A SUCCESSFUL DAY'S SPORT. 369 



I and which were the bears, as we had mixed ourselves up so, and all 

 seemed to be holding out our paws for the gun he carried, until he didn't 

 know rightly who was who, and so bolted ! Two of the three bears had 

 rushed towards us at my shot, and had got rather close, which he made an 

 excuse for flight, 



I generally considered that in the bear-ground about the foot of the 

 Billiga-rungun hiUs I ought to keep up my average when bear-shooting to one 

 a-day for a week or so, so I started on the fifth morning four bears in arrears. 

 It was about four o'clock in the afternoon that Jaffer and I were seated on 

 the top of a hill, which rose some five hundred feet above the general level 

 of the jungles round Poonjoor. Fortune seemed to be against us. It was 

 a lovely day — not in the English acceptation of the term, but from the 

 Indian sportsman's point of view — showery and overcast. As we sat 

 facing the west, from which quarter the wind was blowing freshly, bringing 

 up clouds from the Malabar coast that for the next two days poured down 

 a monsoon deluge on the Mysore plateau, destroying by its violence an im- 

 mense number of cattle, and even birds in the jungle, we scanned the open 

 glades in the forest below us in hopes of seeing a bear. We had been 

 singularly unsuccessful all day. Since early morning Bommay Gouda, some 

 Sholaga trackers, Jaffer, and I, had done all we could to find bears, but we 

 had not even seen a single recent track. Our wish was to find marks of 

 the night before, when the Sholagas could follow the bear to its retreat. 

 There had been a heavy fall of rain — the one thing needful in bear-shoot- 

 ing — during the night, and the delightful coolness of the day had enabled 

 us to keep on without intermission, except for breakfast on the banks of the 

 Poonjoor river. StiU we had seen nothing till afternoon, when we found 

 some scratchings, made early that morning, at the foot of the hill Jaffer 

 and I were now seated on. The soil was stony, and the occasional 

 showers during the morning had dimmed such traces as there were, so the 

 following the trail was not an easy task. Nevertheless Bommay Gouda & 

 Co. had girt up their loins and buckled to, and were now engaged on the 

 footprints in the forest below us. 



It was slow work, however, and as the day was so overcast I had 

 thought it likely that bears might be abroad feeding, so Jafi'er and I had 

 ascended the hill to look round. The cool breath from the gathering 

 clouds was very invigorating after the three months of hot weather we 

 had passed thi-ough, and the prospect over the wide expanse of forest, now 

 in young leaf, a refreshing one. Whilst admiring it I did not, however, for- 

 get the main object of our ascent ; but seeing nothing from where we were, 

 we crossed the narrow piece of level ground on the top of the hill to take a 



2 A 



