322 Sport and L ife in the Further Himalaya 



hearing which, the mother promptly wheeled 

 round and came straight at me. My orderly 

 with a second rifle missed her, but she went down 

 to my second barrel when not five paces away. 

 A miss here would certainly have meant a maul- 

 ing. 



Another time I had shot a nearly full-grown 

 cub from a tree towards the close of a tiger 

 beat. A bear that was following close behind, 

 most probably the mother, on hearing the shot, 

 to my astonishment deliberately stopped and 

 began looking up in the trees to discover her 

 unseen foe. The Bhils of Central India, real 

 jungle people, treat bears in a very offhand sort 

 of way in fact, pay them no courtesy at all. 

 During a beat, I recollect seeing one of them 

 run after a bear and with his stick catch him 

 a sounding thwack on the part that no self- 

 respecting animal should show to his enemy. 

 Not that this really proves anything, for every 

 one who knows the "Bagri" Bhil will testify 

 to his foolhardy pluck even when in the presence 

 of the tiger. 



In the Himalaya the black bear is an individual 

 that demands much more respect. He is, in fact, 

 as Artemus Ward says, very " onreliable." Kipling's 

 picture of Adamzad 



