IN THE SAL FORESTS 373 



violet-shadowed hills, were strange and unknown before. 

 Numbers of the large black and red " Malabar " squirrel 

 played among the trees ; a cuckoo of entirely novel voice 

 sent his four delightful notes echoing along the woody 

 shores ; our little boatmen conversed shyly in strange and 

 dulcet speech. Rod, rifle, and gun would be forgotten, laid 

 aside, in that warm sunset glow reflected from water as 

 serene as the sky it pictured ; then in the distance, round 

 some rocky bamboo-feathered promontory, we would sight 

 our little encampment overlooking the river-bank, and, 

 gliding nearer, note our modest table and chairs set on 

 some cunningly chosen eminence rising from the smooth 

 yellow sand of a water-lapped shore. 



It had cost us many an arduous march to penetrate to 

 those to Europeans almost virgin jungles ; long days in 

 blistering Central Province heat ; and struggles across 

 country devoid of any but the wildest tracks, where 

 baggage carts had to be lifted over immovable trunks of 

 fallen forest giants, or a way cleared in the thick green 

 undergrowth. And at last here we were nearly two 

 hundred miles from the nearest railway, in the very midst 

 of the country described in the faded yellow pages of the 

 diaries kept by him who had explored these solitudes 

 forty years ago. 



To give an idea of the height to which our hopes had 

 risen before we found what havoc a few years of native 

 guns had wrought, I cannot do better than give a few 

 extracts from his records : 



"April I3//2, 1868. Went to the pond beyond the river, 

 and sat down in the open to await dawn. Four buffs, one 

 I think a bull, came up, drank, and walked off. Too dusk 

 to see. When it became light enough I went on their 

 tracks and came on eight buffs. Tried to circumvent them, 

 but they took a different route to that I had expected. 

 Got on their tracks again, and unfortunately when in very 

 thick jungle one of the cows spied us, and off they went ! 



