386 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



pudding and mince-pies out of Crosse and BlackwelTs tins. 

 Sundry glasses of whisky-toddy, imbibed round a rattling 

 bonfire lit in front of the tents, were fully justified by the 

 really severe cold after sunset. Stalking the bdrd-singhd, 

 however, affords the finest sport; and from the less exclu- 

 sively nocturnal habits of the animal, as well as the open 

 character of the country, resembles deer-stalking in Scotland 

 more than any other of our field sports. 



When hurrying through this country in January of 1863, 

 en route to the eastern forests, I halted for two days in the 

 upper valley of the Halon to stalk the red deer, which I had 

 never before seen. The grass was very thick and long, and, 

 being still green, was entirely unburnt. At a place called 

 Motinald, where a deep branching watercourse crosses the 

 pathway several times, I was walking ahead of my followers, 

 when I came on the remains of a poor wanderer, who had 

 evidently not long before been killed by a tiger. He was 

 a religious mendicant ; and his long iron tongs, begging-bowl 

 hollowed from a skull, and cocoa-nut hooka were scattered 

 about in the bottom of the nald, where he had been resting 

 on his weary march, together with tresses of his long matted 

 hair and a shred or two of cloth. The bones were all broken 

 to pieces, and many of them were missing altogether. A 

 Bunjdra' drover had been taken off near the same spot about 

 a week before, so that it was not without some misgivings 

 that I wandered off the road through the long grass to look 

 for red deer towards the skirts of the hills. To hunt for the 

 tiger in such an ocean of grass-cover would have been hope- 

 less. I skirted the hills to the right of the road from here 

 to the camping-ground at Mangli, very soon getting drenched 

 to the skin in passing through the high grass dripping with 

 the morning dew. Towards the hills the grass was shorter, 



