274 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 



and an endeavour must also be made to prevent many people 

 coming to have a peep at the carcase ; as though the tiger is not 

 specially timid at night, I have known of cases where, on account 

 of the traces of numerous visitors during the day, the tiger has 

 found it unadvisable to return at night. 



With properly armed and trained hunters, and also with dogs, 

 one can trace, when some of the bait has been eaten, the direction 

 taken by the tiger, but this is often difficult and sometimes 

 fruitless. 



The almost entirely inaccessible and densely overgrown spot 

 which the tiger choses for his "kraton"* makes it extremely 

 fatiguing for Europeans to track him ; but, hard though it be, it is 

 a possibility to find a poisoned tiger ; to track a healthy tiger is, 

 in my opinion, except by a stroke of good luck, a hopeless task. 



The well-known tiger hunts of the English in Bengal are mostly 

 carried out in an entirely different kind of country. There 

 are, as a rule, extensive plains with comparatively moderate undu- 

 lations. The jungles (thick canebrake and scrub) and the nullahs 

 ( small ravines, in which a rivulet or brook meanders and which 

 are sometimes also overgrown ) offer little hindrance to the hunter, 

 who places himself, with some good weapons, some bottles of 

 soda-water, and the invariable " cheroots" ;in a so-called ~howdah on 

 the back of the elephant, with a mahout to guide the animal. The 

 fearless, sharp-sighted elephants do duty as beaters, and so the 

 tigers, roused by a long row of elephants and huntsmen, are 

 shot down from above from the moving panggung.f 



Even if we had here trained elephants, they would be useless 

 in Java (except on occasional plains here and there), and espe- 

 cially so in the steep thickly wooded ravines of the greater part 

 of the Preanger. 



After prolonged drought, tracking is naturally more difficult 

 than in wet weather, when the ground shows the trace of the game 

 more plainly. If it is not found plentifully near the carcase, an 



* Palace. 



f Elevated stage, platform, watch-tower. 



