250 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA 



in one district than in another I consider to be that I 

 have mentioned. Great grazing districts, where the cattle 

 come only for a limited season, are always the worst. 

 Where the cattle remain all the year round, as in Nimar, 

 the tigers rarely take to man-eating. 



As soon as I could ride in the howdah, and long before 

 I could do more than hobble on foot, I marched to a place 

 called Charkhera, where the last kill had been reported. 

 My usually straggling following was now compressed into 

 a close body, preceded and followed by the baggage- 

 elephants, and protected by a guard of police with muskets, 

 peons with my spare guns, and a whole fosse of match- 

 locked shikaris. Two deserted villages were passed on 

 the road, and heaps of stones at intervals showed where a 

 traveller had been struck down. A better hunting-ground 

 for a man-eater certainly could not be. Thick scrubby 

 teak jungle closed in the road on both sides ; and alongside 

 of it for a great part of the way wound a narrow deep water- 

 course, overshadowed by thick jaman bushes, and with 

 here and there a small pool of water still left. I hunted 

 along this nala the whole way, and found many old tracks 

 of a very large male tiger,' which the shikaris declared 

 to be the man-eater. There were none more recent, how- 

 ever, than several days. Charkhera was also deserted on 

 account of the tiger, and there was no shade to speak of ; 

 but it was the most central place within reach of the usual 

 haunts of the brute, so I encamped here, and sent the 

 baggage-elephants back to fetch provisions. In the even- 

 ing I was startled by a messenger from a place called Le, 

 on the Moran river, nearly in the direction I had come from, 

 who said that one of a party of pilgrims who had been 

 travelling unsuspectingly by a jungle road had been carried 

 off by the tiger close to that place. Early next morning 

 I started off with two elephants, and arrived at the spot 

 about eight o'clock. The man had been struck down where 

 a small ravine leading down to the Moran crosses a lonely 

 pathway a few miles east of Le. The shoulders-stick with 



^ A little practice suffices to distinguish the tracks of tigers of 

 difierent ages and sexes. The old male has a much squarer track, so 

 to speak, than the female, which leaves a more oval footprint. 



