1 1 2 Leaves from an Indian Jungle. 



the spot where I should be seated, rifle in hand. At last 

 all was ready, and I mounted to my perch and settled 

 everything in a thoroughly comfortable manner rifle 

 with night-sight at my side, water-bottle hanging con- 

 veniently from a bough close to my head, and haversack 

 with light refreshment, not of a noisy kind, somewhere 

 handy. The men went away. 



It was right at the fag end of the hot weather ; and at 

 this elevation close on 4,000 feet the breeze was tem- 

 pered by moisture that presaged a near approach of the 

 monsoon current. The moon was practically full, as she 

 shone through the interstices of the jungle on her way to 

 the zenith. Through a gap in the beautifully rounded 

 foliage of great mango trees, growing hard by the edge 

 of the plateau, one obtained a glimpse of the far-off 

 Tapti valley, still bathed in a reddish mist, or dust-haze, 

 illumined by the after-glow of sunset. Distant tinklings 

 denoted the return home of cattle to the Korku huts some 

 five hundred yards away. The eternal nightjars began 

 to set up their " Chuckoo-chuckoo-chuckoo !" or to sail 

 ghost-like abroad, uttering a peculiar cry that sounds 

 like " Chyeece." Then, somewhere down beyond the 

 edge of the khud, one heard the bark of a wandering 

 kh&kar. 



Night-watching in trees is not a form of amusement 

 that appeals to me much now, after a long course of the 

 same necessitated by the very thick jungles in which most 

 of my shikar has been carried out but the first hour 

 or so of such a vigil, until one gets bored, and especially 

 if animals appear and interest the watcher, never fails to 

 exercise a certain mystic charm. Thick-skulled and 

 unhappy must he be whose perceptions fail to respond to 

 the wooing of our mother Nature in one of her most 



