24 THE EASTERN HUNTERS. 



did the fleshless natives find any difficulty in keeping 

 up with them. 



It should be mentioned, that fireworks are most 

 useful auxiliaries in forcing a tiger from thick 

 patches of jungle, rocks, and other lairs, to approach 

 which very closely would be dangerous for the 

 beaters. If his whereabouts is tolerably accurately 

 guessed, and a firework or two pitched near him, 

 there are few possessed of equanimity sufficient to 

 withstand the influence of the spitting, fizzing fire 

 of a well-made flower-pot or rocket, or the lively 

 jumps of a good cracker. But of the three, com- 

 mend me to the flower-pot. This is an earthen 

 case shaped somewhat like an elongated beehive, 

 with a hole at the top through which, when lighted, 

 a fine spluttering fire issues with force. The rockets 

 are hollow tubes of bamboo, about eight or twelve 

 inches long, but are not, I think, so certain as the 

 flower-pots ; the latter, moreover, appear to be the 

 more manageable of the two in the hands of beaters. 



The road, crossing here and there several patches 

 of cultivated land, led for the most part through 

 thickish jungle in nearly an opposite direction to 

 the hills. 



An hour's ride brought them to a little village, 

 composed indeed of not more than ten or a dozen 

 low huts. Hewers of w r ood, and cutters of grass, 



