6 SPORT IN ASIA AND AFRICA 



machan sitting up over a kill, though, as above 

 said, my successes were few and my failures 

 were many. Good hearing and the ability to 

 see in the dark are important qualifications for 

 success in this form of sport ; and in both of these 

 qualifications I was deficient. 



It is certainly very trying to sit up all night, 

 but to sit for four or five hours is very enjoyable ; 

 and in the Central Provinces the plucky little 

 aborigines are always ready to come and help 

 you down at any hour you may appoint. The 

 shikari in the districts in the United Provinces, 

 which lie along the edge of the Terai, is, so far as 

 my experience goes, a coward, and is afraid even 

 to visit a kill except on the back of an elephant. 



I have shot in India good specimens of tiger, 

 panther, bear, buffalo, gaur or bison, and also 

 good sambur, swamp-deer, barasingh and chital 

 stags and good black buck, nilgai, four-horned 

 antelope, and kakar, or barking deer, but I was not 

 fortunate enough to secure any trophy in India 

 which was out of the common. All the heads in 

 the illustrations were, however, obtained either 

 by fair stalking or by good shooting in chance 

 encounters, when I v/as still-hunting in the forests 

 in the early morning or the late evening. I got 

 some good heads whilst still-hunting in the 

 Central Provinces, but it must be confessed 

 that I also shot a good many chital and sambur 

 stags which ought to have been spared. It is 

 difficult in this kind of shooting to pick your 

 head : you must shoot at once, or the animal 

 vanishes. 



I had some fine sport in India, but my best 



