74 Leaves from an Indian Jungle. 



conspicuously against the dark wet earth, as some gleam of 

 sunlight caught our yellow skins. 



Never shall I forget a day succeeding a heavy fall 

 of rain, when I had lingered behind my mother (I was not 

 now so tied to her side), and found myself separated from 

 her by an expanse of tenacious wet soil. As I stood 

 undecided, there came a laboured panting, and a yell of 

 excouragement, as a village dog, urged on by his owner, 

 snatched fiercely at my flank ! With a bound I escaped him, 

 and toiled frantically over the soft mud, into which my 

 sharp feet sank deeply. Again I felt, with despair, the hot 

 breath on my haunch when suddenly the ground became 

 harder, I drew away from my pursuer, and, gaining the 

 grassy slope of a rising ground, finally shook him off, baffled, 

 in spite of his oiled feet ; he now halted with lolling 

 tongue, and, turning, slunk back whence he came. 



With the rain the crops rose, and in a few weeks the 

 plains were clothed in green jawdri and wide fields of 

 cotton, save for the ground reserved for the later sowings 

 of wheat and gramjawdri that soon reared its great 

 stalks high above the heads of the workers in the fields ; 

 that formed a pleasant covert for us, who now wandered 

 in small and scattered bands, scarce troubling to change our 

 quarters, so abundant and accessible was our food. But 

 with the fawdricame the Bhois. Cunningly disposing their 

 tall nets along the edge and angles of the high millet, they 

 would endeavour to move a herd of antelope so as to 

 entangle them in a cul-de-sac; and their patience and 

 skill were nearly always rewarded by some foolish one of 

 our number. 



The first time I was introduced to this danger was 

 when my sprouting horns were only a few inches in length. 

 We were all lying amid the stems of a wide field ofjawdri, 



