STALKING EHINOCEKOS. 257 



were sometimes fired at from the houses of the pioneer 

 planters ; and I have been shown a spot on which one of 

 them stood behind a bungalow, preventing the occupants' 

 dinner being served, till driven away by several shots, the 

 kitchen in this country not forming a part of the dwelling- 

 house as in Europe and countries of the temperate zone. 



In the " Soonderbuns " it is possible under the most 

 favourable circumstances to seek the rhinoceros on foot ; but 

 quite apart from the extreme unhealthiness of those forests, 

 that sport is attended by so many difficulties and discomforts, 

 that it is not much engaged in by other than the most en- 

 thusiastic sportsmen. I have had myself very little expe- 

 rience of it, but am not altogether unacquainted with it, 

 having during my early career in this country often visited 

 those wildernesses of evil repute, which swarm with game 

 beyond all doubt in many places, particularly on the sea-face, 

 and marshes within the woods, and lastly, on the skirts of the 

 remotest cultivation. 



Along the base of the hills in the " Doars " this animal 

 may occasionally be met with by the " gour " or deer-stalker ; 

 for in those regions rarely trod by the foot of man, he roams 

 without fear or dispute as a monarch, to whom even the 

 mighty elephant must give way, and before whose ponderous 

 strength and weight the morose bull-buffalo must bend the 

 knee and kiss the dust. 



Mr. Robertson Pughe writes to me : " I was once 

 marching with a detachment of Frontier Police at the foot 

 of the Bhutan Hills in the middle of May. Nearly all my 

 men being, or having been, down with fever, the march was a 

 melancholy one in the extreme. In course of time we arrived 

 at the margin of a small pond in the midst of a dense forest, 

 and while the men rested, I took a turn round the water in 

 search of tracks. Finding some of rhinoceros, I followed 

 them. The mud left upon the bushes and trees by the sides 

 of the .animals was barely dry, but I failed to come up to 

 them, and time at my command not allowing of a prolonged 

 pursuit, I gave a ' coo-ee ' to call up my men, bitterly to regret 



s 



