JUNGLES OF BENGAL DUARS AND ASSAM 133 



coming down for a week's Christmas shoot with me. Our 

 first camp was to be in the neighbourhood of the salt-lick 

 in question, and a day or two before I determined to spend 

 the night in the machan and see what animals were in the 

 vicinity. 



I may say that there was a smaller salt-lick situated 

 upon a little plateau about a mile and a half from the one 

 I usually watched. On the edge of the smaller one I had 

 had constructed a tiny zareba of branches and thorns on 

 the ground. On occasions I watched here and sometimes 

 if the big salt-lick proved blank I changed my quarters, 

 but this only on very bright moonlight nights. With the 

 perverseness of the jungle folk on some nights the small 

 lick would be visited by all the animals in the vicinity 

 whilst the larger one, where I sat up aloft, remained deserted. 

 Nevertheless, I preferred the latter as one could see more 

 when perched up above the ground, and the risk of fever 

 was infinitely less. 



On the night in question I changed my abode, shifting 

 from the machan to the zareba at about midnight, up to 

 which hour I had seen no sign of pad or hoof. The reason 

 I gave myself was that I really wished to know what 

 animals were about for the sake of my expected friends. 

 The true facts were, however, that I was so appallingly 

 cold that I felt I could not sit up there another minute ; 

 also a slight mist was coming up from the river and I felt 

 sure it would thicken later. The chattering of my orderly's 

 teeth, too, got on my nerves, and when I tried to lift the 

 rifle I found I could not feel it at all. Get out of that 

 machan I must, and it meant either bed or the zareba. 

 I had intended bed, but after getting down and stamping 

 some circulation into my feet and hands, to the orderly's 

 speechless disgust, I gave the order for a move to the 

 zareba. 



My three years in India, whilst inoculating me with a zest 

 for all pertaining to the jungles and jungle life, had hardly 

 instilled into me that sufficient knowledge which results in 

 the intuitive exercise of a certain amount of caution or dis- 

 cretion, call it which you will, whilst out hunting in the 

 forest. It is that instinctive caution which animates the 

 jungle-man. He does not move about unknown jungles in 

 the dark, and on the occasion in question my orderly, a man 

 from the Nepal Hills and plucky enough in the daytime, 



