104 The Hunting Grounds 



great relish. They held a long communication with 

 the old woman, in a strange guttural language which 

 none of us could understand ; and she must have 

 allayed their fears, for they all laid down by the fire 

 and slept, or rather pretended to sleep, for every now 

 and then I saw one or the other open his eyes and 

 look suspiciously, round. Some of my gang kept 

 watch during the night, and I still kept the first 

 child chained by the leg. In the morning when 

 I got up I found them squatting on their hams in 

 deep consultation. I showed them the skin of a bear 



which M had killed a few days before, and they 



evidently knew what the animal was at once, for they 

 imitated the noise of his grunting exactly. I pointed 

 out the bullet-holes in the skin, and showed them my 

 gun, which, much to their consternation, I fired against 

 a tree ; and, when their fright had a little subsided, 

 I showed them the hole in the trunk which the bullet 

 had made, and one of my people cut it out with an 

 axe. This instrument seemed to surprise them more 

 than anything else. They could not understand it 

 at all at first ; but, after they had seen it used a few 

 times, nothing would please them so much as to set 

 them to work chopping up firewood. They amused 

 themselves thus for hours together watching the chips 

 fly, laughing and grunting to each other, and con- 

 versing in their curious guttural language. 



" I shot in those jungles nearly a month, and then 



