THE TIGER. 261 



The first difficulty is to get reliable information of the 

 presence of tigers in a particular neighbourhood. A great 

 many reasons, besides the simple one to which it is usually 

 attributed, namely that " they are cursed niggers," combine to 

 make the natives in most places very unwilling to give infor- 

 mation about tigers. Firstly, it is likely to bring down a large 

 encampment of " Sahibs " on their village, which they, very 

 justly in most cases, dislike. The military officer who scorns 

 to learn the rural language, and his train of overbearing 

 swindling servants, who fully carry out the principle that 

 from him who hath not what little he hath shall be taken 

 away, and that without a price too, stinks in the nostrils of 

 the poor inhabitants of the tracts where tigers are found. The 

 tiger himself is in fact far more endurable than those who 

 encamp over against them to make war upon him, and de- 

 mand from them grain and other supplies which they have 

 not, and carts, etc., to carry the camp, which they want to 

 use for other urgent purposes. Then they fear that they will 

 be made to beat for the tiger both those who are willing and 

 those who are not with a considerable chance of getting 

 killed, and very little of being paid for their services. There 

 are few well-known resorts of tigers where some story of the 

 sort has not been handed down among the people. The first 

 essential towards getting sport is to conciliate the willing 

 co-operation of the people, and make it plain to them that 

 your arrangements for supplies are such as to throw no un- 

 bearable burden on a poor country, and that your method of 

 hunting is not one to lead to the constant risk of life. Such, 

 however, is the want of sympathy often engendered in the 

 naturally generous Englishman by the fact of his becoming a 

 member of the ruling caste in India, that sportsmen will some- 

 times be heard on their return from an unsuccessful expedition, 



