if. R H. THE PRINCE OF WALES' SHOOTS. 
681 
and presently one of them was seen by a young member of the Maharaja’s 
family, in the howdah with Capt. Dudley North, who urged him to fire. 
Capt. Dudley North had previously won the toss for the first shot and the 
occupant of the adjoining howdah who had also seen the animal excitedly point- 
ed him out : Capt. Dudley North witing to me said : 
“ I could see nothing and told my friend so, he however still urged me 
to shoot. I could not see anything so I aimed at what I presumed was 
the object he intended and fired. Absolutely nothing happened and the 
conglomeration of the tree stump and grass which might have been or 
looked like a rhino remained exactly where it was. Even the real rhinos 
in our vicinity did not stir. We continued groping about in the big grass 
and shortly afterwards two rhinos dashed out of the pool av'ay from us and 
in an impossible position for a decent shot. We tracked them for some dis- 
tance, and were in a small clearing on the edge of some very high grass when 
we observed a great commotion going on ncai- by. The top of the high grass 
was violently agitated as though some great beast was pushing through and 
there was no doubt that a rhino was coming our way and shortly afterwards 
he did, with a rush, charging straight at my elephant. The high grass 
parted and directly I saw the horn on the top of his nose, through the dense 
cover, I fired. Lord Cromer, on my left, fired two barrels in quick succes- 
sion and my elephant wheeled round immediately I fired, and was for 
getting out it, so I did not have much time to see exactly what happened. 
The impression was that the rhino stumbled and almost fell but i-ecovered 
and made off through the grass. Lord Cromer was of the same opinion and 
thought both our shots had taken effect. In the confusion of elephants 
trying to bolt no one had time to shoot at another rhino which came out 
on our right but went back into cover very quickly. There were blood traces 
which we tracked for some time but eventually lost. This rhino was picked 
up dead some days after the Royal party left Nepal.” 
After the above incident the party formed into line moving slowly through 
the jungle. Shortly afterwards a rhino was seen and very fortunately bagged 
by Capt. Dudley North. The beast was hit through the spine half way down 
its neck and dropped in his tracks needing only another shot to give it its 
quietus. Capt. Dudley North was using a double-barrelled ‘470 Gibbs Rifle 
with a solid bullet. 
Admiral Halsey with a party consisting of Sir Godfrey Thomas, the Hon’ble 
Bruce Ogilvy and Col. Harvey secured a tiger late in the afternoon of the same 
day. The morning had been blank and after lunch a second attempt was made. 
A very long trek through dense jimgle where everyone got more or less lost, 
brought no result. So a man was sent ahead to reconnoitre ; it seemed that 
all arrangements had failed, and a return to camp was decided on at 4 p.ir., 
a few minutes after however ‘ Khubber ’ was brought that a tiger had been 
ringed quite close by. Soon all the guns were in position and a few minutes 
later Admiral Halsey bagged his tiger with a shot through the neck. 
Saturday, December \lth. — H. R. H. spent the morning after small game and 
with his party accounted for some 25 head. The Admiral, Col. Harvey and 
Lord Louis Mountbatten motored to Kasra (30 miles) after rhino. They saw 
none and had a tiger beat which was also blank. The same morning Capt. 
Po3'nder and Capt. Dudley North both had a shot at a rhino which fell to the 
former’s rifle. She was a gravid female. When it was being skinned a 
calf was found in ntero. The animal gave no trouble and did not charge, but 
as Capt. Dudley North afterwards said “ she took a terrible lot of killing.” 
Tbe rhino shoots in Nepal showed very clearly the extreme difficulty of bring- 
ing these animals to bag without a vital shot. In the dense swamps 
of the Terai a wounded rhino is practically impossible to track and 
recover. In the present instance the rhine was spotted in a strip of grass jungle 
