TRACKERS AND TRACKING 173 



a beast when he has only passed an hour or two 

 before, to follow tracks twenty-four hours old must 

 necessarily involve a long, stern chase ; but, then, 

 Burmans never seem to take into consideration 

 the animal's habits, and regard every bison and 

 tsaing as a beast who is always steadily marching 

 away from them in a more or less straight line. 

 I have endeavoured to show that this is not the 

 case ; indeed, if it were, we should never get 

 up to our beast at all, and it would very soon 

 starve to death. If we could only track at night, 

 the short time taken to come up with the animal 

 would be a revelation to some of us. The reader 

 may ask why, if my reasoning is correct, experi- 

 enced hunters will have nothing to say to a 

 track that is two days old. It may be argued 

 that if the beast sticks more or less to the same 

 feeding-grounds, it should not take very much 

 longer to overtake him than when fairly fresh 

 tracks are found. I will admit that there is 

 something in this, and I have not the slightest 

 doubt that if tracks two or three days old were 

 followed, the animal would occasionally be found 

 fairly close at hand. I say occasionally advisedly 

 and for this reason. Neither bison nor tsaing — 

 elephants least of all — restrict themselves ordin- 

 arily to one feeding-ground, or to one particular 

 jungle. Apart from the fact that all the pachy- 

 derms change their ground entirely from time 

 to time, according to the season of the year 



