214 TWO YEARS IN THE JUXGLE. 



who had heai'd all about the strike, and they were roundly abused 

 for their laziness and neglect of their families. The men looked 

 thoroughly ashamed, and each took his lecture very meekly. Poor 

 ^^Tetches ! it was probably the first time in their hves they ever 

 felt fat enough to strike, and they wanted to see how it would feel 

 to defy a white man and refuse to work. 



The next day, part of the men went back and brought away all 

 that remained of the skeleton, while I set the remaining ten, who 

 belonged to the chuckler caste — tanners — at work upon the skin to 

 f bin it down still more. They all worked upon it three days, in which 

 time thoy cut off several hundred pounds of the tough fibre. "We now 

 kept the skin spread out all the time, and it began to diy rapidly. 



Ha^dug succeeded in adding to my collection of Indian mam- 

 mals the skin of a full-sized male elephant in perfect condition, 

 I was ready to leave the hills. It was then the first week in De- 

 cember, and I had had all the hunting I wanted. "Mr. Theobald 

 was gone, and so were nearly all the people attached to the Forest 

 Department. We were then in the middle of the northeast monsoon, 

 it rained a great deal, and the forest, being now almost deserted, 

 seemed really gloomy. On the other hand, however, the elephants 

 and bison had come down in great numbers from the higher ranges, 

 and were quite thick all around Sungam and Toonacadavoo, where 

 they were seldom seen earlier in the season. In many locahties 

 where, four months previous, I had hunted through grass not more 

 than a foot high, it was then all of five or six feet. It always made 

 me feel uneasy to walk through grass as high as my head, which 

 could conceal a crouching tiger so closely one might almost stum- 

 ble over it before seeing it. It is only the abundance of game that 

 preserves the defenceless hill-people from being eaten one after 

 another, and I have often wondered that the game-killing tigers do 

 not occasionally strike down a man by mistake. There are plenty 

 of tigers on the Animallais, for we often saw their pugs, but the 

 cover for them is so continuous, and game so plentiful, that regular 

 tiger hunting is out of the question, and perhaps always will be. 



As soon as the elephant skin was dry enough to be transported, 

 I sent for three bandies to meet me at the foot of the hills, and 

 three more to cart my collection and camp equipage down. The 

 day we were to start, we loaded the carts and were almost ready 

 for a move, when a terrific rain-storm came up and delayed us for 

 some hours. About noon it cleared up, however, and being very 

 anxious to make a move, we set out. My Mulcers marched with ua 



