Jungle By-Ways in India 



evenings, and where they lay up during the heat 

 of the day. 



The local villager possesses all this information. 

 But the villager knowing, and the villager giving 

 the Sahib khubbar, are two very different things. 

 Therefore, if you want sport, treat the villager 

 well, and do him well, and you will find he will 

 mostly play up to you. 



I remember going out one morning at dawn 

 with the express object of endeavouring to bag a 

 blue bull, as meat was badly wanted in the camp, 

 and the only village near me had sent in a depu- 

 tation asking the Sahib to rid them of one of 

 the destroyers of their crops, and at the same 

 time give them a ' belly-full/ as they expressed 

 it, of meat. As meat was required, and I did not 

 wish to fire a shot in the forest, as I was on the 

 look out for a bison or a good sambhar head, I 

 acquiesced to the wish of the deputation. 



My guide took me in an almost undeviating 

 line for the spot where he told me we should be 

 certain to find a herd of does, with perhaps a bull. 



It was a beautiful morning towards the end of 

 April in Central India. Already it should have 

 been very hot, but a curiously unusual season had 

 been experienced with heavy rain for several 

 days in the middle of the month, and this had 

 brought down the temperature in a most re- 

 markable manner. But more than this, the rain 

 coming down on a soil which was already burnt 



1 86 



