INTRODUCTORY 5 



success. More than once, when I had made a 

 mess of things, I resolved to leave the pursuit 

 to others ; but, like Omar Khayyam, " Repentance 

 oft I swore ; I swore, but was I sober when I 

 swore ? " ; and the discovery of fresh tracks, or an 

 invitation to join an expedition with the chance 

 of a tiger, were too much for my resolutions. 



Sitting up at night over a kill for a tiger is 

 considered by some people to be poaching and 

 unsportsmanlike, but I entirely disagree with 

 this view. It will generally be found that the 

 people who condemn this form of sport admit, 

 upon cross-examination, that when they have sat 

 up nothing has come. They had not, probably, the 

 patience and the fortitude — and very consider- 

 able fortitude is often required — to sit quiet 

 enough. I heard some native shikaris, on one 

 occasion, discussing the merits of a deceased 

 Indian gentleman. " Kaisa machan ka baith- 

 newala tha ! " (And what a sitter he was in a 

 machan !) said one. The remark made me laugh 

 at the time, but there are unquestionably just 

 as many grades of sitters in a machan as there 

 are grades of trackers, or of rifle-shots. 



I had not much fortune when sitting up either 

 for tigers or panthers ; but, in my opinion, it is 

 fine sport, and the man who, by sitting motionless 

 for hours, outwits and shoots a tiger in this way, 

 in entitled to far more credit than a sportsman 

 who is led up to a machan in a beat arranged by 

 someone else, and then kills a tiger by a shot at a 

 few yards' distance. Certainly some of the most 

 interesting and exciting experiences I have had 

 when tiger or panther shooting have been in a 



