106 BIG-GAME SHOOTING IN UPPER BURMA 



and as the trail now took us into fairly open 

 bamboo jungle I expected to see or hear him 

 every moment. Suddenly there was a snort 

 and a crash. The tsaing had vanished without 

 even giving us a glimpse of him ! On going to 

 the spot we found the brute had been lying 

 down ! I looked at my watch. It was ten 

 minutes to six. From six in the morning till 

 six in the evening had we followed this child of 

 the devil, with only a break of twenty minutes 

 for food, and a rest of one and a half hours in 

 the middle of the day to give him an opportunity 

 of resuming his ramble, only to find him lying 

 down at nightfall ! This beast was quite the 

 worst tsaing I have ever followed. Had we got 

 near him an hour earlier, I would again have 

 gone ahead, and crept along in his tracks ; but 

 time was so short that I could no longer afford 

 to do so. The tsaing, who was changing his 

 ground, had covered about fifteen miles ; but 

 fortunately ended up two miles from a village, 

 where I was able to get a pony and ride to camp, 

 arriving at 10 p.m. 



No rain falling in the night I took the next 

 day off ; but a heavy shower fell in the evening. 

 I therefore left camp at 4 a.m. on the following 

 morning, arriving on my ground at 5.30. At 

 7 a.m. we struck overnight tracks of a solitary 

 bull, and soon came on freshly bitten grass. 

 At 7.30 we found warm droppings. Here I led, 



