110 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



village across the great ravine, whom we found cutting a 

 dhya on one of the hill-sides as we passed. I had found 

 the footprints of the Dhupgarh tiger in the bed of the 

 stream, and was following them up with one of the Korkiis, 

 when I was recalled by a whistle to a place where the tracks 

 of the two bulls had been discovered. They were making 

 for a high plateau covered with thick bamboo jungle at 

 the top of the valley, and we at once started on the trail. 

 It was clear everywhere, and the men ran it at a sharp 

 walk nearly to the top of the hill. Here, however, a 

 sheet of rock intervened, and above it was a mass of large 

 boulders intermixed with heavy clumps of bamboo. We 

 were a long time puzzling the track through here, as the 

 buUs had stopped and fed about on the young bamboo 

 shoots. At last, however, one of the men we had picked 

 up took a long cast over the top of the hill, and returned 

 with the news that the bulls had separated, one going off 

 to the south, apparently in the direction of a well-known 

 haunt in the Bori teak forest, while his companion had 

 gone off up the hill in the opposite direction. We decided 

 to follow the latter, as it led more nearly in the direction 

 of home. The wilderness of bamboo-covered hiUs and 

 deep intervening rocky-bottomed or swampy deUs, over 

 and through which we carried that trail till the sun was 

 getting low, is beyond description. Every now and then 

 we thought we were just upon him, freshly-cropped bam- 

 boos and droppings showing that he was not far in front. 

 But he had never stopped for long. This restlessness I 

 afterwards fotmd to be the habit of bison which have 

 recently been disturbed. He was evidently making ofi 

 steadily for some distant retreat. We started several 

 herds of sambar and sohtary stags, and once a bear bustled 

 out of a nala we were crossing, and bundled off down the 

 hill-side ; but we were bent on nobler game and durst not 

 fire at them. By evening we had got right to the further 

 side of the great ravine beyond Jambo-Dwip, and the 

 peak of Dhupgarh glowed pink and distant in the rays of 

 the declining sun. We were descending a long slope 

 among thin trees and high yellow grass, and I was a little 

 ahead of the rest, when I suddenly saw the head and 

 horns of a bison looking at me over a low thicket, and was 



