CHAPTER VIII 



FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN EASTERN BENGAL 



Chittagong — The District and Hill Tracts — South Lushai Hills — An 

 interesting fauna — The buffalo and rhinoceros — The mithan — 

 Elephants and the Keddah Department — Mode of travelUng — ^The 

 tidal creeks and coast-line of Bay of Bengal — Bird life — The rivers of 

 the area — Magnificent scenery and dense forest — Animal life of the 

 forests — Swimming deer — Monkeys crossing a river — Rafting out 

 forest produce — The game problem — The native and his umbrella — 

 Shifting cultivation — Trackless forests — Difficult to find game — A 

 fine animal sanctuary — Game in the Collectorate Forests — A Christ- 

 mas shoot — A game card — The civet-cat — Dogs used with the beaters 

 — Pig — A tussle with an old boar — The dogs go in — Death of the 

 pi-dog. 



DURING the closing years of the century I found 

 myself stationed in Chittagong in Eastern 

 Bengal. This district has earned an unenviable 

 notoriety for malaria amongst officials and more 

 especially amongst Forest Officers, the official connexion 

 of many of the latter having been suddenly terminated by 

 a medical certificate and a trip home. The climate suited 

 me apparently, and during the three years I was there I 

 had little fever. 



The division was a very fine one for the zoologist and 

 sportsman. For the charge included, firstly, the Chittagong 

 district with its seaboard and network of tidal canals and 

 series of low rocky ridges clothed with bamboo jungle, both 

 localities invariably teeming with a variety of animal life 

 including birds, much of it totally different from the fauna 

 one had been studying in Chota Nagpur and the Central 

 Provinces. Secondly, the Forest Officer held sway over the 

 forests of the neighbouring Chittagong Hill Tracts District, 

 an enormous, chaotic mass of wild pathless jungle-clad 

 hills covering an area of some four thousand square miles. 

 The hills in this tract run in parallel series of ridges more or 

 less due north and south down to the seaboard, the rivers 



n 97 



