28l 



THE BANDYPORE MAN-EATER. 



IT was before the days of railways when the Seegor 

 pass via Mysore was the only road to Ootacamund, 

 and bullock transits the quickest means of travelling. 

 It was a fair road from Bangalore to Mysore, but 

 from thence onwards to Seegor at the foot of the 

 Neilgherries there was nothing but a clayey track 

 (known as a second class road) with quagmires 

 and pits during the rainy season, in which it was 

 a miracle if your coach wheel did not stick and 

 remain a fixture till help was procured from 

 Bandypore or Mussencoil, the only large villages 

 along this route. Such had been my fate the 

 previous July, when travelling to Madras from 

 Ooty via Bangalore. My transit came to grief in 

 a mud-hole in the centre of the road and in our 

 efforts to extract the wheel by means of a long 

 pole used as a lever, a felloe was smashed. This 

 necessitated a delay of two days at the Bandypore 

 bungalow, before a new felloe could be made by 

 the village artizan, and it was while thus stranded 

 far away from the haunts of civilization that I 

 first heard of the Bandypore man-eater. Having 

 nothing better to do I had strolled into the village 

 to watch the carpenter at his work, and help with 



