2 9 8 IN THE INDIAN JUNGLE. 



Koderma. The fourth in the line of coolies was 

 a man with a black umbrella over his head. His 

 wife, with an infant child on her hip, was following. 

 The foremost coolie fancied he saw something 

 move behind a felled tree some distance ahead. He 

 thought nothing more of the circumstance until he 

 had passed the tree, when he heard a scream from 

 the woman, who was standing in the middle of the 

 road, with her child at her feet, shouting : " The 

 tiger ! The tiger ! See ! See ! " There, sure 

 enough, was the tiger carrying off the man with the 

 umbrella, which he still grasped in his hand ; the 

 open umbrella catching in the brushwood and im- 

 peding the progress of the tiger. The men raised 

 a shout, and moved a few paces in the direction 

 of the brute, when it dropped its prey and turned 

 on the men, snarling ferociously, which at once put 

 them to flight. One of the men remarked that the 

 tiger had lost its left ear and its eyesight appeared 

 defective, as if it had been wounded by a charge of 

 shot. It is of large size and of a light tawny colour. 

 Hitherto it has baffled all the attempts of Euro- 

 pean and native shikarees to shoot it. So great 

 has been the loss of human life, and so great the 

 terror this man-eater has inspired in the neighbour- 

 hood, that it behoves the Government to take 

 special measures to destroy it. 



Jiban's tale was true as regards the peculiarities 

 of this brute. At first he took to killing and eating 

 only golas. Jiban says that it was because the 

 golas always smell of |' cattle a common food of 

 tigers and that this odour attracted him at first. 



