Tiger Shooting. 3 



tigers fairly plentiful. My bungalow was situated at 

 the foot of a range of hills, some 600 feet high, once 

 the stronghold of Mahratta chiefs, more noted as 

 freebooters than as peaceable inhabitants. A broad, 

 winding, we]l-paved road, laid out in steps, led to the 

 top, where were then, and are still, the remains of a 

 palace. The whole country was rudely fortified. Solid 

 stone walls with flanking towers extended for miles 

 around, being carried up hill and down dale, and 

 must have been the work of ages. In ancient times, 

 before ordnance was known, these defences were all 

 but impregnable ; in my day even, they would have 

 given a great deal of trouble to any enemy to carry, 

 if he were unprovided with artillery. The population 

 had disappeared with the fall of the power of the chiefs, 

 and the whole country was a wilderness, inhabited by a 

 few deer, a few tigers, many leopards and thousands 

 of lungoor and other varieties of monkey, and 

 occasionally by a few bears. You might go fifteen, 

 yea, twenty miles, without encountering an inhabitant. 

 From Condapilly, a considerable village, amounting 

 almost to a town, vast flocks of goats and sheep and 

 herds of cattle were taken daily past my house for 

 grazing purposes, and as in those good old times, when 

 the country was ruled by the Honourable the East 

 India Company, whose directors had passed the 

 greater part of their lives in India and knew how to 

 rule the natives, every village and every district had 

 its nerick, or a fixed price for every article of food 

 required either by Europeans or the people of the 

 country, there was no bargaining. The price of a 

 selected fat sheep was one rupee (two shillings) ; 

 for one taken at haphazard out of the flock twelve 



B 2 



