ADVENTURES IN CAMP AND JUNGLE. 183 



or 800 feet when our guide halted, and his friend, who had 

 been perched on a tree, came down and informed us that the 

 bear had not moved out from the masses of rocks into which 

 they had marked him. I carried a 12-bore rifle, and another 

 of the same calibre was carried by my henchman Bappoo, 

 who had accompanied me from Dholka in Guzerat. We ad- 

 vanced cautiously, peering over the rocks ; but we found that 

 they merely concealed the entrances to a complete gallery of 

 bear-holes. Into some of these we hurled stones, and vainly 

 endeavoured by shouts to induce the bear to show. Shots 

 were even fired into the cave, but with no result, and at 

 length, supposing that the bear must have moved unobserved 

 by the watcher, or had made up his mind not to come out, I 

 laid aside my rifle, and sitting down with my men in the 

 entrance of a cave, we lit our pipes and enjoyed the view. 



The prospect was grand and extensive, though the heated 

 air rendered the distance rather hazy. We were seated on a 

 spur of the Vindyah range of mountains, and the ground beneath 

 us seemed to be nearly level, stretching away across the pro- 

 vince of Nimar to the Nerbudda, which, from our exalted 

 position, we could see winding through the valley like a silver 

 serpent, as it crossed from left to right about twelve miles in our 

 front. But we knew that our bird's-eye view deceived us, for 

 the apparently level jungles below us were deeply cut up by 

 rocky ravines, filled in parts with high grass and thorny 

 bushes of the "bair," whose small round berries form a favourite 

 food of their ursine namesakes. The trees were mostly 

 salur, of moderate growth, devoid of leaves. The wood of this 

 tree is soft and worthless, and a resinous gum of no known 

 value exudes freely from its yellow bark. 



Here and there small clearings might be detected, and an 

 occasional Bheel hut ; and, in the more immediate vicinity of 



