CHAPTER II. 



MY FIRST TIGER. 



I HAD been in India some months, but, though 

 keen enough on shooting, I had not succeeded in 

 putting together much of a bag of big game, although 

 I had arrived at the beginning of the hot weather, 

 which is generally the best time for big game shooting. 



My regiment was at the time stationed in Raj- 

 putana. The cantonment was one which had been 

 established many years. Consequently, while the 

 immediate neighbourhood had been thoroughly shot 

 out by sporting privates and sergeants, all the avail- 

 able places within a fifty mile radius had been well 

 worked by successive subalterns and captains. The 

 result was that one had to go a long way before 

 one could hope to find a sambur deer, and in India, 

 ubi rusa ibi tigris (where the sambur is, there is the 

 tiger) is a true saying. 



Of course, I possessed that generally useless 

 appendage, a shikari (native hunter). The first I 

 owned, or perhaps I should rather say who owned 

 me, was worse than useless, and I soon dismissed 

 him. A little later in the year, a brother officer who 



