294 The Hunting Grounds 



an area of several hundreds of square miles, inhabited 

 only by a few wild, uncivilised tribes, said to be the 

 aborigines of the country, who for ages have shrunk 

 from intercourse with the rest of the world, living in 

 hollow trees or caves, and subsisting upon wild fruits, 

 jungle-roots, and such small animals as they can 

 bring down with their arrows. 



These woods, in which the sound of an axe is 

 seldom heard, are the haunts of the largest denizens 

 of the forest. Here vast herds of elephants and bison 

 (Bos gaurus) wander through the leafy solitudes 

 unmolested; and tigers, panthers, and bears are so 

 numerous, that after nightfall they may be heard in 

 different parts of the jungle howling and calling to each 

 other with those peculiarly wild and deeply melancholy 

 intonations which appal and strike awe into the hearts 

 of those who are not accustomed to such serenades. 



The natives in this part of the country have a 

 strange superstition about these hunting grounds. 

 They say that in the inmost recesses of the forest, 

 where the eye of man has never yet penetrated, there 

 is a lake, to the banks of which elephants, when they 

 feel the approach of dissolution, go to die. Perhaps 

 this popular belief may in some measure be accounted 

 for by the fact, that the body of an elephant that has 

 died a natural death has rarely, if ever, been found 

 in the woods. Some say that the remains of the 

 dead are buried by their companions in the herd. 



