78 A COLLECTING TRIP 
yacht. She was eighty feet long and carried twenty 
men. She was furnished with all the modern fixings, 
even electrie ights. We steamed down to the Sunder- 
bunds in her. The Sunderbunds are a series of jung- 
ley islands separated by winding creeks; you anchor oft 
a likely looking spot, go ashore and shoot or rather 
collect whatever comes your way. One night we sat 
up on a manchan (a bamboo platform in a tree), hav- 
ing tied two goats out in the hope of getting a tiger; 
unfortunately we only came as near to it as to hear 
the tiger growl, but even that was exciting. We spent 
the whole night, from 9.30 in the evening to 6.30 the 
next morning, and never saw a thing, not even a deer. 
We did nearly step on a Russel’s viper in the dark, 
walking to the tree — a big fellow too. You have no 
idea how simply tremendous tigers’ footprints are. 
We saw hundreds of very newly made ones. Deer 
paths were just like roads and we have seen a good 
many deer, but did not shoot any for fear of frighten- 
ing away tigers. They were very pretty spotted deer 
ealled Chital. The life all about us was so wild and 
so different from what the ordinary globe trotter sees; 
the native boats we saw were exactly like what I have 
always imagined slave boats to have been. One man 
squats in the rear and steers with a tremendous rud- 
der, while the other men walk backwards and for- 
wards pulling oars that looked as if they must have 
belonged to the first sailors in the world; you never 
imagined anything more primitive. We took several 
photographs of them. On our way back here we 
stopped at the Botanical Gardens and saw a famous 
banyan tree, one hundred and thirty-one years old, 
and large enough to hold two regiments under it. I 
