LIONS AND TIGERS. 247 



looked at me in terror, thinking I had lost my senses 

 under the last half-hour's excitement. 



As the poison I had poured into the pool began to 

 affect the beast, he uttered several piercing yet half- 

 strangled cries, and, with a few rapid contortions, fell 

 over dead. 



The next morning the whole village assembled to do 

 us honor, and express their admiration of our prowess ; 

 but, finding our guns had not been discharged, and that 

 it was at the sacred pool that the " man-eater " fell, 

 they experienced that religious terror to which unedu- 

 cated races are so susceptible, and bowed before the 

 priest, whom they found mightier than the beasts of 

 the forest. This feeling was encouraged by my giving 

 him the skin and teeth of the tiy;er, — the former nieas- 

 uring four yards from nose to tail, — and we left them 

 performing one of their curious dances in honor of 

 their all-puissant deities. 



They tell a queer story in India of an Englishman 

 who came out to add a tiger's head of a certain size 

 to his already large collection. He sought a district 

 renowned for its immense tigers, armed simply with a 

 long sharp dagger like those formerly carried in Venice, 

 and a curious-shaped travelling box. When the latter 

 was opened, it proved to contain a full suit of plate 

 armor ! 



Clothed in steel from head to foot, dao-o-er in hand, 

 this — to say the least — original hunter walked at night. 



