SHOOT A GAUR AND A RHINOCEROS 187 



ball, No. 10, two-grooved, from my double Lang brought him 

 down ; we cut off his head and hung it up and went on. We 

 left the table-land and entered a sholah, where I got three 

 shots at sambur, but only succeeded in bagging one. On 

 getting back to the village we sent for the gaur's head, and 

 the villagers returned staggering under the weight of the beef 

 they carried. After a bath and an early dinner we went to sit 

 up the Karen in one hole and I in the other. Such a night 

 as I spent ! I would not do it again even to shoot a dozen 

 rhinoceros, if each of them had four instead of two horns. It 

 was a bright moonlight night ; the pachyderm came about 

 eleven, and as he passed, the Karen gave him the contents of 

 one of my rifles ; in his fright the rhinoceros ran into a very 

 boggy part of the swamp close to me, and, stepping out, I 

 killed him easily with a shot behind the ear. It was no use 

 stopping longer, and I had had quite enough of the mosquitoes, 

 who were not only very large, very noisy, but very blood- 

 thirsty. We secured the head next day, and made tracks 

 homeward by a circuitous route. We saw nothing the first 

 day, but came across several elephants. I mortally wounded 

 a tusker, but lost him for the time ; the jungle was so dense 

 and the tracks so numerous, that we took up the wrong one, 

 and never succeeded in regaining the correct one. I heard 

 afterwards that the Karens found him and appropriated his 

 tusks, which were rather good ones not long, but thick. We 

 put up in a Karen village, and the men said if I'd remain 

 for a day or two they would beat a ravine in which there was 

 generally a tiger, and they could also show gaur and sambur. 

 As I was in no hurry, I assented. I was duly posted next day, 

 but, instead of a tiger, a panther showed himself, and I dropped 

 him dead. He measured J\ feet to the tip of the tail. 

 Returning to the hut, I breakfasted, and then went out stalk- 

 ing. I wounded a gaur but lost it, and got a sambur and 

 a barking deer. The next day I got back to Haingye. 



