68 
THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY, 
they began to pipe and trumpet, with their trunks, and off 
they all scampered, with the exception of that on which his 
Excellency sat, and one other. What with digging the iron 
hook into their heads; and by dint of kicks, coaxing, and 
abuse, several were brought to the scratch, and among 
them the one belonging to the writer of these lines. 
Coming to where the tiger lay, we saw him in the atti- 
tude of springing, his eyes glaring through the grass. 
After some few shots, among which, by monstrous luck, 
was one from my own gun, he yielded up his life, which 
till to-day had doubtless passed far from the busy haunts 
of man, shunning all but the society of his own immediate 
family, and stained with the slaughter of a thousand bullocks. 
Packing the dead, or, in sporting phrase, “bagging” the 
tiger, on the top of a pad elephant, we commenced a 
search for another. In a few minutes we roused two, and 
off they bolted; it was beautiful to see them cantering 
away, and now and then standing on their hind feet to see 
whereabout the enemy was. These two soon separated; 
the largest took to the right, and seemed disposed to force 
our line, as he came back towards us: he effected his pur- 
pose, but was felled by a shot; other shots followed 
quickly, and he soon was despatched. Of this fight I saw 
but little, having gone alone after my “own bird;” there 
were two small pad elephants with me; the beast was 
hunted backwards and forwards, when, on getting close to 
him, he charged one of the small elephants, upon which 
there was a man with a spear; with this weapon the man 
heat him off, the elephant running away as fast as he could. 
Quitting this, he attacked the other elephant, and in the 
hurry to get away, a man that was on his back fell off 
almost at the tiger’s feet: I was obliged to stop and pick 
him up. 
Having the misfortune to break the loose ramrod while 
ramming down a ball, nothing remained to me but patience, 
which of all virtues is less known or understood in tiger- 
shooting than in any other pursuit, and all that could be 
done was to keep the animal in view till the rest of the 
party came up from the conquest of the second. His entry 
into some thick grass being marked, the line advanced, and 
soon came upon him in some deep water, which he could 
not cross without swimming. Upon being disturbed, he 
turned and sprang up, ’[seizing an elephant by the root of 
the tail; off they both went, amid the shouts and shots of 
the party. We had no regard to the person on the ele- 
phant, to the cooly or assistant who was standing with his 
feet within an inch of the tiger’s teeth, or to the elephant 
himself, but, with a stoical indifference to the safety of all 
three, crack, crack, went the guns; it was in all ways a 
feu-de-joie. 
After the tiger had ridden en croupe, for twenty yards 
or thereabouts, he fell dead, pierced by eight or ten balls. 
He proved to be a young male, not full grown: the other 
two, a full grown male and female, were most likely his 
respected parents. While he was hanging on by the tail, 
the elephant, not liking his outside passenger, tried all 
means to dislodge him; he kicked with all his might, and 
put out a hind leg to pull him under his body: these 
kicks and cuffs must have been as serviceable to the tiger 
as a fall from the seventh heaven. The infinite dexterity 
with which so unwieldy an animal as the elephant can 
hook in a tiger, wild hog, or deer, with his hind leg is in- 
credible. When once within the chancery limits of his 
four legs, no ingenuity or force can extricate the unlucky 
object from the process which it undergoes. A ball in the 
hands of a juggler does not change sides with greater cele- 
rity, nor is there any bread in Christendom more tho- 
roughly kneaded. A full grown tiger is reduced, by this 
operation, to a mere mummy. After the termashu or sport 
was over, the elephant was inspected, to ascertain if he 
had been wounded; no marks were discernible, which to 
all of us seemed the oddest thing in the whole business. 
No one, save the tiger himself, was less pleased at the 
recklessness of our proceedings, than the gentleman on the 
elephant, whose situation was not, by any train of reason- 
ing, an enviable one; but how he, or any other person, 
could expect that such a batch of bumpkins in the myste- 
ries of tiger shooting should be able, on their first finding, 
to behave with the least leaven of reflection, or approach 
to decorum, is certainly beyond all comprehension. The 
party returned to the camp at sunset, having left it at half 
past three, thus doing all our work in an hour and a half, 
and within a mile of camp. I have been, perhaps, too dif- 
fuse on this subject, but it was the coup d'essai of every 
one of the party, and its proving so good, and serving, 
though in an imperfect manner, to show what tiger shoot- 
ing is, will, it is to be hoped, plead in excuse for the pro- 
lixity of the narration. 
The little elephant, whose rider fell off his back, ran 
away to the jungles, and no tidings of the truant have 
since been gained. — Jlrcher's Tour in India. 
SPORTING IN BENGAL. 
From the London Sporting Magazine. 
On Sunday, Sept. 9th, 182-, I bade farewell to my 
Calcutta friends with a dark feeling of presentiment, 
which told me that most of us had parted to meet no 
more; and which foreboding time has but too well con- 
