334 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



out of the village. He was a panther of the largest 

 size, and had been wounded by a shikari from a tree,, 

 the ball passing through his external ear and one of his 

 paws, and rendering him incapable of killing game. I 

 was a week hunting him, as he was very careful not to 

 show himself when pursued ; and at last I shot him in 

 a cowhouse into which he had ventured, and killed 

 several head of cattle, before the people had courage to 

 shut the door. 



When a panther takes to man-eating, he is a far 

 more terrible scourge than a tiger. In 1858 a man- 

 killing panther devastated the northern part of the 

 Seoni district, killing (incredible as it may seem) nearly 

 a hundred persons before he was shot by a shikari. He 

 never ate the bodies, but merely lapped the blood from 

 the throat ; and his plan was either to steal into a house 

 at night, and strangle some sleeper on his bed, stifling 

 all outcry with his deadly grip, or to climb into the high 

 platforms from which watchers guard their fields from 

 deer, and drag out his victim from there. He was not 

 to be baulked of his prey ; and when driven ofi" from one 

 end of a village, would hurry round to the opposite side 

 and secure another in the confusion. A few moments 

 completed his deadly work, and such was the devilish 

 cunning he joined to this extraordinary boldness that all 

 attempts to find and shoot him were for many months 

 unsuccessful. European sportsmen who went out, after 

 hunting him in vain all day, would find his tracks close 

 to the door of their tent in the morning. When, a few 

 years later, I passed through the scene of his chief 

 depredations (Dhuma), a curious myth had grown round 

 the history of this panther. A man and his wife were 

 travelling back to their home from a pilgrimage to 

 Benares, when they met on the road a panther. The 



