Tiger-Shooting 263 



which they kept letting off, made her move at last. 

 She sprang up with a loud roar ; but instead of coming 

 out near any of the guns, as we hoped, she rushed off 

 down through the grass right-handed, and I only saw 

 her striped back for one second, only that and her tail, 

 about sixty yards off in the grass, not enough to fire. 

 She went right off. For more than ten miles the shikaris 

 tracked her, still travelling on, and then they gave it up. 



Leaving this camp, we reached that day a place 

 called Tarwai, where we met with the first actual and 

 sad signs of the famine, which was prevalent. We 

 had passed across waste after waste, which should have 

 been rice, paddy, and other grain, but lay now all 

 uncultivated, owing to the non est of water. 



In all the villages so far they had had rice left from 

 last year, sufficient for a miserable pittance for this 

 year ; but at Tarwai the wailing, walking skeletons 

 crawled up to us heart-stirring spectacles ! They 

 clamoured for rice with their shrunken little ones in 

 their arms and of course we spared them all we could, 

 and gave them a little money to send and buy more. 

 But it was terribly little we could do for the starving, 

 hollow-eyed, weary supplicants, who, after we had 

 distributed the rice, clustered over the ground where 

 it had lain, like ants by spilled honey, searching for 

 another grain. 



The heat throughout this time could not be pictured 

 at all by any one at home. It cannot be realised by 

 those who have not felt it, and it gives the ordinary 

 Britisher no adequate idea whatever to read that it 



