296 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



mythology, that never failed, when retailed over a 

 fire at night to a circle of gaping cowherds and village 

 shikaris, to unlock every secret of the neighbourhood 

 in the matter of tigers. Such an oily cozener of reticent 

 G6nds never existed. Then, miserable as he looked^ 

 he could walk about all day and every day for a week 

 in a broiling sun, hunting up tracks, with nothing 

 but the thinnest of muslin skull-caps on his hard nut of 

 a head, and would fearlessly penetrate into the very 

 lair of a tiger perfectly unarmed. He had a particular 

 beaming look which he always wore on his ugly face 

 when he had actually seen or, as he said, " salaamed 

 to " a tiger comfortably disposed of for the day ; and in 

 late years, when I had to leave all the arrangements to 

 him, I hardly recollect ever going out when he reported 

 the fiud a likely one without at least seeing the game. 

 He could shoot a little, say a pot shot at a bird on 

 a branch at twenty paces, and kept guns, etc., in 

 beautiful order. But he sood came to utterly despise 

 and contemn everything except tiger-hunting, for which 

 he had, I believe, really an absorbing passion. Even 

 bison-hunting he looked down on as sport not fit for a 

 gentleman to pursue. For ten months in the year 

 he moped about looking utterly wretched, and taking 

 no interest in anything but the elephants and rifles ; 

 and woke up again only on the first of April — opposite 

 which date " Tiger-shooting commences " will be entered 

 in the Indian almanack of the future, when the royal 

 animal shall be preserved in the Reserved Forests of 

 Central India to furnish sport for the nobility of the 

 land ! 



Poor old Lalld ! He fell a victim in the end to 

 contempt of tigers, bred of undue familiarity. I was 

 very ill with fever, and meditating a trip home, and 



