THE TEAK EEGION 187 



he dropped on the spot. All this occupied but a few 

 seconds, being as quick a right and left as ever I fired. 

 On turning my attention again to the first tiger, I was 

 just in time to see him reach the thick jungle some twenty 

 paces ofi, and, before I could seize another gun, he had 

 disappeared. I had time to perceive, however, that his 

 right hind leg was broken in the body; the shell must, 

 therefore, as he was hit in the left shoulder, have traversed 

 his body from stem to stern ; and yet here were none of 

 the immediate paralysing effects ascribed to these shells 

 at close quarters. On walking up to the second "tiger," 

 what was my disgust to find that it was not a tiger after 

 all, but only a huge striped hysena I had shot, having 

 mistaken his disproportionately large head in the imperfect 

 light for that of the jungle king ! The shell had passed 

 completely through his neck, but, if it exploded at all, 

 must have done so after passing out. The other was a 

 veritable tiger, however. We followed him a httle way 

 by his footprints and blood, but it was getting very dark, 

 and prudence compelled us to leave him till the morning. 

 We failed, however, to find him then, though we hunted 

 about the whole day ; and it was not till some days after 

 that a cowherd found his rotting remains beside a pool 

 of water, many miles away. 



On another occasion I secured the largest sambar horns 

 I have ever seen, in a drive. It was in the Bori teak 

 forest, a lovely little valley nestling under the northern 

 scarp of the Mahadeo hills, and surrounded on three sides 

 by its mural precipices. Being very inaccessible from the 

 plains, more teak trees have here escaped the destroying 

 timber contractor than almost anywhere else; and E., 

 D., and myself were engaged in demarcating its boundaries 

 as a reserved forest. Having toiled for some days putting 

 up cairns of stones along the open southern border, where 

 it is not enclosed by precipices, and completed the business, 

 we decided to wind up with a drive in the forest itself for 

 sambar, and the chance of a few bison whose tracks we 

 had seen during our work. The grass was so long and 

 the forest so thick that driving was then almost the only 

 possible way of getting game. We had had a number of 



