A NOTED BULL BLSON. 39 



I believe the hardships and robberies to which the people were subjected to 

 have been the chief cause of their leaving their homes. Their granaries 

 were sacked, their herds driven off, and their women abducted by these 

 freebooters. Consecutive years of scarcity or sickness may also, in some 

 cases, have tended to this result; but as all Indian villages have small begin- 

 nings, if the site chosen proves unhealthy it is soon given up ; and conse- 

 quently, when the remains of any village formerly of importance are found, 

 it is more reasonable to look to other causes for its abandonment than 

 unhealthiness, which should rather decrease (except epidemics) with the 

 growth of the village, and the greater area from which the surrounding 

 jungle is removed, than increase. Some villages have evidently been 

 ruined through the action of their inhabitants, as those mentioned in Chap. 

 III. ; but there are no such causes visible in the deserted villages at the 

 foot of the Billiga-runguns, and doubtless the ancestors of the Brinjarries, 

 who now quietly graze cattle over their ruins, had a main share in bringing 

 about their downfall. 



There used to be a famous old solitary bull bison, well known to the 

 Sholagas as having frequented the vicinity of Dodda Goudan Parliah for 

 twenty years. I had learned that he was generally to be seen in the cool 

 hours of the morning and evening grazing in the short grass on the out- 

 skirts of the jungle, preparatory to retiring into it for the day. One morn- 

 ing I was going from a place called Koonibar-goondy to fish in the deep 

 pools of the Honhollay, within the gorge, and was riding my small pad 

 elephant Soondargowry, which did not bring my head to the level of the 

 grass, then ten feet high, when, as I passed along, I saw through a gap in 

 the grass the head of a bison lying under a bamboo clump some sixty yards 

 to my right. I pulled up to make sure. Yes ! there he was, a splendid 

 old bull, chewing the cud peacefully, and not looking in our direction ! I 

 knew instantly he must be the bull I had heard so much of, and which I 

 had been singularly unsuccessful in falling in with before. My heavy rifles 

 were at hand, so I jumped off the elephant, and with a tracker crept through 

 the grass towards the bull. As we came to the clear ground under the 

 bamboo clumps, he suddenly upreared his gigantic black form to our 

 right ; he had caught a slant of our wind. He stood stern on ; and as I 

 feared he might dash away, I took the best shot I could, and broke his 

 right hip-joint. I was using an 8 -bore rifle and ten drains. At the shot 

 the bull rushed amongst the bamboo clumps, his disabled leg swinging like 

 a flail. Another tracker joined us, and we followed him without loss of 

 time ; but he got into a narrow belt of grass and young bamboo a hundred 

 yards away, and here we heard him breathing heavily. We kept to the shelter 



