204 Wild Beasts 



advanced elsewhere. This will be a durora against the 

 tigers of a district, our hunting-grounds lie in historic 

 spots, and the party is accompanied by elephants, baggage 

 animals, attendants, and all the varied appliances that 

 belong to a raid of this kind conducted upon a large scale. 

 Close to our camp lie the crumbling cedghas, shrines, 

 tombs, and fortress palaces of a race of princes now 

 extinct, and seated in a kiosk around whose crumbling 

 walls half-effaced Persian and Arabic inscriptions tell of 

 the beauty of some girl whose bright eyes closed ages 

 ago, and whose career of ineffectual passion finds a fit 

 emblem in the pishash, or transient dust column that 

 glides across the plain, let us attempt to forecast the 

 events of to-morrow. More can be foretold than one 

 would suppose. The tiger's size and age, the configura- 

 tion of the ground, his previous habits of life, and the 

 places where shade and water are to be found, will 

 certainly affect his movements after he has been roused, 

 and when the shikdris come in we shall know all 

 this. Here is the head huntsman now, who comes 

 back from his scout to make a report to the "Cap- 

 tain of the hunt," an experienced sportsman always 

 elected on such occasions to take a general direction of 

 affairs, and manoeuvre our elephants in the field. Mo- 

 hammed Kasim Ali is a typical figure and wofth looking 

 at ; a small withered being with a dingy turban wound 

 around his straggling elf locks ; dressed in 'a ragged shirt 

 of Mhowa green, and lugging a matchlock as long as 

 himself loaded half way up the barrel. He bears the big 

 bison horn of coarse slow-burning native powder, and a 



