THE NAKBADA VALLEY. 79 



intervening range of hills. On the way I shot a young 

 Sarnbar stag ; and after arriving in camp a messenger from 

 the village I had left in the morning came in breathless to say 

 that a tiger had killed a bullock in the morning within half a 

 mile of my camp. At that time of year, when the jungle is 

 very green and thick, and tigers always on the move, it was 

 not worth while to go back, even if I had had the time. 



This day's march was through a much more jungly country 

 than I had yet met. It could not be called a forest ; for the 

 trees were all of the secondary growth which marks land 

 repeatedly cleared and abandoned again ; and the cultivation, 

 such as it was, was still carried on with the regular bullock- 

 plough, after the manner of the plains. In many places there 

 was a thick growth of teak poles from old stumps of trees ; 

 and many of the fields had been hewn out of these coppices, 

 the poles being burnt on the ground as manure, in the manner 

 to be hereafter described. The clear and pretty stream of the 

 Denwa, which comes down from Puchmurree, was crossed 

 several times by the track we followed, and contained on its 

 sandy banks many footprints of tigers. There was evidently 

 a good deal of forest game about. The valley is one of those 

 tracts on the border between open plain and dense jungle, 

 where much of the nocturnal life of the forest creatures is 

 passed. In such a tract the traveller will often be astonished 

 at the quantity of signs of animals he will see in the morning 

 all about his night's camp, while not a wild creature of any 

 sort will he find in the neighbourhood if he goes to look for 

 them after the sun is up. The fact is that deer, bears, pigs, 

 etc., travel such long distances at night to their feeding 

 grounds, and depart again to the remoter hills so early in the 

 morning, that unless a very early start be made, nothing but 

 the tracks they have left behind will ever be seen. The tigers 



