144 DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 



tramp. The only other forests I am acquainted with at 

 all resembling the Malabar ones for morasses are those in 

 North Russia, and they are worse. One requires hip boots 

 to tackle these. But there one does not get the elephant - 

 foot imprints to fall into. Six miles lay before us in order 

 to reach a place where the shikari's information led him 

 to expect that he would find fresh traces of a big herd of 

 bison ; and those six miles ran, apparently, entirely along 

 a wild elephant track. It was a nightmare of a walk, my 

 recollection of which is that I spent the best part of three 

 hours in getting into and slowly pulling my legs out of 

 two-foot deep pot-holes filled to the brim with water, left 

 by a herd of elephants of all sizes that had preceded us but 

 an hour or two earlier. We passed close to them at some 

 time during that trek, but they did not wind us ; they 

 were making too much noise in tearing down branches 

 from the trees to hear us, and we were quite glad to hurry 

 away from their vicinity. 



Quite suddenly, when I was near the end of my tether 

 for the time being, Anacondu, a dim, flitting shadow in 

 front of me all this time, halted. We had arrived and 

 were to await the dawn. All too soon it appeared. Trees, 

 dim shadows till then, took on sharp outlines with amazing 

 swiftness, the sky paled and then gleamed ; the crest of a 

 dark mass in front became outlined in yellow and red, and 

 fingers of light crept down the hill-side, dissipating the 

 shadows with that incredible rapidity which is a never- 

 ending surprise in the East. Anacondu had disappeared, 

 and awaiting his return I watched the beautiful scene with 

 a keen relish which, often as I had seen it, never palled. 

 The shikari reappeared. He had found the tracks of the 

 herd. Forty or fifty animals he thought it contained. 



Having scant time at my disposal to give to sport on this 

 trip, it had been understood that I was prepared to follow 

 any tracks which appeared likely to give me a shot at a 

 decent head, as I could not afford to risk a blank day by 

 spending time looking for the tracks of a solitary bull. If 

 fortune took us across any we would follow them if fresh 

 enough. Otherwise a herd must suffice. 



We now took up the tracks of this mighty herd, a far 

 larger one than I had ever met in Chota Nagpur or the 

 Central Provinces. Even in Eastern Bengal I had never 

 come across a herd of this dimension, though the forests 



