TEAK AND BAMBOO. (THE SAMBAR.) 



"Dhank!" 



Which is my name, in the language of the Korkus, and 

 the most appropriate of all my names, expressing my voice 

 as nearly as can any human word that abrupt, sonorous, 

 trumpet-like note, which, once heard, ringing through the 

 gorges of my native hills, can never be forgotten. 



"Dhank!" What memories it conjures up! The shim- 

 mering surface of the moonlit jungle pool, where the ripples 

 widen about our feet : the bell of alarm from some watch- 

 ful hind, warning, perchance, of the forest king's midnight 

 approach : the first rosy shafts of the rising sun, touching 

 the solemn peaks that rise in solid grandeur far across the 

 tumultuous sea of forest-clad hills, in whose dark deep 

 valleys long rausa grass drips chill dews : the little open 

 glade on the .m/az-stuclded slope of some precipitous spur, 

 where the saplings show frayed and red from the rubbing 

 of our stags' antlers. 



It was amid these Central Indian hills that I first saw 

 the light at the head of a deep glen, where the arching 

 trees, roped together by the long, thick tendrils of the 

 mahul creeper (Bauhtnia scandeus) met their green canopy 

 far above our heads, and the sunlight, filtering through a 

 well-nigh impenetrable mass of verdure, fell here and there 

 in broken patches on the tangled mass of undergrowth 

 for I was born during the rainy season. 



I remember the first time my dam led me out on the little 

 game-path winding along the steep mountain sides that 

 hemmed in our retreat ! above us the hill-tops were lost in 



