A SKETCH IN AN INDIAN JUNGLE 11 



prevented our being provided with such weapons as would have 

 given us a chance against the largest game ; yet a particularly 

 fresh rhinoceros spoor, promising an early opportunity of seeing 

 the ponderous heast at home, was too tempting to pass by, so 

 with a gun only, and on no deadly thoughts intent, we followed 

 it in single file. 



The spoor was deeply sunk at first in the deep mud, the holes 

 half filled with water ; then the horny toes had sharply cut the 

 smoothly- stamped oval footmarks of an elephant, crossed and 

 recrossed here and there by those of many a deer species, before 

 it had entered the forest on one of the many hard-trodden narrow 

 paths. Soon a coolie called attention to the very recent spoor of 

 three other rhinoceros which here had joined our path from 

 another direction, followed it for a short distance, and then had 

 left it again to seek other pastures. 



On we went, sometimes having to stoop and sometimes almost 

 to creep under the thick tangled bushes through which the 

 animal had forced its way, scratching and scraping its back 

 against the woven mass, leaving every branch covered with the 

 mud which, when rolling in the morass, had adhered to the 

 ponderous creature's back and sides. A little further on it had 

 had another roll in a puddle by the way, the benefit of which we 

 soon got when following it, sometimes on our hands and knees, 

 and pushing our way through the jungle until the clothes were 

 covered with mud. Suddenly, when turning the corner of a 

 thick bush, without the slightest warning we came upon and 

 almost slipped down the greasy bank into a small round pool, 

 in which no less than four immense rhinoceros were lying, 

 showing only their heads and backs. There they were, within 

 two yards of us ; but there they did not long remain, for appa- 

 rently, as startled as we by the sudden rencontre, out they 

 rushed with a snort like that of a wheezy steam engine and 

 any amount of splashing, and up the bank they bounded with 

 a speed which would have seemed impossible to an animal 

 apparently so unwieldy. There was only just time to jump 

 aside, during which decidedly hasty retreat I caught my foot 

 in a root and fell headlong behind a tree luckily beyond the 

 path, my gun being projected some distance further. Up rushed 

 one rhinoceros along the path we had just quitted, snorting 

 furiously, the others going in different directions, but all passing 



