16 



RESULT OF A PRACTICAL JOKE. 



from a machan. This construction is a small platform of 

 sticks, either raised on poles at a safe height from the 

 ground, or on the branches of some convenient tree, where 



the villager is wont to sit 

 on sentry with his match- 

 lock, or as often to fall 

 asleep at night, by way 

 of protecting his crops 

 from the ravages of wild 

 animals. But the chances 

 are so doubtful that " the 

 game is not worth the 

 candle." One of the 

 many tales told by my 

 native followers round 

 our camp-fire, was of a 

 villager who paid dearly 

 for playing a practical 

 joke in personifying a 

 bear. Enveloping him- 

 self in his black blanket, and imitating the noise of a bear, 

 this man one night entered a corn-field with the playful 

 idea of testing the courage of the tenant of the machan. 

 The watcher promptly let drive with his matchlock, and 

 inflicted a wound from which the practical joker died. 



It is a marvel how a cunning old Bruin will sometimes 

 contrive to hide his big black carcass in a tree, so well as 

 to avoid detection. Of this I had a fair example when I 

 camped out and spent Christmas-day with my shikarees 

 among the ferce natures in the woods, there being no com- 

 patriot with whom to pass that festive time then within 

 sixty miles of the outpost. Kurbeer and I had been trying 

 to circumvent two jurrow-deer, which, having got wind of 

 us, made off. As they were trotting away past an oak-tree, 

 I chanced to notice that some of its branches were violently 

 shaken. Being just the end of the acorn season, we con- 



' ' On sentry " in a Machan. 



