454 WILD SPORTS OF BURMA AND ASSAM 



beast lumbering through the long grass and fired, and killed 

 a three-parts-grown rhinoceros. We then separated. I 

 came upon a monster ; he looked more like an elephant 

 than a rhinoceros, and I hesitated to fire at first ; but directly 

 he squealed I put two barrels into him, brought him on his 

 knees, but he jumped up and went off screeching. I chased 

 him some way, but he was going away from camp and it was 

 getting on for evening, so he escaped. We found our camp 

 pitched close to a tank on high ground, quite open all round, 

 very different from other parts of Assam. 



May 2. Comber and I shot our way across country, which, 

 with the exception of a patch of long grass here and there, 

 was open all round and lovely for riding. There were 

 numerous boars, who seemed to care nothing for us. We 

 had no spears and no horses, or we might have had lovely 

 pig-sticking ; but I made a note of the locality, and had some 

 fine fun there afterwards with Williamson. 



Leaving this oasis, we got into heavy grass, and I shot 



one of the lesser rhinoceros. Comber wounded one, but lost 



it. On reaching the river bank, a villager told us a tiger had 



just killed a cow, and took us to its body, which was scarcely 



cold ; but with the exception of a long narrow tank, the banks 



of which were fringed with grass about four feet high, the 



country was quite open, with here and there a baire-tree 1 



or a baubul bush. We thought we were sure of this tiger, 



and that he must be in the grass on the edge of the nullah, 



so we formed line and beat through it twice without a sign 



of the tiger, so thinking he had gone to some other chur I 



shot a small deer, and as we clustered round it Comber's 



mahout called out, "The tiger I" and there he was sure 



enough, bounding along in the open, and before we could 



pick up a gun he had disappeared down the bank, and 



though we searched for him for two hours, we never saw him 



again that day, but I shot him near the same spot the next 



year. He had been lying under a solitary bush in the open, 



watching a herd of cattle, and had allowed us to pass him 



within 50 yards without moving, and it was only my shots 



1 The baire-tree bears a fruit something like a crab-apple, not bad 

 eating if thoroughly ripe. F. T. P. 



