THE BIOGRAPHY OF A TIGER 55 



and thorny, creeper-knotted undergrowth that swept far 

 downhill and round the shoulders of the mountain to 

 merge in the heavy grey teak forest of the slopes below. 

 Yet lower and beyond, about a mile down the headlong 

 swoop of spur and gully, portions of the winding course of 

 the stony river-bed could be seen through gaps in the tall 

 jungle, boring their way tortuously between green trees 

 and ravine-scarred steeps to join the Sfpna now far away 

 to the left. Beyond the depths of the dusky valley the 

 jungled hills rose again for close on two thousand feet, 

 rank on rank, spur on spur, ridge beyond ridge in their 

 mighty array, the departing sunlight striking their steep 

 sides and dyeing them a glowing orange, with violet 

 fissures where they shouldered up like buttresses, five 

 miles away, against the opposite plateaux of woody 

 Bejmahal. Thence the curving amphitheatre of purpling 

 hills swept round to the far north, where, towering over 

 the sea of rugged forests at their feet, there stood out, 

 solitary and apart, the flat-topped heights of Makla and 

 Asehri. And beyond those gloomy sentinels the undu- 

 lating lower ranges of the wild Melghat went rolling away 

 into the soft haze of evening that overlay the broad 

 panorama of the Tapti valley, till sixty, seventy miles 

 distant they faded into the dim blue hills of Kalibhit 

 A far-off smudge of trailing smoke marked an extensive 

 forest fire ; and some tiny masses of piled cloud, lying low 

 beyond the horizon at an immense distance, shone at 

 intervals with a remote glimmer of lightning. Over the 

 whole desolate scene brooded a deep sensation of vastness 

 and wide-flung space. 



As the sun went down the sky became suffused with 

 a flood of lurid yellow light, growing and spreading into 

 orange and crimson in the still warm atmosphere till the 

 summits of the higher hills glowed like heated copper. 

 Against the flaming west the huge bulk of Abapur reared 

 up dark and silent. The last crow of the jungle-cock had 



