TIGER 315 



In 1892 I got a letter from an old friend, a 

 collector in the North- West Provinces, bidding me 

 to a tiger-hunt on the banks of the Sarda. This was 

 quite good enough, for besides knowing every inch 

 of the district and being quite a good hunter and 

 tracker himself, he had also command of unlimited 

 elephants, being thoroughly popular in his own dis- 

 trict. It was the end of March when we assembled 

 on the banks of the Sarda river, which divides Nepal 

 from the North-West Provinces. Every one was 

 quite happy ; the grass had dried early, and had been 

 nicely burned in patches, and the shikari, who had 

 been scouring the neighbourhood some days, reported 

 several tigers in the vicinity. 



The next morning, being fond of fresh air, I was 

 up at daybreak, and sallied forth with my host and 

 the two trackers to perform the first function of the 

 day, i.e. to locate our tiger. We rode our pad 

 elephants, which at this game take the place of covert 

 hacks, and having proceeded about a mile from camp, 

 we reached a deep -cut, winding nullah which had 

 pools of water here and there in the bottom. Up 

 this we proceeded, and soon came across what we 

 wanted. A tiger, and a big one too, had taken a 

 drink there during the night. After drinking he 

 had left the nullah and crossed the open plain above, 

 which extended half a mile wide along the edge. The 

 ground was as hard as a road, and my host and his 

 shikaris now showed me a wonderful bit of tracking. 

 On this flat strip the tiger had wandered during the 

 small hours. Here and there they hunted like dogs. 

 VOL. u Y 



