234 THE FORESTS OF UPPER INDIA 



hard and baked by five months' fierce sun. The tent was 

 luckily dry under the outer fly, but the natives were in 

 miserable plight, shivering with cold, and huddled under 

 chappars of long grass, got from the village on the plain. 

 Many were attacked by fever, and quinine had to be 

 distributed. I sat in my tent working at maps, and 

 realized how much the world is indebted to the sun, and 

 vowed never to grumble at the heat of his glorious rays. 

 Cloud and mist hung over everything, and the jungle 

 seemed a place of dank, impenetrable gloom. The beasts 

 of the forest came to drink in the stream as if the day 

 were dark night ; tigers' and bears' tracks were fresh in 

 the mud, and great tracks which I had never seen, as 

 huge almost as an elephant's, but cloven. There could 

 be no mistaking these great wide footmarks for those of 

 ordinary cattle. They were the tracks of the great wild 

 buffalo, the arna, of which I had heard so much, an animal 

 most rare to find stiU at large in the jungles, the largest 

 and most dangerous of wild beasts, next to the homed 

 rhinoceros. 



Next morning the sky had cleared ; a bright sun shone 

 out, and all nature was transformed. The dreadful 

 forest was shining and gay, the leaves sparkling with 

 drops of moisture in the glistening rays. Occasional 

 glimpses through the trees of the Himalayas, towering 

 against the northern sky, were visible like a scene in a 

 theatre. The elephants kneel down, and we climb up 

 and start to explore. 



The straight black stems of the sal -trees are clasped 

 round by coils of huge creepers, which hang in festoons 

 from tree to tree. One carries a kukri, or Nepali knife, 

 in the howdah to cut these creepers, which would other- 

 wise stop one's progress. An elephant often pulls them 

 down with his trunk at command of his driver, and some- 



