282 THE HUNTING GEOUNDS 



miles, inhabited only by a few wild, uncivilised 

 tribes, said to be the aborigines of the country, who 

 for ages have shrunk from intercourse with the rest 

 of the world, living in hollow trees or caves, and 

 subsisting upon wild fruits, jungle-roots, and such 

 small animals as they can bring down with their 

 arrows. 



These woods, in which the sound of an axe is 

 seldom heard, are the haunts of the largest denizens 

 of the forest. Here vast herds of elephants and 

 bison (Bos gaurus) wander through the leafy soli- 

 tudes unmolested ; and tigers, panthers, and bears 

 are so numerous, that after nightfall they may be 

 heard in different parts of the jungle howling and 

 calling to each other, with those peculiarly wild and 

 deeply melancholy intonations which appal and 

 strike awe into the hearts of those who are not 

 accustomed to such serenades. 



The natives in this part of the country have a 

 strange superstition about these hunting-grounds. 

 They say that in the inmost recesses of the forest, 

 where the eye of man has never yet penetrated, 

 there is a lake, to the banks of which elephants, 

 when they feel the approach of dissolution, go to 

 die. Perhaps this popular belief may in some mea- 

 sure be accounted for by the fact, that the body of 

 an elephant that has died a natural death has rarely, 

 if ever, been found in the woods. Some say that 

 the remains of the dead are buried by their com- 

 panions in the herd. 



