10 MOVEMENTS OF GAME. 



trying where the forest is not dense. The jungle-people burn the grass tc 

 admit of their gathering certain fruits and jungle-products, especially the 

 gall-nut, used in tanning. This burning insures a supply of sweet grass 

 as soon as showers fall on the fertilising ash. 



During the months when the jungles are clear, the wanderings of the 

 game are necessarily curtailed, not only by want of cover, but also of food 

 and water. The Ixerds of elephants, bison, and deer collect in moist and 

 deep valleys where the grass is green, and fires do not enter. The difficulty 

 of finding these secluded places however, is great, as they are in such heavy 

 and moist jungles that the very few wild people's dwellings that do exist 

 are seldom near them, and unless the sportsman is well equipped for a 

 march into difficult country, away from supplies of all kinds, they are 

 inaccessible. To any one ignorant of the extent of the wild animals' hot- 

 weather retreats it seems almost magical, after experiencing the difficulty 

 of finding them during that season, to observe how they reappear on all 

 sides with the first rains. 



It is a magnificent sight to see the jungles of a hill-range burning. 

 Sometimes immense tracts are on fire at once, and at night give forth a 

 lurid blaze which lights up the country for miles round. If the fire is 

 near, the roaring noise is truly appalling, and impresses one with a sense 

 of the dread power of the element. Huge billows of thick smoke, in which 

 lighted grass and leaves are whirled forward, roll heavily and slowly along, 

 whilst a sound as of incessant discharges of small-arms is caused by the 

 bamboos and grass stalks exploding. The noise lulls and swells with 

 every alternation in the breeze and in proportion to the thickness of the 

 undergrowth. Long after the main conflagration has passed, isolated 

 bamboo-clumps and dried trees are seen burning fiercely like pillars of 

 flame, till they fall over with a sullen crash, and are quenched. Many 

 trees smoulder for months. I knew one of enormous size, the roots of 

 which, some of the girth of a bullock, or greater, burnt for three and a half 

 years, the fire smouldering slowly underground in the roots long after the 

 parent stem had fallen. 



During the day countless buzzards and fly-catchers hover over the 

 smoke, preying on the bewildered insects which are escaping from it. The 

 destruction of noxious vermin by the fires must be considerable ; but many 

 animals and reptiles, as the land-tortoise and snakes, whose powers of speed 

 do not enable them to escape by those means, survive by burying them- 

 selves in holes or burrows amongst rocks. 



I have never seen jungle-fires advance at any great rate, except in very 

 dry and long grass, unshaded by trees, and under the influence of a strong 



