THIETEEN YEAKS AMONG THE 

 WILD BEASTS OF INDIA. 



CHAPTER I. 



SKETCH OF author's HUNTING EXPERIENCES. 



I LAND IN MADRAS — APPOINTMENT IN MYSORE — MY FIRST TIGER — APPOINTED TO SUPERIN- 

 TEND AN EXPERIMENT FOR THE CAPTURE OF WILD ELEPHANTS IN MYSORE — RESULTS 

 —SIMILARLY APPOINTED IN EASTERN BENGAL— TRACTS VISITED — CAPTURE EIGHTY- 

 FIVE ELEPHANTS — RETURN TO MYSORE — FURLOUGH TO ENGLAND — REMARKS. 



I LANDED in Madras in 1864, and proceeded to a station in the Mysore 

 country where I had friends. I was fresh from school and looked 

 with delight upon the prospect of a coffee-planter's life, in which I had been 

 promised a start by a friend, himself a planter. But coffee was in one of the 

 vicissitudes with which that enterprise seems so frequently to be struggling 

 — at least my friend's estate was — and before I had completed a voyage 

 round the Cape he had been eaten out by the " borer " insect, or his pros- 

 pects had shared the blight at that time affecting his trees' leaves — I for- 

 get which. My hopes of a jungle-life seemed to be doomed ; my vision of 

 wild elephants, tigers, and bison to be hopelessly dispelled ! However, in a 

 month or two a friend who was engaged in prosecuting some surveys for 

 Government took me with him, and in the next six months I learnt a little 

 of the country and surveying, and a good deal about duck and antelope 

 shooting. I then appKed myself to the study of Canarese, the vernacular 

 of Mysore, for a year, which I look back upon as perhaps the most judi- 



