CHAPTER VIII. 



Tigers and Tiger-shooting Pursuit and Destruction of a notorious Man- 

 eater Native Ideas on the subject of Claims upon Europeans 

 Attempted Extortions Our Courts admirably adapted to meet the 

 fondness of Natives for protracted Litigation and vindictive 

 Prosecutions. 



I WAS a " Griff," and had not yet seen a tiger, when an 

 invitation came from a friend, who was the Salt Agent of 

 Chittagong, to try my " prentice-hand " upon a tigress, which 

 was playing havoc with the salt manufacture of one of his 

 " Arungs." It appeared that for three months previously 

 she had taken up her quarters in that locality, and had killed, 

 wounded, or carried off sixty " Molunghees" and fuel-cutters; 

 also, that the local " Shikarees" who had failed to track and 

 destroy her, had lost heart and had given her up as an 

 enchanted demon, quite beyond their powers of destruction. 

 Consequently such a terror had been established, that men 

 could not be induced to go out to cut and fetch in fuel to 

 keep up the fires for boiling down the brine. It may be pre- 

 sumed also that the European residents were at that parti- 

 cular period no more sportsmen than was my friend the 

 agent ; or that they had neither the time nor the inclination 

 for a pursuit, which might be long and tedious as well as 

 ineffectual. However that may be, the man-eater lived, killed, 

 and ate, and the salt manufacture dwindled down to next 

 to nothing in the "Arung" selected by her as the field of 

 her depredations. 



It has been stated that I was a "Griff" then, but in 

 addition to total inexperience, the firearms I owned, though 

 good in themselves, were not quite what they should be with 



