170 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



Many serious accidents result from the foolish way in 

 which Mahomedan attendants run forward on the fall of a 

 buffalo to cut its throat before it expires. A friend, driven 

 up into a tree by an infuriated bull, which charged and 

 watched him, after firing many shots from a light gun, suc- 

 ceeded at length in bringing him down seemingly quite 

 spent; whereupon his servant descended and ran forward, 

 knife in hand, but the bull, springing up again, pursued arid 

 slew him, and then sulkily walked off the field. In this case 

 a bullet had so struck the bull as to bring him to his knees, 

 momentarily stunned or paralysed; but not having been a 

 witness of the scene, I am unable to state precisely what 

 occurred, but cannot believe that the buffalo's condition could 

 have been such as to justify a near approach to him at that 

 moment. 



One of the very few Bengalee gentlemen whom I knew 

 to be sportsmen, was the late Rajah of Mynah (a place not 

 far from Tumlook), who used now and then to accompany me 

 on my buffalo- shooting expeditions in Jellamoota, and in and 

 around Sourabarea. Unlike the majority of his fellows, 

 whose sporting is often confined to a caricature get-up as a 

 European, he used to throw off his shoes and flowing gar- 

 ments, and girding up his loins, take manfully to the mud 

 and water. 



One day my friend the Rajah and I, finding a herd in an 

 open swamp, contrived, with some manoeuvring, to get up to 

 it within shot, and brought down a couple, of which one was 

 a bull, on whose fall one of the Rajah's followers, against our 

 warnings, advanced, knife in hand, to cut its throat. Before 

 the man got to the .bull the latter recovered his legs, and 

 seeing him hesitating, darted upon him in a headlong charge, 

 flung him up into the air, and then kneeling upon him, 

 seemed to tear with his teeth his body and clothes. The 

 bull was killed immediately, but not before he had gored and 

 trampled the life out of the unfortunate follower. 



It has been remarked above that a wounded buffalo 

 should be followed into covert with the utmost caution, one 



