INTRODUCTION ix 



Club, football and hockey contests, gymkhanas and race 

 meetings, of days under the burning sun in enjoyment of 

 that prince of sports pig-sticking, hunting the wily " jack " 

 or paper-chasing (on horseback, bien entendu) ; of keen 

 tussles at tennis and badminton, of theatricals and con- 

 certs, all amateur performances, and for this reason the 

 more enjoyable, especially the rehearsals ! Of bridge and 

 the Club bar ; of the softer delights and amenities of the 

 Ladies' Room, and of those thrillingly dangerous drives 

 and rides in the delicious, cool evening air, or 'neath the 

 brilhant moonlight with as companion the particular 

 goddess amongst the fair sex. The mere enumeration of 

 the above delights must assuredly convict the most con- 

 firmed Anglo-Indian grouser of a lapse of memory. 



But to a considerable portion of our race in India the 

 delights of the Station hold but a subordinate place in their 

 scheme of life in the East. The most unalloyed joys are 

 realized in the untrammelled free life in camp in the jungles. 

 True in these busy, worrying, hurrying days the post 

 and telegraph can reach one even there, sooner or later. 

 But not, thank God, that invention of the fiend, the 

 telephone ! 



The fascination of the Jungle ! 



Who can say in what it really lies. Its appeal is so wide. 

 To the stay-at-home the very word " jungle " conjures 

 up all sorts of visions, entrancing for some, fascinating for 

 others, repellent, it may be hoped, for the few. The word 

 is perhaps most commonly associated by the man in the 

 street with the tiger — the Royal Bengal Tiger. And yet 

 there are many who have spent months, aye and years, 

 in India's jungles and have never set eyes on a tiger. 

 Yet others again who, mirahile dictu, might have done so 

 and yet have not cared to. 



True the novice when he first goes out is under the im- 

 pression that he will find a tiger behind every bush or walking 

 up every ravine or nullah. I can well remember my first 

 walk in such a locality — finger on trigger, breath coming 

 short, brain in a whirl of excitement — and probably not a 

 tiger within ten miles of me ! Quite as well perhaps that 

 there was not. I had been but six weeks in the country 

 and was accompanied by a forest guard and a coolie only, 

 whose language I did not know. It is not very long, however, 

 before the new-comer is disabused of this common fallacy. 



