70 



DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 





However, I collected together the remnants of my 

 rapidly diminishing courage, and changing into jungle kit, 

 hurriedly started so as to get wet through at once. This 

 done, it was not worth while going back, and forward was 

 the word. I rode two miles and tramped the remaining 

 distance up over the wet molehills — for so they appeared 

 to me after the giant Himalaya — until I reached the kill, 

 and a more depressing show I have rarely assisted at. 



The tiger had killed in the open on the top of a grassy 

 plateau, which was quite treeless. The ground sloped 

 suddenly and steeply on the western edge of this plateau, 

 the hill-side being covered with scrub jungle ; through this 

 scrub the tiger had dragged the carcase of the dead buffalo 

 — out of which only a few pounds of flesh of the hind- 

 quarter and the tail 

 had disappeared — a 

 short distance, and a 

 narrow track had 

 been cut by the men 

 to expose the body. 

 In a small space at 

 the end of the trail I 

 could see the spot 

 where the carcase lay, the jungle having been cut so as to 

 leave a small clearing just round it. Up above in a tree full 

 of wet creepers, in which 

 two crows sat contemplat- 

 ing the kill, some fifteen 

 feet from the ground I saw 

 my quarters for the next 

 three hours or so. Over- 

 head hung the lowering 

 clouds, whilst a strong 

 wind blew the driving 

 rain across my face. The 

 prospect was not enliven- 

 ing. 



Having inspected the 

 defunct buffalo from a 

 distance, and noticed a 

 couple of vultures perched in a tree close by, I climbed 

 up into the machan, covered myself up in my mackintosh, 

 and sent the men, all but the orderly, away. Hardly 



