264 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. 



took to a tree and was kept there all night the same being 

 probably a euphemism for a night passed with some boon 

 companions at a neighbouring grog-shop. The usual haunts 

 of the tiger will be described ; and the size of his footprints 

 and width of his head be drawn to a greatly exaggerated 

 scale. The shikari of the neighbourhood will be present, or 

 can be sent for a long gaunt figure clad in a ragged shirt of 

 Mhowa green, with a dingy turban twisted round his shaggy 

 locks, and furnished with the usual long small-bored match- 

 lock, with its bulky powder-flask of bison horn, and smaller 

 supply of fine priming powder kept carefully in a horn of the 

 gazelle. Eupees, or a prospect of them, will be wanted to 

 loosen his tongue, and then his statements will likely be 

 studiously vague. His hearty services must be secured, how- 

 ever, for he alone knows intimately the ways and haunts of 

 the tiger, and he alone will have the pluck to accompany you 

 or your shikari to mark him down. If you are known to be 

 a good paymaster he will willingly serve you, otherwise you 

 must promise him a handsome douceur in case of success, to 

 induce him to spoil his own chance of claiming the Govern- 

 ment reward. This reward was, till financial difficulties re- 

 duced it to half, fifty rupees (5) ; and, as all sportsmen were 

 entitled to claim it, it used to go far to cover the cost of the 

 hunt. I used always to divide it equally between the village 

 shikari, if he worked well, and my own shikari and elephant 

 driver. Now, however, the sportsman will find himself a good 

 deal out of pocket by every tiger he kills. 



More precise information must be sought for by the sports- 

 man himself. The village shikdri knows nothing of our system 

 of hunting by attacking the tiger in his midday lair. His 

 personal experience of him has probably been confined to 

 nocturnal interviews from the tops of trees ; but he will be 



