COLONEL nightingale's LETTER. 
211 
List week's shikar ; having suffered much from fever, this was 
the first time I was able to go out in February. On the 13th 
I chulled out forty miles to Morchee, breakfasted, picketed 
buffaloes and started on my elephant on a chance hunt to a 
place where Hamilton, the Commissioner, had seen four 
tigers the week before. I was moving along the bed of a 
river looking out for anything that might turn up, when Crib 
gave a bark ; 1 pulled up and saw a commotion in a thick 
patch of ' jow * (Cyprus) jungle. I suspected it must be some 
big animal so told the cooHes to go back and spring tlieir 
rattles ; suddenly out rushed two tigers and made off in 
different directions. I pursued one, a young one, and 
managed to get in front of him, when he charged me at 
once ; at a dozen paces I managed to put two balls into his 
chest and upset him^ after which I finished him with one 
under the ear. I then cut away after the second one, a 
tigress, and could not for a long time find out where she 
had gone. At last on beating a small ravine off the river, 
up she got and cantered off ; she was hobbling along more 
than a hundred yards off when 1 made a very pretty shot 
with my right barrel and hit her right through the heart ; 
she gave two tremendous bounds into the air, falling on her 
head each time, and then lay dead. The coolies were flab- 
bergasted at the velocity with which these two brutes were 
arranged. I then took a beat to explore the ground and put 
up some pig ; they were in a thick thorn jungle, and the 
ground is generally considered unrideable, but I got on my 
horse and had a shy, and though I was torn to pieces by the 
thorns I slew the boar after a couple of charges. 
The next day no bufiiiloes were killed so I went for a 
chance beat, only killing a Nilgai. The following day they 
