192 



TWO YEARS IN THE JUNGLE. 



I may remark in passing, that Mr. Morgan, who was about such 

 a youngster as myself, in many respects, showed me at his house 

 a really wonderful collection of hunting trophies, all shot and 

 mounted by his own hands. Ranged around his dining-room were 

 about twenty well-mounted heads of bison, among which was the 

 young bull which mauled him so severely, and the walls were liter- 

 ally covered with skulls, antlers, and stuffed heads of sambur, 

 axis deer, muntjac, boar, bison, bear, etc., etc. 



In his parlor were two mounted tiger-heads, two splendid ele- 

 phant tusks, a tiger-skin mat, a cabinet of bird's eggs, and many 

 smaller specimens of great interest. It is truly refreshing to meet a 

 sportsman who is such an industrious saver of trophies, and who, 

 like myself, cannot bear to kill an animal and let it go utterly to 

 waste. 



Among other things, Mr. Morgan showed me his " battery," con- 

 sisting of eight deadly weapons ! The largest was a smooth- 

 bore, B. L., C. F. gun, No. 4-bore with a barrel 3^ feet long, carry- 

 ing twelve drachms of powder and a four-oimce hall. This is the 

 calibre recommended by Sir Samuel Baker, Sanderson, and other 

 noted sportsmen, for elephant shooting ! It requires three coolies 

 to carry this gun, turn and turn about on a day's shooting, and Mr. 

 M. fires it from a small tripod-stand he has invented for the pur- 

 pose. Such a weapon is really a young cannon, and is perhaps 

 such a one as Professor Ward had in mind when he wrote me at the 

 last to " get a howitzer if you can't bring down elephants with your 

 smaller ordnance." 



It is a difficult matter to prepare, in the jungle, a large bison 

 skin so that it can be mounted successfully, and for this reason I 

 will describe how I accomplished the task. 



My largest bull was killed about 10 a.m., and, being fully pre- 

 pared, we measured and skinned him immediately. We removed 

 the skin in the same way as described for the tiger, except that to 

 skin the head, we cut the skin loose from around the base of each 

 horn, then slit the back of the neck and head into a perfect Y, with 

 the long limb extending along the back of the neck, and each of 

 the short ones reaching up to the base of one horn at the back. 

 The head can thus be skinned very easily and lifted out through 

 this hole. We carried the skin home slung under a pole — a heavy 

 load for four men — and after spreading it out on a bit of bare 

 ground we all went at it with our knives, to thin it down. On the 

 back, and sides of the neck, the skin was more than an inch thick. 



