Jungle By-Ways in India 



to understand that, owing to the heavy rain of the 

 past few days, tracking would be very difficult 

 work unless we came upon tracks made after 

 the rain had ceased. It must have been somewhere 

 about six o'clock or a little later when we left the 

 pool and headed for the hill, having decided to 

 follow the tracks of three bison which had made 

 off in this direction the day before. So Bishu 

 said though I was at a loss to understand how 

 he arrived at this conclusion. [As an instance of 

 the marvellous tracking powers of these men I 

 may quote here the following. One hot weather 

 we were on a barren trappy hillside of rock. I 

 asked Bishu how he could possibly say the bison 

 had gone over that way. He pointed to a small 

 piece of stone. I picked it up, and could just 

 see that it was slightly darker on the face which 

 lay uppermost. It had been turned over by the 

 bison's hoof shortly before. This was tracking !] 

 The ground soon became difficult, and we had 

 some very severe climbing, not so much on 

 account of the elevation of the hills as owing to 

 their stony nature. We advanced in this way for 

 an hour or so, the tracks at last leading into a 

 lovely valley, in which we hoped the animals 

 would have stopped to feed for some time. My 

 eye, still comparatively new to the Indian forest, 

 and more especially to the Indian forest in the 

 rains, was delighted by some fine sal trees of 

 enormous growth and girth, but growth of all 



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