68 



THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY, 



they began to pipe and trumpet, with their trunks, and off 

 they all scampered, with the exception of that on which his 

 Excellency sat, and one other. What with digging the iron 

 hook into their heads; and by dint of kicks, coaxing, and 

 abuse, several were brought to the scratch, and among 

 them the one belonging to the writer of these lines. 



Coming to where the tiger lay, we saw him in the atti- 

 tude of springing, his eyes glaring through the grass. 

 After some few shots, among which, by monstrous luck, 

 was one from my own gun, he yielded up his life, which 

 till to-day had doubtless passed far from the busy haunts 

 of man, shunning all but the society of his own immediate 

 family,and stained with the slaughter of a thousand bullocks. 

 Packing the dead, or, in sporting phrase, "bagging" the 

 tiger, on the top of a pad elephant, we commenced a 

 search for another. In a few minutes we roused two, and 

 off they bolted; it was beautiful to see them cantering 

 away, and now and then standing on their hind feet to see 

 whereabout the enemy was. These two soon separated; 

 the largest took to the right, and seemed disposed to force 

 our line, as he came back towards us: he effected his pur- 

 pose, but was felled by a shot; other shots followed 

 quickly, and he soon was despatched. Of this fight I saw 

 but little, having gone alone after my "own bird;" there 

 were two small pad elephants with me; the beast was 

 hunted backwards and forwards, when, on getting close to 

 him, he charged one of the small elephants, upon which 

 there was a man with a spear; with this weapon the man 

 beat him off, the elephant running away as fast as he could. 

 Quitting this, he attacked the other elephant, and in the 

 hurry to get away, a man that was on his back fell off 

 almost at the tiger's feet: I was obliged to stop and pick 

 him up. 



Having the misfortune to break the loose ramrod while 

 ramming down a ball, nothing remained to me but patience, 

 which of all virtues is less known or understood in tiger- 

 shooting than in any other pursuit, and all that could be 

 done was to keep the animal in view till the rest of the 

 party came up from the conquest of the second. His entry 

 into some thick grass being marked, the line advanced, and 

 soon came upon him in some deep water, which he could 

 not cross without swimming. Upon being disturbed, he 

 turned and sprang up, "seizing an elephant by the root of 

 the tail; off they both went, amid the shouts and shots of 

 the party. We had no regard to the person on the ele- 

 phant, to the cooly or assistant who was standing with his 

 feet within an inch of the tiger's teeth, or to the elephant 

 himself, but, with a stoical indifference to the safety of all 

 three, crack, crack, went the guns; it was in all ways a 

 feu-de-joie. 



After the tiger had ridden en croupe for twenty yards 



or thereabouts, he fell dead, pierced by eight or ten balls. 

 He proved to be a young male, not full grown: the other 

 two, a full grown male and female, were most likely his 

 respected parents. While he was hanging on by the tail, 

 the elephant, not liking his outside passenger, tried all 

 means to dislodge him; he kicked with all Ii is might, and 

 put out a hind leg to pull him under his body: these 

 kicks and cuffs must have been as serviceable to the tiger 

 as a fall from the seventh heaven. The infinite dexterity 

 with which so unwieldy an animal as the elephant can 

 hook in a tiger, wild hog, or deer, with his hind leg is in- 

 credible. When once within the chancery limits of his 

 four legs, no ingenuity or force can extricate the unlucky 

 object from the process which it undergoes. A ball in the 

 hands of a juggler docs not change sides with greater cele- 

 rity, nor is there any bread in Christendom more tho- 

 roughly kneaded. A full grown tiger is reduced, by this 

 operation, to a mere mummy. After the termashu or sport 

 was over, the elephant was inspected, to ascertain if he 

 had been wounded; no marks were discernible, which to 

 all of us seemed the oddest thing in the whole business. 



No one, save the tiger himself, was less pleased at the 

 recklessness of our proceedings, than the gentleman on the 

 elephant, whose situation was not, by any train of reason- 

 ing, an enviable one; but how he, or any other person, 

 could expect that such a batch of bumpkins in the myste- 

 ries of tiger shooting should be able, on their first finding, 

 to behave with the least leaven of reflection, or approach 

 to decorum, is certainly beyond all comprehension. The 

 party returned to the camp at sunset, having left it at half 

 past three, thus doing all our work in an hour and a half, 

 and within a mile of camp. I have been, perhaps, too dif- 

 fuse on this subject, but it was the coup d'essai of every 

 one of the party, and its proving so good, and serving, 

 though in an imperfect manner, to show what tiger shoot- 

 ing is, will, it is to be hoped, plead in excuse for the pro- 

 lixity of the narration. 



The little elephant, whose rider fell off his back, ran 

 away to the jungles, and no tidings of the truant have 

 since been gained. — Jlrcher's Tour in India. 



SPORTING IN BENGAL. 



From the London Sporting Magazine 



On Sunday, Sept. 9th, 182-, I bade farewell to my 

 Calcutta friends with a dark feeling of presentiment, 

 which told me that most of us had parted to meet no 

 more; and which foreboding time has but too well con- 



