MY SHIKAREE FRIENDS. 



I. PANDU THE GOND. 



How little do we know of India even after a hundred 

 and fifty years' occupation of the country ! Off 

 the beaten tracks the great trunk roads, the well- 

 known lines of railway and we are lost in a wil- 

 derness of peoples and things of whose existence we 

 know nothing unless we search the pages of the 

 Gazetteer, and even that often fails us, since how- 

 ever carefully compiled, its information is chiefly 

 derived from European sources and Europeans as 

 a rule are slow to win the confidence of the natives. 

 I do not claim to be anything very different from 

 my fellows, but perhaps from constant association 

 with wild tribes in various parts of India, I have 

 learned to appreciate their many virtues. I have 

 found them as staunch and as true as men of my 

 own blood, and have come to look on their little 

 failings with a kindly eye. However, I am not 

 writing a dissertation on ethnology ; I merely wish 

 to describe some of my shikaree friends. 



Let me begin, then, with a pen-and-ink sketch of 

 Pandu, the hunter. Tall for a native, nearly six 

 feet high, and a frame so gaunt that he would not 



