The Tiger 241 



mail-carriers, and travellers on roads, of priests who serve 

 at lonely shrines. 



No country is so favorable for his exploits as India. 

 The endless divisions of its people into castes or profes- 

 sions is destructive to unanimity of feeling and combined 

 action. The " gentle Hindu," who is one of the most 

 callous and unsympathetic of mankind, folds his hands 

 when one of his co-religionists has been carried off, and 

 says that Kali probably sent the tiger for that especial 

 purpose, so what has he to do with it ? His Mussulman 

 acquaintance twists his mustache, and mutters, Ul-humd- 

 ul-illa^ praise be to God, this man was only an infidel, and 

 it was his destiny ! They cannot act together, and for- 

 merly matters were worse than they are now. 



Nothing could suit the prowling tiger better than these 

 isolated settlements with their careless, nearly defenceless 

 inhabitants, the by-ways and wastes that separate them. 

 When he has once killed a man, and has discovered the 

 creature's feebleness, those horrors so often recorded 

 follow as matters of course. Henceforth, nobody is safe 

 beyond the walls of his town or dwelling. Occasionally 

 not even there, for the man-eater combines the extremes 

 of conduct, excessive wariness and desperate audacity. 



There is no necessity to multiply references as to the fact 

 that these tigers are audacious, that is generally known 

 to be the case ; but it is well to remember in connection 

 with their relations to mankind, that they are apt to 

 become panic-stricken at anything which appears strange 

 and unaccountable. Colonel Pollok preserves an incident 

 ("Sport in British Burmah") which illustrates their enter- 



