WANT OF TRACKERS. 237 



doubtless all hostile intentions were knocked out of him by the severe visi- 

 tation upon his knowledge-box. Had I done anything but what I did at 

 the critical moment there is no doubt I should have been caught. I felt as 

 collected through it all as possible. The deadly coolness which sportsmen 

 often experience is in proportion in its intensity to the increase of danger and 

 necessity for nerve. 



Jaffer and I picked ourselves up and pursued the retreating tusker. He 

 was now going slowly and wearily, and we were up with him in two hun- 

 dred yards from the scene of our discomfiture, but in such thick cover that 

 it would have been folly to have closed with him there ; so, as we had the 

 wind, we kept about thirty yards behind him. Unfortunately the bamboo- 

 cover was extensive, and in about a quarter of a mile he joined the herd 

 without once emerging into the open, as we had hoped he would, and afford 

 us another chance. The herd had only gone about two hundred yards at 

 the shot, and were feeding again ; and as I feared that following the tusker 

 would only bring us into collision with other elephants, we abandoned the 

 chase and returned to the pad-elephant. Had I only had my Mysore Sho- 

 laga or Kurraba trackers with me we should no doubt have recovered the 

 elephant. 



In Chapter VI. I have referred to the very large tusk of an elephant 

 shot in the Billiga-rungun hills by Sir Victor Brooke and Colonel Douglas 

 Hamilton, some years before I first shot there. For the following interesting 

 account of their adventures with this elephant I am indebted to the pen of 

 Sir Victor. The tusk referred to is, I beKeve, the largest on record for an 

 Indian elephant. 



"In July 1863, Colonel Douglas Hamilton and I were shooting on the 

 Hassanoor hills. Southern India. We had had excellent sport, but until the 

 date of the death of the big tusker, had not come across any elephants. 

 Upon the morning of that day, in the jungles to the east of the Hassanoor 

 bungalow, we had tracked up a fine tusker, which, partly from over-anxiety, 

 and partly, I must confess, from the effect on my nervous system of the 

 presence of the first wild buU-elephant I had ever seen, I had failed to bag. 

 About mid-day I was lying on my bed chewing the cud of vexation, and 

 inwardly vowing terrible vengeance on the next tusker I might meet, when 

 two natives came in to report a herd of elephants in a valley some three or 

 four miles to the north of our camp. To prepare ourselves was the work of 

 a few seconds. As we arrived on the ridge overlooking the valley where the 

 elephants were, we heard the crackling of bamboos, and occasionally caught 

 sight of the back of an elephant as it crossed a break amongst the confused 

 mass of tree -tops upon which we were gazing. Presently one of the 



