MAN-EATING TIGRESS OF MUNDALI. 259 



had turned in for tbe night. The moon, just passed her full, was 

 concealed by clouds, but enough of her light passed through to en- 

 able objects up to 20 yards off to be discerned clearly. A party of the 

 servants were sitting gossiping round a fire on the edge of a terrace. 

 Suddenly one of the party, who was facing the edge of the terrace, 

 caught sight of a crouching animal about 8 yards off. Instantly a 

 hue and cry was raised, and the tigress sprang away and disappeared 

 down the slope. 



"A few days before our arrival atMundali the tigress had entered 

 a cabin built of large hewn slabs, in which about 18 men were alseep, 

 and walked off with one of the sleepers without awaking the rest. This 

 incident and the attack on our orderly's tent combined to render us 

 circumspect, and before retiring for the night we invariably bolted 

 the doors and windows of the rest-house occupied by us. We are 

 reminded of this circumstance by the remembrance of some raillery, 

 of which we were the butt atadinner party, and the purpose of which 

 was to bring our courage into question. The scoffer, who will recog- 

 nise himself when he reads this, laughed at the mere idea of the 

 most daring man-eating tiger going near a house or tent, much less 

 entering it. The evidence of the orderly and his companions who 

 had seen the tigress by the light of their fire, the evidence of our 

 own eyes, which had seen her well-marked foot-prints before the 

 orderly's tent and in the soft soil of the slope beyond, went for 

 nothing. In our terror a leopard had assumed the proportions of a 

 tiger ! Against the direct evidence of the eyes of several individuals, 

 who were by no means griffs in the matter of tigers and leopards, 

 the mere opinion of one individual, who said that only a leopard 

 could display the boldness this supposed tiger had been reported 

 to have shown, was accept ed as sufficient disproof. The supposed 

 leopard has now been shot, after repeating all its previous perfor- 

 mances, which it was so absolutely certain no tiger could have been 

 guilty of; but unfortunately for our scoffer, this leopard has had 

 {he bad grace to turn out to be a tiger, not the mythical tiger seen 

 by the dim light of the camp fire through the spectacles of terror 

 but a real unmitigated tiger. 



" For those who are still incapable of believing that a tiger can enter 

 a tent or house, we will cite another instance which occurred last 

 March. Sawing operations were going on just above the Tons, about 

 24 miles further in the interior of the Himalayas than Mundali, and 

 the sawyers were located in several huts huddled together by the 

 side of the Tons-llama Sarai bridle-path. One night a tigress, who 



