PREFACE vii 



vivid imagination and the landscapes, in which wild 

 beasts are represented as found at home, are in most cases 

 facsimiles of actual localities as they at present exist. 



These jungle sketches do not deal with what is perhaps 

 the popular idea of Indian sport the imposing line of 

 elephants, the gay party, the " file-firing " of the battue, and 

 piles of slain. They are merely the records of the quiet 

 solitary shikari, who, lacking either the means or the in- 

 clination or both for the slaughtering of a large amount 

 of game in a short space of time without the exercise of 

 personal effort or woodcraft, works alone, or in the com- 

 pany of a single comrade, and with his simple equipment 

 penetrates to retired spots the peaceful haunts of game. 

 Here, wandering unaided save by a few trusty followers, 

 he possesses the advantage of being able to trace the habits 

 and daily life of the creatures of the jungle in a way which 

 is denied to those employing more pretentious methods. 



At sunset and at dawn, by the light of the moon, from 

 the solitary nightly post, or silently threading the undis- 

 turbed forest, he reads the secrets of the wilderness, and 

 becomes, as it were, a subject, not an intruder, of its 

 retired, reserved empire. 



It will be noted that the chapters or stories comprising 

 this volume are of varying character some dealing with 

 the real, others idealistic, and one or two entirely fanciful. 

 They have been written from time to time during a resi- 

 dence in India of some fourteen years, mostly spent in 

 jungly places. A considerable portion of them has been 

 pencilled in the jungle itself; in the shooting tent; while 

 lying out on the hillside ; even on moonlight nights spent 

 in lonely machdns. The cerebral stimulus afforded by the 

 sometimes eerie experiences of solitarily perambulating a 

 lonely jungle by night, being bottled up in a hole in the 

 ground awaiting the return of the man-eater to his prey, or 

 watching alone at the midnight post in a tree, miles from 



