SOME INDIAN STALKING AND SHOOTING. 37 



dusk, and I returned well pleased to my camp. Both stags were 

 brought in next morning. 



On the slopes of the Riwa plateau to the N. and N.-W. of the 

 Allahabad District and in the Kirwi sub-division of the Banda District 

 are numerous sambar. I have never stalked them there with any 

 success. It is impossible to move without sound on bamboo and other 

 leaves, over loose stones, at an angle of 45° and steeper. I have in 

 such country, on the few occasions on which I had the chance, had 

 the animals driven. The hill-side invariably ends above in a perpendi- 

 cular escarpment of trap rock, inaccessible except by rifts which 

 occur at differing intervals. This is locally known as the arri. The 

 slope is driven parallel to this aw', and everything on it makes sooner 

 or later for a pathway which the animals of countless ages have worn 

 along the base of the escarpment. The guns are ambushed in a line 

 on the slope at right angles to the arri, their posts being determined 

 by lot. That commanding the pathway under the escarpment is of 

 course the best, and is usually posted so as to command also one of the 

 practicable rifts leading up to safety in the forest on the plateau above. 

 The other posts are as a rule likely to shew sport only in proportion as 

 they are nearest to the uppermost one. One never knows what 

 animal may turn up in these beats. T iger, panther, bear, sambar, pig, 

 blue bull, or spotted deer (the latter more rarely) — all are represented 

 there. If a tiger is known or suspected to be in the jungle, the posts, 

 or at least the upper ones, are in carefully-made machans in trees, 

 cunningly hidden at the last moment with green boughs. The upper- 

 most post is not invariably the best as far at least as tiger is concerned ; 

 and the unerring, but to all appearance unreasonable, selection of 

 another post for their line of advance by successive tigers, is one of 

 those jungle incidents which no fellow can understand. In a certain 

 now well-known beat, which I may say that I discovered, a tiger or 

 two are killed every year ; and the beast invariably comes to one 

 particular post, the third from the top, with nothing whatever to 

 indicate the reason of his preference for that line. For sambar in this 

 jungle the very greatest caution is necessary. It is perfectly marvel- 

 lous with what complete silence so heavy a beast, with his spreading 

 head, will make his way, in front of the line of beaters, through dense 

 cover and over broken rocks. The sportsman may have sat for an 

 hour, with exemplary patience, silent, motionless and noiseless at his 

 post. A big sambar may have come up close without the gun having 

 had the faintest inkling of it, and may have been standing, suspiciously 



