THE HIGHER NARBADA 271 



in a very dense thorny cover on the banks of a little stream. 

 Twice up and down I passed without seeing the brute, 

 but firing once into a log of wood in mistake for her, and 

 was going along the top of the cover for the third time 

 when the elephant pointed down the bank with her ex- 

 tended trunk. We threw some stones in, but nothing 

 moved; and at last a peon came up with a huge stone 

 on his head, which he heaved down the bank. Next 

 moment a yellow streak shot from the bushes, and, levelling 

 the adventurous peon, hke a flash of lightning came 

 straight at my elephant's head, when, just at the last 

 spring, I broke her back with a breech-loader, and she 

 fell over under the elephant's trunk, tearing at the earth 

 and stones and her own body in her bloody rage. She 

 had a cub in the cover, about the size of a cat, which I 

 shot on the way back. 



The method usually resorted to by old Bamanjee and 

 other native shikaris for killing panthers and leopards 

 was by tying out a kid, with a line attached to a fish- 

 hook through its ear, a pull at which makes the poor 

 little brute continue to squeak, after it has cried itself 

 to silence about its mother. No sentiment of humanity 

 interferes with the devices of the mild Hindu. A dog 

 in a pit, with a basket-work cover over it, and similarly 

 attached to a line, is equally efiective. I have known 

 panthers repeatedly to take animals they have kiUed 

 up into trees to devour, and once found the body of a child, 

 that had been killed by a panther in the Betiil district, 

 so disposed of in the fork of a tree. They are very often 

 lost, I beheve, by taking unobserved to trees. Beating 

 them out of cover with a strong body of beaters and 

 fireworks is, on the whole, the most successful way of 

 hunting these cunning brutes; but it is accompanied 

 by a good deal of risk to the beaters as well as to the 

 sportsman, if he is over- venturesome ; and it is apt, also, 

 to end in disappointment in most instances. My own 

 experience is that the majority of panthers one finds 

 are come across more by luck than good management. 



Old Bamanjee, with whom I had often been out on 

 short trips with considerable success, induced me to take 



