1 1 6 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



killed a tiger and had shown him some other civilities 

 and treated him with consideration, for which he was 

 duly grateful. Most of his men therefore knew me> 

 and when I proposed to be present at a hunt they 

 gladly consented. I had three koonkies, one of them 

 well known, but they were not in training, so they 

 merely joined in the hunt to help if required. 

 I was seated on the fastest koonkie, which carried 

 of course the most expert mahout and nooser. It 

 was easy work whilst she went at a walk looking for 

 a herd. The first we saw did not contain any beast the 

 mahout fancied, so we let it alone and went on 

 ahead, but presently we espied a three-parts-grown 

 tusker quite alone. We had four koonkies and eight 

 other elephants out besides my three koonkies, and four 

 pad elephants. We had separated of course, two 

 elephants being deemed enough to be together, for 

 it was not anticipated that any very large ones would 

 be seen, or if we came across any, there was no need 

 for us to molest them, and the ground we were to 

 go over was very extensive. It was principally a 

 plain which extended to the foot of the G-arrow Hills, 

 but in it there were clumps of trees in which elephants 

 took shelter during the heat of the day. Many 

 herds had been " marked " down a day or two before. 

 The wild mangoes were getting ripe, and there were 

 extensive tracts of the tara or wild cardamom, both 

 of which elephants are very partial to. 



As the two jockeys lay down flat, I did so too 

 to the best of my ability. The koonkie, left to her- 

 self, moved along slowly, feeding the while, and the 

 young male showed no signs of distrust until we 

 were quite close, in fact I thought at one time that 



