312 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



compressed into a close body, preceded and followed by 

 the baggage-el epbants, and protected by a guard of 

 police with muskets, peons with my spare guns, and a 

 whole posse of matchlocked shikaris. Two deserted 

 villages were passed on the road, and heaps of stones at 

 intervals showed where a traveller had been struck 

 down. A better hunting-ground for a man-eater 

 certainly could not be. Thick scrubby teak jungle 

 closed in the road on both sides ; and alongside of it for 

 a great part of the way wound a narrow deep water- 

 course, overshadowed by thick jaman bushes, and with 

 here and there a small pool of water still left. I hunted 

 along this niila the whole way, and found many old 

 tracks of a very large male tiger,* which the shikaris 

 declared to be the man-eater. There were none more 

 recent, however, than several days. Charkhera was also 

 deserted on account of the tiger, and there was no shade 

 to speak of ; but it was the most central place within 

 reach of the usual haunts of the brute, so 1 encamped 

 here, and sent the baggage-elephants back to fetch 

 provisions. In the evening I was startled by a 

 messenger from a place called Le, on the Moran river, 

 nearly in the direction I had come from, who said that 

 one of a party of pilgrims who had been travelling unsus- 

 pectingly by a jungle road had been carried oft' by the 

 tiger close to that place. Early next morning I started oft" 

 with two elephants, and arrived at the spot about eight 

 o'clock. The man had been struck down where a small 

 ravine leading down to the Moran crosses a lonely path- 

 way a few miles east of Le. The shoulder-stick with its 

 pendent baskets, in which the holy water from his place 



* A little practice suliices to distinguish the tracks of tigers of 

 different ages and sexes. The old male has a much .^quarcr track, so 

 to speak, than the female, which leaves a more oval footprint. 



