THE SAL FORESTS 317 



pudding and mince-pies out of Crosse and Blackwell's 

 tins. Sundry glasses of whisky toddy, imbibed round a 

 rattling bonfire lit in front of tlie tents, were fully justified 

 by the really severe cold after sunset. Stalking the hdrd- 

 singJid, however, afiords the finest sport; and from the 

 less exclusively nocturnal habits of the animal, as well as 

 the open character of the country, resembles deer-stalking 

 in Scotland more than any other of our field sports. 



When hurrying through this country in January, en 

 route to the eastern forests, I halted for two days in the 

 upper vaUey of the Halon to stalk the red deer, which I 

 had never before seen. The grass was very thick and 

 long, and, being still green, was entirely unburnt. At a 

 place called Motinala, where a deep branching watercourse 

 crosses the pathway several times, I was walking ahead of 

 my followers, when I came on the remains of a poor wan- 

 derer, who had evidently not long before been killed by 

 a tiger. He was a religious mendicant ; and his long iron 

 tongs, begging-bowl hollowed from a skuil, and cocoa-nut 

 hooka were scattered about in the bottom of the nala, 

 where he had been resting on his weary march, together 

 with tresses of his long matted hair and a shred or two 

 of cloth. The bones were all broken to pieces, and many 

 of them were missing altogether. A Banjara drover had 

 been taken off near the same spot about a week before, 

 so that it was not without some misgivings that I wandered 

 off the road through the long grass to look for red deer 

 towards the skirts of the hills. To hunt for the tiger in 

 such an ocean of grass-cover would have been hopeless. 

 I skirted the hiUs to the right of the road from here to 

 the camping-ground at Mangli, very soon getting drenched 

 to the skin passing through the high grass dripping with 

 the morning dew. Towards the hills the grass was shorter, 

 and the plain much cut up by deep fissures in the black, 

 heavy soil. I saw several small herds of deer wending 

 their way towards the clumps of sal forest on the skirt 

 of the hills before I found any in a position that would 

 admit of stalking. At last I marked a small parcel of hinds, 

 with two fair-looking stags, disappear over a low rising 

 ground, slowly feeding their way towards the forest ; and 



