52 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



cart being procured, the two, lying dead in each other's 

 embrace, were conveyed to the village. 



Having secured a rough sketch of the extraordinary 

 scene, I had the snake skinned, but the people failed 

 to hang it out of the reach of prowling jackals, and 

 five feet of it was torn away. 



It was thus lost as a specimen. I thought it very 

 large at the time, but subsequently I saw two snakes 

 killed each over twenty-four feet in length. But one 

 might live to the age of Methuselah, and wander in 

 the forests for five hundred years and never see such 

 a sight as that witnessed by me that night. The 

 dead woodcutter was duly cremated. I remained a 

 week longer, got the " tusker," but heard no more of 

 anybody being killed. There is little doubt there- 

 fore, that it was the veritable man-eater that was 

 destroyed by the snake. The tiger 1 was only eight feet 

 one inch long, in perfect condition as to skin, but very 

 emaciated, as if her food either did not agree with 

 her or she did not get enough of it, and I strongly 

 suspect the latter was the case, for so vigilant were 

 these people that they never gave the depredator time 

 to make a square meal off her numerous victims. 

 But for the chance of my having witnessed the wood- 

 cutter's death, and so prevented the men removing 

 the corpse, the probabilities are the man-eater would 

 have lived many a day longer and continued its 

 ravages upon the human family. 



In the Yonzaleen, Burma, man-eating tigers are 

 very numerous, in other parts of that country they 

 are, comparatively speaking, unknown. But occasion- 

 ally one hears of a person being killed here and 



1 It turned out to be a tigress. 



