142 DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 



then becomes a strong intoxicant. Bears are very partial 

 to this drink, which is known as toddy, and smash the 

 pots to get at it. They say that it makes them drunk ! I 

 never saw an intoxicated bear. Uncouth as his actions 

 always are he would be a comical sight when drunk. 



Bison were the animals I chiefly tried for, and in the 

 dense jungles on the Kanara and Malabar side he provides a 

 magnificent sport. But one must be in hard condition to 

 enjoy it and obtain success. 



These great jungles are dense and high, giant forest 

 trees of teak and other species being interspersed with 

 large clumps of the giant bamboo, its slender side branches 

 armed with long, sharp spikes, causing extreme discomfort 

 when one finds one's clothes, and often flesh as well, impaled 

 on them ; dense cane brakes have to be skirted, areas of 

 tussocky grass negotiated, whilst the going underfoot, so 

 far as my experience goes, consists of a heavy mire deeply 

 impressed with the footprints made by wild elephants (a 

 foot or two deep these), bison, sambhar, and so forth, 

 amongst which one flounders, stumbles and sinks as in a 

 giant morass. Throw in a damp greenhouse temperature 

 of between 90 degrees and 100 degrees, and you have the 

 conditions under which the sportsman pursues and enjoys 

 the cream of big game shooting in Malabar. 



And both jungles and sport are magnificent. I remember 

 a day, a very long day, I had with a shikari named Anacondu, 

 as vividly as if the events had taken place only yesterday. 



Anacondu, quite a fine type of the native shikaris of 

 that part of the world, had been lent to me owing to the 

 extraordinary behaviour of the man I first took on. The 

 latter had, or was supposed to have, some reputation as a 

 tracker and shikari of parts. In the former capacity I had 

 no fault to find with him. After tracking an old solitary 

 bull bison for some six weary hours through pestilentially 

 thick and hot jungle for the most part, we came to a rise 

 in the ground and started to climb a small hill covered with 

 a coarse tussocky grass, with scattered, small trees and a 

 few bamboo clumps. All the evidence went to show that 

 the bison was close, and we expected to find him lying up 

 in the shade of one of the trees or bamboo clumps. Half-way 

 up the hill we were climbing it bent almost double my 

 companion touched me on the arm and went silently 

 forward round a small clump of bamboos. He soon re_ 



