394 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



branching watercourse crosses the pathway several 

 times, I was walking ahead of my followers, when I 

 came on the remains of a poor wanderer, who had 

 evidently not long before been killed by a tiger. He 

 was a religious mendicant ; and his long iron tongs, 

 beo:o;ino;-bo\vl hollowed from a skull, and cocoa-nut 

 hooka were scattered about in the bottom of the nala, 

 where he had been resting on his weary march, together 

 with tresses of his lonoj matted hair and a shred or two 

 of cloth. The bones were all broken to pieces, and 

 many of them were missing altogether. A Banjara 

 drover had been taken off near the same spot about a 

 week before, so that it was not without some misgivings 

 that I wandered off the road through the longf grass to 

 look for red deer towards the skirts of the hills. To 

 hunt for the tiger in such an ocean of grass-cover would 

 have been hopeless. I skirted the hills to the right of 

 the road from here to the camping-ground at Mangli, 

 very soon getting drenched to the skin passing through 

 the high grass dripping with the morning dew. Towards 

 the hills the grass was shorter, and the plain much cut 

 up by deep fissures in the black, heavy soil. I saw 

 several small herds of deer wending their way towards 

 the clumps of sal forest on the skirt of the hills before I 

 found any in a position that would admit of stalking. 

 At last I marked a small parcel of hinds, with two fair- 

 looking stags, disappear over a low rising ground, slowly 

 feeding their way towards the forest ; and making a long 

 detour to gain the shelter of a deep crack, which led 

 into the valley they had entered, I stalked almost into 

 the middle of them before I was aware. My first 

 intimation of the fact was the sharp bark of a hind, who 

 had observed the top of my head over the bank, and the 

 next moment a rush of feet informed me that the herd 



