MAULED BY A PANTHER. 
By W. B. M. 
{ vin from my diaries that I had killed fifty-six panthers and 
forty-six tigers—a total of one hundred and two felines—when I 
was defeated by a panther in the following manner :— 
I had been camped for 14 or 15 days close to the great earthen 
dam of the Waghad lake, looking after my police and revenue sub- 
ordinates, who had to collect and keep on the work 3,000 labourers 
required by the Engineering Department to secure the dam from 
injury during tho rains, when I heard of a tiger being in the Ram- 
sej hills, distant about ten miles. 1 at once despatched a tent to 
Tongaldhara, a small village below the hill, and sent out four or five 
of my police constables and the same number of sepoys to collect 
information of the tiger and mark him down jf possible. The day 
after my arrival at Tongaldhara (31st May 1884), a villager came 
hurriedly to my tent about nine o’clock in the morning, announced 
that a tiger—it turned out to be a la rge panther—had been seen by 
the paltyas (watchers) at carly dawn crossing over the hill, and that 
it had been satisfactorily marked down on the far side. 
I started on my pony to ride round the hill, while I sent my 
policemen and the few beaters I could collect in Tongaldhara across 
it with orders to meet mo at Dherrigam village, 
When I arrived at Dherrigam I was pointed out the side of a hill, 
some 800 feet high, in which the so-called tiger was saidto be 
marked down. This hill was crowned throughout its length with a 
massive natural wall of trap rock, varying from 150 to 200 feet 
high, having about its middle three or four deep rents or clefts 
forming passes from one side of the hill to the other, and through 
one of these the panther had been seen to enter the ravine at 
dawn. 
Looking through my glasses I could discern 15 or 20 paltyas 
(watchers) posted in twos and threes at various commanding points 
on the hill side. The white head-dress or clothing of some render- 
ing them conspicuous on the black 
easily distinguishable by their dark 
the tree on which they we 
rocks on which they sat, others 
skins against the light. bark of 
re perched, or against:the yellow grass on 
which they squatted, It wag 
inch without detection with all 
Beckoning down some of them 
impossible for the beast to move/an 
these fellows round the jungle. 
from the hills, I enquired where the 
