22 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



woven very strongly and firmly, and fixed from limb to 

 limb of some suitably high tree. From this safe perch 

 watch is kept over a ' kill ' — some slain animal, to which 

 the slayer is expected to return. But that is not the way 

 used with tigers, be it understood. 



For the above-mentioned duty the chosen men must be 

 warranted never to sneeze or cough, or to drop — still less 

 to let off — a rifle, out of sheer excitement, as has happened 

 only too often in the experience of many a shikari. 1 But 

 this is a digression. 



What a wonderful climb that was ! To make any going 

 possible the men in advance hewed and hacked to right and 

 left through a scene of beauty and marvel of which a Kew 

 palm-house can give but a faint suggestion. Everywhere 

 magnificent giant creepers, some delicate as wreaths of 

 English clematis with gossamer-woven flowers ; others so 

 weird-looking as to be almost repellent, with their snake- 

 like stems, thick as one's arm, and strange blood-spotted 

 blossoms — all clinging like iron bands for strength, and, 

 for all their delicacy, equally impassable. The most en- 

 chanting ferneries were cut, or torn through, at every step, 

 only to open the way to wilder extravagances of fantastic 

 loveliness. Familiar though it all was to F., yet never los- 

 ing its charm — the greater, indeed, owing to his botanical 

 knowledge — to me it was a perfect poem for beauty, hitherto 

 unseen and unimagined. India is the only tropical land 

 I know, so I can make no comparisons, but at any rate 

 nothing can surpass the fairy grandeur of those wild jungles. 



One tree there is with which the forest seems ablaze when 

 it is in blossom — the ' flame-of-the-forest,' as it is fitly 

 named. The petals are shaped like a parrot's beak, and 

 are of a vivid orange-scarlet. Another, the sumponghi 

 (champak it is also called), has ivory-hued flowers, shaded 

 and deepening into yellow at the base, and these last are 



1 Sportsman. 



