84 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



noise, it seemed to me, as I awoke, inside the tent 

 ropes. The horses were tearing at their pickets, and 

 all the camp in a hubbub. I started out with a gun, 

 but the people said they had just passed through the 

 camp, rolling over each other and growling ; and it 

 was so pitch dark that I could not see any distance 

 before me, and had to come back. The next march 

 was fourteen miles to Jhilpa, the last village before 

 the ascent of the hills begins. The view of Puchmurree 

 was lost during this march from our being too close 

 under the intervening range of hills. On the way I 

 shot a young Sambar stag ; and after arriving in camp 

 a messenger from the village I had left in the morning 

 came in breathless to say that a tiger had killed a 

 bullock in the morning within half a mile of my 

 camp. At that time of year, when the jungle is very 

 green and thick, and tigers always on the move, it 

 was not worth while to go back, even if I had had the 

 time. 



This day's march was through a much more jungly 

 country than I had yet met. It could not be called 

 a forest ; for the trees were all of the secondary growth, 

 which marks land repeatedly cleared and abandoned 

 again : and the cultivation, such as it was, was still 

 carried on with the regular bullock-plough, after the 

 manner of the plains. In many places there was a 

 thick growth of teak poles from old stumps of trees ; 

 and many of the fields had been hewn out of these 

 coppices, the poles being burnt on the ground as manure, 

 in the manner to be hereafter described. The clear 

 and pretty stream of the Denwa, which comes down 

 from Puchmurree, was crossed several times by the 

 track we followed, and contained on its sandy banks 



