120 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



the day they sometimes light a fire at the mouth 

 of it and watch for a drowsy, half-suffocated 

 porcupine to emerge. A native, with this ob- 

 ject in view, once set fire to a great heap of 

 brushwood piled in front of a likely looking 

 cave and took up a position from which he 

 could see what happened. Nothing did hap- 

 pen, and, although the natives of India are 

 patient beyond most men, he gave up his vigil 

 at last, and tramped home disappointed with 

 his bad luck. Next day he passed the cave 

 again, out of curiosity, and was amazed to find, 

 lying just inside the entrance, a young tigress 

 suffocated to death. She dared not make a 

 dash for liberty through the smoke, not only 

 because she was probably afraid of the flames, 

 but for the still sounder reason that she knew 

 that her charge must inevitably have carried 

 her over the edge of the rock to a drop of at 

 least fifty feet into a deep waterhole below. 



Now and again tiger-cubs are captured 

 after the death of the mother, and I am in- 

 debted to a correspondent for an account of 

 two such occasions, on the second of w r hich, 

 as will be seen, the smoking-out method was 

 also applied, though far more scientifically 

 than in the case recorded above. It played 

 no part, however, in the capture of a brace 

 of cubs during a Christmas shoot in 1905, in 

 H.H. the Maharajah's reserve at Sacribail, 



