14 DESCRIPTION OF COUNTRY. 



This is the way in which Tigers are shot in the Rohilkund, Oudh, and Nepal Terai, in 

 all of which hunting is frequently successfully carried on by beating every likely place, 

 regardless whether Tigers are actually known to inhabit them or not. 



In the Sikkim Terai, the Bhutan Dooars, and still further east in Assam, however, the 

 jungles are so extensive and dense, and the grass and reeds so high, that unless Tigers 

 are marked down, it is in many places utterly useless to look for them. Even if found they 

 could not be killed in the dense beds of reeds which frequently prove a safe asylum for the 

 Rhinoceros and the Buffalo. The Gaur also occasionally takes refuge in such fastnesses, but 

 as a rule he prefers to spend the day under the shade of the umbrageous trees, whose heavy 

 masses adorn the lowest skirts of the hills. 



The habits of each animal will, however, be more fully treated of in the proper place. 



Having thus conducted the reader in fancy from the west of Thibet to the south-east 

 end of the Himalayan range, I will ask him to accompany me to our north-west frontier. 



Here he will find that between Peshawur and Jhelum, from the foot of the Himalayas to 

 the junction of the Punjab rivers, the land is broken up in a most fantastic way. Low ranges 

 of hills, of which the Salt Range is the highest and most conspicuous, run in various 

 directions ; while, besides these upheavings of the soil, it is also hollowed out in an extra- 

 ordinary manner, producing as it were a second series of hills and valleys, the summits of 

 these lower hills only reaching the level of the bases of the ranges above. 



Thousands of ravines of various depth and width intersect the country in every 

 direction, and any one unacquainted with the locality would find the greatest difficulty in 

 making his way from point to point, even on foot. To wheeled carriages, and even to beasts 

 of burden, the country is impassable, except along two or three lines of communication, 

 of which the grand trunk road is the only good one. An invading army would have hard 

 work in fighting its way from Attock to Jhelum. Water has evidently been the power 

 at work which has so furrowed the country, and it would be interesting to know how many 

 centuries were required to produce such results. 



Oorial and Chikara are scattered all over this country, inhabiting alike the hills and the 

 ravines. 



On the Indus leaving the rocky hills — between which it has hitherto been imprisoned — 

 at Kalabagh, it opens out into a wider channel ; the soil being soft and sandy, the course 

 of the river is constantly changing ; the bank on one side may be seen falling in at the rate 

 of many acres a day, while the earth and sand thus swept away accumulate and form islands 

 in other places. These islands and the banks of the river where not cultivated, are generally 

 covered with long grass and 'jhclo.' In former times the Swamp Deer (or ' Grind,' as it 

 is here called) used to be common, but it is now very rare. 



A large expanse of sandy desert extends from the right bank of the Indus to the low 

 rocky ridges which form the line of our western frontier ; and a more inhospitable looking 

 country cannot be imagined than the ' Derajat.' From Dera Ismail Khan, one of our 

 Frontier Stations, to the hills, is a distance of about forty miles. On one of the highest peaks 

 the small Sanitarium of Sheikh Boodeen has been established, to which people from Bunnoo 



