493 



he means to give it a principal place in a picture which he meditates 

 upon the subject; and which, had. you been with us, I should 

 have hoped might have been also recorded elegantly and pathe- 

 tically in song. 



An old woman, looking earnestly at the largest tiger, and 

 pointing at times to his tusks, and at times lifting his fore-paws, 

 and viewing his talons, her furrows bathed in tears, in broken and 

 moaning tones narrated something to a little circle composed of 

 three brahmins and a young woman with a child in her arms. 

 No human misery could pierce the phlegm and apathy of the 

 brahmins, and with them there was not a feature softened; but 

 horror and sorrow were alternately painted in the face of the female; 

 and, from her clasping at times her child more closely to her 

 breast, I guessed the subject of the old woman's story, and upon 

 inquiry I found that I was right in my conjecture. She was 

 widowed and childless ; she owed both her misfortunes to the 

 tigers of that jungle, and most probably to those which then lay 

 dead before her; for they, it was believed, had recently carried off 

 her husband and her two sons grown up to manhood, and now she 

 wanted food: in the phrenzy of her grief she alternately described 

 her loss to the crowd, and in a wild scream demanded her hus- 

 band and her children from the tigers; indeed it was a piteous 

 spectacle ! 



The site of our encampment was well chosen; it was a small 

 sloping lawn, the verdure fresh, and skirted on three sides with 

 trees; the fourth bounded by the deep bed of a torrent-river. At 

 proper distances on this lawn, there were five large and com mo- 



