SHOOTING TRIPS IN CENTRAL PROVINCES 81 



tradition and romance handed down in the locality through 

 generations of fakirs and wild jungle-men. 



As I went down through the forest on my quest we passed 

 a tank full and brimming with water. This place was 

 famous in these parts in the hot weather. When the small 

 streams and water holes had dried up under the rays of 

 the fierce sun, the entire community of the jungle folk from 

 the surrounding forests resorted to the old tank to drink 

 from its much-diminished water level. Hundreds of head 

 of game, including tiger, leopard, bison, sambhar, chital, and 

 others, visit this spot to quench their thirst at this season, and 

 although I never had the luck to be in this locality at that 

 period I saw others of a similar nature. The hot weather 

 season is the one par excellence during which it is possible 

 to form an idea of the abundance of a certain species of 

 animal in a particular locality owing to the absolute neces- 

 sity of the animals visiting the, at that season, compara- 

 tively few drinking places in the forest. A very different 

 aspect the tank now presented with its edges lapping the 

 green grass and its surface, where not covered by a beauti- 

 ful water-lily, reflecting the sea of green by which it was 

 entirely surrounded. 



It proved a hot trek to the old fort, or what remained of 

 it. We came upon it quite suddenly, lost in a tangled mass 

 of thick jungle which climbed densely up the lower flanks 

 of a steep hill. The fort appeared to be on a small hillock 

 or low spur jutting from the hill, and was probably an ideal 

 stronghold for defence against old-time warfare. A small 

 gateway was flanked by deep red walls with a broken 

 tower or two at the angles and portions of loopholed 

 battlements still standing. Inside a court, now overgrown 

 with scrub amidst debris of masonry fallen from the 

 building, a very much ruined stairway climbed up the side 

 of an inner wall. This was a difficult structure to negotiate 

 as several stairs had fallen away. Beneath it and on either 

 side of the main gate were some small cells either cut or 

 built into the thick walls, their entrances more or less 

 covered with creepers and growths. As I passed these I 

 remember thinking that these cells would make excellent 

 lairs for animals, but at the time I was too intent on getting 

 up the stairway so as to see as much of the upper parts of 

 the ruins as was practicable, to throw more than a cursory 

 glance at them. 



