APPOINTED TO SUPERINTEND ELEPHANT-CATCHING. 3 



elephants, and in consequence was appointed to the temporary charge of the 

 Bengal Elephant-Catching Establishment, in September 1875. I worked 

 in Bengal for nine months, during which time I visited the Garrow and 

 Chittagong hill tracts, wild and little-known regions. I returned to Mysore 

 in June 1876, after capturing eighty-five elephants in Chittagong. 



But the famine which has recently devastated the south of India had 

 then begun, and the scarcity of rain rendered elephant-catching impossible 

 for a time, as fodder could not be procured for the support of any elephants 

 that might have been captured; so myseK and hunting establishment were 

 employed in apportioning the border forests into grazing blocks for the starv- 

 ing cattle that flocked thither for pasture. Few of their owners had ever 

 seen jungle before, and were terrified by exaggerated tales of tigers, wild 

 •elephants, and evil spirits. Unless provision had been made by Government 

 for their being accompanied by men accustomed to jungle-life, they would 

 merely have crowded the borders of the forests, and never have reached the 

 best grazing grounds. After organising arrangements for their convenience, 

 by placing trackers and jungle-men in charge of different sections of the 

 •forests, I found it necessary to return to England (in April 1877) on fifteen 

 months' furlough on medical certificate, after a continued residence of tliirteen 

 years in India. 



The peculiar opportunities which have been afforded me during that 

 period from following my natural inclinations, and by the nature of my 

 duties, of encountering the wild animals of Southern India and Eastern 

 Bengal, have induced me to believe that my experiences may be of some 

 interest to the general public, and perhaps of some se^^ice to the cause of 

 natural history. In presuming to relate them I am but dealing with 

 matters which have constituted my daily occupation. All that I narrate is 

 from personal observation; and whilst no one can be more alive than myself 

 to the fact that, if the wielding of my pen is to be taken as a test of my 

 ability with the tools of sport, it will lead to but a poor opinion of my 

 accomplishments, I claim one merit for my jottings which I hope will 

 cover their numerous failings — at least in the eyes of brother sportsmen — 

 and that is, that they are all strictly true. Any one who has devoted him- 

 self to Indian field-sports for some years as I have done must have been 

 singularly unfortunate if he has not sufiicient exciting facts noted in his 

 journal to fill a book without the necessity of resorting to fiction or 

 exaggeration. 



I have dealt at some length upon the habits when wild, the mode of 

 capture and training, and the management and conduct in captivity, of the 

 elephant. The popular interest felt in that animal is perhaps more general 



