24 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
spherical bullets as well as with shot, these two 
weapons completing a battery that in these days 
would be considered quite inadequate for the soli- 
tary hunter of big game. It is partly to this 
inadequacy, partly to an absolute inexperience in 
shooting from an elephant, that the signal defeat 
suffered in the first encounter may be traced. The 
camp at Sathidna, a*depot seven miles from Dudua, 
was, and still is, an ideal headquarters for general 
shooting, being within reach of the haunts of all the 
various fauna of the district; and it was here that 
one morning a Gujar arrived and squatted on the 
ground in front of my tent, patiently awaiting an 
audience. 
The Gujars are a tribe apart, who keep herds of 
buffaloes, and make a living by the sale of milk and 
butter. They dwell in the forest, selecting a place 
for their huts in the vicinity of grazing and water, 
moving on as these become scarce, and roaming far 
into the Himalaya in the summer. Their buffaloes 
return to the cattle-station twice a day, morning 
and evening, and after being milked wander off 
again into the forest, sometimes alone, at others 
accompanied by a youthful Gujar, who often reclines 
on the broad back of one of the cows. The Gujars 
know no fear ; they were in the past a martial race, 
and to-day they show no subservience, and present 
picturesque figures as they stand on their high 
wooden sandals, robed in black blankets and armed 
with formidable six-foot bamboos. They are one of 
the numerous forest tribes with whom the Forest 
Officer comes into frequent contact, and from whom 
he learns the characteristics and habits of an un- 
