Teak and Bamboo. 15 



driving mist, while from below rose the deep booming of a 

 torrent in angry spate, as it leapt, turbid and yellow, over 

 a short basalt cliff, and roared down the valley to join the 

 swollen Tapti. 



Elsewhere it was still and oppressive, and the remains of 

 thelast downpour dripped heavily off the sodden teak leaves. 

 Far down the valley a thin curl of blue smoke behind the 

 trees marked the huts of some hill-folk, while away out 

 beyond the low foot-hills lay the distant clear-cut line of 

 the plains, meeting the sky like the horizon of a vast sea. 



Our life is seldom a stirring one : we live in quiet retire- 

 ment in our lonely forests, not often seeing more of the 

 outer world than the little Korku hamlet at the mouth of 

 our valley affords when it lies wrapped in sleep, and we 

 wander nightly to visit the few bet bushes in its vicinity, 

 or when we hear the distant chopping of some solitary 

 woodcutter's axe. 



To live thus is to be sombre, deliberate, almost melan- 

 choly; and any one who has studied our habits must know 

 this to be our nature, although he will also have had 

 experience of our .keen perceptions and extreme natural 

 watchfulness. 



During my earlier days my dam and I seldom wandered 

 beyond the limits of the glen where I was born, and which 

 was inhabited by only a few more of our species, including 

 one stag. I saw him now and again only, for he wandered 

 little, and showed a great reluctance to pass through the 

 forest while his horns were in the sensitive velvet stage. 

 Among the more interesting neighbours were a couple of 

 our little cousins, the khdkar, or barking deer, whose ruddy 

 little coats were to be seen in the grass bordering the 

 thicker copses, their white, rabbit-like tails raised in ridi- 

 culous fashion as they darted in play Behind the tree stems ; 



