THE MUSK-DEER. 
55 
als, foxes, likewise find a refuge in these hilly soli- 
tudes. 
“ Fierce o’er the mountain stalks the ravenous tiger, 
Or lurks in gloomy caves ; through the thick grass 
Coils the vast serpent, on whose painted hack 
The cricket chirps, and with the drops that dew 
The scales, allays his thirst. Silence profound 
Enwraps the forest, save where babbling springs 
Gush from the rock, or where the echoing hills 
Give back the tiger’s roar, or where the boughs 
Burst into crackling flame, and wide extends 
The blaze the dragon’s fiery breath has kindled/’ * 
The trees in these regions are sometimes of enor- 
mous size, occasionally measuring twenty feet in girth, 
towering to a height of more than a hundred and 
fifty, and exhibiting a sheer branchless trunk at least 
sixty feet high, surmounted by a vast crest which 
waves like a gigantic canopy above it, projecting its 
mighty shadow in the calm clear light of the setting 
sun and wrapping in solemn shade the scarped and 
precipitous sides of the neighbouring hill. Everything 
here is, in fact, on so immense a scale, that all mi- 
nuter objects are lessened to a degree hardly to be 
conceived. At a short distance, a man seems dwindled 
to a mere puppet, while horses and oxen appear 
scarcely bigger than dogs. 
The most singular animal known in these hills is 
the musk-deer, a creature timid and wild to excess; 
it lives secluded from the sight of man, and indeed of 
every other animal but its own species, inhabiting the 
* “ Specimens of the Hindoo Theatre,” translated from the 
original Sanscrit by Horace Hayman Wilson, Esq., Professor of 
Sanscrit at the University of Oxford. 
