SHIKARIE SUBBA. 353 



his own village rather than go to a distance to obtain relief. I have met 

 some natives, however, of sporting tastes, who would roll up their blanket, 

 tie up their simple cooking utensils, and start upon any service, perhaps 

 to be absent for a month or more, at a moment's notice, merely asking 

 that something should be sent to their wives, a point which the Hindoo never 

 forgets. Subba was one of these rovers, and in consequence was looked 

 upon as somewhat of a vagabond by his stay-at-home neighbours. As a 

 tracker he had the great recommendation of being a taciturn man, never 

 speaking till he was sure, and never substituting imagination for facts. 



It so happened that before I went to Maderhully I made a more distant 

 excursion after certain bears with a friend, and whilst four fell to my rifle 

 he shot none. I was moved with compassion at his disappointment, and sent 

 him to Maderhully after my preserved panthers, which Subba had been 

 reporting for some time were to him as " the dogs of his own house" — i.e., 

 that he was as certain of being able to lay hands on them. I ordered him 

 to show my friend every attention, as some consolation for his ill luck with 

 the bears ; but the same cause which had led to want of success in the one 

 case — viz., lack of knowledge of his game — again operated in his panther- 

 hunt ; and though Subba and the beaters did their best, my friend rendered 

 their efforts futile by leaving the place where he had been posted for one he 

 himself deemed better, and by committing other blunders, and he finally 

 crowned the whole by missing the panthers when he did get a chance at 

 them ! He tried again the following day ; but Subba made no apology 

 when relating the circumstances to me afterwards for having, with the 

 villagers, purposely misled the " Doray " (gentleman), as, though they knew 

 well where the panthers were on the second day, they feared they might only 

 be frightened away, not secured ; and it is not unnatural that men, whose 

 hopes of reward rest on the death of the animals they may have spent 

 much time in watching and marking, should not like to see them lost, and 

 with them their hoped-for guerdon, by an unskilful sportsman. 



The panthers — or two leopards and one panther, as they turned out to 

 be — lived in a large, partly abandoned, and jungle-overgrown garden beneath 

 the embankment of a lake or tank, the water of which had formerly been 

 used for irrigating it. The proximity of this stronghold to Maderhully and 

 other villages, in the environs of which dogs, goats, and stray cattle might 

 frequently be pounced upon, rendered it a suitable retreat for the panther 

 and leopards, and here they had lived unmolested for a long time, as none 

 of the villagers had firearms. Having allowed them a few days to recover 

 from any alarm they might feel at the late hunt, I appointed the 25 th of 

 May as an auspicious day for further operations against them ; and as it 



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