296 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



the year round, as in Nimar, the tigers rarely take to man- 

 eating. 



As soon as I could ride in the howdah, and long before I 

 could do more than hobble on foot, I marched to a place called 

 Chirkher^, where the last kill had been reported. My usually 

 straggling following was now compressed into a close body, 

 preceded and followed by the baggage-elephants, and protected 

 by a guard of police with muskets, peons with my spare 

 guns, and a whole posse of matchlocked shikaris. Two 

 deserted villages were passed on the road, and heaps of stones 

 at intervals showed where a traveller had been struck down. 

 A better hunting-ground for a man-eater certainly could not 

 be. Thick scrubby teak jungle closed in the road on both 

 sides ; and alongside of it for a great part of the way wound a 

 narrow deep watercourse, overshadowed by thick j&man 

 bushes, and with here and there a small pool of water still left. 

 I hunted along this nali, the whole way, and found many old 

 tracks of a very large male tiger/ 5 " which the shikaris declared 

 to be the man-eater. There were none more recent, however, 

 than several days. Chirkherd was also deserted on account 

 of the tiger, and there was no shade to speak of ; but it was 

 the most central place within reach of the usual haunts 

 of the brute, so I encamped here, and sent the baggage- 

 elephants back to fetch provisions. In the evening I was 

 startled by a messenger from a place called Ld, on the 

 Moran river, nearly in the direction I had come from, who 

 said that one of a party of pilgrims who had been travelling 

 unsuspectingly by a jungle road had been carried off by the 

 tiger close to that place. Early next morning I started off 



* A little practice suffices to distinguish the tracks of tigers of different ages 

 and sexes. The old male has a much sqiiarer track, so to speak, than the female, 

 which leaves a more oval footprint. 



