CHAPTER IX 



THE next leopard that came into my life though, un- 

 fortunately, only incidentally was a very different animal, 

 both as to size and character, and, I may add, in tastes, 

 for it eventually developed into the most confirmed man- 

 eater of any leopard ever known, or even heard of, in Bengal. 

 Its ravages at one time were so frequently committed in 

 the villages lying on the border of my district that I made 

 one or two attempts to destroy the beast myself, but 

 without success. 



For human beings to be killed by tigers, and occasionally 

 by leopards, was a common enough occurrence in those 

 days ; but it is doubtful whether the most notorious of 

 man-eating animals that has yet been heard of in any part 

 of India, ever exercised such terrorism in the neighbourhood 

 it frequented as the one whose criminal history is now to 

 be recorded, and whose depredations against the human 

 race, extending over a period of twenty months, created a 

 panic, seldom equalled, and certainly never yet surpassed. 

 In some cases whole families were destroyed, while there 

 was scarcely a single household that had not supplied at 

 least one victim to this monster's murderous rapacity. 



The animal had taken up its abode in the jungle around 



a group of villages of which one L was the chief and 



centre. This record of its unprecedented ferocity and 

 subsequent death is compiled from the notes of a friend, 

 an official of the district in which these massacres took place, 

 and who formed one of the party of sportsmen by whom 

 they were avenged. 



The district in question was contiguous to the one in 

 which I was posted at the time, and I well remember the 

 terror established in the neighbourhood by the appalling 

 number of persons killed and eaten monthly by the savage 

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