39^ A Description of Kjimaon, [Sess. 



the outer range of Kumaon — that is, the hills nearest to 

 the plains — are certainly higher than the outer range is any- 

 where else in the Himalayas. 



I mentioned that the tcrai is the favourite haunt of tigers. 

 This is where they pass the day sleeping, but at night they 

 visit the hhcibur and the lower hills. About thirty years ago, 

 at Haldwani, a village in the hliabur, there lived a poor widow 

 with two sons. Tigers were then far more common than they 

 are now. The elder son became a letter-carrier or postal- 

 runner between Haldwani and Kathgodam, a place six miles 

 off in the lower hUls. One night a tiger killed and ate him. 

 Strange to say, his brother applied for and got the vacant 

 appointment. I suppose the family had no other means of 

 earning a livelihood. Before long he, too, was devoured by 

 the same tiger, almost at the very spot where his brother had 

 been killed. The poor widow, left alone in the world, never 

 hesitated as to what she ought to do. The night after her 

 second son was carried off, she seated herself on the fatal spot, 

 saying to the neighbours, " The tiger has taken my two boys \ 

 let him take me too." She had to wait a week : for seven 

 weary nights she sat alone by the roadside, wrapped up in 

 her tattered blanket. But the tiger came at last ; and there 

 was an end of the Haldwani family. I have often walked 

 from Haldwani to Kathgodam, and tried to find out the exact 

 spot where the old woman sat ; but no one I met could tell 

 me with certainty, and there were many likely places for tigers 

 along the gloomy road running between a mountain torrent 

 on one side and the high wood- clad precipices on the other. 



Besides Almora there is another town in Kumaon — viz., 

 Naini Tal, the summer residence of the Lieutenant-Governor 

 of the North- West Provinces. ISTaini Tal is built round a 

 lake of the same name. Till 1840 no European knew of the 

 existence of this lake, though there had been a considerable 

 English population in Almora for nearly forty years. The 

 natives concealed the fact of its existence because it was 

 considered a holy lake, being sacred to the goddess Naini 

 Devi — Our Lady of the Beautiful Eyes. One traveller came 

 upon it by accident in 1840, and described it in a newspaper 

 which was then i^ublished at Mussourie ; but another corres- 

 pondent of the paper wrote that the story was a fabrication. 



