392 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTBAL INDIA. 



answered from behind the camp by another pitched in a 

 yet deeper tone, startling us from its suddenness and proxi- 

 mity. All three were repeated at short intervals, as the three 

 tigers approached each other along the bottoms of the deep 

 dry watercourses, between and above which the camp had 

 been pitched. As they drew together the noises ceased for 

 about a quarter of an hour ; and I was dozing off to sleep 

 again, when suddenly arose the most fearful din near to where 

 the tigress had first sounded the love note to her rival lovers, 

 a din like the caterwauling of midnight cats magnified a hun- 

 dred fold. Intervals of silence, broken by outbursts of this 

 infernal shrieking and moaning, disturbed our rest for the 

 next hour, dying away gradually as the tigers retired along 

 the bed of the river. In the morning I found all the in- 

 cidents of a three-volume novel in feline life imprinted on the 

 sand ; and marks of blood showed how genuine the combat 

 part of the performance had been. For the assurance of the 

 timid I may as well say that I have never had my camp 

 actually irivaded by a tiger, though constantly pitched, with 

 a slender following, and without any sort of precaution, in the 

 middle of their haunts. It strikes a stranger to jungle ways 

 a little oddly perhaps to see a man in the warm summer 

 nights calmly take his bed out a hundred yards from the 

 tents, lie down under the canopy of heaven, listen, pipe in 

 mouth, for half an hour to the noises of wild animals, and 

 then placidly fall asleep. He soons learns to do the same 

 himself. 



About the end of the rains, in September and October, the 

 red deer collect in large herds on the tops of the plateaux ; 

 and I have been told of assemblages of several hundred 

 head at that season. They are then beginning to rut, and 

 are very easy to get at, the Gonds and Bygas killing great 



