+Courts. Our English officials, let it be plainly understood, are
+above suspicion. It needs not my poor testimony to uphold their
+character for high honour, loyal integrity, and zealous eagerness
+to do 'justly, and to walk uprightly.' They are unwearied in their
+efforts to get at truth, and govern wisely; but our system of law
+is totally unsuited for Orientals. It is made a medium for
+chicanery and trickery of the most atrocious form. Most of the
+native underlings are utterly venal and corrupt. Increased pay does
+not mean decrease of knavery. Cheating, and lying, and taking
+bribes, and abuse of authority are ingrained into their very souls;
+and all the cut and dry formulas of namby pamby philanthropists,
+the inane maunderings of stay-at-home sentimentalists, the wise
+saws of self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo
+as he really shews himself to us in daily and hourly contact with
+him, will ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule,
+would be productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless
+venality, or would end in anything but anarchy and chaos.</p>
+<p>It sounds very well in print, and increases the circulation of a
+paper or two among the Baboos, to cry out that our task is to
+elevate the oppressed and ignorant millions of the East, to educate
+them into self-government, to make them judges, officers,
+lawgivers, governors over all the land. To vacate our place and
+power, and let the Baboo and the Bunneah, to whom we have given the
+glories of Western civilization, rule in our place, and guide the
+fortunes of these toiling millions who owe protection and peace to
+our fostering rule. It is a noble sentiment to resign wealth,
+honour, glory, and power; to give up a settled government; to alter
+a policy that has welded the conflicting elements of Hindustan into
+one stable whole; to throw up our title of conqueror, and
+disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A sprinkling of
+thinly-veneered, half-educated natives, want a share of the loaves
+and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people of the
+'man and brother' type, cry out at home to let them have their
+way.</p>
+<p>No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life
+and property; develop the resources of the country; foster all the
+virtues you can find in the native mind; but till you can give him
+the energy, the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly,
+honourable straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of
+meanness, trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do
+right; his contempt for oppression of the weak; his
+self-dependence; his probity. But why go on? When you make Hindoos
+honest, truthful, God-fearing Englishmen, you can let them govern
+themselves; but as soon 'may the leopard change his spots,' as the
+Hindoo his character. He is wholly unfit for self-government;
+utterly opposed to honest, truthful, stable government at all. Time
+brings strange changes, but the wisdom which has governed the
+country hitherto, will surely be able to meet the new demand that
+may be made upon it in the immediate present, or in the far distant
+future.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Jungle wild fruits.&mdash;Curious method of
+catching quail.&mdash;Quail nets. &mdash;Quail caught in a
+blacksmith's shop.&mdash;Native wrestling.&mdash;The
+trainer.&mdash;How they train for a match.&mdash;Rules of
+wrestling.&mdash;Grips. &mdash;A wrestling match.&mdash;Incidents
+of the struggle.&mdash;Description of a match between a Brahmin and
+a blacksmith.&mdash;Sparring for the grip.&mdash;The blacksmith has
+it.&mdash;The struggle.&mdash;The Brahmin getting the worst of
+it.&mdash;Two to one on the little 'un!&mdash;The Brahmin plays the
+waiting game, turns the tables <i>and</i> the
+blacksmith.&mdash;Remarks on wrestling.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>A peculiarity in the sombre sal jungles is the scarcity of wild
+fruit. At home the woods are filled with berries and fruit-bearing
+bushes. Who among my readers has not a lively recollection of
+bramble hunting, nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries,
+wild strawberries, raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might
+walk many a mile through the sal jungles without meeting fruit of
+any kind, save the dry and tasteless wild fig, or the sickly
+mhowa.</p>
+<p>There are indeed very few jungle fruits that I have ever come
+across. There is one acid sort of plum called the <i>Omra</i>,
+which makes a good preserve, but is not very nice to eat raw. The
+<i>Gorkah</i> is a small red berry, very sweet and pleasant,
+slightly acid, not unlike a red currant in fact, and with two small
+pips or stones. The Nepaulese call it <i>Bunchooree</i>. It grows
+on a small stunted-looking bush, with few branches, and a pointed
+leaf, in form resembling the acacia leaf, but not so large.</p>
+<p>The <i>Glaphur</i> is a brown, round fruit; the skin rather
+crisp and hard, and of a dull earthy colour, not unlike that of a
+common boiled potato. The inside is a stringy, spongy-looking mass,
+with small seeds embedded in a gummy viscid substance. The taste is
+exactly like an almond, and it forms a pleasant mouthful if one is
+thirsty.</p>
+<p>Travelling one day along one of the glades I have mentioned as
+dividing the strips of jungle, I was surprised to see a man before
+me in a field of long stubble, with a cloth spread over his head,
+and two sticks projecting in front at an obtuse angle to his body,
+forming horn-like projections, on which the ends of his cloth
+twisted spirally, were tied. I thought from his curious antics and
+movements, that he must be mad, but I soon discovered that there
+was method in his madness. He was catching quail. The quail are
+often very numerous in the stubble fields, and the natives adopt
+very ingenious devices for their capture. This was one I was now
+witnessing. Covering themselves with their cloth as I have
+described, the projecting ends of the two sticks representing the
+horns, they simulate all the movements of a cow or bull. They
+pretend to paw up the earth, toss their make-believe horns, turn
+round and pretend to scratch themselves, and in fact identify
+themselves with the animal they are representing; and it is
+irresistibly comic to watch a solitary performer go through this
+<i>al fresco</i> comedy. I have laughed often at some cunning old
+herdsman, or shekarry. When they see you watching them, they will
+redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old bull, going
+through all his pranks and practices, and throw you into
+convulsions of laughter.</p>
+<p>Round two sides of the field, they have previously put fine
+nets, and at the apex they have a large cage with a decoy quail
+inside, or perhaps a pair. The quail is a running bird, disinclined
+for flight except at night; in the day-time they prefer running to
+using their wings. The idiotic looking old cow, as we will call the
+hunter, has all his wits about him. He proceeds very slowly and
+warily, his keen eye detects the coveys of quail, which way they
+are running; his ruse generally succeeds wonderfully. He is no more
+like a cow, than that respectable animal is like a cucumber; but he
+paws, and tosses, and moves about, pretends to eat, to nibble here,
+and switch his tail there, and so manoeuvres as to keep the running
+quail away from the unprotected edges of the field. When they get
+to the verge protected by the net, they begin to take alarm; they
+are probably not very certain about the peculiar looking 'old cow'
+behind them, and running along the net, they see the decoy quails
+evidently feeding in great security and freedom. The V shaped mouth
+of the large basket cage looks invitingly open. The puzzling nets
+are barring the way, and the 'old cow' is gradually closing up
+behind. As the hunter moves along, I should have told you, he rubs
+two pieces of dry hard sticks gently up and down his thigh with one
+hand, producing a peculiar crepitation, a crackling sound, not
+sufficient to startle the birds into flight, but alarming them
+enough to make them get out of the way of the 'old cow.' One bolder
+than the others, possibly the most timid of the covey, irritated by
+the queer crackling sound, now enters the basket, the others follow
+like a flock of sheep; and once in, the puzzling shape of the
+entrance prevents their exit. Not unfrequently the hunter bags
+twenty or even thirty brace of quail in one field, by this
+ridiculous looking but ingenious method.</p>
+<p>The small quail net is also sometimes used for the capture of
+hares. The natives stretch the net in the jungle, much as they do
+the large nets for deer described in a former chapter; forming a
+line, they then beat up the hares, of which there are no stint. My
+friend Pat once made a novel haul. His <i>lobarkhanna</i> or
+blacksmith's shop was close to a patch of jungle, and Pat often
+noticed numbers of quail running through the loose chinks and
+crevices of the walls, in the morning when anyone went into the
+place for the first time; this was at a factory called Rajpore. Pat
+came to the conclusion, that as the blacksmith's fires smouldered
+some time after work was discontinued at night, and as the
+atmosphere of the hut was warmer and more genial than the cold,
+foggy, outside air, for it was in the cold season, the quail
+probably took up their quarters in the hut for the night, on
+account of the warmth and shelter. One night therefore he got some
+of his servants, and with great caution and as much silence as
+possible, they let down a quantity of nets all round the
+lobarkhanna, and in the morning they captured about twenty
+quails.</p>
+<p>The quail is very pugnacious, and as they are easily trained to
+fight, they are very common pets with the natives, who train and
+keep them to pit them against each other, and bet what they can
+afford on the result. A quail fight, a battle between two trained
+rams, a cock fight, even an encounter between trained tamed
+buffaloes, are very common spectacles in the villages; but the most
+popular sport is a good wrestling match.</p>
+<p>The dwellers in the Presidency towns, and indeed in most of the
+large stations, seldom see an exhibition of this kind; but away in
+the remote interior, near the frontier, it is very popular pastime,
+and wrestling is a favourite with all classes. Such manly sport is
+rather opposed to the commonly received idea at home, of the mild
+Hindoo. In nearly every village of Behar however, and all along the
+borders of Nepaul, there is, as a rule, a bit of land attached to
+the residence of some head man, or the common property of the
+commune, set apart for the practice of athletic sports, chief of
+which is the favourite <i>khoosthee</i> or wrestling. There is
+generally some wary old veteran, who has won his spurs, or laurels,
+or belt, or whatever you choose to call it, in many a hard fought
+and well contested tussle for the championship of his little world;
+he is 'up to every dodge,' and knows every feint and guard, every
+wile and tactic of the wrestling ground. It is generally in some
+shady grove, secluded and cool; here of an evening when the labours
+of the day are over, the most stalwart sons of the hamlet meet, to
+test each others skill and endurance in a friendly <i>shake</i>.
+The old man puts them through the preliminary practice, shows them
+every trick at his command, and attends strictly to their training
+and various trials. The ground is dug knee deep, and forms a soft,
+good holding stand. I have often looked on at this evening
+practice, and it would astonish a stranger, who cannot understand
+strength, endurance, and activity being attributed to a 'mere
+nigger,' to see the severe training these young lads impose upon
+themselves. They leap into the air, and suddenly assume a sitting
+position, then leap up again and squat down with a force that would
+seem to jerk every bone in their bodies out of its place; this gets
+up the muscles of the thighs. Some lie down at full length, only
+touching the ground with the extreme tips of their toes, their arms
+doubled up under them, and sustaining the full weight of the body
+on the extended palms of the hands. They then sway themselves
+backwards and forwards to their full length, never shifting hand or
+toe, till they are bathed in perspiration; they keep up a uniform
+steady backward and forward movement, so as to develop the muscles
+of the arms, chest, and back. They practice leaping, running, and
+lifting weights. Some standing at their full height, brace up the
+muscles of the shoulder and upper arm, and then leaping up, allow
+themselves to fall to earth on the tensely strung muscles of the
+shoulder. This severe exercise gets the muscles into perfect form,
+and few, very few indeed of our untrained youths, could cope in a
+dead lock, or fierce struggle, with a good village Hindoo or
+Mussulman in active training, and having any knowledge of the
+tricks of the wrestling school. No hitting is allowed. The Hindoo
+system of wrestling is the perfection of science and skill; mere
+dead weight of course will always tell in a close grip, but the
+catches, the holds, the twists and dodges that are practised, allow
+for the fullest development of cultivated skill, as against mere
+brute force. The system is purely a scientific one. The fundamental
+rule is 'catch where you can,' only you must not clutch the hair or
+strike with the fists.</p>
+<p>The loins are tightly girt with a long waist-belt or
+<i>kummerbund</i> of cloth, which, passed repeatedly between the
+limbs and round the loins, sufficiently braces up and protects that
+part of the body. In some matches you are not allowed to clutch
+this waist cloth or belt, in some villages it is allowed; the
+custom varies in various places, but what is a fair grip, and what
+is not, is always made known before the competitors engage. A
+twist, or grip, or dodge, is known as a <i>paench</i>. This
+literally means a screw or twist, but in wrestling phraseology,
+means any grip by which you can get such an advantage over your
+opponent as to defeat him. For every paench there is a counter
+paench. A throw is considered satisfactory when BOTH shoulders of
+your opponent touch the ground simultaneously. The old
+<i>khalifa</i> or trainer takes a great interest in the progress of
+his <i>chailas</i> or pupils. <i>Chaila</i> really means disciple
+or follower. Every khalifa has his favourite paenches or grips,
+which have stood him in good stead in his old battling days; he
+teaches these paenches to his pupils, so that when you get young
+fellows from different villages to meet, you see a really fine
+exhibition of wrestling skill. There is little tripping, as amongst
+our wrestlers at home; a dead-lock is uncommon. The rival wrestlers
+generally bound into the ring, slapping their thighs and arms with
+a loud resounding slap. They lift their legs high up from the
+ground with every step, and scheme and manoeuvre sometimes for a
+long while to get the best corner; they try to get the sun into
+their adversaries eyes; they scan the appearance and every movement
+of their opponent. The old wary fellows take it very coolly, and if
+they can't get the desired side of the ground, they keep hopping
+about like a solemn old ostrich, till the impetuosity or impatience
+of their foe leads him to attack. They remind you for all the world
+of a pair of game cocks, their bodies are bent, their heads almost
+touching. There is a deal of light play with the hands, each trying
+to get the other by the wrist or elbow, or at the back of the head
+round the neck. If one gets the other by a finger even, it is a
+great advantage, as he would whip nimbly round, and threaten to
+break the impounded finger; this would be considered quite fair.
+One will often suddenly drop on his knees and try to reach the
+ankles of his adversary. I have seen a slippery customer, stoop
+suddenly down, grasp up a handful of dust, and throw it into the
+eyes of his opponent. It was done with the quickness of thought,
+but it was detected, and on an appeal by the sufferer, the knave
+was well thrashed by the onlookers.</p>
+<p>There are many professionals who follow no other calling.
+Wrestlers are kept by Rajahs and wealthy men, who get up matches.
+Frequently one village will challenge another, like our village
+cricket clubs. The villagers often get up small subscriptions, and
+purchase a silver armlet or bracelet, the prize him who shall hold
+his own against all comers. The 'Champion's Belt' scarcely calls
+forth greater competition, keener rivalry, or better sport. It is
+at once the most manly and most scientific sport in which the
+native indulges. A disputed fall sometimes terminates in a general
+free fight, when the backers of the respective men lay on the stick
+to each other with mutual hate and hearty lustiness.</p>
+<p>It is not by any means always the strongest who wins. The man
+who knows the most paenches, who is agile, active, cool, and
+careful, will not unfrequently overthrow an antagonist twice his
+weight and strength. All the wrestlers in the country-side know
+each other's qualifications pretty accurately, and at a general
+match got up by a Zemindar or planter, or by public subscription,
+it is generally safe to let them handicap the men who are ready to
+compete for the prizes. We used generally to put down a few of the
+oldest professors, and let them pit couples against each other; the
+sport to the onlookers was most exciting. Between the men
+themselves as a rule, the utmost good humour reigns, they strive
+hard to win, but they accept a defeat with smiling resignation. It
+is only between rival village champions, different caste men, or
+worse still, men of differing religions, such as a Hindoo and a
+Mahommedan, that there is any danger of a fight. A disturbance is a
+rare exception, but I have seen a few wrestling matches end in a
+regular general scrimmage, with broken heads, and even fractured
+limbs. With good management however, and an efficient body of men
+to guard against a breach of the peace, this need never occur.</p>
+<p>It rarely takes much trouble to get up a match. If you tell your
+head men that you would like to see one, say on a Saturday
+afternoon, they pass the word to the different villages, and at the
+appointed time, all the finest young fellows and most of the male
+population, led by their head man, with the old trainer in
+attendance, are at the appointed place. The competitors are
+admitted within the enclosure, and round it the rows of spectators
+packed twenty deep squat on the ground, and watch the proceedings
+with deep interest.</p>
+<p>While the <i>Punchayiet</i>, a picked council, are taking down
+the names of intending competitors, finding out about their form
+and performances, and assigning to each his antagonist, the young
+men throw themselves with shouts and laughter into the ring, and go
+through all the evolutions and postures of the training ground.
+They bound about, try all sorts of antics and contortions, display
+wonderful agility and activity; it is a pretty sight to see, and
+one can't help admiring their vigorous frames, and graceful
+proportions. They are handsome, well made, supple, wiry fellows,
+although they be NIGGERS, and Hodge and Giles at home would not
+have a chance with them in a fair wrestling bout, conducted
+according to their own laws and customs.</p>
+<p>The entries are now all made, places and pairs are arranged, and
+to the ear-splitting thunder of two or three tom-toms, two pair of
+strapping youngsters step into the ring; they carefully scan each
+other, advance, shake hands, or salaam, leisurely tie up their back
+hair, slap their muscles, rub a little earth over their shoulders
+and arms, so that their adversary may have a fair grip, then step
+by step slowly and gradually they near each other. A few quick
+passages are now interchanged; the lithe supple fingers twist and
+intertwine, grips are formed on arm and neck. The postures change
+each moment, and are a study for an anatomist or sculptor. As they
+warm to their work they get more reckless; they are only the raw
+material, the untrained lads. There is a quick scuffle, heaving,
+swaying, rocking, and struggling, and the two victors, leaping into
+the air, and slapping their chests, bound back into the gratified
+circle of their comrades, while the two discomfited athletes,
+forcing a rueful smile, retire and 'take a back seat.' Two couple
+of more experienced hands now face each other. There is pretty play
+this time, as the varying changes of the contest bring forth ever
+varying displays of skill and science. The crowd shout as an
+advantage is gained, or cry out 'Hi, hi' in a doubtful manner, as
+their favourite seems to be getting the worst of it. The result
+however is much the same; after a longer or shorter time, two get
+fairly thrown and retire. If there is any dispute, it is at once
+referred to the judges, who sit grimly watching the struggle, and
+comparing the paenches displayed, with those they themselves have
+practised in many a well-won fight. On a reference being made, both
+combatants retain their exact hold and position, only cease
+straining. As soon as the matter is settled, they go at it again
+till victory determine in favour of the lucky man. In no similar
+contest in England I am convinced would there be so much fairness,
+quietness, and order. The only stimulants in the crowd are betel
+nut and tobacco. All is orderly and calm, and at any moment a word
+from the sahib will quell any rising turbulence. It is now time for
+a still more scientific exhibition.</p>
+<p>Pat has a man, a tall, wiry, handsome Brahmin, who has never yet
+been beaten. Young K. has long been jealous of his uniform success,
+and on several occasions has brought an antagonist to battle with
+Pat's champion. To-day he has got a sturdy young blacksmith, whom
+rumour hath much vaunted, and although he is not so tall as Pat's
+wrestler, his square, deep chest and stalwart limbs, give promise
+of great strength and endurance.</p>
+<p>As the two men strip and bound into the ring, there is the usual
+hush of anticipation. Keen eyes scan the appearance of the
+antagonists. They are both models of manly beauty. The blacksmith,
+though more awkward in his motions, has a cool, determined look
+about him. The Brahmin, conscious of his reputation, walks quickly
+up, with a smile of rather ostentatious condescension on his finely
+cut features, and offers his hand to the blacksmith. The little man
+is evidently suspicious. He thinks this may be a deeply laid trap
+to get a grip upon him. Nor does he like the bland patronising
+manner of 'Roopuarain,' so he surlily draws back, at which there is
+a roar of laughter from the. crowd, in which we cannot help
+joining.</p>
+<p>K. now comes forward, and pats his 'fancy man' on the back. The
+two wrestlers thereupon shake hands, and then in the usual manner
+both warily move backwards and forwards, till amid cries from the
+onlookers, the blacksmith makes a sudden dash at the practised old
+player, and in a moment has him round the waist.</p>
+<p>He evidently depended on his superior strength. For a moment he
+fairly lifted Roopnarain clean off his legs, swayed him to and fro,
+and with a mighty strain tried to throw him to the ground. Bending
+to the notes, Roopnarain allowed himself to yield, till his feet
+touched the ground, then crouching like a panther, he bounded
+forward, and getting his leg behind that of the blacksmith, by a
+deft side twist he nearly threw him over. The little fellow,
+however, steadied himself on the ground with one hand, recovered
+his footing, and again had the Brahmin firmly locked in his
+tenacious hold. Roopuarain did not like the grip. These were not
+the tactics he was accustomed to. While the other tugged and
+strained, he, quietly yielding his lithe lissome frame to every
+effort, tried hard with obstinate endeavour to untwist the hands
+that held him firmly locked. It was beautiful play to see the mute
+hands of both the wrestlers feeling, tearing, twisting at each
+other, but the grasp was too firm, and, taking advantage of a
+momentary movement, Roopnarain got his elbow under the other's
+chin, then leaning forward, he pressed his opponent's head
+backward, and the strain began to tell. He fought fiercely, he
+struggled hard, but the determined elbow was not to be baulked, and
+to save himself from an overthrow the blacksmith was forced to
+relax his hold, and sprang nimbly back beyond reach, to mature
+another attack. Roopnarain quietly walked round, rubbed his
+shoulders with earth, and with the same mocking smile, stood
+leaning forward, his hands on his knees, waiting for a fresh
+onset.</p>
+<p>This time the young fellow was more cautious. He found he had no
+novice to deal with, and the Brahmin was not at all anxious to
+precipitate matters. By a splendid feint, after some pretty
+sparring for a grip, the youngster again succeeded in getting a
+hold on the Brahmin, and wheeling round quick as lightning, got
+behind Roopnarain, and with a dexterous trip threw the tall man
+heavily on his face. He then tried to get him by the ankle, and
+bending his leg up backwards, he would have got a purchase for
+turning him on his back. The old man was, however, 'up to this
+move.' He lay extended flat on his chest, his legs wide apart. As
+often as the little one bent down to grasp his ankle, he would put
+out a hand stealthily, and silently as a snake, and endeavour to
+get the little man's leg in his grasp. This necessitated a change
+of position, and round and round they spun, each trying to get hold
+of the other by the leg or foot. The blacksmith got his knee on the
+neck of the Brahmin, and by sheer strength tried several times with
+a mighty heave to turn his opponent. It was no use, however, it is
+next to impossible to throw a man when he is lying flat out as the
+Brahmin now was. It is difficult enough to turn the dead weight of
+a man in that position, and when he is straining every nerve to
+resist the accomplishment of your object it becomes altogether
+impracticable. The excitement in the crowd was intense. The very
+drummer&mdash;I ought to call him a tom-tomer&mdash;had ceased to
+beat his tom-tom. Pat's lips were firmly pressed together, and K.
+was trembling with suppressed excitement. The heaving chests and
+profuse perspiration bedewing the bodies of both combatants, told
+how severe had been their exertions. The blacksmith seemed
+gathering himself up for a mighty effort, when, quick as light, the
+Brahmin drew his limbs together, was seen to arch his back, and
+with a sudden backward movement, seemed to glide from under his
+dashing assailant, and quicker than it takes me to write it, the
+positions were reversed.</p>
+<p>The Brahmin was now above, and the blacksmith taking in the
+altered aspect of affairs at a glance, threw himself flat on the
+ground, and tried the same tactics as his opponent. The different
+play of the two men now came strongly into relief. Instead of
+exhausting himself with useless efforts, Roopnarain, while keeping
+a wary eye on every movement of his prostrate foe, contented
+himself while he took breath, with coolly and and yet determinedly
+making his grip secure. Putting out one leg then within reach of
+his opponent's hand, as a lure, he saw the blacksmith stretch forth
+to grasp the tempting hold.</p>
+<p>Quicker than the dart of the python, the fierce onset of the
+kingly tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering
+lightning, was the grasp made at the outstretched arm by the
+practised Brahmin. His tenacious fingers closed tightly round the
+other's wrist. One sudden wrench, and he had the blacksmith's arm
+bent back and powerless, held down on the little fellow's own
+shoulders. Pat smiled a derisive smile, K. uttered what was not a
+benison, while the Brahmins in the crowd, and all Pat's men, raised
+a truly Hindoo howl. The position of the men was now this. The
+stout little man was flat on his face, one of his arms bent
+helplessly round on his own back. Roopnarain, calm and cool as
+ever, was astride the prostrate blacksmith, placidly surveying the
+crowd. The little man writhed, and twisted, and struggled, he tried
+with his legs to entwine himself with those of the Brahmin. He
+tried to spin round; the Brahmin was watching with the eye of a
+hawk for a grip of the other arm, but it was closely drawn in, and
+firmly pressed in safety under the heaving chest of the blacksmith.
+The muscles were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that was seen
+at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete was
+surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm
+further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero,
+game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain
+tried to bend him over, till we thought either the poor fellow's
+neck must break, or his arm be torn from its socket.</p>
+<p>He endured all without a murmur. Not a chance did he throw away.
+Once or twice he made a splendid effort, once he tried to catch the
+Brahmin again by the leg. Roopnarain pounced down, but the arm was
+as quickly within its shield. It was now but a question of time and
+endurance. Every dodge that he was master of did the Brahmin bring
+into play. They were both in perfect training, muscles as hard as
+steel, every nerve and sinew strained to the utmost tension.
+Roopnarain actually tried tickling his man, but he would not give
+him a chance. At length he got his hand in the bent elbow of the
+free arm, and slowly, and laboriously forced it out. There were
+tremendous spurts and struggles, but patient determination was not
+to be baulked. Slowly the arm came up over the back, the struggle
+was tremendous, but at length both the poor fellow's arms were
+tightly pinioned behind his back. He was powerless now. The Brahmin
+drew the two arms backwards, towards the head of the poor little
+fellow, and he was bound to come over or have both his arms broken.
+With a hoarse cry of sobbing-pain and shame, the brave little man
+came over, both shoulders on the mould, and the scientific old
+veteran was again the victor.</p>
+<p>This is but a very faint description of a true wrestling bout
+among the robust dwellers in these remote villages. It may seem
+cruel, but it is to my mind the perfection of muscular strength and
+skill, combined with keen subtle, intellectual acuteness. It brings
+every faculty of mind and body into play, it begets a healthy,
+honest love of fair play, and an admiration of endurance and pluck,
+two qualities of which Englishmen certainly can boast. Strength
+without skill and training will not avail. It is a fine manly
+sport, and one which should be encouraged by all who wish well to
+our dusky fellow subjects in the far off plains and valleys of
+Hindostan.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXVI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVI.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Indigo seed growing.&mdash;Seed buying and
+buyers.&mdash;Tricks of sellers. &mdash;Tests for good
+seed.&mdash;The threshing-floor.&mdash;Seed cleaning and
+packing.&mdash;Staff of servants.&mdash;Despatching the bags by
+boat.&mdash;The 'Pooneah' or rent day.&mdash;Purneah
+planters&mdash;their hospitality.&mdash;The rent day a great
+festival.&mdash;Preparation.&mdash;Collection of rents.&mdash;Feast
+to retainers.&mdash;The reception in the
+evening.&mdash;Tribute.&mdash;Old customs. &mdash;Improvisatores
+and bards.&mdash;Nautches.&mdash;Dancing and music.&mdash;The dance
+of the Dangurs.&mdash;Jugglers and itinerary showmen.&mdash;'Bara
+Roopes,' or actors and mimics.&mdash;Their different styles of
+acting.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Besides indigo planting proper, there is another large branch of
+industry in North Bhaugulpore, and along the Nepaul frontier there,
+and in Purneah, which is the growing of indigo seed for the Bengal
+planters. The system of advances and the mode of cultivation is
+much the same as that followed in indigo planting proper. The seed
+is sown in June or July, is weeded and tended all through the
+rains, and cut in December. The planters advance about four rupees
+a beegah to the ryot, who cuts his seed-plant, and brings it into
+the factory threshing ground, where it is beaten out, cleaned,
+weighed, and packed in bags. When the seed has been threshed out
+and cleaned, it is weighed, and the ryot or cultivator gets four
+rupees for every maund&mdash;a maund being eighty pounds
+avoirdupois. The previous advance is deducted. The rent or loan
+account is adjusted, and the balance made over in cash.</p>
+<p>Others grow the seed on their own account, without taking
+advances, and bring it to the factory for sale. If prices are
+ruling high, they may get much more than four rupees per maund for
+it, and they adopt all kinds of ingenious devices to adulterate the
+seed, and increase its weight. They mix dust with it, seeds of
+weeds, even grains of wheat, and mustard, pea, and other seeds. In
+buying seed, therefore, one has to be very careful, to reject all
+that looks bad, or that may have been adulterated. They will even
+get old useless seed, the refuse stock of former years, and mixing
+this with leaves of the neem tree and some turmeric powder, give it
+a gloss that makes it look like fresh seed.</p>
+<p>When you suspect that the seed has been tampered with in this
+manner, you wet some of it, and rub it on a piece of fresh clean
+linen, so as to bring off the dye. Where the attempt has been
+flagrant, you are sometimes tempted to take the law into your own
+hands, and administer a little of the castigation which the
+cheating rascal so richly deserves. In other cases it is necessary
+to submit the seed to a microscopic examination. If any old, worn
+seeds are detected, you reject the sample unhesitatingly. Even when
+the seed appears quite good, you subject it to yet another test.
+Take one or two hundred seeds, and putting them on a damp piece of
+the pith of a plantain tree, mixed with a little earth, set them in
+a warm place, and in two days you will be able to tell what
+percentage has germinated, and what is incapable of germination. If
+the percentage is good, the seed may be considered as fairly up to
+the sample, and it is purchased. There are native seed buyers, who
+try to get as much into their hands as they can, and rig the
+market. There are also European buyers, and there is a keen rivalry
+in all the bazaars.</p>
+<p>The threshing-floor, and seed-cleaning ground presents a busy
+sight when several thousand maunds of seed are being got ready for
+despatch by boats. The dirty seed, full of dust and other
+impurities, is heaped up in one corner. The floor is in the shape
+of a large square, nicely paved with cement, as hard and clean as
+marble. Crowds of nearly nude coolies, hurry to and fro with scoops
+of seed resting on their shoulders. When they get in line, at right
+angles to the direction in which the wind is blowing, they move
+slowly along, letting the seed descend on the heap below, while the
+wind winnows it, and carries the dust in dense clouds to leeward.
+This is repeated over and over again, till the seed is as clean as
+it can be made. It is put through bamboo sieves, so formed that any
+seed larger than indigo cannot pass through. What remains in the
+sieve is put aside, and afterwards cleaned, sorted, and sold as
+food, or if useless, thrown away or given to the fowls. The men and
+boys dart backwards and forwards, there is a steady drip, drip, of
+seed from the scoops, dense clouds of dust, and incessant noise and
+bustle. Peons or watchmen are stationed all around to see that none
+is wasted or stolen. Some are filling sacks full of the cleaned
+seed, and hauling them off to the weighman and his clerk. Two
+maunds are put in every sack, and when weighed the bags are hauled
+up close to the <i>godown</i> or store-room. Here are an army of
+men with sailmaker's needles and twine. They sew up the bags, which
+are then hauled away to be marked with the factory brand. Carts are
+coming and going, carrying bags to the boats, which are lying at
+the river bank taking in their cargo, and the returning carts bring
+back loads of wood from the banks of the river. In one corner,
+under a shed, sits the sahib chaffering with a party of
+<i>paikars</i> (seed merchants), who have brought seed for
+sale.</p>
+<p>Of course he decries the seed, says it is bad, will not hear of
+the price wanted, and laughs to scorn all the fervent protestations
+that the seed was grown on their own ground, and has never passed
+through any hands but their own. If you are satisfied that the seed
+is good, you secretly name your price to your head man, who
+forthwith takes up the work of depreciation. You move off to some
+other department of the work. The head man and the merchants sit
+down, perhaps smoke a <i>hookah</i>, each trying to outwit the
+other, but after a keen encounter of wits perhaps a bargain is
+made. A pretty fair price is arrived at, and away goes the
+purchased seed, to swell the heap at the other end of the yard. It
+has to be carefully weighed first, and the weighman gets a little
+from the vendor as his perquisite, which the factory takes from him
+at the market rate.</p>
+<p>You have buyers of your own out in the <i>dehaat</i> (district),
+and the parcels they have bought come in hour by hour, with
+invoices detailing all particulars of quantity, quality, and price.
+The loads from the seed depots and outworks, come rolling up in the
+afternoon, and have all to be weighed, checked, noted down, and
+examined. Every man's hand is against you. You cannot trust your
+own servants. For a paltry bribe they will try to pass a bad parcel
+of seed, and even when you have your European assistants to help
+you, it is hard work to avoid being over-reached in some shape or
+other.</p>
+<p>You have to keep up a large staff of writers, who make out
+invoices and accounts, and keep the books. Your correspondence
+alone is enough work for one man, and you have to tally bags, count
+coolies, see them paid their daily wage, attend to lawsuits that
+may be going on, and yet find time to superintend the operations of
+the farm, and keep an eye to your rents and revenues from the
+villages. It is a busy, an anxious time. You have a vast
+responsibility on your shoulders, and when one takes into
+consideration the climate you have to contend with, the home
+comforts and domestic joys you have to do without, the constant
+tension of mind and irritation of body from dust, heat, insects,
+lies, bribery, robbers, and villany of every description, that
+meets you on all hands, it must be allowed that a planter at such a
+time has no easy life.</p>
+<p>The time at which you despatch the seed is also the very time
+when you are preparing your land for spring sowings. This requires
+almost as much surveillance as the seed-buying and despatching. You
+have not a moment you can call your own. If you had subordinates
+you could trust, who would be faithful and honest, you could safely
+leave part of the work to them, but from very sad experience I have
+found that trusting to a native is trusting to a very rotten stick.
+They are certainly not all bad, but there are just enough
+exceptions to prove the rule.</p>
+<p>One peculiar custom prevailed in this border district of North
+Bhaugulpore, which I have not observed elsewhere. At the beginning
+of the financial year, when the accounts of the past season had all
+been made up and arranged, and the collection of the rents for the
+new year was beginning, the planters and Zemindars held what was
+called the <i>Pooneah</i>. It is customary for all cultivators and
+tenants to pay a proportion of their rent in advance. The Pooneah
+might therefore be called 'rent-day.' A similar day is set apart
+for the same purpose in Tirhoot, called <i>tousee</i> or
+collections, but it is not attended by the same ceremonious
+observances, and quaint customs, as attach to the Pooneah on the
+border land.</p>
+<p>When every man's account has been made up and checked by the
+books, the Pooneah day is fixed on. Invitations are sent to all
+your neighbouring friends, who look forward to each other's annual
+Pooneah as a great gala day. In North Bhaugulpore and Purneah,
+nearly all the planters and English-speaking population belong to
+old families who have been born in the district, and have settled
+and lived there long before the days of quick communication with
+home. Their rule among their dependants is patriarchal. Everyone is
+known among the natives, who have seen him since his birth living
+amongst them, by some pet name. The old men of the villages
+remember his father and his father's father, the younger villagers
+have had him pointed out to them on their visits to the factory as
+'Willie Baba,' 'Freddy Baba,' or whatever his boyish name may have
+been, with the addition of 'Baba,' which is simply a pet name for a
+child. These planters know every village for miles and miles. They
+know most of the leading men in each village by name. The villagers
+know all about them, discuss their affairs with the utmost freedom,
+and not a single thing, ever so trivial, happens in the planter's
+home but it is known and commented on in all the villages that lie
+within the <i>ilaka</i> (jurisdiction) of the factory.</p>
+<p>The hospitality of these planters is unbounded. They are most of
+them much liked by all the natives round. I came a 'stranger
+amongst them,' and in one sense, and not a flattering sense, they
+tried 'to take me in,' but only in one or two instances, which I
+shall not specify here. By nearly all I was welcomed and kindly
+treated, and I formed some very lasting friendships among them. Old
+traditions of princely hospitality still linger among them. They
+were clannish in the best sense of the word. The kindness and
+attention given to aged or indigent relations was one of their best
+traits. I am afraid the race is fast dying out. Lavish expenditure,
+and a too confiding faith in their native dependants has often
+brought the usual result. But many of my readers will associate
+with the name of Purneah or Bhaugulpore planter, recollections of
+hospitality and unostentatious kindness, and memories of glorious
+sport and warm-hearted friendships.</p>
+<p>On the Pooneah day then, or the night before, many of these
+friends would meet. The day has long been known to all the villages
+round, and nothing could better shew the patriarchal semi-feudal
+style in which they ruled over their villages than the customs in
+connection with this anniversary. Some days before it, requisitions
+have been made on all the villages in any way connected with the
+factory, for various articles of diet. The herdsmen have to send a
+tribute of milk, curds, and <i>ghee</i> or clarified butter.
+Cultivators of root crops or fruit send in samples of their
+produce, in the shape of huge bundle of plantains, immense
+jack-fruits, or baskets of sweet potatoes, yams, and other
+vegetables. The <i>koomhar</i> or potter has to send in earthen
+pots and jars. The <i>mochee</i> or worker in leather, brings with
+him a sample of his work in the shape of a pair of shoes. These are
+pounced on by your servants and <i>omlah</i>, the omlah being the
+head men in the office. It is a fine time for them. Wooden shoes,
+umbrellas, brass pots, fowls, goats, fruits, in fact all the
+productions of your country side are sent or brought in. It is the
+old feudal tribute of the middle ages back again. During the day
+the <i>cutcherry</i> or office is crowded with the more respectable
+villagers, paying in rents and settling accounts. The noise and
+bustle are great, but an immense quantity of work is got
+through.</p>
+<p>The village putwarries and head men are all there with their
+voluminous accounts. Your rent-collector, called a
+<i>tehseeldar</i>, has been busy in the villages with the tenants
+and putwarries, collecting rent for the great Pooneah day. There is
+a constant chink of money, a busy hum, a scratching of innumerable
+pens. Under every tree, 'neath the shade of every hut, busy groups
+are squatted round some acute accountant. Totals are being totted
+up on all hands. From greasy recesses in the waistband a dirty
+bundle is slowly pulled forth, and the desired sum reluctantly
+counted out.</p>
+<p>From early morn till dewy eve this work goes on, and you judge
+your Pooneah to have been a good or bad one by the amount you are
+able to collect. Peons, with their brass badges flashing in the
+sun, and their red puggrees shewing off their bronzed faces and
+black whiskers, are despatched in all directions for defaulters.
+There is a constant going to and fro, a hurrying and bustling in
+the crowd, a hum as of a distant fair pervading the place, and by
+evening the total of the day's collections is added up, and while
+the sahib and his friends take their sherry and bitters, the omlah
+and servants retire to wash and feast, and prepare for the night's
+festivities.</p>
+<p>During the day, at the houses of the omlah, culinary
+preparations on a vast scale have been going on. The large supplies
+of grain, rice, flour, fruit, vegetables, &amp;c., which were
+brought in as <i>salamee</i> or tribute, supplemented by additions
+from the sahib's own stores, have been made into savoury messes.
+Curries, and cakes, boiled flesh, and roast kid, are all ready, and
+the crowd, having divested themselves of their head-dress and outer
+garments, and cleaned their hands and feet by copious ablutions,
+sit down in a wide circle. The large leaves of the water-lily are
+now served out to each man, and perform the office of plates. Huge
+baskets of <i>chupatties</i>, a flat sort of 'griddle-cake,' are
+now brought round, and each man gets four or five doled out. The
+cooking and attendance is all done by Brahmins. No inferior caste
+would answer, as Rajpoots and other high castes will only eat food
+that has been cooked by a Brahmin or one of their own class. The
+Brahmin attendants now come round with great <i>dekchees</i> or
+cooking-pots, full of curried vegetables, boiled rice, and similar
+dishes. A ladle-full is handed out to each man, who receives it on
+his leaf. The rice is served out by the hands of the attendants.
+The guests manipulate a huge ball of rice and curry mixed between
+the fingers of the right hand, pass this solemnly into their
+widely-gaping mouths, with the head thrown back to receive the
+mess, like an adjutant-bird swallowing a frog, and then they
+masticate with much apparent enjoyment. Sugar, treacle, curds,
+milk, oil, butter, preserves, and chutnees are served out to the
+more wealthy and respectable. The amount they can consume is
+wonderful. Seeing the enormous supplies, you would think that even
+this great crowd could never get through them, but by the time
+repletion has set in, there is little or nothing left, and many of
+the inflated and distended old farmers could begin again and repeat
+'another of the same' with ease. Each person has his own
+<i>lotah</i>, a brass drinking vessel, and when all have eaten they
+again wash their hands, rinse out their mouths, and don their
+gayest apparel.</p>
+<p>The gentlemen in the bungalow now get word that the evening's
+festivities are about to commence. Lighting our cigars, we sally
+out to the <i>shamiana</i> which has been erected on the ridge,
+surrounding the deep tank which supplies the factory during the
+manufacturing season with water. The <i>shamiana</i> is a large
+canopy or wall-less tent. It is festooned with flowers and green
+plantain trees, and evergreens have been planted all round it.
+Flaring flambeaux, torches, Chinese lanterns, and oil lamps flicker
+and glare, and make the interior almost as bright as day. When we
+arrive we find our chairs drawn up in state, one raised seat in the
+centre being the place of honour, and reserved for the manager of
+the factory.</p>
+<p>When we are seated, the <i>malee</i> or gardener advances with a
+wooden tray filled with sand, in which are stuck heads of all the
+finest flowers the garden can afford, placed in the most
+symmetrical patterns, and really a pretty tasteful piece of
+workmanship. Two or three old Brahmins, principal among whom is
+'Hureehar Jha,' a wicked old scoundrel, now advance, bearing gay
+garlands of flowers, muttering a strange gibberish in Sanskrit,
+supposed to be a blessing, but which might be a curse for all we
+understood of it, and decking our wrists and necks with these
+strings of flowers. For this service they get a small gratuity. The
+factory omlah headed by the dignified, portly <i>gornasta</i> or
+confidential adviser, dressed in snowy turbans and spotless white,
+now come forward. A large brass tray stands on the table in front
+of you. They each present a <i>salamee</i> or <i>nuzzur</i>, that
+is, a tribute or present, which you touch, and it is then deposited
+with a rattling jingle on the brass plate. The head men of
+villages, putwarries, and wealthy tenants, give two, three, and
+sometimes even four rupees. Every tenant of respectability thinks
+it incumbent on him to give something. Every man as he comes up
+makes a low salaam, deposits his <i>salamee</i>, his name is
+written down, and he retires. The putwarries present two rupees
+each, shouting out their names, and the names of their villages.
+Afterwards a small assessment is levied on the villagers, of a
+'pice' or two 'pice' each, about a halfpenny of our money, and
+which recoups the putwarree for his outlay.</p>
+<p>This has nothing to do with the legitimate revenue of the
+factory. It never appears in the books. It is quite a voluntary
+offering, and I have never seen it in any other district. In the
+meantime the <i>Raj-bhats</i>, a wandering class of hereditary
+minstrels or bards, are singing your praises and those of your
+ancestors in ear-splitting strains. Some of them have really good
+voices, all possess the gift of improvisation, and are quick to
+seize on the salient points of the scene before them, and weave
+them into their song, sometimes in a very ingenious and humorous
+manner. They are often employed by rich natives, to while away a
+long night with one of their, treasured rhythmical tales or songs.
+One or two are kept in the retinue of every Rajah or noble, and
+they possess a mine of legendary information, which would be
+invaluable to the collector of folk-lore and antiquarian
+literature.</p>
+<p>At some of the Pooneahs the evening's gaiety winds up with a
+<i>nautch</i> or dance, by dancing girls or boys. I always thought
+this a most sleep-inspiring exhibition. It has been so often
+described that I need not trouble my readers with it. The women are
+gaily dressed in brocades and gauzy textures, and glitter with
+spangles and tawdry ornaments. The musical accompaniment of
+clanging zither, asthmatic fiddle, timber-toned drum, clanging
+cymbal, and harsh metallic triangle, is a sore affliction, and when
+the dusky prima donna throws back her head, extends her chest, gets
+up to her high note, with her hand behind her ear, and her
+poura-stained mouth and teeth wide expanded like the jaws of a
+fangless wolf, and the demoniac instruments and performers redouble
+their din, the noise is something too dreadful to experience often.
+The native women sit mute and hushed, seeming to like it. I have
+heard it said that the Germans eat ants. Finlanders relish penny
+candles. The Nepaulese gourmandise on putrid fish. I am fond of
+mouldy cheese, and organ-grinders are an object of affection with
+some of our home community. I <i>know</i> that the general run of
+natives delight in a nautch. Tastes differ, but to me it is an
+inexplicable phenomenon.</p>
+<p>Amid all this noise we sit till we are wearied. Parin-leaves and
+betel nut are handed round by the servants. There is a very
+sudorific odour from the crowd. All are comfortably seated on the
+ground. The torches flare, and send up volumes of smoke to the
+ornamented roof of the canopy. The lights are reflected in the deep
+glassy bosom of the silent tank. The combined sounds and odours get
+oppressive, and we are glad to get back to the bungalow, to consume
+our 'peg' and our 'weed' in the congenial company of our
+friends.</p>
+<p>In some factories the night closes with a grand dance by all the
+inhabitants of the <i>dangur tola</i>. The men and women range
+themselves in two semicircles, standing opposite each other. The
+tallest of both lines at the one end, diminishing away at the other
+extremity to the children and little ones who can scarcely toddle.
+They have a wild, plaintive song, with swelling cadences and abrupt
+stops. They go through an extraordinary variety of evolutions,
+stamping with one foot and keeping perfect time. They sway their
+bodies, revolve, march, and countermarch, the men sometimes opening
+their ranks, and the women going through, and <i>vice versa</i>.
+They turn round like the winding convolutions of a shell, increase
+their pace as the song waxes quick and shrill, get excited, and
+finish off with a resounding stamp of the foot, and a guttural cry
+which seems to exhaust all the breath left in their bodies. The men
+then get some liquor, and the women a small money present. If the
+sahib is very liberal he gives them a pig on which to feast, and
+the <i>dangurs</i> go away very happy and contented. Their dance is
+not unlike the <i>corroborry</i> of the Australian aborigines. The
+two races are not unlike each other too in feature, although I
+cannot think that they are in any way connected.</p>
+<p>Next morning there is a jackal hunt, or cricket, or pony races,
+or shooting matches, or sport of some kind, while the rent
+collection still goes on. In the afternoon we have grand wrestling
+matches amongst the natives for small prizes, and generally witness
+some fine exhibitions of athletic skill and endurance.</p>
+<p>Some wandering juggler may have been attracted by the rumour of
+the gathering. A tight-rope dancer, a snake charmer, an itinerant
+showman with a performing goat, monkey, or dancing bear, may make
+his appearance before the admiring crowd.</p>
+<p>At times a party of mimes or actors come round, and a rare treat
+is not seldom afforded by the <i>bara roopees</i>. <i>Bara</i>
+means twelve, and <i>roop</i> is an impersonation, a character.
+These 'twelve characters' make up in all sorts of disguises. Their
+wardrobe is very limited, yet the number of people they personate,
+and their genuine acting talent would astonish you. With a
+projecting tooth and a few streaks of clay, they make up a
+withered, trembling old hag, afflicted with palsy, rheumatism, and
+a hacking cough. They make friends with your bearer, and an old hat
+and coat transforms them into a planter, a missionary, or an
+officer. They whiten their faces, using false hair and moustache,
+and while you are chatting with your neighbour, a strange sahib
+suddenly and mysteriously seats himself by your side. You stare,
+and look at your host, who is generally in the secret, but a
+stranger, or new comer, is often completely taken in. It is
+generally at night that they go through their personations, and
+when they have dressed for their part, they generally choose a
+moment when your attention is attracted by a cunning diversion. On
+looking up you are astounded to find some utter stranger standing
+behind your chair, or stalking solemnly round the room.</p>
+<p>They personate a woman, a white lady, a sepoy policeman, almost
+any character. Some are especially good at mimicking the Bengalee
+Baboo, or the merchant from Cabool or Afghanistan with his fruits
+and cloths. A favourite <i>roop</i> with them is to paint one half
+of the face like a man. Everything is complete down to moustache,
+the folds of the puggree, the <i>lathee</i> or staff, indeed to the
+slightest detail. You would fancy you saw a stalwart, strapping
+Hindoo before you. He turns round, and lo, a bashful maiden. Her
+eyes are stained with <i>henna</i> (myrtle juice) or antimony. Her
+long-hair neatly smoothed down is tied into a knot at the back, and
+glistens with the pearl-like ornaments. The taper arm is loaded
+with armlets and bracelets. The very toes are bedecked with rings.
+The bodice hides the taper waist and budding bosom, the tiny ear is
+loaded with jewelled ear-rings, the very nose is not forgotten, but
+is ornamented with a golden circle, bearing on its circumference a
+pearl of great price. The art, the posturing, the mimicry, is
+really admirable. A good <i>bara roopee</i> is well worth seeing,
+and amply earns the two or three rupees he gets as his reward.</p>
+<p>The Pooneah seldom lasts more than the two days, but it is quite
+unique in its feudal character, and is one of the old-fashioned
+observances; a relic of the time when the planter was really looked
+upon as the father of his people, and when a little sentiment and
+mutual affection mingled with the purely business relations of
+landlord and tenant.</p>
+<p>I delighted my ryots by importing some of our own country
+recreations, and setting the ploughmen to compete against each
+other. I stuck a greasy bamboo firmly into the earth, putting a bag
+of copper coins at the top. Many tried to climb it, but when they
+came to the grease they came down 'by the run.' One fellow however
+filled his <i>kummerbund</i> with sand, and after much exertion
+managed to secure the prize. Wheeling the barrow blindfold also
+gave much amusement, and we made some boys bend their foreheads
+down to a stick and run round till they were giddy. Their ludicrous
+efforts then to jump over some water-pots, and run to a thorny
+bush, raised tumultuous peals of laughter. The poor boys generally
+smashed the pots, and ended by tumbling into the thorns.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXVII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>The Koosee
+jungles.&mdash;Ferries.&mdash;Jungle roads.&mdash;The
+rhinoceros.&mdash;We go to visit a neighbour.&mdash;We lose our way
+and get belated.&mdash;We fall into a quicksand.&mdash;No ferry
+boat.&mdash;Camping out on the sand.&mdash;Two tigers close
+by.&mdash;We light a fire.&mdash;The boat at last
+arrives.&mdash;Crossing the stream.&mdash;Set fire to the boatman's
+hut.&mdash;Swim the horses.&mdash;They are nearly drowned.&mdash;We
+again lose our way in the jungle.&mdash;The towing path, and how
+boats are towed up the river.&mdash;We at last reach the
+factory.&mdash;News of rhinoceros in the morning.&mdash;Off we
+start, but arrive too late.&mdash;Death of the
+rhinoceros.&mdash;His dimensions.&mdash;Description.
+&mdash;Habits.&mdash;Rhinoceros in Nepaul.&mdash;The old 'Major
+Captan.'&mdash;Description of Nepaulese scenery.&mdash;Immigration
+of Nepaulese.&mdash;Their fondness for fish.&mdash;They eat it
+putrid.&mdash;Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul. &mdash;Resources
+of the country.&mdash;Must sooner or later be opened up.
+&mdash;Influences at work to elevate the people.&mdash;Planters and
+factories chief of these.&mdash;Character of the planter.&mdash;His
+claims to consideration from government.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>In the vast grass jungles that border the banks of the Koosee,
+stretching in great plains without an undulation for miles on
+either side, intersected by innumerable water-beds and dried up
+channels, there is plenty of game of all sorts. It is an impetuous,
+swiftly-flowing stream, dashing directly down from the mighty hills
+of Nepaul. So swift is its current and so erratic its course, that
+it frequently bursts its banks, and careers through the jungle,
+forming a new bed, and carrying away cattle and wild animals in its
+headlong rush.</p>
+<p>The <i>ghauts</i> or ferries are constantly changing, and a long
+bamboo with a bit of white rag affixed, shows where the boats and
+boatmen are to be found. In many instances the track is a mere
+cattle path, and hundreds of cross openings, leading into the tall
+jungle grass, are apt to bewilder and mislead the traveller. During
+the dry season these jungles are the resort of great herds of
+cattle and tame buffaloes, which trample down the dry stalks, and
+force their way into the innermost recesses of the wilderness of
+grass, which grows ten to twelve feet high. If you once lose your
+path you may wander for miles, until your weary horse is almost
+unable to stumble on. In such a case, the best way is to take it
+coolly, and halloo till a herdsman or thatch-cutter comes to your
+rescue. The knowledge of the jungles displayed by these poor
+ignorant men is wonderful; they know every gully and watercourse,
+every ford and quicksand, and they betray not the slightest sign of
+fear, although they know that at any moment they may come across a
+herd of wild buffalo, a savage rhinoceros, or even a royal
+tiger.</p>
+<p>The tracks of rhinoceros are often seen, but although I have
+frequently had these pointed out to me when out tiger shooting, I
+only saw two while I lived in that district.</p>
+<p>The first occasion was after a night of discomfort such as I
+have fortunately seldom experienced. I had been away at a
+neighbouring factory in Purneah, some eighteen or twenty miles from
+my bungalow. My companion had been my predecessor in the
+management, and was supposed to be well acquainted with the
+country. We had gone over to one of the outworks across the river,
+and I had received charge of the place from him. It was a lonely
+solitary spot; the house was composed of grass walls plastered with
+mud, and had not been used for some time. F. proposed that we
+should ride over to see H., to whom he would introduce me as he
+would be one of my nearest neighbours, and would give us a
+comfortable dinner and bed, which there was no chance of our
+procuring where we were.</p>
+<p>We plunged at once into the mazy labyrinths of the jungle, and
+soon emerged on the high sandy downs, stretching mile beyond mile
+along the southern bank of the ever-changing river. Having lost our
+way, we got to the factory after dark, but a friendly villager
+volunteered his services as guide, and led us safely to our
+destination. After a cheerful evening with H., we persuaded him to
+accompany us back next day. He took out his dogs, and we had a good
+course after a hare, killing two jackals, and sending back the dogs
+by the sweeper. At Burgamma, the outwork, we stopped to
+<i>tiffin</i> on some cold fowl we had brought with us. The old
+factory head man got us some milk, eggs, and <i>chupatties</i>; and
+about three in the afternoon we started for the head factory. In an
+evil moment F. proposed that, as we were near another outwork
+called <i>Fusseah</i>, we should diverge thither, I could take over
+charge, and we could thus save a ride on another day. Not knowing
+anything of the country I acquiesced, and we reached Fusseah in
+time to see the place, and do all that was needful. It was a
+miserable tumbledown little spot, with four pair of vats; it had
+formerly been a good working factory, but the river had cut away
+most of its best lands, and completely washed away some of the
+villages, while the whole of the cultivation was fast relapsing
+into jungle.</p>
+<p>'Debnarain Singh' the <i>gomorsta</i> or head man, asked us to
+stay for the night, as he said we could never get home before dark.
+F. however scouted the idea, and we resumed our way. The track, for
+it could not be called a road, led us through one or two jungle
+villages completely hidden by the dense bamboo clumps and long
+jungle grass. You can't see a trace of habitation till you are
+fairly on the village, and as the rice-fields are bordered with
+long strips of tall grass, the whole country presents the
+appearance of a uniform jungle. We got through the rice swamps, the
+villages, and the grass in safety, and as it was getting dark,
+emerged on the great plain of undulating ridgy sandbanks, that form
+the bed of the river during the annual floods. We had our
+<i>syces</i> (grooms) and two peons with us. We had to ride over
+nearly two miles of sand before we could reach the <i>ghat</i>
+where we expected the ferry-boats, and, the main stream once
+crossed, we had only two miles further to reach the factory. We
+were getting both tired and hungry; a heavy dew was falling, and
+the night was raw and chill. It was dark, there was no moon to
+light our way, and the stars were obscured by the silently creeping
+fog, rising from the marshy hollows among the sand. All at once F.,
+who was leading, called out that we were off the path, and before I
+could pull up, my poor old tired horse was floundering in a
+quicksand up to the girths; I threw myself off and tried to wheel
+him round. H. was behind us, and we cried to him to halt where he
+was. I was sinking at every movement up to the knees, when the syce
+came to my rescue, and took charge of the horse. F.'s syce ran to
+extricate his master and horse; the two peons kept calling, 'Oh! my
+father, my father,' the horses snorted, and struggled desperately
+in the tenacious and treacherous quicksand; but after a prolonged
+effort, we all got safely out, and rejoined H. on the firm
+ridge.</p>
+<p>We now hallooed and shouted for the boatmen, but beyond the
+swish of the rapid stream to our right, or the plash of a falling
+bank as the swift current undermined it, no sound answered our
+repeated calls. We were wet and weary, but to go either backward or
+forward was out of the question. We were off the path, and the
+first step in any direction might lead us into another quicksand,
+worse perhaps than that from which we had just extricated
+ourselves. The horses were trembling in every limb. The syces
+cowered together and shivered with the cold. We ordered the two
+peons to try and reach the ghat, and see what had become of the
+boats, while we awaited their return where we were. The fog and
+darkness soon swallowed them up, and putting the best face on our
+dismal circumstances that we could, we lit our pipes and extended
+our jaded limbs on the damp sand.</p>
+<p>For a time we could hear the shouts of the peons as they
+hallooed for the boatmen, and we listened anxiously for the
+response, but there was none. We could hear the purling swish of
+the rapid stream, the crumbling banks falling into the current with
+a distant splash. Occasionally a swift rushing of wings overhead
+told us of the arrowy flight of diver or teal. Far in the distance
+twinkled the gleam of a herdsman's fire, the faint tinkle of a
+distant bell, or the subdued barking of a village dog for a moment,
+alone broke the silence.</p>
+<p>At times the hideous chorus of a pack of jackals woke the echoes
+of the night. Then, at no great distance, rose a hoarse booming
+cry, swelling on the night air, and subsiding into a lengthened
+growl. The syces started to their feet, the horses snorted with
+fear; and as the roar was repeated, followed closely by another to
+our left, and seemingly nearer, H. exclaimed 'By Jove! there's a
+couple of tigers.'</p>
+<p>Sure enough, so it was. It was the first time I had heard the
+roar of the tiger in his own domain, and I must confess that my
+sensations were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting
+sticks and what roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats
+everything was wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about
+on our hands and knees, and pick up whatever we came across.</p>
+<p>With great difficulty we managed to light a small fire, and for
+about half-an-hour were nearly smothered by trying with inflated
+cheeks to coax it into a blaze. The tigers continued to call at
+intervals, but did not seem to be approaching us. It was a long
+weary wait, we were cold, wet, hungry, and tired; F., the cause of
+our misfortunes, had taken off his saddle, and with it for a pillow
+was now fast asleep. H. and I cowered over the miserable sputtering
+flame, and longed and wished for the morning. It was a miserable
+night, the hours seemed interminable, the dense volumes of smoke
+from the water-sodden wood nearly choked us. At last, after some
+hours spent in this miserable manner, we heard a faint halloo in
+the distance; it was now past eleven at night. We returned the
+hail, and bye-and-bye the peons returned bringing a boatman with
+them. The lazy rascals at the ghat where we had proposed crossing,
+had gone home at nightfall, leaving their boats on the further
+bank. Our trusty peons, had gone five miles up the river, through
+the thick jungle, and brought a boat down with them from the next
+ghat to that where we were.</p>
+<p>We now warily picked our way down to the edge of the bank. The
+boat seemed very fragile, and the current looked so swift and
+dangerous, that we determined to go across first ourselves, get the
+larger boat from the other side, light a fire, and then bring over
+the horses. We embarked accordingly, leaving the syces and horses
+behind us. The peons and boatman pulled the boat a long way up
+stream by a rope, then shooting out we were carried swiftly down
+stream, the dark shadow of the further bank seeming at a great
+distance. The boatman pushed vigorously at his bamboo pole, the
+water rippled and gurgled, and frothed and eddied around.
+Half-a-dozen times we thought our boat would topple over, but at
+length we got safely across, far below what we had proposed as our
+landing place.</p>
+<p>We found the boats all right, and the boatman's hut, a mere
+collection of dry grass and a few old bamboos. As it could be
+replaced in an hour, and the material lay all around, we fired the
+hut, which soon, blazed up, throwing a weird lurid glow on bank and
+stream, and disclosing far on the other bank our weary nags and
+shivering syces, looking very bedraggled and forlorn indeed. The
+leaping and crackling of the flames, and the genial warmth,
+invigorated us a little, and while I stayed behind to feed the
+fire, the others recrossed to bring the horses over.</p>
+<p>With the previous fright however, their long waiting, the
+blazing fire, and being unaccustomed to boats at night, the poor
+scared horses refused to enter the boat, The boats are
+flat-bottomed or broadly bulging, with a bamboo platform strewn
+with grass in the centre. As a rule, they have no protecting rails,
+and even in the daytime, when the current is strong and eddies
+numerous, they are very dangerous for horses. At all events, the
+poor brutes would not be led on to the platform, so there was
+nothing for it but to swim them across. The boat was therefore
+towed a long way up the bank, which on the farther side was nearly
+level with the current, but where the hut had stood was steep and
+slushy, and perhaps twenty feet high. This was where the deepest
+water ran, and where the current was swiftest. If the horses
+therefore missed the landing ghat or stage, which was cut sloping
+into the bank, there was a danger of their being swept away
+altogether and lost. However, we determined on making the attempt.
+Entering the water, and holding the horses tightly by the head,
+with a leading rope attached, to be paid out in case of necessity;
+the boat shot out, the horses pawed the water, entering deeper and
+deeper, foot by foot, into the swiftly rushing silent stream. So
+long as they were in their depth, and had footing, they were
+alright, but when they reached the middle of the river, the
+current, rushing with frightful velocity, swept them off their
+feet, and boat and horses began to go down stream. The horses, with
+lips apart showing their teeth firmly set, the lurid glare of the
+flame lighting up their straining eyeballs, the plashing of the
+water, the dark rapid current flowing noiselessly past; the rocking
+heaving boat, the dusky forms of syces, peons, and boatman,
+standing out clear in the ruddy fire-light against the utter
+blackness of the night, composed a weird picture I can never
+forget.</p>
+<p>The boat shot swiftly past the ghat, and came with a thump
+against the bank. It swung round into the stream again, but the
+boatman had luckily managed to scramble ashore, and his efforts and
+mine united, hauling on the mooring-rope, sufficed to bring her in
+to the bank. The three struggling horses were yet in the current,
+trying bravely to stem the furious rush of the river. The syces and
+my friends were holding hard to the tether-ropes, which were now at
+their full stretch. It was a most critical moment. Had they let go,
+the horses would have been swept away to form a meal for the
+alligators. They managed, however, to get in close to the bank, and
+here, although the water was still over their backs, they got a
+slight and precarious footing, and inch by inch struggled after the
+boat, which we were now pulling up to the landing place.</p>
+<p>After a sore struggle, during which we thought more than once
+the gallant nags would never emerge from the water, they staggered
+up the bank, dripping, trembling, and utterly overcome with their
+exertions. It was my first introduction to the treacherous Koosee,
+and I never again attempted to swim a horse across at night. We led
+the poor tired creatures up to the fire, heaping on fresh bundles
+of thatching-grass, of which there was plenty lying about, the
+syces then rubbed them down, and shampooed their legs, till they
+began to take a little heart, whinnying as we spoke to them and
+caressed them.</p>
+<p>After resting for nearly an hour, we replaced the saddles, and
+F., who by this time began to mistrust his knowledge of the jungles
+by night, allowed one of the peons, who was sure he knew every inch
+of the road, to lead the way. Leaving the smouldering flames to
+flicker and burn out in solitude, we again plunged into the
+darkness of the night, threading our way through the thick jungle
+grass, now loaded with dewy moisture, and dripping copious showers
+upon us from its high walls at either side of the narrow track. We
+crossed a rapid little stream, an arm of the main river, turned to
+the right, progressed a few hundred yards, turned to the left, and
+finally came to a dead stop, having again lost our way.</p>
+<p>We heaped execrations on the luckless peon's head, and I
+suggested that we should make for the main stream, follow up the
+bank till we reached the next ghat, where I knew there was a
+cart-road leading to the factory. Otherwise we might wander all
+night in the jungles, perhaps get into another quicksand, or come
+to some other signal grief. We accordingly turned round. We could
+hear the swish of the river at no great distance, and soon,
+stumbling over bushes and bursting through matted chumps of grass,
+dripping with wet, and utterly tired and dejected, we reached the
+bank of the stream.</p>
+<p>Here we had no difficulty in following the path. The river is so
+swift, that the only way boats are enabled to get up stream to take
+down the inland produce, is by having a few coolies or boatmen to
+drag the boat up against the current by towing-lines. This is
+called <i>gooning</i>. The goon-ropes are attached to the mast of
+the boat. At the free end is a round bit of bamboo. The
+towing-coolie places this against his shoulder, and slowly and
+laboriously drags the boat up against the current. We were now on
+this towing-path, and after riding for nearly four miles we reached
+the ghat, struck into the cart-road, and without further
+misadventure reached the factory about four in the morning, utterly
+fagged and worn out.</p>
+<p>About eight in the morning my bearer woke me out of a deep
+sleep, with the news that there was a <i>gaerha</i>, that is, a
+rhinoceros, close to the factory. We had some days previously heard
+it rumoured that there were <i>two</i> rhinoceroses in the
+<i>Battabarree</i> jungles, so I at once roused my soundly-sleeping
+friends. Swallowing a hasty morsel of toast and a cup of coffee, we
+mounted our ponies, sent our guns on ahead, and rode off for the
+village where the rhinoceros was reported. As we rode hurriedly
+along we could see natives running in the same direction as
+ourselves, and one of my men came up panting and breathless to
+confirm the news about the rhinoceros, with the unwelcome addition
+that Premnarain Singh, a young neighbouring Zemindar, had gone in
+pursuit of it with his elephant and guns. We hurried on, and just
+then heard the distant report of a shot, followed quickly by two
+more. We tried to take a short cut across country through some
+rice-fields, but our ponies sank in the boggy ground, and we had to
+retrace our way to the path.</p>
+<p>By the time we got to the village we found an excited crowd of
+over a thousand natives, dancing and gesticulating round the
+prostrate carcase of the rhinoceros. The Baboo and his party had
+found the poor brute firmly imbedded in a quicksand. With organised
+effort they might have secured the prize alive, and could have sold
+him in Calcutta for at least a thousand rupees, but they were too
+excited, and blazed away three shots into the helpless beast. 'Many
+hands make light work,' so the crowd soon had the dead animal
+extricated, rolled him into the creek, and floated him down to the
+village, where we found them already beginning to hack and hew the
+flesh, completely spoiling the skin, and properly completing the
+butchery. We were terribly vexed that we were too late, but
+endeavoured to stop the stupid destruction that was going on. The
+body measured eleven feet three inches from the snout to the tail,
+and stood six feet nine. The horn was six and a half inches long,
+and the girth a little over ten feet. We put the best face on the
+matter, congratulated the Baboo with very bad grace, and asked him
+to get the skin cut up properly.</p>
+<p>Cut in strips from the under part of the ribs and along the
+belly, the skin makes magnificent riding-whips. The bosses on the
+shoulder and sides are made into shields by the natives,
+elaborately ornamented and much prized. The horn, however, is the
+most coveted acquisition. It is believed to have peculiar virtues,
+and is popularly supposed by its mere presence in a house to
+mitigate the pains of maternity. A rhinoceros horn is often handed
+down from generation to generation as a heirloom, and when a birth
+is about to take place the anxious husband often gets a loan of the
+precious treasure, after which he has no fears for the safe issue
+of the labour.</p>
+<p>The flesh of the rhinoceros is eaten by all classes. It is one
+of the five animals that a Brahmin is allowed to eat by the
+<i>Shastras</i>. They were formerly much more common in these
+jungles, but of late years very few have been killed. When they
+take up their abode in a piece of jungle they are not easily
+dislodged. They are fierce, savage brutes, and do not scruple to
+attack an elephant when they are hard pressed by the hunter. When
+they wish to leave a locality where they have been disturbed, they
+will make for some distant point, and march on with dogged and
+inflexible purpose. Some have been known to travel eighty miles in
+the twenty-four hours, through thick jungle, over rivers, and
+through swamp and quicksand. Their sense of hearing is very acute,
+and they are very easily roused to fury. One peculiarity often
+noticed by sportsmen is, that they always go to the same spot when
+they want to obey the calls of nature. Mounds of their dung are
+sometimes seen in the jungle, and the tracks shew that the
+rhinoceros pays a daily visit to this one particular spot.</p>
+<p>In Nepaul, and along the <i>terai</i> or wooded slopes of the
+frontier, they are more numerous; but 'Jung Bahadur,' the late
+ruler of Nepaul, would allow no one to shoot them but himself. I
+remember the wailing lament of a Nepaul officer with whom I was out
+shooting, when I happened to fire at and wound one of the protected
+beasts. It was in Nepaul, among a cluster of low woody hills, with
+a brawling stream dashing through the precipitous channel worn out
+of the rocky, boulder-covered dell. The rhinoceros was up the hill
+slightly above me, and we were beating up for a tiger that we had
+seen go ahead of the line.</p>
+<p>In my eagerness to bag a 'rhino' I quite forgot the interdict,
+and fired an Express bullet into the shoulder of the animal, as he
+stood broadside on, staring stupidly at me. He staggered, and made
+as if he would charge down the hill. The old '&#257;aptan,' as they
+called our sporting host, was shouting out to me not to fire. The
+<i>mahouts</i> and beaters were petrified with horror at my
+presumption. I fancy they expected an immediate order for my
+decapitation, or for my ears to be cut off at the very least, but
+feeling I might as well be 'in for a pound as for a penny,' I fired
+again, and tumbled the huge brute over, with a bullet through the
+skull behind the ear. The old officer was horror-stricken, and
+would allow no one to go near the animal. He would not even let me
+get down to measure it, being terrified lest the affair should
+reach the ears of his formidable lord and ruler, that he hurried us
+off from the scene of my transgression as quickly as he could.</p>
+<p>The old Major Capt&#257;n was a curious character. The
+government of Nepaul is purely military. All executive and judicial
+functions are carried on by military officers. After serving a
+certain time in the army, they get rewarded for good service by
+being appointed to the executive charge of a district. So far as I
+could make out, they seem to farm the revenue much as is done in
+Turkey. They must send in so much to the Treasury, and anything
+over they keep for themselves. Their administration of justice is
+rough and ready. Fines, corporal punishment, and in the case of
+heinous crimes, mutilation and death are their penalties. There is
+a tax of <i>kind</i> on all produce, and licenses to cut timber
+bring in a large revenue. A protective tariff is levied on all
+goods or produce passing the frontier from British territory, and
+no European is allowed to travel in the country, or to settle and
+trade there. In the lower valleys there are magnificent stretches
+of land suitable for indigo, tea, rice, and other crops. The
+streams are numerous, moisture is plentiful, the soil is fertile,
+and the slopes of the hills are covered with splendid timber, a
+great quantity of which is cut and floated down the Gunduch,
+Bagmuttee, Koosee, and other streams during the rainy season. It is
+used principally for beams, rafters, and railway sleepers.</p>
+<p>The people are jealous of intrusion and suspicious of strangers,
+but as I was with an official, they generally came out in great
+numbers to gaze as we passed through a village. The country does
+not seem so thickly populated as in our territory, and the
+cultivators had a more well-to-do look. They possess vast numbers
+of cattle. The houses have conical roofs, and great quadrangular
+sheds, roofed with a flat covering of thatch, are erected all round
+the houses, for the protection of the cattle at night. The taxes
+must weigh heavily on the population. The executive officer, when
+he gets charge of a district, removes all the subordinates who have
+been acting under his predecessor. When I asked the old Major if
+this would not interfere with the efficient administration of
+justice, and the smooth working of his revenue and executive
+functions, he gave a funny leer, almost a wink, and said it was
+much more satisfactory to have men of your own working under you,
+the fact being, that with his own men he could more securely wring
+from the ryots the uttermost farthing they could pay, and was more
+certain of getting his own share of the spoil.</p>
+<p>With practically irresponsible power, and only answerable
+directly to his immediate military superior, an unscrupulous man
+may harry and harass a district pretty much as he chooses. Our old
+Major seemed to be civil and lenient, but in some districts the
+exactions and extortions of the rulers have driven many of the
+hard-working Nepaulese over the border into our territory. Our
+landholders or Zemindars, having vast areas of untilled land, are
+only too glad to encourage this immigration, and give the exiles,
+whom they find hard-working industrious tenants, long leases on
+easy terms. The new-comers are very independent, and strenuously
+resist any encroachment on what they consider their rights. If an
+attempt is made to raise their rent, even equitably, the land
+having increased in value, they will resist the attempt 'tooth and
+nail,' and take every advantage the law affords to oppose it. They
+are very fond of litigation, and are mostly able to afford the
+expense of a lawsuit. I generally found it answer better to call
+them together and reason quietly with them, submitting any point in
+dispute to an arbitration of parties mutually selected.</p>
+<p>Nearly all the rivers in Nepaul are formed principally from the
+melting of the snow on the higher ranges. A vast body of water
+descends annually into the plains from the natural surface drainage
+of the country, but the melting of the snows is the main source of
+the river system. Many of the hill streams, and it is particularly
+observable at some seasons in the Koosee, have a regular daily rise
+and fall. In the early morning you can often ford a branch of the
+river, which by midday has become a swiftly-rolling torrent,
+filling the channel from bank to bank. The water is intensely cold,
+and few or no fish are to be found in the mountain streams of
+Nepaul. When the Nepaulese come down to the plains on business,
+pleasure, or pilgrimage their great treat is a mighty banquet of
+fish. For two or three <i>annas</i> a fish of several pounds weight
+can easily be purchased. They revel on this unwonted fare, eating
+to repletion, and very frequently making themselves ill in
+consequence. When Jung Bahadur came down through Chumparun to
+attend the <i>durbar</i> of the lamented Earl Mayo, cholera broke
+out in his camp, brought on simply by the enormous quantities of
+fish, often not very fresh or wholesome, which his guards and camp
+followers consumed.</p>
+<p>Large quantities of dried fish are sent up to Nepaul, and
+exchanged for rice and other grain, or horns, hides, and blankets.
+The fish-drying is done very simply in the sun. It is generally
+left till it is half putrid and taints the air for miles. The
+sweltering, half-rotting mass, packed in filthy bags, and slung on
+ponies or bullocks, is sent over the frontier to some village
+bazaar in Nepaul. The track of a consignment of this horrible filth
+can be recognised from very far away. The perfume hovers on the
+road, and as you are riding up and get the first sniff of the
+putrid odour, you know at once that the Nepaulese market is being
+recruited by a <i>fresh</i> accession of very <i>stale</i> fish. If
+the taste is at all equal to the smell, the rankest witches broth
+ever brewed in reeking cauldron would probably be preferable. Over
+the frontier there seems to be few roads, merely bullock tracks.
+Most of the transporting of goods is done by bullocks, and
+intercommunication must be slow and costly. I believe that near
+Katmandoo, the capital, the roads and bridges are good, and kept in
+tolerable repair. There is an arsenal where they manufacture modern
+munitions of war. Their soldiers are well disciplined, fairly well
+equipped, and form excellent fighting material.</p>
+<p>Our policy of annexation, so far as India is concerned, may
+perhaps be now considered as finally abandoned. We have no desire
+to annex Nepaul, but surely this system of utter isolation, of
+jealous exclusion at all hazards of English enterprise and capital,
+might be broken down to a mutual community of interest, a full and
+free exchange of products, and a reception by Nepaul without fear
+and distrust of the benefits our capitalists and pioneers could
+give the country by opening out its resources, and establishing the
+industries of the West on its fertile slopes and plains. I am no
+politician, and know nothing of the secret springs of policy that
+regulate our dealings with Nepaul, but it does seem somewhat weak
+and puerile to allow the Nepaulese free access to our territories,
+and an unprotected market in our towns for all their produce, while
+the British subject is rigorously excluded from the country, his
+productions saddled with a heavy protective duty, and the
+representative of our Government himself, treated more as a
+prisoner in honourable confinement, than as the accredited
+ambassador of a mighty empire.</p>
+<p>I may be utterly wrong. There may be weighty reasons of State
+for this condition of things, but it is a general feeling among
+Englishmen in India that, <i>we</i> have to do all the GIVE and our
+Oriental neighbours do all the TAKE. The un-official English mind
+in India does not see the necessity for the painfully deferential
+attitude we invariably take in our dealings with native states. The
+time has surely come, when Oriental mistrust of our intentions
+should be stoutly battled with. There is room in Nepaul for
+hundreds of factories, for tea-gardens, fruit-groves,
+spice-plantations, woollen-mills, saw-mills, and countless other
+industries. Mineral products are reported of unusual richness. In
+the great central valley the climate approaches that of England.
+The establishment of productive industries would be a work of time,
+but so long as this ridiculous policy of isolation is maintained,
+and the exclusion of English tourists, sportsmen, or observers
+carried out in all its present strictness, we can never form an
+adequate idea of the resources of the country. The Nepaulese
+themselves cannot progress. I am convinced that a frank and
+unconstrained intercourse between Europeans and natives would
+create no jealousy and antagonism, but would lead to the
+development of a country singularly blessed by nature, and open a
+wide field for Anglo-Saxon energy and enterprise. It does seem
+strange, with all our vast territory of Hindustan accurately mapped
+out and known, roads and railways, canals and embankments,
+intersecting it in all directions, that this interesting corner of
+the globe, lying contiguous to our territory for hundreds of miles,
+should be less known than the interior of Africa, or the barren
+solitudes of the ice-bound Arctic regions.</p>
+<p>In these rich valleys hundreds of miles of the finest and most
+fertile lands in Asia lie covered by dense jungle, waiting for
+labour and capital. For the present we have enough to do in our own
+possessions to reclaim the uncultured wastes; but considering the
+rapid increase of population, the avidity with which land is taken
+up, the daily increasing use of all modern labour-saving
+appliances, the time must very shortly come when capital and energy
+will need new outlets, and one of the most promising of these is in
+Nepaul. The rapid changes which have come over the face of rural
+India, especially in these border districts, within the last twenty
+years, might well make the most thoughtless pause. Land has
+increased in value more than two-fold. The price of labour and of
+produce has kept more than equal pace. Machinery is whirring and
+clanking, where a few years ago a steam whistle would have startled
+the natives out of their wits. With cheap, easy, and rapid
+communication, a journey to any of the great cities is now thought
+no more of than a trip to a distant village in the same district
+was thought of twenty years ago. Everywhere are the signs of
+progress. New industries are opening up. Jungle is fast
+disappearing. Agriculture has wonderfully improved; and wherever an
+indigo factory has been built, progress has taken the place of
+stagnation, industry and thrift that of listless indolence and
+shiftless apathy. A spirit has moved in the valley of dry bones,
+and has clothed with living flesh the gaunt skeletons produced by
+ignorance, disease, and want. The energy and intelligence of the
+planter has breathed on the stagnant waters of the Hindoo intellect
+the breath of life, and the living tide is heaving, full of
+activity, purging by its resistless ever-moving pulsations the
+formerly stagnant mass of its impurities, and making it a
+life-giving sea of active industry and progress.</p>
+<p>Let any unprejudiced observer see for himself if it be not so;
+let him go to those districts where British capital and energy are
+not employed; let him leave the planting districts, and go up to
+the wastes of Oudh, or the purely native districts of the
+North-west, where there are no Europeans but the officials in the
+<i>station</i>. He will find fewer and worse roads, fewer wells,
+worse constructed houses, much ruder cultivation, less activity and
+industry; more dirt, disease, and desolation; less intelligence;
+more intolerance; and a peasantry morally, mentally, physically,
+and in every way inferior to those who are brought into daily
+contact with the Anglo-Saxon planters and gentlemen, and have
+imbibed somewhat of their activity and spirit of progress. And yet
+these are the men whom successive Lieutenant-Governors, and
+Governments generally, have done their best to thwart and obstruct.
+They have been misrepresented, held up to obloquy, and foully
+slandered; they have been described as utterly base, fattening on
+the spoils of a cowed and terror-ridden peasantry. Utterly
+unscrupulous, fearing neither God nor man, hesitating at no crime,
+deterred by no consideration from oppressing their tenantry, and
+compassing their interested ends by the vilest frauds.</p>
+<p>Such was the picture drawn of the indigo planter not so many
+years ago. There may have been much in the past over which we would
+willingly draw the veil, but at the present moment I firmly believe
+that the planters of Behar&mdash;and I speak as an observant
+student of what has been going on in India&mdash;have done more to
+elevate the peasantry, to rouse them into vitality, and to improve
+them in every way, than all the other agencies that have been at
+work with the same end in view.</p>
+<p>The Indian Government to all appearance must always work in
+extremes. It never seems to hit the happy medium. The
+Lieutenant-Governor for the time being impresses every department
+under him too strongly with his own individuality. The planters,
+who are an intelligent and independent body of men, have seemingly
+always been obnoxious to the ideas of a perfectly despotic and
+irresponsible ruler. In spite however of all difficulties and
+drawbacks, they have held their own. I know that the poor people
+and small cultivators look up to them with respect and affection.
+They find in them ready and sympathizing friends, able and willing
+to shield them from the exactions of their own more powerful and
+uncharitable fellow-countrymen. Half, nay nine-tenths, of the
+stories against planters, are got up by the money-lenders, the
+petty Zemindars, and wealthy villagers, who find the planter
+competing with them for land and labour, and raising the price of
+both. The poor people look to the factory as a never failing
+resource when all else fails, and but for the assistance it gives
+in money, or seed, or plough bullocks and implements of husbandry,
+many a struggling hardworking tenant would inevitably go to the
+wall, or become inextricably entangled in the meshes of the Bunneah
+and money-lender.</p>
+<p>I assert as a fact that the great majority of villagers in Behar
+would rather go to the factory, and have their sahib adjudicate on
+their dispute, than take it into Court. The officials in the indigo
+districts know this, and as a rule are very friendly with the
+planters. But not long since, an official was afraid to dine at a
+planter's house, fearing he might be accused of planter
+proclivities. In no other country in the world would the same
+jealousy of men who open out and enrich a country, and who are
+loyal, intelligent, and educated citizens, be displayed; but there
+are high quarters in which the old feeling of the East India
+Company, that all who were not in the service must be adventurers
+and interlopers, seems not wholly to have died out.</p>
+<p>That there have been abuses no one denies; but for years past
+the majority of the planters in Tirhoot, Chupra, and Chumparun, and
+in the indigo districts generally, not merely the managers, but the
+proprietors and agents have been laudably and loyally stirring, in
+spite of failures, reduced prices, and frequent bad seasons, to
+elevate the standard of their peasantry, and establish the indigo
+system on a fair and equitable basis. During the years when I was
+an assistant and manager on indigo estates, the rates for payment
+of indigo to cultivators nearly doubled, although prices for the
+manufactured article remained stationary. In well managed
+factories, the forcible seizure of carts and ploughs, and the
+enforcement of labour, which is an old charge against planters, was
+unknown; and the payment of tribute, common under the old feudal
+system, and styled <i>furmaish</i>, had been allowed to fall into
+desuetude. The NATIVE Zemindars or landholders however, still
+jealously maintain their rights, and harsh exactions were often
+made by them on the cultivators on the occasions of domestic
+events, such as births, marriages, deaths, and such like, in the
+families of the landowners. For years these exactions or feudal
+payments by the ryot to the Zemindar have been commuted by the
+factories into a lump sum in cash, when villages have been taken in
+farm, and this sum has been paid to the Zemindar as an enhanced
+rent. In the majority of cases it has not been levied from the
+cultivators, but the whole expense has been borne by the factory.
+In individual instances resort may have been had to unworthy tricks
+to harass the ryots, the factory middle-men having often been
+oppressors and tyrants; but as a body, the indigo planters of the
+present day have sternly set their faces to put down these
+oppressions, and have honestly striven to mete out even-handed
+justice to their tenants and dependants. With the spread of
+education and intelligence, the development of agricultural
+knowledge and practical science, and the vastly improved
+communication by roads, bridges, and ferries, in bringing about all
+of which the planting community themselves have been largely
+instrumental, there can be little doubt that these old fashioned
+charges against the planters as a body will cease, and public
+opinion will be brought to bear on any one who may promote his own
+interests by cruelty or rapacity, instead of doing his business on
+an equitable commercial basis, giving every man his due, relying on
+skill, energy, industry, and integrity, to promote the best
+interests of his factory; gaining the esteem and affection of his
+people by liberality, kindness, and strict justice.</p>
+<p>It can never be expected that a ryot can grow indigo at a loss
+to himself, or at a lower rate of profit than that which the
+cultivation of his other ordinary crops would give him, without at
+least some compensating advantages. With all his poverty and
+supposed stupidity, he is keenly alive to his own interests, quite
+able to hold his own in matters affecting his pocket. I have no
+hesitation in saying that the steady efforts which have been made
+by all the best planters to treat the ryot fairly, to give him
+justice, to encourage him with liberal aid and sympathy, and to put
+their mutual relations on a fair business footing, are now bearing
+fruit, and will result in the cultivation and manufacture of indigo
+in Upper Bengal becoming, as it deserves to become, one of the most
+firmly established, fairly conducted, and justly administered
+industries in India. That it may be so is, as I know, the earnest
+wish, as it has long been the dearest object, of my best friends
+among the planters of Behar.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXVIII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVIII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>The tiger.&mdash;His habitat.&mdash;Shooting
+on foot.&mdash;Modes of shooting.&mdash;A tiger hunt on
+foot.&mdash;The scene of the hunt.-The beat.&mdash;Incidents of the
+hunt.&mdash;Fireworks.&mdash;The tiger charges.&mdash;The elephant
+bolts.&mdash;The tigress will not break.&mdash;We kill a half-grown
+cub.&mdash;Try again for the
+tigress.&mdash;Unsuccessful.&mdash;Exaggerations in tiger
+stories.&mdash;My authorities.&mdash;The brothers S.&mdash;Ferocity
+and structure of the tiger. &mdash;His devastations.&mdash;His
+frame-work, teeth, &amp;c.&mdash;A tiger at bay. &mdash;His
+unsociable habits.&mdash;Fight between tiger and
+tigress.&mdash;Young tigers.&mdash;Power and strength of the
+tiger.&mdash;Examples.&mdash;His cowardice. &mdash;Charge of a
+wounded tiger.&mdash;Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+&mdash;A spined tiger.&mdash;Boldness of young
+tigers.&mdash;Cruelty.&mdash;Cunning.&mdash;Night scenes in the
+jungle.&mdash;Tiger killed by a wild boar.&mdash;His cautious
+habits.&mdash;General remarks.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>In the foregoing chapters I have tried to perform my promise, to
+give a general idea of our daily life in India; our toils and
+trials, our sports, our pastimes, and our general pursuits. No
+record of Indian sport, however, would be complete without some
+allusion to the kingly tiger, and no one can live long near the
+Nepaul frontier, without at some time or other having an encounter
+with the royal robber&mdash;the striped and whiskered monarch of
+the jungle.</p>
+<p>He is always to be found in the Terai forests, and although very
+occasionally indeed met with in Tirhoot, where the population is
+very dense, and waste lands infrequent, he is yet often to be
+encountered in the solitudes of Oudh or Goruchpore, has been shot
+at and killed near Bettiah, and at our pig-sticking ground near
+Kuderent. In North Bhaugulpore and Purneah he may be said to be
+ALWAYS at home, as he can be met there, if you search for him, at
+all seasons of the year.</p>
+<p>In some parts of India, notably in the Deccan, and in some
+districts on the Bombay side, and even in the Soonderbunds near
+Calcutta, sportsmen and shekarries go after the tiger on foot. I
+must confess that this seems to me a mad thing to do. With every
+advantage of weapon, with the most daring courage, and the most
+imperturbable coolness, I think a man no fair match for a tiger in
+his native jungles. There are men now living who have shot numbers
+of tigers on foot, but the numerous fatal accidents recorded every
+year, plainly shew the danger of such a mode of shooting.</p>
+<p>In Central India, in the North-west, indeed in most districts
+where elephants are not easily procurable, it is customary to erect
+<i>mychans</i> or bamboo platforms on trees. A line of beaters,
+with tom-toms, drums, fireworks, and other means for creating a
+din, are then sent into the jungle, to beat the tigers up to the
+platform on which you sit and wait. This is often a successful mode
+if you secure an advantageous place, but accidents to the beaters
+are very common, and it is at best a weary and vexatious mode of
+shooting, as after all your trouble the tiger may not come near
+your <i>mychan</i>, or give you the slightest glimpse of his
+beautiful skin.</p>
+<p>I have only been out after tiger on foot on one occasion. It was
+in the sal jungles in Oudh. A neighbour of mine, a most intimate
+and dear friend, whom I had nicknamed the 'General,' and a young
+friend, Fullerton, were with me. A tigress and cub were reported to
+be in a dense patch of <i>nurkool</i> jungle, on the banks of the
+creek which divided the General's cultivation from mine. The
+nurkool is a tall feathery-looking cane, very much relished by
+elephants. It grows in dense brakes, and generally in damp boggy
+ground, affording complete shade and shelter for wild animals, and
+is a favourite haunt of pig, wolf, tiger, and buffalo.</p>
+<p>We had only one elephant, the use of which Fullerton had got
+from a neighbouring Baboo. It was not a staunch animal, so we put
+one of our men in the howdah, with a plentiful supply of bombs, a
+kind of native firework, enclosed in a clay case, which burns like
+a huge squib, and sets fire to the jungle. Along with the elephant
+we had a line of about one hundred coolies, and several men with
+drums and tom-toms. Fullerton took the side nearest the river, as
+it was possible the brute might sneak out that way, and make her
+escape along the bank. The General's shekarry remained behind, in
+rear of the line of beaters, in case the tigress might break the
+line, and try to escape by the rear. My <i>Gomasta</i>, the
+General, and myself, then took up positions behind trees all along
+the side of the glade or dell in which was the bit of nurkool
+jungle.</p>
+<p>It was a small basin, sloping gently down to the creek from the
+sal jungle, which grew up dark and thick all around. A margin of
+close sward, as green and level as a billiard-table, encircled the
+glade, and in the basin the thick nurkool grew up close, dense, and
+high, like a rustling barrier of living green. In the centre was
+the decaying stump of a mighty forest monarch, with its withered
+arms stretching out their bleached and shattered lengths far over
+the waving feathery tops of the nurkool below.</p>
+<p>The General and I cut down, some branches, which we stuck in the
+ground before us. I had a fallen log in front of me, on which I
+rested my guns. I had a naked <i>kookree</i> ready to hand, for we
+were sure that the tigress was in the swamp, and I did not know
+what might happen. I did not half like this style of shooting, and
+wished I was safely seated on the back of 'JORROCKS,' my faithful
+old Bhaugulpore elephant. The General whistled as a sign for the
+beat to begin. The coolies dashed into the thicket. The stately
+elephant slowly forced his ponderous body through the crashing
+swaying brake. The rattle of the tom-toms and rumble of the drums,
+mingled with the hoarse shouts and cries of the beaters, the fiery
+rush of sputtering flame, and the loud report as each bomb burst,
+with the huge volumes of blinding smoke, and the scent of gunpowder
+that came on the breeze, told us that the bombs were doing their
+work. The jungle was too green to burn; but the fireworks raised a
+dense sulphurous smoke, which penetrated among the tall stems of
+the nurkool, and by the waving and crashing of the tall swaying
+canes, the heaving of the howdah, with the red puggree of the peon,
+and the gleaming of the staves and weapons, we could see that the
+beat was advancing.</p>
+<p>As they neared the large withered tree in the centre of the
+brake, the elephant curled up his trunk and trumpeted. This was a
+sure sign there was game afoot. We could see the peon in the howdah
+leaning over the front bar, and eagerly peering into the recesses
+of the thicket before him. He lit one of the bombs, and hurled it
+right up against the hole of the tree. It hissed and sputtered, and
+the smoke came curling over the reeds in dense volumes. A roar
+followed that made the valley ring again. We heard a swift rush.
+The elephant turned tail, and fled madly away, crashing through the
+matted brake that crackled and tore under his tread. The howdah
+swayed wildly, and the peon clung tenaciously on to the top bar
+with all his desperate might. The <i>mahout</i>, or
+elephant-driver, tried in vain to check the rush of the frightened
+brute, but after repeated sounding whacks on the head he got her to
+stop, and again turn round. Meantime the cries and shouting had
+ceased, and the beaters came pouring from the jungle by twos and
+threes, like the frightened inhabitants of some hive or ant-heap.
+Some in their hurry came tumbling out headlong, others with their
+faces turned backwards to see if anything was in pursuit of them,
+got entangled in the reeds, and fell prone on their hands and
+knees. One fellow had just emerged from the thick cover, when
+another terrified compatriot dashed out in blind unreasoning fear
+close behind him. The first one thought the tiger was on him. With
+one howl of anguish and dismay he fled as fast as he could run, and
+the General and I, who had witnessed the episode, could not help
+uniting in a resounding peal of laughter, that did more to bring
+the scared coolies to their senses than anything else we could have
+done.</p>
+<p>There was no doubt now of the tiger's whereabouts. One of the
+beaters gave us a most graphic description of its appearance and
+proportions. According to him it was bigger than an elephant, had a
+mouth as wide as a coal scuttle, and eyes that glared like a
+thousand suns. From all this we inferred that there was a full
+grown tiger or tigress in the jungle. We re-formed the line of
+beaters, and once more got the elephant to enter the patch. The
+same story was repeated. No sooner did they get near the old tree,
+than the tigress again charged with a roar, and our valiant coolies
+and the chicken-hearted elephant vacated the jungle as fast as
+their legs could carry them. This happened twice or thrice. The
+tigress charged every time, but would not leave her safe cover. The
+elephant wheeled round at every charge, and would not shew fight.
+Fullerton got into the howdah, and fired two shots into the spot
+where the tigress was lying. He did not apparently wound her, but
+the reports brought her to the charge once more, and the elephant,
+by this time fairly tired of the game, and thoroughly demoralised
+with fear, bolted right away, and nearly cracked poor Fullerton's
+head against the branch of a tree.</p>
+<p>We could plainly see, that with only one elephant we could never
+dislodge the tigress, so making the coolies beat up the patch in
+lines, we shot several pig and a hog-deer, and adjourned for
+something to eat by the bank of the creek. We had been trying to
+oust the tigress for over four hours, but she was as wise as she
+was savage, and refused to become a mark for our bullets in the
+open. After lunch we made another grand attempt. We promised the
+coolies double pay if they roused the tigress to flight. The
+elephant was forced again into the nurkool very much against his
+will, and the mahout was promised a reward if we got the tigress.
+The din this time was prodigious, and strange to say they got quite
+close up to the big withered tree without the usual roar and
+charge. This seemed somewhat to stimulate the beaters and the old
+elephant. The coolies redoubled their cries, smote among the reeds
+with their heavy staves, and shouted encouragement to each other.
+Right in the middle of the line, as it seemed to us from the
+outside, there was then a fierce roar and a mighty commotion. Cries
+of fear and consternation arose, and forth poured the coolies
+again, helter skelter, like so many rabbits from a warren when the
+weasel or ferret has entered the burrow. Right before me a huge old
+boar and a couple of sows came plunging forth. I let them get on a
+little distance from the brake, and then with my 'Express' I rolled
+over the tusker and one of his companions, and just then the
+General shouted out to me, 'There's the tiger!'</p>
+<p>I looked in the direction of his levelled gun, and there at the
+edge of the jungle was a handsome half-grown tiger cub, beautifully
+marked, his tail switching angrily from side to side, and his
+twitching retracted lips and bristling moustache drawn back like
+those of a vicious cat, showing his gleaming polished fangs and
+teeth.</p>
+<p>The General had a fine chance, took a steady aim, and shot the
+young savage right through the heart. The handsome young tiger gave
+one convulsive leap into the air and fell on his side stone dead.
+We could not help a cheer, and shouted for Fullerton, who soon came
+running up. We got some coolies together, but they were frightened
+to go near the dead animal, as we could plainly hear the old vixen
+inside snarling and snapping, for all the world like an angry
+terrier. We heard her half-suppressed growl and snarl. She was
+evidently in a fine temper. How we wished for a couple of staunch
+elephants to hunt her out of the cane. It was no use, however, the
+elephant would not go near the jungle again. The coolies were
+thoroughly scared, and had got plenty of pork and venison to eat,
+so did not care for anything else. We collected a lot of tame
+buffaloes, and tried to drive them through the jungle, but the
+coolies had lost heart, and would not exert themselves; so we had
+to content ourselves with the cub, who measured six feet three
+inches (a very handsome skin it was), and very reluctantly had to
+leave the savage mother alone. I never saw a brute charge so
+persistently as she did. She always rushed forward with a
+succession of roars, and was very wary and cunning. She never
+charged home, she did not even touch the elephant or any of the
+coolies, but evidently trusted to frighten her assailants away by a
+bold show and a fierce outcry.</p>
+<p>We went back two days after with five elephants, which with
+great difficulty we had got together<a href=
+"#footnoteE1"><sup>1</sup></a>, and thoroughly beat the patch of
+nurkool, killed a lot of pig and a couple of deer, shot an
+alligator, and destroyed over thirty of its eggs, which we
+discovered on the bank of the creek; and returning in the evening
+shot a nilghau and a black buck, but the tigress had disappeared.
+She was gone, and we grumbled sorely at our bad luck. That was the
+only occasion I was ever after tiger on foot. It was doubtless
+intensely exciting work, and both tigress and cub must have passed
+close to us several times, hidden by the jungle. We were only about
+thirty paces from the edge of the brake, and both animals must have
+seen us, although the dense cover hid them from our sight. I
+certainly prefer shooting from the howdah.</p>
+<p>Although it is beyond the scope of this book to enter into a
+detailed account of the tiger, discussing his structure, habits,
+and characteristics, it may aid the reader if I give a sketchy
+general outline of some of the more prominent points of interest
+connected with the monarch of the jungle, the cruel, cunning,
+ferocious king of the cat tribe, the beautiful but dreaded
+tiger.</p>
+<p>I should prefer to shew his character by incidents with which I
+have myself been connected, but as many statements have been made
+about tigers that are utterly absurd and untrue, and as tiger
+stories generally contain a good deal of exaggeration, and a
+natural scepticism unconsciously haunts the reader when tigers and
+tiger shooting are the topics, it may be as well to state once for
+all, that I shall put down nothing that cannot be abundantly
+substantiated by reference to my own sporting journals, on those of
+the brothers S., friends and fellow-sportsmen of my own. To G.S. I
+am under great obligations for many interesting notes he has given
+me about tiger shooting. Joe, his brother, was long our captain in
+our annual shooting parties. Their father and <i>his</i> brother,
+the latter still alive and a keen shot, were noted sportsmen at a
+time when game was more plentiful, shooting more generally
+practised, and when to be a good shot meant more than average
+excellence. The two brothers between them have shot, I daresay,
+more than four hundred and fifty male and female tigers, and
+serried rows of skulls ranged round the billiard-rooms in their
+respective factories, bear witness to their love of sport and the
+deadly accuracy of their aim. Under their auspices I began my tiger
+shooting, and as they knew every inch of the jungles, had for years
+been observant students of nature, were acquainted with all the
+haunts and habits of every wild creature, I acquired a fund of
+information about the tiger which I knew could be depended on. It
+was the result of actual observation and experience, and in most
+instances it was corroborated by my own experience in my more
+limited sphere of action. Every incident I adduce, every deduction
+I draw, every assertion I make regarding tigers and tiger shooting
+can be plentifully substantiated, and abundantly testified to, by
+my brother sportsmen of Purneah and Bhaugulpore. From their
+valuable information I have got most of the material for this part
+of my book.</p>
+<p>Of the order FERAE, the family <i>felidae</i>, there is perhaps
+no animal in the wide range of all zoology, so eminently fitted for
+destruction as the tiger. His whole structure and appearance,
+combining beauty and extreme agility with prodigious strength, his
+ferocity, and his cunning, mark him out as the very type of a beast
+of prey. He is the largest of the cat tribe, the most formidable
+race of quadrupeds on earth. He is the most bloodthirsty in habit,
+and the most dreaded by man. Whole tracts of fertile fields,
+reclaimed from the wild luxuriance of matted jungle, and waving
+with golden grain, have been deserted by the patient husbandmen,
+and allowed to relapse into tangled thicket and uncultured waste on
+account of the ravages of this formidable robber. Whole villages
+have been depopulated by tigers, the mouldering door-posts, and
+crumbling rafters, met with at intervals in the heart of the
+solitary jungle, alone marking the spot where a thriving hamlet
+once sent up the curling smoke from its humble hearths, until the
+scourge of the wilderness, the dreaded 'man-eater,' took up his
+station near it, and drove the inhabitants in terror from the spot.
+Whole herds of valuable cattle have been literally destroyed by the
+tiger. His habitat is in those jungles, and near those localities,
+which are most highly prized by the herdsmen of India for their
+pastures, and the numbers of cattle that yearly fall before his
+thirst for blood, and his greed for living prey, are almost
+incredible. I have scarcely known a day pass, during the hot
+months, on the banks of the Koosee, that news of a <i>kill</i> has
+not been sent in from some of the villages in my <i>ilaka</i>, and
+as a tiger eats once in every four or five days, and oftener if he
+can get the chance, the number of animals that fall a prey to his
+insatiable appetite, over the extent of Hindustan, must be
+enormous. The annual destruction of tame animals by tigers alone is
+almost incredible, and when we add to this the wild buffalo, the
+deer, the pig, and other untamed animals, to say nothing of smaller
+creatures, we can form some conception of the destruction caused by
+the tiger in the course of a year.</p>
+<p>His whole frame is put together to effect destruction. In
+cutting up a tiger you are impressed with this. His tendons are
+masses of nerve and muscle as hard as steel. The muscular
+development is tremendous. Vast bands and layers of muscle overlap
+each other. Strong ligaments, which you can scarcely cut through,
+and which soon blunt the sharpest knife, unite the solid,
+freely-playing, loosely-jointed bones. The muzzle is broad, and
+short, and obtuse. The claws are completely retractile. The jaws
+are short. There are two false molars, two grinders above, and the
+same number below. The upper carnivorous tooth has three lobes, and
+an obtuse heel; the lower has two lobes, pointed and sharp, and no
+heel. There is one very small tuberculous tooth above as an
+auxiliary, and then the strong back teeth. The muscles of the jaws
+are of tremendous power. I have come across the remains of a
+buffalo killed by a tiger, and found all the large bones, even the
+big strong bones of the pelvis and large joints, cracked and
+crunched like so many walnuts, by the powerful jaws of the fierce
+brute.</p>
+<p>The eye is peculiarly brilliant, and when glaring with fury it
+is truly demoniac. With his bristles rigid, the snarling lips drawn
+back, disclosing the formidable fangs, the body crouching for his
+spring, and the lithe tail puffed up and swollen, and lashing
+restlessly from side to side, each muscle tense and strung, and an
+undulating movement perceptible like the motions of a huge snake, a
+crouching tiger at bay is a sight that strikes a certain chill to
+the heart of the onlooker. When he bounds forward, with a roar that
+reverberates among the mazy labyrinths of the interminable jungle,
+he tests the steadiest nerve and almost daunts the bravest
+heart.</p>
+<p>In their habits they are very unsociable, and are only seen
+together during the amatory season. When that is over the male
+tiger betakes him again to his solitary predatory life, and the
+tigress becomes, if possible, fiercer than he is, and buries
+herself in the gloomiest recesses of the jungle. When the young are
+born, the male tiger has often been known to devour his offspring,
+and at this time they are very savage and quarrelsome. Old G., a
+planter in Purneah, once came across a pair engaged in deadly
+combat. They writhed and struggled on the ground, the male tiger
+striking tremendous blows on the chest and flanks of his consort,
+and tearing her skin in strips, while the tigress buried her fangs
+in his neck, tearing and worrying with all the ferocity of her
+nature. She was battling for her young. G. shot both the enraged
+combatants, and found that one of the cubs had been mangled,
+evidently by his unnatural father. Another, which he picked up in a
+neighbouring bush, was unharmed, but did not survive long. Pairs
+have often been shot in the same jungle, but seldom in close
+proximity, and it accords with all experience that they betray an
+aversion to each other's society, except at the one season. This
+propensity of the father to devour his offspring seems to be due to
+jealousy or to blind unreasoning hate. To save her offspring the
+female always conceals her young, and will often move far from the
+jungle which she usually frequents.</p>
+<p>When the cubs are able to kill for themselves, she seems to lose
+all pleasure in their society, and by the time they are well grown
+she usually has another batch to provide for. I have, however, shot
+a tigress with a full-grown cub&mdash;the hunt described in the
+last chapter is an instance&mdash;and on several occasions, my
+friend George has shot the mother with three or four full-grown
+cubs in attendance. This is however rare, and only happens I
+believe when the mother has remained entirely separate from the
+company of the male.</p>
+<p>The strength of the tiger is amazing. The fore paw is the most
+formidable weapon of attack. With one stroke delivered with full
+effect he can completely disable a large buffalo. On one occasion,
+on the Koosee <i>derahs</i>, that is, the plains bordering the
+river, an enraged tiger, passing through a herd of buffaloes, broke
+the backs of two of the herd, giving each a stroke right and left
+as he went along. One blow is generally sufficient to kill the
+largest bullock or buffalo. Our captain, Joe, had once received
+<i>khubber</i>, that is, news or information, of a kill by a tiger.
+He went straight to the <i>baithan</i>, the herd's head-quarters,
+and on making enquiries, was told that the tiger was a veritable
+monster.</p>
+<p>'Did you see it?' asked Joe.</p>
+<p>'I did not,' responded the <i>goala</i> or cowherd.</p>
+<p>'Then how do you know it was so large?'</p>
+<p>'Because,' said the man, 'it killed the biggest buffalo in my
+herd, and the poor brute only gave one groan.'</p>
+<p>George once tracked a tiger, following up the drag of a bullock
+that he had carried off. At one place the brute came to a ditch,
+which was measured and found to be five feet in width. Through this
+there was no drag, but the traces continued on the further side.
+The inference is, that the powerful thief had cleared the ditch,
+taking the bullock bodily with him at a bound. Others have been
+known to jump clear out of a cattle pen, over a fence some six feet
+high, taking on one occasion a large-sized calf, and another time a
+sheep.</p>
+<p>Another wounded tiger, with two bullets in his flanks, the wound
+being near the root of the tail, cleared a <i>nullah</i>, or dry
+watercourse, at one bound. The nullah was stepped by George, and
+found to be twenty-three paces wide. It is fortunate, with such
+tremendous powers for attack, that the tiger will try as a rule to
+slink out of the way if he can. He almost always avoids an
+encounter with man. His first instinct is flight. Only the exciting
+incidents of the chase are as a rule put upon record. A narrative
+of tiger shooting therefore is apt in this respect to be a little
+misleading. The victims who meet their death tamely and quietly
+(and they form the majority in every hunt),&mdash;those that are
+shot as they are tamely trying to escape&mdash;are simply
+enumerated, but the charging tiger, the old vixen that breaks the
+line, and scatters the beaters to right and left, that rouses the
+blood of the sportsmen to a fierce excitement, these are made the
+most of. Every incident is detailed and dwelt upon, and thus the
+idea has gained ground, that ALL tigers are courageous, and wait
+not for attack, but in most instances take the initiative. It is
+not the case. Most of the tigers I have seen killed would have
+escaped if they could. It is only when brought to bay, or very hard
+pressed, or in defence of its young, that a tiger or tigress
+displays its native ferocity. At such a moment indeed, nothing
+gives a better idea of savage determined fury and fiendish rage.
+With ears thrown back, brows contracted, mouth open, and glaring
+yellow eyes scintillating with fury, the cruel claws plucking at
+the earth, the ridgy hairs on the back stiff and erect as bristles,
+and the lithe lissome body quivering in every muscle and fibre with
+wrath and hate, the beast comes down to the charge with a defiant
+roar, which makes the pulse bound and the breath come short and
+quick. It requires all a man's nerve and coolness, to enable him to
+make steady shooting.</p>
+<p>Roused to fury by a wound, I have seen tigers wheel round with
+amazing swiftness, and dash headlong, roaring dreadfully as they
+charged, full upon the nearest elephant, scattering the line and
+lacerating the poor creature on whose flanks or head they may have
+fastened, their whole aspect betokening pitiless ferocity and
+fiendish rage.</p>
+<p>Even in death they do not forget their savage instincts. I knew
+of one case in which a seemingly dead tiger inflicted a fearful
+wound upon an elephant that had trodden on what appeared to be his
+inanimate carcase. Another elephant, that attacked and all but
+trampled a tiger to death, was severely bitten under one of the
+toe-nails. The wound mortified, and the unfortunate beast died in
+about a week after its infliction. Another monster, severely
+wounded, fell into a pool of water, and seized hold with its jaws
+of a hard knot of wood that was floating about. In its death agony,
+it made its powerful teeth meet in the hard wood, and not until it
+was being cut up, and we had divided the muscles of the jaws, could
+we extricate the wood from that formidable clench. In rage and
+fury, and mad with pain, the wounded tiger will often turn round
+and savagely bite the wound that causes its agony, and they very
+often bite their paws and shoulders, and tear the grass and earth
+around them.</p>
+<p>A tiger wounded in the spine, however, is the most exciting
+spectacle. Paralysed in the limbs, he wheels round, roaring and
+biting at everything within his reach. In 1874 I shot one in the
+spine, and watched his furious movements for some time before I put
+him out of his misery. I threw him a pad from one of the elephants,
+and the way he tore and gnawed it gave me some faint idea of his
+fury and ferocity. He looked the very personification of impotent
+viciousness; the incarnation of devilish rage.</p>
+<p>Urged by hunger the tiger fearlessly attacks his prey. The most
+courageous are young tigers about seven or eight feet long. They
+invariably give better sport than larger and older animals, being
+more ready to charge, and altogether bolder and more defiant. Up to
+the age of two years they have probably been with the mother, have
+never encountered a reverse or defeat, and having become bold by
+impunity, hesitate not to fly at any assailant whatever.</p>
+<p>Like all the cat tribe, they are very cruel in disposition,
+often most wantonly so. Having disabled his prey with the first
+onset, the tiger plays with it as a cat does with a mouse, and,
+unless very sharp set by hunger, he always indulges this love of
+torture. His attacks are by no means due only to the cravings of
+his appetite. He often slays the victims of a herd, in the
+wantonness of sport, merely to indulge his murderous propensities.
+Even when he has had a good meal he will often go on adding fresh
+victims, seemingly to gratify his sense of power, and his love of
+slaughter. In teaching her cubs to kill for themselves, the mother
+often displays great cruelty, frequently killing at a time five or
+six cows from one herd. The young savages are apt pupils, and 'try
+their prentice hand' on calves and weakly members of the herd,
+killing from the mere love of murder.</p>
+<p>Their cunning is as remarkable as their cruelty; what they lack
+in speed they make up in consummate subtlety. They take advantage
+of the direction of the wind, and of every irregularity of the
+ground. It is amazing what slight cover will suffice to conceal
+their lurking forms from the observation of the herd. During the
+day they generally retreat to some cool and shady spot, deep in the
+recesses of the jungle. Where the soft earth has been worn away
+with ragged hollows and deep shady water-courses, where the tallest
+and most impenetrable jungle conceals the winding and impervious
+paths, hidden in the gloom and obscurity of the densely-matted
+grass, the lordly tiger crouches, and blinks away the day. With the
+approach of night, however, his mood undergoes a change. He hears
+the tinkle of the bells, borne by some of the members of a
+retreating herd, that may have been feeding in close proximity to
+his haunt all day long, and from which he has determined to select
+a victim for his evening meal. He rouses himself and yawns,
+stretches himself like the great cruel cat he is, and then crawls
+and creeps silently along, by swampy watercourses, and through
+devious labyrinths known to himself alone. He hangs on the
+outskirts of the herd, prowling along and watching every motion of
+the returning cattle. He makes his selection, and with infinite
+cunning and patience contrives to separate it from the rest. He
+waits for a favourable moment, when, with a roar that sends the
+alarmed companions of the unfortunate victim scampering together to
+the front, he springs on his unhappy prey, deprives it of all power
+of resistance with one tremendous stroke, and bears it away to
+feast at his leisure on the warm and quivering carcase.</p>
+<p>He generally kills as the shades of evening are falling, and
+seldom ventures on a foraging expedition by day. After nightfall it
+is dangerous to be abroad in the jungles. It is then that dramas
+are acted of thrilling interest, and unimaginable sensation scenes
+take place. Some of the old shekarries and field-watchers
+frequently dig shallow pits, in which they take their stand. Their
+eye is on the level of the ground, and any object standing out in
+relief against the sky line can be readily detected. If they could
+relate their experiences, what absorbing narratives they could
+write. They see the tiger spring upon his terror-stricken prey, the
+mother and her hungry cubs prowling about for a victim, or two
+fierce tigers battling for the favours of some sleek, striped,
+remorseless, bloodthirsty forest-fiend. In pursuit of their quarry,
+they steal noiselessly along, and love to make their spring
+unawares. They generally select some weaker member of a herd, and
+are chary of attacking a strong big-boned, horned animal. They
+sometimes 'catch a Tartar,' and instances are known of a buffalo
+not only withstanding the attack of a tiger successfully, but
+actually gaining the victory over his more active assailant, whose
+life has paid the penalty of his rashness.</p>
+<p>Old G. told me, he had come across the bodies of a wild boar and
+an old tiger, lying dead together near Burgamma. The boar was
+fearfully mauled, but the clean-cut gaping gashes in the striped
+hide of the tiger, told how fearfully and gallantly he had battled
+for his life.</p>
+<p>In emerging from the jungle at night, they generally select the
+same path or spot, and approach the edge of the cover with great
+caution. They will follow the same track for days together. Hence
+in some places the tracks of the tigers are so numerous as to lead
+the tyro to imagine that dozens must have passed, when in truth the
+tracks all belong to one and the same brute. So acute is their
+perception, so narrowly do they scrutinize every minute object in
+their path, so suspicious is their nature, that anything new in
+their path, such as a pitfall, a screen of cut grass, a
+<i>mychan</i>, that is, a stage from which you might be intending
+to get a shot, nay, even the print of a footstep&mdash;a man's, a
+horse's, an elephant's&mdash;is often quite enough to turn them
+from a projected expedition, or at any rate to lead them to seek
+some new outlet from the jungle. In any case it increases their
+wariness, and under such circumstances it becomes almost impossible
+to get a shot at them from a pit or shooting-stage. Their vision,
+their sense of smell, of hearing, all their perceptions are so
+acute, that I think lying in wait for them is chiefly productive of
+weariness and vexation of spirit. It is certainly dangerous, and
+the chances of a successful shot are so problematical, while the
+<i>disagreeables</i>, and discomforts, and dangers are so real and
+tangible, that I am inclined to think this mode of attack 'hardly
+worth the candle.'</p>
+<p>With all his ferocity and cruelty, however, I am of opinion that
+the tiger is more cowardly than courageous. He will always try to
+escape a danger, and fly from attack, rather than attack in return
+or wait to meet it, and wherever he can, in pursuit of his prey, he
+will trust rather to his cunning than to his strength, and he
+always prefers an ambuscade to an open onslaught.</p>
+<hr align="left" noshade size="1" width="20%">
+<p><a name="footnoteE1"><sup>1</sup></a> This was at the time the
+Prince of Wales was shooting in Nepaul, not very far from where I
+was then stationed. Most of the elephants in the district had been
+sent up to his Royal Highness's camp, or were on their way to take
+part in the ceremonies of the grand <i>Durbar</i> in Delhi.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXIX."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIX.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>The tiger's mode of attack.&mdash;The food
+he prefers.&mdash;Varieties of prey. &mdash;Examples.&mdash;What he
+eats first.&mdash;How to tell the kill of a tiger. &mdash;Appetite
+fierce.&mdash;Tiger choked by a bone.&mdash;Two varieties of
+tiger.&mdash;The royal Bengal.&mdash;Description.&mdash;The hill
+tiger.&mdash;His description.&mdash;The two compared.&mdash;Length
+of the tiger.&mdash;How to measure
+tigers.&mdash;Measurements.&mdash;Comparison between male and
+female. &mdash;Number of young at a birth.&mdash;The young
+cubs.&mdash;Mother teaching cubs to kill.&mdash;Education and
+progress of the young tiger.&mdash;Wariness and cunning of the
+tiger.&mdash;Hunting incidents shewing their powers of
+concealment.&mdash;Tigers taking to
+water.&mdash;Examples.&mdash;Swimming powers. &mdash;Caught by
+floods.&mdash;Story of the Soonderbund tigers.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The tiger's mode of attack is very characteristic of his whole
+nature. To see him stealthily crouching, or crawling silently and
+sneakingly after a herd of cattle, dodging behind every clump of
+bushes or tuft of grass, running swiftly along the high bank of a
+watercourse, and sneaking under the shadowing border of a belt of
+jungle, is to understand his cunning and craftiness. His attitude,
+when he is crouching for the final bound, is the embodiment of
+suppleness and strength. All his actions are graceful, and half
+display and half conceal beneath their symmetry and elegance the
+tremendous power and deadly ferocity that lurks beneath. For a
+short distance he is possessed of great speed, and with a few short
+agile bounds he generally manages to overtake his prey. If baffled
+in his first attack, he retires growling to lie in wait for a less
+fortunate victim. His onset being so fierce and sudden, the animal
+he selects for his prey is generally taken at a great disadvantage,
+and is seldom in a position to make any strenuous or availing
+resistance.</p>
+<p>Delivering the numbing blow with his mighty fore paw, he fastens
+on the throat of the animal he has felled, and invariably tries to
+tear open the jugular vein. This is his practice in nearly every
+case, and it shews a wonderful instinct for selecting the most
+deadly spot in the whole body of his luckless prey. When he has got
+hold of his victim by the throat, he lies down, holding on to the
+bleeding carcase, snarling and growling, and fastening and
+withdrawing his claws, much as a cat does with a rat or mouse. Some
+writers say he then proceeds to drink the blood, but this is just
+one of those broad general assertions which require proof. In some
+cases he may quench his thirst and gratify his appetite for blood
+by drinking it from the gushing veins of his quivering victim, but
+in many cases I know from observation, that the blood is not drunk.
+If the tiger is very hungry he then begins his feast, tearing huge
+fragments of flesh from the dead body, and not unusually swallowing
+them whole. If he is not particularly hungry, he drags the carcase
+away, and hides it in some well-known spot. This is to preserve it
+from the hungry talons and teeth of vultures and jackals. He
+commonly remains on guard near his <i>cache</i> until he has
+acquired an appetite. If he cannot conveniently carry away his
+quarry, because of its bulk, or the nature of the ground, or from
+being disturbed, he returns to the place at night and satisfies his
+appetite.</p>
+<p>Tigers can sneak crouchingly along as fast as they can trot, and
+it is wonderful how silently they can steal on their prey. They
+seem to have some stray provident fits, and on occasions make
+provision for future wants. There are instances on record of a
+tiger dragging a <i>kill</i> after him for miles, over water, and
+through slush and weeds, and feasting on the carcase days after he
+has killed it. It is a fact, now established beyond a doubt, that
+he will eat carrion and putrid flesh, but only from necessity and
+not from choice.</p>
+<p>On one occasion my friends put up a tigress during the rains,
+when there are few cattle in the <i>derahs</i> or plains near the
+river. She had killed a pig, and was eagerly devouring the carcase
+when she was disturbed. Snarling and growling, she made off with a
+leg of pork in her mouth, when a bullet ended her career. They seem
+to prefer pork and venison to almost any other kind of food, and no
+doubt pig and deer are their natural and usual prey. The influx,
+however, of vast herds of cattle, and the consequent presence of
+man, drive away the wild animals, and at all events make them more
+wary and more difficult to kill. Finding domestic cattle
+unsuspicious, and not very formidable foes, the tiger contents
+himself at a pinch with beef, and judging from his ravages he comes
+to like it. Getting bolder by impunity, he ventures in some straits
+to attack man. He finds him a very easy prey; he finds the flesh
+too, perhaps, not unlike his favourite pig. Henceforth he becomes a
+'man-eater,' the most dreaded scourge and pestilent plague of the
+district. He sometimes finds an old boar a tough customer, and
+never ventures to attack a buffalo unless it be grazing alone, and
+away from the rest of the herd. When buffaloes are attacked, they
+make common cause against their crafty and powerful foe, and
+uniting together in a crescent-shaped line, their horns all
+directed in a living <i>cheval-de-frise</i> against the tiger, they
+rush tumultuously at him, and fairly hunt him from the jungle. The
+pig, having a short thick neck, and being tremendously muscular, is
+hard to kill; but the poor inoffensive cow, with her long-neck, is
+generally killed at the first blow, or so disabled that it requires
+little further effort to complete the work of slaughter.</p>
+<p>Two friends of mine once shot an enormous old tiger on a small
+island in the middle of the river, during the height of the annual
+rains. The brute had lost nearly all its hair from mange, and was
+an emaciated sorry-looking object. From the remains on the
+island&mdash;the skin, scales, and bones&mdash;they found that he
+must have slain and eaten several alligators during his enforced
+imprisonment on the island. They will eat alligators when pressed
+by hunger, and they have been known to subsist on turtles,
+tortoises, iguanas, and even jackals. Only the other day in Assam,
+a son of Dr. B. was severely mauled by a tiger which sprang into
+the verandah after a dog. There were three gentlemen in the
+verandah, and, as you may imagine, they were taken not a little by
+surprise. They succeeded in bagging the tiger, but not until poor
+B. was very severely hurt.</p>
+<p>After tearing the throat open, they walk round the prostrate
+carcase of their prey, growling and spitting like 'tabby' cats.
+They begin their operations in earnest, invariably on the buttock.
+A leopard generally eats the inner portion of the thigh first. A
+wolf tears open the belly, and eats the intestines first. A
+vulture, hawk, or kite, begins on the eyes; but a tiger invariably
+begins on the buttocks, whether of buffalo, cow, deer, or pig. He
+then eats the fatty covering round the intestines, follows that up
+with the liver and udder, and works his way round systematically to
+the fore-quarters, leaving the head to the last. It is frequently
+the only part of an animal that they do not eat.</p>
+<p>A 'man-eater' eats the buttocks, shoulders, and breasts first.
+So many carcases are found in the jungle of animals that have died
+from disease or old age, or succumbed to hurts and accidents, that
+the whitened skeletons meet the eye in hundreds. But one can always
+tell the kill of a tiger, and distinguish between it and the other
+bleached heaps. The large bones of a tiger's kill are always
+broken. The broad massive rib bones are crunched in two as easily
+as a dog would snap the drumstick of a fowl. Vultures and jackals,
+the scavengers of the jungle, are incapable of doing this; and when
+you see the fractured large bones, you can always tell that the
+whiskered monarch has been on the war-path. George S. writes
+me:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'I have known a tiger devour a whole bullock to his own cheek in
+one day. Early in the morning a man came to inform me he had seen a
+tiger pull down a bullock. I went after the fellow late in the
+afternoon, and found him in a bush not more than twenty feet
+square, the only jungle he had to hide in for some distance round,
+and in this he had polished off the bullock, nothing remaining save
+the head. The jungle being so very small, and he having lain the
+whole day in it, nothing in the way of vultures or jackals could
+have assisted him in finishing off the bullock.'</p>
+<p>When hungry they appear to bolt large masses of flesh without
+masticating it. The same correspondent writes:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'We cut out regular "fids" once from a tiger's stomach, also
+large pieces of bone. Joe heard a tremendous roaring one night,
+which continued till near morning, not far from Nipunneah. He went
+out at dawn to look for the tiger, which he found was dead. The
+brute had tried to swallow the knee-joint of a bullock, and it had
+stuck in his gullet. This made him roar from pain, and eventually
+choked him.'</p>
+<p>As there are two distinct varieties of wild pig in India, so
+there seems to be little doubt that there are two distinct kinds of
+tigers. As these have frequently crossed we find many hybrids. I
+cannot do better than again quote from my obliging and observant
+friend George. The two kinds he designates as 'The Royal Bengal,'
+and 'The Hill Tiger,' and goes on to say:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'As a rule the stripes of a Royal Bengal are single and dark.
+The skull is widely different from that of his brother the Hill
+tiger, being low in the crown, wider in the jaws, rather flat in
+comparison, and the brain-pan longer with a sloping curve at the
+end, the crest of the brain-pan being a concave curve.</p>
+<p>'The Hill tiger is much more massively built; squat and thick
+set, heavier in weight and larger in bulk, with shorter tail, and
+very large and powerful neck, head, and shoulders. The stripes
+generally are double, and of a more brownish tinge, with fawn
+colour between the double stripes. The skull is high in the crown,
+and not quite so wide. The brain-pan is shorter, and the crest
+slightly convex or nearly straight, and the curve at the end of the
+skull rather abrupt.</p>
+<p>'They never grow so long as the "Bengal," yet look twice as
+big.</p>
+<p>'The crosses are very numerous, and vary according to pedigree,
+in stripes, skulls, form, weight, bulk, and tail. This I find most
+remarkable when I look at my collection of over 160 skulls.</p>
+<p>'The difference is better marked in tigers than in tigresses.
+The Bengal variety are not as a rule as ferocious as the Hill
+tiger. Being more supple and cunning, they can easier evade their
+pursuers by flight and manoeuvre than, their less agile brothers.
+The former, owing to deficiency of strength, oftener meet with
+discomfiture, and consequently are more wary and cunning; while the
+latter, prone to carry everything before them, trust more to their
+strength and courage, anticipating victory as certain.</p>
+<p>'In some the stripes are doubled throughout, in others only
+partially so, while in some they are single throughout, and some
+have manes to a slight extent.'</p>
+<p>I have no doubt this classification is correct. The tigers I
+have seen in Nepaul near the hills, were sometimes almost a dull
+red, and at a distance looked like a huge dun cow, while those I
+have seen in the plains during our annual hunts, were of a bright
+tawny yellow, longer, more lanky, and not shewing half such a bold
+front as their bulkier and bolder brethren of the hills.</p>
+<p>The length of the tiger has often given rise to fierce
+discussions among sportsmen. The fertile imagination of the slayer
+of a solitary 'stripes,' has frequently invested the brute he has
+himself shot, or seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been
+shot by a friend, or the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous
+length, inches swelling to feet, and dimensions growing at each
+repetition of the yarn, till, as in the case of boars, the
+twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch tusker, and the eight foot
+tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.</p>
+<p>Purists again, sticklers for stern truth, haters of bounce or
+exaggeration, have perhaps erred as much on the other side; and in
+their eagerness to give the exact measurement, and avoid the very
+appearance of exaggeration, they actually stretch their tape line
+and refuse to measure the curves of the body, taking it in straight
+lines. This I think is manifestly unfair.</p>
+<p>Our mode of measurement in Purneah was to take the tiger as he
+lay before he was put on the elephant, and measure from the tip of
+the nose, over the crest of the skull, along the undulations of the
+body, to the tip of the tail. That is, we followed the curvature of
+the spine along the dividing ridge of the back, and always were
+careful and fair in our attempts. I am of opinion that a tiger over
+ten feet long is an exceptionally long one, but when I read of
+sportsmen denying altogether that even that length can be attained,
+I can but pity the dogmatic scepticism that refuses credence to
+well ascertained and authenticated facts. I believe also that
+tigers are not got nearly so large as in former days. I believe
+that much longer and heavier tigers&mdash;animals larger in every
+way&mdash;were shot some twenty years ago than those we can get
+now, but I account for this by the fact that there is less land
+left waste and uncultivated. There are more roads, ferries, and
+bridges, more improved communications, and in consequence more
+travelling. Population and cultivation have increased; firearms are
+more numerous; sport is more generally followed; shooting is much
+more frequent and deadly; and, in a word, tigers have not the same
+chances as they had some twenty years ago of attaining a ripe old
+age, and reaching the extremest limit of their growth. The largest
+tigers being also the most suspicious and wary, are only found in
+the remotest recesses of the impenetrable jungles of Nepaul and the
+Terai, or in those parts of the Indian wilds where the crack of the
+European rifle is seldom or never heard.</p>
+<p>It has been so loudly asserted, and so boldly maintained that no
+tiger was ever shot reaching, when fairly measured (that is,
+measured with the skin on, as he lay), ten feet, that I will let
+Mr. George again speak for himself. Referring to the royal Bengal,
+he says:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'These grow to great lengths. They have been shot as long as
+twelve feet seven inches (my father shot one that length) or
+longer; twelve feet seven inches, twelve feet six inches, twelve
+feet three inches, twelve feet one inch, and twelve feet, have been
+shot and recorded in the old sporting magazines by gentlemen of
+undoubted veracity in Purneah.</p>
+<p>'I have seen the skin of one twelve feet one inch, compared with
+which the skin of one I have by me <i>that measured as he lay</i>
+(the italics are mine) eleven feet one inch, looks like the skin of
+a cub. The old skin looks more like that of a huge antediluvian
+species in comparison with the other.</p>
+<p>'The twelve footer was so heavy that my uncle (C.A.S.) tells me
+no number of mahouts could lift it. Several men, if they could have
+approached at one and the same time, might have been able to do so,
+but a sufficient number of men could not lay hold simultaneously to
+move the body from the ground.</p>
+<p>'Eventually a number of bamboos had to be cut, and placed in an
+incline from the ground to the elephant's saddle while the elephant
+knelt down, and up this incline the tiger had to be regularly
+hauled and shoved, and so fastened on the elephant.</p>
+<p>'He (the tiger) mauled four elephants, one of whom died the same
+day, and one other had a narrow <i>batch</i>, i.e. escape, of its
+life.</p>
+<p>In another communication to me, my friend goes over the same
+ground, but as the matter is one of interest to sportsmen and
+naturalists, I will give the extract entire. It proceeds as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Tigers grow to great lengths, some assert to even fourteen
+feet. I do not say they do not, but such cases are very rare, and
+require authentication. The longest I have seen, measured as he
+lay, eleven feet one inch (see "Oriental Sporting Magazine," for
+July, 1871, p. 308). He was seven feet nine inches from tip of nose
+to root of tail; root of tail one foot three inches in
+circumference; round chest four feet six inches; length of head one
+foot two inches; fore arm two feet two inches; round the head two
+feet ten inches; length of tail three feet four inches.</p>
+<p>'Besides this, I have shot another eleven feet, and one ten feet
+eleven inches.</p>
+<p>'The largest tigress I have shot was at Sahareah, which measured
+ten feet two inches. I shot another ten feet exactly.' (See O.S.M.,
+Aug., 1874, p. 358.)</p>
+<p>'I have got the head of a tiger, shot by Joe, which measured
+eleven feet five inches. It was shot at Baraila.</p>
+<p>'The male is much bigger built in every way&mdash;length,
+weight, size, &amp;c., than the female. The males are more savage,
+the females more cunning and agile. The arms, body, paws, head,
+skull, claws, teeth, &amp;c., of the female, are smaller. The tail
+of tigress longer; hind legs more lanky; the prints look smaller
+and more contracted, and the toes nearer together. It is said that
+though a large tiger may venture to attack a buffalo, the tigress
+refrains from doing so, but I have found this otherwise in my
+experience.</p>
+<p>'I have kept a regular log of all tigers shot by me. The average
+length of fifty-two tigers recorded in my journal is nine feet six
+and a half inches (cubs excluded), and of sixty-eight tigresses
+(cubs excluded), eight feet four inches.</p>
+<p>'The average of tigers and tigresses is eight feet ten and a
+quarter inches. This is excluding cubs I have taken alive.'</p>
+<p>As to measurements, he goes on to make a few remarks, and as I
+cannot improve on them I reproduce the original passage:&mdash;</p>
+<p>'Several methods have been recommended for measuring tigers. I
+measure them on the ground, or when brought to camp before
+skinning, and run the tape tight along the line, beginning at the
+tip of the nose, along the middle of the skull, between the ears
+and neck, then along the spine to the end of the tail, taking any
+curves of the body.</p>
+<p>'No doubt measurements of skull, body, tail, legs, &amp;c.,
+ought all to be taken, to give an adequate idea of the tiger, and
+for comparing them with one another, but this is not always
+feasible.'</p>
+<p>Most of the leading sportsmen in India now-a-days are very
+particular in taking the dimensions of every limb of the dead
+tiger. They take his girth, length, and different proportions. Many
+even weigh the tiger when it gets into camp, and no doubt this test
+is one of the best that can be given for a comparison of the sizes
+of the different animals slain.</p>
+<p>Another much disputed point in the natural history of the
+animal, a point on which there has been much acrimonious
+discussion, is the number of young that are given at a birth. Some
+writers have asserted, and stoutly maintained, that two cubs, or at
+the most three, is the extreme number of young brought forth at one
+time.</p>
+<p>This may be the ordinary number, but the two gentlemen I have
+already alluded to have assured me, that on frequent occasions they
+have picked up four actually born, and have cut out five several
+times, and on one occasion six, from the womb of a tigress.</p>
+<p>I have myself picked up four male cubs, all in one spot, with
+their eyes just beginning to open, and none of their teeth through
+the gums. One had been trampled to death by buffaloes, the other
+three were alive and scatheless, huddled into a bush, like three
+immense kittens. I kept the three for a considerable time, and
+eventually took them to Calcutta and sold them for a very
+satisfactory price.</p>
+<p>It seems clear, however, that the tigress frequently has four
+and even five cubs. It is rare, indeed to find her accompanied by
+more than two well grown cubs, very seldom three; and the inference
+is, that one or two of the young tigers succumb in very early
+life.</p>
+<p>The young ones do not appear to grow very quickly; they are
+about a foot long when they are born; they are born blind, with
+very minute hair, almost none in fact, but with the stripes already
+perfectly marked on the soft supple skin; they open their eyes when
+they are eight or ten days old, at which time they measure about a
+foot and a half. At the age of nine months they have attained to
+five feet in length, and are waxing mischievous. Tiger cubs a year
+old average about five feet eight inches, tigresses some three
+inches or so less. In two years they grow respectively to&mdash;the
+male seven feet six inches, and the female seven feet. At about
+this time they leave the mother, if they have not already done so,
+and commence depredations on their own account. In fact, their
+education has been well attended to. The mother teaches them to
+kill when they are about a year old. A young cub that measured only
+six feet, and whose mother had been shot in one of the annual
+beats, was killed while attacking a full grown cow in the
+government pound at Dumdaha police station. When they reach the
+length of six feet six inches they can kill pretty easily, and
+numbers have been shot by George and other Purneah sportsmen close
+to their 'kills.'</p>
+<p>They are most daring and courageous when they have just left
+their mother's care, and are cast forth to fight the battle of life
+for themselves. While with the old tigress their lines have been
+cast in not unpleasant places, they have seldom known hunger, and
+have experienced no reverses. Accustomed to see every animal
+succumb to her well planned and audacious attacks, they fancy that
+nothing will withstand their onslaught. They have been known to
+attack a line of elephants, and to charge most determinedly, even
+in this adolescent stage.</p>
+<p>Bye-and-bye, however, as they receive a few rude shocks from
+buffaloes, or are worsted in a hand-to-hand encounter with some
+tough old bull, or savage old grey boar, more especially if they
+get an ugly rip or two from the sharp tusks of an infuriated
+fighting tusker, they begin to be less aggressive, they learn that
+discretion may be the better part of valour, and their cunning
+instincts are roused. In fact, their education is progressing, and
+in time they instinctively discover every wile and dodge and
+cunning stratagem, and display all the wondrous subtlety of their
+race in procuring their prey.</p>
+<p>Old tigers are invariably more wary, cautious, and suspicious
+than young ones, and till they are fairly put to it by hunger,
+hurt, or compulsion, they endeavour to keep their stripes
+concealed. When brought to bay, however, there is little to
+reproach them with on the score of cowardice, and it will be matter
+of rejoicing if you or your elephants do not come off second best
+in the encounter. Even in the last desperate case, a cunning old
+tiger will often make a feint, or sham rush, or pretended charge,
+when his whole object is flight. If he succeed in demoralising the
+line of elephants, roaring and dashing furiously about, he will
+then try in the confusion to double through, unless he is too badly
+wounded to be able to travel fast, in which case he will fight to
+the end.</p>
+<p>Old fellows are well acquainted with every maze and thicket in
+the jungles, and they no sooner hear the elephants enter the 'bush'
+or 'cover' than they make off for some distant shelter. If there is
+no apparent chance of this being successful, they try to steal out
+laterally and outflank the line, or if that also is impossible,
+they hide in some secret recess like a fox, or crouch low in some
+clumpy bush, and trust to you or your elephant passing by without
+noticing their presence.</p>
+<p>It is marvellous in what sparse cover they will manage to lie
+up. So admirably do their stripes mingle with the withered and
+charred grass-stems and dried up stalks, that it is very difficult
+to detect the dreaded robber when he is lying flat, extended, close
+to the ground, so still and motionless that you cannot distinguish
+a tremor or even a vibration of the grass in which he is
+crouching.</p>
+<p>On one occasion George followed an old tiger through some
+stubble about three feet high. It had been well trampled down too
+by tame buffaloes. The tiger had been tracked into the field, and
+was known to be in it. George was within ten yards of the cunning
+brute, and although mounted on a tall elephant, and eagerly
+scanning the thin cover with his sharpest glance, he could not
+discern the concealed monster. His elephant was within four paces
+of it, when it sprang up at the charge, giving a mighty roar, which
+however also served as its death yell, as a bullet from George's
+trusty gun crashed through its ribs and heart.</p>
+<p>Tigers can lay themselves so flat on the ground, and lie so
+perfectly motionless, that it is often a very easy thing to
+overlook them. On another occasion, when the Purneah Hunt were out,
+a tigress that had been shot got under some cover that was trampled
+down by a line of about twenty elephants. The sportsmen knew that
+she had been severely wounded, as they could tell by the gouts of
+blood, but there was no sign of the body. She had disappeared.
+After a long search, beating the same ground over and over again,
+an elephant trod on the dead body lying under the trampled canes,
+and the mahout got down and discovered her lying quite dead. She
+was a large animal and full grown.</p>
+<p>On another occasion George was after a fine male tiger. He was
+following up fast, but coming to a broad nullah, full of water, he
+suddenly lost sight of his game. He looked up and down the bank,
+and on the opposite bank, but could see no traces of the tiger.
+Looking down, he saw in the water what at first he took to be a
+large bull-frog. There was not a ripple on the placid stagnant
+surface of the pool. He marvelled much, and just then his mahout
+pointed to the supposed bull-frog, and in an excited whisper
+implored George to fire. A keener look convinced George that it
+really was the tiger. It was totally immersed all but the face, and
+lying so still that not the faintest motion or ripple was
+perceptible. He fired and inflicted a terrible wound. The tiger
+bounded madly forward, and George gave it its quietus through the
+spine as it tried to spring up the opposite bank.</p>
+<p>A nearly similar case occurred to old Mr. C., one of the veteran
+sportsmen of Purneah. A tiger had bolted towards a small tank or
+pond, and though the line followed up in hot pursuit, the brute
+disappeared. Old C., keener than the others, was loth to give up
+the pursuit, and presently discerned a yellowish reflection in the
+clear water. Peering more intently, he could discover the yellowish
+tawny outline of the cunning animal, totally immersed in the water,
+save its eyes, ears, and nose. He shot the tiger dead, and it sank
+to the bottom like a stone. So perfectly had it concealed itself,
+that the other sportsmen could not for the life of them imagine
+what old C. had fired at, till his mahout got down and began to
+haul the dead animal out of the water.</p>
+<p>Tigers are not at all afraid of water, and are fast and powerful
+swimmers. They swim much after the fashion of a horse, only the
+head out of the water, and they make scarcely any ripple.</p>
+<p>'In another case,' writes George, 'though not five yards from
+the elephant, and right under me, a tiger was swimming with so
+slight a ripple that I mistook it for a rat, until I saw the
+stripes emerge, when I perforated his jacket with a bullet.'</p>
+<p>Only their head remaining out of water when they are swimming,
+they are very hard to hit, as shooting at an object on water is
+very deceptive work as to judging distance, and a tiger's head is
+but a small object to aim at when some little way off.</p>
+<p>Old C. had another adventure with a cunning rogue, which all but
+ended disastrously. He was in hot pursuit of the tiger, and,
+finding no safety on land, it took to swimming in a broad
+unfordable piece of water, a sort of deep lagoon. Old C. procured a
+boat that was handy, and got a coolie to paddle him out after the
+tiger. He fired several shots at the exposed head of the brute, but
+missed. He thought he would wait till he got nearer and make a sure
+shot, as he had only one bullet left in the boat. Suddenly the
+tiger turned round, and made straight for the boat. Here was a
+quandary. Even if lie killed the tiger with his single bullet it
+might upset the boat; the lagoon was full of alligators, to say
+nothing of weeds, and there was no time to get his heavy boots off.
+He felt his life might depend on the accuracy of his aim. He fired,
+and killed the tiger stone dead within four or five yards of the
+boat.</p>
+<p>On one occasion, when out with our worthy district magistrate,
+Mr. S., I came on the tracks of what to all appearance, was a very
+large tiger. They led over the sand close to the water's edge, and
+were very distinct. I could see no returning marks, so I judged
+that the tiger must have taken to the water. The stream was rapid
+and deep, and midway to the further bank was a big, oblong-shaped,
+sandy islet, some five or six hundred yards long, and having a few
+scrubby bushes growing sparsely on it. We put our elephants into
+the rapid current, and got across. The river here was nearly a
+quarter of a mile wide on each side of the islet. As we emerged
+from the stream on to the island we found fresh tracks of the
+tiger. They led us completely round the circumference of the islet.
+The tiger had evidently been in quest of food. The prints were
+fresh and very well defined. Finding that all was barren on the
+sandy shore, he entered the current again, and following up we
+found his imprint once more on the further bank, several hundred
+yards down the stream.</p>
+<p>One tiger was killed stone dead by a single bullet during one of
+our annual hunts, and falling back into the water, it sank to the
+bottom like lead. Being unable to find the animal, we beat all
+round the place, till I suggested it might have been hit and fallen
+into the river. One of the men was ordered to dive down, and
+ascertain if the tiger was at the bottom. The river water is
+generally muddy, so that the bottom cannot be seen. Divesting
+himself of puggree, and girding up his loins, the diver sank gently
+to the bottom, but presently reappeared in a palpable funk, puffing
+and blowing, and declaring that the tiger was certainly at the
+bottom. The foolish fellow thought it might be still alive. We soon
+disabused his mind of that idea, and had the dead tiger hauled up
+to dry land.</p>
+<p>Surprised by floods, a tiger has been known to remain for days
+on an ant-hill, and even to take refuge on the branch of some large
+tree, but he takes to water readily, and can swim for over a mile,
+and he has been known to remain for days in from two to three feet
+depth of water.</p>
+<p>A time-honoured tiger story with old hands, used to tell how the
+Soonderbund tigers got carried out to sea. If the listener was a
+new arrival, or a <i>gobe mouche</i>, they would explain that the
+tigers in the Soonderbunds often get carried out to sea by the
+retiring tide. It would sweep them off as they were swimming from
+island to island in the vast delta of Father Ganges. Only the young
+ones, however, suffered this lamentable fate. The older and more
+wary fellows, taught perhaps by sad experience, used always to dip
+their tails in, before starting on a swim, so as to ascertain which
+way the tide was flowing. If it was the flow of the tide they would
+boldly venture in, but if it was ebb tide, and there was the
+slightest chance of their being carried out to sea, they would
+patiently lie down, meditate on the fleeting vanity of life, and
+like the hero of the song&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>'Wait for the turn of the tide.'</blockquote>
+<p>Without venturing an opinion on this story, I may confidently
+assert, that the tiger, unlike his humble prototype the domestic
+cat, is not really afraid of water, but will take to it readily to
+escape a threatened danger, or if he can achieve any object by
+'paddling his own canoe.'</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXX."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XX.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>No regular breeding season.&mdash;Beliefs
+and prejudices of the natives about tigers.&mdash;Bravery of the
+'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.&mdash;Clawmarks on
+trees.&mdash;Fondness for particular localities.&mdash;Tiger in Mr.
+F.'s howdah.&mdash;Springing powers of tigers.&mdash;Lying close in
+cover.&mdash;Incident. &mdash;Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.&mdash;Man
+clawed by a tiger.&mdash;Knocked its eye out with a
+sickle.&mdash;Same tiger subsequently shot in same
+place.&mdash;Tigers easily killed.&mdash;Instances.&mdash;Effect of
+shells on tiger and buffalo.&mdash;Best weapon and bullets for
+tiger.&mdash;Poisoning tigers denounced.&mdash;Natives prone to
+exaggerate in giving news of tiger.&mdash;Anecdote.&mdash;Beating
+for tiger.&mdash;Line of elephants.&mdash;Padding dead
+game.&mdash;Line of seventy-six elephants.&mdash;Captain of the
+hunt.&mdash;Flags for signals in the line. &mdash;'Naka,' or scout
+ahead.&mdash;Usual time for tiger shooting on the
+Koosee.&mdash;Firing the jungle.&mdash;The line of fire at
+night.&mdash;Foolish to shoot at moving jungle.&mdash;Never shoot
+down the line.&mdash;Motions of different animals in the
+grass.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Tigers seem to have no regular breeding season. As a rule the
+male and female come together in the autumn and winter, and the
+young ones are born in the spring and summer. All the young tigers
+I have ever heard of have been found in March, April, and May, and
+so on through the rains.</p>
+<p>The natives have many singular beliefs and prejudices about
+tigers, and they are very often averse to give the slightest
+information as to their whereabouts. To a stranger they will either
+give no information at all, pleading entire ignorance, or they will
+wilfully mislead him, putting him on a totally wrong track. If you
+are well known to the villagers, and if they have confidence in
+your nerve and aim, they will eagerly tell you everything they
+know, and will accompany you on your elephant, to point out the
+exact spot where the tiger was last seen. In the event of a 'find'
+they always look for <i>backsheesh</i>, even though your exertions
+may have rid their neighbourhood of an acknowledged scourge.</p>
+<p>The <i>gwalla</i>, or cowherd caste, seem to know the habits of
+the yellow striped robber very accurately. Accompanied by their
+herd they will venture into the thickest jungle, even though they
+know that it is infested by one or more tigers. If any member of
+the herd is attacked, it is quite common for the <i>gwalla</i> to
+rush up, and by shouts and even blows try to make the robber yield
+up his prey. This is no exaggeration, but a simple fact. A cowherd
+attacked by a tiger has been known to call up his herd by cries,
+and they have succeeded in driving off his fierce assailant. No
+tiger will willingly face a herd of buffaloes or cattle united for
+mutual defence. Surrounded by his trusty herd, the <i>gwalla</i>
+traverses the densest jungle and most tiger-infested thickets
+without fear.</p>
+<p>They believe that to rub the fat of the tiger on the loins, and
+to eat a piece of the tongue or flesh, will cure impotency; and
+tiger fat, rubbed on a painful part of the body, is an accepted
+specific for rheumatic affections. It is a firmly settled belief,
+that the whiskers and teeth, worn on the body, will act as a charm,
+making the wearer proof against the attacks of tigers. The
+collar-bone too, is eagerly coveted for the same reason.</p>
+<p>During the rains tigers are sometimes forced, like others of the
+cat tribe, to take to trees. A Mr. McI. shot two large full grown,
+tigers in a tree at Gunghara, and a Baboo of my acquaintance bagged
+no less than eight in trees during one rainy season at Rampoor.</p>
+<p>Tigers generally prefer remaining near water, and drink a great
+deal, the quantity of raw meat they devour being no doubt
+provocative of thirst.</p>
+<p>The marks of their claws are often seen on trees in the vicinity
+of their haunts, and from this fact many ridiculous stories have
+got abroad regarding their habits. It has even been regarded by
+some writers as a sort of rude test, by which to arrive at an
+approximate estimate of the tiger's size. A tiger can stretch
+himself out some two or two and a half feet more than his
+measurable length. You have doubtless often seen a domestic cat
+whetting its claws on the mat, or scratching some rough substance,
+such as the bark of a tree; this is often done to clean the claws,
+and to get rid of chipped and ragged pieces, and it is sometimes
+mere playfulness. It is the same with the tiger, the scratching on
+the trees is frequently done in the mere wantonness of sport, but
+it is often resorted to to clear the claws from pieces of flesh,
+that may have adhered to them during a meal on some poor
+slaughtered bullock. These marks on the trees are a valuable sign
+for the hunter, as by their appearance, whether fresh or old, he
+can often tell the whereabouts of his quarry, and a good tracker
+will even be able to make a rough guess at its probable size and
+disposition.</p>
+<p>Like policemen, tigers stick to certain beats; even when
+disturbed, and forced to abandon a favourite spot, they frequently
+return to it; and although the jungle may be wholly destroyed, old
+tigers retain a partiality for the scenes of their youthful
+depredations; they are often shot in the most unlikely places,
+where there is little or no cover, and one would certainly never
+expect to find them; they migrate with the herds, and retire to the
+hills during the annual floods, always coming back to the same
+jungle when the rains are over.</p>
+<p>Experienced shekarries know this trait of the tiger's character
+well, and can tell you minutely the colour and general appearance
+of the animals in any particular jungle; they are aware of any
+peculiarity, such as lameness, scars, &amp;c., and their
+observations must be very keen indeed, and amazingly accurate, as I
+have never known them wrong when they committed themselves to a
+positive statement.</p>
+<p>An old planter residing at Sultanpore, close on the Nepaul
+border, a noted sportsman and a crack shot, was charged on one
+occasion by a large tiger; the brute sprang right off the ground on
+to the elephant's head; his hind legs were completely off the
+ground, resting on the elephant's chest and neck; Mr. F. retained
+sufficient presence of mind to sit close down in his howdah; the
+tiger's forearm was extended completely over the front bar, and so
+close that it touched his hat. In this position he called out to
+his son who was on another elephant close by, to fire at the tiger;
+he was cool enough to warn him to take a careful aim, and not hit
+the elephant. His son acted gallantly up to his instructions, and
+shot the tiger through the heart, when it dropped down quite dead,
+to Mr. F.'s great relief.</p>
+<p>Some sportsmen are of opinion, that the tiger when charging
+never springs clear from the ground, but only rears itself on its
+hind legs; this however is a mistake. I saw a tiger leap right off
+the ground, and spring on to the rump of an elephant carrying young
+Sam S. The elephant proved staunch, and remained quite quiet, and
+Sam, turning round in his howdah, shot his assailant through the
+head.</p>
+<p>I may give another incident, to shew how closely tigers will
+sometimes stick to cover; they are sometimes as bad to dislodge as
+a quail or a hare; they will crouch down and conceal themselves
+till you almost trample on them. One day a party of the Purneah
+Club were out; they had shot two fine tigers out of several that
+had been seen; the others were known to have gone ahead into some
+jungle surrounded by water, and easy to beat. Before proceeding
+further it was proposed accordingly to have some refreshment. The
+<i>tiffin</i> elephant was directed to a tree close by, beneath
+whose shade the hungry sportsmen were to plant themselves; the
+elephant had knelt down, one or two boxes had actually been
+removed, several of the servants were clearing away the dried grass
+and leaves. H.W.S. came up on the opposite side of the tree, and
+was in the act of leaping off his elephant, when an enormous tiger
+got up at his very feet, and before the astounded sportsmen could
+handle a gun, the formidable intruder had cleared the bushes with a
+bound, and disappeared in the thick jungle.</p>
+<p>The following adventure bears me out in my remark, that tigers
+get attached to, and like to remain in, one place. Mr. F. Simpson,
+a thorough-going sportsman of the good old type, had been out one
+day in the Koosee derahs; he had had a long and unsuccessful beat
+for tiger, and had given up all hope of bagging one that day; he
+thought therefore that he might as well turn his attention to more
+ignoble game. Extracting his bullets, he replaced them with No. 4
+shot. In a few minutes a peacock got up in front of him, and he
+fired. The report roused a very fine tiger right in front of his
+elephant; to make the best of a bad bargain, he gave the retreating
+animal the full benefit of his remaining charge of shot, and
+peppered it well. About a year after, close to this very place,
+C.A.S. bagged a fine tiger. On examination, the marks of a charge
+of shot were found in the flanks, and on removing the pads of the
+feet, numbers of pellets of No. 4 shot were found embedded in them.
+It was evidently the animal that had been peppered a year before,
+and the pellets had worked their way downwards to the feet.</p>
+<p>On another occasion, a man came to the factory where George was
+then residing, to give information of a tiger. He bore on his back
+numerous bleeding scratches, ample evidence of the truth of his
+story. While cutting grass in the jungle, with a blanket on his
+back, the day being rainy, he had been attacked by a tiger from the
+rear. The blanket is generally folded several times, and worn over
+the head and back. It is a thick heavy covering, and in the first
+onset the tiger tore the blanket from the man's body, which was
+probably the means of saving his life. The man turned round,
+terribly scared, as may be imagined. In desperation he struck at
+the tiger with his sickle, and according to his own account, he
+succeeded in putting out one of its eyes. He said it was a young
+tiger, and his bleeding wounds, and the persistency with which he
+stuck to his story, impressed George with the belief that he was
+telling the truth. A search for the tiger was made. The man's
+blanket was found, torn to shreds, but no tiger, although the
+footprints of one were plainly visible. But some months after, near
+the same spot, George shot a half grown tiger with one of its eyes
+gone, which had evidently been roughly torn from the socket. This
+was doubtless the identical brute that had attacked the
+grass-cutter.</p>
+<p>It is sometimes wonderful how easily a large and powerful tiger
+may be killed. The most vulnerable parts are the back of the head,
+through the neck, and broadside on the chest. The neck is the most
+deadly spot of all, and a shot behind the shoulder, or on the
+spine, is sure to bring the game to bag. I have seen several shot
+with a single bullet from a smooth-bore, and on one occasion,
+George tells me he saw a tigress killed with a single smooth-bore
+bullet at over a hundred yards. The bullet was a <i>ricochet</i>,
+and struck the tigress below the chest, and travelled towards the
+heart, but without touching it. She fell twenty yards from where
+she had been hit. Another, which on skinning we found had been shot
+through the heart, with a single smooth-bore bullet at a distance
+of one hundred and fifty yards, travelled for thirty yards before
+falling dead. Meiselback, a neighbour of mine, shot three tigers
+successively, on one occasion, with a No. 18 Joe Manton
+smooth-bore. Each of the three was killed by a single bullet, one
+in the head, one in the neck, and one through the heart, the bullet
+entering behind the shoulder.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, I once fired no less than six Jacob's shells
+into a tiger, all behind the shoulder, before I could stop him. The
+shells seemed to explode on the surface the moment they came in
+contact with the body. There was a tremendous surface wound, big
+enough to put a pumpkin into, but very little internal hurt. On
+another occasion (April 4, 1874) during one of the most exciting
+and most glorious moments of my sporting life&mdash;buffaloes
+charging the line in all directions, burning jungle all around us,
+and bullets whistling on every side&mdash;I fired TWELVE shells
+into a large bull before I killed him. As every shell hit him, I
+heard the sharp detonation, and saw the tiny puff of smoke curl
+outward from the ghastly wound. The poor maddened brute would drop
+on his knees, stagger again to his feet, and, game to the last,
+attempt to charge my elephant. I was anxious really to test the
+effect of the Jacob's shell as against the solid conical bullet,
+and carefully watched the result of each shot. My weapon was a
+beautifully finished No. 12 smooth-bore, made expressly to order
+for an officer in the Royal Artillery, from whom I bought it. From
+that day I never fired another Jacob's shell.</p>
+<p>My remarks about the tiger springing clear off the ground when
+charging, are amply borne out by the experience of some of my
+sporting friends. I could quote pages, but will content myself with
+one extract. It is a point of some importance, as many good old
+sportsmen pooh-pooh the idea, and maintain that the tiger merely
+stretches himself out to his fullest length, and if he does leave
+the ground, it is by a purely physical effort, pulling himself up
+by his claws.</p>
+<p>My friend George writes me: 'In several cases I have known and
+seen the tiger spring, and leave the ground. In one case the tiger
+sprang from fully five yards off. He crouched at the distance of a
+few paces, as if about to spring, and then sprang clean on to the
+head of Joe's <i>tusker</i>. An eight feet nine inch tigress once
+got on to the head of my elephant, which was ten feet seven inches
+in height. Every one present saw her leave the ground. Once, when
+after a tiger in small stubble, about six feet high, I saw one
+bound over a bush so clean that I could see every bit of him.' And
+so on.</p>
+<p>For long range shooting the rifle is doubtless the best weapon.
+The Express is the most deadly. The smooth-bore is the gun for
+downright honest sport. Shells and hollow pointed bullets are the
+things, as one sportsman writes me, 'for mutilation and cowardly
+murder, and for spoiling the skin.' Poison is the resource of the
+poacher. No sportsman could descend so low. Grant that the tiger is
+a scourge, a pest, a nuisance, a cruel and implacable foe to man
+and beast; pile all the vilest epithets of your vocabulary on his
+head, and say that he deserves them all, still he is what
+opportunity and circumstance have made him. He is as nature
+fashioned him; and there are bold spirits, and keen sights, and
+steady nerves enough, God wot, among our Indian sportsmen, to cope
+with him on more equal and sportsmanlike terms than by poisoning
+him like a mangy dog. On this point, however, opinions differ. I do
+not envy the man who would prefer poisoning a tiger to the keen
+delight of patiently following him up, ousting him from cover to
+cover, watching his careful endeavours to elude your search;
+perhaps at the end of a long and fascinating beat, feeling the
+electric excitement thrill every nerve and fibre of your body, as
+the magnificent robber comes bounding down at the charge, the very
+embodiment of ferocity and strength, the perfection of symmetry,
+the acme of agility and grace.</p>
+<p>Natives are such notorious perverters of the truth, and so often
+hide what little there may be in their communications under such
+floods of Oriental hyperbole and exaggeration, that you are often
+disappointed in going out on what you consider trustworthy and
+certain information. They often remind me of the story of the Laird
+of Logan. He was riding slowly along a country road one day, when
+another equestrian joined him. Logan's eye fixed itself on a hole
+in the turf bank bounding the road, and with great gravity, and in
+trust-inspiring accents, he said, 'I saw a <i>tod</i> (or fox) gang
+in there.'</p>
+<p>'Did you, really;' cried the new comer.</p>
+<p>'I did,' responded the laird.</p>
+<p>'Will you hold my horse till I get a spade,' cried the now
+excited traveller.</p>
+<p>The laird assented. Away hurried the man, and soon returned with
+a spade. He set manfully to work to dig out the fox, and worked
+till the perspiration streamed down his face. The laird sat
+stolidly looking on, saying never a word; and as he seemed to be
+nearing the confines of the hole, the poor digger redoubled his
+exertions. When at length it became plain that there was no fox
+there, he wiped his streaming brow, and rather crossly exclaimed,
+'I'm afraid there's no tod here.'</p>
+<p>'It would be a wonder if there was,' rejoined the laird, without
+the movement of a muscle, 'it's ten years since I saw him gang in
+there.'</p>
+<p>So it is sometimes with a native. He will fire your ardour, by
+telling you of some enormous tiger, to be found in some jungle
+close by, but when you come to enquire minutely into his story, you
+find that the tiger was seen perhaps the year before last, or that
+it <i>used</i> to be there, or that somebody else had told him of
+its being there.</p>
+<p>Some tigers, too, are so cunning and wary, that they will make
+off long before the elephants have come near. I have seen others
+rise on their hind legs just like a hare or a kangaroo, and peer
+over the jungle trying to make out one's whereabouts. This is of
+course only in short light jungle.</p>
+<p>The plan we generally adopt in beating for tiger on or near the
+Nepaul border, is to use a line of elephants to beat the cover. It
+is a fine sight to watch the long line of stately monsters moving
+slowly and steadily forward. Several howdahs tower high above the
+line, the polished barrels of guns and rifles glittering in the
+fierce rays of the burning and vertical sun. Some of the shooters
+wear huge hats made from the light pith of the solah plant, others
+have long blue or white puggrees wound round their heads in truly
+Oriental style. These are very comfortable to wear, but rather
+trying to the sight, as they afford no protection to the eyes. For
+riding they are to my mind the most comfortable head-dress that can
+be worn, and they are certainly more graceful than the stiff
+unsightly solah hat.</p>
+<p>Between every two howdahs are four or five pad elephants. These
+beat up all the intervening bushes, and carry the game that may be
+shot. When a pig, deer, tiger, or other animal has been shot, and
+has received its <i>coup de grace</i>, it is quickly bundled on to
+the pad, and there secured. The elephant kneels down to receive the
+load, and while game is being padded the whole line waits, till the
+operation is complete, as it is bad policy to leave blanks. Where
+this simple precaution is neglected, many a tiger will sneak
+through the opening left by the pad elephant, and so silently and
+cautiously can they steal through the dense cover, and so cunning
+are they and acute, that they will take advantage of the slightest
+gap, and the keenest and best trained eye will fail to detect
+them.</p>
+<p>In most of our hunting parties on the Koosee, we had some twenty
+or thirty elephants, and frequently six or eight howdahs. These
+expeditions were very pleasant, and we lived luxuriously. For real
+sport ten elephants and two or three tried comrades&mdash;not
+more&mdash;is much better. With a short, easily-worked line, that
+can turn and double, and follow the tiger quickly, and dog his
+every movement, you can get far better sport, and bring more to
+bag, than with a long unwieldy line, that takes a considerable time
+to turn and wheel, and in whose onward march there is of necessity
+little of the silence and swiftness which are necessary elements in
+successful tiger shooting.</p>
+<p>I have been out with a line of seventy-six elephants and
+fourteen howdahs. This was on 16th March 1875. It was a magnificent
+sight to see the seventy-six huge brutes in the river together,
+splashing the water along their heated sides to cool themselves,
+and sending huge waves dashing against the crumbling banks of the
+rapid stream. It was no less magnificent to see their slow stately
+march through the swaying, crashing jungle. What an idea of
+irresistible power and ponderous strength the huge creatures gave
+us, as they heaved through the tangled brake, crushing everything
+in their resistless progress. It was a sight to be remembered, but
+as might have been expected, we found the jungles almost
+untenanted. Everything cleared out before us, long ere the line
+could reach its vicinity. We only killed one tiger, but next day we
+separated, the main body crossing the stream, while my friends and
+myself, with only fourteen elephants, rebeat the same jungle and
+bagged two.</p>
+<p>In every hunt, one member is told off to look after the forage
+and grain for the elephants. One attends to the cooking and
+requirements of the table, one acts as paymaster and keeper of
+accounts, while the most experienced is unanimously elected
+captain, and takes general direction of every movement of the line.
+He decides on the plan of operations for the day, gives each his
+place in the line, and for the time, becomes an irresponsible
+autocrat, whose word is law, and against whose decision there is no
+appeal.</p>
+<p>Scouts are sent out during the night, and bring in reports from
+all parts of the jungle in the early morning, while we are
+discussing <i>chota baziree</i>, our early morning meal. If tiger
+is reported, or a kill has been discovered, we form line in
+silence, and without noise bear down direct on the spot. In the
+captain's howdah are three flags. A blue flag flying means that
+only tiger or rhinoceros are to be shot at. A red flag signifies
+that we are to have general firing, in fact that we may blaze away
+at any game that may be afoot, and the white flag shews us that we
+are on our homeward way, and then also may shoot at anything we can
+get, break the line, or do whatever we choose. On the flanks are
+generally posted the best shots of the party. The captain, as a
+rule, keeps to the centre of the line. Frequently one man and
+elephant is sent on ahead to some opening or dry water-bed, to see
+that no cunning tiger sneaks away unseen. This vedette is called
+<i>naka</i>. All experienced sportsmen employ a naka, and not
+unfrequently where the ground is difficult, two are sent ahead. The
+naka is a most important post, and the holder will often get a
+lucky shot at some wary veteran trying to sneak off, and may
+perhaps bag the only tiger of the day. The mere knowledge that
+there is an elephant on ahead, will often keep tigers from trying
+to get away. They prefer to face the known danger of the line
+behind, to the unknown danger in front, and in all cases where
+there is a big party a naka should be sent on ahead.</p>
+<p>Tigers can be, and are, shot on the Koosee plains all the year
+round, but the big hunts take place in the months of March, April,
+and May, when the hot west winds are blowing, and when the jungle
+has got considerably trampled down by the herds of cattle grazing
+in the tangled wilderness of tall grass. Innumerable small paths
+shew where the cattle wander backward and forward through the
+labyrinths of the jungle. In the howdah we carry ample supplies of
+vesuvians. We light and drop these as they blaze into the dried
+grass and withered leaves as we move along, and soon a mighty wall
+of roaring flame behind us, attests the presence of the destroying
+element. We go diagonally up wind, and the flames and smoke thus
+surge and roar and curl and roll, in dense blinding volumes, to the
+rear and leeward of our line. The roaring of the flames sounds like
+the maddened surf of an angry sea, dashing in thunder against an
+iron-bound coast. The leaping flames mount up in fiery columns,
+illuminating the fleecy clouds of smoke with an unearthly glare.
+The noise is deafening; at times some of the elephants get quite
+nervous at the fierce roar of the flames behind, and try to bolt
+across country. The fire serves two good purposes. It burns up the
+old withered grass, making room for the fresh succulent sprouts to
+spring, and it keeps all the game in front of the line, driving the
+animals before us, as they are afraid to break back and face the
+roaring-wall of flame. A seething, surging sea of flame, several
+miles long, encircling the whole country in its fiery belt,
+sweeping along at night with the roar of a storm-tossed sea; the
+flames flickering, swelling, and leaping up in the dark night, the
+fiery particles rushing along amid clouds of lurid smoke, and the
+glare of the serpent-like line reddening the horizon, is one of
+those magnificent spectacles that can only be witnessed at rare
+intervals among the experiences of a sojourn in India. Words fail
+to depict its grandeur, and the utmost skill of Dor&eacute; could
+not render on canvas, the weird, unearthly magnificence of a jungle
+fire, at the culmination of its force and fury.</p>
+<p>In beating, the elephants are several yards apart, and, standing
+in the howdah, you can see the slightest motion of the grass before
+you, unless indeed it be virgin jungle, quite untrodden, and
+perhaps higher than your elephant; in such high dense cover, tigers
+will sometimes lie up and allow you to go clean past them. In such
+a case you must fire the jungle, and allow the blaze to beat for
+you. It is common for young, over eager sportsmen, to fire at
+moving jungle, trusting to a lucky chance for hitting the moving
+animal; this is useless waste of powder; they fail to realize the
+great length of the swaying grass, and invariably shoot over the
+game; the animal hears the crashing of the bullet through the dense
+thicket overhead, and immediately stops, and you lose all idea of
+his whereabouts. When you see an animal moving before you in long
+jungle, it should be your object to follow him slowly and
+patiently, till you can get a sight of him, and see what sort of
+beast he is. Firing at the moving grass is worse than useless. Keep
+as close behind him as you can, make signs for the other elephants
+to close in; stick to your quarry, never lose sight of him for an
+instant, be ready to seize the first moment, when more open jungle,
+or some other favourable chance, may give you a glimpse of his
+skin.</p>
+<p>Another caution should be observed. Never fire down the line. It
+is astonishing how little will divert a bullet, and a careless shot
+is worse than a dozen charging tigers. If a tiger does break back,
+let him get well away behind the line, and then blaze at him as
+hard as you like. It is particularly unpleasant to hear a bullet
+come singing and booming down the line from some excited dunderhead
+on the far left or right.</p>
+<p>A tiger slouching along in front moves pretty fast, in a silent
+swinging trot; the tops of the reeds or grass sway very gently,
+with a wavering, side to side motion. A pig rushes boldly through,
+and a deer will cause the grass to rock violently to and fro. A
+buffalo or rhinoceros is known at once by the crashing of the dry
+stalks, as his huge frame plunges along; but the tiger can never be
+mistaken. When that gentle, undulating, noiseless motion is once
+seen, be ready with your trusty gun, and remove not your eye from
+the spot, for the mighty robber of the jungle is before you.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXI.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Howdahs and howdah-ropes.&mdash;Mussulman
+custom.&mdash;Killing animals for food.&mdash;Mysterious appearance
+of natives when an animal is killed. &mdash;Fastening dead tigers
+to the pad.&mdash;Present mode wants improving. &mdash;Incident
+illustrative of this.&mdash;Dangerous to go close to wounded
+tigers.&mdash;Examples.&mdash;Footprints of tigers.&mdash;Call of
+the tiger.&mdash;Natives and their powers of description.&mdash;How
+to beat successfully for tiger. &mdash;Description of a
+beat.&mdash;Disputes among the shooters.&mdash;Awarding
+tigers.&mdash;Cutting open the tiger.&mdash;Native idea about the
+liver of the tiger.&mdash;Signs of a tiger's presence in the
+jungle.&mdash;Vultures.&mdash;Do they scent their quarry or view
+it?&mdash;A vulture carrion feast.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The best howdahs are light, single-seated ones, with strong,
+light frames of wood and cane-work, and a moveable seat with a
+leather strap, adjustable to any length, on which to lean back.
+They should have a strong iron rail all round the top, covered with
+leather, with convenient grooves to receive the barrels of the
+guns, as they rest in front, ready to either hand. In front there
+should be compartments for different kinds of cartridges; and
+pockets and lockers under the seat, and at the back, or wherever
+there is room. Outside should be a strong iron step, to get out and
+in by easily, and a strong iron ring, through which to pass the
+rope that binds the howdah to the elephant.</p>
+<p>You cannot be too careful with your howdah ropes. A chain is
+generally used as an auxiliary to the rope, which should be of
+cotton, strong and well twisted, and should be overhauled daily, to
+see that there is no chafing. It is passed round the foot-bars of
+the howdah, and several times round the belly of the elephant.</p>
+<p>Another rope acts as a crupper behind, being passed through
+rings in the terminal frame-work of the howdah, and under the
+elephant's tail; it frequently causes painful sores there, and some
+drivers give it a hitch round the tail, in the same way as you
+would hitch it round a post. Another steadying rope goes round the
+elephant's breast, like a chest-band. 'A merciful man is merciful
+to his beast.' You should always, therefore, have a sheet of soft
+well oiled leather to go between the chest and belly ropes and the
+elephant's hide; this prevents chafing, and is a great relief to
+the poor old <i>hathi</i>, as they call the elephant. <i>Hatnee</i>
+is the female elephant. <i>Duntar</i> is a fellow with large tusks,
+and <i>mukna</i> is an elephant with small downward growing
+tusks.</p>
+<p>Many of the old fashioned howdahs are far too heavy; a firm,
+strong howdah should not weigh more than 28 lbs. In most of the old
+fashioned ones, there is a seat for an attendant. If your attendant
+be a Mussulman, he hurries down as soon as you shoot a deer, to cut
+its throat. The Mohammedan religion enjoins a variety of rules on
+its professors in regard to the slaying of animals for food. Chief
+of these is a prohibition, against eating the flesh of an animal
+that has died a natural death; the throat of every animal intended
+to be eaten should be cut, and at the moment of applying the knife,
+<i>Bismillah</i> should be said, that is, 'In the name of God.' If
+therefore your mahout, or attendant, belong to the religion of the
+<i>Koran</i>, he will hurry down to cut the throat of a wounded
+deer if possible before life is extinct; if it be already dead, he
+will leave it alone for the Hindoos, who have no such scruples.</p>
+<p>A number of <i>moosahurs, banturs, gwallas</i>, and other
+idlers, from the jungle villages, generally follow in the wake of
+the line. If you shoot many pigs, they carry off the dead bodies,
+and hold high carnival in their homes in the evening. To see them
+rush on a slain buffalo, and hack it to pieces, is a curious sight;
+they fight for pieces of flesh like so many vultures. Sportsmen
+generally content themselves with the head of a buffalo, but not a
+scrap of the carcase is ever wasted. The natives are attracted to
+the spot, like ants to a heap of grain, or wasps to an old sugar
+barrel; they seem to spring out of the earth, so rapidly do they
+make their appearance. If you were to kill a dozen buffaloes, I
+believe all the flesh would be taken away to the neighbouring
+villages within an hour.</p>
+<p>This appearance of men in the jungles is wonderful. You may
+think yourself in the centre of a vast wilderness, not a sign of
+human habitation for miles around; on all sides stretches a vast
+ocean of grass, the resort of ferocious wild animals, seemingly
+untrodden by a human foot. You shoot a deer, a pig, or other animal
+whose flesh is fit for food; the man behind you gives a cry, and in
+ten minutes you will have a group of brawny young fellows around
+your elephant, eager to carry away the game. The way these natives
+thread the dense jungle is to me a wonder; they seem to know every
+devious path and hidden recess, and they traverse the most gloomy
+and dangerous solitudes without betraying the slightest
+apprehension.</p>
+<p>In fastening dead game to the pad of the carrying elephant great
+care is necessary. Some elephants are very timid, and indeed all
+elephants are mistrustful and suspicious of anything behind them.
+They are pretty courageous in facing anything before them, but they
+do not like a rustling or indeed any motion in their rear. I have
+seen a dog put an elephant to flight, and if you have a lazy
+<i>hathi</i>, a good plan is to walk a horse behind him. He will
+then shuffle along at a prodigious pace constantly looking round
+from side to side, and no doubt in his heart anathematising the
+horse that forces the running so persistently.</p>
+<p>The present method of roughly lashing on dead game anyhow
+requires altering. Some ingenious sportsman could surely devise a
+system of slings by which the dead weight of the game could be more
+equally distributed. At present the dead bodies are hauled up at
+random, and fastened anyhow. The pad gets displaced, the elephant
+must stop till the burden is rearranged; the ropes, especially on a
+hot day, cut into the skin and rub off the hair, and many a good
+skin is quite spoiled by the present rough method of tying on the
+pad.</p>
+<p>One day, in taking off a dead tiger from the pad, near George's
+bungalow, the end of the rope (a new one) remained somehow fixed to
+the neck of the elephant. When he rose up, being relieved of the
+weight, he dragged the dead tiger with him. This put the elephant
+into a horrible funk, and despite all the efforts of the driver he
+started off at a trot, hauling the tiger after him. Every now and
+then he would turn round, and tread and kick the lifeless carcase.
+At length the rope gave way, and the elephant became more
+manageable, but not before a fine skin had been totally ruined, all
+owing to this primitive style of fastening by ropes to the pad. A
+proper pad, with leather straps and buckles, that could be hauled
+as tight as necessary&mdash;a sort of harness arrangement, could
+easily be devised, to secure dead game on the pad. I am certain it
+would save time in the hunting-field, and protect many a fine skin,
+that gets abraded and marked by the present rough and ready
+lashing.</p>
+<p>It is always dangerous to go too close up to a wounded tiger,
+and one should never rashly jump to the conclusion that a tiger is
+dead because he appears so Approach him cautiously, and make very
+certain that he is really and truly dead, before you venture to get
+down beside the body. It is a bad plan to take your elephant close
+up to a dead tiger at all. I have known cases where good staunch
+elephants have been spoiled for future sport, by being rashly taken
+up to a wounded tiger. In rolling about, the tiger may get hold of
+the elephants, and inflict injuries that will demoralise them, and
+make them quite unsteady on subsequent occasions.</p>
+<p>I have known cases where a tiger left for dead has had to be
+shot over again. I have seen a man get down to pull a seemingly
+dead tiger into the open, and get charged. Fortunately it was a
+dying effort, and I put a bullet through the skull before the tiger
+could reach the frightened peon. We have been several times grouped
+round a dying tiger, watching him breathe his last, when the brute
+has summoned up strength for a final effort, and charged the
+elephants.</p>
+<p>On one occasion W.D. had got down beside what he thought a dead
+tiger, had rolled him over, and, tape in hand, was about to measure
+the animal, when he staggered to his feet with a terrific growl,
+and made away through the jungle. He had only been stunned, and
+fortunately preferred running to fighting, or the consequences
+might have been more tragic; as it was, he was quickly followed up
+and killed. But instances like these might be indefinitely
+multiplied, all teaching, that seemingly dead tigers should be
+approached with the utmost respect. Never venture off your elephant
+without a loaded revolver.</p>
+<p>In beating for tiger, we have seen that the appearance of the
+kill, whether fresh or old, whether much torn and mangled or
+comparatively untouched, often affords valuable indications to the
+sportsman. The footprints are not less narrowly looked for, and
+scrutinized. If we are after tiger, and following them up, the
+captain will generally get down at any bare place, such as a dry
+nullah, the edge of a tank or water hole, or any other spot where
+footprints can be detected. Fresh prints can be very easily
+distinguished. The impression is like that made by a dog, only much
+larger, and the marks of the claws are not visible. The largest
+footprint I have heard of was measured by George S., and was found
+to be eight and a quarter inches wide from the outside of the first
+to the outside of the fourth toe. If a tiger has passed very
+recently, the prints will be fresh-looking, and if on damp ground
+there can be no mistaking them. If it has been raining recently, we
+particularly notice whether the rain has obliterated the track at
+all, in any place; which would lead us to the conclusion that the
+tiger had passed before it rained. If the water has lodged in the
+footprint, the tiger has passed after the shower. In fresh prints
+the water will be slightly puddly or muddy. In old prints it will
+be quite clear; and so on.</p>
+<p>The call of the male tiger is quite different from that of the
+female. The male calls with a hoarse harsh cry, something between
+the grunt of a pig and the bellow of a bull; the call of the
+tigress is more like the prolonged mew of a cat much intensified.
+During the pairing season the call is sharper and shorter, and ends
+in a sudden break. At that time, too, they cry at more frequent
+intervals. The roar of the tiger is quite unlike the call. Once
+heard it is not easily forgotten, The natives who live in the
+jungles can tell one tiger from another by colour, size, &amp;c.,
+and they can even distinguish one animal from another by his call.
+It is very absurd to hear a couple of natives get together and
+describe the appearance of some tiger they have seen.</p>
+<p>In describing a pig, they refer to his height, or the length of
+his tusks. They describe a fish by putting their fists together,
+and saying he was so thick, <i>itna mota</i>. The head of a tiger
+is always the most conspicuous part of the body seen in the jungle.
+They therefore invariably describe him by his head. One man will
+hold his two hands apart about two feet, and say that the head was
+<i>itna burra</i>, that is, so big. The other, not to be outdone,
+gives rein to his imagination, and adds another foot. The first
+immediately fancies discredit will attach to his veracity, and
+vehemently asserts that there must in that case have been two
+tigers; and so they go on, till they conclusively prove, that two
+tigers there must have been, and indeed, if you let them go on,
+they will soon assure you that, besides the pair of tigers, there
+must be at least a pair of half-grown cubs. Their imaginations are
+very fertile, and you must take the information of a native as to
+tigers with a very large pinch of salt.</p>
+<p>For successful tiger shooting much depends on the beating. When
+after tiger, general firing should on no account be allowed, and
+the line should move forward as silently as possible. In light
+cover, extending over a large area, the elephants should be kept a
+considerable distance apart, but in thick dense cover the line
+should be quite close, and beat up slowly and thoroughly, as a
+tiger may lay up and allow the line to pass him. On no account
+should an elephant be let to lag behind, and no one should be
+allowed to rush forward or go in advance. The elephants should move
+along, steady and even, like a moving wall, the fastest being on
+the flanks, and accommodating their pace to the general rate of
+progress. No matter what tempting chances at pig or deer you may
+have, you must on no account fire except at tiger.</p>
+<p>The captain should be in the centre, and the men on the flanks
+ought to be constantly on the <i>qui vive</i>, to see that no
+cunning tiger outflanks the line. The attention should never wander
+from the jungle before you, for at any moment a tiger may get
+up&mdash;and I know of no sport where it is necessary to be so
+continuously on the alert. Every moment is fraught with intense
+excitement, and when a tiger does really show his stripes before
+you, the all-absorbing eager excitement of a lifetime is packed in
+a few brief moments. Not a chance should be thrown away, a long, or
+even an uncertain shot, is better than none, and if you make one
+miss, you may not have another chance again that day: for the tiger
+is chary of showing his stripes, and thinks discretion the better
+part of valour.</p>
+<p>All the line of course are aware, as a rule, when a tiger is on
+the move, and a good captain (and Joe S., who generally took the
+direction of our beats, could not well be matched) will wheel the
+line, double, turn, march, and countermarch, and fairly run the
+tiger down. At such a time, although you may not actually see the
+tiger, the excitement is tremendous. You stand erect in the howdah,
+your favourite gun ready; your attendant behind is as excited as
+yourself, and sways from side to side to peer into the gloomy
+depths of the jungle; in front, the mahout wriggles on his seat, as
+if by his motion he could urge the elephant to a quicker advance.
+He digs his toes savagely into his elephant behind the ear; the
+line is closing up; every eye is fixed on the moving jungle ahead.
+The roaring of the flames behind, and the crashing of the dried
+reeds as the elephants force their ponderous frames through the
+intertwisted stems and foliage, are the only sounds that greet the
+ear. Suddenly you see the tawny yellow hide, as the tiger slouches
+along. Your gun rings out a reverberating challenge, as your fatal
+bullet speeds on its errand. To right and left the echoes ring, as
+shot after shot is fired at the bounding robber. Then the line
+closes up, and you form a circle round the stricken beast, and
+watch his mighty limbs quiver in the death-agony, and as he falls
+over dead, and powerless for further harm, you raise the heartfelt,
+pulse-stirring cheer, that finds an echo in every brother
+sportman's heart.</p>
+<p>Disputes sometimes arise as to whose bullet first drew blood.
+These are settled by the captain, and from his decision there is no
+appeal. Many sportsmen put peculiar marks on their bullets, by
+which they can be recognised, which is a good plan. In an exciting
+scrimmage every one blazes at the tiger, not one bullet perhaps in
+five or six takes effect, and every one is ready to claim the skin,
+as having been pierced with his particular bullet. Disputes are not
+very common, but an inspection of the wounds, and the bullets found
+in the body, generally settle the question. After hearing all the
+pros and cons, the captain generally succeeds in awarding the tiger
+to the right man.</p>
+<p>After a successful day, the news rapidly spreads through the
+adjacent country, and we may take the line a little out of our way
+to make a sort of triumphal procession through the villages. On
+reaching the camp there is sure to be a great crowd waiting to see
+the slain tigers, the despoilers of the people's flocks and
+herds.</p>
+<p>It is then you hear of all the depredations the dead robber has
+committed, and it is then you begin to form some faint conception
+of his enormous destructive powers. Villager after villager unfolds
+a tale of some favourite heifer, or buffalo, or cow having been
+struck down, and the copious vocabulary of Hindostanee Billingsgate
+is almost exhausted, and floods of abuse poured out on the
+prostrate head.</p>
+<p>On cutting open the tiger, parasites are frequently found in the
+flesh. These are long, white, thread-like worms, and are supposed
+by some to be Guinea worms. Huge masses of undigested bone and hair
+are sometimes taken from the intestines, shewing that the tiger
+does not waste much time on mastication, but tears and eats the
+flesh in large masses. The liver is found to have numbers of
+separate lobes, and the natives say that this is an infallible test
+of the age of a tiger, as a separate lobe forms on the liver for
+each year of the tiger's life. I have certainly found young tigers
+having but two and three lobes, and old tigers I have found with
+six, seven, and even eight, but the statement is entirely
+unsupported by careful observation, and requires authentication
+before it can be accepted.</p>
+<p>A reported kill is a pretty certain sign that there are tigers
+in the jungle, but there are other signs with which one soon gets
+familiar. When, for example, you hear deer calling repeatedly, and
+see them constantly on the move, it is a sign that tiger are in the
+neighbourhood. When cattle are reluctant to enter the jungle,
+restless, and unwilling to graze, you may be sure tiger are
+somewhere about, not far away. A kill is often known by the numbers
+of vultures that hover about in long, sailing, steady circles. What
+multitudes of vultures there are. Overhead, far up in the liquid
+ether, you see them circling round and round like dim specks in the
+distance; farther and farther away, till they seem like bees, then
+lessen and fade into the infinitude of space. No part of the sky is
+ever free from their presence. When a kill has been perceived, you
+see one come flying along, strong and swift in headlong flight.
+With the directness of a thunderbolt he speeds to where his
+loathsome meal lies sweltering in the noonday sun. As he comes
+nearer and nearer, his repulsive looking body assumes form and
+substance. The cruel, ugly bald head, drawn close in between the
+strong pointed shoulders, the broad powerful wings, with their wide
+sweep, measured and slow, bear him swiftly past. With a curve and a
+sweep he circles round, down come the long bony legs, the bald and
+hideous neck is extended, and with talons quivering for the rotting
+flesh, and cruel beak agape, he hurries on to his repast, the
+embodiment of everything ghoul-like and ghastly. In his wake comes
+another, then twos and threes, anon tens and twenties, till
+hundreds have collected, and the ground is covered with the
+hissing, tearing, fiercely clawing crowd. It is a horrible sight to
+see a heap of vultures battling over a dead bullock. I have seen
+them so piled up that the under ones were nearly smothered to
+death; and the writhing contortions of the long bare necks, as the
+fierce brutes battled with talons and claws, were like the twisting
+of monster snakes, or the furious writhing of gorgons and furies
+over some fated victim.</p>
+<p>It has been a much debated point with sportsmen and naturalists,
+whether the eye or the sense of smell guides the vulture to his
+feast of carrion. I have often watched them. They scan the vast
+surface spread below them with a piercing and never tiring gaze.
+They observe each other. When one is seen to cease his steady
+circling flight, far up in mid air, and to stretch his broad wings
+earthwards, the others know that he has espied a meal, and follow
+his lead; and these in turn are followed by others, till from all
+quarters flock crowds of these scavengers of the sky. They can
+detect a dog or jackal from a vast height, and they know by
+intuition that, where the carcase is there will the dogs and
+jackals be gathered. I think there can be no doubt that the vision
+is the sense they are most indebted to for directing them to their
+food.</p>
+<p>On one occasion I remember seeing a tumultuous heap of them,
+battling fiercely, as I have just tried to describe, over the
+carcases of two tigers we had killed near Dumdaha. The dead bodies
+were hidden partially in a grove of trees, and for a long time
+there were only some ten or a dozen vultures near. These gorged
+themselves so fearfully, that they could not rise from the ground,
+but lay with wings expanded, looking very aldermanic and
+apoplectic. Bye-and-bye, however, the rush began, and by the time
+we had struck the tents, there could not have been fewer than 150
+vultures, hissing and spitting at each other like angry cats;
+trampling each other to the dust to get at the carcases; and
+tearing wildly with talon and beak for a place. In a very short
+time nothing but mangled bones remained. A great number of the
+vultures got on to the rotten limb of a huge mango tree. One other
+proved the last straw, for down came the rotten branch and several
+of the vultures, tearing at each other, fell heavily to the ground,
+where they lay quite helpless. As an experiment we shot a miserable
+mangy Pariah dog, that was prowling about the ground seeking
+garbage and offal. He was shot stone-dead, and for a time no
+vulture ventured near. A crow was the first to begin the feast of
+death. One of the hungriest of the vultures next approached, and in
+a few minutes the yet warm body of the poor dog was torn into a
+thousand fragments, till nothing remained but scattered and
+disjointed bones.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul
+frontier.&mdash;Indian scenery near the border.&mdash;Lose our
+way.&mdash;Cold night.&mdash;The river by night.&mdash;Our boat and
+boatmen.&mdash;Tigers calling on the bank.&mdash;An anxious
+moment.&mdash;Fire at and wound the tigress.&mdash;Reach
+camp.&mdash;The Nepaulee's adventure with a tiger.&mdash;The old
+Major.&mdash;His appearance and manners.&mdash;The pompous
+Jemadar.&mdash;Nepaulese proverb.&mdash;Firing the
+jungle.&mdash;Start a tiger and shoot him.&mdash;Another in
+front.&mdash;Appearance of the fires by night.&mdash;The tiger
+escapes.&mdash;Too dark to follow up.&mdash;Coolie shot by mistake
+during a former hunt.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Early in 1875 a military friend of mine was engaged in
+inspecting the boundary pillars near my factory, between our
+territory and that of Nepaul. Some of the pillars had been cut away
+by the river, and the survey map required a little alteration in
+consequence. Our district magistrate was in attendance, and sent me
+an invitation to go up and spend a week with them in camp. I had no
+need to send on tents, as they had every requisite for comfort. I
+sent off my bed and bedding on Geerdharee Jha's old elephant, a
+timid, useless brute, fit neither far beating jungle nor for
+carrying a howdah. My horse I sent on to the ghat or crossing, some
+ten miles up the river, and after lunch I started. It was a fine
+cool afternoon, and it was not long ere I reached the neighbouring
+factory of Im&#257;mnugger. Here I had a little refreshment with
+Old Tom, and after exchanging greetings, I resumed my way over a
+part of the country with which I was totally unacquainted.</p>
+<p>I rode on, past villages nestling in the mango groves, past huge
+tanks, excavated by the busy labour of generations long since
+departed; past decaying temples, overshadowed by mighty tamarind
+trees, with the <i>peepul</i> and <i>pakur</i> insinuating their
+twining roots amid the shattered and crumbling masonry. In one
+large village I passed through the bustling bazaar, where the din,
+and dust, and mingled odours, were almost overpowering. The country
+was now assuming quite an undulating character. The banks of the
+creeks were steep and rugged, and in some cases the water actually
+tumbled from rock to rock, with a purling pleasant ripple and
+plash, a welcome sound to a Scotch ear, and a pleasant surprise
+after the dull, dead, leaden, noiseless flow of the streams further
+down on the plains.</p>
+<p>Far in front lay the gloomy belt of Terai, or border forest,
+here called the <i>morung</i>, where the British territories had
+their extreme limit in that direction. Behind this belt, tier on
+tier, rose the mighty ranges of the majestic Himalayas, towering up
+in solemn grandeur from the bushy masses of forest-clad hills till
+their snow-capped summits seemed to pierce the sky. The country was
+covered by green crops, with here and there patches of dingy
+rice-stubble, and an occasional stretch of dense grass jungle.
+Quail, partridge, and plover rose from the ground in coveys, as my
+horse cantered through; and an occasional peafowl or florican
+scudded across the track as I ambled onward. I asked at a wretched
+little accumulation of weavers' huts where the ghat was, and if my
+elephant had gone on. To both my queries I received satisfactory
+replies, and as the day was now drawing in, I pushed my nag into a
+sharp canter and hurried forward.</p>
+<p>I soon perceived the bulky outline of my elephant ahead, and on
+coming up, found that my men had come too far up the river, had
+missed the ghat to which I had sent my spare horse, and were now
+making for another ferry still higher up. My horse was jaded, so I
+got on the elephant, and made one of the peons lead the horse
+behind. It was rapidly getting dark, and the mahout, or elephant
+driver, a miserable low caste stupid fellow, evidently knew nothing
+of the country, and was going at random. I halted at the next
+village, got hold of the chowkeydar, and by a promise of
+backsheesh, prevailed on him to accompany us and show us the way.
+We turned off from the direct northerly direction in which we had
+been going, and made straight for the river, which we could see in
+the distance, looking chill and grey in the fast fading twilight.
+We now got on the sandbanks, and had to go cautiously for fear of
+quicksands. By the time we reached the ghat it was quite dark and
+growing very cold.</p>
+<p>We were quite close to the hills, a heavy dew was falling, and I
+found that I should have to float down the liver for a mile, and
+then pole up stream in another channel for two miles before I could
+reach camp.</p>
+<p>I got my horse into the boat, ordering the elephant driver to
+travel all night if he could, as I should expect my things to be at
+camp early in the morning, and the boatmen pushed off the unwieldy
+ferry-boat, floating us quietly down the rapid 'drumly' stream. All
+is solemnly still and silent on an Indian river at night. The
+stream is swift but noiseless. Vast plains and heaps of sand
+stretch for miles on either bank. There are no villages near the
+stream. Faintly, far away in the distance, you hear a few subdued
+sounds, the only evidences of human habitation. There is the tinkle
+of a cow-bell, the barking of a pariah dog, the monotonous
+dub-a-dub-dub of a timber-toned tom-tom, muffled and slightly
+mellowed by the distance. The faint, far cries, and occasional
+halloos of the herd-boys calling to each other, gradually cease,
+but the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub continues till far into the
+night.</p>
+<p>It was now very cold, and I was glad to borrow a blanket from my
+peon. At such a time the pipe is a great solace. It soothes the
+whole system, and plunges one into an agreeable dreamy speculative
+mood, through which all sorts of fantastic notions resolve. Fancies
+chase each other quickly, and old memories rise, bitter or sweet,
+but all tinged and tinted by the seductive influence of the magic
+weed. Hail, blessed pipe! the invigorator of the weary, the
+uncomplaining faithful friend, the consoler of sorrows, and the
+dispeller of care, the much-prized companion of the solitary
+wayfarer!</p>
+<p>Now a jackal utters a howl on the bank, as our boat shoots past,
+and the diabolical noise is echoed from knoll to knoll, and from
+ridge to ridge, as these incarnate devils of the night join in and
+prolong the infernal chorus. An occasional splash, as a piece of
+the bank topples over into the stream, rouses the cormorant and
+gull from their placid dozing on the sandbanks. They squeak and
+gurgle out an unintelligible protest, then cosily settle their
+heads again beneath the sheltering wing, and sleep the slumber of
+the dreamless. A sharp sudden plump, or a lazy surging sound,
+accompanied by a wheezy blowing sort of hiss, tells us that a
+<i>seelun</i> is disporting himself; or that a fat old 'porpus' is
+bearing his clumsy bulk through the rushing current.</p>
+<p>The bank now looms out dark and mysterious, and as we turn the
+point another long stretch of the river opens out, reflecting the
+merry twinkle of the myriad stars, that glitter sharp and clear
+millions of miles overhead. There is now a clattering of bamboo
+poles. With a grunt of disgust, and a quick catching of the breath,
+as the cold water rushes up against his thighs, one of the boatmen
+splashes overboard, and they commence slowly and wearily pushing
+the boat up stream. We touch the bank a dozen times. The current
+swoops down and turns us round and round. The men have to put their
+shoulders under the gunwale, and heave and strain with all their
+might. The long bamboo poles are plunged into the dark depths of
+the river, and the men puff, and grunt, and blow, as they bend
+almost to the bottom of the boat while they push. It is a weary
+progress. We are dripping wet with dew. Quite close on the bank we
+hear the hoarse wailing call of a tigress. The call of the tiger
+comes echoing down between the banks. The men cease poling. I peer
+forward into the obscurity. My syce pats, and speaks soothingly to
+the trembling horse, while my peon with excited fingers fumbles at
+the straps of my gun-case. For a moment all is intensely still.</p>
+<p>I whisper to the boatmen to push out a little into the stream.
+Again the tigress calls, this time so close to us that we could
+almost fancy we could feel her breath. My gun is ready. The syce
+holds the horse firmly by the head, and as we leave the bank, we
+can distinctly see the outline of some large animal, standing out a
+dark bulky mass against the skyline. I take a steady aim and fire.
+A roar of astonishment, wrath, and pain follows the report. The
+horse struggles and snorts, the boatman calls out 'Oh, my father!'
+and ejaculates 'hi-hi-hi!' in tones of piled up anguish and
+apprehension, the peon cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug,
+gea,' that bullet has told; oh your highness! and while the boat
+rocks violently to and fro, I abuse the boatmen, slang the syce,
+and rush to grasp a pole, while the peon seizes another; for we are
+drifting rapidly down stream, and may at any moment strike on a
+bank and topple over. We can hear by the growling and commotion on
+the bank, that my bullet has indeed told, and that something is
+hit. We soon get the frightened boatmen quieted down, and after
+another hour's weary work we spy the white outline of the tents
+above the bank. A lamp shines out a bright welcome; and although it
+is nearly twelve at night, the Captain and the magistrate are
+discussing hot toddy, and waiting my arrival. My spare horse had
+come on from the ghat, the syce had told them I was coming, and
+they had been indulging in all sorts of speculations over my
+non-arrival.</p>
+<p>A good supper, and a reeking jorum, soon banished all
+recollections of my weary journey, and men were ordered to go out
+at first break of dawn, and see about the wounded tiger. In the
+morning I was gratified beyond expression to find a fine tigress,
+measuring 8 feet 3 inches, had been brought in, the result of my
+lucky night shot; the marks of a large tiger were found about the
+spot, and we determined to beat up for him, and if possible secure
+his skin, as we already had that of his consort.</p>
+<p>Captain S. had some work to finish, and my elephant and bearer
+had not arrived, so our magistrate and myself walked down to the
+sandbanks, and amused ourselves for an hour shooting sandpipers and
+plover; we also shot a pair of mallard and a couple of teal, and
+then went back to the tents, and were soon busily discussing a
+hunter's breakfast. While at our meal, my elephant and things
+arrived, and just then also, the 'Major Capt&#257;n,' or Nepaulese
+functionary, my old friend, came up with eight elephants, and we
+hurried out to greet the fat, merry-featured old man.</p>
+<p>What a quaint, genial old customer he looked, as he bowed and
+salaamed to us from his elevated seat, his face beaming, and his
+little bead-like eyes twinkling with pleasure. He was full of an
+adventure he had as he came along. After crossing a brawling
+mountain-torrent, some miles from our camp, they entered some dense
+kair jungle. The kair is I believe a species of mimosa; it is a
+hard wood, growing in a thick scrubby form, with small pointed
+leaves, a yellowish sort of flower, and sharp thorns studding its
+branches; it is a favourite resort for pig, and although it is
+difficult to beat on account of the thorns, tigers are not
+unfrequently found among the gloomy recesses of a good kair
+scrub.</p>
+<p>As they entered this jungle, some of the men were loitering
+behind. When the elephants had passed about halfway through, the
+men came rushing up pell mell, with consternation on their faces,
+reporting that a huge tiger had sprung out on them, and carried off
+one of their number. The Major and the elephants hurried back, and
+met the man limping along, bleeding from several scratches, and
+with a nasty bite in his shoulder, but otherwise more frightened
+than hurt. The tiger had simply knocked him down, stood over him
+for a minute, seized him by the shoulder, and then dashed on
+through the scrub, leaving him behind half dead with pain and
+fear.</p>
+<p>It was most amusing to hear the fat little Major relate the
+story. He went through all the by-play incident to the piece, and
+as he got excited, stood right up on his narrow pad. His
+gesticulations were most vehement, and as the elephant was rather
+unsteady, and his footing to say the least precarious, he seemed
+every moment as if he must topple over. The old warrior, however,
+was equal to the occasion; without for an instant abating the
+vigour of his narrative, he would clutch at the greasy, matted
+locks of his mahout, and steady himself, while he volubly described
+incident after incident. As he warmed with his subject, and tried
+to shew us how the tiger must have pounced on the man, he would let
+go and use his hands in illustration; the old elephant would give
+another heave, and the fat little man would make another frantic
+grab at the patient mahout's hair. The whole scene was most
+comical, and we were in convulsions of laughter.</p>
+<p>The news, however, foreboded ample sport; we now had certain
+<i>khubber</i> of at least two tigers; we were soon under weigh;
+the wounded man had been sent back to the Major's head-quarters on
+an elephant, and in time recovered completely from his mauling. As
+we jogged along, we had a most interesting talk with the Major
+Capt&#257;n. He was wonderfully well informed, considering he had
+never been out of Nepaul. He knew all about England, our army, our
+mode of government, our parliament, and our Queen; whenever he
+alluded to Her Majesty he salaamed profoundly, whether as a tribute
+of respect to her, or in compliment to us as loyal subjects, we
+could not quite make out. He described to us the route home by the
+Suez canal, and the fun of his talk was much heightened by his
+applying the native names to everything; London was <i>Shuhur</i>,
+the word meaning 'a city,' and he told us it was built on the
+<i>Tham&#257;ss nuddee</i>, by which he meant the Thames river.</p>
+<p>Our magistrate had a Jemadar of Peons with him, a sort of head
+man among the servants. This man, abundantly bedecked with
+ear-rings, finger-rings, and other ornaments, was a useless,
+bullying sort of fellow; dressed to the full extent of Oriental
+foppishness, and because he was the magistrate's servant, he
+thought himself entitled to order the other servants about in the
+most lordly way. He was now making himself peculiarly officious,
+shouting to the drivers to go here and there, to do this and do
+that, and indulging in copious torrents of abuse, without which it
+seems impossible for a native subordinate to give directions on any
+subject. We were all rather amused, and could not help bursting
+into laughter, as, inflated with a sense of his own importance, he
+began abusing one of the native drivers of the Nepaulee chief; this
+man did not submit tamely to his insolence. To him the magistrate
+was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a perfect nonentity. He
+accordingly turned round and poured forth a perfect flood of
+invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar took a back
+seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his melodious voice
+in tones of imperious command.</p>
+<p>The old Major chuckled, and rubbed his fat little hands, and
+leaning over to me said, 'at home a lion, but abroad a lamb,' for,
+surrounded by his women at home, the man would twirl his
+moustaches, look fierce, and fancy himself a very tiger; but, no
+sooner did he go abroad, and mix with men as good, if not better
+than himself, than he was ready to eat any amount of humble
+pie.</p>
+<p>We determined first of all to beat for the tiger whose tracks
+had been seen near where I had fired my lucky shot the preceding
+night. A strong west wind was blowing, and dense clouds of sand
+were being swept athwart our line, from the vast plains of fine
+white sand bordering the river for miles. As we went along we fired
+the jungle in our rear, and the strong wind carried the flames
+raging and roaring through the dense jungle with amazing fury. One
+elephant got so frightened at the noise behind him, that he fairly
+bolted for the river, and could not be persuaded back into the
+line.</p>
+<p>Disturbed by the fire, we saw numerous deer and pig, but being
+after tiger we refrained from shooting at them. The Basinattea
+Tuppoo, which was the scene of our present hunt, were famous
+jungles, and many a tiger had been shot there by the Purneah Club
+in bygone days. The annual ravages of the impetuous river, had
+however much changed the face of the country; vast tracts of jungle
+had been obliterated by deposits of sand from its annual
+incursions. Great skeletons of trees stood everywhere, stretching
+out bare and unsightly branches, all bending to the south, shewing
+the mighty power of the current, when it made its annual progress
+of devastation over the surrounding country. Now, however, it was
+like a thin streak of silver, flashing back the fierce rays of the
+meridian sun. Through the blinding clouds of fine white sand we
+could at times, during a temporary lull, see its ruined surface.
+And we were glad when we came on the tracks of the tiger, which led
+straight from the stream, in the direction of some thick tree
+jungle at no great distance. We gladly turned our backs to the
+furious clouds of dust and gusts of scorching wind, and led by a
+Nepaulee tracker, were soon crashing heavily through the
+jungle.</p>
+<p>When hunting with elephants, the Nepaulese beat in a dense line,
+the heads of the elephants touching each other. In this manner we
+were now proceeding, when S. called out, 'There goes the
+tiger.'</p>
+<p>We looked up, and saw a very large tiger making off for a deep
+watercourse, which ran through the jungle some 200 yards ahead of
+the line. We hurried up as fast as we could, putting out a fast
+elephant on either flank, to see that the cunning brute did not
+sneak either up or down the nullah, under cover of the high banks.
+This, however, was not his object. We saw him descend into the
+nullah, and almost immediately top the further bank, and disappear
+into the jungle beyond.</p>
+<p>Pressing on at a rapid jolting trot, we dashed after him in hot
+pursuit. The jungle seemed somewhat lighter on ahead. In the
+distance we could see some dangurs at work breaking up land, and to
+the right was a small collection of huts with a beautiful riband of
+green crops, a perfect oasis in the wilderness of sand and parched
+up grass. Forming into line we pressed on. The tiger was evidently
+lying up, probably deterred from breaking across the open by the
+sight of the dangurs at work. My heart was bounding with
+excitement. We were all intensely eager, and thought no more of the
+hot wind and blinding dust. Just then Captain S. saw the brute
+sneaking along to the left of the line, trying to outflank us, and
+break back. He fired two shots rapidly with his Express, and the
+second one, taking effect in the neck of the tiger, bowled him over
+as he stood. He was a mangy-looking brute, badly marked, and
+measured eight feet eleven inches. He did not have a chance of
+charging, and probably had little heart for a fight.</p>
+<p>We soon had him padded, and then proceeded straight north, to
+the scene of the Major's encounter with the tiger in the morning.
+The jungle was well trampled down; there were numerous streams and
+pools of water, occasional clumps of bamboos, and abrupt ridgy
+undulations. It was the very jungle for tiger, and elated by our
+success in having bagged one already, we were all in high spirits.
+The line of fire we could see far in the distance, sweeping on like
+the march of fate, and we could have shot numerous deer, but
+reserved our fire for nobler game. It was getting well on in the
+afternoon when we came up to the kair jungle. We beat right up to
+where the man had been seized, and could see the marks of the
+struggle distinctly enough. We beat right through the jungle with
+no result, and as it was now getting rather late, the old Major
+signified his desire to bid us good evening. As this meant
+depriving us of eight elephants, we prevailed on him to try one
+spare straggling corner that we had not gone through. He laughed
+the idea to scorn of getting a tiger there, saying there was no
+cover. One elephant, however, was sent while we were talking. Our
+elephants were all standing in a group, and the mahout on his
+solitary elephant was listlessly jogging on in a purposeless and
+desultory manner, when we suddenly heard the elephant pipe out a
+shrill note of alarm, and the mahout yelled 'Bagh! Bagh!' tiger!
+tiger! The Captain was again the lucky man. The tiger, a much finer
+and stronger built animal than the one we had already killed, was
+standing not eighty paces off, shewing his teeth, his bristles
+erect, and evidently in a bad temper. He had been crouching among
+some low bushes, and seeing the elephant bearing directly down on
+him, he no doubt imagined his retreat had been discovered. At all
+events there he was, and he presented a splendid aim. He was a
+noble-looking specimen as he stood there grim and defiant. Captain
+S. took aim, and lodged an Express bullet in his chest. It made a
+fearful wound, and the ferocious brute writhed and rolled about in
+agony. We quickly surrounded him, and a bullet behind the ear from
+my No. 16 put an end to his misery.</p>
+<p>The old Major now bade us good evening, and after padding the
+second tiger, and much elated at our success, we began to beat
+homewards, shooting at everything that rose before us. A couple of
+tremendous pig got up before me, and dashed through a clear stream
+that was purling peacefully in its pebbly bed. As the boar was
+rushing up the farther bank, I deposited a pellet in his hind
+quarters. He gave an angry grunt and tottered on, but presently
+pulled up, and seemed determined to have some revenge for his hurt.
+As my elephant came up the bank, the gallant boar tried to charge,
+but already wounded and weak from loss of blood, he tottered and
+staggered about. My elephant would not face him, so I gave him
+another shot behind the shoulder, and padded him for the
+<i>moosahurs</i> and sweepers in camp. Just then one of the
+policemen started a young hog-deer, and several of the men got down
+and tried to catch the little thing alive. They soon succeeded, and
+the cries of the poor little <i>butcha</i>, that is 'young one,'
+were most plaintive.</p>
+<p>The wind had now subsided, there was a red angry glare, as the
+level rays of the setting sun shimmered through the dense clouds of
+dust that loaded the atmosphere. It was like the dull, red, coppery
+hue which presages a storm. The vast morung jungle lay behind us,
+and beyond that the swelling wooded hills, beginning to show dark
+and indistinct against the gathering gloom. A long line of cattle
+were wending their way homeward to the batan, and the tinkle of the
+big copper bell fell pleasingly on our ears. In the distance, we
+could see the white canvas of the tents gleaming in the rays of the
+setting sun. A vast circular line of smouldering fire, flickering
+and flaring fitfully, and surmounted by huge volumes of curling
+smoke, shewed the remains of the fierce tornado of flame that had
+raged at noon, when we lit the jungle. The jungle was very light,
+and much trodden down, our three howdah elephants were not far
+apart, and we were chatting cheerfully together and discussing the
+incidents of the day. My bearer was sitting behind me in the back
+of the howdah, and I had taken out my ball cartridge from my No. 12
+breechloader, and had replaced them with shot. Just then my mahout
+raised his hand, and in a hoarse excited whisper called out,</p>
+<p>'Look, sahib, a large tiger!'</p>
+<p>'Where?' we all exclaimed, getting excited at once. He pointed
+in front to a large object, looking for all the world like a huge
+dun cow.</p>
+<p>'Why, you fool, that is a bullock.' I exclaimed.</p>
+<p>My bearer, who had also been intently gazing, now said.</p>
+<p>'No, sahib! that is a tiger, and a large one.'</p>
+<p>At that moment, it turned partly round, and I at once saw that
+the men were right, and that it was a veritable tiger, and
+seemingly a monster in size. I at once called to Captain S. and the
+magistrate, who had by this time fallen a little behind.</p>
+<p>'Look out, you fellows! here's a tiger in front.'</p>
+<p>At first they thought I was joking, but a glance confirmed the
+truth of what I had said. When I first saw the brute, he was
+evidently sneaking after the cattle, and was about sixty paces from
+me. He was so intent on watching the herd, that he had not noticed
+our approach. He was now, however, evidently alarmed and making
+off. By the time I called out, he must have been over eighty yards
+away. I had my No. 12 in my hand, loaded with shot; it was no use;
+I put it down and took up my No. 16; this occupied a few seconds; I
+fired both barrels; the first bullet was in excellent line but
+rather short, the second went over the animal's back, and neither
+touched him. It made him, however, quicken his retreat, and when
+Captain S. fired, he must have been fully one hundred and fifty
+yards away; as it was now somewhat dusky, he also missed. He fired
+another long shot with his rifle, but missed again. Oh that unlucky
+change of cartridges in my No. 12! But for that&mdash;but
+there&mdash;we are always wise after the event. We never expected
+to see a tiger in such open country, especially as we had been over
+the same ground before, firing pretty often as we came along.</p>
+<p>We followed up of course, but it was now fast getting dark, and
+though we beat about for some time, we could not get another
+glimpse of the tiger. He was seemingly a very large male,
+dark-coloured, and in splendid condition. We must have got him, had
+it been earlier, as he could not have gone far forward, for the
+lines of fire were beyond him, and we had him between the fire and
+the elephants. We got home about 6.30, rather disappointed at
+missing such a glorious prize, so true is it that a sportsman's
+soul is never satisfied. But we had rare and most unlooked-for
+luck, and we felt considerably better after a good dinner, and
+indulged in hopes of getting the big fellow next morning.</p>
+<p>In the same jungles, some years ago, a very sad accident
+occurred. A party were out tiger-shooting, and during one of the
+beats, a cowherd hearing the noise of the advancing elephants,
+crouched behind a bush, and covered himself with his blanket. At a
+distance he looked exactly like a pig, and one of the shooters
+mistook him for one. He fired, and hit the poor herd in the hip. As
+soon as the mistake was perceived, everything was done for the poor
+fellow. His wound was dressed as well as they could do it, and he
+was sent off to the doctor in a dhoolie, a a sort of covered
+litter, slung on a pole and carried on men's shoulders. It was too
+late, the poor coolie died on the road, from shock and loss of
+blood. Such mistakes occur very seldom, and this was such a natural
+one, that no one could blame the unfortunate sportsman, and
+certainly no one felt keener regret than he did. The coolie's
+family was amply provided for, which was all that remained to be
+done.</p>
+<p>This is the only instance I know, where fatal results have
+followed such an accident. I have known several cases of beaters
+peppered with shot, generally from their own carelessness, and
+disregard of orders, but a salve in the shape of a few rupees has
+generally proved the most effective ointment. I have known some
+rascals say, they were sorry they had not been lucky enough to be
+wounded, as they considered a punctured cuticle nothing to set
+against the magnificent douceur of four or five rupees. One
+impetuous scamp, being told not to go in front of the line during a
+beat near Burgamma, replied to the warning caution of his
+jemadar,</p>
+<p>'Oh never mind, if get shot I will get backsheesh.'</p>
+<p>Whether this was a compliment to the efficacy of our treatment
+(by the silver ointment), or to the inaccuracy and harmlessness of
+our shooting, I leave the reader to judge.</p>
+<p>Our bag during this lucky day, including the tigress killed by
+my shot on the river bank, was as follows: three tigers, one boar,
+four deer, including the young one taken alive, eight sandpipers,
+nine plovers, two mallards, and two teal.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXIII."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIII.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>We resume the beat.&mdash;The
+hog-deer.&mdash;Nepaulese villages.&mdash;Village
+granaries.&mdash;Tiger in front.&mdash;A hit! a
+hit!&mdash;Following up the wounded tiger.&mdash;Find him
+dead.&mdash;Tiffin in the village.&mdash;The Patair jungle.
+&mdash;Search for tiger.&mdash;Gone away!&mdash;An elephant
+steeplechase in pursuit. &mdash;Exciting chase.&mdash;The Morung
+jungle.&mdash;Magnificent scenery.&mdash;Skinning the
+tiger.&mdash;Incidents of tiger hunting.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Next morning, both the magistrate and myself felt very ill,
+headachy and sick, with violent vomiting and retching; Captain S.
+attributed it to the fierce hot wind and exposure of the preceding
+day, but we, the sufferers, blamed the <i>dekchees</i> or cooking
+pots. These <i>dekchees</i> are generally made of copper, coated or
+tinned over with white metal once a month or oftener; if the
+tinning is omitted, or the copper becomes exposed by accident or
+neglect, the food cooked in the pots sometimes gets tainted with
+copper, and produces nausea and sickness in those who eat it. I
+have known, within my own experience, cases of copper poisoning
+that have terminated fatally. It is well always thoroughly to
+inspect the kitchen utensils, particularly when in camp; unless
+carefully watched and closely supervised, servants get very
+careless, and let food remain in these copper vessels. This is
+always dangerous, and should never be allowed.</p>
+<p>In consequence of our indisposition, we did not start till the
+forenoon was far advanced, and the hot west wind had again begun to
+sweep over the prairie-like stretches of sand and withered grass.
+We commenced beating up by the Batan or cattle stance, near which
+we had seen the big tiger, the preceding evening. S. however became
+so sick and giddy, that he had to return to camp, and Captain S.
+and I continued the beat alone. Having gone over the same ground
+only yesterday, we did not expect a tiger so near to camp, more
+especially as the fire had made fearful havoc with the tall grass.
+Hog-deer were very numerous; they are not as a rule easily
+disturbed; they are of a reddish brown colour, not unlike that of
+the Scotch red deer, and rush through the jungle, when alarmed,
+with a succession of bounding leaps; they make very pretty
+shooting, and when young, afford tender and well-flavoured venison.
+One hint I may give. When you shoot a buck, see that he is at once
+denuded of certain appendages, else the flesh will get rank and
+disagreeable to eat. The bucks have pretty antlers, but are not
+very noble looking. The does are somewhat lighter in colour, and do
+not seem to consort together in herds like antelopes; there are
+rarely more than five in a group, though I have certainly seen more
+on several occasions.</p>
+<p>This morning we were unlucky with our deer. I shot three, and
+Captain S. shot at and wounded three, not one of which however did
+we bag. This part of the country is exclusively inhabited by
+Parbutteas, the native name for Nepaulese settled in British
+territory. Over the frontier line, the villages are called
+Pahareeas, signifying mountaineers or hillmen, from Pahar, a
+mountain. We beat up to a Parbuttea village, with its conical
+roofed huts; men and women were engaged in plaiting long coils of
+rice straw into cable looking ropes. A few split bamboos are
+fastened into the ground, in a circle, and these ropes are then
+coiled round, in and out, between the stakes; this makes a huge
+circular vat-shaped repository, open at both ends; it is then
+lifted up and put on a platform coated with mud, and protected from
+rats and vermin by the pillars being placed on smooth, inverted
+earthen pots. The coils of straw are now plastered outside and in
+with a mixture of mud, chaff, and cowdung, and allowed to dry; when
+dried the hut is filled with grain, and securely roofed and
+thatched. This forms the invariable village granary, and looks at a
+distance not unlike a stack or rick of corn, round a farm at home.
+By the abundance of these granaries in a village, one can tell at a
+glance whether the season has been a good one, and whether the
+frugal inhabitants of the clustering little hamlet are in pretty
+comfortable circumstances. If they are under the sway of a grasping
+and unscrupulous landlord, they not unfrequently bury their grain
+in clay-lined chambers in the earth, and have always enough for
+current wants, stored up in the sun-baked clay repositories
+mentioned in a former chapter.</p>
+<p>Beyond the village we entered some thick Patair jungle. Its
+greenness was refreshing after the burnt up and withered grass
+jungle. We were now in a hollow bordering the stream, and somewhat
+protected from the scorching wind, and the stinging clouds of fine
+sand and red dust. The brook looked so cool and refreshing, and the
+water so clear and pellucid, that I was about to dismount to take a
+drink and lave my heated head and face, when a low whistle to my
+right made me look in that direction, and I saw the Captain waving
+his hand excitedly, and pointing ahead. He was higher up the bank
+than I was, and in very dense Patair; a ridge ran between his front
+of the line and mine, so that I could only see his howdah, and the
+bulk of the elephant's body was concealed from me by the grass on
+this ridge.</p>
+<p>I closed up diagonally across the ridge; S. still waving to me
+to hurry up; as I topped it, I spied a large tiger slouching along
+in the hollow immediately below me. He saw me at the same instant,
+and bounded on in front of S. His Express was at his shoulder on
+the instant; he fired, and a tremendous spurt of blood shewed a
+hit, a hit, a palpable hit. The tiger was nowhere visible, and not
+a cry or a motion could we hear or see, to give us any clue to the
+whereabouts of the wounded animal. We followed up however, quickly
+but cautiously, expecting every instant a furious charge.</p>
+<p>We must have gone at least a hundred yards, when right in front
+of me I descried the tiger, crouching down, its head resting on its
+fore paws, and to all appearance settling for a spring. It was
+about twenty yards from me, and taking a rather hasty aim, I
+quickly fired both barrels straight at the head. I could only see
+the head and paws, but these I saw quite distinctly. My elephant
+was very unsteady, and both my bullets went within an inch of the
+tiger's head, but fortunately missed completely. I say fortunately,
+for finding the brute still remaining quite motionless, we
+cautiously approached, and found it was stone dead. The perfect
+naturalness of the position, however, might well have deceived a
+more experienced sportsman. The beast was lying crouched on all
+fours, as if in the very act of preparing to spring. The one bullet
+had killed it; the wound was in the lungs, and the internal
+bleeding had suffocated it, but here was a wonderful instance of
+the tiger's tenacity of life, even when sorely wounded, for it had
+travelled over a hundred and thirty yards after S. had shot it.</p>
+<p>It was lucky I missed, for my bullets would have spoiled the
+skull. She was a very handsome, finely marked tigress, a large
+specimen, for on applying the tape we found she measured exactly
+nine feet. Before descending to measure her, we were joined by the
+old Major Capt&#257;n, whose elephants we had for some time
+descried in the distance. His congratulations were profuse, and no
+doubt sincere, and after padding the tigress, we hied to the
+welcome shelter of one of the village houses, where we discussed a
+hearty and substantial tiffin.</p>
+<p>During tiffin, we were surrounded by a bevy of really fair and
+buxom lasses. They wore petticoats of striped blue cloth, and had
+their arms and shoulders bare, and their ears loaded with silver
+ornaments. They were merry, laughing, comely damsels, with none of
+the exaggerated shyness, and affected prudery of the women of the
+plains. We were offered plantains, milk, and chupatties, and an old
+patriarch came out leaning on his staff, to revile and abuse the
+tigress. From some of the young men we heard of a fresh kill to the
+north of the village, and after tiffin we proceeded in that
+direction, following up the course of the limpid stream, whose
+gurgling ripple sounded so pleasantly in our ears.</p>
+<p>Far ahead to the right, and on the further bank of the stream,
+we could see dense curling volumes of smoke, and leaping pyramids
+of flame, where a jungle fire was raging in some thick acacia
+scrub. As we got nearer, the heat became excessive, and the flames,
+fanned into tremendous fury by the fierce west wind, tore through
+the dry thorny bushes. Our elephants were quite unsteady, and did
+not like facing the fire. We made a slight detour, and soon had the
+roaring wall of flame behind us. We were now entering on a moist,
+circular, basin-shaped hollow. Among the patair roots were the
+recent marks of great numbers of wild pigs, where they had been
+foraging among the stiff clay for these esculents. The patair is
+like a huge bulrush, and the elephants are very fond of its
+succulent, juicy, cool-looking leaves. Those in our line kept
+tearing up huge tufts of it, thrashing out the mud and dirt from
+the roots against their forelegs, and with a grunt of satisfaction,
+making it slowly disappear in their cavernous mouths. There was
+considerable noise, and the jungle was nearly as high as the
+howdahs, presenting the appearance of an impenetrable screen of
+vivid green. We beat and rebeat, across and across, but there was
+no sign of the tiger. The banks of the nullah were very steep,
+rotten looking, and dangerous. We had about eighteen elephants,
+namely, ten of our own, and eight belonging to the Nepaulese. We
+were beating very close, the elephants' heads almost touching. This
+is the way they always beat in Nepaul. We thought we had left not a
+spot in the basin untouched, and Captain S. was quite satisfied
+that there could be no tiger there. It was a splendid jungle for
+cover, so thick, dense, and cool. I was beating along the edge of
+the creek, which ran deep and silent, between the gloomy
+sedge-covered banks. In a placid little pool I saw a couple of
+widgeon all unconscious of danger, their glossy plumage reflected
+in the clear water. I called to Captain S. 'We are sold this time
+Captain, there's no tiger here!'</p>
+<p>'I am afraid not,' he answered.</p>
+<p>'Shall I bag those two widgeon?' I asked.</p>
+<p>'All right,' was the response.</p>
+<p>Putting in shot cartridge, I shot both the widgeon, but we were
+all astounded to see the tiger we had so carefully and
+perseveringly searched for, bound out of a crevice in the bank,
+almost right under my elephant. Off he went with a smothered roar,
+that set our elephants hurrying backwards and forwards. There was a
+commotion along the whole line. The jungle was too dense for us to
+see anything. It was one more proof how these hill tigers will lie
+close, even in the midst of a line.</p>
+<p>S. called out to me to remain quiet, and see if we could trace
+the tiger's progress by any rustling in the cover. Looking down we
+saw the kill, close to the edge of the water. A fast elephant was
+sent on ahead, to try and ascertain whether the tiger was likely to
+break beyond the circle of the little basin-shaped valley. We
+gathered round the kill; it was quite fresh; a young buffalo. The
+Major told us that in his experience, a male tiger always begins on
+the neck first. A female always at the hind quarters. A few
+mouthfuls only had been eaten, and according to the Major, it must
+have been a tigress, as the part devoured was from the hind
+quarters.</p>
+<p>While we were talking over these things, a frenzied shout from
+the driver of our naka elephant caused us to look in his direction.
+He was gesticulating wildly, and bawling at the top of his voice,
+'Come, come quickly, sahibs, the tiger is running away.'</p>
+<p>Now commenced such a mad and hurried scramble as I have never
+witnessed before or since, from the back of an elephant. As we tore
+through the tangled dense green patair, the broad leaves crackled
+like crashing branches, the huge elephants surged ahead like ships
+rocking in a gale of wind, and the mahouts and attendants on the
+pad elephants, shouted and urged on their shuffling animals, by
+excited cries and resounding whacks.</p>
+<p>In the retinue of the Major, were several men with elephant
+spears or goads. These consist of a long, pliant, polished bamboo,
+with a sharp spike at the end, which they call a <i>jhetha</i>.
+These men now came hurrying round the ridge, among the opener
+grass, and as we emerged from the heavy cover, they began goading
+the elephants behind and urging them to their most furious pace. On
+ahead, nearly a quarter of a mile away, we could see a huge tiger
+making off for the distant morung, at a rapid sling trot. His lithe
+body shone before us, and urged us to the most desperate efforts.
+It was almost a bare plateau. There was scarcely any cover, only
+here and there a few stunted acacia bushes. The dense forest was
+two or three miles ahead, but there were several nasty steep banks,
+and precipitous gullies with deep water rushing between. Attached
+to each Nepaulee pad, by a stout curiously-plaited cord, ornamented
+with fancy knots and tassels of silk, was a small pestle-shaped
+instrument, not unlike an auctioneer's hammer. It was quaintly
+carved, and studded with short, blunt, shining, brass nails or
+spikes. I had noticed these hanging down from the pads, and had
+often wondered what they were for. I was now to see them used.
+While the mahouts in front rained a shower of blows on the
+elephants head, and the spear-men pricked him up from behind with
+their jhethas, the occupant of the pad, turning round with his face
+to the tail, belaboured the poor hathee with the auctioneer's
+hammer. The blows rattled on the elephant's rump. The brutes
+trumpeted with pain, but they <i>did</i> put on the pace, and
+travelled as I never imagined an elephant <i>could</i> travel. Past
+bush and brake, down precipitous ravine, over the stones, through
+the thorny scrub, dashing down a steep bank here, plunging madly
+through a deep stream there, we shuffled along. We must have been
+going fully seven miles an hour. The pestle-shaped hammer is called
+a <i>lohath</i>, and most unmercifully were they wielded. We were
+jostled and jolted, till every bone ached again. Clouds of dust
+were driven before our reeling waving line. How the Nepaulese
+shouted and capered. We were all mad with excitement. I shouted
+with the rest. The fat little Major kicked his heels against the
+sides of his elephant, as if he were spurring a Derby winner to
+victory. Our usually sedate captain yelled&mdash;actually
+yelled!&mdash;in an agony of excitement, and tried to execute a war
+dance of his own on the floor of his howdah. Our guns rattled, the
+chains clanked and jangled, the howdahs rocked and pitched from
+side to side. We made a desperate effort. The poor elephants made a
+gallant race of it. The foot men perspired and swore, but it was
+not to be. Our striped friend had the best of the start, and we
+gained not an inch upon him. To our unspeakable mortification, he
+reached the dense cover on ahead, where we might as well have
+sought for a needle in a haystack. Never, however, shall I forget
+that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant steeple-chase.
+Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for it next day.</p>
+<p>The old Major and his fleet racing elephants now left us, and
+our jaded beasts took us slowly back in the direction of our camp.
+It was a fine wild view on which we were now gazing. Behind us the
+dark gloomy impenetrable morung, the home of ever-abiding fever and
+ague. Behind that the countless multitude of hills, swelling here
+and receding there, a jumbled heap of mighty peaks and fretted
+pinnacles, with their glistening sides and dark shadowless ravines,
+their mighty scaurs and their abrupt serrated edges showing out
+clearly and boldly defined against the evening sky. Far to the
+right, the shining river&mdash;a riband of burnished steel, for its
+waters were a deep steely blue&mdash;rolled its swift flood along
+amid shining sand-banks. In front, the vast undulating plain, with
+grove, and rill, and smoking hamlet, stretched at our feet in a
+lovely panorama of blended and harmonious colour. We were now high
+up above the plain, and the scene was one of the finest I have ever
+witnessed in India. The wind had gone down, and the oblique rays of
+the sun lit up the whole vast panorama with a lurid light, which
+was heightened in effect by the dust-laden atmosphere, and the
+volumes of smoke from the now distant fires, hedging in the far
+horizon with curtains of threatening grandeur and gloom. That far
+away canopy of dust and smoke formed a wonderful contrast to the
+shining snow-capped hills behind. Altogether it was a day to be
+remembered. I have seen no such strange and unearthly combination
+of shade and colour in any landscape before or since.</p>
+<p>On the way home we bagged a florican and a very fine mallard,
+and reached the camp utterly fagged, to find our worthy magistrate
+very much recovered, and glad to congratulate us on our having
+bagged the tigress. After a plunge in the river, and a rare camp
+dinner&mdash;such a meal as only an Indian sportsman can
+procure&mdash;we lay back in our cane chairs, and while the
+fragrant smoke from the mild Manilla curled lovingly about the roof
+of the tent, we discussed the day's proceedings, and fought our
+battles over again.</p>
+<p>A rather animated discussion arose about the length of the
+tiger&mdash;as to its frame merely, and we wondered what difference
+the skin would make in the length of the animal. As it was a point
+we had never heard mooted before, we determined to see for
+ourselves. We accordingly went out into the beautiful moonlight,
+and superintended the skinning of the tigress. The skin was taken
+off most artistically. We had carefully measured the animal before
+skinning. She was exactly nine feet long. We found the skin made a
+difference of only four inches, the bare skeleton from tip of nose
+to extreme point of tail measuring eight feet eight inches.</p>
+<p>As an instance of tigers taking to trees, our worthy magistrate
+related that in Rajmehal he and a friend had wounded a tiger, and
+subsequently lost him in the jungle. In vain they searched in every
+conceivable direction, but could find no trace of him. They were
+about giving up in despair, when S., raising his hat, happened to
+look up, and there, on a large bough directly overhead, he saw the
+wounded tiger lying extended at full length, some eighteen feet
+from the ground. They were not long in leaving the dangerous
+vicinity, and it was not long either ere a well-directed shot
+brought the tiger down from his elevated perch.</p>
+<p>These after-dinner stories are not the least enjoyable part of a
+tiger-hunting party. Round the camp table in a snug, well-lighted
+tent, with all the 'materials' handy, I have listened to many a
+tale of thrilling adventure. S. was full of reminiscences, and
+having seen a deal of tiger shooting in various parts of India, his
+recollections were much appreciated. To shew that the principal
+danger in tiger shooting is not from the tiger himself, but from
+one's elephant becoming panic-stricken and bolting, he told how a
+Mr. Aubert, a Benares planter, lost his life. A tiger had been
+'spined' by a shot, and the line gathered round the prostrate
+monster to watch its death-struggle. The elephant on which the
+unfortunate planter sat got demoralised and attempted to bolt. The
+mahout endeavoured to check its rush, and in desperation the
+elephant charged straight down, close past the tiger, which lay
+writhing and roaring under a huge overhanging tree. The elephant
+was rushing directly under this tree, and a large branch would have
+swept howdah and everything it contained clean off the elephant's
+back, as easily as one would brush off a fly. To save himself
+Aubert made a leap for the branch, the elephant forging madly
+ahead; and the howdah, being smashed like match-wood, fell on the
+tiger below, who was tearing and clawing at everything within his
+reach. Poor Aubert got hold of the branch with his hands, and clung
+with all the desperation of one fighting for his life. He was right
+above the wounded tiger, but his grasp on the tree was not a firm
+one. For a moment he hung suspended above the furious animal,
+which, mad with agony and fury, was a picture of demoniac rage. The
+poor fellow could hold no longer, and fell right on the tiger. It
+was nearly at its last gasp, but it caught hold of Aubert by the
+foot, and in a final paroxysm of pain and rage chawed the foot
+clean off, and the poor fellow died next day from the shock and
+loss of blood. He was one of four brothers who all met untimely
+deaths from accidents. This one was killed by the tiger, another
+was thrown from a vehicle and killed on the spot, the third was
+drowned, and the fourth shot by accident.</p>
+<p>Our bag to-day was one tiger, one florican, one mallard, and two
+widgeon. On cutting the tiger open, we found that the bullet had
+entered on the left side, and, as we suspected, had entered the
+lungs. It had, however, made a terrible wound. We found that it had
+penetrated the heart and liver, gone forward through the chest, and
+smashed the right shoulder. Notwithstanding this fearful wound,
+shewing the tremendous effects of the Express bullet, the tiger had
+gone on for the distance I have mentioned, after which it must have
+fallen stone-dead. It was a marvellous instance of vitality, even
+after the heart, liver, and lungs had been pierced. The liver had
+six lobes, and it was then I heard for the first time, that with
+the natives this was an infallible sign of the age of a tiger. The
+old Major firmly believed it, and told us it was quite an accepted
+article of faith with all native sportsmen. Facts subsequently came
+under my own observation which seemed to give great probability to
+the theory, but it is one on which I would not like to give a
+decided opinion, till after hearing the experiences of other
+sportsmen.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXIV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIV.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Camp of the Nepaulee
+chief.&mdash;Quicksands.&mdash;Elephants crossing rivers.
+&mdash;Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.&mdash;We beat the forest for
+tiger.&mdash;Shoot a young tiger.&mdash;Red ants in the
+forest.&mdash;Bhowras or ground bees.&mdash;The <i>ursus
+labialis</i> or long-lipped bear.&mdash;Recross the
+stream.&mdash;Florican. &mdash;Stag running the gauntlet of
+flame.&mdash;Our bag.&mdash;Start for factory. &mdash;Remarks on
+elephants.&mdash;Precautions useful for protection from the sun in
+tiger shooting.&mdash;The <i>puggree</i>.&mdash;Cattle breeding in
+India, and wholesale deaths of cattle from
+disease.&mdash;Nathpore.&mdash;Ravages of the river.&mdash;Mrs.
+Gray, an old resident in the jungles.&mdash;Description of her
+surroundings.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Next morning we started beating due east, setting fire to the
+jungle as we went along. The roaring and crackling of the flames
+startled the elephant on which Captain S. was riding, and going
+away across country at a furious pace, it was with difficulty that
+it could be stopped. We crossed the frontier line a short distance
+from camp, and entered a dense jungle of thorny acacia, with long
+dry grass almost choking the trees. They were dry and stunted, and
+when we dropped a few lights amongst such combustible material, the
+fire was splendid beyond description. How the flames surged through
+the withered grass. We were forced to pause and admire the
+magnificent sight. The wall of flame tore along with inconceivable
+rapidity, and the blinding volumes of smoke obscured the country
+for miles. The jungle was full of deer and pig. One fine buck came
+bounding along past our line, but I stopped him with a single
+bullet through the neck. He fell over with a tremendous crash, and
+turning a complete somersault broke off both his horns with the
+force of the fall.</p>
+<p>We beat down a shallow sandy watercourse, and could see the camp
+of the old Major on the high bank beyond. Farther down the stream
+there was a small square fort, the whitewashed walls of which
+flashed back the rays of the sun, and grouped round it were some
+ruinous looking huts, several snowy tents, and a huge shamiana or
+canopy, under which we could see a host of attendants spreading
+carpets, placing chairs, and otherwise making ready for us. The
+banks of the stream were very steep, but the guide at length
+brought us to what seemed a safe and fordable passage. On the
+further side was a flat expanse of seemingly firm and dry sand, but
+no sooner had our elephants begun to cross it, than the whole
+sandbank for yards began to rock and tremble; the water welled up
+over the footmarks of the elephants, and S. called out to us,
+Fussun, Fussun! quicksand, quicksand! We scattered the elephants,
+and tried to hurry them over the dangerous bit of ground with
+shouts and cries of encouragement.</p>
+<p>The poor animals seemed thoroughly to appreciate the danger, and
+shuffled forward as quickly as they could. All got over in safety
+except the last three. The treacherous sand, rendered still more
+insecure by the heavy tread of so many ponderous animals, now gave
+way entirely, and the three hapless elephants were left floundering
+in the tenacious hold of the dreaded fussun. Two of the three were
+not far from the firm bank, and managed to extricate themselves
+after a short struggle; but the third had sunk up to the shoulders,
+and could scarcely move. All hands immediately began cutting long
+grass and forming it into bundles. These were thrown to the sinking
+elephant. He rolled from side to side, the sand quaking and
+undulating round him in all directions. At times he would roll over
+till nearly half his body was invisible. Some of the Nepaulese
+ventured near, and managed to undo the harness-ropes that were
+holding on the pad. The sagacious brute fully understood his
+danger, and the efforts we were making for his assistance. He
+managed to get several of the big bundles of grass under his feet,
+and stood there looking at us with a most pathetic pleading
+expression, and trembling, as if with an ague, from fear and
+exhaustion.</p>
+<p>The old Major came down to meet us, and a crowd of his men added
+their efforts to ours, to help the unfortunate elephant. We threw
+in bundle after bundle of grass, till we had the yielding sand
+covered with a thick passage of firmly bound fascines, on which the
+hathee, staggering and floundering painfully, managed to reach firm
+land. He was so completely exhausted that he could scarcely walk to
+the tents, and we left him there to the care of his attendants.
+This is a very common episode in tiger hunting, and does not always
+terminate so fortunately. In running water, the quicksand is not so
+dangerous, as the force of the stream keeps washing away the sand,
+and does not allow it to settle round the legs of the elephant; but
+on dry land, a dry fussun, as it is called, is justly feared; and
+many a valuable animal has been swallowed up in its slow, deadly,
+tenacious grasp.</p>
+<p>In crossing sand, the heaviest and slowest elephants should go
+first, preceded by a light, nimble pioneer. If the leading elephant
+shows signs of sinking, the others should at once turn back, and
+seek some safer place. In all cases the line should separate a
+little, and not follow in each other's footsteps. The indications
+of a quicksand are easily recognised. If the surface of the sand
+begins to oscillate and undulate with a tremulous rocking motion,
+it is always wise to seek some other passage. Looking back, after
+elephants have passed, you will often see what was a perfectly dry
+flat, covered with several inches of water. When water begins to
+ooze up in any quantity, after a few elephants have passed, it is
+much safer to make the remainder cross at some spot farther on.</p>
+<p>In crossing a deep swift river, the elephants should enter the
+water in a line, ranged up and down the river. That is, the line
+should be ranged along the bank, and enter the water at right
+angles to the current, and not in Indian file. The strongest
+elephants should be up stream, as they help to break the force of
+the current for the weaker and smaller animals down below. It is a
+fine sight to see some thirty or forty of these huge animals
+crossing a deep and rapid river. Some are reluctant to strike out,
+when they begin to enter the deepest channel, and try to turn back;
+the mahouts and 'mates' shout, and belabour them with bamboo poles.
+The trumpeting of the elephants, the waving of the trunks,
+disporting, like huge water-snakes, in the perturbed current, the
+splashing of the bamboos, the dark bodies of the natives swimming
+here and there round the animals, the unwieldy boat piled high with
+how-dahs and pads, the whole heap surmounted by a group of
+sportsmen with their gleaming weapons, and variegated puggrees,
+make up a picturesque and memorable sight. Some of the strong
+swimmers among the elephants seem to enjoy the whole affair
+immensely. They dip their huge heads entirely under the current,
+the sun flashes on the dark hide, glistening with the dripping
+water; the enormous head emerges again slowly, like some monstrous
+antediluvian creation, and with a succession of these ponderous
+appearances and disappearances, the mighty brutes forge through the
+surging water. When they reach a shallow part, they pipe with
+pleasure, and send volumes of fluid splashing against their heaving
+flanks, scattering the spray all round in mimic rainbows.</p>
+<p>At all times the Koosee was a dangerous stream to cross, but
+during the rains I have seen the strongest and best swimming
+elephants taken nearly a mile down stream; and in many instances
+they have been drowned, their vast bulk and marvellous strength
+being quite unable to cope with the tremendous force of the raging
+waters.</p>
+<p>When we had got comfortably seated under the shamiana, a crowd
+of attendants brought us baskets of fruit and a very nice cold
+collation of various Indian dishes and curries. We did ample
+justice to the old soldier's hospitable offerings, and then
+betel-nut, cardamums, cloves, and other spices, and pauri leaves,
+were handed round on a silver salver, beautifully embossed and
+carved with quaint devices. We lit our cigars, our beards and
+handkerchiefs were anointed with attar of roses; and the old Major
+then informed us that there was good khubber of tiger in the wood
+close by.</p>
+<p>The trees were splendid specimens of forest growth, enormously
+thick, beautifully umbrageous, and growing very close together.
+There was a dense undergrowth of tangled creeper, and the most
+lovely ferns and tropical plants in the richest luxuriance, and of
+every conceivable shade of amber and green. It was a charming spot.
+The patch of forest was separated from the unbroken line of morung
+jungle by a beautifully sheltered glade of several hundred acres,
+and further broken in three places by avenue-looking openings,
+disclosing peeps of the black and gloomy-looking mass of
+impenetrable forest beyond.</p>
+<p>In the first of these openings we were directed to take up a
+position, while the pad elephants and a crowd of beaters went to
+the edge of the patch of forest and began beating up to us. Immense
+numbers of genuine jungle fowl were calling in all directions, and
+flying right across the opening in numerous coveys. They are
+beautifully marked with black and golden plumes round the neck, and
+I determined to shoot a few by and bye to send home to friends, who
+I knew would prize them as invaluable material in dressing hooks
+for fly-fishing. The crashing of the trees, as the elephants forced
+their way through the thick forest, or tore off huge branches as
+they struggled amid the matted vegetation, kept us all on the
+alert. The first place was however a blank, and we moved on to the
+next. We had not long to wait, for a fierce din inside the jungle,
+and the excited cries of the beaters, apprised us that game of some
+sort was afoot. We were eagerly watching, and speculating on the
+cause of the uproar, when a very fine half-grown tiger cub sprang
+out of some closely growing fern, and dashed across the narrow
+opening so quickly, that ere we had time to raise a gun, he had
+disappeared in some heavy jhamun jungle on the further side of the
+path.</p>
+<p>We hurried round as fast as we could to intercept him, should he
+attempt to break on ahead; and leaving some men to rally the
+mahouts, and let them know that there was a tiger afoot, we were
+soon in our places, and ready to give the cub a warm reception,
+should he again show his stripes. It was not long ere he did so. I
+spied him stealing along the edge of the jungle, evidently
+intending to make a rush back past the opening he had just crossed,
+and outflank the line of beater elephants. I fired and hit him in
+the forearm; he rolled over roaring with rage, and then descrying
+his assailants, he bounded into the open, and as well as his wound
+would allow him, came furiously down at the charge. In less time
+however than it takes to write it, he had received three bullets in
+his body, and tumbled down a lifeless heap. We raised a cheer which
+brought the beaters and elephants quickly to the spot. In coming
+through a thickly wooded part of the forest, with numerous long and
+pliant creepers intertwisted into a confused tangle of rope-like
+ligaments, the old Juddeah elephant tore down one of the long
+lines, and dislodged an angry army of venomous red ants on the
+occupants of the guddee, or cushioned seat on the elephant's pad.
+The ants proved formidable assailants. There were two or three
+Baboos or native gentlemen, holding on to the ropes, chewing pan,
+and enjoying the scene, but the red ants were altogether more than
+they had bargained for. Recognising the Baboos as the immediate
+cause of their disturbance, they attacked them with indomitable
+courage. The mahout fairly yelled with pain, and one of the Baboos,
+smarting from the fiery bites of the furious insects, toppled clean
+backwards into the undergrowth, showing an undignified pair of
+heels. The other two danced on the guddee, sweeping and thrashing
+the air, the cushion, and their clothes, with their cummerbunds, in
+the vain effort to free themselves of their angry assailants. The
+guddee was literally covered with ants; it looked an animated red
+mass, and the wretched Baboos made frantic efforts to shake
+themselves clear. They were dreadfully bitten, and reaching the
+open, they slid off the elephant, and even on the ground continued
+their saltatory antics before finally getting rid of their
+ferocious assailants.</p>
+<p>In forest shooting the red ant is one of the most dreaded pests
+of the jungle. If a colony gets dislodged from some overhanging
+branch, and is landed in your howdah, the best plan is to evacuate
+your stronghold as quickly as you can, and let the attendants clear
+away the invaders. Their bite is very painful, and they take such
+tenacious hold, that rather than quit their grip, they allow
+themselves to be decapitated and leave their head and formidable
+forceps sticking in your flesh.</p>
+<p>Other dreaded foes in the forest jungle are the Bhowra or ground
+bees, which are more properly a kind of hornet. If by evil chance
+your elephant should tread on their mound-like nest, instantly an
+angry swarm of venomous and enraged hornets comes buzzing about
+your ears. Your only chance is to squat down, and envelope yourself
+completely in a blanket. Old sportsmen, shooting in forest jungle,
+invariably take a blanket Avith them in the howdah, to ensure
+themselves protection in the event of an attack by these
+blood-thirsty creatures. The thick matted creepers too are a great
+nuisance, for which a bill-hook or sharp kookree is an invaluable
+adjunct to the other paraphernalia of the march. I have seen a
+mahout swept clean off the elephant's back by these tenacious
+creepers, and the elephants themselves are sometimes unable to
+break through the tangle of sinewy, lithe cords, which drape the
+huge forest trees, hanging in slender festoons from every branch.
+Some of them are prickly, and as the elephant slowly forces his way
+through the mass of pendent swaying cords, they lacerate and tear
+the mahout's clothes and skin, and appropriate his puggree. As you
+crouch down within the shelter of your howdah, you can't help
+pitying the poor wretch, and incline to think that, after all,
+shooting in grass jungle has fewer drawbacks and is preferable to
+forest shooting.</p>
+<p>One of the drivers reported that he had seen a bear in the
+jungle, and we saw the earth of one not far from where the young
+tiger had fallen; it was the lair of the sloth bear or <i>Ursus
+labialis</i>, so called from his long pendent upper lip. His spoor
+is very easily distinguished from that of any other animal; the
+ball of the foot shows a distinct round impression, and about an
+inch to an inch and a half further on, the impression of the long
+curved claws are seen. He uses these long-curved claws to tear up
+ant hills, and open hollow decaying trees, to get at the honey
+within, of which he is very fond. We went after the bear, and were
+not long in discovering his whereabouts, and a well-directed shot
+from S. added him to our bag. The best bear shooting in India
+perhaps is in CHOTA NAGPOOR, but this does not come within the
+limits of my present volume. We now beat slowly through the wood,
+keeping a bright look out for ants and hornets, and getting fine
+shooting at the numerous jungle fowl which flew about in amazing
+numbers.</p>
+<p>The forest trees in this patch of jungle were very fine. The
+hill seerees, with its feathery foliage and delicate clusters of
+white bugle-shaped blossom; the semul or cotton tree, with its
+wonderful wealth of magnificent crimson flowers; the birch-looking
+sheeshum or sissod; the sombre looking sal; the shining,
+leathery-leafed bhur, with its immense over-arching limbs, and the
+crisp, curly-leafed elegant-looking jhamun or Indian olive, formed
+a paradise of sylvan beauty, on which the eye dwelt till it was
+sated with the woodland loveliness.</p>
+<p>In recrossing the dhar or water-course, we took care to avoid
+the quicksands, and as we did not expect to fall in with another
+tiger, we indulged in a little general firing. I shot a fine buck
+through the spine, and we bagged several deer, and no less than
+five florican; this bird is allied to the bustard family, and has
+beautiful drooping feathers, hanging in plumy pendants of deep
+black and pure white, intermingled in the most graceful and showy
+manner. The male is a magnificent bird, and has perhaps as fine
+plumage as any bird on the border; the flesh yields the most
+delicate eating of any game bird I know; the slices of mingled
+brown and white from the breast are delicious. The birds are rather
+shy, generally getting up a long way in front of the line, and
+moving with a slow, rather clumsy, flight, not unlike the flight of
+the white earth owl. They run with great swiftness, and are rather
+hard to kill, unless hit about the neck and head. There are two
+sorts, the lesser and the greater, the former also called the
+bastard florican. Altogether they are noble looking birds, and the
+sportsman is always glad to add as many florican as he can to his
+bag.</p>
+<p>We were now nearing the locality of the fierce fire of the
+morning; it was still blazing in a long extended line of flame, and
+we witnessed an incident without parallel in the experience of any
+of us. I fired at and wounded a large stag; it was wounded
+somewhere in the side, and seemed very hard hit indeed. Maddened
+probably by terror and pain, it made straight for the line of fire,
+and bounded unhesitatingly right into the flame. We saw it
+distinctly go clean though the flames, but we could not see whether
+it got away with its life, as the elephants would not go up to the
+fire. At all events, the stag went right through his fiery ordeal,
+and was lost to us. We started numerous hares close to camp, and S.
+bowled over several. They are very common in the short grass
+jungle, where the soil is sandy, and are frequently to be found
+among thin jowah jungle; they afford good sport for coursing, but
+are neither so fleet, nor so large, nor such good eating as the
+English hare. In fact, they are very dry eating, and the best way
+to cook them is to jug them, or make a hunter's pie, adding
+portions of partridge, quail, or plover, with a few mushrooms, and
+a modicum of ham or bacon if these are procurable.</p>
+<p>We reached camp pretty late, and sent off venison, birds, and
+other spoils to Mrs. S. and to Inamputte factory. Our bag shewed a
+diversity of spoil, consisting of one tiger, seven hog-deer, one
+bear <i>(Ursus labialis)</i>, seventeen jungle fowl, five florican,
+and six hares. It was no bad bag considering that during most of
+the day we had been beating solely for tiger. We could have shot
+many more deer and jungle fowl, but we never try to shoot more than
+are needed to satisfy the wants of the camp. Were we to attempt to
+shoot at all the deer and pig that we see, the figures would reach
+very large totals. As a rule therefore, the records of Indian
+sportsmen give no idea of the vast quantities of game that are put
+up and never fired at. It would be the very wantonness of
+destruction, to shoot animals not wanted for some specific purpose,
+unless indeed, you were raging an indiscriminate war of
+extermination, in a quarter where their numbers were a nuisance and
+prejudicial to crops. In that case, your proceedings would not be
+dignified by the name of sport.</p>
+<p>After a few more days shooting, the incidents of which were
+pretty much like those I have been describing, I started back for
+the factory. I sent my horse on ahead, and took five elephants with
+me to beat up for game on the homeward route. Close to camp a fine
+buck got up in front of me. I broke both his forelegs with my first
+shot, but the poor brute still managed to hobble along. It was in
+some very dense patair jungle, and I had considerable difficulty in
+bringing him to bag. When we reached the ghat or ferry, I ordered
+Geerdharee Jha's mahout to cross with his elephant. The brute,
+however, refused to cross the river alone, and in spite of all the
+driver could do, she insisted on following the rest. I got down,
+and some of the other drivers got out the hobbles and bound them
+round her legs. In spite of these she still seemed determined to
+follow us. She shook the bedding and other articles with which she
+was loaded off her back, and made a frantic effort to follow us
+through the deep sand. The iron chains cut into her legs, and,
+afraid that she might do herself an irreparable injury, I had her
+tied up to a tree, and left her trumpeting and making an indignant
+lamentation at being separated from the rest of the line.</p>
+<p>The elephant seems to be quite a social animal. I have
+frequently seen cases where, after having been in company together
+for a lengthened hunt, they have manifested great reluctance to
+separate. In leaving the line, I have often noticed the single
+elephant looking back at his comrades, and giving vent to his
+disappointment and disapproval, by grunts and trumpetings of
+indignant protest. We left the refractory hathee tied up to her
+tree, and as we crossed the long rolling billows of burning sand
+that lay athwart our course, she was soon lost to view. I shot a
+couple more hog-deer, and got several plover and teal in the
+patches of water that lay in some of the hollows among the
+sandbanks. I fired at a huge alligator basking in the sun, on a
+sandbank close to the stream. The bullet hit him somewhere in the
+forearm, and he made a tremendous sensation header into the
+current. From the agitation in the water, he seemed not to
+appreciate the leaden message which I had sent him.</p>
+<p>We found the journey through the soft yielding sand very
+fatiguing, and especially trying to the eyes. When not shooting, it
+is a very wise precaution to wear eye-preservers or 'goggles.' They
+are a great relief to the eyes, and the best, I think, are the
+neutral tinted. During the west winds, when the atmosphere is
+loaded with fine particles of irritating sand and dust, these
+goggles are very necessary, and are a great protection to the
+sight.</p>
+<p>Another prudent precaution is to have the back of one's shirt or
+coat slightly padded with cotton and quilted. The heat prevents one
+wearing thick clothes, and there is no doubt that the action of the
+direct rays of the burning sun all down the back on the spinal
+cord, is very injurious, and may be a fruitful cause of sunstroke.
+It is certainly productive of great lassitude and weariness. I used
+to wear a thin quilted sort of shield made of cotton-drill, which
+fastened round the shoulders and waist. It does not incommode one's
+action in any particular, and is, I think, a great protection
+against the fierce rays of the sun. Many prefer the puggree as a
+head-piece. It is undeniably a fine thing when one is riding on
+horseback, as it fits close to the head, does not catch the wind
+during a smart trot or canter, and is therefore not easily shaken
+off. For riding I think it preferable to all other headdresses. A
+good thick puggree is a great protection to the back of the head
+and neck, the part of the body which of all others requires
+protection from the sun. It feels rather heavy at first, but one
+gets used to it, and it does not shade the eyes and face. These are
+the two gravest objections to it, but for comfort, softness, and
+protection to the head and neck, I do not think it can be
+surpassed.</p>
+<p>After crossing the sand, we again entered some thin scrubby
+acacia jungle, with here and there a moist swampy nullah, with rank
+green patair jungle growing in the cool dank shade. Here we
+disturbed a colony of pigs, but the four mahouts being Mahommedans
+I did not fire. As we went along, one of my men called my attention
+to some footprints near a small lagoon. On inspection we found they
+were rhinoceros tracks, evidently of old date. These animals are
+often seen in this part of the country, but are more numerous
+farther north, in the great morung forest jungle.</p>
+<p>A very noticeable feature in these jungles was the immense
+quantity of bleached ghastly skeletons of cattle. This year had
+been a most disastrous one for cattle. Enormous numbers had been
+swept off by disease, and in many villages bordering on the morung
+the herds had been well-nigh exterminated. Little attention is paid
+to breeding. In some districts, such as the Mooteeharree and
+Mudhobunnee division, fine cart-bullocks are bred, carefully
+handled and tended, and fetch high prices. In Kurruchpore, beyond
+the Ganges in Bhaugulpore district, cattle of a small breed, hardy,
+active, staunch, and strong, are bred in great numbers, and are
+held in great estimation for agricultural requirements; but in
+these Koosee jungles the bulls are often ill-bred weedy brutes, and
+the cows being much in excess of a fair proportion of bulls, a deal
+of in-breeding takes place; unmatured young bulls roam about with
+the herd, and the result is a crowd of cattle that succumb to the
+first ailment, so that the land is littered with their bones.</p>
+<p>The bullock being indispensable to the Indian cultivator, bull
+calves are prized, taken care of, well nurtured, and well fed. The
+cow calves are pretty much left to take care of themselves; they
+are thin, miserable, half-starved brutes, and the short-sighted
+ryot seems altogether to forget that it is on these miserable
+withered specimens that he must depend for his supply of plough and
+cart-bullocks. The matter is most shamefully neglected. Government
+occasionally through its officers, experimental farms, etc., tries
+to get good sire stock for both horses and cattle, but as long as
+the dams are bad&mdash;mere weeds, without blood, bone, muscle, or
+stamina, the produce must be bad. As a pretty well established and
+general rule, the ryots look after their bullocks,&mdash;they
+recognise their value, and appreciate their utility, but the cows
+fare badly, and from all I have myself seen, and from the
+concurrent testimony of many observant friends in the rural
+districts, I should say that the breed has become much
+deteriorated.</p>
+<p>Old planters constantly tell you, that such cattle as they used
+to get are not now procurable for love or money. Within the last
+twenty years prices have more than doubled, because the demand for
+good plough-bullocks has been more urgent, as a consequence of
+increased cultivation, and the supply is not equal to the demand.
+Attention to the matter is imperative, and planters would be wise
+in their own interests to devote a little time and trouble to
+disseminating sound ideas about the selection of breeding stock,
+and the principles of rearing and raising stock among their ryots
+and dependants. Every factory should be able to breed its own
+cattle, and supply its own requirements for plough and
+cart-bullocks. It would be cheaper in the end, and it would
+undoubtedly be a blessing to the country to raise the standard of
+cattle used in agricultural work.</p>
+<p>To return from this digression. We plodded on and on, weary,
+hot, and thirsty, expecting every moment to see the ghat and my
+waiting horse. But the country here is so wild, the river takes
+such erratic courses during the annual floods, and the district is
+so secluded and so seldom visited by Europeans or factory servants,
+that my syce had evidently lost his way. After we had crossed
+innumerable streams, and laboriously traversed mile upon mile of
+burning sand, we gave up the attempt to find the ghat, and made for
+Nathpore.</p>
+<p>Nathpore was formerly a considerable town, not far from the
+Nepaul border, a flourishing grain mart and emporium for the
+fibres, gums, spices, timbers, and other productions of a wide
+frontier. There was a busy and crowded bazaar, long streets of
+shops and houses, and hundreds of boats lying in the stream beside
+the numerous ghats, taking in and discharging their cargoes. It may
+give a faint idea of the destructive force of an Indian stream like
+the Koosee when it is in full flood, to say that this once
+flourishing town is now but a handful of miserable huts. Miles of
+rich lands, once clothed with luxuriant crops of rice, indigo, and
+waving grain, are now barren reaches of burning sand. The bleached
+skeletons of mango, jackfruit, and other trees, stretch out their
+leafless and lifeless branches, to remind the spectator of the time
+when their foliage rustled in the breeze, when their lusty limbs
+bore rich clusters of luscious fruit, and when the din of the
+bazaar resounded beneath their welcome shade. A fine old lady still
+lived in a two-storied brick building, with quaint little darkened
+rooms, and a narrow verandah running all round the building. She
+was long past the allotted threescore years and ten, with a keen
+yet mildly beaming eye, and a wealth of beautiful hair as white as
+driven snow, neatly gathered back from her shapely forehead. She
+was the last remaining link connecting the present with the past
+glories of Nathpore. Her husband had been a planter and Zemindar.
+Where his vats had stood laden with rich indigo, the engulphing
+sand now reflected the rays of the torrid sun from its burning
+whiteness. She shewed me a picture of the town as it appeared to
+her when she had been brought there many a long and weary year ago,
+ere yet her step had lost its lightness, and when she was in the
+bloom of her bridal life. There was a fine broad boulevard,
+shadowed by splendid trees, on which she and her husband had driven
+in their carriage of an evening, through crowds of prosperous and
+contented traders and cultivators. The hungry river had swept all
+this away. Subsisting on a few precarious rents of some little
+plots of ground that it had spared, all that remained of a once
+princely estate, this good old lady lived her lonely life cheerful
+and contented, never murmuring or repining. The river had not
+spared even the graves of her departed dear ones. Since I left that
+part of the country I hear that she has been called away to join
+those who had gone before her.</p>
+<p>I arrived at her house late in the afternoon. I had never been
+at Nathpore before, although the place was well known to me by
+reputation. What a wreck it presented as our elephants marched
+through. Ruined, dismantled, crumbling temples; masses of masonry
+half submerged in the swift-running, treacherous, undermining
+stream; huge trees lying prostrate, twisted and jammed together
+where the angry flood had hurled them; bare unsightly poles and
+piles, sticking from the water at every angle, reminding us of the
+granaries and godowns that were wont to be filled with the
+agricultural wealth of the districts for miles around; hard
+metalled roads cut abruptly off, and bridges with only half an
+arch, standing lonely and ruined half way in the muddy current that
+swept noiselessly past the deserted city. It was a scene of utter
+waste and desolation.</p>
+<p>The lady I mentioned made me very welcome, and I was struck by
+her unaffected cheerfulness and gentleness. She was a gentlewoman
+indeed, and though reduced in circumstances, surrounded by
+misfortunes, and daily and hourly reminded by the scattered wreck
+around her of her former wealth and position, she bore all with
+exemplary fortitude, and to the full extent of her scanty means she
+relieved the sorrows and ailments of the natives. They all loved
+and respected, and I could not help admiring and honouring her.</p>
+<p>She pointed out to me, far away on the south-east horizon, the
+place where the river ran in its shallow channel when she first
+came to Nathpore. During her experience it had cut into and
+overspread more than twenty miles of country, turning fertile
+fields into arid wastes of sand; sweeping away factories, farms,
+and villages; and changing the whole face of the country from a
+fruitful landscape into a wilderness of sand and swamp.</p>
+<p>My horse came up in the evening, and I rode over to Inamputte,
+leaving my kindly hostess in her solitude.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXV."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXV.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Exciting jungle scene.&mdash;The
+camp.&mdash;All quiet.&mdash;Advent of the cowherds. &mdash;A tiger
+close by.&mdash;Proceed to the spot.&mdash;Encounter between
+tigress and buffaloes.&mdash;Strange behaviour of the
+elephant.&mdash;Discovery and capture of four cubs.&mdash;Joyful
+return to camp.&mdash;Death of the tigress. &mdash;Night encounter
+with a leopard.&mdash;The haunts of the tiger and our shooting
+grounds.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>One of the most exciting and deeply interesting scenes I ever
+witnessed in the jungles, was on the occasion I have referred to in
+a former chapter, when speaking of the number of young given by the
+tigress at a birth. It was in the month of March, at the village of
+Ryseree, in Bhaugulpore. I had been encamped in the midst of
+twenty-four beautiful tanks, the history and construction of which
+were lost in the mists of tradition. The villagers had a story that
+these tanks were the work of a mighty giant, Bheema, with whose aid
+and that of his brethren they had been excavated in a single
+night.</p>
+<p>At all events, they were now covered with a wild tangle of water
+lilies and aquatic plants; well stocked with magnificent fish, and
+an occasional scaly monster of a saurian. They were the haunt of
+vast quantities of widgeon, teal, whistlers, mallard, ducks, snipe,
+curlew, blue fowl, and the usual varied <i>habitu&eacute;s</i> of
+an exceptionally good Indian lake. In the vicinity hares were
+numerous, and in the thick jungle bordering the tanks in places,
+and consisting mostly of nurkool and wild rose, hog-deer and wild
+pig were abundant. The dried-up bed of an old arm of the Koosee was
+quite close to my camp, and abounded in sandpiper, and golden,
+grey, goggle-eyed, and stilted plover, besides other game.</p>
+<p>It was indeed a favourite camping spot, and the village was
+inhabited by a hardy, independent set of Gwallas, Koormees, and
+agriculturists, with whom I was a prime favourite.</p>
+<p>I was sitting in my tent, going over some village accounts with
+the village putwarrie, and my gomasta. A poss&eacute; of villagers
+were grouped under the grateful shade of a gnarled old mango tree,
+whose contorted limbs bore evidence to the violence of many a
+<i>tufan</i>, or tempest, which it had weathered. The usual
+confused clamour of tongues was rising from this group, and the
+sub; ect of debate was the eternal 'pice.' Behind the bank, and in
+rear of the tent, the cook and his mate were disembowelling a
+hapless <i>moorghee</i>, a fowl, whose decapitation had just been
+effected with a huge jagged old cavalry sword, of which my cook was
+not a little proud; and on the strength of which he adopted fierce
+military airs, and gave an extra turn to his well-oiled moustache
+when he went abroad for a holiday.</p>
+<p>Farther to the rear a line of horses were picketed, including my
+man-eating demon the white Cabool stallion, my gentle country-bred
+mare Motee&mdash;the pearl&mdash;and my handsome little pony mare,
+formerly my hockey or polo steed, a present from a gallant
+sportsman and rare good fellow, as good a judge of a horse, or a
+criminal, as ever sat on a bench.</p>
+<p>Behind the horses, each manacled by weighty chains, with his
+ponderous trunk and ragged-looking tail swaying too and fro with a
+never-ceasing motion, stood a line of ten elephants. Their huge
+leathery ears flapped lazily, and ever and anon one or other would
+seize a mighty branch, and belabour his corrugated sides to free
+himself of the detested and troublesome flies. The elephants were
+placidly munching their <i>chana</i> (bait, or food), and
+occasionally giving each other a dry bath in the shape of a shower
+of sand. There was a monotonous clank of chains, and an occasional
+deep abdominal rumble like distant thunder. All over the camp there
+was a confused subdued medley of sound. A hum from the
+argumentative villagers, a lazy flop in the tank as a raho rose to
+the surface, an occasional outburst from the ducks, an angry
+clamour from the water-hens and blue-fowl. My dogs were lying round
+me blinking and winking, and making an occasional futile snap at an
+imaginary fly or flea. It was a drowsy and peaceful scene. I was
+nearly dropping off to sleep, from the heat and the monotonous
+drone of the putwarrie, who was intoning nasally some formidable
+document about fishery rights and privileges.</p>
+<p>Suddenly there was a hush. Every sound seemed to stop
+simultaneously as if by pre-arranged concert. Then three men were
+seen rushing madly along the elevated ridge surrounding one of the
+tanks. I recognised one of my peons, and with him two cowherds.
+Their head-dresses were all disarranged, and their parted lips,
+heaving chests, and eyes blazing with excitement, shewed that they
+were brimful of some unusual message.</p>
+<p>Now arose such a bustle in the camp as no description could
+adequately portray. The elephants trumpeted and piped; the
+<i>syces</i>, or grooms, came rushing up with eager queries; the
+villagers bustled about like so many ants aroused by the approach
+of a hostile foe; my pack of terriers yelped out in chorus; the
+pony neighed; the Cabool stallion plunged about; my servants came
+rushing from the shelter of the tent verandah with disordered
+dress; the ducks rose in a quacking crowd, and circled round and
+round the tent; and the cry arose of 'Bagh! Bagh! Khodamund! Arree
+Bap re Bap! Ram Ram, Seeta Ram!'</p>
+<p>Breathless with running, the men now tumbled up, hurriedly
+salaamed, arid then each with gasps and choking stops, and
+pell-mell volubility, and amid a running fire of cries, queries,
+and interjections from the mob, began to unfold their tale. There
+was an infuriated tigress at the other side of the nullah, or dry
+watercourse, she had attacked a herd of buffaloes, and it was
+believed that she had cubs.</p>
+<p>Already Debnarain Singh was getting his own pad elephant
+caparisoned, and my bearer was diving under my camp bed for my gun
+and cartridges. Knowing the little elephant to be a fast walker,
+and fairly staunch, I got on her back, and accompanied by the
+gomasta and mahout we set out, followed by the peon and herdsmen to
+shew us the way.</p>
+<p>I expected two friends, officers from Calcutta, that very day,
+and wished not to kill the tigress but to keep her for our combined
+shooting next day. We had not proceeded far when, on the other side
+of the nullah, we saw dense clouds of dust rising, and heard a
+confused, rushing, trampling sound, mingled with the clashing of
+horns, and the snorting of a herd of angry buffaloes.</p>
+<p>It was the wildest sight I have ever seen in connection with
+animal life. The buffaloes were drawn together in the form of a
+crescent; their eyes glared fiercely, and as they advanced in a
+series of short runs, stamping with their hoofs, and angrily
+lashing their tails, their horns would come together with a
+clanging, clattering crash, and they would paw the sand, snort and
+toss their heads, and behave in the most extraordinary manner.</p>
+<p>The cause of all this commotion was not far to seek. Directly in
+front, retreating slowly, with stealthy, prowling, crawling steps,
+and an occasional short, quick leap or bound to one side or the
+other, was a magnificent tigress, looking the very personification
+of baffled fury. Ever and anon she crouched down to the earth, tore
+up the sand with her claws, lashed her tail from side to side, and
+with lips retracted, long moustaches quivering with wrath, and
+hateful eyes scintillating with rage and fury, she seemed to
+meditate an attack on the angry buffaloes. The serried array of
+clashing horns, and the ponderous bulk of the herd, seemed however
+to daunt the snarling vixen; at their next rush she would bound
+back a few paces, crouch down, growl, and be forced to move back
+again, by the short, blundering rush of the crowd.</p>
+<p>All the calves and old cows were in the rear of the herd, and it
+was not a little comical to witness their ungainly attitudes. They
+would stretch their clumsy necks, and shake their heads, as if they
+did not rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they
+stopped too long to indulge their curiosity, there was a danger of
+their getting separated from the fighting members of the herd, they
+would make a stupid, headlong, lumbering lurch forward, and jostle
+each other, in their blundering panic.</p>
+<p>It was a grand sight. The tigress was the embodiment of lithe
+and savage beauty, but her features expressed the wildest baffled
+rage. I could have shot the striped vixen over and over again, but
+I wished to keep her for my friends, and I was thrilled with the
+excitement of such a novel scene.</p>
+<p>Suddenly our elephant trumpeted, and shied quickly to one side,
+from something lying on the ground. Curling up its trunk it began
+backing and piping at a prodigious rate.</p>
+<p>'Hullo! what's the matter now?' said I to Debnarain.</p>
+<p>'God only knows,' said he.</p>
+<p>'A young tiger!' 'Bagh ka butcha!' screams our mahout, and
+regardless of the elephant or of our cries to stop, he scuttled
+down the pad rope like a monkey down a backstay, and clutching a
+young dead tiger cub, threw it up to Debnarain; it was about the
+size of a small poodle, and had evidently been trampled by the
+pursuing herd of buffaloes.</p>
+<p>'There may be others,' said the gomasta; and peering into every
+bush, we went slowly on.</p>
+<p>The elephant now shewed decided symptoms of dislike and a
+reluctance to approach a particular dense clump of grass.</p>
+<p>A sounding whack on the head, however, made her quicken her
+steps, and thrusting the long stalks aside, she discovered for us
+three blinking little cubs, brothers of the defunct, and doubtless
+part of the same litter. Their eyes were scarcely open, and they
+lay huddled together like three enormous striped kittens, and spat
+at us and bristled their little moustaches much as an angry cat
+would do. All the four were males.</p>
+<p>It was not long ere I had them carefully wrapped in the mahout's
+blanket. Overjoyed at our good fortune, we left the excited
+buffaloes still executing their singular war-dance, and the angry
+tigress, robbed of her whelps, consuming her soul in baffled
+fury.</p>
+<p>We heard her roaring through the night, close to camp, and on my
+friends' arrival, we beat her up next morning, and she fell pierced
+by three bullets, after a fierce and determined charge. We came
+upon her across the nullah, and her mind was evidently made up to
+fight. Nearly all the villagers had turned out with the line of
+elephants. Before we had time to order them away, she came down
+upon the line, roaring furiously, and bounding over the long
+grass,&mdash;a most magnificent sight.</p>
+<p>My first bullet took her full in the chest, and before she could
+make good her charge, a ball each from Pat and Captain G. settled
+her career. She was beautifully striped, and rather large for a
+tigress, measuring nine feet three inches.</p>
+<p>It was now a question with me, how to rear the three interesting
+orphans; we thought a slut from some of the villages would prove
+the best wet nurse, and tried accordingly to get one, but could
+not. In the meantime an unhappy goat was pounced on and the three
+young-tigers took to her teats as if 'to the manner born.' The poor
+Nanny screamed tremendously at first sight of them, but she soon
+got accustomed to them, and when they grew a little bigger, she
+would often playfully butt at them with her horns.</p>
+<p>The little brutes throve wonderfully, and soon developed such an
+appetite that I had to get no less than six goats to satisfy their
+constant thirst. I kept the cubs for over two months, and I shall
+not soon forget the excitement I caused, when my boat stopped at
+Sahribgunge, and my goats, tiger cubs, and attendants, formed a
+procession from the ghat or landing-place, to the railway
+station.</p>
+<p>Soldiers, guards, engineers, travellers, and crowds of natives
+surrounded me, and at every station the guard's van, with my novel
+menagerie, was the centre of attraction. I sold the cubs to
+Jamrach's agent in Calcutta for a very satisfactory price. Two of
+them were very powerful, finely marked, handsome animals; the third
+had always been sickly, had frequent convulsions, and died a few
+days after I sold it. I was afterwards told that the milk diet was
+a mistake, and that I should have fed them on raw meat. However, I
+was very well satisfied on the whole with the result of my
+adventure.</p>
+<p>I had another in the same part of the country, which at the time
+was a pretty good test of the state of my nerves.</p>
+<p>I was camped out at the village of Purindaha, on the edge of a
+gloomy sal forest, which was reported to contain numerous leopards.
+The villagers were a mixed lot of low-caste Hindoos, and Nepaulese
+settlers. They had been fighting with the factory, and would not
+pay up their rents, and I was trying, with every probability of
+success, to make an amicable arrangement with them. At all events,
+I had so far won them round, that they were willing to talk to me.
+They came to the tent and listened quietly, and except on the
+subject of rent, we got on in the most friendly manner.</p>
+<p>It was the middle of April. The heat was intense. The whole
+atmosphere had that coppery look which denotes extreme heat, and
+the air was loaded with fine yellow dust, which the daily west wind
+bore on its fever laden wings, to disturb the lungs and tempers of
+all good Christians. The <i>kanats</i>, or canvas walls of the
+tent, had all been taken down for coolness, and my camp bed lay in
+one corner, open all round to the outside air, but only sheltered
+from the dew. It had been a busy day. I had been going over
+accounts, and talking to the villagers till I was really hoarse.
+After a light dinner I lay down on my bed, but it was too close and
+hot to sleep. By and bye the various sounds died out. The
+tom-toming ceased in the village. My servants suspended their low
+muttered gossip round the cook's fire, wrapped themselves in their
+white cloths, and dropped into slumber. 'Toby,' 'Nettle,' 'Whisky,'
+'Pincher,' and my other terriers, resembled so many curled-up hairy
+balls, and were in the land of dreams. Occasionally an owl would
+give a melancholy hoot from the forest, or a screech owl would
+raise a momentary and damnable din. At intervals, the tinkle of a
+cow-bell sounded faintly in the distance. I tossed restlessly,
+thinking of various things, till I must have dropped off into an
+uneasy fitful sleep. I know not how long I had been dozing, but of
+a sudden I felt myself wide awake, though with my eyes yet firmly
+closed.</p>
+<p>I was conscious of some terrible unknown impending danger. I had
+experienced the same feeling before on waking from a nightmare, but
+I knew that the danger now was real. I felt a shrinking horror, a
+terrible and nameless fear, and for the life of me I could not move
+hand or foot. I was lying on my side, and could distinctly hear the
+thumping of my heart. A cold sweat broke out behind my ears and
+over my neck and chest. I could analyse my every feeling, and I
+knew there was some PRESENCE in the tent, and that I was in instant
+and imminent peril. Suddenly in the distance a pariah dog gave a
+prolonged melancholy howl. As if this had broken the spell which
+had hitherto bound me, I opened my eyes, and within ten inches of
+my face, there was a handsome leopardess gazing steadily at me. Our
+eyes met, and how long we confronted each other I know not. It must
+have been some minutes. Her eyes contracted and expanded, the pupil
+elongated and then opened out into a round lustrous globe. I could
+see the lithe tail oscillating at its extreme tip, with a gentle
+waving motion, like that of a cat when hunting birds in the garden.
+I seemed to possess no will. I believe I was under a species of
+fascination, but we continued our steady stare at each other.</p>
+<p>Just then, there was a movement by some of the horses. The
+leopard slowly turned her head, and I grasped the revolver which
+lay under my pillow. The beautiful spotted monster turned her head
+for an instant, and shewed her teeth, and then with one bound went
+through the open side of the tent. I fired two shots, which were
+answered with a roar. The din that followed would have frightened
+the devil. It was a beautiful clear night, with a moon at the full,
+and everything shewed as plainly as at noonday. The servants
+uttered exclamations of terror. The terriers went into an agony of
+yelps and barks. The horses snorted, and tried to get loose, and my
+chowkeydar, who had been asleep on his watch, thinking a band of
+dacoits were on us, began laying round him with his staff,
+shouting, <i>Chor, Chor! lagga, lagga, lagga!</i> that is, 'thief,
+thief! lay on, lay on, lay on!'</p>
+<p>The leopard was hit, and evidently in a terrible temper. She
+halted not thirty paces from the tent, beside a jhamun tree, and
+seemed undecided whether to go on or return and wreak her vengeance
+on me. That moment decided her fate. I snatched down my Express
+rifle, which was hanging in two loops above my bed, and shot her
+right through the heart.</p>
+<p>I never understood how she could have made her way past dogs,
+servants, horses, and watchman, right into the tent, without
+raising some alarm. It must have been more from curiosity than any
+hostile design. I know that my nerves were very rudely shaken, but
+I became the hero of the Purindaha villagers. I believe that my
+night adventure with the leopardess did more to bring them round to
+a settlement than all my eloquence and figures.</p>
+<p>The river Koosee, on the banks of which, and in the long grass
+plains adjacent, most of the incidents I have recorded took place,
+takes its rise at the base of Mount Everest, and, after draining
+nearly the whole of Eastern. Nepaul, emerges by a deep gorge from
+the hills at the north-west corner of Purneah. The stream runs with
+extreme velocity. It is known as a snow stream. The water is always
+cold, and generally of a milky colour, containing much fine white
+sand. No sooner does it leave its rocky bed than it tears through
+the flat country by numerous channels. It is subject to very sudden
+rises. A premonitory warning of these is generally given. The water
+becomes of a turbid, almost blood-like colour. Sometimes I have
+seen the river rise over thirty feet in twenty-four hours. The
+melting of the snow often makes a raging torrent, level from bank
+to bank, where only a few hours before a horse could have forded
+the stream without wetting the girths of the saddle.</p>
+<p>In 1876 the largest channel was a swift broad stream called the
+Dhaus. The river is very capricious, seldom flowing for any length
+of time in one channel. This is owing in great measure to the
+amount of silt it carries with it from the hills, in its impetuous
+progress to the plains.</p>
+<p>In these dry watercourses, among the sand ridges, beside the
+humid marshy hollows, and among the thick strips of grass jungle,
+tigers are always to be found. They are much less numerous now
+however than formerly. As a rule, there is no shelter in these
+water-worn, flood-ravaged tracts and sultry jungles. Occasionally a
+few straggling plantain trees, a clump of sickly-looking bamboos, a
+cluster of tall shadowless palms, marks the site of a deserted
+village. All else is waving grass, withered and dry. The villages,
+inhabited mostly by a few cowherds, boatmen, and rice-farmers are
+scattered at wide intervals. In the shooting season, and when the
+hot winds are blowing, the only shadow on the plain is that cast by
+the dense volumes of lurid smoke, rising in blinding clouds from
+the jungle fires.</p>
+<p>According to the season, animal life fluctuates strangely.
+During the rains, when the river is in full flood, and much of the
+country submerged, most of the animals migrate to the North,
+buffaloes and wild pig alone keeping possession, of the higher
+ridges in the neighbourhood of their usual haunts.</p>
+<p>The contrasts presented on these plains at different seasons of
+the year are most remarkable. In March and April they are parched
+up, brown, and dead; great black patches showing the track of a
+destroying fire, the fine brown ash from the burnt grass
+penetrating the eyes and nostrils, and sweeping along in eddying
+and blinding clouds. They then look the very picture of an
+untenable waste, a sea of desolation, whose limits blend in the
+extreme distance with the shimmering coppery horizon. In the rainy
+season these arid-looking wastes are covered with tall-plumed,
+reed-like, waving grass, varying from two to ten feet in height,
+stretching in an unbroken sweep as far as the eye can reach, except
+where an abrupt line shews that the swift river has its treacherous
+course. After the rains, progress through the jungle is dangerous.
+Quicksands and beds of tenacious mud impede one at every step. The
+rich vegetation springs up green and vigorous, with a rapidity only
+to be seen in the Tropics. But what a glorious hunting ground! What
+a preserve for Nimrod! Deer forest, or heathered moor, can never
+compete with the old Koosee Derahs for abundance of game and
+thrilling excitement in sport. My genial, happy, loyal comrades
+too&mdash;while memory lasts the recollection of your joyous,
+frank, warm-hearted comradeship shall never fade.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="ChapterXXVI."></a>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVI.</h3>
+<p class="indented"><b>Remarks on guns.&mdash;How to cure
+skins.&mdash;Different recipes.&mdash;Conclusion.</b></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>My remarks on guns shall be brief. The true sportsman has many
+facilities for acquiring the best information on a choice of
+weapons. For large game perhaps nothing can equal the Express
+rifle. My own trusty weapon was a '500 bore, very plain, with a
+pistol grip, point blank up to 180 yards, made by Murcott of the
+Haymarket, from whom I have bought over twenty guns, every one of
+which turned out a splendid weapon.</p>
+<p>My next favourite was a No. 12 breachloader, very light, but
+strong and carefully finished. It had a side snap action with
+rebounding locks, and was the quickest gun to fire and reload I
+ever possessed. I bought it from the same maker, although it was
+manufactured by W.W. Greener.</p>
+<p>Avoid a cheap gun as you would avoid a cheap Jew pedlar. A good
+name is above riches so far as a gun is concerned, and when you
+have a good gun take as much care of it as you would of a good
+wife. They are both equally rare. An expensive gun is not
+necessarily a good one, but a cheap gun is very seldom trustworthy.
+Have a portable, handy black leather case. Keep your gun always
+clean, bright, and free from rust. After every day's shooting see
+that the barrels and locks are carefully cleaned and oiled. Nothing
+is better for this purpose than rangoon oil.</p>
+<p>For preserving horns, a little scraping and varnishing are all
+that is required. While in camp it is a good plan to rub them with
+deer, or pig, or tiger fat, as it keeps them from cracking.</p>
+<p>To clean a tiger's or other skull. If there be a nest of ants
+near the camp, place the skull in their immediate vicinity. Some
+recommend putting in water till the particles of flesh rot, or till
+the skull is cleared by the fishes. A strong solution of caustic
+water may be used if you wish to get the bones cleaned very
+quickly. Some put the skulls in quicklime, but it has a tendency to
+make the bones splinter, and it is difficult to keep the teeth from
+getting loose and dropping out. The best but slowest plan is to fix
+them in mechanically by wire or white lead. A good preservative is
+to wash or paint them with a very strong solution of fine lime and
+water.</p>
+<p>To cure skins. I know no better recipe than the one adopted by
+my trainers in the art of <i>shibar</i>, the brothers S. I cannot
+do better than give a description of the process in the words of
+George himself.</p>
+<p>'Skin the animal in the usual way. Cut from the corner of the
+mouth, down the throat, and along the belly. A white stripe or
+border generally runs along the belly. This should be left as
+nearly as possible equal on both sides. Carefully cut the fleshy
+parts off the lips and balls of the toes and feet. Clean away every
+particle of fatty or fleshy matter that may still adhere to the
+skin. Peg it out on the ground with the hair side undermost. When
+thoroughly scraped clean of all extraneous matter on the inner
+surface, get a bucket or tub of buttermilk, which is called by the
+natives <i>dahye</i> or <i>mutha</i>. It is a favourite article of
+diet with them, cheap and plentiful. Dip the skin in this, and keep
+it well and entirely submerged by placing some heavy weight on it.
+It should be submerged fully three inches in the tub of
+buttermilk.</p>
+<p>'After two days in the milk bath, take it out and peg it as
+before. Now take a smooth oval rubbing-board about twelve inches
+long, five round, and about an inch thick in the middle, and scrub
+the skin heartily with this instrument. On its lower surface it
+should be cuts in grooves, semicircular in shape, half an inch
+wide, and one inch apart. During scrubbing use plenty of pure water
+to remove filth. In about half an hour the pinkish-white colour
+will disappear, and the skin will appear white, with a blackish
+tinge underneath. This is the true hide.</p>
+<p>'Again submerge in the buttermilk bath for twenty-four hours,
+and get a man to tread on it in every possible way, folding it and
+unfolding it, till all has been thoroughly worked.</p>
+<p>'Take it out again, peg out and scrub it as before, after which
+wash the whole hide well in clear water. Never mind if the skin
+looks rotten, it is really not so.</p>
+<p>'When washed put it into a tub, in which you have first placed a
+mixture consisting of half an ounce of alum to each gallon of
+water. Soak the skin in this mixture for about six hours, taking it
+up occasionally to drain a little. This is sufficient to cure your
+skin and clean it.'</p>
+<p>The tanning remains to be done.</p>
+<p>'Get four pounds of babool, tamarind, or dry oak bark. (The
+babool is a kind of acacia, and is easily procurable, as the
+tamarind also is). Boil the bark in two gallons of water till it is
+reduced to one half the quantity. Add to this nine gallons of fresh
+water, and in this solution souse the skin for two, or three, or
+four days.</p>
+<p>'The hairs having been set by the soaking in alum, the skin will
+tan more quickly, and if the tan is occasionally rubbed into the
+pores of the skin it will be an improvement. You can tell when the
+tanning is complete by the colour the skin assumes. When this
+satisfies the eye, take it out and drain on a rod. When nearly dry
+it should be curried with olive oil or clarified butter if required
+for wear, but if only for floor covering or carriage rug, the
+English curriers' common 'dubbin,' sold by shopkeepers, is best.
+This operation, which must be done on the inner side only, is
+simple.</p>
+<p>'Another simple recipe, and one which answers well, is this. Mix
+together of the best English soap, four ounces; arsenic, two and a
+half grains; camphor, two ounces; alum, half an ounce; saltpetre,
+half an ounce. Boil the whole, and keep stirring, in a half-pint of
+distilled water, over a very slow fire, for from ten to fifteen
+minutes. Apply when cool with a sponge. A little sweet oil may be
+rubbed on the skins after they are dry.</p>
+<p>'Another good method is to apply arsenical soap, which may be
+made as follows: powdered arsenic, two pounds; camphor, five
+ounces; white soap, sliced thin, two pounds; salt of tartar, twelve
+drams; chalk, or powdered fine lime, four ounces; add a small
+quantity of water first to the soap, put over a gentle fire, and
+keep stirring. When melted, add the lime and tartar, and thoroughly
+mix; next add the arsenic, keeping up a constant motion, and lastly
+the camphor. The camphor should first be reduced to a powder by
+means of a little spirits of wine, and should be added to the mess
+after it has been taken off the fire.</p>
+<p>'This preparation must be kept in a well-stoppered jar, or
+properly closed pot. When ready, the soap should be of the
+consistency of Devonshire cream. To use, add water till it becomes
+of the consistency of clear rich soup.'</p>
+<p>I have now finished my book. It has been pleasant to me to write
+down these recollections. Ever since I began my task, death has
+been busy, and the ranks of my friends have been sadly thinned.
+Failing health has driven me from my old shooting grounds, and in
+sunny Australia I have been trying to recruit the energies
+enervated by the burning climate of India. That my dear old planter
+friends may have as kindly recollections of 'the Maori' as he has
+of them, is what I ardently hope; that I may yet get back to share
+in the sports, pastimes, joys, and social delights of Mofussil life
+in India, is what I chiefly desire. If this volume meets the
+approbation of the public, I may be tempted to draw further on a
+well-stocked memory, and gossip afresh on Indian life, Indian
+experiences, and Indian sport. Meantime, courteous reader,
+farewell.</p>
+<hr align="center" noshade size="1" width="20%">
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+<pre>
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+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier, by James Inglis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+       Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter
+
+Author: James Inglis
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2004 [EBook #10818]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN NEPAUL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _Frontispiece_. TIGER HUNTING. RETURN TO THE CAMP.]
+
+
+SPORT AND WORK
+
+ON THE
+
+NEPAUL FRONTIER
+
+
+OR
+
+
+TWELVE YEARS SPORTING REMINISCENCES
+
+OF AN INDIGO PLANTER
+
+
+By "MAORI"
+
+
+1878
+
+
+
+
+[Note: Some words in this book have a macron over a vowel. A macron
+is a punctuation mark ( - ) and is represented herein as [=a], [=e]
+or [=o].]
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+I went home in 1875 for a few months, after some twelve years' residence
+in India. What first suggested the writing of such a book as this, was
+the amazing ignorance of ordinary Indian life betrayed by people at
+home. The questions asked me about India, and our daily life there,
+showed in many cases such an utter want of knowledge, that I thought,
+surely there is room here for a chatty, familiar, unpretentious book
+for friends at home, giving an account of our every-day life in India,
+our labours and amusements, our toils and relaxations, and a few
+pictures of our ordinary daily surroundings in the far, far East.
+
+Such then is the design of my book. I want to picture to my readers
+Planter Life in the Mofussil, or country districts of India; to tell
+them of our hunting, shooting, fishing, and other amusements; to
+describe our work, our play, and matter-of-fact incidents in our daily
+life; to describe the natives as they appear to us in our intimate
+every-day dealings with them; to illustrate their manners, customs,
+dispositions, observances and sayings, so far as these bear on our own
+social life.
+
+I am no politician, no learned ethnologist, no sage theorist. I simply
+try to describe what I have seen, and hope to enlist the attention and
+interest of my readers, in my reminiscences of sport and labour, in the
+villages and jungles on the far off frontier of Nepaul.
+
+I have tried to express my meaning as far as possible without Anglo-Indian
+and Hindustani words; where these have been used, as at times they could
+not but be, I have given a synonymous word or phrase in English, so that
+all my friends at home may know my meaning.
+
+I know that my friends will be lenient to my faults, and even the
+sternest critic, if he look for it, may find some pleasure and profit in
+my pages.
+
+JAS. INGLIS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Province of Behar.--Boundaries.--General description.--District of
+Chumparun.--Mooteeharree.--The town and lake.--Native houses.--The
+Planters' Club.--Legoulie.
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+My first charge.--How we get our lands.--Our home farm.--System of
+farming.--Collection of rents.--The planter's duties.
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
+--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at Work.
+--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Manufacture of Indigo.--Loading the vats.--Beating.--Boiling, straining,
+and pressing.--Scene in the Factory.--Fluctuation of produce.--Chemistry
+of Indigo.
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Parewah factory.--A 'Bobbery Pack.'--Hunt through a village after
+a cat.--The pariah dog of India.--Fate of 'Pincher.'--Rampore
+hound.--Persian greyhound.--Caboolee dogs.--A jackal hunt.--Incidents
+of the chase.
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Fishing in India.--Hereditary trades.--The boatmen and fishermen of
+India.--Their villages.--Nets.--Modes of fishing.--Curiosities relating
+thereto.--Catching an alligator with a hook.--Exciting capture.
+--Crocodiles.--Shooting an alligator.--Death of the man-eater.
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Native superstitions.--Charming a bewitched woman.--Exorcising ghosts
+from a field.--Witchcraft.--The witchfinder or 'Ojah,'--Influence of
+fear.--Snake bites.--How to cure them.--How to discover a thief.--Ghosts
+and their habits.--The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.--Cruelty to
+animals by natives.
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Our annual race meet.--The arrivals.--The camps.--The 'ordinary,'--The
+course.--'They're off.'--The race.--The steeple-chase.--Incidents of
+the meet.--The ball.
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Pig-sticking in India.--Varieties of boar.--Their size and height.
+--Ingenious mode of capture by the natives.--The 'Batan' or buffalo
+herd.--Pigs charging.--Their courage and ferocity.--Destruction of
+game.--A close season for game.
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Kuderent jungle.--Charged by a pig.--The biter bit.--'Mac' after the
+big boar.--The horse for pig-sticking.--The line of beaters.--The boar
+breaks.--'Away! Away!'--First spear.--Pig-sticking at Peeprah.--The
+old 'lungra' or cripple.--A boar at bay.--Hurrah for pig-sticking!
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The sal forests.--The jungle goddess.--The trees in the jungle.
+--Appearance of the forests.--Birds.--Varieties of parrots.--A 'beat'
+in the forest.--The 'shekarry.'--Mehrman Singh and his gun.--The Banturs,
+a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.--Their habits.--A village feast.--We
+beat for deer.--Habits of the spotted deer.--Waiting for the game.
+--Mehrman Singh gets drunk.--Our bag.--Pea-fowl and their habits.--How
+to shoot them.--Curious custom of the Nepaulese.--How Juggroo was
+tricked, and his revenge.
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
+one.--Encounter with a leopard in a Dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
+leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
+annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
+harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
+sanitation.
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
+--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
+village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
+village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
+system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
+justice.
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The temple.
+--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.--Their
+low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions and knavery.
+--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native officials.--The
+Hindoo unfit for self-government.
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Jungle wild fruits.--Curious method of catching quail.--Quail nets.
+--Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.--Native wrestling.--The trainer.
+--How they train for a match.--Rules of wrestling.--Grips.--A wrestling
+match.--Incidents of the struggle.--Description of a match between a
+Brahmin and a blacksmith.--Sparring for the grip.--The blacksmith has
+it.--The struggle.--The Brahmin getting the worst of it.--Two to one
+on the little 'un!--The Brahmin plays the waiting game, turns the tables
+_and_ the blacksmith.--Remarks on wrestling.
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Indigo seed growing.--Seed buying and buyers.--Tricks of sellers.--Tests
+for good seed.--The threshing-floor.--Seed cleaning and packing.--Staff
+of servants.--Despatching the bags by boat.--The 'Pooneah' or rent day.
+--Purneah planters--their hospitality.--The rent day a great festival.
+--Preparation.--Collection of rents.--Feast to retainers.--The reception
+in the evening.--Tribute.--Old customs.--Improvisatores and bards.
+--Nautches.--Dancing and music.--The dance of the Dangurs.--Jugglers
+and itinerary showmen.--'Bara Roopes,' or actors and mimics.--Their
+different styles of acting.
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The Koosee jungles.--Ferries.--Jungle roads.--The rhinoceros.--We go
+to visit a neighbour.--We lose our way and get belated.--We fall into
+a quicksand.--No ferry boat.--Camping out on the sand.--Two tigers close
+by.--We light a fire.--The boat at last arrives.--Crossing the stream.
+--Set fire to the boatman's hut.--Swim the horses.--They are nearly
+drowned.--We again lose our way in the jungle.--The towing path, and
+how boats are towed up the river.--We at last reach the factory.--News
+of rhinoceros in the morning.--Off we start, but arrive too late.--Death
+of the rhinoceros.--His dimensions.--Description.--Habits.--Rhinoceros
+in Nepaul.--The old 'Major Capt[=a]n.'--Description of Nepaulese scenery.
+--Immigration of Nepaulese.--Their fondness for fish.--They eat it
+putrid.--Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul.--Resources of the country.
+--Must sooner or later be opened up.--Influences at work to elevate
+the people.--Planters and factories chief of these.--Character of the
+planter.--Has claims to consideration from government.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The tiger.--His habitat.--Shooting on foot.--Modes of shooting.--A
+tiger hunt on foot.--The scene of the hunt.--The beat.--Incidents of
+the hunt.--Fireworks.--The tiger charges.--The elephant bolts.--The
+tigress will not break.--We kill a half-grown cub.--Try again for
+the tigress.--Unsuccessful.--Exaggerations in tiger stories.--My
+authorities.--The brothers S.--Ferocity and structure of the
+tiger.--His devastations.--His frame-work, teeth, &c.--A tiger at
+bay.--His unsociable habits.--Fight between tiger and tigress.--Young
+tigers.--Power and strength of the tiger.--Examples.--His cowardice.
+--Charge of a wounded tiger.--Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+--A spined tiger.--Boldness of young tigers.--Cruelty.--Cunning.--Night
+scenes in the jungle.--Tiger killed by a wild boar.--His cautious
+habits.--General remarks.
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
+--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
+--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of tiger.
+--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His description.
+--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to measure tigers.
+--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.--Number of
+young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs to kill.
+--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and cunning
+of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of concealment.
+--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.--Caught by
+floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives
+about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Claw-marks
+on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s
+howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.
+--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye
+out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers
+easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of shells on tiger and buffalo.--Best
+weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives
+prone to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for
+tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six
+elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.
+--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the Koosee.
+--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to shoot at
+moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of different animals
+in the grass.
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Howdahs and howdah-ropes.--Mussulman custom.--Killing animals for food.
+--Mysterious appearance of natives when an animal is killed.--Fastening
+dead tigers to the pad.--Present mode wants improving.--Incident
+illustrative of this.--Dangerous to go close to wounded tigers.
+--Examples.--Footprints of tigers.--Call of the tiger.--Natives and
+their powers of description.--How to beat successfully for tiger.
+--Description of a beat.--Disputes among the shooters.--Awarding
+tigers.--Cutting open the tiger.--Native idea about the liver of the
+tiger.--Signs of a tiger's presence in the jungle.--Vultures.--Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?--A vulture carrion feast.
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul frontier.--Indian scenery near
+the border.--Lose our way.--Cold night.--The river by night.--Our boat
+and boatmen.--Tigers calling on the bank.--An anxious moment.--Fire at
+and wound the tigress.--Reach camp.--The Nepaulee's adventure with a
+tiger.--The old Major.--His appearance and manners.--The pompous
+Jemadar.--Nepaulese proverb.--Firing the jungle.--Start a tiger and
+shoot him.--Another in front.--Appearance of the fires by night.--The
+tiger escapes.--Too dark to follow up.--Coolie shot by mistake during
+a former hunt.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+We resume the beat.--The hog-deer.--Nepaulese villages.--Village
+granaries.--Tiger in front.--A hit! a hit!--Following up the wounded
+tiger.--Find him dead.--Tiffin in the village.--The Patair jungle.
+--Search for tiger.--Gone away!--An elephant steeplechase in pursuit.
+--Exciting chase.--The Morung jungle.--Magnificent scenery.--Skinning
+the tiger.--Incidents of tiger hunting.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Camp of the Nepaulee chief.--Quicksands.--Elephants crossing rivers.
+--Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.--We beat the forest for tiger.--Shoot
+a young tiger.--Red ants in the forest.--Bhowras or ground bees.--The
+_ursus labialis_ or long-lipped bear.--Recross the stream.--Florican.
+--Stag running the gauntlet of flame.--Our bag.--Start for factory.
+--Remarks on elephants.--Precautions useful for protection from the
+sun in tiger shooting.--The _puggree_.--Cattle breeding in India, and
+wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.--Nathpore.--Ravages of the
+river.--Mrs. Gray, an old resident in the jungles.--Description of
+her surroundings.
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Exciting jungle scene.--The camp.--All quiet.--Advent of the cow-herds.
+--A tiger close by.--Proceed to the spot.--Encounter between tigress
+and buffaloes.--Strange behaviour of the elephant.--Discovery and
+capture of four cubs.--Joyful return to camp.--Death of the tigress.
+--Night encounter with a leopard.--The haunts of the tiger and our
+shooting grounds.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Remarks on guns.--How to cure skins.--Different Recipes.--Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+Tiger Hunting--Return to the Camp
+Coolie's Hut
+Indigo Beating Vats
+Indigo Beaters at work in the Vat
+Indian Factory Peon
+Indigo Planter's House
+Pig Stickers
+Carpenters and Blacksmiths at work
+Hindoo Village Temples
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Province of Behar.--Boundaries.--General description.--District of
+Chumparun.--Mooteeharree.--The town and lake.--Native houses.--The
+Planters' Club.--Legoulie.
+
+Among the many beautiful and fertile provinces of India, none can, I
+think, much excel that of Behar for richness of soil, diversity of
+race, beauty of scenery, and the energy and intelligence of its
+inhabitants. Stretching from the Nepaul hills to the far distant
+plains of Gya, with the Gunduch, Bogmuttee and other noble streams
+watering its rich bosom, and swelling with their tribute the stately
+Ganges, it includes every variety of soil and climate; and its various
+races, with their strange costumes, creeds, and customs, might afford
+material to fill volumes.
+
+The northern part of this splendid province follows the Nepaulese
+boundary from the district of Goruchpore on the north, to that of
+Purneah on the south. In the forests and jungles along this boundary
+line live many strange tribes, whose customs, and even their names and
+language, are all but unknown to the English public. Strange wild
+animals dispute with these aborigines the possession of the gloomy
+jungle solitudes. Great trees of wondrous dimensions and strange
+foliage rear their stately heads to heaven, and are matted and
+entwined together by creepers of huge size and tenacious hold.
+
+To the south and east vast billows of golden grain roll in successive
+undulations to the mighty Ganges, the sacred stream of the Hindoos.
+Innumerable villages, nestling amid groves of plantains and feathery
+rustling bamboos, send up their wreaths of pale grey smoke into the
+still warm air. At frequent intervals the steely blue of some lovely
+lake, where thousands of water-fowl disport themselves, reflects from
+its polished surface the sheen of the noonday sun. Great masses of
+mango wood shew a sombre outline at intervals, and here and there the
+towering chimney of an indigo factory pierces the sky. Government
+roads and embankments intersect the face of the country in all
+directions, and vast sheets of the indigo plant refresh the eye with
+their plains of living green, forming a grateful contrast to the hard,
+dried, sun-baked surface of the stubble fields, where the rice crop
+has rustled in the breezes of the past season. In one of the loveliest
+and most fertile districts of this vast province, namely, Chumparun, I
+began my experiences as an indigo planter.
+
+Chumparun with its subdistrict of Bettiah, lies to the north of
+Tirhoot, and is bounded all along its northern extent by the Nepaul
+hills and forests. When I joined my appointment as assistant on one
+of the large indigo concerns there, there were not more than about
+thirty European residents altogether in the district. The chief town,
+Mooteeharree, consisted of a long _bazaar_, or market street, beautifully
+situated on the bank of a lovely lake, some two miles in length. From
+the main street, with its quaint little shops sheltered from the sun
+by makeshift verandahs of tattered sacking, weather-stained shingles,
+or rotting bamboo mats, various little lanes and alleys diverged,
+leading one into a collection of tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up
+apparently by chance, and presenting the most incongruous appearance
+that could possibly be conceived. One or two _pucca_ houses, that is,
+houses of brick and masonry, shewed where some wealthy Bunneah
+(trader) or usurious banker lived, but the majority of the houses were
+of the usual mud and bamboo order. There is a small thatched hut where
+the meals were cooked, and where the owner and his family could sleep
+during the rains. Another smaller hut at right angles to this, gives
+shelter to the family goat, or, if they are rich enough to keep one,
+the cow. All round the villages in India there are generally large
+patches of common, where the village cows have free rights of pasture;
+and all who can, keep either a cow or a couple of goats, the milk from
+which forms a welcome addition to their usual scanty fare. In this
+second hut also is stored as much fuel, consisting of dried cow-dung,
+straw, maize-stalks, leaves, etc., as can be collected; and a ragged
+fence of bamboo or _rahur_[1] stalks encloses the two unprotected
+sides, thus forming inside a small court, quadrangle, or square. This
+court is the native's _sanctum sanctorum_. It is kept scrupulously
+clean, being swept and garnished religiously every day. In this the
+women prepare the rice for the day's consumption; here they cut up and
+clean their vegetables, or their fish, when the adjacent lake has been
+dragged by the village fishermen. Here the produce of their little
+garden, capsicums, Indian corn, onions or potatoes--perchance turmeric,
+ginger, or other roots or spices--are dried and made ready for storing
+in the earthen sun-baked repository for the reception of such produce
+appertaining to each household. Here the children play, and are washed
+and tended. Here the maiden combs out her long black hair, or decorates
+her bronzed visage with streaks of red paint down the nose, and a
+little antimony on the eyelids, or myrtle juice on the finger and toe
+nails. Here, too, the matron, or the withered old crone of a
+grandmother, spins her cotton thread; or, in the old scriptural
+hand-mill, grinds the corn for the family flour and meal; and the
+father and the young men (when the sun is high and hot in the heavens)
+take their noonday _siesta_, or, the day's labours over, cower round
+the smoking dung fire of a cold winter night, and discuss the prices
+ruling in the bazaar, the rise of rents, or the last village scandal.
+
+In the middle of the town, and surrounded by a spacious fenced-in
+compound, which sloped gently to the lake, stood the Planters' Club, a
+large low roofed bungalow, with a roomy wide verandah in front. Here
+we met, when business or pleasure brought us to 'the Station.' Here
+were held our annual balls, or an occasional public dinner party. To
+the north of the Club stood a long range of barrack-looking buildings,
+which were the opium godowns, where the opium was collected and stored
+during the season. Facing this again, and at the extremity of the
+lake, was the district jail, where all the rascals of the surrounding
+country were confined; its high walls tipped at intervals by a red
+puggree and flashing bayonet wherever a jail sepoy kept his 'lonely
+watch.' Near it, sheltered in a grove of shady trees, were the court
+houses, where the collector and magistrate daily dispensed justice, or
+where the native _moonsiff_ disentangled knotty points of law. Here,
+too, came the sessions judge once a month or so, to try criminal cases
+and mete out justice to the law-breakers.
+
+We had thus a small European element in our 'Station,' consisting of
+our magistrate and collector, whose large and handsome house was built
+on the banks of another and yet lovelier lake, which joined the town
+lake by a narrow stream or strait at its southern end, an opium agent,
+a district superintendent of police, and last but not least, a doctor.
+These formed the official population of our little 'Station.' There
+was also a nice little church, but no resident pastor, and behind the
+town lay a quiet churchyard, rich in the dust of many a pioneer, who,
+far from home and friends, had here been gathered to his silent rest.
+
+About twelve miles to the north, and near the Nepaul boundary, was the
+small military station of Legoulie. Here there was always a native
+cavalry regiment, the officers of which were frequent and welcome
+guests at the factories in the district, and were always glad to see
+their indigo friends at their mess in cantonments. At Rettiah, still
+further to the north, was a rich rajah's palace, where a resident
+European manager dwelt, and had for his sole society an assistant
+magistrate who transacted the executive and judicial work of the
+subdistrict. These, with some twenty-five or thirty indigo managers
+and assistants, composed the whole European population of Chumparun.
+
+Never was there a more united community. We were all like brothers.
+Each knew all the rest. The assistants frequently visited each other,
+and the managers were kind and considerate to their subordinates.
+Hunting parties were common, cricket and hockey matches were frequent,
+and in the cold weather, which is our slackest season, fun, frolic,
+and sport was the order of the day. We had an annual race meet, when
+all the crack horses of the district met in keen rivalry to test their
+pace and endurance. During this high carnival, we lived for the most
+part under canvass, and had friends from far and near to share our
+hospitality. In a future chapter I must describe our racing meet.
+
+
+[1] The _rahur_ is a kind of pea, growing not unlike our English broom
+    in appearance; it is sown with the maize crop during the rains,
+    and garnered in the cold weather. It produces a small pea, which
+    is largely used by the natives, and forms the nutritive article of
+    diet known as _dhall_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+My first charge.--How we get our lands.--Our home farm.--System of
+farming.--Collection of rents.--The planter's duties.
+
+My first charge was a small outwork of the large factory Seeraha. It
+was called Puttihee. There was no bungalow; that is, there was no
+regular house for the assistant, but a little one-roomed hut, built on
+the top of the indigo vats, served me for a residence. It had neither
+doors nor windows, and the rain used to beat through the room, while
+the eaves were inhabited by countless swarms of bats, who, in the
+evening flashed backwards and forwards in ghostly rapid flight, and
+were a most intolerable nuisance. To give some idea of the duties of
+an indigo assistant, I must explain the system on which we get our
+lands, and how we grow our crop.
+
+Water of course being a _sine qua non_, the first object in selecting
+a site for a factory is, to have water in plenty contiguous to the
+proposed buildings. Consequently Puttihee was built on the banks of a
+very pretty lake, shaped like a horseshoe, and covered with water
+lilies and broad-leaved green aquatic plants. The lake was kept by the
+native proprietor as a fish preserve, and literally teemed with fish
+of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. I had not been long at Puttihee
+before I had erected a staging, leading out into deep water, and many
+a happy hour I have spent there with my three or four rods out,
+pulling in the finny inhabitants.
+
+Having got water and a site, the next thing is to get land on which to
+grow your crop. By purchase, by getting a long lease, or otherwise,
+you become possessed of several hundred acres of the land immediately
+surrounding the factory. Of course some factories will have more and
+some less as circumstances happen. This land, however, is peculiarly
+factory property. It is in fact a sort of home farm, and goes by the
+name of _Zeraat_. It is ploughed by factory bullocks, worked by
+factory coolies, and is altogether apart and separate from the
+ordinary lands held by the ryots and worked by them. (A ryot means a
+cultivator.) In most factories the Zeraats are farmed in the most
+thorough manner. Many now use the light Howard's plough, and apply
+quantities of manure.
+
+The fields extend in vast unbroken plains all round the factory. The
+land is worked and pulverised, and reploughed, and harrowed, and
+cleaned, till not a lump the size of a pigeon's egg is to be seen. If
+necessary, it is carefully weeded several times before the crop is
+sown, and in fact, a fine clean stretch of Zeraat in Tirhoot or
+Chumparun, will compare most favourably with any field in the highest
+farming districts of England or Scotland. The ploughing and other farm
+labour is done by bullocks. A staff of these, varying of course with
+the amount of land under cultivation, is kept at each factory. For
+their support a certain amount of sugar-cane is planted, and in the
+cold weather carrots are sown, and _gennara_, a kind of millet, and
+maize.
+
+Both maize and gennara have broad green leaves, and long juicy
+succulent stalks. They grow to a good height, and when cut up and
+mixed with chopped straw and carrots, form a most excellent feed for
+cattle. Besides the bullocks, each factory keeps up a staff of
+generally excellent horses, for the use of the assistant or manager,
+on which he rides over his cultivation, and looks generally after the
+farm. Some of the native subordinates also have ponies, or Cabool
+horses, or country-breds; and for the feed of these animals some few
+acres of oats are sown every cold season. In most factories too, when
+any particular bit of the Zeraats gets exhausted by the constant
+repetition of indigo cropping, a rest is given it, by taking a crop of
+oil seeds or oats off the land. The oil seeds usually sown are mustard
+or rape. The oil is useful in the factory for oiling the screws or the
+machinery, and for other purposes.
+
+The factory roads through the Zeraats are kept in most perfect order;
+many of them are metalled. The ditches are cleaned once a year. All
+thistles and weeds by the sides of the roads and ditches, are
+ruthlessly cut down. The edges of all the fields are neatly trimmed
+and cut. Useless trees and clumps of jungle are cut down; and in fact
+the Zeraats round a factory shew a perfect picture of orderly thrift,
+careful management, and neat, scientific, and elaborate farming.
+
+Having got the Zeraats, the next thing is to extend the cultivation
+outside.
+
+The land in India is not, as with us at home, parcelled out into large
+farms. There are wealthy proprietors, rajahs, baboos, and so on, who
+hold vast tracts of land, either by grant, or purchase, or hereditary
+succession; but the tenants are literally the children of the soil.
+Wherever a village nestles among its plantain or mango groves, the
+land is parcelled out among the villagers. A large proprietor does not
+reckon up his farms as a landlord at home would do, but he counts his
+villages. In a village with a thousand acres belonging to it, there
+might be 100 or even 200 tenants farming the land. Each petty villager
+would have his acre or half acre, or four, or five, or ten, or twenty
+acres, as the case might be. He holds this by a 'tenant right,' and
+cannot be dispossessed as long as he pays his rent regularly. He can
+sell his tenant right, and the purchaser on paying the rent, becomes
+the _bona fide_ possessor of the land to all intents and purposes.
+
+If the average rent of the village lands was, let me say, one rupee
+eight annas an acre, the rent roll of the 1000 acres would be 1500
+rupees. Out of this the government land revenue comes. Certain
+deductions have to be made--some ryots may be defaulters. The village
+temple, or the village Brahmin, may have to get something, the
+road-cess has to be paid, and so on. Taking everything into account,
+you arrive at a pretty fair view of what the rental is. If the
+proprietor of the village wants a loan of money, or if you offer to
+pay him the rent by half-yearly or quarterly instalments, you taking
+all the risk of collecting in turn from each ryot individually, he is
+often only too glad to accept your offer, and giving you a lease of
+the village for whatever term may be agreed on, you step in as
+virtually the landlord, and the ryots have to pay their rents to you.
+
+In many cases by careful management, by remeasuring lands, settling
+doubtful boundaries, and generally working up the estate, you can much
+increase the rental, and actually make a profit on your bargain with
+the landlord. This department of indigo work is called Zemindaree.
+Having, then, got the village in lease, you summon in all your tenants;
+shew them their rent accounts, arrange with them for the punctual
+payment of them, and get them to agree to cultivate a certain
+percentage of their land in indigo for you.
+
+This percentage varies very considerably. In some places it is one
+acre in five, in some one in twenty. It all depends on local
+circumstances. You select the land, you give the seed, but the ryot
+has to prepare the field for sowing, he has to plough, weed, and reap
+the crop, and deliver it at the factory. For the indigo he gets so
+much per acre, the price being as near as possible the average price
+of an acre of ordinary produce: taking the average out-turn and prices
+of, say, ten years. It used formerly to be much less, but the ryot
+nowadays gets nearly double for his indigo what he got some ten or
+fifteen years ago, and this, although prices have not risen for the
+manufactured article, and the prices of labour, stores, machinery,
+live stock, etc., have more than doubled. In some parts the ryot gets
+paid so much per bundle of plants delivered at the vats, but generally
+in Behar, at least in north Behar, he is paid so much per acre or
+_Beegah_. I use the word acre as being more easily understood by
+people at home than Beegah. The Beegah varies in different districts,
+but is generally about two-thirds of an acre.
+
+When his rent account, then, comes to be made out, the ryot gets
+credit for the price of his indigo grown and delivered; and this very
+often suffices, not only to clear his entire rent, but to leave a
+margin in hard cash for him to take home. Before the beginning of the
+indigo season, however, he comes into the factory and takes a cash
+advance on account of the indigo to be grown. This is often a great
+help to him, enabling him to get his seeds for his other lands,
+perhaps ploughs, or to buy a cart, or clothes for the family, or to
+replace a bullock that may have died; or to help to give a marriage
+portion to a son or daughter that he wants to get married.
+
+You will thus see that we have cultivation to look after in all the
+villages round about the factory which we can get in lease. The ryot,
+in return for his cash advance, agrees to cultivate so much indigo at
+a certain price, for which he gets credit in his rent. Such, shortly,
+is our indigo system. In some villages the ryot will estimate for us
+without our having the lease at all, and without taking advances.
+He grows the indigo as he would grow any other crop, as a pure
+speculation. If he has a good crop, he can get the price in hard cash
+from the factory, and a great deal is grown in this way in both
+Purneah and Bhaugulpore. This is called _Kooskee_, as against the
+system of advances, which is called _Tuccaree_.
+
+The planter, then, has to be constantly over his villages, looking out
+for good lands, giving up bad fields, and taking in new ones. He must
+watch what crops grow best in certain places. He must see that he does
+not take lands where water may lodge, and, on the other hand, avoid
+those that do not retain their moisture. He must attend also to the
+state of the other crops generally all over his cultivation, as the
+punctual payment of rents depends largely on the state of the crops.
+He must have his eyes open to everything going on, be able to tell the
+probable rent-roll of every village for miles around, know whether the
+ryots are lazy and discontented, or are industrious and hard-working.
+Up in the early morning, before the hot blazing sun has climbed on
+high, he is off on his trusty nag, through his Zeraats, with his
+greyhounds and terriers panting behind him. As he nears a village, the
+farm-servant in charge of that particular bit of cultivation, comes
+out with a low salaam, to report progress, or complain that so-and-so
+is not working up his field as he ought to do.
+
+Over all the lands he goes, seeing where re-ploughing is necessary,
+ordering harrowing here, weeding there, or rolling somewhere else. He
+sees where the ditches need deepening, where the roads want levelling
+or widening, where a new bridge will be necessary, where lands must be
+thrown up and new ones taken in. He knows nearly all his ryots, and
+has a kind word for every one he passes; asks after their crops, their
+bullocks, or their land; rouses up the indolent; gives a cheerful nod
+to the industrious; orders this one to be brought in to settle his
+account, or that one to make greater haste with the preparation of his
+land, that he may not lose his moisture. In fact, he has his hands
+full till the mounting sun warns him to go back to breakfast. And so,
+with a rattling burst after a jackal or fox, he gets back to his
+bungalow to bathe, dress, and break his fast with fowl cutlets, and
+curry and rice, washed down with a wholesome tumbler of Bass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
+--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at work.
+--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
+
+Having now got our land, water, and buildings--which latter I will
+describe further on--the next thing is to set to work to get our crop.
+Manufacture being finished, and the crop all cut by the beginning or
+middle of October, when the annual rains are over, it is of importance
+to have the lands dug up as early as possible, that the rich moisture,
+on which the successful cultivation of the crop mainly depends, may be
+secured before the hot west winds and strong sun of early spring lick
+it up.
+
+Attached to every factory is a small settlement of labourers, belonging
+to a tribe of aborigines called _Dangurs_. These originally, I believe,
+came from Chota Nagpoor, which seems to have been their primal home.
+They are a cheerful industrious race, have a distinct language of their
+own, and only intermarry with each other. Long ago, when there were no
+post carriages to the hills, and but few roads, the Dangurs were
+largely employed as dale runners, or postmen. Some few of them settled
+with their families on lands near the foot of the hills in Purneah, and
+gradually others made their way northwards, until now there is scarcely
+a factory in Behar that has not its Dangur tola, or village.
+
+The men are tractable, merry-hearted, and faithful. The women betray
+none of the exaggerated modesty which is characteristic of Hindoo women
+generally. They never turn aside and hide their faces as you pass, but
+look up to you with a merry smile on their countenances, and exchange
+greetings with the utmost frankness. In a future chapter I may speak at
+greater length of the Dangurs; at present it suffices to say, that they
+form a sort of appanage to the factory, and are in fact treated as part
+of the permanent staff.
+
+Each Dangur when he marries, gets some grass and bamboos from the
+factory to build a house, and a small plot of ground to serve as a
+garden, for which he pays a very small rent, or in many instances
+nothing at all. In return, he is always on the spot ready for any
+factory work that may be going on, for which he has his daily wage.
+Some factories pay by the month, but the general custom is to charge
+for hoeing by piece-work, and during manufacture, when the work is
+constant, there is paid a monthly wage.
+
+In the close foggy mornings of October and November, long before the
+sun is up, the Dangurs are hard at work in the Zeraats, turning up the
+soil with their _kodalies_, (a kind of cutting hoe,) and you can often
+hear their merry voices rising through the mist, as they crack jokes
+with each other to enliven their work, or troll one of their quaint
+native ditties.
+
+They are presided over by a 'mate,' generally one of the oldest men and
+first settlers in the village. If he has had a large family, his sons
+look up to him, and his sons-in-law obey his orders with the utmost
+fealty. The 'mate' settles all disputes, presents all grievances to the
+_sahib_, and all orders are given through him.
+
+The indigo stubble which has been left in the ground is perhaps about a
+foot high, and as they cut it out, their wives and children come to
+gather up the sticks for fuel, and this of course also helps to clean
+the land. By eleven o'clock, when the sluggish mist has been dissipated
+by the rays of the scorching sun, the day's labour is nearly concluded.
+You will then see the swarthy Dangur, with his favourite child on his
+shoulder, wending his way back to his hut, followed by his comely wife
+carrying his hoe, and a tribe of little ones bringing up the rear, each
+carrying bundles of the indigo stubble which the industrious father has
+dug up during the early hours of morning.
+
+In the afternoon out comes the _hengha_, which is simply a heavy flat
+log of wood, with a V shaped cut or groove all along under its flat
+surface. To each end of the hengha a pair of bullocks are yoked, and
+two men standing on the log, and holding on by the bullocks' tails, it
+is slowly dragged over the field wherever the hoeing has been going on.
+The lumps and clods are caught in the groove on the under surface, and
+dragged along and broken up and pulverized, and the whole surface of
+the field thus gets harrowed down, and forms a homogeneous mass of
+light friable soil, covering the weeds and dirt to let them rot,
+exposing the least surface for the wind and heat to act on, and thus
+keeping the moisture in the soil.
+
+Now is a busy time for the planter. Up early in the cold raw fog, he is
+over his Zeraats long before dawn, and round by his outlying villages
+to see the ryots at work in their fields. To each eighty or a hundred
+acres a man is attached called a _Tokedar_. His duty is to rouse out
+the ryots, see the hoes and ploughs at work, get the weeding done, and
+be responsible for the state of the cultivation generally. He will
+probably have two villages under him. If the village with its lands be
+very extensive, of course there will be a Tokedar for it alone, but
+frequently a Tokedar may have two or more villages under his charge. In
+the village, the head man--generally the most influential man in the
+community--also acts with the Tokedar, helping him to get ploughs,
+bullocks, and coolies when these are wanted; and under him, the village
+_chowkeydar_, or watchman, sees that stray cattle do not get into the
+fields, that the roads, bridges and fences are not damaged, and so on.
+Over the Tokedars, again, are Zillahdars. A 'zillah' is a small
+district. There may be eight or ten villages and three or four Tokedars
+under a Zillahdar. The Zillahdar looks out for good lands to change for
+bad ones, where this is necessary, and where no objection is made by
+the farmer; sees that the Tokedars do their work properly; reports
+rain, blight, locusts, and other visitations that might injure the
+crop; watches all that goes on in his zillah, and makes his report to
+the planter whenever anything of importance happens in his particular
+part of the cultivation. Over all again comes the JEMADAR--the head man
+over the whole cultivation--the planter's right-hand man.
+
+He is generally an old, experienced, and trusted servant. He knows all
+the lands for miles round, and the peculiar soils and products of all
+the villages far and near. He can tell what lands grow the best
+tobacco, what lands are free from inundation, what free from drought;
+the temper of the inhabitants of each village, and the history of each
+farm; where are the best ploughs, the best bullocks, and the best
+farming; in what villages you get most coolies for weeding; where you
+can get the best carts, the best straw, and the best of everything at
+the most favourable rates. He comes up each night when the day's work
+is done, and gets his orders for the morrow. You are often glad to take
+his advice on sowing, reaping, and other operations of the farm. He
+knows where the plant will ripen earliest, and where the leaf will be
+thickest, and to him you look for satisfaction if any screw gets loose
+in the outside farm-work.
+
+He generally accompanies you in your morning ride, shows you your new
+lands, consults with you about throwing up exhausted fields, and is
+generally a sort of farm-bailiff or confidential land-steward. Where he
+is an honest, intelligent, and loyal man, he takes half the care and
+work off your shoulders. Such men are however rare, and if not very
+closely looked after, they are apt to abuse their position, and often
+harass the ryots needlessly, looking more to the feathering of their
+own nests than the advancement of your interests.
+
+The only Jemadar I felt I could thoroughly trust, was my first one at
+Parewah, an old Rajpoot, called Kassee Rai. He was a fine, ruddy-faced,
+white-haired old man, as independent and straightforward an old farmer
+as you could meet anywhere, and I never had reason to regret taking his
+advice on any matter. I never found him out in a lie, or in a dishonest
+or underhand action. Though over seventy years of age he was upright as
+a dart. He could not keep up with me when we went out riding over the
+fields, but he would be out the whole day over the lands, and was
+always the first at his work in the morning and the last to leave off
+at night. The ryots all loved him, and would do anything for him; and
+when poor old Kassee died, the third year he had been under me, I felt
+as if an old friend had gone. I never spoke an angry word to him, and I
+never had a fault to find with him.
+
+When the hoeing has been finished in zeraat and zillah, and all the
+upturned soil battened down by the _hengha_, the next thing is to
+commence the ploughing. Your ploughmen are mostly low caste
+men--Doosadhs, Churnars, Moosahurs, Gwallahs, _et hoc genus omne_.
+The Indian plough, so like a big misshapen wooden pickaxe, has often
+been described. It however turns up the light soft soil very well
+considering its pretensions, and those made in the factory workshops
+are generally heavier and sharper than the ordinary village plough.
+Our bullocks too, being strong and well fed, the ploughing in the
+zeraats is generally good.
+
+The ploughing is immediately followed up by the _hengha_, which again
+triturates and breaks up the clods, rolls the sticks, leaves, and grass
+roots together, brings the refuse and dirt to the surface, and again
+levels the soil, and prevents the wind from taking away the moisture.
+The land now looks fine and fresh and level, but very dirty. A host of
+coolies are put on the fields with small sticks in their hands. All the
+Dangur women and children are there, with men, women, and children of
+all the poorest classes from the villages round, whom the attractions
+of wages or the exertions of headmen Tokedars and Zillahdars have
+brought together to earn their daily bread. With the sticks they beat
+and break up every clod, leaving not one behind the size of a walnut.
+They collect all the refuse, weeds, and dirt, which are heaped up and
+burnt on the field, and so they go on till the zeraats look as clean as
+a nobleman's garden, and you would think that surely this must satisfy
+the fastidious eye of the planter. But no, our work is not half begun
+yet.
+
+It is rather a strange sight to see some four or five hundred coolies
+squatted in a long irregular line, chattering, laughing, shouting, or
+squabbling. A dense cloud of dust rises over them, and through the dim
+obscurity one hears the ceaseless sound of the thwack! thwack! as their
+sticks rattle on the ground. White dust lies thick on each swarthy
+skin; their faces are like faces in a pantomime. There are the flashing
+eyes and the grinning rows of white teeth; all else is clouded in thick
+layers of dust, with black spots and stencillings showing here and
+there like a picture in sepia and chalk. As they near the end of the
+field they redouble their thwacking, shuffle along like land-crabs, and
+while the Mates, Peons, and Tokedars shout at them to encourage them,
+they raise a roar loud enough to wake the dead. The dust rises in
+denser clouds, the noise is deafening, a regular mad hurry-scurry, a
+wild boisterous scramble ensues, and amid much chaffing, noise, and
+laughter, they scramble off again to begin another length of land; and
+so the day's work goes on.
+
+The planter has to count his coolies several times a-day, or they would
+cheat him. Some come in the morning, get counted, and their names put
+on the roll, and then go off till paytime comes round. Some come for an
+hour or two, and send a relative in the evening when the pice are being
+paid out, to get the wage of work they have not done. All are paid in
+pice--little copper bits of coin, averaging about sixty-four to the
+rupee. However, you soon come to know the coolies by sight, and after
+some experience are rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get
+'done' most thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the
+artless and unsophisticated coolie.
+
+The type of feature along a line of coolies is as a rule a very
+forbidding and degraded one. They are mostly of the very poorest class.
+Many of them are plainly half silly, or wholly idiotic; not a few are
+deaf and dumb; others are crippled or deformed, and numbers are leprous
+and scrofulous. Numbers of them are afflicted in some districts with
+goitre, caused probably by bad drinking water; all have a pinched,
+withered, wan look, that tells of hard work and insufficient fare. It
+is a pleasure to turn to the end of the line, where the Dangur women
+and boys and girls generally take their place. Here are the loudest
+laughter, and the sauciest faces. The children are merry, chubby, fat
+things, with well-distended stomachs and pleasant looks; a merry smile
+rippling over their broad fat cheeks as they slyly glance up at you.
+The women--with huge earrings in their ears, and a perfect load of
+heavy brass rings on their arms--chatter away, make believe to be shy,
+and show off a thousand coquettish airs. Their very toes are bedizened
+with brass rings; and long festoons of red, white, and blue beads hang
+pendent round their necks.
+
+In the evening the line is re-formed before the bungalow. A huge bag of
+copper coin is produced. The old Lallah, or writer, with spectacles on
+nose, squats down in the middle of the assembled coolies, and as each
+name is called, the mates count out the pice, and make it over to the
+coolie, who forthwith hurries off to get his little purchases made at
+the village Bunneah's shop; and so, on a poor supper of parched peas,
+or boiled rice, with no other relish but a pinch of salt, the poor
+coolie crawls to bed, only to dream of more hard work and scanty fare
+on the morrow. Poor thing! a village coolie has a hard time of it!
+During the hot months, if rice be cheap and plentiful, he can jog along
+pretty comfortably, but when the cold nights come on, and he cowers in
+his wretched hut, hungry, half naked, cold, and wearied, he is of all
+objects most pitiable. It is, however, a fact little creditable to his
+more prosperous fellow-countrymen, that he gets better paid for his
+labour in connection with factory work, than he does in many cases for
+tasks forced on him by the leading ryots of the village in connection
+with their own fields.
+
+[Illustration: COOLIE'S HUT.]
+
+This first cleaning of the fields--or, as it is called, _Oustennie_--being
+finished, the lands are all again re-ploughed, re-harrowed, and then
+once more re-cleaned by the coolies, till not a weed or spot of dirt
+remains; and till the whole surface is uniformly soft, friable, moist,
+and clean. We have now some breathing time; and as this is the most
+enjoyable season of the year, when the days are cool, and roaring wood
+fires at night remind us of home, we hunt, visit, race, dance, and
+generally enjoy ourselves. Should heavy rain fall, as it sometimes does
+about Christmas and early in February, the whole cultivation gets
+beaten down and caked over. In such a case amusements must for a time
+be thrown aside, till all the lands have been again re-ploughed. Of
+course we are never wholly idle. There are always rents to collect,
+matters to adjust in connexion with our villages and tenantry,
+law-suits to recover bad debts, to enforce contracts, or protect
+manorial or other rights,--but generally speaking, when the lands have
+been prepared, we have a slack season or breathing time for a month or
+so.
+
+Arrangements having been made for the supply of seed, which generally
+comes from about the neighbourhood of Cawnpore, as February draws near
+we make preparations for beginning our sowings. February is the usual
+month, but it depends on the moisture, and sometimes sowings may go on
+up till May and June. In Purneah and Bhaugulpore, where the cultivation
+is much rougher than in Tirhoot, the sowing is done broadcast. And in
+Bengal the sowing is often done upon the soft mud which is left on the
+banks of the rivers at the retiring of the annual floods. In Tirhoot,
+however, where the high farming I have been trying to describe is
+practised, the sowing is done by means of drills. Drills are got out,
+overhauled, and put in thorough repair. Bags of seed are sent out to
+the villages, advances for bullocks are given to the ryots, and on a
+certain day when all seems favourable--no sign of rain or high
+winds--the drills are set at work, and day and night the work goes on,
+till all the cultivation has been sown. As the drills go along, the
+hengha follows close behind, covering the seed in the furrows; and once
+again it is put over, till the fields are all level, shining, and
+clean, waiting for the first appearance of the young soft shoots.
+
+These, after some seven, nine, or perhaps fifteen days, according to
+the weather, begin to appear in long lines of delicate pale yellowish
+green. This is a most anxious time. Should rain fall, the whole surface
+of the earth gets caked and hard, and the delicate plant burns out, or
+being chafed against the hard surface crust, it withers and dies. If
+the wind gets into the east, it brings a peculiar blight which settles
+round the leaf and collar of the stem of the young plant, chokes it,
+and sweeps off miles and miles of it. If hot west winds blow, the plant
+gets black, discoloured, burnt up, and dead. A south wind often brings
+caterpillars--at least this pest often makes its appearance when the
+wind is southerly; but as often as not caterpillars find their way to
+the young plant in the most mysterious manner,--no one knowing whence
+they come. Daily, nay almost hourly, reports come in from all parts of
+the zillah: now you hear of 'Lahee,' blight on some field; now it is
+'Ihirka,' scorching, or 'Pilooa,' caterpillars. In some places the seed
+may have been bad or covered with too much earth, and the plant comes
+up straggling and thin. If there is abundant moisture, this must be
+re-sown. In fact, there is never-ending anxiety and work at this
+season, but when the plant has got into ten or fifteen leaf, and is an
+inch or two high, the most critical time is over, and one begins to
+think about the next operation, namely WEEDING.
+
+The coolies are again in requisition. Each comes armed with a
+_coorpee_,--this is a small metal spatula, broad-pointed, with which
+they dig out the weeds with amazing deftness. Sometimes they may
+inadvertently take out a single stem of indigo with the weeds: the eye
+of the mate or Tokedar espies this at once, and the careless coolie is
+treated to a volley of Hindoo Billingsgate, in which all his relations
+are abused to the seventh generation. By the time the first weeding is
+finished, the plant will be over a foot high, and if necessary a second
+weeding is then given. After the second weeding, and if any rain has
+fallen in the interim, the plant will be fully two feet high.
+
+It is now a noble-looking expanse of beautiful green waving foliage. As
+the wind ruffles its myriads of leaves, the sparkle of the sunbeams on
+the undulating mass produces the most wonderful combinations of light
+and shade; feathery sprays of a delicate pale green curl gracefully all
+over the field. It is like an ocean of vegetation, with billows of rich
+colour chasing each other, and blending in harmonious hues; the whole
+field looking a perfect oasis of beauty amid the surrounding dull brown
+tints of the season.
+
+It is now time to give the plant a light touch of the plough. This
+eases the soil about the roots, lets in air and light, tends to clean
+the undergrowth of weeds, and gives it a great impetus. The operation
+is called _Bedaheunee_. By the beginning of June the tiny red flower is
+peeping from its leafy sheath, the lower leaves are turning yellowish
+and crisp, and it is almost time to begin the grandest and most
+important operation of the season, the manufacture of the dye from the
+plant.
+
+To this you have been looking forward during the cold raw foggy days of
+November, when the ploughs were hard at work,--during the hot fierce
+winds of March, and the still, sultry, breathless early days of June,
+when the air was so still and oppressive that you could scarcely
+breathe. These sultry days are the lull before the storm--the pause
+before the moisture-laden clouds of the monsoon roll over the land
+'rugged and brown,' and the wild rattle of thunder and the lurid glare
+of quivering never-ceasing lightning herald in the annual rains. The
+manufacture however deserves a chapter to itself.
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO BEATING VATS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Manufacture of Indigo.--Loading the vats.--Beating.--Boiling,
+straining, and pressing.--Scene in the Factory.--Fluctuation of
+produce.--Chemistry of Indigo.
+
+Indigo is manufactured solely from the leaf. When arrangements have
+been made for cutting and carting the plant from the fields, the vats
+and machinery are all made ready, and a day is appointed to begin
+'Mahye' or manufacture. The apparatus consists of, first, a strong
+serviceable pump for pumping up water into the vats: this is now mostly
+done by machinery, but many small factories still use the old Persian
+wheel, which may be shortly described as simply an endless chain of
+buckets, working on a revolving wheel or drum. The machine is worked by
+bullocks, and as the buckets ascend full from the well, they are
+emptied during their revolution into a small trough at the top, and the
+water is conveyed into a huge masonry reservoir or tank, situated high
+up above the vats, which forms a splendid open air bath for the planter
+when he feels inclined for a swim. Many of these tanks, called
+_Kajhana_, are capable of containing 40,000 cubic feet of water or
+more.
+
+Below, and in a line with this reservoir, are the steeping vats, each
+capable of containing about 2000 cubic feet of water when full. Of
+course the vats vary in size, but what is called a _pucca_ vat is of
+the above capacity. When the fresh green plant is brought in, the carts
+with their loads are ranged in line, opposite these loading vats. The
+loading coolies, 'Bojhunneas'--so called from '_Bojh_,' a bundle--jump
+into the vats, and receive the plant from the cart-men, stacking it up
+in perpendicular layers, till the vat is full: a horizontal layer is
+put on top to make the surface look even. Bamboo battens are then
+placed over the plant, and these are pressed down, and held in their
+place by horizontal beams, working in upright posts. The uprights have
+holes at intervals of six inches. An iron pin is put in one of the
+holes; a lever is put under this pin, and the beam pressed down, till
+the next hole is reached and a fresh pin inserted, which keeps the beam
+down in its place. When sufficient pressure has been applied, the
+sluice in the reservoir is opened, and the water runs by a channel into
+the vat till it is full. Vat after vat is thus filled till all are
+finished, and the plant is allowed to steep from ten to thirteen or
+fourteen hours, according to the state of the weather, the temperature
+of the water, and other conditions and circumstances which have all to
+be carefully noted.
+
+At first a greenish yellow tinge appears in the water, gradually
+deepening to an intense blue. As the fermentation goes on, froth forms
+on the surface of the vat, the water swells up, bubbles of gas arise to
+the surface, and the whole range of vats presents a frothing, bubbling,
+sweltering appearance, indicative of the chemical action going on in
+the interior. If a torch be applied to the surface of a vat, the
+accumulated gas ignites with a loud report, and a blue lambent flame
+travels with amazing rapidity over the effervescent liquid. In very hot
+weather I have seen the water swell up over the mid walls of the vats,
+till the whole range would be one uniform surface of frothing liquid,
+and on applying a light, the report has been as loud as that of a small
+cannon, and the flame has leapt from vat to vat like the flitting
+will-o'-the-wisp on the surface of some miasmatic marsh.
+
+When fermentation has proceeded sufficiently, the temperature of the
+vat lowers somewhat, and the water, which has been globular and convex
+on the surface and at the sides, now becomes distinctly convex and
+recedes a very little. This is a sign that the plant has been steeped
+long enough, and that it is now time to open the vat. A pin is knocked
+out from the bottom, and the pent-up liquor rushes out in a golden
+yellow stream tinted with blue and green into the beating vat, which
+lies parallel to, but at a lower level than the loading vat.
+
+Of course as the vats are loaded at different hours, and the steeping
+varies with circumstances, they must be ready to open also at different
+intervals. There are two men specially engaged to look after the
+opening. The time of loading each one is carefully noted; the time it
+will take to steep is guessed at, and an hour for opening written down.
+When this hour arrives, the _Gunta parree_, or time-keeper, looks at
+the vat, and if it appears ready he gets the pinmen to knock out the
+pin and let the steeped liquor run into the beating vat.
+
+Where there are many vats, this goes on all night, and by the morning
+the beating vats are all full of steeped liquor, and ready to be
+beaten.
+
+The beating now is mostly done by machinery; but the old style was very
+different. A gang of coolies (generally Dangurs) were put into the
+vats, having long sticks with a disc at the end, with which, standing
+in two rows, they threw up the liquor into the air. The quantity forced
+up by the one coolie encounters in mid air that sent up by the man
+standing immediately opposite to him, and the two jets meeting and
+mixing confusedly together, tumble down in broken frothy masses into
+the vat. Beginning with a slow steady stroke the coolies gradually
+increase the pace, shouting out a hoarse wild song at intervals; till,
+what with the swish and splash of the falling water, the measured beat
+of the _furrovahs_ or beating rods, and the yells and cries with which
+they excite each other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which
+at first is of a yellowish green, is now beginning to assume an intense
+blue tint; this is the result of the oxygenation going on. As the blue
+deepens, the exertions of the coolie increase, till with every muscle
+straining, head thrown back, chest expanded, his long black hair
+dripping with white foam, and his bronzed naked body glistening with
+blue liquor, he yells and shouts and twists and contorts his body till
+he looks like a true 'blue devil.' To see eight or ten vats full of
+yelling howling blue creatures, the water splashing high in mid air,
+the foam flecking the walls, and the measured beat of the _furrovahs_
+rising weird-like into the morning air, is almost enough to shake the
+nerve of a stranger, but it is music in the planter's ear, and he can
+scarce refrain from yelling out in sympathy with his coolies, and
+sharing in their frantic excitement. Indeed it is often necessary to
+encourage them if a vat proves obstinate, and the colour refuses to
+come--an event which occasionally does happen. It is very hard work
+beating, and when this constant violent exercise is kept up for about
+three hours (which is the time generally taken), the coolies are pretty
+well exhausted, and require a rest.
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO BEATERS AT WORK IN THE VATS.]
+
+During the beating, two processes are going on simultaneously. One is
+chemical--oxygenation--turning the yellowish green dye into a deep
+intense blue: the other is mechanical--a separation of the particles of
+dye from the water in which it is held in solution. The beating seems
+to do this, causing the dye to granulate in larger particles.
+
+When the vat has been beaten, the coolies remove the froth and scum
+from the surface of the water, and then leave the contents to settle.
+The fecula or dye, or _mall_, as it is technically called, now settles
+at the bottom of the vat in a soft pulpy sediment, and the waste liquor
+left on the top is let off through graduated holes in the front. Pin
+after pin is gradually removed, and the clear sherry-coloured waste
+allowed to run out till the last hole in the series is reached, and
+nothing but dye remains in the vat. By this time the coolies have had a
+rest and food, and now they return to the works, and either lift up the
+_mall_ in earthen jars and take it to the mall tank, or--as is now more
+commonly done--they run it along a channel to the tank, and then wash
+out and clean the vat to be ready for the renewed beating on the
+morrow. When all the _mall_ has been collected in the mall tank, it is
+next pumped up into the straining room. It is here strained through
+successive layers of wire gauze and cloth, till, free from dirt, sand
+and impurity, it is run into the large iron boilers, to be subjected to
+the next process. This is the boiling. This operation usually takes two
+or three hours, after which it is run off along narrow channels, till
+it reaches the straining-table. It is a very important part of the
+manufacture, and has to be carefully done. The straining-table is an
+oblong shallow wooden frame, in the shape of a trough, but all composed
+of open woodwork. It is covered by a large straining-sheet, on which
+the mall settles; while the waste water trickles through and is carried
+away by a drain. When the mall has stood on the table all night, it is
+next morning lifted up by scoops and buckets and put into the presses.
+These are square boxes of iron or wood, with perforated sides and
+bottom and a removeable perforated lid. The insides of the boxes are
+lined with press cloths, and when filled these cloths are carefully
+folded over the _mall_, which is now of the consistence of starch; and
+a heavy beam, worked on two upright three-inch screws, is let down on
+the lid of the press. A long lever is now put on the screws, and the
+nut worked slowly round. The pressure is enormous, and all the water
+remaining in the _mall_ is pressed through the cloth and perforations
+in the press-box till nothing but the pure indigo remains behind.
+
+The presses are now opened, and a square slab of dark moist indigo,
+about three or three and a half inches thick, is carried off on the
+bottom of the press (the top and sides having been removed), and
+carefully placed on the cutting frame. This frame corresponds in size
+to the bottom of the press, and is grooved in lines somewhat after the
+manner of a chess-board. A stiff iron rod with a brass wire attached is
+put through the groove under the slab, the wire is brought over the
+slab, and the rod being pulled smartly through brings the wire with it,
+cutting the indigo much in the same way as you would cut a bar of soap.
+When all the slab has been cut into bars, the wire and rod are next put
+into the grooves at right angles to the bars and again pulled through,
+thus dividing the bars into cubical cakes. Each cake is then stamped
+with the factory mark and number, and all are noted down in the books.
+They are then taken to the drying house; this is a large airy building,
+with strong shelves of bamboo reaching to the roof, and having narrow
+passages between the tiers of shelves. On these shelves or _mychans_,
+as they are called, the cakes are ranged to dry. The drying takes two
+or three months, and the cakes are turned and moved at frequent
+intervals, till thoroughly ready for packing. All the little pieces and
+corners and chips are carefully put by on separate shelves, and packed
+separately. Even the sweepings and refuse from the sheets and floor are
+all carefully collected, mixed with water, boiled separately, and made
+into cakes, which are called 'washings.'
+
+During the drying a thick mould forms on the cakes. This is carefully
+brushed off before packing, and, mixed with sweepings and tiny chips is
+all ground up in a hand-mill, packed in separate chests, and sold as
+dust. In October, when _mahye_ is over, and the preparation of the land
+going on again, the packing begins. The cakes, each of separate date,
+are carefully scrutinised, and placed in order of quality. The finest
+qualities are packed first, in layers, in mango-wood boxes; the boxes
+are first weighed empty, re-weighed when full, and the difference gives
+the nett weight of the indigo. The tare, gross, and nett weights are
+printed legibly on the chests, along with the factory mark and number
+of the chest, and when all are ready, they are sent down to the brokers
+in Calcutta for sale. Such shortly is the system of manufacture.
+
+During _mahye_ the factory is a busy scene. Long before break of day
+the ryots and coolies are busy cutting the plant, leaving it in green
+little heaps for the cartmen to load. In the early morning the carts
+are seen converging to the factory on every road, crawling along like
+huge green beetles. Here a cavalcade of twenty or thirty carts, there
+in clusters of twos or threes. When they reach the factory the loaders
+have several vats ready for the reception of the plant, while others
+are taking out the already steeped plant of yesterday; staggering under
+its weight, as, dripping with water, they toss it on the vast
+accumulating heap of refuse material.
+
+Down in the vats below, the beating coolies are plashing, and shouting,
+and yelling, or the revolving wheel (where machinery is used) is
+scattering clouds of spray and foam in the blinding sunshine. The
+firemen stripped to the waist, are feeding the furnaces with the dried
+stems of last year's crop, which forms our only fuel. The smoke hovers
+in volumes over the boiling-house. The pinmen are busy sorting their
+pins, rolling hemp round them to make them fit the holes more exactly.
+Inside the boiling-house, dimly discernible through the clouds of
+stifling steam, the boilermen are seen with long rods, stirring slowly
+the boiling mass of bubbling blue. The clank of the levers resounds
+through the pressing-house, or the hoarse guttural 'hah, hah!' as the
+huge lever is strained and pulled at by the press-house coolies. The
+straining-table is being cleaned by the table 'mate' and his coolies,
+while the washerman stamps on his sheets and press-cloths to extract
+all the colour from them, and the cake-house boys run to and fro
+between the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on
+their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from
+the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary
+to their forest haunt. Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds.
+The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the
+roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of
+the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified
+or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the objurgations of the
+'mates' as some lazy fellow eases his stroke in the beating vats; the
+cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round the circle where the
+Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp, dilapidated wheel-house;
+the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on the drum, the arriving and
+departing carts; the clang of the anvil, as the blacksmith and his men
+hammer away at some huge screw which has been bent; the hurrying crowds
+of cartmen and loaders with their burdens of fresh green plant or
+dripping refuse;--form such a medley of sights and sounds as I have
+never seen equalled in any other industry.
+
+The planter has to be here, there, and everywhere. He sends carts to
+this village or to that, according as the crop ripens. Coolies must be
+counted and paid daily. The stubble must be ploughed to give the plant
+a start for the second growth whenever the weather will admit of it.
+Reports have to be sent to the agents and owners. The boiling must be
+narrowly watched, as also the beating and the straining. He has a large
+staff of native assistants, but if his _mahye_ is to be successful, his
+eye must be over all. It is an anxious time, but the constant work is
+grateful, and when the produce is good, and everything working
+smoothly, it is perhaps the most enjoyable time of the whole year. Is
+it nothing to see the crop, on which so much care has been expended,
+which you have watched day by day through all the vicissitudes of the
+season, through drought, and flood, and blight; is it nothing to see it
+safely harvested, and your shelves filling day by day with fine sound
+cakes, the representatives of wealth, that will fill your pockets with
+commission, and build up your name as a careful and painstaking
+planter?
+
+'What's your produce?' is now the first query at this season, when
+planters meet. Calculations are made daily, nay hourly, to see how much
+is being got per beegah, or how much per vat. The presses are calculated
+to weigh so much. Some days you will get a press a vat, some days it
+will mount up to two presses a vat, and at other times it will recede
+to half a press a vat, or even less. Cold wet weather reduces the
+produce. Warm sunny weather will send it up again. Short stunted plant
+from poor lands will often reduce your average per acre, to be again
+sent up as fresh, hardy, leafy plant comes in from some favourite
+village, where you have new and fertile lands, or where the plant from
+the rich zeraats laden with broad strong leaf is tumbled into the
+loading vat.
+
+So far as I know, there seems to be no law of produce. It is the most
+erratic and incomprehensible thing about planting. One day your presses
+are full to straining, next day half of them lie empty. No doubt the
+state of the weather, the quality of your plant, the temperature of the
+water, the length of time steeping, and other things have an influence;
+but I know of no planter who can entirely and satisfactorily account
+for the sudden and incomprehensible fluctuations and variations which
+undoubtedly take place in the produce or yield of the plant. It is a
+matter of more interest to the planter than to the general public, but
+all I can say is, that if the circumstances attendant on any sudden
+change in the yielding powers of the plant were more accurately noted;
+if the chemical conditions of the water, the air, and the raw material
+itself, more especially in reference to the soil on which it grows, the
+time it takes in transit from the field to the vat, and other points,
+which will at once suggest themselves to a practical planter, were more
+carefully, methodically, and scientifically observed, some coherent
+theory resulting in plain practical results might be evolved.
+
+Planters should attend more to this. I believe the chemical history of
+indigo has yet to be written. The whole manufacture, so far as
+chemistry is concerned, is yet crude and ill-digested. I know that by
+careful experiment, and close scientific investigation and observation,
+the preparation of indigo could be much improved. So far as the
+mechanical appliances for the manufacture go, the last ten years have
+witnessed amazing and rapid improvements. What is now wanted, is, that
+what has been done for the mere mechanical appliances, should be done
+for the proper understanding of the chemical changes and conditions in
+the constitution of the plant, and in the various processes of its
+manufacture[1].
+
+[1] Since the above chapter was written Mons. P.I. Michea, a French
+    chemist of some experience in Indigo matters, has patented
+    an invention (the result of much study, experiment, and
+    investigation), by the application of which an immense increase in
+    the produce of the plant has been obtained during the last season,
+    in several factories where it has been worked in Jessore, Purneah,
+    Kishnaghur, and other places. This increase, varying according to
+    circumstances, has in some instances reached the amazing extent
+    of 30 to 47 per cent., and so far from being attended with a
+    deterioration of quality the dye produced is said to be finer than
+    that obtained under the old crude process described in the above
+    chapter. This shows what a waste must have been going on, and what
+    may yet be done, by properly organised scientific investigation.
+    I firmly believe that with an intelligent application of the
+    principles of chemistry and agricultural science, not only to the
+    manufacture but to growth, cultivation, nature of the soil,
+    application of manures, and other such departments of the
+    business, quite a revolution will set in, and a new era in the
+    history of this great industry will be inaugurated. Less area for
+    crop will be required, working expenses will be reduced, a greater
+    out-turn, and a more certain crop secured, and all classes,
+    planter and ryot alike, will be benefited.
+
+[Illustration: INDIAN FACTORY PEON.]
+
+[Illustration: INDIGO PLANTER'S HOUSE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Parewah factory.--A 'Bobbery Pack.'--Hunt through a village after a
+cat.--The pariah dog of India.--Fate of 'Pincher.'--Rampore hound.
+--Persian greyhound.--Caboolee dogs.--A jackal hunt.--Incidents of
+the chase.
+
+After living at Puttihee for two years, I was transferred to another
+out-factory in the same concern, called Parewah. There was here a very
+nice little three-roomed bungalow, with airy verandahs all round. It
+was a pleasant change from Puttihee, and the situation was very pretty.
+A small stream, almost dry in the hot weather, but a swollen, deep,
+rapid torrent in the rains, meandered past the factory. Nearing the
+bullock-house it suddenly took a sweep to the left in the form of a
+wide horseshoe, and in this bend or pocket was situated the bungalow,
+with a pretty terraced garden sloping gently to the stream. Thus the
+river was in full view from both the front and the back verandahs.
+In front, and close on the bank of the river, stood the kitchen,
+fowl-house, and offices. To the right of the compound were the stables,
+while behind the bungalow, and some distance down the stream, the
+wheel-house, vats, press-house, boiling-house, cake-house, and
+workshops were grouped together. I was but nine miles from the
+bead-factory, and the same distance from the station of Mooteeharree,
+while over the river, and but three miles off, I had the factory of
+Meerpore, with its hospitable manager as my nearest neighbour. His
+lands and mine lay contiguous. In fact some of his villages lay beyond
+some of mine, and he had to ride through part of my cultivation to
+reach them.
+
+Not unfrequently we would meet in the zillah of a morning, when we
+would invariably make for the nearest patch of grass or jungle, and
+enjoy a hunt together. In the cool early mornings, when the heavy night
+dews still lie glittering on the grass, when the cobwebs seem strung
+with pearls, and faint lines of soft fleecy mist lie in the hollows by
+the watercourses; long ere the hot, fiery sun has left his crimson bed
+behind the cold grey horizon, we are out on our favourite horse, the
+wiry, long-limbed _syce_ or groom trotting along behind us. The
+_mehter_ or dog-keeper is also in attendance with a couple of
+greyhounds in leash, and a motley pack of wicked little terriers
+frisking and frolicking behind him. This mongrel collection is known as
+'the Bobbery Pack,' and forms a certain adjunct to every assistant's
+bungalow in the district. I had one very noble-looking kangaroo hound
+that I had brought from Australia with me, and my 'bobbery pack' of
+terriers contained canine specimens of all sorts, sizes, and colours.
+
+On nearing a village, you would see one black fellow, 'Pincher,' set
+off at a round trot ahead, with seemingly the most innocent air in the
+world. 'Tilly,' 'Tiny,' and 'Nipper' follow.
+
+Then 'Dandy,' 'Curly,' 'Brandy,' and 'Nettle,' till spying a cat in the
+distance, the whole pack with a whimper of excitement dash off at a mad
+scramble, the hound straining meanwhile at the slip, till he almost
+pulls the _mehter_ off his legs. Off goes the cat, round the corner of
+a hut with her tail puffed up to fully three times its normal size.
+Round in mad, eager pursuit rattle the terriers, thirsting for her
+blood. The _syce_ dashes forward, vainly hoping to turn them from their
+quest. Now a village dog, roused from his morning nap, bounds out with
+a demoniac howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the curs in the
+village.
+
+Meanwhile the row inside the hut is fiendish. The sleeping family
+rudely roused by the yelping pack, utter the most discordant screams.
+The women with garments fluttering behind them, rush out beating their
+breasts, thinking the very devil is loose. The wails of the unfortunate
+cat mingle with the short snapping barks of the pack, or a howl of
+anguish as puss inflicts a caress on the face of some too careless or
+reckless dog. A howling village cur has rashly ventured too near.
+'Pincher' has him by the hind leg before you could say 'Jack Robinson.'
+Leaving the dead cat for 'Toby' and 'Nettle' to worry, the whole pack
+now fiercely attack the luckless _Pariah_ dog. A dozen of his village
+mates dance madly outside the ring, but are too wise or too cowardly to
+come to closer quarters. The kangaroo hound has now fairly torn the
+rope from the keeper's hand, and with one mighty bound is in the middle
+of the fight, scattering the village dogs right and left. The whole
+village is now in commotion, the _syce_ and keeper shout the names of
+the terriers in vain. Oaths, cries, shouts, and screams mingle with the
+yelping and growling of the combatants, till riding up, I disperse the
+worrying pack with a few cracks of my hunting whip, and so on again
+over the zillah, leaving the women and children to recover their
+scattered senses, the old men to grumble over their broken slumbers,
+and the boys and young men to wonder at the pluck and dash of the
+_Belaitee Kookoor_, or English dog.
+
+The common Pariah dog, or village dog of India, is a perfect cur; a
+mangy, carrion-loving, yellow-fanged, howling brute. A most unlovely
+and unloving beast. As you pass his village he will bounce out on you
+with the fiercest bark and the most menacing snarl; but lo! if a
+terrier the size of a teacup but boldly go at him, down goes his tail
+like a pump-handle, he turns white with fear, and like the arrant
+coward that he is, tumbles on his back and fairly screams for mercy. I
+have often been amused to see a great hulking cowardly brute come out
+like an avalanche at 'Pincher,' expecting to make one mouthful of him.
+What a look of bewilderment he would put on, as my gallant little
+'Pincher,' with a short, sharp, defiant bark would go boldly at him.
+The huge yellow brute would stop dead short on all four legs, and as
+the rest of my pack would come scampering round the corner, he would
+find himself the centre of a ring of indomitable assailants.
+
+How he curses his short-sighted temerity. With one long howl of utter
+dismay and deadly fear, he manages to get away from the pack, leaving
+my little doggies to come proudly round my horse with their mouths full
+of fur, and each of their little tails as stiff as an iron ramrod.
+
+That 'Pincher,' in some respects, was a very fiend incarnate. There was
+no keeping him in. He was constantly getting into hot water himself,
+and leading the pack into all sorts of mischief. He was as bold as
+brass and as courageous as a lion. He stole food, worried sheep and
+goats, and was never out of a scrape. I tried thrashing him, tying him
+up, half starving him, but all to no purpose. He would be into every
+hut in a village whenever he had the chance, overturning brass pots,
+eating up rice and curries, and throwing the poor villager's household
+into dismay and confusion. He would never leave a cat if he once saw
+it. I've seen him scramble through the roofs of more than one hut, and
+oust the cat from its fancied stronghold.
+
+I put him into an indigo vat with a big dog jackal once, and he whipped
+the jackal single-handed. He did not kill it, but he worried it till
+the jackal shammed dead and would not 'come to the scratch.' 'Pincher's'
+ears were perfect shreds, and his scars were as numerous almost as his
+hairs. My gallant 'Pincher!' His was a sad end. He got eaten up by an
+alligator in the 'Dhans,' a sluggish stream in Bhaugulpore. I had all
+my pack in the boat with me, the stream was swollen and full of weeds.
+A jackal gave tongue on the bank, and 'Pincher' bounded over the side
+of the boat at once. I tried to 'grab' him, and nearly upset the boat
+in doing so. Our boat was going rapidly down stream, and 'Pincher'
+tried to get ashore but got among the weeds. He gave a bark, poor
+gallant little dog, for help, but just then we saw a dark square snout
+shoot athwart the stream. A half-smothered sobbing cry from 'Pincher,'
+and the bravest little dog I ever possessed was gone for ever.
+
+There is another breed of large, strong-limbed, big-boned dogs, called
+Rampore hounds. They are a cross breed from the original upcountry dog
+and the Persian greyhound. Some call them the Indian greyhound. They
+seem to be bred principally in the Rampore-Bareilly district, but one
+or more are generally to be found in every planter's pack. They are
+fast and strong enough, but I have often found them bad at tackling,
+and they are too fond of their keeper ever to make an affectionate
+faithful dog to the European.
+
+Another somewhat similar breed is the _Tazi_. This, although not so
+large a dog as the Rhamporee, is a much pluckier animal, and when well
+trained will tackle a jackal with the utmost determination. He has a
+wrinkled almost hairless skin, but a very uncertain temper, and he is
+not very amenable to discipline. _Tazi_ is simply the Persian word for
+a greyhound, and refers to no particular breed. The common name for a
+dog is _Kutta_, pronounced _Cootta_, but the Tazi has certainly been an
+importation from the North-west, hence the Persian name. The wandering
+Caboolees, who come down to the plains once a year with dried fruits,
+spices, and other products of field or garden, also bring with them the
+dogs of their native country for sale, and on occasion they bring
+lovely long-haired white Persian cats, very beautiful animals. These
+Caboolee dogs are tall, long-limbed brutes, generally white, with a
+long thin snout, very long silky-haired drooping ears, and generally
+wearing tufts of hair on their legs and tail, somewhat like the
+feathering of a spaniel, which makes them look rather clumsy. They
+cannot stand the heat of the plains at all well, and are difficult to
+tame, but fleet and plucky, hunting well with an English pack.
+
+My neighbour Anthony at Meerpore had some very fine English greyhounds
+and bulldogs, and many a rattling burst have we had together after the
+fox or the jackal. Imagine a wide level plain, with one uniform dull
+covering of rice stubble, save where in the centre a mound rises some
+two acres in extent, covered with long thatching grass, a few scrubby
+acacia bushes, and other jungly brushwood. All round the circular
+horizon are dense forest masses of sombre looking foliage, save where
+some clump of palms uprear their stately heads, or the white shining
+walls of some temple, sacred to Shiva or Khristna glitter in the
+sunshine. Far to the left a sluggish creek winds slowly along through
+the plain, its banks fringed with acacias and wild rose jungle. On the
+far bank is a small patch of _Sal_ forest jungle, with a thick rank
+undergrowth of ferns, thistles, and rank grass. As I am slowly riding
+along I hear a shout in the distance, and looking round behold Anthony
+advancing at a rapid hand gallop. His dogs and mine, being old friends,
+rapidly fraternise, and we determine on a hunt.
+
+'Let's try the old patch, Anthony!'
+
+'All right,' and away we go making straight for the mound. When we
+reach the grass the syces and keepers hold the hounds at the corners
+outside, while we ride through the grass urging on the terriers, who,
+quivering with excitement, utter short barks, and dash here and there
+among the thick grass, all eager for a find.
+
+'Gone away, gone away!' shouts Anthony, as a fleet fox dashes out,
+closely followed by 'Pincher' and half a dozen others. The hounds are
+slipped, and away go the pack in full pursuit, we on our horses riding
+along, one on each side of the chase. The fox has a good start, but now
+the hounds are nearing him, when with a sudden whisk he doubles round
+the ridge encircling a rice field, the hounds overshoot him, and ere
+they turn the fox has put the breadth of a good field between himself
+and his pursuers. He is now making back again for the grass, but
+encounters some of the terriers who have tailed off behind. With
+panting chests and lolling tongues, they are pegging stolidly along,
+when fortune gives them this welcome chance. Redoubling their efforts,
+they dash at the fox. 'Bravo, Tilly! you tumbled him over that time;'
+but he is up and away again. Dodging, double-turning, and twisting, he
+has nearly run the gauntlet, and the friendly covert is close at hand,
+but the hounds are now up again and thirsting for his blood. 'Hurrah!
+Minnie has him!' cries Anthony, and riding up we divest poor Reynard of
+his brush, pat the dogs, ease the girths for a minute, and then again
+into the jungle for another beat.
+
+This time a fat old jackal breaks to the left, long before the dogs are
+up. Yelling to the _mehters_ not to slip the hounds, we gather the
+terriers together, and pound over the stubble and ridges. He is going
+very leisurely, casting an occasional scared look over his shoulder.
+'Curly' and 'Legs,' two of my fastest terriers, are now in full view,
+they are laying themselves well to the ground, and Master Jackal thinks
+it's high time to increase his pace. He puts on a spurt, but condition
+tells. He is fat and pursy, and must have had a good feed last night on
+some poor dead bullock. He is shewing his teeth now. Curly makes his
+rush, and they both roll over together. Up hurries Legs, and the jackal
+gets a grip, gives him a shake, and then hobbles slowly on. The two
+terriers now hamper him terribly. One minute they are at his heels, and
+as soon as he turns, they are at his ear or shoulder. The rest of the
+pack are fast coming up.
+
+Anthony has a magnificent bulldog, broad-chested, and a very Goliath
+among dogs. He is called 'Sailor.' Sailor always pounds along at the
+same steady pace; he never seems to get flurried. Sitting lazily at the
+door, he seems too indolent even to snap at a fly. He is a true
+philosopher, and nought seems to disturb his serenity. But see him
+after a jackal, his big red tongue hanging out, his eyes flashing fire,
+and his hair erected on his back like the bristles of a wild boar. He
+looks fiendish then, and he is a true bulldog. There is no flinching
+with Sailor. Once he gets his grip it's no use trying to make him let
+go.
+
+Up comes Sailor now.
+
+He has the jackal by the throat.
+
+A hoarse, rattling, gasping yell, and the jackal has gone to the happy
+hunting grounds.
+
+The sun is now mounting in the sky. The hounds and terriers feel the
+heat, so sending them home by the keeper, we diverge on our respective
+roads, ride over our cultivation, seeing the ploughing and preparations
+generally, till hot, tired, and dusty, we reach home about 11.30,
+tumble into our bath, and feeling refreshed, sit down contentedly to
+breakfast. If the _dak_ or postman has come in we get our letters and
+papers, and the afternoon is devoted to office work and accounts,
+hearing complaints and reports from the villages, or looking over any
+labour that may be going on in the zeraats or at the workshops. In the
+evening we ride over the zeraats again, give orders for the morrow's
+work, consume a little tobacco, have an early dinner, and after a
+little reading, retire soon to bed to dream of far away friends and the
+happy memories of home. Many an evening it is very lonely work. No
+friendly face, and no congenial society within miles of your factory.
+Little wonder that the arrival of a brother planter sends a thrill
+through the frame, and that his advent is welcomed as the most
+agreeable break to the irksome monotony of our lonely life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Fishing in India.--Hereditary trades.--The boatmen and fishermen of
+India.--Their villages.--Nets.--Modes of fishing.--Curiosities
+relating thereto.--Catching an alligator with a hook.--Exciting
+capture.-Crocodiles.--Shooting an alligator.--Death of the man-eater.
+
+Not only in the wild jungles, on the undulating plains, and among the
+withered brown stubbles, does animal life abound in India; but the
+rivers, lakes, and creeks teem with fish of every conceivable size,
+shape, and colour. The varieties are legion. From the huge black
+porpoise, tumbling through the turgid stream of the Ganges, to the
+bright, sparkling, silvery shoals of delicate _chillooahs_ or
+_poteeahs_, which one sees darting in and out among the rice stubbles
+in every paddy field during the rains. Here a huge _bhowarree_ (pike),
+or ravenous _coira_, comes to the surface with a splash; there a
+_raho_, the Indian salmon, with its round sucker-like mouth, rises
+slowly to the surface, sucks in a fly and disappears as slowly as it
+rose; or a _pachgutchea_, a long sharp-nosed fish, darts rapidly by; a
+shoal of mullet with their heads out of the water swim athwart the
+stream, and far down in the cool depths of the tank or lake, a thousand
+different varieties disport themselves among the mazy labyrinths of the
+broad-leaved weeds.
+
+During the middle, and about the end of the rains, is the best time for
+fishing; the whole country is then a perfect network of streams. Every
+rice field is a shallow lake, with countless thousands of tiny fish
+darting here and there among the rice stalks. Every ditch teems with
+fish, and every hollow in every field is a well stocked aquarium.
+
+Round the edge of every lake or tank in the early morning, or when the
+fierce heat of the day begins to get tempered by the approaching shades
+of evening, one sees numbers of boys and men of the poorer classes,
+each with a couple of rough bamboo rods stuck in the ground in front of
+him, watching his primitive float with the greatest eagerness, and
+whipping out at intervals some luckless fish of about three or four
+ounces in weight with a tremendous haul, fit for the capture of a
+forty-pounder. They get a coarse sort of hook in the bazaar, rig up a
+roughly-twisted line, tie on a small piece of hollow reed for a float,
+and with a lively earth-worm for a bait, they can generally manage in a
+very short time to secure enough fish for a meal.
+
+With a short light rod, a good silk line, and an English hook attached
+to fine gut, I have enjoyed many a good hour's sport at Parewah. I used
+to have a cane chair sent down to the bank of the stream, a _punkah_,
+or hand fan, plenty of cooling drinks, and two coolie boys in
+attendance to remove the fish, renew baits, and keep the punkah in
+constant swing. There I used to sit enjoying my cigar, and pulling in
+little fish at the rate sometimes of a couple a minute.
+
+I remember hooking a turtle once, and a terrible job it was to land
+him. My light rod bent like a willow, but the tackle was good, and
+after ten minutes' hard work I got the turtle to the side, where my
+boys soon secured him. He weighed thirteen pounds. Sometimes you get
+among a colony of freshwater crabs.
+
+They are little brown brutes, and strip your hooks of the bait as fast
+as you fling them in. There is nothing for it in such a case but to
+shift your station. Many of the bottom fish--the _ghurai_, the
+_saourie_, the _barnee_ (eel), and others, make no effort to escape the
+hook. You see them resting at the bottom, and drop the bait at their
+very nose. On the whole, the hand fishing is uninteresting, but it
+serves to wile away an odd hour when hunting and shooting are hardly
+practicable.
+
+Particular occupations in India are restricted to particular castes.
+All trades are hereditary. For example, a _tatmah_, or weaver, is
+always a weaver. He cannot become a blacksmith or carpenter. He has no
+choice. He must follow the hereditary trade. The peculiar system of
+land-tenure in India, which secures as far as possible a bit of land
+for every one, tends to perpetuate this hereditary selection of trades,
+by enabling every cultivator to be so far independent of his
+handicraft, thus restricting competition. There may be twenty _lohars_,
+or blacksmiths, in a village, but they do not all follow their calling.
+They till their lands, and are _de facto_ petty farmers. They know the
+rudiments of their handicraft, but the actual blacksmith's work is done
+by the hereditary smith of the village, whose son in turn will succeed
+him when he dies, or if he leave no son, his fellow caste men will put
+in a successor.
+
+Nearly every villager during the rains may be found on the banks of the
+stream or lake, angling in an amateur sort of way, but the fishermen
+of Behar _par excellence_ are the _mull[=a]hs_; they are also called
+_Gouhree, Beeu_, or _Muchooah_. In Bengal they are called _Nikaree_,
+and in some parts _Baeharee_, from the Persian word for a boat. In the
+same way _muchooah_ is derived from _much_, a fish, and _mullah_ means
+boatman, strictly speaking, rather than fisherman. All boatmen and
+fishermen belong to this caste, and their villages can be recognised at
+once by the instruments of their calling lying all around.
+
+Perched high on some bank overlooking the stream or lake, you see
+innumerable festoons of nets hanging out to dry on tall bamboo poles,
+or hanging like lace curtains of very coarse texture from the roofs and
+eaves of the huts. Hauled up on the beach are a whole fleet of boats of
+different sizes, from the small _dugout_, which will hold only one man,
+to the huge _dinghy_, in which the big nets and a dozen men can be
+stowed with ease. Great heaps of shells of the freshwater mussel show
+the source of great supplies of bait; while overhead a great hovering
+army of kites and vultures are constantly circling round, eagerly
+watching for the slightest scrap of offal from the nets. When the rains
+have fairly set in, and the fishermen have got their rice fields all
+planted out, they are at liberty to follow their hereditary avocation.
+A day is fixed for a drag, and the big nets are overhauled and got in
+readiness. The head _mullah_, a wary grizzled old veteran, gives the
+orders. The big drag-net is bundled into the boat, which is quickly
+pushed off into the stream, and at a certain distance from shore the
+net is cast from the boat. Being weighted at the lower end it rapidly
+sinks, and, buoyed on the upper side with pieces of cork, it makes a
+perpendicular wall in the water. Several long bamboo poles are now run
+through the ropes along the upper side of the net, to prevent the net
+being dragged under water altogether by the weight of the fish in a
+great haul. The little boats, a crowd of which are in attendance, now
+dart out, surrounding the net on all sides, and the boatmen beating
+their oars on the sides of the boats, create such a clatter as to
+frighten, the fish into the circumference of the big net. This is now
+being dragged slowly to shore by strong and willing arms. The women and
+children watch eagerly on the bank. At length the glittering haul is
+pulled up high and dry on the beach, the fish are divided among the
+men, the women fill their baskets, and away they hie to the nearest
+_bazaar_, or if it be not _bazaar_ or market day, they hawk the fish
+through the nearest villages, like our fish-wives at home.
+
+There is another common mode of fishing adopted in narrow lakes and
+small streams, which are let out to the fishermen by the Zemindars or
+landholders. A barricade made of light reeds, all matted together by
+string, is stuck into the stream, and a portion of the water is fenced
+in, generally in a circular form. The reed fence being quite flexible
+is gradually moved in, narrowing the circle. As the circle narrows, the
+agitation inside is indescribable; fish jumping in all directions--a
+moving mass of glittering scales and fins. The larger ones try to leap
+the barrier, and are caught by the attendant _mullahs_, who pounce on
+them with swift dexterity. Eagles and kites dart and swoop down,
+bearing off a captive fish in their talons. The reed fence is doubled
+back on itself, and gradually pushed on till the whole of the fish
+inside are jammed together in a moving mass. The weeds and dirt are
+then removed, and the fish put into baskets and carried off to market.
+
+Others, again, use circular casting nets, which they throw with very
+great dexterity. Gathering the net into a bunch they rest it on the
+shoulder, then with a circular sweep round the head, they fling it far
+out. Being loaded, it sinks down rapidly in the water. A string is
+attached to the centre of the net, and the fisherman hauls it in with
+whatever prey he may be lucky enough to secure.
+
+As the waters recede during October, after the rains have ended, each
+runlet and purling stream becomes a scene of slaughter on a most
+reckless and improvident scale. The innumerable shoals of spawn and
+small fish that have been feeding in the rice fields, warned by some
+instinct seek the lakes and main streams. As they try to get their way
+back, however, they find at each outlet in each ditch and field a
+deadly wicker trap, in the shape of a square basket with a V-shaped
+opening leading into it, through which the stream makes its way. After
+entering this basket there is no egress except through the narrow
+opening, and they are trapped thus in countless thousands. Others of
+the natives in mere wantonness put a shelf of reeds or rushes in the
+bed of the stream, with an upward slope. As the water rushes along, the
+little fish are left high and dry on this shelf or screen, and the
+water runs off below. In this way scarcely a fish escapes, and as
+millions are too small to be eaten, it is a most serious waste. The
+attention of Government has been directed to the subject, and steps may
+be taken to stop such a reckless and wholesale destruction of a
+valuable food supply.
+
+In some parts of Purneah and Bhaugulpore I have seen a most ingenious
+method adopted by the _mullahs_. A gang of four or five enter the
+stream and travel slowly downwards, stirring up the mud at the bottom
+with their feet. The fish, ascending the stream to escape the mud, get
+entangled in the weeds. The fishermen feel them with their feet amongst
+the weeds, and immediately pounce on them with their hands. Each man
+has a _gila_ or earthen pot attached by a string to his waist and
+floating behind him in the water. I have seen four men fill their
+earthen pots in less than an hour by this ingenious but primitive mode
+of fishing. Some of them can use their feet almost as well for grasping
+purposes as their hands.
+
+Another mode of capture is by a small net. A flat piece of netting is
+spread over a hoop, to which four or five pieces of bamboo are
+attached, rising up and meeting in the centre, so as to form a sort of
+miniature skeleton tent-like frame over the net. The hoop with the net
+stretched tight across is then pressed down flat on the bottom of the
+tank or stream. If any fish are beneath, their efforts to escape
+agitate the net. The motion is communicated to the fisherman by a
+string from the centre of the net which is rolled round the fisherman's
+thumb. When the jerking of his thumb announces a captive fish, he puts
+down his left hand and secures his victim. The _Banturs_, _Nepaulees_,
+and other jungle tribes, also often use the bow and arrow as a means of
+securing fish.
+
+Seated on the branch of some overhanging tree, while his keen eye scans
+the depths below, he watches for a large fish, and as it passes, he
+lets fly his arrow with unerring aim, and impales the luckless victim.
+Some tribes fish at night, by torchlight, spearing the fish who are
+attracted by the light. In Nepaul the bark of the _Hill Sirres_ is
+often used to poison a stream or piece of water. Pounded up and thrown
+in, it seems to have some uncommon effect on the fish. After water has
+been treated in this way, the fish, seemingly quite stupefied, rise to
+the surface, on which they float in great numbers, and allow themselves
+to be caught. The strangest part of it is that they are perfectly
+innocuous as food, notwithstanding this treatment.
+
+Fish forms a very favourite article of diet with both Mussulmans and
+Hindoos. Many of the latter take a vow to touch no flesh of any kind.
+They are called _Kunthees_ or _Boghuts_, but a _Boghut_ is more of an
+ascetic than a _Kunthee_. However, the _Kunthee_ is glad of a fish
+dinner when he can get it. They are restricted to no particular sect or
+caste, but all who have taken the vow wear a peculiar necklace, made
+generally of sandal-wood beads or _neem_ beads round their throats.
+Hence the name, from _kunth_ meaning the throat.
+
+The right to fish in any particular piece of water, is let out by the
+proprietor on whose land the water lies, or through which it flows. The
+letting is generally done by auction yearly. The fishing is called a
+_shilkur_; from _shal_, a net. It is generally taken by some rich
+_Bunneah_ (grain seller) or village banker, who sub-lets it in turn to
+the fishermen.
+
+In some of the tanks which are not so let, and where the native
+proprietor preserves the fish, first-class sport can be had. A common
+native poaching dodge is this: if some oil cake be thrown into the
+water a few hours previous to your fishing, or better still, balls made
+of roasted linseed meal, mixed with bruised leaves of the 'sweet
+basil,' or _toolsee_ plant, the fish assemble in hundreds round the
+spot, and devour the bait greedily. With a good eighteen-foot rod, fish
+of from twelve to twenty pounds are not uncommonly caught, and will
+give good play too. Fishing in the plains of India is, however, rather
+tame sport at the best of times.
+
+You have heard of the famous _mahseer_--some of them over eighty or a
+hundred pounds weight? We have none of these in Behar, but the huge
+porpoise gives splendid rifle or carbine practice as he rolls through
+the turgid streams. They are difficult to hit, but I have seen several
+killed with ball; and the oil extracted from their bodies is a splendid
+dressing for harness. But the most exciting fishing I have ever seen
+was--What do you think?--Alligator fishing! Yes, the formidable scaly
+monster, with his square snout and terrible jaws, his ponderous body
+covered with armour, and his serrated tail, with which he could break
+the leg of a bullock, or smash an outrigger as easily as a whale could
+smash a jolly-boat.
+
+I must try to describe one day's alligator fishing.
+
+When I was down in Bhaugulpore, I went out frequently fishing in the
+various tanks and streams near my factory. My friend Pat, who is a keen
+sportsman and very fond of angling, wrote to me one day when he and his
+brother Willie were going out to the Teljuga, asking me to join their
+party. The Teljuga is the boundary stream between Tirhoot and
+Bhaugulpore, and its sluggish muddy waters teem with alligators--the
+regular square-nosed _mugger_, the terrible man-eater. The _nakar_ or
+long-nosed species may be seen in countless numbers in any of the large
+streams, stretched out on the banks basking in the noonday sun. Going
+down the Koosee particularly, you come across hundreds sometimes lying
+on one bank. As the boat nears them, they slide noiselessly and slowly
+into the stream. A large excrescence forms on the tip of the long
+snout, like a huge sponge; and this is often all that is seen on the
+surface of the water as the huge brute swims about waiting for his
+prey. These _nakars_, or long-nosed specimens, never attack human
+beings--at least such cases are very very rare--but live almost
+entirely on fish. I remember seeing one catch a paddy-bird on one
+occasion near the junction of the Koosee with the Ganges. My boat was
+fastened to the shore near a slimy creek, that came oozing into the
+river from some dense jungle near. I was washing my hands and face on
+the bank, and the boatmen were fishing with a small hand-net, for our
+breakfast. Numbers of attenuated melancholy-looking paddy-birds were
+stalking solemnly and stiltedly along the bank, also fishing for
+_theirs_. I noticed one who was particularly greedy, with his long legs
+half immersed in the water, constantly darting out his long bill and
+bringing up a hapless struggling fish. All of a sudden a long snout and
+the ugly serrated ridgy back of a _nakar_ was shot like lightning at
+the hapless bird, and right before our eyes the poor paddy was crunched
+up. As a rule, however, alligators confine themselves to a fish diet,
+and are glad of any refuse or dead animal that may float their way. But
+with the _mugger_, the _boach_, or square-nosed variety, 'all is fish
+that comes to his net.' His soul delights in young dog or live pork. A
+fat duck comes not amiss; and impelled by hunger he hesitates not to
+attack man. Once regaled with the flavour of human flesh, he takes up
+his stand near some ferry, or bathing ghaut, where many hapless women
+and children often fall victims to his unholy appetite, before his
+career is cut short.
+
+I remember shooting one ghastly old scaly villain in a tank near
+Ryseree. He had made this tank his home, and with that fatalism which
+is so characteristic of the Hindoo, the usual ablutions and bathings
+went on as if no such monster existed. Several woman having been
+carried off, however, at short intervals, the villagers asked me to try
+and rid them of their foe. I took a ride down to the tank one Friday
+morning, and found the banks a scene of great excitement. A woman had
+been carried off some hours before as she was filling her water jar,
+and the monster was now reposing at the bottom of the tank digesting
+his horrible meal. The tank was covered with crimson water-lilies in
+full bloom, their broad brown and green leaves showing off the crimson
+beauty of the open flower. At the north corner some wild rose bushes
+dropped over the water, casting a dense matted shade. Here was the
+haunt of the _mugger_. He had excavated a huge gloomy-looking hole,
+into which he retired when gorged with prey. My first care was to cut
+away some of these bushes, and then, finding he was not at home, we
+drove some bamboo stakes through the bank to prevent him getting into
+his _manu_, which is what the natives term the den or hole. I then sat
+down under a _goolar_ tree, to wait for his appearance. The _goolar_ is
+a species of fig, and the leaves are much relished by cattle and goats.
+Gradually the village boys and young men went off to their ploughing,
+or grass cutting for the cows' evening meal. A woman came down
+occasionally to fill her waterpot in evident fear and trembling. A
+swarm of _minas_ (the Indian starling) hopped and twittered round my
+feet. The cooing of a pair of amatory pigeons overhead nearly lulled me
+to slumber. A flock of green parrots came swiftly circling overhead,
+making for the fig-tree at the south end of the tank. An occasional
+_raho_ lazily rose among the water-lilies, and disappeared with an
+indolent flap of his tail. The brilliant kingfisher, resplendent in
+crimson and emerald, sat on the withered branch of a prostrate
+mango-tree close by, pluming his feathers and doubtless meditating on
+the vanity of life. Suddenly, close by the massive post which marks the
+centre of every Hindoo tank, a huge scaly snout slowly and almost
+imperceptibly rose to the surface, then a broad, flat, forbidding
+forehead, topped by two grey fishy eyes with warty-looking callosities
+for eyebrows. Just then an eager urchin who had been squatted by me for
+hours, pointed to the brute. It was enough. Down sank the loathsome
+creature, and we had to resume our attitude of expectation and patient
+waiting. Another hour passed slowly. It was the middle of the
+afternoon, and very hot. I had sent my _tokedar_ off for a 'peg' to the
+factory, and was beginning to get very drowsy, when, right in the same
+spot, the repulsive head again rose slowly to the surface. I had my
+trusty No. 12 to my shoulder on the instant, glanced carefully along
+the barrels, but just then only the eyes of the brute were invisible. A
+moment of intense excitement followed, and then, emboldened by the
+extreme stillness, he showed his whole head above the surface. I pulled
+the trigger, and a Meade shell crashed through the monster's skull,
+scattering his brains in the water and actually sending one splinter of
+the skull to the opposite edge of the tank, where my little Hindoo boy
+picked it up and brought it to me.
+
+There was a mighty agitation in the water; the water-lilies rocked to
+and fro, and the broad leaves glittered with the water drops thrown on
+them; then all was still. Hearing the report of my gun, the natives
+came flocking to the spot, and, telling them their enemy was slain, I
+departed, leaving instructions to let me know when the body came to the
+surface. It did so three days later. Getting some _chumars_ and _domes_
+(two of the lowest castes, as none of the higher castes will touch a
+dead body under pain of losing caste), we hauled the putrid carcase to
+shore, and on cutting it open, found the glass armlets and brass
+ornaments of no less than five women and the silver ornaments of three
+children, all in a lump in the brute's stomach. Its skull was
+completely smashed and shattered to pieces by my shot. Its teeth were
+crusted with tartar, and worn almost to the very stumps. It measured
+nineteen feet.
+
+But during this digression my friends Pat and Willie have been waiting
+on the banks of the 'Teljuga.' I reached their tents late at night,
+found them both in high spirits after a good day's execution among the
+ducks and teal, and preparations being made for catching an alligator
+next day. Up early in the morning, we beat some grass close by the
+stream, and roused out an enormous boar that gave us a three mile spin
+and a good fight, after Pat had given him first spear. After breakfast
+we got our tackle ready.
+
+This was a large iron hook with a strong shank, to which was attached a
+stout iron ring. To this ring a long thick rope was fastened, and I
+noticed for several yards the strands were all loose and detached, and
+only knotted at intervals. I asked Pat the reason of this curious
+arrangement, and was told that if we were lucky enough to secure a
+_mugger_, the loose strands would entangle themselves amongst his
+formidable teeth, whereas were the rope in one strand only he might
+bite it through; the knottings at intervals were to give greater
+strength to the line. We now got our bait ready. On this occasion it
+was a live tame duck. Passing the bend of the hook round its neck, and
+the shank under its right wing, we tied the hook in this position with
+thread. We then made a small raft of the soft pith of the
+plantain-tree, tied the duck to the raft and committed it to the
+stream. Holding the rope as clear of the water as we could, the poor
+quacking duck floated slowly down the muddy current, making an
+occasional vain effort to get free. We saw at a distance an ugly snout
+rise to the surface for an instant and then noiselessly disappear.
+
+'There's one!' says Pat in a whisper.
+
+'Be sure and not strike too soon,' says Willie.
+
+'Look out there, you lazy rascals!' This in Hindostanee to the grooms
+and servants who were with us.
+
+Again the black mass rises to the surface, but this time nearer to the
+fated duck. As if aware of its peril it now struggles and quacks most
+vociferously. Nearer and nearer each time the black snout rises, and
+then each time silently disappears beneath the turgid muddy stream. Now
+it appears again; this time there are two, and there is another at a
+distance attracted by the quacking of the duck. We on the bank cower
+down and go as noiselessly as we can. Sometimes the rope dips on the
+water, and the huge snout and staring eyes immediately disappear. At
+length it rises within a few yards of the duck; then there is a mighty
+rush, two huge jaws open and shut with a snap like factory shears, and
+amid a whirl of foam and water and surging mud the poor duck and the
+hideous reptile disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense
+volumes of mud that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the
+tragedy that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim
+to and fro still further disturbing the muddy current.
+
+'Give him lots of time to swallow,' yells Pat, now fairly mad with
+excitement.
+
+The grooms and grass-cutters howl and dance. Willie and I dig each
+other in the ribs, and all generally act in an excited and insane way.
+
+Pat now puts the rope over his shoulder, we all take hold, and with a
+'one, two, three!' we make a simultaneous rush from the bank, and as
+the rope suddenly tightens with a pull and strain that nearly jerks us
+all on our backs, we feel that we have hooked the monster, and our
+excitement reaches its culminating point.
+
+What a commotion now in the black depths of the muddy stream! The
+water, lashed by his powerful tail, surges and dashes in eddying
+whirls. He rises and darts backwards and forwards, snapping his
+horrible jaws, moving his head from side to side, his eyes glaring with
+fury. We hold stoutly on to the rope, although our wrists are strained
+and our arms ache. At length he begins to feel our steady pull, and
+inch by inch, struggling demoniacally, he nears the bank. When once he
+reaches it, however, the united efforts of twice our number would fail
+to bring him farther. Bleeding and foaming at the mouth, his horrid
+teeth glistening amid the frothy, blood-flecked foam, he plants his
+strong curved fore-legs against the shelving bank, and tugs and strains
+at the rope with devilish force and fury. It is no use--the rope has
+been tested, and answers bravely to the strain; and now with a long
+boar spear, Pat cautiously descends the bank, and gives him a deadly
+thrust under the fore arm. With a last fiendish glare of hate and
+defiance, he springs forward; we haul in the rope, Pat nimbly jumps
+back, and a pistol shot through the eye settles the monster for ever.
+This was the first alligator I ever saw hooked; he measured sixteen and
+a half feet exactly, but words can give no idea of half the excitement
+that attended the capture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Native superstitions.--Charming a bewitched woman.--Exorcising ghosts
+from a field.--Witchcraft.--The witchfinder or 'Ojah.'--Influence of
+fear.--Snake bites.--How to cure them.--How to discover a thief.--Ghosts
+and their habits.--The 'Haddick' or native bone-setter.--Cruelty to
+animals by natives.
+
+The natives as a rule, and especially the lower classes, are
+excessively superstitious. They are afraid to go out after nightfall,
+believing that then the spirits of the dead walk abroad. It is almost
+impossible to get a coolie, or even a fairly intelligent servant, to go
+a message at night, unless you give him another man for company.
+
+A belief in witches is quite prevalent, and there is scarcely a village
+in Behar that does not contain some withered old crone, reputed and
+firmly believed to be a witch. Others, either young or old are believed
+to have the evil eye; and, as in Scotland some centuries ago, there are
+also witch-finders and sorcerers, who will sell charms, cast
+nativities, give divinations, or ward off the evil efforts of wizards
+and witches by powerful spells. When a wealthy man has a child born,
+the Brahmins cast the nativity of the infant on some auspicious day.
+They fix on the name, and settle the date for the baptismal ceremony.
+
+I remember a man coming to me on one occasion from the village of
+Kuppoorpuckree. He rushed up to where I was sitting in the verandah,
+threw himself at my feet, with tears streaming down his cheeks, and
+amid loud cries for pity and help, told me that his wife had just been
+bewitched. Getting him somewhat soothed and pacified, I learned that a
+reputed witch lived next door to his house; that she and the man's wife
+had quarrelled in the morning about some capsicums which the witch was
+trying to steal from his garden; that in the evening, as his wife was
+washing herself inside the _angana_, or little courtyard appertaining
+to his house, she was seized with cramps and shivering fits, and was
+now in a raging fever; that the witch had been also bathing at the
+time, and that the water from her body had splashed over this man's
+fence, and part of it had come in contact with his wife's body--hence
+undoubtedly this strange possession. He wished me to send peons at
+once, and have the witch seized, beaten, and expelled from the village.
+It would have been no use my trying to persuade him that no witchcraft
+existed. So I gave him a good dose of quinine for his wife, which she
+was to take as soon as the fit subsided. Next I got my old _moonshee_,
+or native writer, to write some Persian characters on a piece of paper;
+I then gave him this paper, muttering a bit of English rhyme at the
+time, and telling him this was a powerful spell. I told him to take
+three hairs from his wife's head, and a paring from her thumb and big
+toe nails, and at the rising of the moon to burn them outside the walls
+of his hut. The poor fellow took the quinine and the paper with the
+deepest reverence, made me a most lowly _salaam_ or obeisance, and
+departed with a light heart. He carried out my instructions to the
+letter, the quinine acted like a charm on the feverish woman, and I
+found myself quite a famous witch-doctor.
+
+There was a nice flat little field close to the water at Parewah, in
+which I thought I could get a good crop of oats during the cold
+weather. I sent for the 'dangur' mates, and asked them to have it dug
+up next day. They hummed and hawed and hesitated, as I thought, in
+rather a strange manner, but departed. In the evening back they came,
+to tell me that the dangurs would _not_ dig up the field.
+
+'Why?' I asked.
+
+'Well you see, Sahib,' said old Teerbouan, who was the patriarch and
+chief spokesman of the village, 'this field has been used for years as
+a burning ghaut' (i.e. a place where the bodies of dead Hindoos were
+buried).
+
+'Well?' said I.
+
+'Well, Sahib, my men say that if they disturb this land, the "Bhoots"
+(ghosts) of all those who have been burned there, will haunt the
+village at night, and they hope you will not persist in asking them to
+dig up the land.'
+
+'Very well, bring down the men with their digging-hoes, and I will
+see.'
+
+Accordingly, next morning, I went down on my pony, found the dangurs
+all assembled, but no digging going on. I called them together, told
+them that it was a very reasonable fear they had, but that I would cast
+such a spell on the land as would settle the ghosts of the departed for
+ever. I then got a branch of a _bael_[1] tree that grew close by,
+dipped it in the stream, and walking backwards round the ground, waved
+the dripping branch round my head, repeating at the same time the first
+gibberish that came into my recollection. My incantation or spell was
+as follows, an old Scotch rhyme I had often repeated when a child at
+school--
+
+  'Eenerty, feenerty, fickerty, feg,
+  Ell, dell, domun's egg;
+  Irky, birky, story, rock,
+  An, tan, toose, Jock;
+  Black fish! white troot!
+  "Gibbie Gaw, ye're oot."'
+
+It had the desired effect. No sooner was my charm uttered, than, after
+a few encouraging words to the men, telling them that there was now no
+fear, that my charm was powerful enough to lay all the spirits in the
+country, and that I would take all the responsibility, they set to work
+with a will, and had the whole field dug up by the evening.
+
+I have seen many such cases. A blight attacks the melon or cucumber
+beds; a fierce wind rises during the night, and shakes half the mangoes
+off the trees; the youngest child is attacked with teething
+convulsions; the plough-bullock is accidentally lamed, or the favourite
+cow refuses to give milk. In every case it is some 'Dyne,' or witch,
+that has been at work with her damnable spells and charms. I remember a
+case in which a poor little child had bad convulsions. The 'Ojah,' or
+witch-finder, in this case a fat, greasy, oleaginous knave, was sent
+for. Full of importance and blowing like a porpoise, he came and caused
+the child to be brought to him, under a tree near the village. I was
+passing at the time, and stopped out of curiosity. He spread a tattered
+cloth in front of him, and muttered some unintelligible gibberish,
+unceasingly making strange passes with his arms. He put down a number
+of articles on his cloth--which was villainously tattered and
+greasy--an unripe plantain, a handful of rice, of parched peas, a thigh
+bone, two wooden cups, some balls, &c., &c.; all of which he kept
+constantly lifting and moving about, keeping up the passes and
+muttering all the time.
+
+The child was a sickly-looking, pining sort of creature, rocking about
+in evident pain, and moaning and fretting just as sick children do.
+Gradually its attention got fixed on the strange antics going on. The
+Ojah kept muttering away, quicker and quicker, constantly shifting the
+bone and cups and other articles on the cloth. His body was suffused
+with perspiration, but in about half an hour the child had gone off to
+sleep, and attended by some dozen old women, and the anxious father,
+was borne off in triumph to the house.
+
+Another time one of Mr. D.'s female servants got bitten by a scorpion.
+The poor woman was in great agony, with her arm swelled up, when an
+Ojah was called in. Setting her before him, he began his incantations
+in the usual manner, but made frequent passes over her body, and over
+the bitten place. A gentle perspiration began to break out on her skin,
+and in a very short time the Ojah had thrown her into a deep mesmeric
+sleep. After about an hour she awoke perfectly free from pain. In this
+case no doubt the Ojah was a mesmerist.
+
+The influence of fear on the ordinary native is most wonderful. I have
+known dozens of instances in which natives have been brought home at
+night for treatment in cases of snake-bite. They have arrived at the
+factory in a complete state of coma, with closed eyes, the pupils
+turned back in the head, the whole body rigid and cold, the lips pale
+white, and the tongue firmly locked between the teeth. I do not believe
+in recovery from a really poisonous bite, where the venom has been
+truly injected. I invariably asked first how long it was since the
+infliction of the bite; I would then examine the marks, and as a rule
+would find them very slight. When the patient had been brought some
+distance, I knew at once that it was a case of pure fright. The natives
+wrap themselves up in their cloths or blankets at night, and lie down
+on the floors of their huts. Turning about, or getting up for water or
+tobacco, or perhaps to put fuel on the fire, they unluckily tread on a
+snake, or during sleep they roll over on one. The snake gives them a
+nip, and scuttles off. They have not seen what sort of snake it is, but
+their imagination conjures up the very worst. After the first outcry,
+when the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly possessed by
+the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his fears work the
+effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye gets dull, his
+pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb, and unless forcibly
+roused by the bystanders he will actually succumb to pure fright, not
+to the snake-bite at all. My chief care when a case of this sort was
+brought me, was to assume a cheery demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears
+of the relatives, and tell them he would be all right in a few hours if
+they attended to my directions. This not uncommonly worked by
+sympathetic influence on the patient himself. I believe, so long as all
+round him thought he was going to die, and expected no other result,
+the same effect was produced on his own mind. As soon as hope sprang up
+in the breasts of all around him, his spirit also caught the contagion.
+As a rule, he would now make an effort to articulate. I would then
+administer a good dose of sal volatile, brandy, eau-de-luce, or other
+strong stimulant, cut into the supposed bite, and apply strong nitric
+acid to the wound. This generally made him wince, and I would hail it
+as a token of certain recovery. By this time some confidence would
+return, and the supposed dying man would soon walk back sound and whole
+among his companions after profuse expressions of gratitude to his
+preserver.
+
+I have treated dozens of cases in this way successfully, and only seen
+two deaths. One was a young woman, my chowkeydar's daughter; the other
+was an old man, who was already dead when they lifted him out of the
+basket in which they had slung him. I do not wish to be misunderstood.
+I believe that in all these cases of recovery it was pure fright
+working on the imagination, and not snake-bite at all. My opinion is
+shared by most planters, that there is no cure yet known for a cobra
+bite, or for that of any other poisonous snake, where the poison has
+once been fairly injected and allowed to mix with the blood[2].
+
+There is another curious instance of the effects of fear on the native
+mind in the common method taken by an Ojah or Brahmin to discover a
+suspected thief. When a theft occurs, the Ojah is sent for, and the
+suspected parties are brought together. After various _muntras_, i.e.
+charms or incantations, have been muttered, the Ojah, who has meanwhile
+narrowly scrutinized each countenance, gives each of the suspected
+individuals a small quantity of dry rice to chew. If the thief be
+present, his superstitious fears are at work, and his conscience
+accuses him. He sees some terrible retribution for him in all these
+_muntras_, and his heart becomes like water within him, his tongue gets
+dry, his salivary glands refuse to act; the innocent munch away at
+their rice contentedly, but the guilty wretch feels as if he had ashes
+in his mouth. At a given signal all spit out their rice, and he whose
+rice comes out, chewed indeed, but dry as summer dust, is adjudged the
+thief. This ordeal is called _chowl chipao_, and is rarely
+unsuccessful. I have known several cases in my own experience in which
+a thief has been thus discovered.
+
+The _bhoots_, or ghosts, are popularly supposed to have favourite
+haunts, generally in some specially selected tree; the _neem_ tree is
+supposed to be the most patronised. The most intelligent natives share
+this belief with the poorest and most ignorant; they fancy the ghosts
+throw stones at them, cast evil influences over them, lure them into
+quicksands, and play other devilish tricks and cantrips. Some roads are
+quite shunned and deserted at night, for no other reason than that a
+ghost is supposed to haunt the place. The most tempting bribe would not
+make a native walk alone over that road after sunset.
+
+Besides the witchfinder, another important village functionary who
+relies much on muntras and charms, is the _Huddick_, or cow doctor. He
+is the only veterinary surgeon of the native when his cow or bullock
+dislocates or breaks a limb, or falls ill. The Huddick passes his hands
+over the affected part, and mutters his _muntras_, which have most
+probably descended to him from his father. Usually knowing a little of
+the anatomical structure of the animal, he may be able to reduce a
+dislocation, or roughly to set a fracture; but if the ailment be
+internal, a draught of mustard oil, or some pounded spices and
+turmeric, or neem leaves administered along with the _muntra_, are
+supposed to be all that human skill and science can do.
+
+The natives are cruel to animals. Half-starved bullocks are shamefully
+overworked. When blows fail to make the ill-starred brute move, they
+give a twist and wrench to the tail, which must cause the animal
+exquisite torture, and unless the hapless beast be utterly exhausted,
+this generally induces it to make a further effort. Ploughmen very
+often deliberately make a raw open sore, one on each rump of the
+plough-bullock. They goad the poor wretch on this raw sore with a
+sharp-pointed stick when he lags, or when they think he needs stirring
+up. Ponies, too, are always worked far too young; and their miserable
+legs get frightfully twisted and bent. The petty shopkeepers, sellers
+of brass pots, grain, spices, and other bazaar wares, who attend the
+various bazaars, or weekly and bi-weekly markets, transport their goods
+by means of these ponies.
+
+The packs of merchandise are slung on rough pack-saddles, made of
+coarse sacking. Shambling along with knees bent together, sores on
+every joint, and frequently an eye knocked out, the poor pony's back
+gets cruelly galled; when the bazaar is reached, he is hobbled as
+tightly as possible, the coarse ropes cutting into the flesh, and he is
+then turned adrift to contemplate starvation on the burnt-up grass.
+Great open sores form on the back, on which a plaster of moist clay, or
+cowdung and pounded leaves, is roughly put. The wretched creature gets
+worn to a skeleton. A little common care and cleanliness would put him
+right, with a little kindly consideration from his brutal master, but
+what does the _Kulwar_ or _Bunneah_ care? he is too lazy.
+
+This unfeeling cruelty and callous indifference to the sufferings of
+the lower animals is a crying evil, and every magistrate, European, and
+educated native, might do much to ease their burdens. Tremendous
+numbers of bullocks and ponies die from sheer neglect and ill treatment
+every year. It is now becoming so serious a trouble, that in many
+villages plough-bullocks are too few in number for the area of land
+under cultivation. The tillage suffers, the crops deteriorate, this
+reacts on prices, the ryot sinks lower and lower, and gets more into
+the grasp of the rapacious money-lender. In many villages I have seen
+whole tracts of land relapsed into _purtee_, or untilled waste, simply
+from want of bullocks to draw the plough. Severe epidemics, like foot
+and mouth disease and pleuro, occasionally sweep off great numbers;
+but, I repeat, that annually the lives of hundreds of valuable animals
+are sacrificed by sheer sloth, dirt, inattention, and brutal cruelty.
+
+In some parts of India, cattle poisoning for the sake of the hides is
+extensively practised. The _Chumars_, that is, the shoemakers,
+furriers, tanners, and workers in leather and skins generally,
+frequently combine together in places, and wilfully poison cattle and
+buffaloes. There is actually a section in the penal code taking
+cognisance of the crime. The Hindoo will not touch a dead carcase, so
+that when a bullock mysteriously sickens and dies, the _Chumars_ haul
+away the body, and appropriate the skin. Some luckless witch is blamed
+for the misfortune, when the rascally Chumars themselves are all the
+while the real culprits. The police, however, are pretty successful in
+detecting this crime, and it is not now of such frequent occurrence
+[3].
+
+Highly as the pious Hindoo venerates the sacred bull of Shira, his
+treatment of his mild patient beasts of burden is a foul blot on his
+character. Were you to shoot a cow, or were a Mussulman to wound a
+stray bullock which might have trespassed, and be trampling down his
+opium or his tobacco crop, and ruining his fields, the Hindoos would
+rise _en masse_ to revenge the insult offered to their religion. Yet
+they scruple not to goad their bullocks, beat them, half starve them,
+and let their gaping wounds fester and become corrupt. When the poor
+brute becomes old and unable to work, and his worn-out teeth unfit to
+graze, he is ruthlessly turned out to die in a ditch, and be torn to
+pieces by jackals, kites, and vultures. The higher classes and
+well-to-do farmers show much consideration for high-priced
+well-conditioned animals, but when they get old or unwell, and demand
+redoubled care and attention, they are too often neglected, till, from
+sheer want of ordinary care, they rot and die.
+
+
+[1] The _bael_ or wood-apple is a sacred wood with Hindoos. It is
+    enjoined in the Shastras that the bodies of the dead should be
+    consumed in a fire fed by logs of bael-tree; but where it is not
+    procurable in sufficient quantity, the natives compound with their
+    consciences by lighting the funeral pyre with a branch from the
+    bael-tree. It is a fine yellow-coloured, pretty durable wood, and
+    makes excellent furniture. A very fine sherbet can be made from
+    the fruit, which acts as an excellent corrective and stomachic.
+
+[2] Deaths from actual snake bite are sadly numerous; but it appears
+    from returns furnished to the Indian Government that Europeans
+    enjoy a very happy exemption. During the last forty years it would
+    seem that only two Europeans have been killed by snake bite, at
+    least only two well substantiated cases. The poorer classes are
+    the most frequent victims. Their universal habit of walking about
+    unshod, and sleeping on the ground, penetrating into the grasses
+    or jungles in pursuit of their daily avocations, no doubt conduces
+    much to the frequency of such accidents. A good plan to keep
+    snakes out of the bungalow is to leave a space all round the
+    rooms, of about four inches, between the walls and the edge of the
+    mats. Have this washed over about once a week with a strong
+    solution of carbolic acid and water. The smell may be unpleasant
+    for a short time, but it proves equally so to the snakes; and I
+    have proved by experience that it keeps them out of the rooms.
+    Mats should also be all firmly fastened down to the floor with
+    bamboo battens, and furniture should be often moved, and kept
+    raised a little from the ground, and the space below carefully
+    swept every day. At night a light should always be kept burning in
+    occupied bedrooms, and on no account should one get out of bed in
+    the dark, or walk about the rooms at night without slippers or
+    shoes.
+
+[3] Somewhat analogous to this is the custom which used to be a
+    common one in some parts of Behar. _Koombars_ and _Grannes_, that
+    is, tile-makers and thatchers, when trade was dull or rain
+    impending, would scatter peas and grain in the interstices of the
+    tiles on the houses of the well-to-do. The pigeons and crows, in
+    their efforts to get at the peas, would loosen and perhaps
+    overturn a few of the tiles. The grannes would be sent for to
+    replace these, would condemn the whole roof as leaky, and the
+    tiles as old and unfit for use, and would provide a job for
+    himself and the tile-maker, the nefarious profits of which they
+    would share together.
+
+    Cultivators of thatching-grass have been known deliberately and
+    wantonly to set fire to villages simply to raise the price of
+    thatch and bamboo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Our annual race meet.--The arrivals.--The camps.--The 'ordinary.'--The
+course.--'They're off.'--The race.--The steeple-chase.--Incidents of
+the meet.--The ball.
+
+Our annual Race Meet is the one great occasion of the year when all the
+dwellers in the district meet. Our races in Chumparun generally took
+place some time about Christmas. Long before the date fixed on,
+arrangements would be made for the exercise of hearty hospitality. The
+residents in the 'station' ask as many guests as will fill their
+houses, and their 'compounds' are crowded with tents, each holding a
+number of visitors, generally bachelors. The principal managers of the
+factories in the district, with their assistants, form a mess for the
+racing week, and, not unfrequently, one or two ladies lend their
+refining presence to the several camps. Friends from other districts,
+from up country, from Calcutta, gather together; and as the weather is
+bracing and cool, and every one determined to enjoy himself, the meet
+is one of the pleasantest of reunions. There are always several races
+specially got up for assistants' horses, and long before, the
+youngsters are up in the early morning, giving their favourite nag a
+spin across the zeraats, or seeing the groom lead him out swathed in
+clothing and bandages, to get him into training for the Assistants'
+race.
+
+As the day draws near, great cases of tinned meats, hampers of beer and
+wine, and goodly supplies of all sorts are sent into the station to the
+various camps. Tents of snowy white canvas begin to peep out at you
+from among the trees. Great oblong booths of blue indigo sheeting show
+where the temporary stables for the horses are being erected; and at
+night the glittering of innumerable camp-fires betokens the presence of
+a whole army of grooms, grass-cutters, peons, watchmen, and other
+servants cooking their evening meal of rice, and discussing the chances
+of the horses of their respective masters in the approaching races. On
+the day before the first racing, the planters are up early, and in
+buggy, dogcart, or on horseback, singly, and by twos and threes, from
+all sides of the district, they find their way to the station. The
+Planter's Club is the general rendezvous. The first comers, having
+found out their waiting servants, and consigned the smoking steeds to
+their care, seat themselves in the verandah, and eagerly watch every
+fresh arrival.
+
+Up comes a buggy. 'Hullo, who's this?'
+
+'Oh, it's "Giblets!" How do you do, "Giblets," old man?'
+
+Down jumps 'Giblets,' and a general handshaking ensues.
+
+'Here comes "Boach" and the "Moonshee,"' yells out an observant
+youngster from the back verandah.
+
+The venerable buggy of the esteemed 'Boach' approaches, and another
+jubilation takes place; the handshaking being so vigorous that the
+'Moonshee's' spectacles nearly come to grief. Now the arrivals ride and
+drive up fast and furious.
+
+'Hullo, "Anthony!"'
+
+'Aha, "Charley," how d'ye do?'
+
+'By Jove, "Ferdie," where have you turned up from?'
+
+'Has the "Skipper" arrived?'
+
+'Have any of you seen "Jamie?"'
+
+'Where's big "Mars'" tents?'
+
+'Have any of ye seen my "Bearer?"'
+
+'Has the "Bump" come in?' and so on.
+
+Such a scene of bustle and excitement. Friends meet that have not seen
+each other for a twelvemonth. Queries are exchanged as to absent
+friends. The chances of the meeting are discussed. Perhaps a passing
+allusion is made to some dear one who has left our ranks since last
+meet. All sorts of topics are started, and up till and during breakfast
+there is a regular medley of tongues, a confused clatter of voices,
+dishes, and glasses, a pervading atmosphere of dense curling volumes of
+tobacco smoke.
+
+To a stranger the names sound uncouth and meaningless, the fact being,
+that we all go by nicknames[1].
+
+'Giblets,' 'Diamond Digger,' 'Mangelwurzel,' 'Goggle-eyed Plover,'
+'Gossein' or holy man, 'Blind Bartimeus,' 'Old Boots,' 'Polly,'
+'Bottle-nosed Whale,' 'Fin MacCoul,' 'Daddy,' 'The Exquisite,' 'The
+Mosquito,' 'Wee Bob,' and 'Napoleon,' are only a very few specimens of
+this strange nomenclature. These soubriquets quite usurp our baptismal
+appellations, and I have often been called 'Maori,' by people who did
+not actually know my real name.
+
+By the evening, all, barring the very late arrivals, have found out
+their various camps. There is a merry dinner, then each sahib, well
+muffled in ulster, plaid, or great coat, hies him to the club, where
+the 'ordinary' is to be held. The nights are now cold and foggy, and a
+tremendous dew falls. At the 'ordinary,' fresh greetings between those
+who now meet for the first time after long separation. The entries and
+bets are made for the morrow's races, although not much betting takes
+place as a rule; but the lotteries on the different races are rapidly
+filled, the dice circulate cheerily, and amid laughing, joking,
+smoking, noise, and excitement, there is a good deal of mild
+speculation. The 'horsey' ones visit the stables for the last time; and
+each retires to his camp bed to dream of the morrow.
+
+Very early, the respective _bearers_ rouse the sleepy _sahibs_. Table
+servants rush hurriedly about the mess tent, bearing huge dishes of
+tempting viands. Grooms, and _grasscuts_ are busy leading the horses
+off to the course. The cold raw fog of the morning fills every tent,
+and dim grey figures of cowering natives, wrapped up over the eyes in
+blankets, with moist blue noses and chattering teeth, are barely
+discernible in the thick mist.
+
+The racecourse is two miles from the club, on the other side of the
+lake, in the middle of a grassy plain, with a neat masonry structure at
+the further side, which serves as a grand stand. Already buggies,
+dogcarts in single harness and tandem, barouches, and waggonettes are
+merrily rolling through the thick mist, past the frowning jail, and
+round the corner of the lake. Natives in gaudy coloured shawls, and
+blankets, are pouring on to the racecourse by hundreds.
+
+Bullock carts, within which are black-eyed, bold beauties, profusely
+burdened with silver ornaments, are drawn up in lines. _Ekkas_--small
+jingling vehicles with a dome-shaped canopy and curtains at the
+sides--drawn by gaily caparisoned ponies, and containing fat, portly
+Baboos, jingle and rattle over the ruts on the side roads.
+
+Sweetmeat sellers, with trays of horrible looking filth, made seemingly
+of insects, clarified butter, and sugar, dodge through the crowd
+dispensing their abominable looking but seemingly much relished wares.
+Tall policemen, with blue jackets, red puggries, yellow belts, and
+white trousers, stalk up and down with conscious dignity.
+
+A madcap young assistant on his pony comes tearing along across
+country. The weighing for the first race is going on; horses are being
+saddled, some vicious brute occasionally lashing out, and scattering
+the crowd behind him. The ladies are seated round the terraced grand
+stand; long strings of horses are being led round and round in a
+circle, by the _syces_; vehicles of every description are lying round
+the building.
+
+Suddenly a bugle sounds; the judge enters his box; the ever popular old
+'Bikram,' who officiates as starter, ambles off on his white cob, and
+after him go half-a-dozen handsome young fellows, their silks rustling
+and flashing through the fast rising mist.
+
+A hundred field-glasses scan the start; all is silent for a moment.
+
+'They're off!' shout a dozen lungs.
+
+'False start!' echo a dozen more.
+
+The gay colours of the riders flicker confusedly in a jumble. One horse
+careers madly along for half the distance, is with difficulty pulled
+up, and is then walked slowly back.
+
+The others left at the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At
+length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!'
+shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!'
+breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the six horses,
+all together, and at a rattling pace, tear up the hill, over the sand
+at the south corner, and up, till at the quarter mile post 'a blanket
+could cover the lot.'
+
+Two or three tails are now showing signals of distress; heels and whips
+are going. Two horses have shot ahead, a bay and a black. 'Jamie' on
+the bay, 'Paddy' on the black.
+
+Still as marble sit those splendid riders, the horses are neck and
+neck; now the bay by a nose, now again the black. The distance post is
+passed with a rush like a whirlwind.
+
+'A dead heat, by Jove!'
+
+'Paddy wins!' 'Jamie has it!' 'Hooray, Pat!' 'Go it, Jamie!' 'Well
+ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent
+racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses
+through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a
+nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up
+a lively air, and the saddling for the next race goes on.
+
+The other races are much the same; there are lots of entries: the
+horses are in splendid condition, and the riding is superb. What is
+better, everything is emphatically 'on the square.' No _pulling_ and
+_roping_ here, no false entries, no dodging of any kind. Fine, gallant,
+English gentlemen meet each other in fair and honest emulation, and
+enjoy the favourite national sport in perfection. The 'Waler' race, for
+imported Australians, brings out fine, tall, strong-boned, clean-limbed
+horses, looking blood all over. The country breds, with slender limbs,
+small heads, and glossy coats, look dainty and delicate as antelopes.
+The lovely, compact Arabs, the pretty-looking ponies, and the
+thick-necked, coarse-looking Cabools, all have their respective trials,
+and then comes the great event--the race of the day--the Steeplechase.
+
+The course is marked out behind the grand stand, following a wide
+circle outside the flat course, which it enters at the quarter-mile
+post, so that the finish is on the flat before the grand stand. The
+fences, ditches, and water leap, are all artificial, but they are
+regular _howlers_, and no make-believes.
+
+Seven horses are despatched to a straggling start, and all negotiate
+the first bank safely. At the next fence a regular _snorter_ of a 'post
+and rail'--topped with brushwood--two horses swerve, one rider being
+deposited on his racing seat upon mother earth, while the other sails
+away across country in a line for home, and is next heard of at the
+stables. The remaining five, three 'walers' and two country-breds, race
+together to the water jump, where one waler deposits his rider, and
+races home by himself, one country-bred refuses, and is henceforth out
+of the race, and the other three, taking the leap in beautiful style,
+put on racing pace to the next bank, and are in the air together. A
+lovely sight! The country is now stiff, and the stride of the waler
+tells. He is leading the country-breds a 'whacker,' but he stumbles and
+falls at the last fence but one from home. His gallant rider, the
+undaunted 'Roley,' remounts just as the two country-breds pass him like
+a flash of light. 'Nothing venture, nothing win,' however, so in go the
+spurs, and off darts the waler like an arrow in pursuit. He is gaining
+fast, and tops the last hurdle leading to the straight just as the
+hoofs of the other two reach the ground.
+
+It is now a matter of pace and good riding. It will be a close finish;
+the waler is first to feel the whip; there is a roar from the crowd; he
+is actually leading; whips and spurs are hard at work now; it is a mad,
+headlong rush; every muscle is strained, and the utmost effort made;
+the poor horses are doing their very best; amid a thunder of hoofs,
+clouds of dust, hats in air, waving of handkerchiefs from the grand
+stand, and a truly British cheer from the paddock, the 'waler' shoots
+in half a length ahead; and so end the morning's races.
+
+Back to camp now, to bathe and breakfast. A long line of dust marks the
+track from the course, for the sun is now high in the heavens, the lake
+is rippling in placid beauty under a gentle breeze, and the long lines
+of natives, as well as vehicles of all sorts, form a quaint but
+picturesque sight. After breakfast calls are made upon all the camps
+and bungalows round the station. Croquet, badminton, and other games go
+on until dinner-time. I could linger lovingly over a camp dinner; the
+rare dishes, the sparkling conversation, the racy anecdote, and the
+general jollity and brotherly feeling; but we must all dress for the
+ball, and so about 9 P.M. the buggies are again in requisition for the
+ball room--the fine, large, central apartment in the Planters' club.
+
+The walls are festooned with flowers, gay curtains, flags, and cloths.
+The floor is shining like silver, and as polished as a mirror. The band
+strikes up the Blue Danube waltz, and amid the usual bustle,
+flirtation, scandal, whispering, glancing, dancing, tripping, sipping,
+and hand-squeezing, the ball goes gaily on till the stewards announce
+supper. At this--to the wall-flowers--welcome announcement, we adjourn
+from the heated ball-room to the cool arbour-like supper tent, where
+every delicacy that can charm the eye or tempt the appetite is spread
+out.
+
+Next morning early we are out with the hounds, and enjoy a rattling
+burst round by the racecourse, where the horses are at exercise.
+Perchance we have heard of a boar in the sugar-cane, and away we go
+with beaters to rouse the grisly monster from his lair. In the
+afternoon there is hockey on horseback, or volunteer drill, with our
+gallant adjutant putting us through our evolutions. In the evening
+there is the usual drive, dinner, music, and the ordinary, and so the
+meet goes on. A constant succession of gaieties keeps everyone alive,
+till the time arrives for a return to our respective factories, and
+another year's hard work.
+
+
+[1] In such a limited society every peculiarity is noted; all our
+    antecedents are known; personal predilections and little foibles
+    of character are marked; eccentricities are watched, and no one,
+    let him be as uninteresting as a miller's pig, is allowed to
+    escape observation and remark. Some little peculiarity is hit
+    upon, and a strange but often very happily expressive nickname
+    stamps one's individuality and photographs him with a word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Pig-sticking in India.--Varieties of boar.--Their size and height.
+--Ingenious mode of capture by the natives,--The 'Batan' or buffalo
+herd.--Pigs charging.--Their courage and ferocity.--Destruction of
+game.--A close season for game.
+
+The sport _par excellence_ of India is pig-sticking. Call it
+hog-hunting if you will, I prefer the honest old-fashioned name. With a
+good horse under one, a fair country, with not too many pitfalls, and
+'lots of pig,' this sport becomes the most exciting that can be
+practised. Some prefer tiger shooting from elephants, others like to
+stalk the lordly ibex on the steep Himalayan slopes, but anyone who has
+ever enjoyed a rattle after a pig over a good country, will recall the
+fierce, delight, the eager thrill, the wild, mad excitement, that
+flushed his whole frame, as he met the infuriate charge of a good
+thirty-inch fighting boar, and drove his trusty spear well home, laying
+low the gallant grey tusker, the indomitable, unconquerable grisly
+boar. The subject is well worn; and though the theme is a noble one,
+there are but few I fancy who have not read the record of some gallant
+fight, where the highest skill, the finest riding, the most undaunted
+pluck, and the cool, keen, daring of a practised hand are not _always_
+successful against the headlong rush and furious charge of a Bengal
+boar at bay.
+
+A record of planter life in India, however, such as this aims at being,
+would be incomplete without some reference to the gallant tusker, and
+so at the risk of tiring my readers, I must try to describe a
+pig-sticking party.
+
+There are two distinct kinds of boar in India, the black and the grey.
+Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer and more
+pugnacious. He is a vicious and implacable foe when roused, and always
+shews better fight than the black variety. The great difference,
+however, is in the shape of the skull; that of the black fellow being
+high over the frontal bone, and not very long in proportion to height,
+while the skull of the grey boar is never very high, but is long, and
+receding in proportion to height.
+
+The black boar grows to an enormous size, and the grey ones are,
+generally speaking, smaller made animals than the black. The young of
+the two also differ in at least one important particular; those of the
+grey pig are always born striped, but the young of the black variety
+are born of that colour, and are not striped but a uniform black colour
+throughout. The two kinds of pig sometimes interbreed, but crosses are
+not common; and, from the colour, size, shape of the head, and general
+behaviour, one can easily tell at a glance what kind of pig gets up
+before his spear, whether it is the heavy, sluggish black boar, or the
+veritable fiery, vicious, fighting grey tusker.
+
+Many stories are told of their enormous size, and a 'forty-inch tusker'
+is the established standard for a Goliath among boars. The best
+fighting boars, however, range from twenty-eight to thirty-two inches
+in height, and I make bold to say that very few of the Present
+generation of sportsmen have ever seen a veritable wild boar over
+thirty-eight inches high.
+
+G.S., who has had perhaps as much jungle experience as any man of
+his age in India, a careful observer, and a finished sportsman,
+tells me that the biggest _boar_ he ever saw was only thirty-eight
+inches high; while the biggest _pig_ he ever killed was a barren
+sow, with three-inch tusks sticking out of her gums; she measured
+thirty-nine-and-a-half inches, and fought like a demon. I have shot
+pig--in heavy jungle where spearing was impracticable--over thirty-six
+inches high, but the biggest pig I ever stuck to my own spear was only
+twenty-eight inches, and I do not think any pig has been killed in
+Chumparun, within the last ten or a dozen years at any rate, over
+thirty-eight inches.
+
+In some parts of India, where pigs are numerous and the jungle dense,
+the natives adopt a very ingenious mode of hunting. I have frequently
+seen it practised by the cowherds on the Koosee _derahs_, i.e. the flat
+swampy jungles on the banks of the Koosee. When the annual floods have
+subsided, leaving behind a thick deposit of mud, wrack, and brushwood,
+the long thick grass soon shoots up to an amazing height, and vast
+herds of cattle and tame buffaloes come down to the jungles from the
+interior of the country, where natural pasture is scarce. They are
+attended by the owner and his assistants, all generally belonging to
+the _gualla_, or cowherd caste, although, of course, there are other
+castes employed. The owner of the herd gets leave to graze his cattle
+in the jungle, by paying a certain fixed sum per head. He fixes on a
+high dry ridge of land, where he runs up a few grass huts for himself
+and men, and there he erects lines of grass and bamboo screens, behind
+which his cattle take shelter at night from the cold south-east wind.
+There are also a few huts of exceedingly frail construction for himself
+and his people. This small colony, in the midst of the universal jungle
+covering the country for miles round, is called a _batan_.
+
+At earliest dawn the buffaloes are milked, and then with their
+attendant herdsmen they wend their way to the jungle, where they spend
+the day, and return again to the batan at night, when they are again
+milked. The milk is made into _ghee_, or clarified butter, and large
+quantities are sent down to the towns by country boats. When we want to
+get up a hunt, we generally send to the nearest _batan_ for _khubber_,
+i.e. news, information. The _Batanea_, or proprietor of the
+establishment, is well posted up. Every herdsman as he comes in at
+night tells what animals he has seen through the day, and thus at the
+_batan_ you hear where tiger, and pig, and deer are to be met with;
+where an unlucky cow has been killed; in what ravine is the thickest
+jungle; where the path is free from clay, or quicksand; what fords are
+safest; and, in short, you get complete information on every point
+connected with the jungle and its wild inhabitants.
+
+To these men the mysterious jungle reveals its most hidden secrets.
+Surrounded by his herd of buffaloes, the _gualla_ ventures into the
+darkest recesses and the most tangled thickets. They have strange wild
+calls by which they give each other notice of the approach of danger,
+and when two or three of them meet, each armed with his heavy,
+iron-shod or brass-bound _lathee_ or quarter staff, they will not budge
+an inch out of their way for buffalo or boar; nay, they have been known
+to face the terrible tiger himself, and fairly beat him away from the
+quivering carcase of some unlucky member of their herd. They have
+generally some favourite buffalo on whose broad back they perch
+themselves, as it browses through the jungle, and from this elevated
+seat they survey the rest of the herd, and note the incidents of jungle
+life. When they wish a little excitement, or a change from their milk
+and rice diet, there are hundreds of pigs around.
+
+They have a broad, sharp spear-head, to which is attached a stout cord,
+often made of twisted hide or hair. Into the socket of the spear is
+thrust a bamboo pole or shaft, tough, pliant, and flexible. The cord is
+wound round the spear and shaft, and the loose end is then fastened to
+the middle of the pole. Having thus prepared his weapon, the herdsman
+mounts his buffalo, and guides it slowly, warily, and cautiously to the
+haunts of the pig. These are, of course, quite accustomed to see the
+buffaloes grazing round them on all sides, and take no notice until the
+_gualla_ is within striking distance. When he has got close up to the
+pig he fancies, he throws his spear with all his force. The pig
+naturally bounds off, the shaft comes out of the socket, leaving the
+spearhead sticking in the wound. The rope uncoils of itself, but being
+firmly fastened to the bamboo, it brings up the pig at each bush, and
+tears and lacerates the wound, until either the spearhead comes out, or
+the wretched pig drops down dead from exhaustion and loss of blood. The
+_gualla_ follows upon his buffalo, and frequently finishes the pig with
+a few strokes of his _lathee_. In any case he gets his pork, and it
+certainly is an ingenious and bold way of procuring it.
+
+Wild pig are very destructive to crops. During the night they revel in
+the cultivated fields contiguous to the jungle, and they destroy more
+by rooting up than by actually eating. It is common for the ryot to dig
+a shallow pit, and ensconce himself inside with his matchlock beside
+him. His head being on a level with the ground, he can discern any
+animal that comes between him and the sky-line. When a pig comes in
+sight, he waits till he is within sure distance, and then puts either a
+bullet or a charge of slugs into him.
+
+The pig is perhaps the most stubborn and courageous animal in India.
+Even when pierced with several spears, and bleeding from numerous
+wounds, he preserves a sullen silence. He disdains to utter a cry of
+fear and pain, but maintains a bold front to the last, and dies with
+his face to the foe, defiant and unconquered. When hard pressed he
+scorns to continue his flight, but wheeling round, he makes a
+determined charge, very frequently to the utter discomfiture of his
+pursuer.
+
+I have seen many a fine horse fearfully cut by a charging pig, and a
+determined boar over and over again break through a line of elephants,
+and make good his escape. There is no animal in all the vast jungle
+that the elephant dreads more than a lusty boar. I have seen elephants
+that would stand the repeated charges of a wounded tiger, turn tail and
+take to ignominious flight before the onset of an angry boar.
+
+His thick short neck, ponderous body, and wedge-like head are admirably
+fitted for crashing through the thick jungle he inhabits, and when he
+has made up his mind to charge, very few animals can withstand his
+furious rush. Instances are quite common of his having made good his
+charge against a line of elephants, cutting and ripping more than one
+severely. He has been known to encounter successfully even the kingly
+tiger himself. Can it be wondered, then, that we consider him a 'foeman
+worthy of our steel'?
+
+To be a good pig-sticker is a recommendation that wins acceptance
+everywhere in India. In a district like Chumparun where nearly every
+planter was an ardent sportsman, a good rider, and spent nearly half
+his time on horseback, pig-sticking was a favourite pastime. Every
+factory had at least one bit of likely jungle close by, where a pig
+could always be found. When I first went to India we used to take out
+our pig-spear over the _zillah_ with us as a matter of course, as we
+never knew when we might hit on a boar.
+
+Things are very different now. Cultivation has much increased. Many of
+the old jungles have been reclaimed, and I fancy many more pigs are
+shot by natives than formerly. A gun can be had now for a few rupees,
+and every loafing 'ne'er do weel' in the village manages to procure
+one, and wages indiscriminate warfare on bird and beast. It is a
+growing evil, and threatens the total extinction of sport in some
+districts. I can remember when nearly every tank was good for a few
+brace of mallard, duck, or teal, where never a feather is now to be
+seen, save the ubiquitous paddy-bird. Jungles, where a pig was a
+certain find, only now contain a measly jackal, and not always that;
+and cover in which partridge, quail, and sometimes even florican were
+numerous, are now only tenanted by the great ground-owl, or a colony of
+field rats. I am far from wishing to limit sport to the European
+community. I would let every native that so wished sport his double
+barrels or handle his spear with the best of us, but he should follow
+and indulge in his sport with reason. The breeding seasons of all
+animals should be respected, and there should be no indiscriminate
+slaughter of male and female, young and old. Until all true sportsmen
+in India unite in this matter, the evil will increase, and bye-and-bye
+there will be no animals left to afford sport of any kind.
+
+There are cases where wild animals are so numerous and destructive
+that extraordinary measures have to be taken for protection from their
+ravages, but these are very rare. I remember having once to wage a war
+of extermination against a colony of pigs that had taken possession of
+some jungle lands near Maharjnugger, a village on the Koosee. I had a
+deal of indigo growing on cleared patches at intervals in the jungles,
+and there the pigs would root and revel in spite of watchmen, till at
+last I was forced in sheer self-defence to begin a crusade against
+them. We got a line of elephants, and two or three friends came to
+assist, and in one day, and round one village only, we shot sixty-three
+full grown pigs. The villagers must have killed and carried away nearly
+double that number of young and wounded. That was a very extreme case,
+and in a pure jungle country; but in settled districts like Tirhoot
+and Chumparun the weaker sex should always be spared, and a close
+season for winged game should be insisted on. To the credit of the
+planters be it said, that this necessity is quite recognised; but
+every pot-bellied native who can beg, borrow, or steal a gun, or in
+any way procure one, is constantly on the look out for a pot shot at
+some unlucky hen-partridge or quail. A whole village will turn out to
+compass the destruction of some wretched sow that may have shewn her
+bristles outside the jungle in the daytime.
+
+In districts where cultivated land is scarce and population scattered,
+it is almost impossible to enjoy pig-sticking. The breaks of open land
+between the jungles are too small and narrow to afford galloping space,
+and though you turn the pig out of one patch of jungle, he immediately
+finds safe shelter in the next. On the banks of some of the large
+rivers, however, such as the Gunduch and the Bagmuttee, there are vast
+stretches of undulating sand, crossed at intervals by narrow creeks,
+and spotted by patches of close, thick jungle. Here the grey tusker
+takes up his abode with his harem. When once you turn him out from his
+lair, there is grand hunting room before he can reach the distant patch
+of jungle to which he directs his flight. In some parts the _jowah_ (a
+plant not unlike broom in appearance) is so thick, that even the
+elephants can scarcely force their way through, but as a rule the
+beating is pretty easy, and one is almost sure of a find.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Kuderent jungle.--Charged by a pig.--The biter bit.--'Mac' after the
+big boar.--The horse for pig-sticking.--The line of beaters.--The boar
+breaks.--'Away! Away!'--First spear.--Pig-sticking at Peeprah.--The
+old 'lungra' or cripple.--A boar at bay.--Hurrah for pig-sticking!
+
+There was a very fine pig jungle at a place called Kuderent, belonging
+to a wealthy landowner who went by the name of the Mudhobunny Baboo. We
+occasionally had a pig-sticking meet here, and as the jungle was
+strictly preserved, we were never disappointed in finding plenty who
+gave us glorious sport. The jungles consisted of great grass plains,
+with thickly wooded patches of dense tree jungle, intersected here and
+there by deep ravines, with stagnant pools of water at intervals; the
+steep sides all thickly clothed with thorny clusters of the wild
+dog-rose. It was a difficult country to beat, and we had always to
+supplement the usual gang of beaters with as many elephants as we could
+collect. In the centre of the jungle was an eminence of considerable
+height, whence there was a magnificent view of the surrounding country.
+
+Far in the distance the giant Himalayas towered into the still clear
+air, the guardian barriers of an unknown land. The fretted pinnacles
+and tremendous ridges, clothed in their pure white mantle of
+everlasting snow, made a magnificent contrast to the dark, misty,
+wooded masses formed by the lower ranges of hills. In the early
+morning, when the first beams of the rising sun had but touched the
+mountain tops, leaving the country below shrouded in the dim mists and
+vapours of retiring night, the sight was most sublime. In presence of
+such hills and distances, such wondrous combinations of colour, scenery
+on such a gigantic scale, even the most thoughtless become impressed
+with the majesty of nature.
+
+Our camp was pitched on the banks of a clear running mountain stream,
+brawling over rocks and boulders; and to eyes so long accustomed to the
+never ending flatness of the rich alluvial plains, and the terrible
+sameness of the rice swamps, the stream was a source of unalloyed
+pleasure. There were only a few places where the abrupt banks gave
+facilities for fording, and when a pig had broken fairly from the
+jungle, and was making for the river (as they very frequently did),
+you would see the cluster of horsemen scattering over the plain like
+a covey of partridges when the hawk swoops down upon them. Each made
+for what he considered the most eligible ford, in hopes of being first
+up with the pig on the further bank, and securing the much coveted
+first spear.
+
+When a pig is hard pressed, and comes to any natural obstacle, as a
+ditch, bank, or stream, he almost invariably gets this obstacle between
+himself and his pursuer; then wheeling round he makes his stand,
+showing wonderful sagacity in choosing the moment of all others when he
+has his enemy at most disadvantage. Experienced hands are aware of
+this, and often try to outflank the boar, but the best men I have seen
+generally wait a little, till the pig is again under weigh, and then
+clearing the ditch or bank, put their horses at full speed, which is
+the best way to make good your attack. The rush of the boar is so
+sudden, fierce, and determined, that a horse at half speed, or going
+slow, has no chance of escape; but a well trained horse at full speed
+meets the pig in his rush, the spear is delivered with unerring aim,
+and slightly swerving to the left, you draw it out as you continue your
+course, and the poor pig is left weltering in his blood behind you.
+
+On one occasion I was very rudely made aware of this trait. It was a
+fine fleet young boar we were after, and we had had a long chase, but
+were now overhauling him fast. I had a good horse under me, and 'Jamie'
+and 'Giblets' were riding neck and neck. There was a small mango
+orchard in front surrounded by the usual ditch and bank. It was nothing
+of a leap; the boar took it with ease, and we could just see him top
+the bank not twenty spear lengths ahead. I was slightly leading, and
+full of eager anxiety and emulation. Jamie called on me to pull up, but
+I was too excited to mind him. I saw him and Giblets each take an
+outward wheel about, and gallop off to catch the boar coming out of the
+cluster of trees on the far side, as I thought. I could not see him,
+but I made no doubt he was in full flight through the trees. There was
+plenty of riding room between the rows, so lifting my game little horse
+at the bank, I felt my heart bound with emulation as I thought I was
+certain to come up first, and take the spear from two such noted heroes
+as my companions. I came up with the pig first, sure enough. _He_ was
+waiting for _me_, and scarce giving my horse time to recover his stride
+after the jump, he came rushing at me, every bristle erect, with a
+vicious grunt of spite and rage. My spear was useless, I had it
+crosswise on my horse's neck; I intended to attack first, and finding
+my enemy turning the tables on me in this way was rather disconcerting.
+I tried to turn aside and avoid the charge, but a branch caught me
+across the face, and knocked my _puggree_ off. In a trice the savage
+little brute was on me. Leaping up fairly from the ground, he got the
+heel of my riding boot in his mouth, and tore off the sole from the
+boot as if it had been so much paper. Jamie and Giblets were sitting
+outside watching the scene, laughing at my discomfiture. Fortunately
+the boar had poor tusks, and my fine little horse was unhurt, but I got
+out of that orchard as fast as I could, and ever after hesitated about
+attacking a boar when he had got a bank or ditch between him and me,
+and was waiting for me on the other side. The far better plan is to
+wait till he sees you are not pressing him, he then goes off at a surly
+sling trot, and you can resume the chase with every advantage in your
+favour. When the blood however is fairly up, and all one's sporting
+instincts roused, it is hard to listen to the dictates of prudence or
+the suggestions of caution and experience.
+
+The very same day we had another instance. My manager, 'Young Mac,' as
+we called him, had started a huge old boar. He was just over the boar,
+and about to deliver his thrust, when his horse stumbled in a rat hole
+(it was very rotten ground), and came floundering to earth, bringing
+his rider with him. Nothing daunted, Mac picked himself up, lost the
+horse, but so eager and excited was he, that he continued the chase on
+foot, calling to some of us to catch his horse while he stuck his boar.
+The old boar was quite blown, and took in the altered aspect of affairs
+at a glance; he turned to charge, and we loudly called on Mac to 'clear
+out.' Not a bit of it, he was too excited to realise his danger, but
+Pat fortunately interposed his horse and spear in time, and no doubt
+saved poor Mac from a gruesome mauling. It was very plucky, but it was
+very foolish, for heavily weighted with boots, breeches, spurs, and
+spear, a man could have no chance against the savage onset of an
+infuriated boar.
+
+In the long thick grass with which the plain was covered the riding was
+very dangerous. I remember seeing six riders come signally to grief
+over a blind ditch in this jungle. It adds not a little to the
+excitement, and really serious accidents are not so common as might be
+imagined. It is no joke however when a riderless horse comes ranging up
+alongside of you as you are sailing along, intent on war; biting and
+kicking at your own horse, he spoils your sport, throws you out of the
+chase, and you are lucky if you do not receive some ugly cut or bruise
+from his too active heels. There is the great beauty of a well trained
+Arab or country-bred; if you get a spill, he waits beside you till you
+recover your faculties, and get your bellows again in working order; if
+you are riding a Cabool, or even a waler, it is even betting that he
+turns to bite or kick you as you lie, or he rattles off in pursuit of
+your more firmly seated friends, spoiling their sport, and causing the
+most fearful explosions of vituperative wrath.
+
+There is something to me intensely exciting in all the varied incidents
+of a rattling burst across country after a fighting old grey boar. You
+see the long waving line of staves, and spear heads, and quaint shaped
+axes, glittering and fluctuating above the feathery tops of the swaying
+grass. There is an irregular line of stately elephants, each with its
+towering howdah and dusky mahout, moving slowly along through the
+rustling reeds. You hear the sharp report of fireworks, the rattling
+thunder of the big _doobla_ or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of
+innumerable _tom-toms_. Shouts, oaths, and cries from a hundred noisy
+coolies, come floating down in bursts of clamour on the soft morning
+air. The din waxes and wanes as the excited beaters descry a 'sounder'
+of pig ahead; with a mighty roar that makes your blood tingle, the
+frantic coolies rally for the final burst. Like rockets from a tube,
+the boar and his progeny come crashing through the brake, and separate
+before you on the plain. With a wild cheer you dash after them in hot
+pursuit; no time now to think of pitfalls, banks, or ditches; your
+gallant steed strains his every muscle, every sense is on the alert,
+but you see not the bush and brake and tangled thicket that you leave
+behind you. Your eye is on the dusky glistening hide and the stiff
+erect bristles in front; the shining tusks and foam-flecked chest are
+your goal, and the wild excitement culminates as you feel your keen
+steel go straight through muscle, bone, and sinew, and you know that
+another grisly monster has fallen. As you ease your girths and wipe
+your heated brow, you feel that few pleasures of the chase come up to
+the noblest, most thrilling sport of all, that of pig-sticking.
+
+The plain is alive with shouting beaters hurrying up to secure the gory
+carcase of the slaughtered foe. A riderless horse is far away, making
+off alone for the distant grove, where the snowy tents are glistening
+through the foliage. On the distant horizon a small cluster of eager
+sportsmen are fast overhauling another luckless tusker, and enjoying in
+all their fierce excitement the same sensations you have just
+experienced. Now is the time to enjoy the soothing weed, and quaff the
+grateful 'peg'; and as the syces and other servants come up in groups
+of twos and threes, you listen with languid delight to all their
+remarks on the incidents of the chase; and as, with their acute
+Oriental imagination nations they dilate in terms of truly Eastern
+exaggeration on your wonderful pluck and daring, you almost fancy
+yourself really the hero they would make you out to be.
+
+Then the reunion round the festive board at night, when every one again
+lives through all the excitement of the day. Talk of fox-hunting after
+pig-sticking, it is like comparing a penny candle to a lighthouse, or a
+donkey race to the 'Grand National'!
+
+Peeprah Factory with its many patches of jungle, its various lakes and
+fine undulating country, was another favourite rendezvous for the
+votaries of pig-sticking. The house itself was quite palatial, built on
+the bank of a lovely horseshoe lake, and embosomed in a grove of trees
+of great rarity and beautiful foliage. It had been built long before
+the days of overland routes and Suez canals, when a planter made India
+his home, and spared no trouble nor expense to make his home
+comfortable. In the great garden were fruit trees from almost every
+clime; little channels of solid masonry led water from the well to all
+parts of the garden. Leading down to the lake was a broad flight of
+steps, guarded on the one side by an immense peepul tree, whose hollow
+trunk and wide stretching canopy of foliage had braved the storms of
+over half a century, on the other side by a most symmetrical almond
+tree, which, when in blossom, was the most beautiful object for miles
+around. A well-kept shrubbery surrounded the house, and tall
+casuarinas, and glossy dark green india-rubber and bhur trees, formed a
+thousand combinations of shade and colour. Here we often met to
+experience the warm, large-hearted hospitality of dear old Pat and his
+gentle little wife. At one time there was a pack of harriers, which
+would lead us a fine, sharp burst by the thickets near the river after
+a doubling hare; but as a rule a meet at Peeprah portended death to the
+gallant tusker, for the jungles were full of pigs, and only honest hard
+work was meant when the Peeprah beaters turned out.
+
+The whole country was covered with patches of grass and thorny jungle.
+Knowing they had another friendly cover close by, the pigs always broke
+at the first beat, and the riding had to be fast and furious if a spear
+was to be won. There were some nasty drop jumps, and deep, hidden
+ditches, and accidents were frequent. In one of these hot, sharp
+gallops poor 'Bonnie Morn,' a favourite horse belonging to 'Jamie,' was
+killed. Not seeing the ditch, it came with tremendous force against the
+bank, and of course its back was broken. Even in its death throes it
+recognised its master's voice, and turned round and licked his hand. We
+were all collected round, and let who will sneer, there were few dry
+eyes as we saw this last mute tribute of affection from the poor dying
+animal.
+
+  THE DEATH OF 'BONNIE MORN.'
+
+  Alas, my 'Brave Bonnie!' the pride of my heart,
+  The moment has come when from thee I must part;
+  No more wilt thou hark to the huntsman's glad horn,
+  My brave little Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  How proudly you bore me at bright break of day,
+  How gallantly 'led,' when the boar broke away!
+  But no more, alas! thou the hunt shall adorn,
+  For now thou art dying, my dear 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  He'd neigh with delight when I'd enter his stall,
+  And canter up gladly on hearing my call;
+  Rub his head on my shoulder while munching his corn,
+  My dear gentle Arab, my poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Or out in the grass, when a pig was in view,
+  None so eager to start, when he heard a 'halloo';
+  Off, off like a flash, the ground spurning with scorn,
+  He aye led the van, did my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  O'er _nullah_ and ditch, o'er hedge, fence, or bank,
+  No matter, _he'd_ clear it, aye in the front rank;
+  A brave little hunter as ever was born
+  Was my grand Arab fav'rite, my good 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Or when in the 'ranks,' who so steady and still?
+  None better than 'Bonnie,' more 'up' in his drill;
+  His fine head erect--eyes flashing with scorn--
+  Right fit for a charger was staunch 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And then on the 'Course,' who so willing and true?
+  Past the 'stand' like an arrow the bonnie horse flew;
+  No spur his good rider need ever have worn,
+  For he aye did his best, did my fleet 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And now here he lies, the good little horse,
+  No more he'll career in the hunt or on 'course':
+  Such a charger to lose makes me sad and forlorn;
+  I _can't_ help a tear, 'tis for poor 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  Ah! blame not my grief, for 'tis deep and sincere,
+  As a friend and companion I held 'Bonnie' dear;
+  No true sportsman ever such feelings will scorn
+  As I heave a deep sigh for my brave 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+  And even in death, when in anguish he lay,
+  When his life's blood was drip--dripping--slowly away,
+  His last thought was still of the master he'd borne;
+  He neighed, licked my hand--and thus died 'Bonnie Morn.'
+
+One tremendous old boar was killed here during one of our meets, which
+was long celebrated in our after-dinner talks on boars and hunting. It
+was called 'THE LUNGRA,' which means the cripple, because it had been
+wounded in the leg in some previous encounter, perhaps in its hot
+youth, before age had stiffened its joints and tinged its whiskers with
+grey. It was the most undaunted pig I have ever seen. It would not
+budge an inch for the beaters, and charged the elephants time after
+time, sending them flying from the jungle most ignominiously. At length
+its patience becoming exhausted, it slowly emerged from the jungle,
+coolly surveyed the scene and its surroundings, and then, disdaining
+flight, charged straight at the nearest horseman. Its hide was as tough
+as a Highland targe, and though L. delivered his spear, it turned the
+weapon aside as if it was merely a thrust from a wooden pole. The old
+_lungra_ made good his charge, and ripped L's. horse on the shoulder.
+It next charged Pat, and ripped his horse, and cut another horse, a
+valuable black waler, across the knee, laming it for life. Rider after
+rider charged down upon the fierce old brute. Although repeatedly
+wounded none of the thrusts were very serious, and already it had put
+five horses _hors de combat_. It now took up a position under a big
+'bhur' tree, close to some water, and while the boldest of us held back
+for a little, it took a deliberate mud bath under our very noses.
+Doubtless feeling much refreshed, it again took up its position under
+the tree, ready to face each fresh assailant, full of fight, and
+determined to die but not to yield an inch.
+
+Time after time we rode at the dauntless cripple. Each time he charged
+right down, and our spears made little mark upon his toughened hide.
+Our horses too were getting tired of such a customer, and little
+inclined to face his charge. At length 'Jamie' delivered a lucky spear
+and the grey old warrior fell. It had kept us at bay for fully an hour
+and a half, and among our number we reckoned some of the best riders
+and boldest pig-stickers in the district.
+
+Such was our sport in those good old days. Our meets came but seldom,
+so that sport never interfered with the interests of honest hard work;
+but meeting each other as we did, and engaging in exciting sport like
+pig-sticking, cemented our friendship, kept us in health, and
+encouraged all the hardy tendencies of our nature. It whetted our
+appetites, it roused all those robust virtues that have made Englishmen
+the men they are, it sent us back to work with lighter hearts and
+renewed energy. It built up many happy, cherished memories of kindly
+words and looks and deeds, that will only fade when we in turn have to
+bow before the hunter, and render up our spirits to God who gave them.
+Long live honest, hearty, true sportsmen, such as were the friends of
+those happy days. Long may Indian sportsmen find plenty of 'foemen
+worthy of their steel' in the old grey boar, the fighting tusker of
+Bengal.
+
+[Illustration: PIG-STICKERS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The sal forests.--The jungle goddess.--The trees in the jungle.
+--Appearance of the forests.--Birds.--Varieties of parrots.--A 'beat'
+in the forest.--The 'shekarry.'--Mehrman Singh and his gun.--The
+Banturs, a jungle tribe of wood-cutters.--Their habits.--A village
+feast.--We beat for deer.--Habits of the spotted deer.--Waiting for
+the game.--Mehrman Singh gets drunk.--Our bag.--Pea-fowl and their
+habits.--How to shoot them.--Curious custom of the Nepaulese.--How
+Juggroo was tricked, and his revenge.
+
+Tirhoot is too generally under cultivation and too thickly inhabited
+for much land to remain under jungle, and except the wild pig of which
+I have spoken, and many varieties of wild fowl, there is little game to
+be met with. It is, however, different in North Bhaugulpore, where
+there are still vast tracts of forest jungle, the haunt of the spotted
+deer, nilghau, leopard, wolf, and other wild animals. Along the banks
+of the Koosee, a rapid mountain river that rolls its flood through
+numerous channels to join the Ganges, there are immense tracts of
+uncultivated land covered with tall elephant grass, and giving cover to
+tigers, hog deer, pig, wild buffalo, and even an occasional rhinoceros,
+to say nothing of smaller game and wildfowl, which are very plentiful.
+
+The sal forests in North Bhaugulpore generally keep to the high ridges,
+which are composed of a light, sandy soil, very friable, and not very
+fertile, except for oil and indigo seeds, which grow most luxuriantly
+wherever the forest land has been cleared. In the shallow valleys which
+lie between the ridges rice is chiefly cultivated, and gives large
+returns. The sal forests have been sadly thinned by unscientific and
+indiscriminate cutting, and very few fine trees now remain. The earth
+is teeming with insects, chief amongst which are the dreaded and
+destructive white ants. The high pointed nests of these destructive
+insects, formed of hardened mud, are the commonest objects one meets
+with in these forest solitudes.
+
+At intervals, beneath some wide spreading peepul or bhur tree, one
+comes on a rude forest shrine, daubed all over with red paint, and with
+gaudy festoons of imitation flowers, cut from the pith of the plantain
+tree, hanging on every surrounding bough. These shrines are sacred
+to _Chumpa buttee_, the Hindoo Diana, protectress of herds, deer,
+buffaloes, huntsmen, and herdsmen. She is the recognised jungle
+goddess, and is held in great veneration by all the wild tribes and
+half-civilized denizens of the gloomy sal jungle.
+
+The general colour of the forest is a dingy green, save when a deeper
+shade here and there shows where the mighty bhur uprears its towering
+height, or where the crimson flowers of the _seemul_ or cotton tree,
+and the bronze-coloured foliage of the _sunpul_ (a tree very like the
+ornamental beech in shrubberies at home) imparts a more varied colour
+to the generally pervading dark green of the universal sal.
+
+The varieties of trees are of course almost innumerable, but the sal is
+so out of all proportion more numerous than any other kind, that the
+forests well deserve their recognised name. The sal is a fine, hard
+wood of very slow growth. The leaves are broad and glistening, and in
+spring are beautifully tipped with a reddish bronze, which gradually
+tones down into the dingy green which is the prevailing tint. The
+_sheshum_ or _sissod_, a tree with bright green leaves much resembling
+the birch, the wood of which is invaluable for cart wheels and
+such-like work, is occasionally met with. There is the _kormbhe_, a
+very tough wood with a red stringy bark, of which the jungle men make
+a kind of touchwood for their matchlocks, and the _parass_, whose
+peculiarity is that at times it bursts into a wondrous wealth of bright
+crimson blossom without a leaf being on the tree. The _parass_ tree in
+full bloom is gorgeous. After the blossom falls the dark-green leaves
+come out, and are not much different in colour from the sal. Then there
+is the _mhowa_, with its lovely white blossoms, from which a strong
+spirit is distilled, and on which the deer, pigs, and wild bear love to
+feast. The peculiar sickly smell of the _mhowa_ when in flower pervades
+the atmosphere for a great distance round, and reminds one forcibly of
+the peculiar sweet, sickly smell of a brewery. The hill _sirres_ is a
+tall feathery-looking tree of most elegant shape, towering above the
+other forest trees, and the natives strip it of its bark, which they
+use to poison streams. It seems to have some narcotic or poisonous
+principle, easily soluble in water, for when put in any quantity in a
+stream or piece of water, it causes all the fish to become apparently
+paralyzed and rise to the surface, where they float about quite
+stupified and helpless, and become an easy prey to the poaching
+'Banturs' and 'Moosahurs' who adopt this wretched mode of fishing.
+
+Along the banks of the streams vegetation gets very luxurious, and
+among the thick undergrowth are found some lovely ferns, broad-leaved
+plants, and flowers of every hue, all alike nearly scentless. Here is
+no odorous breath of violet or honeysuckle, no delicate perfume of
+primrose or sweetbriar, only a musty, dank, earthy smell which gets
+more and more pronounced as the mists rise along with the deadly
+vapours of the night. Sleeping in these forests is very unhealthy.
+There is a most fatal miasma all through the year, less during the hot
+months, but very bad during and immediately after the annual rains; and
+in September and October nearly every soul in the jungly tracts is
+smitten with fever. The vapour only rises to a certain height above the
+ground, and at the elevation of ten feet or so, I believe one could
+sleep in the jungles with impunity; but it is dangerous at all times to
+sleep in the forest, unless at a considerable elevation. The absence of
+all those delicious smells which make a walk through the woodlands at
+home so delightful, is conspicuous in the sal forests, and another of
+the most noticeable features is the extreme silence, the oppressive
+stillness that reigns.
+
+You know how full of melody is an English wood, when thrush, blackbird,
+mavis, linnet, and a thousand warblers flit from tree to tree. How the
+choir rings out its full anthem of sweetest sound, till every bush and
+tree seems a centre of sweet strains, soft, low, liquid trills, and
+full ripe gushes of melody and song. But it is not thus in an Indian
+forest. There are actually few birds. As you brush through the long
+grass and trample the tangled undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling
+branches, or dodging under the pliant arms of the creepers, you may
+flush a black or grey partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a
+quiet family party of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting
+about to make the vaulted arcades of the forest echo to their music.
+
+The hornbill darts with a succession of long bounding flights from one
+tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow tree close by,
+his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A
+flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the _golden
+oriole_ or mango bird, the _koel_, with here and there a red-tufted
+_bulbul_, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep
+silence is unbroken, save by the melancholy hoot of some blinking owl,
+and the soft monotonous coo of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The
+exquisite honey-sucker, as delicately formed as the petal of a fairy
+flower, flits noiselessly about from blossom to blossom. The natives
+call it the 'Muddpenah' or drinker of honey. There are innumerable
+butterflies of graceful shape and gorgeous colours; what few birds
+there are have beautiful plumage; there is a faint rustle of leaves, a
+faint, far hum of insect life; but it feels so silent, so unlike the
+woods at home. You are oppressed by the solemn stillness, and feel
+almost nervous as you push warily along, for at any moment a leopard,
+wolf, or hyena may get up before you, or you may disturb the siesta of
+a sounder of pig, or a herd of deer.
+
+Up in those forests on the borders of Nepaul, which are called the
+_morung_, there are a great many varieties of parrot, all of them
+very beautiful. There is first the common green parrot, with a red
+beak, and a circle of salmon-coloured feathers round its neck; they
+are very noisy and destructive, and flock together to the fields
+where they do great damage to the crops. The _lutkun sooga_ is an
+exquisitely-coloured bird, about the size of a sparrow. The _ghur[=a]l_,
+a large red and green parrot, with a crimson beak. The _tota_ a
+yellowish-green colour, and the male with a breast as red as blood;
+they call it the _amereet bhela_. Another lovely little parrot, the
+_taeteea sooga_, has a green body, red head, and black throat; but the
+most showy and brilliant of all the tribe is the _putsoogee_. The body
+is a rich living green, red wings, yellow beak, and black throat; there
+is a tuft of vivid red as a topknot, and the tail is a brilliant blue;
+the under feathers of the tail being a pure snowy white.
+
+At times the silence is broken by a loud, metallic, bell-like cry,
+very like the yodel you hear in the Alps. You hear it rise sharp and
+distinct, 'Looralei!' and as suddenly cease. This is the cry of the
+_kookoor gh[=e]t_, a bird not unlike a small pheasant, with a
+reddish-brown back and a fawn-coloured breast. The _sherra_ is another
+green parrot, a little larger than the _putsoogee_, but not so
+beautifully coloured.
+
+There is generally a green, slime-covered, sluggish stream in all these
+forests, its channel choked with rotting leaves and decaying vegetable
+matter. The water should never be drunk until it has been boiled and
+filtered. At intervals the stream opens out and forms a clear
+rush-fringed pool, and the trees receding on either bank leave a lovely
+grassy glade, where the deer and nilghau come to drink. On the glassy
+bosom of the pool in the centre, fine duck, mallard, and teal, can
+frequently be found, and the rushes round the margin are to a certainty
+good for a couple of brace of snipe.
+
+Sometimes on a withered branch overhanging the stream, you can see
+perched the _ahur_, or great black fish-hawk. It has a grating,
+discordant cry, which it utters at intervals as it sits pluming its
+black feathers above the pool. The dark ibis and the ubiquitous
+paddy-bird are of course also found here; and where the land is low and
+marshy, and the stream crawls along through several channels, you are
+sure to come across a couple of red-headed _sarus_, serpent birds, a
+crane, and a solitary heron. The _moosahernee_ is a black and white
+bird, I fancy a sort of ibis, and is good eating. The _dokahur_ is
+another fine big bird, black body and white wings, and as its name
+(derived from _dokha_, a shell) implies, it is the shell-gatherer, or
+snail-eater, and gives good shooting.
+
+When you have determined to beat the forest, you first get your coolies
+and villagers assembled, and send them some mile or two miles ahead,
+under charge of some of the head men, to beat the jungle towards you,
+while you look out for a likely spot, shady, concealed, and cool, where
+you wait with your guns till the game is driven up to you. The whole
+arrangements are generally made, of course under your own supervision,
+by your _Shekarry_, or gamekeeper, as I suppose you might call him. He
+is generally a thin, wiry, silent man, well versed in all the lore of
+the woods, acquainted with the name, appearance, and habits of every
+bird and beast in the forest. He knows their haunts and when they are
+to be found at home. He will track a wounded deer like a bloodhound,
+and can tell the signs and almost impalpable evidences of an animal's
+whereabouts, the knowledge of which goes to make up the genuine hunter.
+
+When all is still around, and only the distant shouts of the beaters
+fall faintly at intervals on the ear, his keen hearing detects the
+light patter of hoof or paw on the crisp, withered leaves. His
+hawk-like glance can pick out from the deepest shade the sleek coat or
+hide of the leopard or the deer; and even before the animal has come in
+sight, his senses tell him whether it is young or old, whether it is
+alarmed, or walking in blind confidence. In fact, I have known a good
+shekarry tell you exactly what animal is coming, whether bear, leopard,
+fox, deer, pig, or monkey.
+
+The best shekarry I ever had was a Nepaulee called 'Mehrman Singh.' He
+had the regular Tartar physiognomy of the Nepaulese. Small, oblique,
+twinkling eyes, high cheekbones, flattish nose, and scanty moustache.
+He was a tall, wiry man, with a remarkably light springy step, a bold
+erect carriage, and was altogether a fine, manly, independent fellow.
+He had none of the fawning obsequiousness which is so common to the
+Hindoo, but was a merry laughing fellow, with a keen love of sport and
+a great appreciation of humour. His gun was fearfully and wonderfully
+made. It was a long, heavy flint gun, with a tremendously heavy barrel,
+and the stock all splices and splinters, tied in places with bits of
+string. I would rather not have been in the immediate vicinity of the
+weapon when he fired it, and yet he contrived to do some good shooting
+with it.
+
+He was wonderfully patient in stalking an animal or waiting for its
+near approach, as he never ventured on a long shot, and did not
+understand our objection to pot-shooting. His shot was composed of
+jagged little bits of iron, chipped from an old _kunthee_, or
+cooking-pot; and his powder was truly unique, being like lumps of
+charcoal, about the size of small raisins. A shekarry fills about four
+or five fingers' depth of this into his gun, then a handful of old
+iron, and with a little touch of English powder pricked in with a pin
+as priming, he is ready for execution on any game that may come within
+reach of a safe pot-shot. When the gun goes off there is a mighty
+splutter, a roar like that of a small cannon, and the slugs go hurtling
+through the bushes, carrying away twigs and leaves, and not
+unfrequently smashing up the game so that it is almost useless for the
+table.
+
+The _Banturs_, who principally inhabit these jungles, are mostly of
+Nepaulese origin. They are a sturdy, independent people, and the women
+have fair skins, and are very pretty. Unchastity is very rare, and the
+infidelity of a wife is almost unknown. If it is found out, mutilation
+and often death are the penalties exacted from the unfortunate woman.
+They wear one long loose flowing garment, much like the skirt of a
+gown; this is tightly twisted round the body above the bosoms, leaving
+the neck and arms quite bare. They are fond of ornaments--nose, ears,
+toes and arms, and even ancles, being loaded with silver rings and
+circlets. Some decorate their nose and the middle parting of the hair
+with a greasy-looking red pigment, while nearly every grown-up woman
+has her arms, neck, and low down on the collar bone most artistically
+tattooed in a variety of close, elaborate patterns. The women all work
+in the clearings; sowing, and weeding, and reaping the rice, barley,
+and other crops. They do most of the digging where that is necessary,
+the men confining themselves to ploughing and wood-cutting. At the
+latter employment they are most expert; they use the axe in the most
+masterly manner, but their mode of cutting is fearfully wasteful; they
+always leave some three feet of the best part of the wood in the
+ground, very rarely cutting a tree close down to the root. Many of
+them are good charcoal-burners, and indeed their principal occupation
+is supplying the adjacent villages with charcoal and firewood. They use
+small narrow-edged axes for felling, but for lopping they invariably
+use the Nepaulese national weapon--the _kookree_. This is a heavy,
+curved knife, with a broad blade, the edge very sharp, and the back
+thick and heavy. In using it they slash right and left with a quick
+downward stroke, drawing the blade quickly toward them as they strike.
+They are wonderfully dexterous with the _kookree_, and will clear
+away brush and underwood almost as quickly as a man can walk. They
+pack their charcoal, rice, or other commodities, in long narrow
+baskets, which they sling on a pole carried on their shoulders, as we
+see the Chinese doing in the well known pictures on tea-chests. They
+are all Hindoos in religion, but are very fond of rice-whiskey. Although
+not so abstemious in this respect as the Hindoos of the plains, they
+are a much finer race both physically and morally. As a rule they are
+truthful, honest, brave, and independent. They are always glad to see
+you, laugh out merrily at you as you pass, and are wonderfully
+hospitable. It would be a nice point for Sir Wilfrid Lawson to
+reconcile the use of rice-whiskey with this marked superiority in all
+moral virtues in the whiskey-drinking, as against the totally-abstaining
+Hindoo.
+
+To return to Mehrman Singh. His face was seamed with smallpox marks,
+and he had seven or eight black patches on it the first time I saw him,
+caused by the splintering of his flint when he let off his antediluvian
+gun. When he saw my breechloaders, the first he had ever beheld, his
+admiration was unbounded. He told me he had come on a leopard asleep in
+the forest one day, and crept up quite close to him. His faith in his
+old gun, however, was not so lively as to make him rashly attack so
+dangerous a customer, so he told me. 'Hum usko jans deydea oos wukt,'
+that is, 'I _gave_ the brute its life that time, but,' he continued,
+'had I had an English gun like this, your honour, I would have blown
+the _soor_ (_Anglice_, pig) to hell.' Old Mehrman was rather strong in
+his expletives at times, but I was not a little amused at the cool way
+he spoke of _giving_ the leopard its life. The probability is, that had
+he only wounded the animal, he would have lost his own.
+
+These Nepaulese are very fond of giving feasts to each other. Their
+dinner-parties, I assure you, are very often 'great affairs.' They are
+not mean in their arrangements, and the wants of the inner man are very
+amply provided for. Their crockery is simple and inexpensive. When the
+feast is prepared, each guest provides himself with a few broad leaves
+from the nearest sal tree, and forming these into a cup, he pins them
+together with thorns from the acacia. Squatting down in a circle, with
+half-a-dozen of these sylvan cups around, the attendant fills one with
+rice, another with _dhall_, a third with goat's-flesh, a fourth with
+_turkaree_ or vegetables, a fifth with chutnee, pickle, or some kind of
+preserve. Curds, ghee, a little oil perhaps, sugar, plantains, and
+other fruit are not wanting, and the whole is washed down with copious
+draughts of fiery rice-whiskey, or where it can be procured, with
+palm-toddy. Not unfrequently dancing boys or girls are in attendance,
+and the horrid din of tom-toms, cymbals, a squeaking fiddle, or a
+twanging sitar, rattling castanets, and ear-piercing songs from the
+dusky _prima donna_, makes night hideous, until the grey dawn peeps
+over the dark forest line.
+
+Early in January, 1875, my camp was at a place in the sal jungles
+called Lohurneah. I had been collecting rents and looking after my seed
+cultivation, and Pat and our sporting District Engineer having joined
+me, we determined to have a beat for deer. Mehrman Singh had reported
+numerous herds in the vicinity of our camp. During the night we had
+been disturbed by the revellers at such a feast in the village as I
+have been describing. We had filled cartridges, seen to our guns, and
+made every preparation for the beat, and early in the morning the
+coolies and idlers of the forest villages all round were ranged in
+circles about our camp.
+
+Swallowing a hasty breakfast we mounted our ponies, and followed by our
+ragged escort, made off for the forest. On the way we met a crowd of
+Banturs with bundles of stakes and great coils of strong heavy netting.
+Sending the coolies on ahead under charge of several headmen and peons,
+we plunged into the gloom of the forest, leaving our ponies and grooms
+outside. When we came to a likely-looking spot, the Banturs began
+operations by fixing up the nets on the stakes and between trees, till
+a line of strong net extended across the forest for several hundred
+yards. We then went ahead, leaving the nets behind us, and each took up
+his station about 200 yards in front. The men with the nets then hid
+themselves behind trees, and crouched in the underwood. With our
+kookries we cut down several branches, stuck them in the ground in
+front, and ensconced ourselves in this artificial shelter. Behind us,
+and between us and the nets, was a narrow cart track leading through
+the forest, and the reason of our taking this position was given me by
+Pat, who was an old hand at jungle shooting.
+
+When deer are being driven, they are intensely suspicious, and of
+course frightened. They know every spot in the jungle, and are
+acquainted with all the paths, tracks, and open places in the forest.
+When they are nearing an open glade, or a road, they slacken their
+pace, and go slowly and warily forward, an old buck generally leading.
+When he has carefully reconnoitred and examined the suspected place in
+front, and found it clear to all appearance, they again put on the
+pace, and clear the open ground at their greatest speed. The best
+chance of a shot is when a path is in front of _them_ and behind _you_,
+as then they are going slowly.
+
+At first when I used to go out after them, I often got an open glade,
+or road, in _front_ of me; but experience soon told me that Pat's plan
+was the best. As this was a beat not so much for real sport, as to show
+me how the villagers managed these affairs, we were all under Pat's
+direction, and he could not have chosen better ground. I was on the
+extreme left, behind a clump of young trees, with the sluggish muddy
+stream on my left. Our Engineer to my right was about one hundred yards
+off, and Pat himself on the extreme right, at about the same distance
+from H. Behind us was the road, and in the rear the long line of nets,
+with their concealed watchers. The nets are so set up on the stakes,
+that when an animal bounds along and touches the net, it falls over
+him, and ere he can extricate himself from its meshes, the vigilant
+Banturs rush out and despatch him with spears and clubs.
+
+We waited a long time hearing nothing of the beaters, and watching the
+red and black ants hurrying to and fro. Huge green-bellied spiders
+oscillated backwards and forwards in their strong, systematically woven
+webs. A small mungoose kept peeping out at me from the roots of an old
+india-rubber tree, and aloft in the branches an amatory pair of hidden
+ringdoves were billing and cooing to each other. At this moment a
+stealthy step stole softly behind, and the next second Mr. Mehrman
+Singh crept quietly and noiselessly beside me, his face flushed with
+rapid walking, his eye flashing with excitement, his finger on his lip,
+and a look of portentous gravity and importance striving to spread
+itself over his speaking countenance. Mehrman had been up all night at
+the feast, and was as drunk as a piper. It was no use being angry with
+him, so I tried to keep him quiet and resumed my watch.
+
+A few minutes afterwards he grasped me by the wrist, rather startling
+me, but in a low hoarse whisper warning me that a troop of monkeys was
+coming. I could not hear the faintest rustle, but sure enough in a
+minute or two a troop of over twenty monkeys came hopping and shambling
+along, stopping every now and then to sit on their hams, look back,
+grin, jabber, and show their formidable teeth, until Mehrman rose up,
+waved his cloth at them, and turned them off from the direction of the
+nets toward the bank of the stream.
+
+Next came a fox, slouching warily and cautiously along; then a couple
+of lean, hungry-looking jackals; next a sharp patter on the crisp dry
+leaves, and several peafowl with resplendent plumage ran rapidly past.
+Another touch on the arm from Mehrman, and following the direction of
+his outstretched hand, I descried a splendid buck within thirty yards
+of me, his antlers and chest but barely visible above the brushwood. My
+gun was to my shoulder in an instant, but the shekarry in an excited
+whisper implored me not to fire. I hesitated, and just then the stately
+head turned round to look behind, and exposing the beautifully curving
+neck full to my aim, I fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the
+fine buck topple over, seemingly hard hit.
+
+A shot on my right, and two shots in rapid succession further on,
+shewed me that Pat and H. were also at work, and then the whole forest
+seemed alive with frightened, madly-plunging pig, deer, and other
+animals. I fired at, and wounded an enormous boar that came rushing
+past, and now the cries of the coolies in front as they came trooping
+on, mingled with the shouts of the men at the nets, where the work of
+death evidently was going on.
+
+It was most exciting while it lasted, but, after all, I do not think it
+was honest sport. The only apology I could make to myself was, that the
+deer and pig were far too numerous, and doing immense damage to the
+crops, and if not thinned out, they would soon have made the growing of
+any crop whatever an impossibility.
+
+The monkey being a sacred animal, is never molested by the natives, and
+the damage he does in a night to a crop of wheat or barley is
+astonishing. Peafowl too are very destructive, and what with these and
+the ravages of pig, deer, hares, and other plunderers, the poor ryot
+has to watch many a weary night, to secure any return from his fields.
+
+On rejoining each other at the nets, we found that five deer and two
+pigs had been killed. Pat had shot a boar and a porcupine, the latter
+with No. 4 shot. H. accounted for a deer, and I got my buck and the
+boar which I had wounded in the chest; Mehrman Singh had followed him
+up and tracked him to the river, where he took refuge among some long
+swamp reeds. Replying to his call, we went up, and a shot through the
+head settled the old boar for ever. Our bag was therefore for the first
+beat, seven deer, four pigs, and a porcupine.
+
+The coolies were now sent away out of the jungle, and on ahead for a
+mile or so, the nets were coiled up, our ponies regained, and off we
+set, to take another station. As we went along the river bank,
+frequently having to force our way through thick jungle, we started 'no
+end' of peafowl, and getting down we soon added a couple to the bag.
+Pat got a fine jack snipe, and I shot a _Jheela_, a very fine waterfowl
+with brown plumage, having a strong metallic, coppery lustre on the
+back, and a steely dark blue breast. The plumage was very thick and
+glossy, and it proved afterwards to be excellent eating.
+
+Peafowl generally retire to the thickest part of the jungles during the
+heat of the day, but if you go out very early, when they are slowly
+wending their way back from the fields, where they have been revelling
+all night, you can shoot numbers of them. I used to go about twenty or
+thirty yards into the jungle, and walk slowly along, keeping that
+distance from the edge. My syce and pony would then walk slowly by the
+edges of the fields, and when the syce saw a peafowl ahead, making for
+the jungle, he would shout and try to make it rise. He generally
+succeeded, and as I was a little in advance and concealed by the
+jungle, I would get a fine shot as the bird flew overhead. I have shot
+as many as eight and ten in a morning in this way. I always used No. 4
+shot with about 3-1/2 drams of powder.
+
+Unless hard hit peafowl will often get away; they run with amazing
+swiftness, and in the heart of the jungle it is almost impossible to
+make them rise. A couple of sharp terriers, or a good retriever, will
+sometimes flush them, but the best way is to go along the edge of the
+jungle in the early morn, as I have described. The peachicks, about
+seven or eight months old, are deliciously tender and well flavoured.
+Old birds are very dry and tough, and require a great deal of that
+old-fashioned sauce, Hunger.
+
+The common name for a peafowl is _m[=o]r_, but the Nepaulese and Banturs
+call it _majoor_. Now _majoor_ also means coolie, and a young fellow,
+S., was horrified one day hearing his attendant in the jungle telling
+him in the most excited way, '_Majoor, majoor_, Sahib; why don't you
+fire?' Poor S. thought it was a coolie the man meant, and that he must
+be going mad, wanting him to shoot a coolie, but he found out his
+mistake, and learnt the double meaning of the word, when he got home
+and consulted his _manager_.
+
+The generic name for all deer is in Hindustani HURIN, but the Nepaulese
+call it CHEETER. The male spotted deer they call KUBRA, the female
+KUBREE. These spotted deer keep almost exclusively to the forests, and
+are very seldom found far away from the friendly cover of the sal
+woods. They are the most handsome, graceful looking animals I know,
+their skins beautifully marked with white spots, and the horns wide and
+arching. When properly prepared the skin makes a beautiful mat for a
+drawing room, and the horns of a good buck are a handsome ornament to
+the hall or the verandah. When bounding along through the forest, his
+beautifully spotted skin flashing through the dark green foliage, his
+antlers laid back over his withers, he looks the very embodiment of
+grace and swiftness. He is very timid, and not easily stalked.
+
+In March and April, when a strong west wind is blowing, it rustles the
+myriads of leaves that, dry as tinder, encumber the earth. This
+perpetual rustle prevents the deer from hearing the footsteps of an
+approaching foe. They generally betake themselves then to some patch of
+grass, or long-crop outside the jungle altogether, and if you want them
+in those months, it is in such places, and not inside the forest at
+all, that you must search. Like all the deer tribe, they are very
+curious, and a bit of rag tied to a tree, or a cloth put over a bush,
+will not unfrequently entice them within range.
+
+Old shekarries will tell you that as long as the deer go on feeding and
+flapping their ears, you may continue your approach. As soon as they
+throw up the head, and keep the ears still, their suspicions have been
+aroused, and if you want venison, you must be as still as a rock, till
+your game is again lulled into security, As soon as the ears begin
+flapping again, you may continue your stalk, but at the slightest
+noise, the noble buck will be off like a flash of lightning. You should
+never go out in the forest with white clothes, as you are then a
+conspicuous mark for all the prying eyes that are invisible to you. The
+best colour is dun brown, dark grey, or dark green. When you see a deer
+has become suspicious, and no cover is near, stand perfectly erect and
+rigid, and do not leave your legs apart. The 'forked-parsnip' formation
+of the 'human form divine' is detected at a glance, but there's just a
+chance that if your legs are drawn together, and you remain perfectly
+motionless, you may be mistaken for the stump of a tree, or at the best
+some less dangerous enemy than man.
+
+As we rode slowly along, to allow the beaters to get ahead, and to let
+the heavily-laden men with the nets keep up with us, we were amused to
+hear the remarks of the syces and shekarries on the sport they had just
+witnessed. Pat's old man, Juggroo, a merry peep-eyed fellow, full of
+anecdote and humour, was rather hard on Mehrman Singh for having been
+up late the preceding night. Mehrman, whose head was by this time
+probably reminding him that there are 'lees to every cup,' did not seem
+to relish the humour. He began grasping one wrist with the other hand,
+working his hand slowly round his wrist, and I noticed that Juggroo
+immediately changed the subject. This, as I afterwards learned, is the
+invariable Nepaulese custom of showing anger. They grasp the wrist as I
+have said, and it is taken as a sign that, if you do not discontinue
+your banter, you will have a fight.
+
+The Nepaulese are rather vain of their personal appearance, and hanker
+greatly after a good thick moustache. This, nature has denied them, for
+the hair on their faces is scanty and stubbly in the extreme. One day
+Juggroo saw his master putting some bandoline on his moustache, which
+was a fine, handsome, silky one. He asked Pat's bearer, an old rogue,
+what it was.
+
+'Oh!' replied the bearer, 'that is the gum of the sal tree; master
+always uses that, and that is the reason he has such a fine moustache.'
+
+Juggroo's imagination fired up at the idea.
+
+'Will it make mine grow too?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+'How do you use it?'
+
+'Just rub it on, as you see master do.'
+
+Away went Juggroo to try the new recipe.
+
+Now, the gum of the sal tree is a very strong resin, and hardens in
+water. It is almost impossible to get it off your skin, as the more
+water you use, the harder it gets.
+
+Next day Juggroo's face presented a sorry sight. He had plentifully
+smeared the gum over his upper lip, so that when he washed his face,
+the gum _set_, making the lip as stiff as a board, and threatening to
+crack the skin every time the slightest muscle moved.
+
+Juggroo _was_ 'sold' and no mistake, but he bore it all in grim
+silence, although he never forgot the old bearer. One day, long after,
+he brought in some berries from the wood, and was munching them,
+seemingly with great relish. The bearer wanted to know what they were,
+Juggroo with much apparent _nonchalance_ told him they were some very
+sweet, juicy, wild berries he had found in the forest. The bearer asked
+to try one.
+
+Juggroo had _another_ fruit ready, very much resembling those he was
+eating. It is filled with minute spikelets, or little hairy spinnacles,
+much resembling those found in ripe doghips at home. If these even
+touch the skin, they cause intense pain, stinging like nettles, and
+blistering every part they touch.
+
+The unsuspicious bearer popped the treacherous berry into his mouth,
+gave it a crunch, and then with a howl of agony, spluttered and spat,
+while the tears ran down his cheeks, as he implored Juggroo by all the
+gods to fetch him some water.
+
+Old Juggroo with a grim smile, walked coolly away, discharging a
+Parthian shaft, by telling him that these berries were very good for
+making the hair grow, and hoped he would soon have a good moustache.
+
+A man from the village now came running up to tell us that there was a
+leopard in the jungle we were about to beat, and that it had seized,
+but failed to carry away, a dog from the village during the night.
+Natives are so apt to tell stories of this kind that at first we did
+not credit him, but turning into the village he showed us the poor dog,
+with great wounds on its neck and throat where the leopard had pounced
+upon it. The noise, it seems, had brought some herdsmen to the place,
+and their cries had frightened the leopard and saved the wretched dog.
+As the man said he could show us the spot where the leopard generally
+remained, we determined to beat him up; so sending a man off on
+horseback for the beaters to slightly alter their intended line of
+beat, we rode off, attended by the villager, to get behind the
+leopard's lair, and see if we could not secure him. These fierce and
+courageous brutes, for they are both, are very common in the sal
+jungles; and as I have seen several killed, both in Bhaugulpore and
+Oudh, I must devote a chapter to the subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+The leopard.--How to shoot him.--Gallant encounter with a wounded
+one.--Encounter with a leopard in a dak bungalow.--Pat shoots two
+leopards.--Effects of the Express bullet.--The 'Sirwah Purrul,' or
+annual festival of huntsmen.--The Hindoo ryot.--Rice-planting and
+harvest.--Poverty of the ryot.--His apathy.--Village fires.--Want of
+sanitation.
+
+Writing principally for friends at home, who are not familiar with
+Indian life, I must narrate facts that, although well known in Indian
+circles, are yet new to the general reader in England. My object is of
+course to represent the life we lead in the far East, and to give a
+series of pictures of what is going on there. If I occasionally touch
+on what may to Indian readers seem well-worn ground, they will forgive
+me.
+
+The leopard then, as a rule keeps to the wooded parts of India. In the
+long grassy jungles bordering the Koosee he is not generally met with.
+He is essentially a predatory animal, always on the outlook for a meal;
+round the villages, nestling amid their sal forests, he is continually
+on the prowl, looking out for a goat, a calf, or unwary dog. His
+appearance and habits are well known; he generally selects for his
+lair, a retired spot surrounded by dense jungle. The one we were after
+now had his home in a matted jungle, growing out of a pool of water,
+which had collected in a long hollow, forming the receptacle of the
+surface drainage from the adjacent slopes. This hollow stretched for
+miles towards the creek which we had been beating up; and the locality
+having moisture and other concurring elements in its favour, the
+vegetation had attained a luxuriance rarely seen in the dry uplands,
+where the west winds lick up the moisture, and the soil is arid and
+unpromising. The matted intertwining branches of the creepers had
+formed an almost impervious screen, and on the basis thus formed, amid
+the branches and creepers, the leopards had formed their lair. Beneath,
+was a still stagnant pool; above, was the leafy foliage. The tracks led
+down to a well-worn path.
+
+Climbing like a cat, as the leopards can do, they found no difficulty
+in gaining a footing on the mass of vegetation. They generally select
+some retired spot like this, and are very seldom seen in the daytime.
+With the approach of night, however, they begin their wandering in
+quest of prey. In a beat such as we were having 'all is fish that comes
+to the net,' and leopards, if they are in the jungle, have to yield to
+the advance of the beaters, like the other denizens of the forest.
+
+Experience tells you that the leopard is daring and ferocious. Old
+experienced hands warn you, that unless you can make sure of your shot,
+it is unwise to fire at a leopard approaching. It is better to wait
+till he has got past you, or at all events is 'broadside on.' If you
+only wound him as he is approaching, he will almost to a certainty make
+straight at you, but if you shoot him as he is going past, he will,
+maddened by pain and anger, go straight forward, and you escape his
+charge. He is more courageous than a tiger, and a very dangerous
+customer at close quarters. Up in one of the forests in Oudh, a friend
+of mine was out one day after leopard, with a companion who belonged to
+the forest department. My friend's companion fired at a leopard as it
+was approaching him, and wounded it severely. Nothing daunted, and
+recognising whence its hurt had come, it charged directly down on the
+concealed sportsman, and before he could half realise the position,
+sprang on him, caught his left arm in its teeth, and began mauling him
+with its claws. His presence of mind did not desert him; noticing close
+by the stump of a sal tree, that had been eaten by white ants till the
+harder parts of the wood alone remained, standing up hard and sharp
+like so many spikes of steel; and knowing that the leopard was already
+badly wounded, and in all probability struggling for his life, he
+managed to drag the struggling animal up to the stump; jammed his left
+arm yet further into the open mouth of the wounded beast, and being a
+strong man, by pure physical force dashed the leopard's brains out on
+the jagged edges of the stump. It was a splendid instance of presence
+of mind. He was horribly mauled of course; in fact I believe he lost
+his arm, but he saved his life. It shows the danger of only wounding a
+leopard, especially if he is coming towards you; always wait till he
+has passed your station, if it is practicable. If you _must_ shoot,
+take what care you can that the shot be a sure one.
+
+In some of the hill stations, and indeed in the villages on the plains,
+it is very common for a leopard to make his appearance in the house or
+verandah of an evening.
+
+One was shot in Bhaugulpore station by the genial and respected
+chaplain, on a Sunday morning two or three years ago. As we went along,
+H. told us a humorous story of an Assistant in the Public Works
+Department, who got mauled by a leopard at Dengra Ghat, Dak Bungalow.
+It had taken up its quarters in a disused room, and this young fellow
+burning, with ardour to distinguish himself, made straight for the room
+in which he was known to be. He opened the door, followed by a motley
+crowd of retainers, discharged his gun, and the sequel proved that he
+was _not_ a dead shot. He had only wounded the leopard. With a bound
+the savage brute was on him, but in the hurry and confusion, he had
+changed front. The leopard had him by the back. You can imagine the
+scene! He roared for help! The leopard was badly hit, and a plucky
+_bearer_ came to his rescue with a stout _lathee_. Between them they
+succeeded in killing the wounded animal, but not before it had left its
+marks on a very sensitive portion of his frame. The moral is, if you go
+after leopard, be sure you kill him at once.
+
+They seldom attack a strong, well-grown animal. Calves, however, goats,
+and dogs are frequently carried off by them. The young of deer and pig,
+too, fall victims, and when nothing else can be had, peafowl have been
+known to furnish them a meal. In my factory in Oudh I had a small,
+graceful, four-horned antelope. It was carried off by a leopard from
+the garden in broad daylight, and in face of a gang of coolies.
+
+The most commonly practised mode of leopard shooting, is to tie a goat
+up to a tree. You have a _mychan_ erected, that is, a platform elevated
+on trees above the ground. Here you take your seat. Attracted by the
+bleating of the goat, the prowling leopard approaches his intended
+victim. If you are on the watch you can generally detect his approach.
+They steal on with extreme caution, being intensely wary and
+suspicious. At a village near where we now were, I had sat up for three
+nights for a leopard, but although I knew he was prowling in the
+vicinity, I had never got a look at him. We believed this leopard to be
+the same brute.
+
+I have already described our mode of beating. The jungle was close, and
+there was a great growth of young trees. I was again on the right, and
+near the edge of the forest. Beyond was a glade planted with rice. The
+incidents of the beat were much as you have just read. There was,
+however, unknown or at any rate unnoticed by us, more intense
+excitement. We knew that the leopard might at any moment pass before
+us. Pat was close to a mighty bhur tree, whose branches, sending down
+shoots from the parent stem, had planted round it a colony of vigorous
+supports. It was a magnificent tree with dense shade. All was solemn
+and still. Pat with his keen eye, his pulse bounding, and every sense
+on the alert, was keeping a careful look-out from behind an immense
+projecting buttress of the tree. All was deadly quiet. H. and myself
+were occupied watching the gambols of some monkeys in our front. The
+beaters were yet far off. Suddenly Pat heard a faint crackle on a dried
+leaf. He glanced in the direction of the sound, and his quick eye
+detected the glossy coats, the beautifully spotted hides of not _one_
+leopard, but _two_. In a moment the stillness was broken by the report
+of his rifle. Another report followed sharp and quick. We were on the
+alert, but to Pat the chief honour and glory belonged. He had shot one
+leopard dead through the heart. The female was badly hit and came
+bounding along in my direction. Of course we were now on the _qui
+vive_. Waiting for an instant, till I could get my aim clear of some
+intervening trees, I at length got a fair shot, and brought her down
+with a ball through the throat. H. and Pat came running up, and we
+congratulated ourselves on our success. By and bye Mehrman Singh and
+the rest of the beaters came up, and the joy of the villagers was
+gratifying. These were doubtless the two leopards we had heard so much
+about, for which I had sat up and watched. It was amusing to see some
+villager whose pet goat or valued calf had been carried off, now coming
+up, striking the dead body of the leopard, and abusing it in the most
+unmeasured terms. Such a crowding round as there was! such a noise, and
+such excitement!
+
+While waiting for the horses to be brought, and while the excited mob
+of beaters and coolies carried off the dead animals to the camp to be
+skinned, we amused ourselves by trying our rifles at a huge tree that
+grew on the further side of the rice swamp. We found the effects of the
+'Express' bullet to be tremendous. It splintered up and burst the bark
+and body of the tree into fragments. Its effects on an animal are even
+more wonderful. On looking afterwards at the leopard which had been
+shot, we found that my bullet had touched the base of the shoulder,
+near the collar-bone. It had gone downwards through the neck, under the
+collar-bone, and struck the shoulder. There it had splintered up and
+made a frightful wound, scattering its fragments all over the chest,
+and cutting and lacerating everything in its way.
+
+For big game the 'Express' is simply invaluable. For all-round shooting
+perhaps a No. 12 smooth-bore is the best. It should be snap action with
+rebounding locks. You should have facilities and instruments for
+loading cartridges. A good cartridge belt is a good thing for carrying
+them, but go where you will now, where there is game to be killed, a
+No. 12 B. L. will enable you to participate in whatever shooting is
+going. Such a one as I have described would satisfy all the wishes of
+any young man who perhaps can only afford one gun.
+
+As we rode slowly along, we learned many curious facts of jungle and
+native life from the followers, and by noticing little incidents
+happening before our eyes. Pat, who is so well versed in jungle life
+and its traditions, told us of a curious moveable feast which the
+natives of these parts hold annually, generally in March or April,
+which is called the _Sirwah Purrub_.
+
+It seems to be somewhat like the old carnivals of the middle ages. I
+have read that in Sardinia, and Italy, and Switzerland something
+similar takes place. The _Sirwah Purrub_ is a sort of festival held in
+honour of the native Diana--the _chumpa buttee_ before referred to. On
+the appointed day all the males in the forest villages, without
+exception, go a-hunting. Old spears are furbished up; miraculous guns,
+of even yet more ancient lineage than Mehrman Singh's dangerous
+flintpiece, are brought out from dusty hiding-places. Battle-axes, bows
+and arrows, hatchets, clubs and weapons of all sorts, are looked up,
+and the motley crowd hies to the forest, the one party beating up the
+game to the other.
+
+Some go fishing, others try to secure a quail or partridge, but it is a
+point of honour that something must be slain. If game be not plentiful
+they will even go to another village and slay a goat, which, rather
+than return empty-handed, they will bear in triumph home. The women
+meet the returning hunters, and if there has been a fortunate beat,
+there is a great feast in the village during the evening and far on
+into the night. The nets are used, and in this way they generally have
+some game to divide in the village on their return from the hunt.
+Ordinarily they seethe the flesh, and pour the whole contents of the
+cooking-pot into a mess of boiled rice. With the addition of a little
+salt, this is to them very palatable fare. They are very good cooks,
+with very simple appliances; with a little mustard oil or clarified
+butter, a few vegetables or a cut-up fish, they can be very successful.
+The food, however, is generally smoked from the cow-dung fire. If you
+are much out in these villages this smoke constantly hangs about,
+clinging to your clothes and flavouring your food, but the natives seem
+to like it amazingly.
+
+In the cold mornings of December or January it hangs about like the
+peat smoke in a Highland village. Round every house are great stacks
+and piles of cow-dung cakes. Before every house is a huge pile of
+ashes, and the villagers cower round this as the evening falls, or
+before the sun has dissipated the mist of the mornings. During the day
+the village dogs burrow in the ashes. Hovering in a dense cloud about
+the roofs and eaves, and along the lower branches of the trees in filmy
+layers, the smoke almost chokes one to ride through it. I have seen a
+native sit till half-choked in a dense column of this smoke. He is too
+lazy to shift his position; the fumes of pungent smoke half smother
+him; tears run from his eyes; he splutters and coughs, and abuses the
+smoke, and its grandfather, and maternal uncle, and all its other known
+relatives; but he prefers semi-suffocation to the trouble of budging an
+inch.
+
+Sometimes the energy of these people is surprising. To go to a fair or
+feast, or on a pilgrimage, they will walk miles upon miles, subsisting
+on parched peas or rice, and carrying heavy burdens. In company they
+sing and carol blithely enough. When alone they are very taciturn, man
+and woman walking together, the man first with his _lathee_ or staff,
+the woman behind carrying child or bundle, and often looking fagged and
+tired enough.
+
+Taking vegetables, or rice, or other commodities to the bazaar, the
+carrier often slings his burden to the two ends of a pole worn over the
+shoulder, much as Chinamen do. But they generally make their load into
+one bundle which they carry on the head, or which they sling, if not
+large and bulky, over their backs, rolled up in one of their cloths.
+
+During the rice-planting season they toil in mud and water from
+earliest morn till late into twilight. Bending and stooping all the
+day, their lower extremities up to the knee sometimes in water, and the
+scorching sun beating on their backs, they certainly show their patient
+plodding industry, for it is downright honest hard work.
+
+The young rice is taken from the nursery patch, where it has been sown
+thick some time previously. When the rice-field is ready--a sloppy,
+muddy, embanked little quagmire--the ryot gets his bundle of young
+rice-plants, and shoves in two or three at a time with his finger and
+thumb. These afterwards form the tufts of rice. Its growth is very
+rapid. Sometimes, in case of flood, the rice actually grows with the
+rise of the water, always keeping its tip above the stream. If wholly
+submerged for any length of time it dies. There are over a hundred
+varieties. Some are only suited for very deep marshy soils; others,
+such as the _s[=a]tee_, or sixty-days rice, can be grown on comparatively
+high land, and ripen early. If rain be scanty, the _s[=a]tee_ and other
+rice crops have to be weeded. It is cut with a jagged-edged sort of
+reaping-hook called a _hussooa_. The cut bundles are carried from the
+fields by women, girls, and lads. They could not take carts in many
+instances into the swamps.
+
+At such times you see every little dyke or embankment with a crowd of
+bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on his head,
+hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The women, with clothes
+tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at
+a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken--garnering
+the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over.
+Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor,
+dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a
+yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use
+leaving a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by
+such a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty
+stomachs in every village, a bundle of rice would be gone by the
+morning.
+
+As in Greece, where every man has to watch his vineyard at night, so
+here, the _kureehan_ or threshing-floor each has its watchman at night.
+For the protection of the growing crops, the villagers club together,
+and appoint a watchman or _chowkeydar_, whom they pay by giving him a
+small percentage on the yield; or a small fractional proportion of the
+area he has to guard, with its standing crop, may be made over to him
+as a recompense.
+
+They thresh out the rice when it has matured a little on the
+threshing-floor. Four to six bullocks are tied in a line to a post in
+the centre, and round this they slowly pace in a circle. They are not
+muzzled, and the poor brutes seem rather to enjoy the unwonted luxury
+of feeding while they work. When there is a good wind, the grain is
+winnowed; it is lifted either in bamboo scoops or in the two hands. The
+wind blows the chaff or _bhoosa_ on to a heap, and the fine fresh rice
+remains behind. The grain merchants now do a good business. Rice must
+be sold to pay the rent, the money-lender, and other clamouring
+creditors. The _bunniahs_ will take repayment in kind. They put on
+the interest, and cheat in the weighments and measurements. So much has
+to be given to the weigh-man as a perquisite. If seed had been borrowed,
+it has now to be returned at a ruinous rate of interest. Some seed must
+be saved for next year, and an average _poor_ ryot, the cultivator of
+but a little holding, very soon sees the result of his harvesting melt
+away, leaving little for wife and little ones to live on. He never
+gets free of the money-lender. He will have to go out and work hard
+for others, as well as get up his own little lands. No chance of a new
+bullock this year, and the old ones are getting worn out and thin. The
+wife must dispense with her promised ornament or dress. For the poor
+ryot it is a miserable hand-to-mouth existence when crops are poor.
+As a rule he is never out of debt. He lives on the scantiest fare;
+hunger often pinches him; he knows none of the luxuries of life.
+Notwithstanding all, the majority are patient, frugal, industrious,
+and to the full extent of their scanty means even charitable and
+benevolent. With the average ryot a little business goes a great way.
+There are some irreconcileable, discontented, worthless fellows in
+every village. All more or less count a lie as rather a good thing to
+be expert in; they lie naturally, simply, and instinctively: but with
+all his faults, and they are doubtless many, I confess to a great
+liking for the average Hindoo ryot.
+
+At times, however, their apathy and laziness is amazing. They are very
+childish, petted, and easily roused. In a quarrel, however, they
+generally confine themselves to vituperation and abuse, and seldom
+come to blows.
+
+As an instance of their fatalism or apathetic indolence, I can remember
+a village on the estate I was managing taking fire. It was quite close
+to the factory. I had my pony saddled at once, and galloped off for the
+burning village. It was a long, straggling one, with a good masonry
+well in the centre, shadowed by a mighty _peepul_ tree. The wind was
+blowing the fire right along, and if no obstruction was offered, would
+sweep off every hut in the place. The only soul who was trying to do a
+thing was a young Brahmin watchman belonging to the factory. He had
+succeeded in removing some brass jars of his own, and was saving some
+grain. One woman was rocking to and fro, beating her breast and crying.
+There sat the rest of the apathetic villagers in groups, not lifting a
+finger, not stirring a step, but calmly looking on, while the devouring
+element was licking up hut after hut, and destroying their little all.
+In a few minutes some of my servants, syces, and factory men had
+arrived. I tied up the pony, ordered my men to pull down a couple of
+huts in the centre, and tried to infuse some energy into the villagers.
+Not a bit of it; they would _not_ stir. They would not even draw a
+bucket of water. However, my men got earthen pots; I dug up fresh earth
+and threw it on the two dismantled huts, dragging away as much of the
+thatch and _debris_ as we could.
+
+The fire licked our faces, and actually got a footing on the first
+house beyond the frail opening we had tried to make, but we persevered,
+and ultimately stayed the fire, and saved about two thirds of the
+village. I never saw such an instance of complete apathy. Some of the
+inhabitants even had not untied the cattle in the sheds. They seemed
+quite prostrated. However, as we worked on, and they began to see that
+all was not yet lost, they began to buckle to; yet even then their
+principal object was to save their brass pots and cooking utensils,
+things that could not possibly burn, and which they might have left
+alone with perfect safety.
+
+A Hindoo village is as inflammable as touchwood. The houses are
+generally built of grass walls, connected with thin battens of bamboo.
+The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all the little
+courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are piled up round
+every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which smoulders all day. A
+stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit round the corner, and
+before one can half realise the catastrophe, the village is on fire.
+Then each only thinks of his own goods; there is no combined effort to
+stay the flames. In the hot west winds of March, April, and May, these
+fires are of very frequent occurrence. In Bhaugulpore, I have seen,
+from my verandah, three villages on fire at one and the same time. In
+some parts of Oudh, among the sal forests, village after village is
+burnt down annually, and I have seen the same catastrophe visit the
+same village several times in the course of one year. These fires arise
+from pure carelessness, sheer apathy, and laziness.
+
+Sanitary precautions too are very insufficient; practically there are
+none. Huge unsightly water-holes, filled during the rains with the
+drainage of all the dung-heaps and mounds of offal and filth that
+abound in the village, swelter under the hot summer sun. They get
+covered with a rank green scum, and if their inky depths be stirred,
+the foulest and most fearful odours issue forth. In these filthy pools
+the villagers often perform their ablutions; they do not scruple to
+drink the putrid water, which is no doubt a hotbed and regular nursery
+for fevers, and choleraic and other disorders.
+
+Many home readers are but little acquainted with the Indian village
+system, and I shall devote a chapter to the description of a Hindoo
+village, with its functionaries, its institutions, its inhabitants, and
+the more marked of their customs and avocations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
+--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
+village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
+village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
+system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
+justice.
+
+A typical village in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of thatched
+huts, apparently set down at random--as indeed it is, for every one
+erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or wherever he can
+get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved
+plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the huts and buildings. Several
+small orchards of mango surround the village; the roads leading to and
+from it are merely well-worn cattle tracks,--in the rains a perfect
+quagmire, and in the hot weather dusty, and confined between straggling
+hedges of aloe or prickly pear. These hedges are festooned with masses
+of clinging luxuriant creepers, among which sometimes struggles up a
+custard apple, an avocado pear, or a wild plum-tree. The latter is a
+prickly straggling tree, called the _bhyre_; the wood is very hard, and
+is often used for making ploughs. The fruit is a little hard yellow
+crisp fruit, with a big stone inside, and very sweet; when it is ripe,
+the village urchins throw sticks up among the branches, and feast on
+the golden shower.
+
+On many of the banks bordering the roads, thatching grass, or rather
+strong upright waving grass, with a beautiful feathery plume, is
+planted. This is used to make the walls of the houses, and these are
+then plastered outside and in with clay and cowdung. The tall hedge
+of dense grass keeps what little breeze there may be away from the
+traveller. The road is something like an Irish 'Boreen,' wanting only
+its beauty and freshness. On a hot day the atmosphere in one of these
+village roads is stifling and loaded with dust.
+
+These houses with their grass walls and thatched roof are called
+_kutcha_, as opposed to more pretentious structures of burnt brick,
+with maybe a tiled sloping or flat plastered roof, which are called
+_pucca. Pucca_ literally means 'ripe,' as opposed to _cutcha_, 'unripe';
+but the rich Oriental tongue has adapted it to almost every kind of
+secondary meaning. Thus a man who is true, upright, respected, a man
+to be depended on, is called a _pucca_ man. It is a word in constant
+use among Anglo-Indians. A _pucca_ road is one which is bridged and
+metalled. If you make an engagement with a friend, and he wants to
+impress you with its importance, he will ask you, Now is that _pucca_?'
+and so on.
+
+Other houses in the village are composed of unburnt bricks cemented
+with mud, or maybe composed of mud walls and thatched roof; these,
+being a compound sort of erection, are called _cutcha pucca_. In the
+_cutcha_ houses live the poorer castes, the _Chumars_ or workers in
+leathers, the _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, or _Gwallahs_.
+
+The _Dornes_, or scavengers, feeders on offal, have to live apart in a
+_tolah_, which might be called a small suburb, by themselves. The
+_Dornes_ drag from the village any animal that happens to die. They
+generally pursue the handicraft of basket making, or mat making, and
+the _Dorne tolah_ can always be known by the pigs and fowls prowling
+about in search of food, and the _Dorne_ and his family splitting up
+bamboo, and weaving mats and baskets at the doors of their miserable
+habitation. To the higher castes both pigs arid fowls are unclean and
+an abomination. _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, and other poor castes, such as
+_Dangurs_, keep however an army of gaunt, lean, hungry-looking pigs.
+These may be seen rooting and wallowing in the marshes when the rice
+has been cut, or foraging among the mango groves, to pick up any stray
+unripe fruit that may have escaped the keen eyes of the hungry and
+swarming children.
+
+There is yet another small _tolah_ or suburb, called the _Kusbee
+tolah_. Here live the miserable outcasts who minister to the worst
+passions of our nature. These degraded beings are banished from the
+more respectable portions of the community; but here, as in our own
+highly civilised and favoured land, vice hovers by the side of virtue,
+and the Hindoo village contains the same elements of happiness and
+misery, profligacy and probity, purity and degradation, as the fine
+home cities that are a name in the mouths of men.
+
+Every village forms a perfect little commonwealth; it contains all the
+elements of self-existence; it is quite a little commune, so far as
+social life is concerned. There is a hereditary blacksmith, washerman,
+potter, barber, and writer. The _dhobee_, or washerman, can always be
+known by the propinquity of his donkeys, diminutive animals which he
+uses to transport his bundle of unsavoury dirty clothes to the pool or
+tank where the linen is washed. On great country roads you may often
+see strings of donkeys laden with bags of grain, which they transport
+from far-away villages to the big bazaars; but if you see a laden
+donkey near a village, be sure the _dhobee_ is not far off.
+
+Here as elsewhere the _hajam_, or barber, is a great gossip, and
+generally a favourite. He uses no soap, and has a most uncouth-looking
+razor, yet he shaves the heads, beards, moustaches, and armpits of his
+customers with great deftness. The lower classes of natives shave the
+hair of the head and of the armpits for the sake of cleanliness and for
+other obvious reasons. The higher classes are very regular in their
+ablutions; every morning, be the water cold or warm, the Rajpoot and
+Brahmin, the respectable middle classes, and all in the village who lay
+any claim to social position, have their _goosal_ or bath. Some hie to
+the nearest tank or stream; at all hours of the day, at any ferry or
+landing stage, you will see swarthy fine-looking fellows up to mid
+waist in the water, scrubbing vigorously their bronzed arms, and neck
+and chest. They clean their teeth with the end of a stick, which they
+chew at one extremity, till they loosen the fibres, and with this
+improvised toothbrush and some wood ashes for paste, they make them
+look as white and clean as ivory.
+
+There is generally a large masonry well in the middle of the village,
+with a broad smooth _pucca_ platform all round it. It has been built by
+some former father of the hamlet, to perpetuate his memory, to fulfil a
+vow to the gods, perhaps simply from goodwill to his fellow townsmen.
+At all events there is generally one such in every village. It is
+generally shadowed by a huge _bhur, peepul_, or tamarind tree. Here may
+always be seen the busiest sight in the village. Pretty young women
+chatter, laugh, and talk, and assume all sorts of picturesque attitudes
+as they fill their waterpots; the village matrons gossip, and sometimes
+quarrel, as they pull away at the windlass over the deep cool well. On
+the platform are a group of fat Brahmins nearly nude, their lighter
+skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower classes. There
+are several groups. With damp drapery clinging to their glistening
+skins, they pour brass pots of cold water over their dripping bodies;
+they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again as the cool element pours
+over head and shoulders. They sit down while some young attendant or
+relation vigorously rubs them down the back; while sitting they clean
+their feet. Thus, amid much laughing and talking, and quaint gestures,
+and not a little expectoration, they perform their ablutions. Not
+unfrequently the more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil,
+which at all events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it
+does, though it is not fragrant. Round the well you get all the village
+news and scandal. It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings,
+and only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village
+into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the hand-mill,
+or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy damsel or
+matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool shadow of her
+hut, for the wants of her lord and master.
+
+Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by government,
+and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars subscribe liberally
+for a schoolmaster in their villages. Near the principal street then,
+in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old mango-tree, we come on the
+village school. The little fellows have all discarded their upper
+clothes on account of the heat, and with much noise, swaying the body
+backwards and forwards, and monotonously intoning, they grind away at
+the mill of learning, and try to get a knowledge of books. Other dusky
+urchins figure away with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces
+of wood to serve as copy-books. The din increases as the stranger
+passes: going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause
+a momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school. The little
+Hindoo scholar probably wishes to impress you with a sense of his
+assiduity. He raises his voice, sways the body more briskly, keeps his
+one eye firmly fixed on his task, while with the other he throws a keen
+swift glance over you, which embraces every detail of your costume, and
+not improbably includes a shrewd estimate of your disposition and
+character.
+
+Hindoo children never seem to me to be boys or girls; they are
+preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing
+together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most
+portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning candour and
+guileless innocence, when they are all the while plotting some petty
+scheme against you. They are certainly far more precocious than English
+children; they realise the hard struggle for life far more quickly. The
+poorer classes can hardly be said to have any childhood; as soon as
+they can toddle they are sent to weed, cut grass, gather fuel, tend
+herds, or do anything that will bring them in a small pittance, and
+ease the burden of the struggling parents. I think the children of the
+higher and middle classes very pretty; they have beautiful, dark,
+thoughtful eyes, and a most intelligent expression. Very young babies
+however are miserably nursed; their hair is allowed to get all tangled
+and matted into unsightly knots; their faces are seldom washed, and
+their eyes are painted with antimony about the lids, and are often
+rheumy and running with water. The use of the pocket handkerchief is
+sadly neglected.
+
+There is generally one open space or long street in our village, and in
+a hamlet of any importance there is weekly or bi-weekly a bazaar or
+market. From early morning in all directions, from solitary huts in
+the forest, from struggling little crofts in the rice lands, from
+fishermen's dwellings perched on the bank of the river, from lonely
+camps in the grass jungle where the herd and his family live with their
+cattle, from all the petty Thorpes about, come the women with their
+baskets of vegetables, their bundles of spun yarn, their piece of woven
+cloth, whatever they have to sell or barter. There is a lad with a pair
+of wooden shoes, which he has fashioned as he was tending the village
+cows; another with a grass mat, or bamboo staff, or some other strange
+outlandish-looking article, which he hopes to barter in the bazaar for
+something on which his heart is set. The _bunniahs_ hurry up their
+tottering, overladen ponies; the rice merchant twists his patient
+bullock's tail to make it move faster; the cloth merchant with his bale
+under his arm and measuring stick in hand, walks briskly along. Here
+comes a gang of charcoal-burners, with their loads of fuel slung on
+poles dangling from their shoulders. A _box wallah_ with his attendant
+coolie, staggering under the weight of a huge box of Manchester goods,
+hurries by. It is a busy sight in the bazaar. What a cackling! What a
+confused clatter of voices! Here also the women are the chief
+contributors to the din of tongues. There is no irate husband here or
+moody master to tell them to be still. Spread out on the ground are
+heaps of different grain, bags of flour, baskets of meal, pulse, or
+barley; sweetmeats occupy the attention of nearly all the buyers. All
+Hindoos indulge in sweets, which take the place of beer with us;
+instead of a 'nobbler,' they offer you a 'lollipop.' Trinkets, beads,
+bracelets, armlets, and anklets of pewter, there are in great bunches;
+fruits, vegetables, sticks of cane, skins full of oil, and sugar, and
+treacle. Stands with fresh 'paun' leaves, and piles of coarse looking
+masses of tobacco are largely patronised. It is like a hive of bees.
+The dust hovers over the moving mass; the smells are various, none of
+them 'blest odours of sweet Araby.' Drugs, condiments, spices, shoes,
+in fact, everything that a rustic population can require, is here. The
+_pice_ jingle as they change hands; the haggling and chaffering are
+without parallel in any market at home. Here is a man apparently in the
+last madness of intense passion, in fierce altercation with another,
+who tries his utmost to outbluster his furious declamation. In a moment
+they are smiling and to all appearance the best friends in the world.
+The bargain has been concluded; it was all about whether the one could
+give three _brinjals_ or four for one pice. It is a scene of
+indescribable bustle, noise, and confusion. By evening however, all
+will have been packed up again, and only the faint outlines of yet
+floating clouds of dust, and the hopping, cheeky crows, picking up the
+scattered litter and remnants of the market, will remain to tell that
+it has been bazaar day in our village.
+
+Generally, about the centre of it, there is a more pretentious
+structure, with verandahs supported on wooden pillars. High walls
+surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little
+doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs
+leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside verandahs.
+Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or walk slowly to and
+from the yard with seemingly purposeless indecision. In the outer
+verandah is an old _palkee_, with evidences in the tarnished gilding
+and frayed and tattered hangings, that it once had some pretensions to
+fashionable elegance.
+
+The walls of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and numerous
+young _peepul_ trees grow in the crevices, their insidious roots
+creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and expediting the work
+of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is the residence of the
+Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner of the lands adjoining.
+Probably he is descended from some noble house of ancient lineage. His
+forefathers, possibly, led armed retainers against some rival in yonder
+far off village, where the dim outlines of a mud fort yet tell of the
+insecurity of the days of old. Now he is old, and fat, and lazy.
+Possibly he has been too often to the money-lender. His lands are
+mortgaged to their full value. Though they respect and look up to their
+old Zemindar, the villagers are getting independent; they are not so
+humble, and pay less and less of feudal tribute than in the old days,
+when the golden palanquin was new, when the elephant had splendid
+housings, when mace, and javelin, and matchlock-men followed in his
+train. Alas! the elephant was sold long ago, and is now the property of
+a wealthy _Bunniah_ who has amassed money in the buying and selling of
+grain and oil. The Zemindar may be a man of progress and intelligence,
+but many are of this broken down and helpless type.
+
+Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant,
+conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages through
+a small staff of _peons_, or un-official police. The accounts are kept
+by another important village functionary--the _putwarrie_, or village
+accountant. _Putwarries_ belong to the writer or _Kayasth_ caste. They
+are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous as any
+class in India. They manage the most complicated accounts between ryot
+and landlord with great skill. Their memories are wonderful, but they
+can always forget conveniently. Where ryots are numerous, the
+landlord's wants pressing, and frequent calls made on the tenantry for
+payment, often made in various kinds of grain and produce, the rates
+and prices of which are constantly changing, it is easy to imagine the
+complications and intricacies of a _putwarrie's_ account. Each ryot
+pretty accurately remembers his own particular indebtedness, but woe to
+him if he pays the _putwarrie_ the value of a 'red cent' without taking
+a receipt. Certainly there may be a really honest _putwarrie_, but I
+very much doubt it. The name stands for chicanery and robbery. On
+the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up for money,
+questioning his accounts, and putting him not unfrequently to actual
+bodily coercion. The ryot on the other hand is constantly inventing
+excuses, getting up delays, and propounding innumerable reasons why
+he cannot pay. He will try to forge receipts, he will get up false
+evidence that he has already paid, and the wretched _putwarrie_ needs
+all his native and acquired sharpness, to hold his own. But all ryots
+are not alike, and when the _putwarrie_ gets hold of some unwary and
+ignorant bumpkin whom he can plunder, he _does_ plunder him
+systematically. All cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle
+lifters, and a _putwarrie_ after he has got over the stage of infancy,
+and has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can
+teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of villains. A
+popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:--
+
+  'Unda poortee, Cowa maro!
+  Iinnum me, billar:
+  Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!!
+  Humesha mara gwar!!'
+
+This is translated thus: 'When the shell is breaking kill the crow, and
+the wild cat at its birth.' A _Kayasth_, writer, or _putwarrie_, may be
+allowed to live till he is twelve years old, at which time he is sure
+to have learned rascality. Then kill him; but kill _gwars_ or cowherds
+any time, for they are invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim
+bucolic humour in this, and it very nearly hits the truth.
+
+The _putwarrie_, then, is an important personage. He has his
+_cutcherry_, or office, where he and his tribe (for there are always
+numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his books and accounts)
+squat on their mat on the ground. Each possesses the instruments of his
+calling in the shape of a small brass ink-pot, and an oblong box
+containing a knife, pencil, and several reeds for pens. Each has a
+bundle of papers and documents before him, this is called his _busta_,
+and contains all the papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce
+squabbles with the tenantry. There is always some noise about a
+putwarrie's cutcherry. He has generally some half dozen quarrels on
+hand, but he trusts to his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is
+essentially a man of peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a
+keen argument, and an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain.
+Another proverb says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming
+a soldier as a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.
+
+The _lohar_, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at home. Here
+is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks from the heated
+iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little to remind one of
+Longfellow's beautiful poem. The _lohar_ sits in the open air. His
+hammers and other implements of trade are very primitive. Like all
+native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work. His bellows are made of
+two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted alternately by the attendant
+coolie. As they lift they get inflated with air; they are then sharply
+forced down on their own folds, and the contained air ejected forcibly
+through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing
+charcoal which forms the fire. His principal work is making and
+sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat
+blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the
+_hussowahs_, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They
+are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in
+metal. They are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and
+even gun-locks, made by a common native village blacksmith, that could
+not be surpassed in delicacy of finish by any English smith. It is
+foreign to our ideas of the brawny blacksmith, to hear that he sits to
+his work, but this is the invariable custom. Even carpenters and masons
+squat down to theirs. Cheap labour is but an arbitrary term, and a
+country smith at home might do the work of ten or twelve men in India;
+but it is just as well to get an idea of existing differences. On many
+of the factories there are very intelligent _mistrees_, which is the
+term for the master blacksmith. These men, getting but twenty-four to
+thirty shillings a month, and supplying themselves with food and
+clothing, are nevertheless competent to work all the machinery, attend
+to the engine, and do all the ironwork necessary for the factory. They
+will superintend the staff of blacksmiths; and if the sewing-machine of
+the _mem sahib_, the gun-lock of the _luna sahib_, the lawn-mower,
+English pump, or other machine gets out of order, requiring any metal
+work, the _mistree_ is called in, and is generally competent to put
+things to rights.
+
+[Illustration: CARPENTERS AND BLACKSMITHS AT WORK]
+
+As I have said, every village is a self-contained little commune. All
+trades necessary to supplying the wants of the villagers are
+represented in it. Besides the profits from his actual calling, nearly
+every man except the daily labourer, has a little bit of land which he
+farms, so as to eke out his scanty income. All possess a cow or two, a
+few goats, and probably a pair of plough-bullocks.
+
+When a dispute arises in the village, should a person be suspected of
+theft, should his cattle trespass on his neighbour's growing crop,
+should he libel some one against whom he has a grudge, or, proceeding
+to stronger measures, take the law into his own hands and assault
+him, the aggrieved party complains to the head man of the village.
+In every village the head man is the fountain of justice. He holds
+his office sometimes by right of superior wealth, or intelligence,
+or hereditary succession, not unfrequently by the unanimous wish of
+his fellow-villagers. On a complaint being made to him, he summons
+both parties and their witnesses. The complainant is then allowed to
+nominate two men, to act as assessors or jurymen on his behalf, his
+nominations being liable to challenge by the opposite party. The
+defendant next names two to act on his behalf, and if these are
+agreed to by both parties, these four, with the head man, form what
+is called a _punchayiet_, or council of five, in fact, a jury. They
+examine the witnesses, and each party to the suit conducts his own
+case. The whole village not unfrequently attends to hear what goes on.
+In a mere caste or private quarrel, only the friends of the parties
+will attend. Every case is tried in public, and all the inhabitants of
+the village can hear the proceedings if they wish. Respectable
+inhabitants can remark on the proceedings, make suggestions, and give
+an opinion. Public feeling is thus pretty accurately gauged and
+tested, and the _punchayiet_ agree among themselves on the verdict. To
+the honour of their character for fair play be it said, that the
+decision of a _punchayiet_ is generally correct, and is very seldom
+appealed against. Our complicated system of law, with its delays, its
+technicalities, its uncertainties, and above all its expense, its
+stamp duties, its court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the
+innumerable vexations attendant on the administration of justice in
+our revenue and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of
+Hindostan. They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give
+them justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are
+far too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and
+complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the gate'
+is what they want. It is quite enough admission of the reality of our
+rule--that we are the paramount power--that they submit a case to us
+at all; and all impediments in the way of their getting cheap and
+speedy justice should be done away with. A codification of existing
+laws, a sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at
+present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less
+legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to efficiency
+and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be the aim of our
+Indian rulers. More especially should this be the case in rural
+districts where large interests are concerned, where cases involve
+delicate points of law. Our present courts, divested of their hungry
+crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough; but I would like
+to see rural courts for petty cases established, presided over by
+leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of probity, which would
+in a measure supplement the _punchayiet_ system, which would be easy
+of access, cheap in their procedure, and with all the impress of
+authority. It is a question I merely glance at, as it does not come
+within the scope of a book like this; but it is well known to every
+planter and European who has come much in contact with the rural
+classes of Hindostan, that there is a vast amount of smouldering
+disaffection, of deep-rooted dislike to, and contempt of, our present
+cumbrous costly machinery of law and justice.
+
+If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a
+plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready
+with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a _vakeel_,
+that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or
+round the factory to get some little business done, to neglect his
+work, to get his rent or produce account investigated, wherever there
+is worry, trouble, delay, or difficulty about anything concerning the
+relations between himself and the factory, the deepest and keenest
+expression of discontent and disgust his versatile and acute
+imagination can suggest, or his fluent tongue give utterance to is,
+that this is 'Adanlut lea mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.'
+Could there be a stronger commentary on our judicial institutions?
+
+The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages.
+Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing; communications are
+much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of
+besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering
+tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no
+difficulty in establishing in such village or district courts as I
+have indicated. All educated respectable Europeans with a stake in the
+country should be made Justices of the Peace, with limited powers to
+try petty cases. There is a vast material--loyalty, educated minds, an
+honest desire to do justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of
+everything pettifogging and underhand--that the Indian Government
+would do well to utilise. The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit
+him of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal
+facility to fall under pecuniary temptation. The educated gentleman
+planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering
+titles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the bench,
+and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our rulers'
+while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience, loyalty, honour,
+and integrity of those of our countrymen who might be willing to place
+their services at the disposal of Government. 'India for the Indians'
+is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it will not do to push it to
+its logical issue. Unless Indians can govern India wisely and well, in
+accordance with modern national ideas, they have no more right to
+India than Hottentots have to the Cape, or the black fellows to
+Australia. In my opinion, Hindoos would never govern Hindustan half,
+quarter, nay, one tithe as well as Englishmen. Make more of your
+Englishmen in India then, make not less of your Baboo if you please,
+but make more of your Englishmen. Keep them loyal and content. Treat
+them kindly and liberally. One Englishman contented, loyal, and
+industrious in an Indian district, is a greater pillar of strength to
+the Indian Government than ten dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them
+have as many titles, decorations, university degrees, or certificates
+of loyalty from junior civilians as they may. Not India for the
+Indians, but India for Imperial Britain say I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The
+temple.--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.
+--Their low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions
+and knavery.--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native
+officials.--The Hindoo unfit for self-government.
+
+One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the watchman or
+_chowkeydar_. He is generally a _Doosadh_, or other low caste man, and
+perambulates the village at night, at intervals uttering a loud cry or
+a fierce howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the _chowkeydars_
+of the neighbouring villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after
+cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into
+faintness. At times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out
+close to your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do
+not feel it to be so. The _chowkeydar_ has to see that no thieves
+enter the village by night. He protects the herds and property of the
+villagers. If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report it to
+the nearest police station. If you lose your way by night, you shout
+out for the nearest _chowkeydar_, and he is bound to pass you on to
+the next village. These men get a small gratuity from government, but
+the villagers also pay them a small sum, which they assess according
+to individual means. The _chowkeydar_ is generally a ragged, swarthy
+fellow with long matted hair, a huge iron-bound staff, and always a
+blue _puggra_. The blue is his official badge. Sometimes he has a
+brass badge, and carries a sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle
+of which is so small that scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found
+to fit it. It is more for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it
+has become so fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.
+
+[Illustration: HINDOO VILLAGE TEMPLES.]
+
+In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the village
+itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is often
+perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village tank.
+Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the sacred
+fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several oleaginous
+old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear only the
+_dhote_ or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton, and hanging about
+the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can be told by his
+sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder. His skin is much
+fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers. It is not
+unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as fair as many
+Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds, but lazy and
+self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is simply a sensual
+voluptuary. This is not the time or place to descant on their
+religion, which, with many gross practices, contains not a little that
+is pure and beautiful. The common idea at home that they are miserable
+pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and stones,' is, like many of the
+accepted ideas about India, very much exaggerated. That the masses,
+the crude uneducated Hindoos, place some faith in the idol, and expect
+in some mysterious way that it will influence their fate for good or
+evil, is not to be denied, but the more intelligent natives, and most
+of the Brahmins, only look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of
+the divinity. They want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to
+God, and the idol is a means to assist their thoughts heavenward. As
+works of art their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other
+symbols of the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same
+purpose. Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has
+perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the gods by erecting a
+temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shrine, which
+they visit at intervals and daub with red paint. They deposit flowers,
+pour libations of water or milk, and in other ways strive to shew that
+a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as I have
+observed, however, the vast mass of the poor toilers in India have
+little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing. They may have
+some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a holier life, but the
+fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and shelter, is too
+incessant for them to indulge much in contemplation. They have a dim
+idea of a future life, but none of them can give you anything but a
+very unsatisfactory idea of their religion. They observe certain forms
+and ceremonies, because their fathers did, and because the Brahmins
+tell them. Of real, vital, practical religion, as we know it, they
+have little or no knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low
+castes about immortality, about salvation, about the higher virtues,
+about the yearnings and wishes that every immortal soul at periods
+has, and he will simply tell you 'Khoda jane, hum greel admi,' i.e.
+'God knows; I am only a poor man!' There they take refuge always when
+you ask them anything puzzling. If you are rating them for a fault,
+asking them to perform a complicated task, or inquiring your way in a
+strange neighbourhood, the first answer you get will, ten to one, be
+'Hum greel admi.' It is said almost instinctively, and no doubt in
+many cases is the refuge of simple disinclination to think the matter
+out. Pure laziness suggests it. It is too much trouble to frame an
+answer, or give the desired information, and the 'greel admi' comes
+naturally to the lip. It is often deprecatory, meaning 'I am ignorant
+and uninformed,' you must not expect too 'much from a poor, rude,
+uncultivated man like me.' It is often, also, a delicate mode of
+flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and often conveying in a
+tone, a look, a gesture, that though the speaker is 'greel,' poor,
+humble, despised, it is only by contrast to you, the questioner, who
+are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For downright fawning
+obsequiousness, or delicate, implied, fine-strung, subtle flattery, I
+will back a Hindoo sycophant against the courtier or place-hunter of
+every other nation. It is very annoying at times, if you are in a
+hurry, and particularly want a direct answer to a plain question, to
+hear the old old story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it
+but patience. You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer
+classes are easily flurried; they will always give what information
+they have if kindly spoken to, but you must not fluster them. You must
+rouse their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of
+your inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your
+object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your motive,
+inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer that they
+think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are weary and tired,
+and you ask your distance from the place you may be wishing to reach,
+they will ridiculously underestimate the length of road. A man may
+have all the cardinal virtues, but if they think you do not like him,
+and you ask his character, they will paint him to you blacker than
+Satan himself. It is very hard to get the plain, unvarnished truth
+from a Hindoo. Many, indeed, are almost incapable of giving an
+intelligent answer to any question that does not nearly concern their
+own private and purely personal interests. They have a sordid,
+grubbing, vegetating life, many of them indeed are but little above
+the brute creation. They have no idea beyond the supply of the mere
+animal wants of the moment. The future never troubles them. They live
+their hard, unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no
+surprises. They have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and
+life is one long continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence.
+What wonder then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the
+mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to suffer,
+to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is _Kismet_--their
+fate. Many of them never strive to avert any impending calamity, such,
+for example, as sickness. A man sickens, he wraps himself in stolid
+apathy, he makes no effort to shake of his malady, he accepts it with
+sullen, despairing, pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends
+mourn in their dumb, despairing way, but they too accept the
+situation. He has no one to rouse him. If you ask him what is the
+matter, he only wails out, 'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am
+unwell. No attempt whatever to tell you of the origin of his illness,
+no wish even for sympathy or assistance. He accepts the fact of his
+illness. He struggles not with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight
+against it? Amen; so let it be. I have often been saddened to see poor
+toiling tenants struck down in this way. Even if you give them
+medicine, they often have not energy enough to take it. You must see
+them take it before your eyes. It is _your_ struggle not theirs. _You_
+must rouse them, by _your_ will. _Your_ energy must compel _them_ to
+make an attempt to combat their weakness. Once you rouse a man, and
+infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his disease, but it is a
+hard fight to get him to TRY. What a meaning in that one word TRY! TO
+ACT. TO DO. The average poor suffering native Hindoo knows nothing of
+it.
+
+Of course their moods vary. They have their 'high days and holidays,'
+feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the whole the average
+ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.
+
+In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or jungle
+lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture. The cow
+being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and butter.
+The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings of
+emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the evening
+wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust, having had
+but 'short commons' all the day on the parched and scanty herbage.
+
+The police are too often a source of annoyance, and become
+extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor. It seems
+to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority. I do not
+scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court peons,
+writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts, about the
+courts of justice, in the service of government officers, or in any
+way attached to the retinue of a government official, one and all are
+undeniably shamelessly venal and corrupt. They accept a bribe much
+more quickly than an attorney a fee, or a hungry dog a shin of beef.
+If a policeman only enters a village he expects a feast from the head
+man, and will ask a present with unblushing effrontery as a perquisite
+of his office. If a theft is reported, the inspector of the nearest
+police-station, or _thanna_ as it is called, sends one of his
+myrmidons, or, if the chance of bribes be good, he may attend himself.
+On arrival, ambling on his broken-kneed, wall-eyed pony, he seats
+himself in the verandah of the chief man of the village, who
+forthwith, with much inward trepidation, makes his appearance. The
+policeman assumes the air of a haughty conqueror receiving homage from
+a conquered foe. He assures the trembling wretch that, 'acting on
+information received,' he must search his dwelling for the missing
+goods, and that his women's apartments will have to be ransacked, and
+so annoys, goads, and insults the unfortunate man, that he is too glad
+to purchase immunity from further insolence by making the policeman a
+small present, perhaps a 'kid of the goats,' or something else. The
+guardian of the peace is then regaled with the best food in the house,
+after which he is 'wreathed with smiles.' If he sees a chance of a
+farther bribe, he takes his departure saying he will make his report
+to the _thanna_. He repeats his procedure with some of the other
+respectable inhabitants, and goes back a good deal richer than he
+came, to share the spoil with the _thannadar_ or inspector.
+
+Another man may then be sent, and the same course is followed, until
+all the force in the station have had their share. The ryot is afraid
+to resist. The police have tremendous powers for annoying and doing
+him harm. A crowd of subservient scoundrels always hangs round the
+station, dependents, relations, or accomplices. These harry the poor
+man who is unwise enough to resist the extortionate demands of the
+police. They take his cattle to the pound, foment strife between him
+and his neighbours, get up frivolous and false charges against him,
+harass him in a thousand ways, and if all else fails, get him summoned
+as a witness in some case. You might think a witness a person to be
+treated with respect, to be attended to, to have every facility
+offered him for giving his evidence at the least cost of time and
+trouble possible, consistent with the demands of justice, and the
+vindication of law and authority.
+
+Not so in India with the witness in a police case, when the force
+dislike him. If he has not previously satisfied their leech-like
+rapacity, he is tormented, tortured, bullied, and kicked 'from pillar
+to post,' till his life becomes a burden to him. He has to leave all
+his avocations, perhaps at the time when his affairs require his
+constant supervision. He has to trudge many a weary mile to attend the
+Court. The police get hold of him, and keep him often in real durance.
+He gets no opportunity for cooking or eating his food. His daily
+habits are upset and interfered with. In every little vexatious way
+(and they are masters of the art of petty torture) they so worry and
+goad him, that the very threat of being summoned as a witness in a
+police case, is often enough to make the horrified well-to-do native
+give a handsome gratuity to be allowed to sit quietly at home.
+
+This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the police.
+They exercise a real despotism. They have set up a reign of terror.
+The nature of the ryot is such, that he will submit to a great deal to
+avoid having to leave his home and his work. The police take full
+advantage of this feeling, and being perfectly unscrupulous,
+insatiably rapacious, and leagued together in villany, they make a
+golden harvest out of every case put into their hands. They have made
+the name of justice stink in the nostrils of the respectable and
+well-to-do middle classes of India.
+
+The District Superintendents are men of energy and probity, but after
+all they are only mortal. What with accounts, inspections, reports,
+forms, and innumerable writings, they cannot exercise a constant
+vigilance and personal supervision over every part of their district.
+A district may comprise many hundred villages, thousands of
+inhabitants, and leagues of intricate and densely peopled country. The
+mere physical exertion of riding over his district would be too much
+for any man in about a week. The subordinate police are all interested
+in keeping up the present system of extortion, and the inspectors and
+sub-inspectors, who wink at malpractices, come in for their share of
+the spoil. There is little combination among the peasantry. Each
+selfishly tries to save his own skin, and they know that if any one
+individual were to complain, or to dare to resist, he would have to
+bear the brunt of the battle alone. None of his neighbours would stir
+a finger to back him; he is too timid and too much in awe of the
+official European, and constitutionally too averse to resistance, to
+do aught but suffer in silence. No doubt he feels his wrongs most
+keenly, and a sullen feeling of hate and wrong is being garnered up,
+which may produce results disastrous for the peace and wellbeing of
+our empire in the East.
+
+As a case in point, I may mention one instance out of many which came
+under my own observation. I had a _moonshee_, or accountant, in one of
+my outworks in Purneah. Formerly, when the police had come through the
+factory, he had been in the habit of giving them a present and some
+food. Under my strict orders, however, that no policemen were to be
+allowed near the place unless they came on business, he had
+discontinued paying his black mail. This was too glaring an
+infringement of what they considered their vested rights to be passed
+over in silence. Example might spread. My man must be made an example
+of. I had a case in the Court of the Deputy Magistrate some twenty
+miles or so from the factory. The moonshee had been named as a witness
+to prove the writing of some papers filed in the suit. They got a
+citation for him to appear, a mere summons for his attendance as a
+witness. Armed with this, they appeared at the factory two or three
+days before the date fixed on for hearing the cause. I had just ridden
+in from Purneah, tired, hot, and dusty, and was sitting in the shade
+of the verandah with young D., my assistant. One policeman first came
+up, presented the summons, which I took, and he then stated that it
+was a _warrant_ for the production of my moonshee, and that he must
+take him away at once. I told the man it was merely a summons,
+requiring the attendance of the moonshee on a certain date, to give
+evidence in the case. He was very insolent in his manner. It is
+customary when a Hindoo of inferior rank appears before you, that he
+removes his shoes, and stands before you in a respectful attitude.
+This man's headdress was all disarranged, which in itself is a sign of
+disrespect. He spoke loudly and insolently; kept his shoes on; and sat
+down squatting on the grass before me. My assistant was very
+indignant, and wanted to speak to the man; but rightly judging that
+the object was to enrage me, and trap me into committing some overt
+act, that would be afterwards construed against me, I kept my temper,
+spoke very firmly but temperately, told him my moonshee was doing some
+work of great importance, that I could not spare his services then,
+but that I would myself see that the summons was attended to. The
+policeman became more boisterous and insolent. I offered to give him a
+letter to the magistrate, acknowledging the receipt of the summons,
+and I asked him his own name, which he refused to give. I asked him if
+he could read, and he said he could not. I then asked him if he could
+not read, how could he know what was in the paper which he had
+brought, and how he knew my moonshee was the party meant. He said a
+chowkeydar had told him so. I asked where was the chowkeydar, and
+seeing from my coolness and determination that the game was up, he
+shouted out, and from round the corner of the huts came another
+policeman, and two village chowkeydars from a distance. They had
+evidently been hiding, observing all that passed, and meaning to act
+as witnesses against me, if I had been led by the first scoundrel's
+behaviour to lose my temper. The second man was not such a brute as
+the first, and when I proceeded to ask their names and all about them,
+and told them I meant to report them to their superintendent, they
+became somewhat frightened, and tried to make excuses.
+
+I told them to be off the premises at once, offering to take the
+summons, and give a receipt for it, but they now saw that they had
+made a mistake in trying to bully me, and made off at once. Mark the
+sequel. The day before the case was fixed on for hearing, I sent off
+the moonshee who was a witness of my own, and his evidence was
+necessary to my proving my case. I supplied him with travelling
+expenses, and he started. On his way to the Court he had to pass the
+_thanna_, or police-station. The police were on the watch. He was
+seized as he passed. He was confined all that night and all the
+following day. For want of his evidence I lost my case, and having
+thus achieved one part of their object to pay me off, they let my
+moonshee go, after insult and abuse, and with threats of future
+vengeance should he ever dare to thwart or oppose them. This was
+pretty 'hot' you think, but it was not all. Fearing my complaint to
+the superintendent, or to the authorities, might get them into
+trouble, they laid a false charge against me, that I had obstructed
+them in the discharge of their duty, that I had showered abuse on
+them, used threatening language, and insulted the majesty of the law
+by tearing up and spitting upon the respected summons of Her Majesty.
+On this complaint I was accordingly summoned into Purneah. The charge
+was a tissue of the most barefaced lies, but I had to ride fifty-four
+miles in the burning sun, ford several rivers, and undergo much
+fatigue and discomfort. My work was of course seriously interfered
+with. I had to take in my assistant as witness, and one or two of the
+servants who had been present. I was put to immense trouble, and no
+little expense, to say nothing of the indignation which I naturally
+felt, and all because I had set my face against a well known evil, and
+was determined not to submit to impudent extortion. Of course the case
+broke down. They contradicted themselves in almost every particular.
+The second constable indeed admitted that I had offered them a letter
+to the magistrate, and had not moved out of the verandah during the
+colloquy. I was honourably acquitted, and had the satisfaction of
+seeing the lying rascals put into the dock by the indignant magistrate
+and prosecuted summarily for getting up a false charge and giving
+false evidence. It was a lesson to the police in those parts, and they
+did not dare to trouble me much afterwards; but it is only one
+instance out of hundreds I could give, and which every planter has
+witnessed of the barefaced audacity, the shameless extortion, the
+unblushing lawlessness of the rural police of India.
+
+It is a gigantic evil, but surely not irremediable. By adding more
+European officers to the force; by educating the people and making
+them more intelligent, independent, and self-reliant, much may be done
+to abate the evil, but at present it is admittedly a foul ulcer on the
+administration of justice under our rule. The menial who serves a
+summons, gets a decree of Court to execute, or is entrusted with any
+order of an official nature, expects to be bribed to do his duty. If
+he does not get his fee, he will throw such impediments in the way,
+raise such obstacles, and fashion such delays, that he completely
+foils every effort to procure justice through a legal channel. No
+wonder a native hates our English Courts. Our English officials, let
+it be plainly understood, are above suspicion. It needs not my poor
+testimony to uphold their character for high honour, loyal integrity,
+and zealous eagerness to do 'justly, and to walk uprightly.' They are
+unwearied in their efforts to get at truth, and govern wisely; but our
+system of law is totally unsuited for Orientals. It is made a medium
+for chicanery and trickery of the most atrocious form. Most of the
+native underlings are utterly venal and corrupt. Increased pay does
+not mean decrease of knavery. Cheating, and lying, and taking bribes,
+and abuse of authority are ingrained into their very souls; and all
+the cut and dry formulas of namby pamby philanthropists, the inane
+maunderings of stay-at-home sentimentalists, the wise saws of
+self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo as he
+really shews himself to us in daily and hourly contact with him, will
+ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule, would be
+productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless venality, or
+would end in anything but anarchy and chaos.
+
+It sounds very well in print, and increases the circulation of a paper
+or two among the Baboos, to cry out that our task is to elevate the
+oppressed and ignorant millions of the East, to educate them into
+self-government, to make them judges, officers, lawgivers, governors
+over all the land. To vacate our place and power, and let the Baboo
+and the Bunneah, to whom we have given the glories of Western
+civilization, rule in our place, and guide the fortunes of these
+toiling millions who owe protection and peace to our fostering rule.
+It is a noble sentiment to resign wealth, honour, glory, and power; to
+give up a settled government; to alter a policy that has welded the
+conflicting elements of Hindustan into one stable whole; to throw up
+our title of conqueror, and disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A
+sprinkling of thinly-veneered, half-educated natives, want a share of
+the loaves and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people
+of the 'man and brother' type, cry out at home to let them have their
+way.
+
+No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life and
+property; develop the resources of the country; foster all the virtues
+you can find in the native mind; but till you can give him the energy,
+the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly, honourable
+straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of meanness,
+trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do right; his
+contempt for oppression of the weak; his self-dependence; his probity.
+But why go on? When you make Hindoos honest, truthful, God-fearing
+Englishmen, you can let them govern themselves; but as soon 'may the
+leopard change his spots,' as the Hindoo his character. He is wholly
+unfit for self-government; utterly opposed to honest, truthful, stable
+government at all. Time brings strange changes, but the wisdom which
+has governed the country hitherto, will surely be able to meet the new
+demand that may be made upon it in the immediate present, or in the
+far distant future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Jungle wild fruits.--Curious method of catching quail.--Quail nets.
+--Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.--Native wrestling.--The
+trainer.--How they train for a match.--Rules of wrestling.--Grips.
+--A wrestling match.--Incidents of the struggle.--Description of a
+match between a Brahmin and a blacksmith.--Sparring for the grip.--The
+blacksmith has it.--The struggle.--The Brahmin getting the worst of
+it.--Two to one on the little 'un!--The Brahmin plays the waiting
+game, turns the tables _and_ the blacksmith.--Remarks on wrestling.
+
+A peculiarity in the sombre sal jungles is the scarcity of wild fruit.
+At home the woods are filled with berries and fruit-bearing bushes.
+Who among my readers has not a lively recollection of bramble hunting,
+nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries, wild strawberries,
+raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might walk many a mile through
+the sal jungles without meeting fruit of any kind, save the dry and
+tasteless wild fig, or the sickly mhowa.
+
+There are indeed very few jungle fruits that I have ever come across.
+There is one acid sort of plum called the _Omra_, which makes a good
+preserve, but is not very nice to eat raw. The _Gorkah_ is a small red
+berry, very sweet and pleasant, slightly acid, not unlike a red
+currant in fact, and with two small pips or stones. The Nepaulese call
+it _Bunchooree_. It grows on a small stunted-looking bush, with few
+branches, and a pointed leaf, in form resembling the acacia leaf, but
+not so large.
+
+The _Glaphur_ is a brown, round fruit; the skin rather crisp and hard,
+and of a dull earthy colour, not unlike that of a common boiled
+potato. The inside is a stringy, spongy-looking mass, with small seeds
+embedded in a gummy viscid substance. The taste is exactly like an
+almond, and it forms a pleasant mouthful if one is thirsty.
+
+Travelling one day along one of the glades I have mentioned as
+dividing the strips of jungle, I was surprised to see a man before me
+in a field of long stubble, with a cloth spread over his head, and two
+sticks projecting in front at an obtuse angle to his body, forming
+horn-like projections, on which the ends of his cloth twisted
+spirally, were tied. I thought from his curious antics and movements,
+that he must be mad, but I soon discovered that there was method in
+his madness. He was catching quail. The quail are often very numerous
+in the stubble fields, and the natives adopt very ingenious devices
+for their capture. This was one I was now witnessing. Covering
+themselves with their cloth as I have described, the projecting ends
+of the two sticks representing the horns, they simulate all the
+movements of a cow or bull. They pretend to paw up the earth, toss
+their make-believe horns, turn round and pretend to scratch
+themselves, and in fact identify themselves with the animal they are
+representing; and it is irresistibly comic to watch a solitary
+performer go through this _al fresco_ comedy. I have laughed often at
+some cunning old herdsman, or shekarry. When they see you watching
+them, they will redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old
+bull, going through all his pranks and practices, and throw you into
+convulsions of laughter.
+
+Round two sides of the field, they have previously put fine nets, and
+at the apex they have a large cage with a decoy quail inside, or
+perhaps a pair. The quail is a running bird, disinclined for flight
+except at night; in the day-time they prefer running to using their
+wings. The idiotic looking old cow, as we will call the hunter, has
+all his wits about him. He proceeds very slowly and warily, his keen
+eye detects the coveys of quail, which way they are running; his ruse
+generally succeeds wonderfully. He is no more like a cow, than that
+respectable animal is like a cucumber; but he paws, and tosses, and
+moves about, pretends to eat, to nibble here, and switch his tail
+there, and so manoeuvres as to keep the running quail away from the
+unprotected edges of the field. When they get to the verge protected
+by the net, they begin to take alarm; they are probably not very
+certain about the peculiar looking 'old cow' behind them, and running
+along the net, they see the decoy quails evidently feeding in great
+security and freedom. The V shaped mouth of the large basket cage
+looks invitingly open. The puzzling nets are barring the way, and the
+'old cow' is gradually closing up behind. As the hunter moves along, I
+should have told you, he rubs two pieces of dry hard sticks gently up
+and down his thigh with one hand, producing a peculiar crepitation, a
+crackling sound, not sufficient to startle the birds into flight, but
+alarming them enough to make them get out of the way of the 'old cow.'
+One bolder than the others, possibly the most timid of the covey,
+irritated by the queer crackling sound, now enters the basket, the
+others follow like a flock of sheep; and once in, the puzzling shape
+of the entrance prevents their exit. Not unfrequently the hunter bags
+twenty or even thirty brace of quail in one field, by this ridiculous
+looking but ingenious method.
+
+The small quail net is also sometimes used for the capture of hares.
+The natives stretch the net in the jungle, much as they do the large
+nets for deer described in a former chapter; forming a line, they then
+beat up the hares, of which there are no stint. My friend Pat once
+made a novel haul. His _lobarkhanna_ or blacksmith's shop was close to
+a patch of jungle, and Pat often noticed numbers of quail running
+through the loose chinks and crevices of the walls, in the morning
+when anyone went into the place for the first time; this was at a
+factory called Rajpore. Pat came to the conclusion, that as the
+blacksmith's fires smouldered some time after work was discontinued at
+night, and as the atmosphere of the hut was warmer and more genial
+than the cold, foggy, outside air, for it was in the cold season, the
+quail probably took up their quarters in the hut for the night, on
+account of the warmth and shelter. One night therefore he got some of
+his servants, and with great caution and as much silence as possible,
+they let down a quantity of nets all round the lobarkhanna, and in the
+morning they captured about twenty quails.
+
+The quail is very pugnacious, and as they are easily trained to fight,
+they are very common pets with the natives, who train and keep them to
+pit them against each other, and bet what they can afford on the
+result. A quail fight, a battle between two trained rams, a cock
+fight, even an encounter between trained tamed buffaloes, are very
+common spectacles in the villages; but the most popular sport is a
+good wrestling match.
+
+The dwellers in the Presidency towns, and indeed in most of the large
+stations, seldom see an exhibition of this kind; but away in the
+remote interior, near the frontier, it is very popular pastime, and
+wrestling is a favourite with all classes. Such manly sport is rather
+opposed to the commonly received idea at home, of the mild Hindoo. In
+nearly every village of Behar however, and all along the borders of
+Nepaul, there is, as a rule, a bit of land attached to the residence
+of some head man, or the common property of the commune, set apart for
+the practice of athletic sports, chief of which is the favourite
+_khoosthee_ or wrestling. There is generally some wary old veteran,
+who has won his spurs, or laurels, or belt, or whatever you choose to
+call it, in many a hard fought and well contested tussle for the
+championship of his little world; he is 'up to every dodge,' and knows
+every feint and guard, every wile and tactic of the wrestling ground.
+It is generally in some shady grove, secluded and cool; here of an
+evening when the labours of the day are over, the most stalwart sons
+of the hamlet meet, to test each others skill and endurance in a
+friendly _shake_. The old man puts them through the preliminary
+practice, shows them every trick at his command, and attends strictly
+to their training and various trials. The ground is dug knee deep, and
+forms a soft, good holding stand. I have often looked on at this
+evening practice, and it would astonish a stranger, who cannot
+understand strength, endurance, and activity being attributed to a
+'mere nigger,' to see the severe training these young lads impose upon
+themselves. They leap into the air, and suddenly assume a sitting
+position, then leap up again and squat down with a force that would
+seem to jerk every bone in their bodies out of its place; this gets up
+the muscles of the thighs. Some lie down at full length, only touching
+the ground with the extreme tips of their toes, their arms doubled up
+under them, and sustaining the full weight of the body on the extended
+palms of the hands. They then sway themselves backwards and forwards
+to their full length, never shifting hand or toe, till they are bathed
+in perspiration; they keep up a uniform steady backward and forward
+movement, so as to develop the muscles of the arms, chest, and back.
+They practice leaping, running, and lifting weights. Some standing at
+their full height, brace up the muscles of the shoulder and upper arm,
+and then leaping up, allow themselves to fall to earth on the tensely
+strung muscles of the shoulder. This severe exercise gets the muscles
+into perfect form, and few, very few indeed of our untrained youths,
+could cope in a dead lock, or fierce struggle, with a good village
+Hindoo or Mussulman in active training, and having any knowledge of
+the tricks of the wrestling school. No hitting is allowed. The Hindoo
+system of wrestling is the perfection of science and skill; mere dead
+weight of course will always tell in a close grip, but the catches,
+the holds, the twists and dodges that are practised, allow for the
+fullest development of cultivated skill, as against mere brute force.
+The system is purely a scientific one. The fundamental rule is 'catch
+where you can,' only you must not clutch the hair or strike with the
+fists.
+
+The loins are tightly girt with a long waist-belt or _kummerbund_ of
+cloth, which, passed repeatedly between the limbs and round the loins,
+sufficiently braces up and protects that part of the body. In some
+matches you are not allowed to clutch this waist cloth or belt, in
+some villages it is allowed; the custom varies in various places, but
+what is a fair grip, and what is not, is always made known before the
+competitors engage. A twist, or grip, or dodge, is known as a
+_paench_. This literally means a screw or twist, but in wrestling
+phraseology, means any grip by which you can get such an advantage
+over your opponent as to defeat him. For every paench there is a
+counter paench. A throw is considered satisfactory when BOTH shoulders
+of your opponent touch the ground simultaneously. The old _khalifa_ or
+trainer takes a great interest in the progress of his _chailas_ or
+pupils. _Chaila_ really means disciple or follower. Every khalifa has
+his favourite paenches or grips, which have stood him in good stead in
+his old battling days; he teaches these paenches to his pupils, so
+that when you get young fellows from different villages to meet, you
+see a really fine exhibition of wrestling skill. There is little
+tripping, as amongst our wrestlers at home; a dead-lock is uncommon.
+The rival wrestlers generally bound into the ring, slapping their
+thighs and arms with a loud resounding slap. They lift their legs high
+up from the ground with every step, and scheme and manoeuvre sometimes
+for a long while to get the best corner; they try to get the sun into
+their adversaries eyes; they scan the appearance and every movement of
+their opponent. The old wary fellows take it very coolly, and if they
+can't get the desired side of the ground, they keep hopping about like
+a solemn old ostrich, till the impetuosity or impatience of their foe
+leads him to attack. They remind you for all the world of a pair of
+game cocks, their bodies are bent, their heads almost touching. There
+is a deal of light play with the hands, each trying to get the other
+by the wrist or elbow, or at the back of the head round the neck. If
+one gets the other by a finger even, it is a great advantage, as he
+would whip nimbly round, and threaten to break the impounded finger;
+this would be considered quite fair. One will often suddenly drop on
+his knees and try to reach the ankles of his adversary. I have seen a
+slippery customer, stoop suddenly down, grasp up a handful of dust,
+and throw it into the eyes of his opponent. It was done with the
+quickness of thought, but it was detected, and on an appeal by the
+sufferer, the knave was well thrashed by the onlookers.
+
+There are many professionals who follow no other calling. Wrestlers
+are kept by Rajahs and wealthy men, who get up matches. Frequently one
+village will challenge another, like our village cricket clubs. The
+villagers often get up small subscriptions, and purchase a silver
+armlet or bracelet, the prize him who shall hold his own against all
+comers. The 'Champion's Belt' scarcely calls forth greater
+competition, keener rivalry, or better sport. It is at once the most
+manly and most scientific sport in which the native indulges. A
+disputed fall sometimes terminates in a general free fight, when the
+backers of the respective men lay on the stick to each other with
+mutual hate and hearty lustiness.
+
+It is not by any means always the strongest who wins. The man who
+knows the most paenches, who is agile, active, cool, and careful, will
+not unfrequently overthrow an antagonist twice his weight and
+strength. All the wrestlers in the country-side know each other's
+qualifications pretty accurately, and at a general match got up by a
+Zemindar or planter, or by public subscription, it is generally safe
+to let them handicap the men who are ready to compete for the prizes.
+We used generally to put down a few of the oldest professors, and let
+them pit couples against each other; the sport to the onlookers was
+most exciting. Between the men themselves as a rule, the utmost good
+humour reigns, they strive hard to win, but they accept a defeat with
+smiling resignation. It is only between rival village champions,
+different caste men, or worse still, men of differing religions, such
+as a Hindoo and a Mahommedan, that there is any danger of a fight. A
+disturbance is a rare exception, but I have seen a few wrestling
+matches end in a regular general scrimmage, with broken heads, and
+even fractured limbs. With good management however, and an efficient
+body of men to guard against a breach of the peace, this need never
+occur.
+
+It rarely takes much trouble to get up a match. If you tell your head
+men that you would like to see one, say on a Saturday afternoon, they
+pass the word to the different villages, and at the appointed time,
+all the finest young fellows and most of the male population, led by
+their head man, with the old trainer in attendance, are at the
+appointed place. The competitors are admitted within the enclosure,
+and round it the rows of spectators packed twenty deep squat on the
+ground, and watch the proceedings with deep interest.
+
+While the _Punchayiet_, a picked council, are taking down the names of
+intending competitors, finding out about their form and performances,
+and assigning to each his antagonist, the young men throw themselves
+with shouts and laughter into the ring, and go through all the
+evolutions and postures of the training ground. They bound about, try
+all sorts of antics and contortions, display wonderful agility and
+activity; it is a pretty sight to see, and one can't help admiring
+their vigorous frames, and graceful proportions. They are handsome,
+well made, supple, wiry fellows, although they be NIGGERS, and Hodge
+and Giles at home would not have a chance with them in a fair
+wrestling bout, conducted according to their own laws and customs.
+
+The entries are now all made, places and pairs are arranged, and to
+the ear-splitting thunder of two or three tom-toms, two pair of
+strapping youngsters step into the ring; they carefully scan each
+other, advance, shake hands, or salaam, leisurely tie up their back
+hair, slap their muscles, rub a little earth over their shoulders and
+arms, so that their adversary may have a fair grip, then step by step
+slowly and gradually they near each other. A few quick passages are
+now interchanged; the lithe supple fingers twist and intertwine, grips
+are formed on arm and neck. The postures change each moment, and are a
+study for an anatomist or sculptor. As they warm to their work they
+get more reckless; they are only the raw material, the untrained lads.
+There is a quick scuffle, heaving, swaying, rocking, and struggling,
+and the two victors, leaping into the air, and slapping their chests,
+bound back into the gratified circle of their comrades, while the two
+discomfited athletes, forcing a rueful smile, retire and 'take a back
+seat.' Two couple of more experienced hands now face each other. There
+is pretty play this time, as the varying changes of the contest bring
+forth ever varying displays of skill and science. The crowd shout as
+an advantage is gained, or cry out 'Hi, hi' in a doubtful manner, as
+their favourite seems to be getting the worst of it. The result
+however is much the same; after a longer or shorter time, two get
+fairly thrown and retire. If there is any dispute, it is at once
+referred to the judges, who sit grimly watching the struggle, and
+comparing the paenches displayed, with those they themselves have
+practised in many a well-won fight. On a reference being made, both
+combatants retain their exact hold and position, only cease straining.
+As soon as the matter is settled, they go at it again till victory
+determine in favour of the lucky man. In no similar contest in England
+I am convinced would there be so much fairness, quietness, and order.
+The only stimulants in the crowd are betel nut and tobacco. All is
+orderly and calm, and at any moment a word from the sahib will quell
+any rising turbulence. It is now time for a still more scientific
+exhibition.
+
+Pat has a man, a tall, wiry, handsome Brahmin, who has never yet been
+beaten. Young K. has long been jealous of his uniform success, and on
+several occasions has brought an antagonist to battle with Pat's
+champion. To-day he has got a sturdy young blacksmith, whom rumour
+hath much vaunted, and although he is not so tall as Pat's wrestler,
+his square, deep chest and stalwart limbs, give promise of great
+strength and endurance.
+
+As the two men strip and bound into the ring, there is the usual hush
+of anticipation. Keen eyes scan the appearance of the antagonists.
+They are both models of manly beauty. The blacksmith, though more
+awkward in his motions, has a cool, determined look about him. The
+Brahmin, conscious of his reputation, walks quickly up, with a smile
+of rather ostentatious condescension on his finely cut features, and
+offers his hand to the blacksmith. The little man is evidently
+suspicious. He thinks this may be a deeply laid trap to get a grip
+upon him. Nor does he like the bland patronising manner of
+'Roopuarain,' so he surlily draws back, at which there is a roar of
+laughter from the. crowd, in which we cannot help joining.
+
+K. now comes forward, and pats his 'fancy man' on the back. The two
+wrestlers thereupon shake hands, and then in the usual manner both
+warily move backwards and forwards, till amid cries from the
+onlookers, the blacksmith makes a sudden dash at the practised old
+player, and in a moment has him round the waist.
+
+He evidently depended on his superior strength. For a moment he fairly
+lifted Roopnarain clean off his legs, swayed him to and fro, and with
+a mighty strain tried to throw him to the ground. Bending to the
+notes, Roopnarain allowed himself to yield, till his feet touched the
+ground, then crouching like a panther, he bounded forward, and getting
+his leg behind that of the blacksmith, by a deft side twist he nearly
+threw him over. The little fellow, however, steadied himself on the
+ground with one hand, recovered his footing, and again had the Brahmin
+firmly locked in his tenacious hold. Roopuarain did not like the grip.
+These were not the tactics he was accustomed to. While the other
+tugged and strained, he, quietly yielding his lithe lissome frame to
+every effort, tried hard with obstinate endeavour to untwist the hands
+that held him firmly locked. It was beautiful play to see the mute
+hands of both the wrestlers feeling, tearing, twisting at each other,
+but the grasp was too firm, and, taking advantage of a momentary
+movement, Roopnarain got his elbow under the other's chin, then
+leaning forward, he pressed his opponent's head backward, and the
+strain began to tell. He fought fiercely, he struggled hard, but the
+determined elbow was not to be baulked, and to save himself from an
+overthrow the blacksmith was forced to relax his hold, and sprang
+nimbly back beyond reach, to mature another attack. Roopnarain quietly
+walked round, rubbed his shoulders with earth, and with the same
+mocking smile, stood leaning forward, his hands on his knees, waiting
+for a fresh onset.
+
+This time the young fellow was more cautious. He found he had no
+novice to deal with, and the Brahmin was not at all anxious to
+precipitate matters. By a splendid feint, after some pretty sparring
+for a grip, the youngster again succeeded in getting a hold on the
+Brahmin, and wheeling round quick as lightning, got behind Roopnarain,
+and with a dexterous trip threw the tall man heavily on his face. He
+then tried to get him by the ankle, and bending his leg up backwards,
+he would have got a purchase for turning him on his back. The old man
+was, however, 'up to this move.' He lay extended flat on his chest,
+his legs wide apart. As often as the little one bent down to grasp his
+ankle, he would put out a hand stealthily, and silently as a snake,
+and endeavour to get the little man's leg in his grasp. This
+necessitated a change of position, and round and round they spun, each
+trying to get hold of the other by the leg or foot. The blacksmith got
+his knee on the neck of the Brahmin, and by sheer strength tried
+several times with a mighty heave to turn his opponent. It was no use,
+however, it is next to impossible to throw a man when he is lying flat
+out as the Brahmin now was. It is difficult enough to turn the dead
+weight of a man in that position, and when he is straining every nerve
+to resist the accomplishment of your object it becomes altogether
+impracticable. The excitement in the crowd was intense. The very
+drummer--I ought to call him a tom-tomer--had ceased to beat his
+tom-tom. Pat's lips were firmly pressed together, and K. was trembling
+with suppressed excitement. The heaving chests and profuse
+perspiration bedewing the bodies of both combatants, told how severe
+had been their exertions. The blacksmith seemed gathering himself up
+for a mighty effort, when, quick as light, the Brahmin drew his limbs
+together, was seen to arch his back, and with a sudden backward
+movement, seemed to glide from under his dashing assailant, and
+quicker than it takes me to write it, the positions were reversed.
+
+The Brahmin was now above, and the blacksmith taking in the altered
+aspect of affairs at a glance, threw himself flat on the ground, and
+tried the same tactics as his opponent. The different play of the two
+men now came strongly into relief. Instead of exhausting himself with
+useless efforts, Roopnarain, while keeping a wary eye on every
+movement of his prostrate foe, contented himself while he took breath,
+with coolly and and yet determinedly making his grip secure. Putting
+out one leg then within reach of his opponent's hand, as a lure, he
+saw the blacksmith stretch forth to grasp the tempting hold.
+
+Quicker than the dart of the python, the fierce onset of the kingly
+tiger, the sudden flash of the forked and quivering lightning, was the
+grasp made at the outstretched arm by the practised Brahmin. His
+tenacious fingers closed tightly round the other's wrist. One sudden
+wrench, and he had the blacksmith's arm bent back and powerless, held
+down on the little fellow's own shoulders. Pat smiled a derisive
+smile, K. uttered what was not a benison, while the Brahmins in the
+crowd, and all Pat's men, raised a truly Hindoo howl. The position of
+the men was now this. The stout little man was flat on his face, one
+of his arms bent helplessly round on his own back. Roopnarain, calm
+and cool as ever, was astride the prostrate blacksmith, placidly
+surveying the crowd. The little man writhed, and twisted, and
+struggled, he tried with his legs to entwine himself with those of the
+Brahmin. He tried to spin round; the Brahmin was watching with the eye
+of a hawk for a grip of the other arm, but it was closely drawn in,
+and firmly pressed in safety under the heaving chest of the
+blacksmith. The muscles were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that
+was seen at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete
+was surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm
+further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero,
+game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain tried
+to bend him over, till we thought either the poor fellow's neck must
+break, or his arm be torn from its socket.
+
+He endured all without a murmur. Not a chance did he throw away. Once
+or twice he made a splendid effort, once he tried to catch the Brahmin
+again by the leg. Roopnarain pounced down, but the arm was as quickly
+within its shield. It was now but a question of time and endurance.
+Every dodge that he was master of did the Brahmin bring into play.
+They were both in perfect training, muscles as hard as steel, every
+nerve and sinew strained to the utmost tension. Roopnarain actually
+tried tickling his man, but he would not give him a chance. At length
+he got his hand in the bent elbow of the free arm, and slowly, and
+laboriously forced it out. There were tremendous spurts and struggles,
+but patient determination was not to be baulked. Slowly the arm came
+up over the back, the struggle was tremendous, but at length both the
+poor fellow's arms were tightly pinioned behind his back. He was
+powerless now. The Brahmin drew the two arms backwards, towards the
+head of the poor little fellow, and he was bound to come over or have
+both his arms broken. With a hoarse cry of sobbing-pain and shame, the
+brave little man came over, both shoulders on the mould, and the
+scientific old veteran was again the victor.
+
+This is but a very faint description of a true wrestling bout among
+the robust dwellers in these remote villages. It may seem cruel, but
+it is to my mind the perfection of muscular strength and skill,
+combined with keen subtle, intellectual acuteness. It brings every
+faculty of mind and body into play, it begets a healthy, honest love
+of fair play, and an admiration of endurance and pluck, two qualities
+of which Englishmen certainly can boast. Strength without skill and
+training will not avail. It is a fine manly sport, and one which
+should be encouraged by all who wish well to our dusky fellow subjects
+in the far off plains and valleys of Hindostan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Indigo seed growing.--Seed buying and buyers.--Tricks of sellers.
+--Tests for good seed.--The threshing-floor.--Seed cleaning and
+packing.--Staff of servants.--Despatching the bags by boat.--The
+'Pooneah' or rent day.--Purneah planters--their hospitality.--The
+rent day a great festival.--Preparation.--Collection of rents.--Feast
+to retainers.--The reception in the evening.--Tribute.--Old customs.
+--Improvisatores and bards.--Nautches.--Dancing and music.--The dance
+of the Dangurs.--Jugglers and itinerary showmen.--'Bara Roopes,' or
+actors and mimics.--Their different styles of acting.
+
+Besides indigo planting proper, there is another large branch of
+industry in North Bhaugulpore, and along the Nepaul frontier there,
+and in Purneah, which is the growing of indigo seed for the Bengal
+planters. The system of advances and the mode of cultivation is much
+the same as that followed in indigo planting proper. The seed is sown
+in June or July, is weeded and tended all through the rains, and cut
+in December. The planters advance about four rupees a beegah to the
+ryot, who cuts his seed-plant, and brings it into the factory
+threshing ground, where it is beaten out, cleaned, weighed, and packed
+in bags. When the seed has been threshed out and cleaned, it is
+weighed, and the ryot or cultivator gets four rupees for every
+maund--a maund being eighty pounds avoirdupois. The previous advance
+is deducted. The rent or loan account is adjusted, and the balance
+made over in cash.
+
+Others grow the seed on their own account, without taking advances,
+and bring it to the factory for sale. If prices are ruling high, they
+may get much more than four rupees per maund for it, and they adopt
+all kinds of ingenious devices to adulterate the seed, and increase
+its weight. They mix dust with it, seeds of weeds, even grains of
+wheat, and mustard, pea, and other seeds. In buying seed, therefore,
+one has to be very careful, to reject all that looks bad, or that may
+have been adulterated. They will even get old useless seed, the refuse
+stock of former years, and mixing this with leaves of the neem tree
+and some turmeric powder, give it a gloss that makes it look like
+fresh seed.
+
+When you suspect that the seed has been tampered with in this manner,
+you wet some of it, and rub it on a piece of fresh clean linen, so as
+to bring off the dye. Where the attempt has been flagrant, you are
+sometimes tempted to take the law into your own hands, and administer
+a little of the castigation which the cheating rascal so richly
+deserves. In other cases it is necessary to submit the seed to a
+microscopic examination. If any old, worn seeds are detected, you
+reject the sample unhesitatingly. Even when the seed appears quite
+good, you subject it to yet another test. Take one or two hundred
+seeds, and putting them on a damp piece of the pith of a plantain
+tree, mixed with a little earth, set them in a warm place, and in two
+days you will be able to tell what percentage has germinated, and what
+is incapable of germination. If the percentage is good, the seed may
+be considered as fairly up to the sample, and it is purchased. There
+are native seed buyers, who try to get as much into their hands as
+they can, and rig the market. There are also European buyers, and
+there is a keen rivalry in all the bazaars.
+
+The threshing-floor, and seed-cleaning ground presents a busy sight
+when several thousand maunds of seed are being got ready for despatch
+by boats. The dirty seed, full of dust and other impurities, is heaped
+up in one corner. The floor is in the shape of a large square, nicely
+paved with cement, as hard and clean as marble. Crowds of nearly nude
+coolies, hurry to and fro with scoops of seed resting on their
+shoulders. When they get in line, at right angles to the direction in
+which the wind is blowing, they move slowly along, letting the seed
+descend on the heap below, while the wind winnows it, and carries the
+dust in dense clouds to leeward. This is repeated over and over again,
+till the seed is as clean as it can be made. It is put through bamboo
+sieves, so formed that any seed larger than indigo cannot pass
+through. What remains in the sieve is put aside, and afterwards
+cleaned, sorted, and sold as food, or if useless, thrown away or given
+to the fowls. The men and boys dart backwards and forwards, there is a
+steady drip, drip, of seed from the scoops, dense clouds of dust, and
+incessant noise and bustle. Peons or watchmen are stationed all around
+to see that none is wasted or stolen. Some are filling sacks full of
+the cleaned seed, and hauling them off to the weighman and his clerk.
+Two maunds are put in every sack, and when weighed the bags are hauled
+up close to the _godown_ or store-room. Here are an army of men with
+sailmaker's needles and twine. They sew up the bags, which are then
+hauled away to be marked with the factory brand. Carts are coming and
+going, carrying bags to the boats, which are lying at the river bank
+taking in their cargo, and the returning carts bring back loads of
+wood from the banks of the river. In one corner, under a shed, sits
+the sahib chaffering with a party of _paikars_ (seed merchants), who
+have brought seed for sale.
+
+Of course he decries the seed, says it is bad, will not hear of the
+price wanted, and laughs to scorn all the fervent protestations that
+the seed was grown on their own ground, and has never passed through
+any hands but their own. If you are satisfied that the seed is good,
+you secretly name your price to your head man, who forthwith takes up
+the work of depreciation. You move off to some other department of the
+work. The head man and the merchants sit down, perhaps smoke a
+_hookah_, each trying to outwit the other, but after a keen encounter
+of wits perhaps a bargain is made. A pretty fair price is arrived at,
+and away goes the purchased seed, to swell the heap at the other end
+of the yard. It has to be carefully weighed first, and the weighman
+gets a little from the vendor as his perquisite, which the factory
+takes from him at the market rate.
+
+You have buyers of your own out in the _dehaat_ (district), and the
+parcels they have bought come in hour by hour, with invoices detailing
+all particulars of quantity, quality, and price. The loads from the
+seed depots and outworks, come rolling up in the afternoon, and have
+all to be weighed, checked, noted down, and examined. Every man's hand
+is against you. You cannot trust your own servants. For a paltry bribe
+they will try to pass a bad parcel of seed, and even when you have
+your European assistants to help you, it is hard work to avoid being
+over-reached in some shape or other.
+
+You have to keep up a large staff of writers, who make out invoices
+and accounts, and keep the books. Your correspondence alone is enough
+work for one man, and you have to tally bags, count coolies, see them
+paid their daily wage, attend to lawsuits that may be going on, and
+yet find time to superintend the operations of the farm, and keep an
+eye to your rents and revenues from the villages. It is a busy, an
+anxious time. You have a vast responsibility on your shoulders, and
+when one takes into consideration the climate you have to contend
+with, the home comforts and domestic joys you have to do without, the
+constant tension of mind and irritation of body from dust, heat,
+insects, lies, bribery, robbers, and villany of every description,
+that meets you on all hands, it must be allowed that a planter at such
+a time has no easy life.
+
+The time at which you despatch the seed is also the very time when you
+are preparing your land for spring sowings. This requires almost as
+much surveillance as the seed-buying and despatching. You have not a
+moment you can call your own. If you had subordinates you could trust,
+who would be faithful and honest, you could safely leave part of the
+work to them, but from very sad experience I have found that trusting
+to a native is trusting to a very rotten stick. They are certainly not
+all bad, but there are just enough exceptions to prove the rule.
+
+One peculiar custom prevailed in this border district of North
+Bhaugulpore, which I have not observed elsewhere. At the beginning of
+the financial year, when the accounts of the past season had all been
+made up and arranged, and the collection of the rents for the new year
+was beginning, the planters and Zemindars held what was called the
+_Pooneah_. It is customary for all cultivators and tenants to pay a
+proportion of their rent in advance. The Pooneah might therefore be
+called 'rent-day.' A similar day is set apart for the same purpose in
+Tirhoot, called _tousee_ or collections, but it is not attended by the
+same ceremonious observances, and quaint customs, as attach to the
+Pooneah on the border land.
+
+When every man's account has been made up and checked by the books,
+the Pooneah day is fixed on. Invitations are sent to all your
+neighbouring friends, who look forward to each other's annual Pooneah
+as a great gala day. In North Bhaugulpore and Purneah, nearly all the
+planters and English-speaking population belong to old families who
+have been born in the district, and have settled and lived there long
+before the days of quick communication with home. Their rule among
+their dependants is patriarchal. Everyone is known among the natives,
+who have seen him since his birth living amongst them, by some pet
+name. The old men of the villages remember his father and his father's
+father, the younger villagers have had him pointed out to them on
+their visits to the factory as 'Willie Baba,' 'Freddy Baba,' or
+whatever his boyish name may have been, with the addition of 'Baba,'
+which is simply a pet name for a child. These planters know every
+village for miles and miles. They know most of the leading men in each
+village by name. The villagers know all about them, discuss their
+affairs with the utmost freedom, and not a single thing, ever so
+trivial, happens in the planter's home but it is known and commented
+on in all the villages that lie within the _ilaka_ (jurisdiction) of
+the factory.
+
+The hospitality of these planters is unbounded. They are most of them
+much liked by all the natives round. I came a 'stranger amongst them,'
+and in one sense, and not a flattering sense, they tried 'to take me
+in,' but only in one or two instances, which I shall not specify here.
+By nearly all I was welcomed and kindly treated, and I formed some
+very lasting friendships among them. Old traditions of princely
+hospitality still linger among them. They were clannish in the best
+sense of the word. The kindness and attention given to aged or
+indigent relations was one of their best traits. I am afraid the race
+is fast dying out. Lavish expenditure, and a too confiding faith in
+their native dependants has often brought the usual result. But many
+of my readers will associate with the name of Purneah or Bhaugulpore
+planter, recollections of hospitality and unostentatious kindness, and
+memories of glorious sport and warm-hearted friendships.
+
+On the Pooneah day then, or the night before, many of these friends
+would meet. The day has long been known to all the villages round, and
+nothing could better shew the patriarchal semi-feudal style in which
+they ruled over their villages than the customs in connection with
+this anniversary. Some days before it, requisitions have been made on
+all the villages in any way connected with the factory, for various
+articles of diet. The herdsmen have to send a tribute of milk, curds,
+and _ghee_ or clarified butter. Cultivators of root crops or fruit
+send in samples of their produce, in the shape of huge bundle of
+plantains, immense jack-fruits, or baskets of sweet potatoes, yams,
+and other vegetables. The _koomhar_ or potter has to send in earthen
+pots and jars. The _mochee_ or worker in leather, brings with him a
+sample of his work in the shape of a pair of shoes. These are pounced
+on by your servants and _omlah_, the omlah being the head men in the
+office. It is a fine time for them. Wooden shoes, umbrellas, brass
+pots, fowls, goats, fruits, in fact all the productions of your
+country side are sent or brought in. It is the old feudal tribute of
+the middle ages back again. During the day the _cutcherry_ or office
+is crowded with the more respectable villagers, paying in rents and
+settling accounts. The noise and bustle are great, but an immense
+quantity of work is got through.
+
+The village putwarries and head men are all there with their
+voluminous accounts. Your rent-collector, called a _tehseeldar_, has
+been busy in the villages with the tenants and putwarries, collecting
+rent for the great Pooneah day. There is a constant chink of money, a
+busy hum, a scratching of innumerable pens. Under every tree, 'neath
+the shade of every hut, busy groups are squatted round some acute
+accountant. Totals are being totted up on all hands. From greasy
+recesses in the waistband a dirty bundle is slowly pulled forth, and
+the desired sum reluctantly counted out.
+
+From early morn till dewy eve this work goes on, and you judge your
+Pooneah to have been a good or bad one by the amount you are able to
+collect. Peons, with their brass badges flashing in the sun, and their
+red puggrees shewing off their bronzed faces and black whiskers, are
+despatched in all directions for defaulters. There is a constant going
+to and fro, a hurrying and bustling in the crowd, a hum as of a
+distant fair pervading the place, and by evening the total of the
+day's collections is added up, and while the sahib and his friends
+take their sherry and bitters, the omlah and servants retire to wash
+and feast, and prepare for the night's festivities.
+
+During the day, at the houses of the omlah, culinary preparations on a
+vast scale have been going on. The large supplies of grain, rice,
+flour, fruit, vegetables, &c., which were brought in as _salamee_ or
+tribute, supplemented by additions from the sahib's own stores, have
+been made into savoury messes. Curries, and cakes, boiled flesh, and
+roast kid, are all ready, and the crowd, having divested themselves of
+their head-dress and outer garments, and cleaned their hands and feet
+by copious ablutions, sit down in a wide circle. The large leaves of
+the water-lily are now served out to each man, and perform the office
+of plates. Huge baskets of _chupatties_, a flat sort of
+'griddle-cake,' are now brought round, and each man gets four or five
+doled out. The cooking and attendance is all done by Brahmins. No
+inferior caste would answer, as Rajpoots and other high castes will
+only eat food that has been cooked by a Brahmin or one of their own
+class. The Brahmin attendants now come round with great _dekchees_ or
+cooking-pots, full of curried vegetables, boiled rice, and similar
+dishes. A ladle-full is handed out to each man, who receives it on his
+leaf. The rice is served out by the hands of the attendants. The
+guests manipulate a huge ball of rice and curry mixed between the
+fingers of the right hand, pass this solemnly into their widely-gaping
+mouths, with the head thrown back to receive the mess, like an
+adjutant-bird swallowing a frog, and then they masticate with much
+apparent enjoyment. Sugar, treacle, curds, milk, oil, butter,
+preserves, and chutnees are served out to the more wealthy and
+respectable. The amount they can consume is wonderful. Seeing the
+enormous supplies, you would think that even this great crowd could
+never get through them, but by the time repletion has set in, there is
+little or nothing left, and many of the inflated and distended old
+farmers could begin again and repeat 'another of the same' with ease.
+Each person has his own _lotah_, a brass drinking vessel, and when all
+have eaten they again wash their hands, rinse out their mouths, and
+don their gayest apparel.
+
+The gentlemen in the bungalow now get word that the evening's
+festivities are about to commence. Lighting our cigars, we sally out
+to the _shamiana_ which has been erected on the ridge, surrounding the
+deep tank which supplies the factory during the manufacturing season
+with water. The _shamiana_ is a large canopy or wall-less tent. It is
+festooned with flowers and green plantain trees, and evergreens have
+been planted all round it. Flaring flambeaux, torches, Chinese
+lanterns, and oil lamps flicker and glare, and make the interior
+almost as bright as day. When we arrive we find our chairs drawn up in
+state, one raised seat in the centre being the place of honour, and
+reserved for the manager of the factory.
+
+When we are seated, the _malee_ or gardener advances with a wooden
+tray filled with sand, in which are stuck heads of all the finest
+flowers the garden can afford, placed in the most symmetrical
+patterns, and really a pretty tasteful piece of workmanship. Two or
+three old Brahmins, principal among whom is 'Hureehar Jha,' a wicked
+old scoundrel, now advance, bearing gay garlands of flowers, muttering
+a strange gibberish in Sanskrit, supposed to be a blessing, but which
+might be a curse for all we understood of it, and decking our wrists
+and necks with these strings of flowers. For this service they get a
+small gratuity. The factory omlah headed by the dignified, portly
+_gornasta_ or confidential adviser, dressed in snowy turbans and
+spotless white, now come forward. A large brass tray stands on the
+table in front of you. They each present a _salamee_ or _nuzzur_, that
+is, a tribute or present, which you touch, and it is then deposited
+with a rattling jingle on the brass plate. The head men of villages,
+putwarries, and wealthy tenants, give two, three, and sometimes even
+four rupees. Every tenant of respectability thinks it incumbent on him
+to give something. Every man as he comes up makes a low salaam,
+deposits his _salamee_, his name is written down, and he retires. The
+putwarries present two rupees each, shouting out their names, and the
+names of their villages. Afterwards a small assessment is levied on
+the villagers, of a 'pice' or two 'pice' each, about a halfpenny of
+our money, and which recoups the putwarree for his outlay.
+
+This has nothing to do with the legitimate revenue of the factory. It
+never appears in the books. It is quite a voluntary offering, and I
+have never seen it in any other district. In the meantime the
+_Raj-bhats_, a wandering class of hereditary minstrels or bards, are
+singing your praises and those of your ancestors in ear-splitting
+strains. Some of them have really good voices, all possess the gift of
+improvisation, and are quick to seize on the salient points of the
+scene before them, and weave them into their song, sometimes in a very
+ingenious and humorous manner. They are often employed by rich
+natives, to while away a long night with one of their, treasured
+rhythmical tales or songs. One or two are kept in the retinue of every
+Rajah or noble, and they possess a mine of legendary information,
+which would be invaluable to the collector of folk-lore and
+antiquarian literature.
+
+At some of the Pooneahs the evening's gaiety winds up with a _nautch_
+or dance, by dancing girls or boys. I always thought this a most
+sleep-inspiring exhibition. It has been so often described that I need
+not trouble my readers with it. The women are gaily dressed in
+brocades and gauzy textures, and glitter with spangles and tawdry
+ornaments. The musical accompaniment of clanging zither, asthmatic
+fiddle, timber-toned drum, clanging cymbal, and harsh metallic
+triangle, is a sore affliction, and when the dusky prima donna throws
+back her head, extends her chest, gets up to her high note, with her
+hand behind her ear, and her poura-stained mouth and teeth wide
+expanded like the jaws of a fangless wolf, and the demoniac
+instruments and performers redouble their din, the noise is something
+too dreadful to experience often. The native women sit mute and
+hushed, seeming to like it. I have heard it said that the Germans eat
+ants. Finlanders relish penny candles. The Nepaulese gourmandise on
+putrid fish. I am fond of mouldy cheese, and organ-grinders are an
+object of affection with some of our home community. I _know_ that the
+general run of natives delight in a nautch. Tastes differ, but to me
+it is an inexplicable phenomenon.
+
+Amid all this noise we sit till we are wearied. Parin-leaves and betel
+nut are handed round by the servants. There is a very sudorific odour
+from the crowd. All are comfortably seated on the ground. The torches
+flare, and send up volumes of smoke to the ornamented roof of the
+canopy. The lights are reflected in the deep glassy bosom of the
+silent tank. The combined sounds and odours get oppressive, and we are
+glad to get back to the bungalow, to consume our 'peg' and our 'weed'
+in the congenial company of our friends.
+
+In some factories the night closes with a grand dance by all the
+inhabitants of the _dangur tola_. The men and women range themselves
+in two semicircles, standing opposite each other. The tallest of both
+lines at the one end, diminishing away at the other extremity to the
+children and little ones who can scarcely toddle. They have a wild,
+plaintive song, with swelling cadences and abrupt stops. They go
+through an extraordinary variety of evolutions, stamping with one foot
+and keeping perfect time. They sway their bodies, revolve, march, and
+countermarch, the men sometimes opening their ranks, and the women
+going through, and _vice versa_. They turn round like the winding
+convolutions of a shell, increase their pace as the song waxes quick
+and shrill, get excited, and finish off with a resounding stamp of the
+foot, and a guttural cry which seems to exhaust all the breath left in
+their bodies. The men then get some liquor, and the women a small
+money present. If the sahib is very liberal he gives them a pig on
+which to feast, and the _dangurs_ go away very happy and contented.
+Their dance is not unlike the _corroborry_ of the Australian
+aborigines. The two races are not unlike each other too in feature,
+although I cannot think that they are in any way connected.
+
+Next morning there is a jackal hunt, or cricket, or pony races, or
+shooting matches, or sport of some kind, while the rent collection
+still goes on. In the afternoon we have grand wrestling matches
+amongst the natives for small prizes, and generally witness some fine
+exhibitions of athletic skill and endurance.
+
+Some wandering juggler may have been attracted by the rumour of the
+gathering. A tight-rope dancer, a snake charmer, an itinerant showman
+with a performing goat, monkey, or dancing bear, may make his
+appearance before the admiring crowd.
+
+At times a party of mimes or actors come round, and a rare treat is
+not seldom afforded by the _bara roopees_. _Bara_ means twelve, and
+_roop_ is an impersonation, a character. These 'twelve characters'
+make up in all sorts of disguises. Their wardrobe is very limited, yet
+the number of people they personate, and their genuine acting talent
+would astonish you. With a projecting tooth and a few streaks of clay,
+they make up a withered, trembling old hag, afflicted with palsy,
+rheumatism, and a hacking cough. They make friends with your bearer,
+and an old hat and coat transforms them into a planter, a missionary,
+or an officer. They whiten their faces, using false hair and
+moustache, and while you are chatting with your neighbour, a strange
+sahib suddenly and mysteriously seats himself by your side. You stare,
+and look at your host, who is generally in the secret, but a stranger,
+or new comer, is often completely taken in. It is generally at night
+that they go through their personations, and when they have dressed
+for their part, they generally choose a moment when your attention is
+attracted by a cunning diversion. On looking up you are astounded to
+find some utter stranger standing behind your chair, or stalking
+solemnly round the room.
+
+They personate a woman, a white lady, a sepoy policeman, almost any
+character. Some are especially good at mimicking the Bengalee Baboo,
+or the merchant from Cabool or Afghanistan with his fruits and cloths.
+A favourite _roop_ with them is to paint one half of the face like a
+man. Everything is complete down to moustache, the folds of the
+puggree, the _lathee_ or staff, indeed to the slightest detail. You
+would fancy you saw a stalwart, strapping Hindoo before you. He turns
+round, and lo, a bashful maiden. Her eyes are stained with _henna_
+(myrtle juice) or antimony. Her long-hair neatly smoothed down is tied
+into a knot at the back, and glistens with the pearl-like ornaments.
+The taper arm is loaded with armlets and bracelets. The very toes are
+bedecked with rings. The bodice hides the taper waist and budding
+bosom, the tiny ear is loaded with jewelled ear-rings, the very nose
+is not forgotten, but is ornamented with a golden circle, bearing on
+its circumference a pearl of great price. The art, the posturing, the
+mimicry, is really admirable. A good _bara roopee_ is well worth
+seeing, and amply earns the two or three rupees he gets as his reward.
+
+The Pooneah seldom lasts more than the two days, but it is quite
+unique in its feudal character, and is one of the old-fashioned
+observances; a relic of the time when the planter was really looked
+upon as the father of his people, and when a little sentiment and
+mutual affection mingled with the purely business relations of
+landlord and tenant.
+
+I delighted my ryots by importing some of our own country recreations,
+and setting the ploughmen to compete against each other. I stuck a
+greasy bamboo firmly into the earth, putting a bag of copper coins at
+the top. Many tried to climb it, but when they came to the grease they
+came down 'by the run.' One fellow however filled his _kummerbund_
+with sand, and after much exertion managed to secure the prize.
+Wheeling the barrow blindfold also gave much amusement, and we made
+some boys bend their foreheads down to a stick and run round till they
+were giddy. Their ludicrous efforts then to jump over some water-pots,
+and run to a thorny bush, raised tumultuous peals of laughter. The
+poor boys generally smashed the pots, and ended by tumbling into the
+thorns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The Koosee jungles.--Ferries.--Jungle roads.--The rhinoceros.--We go
+to visit a neighbour.--We lose our way and get belated.--We fall into
+a quicksand.--No ferry boat.--Camping out on the sand.--Two tigers
+close by.--We light a fire.--The boat at last arrives.--Crossing the
+stream.--Set fire to the boatman's hut.--Swim the horses.--They are
+nearly drowned.--We again lose our way in the jungle.--The towing
+path, and how boats are towed up the river.--We at last reach the
+factory.--News of rhinoceros in the morning.--Off we start, but arrive
+too late.--Death of the rhinoceros.--His dimensions.--Description.
+--Habits.--Rhinoceros in Nepaul.--The old 'Major Capt[=a]n.'--Description
+of Nepaulese scenery.--Immigration of Nepaulese.--Their fondness for
+fish.--They eat it putrid.--Exclusion of Europeans from Nepaul.
+--Resources of the country.--Must sooner or later be opened up.
+--Influences at work to elevate the people.--Planters and factories
+chief of these.--Character of the planter.--His claims to consideration
+from government.
+
+In the vast grass jungles that border the banks of the Koosee,
+stretching in great plains without an undulation for miles on either
+side, intersected by innumerable water-beds and dried up channels,
+there is plenty of game of all sorts. It is an impetuous,
+swiftly-flowing stream, dashing directly down from the mighty hills of
+Nepaul. So swift is its current and so erratic its course, that it
+frequently bursts its banks, and careers through the jungle, forming a
+new bed, and carrying away cattle and wild animals in its headlong
+rush.
+
+The _ghauts_ or ferries are constantly changing, and a long bamboo
+with a bit of white rag affixed, shows where the boats and boatmen are
+to be found. In many instances the track is a mere cattle path, and
+hundreds of cross openings, leading into the tall jungle grass, are
+apt to bewilder and mislead the traveller. During the dry season these
+jungles are the resort of great herds of cattle and tame buffaloes,
+which trample down the dry stalks, and force their way into the
+innermost recesses of the wilderness of grass, which grows ten to
+twelve feet high. If you once lose your path you may wander for miles,
+until your weary horse is almost unable to stumble on. In such a case,
+the best way is to take it coolly, and halloo till a herdsman or
+thatch-cutter comes to your rescue. The knowledge of the jungles
+displayed by these poor ignorant men is wonderful; they know every
+gully and watercourse, every ford and quicksand, and they betray not
+the slightest sign of fear, although they know that at any moment they
+may come across a herd of wild buffalo, a savage rhinoceros, or even a
+royal tiger.
+
+The tracks of rhinoceros are often seen, but although I have
+frequently had these pointed out to me when out tiger shooting, I only
+saw two while I lived in that district.
+
+The first occasion was after a night of discomfort such as I have
+fortunately seldom experienced. I had been away at a neighbouring
+factory in Purneah, some eighteen or twenty miles from my bungalow. My
+companion had been my predecessor in the management, and was supposed
+to be well acquainted with the country. We had gone over to one of the
+outworks across the river, and I had received charge of the place from
+him. It was a lonely solitary spot; the house was composed of grass
+walls plastered with mud, and had not been used for some time. F.
+proposed that we should ride over to see H., to whom he would
+introduce me as he would be one of my nearest neighbours, and would
+give us a comfortable dinner and bed, which there was no chance of our
+procuring where we were.
+
+We plunged at once into the mazy labyrinths of the jungle, and soon
+emerged on the high sandy downs, stretching mile beyond mile along the
+southern bank of the ever-changing river. Having lost our way, we got
+to the factory after dark, but a friendly villager volunteered his
+services as guide, and led us safely to our destination. After a
+cheerful evening with H., we persuaded him to accompany us back next
+day. He took out his dogs, and we had a good course after a hare,
+killing two jackals, and sending back the dogs by the sweeper. At
+Burgamma, the outwork, we stopped to _tiffin_ on some cold fowl we had
+brought with us. The old factory head man got us some milk, eggs, and
+_chupatties_; and about three in the afternoon we started for the head
+factory. In an evil moment F. proposed that, as we were near another
+outwork called _Fusseah_, we should diverge thither, I could take over
+charge, and we could thus save a ride on another day. Not knowing
+anything of the country I acquiesced, and we reached Fusseah in time
+to see the place, and do all that was needful. It was a miserable
+tumbledown little spot, with four pair of vats; it had formerly been a
+good working factory, but the river had cut away most of its best
+lands, and completely washed away some of the villages, while the
+whole of the cultivation was fast relapsing into jungle.
+
+'Debnarain Singh' the _gomorsta_ or head man, asked us to stay for the
+night, as he said we could never get home before dark. F. however
+scouted the idea, and we resumed our way. The track, for it could not
+be called a road, led us through one or two jungle villages completely
+hidden by the dense bamboo clumps and long jungle grass. You can't see
+a trace of habitation till you are fairly on the village, and as the
+rice-fields are bordered with long strips of tall grass, the whole
+country presents the appearance of a uniform jungle. We got through
+the rice swamps, the villages, and the grass in safety, and as it was
+getting dark, emerged on the great plain of undulating ridgy
+sandbanks, that form the bed of the river during the annual floods. We
+had our _syces_ (grooms) and two peons with us. We had to ride over
+nearly two miles of sand before we could reach the _ghat_ where we
+expected the ferry-boats, and, the main stream once crossed, we had
+only two miles further to reach the factory. We were getting both
+tired and hungry; a heavy dew was falling, and the night was raw and
+chill. It was dark, there was no moon to light our way, and the stars
+were obscured by the silently creeping fog, rising from the marshy
+hollows among the sand. All at once F., who was leading, called out
+that we were off the path, and before I could pull up, my poor old
+tired horse was floundering in a quicksand up to the girths; I threw
+myself off and tried to wheel him round. H. was behind us, and we
+cried to him to halt where he was. I was sinking at every movement up
+to the knees, when the syce came to my rescue, and took charge of the
+horse. F.'s syce ran to extricate his master and horse; the two peons
+kept calling, 'Oh! my father, my father,' the horses snorted, and
+struggled desperately in the tenacious and treacherous quicksand; but
+after a prolonged effort, we all got safely out, and rejoined H. on
+the firm ridge.
+
+We now hallooed and shouted for the boatmen, but beyond the swish of
+the rapid stream to our right, or the plash of a falling bank as the
+swift current undermined it, no sound answered our repeated calls. We
+were wet and weary, but to go either backward or forward was out of
+the question. We were off the path, and the first step in any
+direction might lead us into another quicksand, worse perhaps than
+that from which we had just extricated ourselves. The horses were
+trembling in every limb. The syces cowered together and shivered with
+the cold. We ordered the two peons to try and reach the ghat, and see
+what had become of the boats, while we awaited their return where we
+were. The fog and darkness soon swallowed them up, and putting the
+best face on our dismal circumstances that we could, we lit our pipes
+and extended our jaded limbs on the damp sand.
+
+For a time we could hear the shouts of the peons as they hallooed for
+the boatmen, and we listened anxiously for the response, but there was
+none. We could hear the purling swish of the rapid stream, the
+crumbling banks falling into the current with a distant splash.
+Occasionally a swift rushing of wings overhead told us of the arrowy
+flight of diver or teal. Far in the distance twinkled the gleam of a
+herdsman's fire, the faint tinkle of a distant bell, or the subdued
+barking of a village dog for a moment, alone broke the silence.
+
+At times the hideous chorus of a pack of jackals woke the echoes of
+the night. Then, at no great distance, rose a hoarse booming cry,
+swelling on the night air, and subsiding into a lengthened growl. The
+syces started to their feet, the horses snorted with fear; and as the
+roar was repeated, followed closely by another to our left, and
+seemingly nearer, H. exclaimed 'By Jove! there's a couple of tigers.'
+
+Sure enough, so it was. It was the first time I had heard the roar of
+the tiger in his own domain, and I must confess that my sensations
+were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting sticks and what
+roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats everything was
+wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about on our hands and
+knees, and pick up whatever we came across.
+
+With great difficulty we managed to light a small fire, and for about
+half-an-hour were nearly smothered by trying with inflated cheeks to
+coax it into a blaze. The tigers continued to call at intervals, but
+did not seem to be approaching us. It was a long weary wait, we were
+cold, wet, hungry, and tired; F., the cause of our misfortunes, had
+taken off his saddle, and with it for a pillow was now fast asleep. H.
+and I cowered over the miserable sputtering flame, and longed and
+wished for the morning. It was a miserable night, the hours seemed
+interminable, the dense volumes of smoke from the water-sodden wood
+nearly choked us. At last, after some hours spent in this miserable
+manner, we heard a faint halloo in the distance; it was now past
+eleven at night. We returned the hail, and bye-and-bye the peons
+returned bringing a boatman with them. The lazy rascals at the ghat
+where we had proposed crossing, had gone home at nightfall, leaving
+their boats on the further bank. Our trusty peons, had gone five miles
+up the river, through the thick jungle, and brought a boat down with
+them from the next ghat to that where we were.
+
+We now warily picked our way down to the edge of the bank. The boat
+seemed very fragile, and the current looked so swift and dangerous,
+that we determined to go across first ourselves, get the larger boat
+from the other side, light a fire, and then bring over the horses. We
+embarked accordingly, leaving the syces and horses behind us. The
+peons and boatman pulled the boat a long way up stream by a rope, then
+shooting out we were carried swiftly down stream, the dark shadow of
+the further bank seeming at a great distance. The boatman pushed
+vigorously at his bamboo pole, the water rippled and gurgled, and
+frothed and eddied around. Half-a-dozen times we thought our boat
+would topple over, but at length we got safely across, far below what
+we had proposed as our landing place.
+
+We found the boats all right, and the boatman's hut, a mere collection
+of dry grass and a few old bamboos. As it could be replaced in an
+hour, and the material lay all around, we fired the hut, which soon,
+blazed up, throwing a weird lurid glow on bank and stream, and
+disclosing far on the other bank our weary nags and shivering syces,
+looking very bedraggled and forlorn indeed. The leaping and crackling
+of the flames, and the genial warmth, invigorated us a little, and
+while I stayed behind to feed the fire, the others recrossed to bring
+the horses over.
+
+With the previous fright however, their long waiting, the blazing
+fire, and being unaccustomed to boats at night, the poor scared horses
+refused to enter the boat, The boats are flat-bottomed or broadly
+bulging, with a bamboo platform strewn with grass in the centre. As a
+rule, they have no protecting rails, and even in the daytime, when the
+current is strong and eddies numerous, they are very dangerous for
+horses. At all events, the poor brutes would not be led on to the
+platform, so there was nothing for it but to swim them across. The
+boat was therefore towed a long way up the bank, which on the farther
+side was nearly level with the current, but where the hut had stood
+was steep and slushy, and perhaps twenty feet high. This was where the
+deepest water ran, and where the current was swiftest. If the horses
+therefore missed the landing ghat or stage, which was cut sloping into
+the bank, there was a danger of their being swept away altogether and
+lost. However, we determined on making the attempt. Entering the
+water, and holding the horses tightly by the head, with a leading rope
+attached, to be paid out in case of necessity; the boat shot out, the
+horses pawed the water, entering deeper and deeper, foot by foot, into
+the swiftly rushing silent stream. So long as they were in their
+depth, and had footing, they were alright, but when they reached the
+middle of the river, the current, rushing with frightful velocity,
+swept them off their feet, and boat and horses began to go down
+stream. The horses, with lips apart showing their teeth firmly set,
+the lurid glare of the flame lighting up their straining eyeballs, the
+plashing of the water, the dark rapid current flowing noiselessly
+past; the rocking heaving boat, the dusky forms of syces, peons, and
+boatman, standing out clear in the ruddy fire-light against the utter
+blackness of the night, composed a weird picture I can never forget.
+
+The boat shot swiftly past the ghat, and came with a thump against the
+bank. It swung round into the stream again, but the boatman had
+luckily managed to scramble ashore, and his efforts and mine united,
+hauling on the mooring-rope, sufficed to bring her in to the bank. The
+three struggling horses were yet in the current, trying bravely to
+stem the furious rush of the river. The syces and my friends were
+holding hard to the tether-ropes, which were now at their full
+stretch. It was a most critical moment. Had they let go, the horses
+would have been swept away to form a meal for the alligators. They
+managed, however, to get in close to the bank, and here, although the
+water was still over their backs, they got a slight and precarious
+footing, and inch by inch struggled after the boat, which we were now
+pulling up to the landing place.
+
+After a sore struggle, during which we thought more than once the
+gallant nags would never emerge from the water, they staggered up the
+bank, dripping, trembling, and utterly overcome with their exertions.
+It was my first introduction to the treacherous Koosee, and I never
+again attempted to swim a horse across at night. We led the poor tired
+creatures up to the fire, heaping on fresh bundles of thatching-grass,
+of which there was plenty lying about, the syces then rubbed them
+down, and shampooed their legs, till they began to take a little
+heart, whinnying as we spoke to them and caressed them.
+
+After resting for nearly an hour, we replaced the saddles, and F., who
+by this time began to mistrust his knowledge of the jungles by night,
+allowed one of the peons, who was sure he knew every inch of the road,
+to lead the way. Leaving the smouldering flames to flicker and burn
+out in solitude, we again plunged into the darkness of the night,
+threading our way through the thick jungle grass, now loaded with dewy
+moisture, and dripping copious showers upon us from its high walls at
+either side of the narrow track. We crossed a rapid little stream, an
+arm of the main river, turned to the right, progressed a few hundred
+yards, turned to the left, and finally came to a dead stop, having
+again lost our way.
+
+We heaped execrations on the luckless peon's head, and I suggested
+that we should make for the main stream, follow up the bank till we
+reached the next ghat, where I knew there was a cart-road leading to
+the factory. Otherwise we might wander all night in the jungles,
+perhaps get into another quicksand, or come to some other signal
+grief. We accordingly turned round. We could hear the swish of the
+river at no great distance, and soon, stumbling over bushes and
+bursting through matted chumps of grass, dripping with wet, and
+utterly tired and dejected, we reached the bank of the stream.
+
+Here we had no difficulty in following the path. The river is so
+swift, that the only way boats are enabled to get up stream to take
+down the inland produce, is by having a few coolies or boatmen to drag
+the boat up against the current by towing-lines. This is called
+_gooning_. The goon-ropes are attached to the mast of the boat. At the
+free end is a round bit of bamboo. The towing-coolie places this
+against his shoulder, and slowly and laboriously drags the boat up
+against the current. We were now on this towing-path, and after riding
+for nearly four miles we reached the ghat, struck into the cart-road,
+and without further misadventure reached the factory about four in the
+morning, utterly fagged and worn out.
+
+About eight in the morning my bearer woke me out of a deep sleep, with
+the news that there was a _gaerha_, that is, a rhinoceros, close to
+the factory. We had some days previously heard it rumoured that there
+were _two_ rhinoceroses in the _Battabarree_ jungles, so I at once
+roused my soundly-sleeping friends. Swallowing a hasty morsel of toast
+and a cup of coffee, we mounted our ponies, sent our guns on ahead,
+and rode off for the village where the rhinoceros was reported. As we
+rode hurriedly along we could see natives running in the same
+direction as ourselves, and one of my men came up panting and
+breathless to confirm the news about the rhinoceros, with the
+unwelcome addition that Premnarain Singh, a young neighbouring
+Zemindar, had gone in pursuit of it with his elephant and guns. We
+hurried on, and just then heard the distant report of a shot, followed
+quickly by two more. We tried to take a short cut across country
+through some rice-fields, but our ponies sank in the boggy ground, and
+we had to retrace our way to the path.
+
+By the time we got to the village we found an excited crowd of over a
+thousand natives, dancing and gesticulating round the prostrate
+carcase of the rhinoceros. The Baboo and his party had found the poor
+brute firmly imbedded in a quicksand. With organised effort they might
+have secured the prize alive, and could have sold him in Calcutta for
+at least a thousand rupees, but they were too excited, and blazed away
+three shots into the helpless beast. 'Many hands make light work,' so
+the crowd soon had the dead animal extricated, rolled him into the
+creek, and floated him down to the village, where we found them
+already beginning to hack and hew the flesh, completely spoiling the
+skin, and properly completing the butchery. We were terribly vexed
+that we were too late, but endeavoured to stop the stupid destruction
+that was going on. The body measured eleven feet three inches from the
+snout to the tail, and stood six feet nine. The horn was six and a
+half inches long, and the girth a little over ten feet. We put the
+best face on the matter, congratulated the Baboo with very bad grace,
+and asked him to get the skin cut up properly.
+
+Cut in strips from the under part of the ribs and along the belly, the
+skin makes magnificent riding-whips. The bosses on the shoulder and
+sides are made into shields by the natives, elaborately ornamented and
+much prized. The horn, however, is the most coveted acquisition. It is
+believed to have peculiar virtues, and is popularly supposed by its
+mere presence in a house to mitigate the pains of maternity. A
+rhinoceros horn is often handed down from generation to generation as
+a heirloom, and when a birth is about to take place the anxious
+husband often gets a loan of the precious treasure, after which he has
+no fears for the safe issue of the labour.
+
+The flesh of the rhinoceros is eaten by all classes. It is one of the
+five animals that a Brahmin is allowed to eat by the _Shastras_. They
+were formerly much more common in these jungles, but of late years
+very few have been killed. When they take up their abode in a piece of
+jungle they are not easily dislodged. They are fierce, savage brutes,
+and do not scruple to attack an elephant when they are hard pressed by
+the hunter. When they wish to leave a locality where they have been
+disturbed, they will make for some distant point, and march on with
+dogged and inflexible purpose. Some have been known to travel eighty
+miles in the twenty-four hours, through thick jungle, over rivers, and
+through swamp and quicksand. Their sense of hearing is very acute, and
+they are very easily roused to fury. One peculiarity often noticed by
+sportsmen is, that they always go to the same spot when they want to
+obey the calls of nature. Mounds of their dung are sometimes seen in
+the jungle, and the tracks shew that the rhinoceros pays a daily visit
+to this one particular spot.
+
+In Nepaul, and along the _terai_ or wooded slopes of the frontier,
+they are more numerous; but 'Jung Bahadur,' the late ruler of Nepaul,
+would allow no one to shoot them but himself. I remember the wailing
+lament of a Nepaul officer with whom I was out shooting, when I
+happened to fire at and wound one of the protected beasts. It was in
+Nepaul, among a cluster of low woody hills, with a brawling stream
+dashing through the precipitous channel worn out of the rocky,
+boulder-covered dell. The rhinoceros was up the hill slightly above
+me, and we were beating up for a tiger that we had seen go ahead of
+the line.
+
+In my eagerness to bag a 'rhino' I quite forgot the interdict, and
+fired an Express bullet into the shoulder of the animal, as he stood
+broadside on, staring stupidly at me. He staggered, and made as if he
+would charge down the hill. The old 'Major Capt[=a]n,' as they called our
+sporting host, was shouting out to me not to fire. The _mahouts_ and
+beaters were petrified with horror at my presumption. I fancy they
+expected an immediate order for my decapitation, or for my ears to be
+cut off at the very least, but feeling I might as well be 'in for a
+pound as for a penny,' I fired again, and tumbled the huge brute over,
+with a bullet through the skull behind the ear. The old officer was
+horror-stricken, and would allow no one to go near the animal. He
+would not even let me get down to measure it, being terrified lest the
+affair should reach the ears of his formidable lord and ruler, that he
+hurried us off from the scene of my transgression as quickly as he
+could.
+
+The old Major Capt[=a]n was a curious character. The government of
+Nepaul is purely military. All executive and judicial functions are
+carried on by military officers. After serving a certain time in the
+army, they get rewarded for good service by being appointed to the
+executive charge of a district. So far as I could make out, they seem
+to farm the revenue much as is done in Turkey. They must send in
+so much to the Treasury, and anything over they keep for themselves.
+Their administration of justice is rough and ready. Fines, corporal
+punishment, and in the case of heinous crimes, mutilation and death are
+their penalties. There is a tax of _kind_ on all produce, and licenses
+to cut timber bring in a large revenue. A protective tariff is levied on
+all goods or produce passing the frontier from British territory, and no
+European is allowed to travel in the country, or to settle and trade
+there. In the lower valleys there are magnificent stretches of land
+suitable for indigo, tea, rice, and other crops. The streams are
+numerous, moisture is plentiful, the soil is fertile, and the slopes of
+the hills are covered with splendid timber, a great quantity of which is
+cut and floated down the Gunduch, Bagmuttee, Koosee, and other streams
+during the rainy season. It is used principally for beams, rafters, and
+railway sleepers.
+
+The people are jealous of intrusion and suspicious of strangers, but
+as I was with an official, they generally came out in great numbers to
+gaze as we passed through a village. The country does not seem so
+thickly populated as in our territory, and the cultivators had a more
+well-to-do look. They possess vast numbers of cattle. The houses have
+conical roofs, and great quadrangular sheds, roofed with a flat
+covering of thatch, are erected all round the houses, for the
+protection of the cattle at night. The taxes must weigh heavily on the
+population. The executive officer, when he gets charge of a district,
+removes all the subordinates who have been acting under his
+predecessor. When I asked the old Major if this would not interfere
+with the efficient administration of justice, and the smooth working
+of his revenue and executive functions, he gave a funny leer, almost a
+wink, and said it was much more satisfactory to have men of your own
+working under you, the fact being, that with his own men he could more
+securely wring from the ryots the uttermost farthing they could pay,
+and was more certain of getting his own share of the spoil.
+
+With practically irresponsible power, and only answerable directly to
+his immediate military superior, an unscrupulous man may harry and
+harass a district pretty much as he chooses. Our old Major seemed to
+be civil and lenient, but in some districts the exactions and
+extortions of the rulers have driven many of the hard-working
+Nepaulese over the border into our territory. Our landholders or
+Zemindars, having vast areas of untilled land, are only too glad to
+encourage this immigration, and give the exiles, whom they find
+hard-working industrious tenants, long leases on easy terms. The
+new-comers are very independent, and strenuously resist any
+encroachment on what they consider their rights. If an attempt is made
+to raise their rent, even equitably, the land having increased in
+value, they will resist the attempt 'tooth and nail,' and take every
+advantage the law affords to oppose it. They are very fond of
+litigation, and are mostly able to afford the expense of a lawsuit. I
+generally found it answer better to call them together and reason
+quietly with them, submitting any point in dispute to an arbitration
+of parties mutually selected.
+
+Nearly all the rivers in Nepaul are formed principally from the
+melting of the snow on the higher ranges. A vast body of water
+descends annually into the plains from the natural surface drainage of
+the country, but the melting of the snows is the main source of the
+river system. Many of the hill streams, and it is particularly
+observable at some seasons in the Koosee, have a regular daily rise
+and fall. In the early morning you can often ford a branch of the
+river, which by midday has become a swiftly-rolling torrent, filling
+the channel from bank to bank. The water is intensely cold, and few or
+no fish are to be found in the mountain streams of Nepaul. When the
+Nepaulese come down to the plains on business, pleasure, or pilgrimage
+their great treat is a mighty banquet of fish. For two or three
+_annas_ a fish of several pounds weight can easily be purchased. They
+revel on this unwonted fare, eating to repletion, and very frequently
+making themselves ill in consequence. When Jung Bahadur came down
+through Chumparun to attend the _durbar_ of the lamented Earl Mayo,
+cholera broke out in his camp, brought on simply by the enormous
+quantities of fish, often not very fresh or wholesome, which his
+guards and camp followers consumed.
+
+Large quantities of dried fish are sent up to Nepaul, and exchanged
+for rice and other grain, or horns, hides, and blankets. The
+fish-drying is done very simply in the sun. It is generally left till
+it is half putrid and taints the air for miles. The sweltering,
+half-rotting mass, packed in filthy bags, and slung on ponies or
+bullocks, is sent over the frontier to some village bazaar in Nepaul.
+The track of a consignment of this horrible filth can be recognised
+from very far away. The perfume hovers on the road, and as you are
+riding up and get the first sniff of the putrid odour, you know at
+once that the Nepaulese market is being recruited by a _fresh_
+accession of very _stale_ fish. If the taste is at all equal to the
+smell, the rankest witches broth ever brewed in reeking cauldron would
+probably be preferable. Over the frontier there seems to be few roads,
+merely bullock tracks. Most of the transporting of goods is done by
+bullocks, and intercommunication must be slow and costly. I believe
+that near Katmandoo, the capital, the roads and bridges are good, and
+kept in tolerable repair. There is an arsenal where they manufacture
+modern munitions of war. Their soldiers are well disciplined, fairly
+well equipped, and form excellent fighting material.
+
+Our policy of annexation, so far as India is concerned, may perhaps be
+now considered as finally abandoned. We have no desire to annex
+Nepaul, but surely this system of utter isolation, of jealous
+exclusion at all hazards of English enterprise and capital, might be
+broken down to a mutual community of interest, a full and free
+exchange of products, and a reception by Nepaul without fear and
+distrust of the benefits our capitalists and pioneers could give the
+country by opening out its resources, and establishing the industries
+of the West on its fertile slopes and plains. I am no politician, and
+know nothing of the secret springs of policy that regulate our
+dealings with Nepaul, but it does seem somewhat weak and puerile to
+allow the Nepaulese free access to our territories, and an unprotected
+market in our towns for all their produce, while the British subject
+is rigorously excluded from the country, his productions saddled with
+a heavy protective duty, and the representative of our Government
+himself, treated more as a prisoner in honourable confinement, than as
+the accredited ambassador of a mighty empire.
+
+I may be utterly wrong. There may be weighty reasons of State for this
+condition of things, but it is a general feeling among Englishmen in
+India that, _we_ have to do all the GIVE and our Oriental neighbours
+do all the TAKE. The un-official English mind in India does not see
+the necessity for the painfully deferential attitude we invariably
+take in our dealings with native states. The time has surely come,
+when Oriental mistrust of our intentions should be stoutly battled
+with. There is room in Nepaul for hundreds of factories, for
+tea-gardens, fruit-groves, spice-plantations, woollen-mills,
+saw-mills, and countless other industries. Mineral products are
+reported of unusual richness. In the great central valley the climate
+approaches that of England. The establishment of productive industries
+would be a work of time, but so long as this ridiculous policy of
+isolation is maintained, and the exclusion of English tourists,
+sportsmen, or observers carried out in all its present strictness, we
+can never form an adequate idea of the resources of the country. The
+Nepaulese themselves cannot progress. I am convinced that a frank and
+unconstrained intercourse between Europeans and natives would create
+no jealousy and antagonism, but would lead to the development of a
+country singularly blessed by nature, and open a wide field for
+Anglo-Saxon energy and enterprise. It does seem strange, with all our
+vast territory of Hindustan accurately mapped out and known, roads and
+railways, canals and embankments, intersecting it in all directions,
+that this interesting corner of the globe, lying contiguous to our
+territory for hundreds of miles, should be less known than the
+interior of Africa, or the barren solitudes of the ice-bound Arctic
+regions.
+
+In these rich valleys hundreds of miles of the finest and most fertile
+lands in Asia lie covered by dense jungle, waiting for labour and
+capital. For the present we have enough to do in our own possessions
+to reclaim the uncultured wastes; but considering the rapid increase
+of population, the avidity with which land is taken up, the daily
+increasing use of all modern labour-saving appliances, the time must
+very shortly come when capital and energy will need new outlets, and
+one of the most promising of these is in Nepaul. The rapid changes
+which have come over the face of rural India, especially in these
+border districts, within the last twenty years, might well make the
+most thoughtless pause. Land has increased in value more than
+two-fold. The price of labour and of produce has kept more than equal
+pace. Machinery is whirring and clanking, where a few years ago a
+steam whistle would have startled the natives out of their wits. With
+cheap, easy, and rapid communication, a journey to any of the great
+cities is now thought no more of than a trip to a distant village in
+the same district was thought of twenty years ago. Everywhere are the
+signs of progress. New industries are opening up. Jungle is fast
+disappearing. Agriculture has wonderfully improved; and wherever an
+indigo factory has been built, progress has taken the place of
+stagnation, industry and thrift that of listless indolence and
+shiftless apathy. A spirit has moved in the valley of dry bones, and
+has clothed with living flesh the gaunt skeletons produced by
+ignorance, disease, and want. The energy and intelligence of the
+planter has breathed on the stagnant waters of the Hindoo intellect
+the breath of life, and the living tide is heaving, full of activity,
+purging by its resistless ever-moving pulsations the formerly stagnant
+mass of its impurities, and making it a life-giving sea of active
+industry and progress.
+
+Let any unprejudiced observer see for himself if it be not so; let him
+go to those districts where British capital and energy are not employed;
+let him leave the planting districts, and go up to the wastes of
+Oudh, or the purely native districts of the North-west, where there
+are no Europeans but the officials in the _station_. He will find
+fewer and worse roads, fewer wells, worse constructed houses, much
+ruder cultivation, less activity and industry; more dirt, disease,
+and desolation; less intelligence; more intolerance; and a peasantry
+morally, mentally, physically, and in every way inferior to those who
+are brought into daily contact with the Anglo-Saxon planters and
+gentlemen, and have imbibed somewhat of their activity and spirit of
+progress. And yet these are the men whom successive Lieutenant-Governors,
+and Governments generally, have done their best to thwart and obstruct.
+They have been misrepresented, held up to obloquy, and foully slandered;
+they have been described as utterly base, fattening on the spoils of a
+cowed and terror-ridden peasantry. Utterly unscrupulous, fearing neither
+God nor man, hesitating at no crime, deterred by no consideration from
+oppressing their tenantry, and compassing their interested ends by the
+vilest frauds.
+
+Such was the picture drawn of the indigo planter not so many years
+ago. There may have been much in the past over which we would
+willingly draw the veil, but at the present moment I firmly believe
+that the planters of Behar--and I speak as an observant student of
+what has been going on in India--have done more to elevate the
+peasantry, to rouse them into vitality, and to improve them in every
+way, than all the other agencies that have been at work with the same
+end in view.
+
+The Indian Government to all appearance must always work in extremes.
+It never seems to hit the happy medium. The Lieutenant-Governor for
+the time being impresses every department under him too strongly with
+his own individuality. The planters, who are an intelligent and
+independent body of men, have seemingly always been obnoxious to the
+ideas of a perfectly despotic and irresponsible ruler. In spite
+however of all difficulties and drawbacks, they have held their own. I
+know that the poor people and small cultivators look up to them with
+respect and affection. They find in them ready and sympathizing
+friends, able and willing to shield them from the exactions of their
+own more powerful and uncharitable fellow-countrymen. Half, nay
+nine-tenths, of the stories against planters, are got up by the
+money-lenders, the petty Zemindars, and wealthy villagers, who find
+the planter competing with them for land and labour, and raising the
+price of both. The poor people look to the factory as a never failing
+resource when all else fails, and but for the assistance it gives in
+money, or seed, or plough bullocks and implements of husbandry, many a
+struggling hardworking tenant would inevitably go to the wall, or
+become inextricably entangled in the meshes of the Bunneah and
+money-lender.
+
+I assert as a fact that the great majority of villagers in Behar would
+rather go to the factory, and have their sahib adjudicate on their
+dispute, than take it into Court. The officials in the indigo
+districts know this, and as a rule are very friendly with the
+planters. But not long since, an official was afraid to dine at a
+planter's house, fearing he might be accused of planter proclivities.
+In no other country in the world would the same jealousy of men who
+open out and enrich a country, and who are loyal, intelligent, and
+educated citizens, be displayed; but there are high quarters in which
+the old feeling of the East India Company, that all who were not in
+the service must be adventurers and interlopers, seems not wholly to
+have died out.
+
+That there have been abuses no one denies; but for years past the
+majority of the planters in Tirhoot, Chupra, and Chumparun, and in the
+indigo districts generally, not merely the managers, but the
+proprietors and agents have been laudably and loyally stirring, in
+spite of failures, reduced prices, and frequent bad seasons, to
+elevate the standard of their peasantry, and establish the indigo
+system on a fair and equitable basis. During the years when I was an
+assistant and manager on indigo estates, the rates for payment of
+indigo to cultivators nearly doubled, although prices for the
+manufactured article remained stationary. In well managed factories,
+the forcible seizure of carts and ploughs, and the enforcement of
+labour, which is an old charge against planters, was unknown; and the
+payment of tribute, common under the old feudal system, and styled
+_furmaish_, had been allowed to fall into desuetude. The NATIVE
+Zemindars or landholders however, still jealously maintain their
+rights, and harsh exactions were often made by them on the cultivators
+on the occasions of domestic events, such as births, marriages,
+deaths, and such like, in the families of the landowners. For years
+these exactions or feudal payments by the ryot to the Zemindar have
+been commuted by the factories into a lump sum in cash, when villages
+have been taken in farm, and this sum has been paid to the Zemindar as
+an enhanced rent. In the majority of cases it has not been levied from
+the cultivators, but the whole expense has been borne by the factory.
+In individual instances resort may have been had to unworthy tricks to
+harass the ryots, the factory middle-men having often been oppressors
+and tyrants; but as a body, the indigo planters of the present day
+have sternly set their faces to put down these oppressions, and have
+honestly striven to mete out even-handed justice to their tenants and
+dependants. With the spread of education and intelligence, the
+development of agricultural knowledge and practical science, and the
+vastly improved communication by roads, bridges, and ferries, in
+bringing about all of which the planting community themselves have
+been largely instrumental, there can be little doubt that these old
+fashioned charges against the planters as a body will cease, and
+public opinion will be brought to bear on any one who may promote his
+own interests by cruelty or rapacity, instead of doing his business on
+an equitable commercial basis, giving every man his due, relying on
+skill, energy, industry, and integrity, to promote the best interests
+of his factory; gaining the esteem and affection of his people by
+liberality, kindness, and strict justice.
+
+It can never be expected that a ryot can grow indigo at a loss to
+himself, or at a lower rate of profit than that which the cultivation
+of his other ordinary crops would give him, without at least some
+compensating advantages. With all his poverty and supposed stupidity,
+he is keenly alive to his own interests, quite able to hold his own in
+matters affecting his pocket. I have no hesitation in saying that the
+steady efforts which have been made by all the best planters to treat
+the ryot fairly, to give him justice, to encourage him with liberal
+aid and sympathy, and to put their mutual relations on a fair business
+footing, are now bearing fruit, and will result in the cultivation and
+manufacture of indigo in Upper Bengal becoming, as it deserves to
+become, one of the most firmly established, fairly conducted, and
+justly administered industries in India. That it may be so is, as I
+know, the earnest wish, as it has long been the dearest object, of my
+best friends among the planters of Behar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+The tiger.--His habitat.--Shooting on foot.--Modes of shooting.--A
+tiger hunt on foot.--The scene of the hunt.-The beat.--Incidents of
+the hunt.--Fireworks.--The tiger charges.--The elephant bolts.--The
+tigress will not break.--We kill a half-grown cub.--Try again for
+the tigress.--Unsuccessful.--Exaggerations in tiger stories.--My
+authorities.--The brothers S.--Ferocity and structure of the tiger.
+--His devastations.--His frame-work, teeth, &c.--A tiger at bay.
+--His unsociable habits.--Fight between tiger and tigress.--Young
+tigers.--Power and strength of the tiger.--Examples.--His cowardice.
+--Charge of a wounded tiger.--Incidents connected with wounded tigers.
+--A spined tiger.--Boldness of young tigers.--Cruelty.--Cunning.--Night
+scenes in the jungle.--Tiger killed by a wild boar.--His cautious
+habits.--General remarks.
+
+In the foregoing chapters I have tried to perform my promise, to give
+a general idea of our daily life in India; our toils and trials, our
+sports, our pastimes, and our general pursuits. No record of Indian
+sport, however, would be complete without some allusion to the kingly
+tiger, and no one can live long near the Nepaul frontier, without at
+some time or other having an encounter with the royal robber--the
+striped and whiskered monarch of the jungle.
+
+He is always to be found in the Terai forests, and although very
+occasionally indeed met with in Tirhoot, where the population is very
+dense, and waste lands infrequent, he is yet often to be encountered
+in the solitudes of Oudh or Goruchpore, has been shot at and killed
+near Bettiah, and at our pig-sticking ground near Kuderent. In North
+Bhaugulpore and Purneah he may be said to be ALWAYS at home, as he can
+be met there, if you search for him, at all seasons of the year.
+
+In some parts of India, notably in the Deccan, and in some districts
+on the Bombay side, and even in the Soonderbunds near Calcutta,
+sportsmen and shekarries go after the tiger on foot. I must confess
+that this seems to me a mad thing to do. With every advantage of
+weapon, with the most daring courage, and the most imperturbable
+coolness, I think a man no fair match for a tiger in his native
+jungles. There are men now living who have shot numbers of tigers on
+foot, but the numerous fatal accidents recorded every year, plainly
+shew the danger of such a mode of shooting.
+
+In Central India, in the North-west, indeed in most districts where
+elephants are not easily procurable, it is customary to erect
+_mychans_ or bamboo platforms on trees. A line of beaters, with
+tom-toms, drums, fireworks, and other means for creating a din, are
+then sent into the jungle, to beat the tigers up to the platform on
+which you sit and wait. This is often a successful mode if you secure
+an advantageous place, but accidents to the beaters are very common,
+and it is at best a weary and vexatious mode of shooting, as after all
+your trouble the tiger may not come near your _mychan_, or give you
+the slightest glimpse of his beautiful skin.
+
+I have only been out after tiger on foot on one occasion. It was in
+the sal jungles in Oudh. A neighbour of mine, a most intimate and dear
+friend, whom I had nicknamed the 'General,' and a young friend,
+Fullerton, were with me. A tigress and cub were reported to be in a
+dense patch of _nurkool_ jungle, on the banks of the creek which
+divided the General's cultivation from mine. The nurkool is a tall
+feathery-looking cane, very much relished by elephants. It grows in
+dense brakes, and generally in damp boggy ground, affording complete
+shade and shelter for wild animals, and is a favourite haunt of pig,
+wolf, tiger, and buffalo.
+
+We had only one elephant, the use of which Fullerton had got from a
+neighbouring Baboo. It was not a staunch animal, so we put one of our
+men in the howdah, with a plentiful supply of bombs, a kind of native
+firework, enclosed in a clay case, which burns like a huge squib, and
+sets fire to the jungle. Along with the elephant we had a line of
+about one hundred coolies, and several men with drums and tom-toms.
+Fullerton took the side nearest the river, as it was possible the
+brute might sneak out that way, and make her escape along the bank.
+The General's shekarry remained behind, in rear of the line of
+beaters, in case the tigress might break the line, and try to escape
+by the rear. My _Gomasta_, the General, and myself, then took up
+positions behind trees all along the side of the glade or dell in
+which was the bit of nurkool jungle.
+
+It was a small basin, sloping gently down to the creek from the sal
+jungle, which grew up dark and thick all around. A margin of close
+sward, as green and level as a billiard-table, encircled the glade,
+and in the basin the thick nurkool grew up close, dense, and high,
+like a rustling barrier of living green. In the centre was the
+decaying stump of a mighty forest monarch, with its withered arms
+stretching out their bleached and shattered lengths far over the
+waving feathery tops of the nurkool below.
+
+The General and I cut down, some branches, which we stuck in the
+ground before us. I had a fallen log in front of me, on which I rested
+my guns. I had a naked _kookree_ ready to hand, for we were sure that
+the tigress was in the swamp, and I did not know what might happen. I
+did not half like this style of shooting, and wished I was safely
+seated on the back of 'JORROCKS,' my faithful old Bhaugulpore
+elephant. The General whistled as a sign for the beat to begin. The
+coolies dashed into the thicket. The stately elephant slowly forced
+his ponderous body through the crashing swaying brake. The rattle of
+the tom-toms and rumble of the drums, mingled with the hoarse shouts
+and cries of the beaters, the fiery rush of sputtering flame, and the
+loud report as each bomb burst, with the huge volumes of blinding
+smoke, and the scent of gunpowder that came on the breeze, told us
+that the bombs were doing their work. The jungle was too green to
+burn; but the fireworks raised a dense sulphurous smoke, which
+penetrated among the tall stems of the nurkool, and by the waving and
+crashing of the tall swaying canes, the heaving of the howdah, with
+the red puggree of the peon, and the gleaming of the staves and
+weapons, we could see that the beat was advancing.
+
+As they neared the large withered tree in the centre of the brake, the
+elephant curled up his trunk and trumpeted. This was a sure sign there
+was game afoot. We could see the peon in the howdah leaning over the
+front bar, and eagerly peering into the recesses of the thicket before
+him. He lit one of the bombs, and hurled it right up against the hole
+of the tree. It hissed and sputtered, and the smoke came curling over
+the reeds in dense volumes. A roar followed that made the valley ring
+again. We heard a swift rush. The elephant turned tail, and fled madly
+away, crashing through the matted brake that crackled and tore under
+his tread. The howdah swayed wildly, and the peon clung tenaciously on
+to the top bar with all his desperate might. The _mahout_, or
+elephant-driver, tried in vain to check the rush of the frightened
+brute, but after repeated sounding whacks on the head he got her to
+stop, and again turn round. Meantime the cries and shouting had
+ceased, and the beaters came pouring from the jungle by twos and
+threes, like the frightened inhabitants of some hive or ant-heap. Some
+in their hurry came tumbling out headlong, others with their faces
+turned backwards to see if anything was in pursuit of them, got
+entangled in the reeds, and fell prone on their hands and knees. One
+fellow had just emerged from the thick cover, when another terrified
+compatriot dashed out in blind unreasoning fear close behind him. The
+first one thought the tiger was on him. With one howl of anguish and
+dismay he fled as fast as he could run, and the General and I, who had
+witnessed the episode, could not help uniting in a resounding peal of
+laughter, that did more to bring the scared coolies to their senses
+than anything else we could have done.
+
+There was no doubt now of the tiger's whereabouts. One of the beaters
+gave us a most graphic description of its appearance and proportions.
+According to him it was bigger than an elephant, had a mouth as wide
+as a coal scuttle, and eyes that glared like a thousand suns. From all
+this we inferred that there was a full grown tiger or tigress in the
+jungle. We re-formed the line of beaters, and once more got the
+elephant to enter the patch. The same story was repeated. No sooner
+did they get near the old tree, than the tigress again charged with a
+roar, and our valiant coolies and the chicken-hearted elephant vacated
+the jungle as fast as their legs could carry them. This happened twice
+or thrice. The tigress charged every time, but would not leave her
+safe cover. The elephant wheeled round at every charge, and would not
+shew fight. Fullerton got into the howdah, and fired two shots into
+the spot where the tigress was lying. He did not apparently wound her,
+but the reports brought her to the charge once more, and the elephant,
+by this time fairly tired of the game, and thoroughly demoralised with
+fear, bolted right away, and nearly cracked poor Fullerton's head
+against the branch of a tree.
+
+We could plainly see, that with only one elephant we could never
+dislodge the tigress, so making the coolies beat up the patch in
+lines, we shot several pig and a hog-deer, and adjourned for something
+to eat by the bank of the creek. We had been trying to oust the
+tigress for over four hours, but she was as wise as she was savage,
+and refused to become a mark for our bullets in the open. After lunch
+we made another grand attempt. We promised the coolies double pay if
+they roused the tigress to flight. The elephant was forced again into
+the nurkool very much against his will, and the mahout was promised a
+reward if we got the tigress. The din this time was prodigious, and
+strange to say they got quite close up to the big withered tree
+without the usual roar and charge. This seemed somewhat to stimulate
+the beaters and the old elephant. The coolies redoubled their cries,
+smote among the reeds with their heavy staves, and shouted
+encouragement to each other. Right in the middle of the line, as it
+seemed to us from the outside, there was then a fierce roar and a
+mighty commotion. Cries of fear and consternation arose, and forth
+poured the coolies again, helter skelter, like so many rabbits from a
+warren when the weasel or ferret has entered the burrow. Right before
+me a huge old boar and a couple of sows came plunging forth. I let
+them get on a little distance from the brake, and then with my
+'Express' I rolled over the tusker and one of his companions, and just
+then the General shouted out to me, 'There's the tiger!'
+
+I looked in the direction of his levelled gun, and there at the edge
+of the jungle was a handsome half-grown tiger cub, beautifully marked,
+his tail switching angrily from side to side, and his twitching
+retracted lips and bristling moustache drawn back like those of a
+vicious cat, showing his gleaming polished fangs and teeth.
+
+The General had a fine chance, took a steady aim, and shot the young
+savage right through the heart. The handsome young tiger gave one
+convulsive leap into the air and fell on his side stone dead. We could
+not help a cheer, and shouted for Fullerton, who soon came running up.
+We got some coolies together, but they were frightened to go near the
+dead animal, as we could plainly hear the old vixen inside snarling
+and snapping, for all the world like an angry terrier. We heard her
+half-suppressed growl and snarl. She was evidently in a fine temper.
+How we wished for a couple of staunch elephants to hunt her out of the
+cane. It was no use, however, the elephant would not go near the
+jungle again. The coolies were thoroughly scared, and had got plenty
+of pork and venison to eat, so did not care for anything else. We
+collected a lot of tame buffaloes, and tried to drive them through the
+jungle, but the coolies had lost heart, and would not exert
+themselves; so we had to content ourselves with the cub, who measured
+six feet three inches (a very handsome skin it was), and very
+reluctantly had to leave the savage mother alone. I never saw a brute
+charge so persistently as she did. She always rushed forward with a
+succession of roars, and was very wary and cunning. She never charged
+home, she did not even touch the elephant or any of the coolies, but
+evidently trusted to frighten her assailants away by a bold show and a
+fierce outcry.
+
+We went back two days after with five elephants, which with great
+difficulty we had got together[1], and thoroughly beat the patch of
+nurkool, killed a lot of pig and a couple of deer, shot an alligator,
+and destroyed over thirty of its eggs, which we discovered on the bank
+of the creek; and returning in the evening shot a nilghau and a black
+buck, but the tigress had disappeared. She was gone, and we grumbled
+sorely at our bad luck. That was the only occasion I was ever after
+tiger on foot. It was doubtless intensely exciting work, and both
+tigress and cub must have passed close to us several times, hidden by
+the jungle. We were only about thirty paces from the edge of the
+brake, and both animals must have seen us, although the dense cover
+hid them from our sight. I certainly prefer shooting from the howdah.
+
+Although it is beyond the scope of this book to enter into a detailed
+account of the tiger, discussing his structure, habits, and
+characteristics, it may aid the reader if I give a sketchy general
+outline of some of the more prominent points of interest connected
+with the monarch of the jungle, the cruel, cunning, ferocious king of
+the cat tribe, the beautiful but dreaded tiger.
+
+I should prefer to shew his character by incidents with which I have
+myself been connected, but as many statements have been made about
+tigers that are utterly absurd and untrue, and as tiger stories
+generally contain a good deal of exaggeration, and a natural
+scepticism unconsciously haunts the reader when tigers and tiger
+shooting are the topics, it may be as well to state once for all, that
+I shall put down nothing that cannot be abundantly substantiated by
+reference to my own sporting journals, on those of the brothers S.,
+friends and fellow-sportsmen of my own. To G.S. I am under great
+obligations for many interesting notes he has given me about tiger
+shooting. Joe, his brother, was long our captain in our annual
+shooting parties. Their father and _his_ brother, the latter still
+alive and a keen shot, were noted sportsmen at a time when game was
+more plentiful, shooting more generally practised, and when to be a
+good shot meant more than average excellence. The two brothers between
+them have shot, I daresay, more than four hundred and fifty male and
+female tigers, and serried rows of skulls ranged round the
+billiard-rooms in their respective factories, bear witness to their
+love of sport and the deadly accuracy of their aim. Under their
+auspices I began my tiger shooting, and as they knew every inch of the
+jungles, had for years been observant students of nature, were
+acquainted with all the haunts and habits of every wild creature, I
+acquired a fund of information about the tiger which I knew could be
+depended on. It was the result of actual observation and experience,
+and in most instances it was corroborated by my own experience in my
+more limited sphere of action. Every incident I adduce, every
+deduction I draw, every assertion I make regarding tigers and tiger
+shooting can be plentifully substantiated, and abundantly testified
+to, by my brother sportsmen of Purneah and Bhaugulpore. From their
+valuable information I have got most of the material for this part of
+my book.
+
+Of the order FERAE, the family _felidae_, there is perhaps no animal
+in the wide range of all zoology, so eminently fitted for destruction
+as the tiger. His whole structure and appearance, combining beauty and
+extreme agility with prodigious strength, his ferocity, and his
+cunning, mark him out as the very type of a beast of prey. He is the
+largest of the cat tribe, the most formidable race of quadrupeds on
+earth. He is the most bloodthirsty in habit, and the most dreaded by
+man. Whole tracts of fertile fields, reclaimed from the wild
+luxuriance of matted jungle, and waving with golden grain, have been
+deserted by the patient husbandmen, and allowed to relapse into
+tangled thicket and uncultured waste on account of the ravages of this
+formidable robber. Whole villages have been depopulated by tigers, the
+mouldering door-posts, and crumbling rafters, met with at intervals in
+the heart of the solitary jungle, alone marking the spot where a
+thriving hamlet once sent up the curling smoke from its humble
+hearths, until the scourge of the wilderness, the dreaded 'man-eater,'
+took up his station near it, and drove the inhabitants in terror from
+the spot. Whole herds of valuable cattle have been literally destroyed
+by the tiger. His habitat is in those jungles, and near those
+localities, which are most highly prized by the herdsmen of India for
+their pastures, and the numbers of cattle that yearly fall before his
+thirst for blood, and his greed for living prey, are almost
+incredible. I have scarcely known a day pass, during the hot months,
+on the banks of the Koosee, that news of a _kill_ has not been sent in
+from some of the villages in my _ilaka_, and as a tiger eats once in
+every four or five days, and oftener if he can get the chance, the
+number of animals that fall a prey to his insatiable appetite, over
+the extent of Hindustan, must be enormous. The annual destruction of
+tame animals by tigers alone is almost incredible, and when we add to
+this the wild buffalo, the deer, the pig, and other untamed animals,
+to say nothing of smaller creatures, we can form some conception of
+the destruction caused by the tiger in the course of a year.
+
+His whole frame is put together to effect destruction. In cutting up a
+tiger you are impressed with this. His tendons are masses of nerve and
+muscle as hard as steel. The muscular development is tremendous. Vast
+bands and layers of muscle overlap each other. Strong ligaments, which
+you can scarcely cut through, and which soon blunt the sharpest knife,
+unite the solid, freely-playing, loosely-jointed bones. The muzzle is
+broad, and short, and obtuse. The claws are completely retractile. The
+jaws are short. There are two false molars, two grinders above, and
+the same number below. The upper carnivorous tooth has three lobes,
+and an obtuse heel; the lower has two lobes, pointed and sharp, and no
+heel. There is one very small tuberculous tooth above as an auxiliary,
+and then the strong back teeth. The muscles of the jaws are of
+tremendous power. I have come across the remains of a buffalo killed
+by a tiger, and found all the large bones, even the big strong bones
+of the pelvis and large joints, cracked and crunched like so many
+walnuts, by the powerful jaws of the fierce brute.
+
+The eye is peculiarly brilliant, and when glaring with fury it is
+truly demoniac. With his bristles rigid, the snarling lips drawn back,
+disclosing the formidable fangs, the body crouching for his spring,
+and the lithe tail puffed up and swollen, and lashing restlessly from
+side to side, each muscle tense and strung, and an undulating movement
+perceptible like the motions of a huge snake, a crouching tiger at bay
+is a sight that strikes a certain chill to the heart of the onlooker.
+When he bounds forward, with a roar that reverberates among the mazy
+labyrinths of the interminable jungle, he tests the steadiest nerve
+and almost daunts the bravest heart.
+
+In their habits they are very unsociable, and are only seen together
+during the amatory season. When that is over the male tiger betakes
+him again to his solitary predatory life, and the tigress becomes, if
+possible, fiercer than he is, and buries herself in the gloomiest
+recesses of the jungle. When the young are born, the male tiger has
+often been known to devour his offspring, and at this time they are
+very savage and quarrelsome. Old G., a planter in Purneah, once came
+across a pair engaged in deadly combat. They writhed and struggled on
+the ground, the male tiger striking tremendous blows on the chest and
+flanks of his consort, and tearing her skin in strips, while the
+tigress buried her fangs in his neck, tearing and worrying with all
+the ferocity of her nature. She was battling for her young. G. shot
+both the enraged combatants, and found that one of the cubs had been
+mangled, evidently by his unnatural father. Another, which he picked
+up in a neighbouring bush, was unharmed, but did not survive long.
+Pairs have often been shot in the same jungle, but seldom in close
+proximity, and it accords with all experience that they betray an
+aversion to each other's society, except at the one season. This
+propensity of the father to devour his offspring seems to be due to
+jealousy or to blind unreasoning hate. To save her offspring the
+female always conceals her young, and will often move far from the
+jungle which she usually frequents.
+
+When the cubs are able to kill for themselves, she seems to lose all
+pleasure in their society, and by the time they are well grown she
+usually has another batch to provide for. I have, however, shot a
+tigress with a full-grown cub--the hunt described in the last chapter
+is an instance--and on several occasions, my friend George has shot
+the mother with three or four full-grown cubs in attendance. This is
+however rare, and only happens I believe when the mother has remained
+entirely separate from the company of the male.
+
+The strength of the tiger is amazing. The fore paw is the most
+formidable weapon of attack. With one stroke delivered with full
+effect he can completely disable a large buffalo. On one occasion, on
+the Koosee _derahs_, that is, the plains bordering the river, an
+enraged tiger, passing through a herd of buffaloes, broke the backs of
+two of the herd, giving each a stroke right and left as he went along.
+One blow is generally sufficient to kill the largest bullock or
+buffalo. Our captain, Joe, had once received _khubber_, that is, news
+or information, of a kill by a tiger. He went straight to the
+_baithan_, the herd's head-quarters, and on making enquiries, was told
+that the tiger was a veritable monster.
+
+'Did you see it?' asked Joe.
+
+'I did not,' responded the _goala_ or cowherd.
+
+'Then how do you know it was so large?'
+
+'Because,' said the man, 'it killed the biggest buffalo in my herd,
+and the poor brute only gave one groan.'
+
+George once tracked a tiger, following up the drag of a bullock that
+he had carried off. At one place the brute came to a ditch, which was
+measured and found to be five feet in width. Through this there was no
+drag, but the traces continued on the further side. The inference is,
+that the powerful thief had cleared the ditch, taking the bullock
+bodily with him at a bound. Others have been known to jump clear out
+of a cattle pen, over a fence some six feet high, taking on one
+occasion a large-sized calf, and another time a sheep.
+
+Another wounded tiger, with two bullets in his flanks, the wound being
+near the root of the tail, cleared a _nullah_, or dry watercourse, at
+one bound. The nullah was stepped by George, and found to be
+twenty-three paces wide. It is fortunate, with such tremendous powers
+for attack, that the tiger will try as a rule to slink out of the way
+if he can. He almost always avoids an encounter with man. His first
+instinct is flight. Only the exciting incidents of the chase are as a
+rule put upon record. A narrative of tiger shooting therefore is apt
+in this respect to be a little misleading. The victims who meet their
+death tamely and quietly (and they form the majority in every
+hunt),--those that are shot as they are tamely trying to escape--are
+simply enumerated, but the charging tiger, the old vixen that breaks
+the line, and scatters the beaters to right and left, that rouses the
+blood of the sportsmen to a fierce excitement, these are made the most
+of. Every incident is detailed and dwelt upon, and thus the idea has
+gained ground, that ALL tigers are courageous, and wait not for
+attack, but in most instances take the initiative. It is not the case.
+Most of the tigers I have seen killed would have escaped if they
+could. It is only when brought to bay, or very hard pressed, or in
+defence of its young, that a tiger or tigress displays its native
+ferocity. At such a moment indeed, nothing gives a better idea of
+savage determined fury and fiendish rage. With ears thrown back, brows
+contracted, mouth open, and glaring yellow eyes scintillating with
+fury, the cruel claws plucking at the earth, the ridgy hairs on the
+back stiff and erect as bristles, and the lithe lissome body quivering
+in every muscle and fibre with wrath and hate, the beast comes down to
+the charge with a defiant roar, which makes the pulse bound and the
+breath come short and quick. It requires all a man's nerve and
+coolness, to enable him to make steady shooting.
+
+Roused to fury by a wound, I have seen tigers wheel round with amazing
+swiftness, and dash headlong, roaring dreadfully as they charged, full
+upon the nearest elephant, scattering the line and lacerating the poor
+creature on whose flanks or head they may have fastened, their whole
+aspect betokening pitiless ferocity and fiendish rage.
+
+Even in death they do not forget their savage instincts. I knew of one
+case in which a seemingly dead tiger inflicted a fearful wound upon an
+elephant that had trodden on what appeared to be his inanimate
+carcase. Another elephant, that attacked and all but trampled a tiger
+to death, was severely bitten under one of the toe-nails. The wound
+mortified, and the unfortunate beast died in about a week after its
+infliction. Another monster, severely wounded, fell into a pool of
+water, and seized hold with its jaws of a hard knot of wood that was
+floating about. In its death agony, it made its powerful teeth meet in
+the hard wood, and not until it was being cut up, and we had divided
+the muscles of the jaws, could we extricate the wood from that
+formidable clench. In rage and fury, and mad with pain, the wounded
+tiger will often turn round and savagely bite the wound that causes
+its agony, and they very often bite their paws and shoulders, and tear
+the grass and earth around them.
+
+A tiger wounded in the spine, however, is the most exciting spectacle.
+Paralysed in the limbs, he wheels round, roaring and biting at
+everything within his reach. In 1874 I shot one in the spine, and
+watched his furious movements for some time before I put him out of
+his misery. I threw him a pad from one of the elephants, and the way
+he tore and gnawed it gave me some faint idea of his fury and
+ferocity. He looked the very personification of impotent viciousness;
+the incarnation of devilish rage.
+
+Urged by hunger the tiger fearlessly attacks his prey. The most
+courageous are young tigers about seven or eight feet long. They
+invariably give better sport than larger and older animals, being more
+ready to charge, and altogether bolder and more defiant. Up to the age
+of two years they have probably been with the mother, have never
+encountered a reverse or defeat, and having become bold by impunity,
+hesitate not to fly at any assailant whatever.
+
+Like all the cat tribe, they are very cruel in disposition, often most
+wantonly so. Having disabled his prey with the first onset, the tiger
+plays with it as a cat does with a mouse, and, unless very sharp set
+by hunger, he always indulges this love of torture. His attacks are by
+no means due only to the cravings of his appetite. He often slays the
+victims of a herd, in the wantonness of sport, merely to indulge his
+murderous propensities. Even when he has had a good meal he will often
+go on adding fresh victims, seemingly to gratify his sense of power,
+and his love of slaughter. In teaching her cubs to kill for
+themselves, the mother often displays great cruelty, frequently
+killing at a time five or six cows from one herd. The young savages
+are apt pupils, and 'try their prentice hand' on calves and weakly
+members of the herd, killing from the mere love of murder.
+
+Their cunning is as remarkable as their cruelty; what they lack in
+speed they make up in consummate subtlety. They take advantage of the
+direction of the wind, and of every irregularity of the ground. It is
+amazing what slight cover will suffice to conceal their lurking forms
+from the observation of the herd. During the day they generally
+retreat to some cool and shady spot, deep in the recesses of the
+jungle. Where the soft earth has been worn away with ragged hollows
+and deep shady water-courses, where the tallest and most impenetrable
+jungle conceals the winding and impervious paths, hidden in the gloom
+and obscurity of the densely-matted grass, the lordly tiger crouches,
+and blinks away the day. With the approach of night, however, his mood
+undergoes a change. He hears the tinkle of the bells, borne by some of
+the members of a retreating herd, that may have been feeding in close
+proximity to his haunt all day long, and from which he has determined
+to select a victim for his evening meal. He rouses himself and yawns,
+stretches himself like the great cruel cat he is, and then crawls and
+creeps silently along, by swampy watercourses, and through devious
+labyrinths known to himself alone. He hangs on the outskirts of the
+herd, prowling along and watching every motion of the returning
+cattle. He makes his selection, and with infinite cunning and patience
+contrives to separate it from the rest. He waits for a favourable
+moment, when, with a roar that sends the alarmed companions of the
+unfortunate victim scampering together to the front, he springs on his
+unhappy prey, deprives it of all power of resistance with one
+tremendous stroke, and bears it away to feast at his leisure on the
+warm and quivering carcase.
+
+He generally kills as the shades of evening are falling, and seldom
+ventures on a foraging expedition by day. After nightfall it is
+dangerous to be abroad in the jungles. It is then that dramas are
+acted of thrilling interest, and unimaginable sensation scenes take
+place. Some of the old shekarries and field-watchers frequently dig
+shallow pits, in which they take their stand. Their eye is on the
+level of the ground, and any object standing out in relief against the
+sky line can be readily detected. If they could relate their
+experiences, what absorbing narratives they could write. They see the
+tiger spring upon his terror-stricken prey, the mother and her hungry
+cubs prowling about for a victim, or two fierce tigers battling for
+the favours of some sleek, striped, remorseless, bloodthirsty
+forest-fiend. In pursuit of their quarry, they steal noiselessly
+along, and love to make their spring unawares. They generally select
+some weaker member of a herd, and are chary of attacking a strong
+big-boned, horned animal. They sometimes 'catch a Tartar,' and
+instances are known of a buffalo not only withstanding the attack of a
+tiger successfully, but actually gaining the victory over his more
+active assailant, whose life has paid the penalty of his rashness.
+
+Old G. told me, he had come across the bodies of a wild boar and an
+old tiger, lying dead together near Burgamma. The boar was fearfully
+mauled, but the clean-cut gaping gashes in the striped hide of the
+tiger, told how fearfully and gallantly he had battled for his life.
+
+In emerging from the jungle at night, they generally select the same
+path or spot, and approach the edge of the cover with great caution.
+They will follow the same track for days together. Hence in some
+places the tracks of the tigers are so numerous as to lead the tyro to
+imagine that dozens must have passed, when in truth the tracks all
+belong to one and the same brute. So acute is their perception, so
+narrowly do they scrutinize every minute object in their path, so
+suspicious is their nature, that anything new in their path, such as a
+pitfall, a screen of cut grass, a _mychan_, that is, a stage from
+which you might be intending to get a shot, nay, even the print of a
+footstep--a man's, a horse's, an elephant's--is often quite enough to
+turn them from a projected expedition, or at any rate to lead them to
+seek some new outlet from the jungle. In any case it increases their
+wariness, and under such circumstances it becomes almost impossible to
+get a shot at them from a pit or shooting-stage. Their vision, their
+sense of smell, of hearing, all their perceptions are so acute, that I
+think lying in wait for them is chiefly productive of weariness and
+vexation of spirit. It is certainly dangerous, and the chances of a
+successful shot are so problematical, while the _disagreeables_, and
+discomforts, and dangers are so real and tangible, that I am inclined
+to think this mode of attack 'hardly worth the candle.'
+
+With all his ferocity and cruelty, however, I am of opinion that the
+tiger is more cowardly than courageous. He will always try to escape a
+danger, and fly from attack, rather than attack in return or wait to
+meet it, and wherever he can, in pursuit of his prey, he will trust
+rather to his cunning than to his strength, and he always prefers an
+ambuscade to an open onslaught.
+
+
+[1] This was at the time the Prince of Wales was shooting in Nepaul,
+    not very far from where I was then stationed. Most of the
+    elephants in the district had been sent up to his Royal Highness's
+    camp, or were on their way to take part in the ceremonies of the
+    grand _Durbar_ in Delhi.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+The tiger's mode of attack.--The food he prefers.--Varieties of prey.
+--Examples.--What he eats first.--How to tell the kill of a tiger.
+--Appetite fierce.--Tiger choked by a bone.--Two varieties of
+tiger.--The royal Bengal.--Description.--The hill tiger.--His
+description.--The two compared.--Length of the tiger.--How to
+measure tigers.--Measurements.--Comparison between male and female.
+--Number of young at a birth.--The young cubs.--Mother teaching cubs
+to kill.--Education and progress of the young tiger.--Wariness and
+cunning of the tiger.--Hunting incidents shewing their powers of
+concealment.--Tigers taking to water.--Examples.--Swimming powers.
+--Caught by floods.--Story of the Soonderbund tigers.
+
+The tiger's mode of attack is very characteristic of his whole nature.
+To see him stealthily crouching, or crawling silently and sneakingly
+after a herd of cattle, dodging behind every clump of bushes or tuft
+of grass, running swiftly along the high bank of a watercourse, and
+sneaking under the shadowing border of a belt of jungle, is to
+understand his cunning and craftiness. His attitude, when he is
+crouching for the final bound, is the embodiment of suppleness and
+strength. All his actions are graceful, and half display and half
+conceal beneath their symmetry and elegance the tremendous power and
+deadly ferocity that lurks beneath. For a short distance he is
+possessed of great speed, and with a few short agile bounds he
+generally manages to overtake his prey. If baffled in his first
+attack, he retires growling to lie in wait for a less fortunate
+victim. His onset being so fierce and sudden, the animal he selects
+for his prey is generally taken at a great disadvantage, and is seldom
+in a position to make any strenuous or availing resistance.
+
+Delivering the numbing blow with his mighty fore paw, he fastens on
+the throat of the animal he has felled, and invariably tries to tear
+open the jugular vein. This is his practice in nearly every case, and
+it shews a wonderful instinct for selecting the most deadly spot in
+the whole body of his luckless prey. When he has got hold of his
+victim by the throat, he lies down, holding on to the bleeding
+carcase, snarling and growling, and fastening and withdrawing his
+claws, much as a cat does with a rat or mouse. Some writers say he
+then proceeds to drink the blood, but this is just one of those broad
+general assertions which require proof. In some cases he may quench
+his thirst and gratify his appetite for blood by drinking it from the
+gushing veins of his quivering victim, but in many cases I know from
+observation, that the blood is not drunk. If the tiger is very hungry
+he then begins his feast, tearing huge fragments of flesh from the
+dead body, and not unusually swallowing them whole. If he is not
+particularly hungry, he drags the carcase away, and hides it in some
+well-known spot. This is to preserve it from the hungry talons and
+teeth of vultures and jackals. He commonly remains on guard near his
+_cache_ until he has acquired an appetite. If he cannot conveniently
+carry away his quarry, because of its bulk, or the nature of the
+ground, or from being disturbed, he returns to the place at night and
+satisfies his appetite.
+
+Tigers can sneak crouchingly along as fast as they can trot, and it is
+wonderful how silently they can steal on their prey. They seem to have
+some stray provident fits, and on occasions make provision for future
+wants. There are instances on record of a tiger dragging a _kill_
+after him for miles, over water, and through slush and weeds, and
+feasting on the carcase days after he has killed it. It is a fact, now
+established beyond a doubt, that he will eat carrion and putrid flesh,
+but only from necessity and not from choice.
+
+On one occasion my friends put up a tigress during the rains, when
+there are few cattle in the _derahs_ or plains near the river. She had
+killed a pig, and was eagerly devouring the carcase when she was
+disturbed. Snarling and growling, she made off with a leg of pork in
+her mouth, when a bullet ended her career. They seem to prefer pork
+and venison to almost any other kind of food, and no doubt pig and
+deer are their natural and usual prey. The influx, however, of vast
+herds of cattle, and the consequent presence of man, drive away the
+wild animals, and at all events make them more wary and more difficult
+to kill. Finding domestic cattle unsuspicious, and not very formidable
+foes, the tiger contents himself at a pinch with beef, and judging
+from his ravages he comes to like it. Getting bolder by impunity, he
+ventures in some straits to attack man. He finds him a very easy prey;
+he finds the flesh too, perhaps, not unlike his favourite pig.
+Henceforth he becomes a 'man-eater,' the most dreaded scourge and
+pestilent plague of the district. He sometimes finds an old boar a
+tough customer, and never ventures to attack a buffalo unless it be
+grazing alone, and away from the rest of the herd. When buffaloes are
+attacked, they make common cause against their crafty and powerful
+foe, and uniting together in a crescent-shaped line, their horns all
+directed in a living _cheval-de-frise_ against the tiger, they rush
+tumultuously at him, and fairly hunt him from the jungle. The pig,
+having a short thick neck, and being tremendously muscular, is hard to
+kill; but the poor inoffensive cow, with her long-neck, is generally
+killed at the first blow, or so disabled that it requires little
+further effort to complete the work of slaughter.
+
+Two friends of mine once shot an enormous old tiger on a small island
+in the middle of the river, during the height of the annual rains. The
+brute had lost nearly all its hair from mange, and was an emaciated
+sorry-looking object. From the remains on the island--the skin,
+scales, and bones--they found that he must have slain and eaten
+several alligators during his enforced imprisonment on the island.
+They will eat alligators when pressed by hunger, and they have been
+known to subsist on turtles, tortoises, iguanas, and even jackals.
+Only the other day in Assam, a son of Dr. B. was severely mauled by a
+tiger which sprang into the verandah after a dog. There were three
+gentlemen in the verandah, and, as you may imagine, they were taken
+not a little by surprise. They succeeded in bagging the tiger, but not
+until poor B. was very severely hurt.
+
+After tearing the throat open, they walk round the prostrate carcase
+of their prey, growling and spitting like 'tabby' cats. They begin
+their operations in earnest, invariably on the buttock. A leopard
+generally eats the inner portion of the thigh first. A wolf tears open
+the belly, and eats the intestines first. A vulture, hawk, or kite,
+begins on the eyes; but a tiger invariably begins on the buttocks,
+whether of buffalo, cow, deer, or pig. He then eats the fatty covering
+round the intestines, follows that up with the liver and udder, and
+works his way round systematically to the fore-quarters, leaving the
+head to the last. It is frequently the only part of an animal that
+they do not eat.
+
+A 'man-eater' eats the buttocks, shoulders, and breasts first. So many
+carcases are found in the jungle of animals that have died from
+disease or old age, or succumbed to hurts and accidents, that the
+whitened skeletons meet the eye in hundreds. But one can always tell
+the kill of a tiger, and distinguish between it and the other bleached
+heaps. The large bones of a tiger's kill are always broken. The broad
+massive rib bones are crunched in two as easily as a dog would snap
+the drumstick of a fowl. Vultures and jackals, the scavengers of the
+jungle, are incapable of doing this; and when you see the fractured
+large bones, you can always tell that the whiskered monarch has been
+on the war-path. George S. writes me:--
+
+'I have known a tiger devour a whole bullock to his own cheek in one
+day. Early in the morning a man came to inform me he had seen a tiger
+pull down a bullock. I went after the fellow late in the afternoon,
+and found him in a bush not more than twenty feet square, the only
+jungle he had to hide in for some distance round, and in this he had
+polished off the bullock, nothing remaining save the head. The jungle
+being so very small, and he having lain the whole day in it, nothing
+in the way of vultures or jackals could have assisted him in finishing
+off the bullock.'
+
+When hungry they appear to bolt large masses of flesh without
+masticating it. The same correspondent writes:--
+
+'We cut out regular "fids" once from a tiger's stomach, also large
+pieces of bone. Joe heard a tremendous roaring one night, which
+continued till near morning, not far from Nipunneah. He went out at
+dawn to look for the tiger, which he found was dead. The brute had
+tried to swallow the knee-joint of a bullock, and it had stuck in his
+gullet. This made him roar from pain, and eventually choked him.'
+
+As there are two distinct varieties of wild pig in India, so there
+seems to be little doubt that there are two distinct kinds of tigers.
+As these have frequently crossed we find many hybrids. I cannot do
+better than again quote from my obliging and observant friend George.
+The two kinds he designates as 'The Royal Bengal,' and 'The Hill
+Tiger,' and goes on to say:--
+
+'As a rule the stripes of a Royal Bengal are single and dark. The
+skull is widely different from that of his brother the Hill tiger,
+being low in the crown, wider in the jaws, rather flat in comparison,
+and the brain-pan longer with a sloping curve at the end, the crest of
+the brain-pan being a concave curve.
+
+'The Hill tiger is much more massively built; squat and thick set,
+heavier in weight and larger in bulk, with shorter tail, and very
+large and powerful neck, head, and shoulders. The stripes generally
+are double, and of a more brownish tinge, with fawn colour between the
+double stripes. The skull is high in the crown, and not quite so wide.
+The brain-pan is shorter, and the crest slightly convex or nearly
+straight, and the curve at the end of the skull rather abrupt.
+
+'They never grow so long as the "Bengal," yet look twice as big.
+
+'The crosses are very numerous, and vary according to pedigree, in
+stripes, skulls, form, weight, bulk, and tail. This I find most
+remarkable when I look at my collection of over 160 skulls.
+
+'The difference is better marked in tigers than in tigresses. The
+Bengal variety are not as a rule as ferocious as the Hill tiger. Being
+more supple and cunning, they can easier evade their pursuers by
+flight and manoeuvre than, their less agile brothers. The former,
+owing to deficiency of strength, oftener meet with discomfiture, and
+consequently are more wary and cunning; while the latter, prone to
+carry everything before them, trust more to their strength and
+courage, anticipating victory as certain.
+
+'In some the stripes are doubled throughout, in others only partially
+so, while in some they are single throughout, and some have manes to a
+slight extent.'
+
+I have no doubt this classification is correct. The tigers I have seen
+in Nepaul near the hills, were sometimes almost a dull red, and at a
+distance looked like a huge dun cow, while those I have seen in the
+plains during our annual hunts, were of a bright tawny yellow, longer,
+more lanky, and not shewing half such a bold front as their bulkier
+and bolder brethren of the hills.
+
+The length of the tiger has often given rise to fierce discussions
+among sportsmen. The fertile imagination of the slayer of a solitary
+'stripes,' has frequently invested the brute he has himself shot, or
+seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been shot by a friend, or
+the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous length, inches swelling to
+feet, and dimensions growing at each repetition of the yarn, till, as
+in the case of boars, the twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch
+tusker, and the eight foot tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.
+
+Purists again, sticklers for stern truth, haters of bounce or
+exaggeration, have perhaps erred as much on the other side; and in
+their eagerness to give the exact measurement, and avoid the very
+appearance of exaggeration, they actually stretch their tape line and
+refuse to measure the curves of the body, taking it in straight lines.
+This I think is manifestly unfair.
+
+Our mode of measurement in Purneah was to take the tiger as he lay
+before he was put on the elephant, and measure from the tip of the
+nose, over the crest of the skull, along the undulations of the body,
+to the tip of the tail. That is, we followed the curvature of the
+spine along the dividing ridge of the back, and always were careful
+and fair in our attempts. I am of opinion that a tiger over ten feet
+long is an exceptionally long one, but when I read of sportsmen
+denying altogether that even that length can be attained, I can but
+pity the dogmatic scepticism that refuses credence to well ascertained
+and authenticated facts. I believe also that tigers are not got nearly
+so large as in former days. I believe that much longer and heavier
+tigers--animals larger in every way--were shot some twenty years ago
+than those we can get now, but I account for this by the fact that
+there is less land left waste and uncultivated. There are more roads,
+ferries, and bridges, more improved communications, and in consequence
+more travelling. Population and cultivation have increased; firearms
+are more numerous; sport is more generally followed; shooting is much
+more frequent and deadly; and, in a word, tigers have not the same
+chances as they had some twenty years ago of attaining a ripe old age,
+and reaching the extremest limit of their growth. The largest tigers
+being also the most suspicious and wary, are only found in the
+remotest recesses of the impenetrable jungles of Nepaul and the Terai,
+or in those parts of the Indian wilds where the crack of the European
+rifle is seldom or never heard.
+
+It has been so loudly asserted, and so boldly maintained that no tiger
+was ever shot reaching, when fairly measured (that is, measured with
+the skin on, as he lay), ten feet, that I will let Mr. George again
+speak for himself. Referring to the royal Bengal, he says:--
+
+'These grow to great lengths. They have been shot as long as twelve
+feet seven inches (my father shot one that length) or longer; twelve
+feet seven inches, twelve feet six inches, twelve feet three inches,
+twelve feet one inch, and twelve feet, have been shot and recorded in
+the old sporting magazines by gentlemen of undoubted veracity in
+Purneah.
+
+'I have seen the skin of one twelve feet one inch, compared with which
+the skin of one I have by me _that measured as he lay_ (the italics
+are mine) eleven feet one inch, looks like the skin of a cub. The old
+skin looks more like that of a huge antediluvian species in comparison
+with the other.
+
+'The twelve footer was so heavy that my uncle (C.A.S.) tells me no
+number of mahouts could lift it. Several men, if they could have
+approached at one and the same time, might have been able to do so,
+but a sufficient number of men could not lay hold simultaneously to
+move the body from the ground.
+
+'Eventually a number of bamboos had to be cut, and placed in an
+incline from the ground to the elephant's saddle while the elephant
+knelt down, and up this incline the tiger had to be regularly hauled
+and shoved, and so fastened on the elephant.
+
+'He (the tiger) mauled four elephants, one of whom died the same day,
+and one other had a narrow _batch_, i.e. escape, of its life.
+
+In another communication to me, my friend goes over the same ground,
+but as the matter is one of interest to sportsmen and naturalists, I
+will give the extract entire. It proceeds as follows:--
+
+'Tigers grow to great lengths, some assert to even fourteen feet. I do
+not say they do not, but such cases are very rare, and require
+authentication. The longest I have seen, measured as he lay, eleven
+feet one inch (see "Oriental Sporting Magazine," for July, 1871, p.
+308). He was seven feet nine inches from tip of nose to root of tail;
+root of tail one foot three inches in circumference; round chest four
+feet six inches; length of head one foot two inches; fore arm two feet
+two inches; round the head two feet ten inches; length of tail three
+feet four inches.
+
+'Besides this, I have shot another eleven feet, and one ten feet
+eleven inches.
+
+'The largest tigress I have shot was at Sahareah, which measured ten
+feet two inches. I shot another ten feet exactly.' (See O.S.M., Aug.,
+1874, p. 358.)
+
+'I have got the head of a tiger, shot by Joe, which measured eleven
+feet five inches. It was shot at Baraila.
+
+'The male is much bigger built in every way--length, weight, size,
+&c., than the female. The males are more savage, the females more
+cunning and agile. The arms, body, paws, head, skull, claws, teeth,
+&c., of the female, are smaller. The tail of tigress longer; hind legs
+more lanky; the prints look smaller and more contracted, and the toes
+nearer together. It is said that though a large tiger may venture to
+attack a buffalo, the tigress refrains from doing so, but I have found
+this otherwise in my experience.
+
+'I have kept a regular log of all tigers shot by me. The average
+length of fifty-two tigers recorded in my journal is nine feet six and
+a half inches (cubs excluded), and of sixty-eight tigresses (cubs
+excluded), eight feet four inches.
+
+'The average of tigers and tigresses is eight feet ten and a quarter
+inches. This is excluding cubs I have taken alive.'
+
+As to measurements, he goes on to make a few remarks, and as I cannot
+improve on them I reproduce the original passage:--
+
+'Several methods have been recommended for measuring tigers. I measure
+them on the ground, or when brought to camp before skinning, and run
+the tape tight along the line, beginning at the tip of the nose, along
+the middle of the skull, between the ears and neck, then along the
+spine to the end of the tail, taking any curves of the body.
+
+'No doubt measurements of skull, body, tail, legs, &c., ought all to
+be taken, to give an adequate idea of the tiger, and for comparing
+them with one another, but this is not always feasible.'
+
+Most of the leading sportsmen in India now-a-days are very particular
+in taking the dimensions of every limb of the dead tiger. They take
+his girth, length, and different proportions. Many even weigh the
+tiger when it gets into camp, and no doubt this test is one of the
+best that can be given for a comparison of the sizes of the different
+animals slain.
+
+Another much disputed point in the natural history of the animal, a
+point on which there has been much acrimonious discussion, is the
+number of young that are given at a birth. Some writers have asserted,
+and stoutly maintained, that two cubs, or at the most three, is the
+extreme number of young brought forth at one time.
+
+This may be the ordinary number, but the two gentlemen I have already
+alluded to have assured me, that on frequent occasions they have
+picked up four actually born, and have cut out five several times, and
+on one occasion six, from the womb of a tigress.
+
+I have myself picked up four male cubs, all in one spot, with their
+eyes just beginning to open, and none of their teeth through the gums.
+One had been trampled to death by buffaloes, the other three were
+alive and scatheless, huddled into a bush, like three immense kittens.
+I kept the three for a considerable time, and eventually took them to
+Calcutta and sold them for a very satisfactory price.
+
+It seems clear, however, that the tigress frequently has four and even
+five cubs. It is rare, indeed to find her accompanied by more than two
+well grown cubs, very seldom three; and the inference is, that one or
+two of the young tigers succumb in very early life.
+
+The young ones do not appear to grow very quickly; they are about a
+foot long when they are born; they are born blind, with very minute
+hair, almost none in fact, but with the stripes already perfectly
+marked on the soft supple skin; they open their eyes when they are
+eight or ten days old, at which time they measure about a foot and a
+half. At the age of nine months they have attained to five feet in
+length, and are waxing mischievous. Tiger cubs a year old average
+about five feet eight inches, tigresses some three inches or so less.
+In two years they grow respectively to--the male seven feet six
+inches, and the female seven feet. At about this time they leave the
+mother, if they have not already done so, and commence depredations on
+their own account. In fact, their education has been well attended to.
+The mother teaches them to kill when they are about a year old. A
+young cub that measured only six feet, and whose mother had been shot
+in one of the annual beats, was killed while attacking a full grown
+cow in the government pound at Dumdaha police station. When they reach
+the length of six feet six inches they can kill pretty easily, and
+numbers have been shot by George and other Purneah sportsmen close to
+their 'kills.'
+
+They are most daring and courageous when they have just left their
+mother's care, and are cast forth to fight the battle of life for
+themselves. While with the old tigress their lines have been cast in
+not unpleasant places, they have seldom known hunger, and have
+experienced no reverses. Accustomed to see every animal succumb to her
+well planned and audacious attacks, they fancy that nothing will
+withstand their onslaught. They have been known to attack a line of
+elephants, and to charge most determinedly, even in this adolescent
+stage.
+
+Bye-and-bye, however, as they receive a few rude shocks from
+buffaloes, or are worsted in a hand-to-hand encounter with some tough
+old bull, or savage old grey boar, more especially if they get an ugly
+rip or two from the sharp tusks of an infuriated fighting tusker, they
+begin to be less aggressive, they learn that discretion may be the
+better part of valour, and their cunning instincts are roused. In
+fact, their education is progressing, and in time they instinctively
+discover every wile and dodge and cunning stratagem, and display all
+the wondrous subtlety of their race in procuring their prey.
+
+Old tigers are invariably more wary, cautious, and suspicious than
+young ones, and till they are fairly put to it by hunger, hurt, or
+compulsion, they endeavour to keep their stripes concealed. When
+brought to bay, however, there is little to reproach them with on the
+score of cowardice, and it will be matter of rejoicing if you or your
+elephants do not come off second best in the encounter. Even in the
+last desperate case, a cunning old tiger will often make a feint, or
+sham rush, or pretended charge, when his whole object is flight. If he
+succeed in demoralising the line of elephants, roaring and dashing
+furiously about, he will then try in the confusion to double through,
+unless he is too badly wounded to be able to travel fast, in which
+case he will fight to the end.
+
+Old fellows are well acquainted with every maze and thicket in the
+jungles, and they no sooner hear the elephants enter the 'bush' or
+'cover' than they make off for some distant shelter. If there is no
+apparent chance of this being successful, they try to steal out
+laterally and outflank the line, or if that also is impossible, they
+hide in some secret recess like a fox, or crouch low in some clumpy
+bush, and trust to you or your elephant passing by without noticing
+their presence.
+
+It is marvellous in what sparse cover they will manage to lie up. So
+admirably do their stripes mingle with the withered and charred
+grass-stems and dried up stalks, that it is very difficult to detect
+the dreaded robber when he is lying flat, extended, close to the
+ground, so still and motionless that you cannot distinguish a tremor
+or even a vibration of the grass in which he is crouching.
+
+On one occasion George followed an old tiger through some stubble
+about three feet high. It had been well trampled down too by tame
+buffaloes. The tiger had been tracked into the field, and was known to
+be in it. George was within ten yards of the cunning brute, and
+although mounted on a tall elephant, and eagerly scanning the thin
+cover with his sharpest glance, he could not discern the concealed
+monster. His elephant was within four paces of it, when it sprang up
+at the charge, giving a mighty roar, which however also served as its
+death yell, as a bullet from George's trusty gun crashed through its
+ribs and heart.
+
+Tigers can lay themselves so flat on the ground, and lie so perfectly
+motionless, that it is often a very easy thing to overlook them. On
+another occasion, when the Purneah Hunt were out, a tigress that had
+been shot got under some cover that was trampled down by a line of
+about twenty elephants. The sportsmen knew that she had been severely
+wounded, as they could tell by the gouts of blood, but there was no
+sign of the body. She had disappeared. After a long search, beating
+the same ground over and over again, an elephant trod on the dead body
+lying under the trampled canes, and the mahout got down and discovered
+her lying quite dead. She was a large animal and full grown.
+
+On another occasion George was after a fine male tiger. He was
+following up fast, but coming to a broad nullah, full of water, he
+suddenly lost sight of his game. He looked up and down the bank, and
+on the opposite bank, but could see no traces of the tiger. Looking
+down, he saw in the water what at first he took to be a large
+bull-frog. There was not a ripple on the placid stagnant surface of
+the pool. He marvelled much, and just then his mahout pointed to the
+supposed bull-frog, and in an excited whisper implored George to fire.
+A keener look convinced George that it really was the tiger. It was
+totally immersed all but the face, and lying so still that not the
+faintest motion or ripple was perceptible. He fired and inflicted a
+terrible wound. The tiger bounded madly forward, and George gave it
+its quietus through the spine as it tried to spring up the opposite
+bank.
+
+A nearly similar case occurred to old Mr. C., one of the veteran
+sportsmen of Purneah. A tiger had bolted towards a small tank or pond,
+and though the line followed up in hot pursuit, the brute disappeared.
+Old C., keener than the others, was loth to give up the pursuit, and
+presently discerned a yellowish reflection in the clear water. Peering
+more intently, he could discover the yellowish tawny outline of the
+cunning animal, totally immersed in the water, save its eyes, ears,
+and nose. He shot the tiger dead, and it sank to the bottom like a
+stone. So perfectly had it concealed itself, that the other sportsmen
+could not for the life of them imagine what old C. had fired at, till
+his mahout got down and began to haul the dead animal out of the
+water.
+
+Tigers are not at all afraid of water, and are fast and powerful
+swimmers. They swim much after the fashion of a horse, only the head
+out of the water, and they make scarcely any ripple.
+
+'In another case,' writes George, 'though not five yards from the
+elephant, and right under me, a tiger was swimming with so slight a
+ripple that I mistook it for a rat, until I saw the stripes emerge,
+when I perforated his jacket with a bullet.'
+
+Only their head remaining out of water when they are swimming, they
+are very hard to hit, as shooting at an object on water is very
+deceptive work as to judging distance, and a tiger's head is but a
+small object to aim at when some little way off.
+
+Old C. had another adventure with a cunning rogue, which all but ended
+disastrously. He was in hot pursuit of the tiger, and, finding no
+safety on land, it took to swimming in a broad unfordable piece of
+water, a sort of deep lagoon. Old C. procured a boat that was handy,
+and got a coolie to paddle him out after the tiger. He fired several
+shots at the exposed head of the brute, but missed. He thought he
+would wait till he got nearer and make a sure shot, as he had only one
+bullet left in the boat. Suddenly the tiger turned round, and made
+straight for the boat. Here was a quandary. Even if lie killed the
+tiger with his single bullet it might upset the boat; the lagoon was
+full of alligators, to say nothing of weeds, and there was no time to
+get his heavy boots off. He felt his life might depend on the accuracy
+of his aim. He fired, and killed the tiger stone dead within four or
+five yards of the boat.
+
+On one occasion, when out with our worthy district magistrate, Mr. S.,
+I came on the tracks of what to all appearance, was a very large
+tiger. They led over the sand close to the water's edge, and were very
+distinct. I could see no returning marks, so I judged that the tiger
+must have taken to the water. The stream was rapid and deep, and
+midway to the further bank was a big, oblong-shaped, sandy islet, some
+five or six hundred yards long, and having a few scrubby bushes
+growing sparsely on it. We put our elephants into the rapid current,
+and got across. The river here was nearly a quarter of a mile wide on
+each side of the islet. As we emerged from the stream on to the island
+we found fresh tracks of the tiger. They led us completely round the
+circumference of the islet. The tiger had evidently been in quest of
+food. The prints were fresh and very well defined. Finding that all
+was barren on the sandy shore, he entered the current again, and
+following up we found his imprint once more on the further bank,
+several hundred yards down the stream.
+
+One tiger was killed stone dead by a single bullet during one of our
+annual hunts, and falling back into the water, it sank to the bottom
+like lead. Being unable to find the animal, we beat all round the
+place, till I suggested it might have been hit and fallen into the
+river. One of the men was ordered to dive down, and ascertain if the
+tiger was at the bottom. The river water is generally muddy, so that
+the bottom cannot be seen. Divesting himself of puggree, and girding
+up his loins, the diver sank gently to the bottom, but presently
+reappeared in a palpable funk, puffing and blowing, and declaring that
+the tiger was certainly at the bottom. The foolish fellow thought it
+might be still alive. We soon disabused his mind of that idea, and had
+the dead tiger hauled up to dry land.
+
+Surprised by floods, a tiger has been known to remain for days on an
+ant-hill, and even to take refuge on the branch of some large tree,
+but he takes to water readily, and can swim for over a mile, and he
+has been known to remain for days in from two to three feet depth of
+water.
+
+A time-honoured tiger story with old hands, used to tell how the
+Soonderbund tigers got carried out to sea. If the listener was a new
+arrival, or a _gobe mouche_, they would explain that the tigers in the
+Soonderbunds often get carried out to sea by the retiring tide. It
+would sweep them off as they were swimming from island to island in
+the vast delta of Father Ganges. Only the young ones, however,
+suffered this lamentable fate. The older and more wary fellows, taught
+perhaps by sad experience, used always to dip their tails in, before
+starting on a swim, so as to ascertain which way the tide was flowing.
+If it was the flow of the tide they would boldly venture in, but if it
+was ebb tide, and there was the slightest chance of their being
+carried out to sea, they would patiently lie down, meditate on the
+fleeting vanity of life, and like the hero of the song--
+
+  'Wait for the turn of the tide.'
+
+Without venturing an opinion on this story, I may confidently assert,
+that the tiger, unlike his humble prototype the domestic cat, is not
+really afraid of water, but will take to it readily to escape a
+threatened danger, or if he can achieve any object by 'paddling his
+own canoe.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives
+about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Clawmarks
+on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s
+howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.
+--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye
+out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers
+easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of shells on tiger and buffalo.--Best
+weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives
+prone to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for
+tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six
+elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.
+--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the
+Koosee.--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to
+shoot at moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of
+different animals in the grass.
+
+Tigers seem to have no regular breeding season. As a rule the male and
+female come together in the autumn and winter, and the young ones are
+born in the spring and summer. All the young tigers I have ever heard
+of have been found in March, April, and May, and so on through the
+rains.
+
+The natives have many singular beliefs and prejudices about tigers,
+and they are very often averse to give the slightest information as to
+their whereabouts. To a stranger they will either give no information
+at all, pleading entire ignorance, or they will wilfully mislead him,
+putting him on a totally wrong track. If you are well known to the
+villagers, and if they have confidence in your nerve and aim, they
+will eagerly tell you everything they know, and will accompany you on
+your elephant, to point out the exact spot where the tiger was last
+seen. In the event of a 'find' they always look for _backsheesh_, even
+though your exertions may have rid their neighbourhood of an
+acknowledged scourge.
+
+The _gwalla_, or cowherd caste, seem to know the habits of the yellow
+striped robber very accurately. Accompanied by their herd they will
+venture into the thickest jungle, even though they know that it is
+infested by one or more tigers. If any member of the herd is attacked,
+it is quite common for the _gwalla_ to rush up, and by shouts and even
+blows try to make the robber yield up his prey. This is no
+exaggeration, but a simple fact. A cowherd attacked by a tiger has
+been known to call up his herd by cries, and they have succeeded in
+driving off his fierce assailant. No tiger will willingly face a herd
+of buffaloes or cattle united for mutual defence. Surrounded by his
+trusty herd, the _gwalla_ traverses the densest jungle and most
+tiger-infested thickets without fear.
+
+They believe that to rub the fat of the tiger on the loins, and to eat
+a piece of the tongue or flesh, will cure impotency; and tiger fat,
+rubbed on a painful part of the body, is an accepted specific for
+rheumatic affections. It is a firmly settled belief, that the whiskers
+and teeth, worn on the body, will act as a charm, making the wearer
+proof against the attacks of tigers. The collar-bone too, is eagerly
+coveted for the same reason.
+
+During the rains tigers are sometimes forced, like others of the cat
+tribe, to take to trees. A Mr. McI. shot two large full grown, tigers
+in a tree at Gunghara, and a Baboo of my acquaintance bagged no less
+than eight in trees during one rainy season at Rampoor.
+
+Tigers generally prefer remaining near water, and drink a great deal,
+the quantity of raw meat they devour being no doubt provocative of
+thirst.
+
+The marks of their claws are often seen on trees in the vicinity of
+their haunts, and from this fact many ridiculous stories have got
+abroad regarding their habits. It has even been regarded by some
+writers as a sort of rude test, by which to arrive at an approximate
+estimate of the tiger's size. A tiger can stretch himself out some two
+or two and a half feet more than his measurable length. You have
+doubtless often seen a domestic cat whetting its claws on the mat, or
+scratching some rough substance, such as the bark of a tree; this is
+often done to clean the claws, and to get rid of chipped and ragged
+pieces, and it is sometimes mere playfulness. It is the same with the
+tiger, the scratching on the trees is frequently done in the mere
+wantonness of sport, but it is often resorted to to clear the claws
+from pieces of flesh, that may have adhered to them during a meal on
+some poor slaughtered bullock. These marks on the trees are a valuable
+sign for the hunter, as by their appearance, whether fresh or old, he
+can often tell the whereabouts of his quarry, and a good tracker will
+even be able to make a rough guess at its probable size and
+disposition.
+
+Like policemen, tigers stick to certain beats; even when disturbed,
+and forced to abandon a favourite spot, they frequently return to it;
+and although the jungle may be wholly destroyed, old tigers retain a
+partiality for the scenes of their youthful depredations; they are
+often shot in the most unlikely places, where there is little or no
+cover, and one would certainly never expect to find them; they migrate
+with the herds, and retire to the hills during the annual floods,
+always coming back to the same jungle when the rains are over.
+
+Experienced shekarries know this trait of the tiger's character well,
+and can tell you minutely the colour and general appearance of the
+animals in any particular jungle; they are aware of any peculiarity,
+such as lameness, scars, &c., and their observations must be very keen
+indeed, and amazingly accurate, as I have never known them wrong when
+they committed themselves to a positive statement.
+
+An old planter residing at Sultanpore, close on the Nepaul border, a
+noted sportsman and a crack shot, was charged on one occasion by a
+large tiger; the brute sprang right off the ground on to the
+elephant's head; his hind legs were completely off the ground, resting
+on the elephant's chest and neck; Mr. F. retained sufficient presence
+of mind to sit close down in his howdah; the tiger's forearm was
+extended completely over the front bar, and so close that it touched
+his hat. In this position he called out to his son who was on another
+elephant close by, to fire at the tiger; he was cool enough to warn
+him to take a careful aim, and not hit the elephant. His son acted
+gallantly up to his instructions, and shot the tiger through the
+heart, when it dropped down quite dead, to Mr. F.'s great relief.
+
+Some sportsmen are of opinion, that the tiger when charging never
+springs clear from the ground, but only rears itself on its hind legs;
+this however is a mistake. I saw a tiger leap right off the ground,
+and spring on to the rump of an elephant carrying young Sam S. The
+elephant proved staunch, and remained quite quiet, and Sam, turning
+round in his howdah, shot his assailant through the head.
+
+I may give another incident, to shew how closely tigers will sometimes
+stick to cover; they are sometimes as bad to dislodge as a quail or a
+hare; they will crouch down and conceal themselves till you almost
+trample on them. One day a party of the Purneah Club were out; they
+had shot two fine tigers out of several that had been seen; the others
+were known to have gone ahead into some jungle surrounded by water,
+and easy to beat. Before proceeding further it was proposed
+accordingly to have some refreshment. The _tiffin_ elephant was
+directed to a tree close by, beneath whose shade the hungry sportsmen
+were to plant themselves; the elephant had knelt down, one or two
+boxes had actually been removed, several of the servants were clearing
+away the dried grass and leaves. H.W.S. came up on the opposite side
+of the tree, and was in the act of leaping off his elephant, when an
+enormous tiger got up at his very feet, and before the astounded
+sportsmen could handle a gun, the formidable intruder had cleared the
+bushes with a bound, and disappeared in the thick jungle.
+
+The following adventure bears me out in my remark, that tigers get
+attached to, and like to remain in, one place. Mr. F. Simpson, a
+thorough-going sportsman of the good old type, had been out one day in
+the Koosee derahs; he had had a long and unsuccessful beat for tiger,
+and had given up all hope of bagging one that day; he thought
+therefore that he might as well turn his attention to more ignoble
+game. Extracting his bullets, he replaced them with No. 4 shot. In a
+few minutes a peacock got up in front of him, and he fired. The report
+roused a very fine tiger right in front of his elephant; to make the
+best of a bad bargain, he gave the retreating animal the full benefit
+of his remaining charge of shot, and peppered it well. About a year
+after, close to this very place, C.A.S. bagged a fine tiger. On
+examination, the marks of a charge of shot were found in the flanks,
+and on removing the pads of the feet, numbers of pellets of No. 4 shot
+were found embedded in them. It was evidently the animal that had been
+peppered a year before, and the pellets had worked their way downwards
+to the feet.
+
+On another occasion, a man came to the factory where George was then
+residing, to give information of a tiger. He bore on his back numerous
+bleeding scratches, ample evidence of the truth of his story. While
+cutting grass in the jungle, with a blanket on his back, the day being
+rainy, he had been attacked by a tiger from the rear. The blanket is
+generally folded several times, and worn over the head and back. It is
+a thick heavy covering, and in the first onset the tiger tore the
+blanket from the man's body, which was probably the means of saving
+his life. The man turned round, terribly scared, as may be imagined.
+In desperation he struck at the tiger with his sickle, and according
+to his own account, he succeeded in putting out one of its eyes. He
+said it was a young tiger, and his bleeding wounds, and the
+persistency with which he stuck to his story, impressed George with
+the belief that he was telling the truth. A search for the tiger was
+made. The man's blanket was found, torn to shreds, but no tiger,
+although the footprints of one were plainly visible. But some months
+after, near the same spot, George shot a half grown tiger with one of
+its eyes gone, which had evidently been roughly torn from the socket.
+This was doubtless the identical brute that had attacked the
+grass-cutter.
+
+It is sometimes wonderful how easily a large and powerful tiger may be
+killed. The most vulnerable parts are the back of the head, through
+the neck, and broadside on the chest. The neck is the most deadly spot
+of all, and a shot behind the shoulder, or on the spine, is sure to
+bring the game to bag. I have seen several shot with a single bullet
+from a smooth-bore, and on one occasion, George tells me he saw a
+tigress killed with a single smooth-bore bullet at over a hundred
+yards. The bullet was a _ricochet_, and struck the tigress below the
+chest, and travelled towards the heart, but without touching it. She
+fell twenty yards from where she had been hit. Another, which on
+skinning we found had been shot through the heart, with a single
+smooth-bore bullet at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards,
+travelled for thirty yards before falling dead. Meiselback, a
+neighbour of mine, shot three tigers successively, on one occasion,
+with a No. 18 Joe Manton smooth-bore. Each of the three was killed by
+a single bullet, one in the head, one in the neck, and one through the
+heart, the bullet entering behind the shoulder.
+
+On the other hand, I once fired no less than six Jacob's shells into a
+tiger, all behind the shoulder, before I could stop him. The shells
+seemed to explode on the surface the moment they came in contact with
+the body. There was a tremendous surface wound, big enough to put a
+pumpkin into, but very little internal hurt. On another occasion
+(April 4, 1874) during one of the most exciting and most glorious
+moments of my sporting life--buffaloes charging the line in all
+directions, burning jungle all around us, and bullets whistling on
+every side--I fired TWELVE shells into a large bull before I killed
+him. As every shell hit him, I heard the sharp detonation, and saw the
+tiny puff of smoke curl outward from the ghastly wound. The poor
+maddened brute would drop on his knees, stagger again to his feet,
+and, game to the last, attempt to charge my elephant. I was anxious
+really to test the effect of the Jacob's shell as against the solid
+conical bullet, and carefully watched the result of each shot. My
+weapon was a beautifully finished No. 12 smooth-bore, made expressly
+to order for an officer in the Royal Artillery, from whom I bought it.
+From that day I never fired another Jacob's shell.
+
+My remarks about the tiger springing clear off the ground when
+charging, are amply borne out by the experience of some of my sporting
+friends. I could quote pages, but will content myself with one
+extract. It is a point of some importance, as many good old sportsmen
+pooh-pooh the idea, and maintain that the tiger merely stretches
+himself out to his fullest length, and if he does leave the ground, it
+is by a purely physical effort, pulling himself up by his claws.
+
+My friend George writes me: 'In several cases I have known and seen
+the tiger spring, and leave the ground. In one case the tiger sprang
+from fully five yards off. He crouched at the distance of a few paces,
+as if about to spring, and then sprang clean on to the head of Joe's
+_tusker_. An eight feet nine inch tigress once got on to the head of
+my elephant, which was ten feet seven inches in height. Every one
+present saw her leave the ground. Once, when after a tiger in small
+stubble, about six feet high, I saw one bound over a bush so clean
+that I could see every bit of him.' And so on.
+
+For long range shooting the rifle is doubtless the best weapon. The
+Express is the most deadly. The smooth-bore is the gun for downright
+honest sport. Shells and hollow pointed bullets are the things, as one
+sportsman writes me, 'for mutilation and cowardly murder, and for
+spoiling the skin.' Poison is the resource of the poacher. No
+sportsman could descend so low. Grant that the tiger is a scourge, a
+pest, a nuisance, a cruel and implacable foe to man and beast; pile
+all the vilest epithets of your vocabulary on his head, and say that
+he deserves them all, still he is what opportunity and circumstance
+have made him. He is as nature fashioned him; and there are bold
+spirits, and keen sights, and steady nerves enough, God wot, among our
+Indian sportsmen, to cope with him on more equal and sportsmanlike
+terms than by poisoning him like a mangy dog. On this point, however,
+opinions differ. I do not envy the man who would prefer poisoning a
+tiger to the keen delight of patiently following him up, ousting him
+from cover to cover, watching his careful endeavours to elude your
+search; perhaps at the end of a long and fascinating beat, feeling the
+electric excitement thrill every nerve and fibre of your body, as the
+magnificent robber comes bounding down at the charge, the very
+embodiment of ferocity and strength, the perfection of symmetry, the
+acme of agility and grace.
+
+Natives are such notorious perverters of the truth, and so often hide
+what little there may be in their communications under such floods of
+Oriental hyperbole and exaggeration, that you are often disappointed
+in going out on what you consider trustworthy and certain information.
+They often remind me of the story of the Laird of Logan. He was riding
+slowly along a country road one day, when another equestrian joined
+him. Logan's eye fixed itself on a hole in the turf bank bounding the
+road, and with great gravity, and in trust-inspiring accents, he said,
+'I saw a _tod_ (or fox) gang in there.'
+
+'Did you, really;' cried the new comer.
+
+'I did,' responded the laird.
+
+'Will you hold my horse till I get a spade,' cried the now excited
+traveller.
+
+The laird assented. Away hurried the man, and soon returned with a
+spade. He set manfully to work to dig out the fox, and worked till the
+perspiration streamed down his face. The laird sat stolidly looking
+on, saying never a word; and as he seemed to be nearing the confines
+of the hole, the poor digger redoubled his exertions. When at length
+it became plain that there was no fox there, he wiped his streaming
+brow, and rather crossly exclaimed, 'I'm afraid there's no tod here.'
+
+'It would be a wonder if there was,' rejoined the laird, without the
+movement of a muscle, 'it's ten years since I saw him gang in there.'
+
+So it is sometimes with a native. He will fire your ardour, by telling
+you of some enormous tiger, to be found in some jungle close by, but
+when you come to enquire minutely into his story, you find that the
+tiger was seen perhaps the year before last, or that it _used_ to be
+there, or that somebody else had told him of its being there.
+
+Some tigers, too, are so cunning and wary, that they will make off
+long before the elephants have come near. I have seen others rise on
+their hind legs just like a hare or a kangaroo, and peer over the
+jungle trying to make out one's whereabouts. This is of course only in
+short light jungle.
+
+The plan we generally adopt in beating for tiger on or near the Nepaul
+border, is to use a line of elephants to beat the cover. It is a fine
+sight to watch the long line of stately monsters moving slowly and
+steadily forward. Several howdahs tower high above the line, the
+polished barrels of guns and rifles glittering in the fierce rays of
+the burning and vertical sun. Some of the shooters wear huge hats made
+from the light pith of the solah plant, others have long blue or white
+puggrees wound round their heads in truly Oriental style. These are
+very comfortable to wear, but rather trying to the sight, as they
+afford no protection to the eyes. For riding they are to my mind the
+most comfortable head-dress that can be worn, and they are certainly
+more graceful than the stiff unsightly solah hat.
+
+Between every two howdahs are four or five pad elephants. These beat
+up all the intervening bushes, and carry the game that may be shot.
+When a pig, deer, tiger, or other animal has been shot, and has
+received its _coup de grace_, it is quickly bundled on to the pad, and
+there secured. The elephant kneels down to receive the load, and while
+game is being padded the whole line waits, till the operation is
+complete, as it is bad policy to leave blanks. Where this simple
+precaution is neglected, many a tiger will sneak through the opening
+left by the pad elephant, and so silently and cautiously can they
+steal through the dense cover, and so cunning are they and acute, that
+they will take advantage of the slightest gap, and the keenest and
+best trained eye will fail to detect them.
+
+In most of our hunting parties on the Koosee, we had some twenty or
+thirty elephants, and frequently six or eight howdahs. These
+expeditions were very pleasant, and we lived luxuriously. For real
+sport ten elephants and two or three tried comrades--not more--is much
+better. With a short, easily-worked line, that can turn and double,
+and follow the tiger quickly, and dog his every movement, you can get
+far better sport, and bring more to bag, than with a long unwieldy
+line, that takes a considerable time to turn and wheel, and in whose
+onward march there is of necessity little of the silence and swiftness
+which are necessary elements in successful tiger shooting.
+
+I have been out with a line of seventy-six elephants and fourteen
+howdahs. This was on 16th March 1875. It was a magnificent sight to
+see the seventy-six huge brutes in the river together, splashing the
+water along their heated sides to cool themselves, and sending huge
+waves dashing against the crumbling banks of the rapid stream. It was
+no less magnificent to see their slow stately march through the
+swaying, crashing jungle. What an idea of irresistible power and
+ponderous strength the huge creatures gave us, as they heaved through
+the tangled brake, crushing everything in their resistless progress.
+It was a sight to be remembered, but as might have been expected, we
+found the jungles almost untenanted. Everything cleared out before us,
+long ere the line could reach its vicinity. We only killed one tiger,
+but next day we separated, the main body crossing the stream, while my
+friends and myself, with only fourteen elephants, rebeat the same
+jungle and bagged two.
+
+In every hunt, one member is told off to look after the forage and
+grain for the elephants. One attends to the cooking and requirements
+of the table, one acts as paymaster and keeper of accounts, while the
+most experienced is unanimously elected captain, and takes general
+direction of every movement of the line. He decides on the plan of
+operations for the day, gives each his place in the line, and for the
+time, becomes an irresponsible autocrat, whose word is law, and
+against whose decision there is no appeal.
+
+Scouts are sent out during the night, and bring in reports from all
+parts of the jungle in the early morning, while we are discussing
+_chota baziree_, our early morning meal. If tiger is reported, or a
+kill has been discovered, we form line in silence, and without noise
+bear down direct on the spot. In the captain's howdah are three flags.
+A blue flag flying means that only tiger or rhinoceros are to be shot
+at. A red flag signifies that we are to have general firing, in fact
+that we may blaze away at any game that may be afoot, and the white
+flag shews us that we are on our homeward way, and then also may shoot
+at anything we can get, break the line, or do whatever we choose. On
+the flanks are generally posted the best shots of the party. The
+captain, as a rule, keeps to the centre of the line. Frequently one
+man and elephant is sent on ahead to some opening or dry water-bed, to
+see that no cunning tiger sneaks away unseen. This vedette is called
+_naka_. All experienced sportsmen employ a naka, and not unfrequently
+where the ground is difficult, two are sent ahead. The naka is a most
+important post, and the holder will often get a lucky shot at some
+wary veteran trying to sneak off, and may perhaps bag the only tiger
+of the day. The mere knowledge that there is an elephant on ahead,
+will often keep tigers from trying to get away. They prefer to face
+the known danger of the line behind, to the unknown danger in front,
+and in all cases where there is a big party a naka should be sent on
+ahead.
+
+Tigers can be, and are, shot on the Koosee plains all the year round,
+but the big hunts take place in the months of March, April, and May,
+when the hot west winds are blowing, and when the jungle has got
+considerably trampled down by the herds of cattle grazing in the
+tangled wilderness of tall grass. Innumerable small paths shew where
+the cattle wander backward and forward through the labyrinths of the
+jungle. In the howdah we carry ample supplies of vesuvians. We light
+and drop these as they blaze into the dried grass and withered leaves
+as we move along, and soon a mighty wall of roaring flame behind us,
+attests the presence of the destroying element. We go diagonally up
+wind, and the flames and smoke thus surge and roar and curl and roll,
+in dense blinding volumes, to the rear and leeward of our line. The
+roaring of the flames sounds like the maddened surf of an angry sea,
+dashing in thunder against an iron-bound coast. The leaping flames
+mount up in fiery columns, illuminating the fleecy clouds of smoke
+with an unearthly glare. The noise is deafening; at times some of the
+elephants get quite nervous at the fierce roar of the flames behind,
+and try to bolt across country. The fire serves two good purposes. It
+burns up the old withered grass, making room for the fresh succulent
+sprouts to spring, and it keeps all the game in front of the line,
+driving the animals before us, as they are afraid to break back and
+face the roaring-wall of flame. A seething, surging sea of flame,
+several miles long, encircling the whole country in its fiery belt,
+sweeping along at night with the roar of a storm-tossed sea; the
+flames flickering, swelling, and leaping up in the dark night, the
+fiery particles rushing along amid clouds of lurid smoke, and the
+glare of the serpent-like line reddening the horizon, is one of those
+magnificent spectacles that can only be witnessed at rare intervals
+among the experiences of a sojourn in India. Words fail to depict its
+grandeur, and the utmost skill of Dore could not render on canvas, the
+weird, unearthly magnificence of a jungle fire, at the culmination of
+its force and fury.
+
+In beating, the elephants are several yards apart, and, standing in
+the howdah, you can see the slightest motion of the grass before you,
+unless indeed it be virgin jungle, quite untrodden, and perhaps higher
+than your elephant; in such high dense cover, tigers will sometimes
+lie up and allow you to go clean past them. In such a case you must
+fire the jungle, and allow the blaze to beat for you. It is common for
+young, over eager sportsmen, to fire at moving jungle, trusting to a
+lucky chance for hitting the moving animal; this is useless waste of
+powder; they fail to realize the great length of the swaying grass,
+and invariably shoot over the game; the animal hears the crashing of
+the bullet through the dense thicket overhead, and immediately stops,
+and you lose all idea of his whereabouts. When you see an animal
+moving before you in long jungle, it should be your object to follow
+him slowly and patiently, till you can get a sight of him, and see
+what sort of beast he is. Firing at the moving grass is worse than
+useless. Keep as close behind him as you can, make signs for the other
+elephants to close in; stick to your quarry, never lose sight of him
+for an instant, be ready to seize the first moment, when more open
+jungle, or some other favourable chance, may give you a glimpse of his
+skin.
+
+Another caution should be observed. Never fire down the line. It is
+astonishing how little will divert a bullet, and a careless shot is
+worse than a dozen charging tigers. If a tiger does break back, let
+him get well away behind the line, and then blaze at him as hard as
+you like. It is particularly unpleasant to hear a bullet come singing
+and booming down the line from some excited dunderhead on the far left
+or right.
+
+A tiger slouching along in front moves pretty fast, in a silent
+swinging trot; the tops of the reeds or grass sway very gently, with a
+wavering, side to side motion. A pig rushes boldly through, and a deer
+will cause the grass to rock violently to and fro. A buffalo or
+rhinoceros is known at once by the crashing of the dry stalks, as his
+huge frame plunges along; but the tiger can never be mistaken. When
+that gentle, undulating, noiseless motion is once seen, be ready with
+your trusty gun, and remove not your eye from the spot, for the mighty
+robber of the jungle is before you.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Howdahs and howdah-ropes.--Mussulman custom.--Killing animals for
+food.--Mysterious appearance of natives when an animal is killed.
+--Fastening dead tigers to the pad.--Present mode wants improving.
+--Incident illustrative of this.--Dangerous to go close to wounded
+tigers.--Examples.--Footprints of tigers.--Call of the tiger.--Natives
+and their powers of description.--How to beat successfully for tiger.
+--Description of a beat.--Disputes among the shooters.--Awarding
+tigers.--Cutting open the tiger.--Native idea about the liver of the
+tiger.--Signs of a tiger's presence in the jungle.--Vultures.--Do they
+scent their quarry or view it?--A vulture carrion feast.
+
+The best howdahs are light, single-seated ones, with strong, light
+frames of wood and cane-work, and a moveable seat with a leather
+strap, adjustable to any length, on which to lean back. They should
+have a strong iron rail all round the top, covered with leather, with
+convenient grooves to receive the barrels of the guns, as they rest in
+front, ready to either hand. In front there should be compartments for
+different kinds of cartridges; and pockets and lockers under the seat,
+and at the back, or wherever there is room. Outside should be a strong
+iron step, to get out and in by easily, and a strong iron ring,
+through which to pass the rope that binds the howdah to the elephant.
+
+You cannot be too careful with your howdah ropes. A chain is generally
+used as an auxiliary to the rope, which should be of cotton, strong
+and well twisted, and should be overhauled daily, to see that there is
+no chafing. It is passed round the foot-bars of the howdah, and
+several times round the belly of the elephant.
+
+Another rope acts as a crupper behind, being passed through rings in
+the terminal frame-work of the howdah, and under the elephant's tail;
+it frequently causes painful sores there, and some drivers give it a
+hitch round the tail, in the same way as you would hitch it round a
+post. Another steadying rope goes round the elephant's breast, like a
+chest-band. 'A merciful man is merciful to his beast.' You should
+always, therefore, have a sheet of soft well oiled leather to go
+between the chest and belly ropes and the elephant's hide; this
+prevents chafing, and is a great relief to the poor old _hathi_, as
+they call the elephant. _Hatnee_ is the female elephant. _Duntar_ is a
+fellow with large tusks, and _mukna_ is an elephant with small
+downward growing tusks.
+
+Many of the old fashioned howdahs are far too heavy; a firm, strong
+howdah should not weigh more than 28 lbs. In most of the old fashioned
+ones, there is a seat for an attendant. If your attendant be a
+Mussulman, he hurries down as soon as you shoot a deer, to cut its
+throat. The Mohammedan religion enjoins a variety of rules on its
+professors in regard to the slaying of animals for food. Chief of
+these is a prohibition, against eating the flesh of an animal that has
+died a natural death; the throat of every animal intended to be eaten
+should be cut, and at the moment of applying the knife, _Bismillah_
+should be said, that is, 'In the name of God.' If therefore your
+mahout, or attendant, belong to the religion of the _Koran_, he will
+hurry down to cut the throat of a wounded deer if possible before life
+is extinct; if it be already dead, he will leave it alone for the
+Hindoos, who have no such scruples.
+
+A number of _moosahurs, banturs, gwallas_, and other idlers, from the
+jungle villages, generally follow in the wake of the line. If you
+shoot many pigs, they carry off the dead bodies, and hold high
+carnival in their homes in the evening. To see them rush on a slain
+buffalo, and hack it to pieces, is a curious sight; they fight for
+pieces of flesh like so many vultures. Sportsmen generally content
+themselves with the head of a buffalo, but not a scrap of the carcase
+is ever wasted. The natives are attracted to the spot, like ants to a
+heap of grain, or wasps to an old sugar barrel; they seem to spring
+out of the earth, so rapidly do they make their appearance. If you
+were to kill a dozen buffaloes, I believe all the flesh would be taken
+away to the neighbouring villages within an hour.
+
+This appearance of men in the jungles is wonderful. You may think
+yourself in the centre of a vast wilderness, not a sign of human
+habitation for miles around; on all sides stretches a vast ocean of
+grass, the resort of ferocious wild animals, seemingly untrodden by a
+human foot. You shoot a deer, a pig, or other animal whose flesh is
+fit for food; the man behind you gives a cry, and in ten minutes you
+will have a group of brawny young fellows around your elephant, eager
+to carry away the game. The way these natives thread the dense jungle
+is to me a wonder; they seem to know every devious path and hidden
+recess, and they traverse the most gloomy and dangerous solitudes
+without betraying the slightest apprehension.
+
+In fastening dead game to the pad of the carrying elephant great care
+is necessary. Some elephants are very timid, and indeed all elephants
+are mistrustful and suspicious of anything behind them. They are
+pretty courageous in facing anything before them, but they do not like
+a rustling or indeed any motion in their rear. I have seen a dog put
+an elephant to flight, and if you have a lazy _hathi_, a good plan is
+to walk a horse behind him. He will then shuffle along at a prodigious
+pace constantly looking round from side to side, and no doubt in his
+heart anathematising the horse that forces the running so
+persistently.
+
+The present method of roughly lashing on dead game anyhow requires
+altering. Some ingenious sportsman could surely devise a system of
+slings by which the dead weight of the game could be more equally
+distributed. At present the dead bodies are hauled up at random, and
+fastened anyhow. The pad gets displaced, the elephant must stop till
+the burden is rearranged; the ropes, especially on a hot day, cut into
+the skin and rub off the hair, and many a good skin is quite spoiled
+by the present rough method of tying on the pad.
+
+One day, in taking off a dead tiger from the pad, near George's
+bungalow, the end of the rope (a new one) remained somehow fixed to
+the neck of the elephant. When he rose up, being relieved of the
+weight, he dragged the dead tiger with him. This put the elephant into
+a horrible funk, and despite all the efforts of the driver he started
+off at a trot, hauling the tiger after him. Every now and then he
+would turn round, and tread and kick the lifeless carcase. At length
+the rope gave way, and the elephant became more manageable, but not
+before a fine skin had been totally ruined, all owing to this
+primitive style of fastening by ropes to the pad. A proper pad, with
+leather straps and buckles, that could be hauled as tight as
+necessary--a sort of harness arrangement, could easily be devised, to
+secure dead game on the pad. I am certain it would save time in the
+hunting-field, and protect many a fine skin, that gets abraded and
+marked by the present rough and ready lashing.
+
+It is always dangerous to go too close up to a wounded tiger, and one
+should never rashly jump to the conclusion that a tiger is dead
+because he appears so Approach him cautiously, and make very certain
+that he is really and truly dead, before you venture to get down
+beside the body. It is a bad plan to take your elephant close up to a
+dead tiger at all. I have known cases where good staunch elephants
+have been spoiled for future sport, by being rashly taken up to a
+wounded tiger. In rolling about, the tiger may get hold of the
+elephants, and inflict injuries that will demoralise them, and make
+them quite unsteady on subsequent occasions.
+
+I have known cases where a tiger left for dead has had to be shot over
+again. I have seen a man get down to pull a seemingly dead tiger into
+the open, and get charged. Fortunately it was a dying effort, and I
+put a bullet through the skull before the tiger could reach the
+frightened peon. We have been several times grouped round a dying
+tiger, watching him breathe his last, when the brute has summoned up
+strength for a final effort, and charged the elephants.
+
+On one occasion W.D. had got down beside what he thought a dead tiger,
+had rolled him over, and, tape in hand, was about to measure the
+animal, when he staggered to his feet with a terrific growl, and made
+away through the jungle. He had only been stunned, and fortunately
+preferred running to fighting, or the consequences might have been
+more tragic; as it was, he was quickly followed up and killed. But
+instances like these might be indefinitely multiplied, all teaching,
+that seemingly dead tigers should be approached with the utmost
+respect. Never venture off your elephant without a loaded revolver.
+
+In beating for tiger, we have seen that the appearance of the kill,
+whether fresh or old, whether much torn and mangled or comparatively
+untouched, often affords valuable indications to the sportsman. The
+footprints are not less narrowly looked for, and scrutinized. If we
+are after tiger, and following them up, the captain will generally get
+down at any bare place, such as a dry nullah, the edge of a tank or
+water hole, or any other spot where footprints can be detected. Fresh
+prints can be very easily distinguished. The impression is like that
+made by a dog, only much larger, and the marks of the claws are not
+visible. The largest footprint I have heard of was measured by George
+S., and was found to be eight and a quarter inches wide from the
+outside of the first to the outside of the fourth toe. If a tiger has
+passed very recently, the prints will be fresh-looking, and if on damp
+ground there can be no mistaking them. If it has been raining
+recently, we particularly notice whether the rain has obliterated the
+track at all, in any place; which would lead us to the conclusion that
+the tiger had passed before it rained. If the water has lodged in the
+footprint, the tiger has passed after the shower. In fresh prints the
+water will be slightly puddly or muddy. In old prints it will be quite
+clear; and so on.
+
+The call of the male tiger is quite different from that of the female.
+The male calls with a hoarse harsh cry, something between the grunt of
+a pig and the bellow of a bull; the call of the tigress is more like
+the prolonged mew of a cat much intensified. During the pairing season
+the call is sharper and shorter, and ends in a sudden break. At that
+time, too, they cry at more frequent intervals. The roar of the tiger
+is quite unlike the call. Once heard it is not easily forgotten, The
+natives who live in the jungles can tell one tiger from another by
+colour, size, &c., and they can even distinguish one animal from
+another by his call. It is very absurd to hear a couple of natives get
+together and describe the appearance of some tiger they have seen.
+
+In describing a pig, they refer to his height, or the length of his
+tusks. They describe a fish by putting their fists together, and
+saying he was so thick, _itna mota_. The head of a tiger is always the
+most conspicuous part of the body seen in the jungle. They therefore
+invariably describe him by his head. One man will hold his two hands
+apart about two feet, and say that the head was _itna burra_, that is,
+so big. The other, not to be outdone, gives rein to his imagination,
+and adds another foot. The first immediately fancies discredit will
+attach to his veracity, and vehemently asserts that there must in that
+case have been two tigers; and so they go on, till they conclusively
+prove, that two tigers there must have been, and indeed, if you let
+them go on, they will soon assure you that, besides the pair of
+tigers, there must be at least a pair of half-grown cubs. Their
+imaginations are very fertile, and you must take the information of a
+native as to tigers with a very large pinch of salt.
+
+For successful tiger shooting much depends on the beating. When after
+tiger, general firing should on no account be allowed, and the line
+should move forward as silently as possible. In light cover, extending
+over a large area, the elephants should be kept a considerable
+distance apart, but in thick dense cover the line should be quite
+close, and beat up slowly and thoroughly, as a tiger may lay up and
+allow the line to pass him. On no account should an elephant be let to
+lag behind, and no one should be allowed to rush forward or go in
+advance. The elephants should move along, steady and even, like a
+moving wall, the fastest being on the flanks, and accommodating their
+pace to the general rate of progress. No matter what tempting chances
+at pig or deer you may have, you must on no account fire except at
+tiger.
+
+The captain should be in the centre, and the men on the flanks ought
+to be constantly on the _qui vive_, to see that no cunning tiger
+outflanks the line. The attention should never wander from the jungle
+before you, for at any moment a tiger may get up--and I know of no
+sport where it is necessary to be so continuously on the alert. Every
+moment is fraught with intense excitement, and when a tiger does
+really show his stripes before you, the all-absorbing eager excitement
+of a lifetime is packed in a few brief moments. Not a chance should be
+thrown away, a long, or even an uncertain shot, is better than none,
+and if you make one miss, you may not have another chance again that
+day: for the tiger is chary of showing his stripes, and thinks
+discretion the better part of valour.
+
+All the line of course are aware, as a rule, when a tiger is on the
+move, and a good captain (and Joe S., who generally took the direction
+of our beats, could not well be matched) will wheel the line, double,
+turn, march, and countermarch, and fairly run the tiger down. At such
+a time, although you may not actually see the tiger, the excitement is
+tremendous. You stand erect in the howdah, your favourite gun ready;
+your attendant behind is as excited as yourself, and sways from side
+to side to peer into the gloomy depths of the jungle; in front, the
+mahout wriggles on his seat, as if by his motion he could urge the
+elephant to a quicker advance. He digs his toes savagely into his
+elephant behind the ear; the line is closing up; every eye is fixed on
+the moving jungle ahead. The roaring of the flames behind, and the
+crashing of the dried reeds as the elephants force their ponderous
+frames through the intertwisted stems and foliage, are the only sounds
+that greet the ear. Suddenly you see the tawny yellow hide, as the
+tiger slouches along. Your gun rings out a reverberating challenge, as
+your fatal bullet speeds on its errand. To right and left the echoes
+ring, as shot after shot is fired at the bounding robber. Then the
+line closes up, and you form a circle round the stricken beast, and
+watch his mighty limbs quiver in the death-agony, and as he falls over
+dead, and powerless for further harm, you raise the heartfelt,
+pulse-stirring cheer, that finds an echo in every brother sportman's
+heart.
+
+Disputes sometimes arise as to whose bullet first drew blood. These
+are settled by the captain, and from his decision there is no appeal.
+Many sportsmen put peculiar marks on their bullets, by which they can
+be recognised, which is a good plan. In an exciting scrimmage every
+one blazes at the tiger, not one bullet perhaps in five or six takes
+effect, and every one is ready to claim the skin, as having been
+pierced with his particular bullet. Disputes are not very common, but
+an inspection of the wounds, and the bullets found in the body,
+generally settle the question. After hearing all the pros and cons,
+the captain generally succeeds in awarding the tiger to the right man.
+
+After a successful day, the news rapidly spreads through the adjacent
+country, and we may take the line a little out of our way to make a
+sort of triumphal procession through the villages. On reaching the
+camp there is sure to be a great crowd waiting to see the slain
+tigers, the despoilers of the people's flocks and herds.
+
+It is then you hear of all the depredations the dead robber has
+committed, and it is then you begin to form some faint conception of
+his enormous destructive powers. Villager after villager unfolds a
+tale of some favourite heifer, or buffalo, or cow having been struck
+down, and the copious vocabulary of Hindostanee Billingsgate is almost
+exhausted, and floods of abuse poured out on the prostrate head.
+
+On cutting open the tiger, parasites are frequently found in the
+flesh. These are long, white, thread-like worms, and are supposed by
+some to be Guinea worms. Huge masses of undigested bone and hair are
+sometimes taken from the intestines, shewing that the tiger does not
+waste much time on mastication, but tears and eats the flesh in large
+masses. The liver is found to have numbers of separate lobes, and the
+natives say that this is an infallible test of the age of a tiger, as
+a separate lobe forms on the liver for each year of the tiger's life.
+I have certainly found young tigers having but two and three lobes,
+and old tigers I have found with six, seven, and even eight, but the
+statement is entirely unsupported by careful observation, and requires
+authentication before it can be accepted.
+
+A reported kill is a pretty certain sign that there are tigers in the
+jungle, but there are other signs with which one soon gets familiar.
+When, for example, you hear deer calling repeatedly, and see them
+constantly on the move, it is a sign that tiger are in the
+neighbourhood. When cattle are reluctant to enter the jungle,
+restless, and unwilling to graze, you may be sure tiger are somewhere
+about, not far away. A kill is often known by the numbers of vultures
+that hover about in long, sailing, steady circles. What multitudes of
+vultures there are. Overhead, far up in the liquid ether, you see them
+circling round and round like dim specks in the distance; farther and
+farther away, till they seem like bees, then lessen and fade into the
+infinitude of space. No part of the sky is ever free from their
+presence. When a kill has been perceived, you see one come flying
+along, strong and swift in headlong flight. With the directness of a
+thunderbolt he speeds to where his loathsome meal lies sweltering in
+the noonday sun. As he comes nearer and nearer, his repulsive looking
+body assumes form and substance. The cruel, ugly bald head, drawn
+close in between the strong pointed shoulders, the broad powerful
+wings, with their wide sweep, measured and slow, bear him swiftly
+past. With a curve and a sweep he circles round, down come the long
+bony legs, the bald and hideous neck is extended, and with talons
+quivering for the rotting flesh, and cruel beak agape, he hurries on
+to his repast, the embodiment of everything ghoul-like and ghastly. In
+his wake comes another, then twos and threes, anon tens and twenties,
+till hundreds have collected, and the ground is covered with the
+hissing, tearing, fiercely clawing crowd. It is a horrible sight to
+see a heap of vultures battling over a dead bullock. I have seen them
+so piled up that the under ones were nearly smothered to death; and
+the writhing contortions of the long bare necks, as the fierce brutes
+battled with talons and claws, were like the twisting of monster
+snakes, or the furious writhing of gorgons and furies over some fated
+victim.
+
+It has been a much debated point with sportsmen and naturalists,
+whether the eye or the sense of smell guides the vulture to his feast
+of carrion. I have often watched them. They scan the vast surface
+spread below them with a piercing and never tiring gaze. They observe
+each other. When one is seen to cease his steady circling flight, far
+up in mid air, and to stretch his broad wings earthwards, the others
+know that he has espied a meal, and follow his lead; and these in turn
+are followed by others, till from all quarters flock crowds of these
+scavengers of the sky. They can detect a dog or jackal from a vast
+height, and they know by intuition that, where the carcase is there
+will the dogs and jackals be gathered. I think there can be no doubt
+that the vision is the sense they are most indebted to for directing
+them to their food.
+
+On one occasion I remember seeing a tumultuous heap of them, battling
+fiercely, as I have just tried to describe, over the carcases of two
+tigers we had killed near Dumdaha. The dead bodies were hidden
+partially in a grove of trees, and for a long time there were only
+some ten or a dozen vultures near. These gorged themselves so
+fearfully, that they could not rise from the ground, but lay with
+wings expanded, looking very aldermanic and apoplectic. Bye-and-bye,
+however, the rush began, and by the time we had struck the tents,
+there could not have been fewer than 150 vultures, hissing and
+spitting at each other like angry cats; trampling each other to the
+dust to get at the carcases; and tearing wildly with talon and beak
+for a place. In a very short time nothing but mangled bones remained.
+A great number of the vultures got on to the rotten limb of a huge
+mango tree. One other proved the last straw, for down came the rotten
+branch and several of the vultures, tearing at each other, fell
+heavily to the ground, where they lay quite helpless. As an experiment
+we shot a miserable mangy Pariah dog, that was prowling about the
+ground seeking garbage and offal. He was shot stone-dead, and for a
+time no vulture ventured near. A crow was the first to begin the feast
+of death. One of the hungriest of the vultures next approached, and in
+a few minutes the yet warm body of the poor dog was torn into a
+thousand fragments, till nothing remained but scattered and disjointed
+bones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+We start for a tiger hunt on the Nepaul frontier.--Indian scenery near
+the border.--Lose our way.--Cold night.--The river by night.--Our boat
+and boatmen.--Tigers calling on the bank.--An anxious moment.--Fire at
+and wound the tigress.--Reach camp.--The Nepaulee's adventure with a
+tiger.--The old Major.--His appearance and manners.--The pompous
+Jemadar.--Nepaulese proverb.--Firing the jungle.--Start a tiger and
+shoot him.--Another in front.--Appearance of the fires by night.--The
+tiger escapes.--Too dark to follow up.--Coolie shot by mistake during
+a former hunt.
+
+Early in 1875 a military friend of mine was engaged in inspecting the
+boundary pillars near my factory, between our territory and that of
+Nepaul. Some of the pillars had been cut away by the river, and the
+survey map required a little alteration in consequence. Our district
+magistrate was in attendance, and sent me an invitation to go up and
+spend a week with them in camp. I had no need to send on tents, as
+they had every requisite for comfort. I sent off my bed and bedding on
+Geerdharee Jha's old elephant, a timid, useless brute, fit neither far
+beating jungle nor for carrying a howdah. My horse I sent on to the
+ghat or crossing, some ten miles up the river, and after lunch I
+started. It was a fine cool afternoon, and it was not long ere I
+reached the neighbouring factory of Im[=a]mnugger. Here I had a little
+refreshment with Old Tom, and after exchanging greetings, I resumed my
+way over a part of the country with which I was totally unacquainted.
+
+I rode on, past villages nestling in the mango groves, past huge
+tanks, excavated by the busy labour of generations long since
+departed; past decaying temples, overshadowed by mighty tamarind
+trees, with the _peepul_ and _pakur_ insinuating their twining roots
+amid the shattered and crumbling masonry. In one large village I
+passed through the bustling bazaar, where the din, and dust, and
+mingled odours, were almost overpowering. The country was now assuming
+quite an undulating character. The banks of the creeks were steep and
+rugged, and in some cases the water actually tumbled from rock to
+rock, with a purling pleasant ripple and plash, a welcome sound to a
+Scotch ear, and a pleasant surprise after the dull, dead, leaden,
+noiseless flow of the streams further down on the plains.
+
+Far in front lay the gloomy belt of Terai, or border forest, here
+called the _morung_, where the British territories had their extreme
+limit in that direction. Behind this belt, tier on tier, rose the
+mighty ranges of the majestic Himalayas, towering up in solemn
+grandeur from the bushy masses of forest-clad hills till their
+snow-capped summits seemed to pierce the sky. The country was covered
+by green crops, with here and there patches of dingy rice-stubble, and
+an occasional stretch of dense grass jungle. Quail, partridge, and
+plover rose from the ground in coveys, as my horse cantered through;
+and an occasional peafowl or florican scudded across the track as I
+ambled onward. I asked at a wretched little accumulation of weavers'
+huts where the ghat was, and if my elephant had gone on. To both my
+queries I received satisfactory replies, and as the day was now
+drawing in, I pushed my nag into a sharp canter and hurried forward.
+
+I soon perceived the bulky outline of my elephant ahead, and on coming
+up, found that my men had come too far up the river, had missed the
+ghat to which I had sent my spare horse, and were now making for
+another ferry still higher up. My horse was jaded, so I got on the
+elephant, and made one of the peons lead the horse behind. It was
+rapidly getting dark, and the mahout, or elephant driver, a miserable
+low caste stupid fellow, evidently knew nothing of the country, and
+was going at random. I halted at the next village, got hold of the
+chowkeydar, and by a promise of backsheesh, prevailed on him to
+accompany us and show us the way. We turned off from the direct
+northerly direction in which we had been going, and made straight for
+the river, which we could see in the distance, looking chill and grey
+in the fast fading twilight. We now got on the sandbanks, and had to
+go cautiously for fear of quicksands. By the time we reached the ghat
+it was quite dark and growing very cold.
+
+We were quite close to the hills, a heavy dew was falling, and I found
+that I should have to float down the liver for a mile, and then pole
+up stream in another channel for two miles before I could reach camp.
+
+I got my horse into the boat, ordering the elephant driver to travel
+all night if he could, as I should expect my things to be at camp
+early in the morning, and the boatmen pushed off the unwieldy
+ferry-boat, floating us quietly down the rapid 'drumly' stream. All is
+solemnly still and silent on an Indian river at night. The stream is
+swift but noiseless. Vast plains and heaps of sand stretch for miles
+on either bank. There are no villages near the stream. Faintly, far
+away in the distance, you hear a few subdued sounds, the only
+evidences of human habitation. There is the tinkle of a cow-bell, the
+barking of a pariah dog, the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub of a
+timber-toned tom-tom, muffled and slightly mellowed by the distance.
+The faint, far cries, and occasional halloos of the herd-boys calling
+to each other, gradually cease, but the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub
+continues till far into the night.
+
+It was now very cold, and I was glad to borrow a blanket from my peon.
+At such a time the pipe is a great solace. It soothes the whole
+system, and plunges one into an agreeable dreamy speculative mood,
+through which all sorts of fantastic notions resolve. Fancies chase
+each other quickly, and old memories rise, bitter or sweet, but all
+tinged and tinted by the seductive influence of the magic weed. Hail,
+blessed pipe! the invigorator of the weary, the uncomplaining faithful
+friend, the consoler of sorrows, and the dispeller of care, the
+much-prized companion of the solitary wayfarer!
+
+Now a jackal utters a howl on the bank, as our boat shoots past, and
+the diabolical noise is echoed from knoll to knoll, and from ridge to
+ridge, as these incarnate devils of the night join in and prolong the
+infernal chorus. An occasional splash, as a piece of the bank topples
+over into the stream, rouses the cormorant and gull from their placid
+dozing on the sandbanks. They squeak and gurgle out an unintelligible
+protest, then cosily settle their heads again beneath the sheltering
+wing, and sleep the slumber of the dreamless. A sharp sudden plump, or
+a lazy surging sound, accompanied by a wheezy blowing sort of hiss,
+tells us that a _seelun_ is disporting himself; or that a fat old
+'porpus' is bearing his clumsy bulk through the rushing current.
+
+The bank now looms out dark and mysterious, and as we turn the point
+another long stretch of the river opens out, reflecting the merry
+twinkle of the myriad stars, that glitter sharp and clear millions of
+miles overhead. There is now a clattering of bamboo poles. With a
+grunt of disgust, and a quick catching of the breath, as the cold
+water rushes up against his thighs, one of the boatmen splashes
+overboard, and they commence slowly and wearily pushing the boat up
+stream. We touch the bank a dozen times. The current swoops down and
+turns us round and round. The men have to put their shoulders under
+the gunwale, and heave and strain with all their might. The long
+bamboo poles are plunged into the dark depths of the river, and the
+men puff, and grunt, and blow, as they bend almost to the bottom of
+the boat while they push. It is a weary progress. We are dripping wet
+with dew. Quite close on the bank we hear the hoarse wailing call of a
+tigress. The call of the tiger comes echoing down between the banks.
+The men cease poling. I peer forward into the obscurity. My syce pats,
+and speaks soothingly to the trembling horse, while my peon with
+excited fingers fumbles at the straps of my gun-case. For a moment all
+is intensely still.
+
+I whisper to the boatmen to push out a little into the stream. Again
+the tigress calls, this time so close to us that we could almost fancy
+we could feel her breath. My gun is ready. The syce holds the horse
+firmly by the head, and as we leave the bank, we can distinctly see
+the outline of some large animal, standing out a dark bulky mass
+against the skyline. I take a steady aim and fire. A roar of
+astonishment, wrath, and pain follows the report. The horse struggles
+and snorts, the boatman calls out 'Oh, my father!' and ejaculates
+'hi-hi-hi!' in tones of piled up anguish and apprehension, the peon
+cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug, gea,' that bullet has told;
+oh your highness! and while the boat rocks violently to and fro, I
+abuse the boatmen, slang the syce, and rush to grasp a pole, while the
+peon seizes another; for we are drifting rapidly down stream, and may
+at any moment strike on a bank and topple over. We can hear by the
+growling and commotion on the bank, that my bullet has indeed told,
+and that something is hit. We soon get the frightened boatmen quieted
+down, and after another hour's weary work we spy the white outline of
+the tents above the bank. A lamp shines out a bright welcome; and
+although it is nearly twelve at night, the Captain and the magistrate
+are discussing hot toddy, and waiting my arrival. My spare horse had
+come on from the ghat, the syce had told them I was coming, and they
+had been indulging in all sorts of speculations over my non-arrival.
+
+A good supper, and a reeking jorum, soon banished all recollections of
+my weary journey, and men were ordered to go out at first break of
+dawn, and see about the wounded tiger. In the morning I was gratified
+beyond expression to find a fine tigress, measuring 8 feet 3 inches,
+had been brought in, the result of my lucky night shot; the marks of a
+large tiger were found about the spot, and we determined to beat up
+for him, and if possible secure his skin, as we already had that of
+his consort.
+
+Captain S. had some work to finish, and my elephant and bearer had not
+arrived, so our magistrate and myself walked down to the sandbanks,
+and amused ourselves for an hour shooting sandpipers and plover; we
+also shot a pair of mallard and a couple of teal, and then went back
+to the tents, and were soon busily discussing a hunter's breakfast.
+While at our meal, my elephant and things arrived, and just then also,
+the 'Major Capt[=a]n,' or Nepaulese functionary, my old friend, came up
+with eight elephants, and we hurried out to greet the fat,
+merry-featured old man.
+
+What a quaint, genial old customer he looked, as he bowed and salaamed
+to us from his elevated seat, his face beaming, and his little
+bead-like eyes twinkling with pleasure. He was full of an adventure he
+had as he came along. After crossing a brawling mountain-torrent, some
+miles from our camp, they entered some dense kair jungle. The kair is
+I believe a species of mimosa; it is a hard wood, growing in a thick
+scrubby form, with small pointed leaves, a yellowish sort of flower,
+and sharp thorns studding its branches; it is a favourite resort for
+pig, and although it is difficult to beat on account of the thorns,
+tigers are not unfrequently found among the gloomy recesses of a good
+kair scrub.
+
+As they entered this jungle, some of the men were loitering behind.
+When the elephants had passed about halfway through, the men came
+rushing up pell mell, with consternation on their faces, reporting
+that a huge tiger had sprung out on them, and carried off one of their
+number. The Major and the elephants hurried back, and met the man
+limping along, bleeding from several scratches, and with a nasty bite
+in his shoulder, but otherwise more frightened than hurt. The tiger
+had simply knocked him down, stood over him for a minute, seized him
+by the shoulder, and then dashed on through the scrub, leaving him
+behind half dead with pain and fear.
+
+It was most amusing to hear the fat little Major relate the story. He
+went through all the by-play incident to the piece, and as he got
+excited, stood right up on his narrow pad. His gesticulations were
+most vehement, and as the elephant was rather unsteady, and his
+footing to say the least precarious, he seemed every moment as if he
+must topple over. The old warrior, however, was equal to the occasion;
+without for an instant abating the vigour of his narrative, he would
+clutch at the greasy, matted locks of his mahout, and steady himself,
+while he volubly described incident after incident. As he warmed with
+his subject, and tried to shew us how the tiger must have pounced on
+the man, he would let go and use his hands in illustration; the old
+elephant would give another heave, and the fat little man would make
+another frantic grab at the patient mahout's hair. The whole scene was
+most comical, and we were in convulsions of laughter.
+
+The news, however, foreboded ample sport; we now had certain _khubber_
+of at least two tigers; we were soon under weigh; the wounded man had
+been sent back to the Major's head-quarters on an elephant, and in
+time recovered completely from his mauling. As we jogged along, we had
+a most interesting talk with the Major Capt[=a]n. He was wonderfully
+well informed, considering he had never been out of Nepaul. He knew all
+about England, our army, our mode of government, our parliament, and
+our Queen; whenever he alluded to Her Majesty he salaamed profoundly,
+whether as a tribute of respect to her, or in compliment to us as loyal
+subjects, we could not quite make out. He described to us the route
+home by the Suez canal, and the fun of his talk was much heightened by
+his applying the native names to everything; London was _Shuhur_, the
+word meaning 'a city,' and he told us it was built on the _Tham[=a]ss
+nuddee_, by which he meant the Thames river.
+
+Our magistrate had a Jemadar of Peons with him, a sort of head man
+among the servants. This man, abundantly bedecked with ear-rings,
+finger-rings, and other ornaments, was a useless, bullying sort of
+fellow; dressed to the full extent of Oriental foppishness, and
+because he was the magistrate's servant, he thought himself entitled
+to order the other servants about in the most lordly way. He was now
+making himself peculiarly officious, shouting to the drivers to go
+here and there, to do this and do that, and indulging in copious
+torrents of abuse, without which it seems impossible for a native
+subordinate to give directions on any subject. We were all rather
+amused, and could not help bursting into laughter, as, inflated with a
+sense of his own importance, he began abusing one of the native
+drivers of the Nepaulee chief; this man did not submit tamely to his
+insolence. To him the magistrate was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a
+perfect nonentity. He accordingly turned round and poured forth a
+perfect flood of invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar
+took a back seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his
+melodious voice in tones of imperious command.
+
+The old Major chuckled, and rubbed his fat little hands, and leaning
+over to me said, 'at home a lion, but abroad a lamb,' for, surrounded
+by his women at home, the man would twirl his moustaches, look fierce,
+and fancy himself a very tiger; but, no sooner did he go abroad, and
+mix with men as good, if not better than himself, than he was ready to
+eat any amount of humble pie.
+
+We determined first of all to beat for the tiger whose tracks had been
+seen near where I had fired my lucky shot the preceding night. A
+strong west wind was blowing, and dense clouds of sand were being
+swept athwart our line, from the vast plains of fine white sand
+bordering the river for miles. As we went along we fired the jungle in
+our rear, and the strong wind carried the flames raging and roaring
+through the dense jungle with amazing fury. One elephant got so
+frightened at the noise behind him, that he fairly bolted for the
+river, and could not be persuaded back into the line.
+
+Disturbed by the fire, we saw numerous deer and pig, but being after
+tiger we refrained from shooting at them. The Basinattea Tuppoo, which
+was the scene of our present hunt, were famous jungles, and many a
+tiger had been shot there by the Purneah Club in bygone days. The
+annual ravages of the impetuous river, had however much changed the
+face of the country; vast tracts of jungle had been obliterated by
+deposits of sand from its annual incursions. Great skeletons of trees
+stood everywhere, stretching out bare and unsightly branches, all
+bending to the south, shewing the mighty power of the current, when it
+made its annual progress of devastation over the surrounding country.
+Now, however, it was like a thin streak of silver, flashing back the
+fierce rays of the meridian sun. Through the blinding clouds of fine
+white sand we could at times, during a temporary lull, see its ruined
+surface. And we were glad when we came on the tracks of the tiger,
+which led straight from the stream, in the direction of some thick
+tree jungle at no great distance. We gladly turned our backs to the
+furious clouds of dust and gusts of scorching wind, and led by a
+Nepaulee tracker, were soon crashing heavily through the jungle.
+
+When hunting with elephants, the Nepaulese beat in a dense line, the
+heads of the elephants touching each other. In this manner we were now
+proceeding, when S. called out, 'There goes the tiger.'
+
+We looked up, and saw a very large tiger making off for a deep
+watercourse, which ran through the jungle some 200 yards ahead of the
+line. We hurried up as fast as we could, putting out a fast elephant
+on either flank, to see that the cunning brute did not sneak either up
+or down the nullah, under cover of the high banks. This, however, was
+not his object. We saw him descend into the nullah, and almost
+immediately top the further bank, and disappear into the jungle
+beyond.
+
+Pressing on at a rapid jolting trot, we dashed after him in hot
+pursuit. The jungle seemed somewhat lighter on ahead. In the distance
+we could see some dangurs at work breaking up land, and to the right
+was a small collection of huts with a beautiful riband of green crops,
+a perfect oasis in the wilderness of sand and parched up grass.
+Forming into line we pressed on. The tiger was evidently lying up,
+probably deterred from breaking across the open by the sight of the
+dangurs at work. My heart was bounding with excitement. We were all
+intensely eager, and thought no more of the hot wind and blinding
+dust. Just then Captain S. saw the brute sneaking along to the left of
+the line, trying to outflank us, and break back. He fired two shots
+rapidly with his Express, and the second one, taking effect in the
+neck of the tiger, bowled him over as he stood. He was a mangy-looking
+brute, badly marked, and measured eight feet eleven inches. He did not
+have a chance of charging, and probably had little heart for a fight.
+
+We soon had him padded, and then proceeded straight north, to the
+scene of the Major's encounter with the tiger in the morning. The
+jungle was well trampled down; there were numerous streams and pools
+of water, occasional clumps of bamboos, and abrupt ridgy undulations.
+It was the very jungle for tiger, and elated by our success in having
+bagged one already, we were all in high spirits. The line of fire we
+could see far in the distance, sweeping on like the march of fate, and
+we could have shot numerous deer, but reserved our fire for nobler
+game. It was getting well on in the afternoon when we came up to the
+kair jungle. We beat right up to where the man had been seized, and
+could see the marks of the struggle distinctly enough. We beat right
+through the jungle with no result, and as it was now getting rather
+late, the old Major signified his desire to bid us good evening. As
+this meant depriving us of eight elephants, we prevailed on him to try
+one spare straggling corner that we had not gone through. He laughed
+the idea to scorn of getting a tiger there, saying there was no cover.
+One elephant, however, was sent while we were talking. Our elephants
+were all standing in a group, and the mahout on his solitary elephant
+was listlessly jogging on in a purposeless and desultory manner, when
+we suddenly heard the elephant pipe out a shrill note of alarm, and
+the mahout yelled 'Bagh! Bagh!' tiger! tiger! The Captain was again
+the lucky man. The tiger, a much finer and stronger built animal than
+the one we had already killed, was standing not eighty paces off,
+shewing his teeth, his bristles erect, and evidently in a bad temper.
+He had been crouching among some low bushes, and seeing the elephant
+bearing directly down on him, he no doubt imagined his retreat had
+been discovered. At all events there he was, and he presented a
+splendid aim. He was a noble-looking specimen as he stood there grim
+and defiant. Captain S. took aim, and lodged an Express bullet in his
+chest. It made a fearful wound, and the ferocious brute writhed and
+rolled about in agony. We quickly surrounded him, and a bullet behind
+the ear from my No. 16 put an end to his misery.
+
+The old Major now bade us good evening, and after padding the second
+tiger, and much elated at our success, we began to beat homewards,
+shooting at everything that rose before us. A couple of tremendous pig
+got up before me, and dashed through a clear stream that was purling
+peacefully in its pebbly bed. As the boar was rushing up the farther
+bank, I deposited a pellet in his hind quarters. He gave an angry
+grunt and tottered on, but presently pulled up, and seemed determined
+to have some revenge for his hurt. As my elephant came up the bank,
+the gallant boar tried to charge, but already wounded and weak from
+loss of blood, he tottered and staggered about. My elephant would not
+face him, so I gave him another shot behind the shoulder, and padded
+him for the _moosahurs_ and sweepers in camp. Just then one of the
+policemen started a young hog-deer, and several of the men got down
+and tried to catch the little thing alive. They soon succeeded, and
+the cries of the poor little _butcha_, that is 'young one,' were most
+plaintive.
+
+The wind had now subsided, there was a red angry glare, as the level
+rays of the setting sun shimmered through the dense clouds of dust
+that loaded the atmosphere. It was like the dull, red, coppery hue
+which presages a storm. The vast morung jungle lay behind us, and
+beyond that the swelling wooded hills, beginning to show dark and
+indistinct against the gathering gloom. A long line of cattle were
+wending their way homeward to the batan, and the tinkle of the big
+copper bell fell pleasingly on our ears. In the distance, we could see
+the white canvas of the tents gleaming in the rays of the setting sun.
+A vast circular line of smouldering fire, flickering and flaring
+fitfully, and surmounted by huge volumes of curling smoke, shewed the
+remains of the fierce tornado of flame that had raged at noon, when we
+lit the jungle. The jungle was very light, and much trodden down, our
+three howdah elephants were not far apart, and we were chatting
+cheerfully together and discussing the incidents of the day. My bearer
+was sitting behind me in the back of the howdah, and I had taken out
+my ball cartridge from my No. 12 breechloader, and had replaced them
+with shot. Just then my mahout raised his hand, and in a hoarse
+excited whisper called out,
+
+'Look, sahib, a large tiger!'
+
+'Where?' we all exclaimed, getting excited at once. He pointed in
+front to a large object, looking for all the world like a huge dun
+cow.
+
+'Why, you fool, that is a bullock.' I exclaimed.
+
+My bearer, who had also been intently gazing, now said.
+
+'No, sahib! that is a tiger, and a large one.'
+
+At that moment, it turned partly round, and I at once saw that the men
+were right, and that it was a veritable tiger, and seemingly a monster
+in size. I at once called to Captain S. and the magistrate, who had by
+this time fallen a little behind.
+
+'Look out, you fellows! here's a tiger in front.'
+
+At first they thought I was joking, but a glance confirmed the truth
+of what I had said. When I first saw the brute, he was evidently
+sneaking after the cattle, and was about sixty paces from me. He was
+so intent on watching the herd, that he had not noticed our approach.
+He was now, however, evidently alarmed and making off. By the time I
+called out, he must have been over eighty yards away. I had my No. 12
+in my hand, loaded with shot; it was no use; I put it down and took up
+my No. 16; this occupied a few seconds; I fired both barrels; the
+first bullet was in excellent line but rather short, the second went
+over the animal's back, and neither touched him. It made him, however,
+quicken his retreat, and when Captain S. fired, he must have been
+fully one hundred and fifty yards away; as it was now somewhat dusky,
+he also missed. He fired another long shot with his rifle, but missed
+again. Oh that unlucky change of cartridges in my No. 12! But for
+that--but there--we are always wise after the event. We never expected
+to see a tiger in such open country, especially as we had been over
+the same ground before, firing pretty often as we came along.
+
+We followed up of course, but it was now fast getting dark, and though
+we beat about for some time, we could not get another glimpse of the
+tiger. He was seemingly a very large male, dark-coloured, and in
+splendid condition. We must have got him, had it been earlier, as he
+could not have gone far forward, for the lines of fire were beyond
+him, and we had him between the fire and the elephants. We got home
+about 6.30, rather disappointed at missing such a glorious prize, so
+true is it that a sportsman's soul is never satisfied. But we had rare
+and most unlooked-for luck, and we felt considerably better after a
+good dinner, and indulged in hopes of getting the big fellow next
+morning.
+
+In the same jungles, some years ago, a very sad accident occurred. A
+party were out tiger-shooting, and during one of the beats, a cowherd
+hearing the noise of the advancing elephants, crouched behind a bush,
+and covered himself with his blanket. At a distance he looked exactly
+like a pig, and one of the shooters mistook him for one. He fired, and
+hit the poor herd in the hip. As soon as the mistake was perceived,
+everything was done for the poor fellow. His wound was dressed as well
+as they could do it, and he was sent off to the doctor in a dhoolie, a
+a sort of covered litter, slung on a pole and carried on men's shoulders.
+It was too late, the poor coolie died on the road, from shock and loss
+of blood. Such mistakes occur very seldom, and this was such a natural
+one, that no one could blame the unfortunate sportsman, and certainly
+no one felt keener regret than he did. The coolie's family was amply
+provided for, which was all that remained to be done.
+
+This is the only instance I know, where fatal results have followed
+such an accident. I have known several cases of beaters peppered with
+shot, generally from their own carelessness, and disregard of orders,
+but a salve in the shape of a few rupees has generally proved the most
+effective ointment. I have known some rascals say, they were sorry
+they had not been lucky enough to be wounded, as they considered a
+punctured cuticle nothing to set against the magnificent douceur of
+four or five rupees. One impetuous scamp, being told not to go in
+front of the line during a beat near Burgamma, replied to the warning
+caution of his jemadar,
+
+'Oh never mind, if get shot I will get backsheesh.'
+
+Whether this was a compliment to the efficacy of our treatment (by the
+silver ointment), or to the inaccuracy and harmlessness of our shooting,
+I leave the reader to judge.
+
+Our bag during this lucky day, including the tigress killed by my shot
+on the river bank, was as follows: three tigers, one boar, four deer,
+including the young one taken alive, eight sandpipers, nine plovers,
+two mallards, and two teal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+We resume the beat.--The hog-deer.--Nepaulese villages.--Village
+granaries.--Tiger in front.--A hit! a hit!--Following up the wounded
+tiger.--Find him dead.--Tiffin in the village.--The Patair jungle.
+--Search for tiger.--Gone away!--An elephant steeplechase in pursuit.
+--Exciting chase.--The Morung jungle.--Magnificent scenery.--Skinning
+the tiger.--Incidents of tiger hunting.
+
+Next morning, both the magistrate and myself felt very ill, headachy
+and sick, with violent vomiting and retching; Captain S. attributed it
+to the fierce hot wind and exposure of the preceding day, but we, the
+sufferers, blamed the _dekchees_ or cooking pots. These _dekchees_ are
+generally made of copper, coated or tinned over with white metal once
+a month or oftener; if the tinning is omitted, or the copper becomes
+exposed by accident or neglect, the food cooked in the pots sometimes
+gets tainted with copper, and produces nausea and sickness in those
+who eat it. I have known, within my own experience, cases of copper
+poisoning that have terminated fatally. It is well always thoroughly
+to inspect the kitchen utensils, particularly when in camp; unless
+carefully watched and closely supervised, servants get very careless,
+and let food remain in these copper vessels. This is always dangerous,
+and should never be allowed.
+
+In consequence of our indisposition, we did not start till the
+forenoon was far advanced, and the hot west wind had again begun to
+sweep over the prairie-like stretches of sand and withered grass. We
+commenced beating up by the Batan or cattle stance, near which we had
+seen the big tiger, the preceding evening. S. however became so sick
+and giddy, that he had to return to camp, and Captain S. and I
+continued the beat alone. Having gone over the same ground only
+yesterday, we did not expect a tiger so near to camp, more especially
+as the fire had made fearful havoc with the tall grass. Hog-deer were
+very numerous; they are not as a rule easily disturbed; they are of a
+reddish brown colour, not unlike that of the Scotch red deer, and rush
+through the jungle, when alarmed, with a succession of bounding leaps;
+they make very pretty shooting, and when young, afford tender and
+well-flavoured venison. One hint I may give. When you shoot a buck,
+see that he is at once denuded of certain appendages, else the flesh
+will get rank and disagreeable to eat. The bucks have pretty antlers,
+but are not very noble looking. The does are somewhat lighter in
+colour, and do not seem to consort together in herds like antelopes;
+there are rarely more than five in a group, though I have certainly
+seen more on several occasions.
+
+This morning we were unlucky with our deer. I shot three, and Captain
+S. shot at and wounded three, not one of which however did we bag.
+This part of the country is exclusively inhabited by Parbutteas, the
+native name for Nepaulese settled in British territory. Over the
+frontier line, the villages are called Pahareeas, signifying
+mountaineers or hillmen, from Pahar, a mountain. We beat up to a
+Parbuttea village, with its conical roofed huts; men and women were
+engaged in plaiting long coils of rice straw into cable looking ropes.
+A few split bamboos are fastened into the ground, in a circle, and
+these ropes are then coiled round, in and out, between the stakes;
+this makes a huge circular vat-shaped repository, open at both ends;
+it is then lifted up and put on a platform coated with mud, and
+protected from rats and vermin by the pillars being placed on smooth,
+inverted earthen pots. The coils of straw are now plastered outside
+and in with a mixture of mud, chaff, and cowdung, and allowed to dry;
+when dried the hut is filled with grain, and securely roofed and
+thatched. This forms the invariable village granary, and looks at a
+distance not unlike a stack or rick of corn, round a farm at home. By
+the abundance of these granaries in a village, one can tell at a
+glance whether the season has been a good one, and whether the frugal
+inhabitants of the clustering little hamlet are in pretty comfortable
+circumstances. If they are under the sway of a grasping and
+unscrupulous landlord, they not unfrequently bury their grain in
+clay-lined chambers in the earth, and have always enough for current
+wants, stored up in the sun-baked clay repositories mentioned in a
+former chapter.
+
+Beyond the village we entered some thick Patair jungle. Its greenness
+was refreshing after the burnt up and withered grass jungle. We were
+now in a hollow bordering the stream, and somewhat protected from the
+scorching wind, and the stinging clouds of fine sand and red dust. The
+brook looked so cool and refreshing, and the water so clear and
+pellucid, that I was about to dismount to take a drink and lave my
+heated head and face, when a low whistle to my right made me look in
+that direction, and I saw the Captain waving his hand excitedly, and
+pointing ahead. He was higher up the bank than I was, and in very
+dense Patair; a ridge ran between his front of the line and mine, so
+that I could only see his howdah, and the bulk of the elephant's body
+was concealed from me by the grass on this ridge.
+
+I closed up diagonally across the ridge; S. still waving to me to
+hurry up; as I topped it, I spied a large tiger slouching along in the
+hollow immediately below me. He saw me at the same instant, and
+bounded on in front of S. His Express was at his shoulder on the
+instant; he fired, and a tremendous spurt of blood shewed a hit, a
+hit, a palpable hit. The tiger was nowhere visible, and not a cry or a
+motion could we hear or see, to give us any clue to the whereabouts of
+the wounded animal. We followed up however, quickly but cautiously,
+expecting every instant a furious charge.
+
+We must have gone at least a hundred yards, when right in front of me
+I descried the tiger, crouching down, its head resting on its fore
+paws, and to all appearance settling for a spring. It was about twenty
+yards from me, and taking a rather hasty aim, I quickly fired both
+barrels straight at the head. I could only see the head and paws, but
+these I saw quite distinctly. My elephant was very unsteady, and both
+my bullets went within an inch of the tiger's head, but fortunately
+missed completely. I say fortunately, for finding the brute still
+remaining quite motionless, we cautiously approached, and found it was
+stone dead. The perfect naturalness of the position, however, might
+well have deceived a more experienced sportsman. The beast was lying
+crouched on all fours, as if in the very act of preparing to spring.
+The one bullet had killed it; the wound was in the lungs, and the
+internal bleeding had suffocated it, but here was a wonderful instance
+of the tiger's tenacity of life, even when sorely wounded, for it had
+travelled over a hundred and thirty yards after S. had shot it.
+
+It was lucky I missed, for my bullets would have spoiled the skull.
+She was a very handsome, finely marked tigress, a large specimen, for
+on applying the tape we found she measured exactly nine feet. Before
+descending to measure her, we were joined by the old Major Capt[=a]n,
+whose elephants we had for some time descried in the distance. His
+congratulations were profuse, and no doubt sincere, and after padding
+the tigress, we hied to the welcome shelter of one of the village
+houses, where we discussed a hearty and substantial tiffin.
+
+During tiffin, we were surrounded by a bevy of really fair and buxom
+lasses. They wore petticoats of striped blue cloth, and had their arms
+and shoulders bare, and their ears loaded with silver ornaments. They
+were merry, laughing, comely damsels, with none of the exaggerated
+shyness, and affected prudery of the women of the plains. We were
+offered plantains, milk, and chupatties, and an old patriarch came out
+leaning on his staff, to revile and abuse the tigress. From some of
+the young men we heard of a fresh kill to the north of the village,
+and after tiffin we proceeded in that direction, following up the
+course of the limpid stream, whose gurgling ripple sounded so
+pleasantly in our ears.
+
+Far ahead to the right, and on the further bank of the stream, we
+could see dense curling volumes of smoke, and leaping pyramids of
+flame, where a jungle fire was raging in some thick acacia scrub. As
+we got nearer, the heat became excessive, and the flames, fanned into
+tremendous fury by the fierce west wind, tore through the dry thorny
+bushes. Our elephants were quite unsteady, and did not like facing the
+fire. We made a slight detour, and soon had the roaring wall of flame
+behind us. We were now entering on a moist, circular, basin-shaped
+hollow. Among the patair roots were the recent marks of great numbers
+of wild pigs, where they had been foraging among the stiff clay for
+these esculents. The patair is like a huge bulrush, and the elephants
+are very fond of its succulent, juicy, cool-looking leaves. Those in
+our line kept tearing up huge tufts of it, thrashing out the mud and
+dirt from the roots against their forelegs, and with a grunt of
+satisfaction, making it slowly disappear in their cavernous mouths.
+There was considerable noise, and the jungle was nearly as high as the
+howdahs, presenting the appearance of an impenetrable screen of vivid
+green. We beat and rebeat, across and across, but there was no sign of
+the tiger. The banks of the nullah were very steep, rotten looking,
+and dangerous. We had about eighteen elephants, namely, ten of our
+own, and eight belonging to the Nepaulese. We were beating very close,
+the elephants' heads almost touching. This is the way they always beat
+in Nepaul. We thought we had left not a spot in the basin untouched,
+and Captain S. was quite satisfied that there could be no tiger there.
+It was a splendid jungle for cover, so thick, dense, and cool. I was
+beating along the edge of the creek, which ran deep and silent,
+between the gloomy sedge-covered banks. In a placid little pool I saw
+a couple of widgeon all unconscious of danger, their glossy plumage
+reflected in the clear water. I called to Captain S. 'We are sold this
+time Captain, there's no tiger here!'
+
+'I am afraid not,' he answered.
+
+'Shall I bag those two widgeon?' I asked.
+
+'All right,' was the response.
+
+Putting in shot cartridge, I shot both the widgeon, but we were all
+astounded to see the tiger we had so carefully and perseveringly
+searched for, bound out of a crevice in the bank, almost right under
+my elephant. Off he went with a smothered roar, that set our elephants
+hurrying backwards and forwards. There was a commotion along the whole
+line. The jungle was too dense for us to see anything. It was one more
+proof how these hill tigers will lie close, even in the midst of a
+line.
+
+S. called out to me to remain quiet, and see if we could trace the
+tiger's progress by any rustling in the cover. Looking down we saw the
+kill, close to the edge of the water. A fast elephant was sent on
+ahead, to try and ascertain whether the tiger was likely to break
+beyond the circle of the little basin-shaped valley. We gathered round
+the kill; it was quite fresh; a young buffalo. The Major told us that
+in his experience, a male tiger always begins on the neck first. A
+female always at the hind quarters. A few mouthfuls only had been
+eaten, and according to the Major, it must have been a tigress, as the
+part devoured was from the hind quarters.
+
+While we were talking over these things, a frenzied shout from the
+driver of our naka elephant caused us to look in his direction. He was
+gesticulating wildly, and bawling at the top of his voice, 'Come, come
+quickly, sahibs, the tiger is running away.'
+
+Now commenced such a mad and hurried scramble as I have never
+witnessed before or since, from the back of an elephant. As we tore
+through the tangled dense green patair, the broad leaves crackled like
+crashing branches, the huge elephants surged ahead like ships rocking
+in a gale of wind, and the mahouts and attendants on the pad
+elephants, shouted and urged on their shuffling animals, by excited
+cries and resounding whacks.
+
+In the retinue of the Major, were several men with elephant spears or
+goads. These consist of a long, pliant, polished bamboo, with a sharp
+spike at the end, which they call a _jhetha_. These men now came
+hurrying round the ridge, among the opener grass, and as we emerged
+from the heavy cover, they began goading the elephants behind and
+urging them to their most furious pace. On ahead, nearly a quarter of
+a mile away, we could see a huge tiger making off for the distant
+morung, at a rapid sling trot. His lithe body shone before us, and
+urged us to the most desperate efforts. It was almost a bare plateau.
+There was scarcely any cover, only here and there a few stunted acacia
+bushes. The dense forest was two or three miles ahead, but there were
+several nasty steep banks, and precipitous gullies with deep water
+rushing between. Attached to each Nepaulee pad, by a stout
+curiously-plaited cord, ornamented with fancy knots and tassels of
+silk, was a small pestle-shaped instrument, not unlike an auctioneer's
+hammer. It was quaintly carved, and studded with short, blunt,
+shining, brass nails or spikes. I had noticed these hanging down from
+the pads, and had often wondered what they were for. I was now to see
+them used. While the mahouts in front rained a shower of blows on the
+elephants head, and the spear-men pricked him up from behind with
+their jhethas, the occupant of the pad, turning round with his face to
+the tail, belaboured the poor hathee with the auctioneer's hammer. The
+blows rattled on the elephant's rump. The brutes trumpeted with pain,
+but they _did_ put on the pace, and travelled as I never imagined an
+elephant _could_ travel. Past bush and brake, down precipitous ravine,
+over the stones, through the thorny scrub, dashing down a steep bank
+here, plunging madly through a deep stream there, we shuffled along.
+We must have been going fully seven miles an hour. The pestle-shaped
+hammer is called a _lohath_, and most unmercifully were they wielded.
+We were jostled and jolted, till every bone ached again. Clouds of
+dust were driven before our reeling waving line. How the Nepaulese
+shouted and capered. We were all mad with excitement. I shouted with
+the rest. The fat little Major kicked his heels against the sides of
+his elephant, as if he were spurring a Derby winner to victory. Our
+usually sedate captain yelled--actually yelled!--in an agony of
+excitement, and tried to execute a war dance of his own on the floor
+of his howdah. Our guns rattled, the chains clanked and jangled, the
+howdahs rocked and pitched from side to side. We made a desperate
+effort. The poor elephants made a gallant race of it. The foot men
+perspired and swore, but it was not to be. Our striped friend had the
+best of the start, and we gained not an inch upon him. To our
+unspeakable mortification, he reached the dense cover on ahead, where
+we might as well have sought for a needle in a haystack. Never,
+however, shall I forget that mad headlong scramble. Fancy an elephant
+steeple-chase. Reader, it was sublime; but we ached for it next day.
+
+The old Major and his fleet racing elephants now left us, and our
+jaded beasts took us slowly back in the direction of our camp. It was
+a fine wild view on which we were now gazing. Behind us the dark
+gloomy impenetrable morung, the home of ever-abiding fever and ague.
+Behind that the countless multitude of hills, swelling here and
+receding there, a jumbled heap of mighty peaks and fretted pinnacles,
+with their glistening sides and dark shadowless ravines, their mighty
+scaurs and their abrupt serrated edges showing out clearly and boldly
+defined against the evening sky. Far to the right, the shining
+river--a riband of burnished steel, for its waters were a deep steely
+blue--rolled its swift flood along amid shining sand-banks. In front,
+the vast undulating plain, with grove, and rill, and smoking hamlet,
+stretched at our feet in a lovely panorama of blended and harmonious
+colour. We were now high up above the plain, and the scene was one of
+the finest I have ever witnessed in India. The wind had gone down, and
+the oblique rays of the sun lit up the whole vast panorama with a
+lurid light, which was heightened in effect by the dust-laden
+atmosphere, and the volumes of smoke from the now distant fires,
+hedging in the far horizon with curtains of threatening grandeur and
+gloom. That far away canopy of dust and smoke formed a wonderful
+contrast to the shining snow-capped hills behind. Altogether it was a
+day to be remembered. I have seen no such strange and unearthly
+combination of shade and colour in any landscape before or since.
+
+On the way home we bagged a florican and a very fine mallard, and
+reached the camp utterly fagged, to find our worthy magistrate very
+much recovered, and glad to congratulate us on our having bagged the
+tigress. After a plunge in the river, and a rare camp dinner--such a
+meal as only an Indian sportsman can procure--we lay back in our cane
+chairs, and while the fragrant smoke from the mild Manilla curled
+lovingly about the roof of the tent, we discussed the day's
+proceedings, and fought our battles over again.
+
+A rather animated discussion arose about the length of the tiger--as
+to its frame merely, and we wondered what difference the skin would
+make in the length of the animal. As it was a point we had never heard
+mooted before, we determined to see for ourselves. We accordingly went
+out into the beautiful moonlight, and superintended the skinning of
+the tigress. The skin was taken off most artistically. We had
+carefully measured the animal before skinning. She was exactly nine
+feet long. We found the skin made a difference of only four inches,
+the bare skeleton from tip of nose to extreme point of tail measuring
+eight feet eight inches.
+
+As an instance of tigers taking to trees, our worthy magistrate
+related that in Rajmehal he and a friend had wounded a tiger, and
+subsequently lost him in the jungle. In vain they searched in every
+conceivable direction, but could find no trace of him. They were about
+giving up in despair, when S., raising his hat, happened to look up,
+and there, on a large bough directly overhead, he saw the wounded
+tiger lying extended at full length, some eighteen feet from the
+ground. They were not long in leaving the dangerous vicinity, and it
+was not long either ere a well-directed shot brought the tiger down
+from his elevated perch.
+
+These after-dinner stories are not the least enjoyable part of a
+tiger-hunting party. Round the camp table in a snug, well-lighted
+tent, with all the 'materials' handy, I have listened to many a tale
+of thrilling adventure. S. was full of reminiscences, and having seen
+a deal of tiger shooting in various parts of India, his recollections
+were much appreciated. To shew that the principal danger in tiger
+shooting is not from the tiger himself, but from one's elephant
+becoming panic-stricken and bolting, he told how a Mr. Aubert, a
+Benares planter, lost his life. A tiger had been 'spined' by a shot,
+and the line gathered round the prostrate monster to watch its
+death-struggle. The elephant on which the unfortunate planter sat got
+demoralised and attempted to bolt. The mahout endeavoured to check its
+rush, and in desperation the elephant charged straight down, close
+past the tiger, which lay writhing and roaring under a huge
+overhanging tree. The elephant was rushing directly under this tree,
+and a large branch would have swept howdah and everything it contained
+clean off the elephant's back, as easily as one would brush off a fly.
+To save himself Aubert made a leap for the branch, the elephant
+forging madly ahead; and the howdah, being smashed like match-wood,
+fell on the tiger below, who was tearing and clawing at everything
+within his reach. Poor Aubert got hold of the branch with his hands,
+and clung with all the desperation of one fighting for his life. He
+was right above the wounded tiger, but his grasp on the tree was not a
+firm one. For a moment he hung suspended above the furious animal,
+which, mad with agony and fury, was a picture of demoniac rage. The
+poor fellow could hold no longer, and fell right on the tiger. It was
+nearly at its last gasp, but it caught hold of Aubert by the foot, and
+in a final paroxysm of pain and rage chawed the foot clean off, and
+the poor fellow died next day from the shock and loss of blood. He was
+one of four brothers who all met untimely deaths from accidents. This
+one was killed by the tiger, another was thrown from a vehicle and
+killed on the spot, the third was drowned, and the fourth shot by
+accident.
+
+Our bag to-day was one tiger, one florican, one mallard, and two
+widgeon. On cutting the tiger open, we found that the bullet had
+entered on the left side, and, as we suspected, had entered the lungs.
+It had, however, made a terrible wound. We found that it had
+penetrated the heart and liver, gone forward through the chest, and
+smashed the right shoulder. Notwithstanding this fearful wound,
+shewing the tremendous effects of the Express bullet, the tiger had
+gone on for the distance I have mentioned, after which it must have
+fallen stone-dead. It was a marvellous instance of vitality, even
+after the heart, liver, and lungs had been pierced. The liver had six
+lobes, and it was then I heard for the first time, that with the
+natives this was an infallible sign of the age of a tiger. The old
+Major firmly believed it, and told us it was quite an accepted article
+of faith with all native sportsmen. Facts subsequently came under my
+own observation which seemed to give great probability to the theory,
+but it is one on which I would not like to give a decided opinion,
+till after hearing the experiences of other sportsmen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Camp of the Nepaulee chief.--Quicksands.--Elephants crossing rivers.
+--Tiffin at the Nepaulee camp.--We beat the forest for tiger.--Shoot
+a young tiger.--Red ants in the forest.--Bhowras or ground bees.--The
+_ursus labialis_ or long-lipped bear.--Recross the stream.--Florican.
+--Stag running the gauntlet of flame.--Our bag.--Start for factory.
+--Remarks on elephants.--Precautions useful for protection from the
+sun in tiger shooting.--The _puggree_.--Cattle breeding in India, and
+wholesale deaths of cattle from disease.--Nathpore.--Ravages of the
+river.--Mrs. Gray, an old resident in the jungles.--Description of her
+surroundings.
+
+Next morning we started beating due east, setting fire to the jungle
+as we went along. The roaring and crackling of the flames startled the
+elephant on which Captain S. was riding, and going away across country
+at a furious pace, it was with difficulty that it could be stopped. We
+crossed the frontier line a short distance from camp, and entered a
+dense jungle of thorny acacia, with long dry grass almost choking the
+trees. They were dry and stunted, and when we dropped a few lights
+amongst such combustible material, the fire was splendid beyond
+description. How the flames surged through the withered grass. We were
+forced to pause and admire the magnificent sight. The wall of flame
+tore along with inconceivable rapidity, and the blinding volumes of
+smoke obscured the country for miles. The jungle was full of deer and
+pig. One fine buck came bounding along past our line, but I stopped
+him with a single bullet through the neck. He fell over with a
+tremendous crash, and turning a complete somersault broke off both his
+horns with the force of the fall.
+
+We beat down a shallow sandy watercourse, and could see the camp of
+the old Major on the high bank beyond. Farther down the stream there
+was a small square fort, the whitewashed walls of which flashed back
+the rays of the sun, and grouped round it were some ruinous looking
+huts, several snowy tents, and a huge shamiana or canopy, under which
+we could see a host of attendants spreading carpets, placing chairs,
+and otherwise making ready for us. The banks of the stream were very
+steep, but the guide at length brought us to what seemed a safe and
+fordable passage. On the further side was a flat expanse of seemingly
+firm and dry sand, but no sooner had our elephants begun to cross it,
+than the whole sandbank for yards began to rock and tremble; the water
+welled up over the footmarks of the elephants, and S. called out to
+us, Fussun, Fussun! quicksand, quicksand! We scattered the elephants,
+and tried to hurry them over the dangerous bit of ground with shouts
+and cries of encouragement.
+
+The poor animals seemed thoroughly to appreciate the danger, and
+shuffled forward as quickly as they could. All got over in safety
+except the last three. The treacherous sand, rendered still more
+insecure by the heavy tread of so many ponderous animals, now gave way
+entirely, and the three hapless elephants were left floundering in the
+tenacious hold of the dreaded fussun. Two of the three were not far
+from the firm bank, and managed to extricate themselves after a short
+struggle; but the third had sunk up to the shoulders, and could
+scarcely move. All hands immediately began cutting long grass and
+forming it into bundles. These were thrown to the sinking elephant. He
+rolled from side to side, the sand quaking and undulating round him in
+all directions. At times he would roll over till nearly half his body
+was invisible. Some of the Nepaulese ventured near, and managed to
+undo the harness-ropes that were holding on the pad. The sagacious
+brute fully understood his danger, and the efforts we were making for
+his assistance. He managed to get several of the big bundles of grass
+under his feet, and stood there looking at us with a most pathetic
+pleading expression, and trembling, as if with an ague, from fear and
+exhaustion.
+
+The old Major came down to meet us, and a crowd of his men added their
+efforts to ours, to help the unfortunate elephant. We threw in bundle
+after bundle of grass, till we had the yielding sand covered with a
+thick passage of firmly bound fascines, on which the hathee,
+staggering and floundering painfully, managed to reach firm land. He
+was so completely exhausted that he could scarcely walk to the tents,
+and we left him there to the care of his attendants. This is a very
+common episode in tiger hunting, and does not always terminate so
+fortunately. In running water, the quicksand is not so dangerous, as
+the force of the stream keeps washing away the sand, and does not
+allow it to settle round the legs of the elephant; but on dry land, a
+dry fussun, as it is called, is justly feared; and many a valuable
+animal has been swallowed up in its slow, deadly, tenacious grasp.
+
+In crossing sand, the heaviest and slowest elephants should go first,
+preceded by a light, nimble pioneer. If the leading elephant shows
+signs of sinking, the others should at once turn back, and seek some
+safer place. In all cases the line should separate a little, and not
+follow in each other's footsteps. The indications of a quicksand are
+easily recognised. If the surface of the sand begins to oscillate and
+undulate with a tremulous rocking motion, it is always wise to seek
+some other passage. Looking back, after elephants have passed, you
+will often see what was a perfectly dry flat, covered with several
+inches of water. When water begins to ooze up in any quantity, after a
+few elephants have passed, it is much safer to make the remainder
+cross at some spot farther on.
+
+In crossing a deep swift river, the elephants should enter the water
+in a line, ranged up and down the river. That is, the line should be
+ranged along the bank, and enter the water at right angles to the
+current, and not in Indian file. The strongest elephants should be up
+stream, as they help to break the force of the current for the weaker
+and smaller animals down below. It is a fine sight to see some thirty
+or forty of these huge animals crossing a deep and rapid river. Some
+are reluctant to strike out, when they begin to enter the deepest
+channel, and try to turn back; the mahouts and 'mates' shout, and
+belabour them with bamboo poles. The trumpeting of the elephants, the
+waving of the trunks, disporting, like huge water-snakes, in the
+perturbed current, the splashing of the bamboos, the dark bodies of
+the natives swimming here and there round the animals, the unwieldy
+boat piled high with how-dahs and pads, the whole heap surmounted by a
+group of sportsmen with their gleaming weapons, and variegated
+puggrees, make up a picturesque and memorable sight. Some of the
+strong swimmers among the elephants seem to enjoy the whole affair
+immensely. They dip their huge heads entirely under the current, the
+sun flashes on the dark hide, glistening with the dripping water; the
+enormous head emerges again slowly, like some monstrous antediluvian
+creation, and with a succession of these ponderous appearances and
+disappearances, the mighty brutes forge through the surging water.
+When they reach a shallow part, they pipe with pleasure, and send
+volumes of fluid splashing against their heaving flanks, scattering
+the spray all round in mimic rainbows.
+
+At all times the Koosee was a dangerous stream to cross, but during
+the rains I have seen the strongest and best swimming elephants taken
+nearly a mile down stream; and in many instances they have been
+drowned, their vast bulk and marvellous strength being quite unable to
+cope with the tremendous force of the raging waters.
+
+When we had got comfortably seated under the shamiana, a crowd of
+attendants brought us baskets of fruit and a very nice cold collation
+of various Indian dishes and curries. We did ample justice to the old
+soldier's hospitable offerings, and then betel-nut, cardamums, cloves,
+and other spices, and pauri leaves, were handed round on a silver
+salver, beautifully embossed and carved with quaint devices. We lit
+our cigars, our beards and handkerchiefs were anointed with attar of
+roses; and the old Major then informed us that there was good khubber
+of tiger in the wood close by.
+
+The trees were splendid specimens of forest growth, enormously thick,
+beautifully umbrageous, and growing very close together. There was a
+dense undergrowth of tangled creeper, and the most lovely ferns and
+tropical plants in the richest luxuriance, and of every conceivable
+shade of amber and green. It was a charming spot. The patch of forest
+was separated from the unbroken line of morung jungle by a beautifully
+sheltered glade of several hundred acres, and further broken in three
+places by avenue-looking openings, disclosing peeps of the black and
+gloomy-looking mass of impenetrable forest beyond.
+
+In the first of these openings we were directed to take up a position,
+while the pad elephants and a crowd of beaters went to the edge of the
+patch of forest and began beating up to us. Immense numbers of genuine
+jungle fowl were calling in all directions, and flying right across
+the opening in numerous coveys. They are beautifully marked with black
+and golden plumes round the neck, and I determined to shoot a few by
+and bye to send home to friends, who I knew would prize them as
+invaluable material in dressing hooks for fly-fishing. The crashing of
+the trees, as the elephants forced their way through the thick forest,
+or tore off huge branches as they struggled amid the matted
+vegetation, kept us all on the alert. The first place was however a
+blank, and we moved on to the next. We had not long to wait, for a
+fierce din inside the jungle, and the excited cries of the beaters,
+apprised us that game of some sort was afoot. We were eagerly
+watching, and speculating on the cause of the uproar, when a very fine
+half-grown tiger cub sprang out of some closely growing fern, and
+dashed across the narrow opening so quickly, that ere we had time to
+raise a gun, he had disappeared in some heavy jhamun jungle on the
+further side of the path.
+
+We hurried round as fast as we could to intercept him, should he
+attempt to break on ahead; and leaving some men to rally the mahouts,
+and let them know that there was a tiger afoot, we were soon in our
+places, and ready to give the cub a warm reception, should he again
+show his stripes. It was not long ere he did so. I spied him stealing
+along the edge of the jungle, evidently intending to make a rush back
+past the opening he had just crossed, and outflank the line of beater
+elephants. I fired and hit him in the forearm; he rolled over roaring
+with rage, and then descrying his assailants, he bounded into the
+open, and as well as his wound would allow him, came furiously down at
+the charge. In less time however than it takes to write it, he had
+received three bullets in his body, and tumbled down a lifeless heap.
+We raised a cheer which brought the beaters and elephants quickly to
+the spot. In coming through a thickly wooded part of the forest, with
+numerous long and pliant creepers intertwisted into a confused tangle
+of rope-like ligaments, the old Juddeah elephant tore down one of the
+long lines, and dislodged an angry army of venomous red ants on the
+occupants of the guddee, or cushioned seat on the elephant's pad. The
+ants proved formidable assailants. There were two or three Baboos or
+native gentlemen, holding on to the ropes, chewing pan, and enjoying
+the scene, but the red ants were altogether more than they had
+bargained for. Recognising the Baboos as the immediate cause of their
+disturbance, they attacked them with indomitable courage. The mahout
+fairly yelled with pain, and one of the Baboos, smarting from the
+fiery bites of the furious insects, toppled clean backwards into the
+undergrowth, showing an undignified pair of heels. The other two
+danced on the guddee, sweeping and thrashing the air, the cushion, and
+their clothes, with their cummerbunds, in the vain effort to free
+themselves of their angry assailants. The guddee was literally covered
+with ants; it looked an animated red mass, and the wretched Baboos
+made frantic efforts to shake themselves clear. They were dreadfully
+bitten, and reaching the open, they slid off the elephant, and even on
+the ground continued their saltatory antics before finally getting rid
+of their ferocious assailants.
+
+In forest shooting the red ant is one of the most dreaded pests of the
+jungle. If a colony gets dislodged from some overhanging branch, and
+is landed in your howdah, the best plan is to evacuate your stronghold
+as quickly as you can, and let the attendants clear away the invaders.
+Their bite is very painful, and they take such tenacious hold, that
+rather than quit their grip, they allow themselves to be decapitated
+and leave their head and formidable forceps sticking in your flesh.
+
+Other dreaded foes in the forest jungle are the Bhowra or ground bees,
+which are more properly a kind of hornet. If by evil chance your
+elephant should tread on their mound-like nest, instantly an angry
+swarm of venomous and enraged hornets comes buzzing about your ears.
+Your only chance is to squat down, and envelope yourself completely in
+a blanket. Old sportsmen, shooting in forest jungle, invariably take a
+blanket Avith them in the howdah, to ensure themselves protection in
+the event of an attack by these blood-thirsty creatures. The thick
+matted creepers too are a great nuisance, for which a bill-hook or
+sharp kookree is an invaluable adjunct to the other paraphernalia of
+the march. I have seen a mahout swept clean off the elephant's back by
+these tenacious creepers, and the elephants themselves are sometimes
+unable to break through the tangle of sinewy, lithe cords, which drape
+the huge forest trees, hanging in slender festoons from every branch.
+Some of them are prickly, and as the elephant slowly forces his way
+through the mass of pendent swaying cords, they lacerate and tear the
+mahout's clothes and skin, and appropriate his puggree. As you crouch
+down within the shelter of your howdah, you can't help pitying the
+poor wretch, and incline to think that, after all, shooting in grass
+jungle has fewer drawbacks and is preferable to forest shooting.
+
+One of the drivers reported that he had seen a bear in the jungle, and
+we saw the earth of one not far from where the young tiger had fallen;
+it was the lair of the sloth bear or _Ursus labialis_, so called from
+his long pendent upper lip. His spoor is very easily distinguished
+from that of any other animal; the ball of the foot shows a distinct
+round impression, and about an inch to an inch and a half further on,
+the impression of the long curved claws are seen. He uses these
+long-curved claws to tear up ant hills, and open hollow decaying
+trees, to get at the honey within, of which he is very fond. We went
+after the bear, and were not long in discovering his whereabouts, and
+a well-directed shot from S. added him to our bag. The best bear
+shooting in India perhaps is in CHOTA NAGPOOR, but this does not come
+within the limits of my present volume. We now beat slowly through the
+wood, keeping a bright look out for ants and hornets, and getting fine
+shooting at the numerous jungle fowl which flew about in amazing
+numbers.
+
+The forest trees in this patch of jungle were very fine. The hill
+seerees, with its feathery foliage and delicate clusters of white
+bugle-shaped blossom; the semul or cotton tree, with its wonderful
+wealth of magnificent crimson flowers; the birch-looking sheeshum or
+sissod; the sombre looking sal; the shining, leathery-leafed bhur,
+with its immense over-arching limbs, and the crisp, curly-leafed
+elegant-looking jhamun or Indian olive, formed a paradise of sylvan
+beauty, on which the eye dwelt till it was sated with the woodland
+loveliness.
+
+In recrossing the dhar or water-course, we took care to avoid the
+quicksands, and as we did not expect to fall in with another tiger, we
+indulged in a little general firing. I shot a fine buck through the
+spine, and we bagged several deer, and no less than five florican;
+this bird is allied to the bustard family, and has beautiful drooping
+feathers, hanging in plumy pendants of deep black and pure white,
+intermingled in the most graceful and showy manner. The male is a
+magnificent bird, and has perhaps as fine plumage as any bird on the
+border; the flesh yields the most delicate eating of any game bird I
+know; the slices of mingled brown and white from the breast are
+delicious. The birds are rather shy, generally getting up a long way
+in front of the line, and moving with a slow, rather clumsy, flight,
+not unlike the flight of the white earth owl. They run with great
+swiftness, and are rather hard to kill, unless hit about the neck and
+head. There are two sorts, the lesser and the greater, the former also
+called the bastard florican. Altogether they are noble looking birds,
+and the sportsman is always glad to add as many florican as he can to
+his bag.
+
+We were now nearing the locality of the fierce fire of the morning; it
+was still blazing in a long extended line of flame, and we witnessed
+an incident without parallel in the experience of any of us. I fired
+at and wounded a large stag; it was wounded somewhere in the side, and
+seemed very hard hit indeed. Maddened probably by terror and pain, it
+made straight for the line of fire, and bounded unhesitatingly right
+into the flame. We saw it distinctly go clean though the flames, but
+we could not see whether it got away with its life, as the elephants
+would not go up to the fire. At all events, the stag went right
+through his fiery ordeal, and was lost to us. We started numerous
+hares close to camp, and S. bowled over several. They are very common
+in the short grass jungle, where the soil is sandy, and are frequently
+to be found among thin jowah jungle; they afford good sport for
+coursing, but are neither so fleet, nor so large, nor such good eating
+as the English hare. In fact, they are very dry eating, and the best
+way to cook them is to jug them, or make a hunter's pie, adding
+portions of partridge, quail, or plover, with a few mushrooms, and a
+modicum of ham or bacon if these are procurable.
+
+We reached camp pretty late, and sent off venison, birds, and other
+spoils to Mrs. S. and to Inamputte factory. Our bag shewed a diversity
+of spoil, consisting of one tiger, seven hog-deer, one bear _(Ursus
+labialis)_, seventeen jungle fowl, five florican, and six hares. It
+was no bad bag considering that during most of the day we had been
+beating solely for tiger. We could have shot many more deer and jungle
+fowl, but we never try to shoot more than are needed to satisfy the
+wants of the camp. Were we to attempt to shoot at all the deer and pig
+that we see, the figures would reach very large totals. As a rule
+therefore, the records of Indian sportsmen give no idea of the vast
+quantities of game that are put up and never fired at. It would be the
+very wantonness of destruction, to shoot animals not wanted for some
+specific purpose, unless indeed, you were raging an indiscriminate war
+of extermination, in a quarter where their numbers were a nuisance and
+prejudicial to crops. In that case, your proceedings would not be
+dignified by the name of sport.
+
+After a few more days shooting, the incidents of which were pretty
+much like those I have been describing, I started back for the
+factory. I sent my horse on ahead, and took five elephants with me to
+beat up for game on the homeward route. Close to camp a fine buck got
+up in front of me. I broke both his forelegs with my first shot, but
+the poor brute still managed to hobble along. It was in some very
+dense patair jungle, and I had considerable difficulty in bringing him
+to bag. When we reached the ghat or ferry, I ordered Geerdharee Jha's
+mahout to cross with his elephant. The brute, however, refused to
+cross the river alone, and in spite of all the driver could do, she
+insisted on following the rest. I got down, and some of the other
+drivers got out the hobbles and bound them round her legs. In spite of
+these she still seemed determined to follow us. She shook the bedding
+and other articles with which she was loaded off her back, and made a
+frantic effort to follow us through the deep sand. The iron chains cut
+into her legs, and, afraid that she might do herself an irreparable
+injury, I had her tied up to a tree, and left her trumpeting and
+making an indignant lamentation at being separated from the rest of
+the line.
+
+The elephant seems to be quite a social animal. I have frequently seen
+cases where, after having been in company together for a lengthened
+hunt, they have manifested great reluctance to separate. In leaving
+the line, I have often noticed the single elephant looking back at his
+comrades, and giving vent to his disappointment and disapproval, by
+grunts and trumpetings of indignant protest. We left the refractory
+hathee tied up to her tree, and as we crossed the long rolling billows
+of burning sand that lay athwart our course, she was soon lost to
+view. I shot a couple more hog-deer, and got several plover and teal
+in the patches of water that lay in some of the hollows among the
+sandbanks. I fired at a huge alligator basking in the sun, on a
+sandbank close to the stream. The bullet hit him somewhere in the
+forearm, and he made a tremendous sensation header into the current.
+From the agitation in the water, he seemed not to appreciate the
+leaden message which I had sent him.
+
+We found the journey through the soft yielding sand very fatiguing,
+and especially trying to the eyes. When not shooting, it is a very
+wise precaution to wear eye-preservers or 'goggles.' They are a great
+relief to the eyes, and the best, I think, are the neutral tinted.
+During the west winds, when the atmosphere is loaded with fine
+particles of irritating sand and dust, these goggles are very
+necessary, and are a great protection to the sight.
+
+Another prudent precaution is to have the back of one's shirt or coat
+slightly padded with cotton and quilted. The heat prevents one wearing
+thick clothes, and there is no doubt that the action of the direct
+rays of the burning sun all down the back on the spinal cord, is very
+injurious, and may be a fruitful cause of sunstroke. It is certainly
+productive of great lassitude and weariness. I used to wear a thin
+quilted sort of shield made of cotton-drill, which fastened round the
+shoulders and waist. It does not incommode one's action in any
+particular, and is, I think, a great protection against the fierce
+rays of the sun. Many prefer the puggree as a head-piece. It is
+undeniably a fine thing when one is riding on horseback, as it fits
+close to the head, does not catch the wind during a smart trot or
+canter, and is therefore not easily shaken off. For riding I think it
+preferable to all other headdresses. A good thick puggree is a great
+protection to the back of the head and neck, the part of the body
+which of all others requires protection from the sun. It feels rather
+heavy at first, but one gets used to it, and it does not shade the
+eyes and face. These are the two gravest objections to it, but for
+comfort, softness, and protection to the head and neck, I do not think
+it can be surpassed.
+
+After crossing the sand, we again entered some thin scrubby acacia
+jungle, with here and there a moist swampy nullah, with rank green
+patair jungle growing in the cool dank shade. Here we disturbed a
+colony of pigs, but the four mahouts being Mahommedans I did not fire.
+As we went along, one of my men called my attention to some footprints
+near a small lagoon. On inspection we found they were rhinoceros
+tracks, evidently of old date. These animals are often seen in this
+part of the country, but are more numerous farther north, in the great
+morung forest jungle.
+
+A very noticeable feature in these jungles was the immense quantity of
+bleached ghastly skeletons of cattle. This year had been a most
+disastrous one for cattle. Enormous numbers had been swept off by
+disease, and in many villages bordering on the morung the herds had
+been well-nigh exterminated. Little attention is paid to breeding. In
+some districts, such as the Mooteeharree and Mudhobunnee division,
+fine cart-bullocks are bred, carefully handled and tended, and fetch
+high prices. In Kurruchpore, beyond the Ganges in Bhaugulpore
+district, cattle of a small breed, hardy, active, staunch, and strong,
+are bred in great numbers, and are held in great estimation for
+agricultural requirements; but in these Koosee jungles the bulls are
+often ill-bred weedy brutes, and the cows being much in excess of a
+fair proportion of bulls, a deal of in-breeding takes place; unmatured
+young bulls roam about with the herd, and the result is a crowd of
+cattle that succumb to the first ailment, so that the land is littered
+with their bones.
+
+The bullock being indispensable to the Indian cultivator, bull calves
+are prized, taken care of, well nurtured, and well fed. The cow calves
+are pretty much left to take care of themselves; they are thin,
+miserable, half-starved brutes, and the short-sighted ryot seems
+altogether to forget that it is on these miserable withered specimens
+that he must depend for his supply of plough and cart-bullocks. The
+matter is most shamefully neglected. Government occasionally through
+its officers, experimental farms, etc., tries to get good sire stock
+for both horses and cattle, but as long as the dams are bad--mere
+weeds, without blood, bone, muscle, or stamina, the produce must be
+bad. As a pretty well established and general rule, the ryots look
+after their bullocks,--they recognise their value, and appreciate
+their utility, but the cows fare badly, and from all I have myself
+seen, and from the concurrent testimony of many observant friends in
+the rural districts, I should say that the breed has become much
+deteriorated.
+
+Old planters constantly tell you, that such cattle as they used to get
+are not now procurable for love or money. Within the last twenty years
+prices have more than doubled, because the demand for good
+plough-bullocks has been more urgent, as a consequence of increased
+cultivation, and the supply is not equal to the demand. Attention to
+the matter is imperative, and planters would be wise in their own
+interests to devote a little time and trouble to disseminating sound
+ideas about the selection of breeding stock, and the principles of
+rearing and raising stock among their ryots and dependants. Every
+factory should be able to breed its own cattle, and supply its own
+requirements for plough and cart-bullocks. It would be cheaper in the
+end, and it would undoubtedly be a blessing to the country to raise
+the standard of cattle used in agricultural work.
+
+To return from this digression. We plodded on and on, weary, hot, and
+thirsty, expecting every moment to see the ghat and my waiting horse.
+But the country here is so wild, the river takes such erratic courses
+during the annual floods, and the district is so secluded and so
+seldom visited by Europeans or factory servants, that my syce had
+evidently lost his way. After we had crossed innumerable streams, and
+laboriously traversed mile upon mile of burning sand, we gave up the
+attempt to find the ghat, and made for Nathpore.
+
+Nathpore was formerly a considerable town, not far from the Nepaul
+border, a flourishing grain mart and emporium for the fibres, gums,
+spices, timbers, and other productions of a wide frontier. There was a
+busy and crowded bazaar, long streets of shops and houses, and
+hundreds of boats lying in the stream beside the numerous ghats,
+taking in and discharging their cargoes. It may give a faint idea of
+the destructive force of an Indian stream like the Koosee when it is
+in full flood, to say that this once flourishing town is now but a
+handful of miserable huts. Miles of rich lands, once clothed with
+luxuriant crops of rice, indigo, and waving grain, are now barren
+reaches of burning sand. The bleached skeletons of mango, jackfruit,
+and other trees, stretch out their leafless and lifeless branches, to
+remind the spectator of the time when their foliage rustled in the
+breeze, when their lusty limbs bore rich clusters of luscious fruit,
+and when the din of the bazaar resounded beneath their welcome shade.
+A fine old lady still lived in a two-storied brick building, with
+quaint little darkened rooms, and a narrow verandah running all round
+the building. She was long past the allotted threescore years and ten,
+with a keen yet mildly beaming eye, and a wealth of beautiful hair as
+white as driven snow, neatly gathered back from her shapely forehead.
+She was the last remaining link connecting the present with the past
+glories of Nathpore. Her husband had been a planter and Zemindar.
+Where his vats had stood laden with rich indigo, the engulphing sand
+now reflected the rays of the torrid sun from its burning whiteness.
+She shewed me a picture of the town as it appeared to her when she had
+been brought there many a long and weary year ago, ere yet her step
+had lost its lightness, and when she was in the bloom of her bridal
+life. There was a fine broad boulevard, shadowed by splendid trees, on
+which she and her husband had driven in their carriage of an evening,
+through crowds of prosperous and contented traders and cultivators.
+The hungry river had swept all this away. Subsisting on a few
+precarious rents of some little plots of ground that it had spared,
+all that remained of a once princely estate, this good old lady lived
+her lonely life cheerful and contented, never murmuring or repining.
+The river had not spared even the graves of her departed dear ones.
+Since I left that part of the country I hear that she has been called
+away to join those who had gone before her.
+
+I arrived at her house late in the afternoon. I had never been at
+Nathpore before, although the place was well known to me by
+reputation. What a wreck it presented as our elephants marched
+through. Ruined, dismantled, crumbling temples; masses of masonry half
+submerged in the swift-running, treacherous, undermining stream; huge
+trees lying prostrate, twisted and jammed together where the angry
+flood had hurled them; bare unsightly poles and piles, sticking from
+the water at every angle, reminding us of the granaries and godowns
+that were wont to be filled with the agricultural wealth of the
+districts for miles around; hard metalled roads cut abruptly off, and
+bridges with only half an arch, standing lonely and ruined half way in
+the muddy current that swept noiselessly past the deserted city. It
+was a scene of utter waste and desolation.
+
+The lady I mentioned made me very welcome, and I was struck by her
+unaffected cheerfulness and gentleness. She was a gentlewoman indeed,
+and though reduced in circumstances, surrounded by misfortunes, and
+daily and hourly reminded by the scattered wreck around her of her
+former wealth and position, she bore all with exemplary fortitude, and
+to the full extent of her scanty means she relieved the sorrows and
+ailments of the natives. They all loved and respected, and I could not
+help admiring and honouring her.
+
+She pointed out to me, far away on the south-east horizon, the place
+where the river ran in its shallow channel when she first came to
+Nathpore. During her experience it had cut into and overspread more
+than twenty miles of country, turning fertile fields into arid wastes
+of sand; sweeping away factories, farms, and villages; and changing
+the whole face of the country from a fruitful landscape into a
+wilderness of sand and swamp.
+
+My horse came up in the evening, and I rode over to Inamputte,
+leaving my kindly hostess in her solitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+Exciting jungle scene.--The camp.--All quiet.--Advent of the cowherds.
+--A tiger close by.--Proceed to the spot.--Encounter between tigress
+and buffaloes.--Strange behaviour of the elephant.--Discovery and
+capture of four cubs.--Joyful return to camp.--Death of the tigress.
+--Night encounter with a leopard.--The haunts of the tiger and our
+shooting grounds.
+
+One of the most exciting and deeply interesting scenes I ever
+witnessed in the jungles, was on the occasion I have referred to in a
+former chapter, when speaking of the number of young given by the
+tigress at a birth. It was in the month of March, at the village of
+Ryseree, in Bhaugulpore. I had been encamped in the midst of
+twenty-four beautiful tanks, the history and construction of which
+were lost in the mists of tradition. The villagers had a story that
+these tanks were the work of a mighty giant, Bheema, with whose aid
+and that of his brethren they had been excavated in a single night.
+
+At all events, they were now covered with a wild tangle of water
+lilies and aquatic plants; well stocked with magnificent fish, and an
+occasional scaly monster of a saurian. They were the haunt of vast
+quantities of widgeon, teal, whistlers, mallard, ducks, snipe, curlew,
+blue fowl, and the usual varied _habitues_ of an exceptionally good
+Indian lake. In the vicinity hares were numerous, and in the thick
+jungle bordering the tanks in places, and consisting mostly of nurkool
+and wild rose, hog-deer and wild pig were abundant. The dried-up bed
+of an old arm of the Koosee was quite close to my camp, and abounded
+in sandpiper, and golden, grey, goggle-eyed, and stilted plover,
+besides other game.
+
+It was indeed a favourite camping spot, and the village was inhabited
+by a hardy, independent set of Gwallas, Koormees, and agriculturists,
+with whom I was a prime favourite.
+
+I was sitting in my tent, going over some village accounts with the
+village putwarrie, and my gomasta. A posse of villagers were grouped
+under the grateful shade of a gnarled old mango tree, whose contorted
+limbs bore evidence to the violence of many a _tufan_, or tempest,
+which it had weathered. The usual confused clamour of tongues was
+rising from this group, and the sub; ect of debate was the eternal
+'pice.' Behind the bank, and in rear of the tent, the cook and his
+mate were disembowelling a hapless _moorghee_, a fowl, whose
+decapitation had just been effected with a huge jagged old cavalry
+sword, of which my cook was not a little proud; and on the strength of
+which he adopted fierce military airs, and gave an extra turn to his
+well-oiled moustache when he went abroad for a holiday.
+
+Farther to the rear a line of horses were picketed, including my
+man-eating demon the white Cabool stallion, my gentle country-bred
+mare Motee--the pearl--and my handsome little pony mare, formerly my
+hockey or polo steed, a present from a gallant sportsman and rare good
+fellow, as good a judge of a horse, or a criminal, as ever sat on a
+bench.
+
+Behind the horses, each manacled by weighty chains, with his ponderous
+trunk and ragged-looking tail swaying too and fro with a never-ceasing
+motion, stood a line of ten elephants. Their huge leathery ears
+flapped lazily, and ever and anon one or other would seize a mighty
+branch, and belabour his corrugated sides to free himself of the
+detested and troublesome flies. The elephants were placidly munching
+their _chana_ (bait, or food), and occasionally giving each other a
+dry bath in the shape of a shower of sand. There was a monotonous
+clank of chains, and an occasional deep abdominal rumble like distant
+thunder. All over the camp there was a confused subdued medley of
+sound. A hum from the argumentative villagers, a lazy flop in the tank
+as a raho rose to the surface, an occasional outburst from the ducks,
+an angry clamour from the water-hens and blue-fowl. My dogs were lying
+round me blinking and winking, and making an occasional futile snap at
+an imaginary fly or flea. It was a drowsy and peaceful scene. I was
+nearly dropping off to sleep, from the heat and the monotonous drone
+of the putwarrie, who was intoning nasally some formidable document
+about fishery rights and privileges.
+
+Suddenly there was a hush. Every sound seemed to stop simultaneously
+as if by pre-arranged concert. Then three men were seen rushing madly
+along the elevated ridge surrounding one of the tanks. I recognised
+one of my peons, and with him two cowherds. Their head-dresses were
+all disarranged, and their parted lips, heaving chests, and eyes
+blazing with excitement, shewed that they were brimful of some unusual
+message.
+
+Now arose such a bustle in the camp as no description could adequately
+portray. The elephants trumpeted and piped; the _syces_, or grooms,
+came rushing up with eager queries; the villagers bustled about like
+so many ants aroused by the approach of a hostile foe; my pack of
+terriers yelped out in chorus; the pony neighed; the Cabool stallion
+plunged about; my servants came rushing from the shelter of the tent
+verandah with disordered dress; the ducks rose in a quacking crowd,
+and circled round and round the tent; and the cry arose of 'Bagh!
+Bagh! Khodamund! Arree Bap re Bap! Ram Ram, Seeta Ram!'
+
+Breathless with running, the men now tumbled up, hurriedly salaamed,
+arid then each with gasps and choking stops, and pell-mell volubility,
+and amid a running fire of cries, queries, and interjections from the
+mob, began to unfold their tale. There was an infuriated tigress at
+the other side of the nullah, or dry watercourse, she had attacked a
+herd of buffaloes, and it was believed that she had cubs.
+
+Already Debnarain Singh was getting his own pad elephant caparisoned,
+and my bearer was diving under my camp bed for my gun and cartridges.
+Knowing the little elephant to be a fast walker, and fairly staunch, I
+got on her back, and accompanied by the gomasta and mahout we set out,
+followed by the peon and herdsmen to shew us the way.
+
+I expected two friends, officers from Calcutta, that very day, and
+wished not to kill the tigress but to keep her for our combined
+shooting next day. We had not proceeded far when, on the other side of
+the nullah, we saw dense clouds of dust rising, and heard a confused,
+rushing, trampling sound, mingled with the clashing of horns, and the
+snorting of a herd of angry buffaloes.
+
+It was the wildest sight I have ever seen in connection with animal
+life. The buffaloes were drawn together in the form of a crescent;
+their eyes glared fiercely, and as they advanced in a series of short
+runs, stamping with their hoofs, and angrily lashing their tails,
+their horns would come together with a clanging, clattering crash, and
+they would paw the sand, snort and toss their heads, and behave in the
+most extraordinary manner.
+
+The cause of all this commotion was not far to seek. Directly in
+front, retreating slowly, with stealthy, prowling, crawling steps, and
+an occasional short, quick leap or bound to one side or the other, was
+a magnificent tigress, looking the very personification of baffled
+fury. Ever and anon she crouched down to the earth, tore up the sand
+with her claws, lashed her tail from side to side, and with lips
+retracted, long moustaches quivering with wrath, and hateful eyes
+scintillating with rage and fury, she seemed to meditate an attack on
+the angry buffaloes. The serried array of clashing horns, and the
+ponderous bulk of the herd, seemed however to daunt the snarling
+vixen; at their next rush she would bound back a few paces, crouch
+down, growl, and be forced to move back again, by the short,
+blundering rush of the crowd.
+
+All the calves and old cows were in the rear of the herd, and it was
+not a little comical to witness their ungainly attitudes. They would
+stretch their clumsy necks, and shake their heads, as if they did not
+rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they stopped too
+long to indulge their curiosity, there was a danger of their getting
+separated from the fighting members of the herd, they would make a
+stupid, headlong, lumbering lurch forward, and jostle each other, in
+their blundering panic.
+
+It was a grand sight. The tigress was the embodiment of lithe and
+savage beauty, but her features expressed the wildest baffled rage. I
+could have shot the striped vixen over and over again, but I wished to
+keep her for my friends, and I was thrilled with the excitement of
+such a novel scene.
+
+Suddenly our elephant trumpeted, and shied quickly to one side, from
+something lying on the ground. Curling up its trunk it began backing
+and piping at a prodigious rate.
+
+'Hullo! what's the matter now?' said I to Debnarain.
+
+'God only knows,' said he.
+
+'A young tiger!' 'Bagh ka butcha!' screams our mahout, and regardless
+of the elephant or of our cries to stop, he scuttled down the pad rope
+like a monkey down a backstay, and clutching a young dead tiger cub,
+threw it up to Debnarain; it was about the size of a small poodle, and
+had evidently been trampled by the pursuing herd of buffaloes.
+
+'There may be others,' said the gomasta; and peering into every bush,
+we went slowly on.
+
+The elephant now shewed decided symptoms of dislike and a reluctance
+to approach a particular dense clump of grass.
+
+A sounding whack on the head, however, made her quicken her steps, and
+thrusting the long stalks aside, she discovered for us three blinking
+little cubs, brothers of the defunct, and doubtless part of the same
+litter. Their eyes were scarcely open, and they lay huddled together
+like three enormous striped kittens, and spat at us and bristled their
+little moustaches much as an angry cat would do. All the four were
+males.
+
+It was not long ere I had them carefully wrapped in the mahout's
+blanket. Overjoyed at our good fortune, we left the excited buffaloes
+still executing their singular war-dance, and the angry tigress,
+robbed of her whelps, consuming her soul in baffled fury.
+
+We heard her roaring through the night, close to camp, and on my
+friends' arrival, we beat her up next morning, and she fell pierced by
+three bullets, after a fierce and determined charge. We came upon her
+across the nullah, and her mind was evidently made up to fight. Nearly
+all the villagers had turned out with the line of elephants. Before we
+had time to order them away, she came down upon the line, roaring
+furiously, and bounding over the long grass,--a most magnificent
+sight.
+
+My first bullet took her full in the chest, and before she could make
+good her charge, a ball each from Pat and Captain G. settled her
+career. She was beautifully striped, and rather large for a tigress,
+measuring nine feet three inches.
+
+It was now a question with me, how to rear the three interesting
+orphans; we thought a slut from some of the villages would prove the
+best wet nurse, and tried accordingly to get one, but could not. In
+the meantime an unhappy goat was pounced on and the three young-tigers
+took to her teats as if 'to the manner born.' The poor Nanny screamed
+tremendously at first sight of them, but she soon got accustomed to
+them, and when they grew a little bigger, she would often playfully
+butt at them with her horns.
+
+The little brutes throve wonderfully, and soon developed such an
+appetite that I had to get no less than six goats to satisfy their
+constant thirst. I kept the cubs for over two months, and I shall not
+soon forget the excitement I caused, when my boat stopped at
+Sahribgunge, and my goats, tiger cubs, and attendants, formed a
+procession from the ghat or landing-place, to the railway station.
+
+Soldiers, guards, engineers, travellers, and crowds of natives
+surrounded me, and at every station the guard's van, with my novel
+menagerie, was the centre of attraction. I sold the cubs to Jamrach's
+agent in Calcutta for a very satisfactory price. Two of them were very
+powerful, finely marked, handsome animals; the third had always been
+sickly, had frequent convulsions, and died a few days after I sold it.
+I was afterwards told that the milk diet was a mistake, and that I
+should have fed them on raw meat. However, I was very well satisfied
+on the whole with the result of my adventure.
+
+I had another in the same part of the country, which at the time was a
+pretty good test of the state of my nerves.
+
+I was camped out at the village of Purindaha, on the edge of a gloomy
+sal forest, which was reported to contain numerous leopards. The
+villagers were a mixed lot of low-caste Hindoos, and Nepaulese
+settlers. They had been fighting with the factory, and would not pay
+up their rents, and I was trying, with every probability of success,
+to make an amicable arrangement with them. At all events, I had so far
+won them round, that they were willing to talk to me. They came to the
+tent and listened quietly, and except on the subject of rent, we got
+on in the most friendly manner.
+
+It was the middle of April. The heat was intense. The whole atmosphere
+had that coppery look which denotes extreme heat, and the air was
+loaded with fine yellow dust, which the daily west wind bore on its
+fever laden wings, to disturb the lungs and tempers of all good
+Christians. The _kanats_, or canvas walls of the tent, had all been
+taken down for coolness, and my camp bed lay in one corner, open all
+round to the outside air, but only sheltered from the dew. It had been
+a busy day. I had been going over accounts, and talking to the
+villagers till I was really hoarse. After a light dinner I lay down on
+my bed, but it was too close and hot to sleep. By and bye the various
+sounds died out. The tom-toming ceased in the village. My servants
+suspended their low muttered gossip round the cook's fire, wrapped
+themselves in their white cloths, and dropped into slumber. 'Toby,'
+'Nettle,' 'Whisky,' 'Pincher,' and my other terriers, resembled so
+many curled-up hairy balls, and were in the land of dreams.
+Occasionally an owl would give a melancholy hoot from the forest, or a
+screech owl would raise a momentary and damnable din. At intervals,
+the tinkle of a cow-bell sounded faintly in the distance. I tossed
+restlessly, thinking of various things, till I must have dropped off
+into an uneasy fitful sleep. I know not how long I had been dozing,
+but of a sudden I felt myself wide awake, though with my eyes yet
+firmly closed.
+
+I was conscious of some terrible unknown impending danger. I had
+experienced the same feeling before on waking from a nightmare, but I
+knew that the danger now was real. I felt a shrinking horror, a
+terrible and nameless fear, and for the life of me I could not move
+hand or foot. I was lying on my side, and could distinctly hear the
+thumping of my heart. A cold sweat broke out behind my ears and over
+my neck and chest. I could analyse my every feeling, and I knew there
+was some PRESENCE in the tent, and that I was in instant and imminent
+peril. Suddenly in the distance a pariah dog gave a prolonged
+melancholy howl. As if this had broken the spell which had hitherto
+bound me, I opened my eyes, and within ten inches of my face, there
+was a handsome leopardess gazing steadily at me. Our eyes met, and how
+long we confronted each other I know not. It must have been some
+minutes. Her eyes contracted and expanded, the pupil elongated and
+then opened out into a round lustrous globe. I could see the lithe
+tail oscillating at its extreme tip, with a gentle waving motion, like
+that of a cat when hunting birds in the garden. I seemed to possess no
+will. I believe I was under a species of fascination, but we continued
+our steady stare at each other.
+
+Just then, there was a movement by some of the horses. The leopard
+slowly turned her head, and I grasped the revolver which lay under my
+pillow. The beautiful spotted monster turned her head for an instant,
+and shewed her teeth, and then with one bound went through the open
+side of the tent. I fired two shots, which were answered with a roar.
+The din that followed would have frightened the devil. It was a
+beautiful clear night, with a moon at the full, and everything shewed
+as plainly as at noonday. The servants uttered exclamations of terror.
+The terriers went into an agony of yelps and barks. The horses
+snorted, and tried to get loose, and my chowkeydar, who had been
+asleep on his watch, thinking a band of dacoits were on us, began
+laying round him with his staff, shouting, _Chor, Chor! lagga, lagga,
+lagga!_ that is, 'thief, thief! lay on, lay on, lay on!'
+
+The leopard was hit, and evidently in a terrible temper. She halted
+not thirty paces from the tent, beside a jhamun tree, and seemed
+undecided whether to go on or return and wreak her vengeance on me.
+That moment decided her fate. I snatched down my Express rifle, which
+was hanging in two loops above my bed, and shot her right through the
+heart.
+
+I never understood how she could have made her way past dogs,
+servants, horses, and watchman, right into the tent, without raising
+some alarm. It must have been more from curiosity than any hostile
+design. I know that my nerves were very rudely shaken, but I became
+the hero of the Purindaha villagers. I believe that my night adventure
+with the leopardess did more to bring them round to a settlement than
+all my eloquence and figures.
+
+The river Koosee, on the banks of which, and in the long grass plains
+adjacent, most of the incidents I have recorded took place, takes its
+rise at the base of Mount Everest, and, after draining nearly the
+whole of Eastern. Nepaul, emerges by a deep gorge from the hills at
+the north-west corner of Purneah. The stream runs with extreme
+velocity. It is known as a snow stream. The water is always cold, and
+generally of a milky colour, containing much fine white sand. No
+sooner does it leave its rocky bed than it tears through the flat
+country by numerous channels. It is subject to very sudden rises. A
+premonitory warning of these is generally given. The water becomes of
+a turbid, almost blood-like colour. Sometimes I have seen the river
+rise over thirty feet in twenty-four hours. The melting of the snow
+often makes a raging torrent, level from bank to bank, where only a
+few hours before a horse could have forded the stream without wetting
+the girths of the saddle.
+
+In 1876 the largest channel was a swift broad stream called the Dhaus.
+The river is very capricious, seldom flowing for any length of time in
+one channel. This is owing in great measure to the amount of silt it
+carries with it from the hills, in its impetuous progress to the
+plains.
+
+In these dry watercourses, among the sand ridges, beside the humid
+marshy hollows, and among the thick strips of grass jungle, tigers are
+always to be found. They are much less numerous now however than
+formerly. As a rule, there is no shelter in these water-worn,
+flood-ravaged tracts and sultry jungles. Occasionally a few straggling
+plantain trees, a clump of sickly-looking bamboos, a cluster of tall
+shadowless palms, marks the site of a deserted village. All else is
+waving grass, withered and dry. The villages, inhabited mostly by a
+few cowherds, boatmen, and rice-farmers are scattered at wide
+intervals. In the shooting season, and when the hot winds are blowing,
+the only shadow on the plain is that cast by the dense volumes of
+lurid smoke, rising in blinding clouds from the jungle fires.
+
+According to the season, animal life fluctuates strangely. During the
+rains, when the river is in full flood, and much of the country
+submerged, most of the animals migrate to the North, buffaloes and
+wild pig alone keeping possession, of the higher ridges in the
+neighbourhood of their usual haunts.
+
+The contrasts presented on these plains at different seasons of the
+year are most remarkable. In March and April they are parched up,
+brown, and dead; great black patches showing the track of a destroying
+fire, the fine brown ash from the burnt grass penetrating the eyes and
+nostrils, and sweeping along in eddying and blinding clouds. They then
+look the very picture of an untenable waste, a sea of desolation,
+whose limits blend in the extreme distance with the shimmering coppery
+horizon. In the rainy season these arid-looking wastes are covered
+with tall-plumed, reed-like, waving grass, varying from two to ten
+feet in height, stretching in an unbroken sweep as far as the eye can
+reach, except where an abrupt line shews that the swift river has its
+treacherous course. After the rains, progress through the jungle is
+dangerous. Quicksands and beds of tenacious mud impede one at every
+step. The rich vegetation springs up green and vigorous, with a
+rapidity only to be seen in the Tropics. But what a glorious hunting
+ground! What a preserve for Nimrod! Deer forest, or heathered moor,
+can never compete with the old Koosee Derahs for abundance of game and
+thrilling excitement in sport. My genial, happy, loyal comrades
+too--while memory lasts the recollection of your joyous, frank,
+warm-hearted comradeship shall never fade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Remarks on guns.--How to cure skins.--Different recipes.--Conclusion.
+
+My remarks on guns shall be brief. The true sportsman has many
+facilities for acquiring the best information on a choice of weapons.
+For large game perhaps nothing can equal the Express rifle. My own
+trusty weapon was a '500 bore, very plain, with a pistol grip, point
+blank up to 180 yards, made by Murcott of the Haymarket, from whom I
+have bought over twenty guns, every one of which turned out a splendid
+weapon.
+
+My next favourite was a No. 12 breachloader, very light, but strong
+and carefully finished. It had a side snap action with rebounding
+locks, and was the quickest gun to fire and reload I ever possessed. I
+bought it from the same maker, although it was manufactured by W.W.
+Greener.
+
+Avoid a cheap gun as you would avoid a cheap Jew pedlar. A good name
+is above riches so far as a gun is concerned, and when you have a good
+gun take as much care of it as you would of a good wife. They are both
+equally rare. An expensive gun is not necessarily a good one, but a
+cheap gun is very seldom trustworthy. Have a portable, handy black
+leather case. Keep your gun always clean, bright, and free from rust.
+After every day's shooting see that the barrels and locks are
+carefully cleaned and oiled. Nothing is better for this purpose than
+rangoon oil.
+
+For preserving horns, a little scraping and varnishing are all that is
+required. While in camp it is a good plan to rub them with deer, or
+pig, or tiger fat, as it keeps them from cracking.
+
+To clean a tiger's or other skull. If there be a nest of ants near the
+camp, place the skull in their immediate vicinity. Some recommend
+putting in water till the particles of flesh rot, or till the skull is
+cleared by the fishes. A strong solution of caustic water may be used
+if you wish to get the bones cleaned very quickly. Some put the skulls
+in quicklime, but it has a tendency to make the bones splinter, and it
+is difficult to keep the teeth from getting loose and dropping out.
+The best but slowest plan is to fix them in mechanically by wire or
+white lead. A good preservative is to wash or paint them with a very
+strong solution of fine lime and water.
+
+To cure skins. I know no better recipe than the one adopted by my
+trainers in the art of _shibar_, the brothers S. I cannot do better
+than give a description of the process in the words of George himself.
+
+'Skin the animal in the usual way. Cut from the corner of the mouth,
+down the throat, and along the belly. A white stripe or border
+generally runs along the belly. This should be left as nearly as
+possible equal on both sides. Carefully cut the fleshy parts off the
+lips and balls of the toes and feet. Clean away every particle of
+fatty or fleshy matter that may still adhere to the skin. Peg it out
+on the ground with the hair side undermost. When thoroughly scraped
+clean of all extraneous matter on the inner surface, get a bucket or
+tub of buttermilk, which is called by the natives _dahye_ or _mutha_.
+It is a favourite article of diet with them, cheap and plentiful. Dip
+the skin in this, and keep it well and entirely submerged by placing
+some heavy weight on it. It should be submerged fully three inches in
+the tub of buttermilk.
+
+'After two days in the milk bath, take it out and peg it as before.
+Now take a smooth oval rubbing-board about twelve inches long, five
+round, and about an inch thick in the middle, and scrub the skin
+heartily with this instrument. On its lower surface it should be cuts
+in grooves, semicircular in shape, half an inch wide, and one inch
+apart. During scrubbing use plenty of pure water to remove filth. In
+about half an hour the pinkish-white colour will disappear, and the
+skin will appear white, with a blackish tinge underneath. This is the
+true hide.
+
+'Again submerge in the buttermilk bath for twenty-four hours, and get
+a man to tread on it in every possible way, folding it and unfolding
+it, till all has been thoroughly worked.
+
+'Take it out again, peg out and scrub it as before, after which wash
+the whole hide well in clear water. Never mind if the skin looks
+rotten, it is really not so.
+
+'When washed put it into a tub, in which you have first placed a
+mixture consisting of half an ounce of alum to each gallon of water.
+Soak the skin in this mixture for about six hours, taking it up
+occasionally to drain a little. This is sufficient to cure your skin
+and clean it.'
+
+The tanning remains to be done.
+
+'Get four pounds of babool, tamarind, or dry oak bark. (The babool is
+a kind of acacia, and is easily procurable, as the tamarind also is).
+Boil the bark in two gallons of water till it is reduced to one half
+the quantity. Add to this nine gallons of fresh water, and in this
+solution souse the skin for two, or three, or four days.
+
+'The hairs having been set by the soaking in alum, the skin will tan
+more quickly, and if the tan is occasionally rubbed into the pores of
+the skin it will be an improvement. You can tell when the tanning is
+complete by the colour the skin assumes. When this satisfies the eye,
+take it out and drain on a rod. When nearly dry it should be curried
+with olive oil or clarified butter if required for wear, but if only
+for floor covering or carriage rug, the English curriers' common
+'dubbin,' sold by shopkeepers, is best. This operation, which must be
+done on the inner side only, is simple.
+
+'Another simple recipe, and one which answers well, is this. Mix
+together of the best English soap, four ounces; arsenic, two and a
+half grains; camphor, two ounces; alum, half an ounce; saltpetre, half
+an ounce. Boil the whole, and keep stirring, in a half-pint of
+distilled water, over a very slow fire, for from ten to fifteen
+minutes. Apply when cool with a sponge. A little sweet oil may be
+rubbed on the skins after they are dry.
+
+'Another good method is to apply arsenical soap, which may be made as
+follows: powdered arsenic, two pounds; camphor, five ounces; white
+soap, sliced thin, two pounds; salt of tartar, twelve drams; chalk, or
+powdered fine lime, four ounces; add a small quantity of water first
+to the soap, put over a gentle fire, and keep stirring. When melted,
+add the lime and tartar, and thoroughly mix; next add the arsenic,
+keeping up a constant motion, and lastly the camphor. The camphor
+should first be reduced to a powder by means of a little spirits of
+wine, and should be added to the mess after it has been taken off the
+fire.
+
+'This preparation must be kept in a well-stoppered jar, or properly
+closed pot. When ready, the soap should be of the consistency of
+Devonshire cream. To use, add water till it becomes of the consistency
+of clear rich soup.'
+
+I have now finished my book. It has been pleasant to me to write down
+these recollections. Ever since I began my task, death has been busy,
+and the ranks of my friends have been sadly thinned. Failing health
+has driven me from my old shooting grounds, and in sunny Australia I
+have been trying to recruit the energies enervated by the burning
+climate of India. That my dear old planter friends may have as kindly
+recollections of 'the Maori' as he has of them, is what I ardently
+hope; that I may yet get back to share in the sports, pastimes, joys,
+and social delights of Mofussil life in India, is what I chiefly
+desire. If this volume meets the approbation of the public, I may be
+tempted to draw further on a well-stocked memory, and gossip afresh on
+Indian life, Indian experiences, and Indian sport. Meantime, courteous
+reader, farewell.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier
+by James Inglis
+
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