82 Sporting Notes in the Far East. 



hills and ravines around the anchorage, contain (as I know by 

 practical experience) tigers of no mean size ; and perhaps the 

 following short story connected with one of these brutes, is worth 

 relating whether it reads to my discredit or no, I cannot do 

 more than leave the reader to judge. 



A friend and myself started early one morning, in quest of 

 woodcock. We landed on the right, facing the head of the bay, and 

 struck inland. After walking some time we came across a deep 

 wooded ravine, having a small stream running along at the bottom ; 

 the place at once striking us as an ideal home, for the bird of the 

 long bill. So we forthwith decided to divide, and by each taking 

 one side, work the gully up to the top. 



Some time after separating, when pushing my way through the 

 tangled undergrowth ; I was unpleasantly startled by hearing some 

 distance ahead, a most frightful noise, which evidently proceeded 

 from the throat of some animal, and which sounded to me, for want 

 of a better definition, more like a deep guttural cough, than anything 

 else. I naturally pulled up ; but not hearing it again, thought my 

 ears must have deceived me, and walked on for about another 

 hundred yards ; when again came the horrid sound, but this 

 time much closer. And not till then did it flash across my mind, 

 that I must be approaching the lair of a tiger. 



The ravine was an excessively lonely place, without a tree bigger 

 than a gooseberry bush within five hundred yards of where I was 



