BACK IN THE JUNGLES AGAIN 189 



nothing occurred. Then the elephant coiled up her trunk 

 after first tapping the ground with it. At almost the same 

 instant a roar resounded through the forest and a yellow 

 mass sprang up out of a patch of grass and sank back into 

 it again. It was the tiger. I had asked the Raja to take 

 the first shot should we come upon the animal still alive as 

 I wanted to repay him to some small extent for his kindness. 

 The elephant was put into the grass patch and a second 

 time the game tiger rose up with a roar. But it was his last 

 effort, and he fell back with a bullet through the brain from 

 the Raja's rifle. He was a game beast, for he had a fearful 

 wound from my first shot which missed the heart by a little 

 only. The second shot had hit him in the pad of the off 

 hind foot. 



Such was the episode which my brain conjured up as we 

 passed close to the tree on this September morning. " Any 

 khubbar of tiger about here, mahout ? " I asked. " They 

 were saying in the camp last night that a monster tiger had 

 his beat in these parts, last hot weather, sahib. But who 

 knows ! Several of the sahibs from the Station were out but 

 they never saw him. It was probably village lies ! " Thus 

 the mahout, whose opinion of the jungle villagers is ever 

 small. 



Shortly after we reached the rendezvous. I spent the 

 rest of the day on, or I should say in, the river, as also the 

 following two days, and my friend and self had quite fair 

 sport with the mahseer. The Dun rivers, as are others in 

 the north of India, are under the protection of a Fishing 

 Club whose headquarters is at Dehra Dun. I was a member 

 of the Committee of this Club for several years and most 

 interesting were the questions which came up for decision and 

 settlement. Owing to the heavy water which comes down 

 these rivers in the monsoons and in the larger ones, the 

 Ganges and Jumna, in the spring with the melting of the 

 snows in the Himalaya, a river may change its channel, for 

 distances which vary from a few hundred yards to a mile or 

 two. The new channel is sometimes a matter of yards only 

 or as much as a mile or two away from the old. Good 'reaches 

 and pools may thus be entirely ruined and with them the work 

 and money expended on building small bunds and revetment 

 walls out into the stream to improve a good reach or pool. 

 Considerable judgment, with these vagaries of the river to 

 be borne in mind and the comparative smallness of the 



