104 TIGERS. 



thirty yards broad, swam towards the opposite bank. 

 When he was almost across the sahib opened fire, where- 

 upon the brute turned about and commenced swimming 

 back again. More shots were fired without result, and the 

 tiger was soon near terra firma again. As the jungle was 

 low scrub, containing no suitable trees for climbing, a 

 stampede ensued, the tiger remaining master of the situa- 

 tion ! My last regular trip after tigers was in the Singareny 

 district, in the Nizam's Dominions, in the hot weather of 

 1881, the party consisting of my colonel, Colonel Eussell, 

 commanding 12th Lancers, and self. Colonel Eussell, 

 being detained by duty, did not join us until we had been 

 a week in the jungle, and we were only able to devote some 

 five weeks to the jungles which remained untried. Previous 

 to the arrival of Colonel Eussell we had got a tigress 

 at Komalapully, a well-known tiger haunt near the 

 Warrungul road, some ninety miles distant from Secun- 

 derabad. We had employed " Kistiah," a famous shikari 

 who lived in that district, which was a good one for tigers, 

 as large herds of cattle grazed there during the hot 

 weather, and it was well provided with water and shady 

 jungle. He was assisted by three shikaries of lesser note, 

 but all were plucky, reliable, and hard-working men. We 

 arrived in camp about nine o'clock one morning in the 

 month of March, and while at breakfast news of a kill was 

 brought in. About one mile distant was a very remarkable 

 conical hill of basaltic rock, at the foot of which a net-work 

 of shady nullahs radiated throughout a tract of scrub 

 jungle, which, stretching away for some miles, joined 

 another hilly area, also a noted tiger haunt. The gara was 

 close to a small pond at the edge of the jungle near the base 

 of the hill, and we were posted so as to intercept the tiger 

 if it attempted to break away through this wooded zone. 



