IN THE SAL FORESTS 379 



his hobby possesses for the true follower of Nimrod ? Not 

 the bare collection of trophies ; nor, indeed, the mere satis- 

 fying of a hunting instinct. It is more than that ; some- 

 thing that appeals even to a mind insensible to Nature's 

 beauties, to her charms when sought in the forest or on the 

 mountain-side. It is the partial return to man's pristine 

 wild life, in a land where the artificialities of civilisation 

 have not yet greatly affected the pursuit of game. It is 

 that broad free feeling; the ability to throw out a wide- 

 sweeping arm and say to oneself, "This is all mine to 

 rove!"; and, besides this, the various interests to be found 

 in the country, its people, its fauna, and their habits. 



When I and my companion reached our land of promise, 

 we found ourselves sr.dly hampered by lack of local know- 

 ledge and by our total ignorance of the habits of the 

 buffalo of those regions. The river, split up in many 

 places into gurgling channels that traversed a perfect 

 maze of luxuriant vegetation, smothering innumerable 

 islets in its embrace, and hiding deep dark recesses full of 

 dark fern and moss, led us at once astray. All that we 

 had read on the subject of buffaloes from Assam and the 

 Terai as well as Forsyth's remarks on the Sambalpur 

 country led us to believe that if our great game were to be 

 found here, it would be among these almost impenetrable 

 islets. Thus we wasted time. The shy inhabitants 

 extremely retiring little creatures, true denizens of the 

 forest, and timid as the wild beasts themselves were 

 extraordinarily secretive, and our own men were as much 

 at a loss as ourselves. At this juncture we were delivered 

 from our perplexity by Amir AH, a Mahomedan shop- 

 keeper, who lived in a considerable village, the capital, as 

 it were, of the surrounding wild country. This individual 

 was brought to our camp by our men one evening, and in 

 the course of a very short conversation we managed to 

 pick up valuable hints as to the habits and present where- 

 abouts of our ponderous quarry. 



