human habitation! But our guide would impart this intelligence with as full a measure of apathy as if he had told us that the day was Monday, or something equally immaterial. "Rasta bool gya" ("I have forgotten the road") would he say; and euphonious though that brief sentence be, it came upon one as sadly discordant when surrounded on every side by unmeasured miles of foresttrees that in their sameness mocked all attempt at identification, and by their denseness of foliage high overhead shut out the light of guiding stars. I have spent a night in one of those forests, and had an opportunity of learning that not going home till morning may on occasion be a very painful experience.

Then that howdah, that bed of Procrustes, in which one can neither sit nor stand with any approach to reasonable ease, and in which a recumbent attitude is impossible! Its advantages are —(1) that, standing in it, a man can shoot on every side of him: (2) that it is convenient for the carriage of the occupant's paraphernalia, his guns on racks on either side; his ammunition in a trough in front; his other requisites in leathern pockets here and there on the sides of the machine, or, as to that bee-blanket, on his seat and (3) that in the hinder compartment an attendant can sit or stand to hold that monster umbrella over his head, or, when quick loading is required, take from his hand the gun just fired and re-charge it. Those are the advantages; otherwise the howdah is an abomination.

The great merit of the pad is its easiness compared with the howdah; but seated upon that, with an attendant, one can only carry a second gun and some ammuni

tion; one can only shoot on one side with any effect; and a lively tiger may possibly join the party seated there. This last objection to the pad is all the more probable by reason of the fact that the sportsman cannot shoot all round: for, supposing that man to be right-handed and only able to shoot from his right shoulder, he would be unable, without shifting his position on the pad, to fire at a tiger close to him on his right hand; and if he hurriedly attempted to shift his position, he might very well fall to the ground, there to try conclusions with the tiger.

These considerations necessitate the employment of the howdah, in which it behoves one to stand as long as there is any chance of a shot. In my first season in the Terai I lost a tiger through nonobservance of this ordinance. I had been beating down a long water-course in the forest for an unconscionable time, as it seemed to me, without seeing the tiger I was after. I had passed through the more likely cover in that narrow channel, which, dry as it was at that season, did not greatly promise tigers; and being in very patchy grass, I thought I might safely sit down. Hardly had I seated myself, when a tiger got up in front of me, and, before I was on foot to deal with it, the beast was away in the forest on my left, never to be seen again that day. I was alone on that occasion; there was no second gun on the alert while I lazied, and so it was entirely due to my own remissness that my bag of that year was ten instead of eleven.

Laziness of this sort is palliated, if not excused, by the tiring effect of long standing in a howdah. Few howdahs are boarded at the bottom, so as to admit of any choice of foothold, and, even when

they are boarded, he who stands in them finds it expedient, both for general comfort (or some approximation thereto) and accuracy of shooting, to stand, as a latterday Colossus, with extended limbs and wide-stretched feet that rest (if there can be rest in a howdah) upon the plates or foot-frames on either side at the bottom of the howdah.

Then the howdah becomes a positive nuisance two or three times a-day, or perhaps all day long, by inclining over on one side, until it seems likely to topple off the elephant. When these symptoms make their first appearance (possibly half an hour after one has started) a halt is cried, and the whole strength of the company is enlisted to restore that howdah to its equilibrium, but mostly in vain: mostly it is as obdurate as Humpty Dumpty in regard to being set up again, and proceeds to cant over within five minutes of the operation that aimed at its rectification. Another halt, and another wrestling with ropes and inexorable fate;

another ephemeral balance, and another diversity, and so da capo until the inevitable final step, when a man hangs on to the upper side of the howdah as a compensatory balance, and stops there. Sometimes two men are required for this service, when they are suggestive of those footmen who hung on at the back of the State coach of the early Georgian era.

And this erratic conduct on the howdah's part is encouraged by the elephant's action when labouring through heavy swamp. When the elephant is up to its girths in tenacious mud, it heels over on its right side to extricate its left hindleg, and that gymnastic effort being completed, heels over on its left side to get its right hind-leg clear: so it rolls heavily from side to

side, like a Channel steamer in a choppy sea, with frequent disarrangement of its gear. The effect upon its passengers may be left to the imagination; but, in order to pile up the agony of the situation, I may add that sometimes one or more tigers may be skirmishing around the swamp - disabled elephant, and much more on a level with the riders of that animal than would be the case on firmer ground. But any disadvantage arising from this, and from any unusual difficulty of shooting, must be regarded as fully compensated by the elephant's inability to bolt. As for shooting from an elephant, there is, in my opinion, but one way of doing this-viz., to sight one's object clearly, let the eye direct the hand in levelling the gun or rifle, without looking at sights or barrels, and pull the trigger on the instant that the weapon touches the shoulder. It is impossible to take deliberate aim at anything from an elephant, because that beast is never still by any chance: even when it is standing at halt there is about it a continuous motion- a sort of ground-swell -which is just as certain a hindrance of a long aim as the rougher jolting that characterises its lumbering progress.

Lastly, as connected with the trials of the flesh and temper that come with elephants, let me say a word for (I mean against) the mahouts. Many natives with whom the Anglo-Indian has to do, more especially in the hot weather, are aggravating. The punkahwalla who, on a sultry night of June, having clutched the punkah rope with his toe, stretches himself out at length in the verandah, and, lulled by the vain imagining that so he will pull the punkah, goes to sleep, is of this class; so is the cook who strains his master's

soup through a much kerosened lamp-cloth or some more obnoxious medium; so, too, is the bearer, or other custodian of a master's property, who, in regard to some indispensable chattel lost within the last twelve hours, swears by all his gods that no such chattel ever existed or that it was satisfactorily disposed of years ago,-all these people, and others of their kind, are very irritating at times, but none of them so persistently so as mahouts of an inferior class.

Some elephant-drivers take an interest in their work, even in the work of beating tigers out of their lairs, but they are the minority. The majority are inspired by the one ruling idea of shirking all work that can any way be avoided. Because it is less toilsome to sit on the pad and drive with a casual touch of their heel, they will sit there, although they lose all control over their elephants that they possess when, sitting on the neck with their feet in the stirrups and their knees pressed against the elephant's ears, they urge their mounts forward. Because it is less troublesome to spend the day without encountering a tiger, they will break line' at the most important juncture, and possibly allow a tiger to head back and escape when a few minutes more of persistent effort in close line would have seen that tiger driven into the open and probably killed. Because it is easier driving in the light cover where the tiger may not be expected, they will scrupulously avoid the denser patches in which it should be looked for. And for these and other reasons, the task of controlling these undisciplined men-keeping them in something like an effective line and getting them to beat in likely places

is one of frequent strain and travail that may well try the most

Job-like patience and drive the meekest of masters to objurgation. I always endeavoured on these expeditions to enlist the sympathies of the mahouts in my cause- -to give a co-operative tinge to it, by the promise of so much per tiger head in addition to the ordinary buksheesh; but this did not seem to affect their conduct in the slightest degree.

And as to any risk to be run, the mahout who sits in his proper place on the elephant's neck is a good deal safer than appearances might lead one to imagine. As long as his elephant keeps upon its feet he is secure enough: a tiger cannot reach him from the front over the elephant's head, or ordinarily on either flank, because the elephant's ears cover his legs. It is true that one of Yule's mahouts had his leg smashed by a tiger that charged from behind his elephant's shoulder, and caught his leg when the elephant's ear flapped forward for an instant; but this was a quite unique incident, as far as my experience is concerned, and I know of no other exception to the general rule above laid down.

When, in spite of many obstacles presented by elephants and mahouts, a tiger is killed, there yet remains a difficulty to be coped with-viz., that of padding the tiger. There lies the beautiful monarch of the forest shorn of that mighty strength that animated him an hour ago, and harmless now as the bleating lamb: a gujbag or some such missile has been thrown upon the stretchedout body, and the dull thud it made upon the corpse was unattended by any sound from, or motion of, that stricken form. It is dead; and, in order that it may be stripped of its black-barred robe, it has to be carried into camp upon one of the pad elephants, so now descend

from your elephants, you mahouts and attendants of the more stalwart sort, and pad that tiger.

Hic labor, hoc opus est. A fullgrown male tiger requires a good deal of lifting. I have seen fourteen men putting their shoulders to this work, or pretending to do so, without immediately placing the tiger high enough for the two or three men mounted on the pad to secure it. I remember how, with one of these larger brutes, Gream, the athlete, and Jacky Hills, the robust, and I were prominent among the workers, and how, taking up my position on the pad, I hauled vigorously upon the rope which we had passed round the tiger, and continuing to haul with too persistent vigour when the tiger had slipped from the noose I hauled upon, went over headlong on the off-side; and even now I can recall the heat of that operation.

When one comes to lifting a dead tiger, one becomes fully aware of its weight; so does one arrive at due appreciation of its strength after once feeling that fore-arm, which is one splendid mass of steel-like muscle. Then one understands how the tiger in his prime can throw a bullock over its shoulder and canter away with it. Then, too, one may well come to pooh-pooh the claim of the lion to be styled the king of beasts. But however interesting may be the study of the tiger in this particular phase once or so, it palls after a time: lifting it is peculiarly hard and hot work, and it is dirty work also, and is sometimes made particularly exasperating by the laches of the elephant selected for the carriage of the tiger. For that intellectual beast is required to kneel to receive its freight, and to kneel long enough to allow that freight to be hoisted on to the pad

and fastened on; and, as often as not, it will rise at the critical moment, just when the tiger has been raised to the edge of the pad, and tumble the tiger and some of its lifters on to the ground, and so bring about the status quo ante. The elephant has wonderful intelligence in some utterly useless directions. It will, for example, pick up a pin with its trunk, and, I daresay, with sufficient encouragement would swallow that pin, and convert its interior economy into a pin-cushion; but I have never known one direct its talents to the simplification of tiger-padding, although I have seen many devote their minds and bodies to the unnecessary duty of adding to the difficulties of that operation.

And when at last the tiger is padded, the elephant has to be reckoned with; for as likely as not it will for the next hour or so, after seeing that tiger hoisted and tied, imagine tigers in everything it sees and every sound it hears. It is well at such a time to approach an elephant with considerable caution, and from the front, lest it make itself disagreeable. Poor K. B. found this out on one occasion, when, after helping to pad a tiger, he ran after my elephant to mount by the tail; for the elephant, hearing him coming from the rear, necessarily assumed that he was a tiger, and kicked out at him with such force and precision as sent him flying for some yards.

This tiger-padding was such a nuisance to my mind that when I could have my own way, and it was practicable, I left a man with a spare elephant behind to remove the skin, and bring that into camp, leaving the carcass where it fell.

The shikari who hunts the tiger in the Terai has to be prepared for many blank days-not a few

days, indeed, so blank that not a shot is fired; for while there is any chance of a tiger in the neighbourhood the signal to shoot at anything is withheld. Many such days have I spent in driving through swamp or stretches of dry grass, or the broken cover of forestglades and nullahs, when sambhur with magnificent heads and fine horned cheetul have got up at my elephant's feet to tempt me; and the black partridge and jungle fowl have flaunted around me to beguile; and at every turn game seemed plentiful as never they were in the most favoured spot when I might shoot at them. On many a day have I resisted these temptations with a stoicism that would have set up a dozen of those old-time philosophers with St Anthony thrown in, and without any reward in the shape of tiger or panther. From before noon till nightfall I have pounded along through every sort of cover, always hoping, but hoping vainly, and never once relaxing the iron rule, " cease firing."

Very curious are the chances of tiger-shooting sometimes. In my first season in the Terai, Lugard and I marched, shooting as we went, for a camping-ground on the edge of a swamp wherein tigers had been often found. We reached our tents in the evening, and ill-tidings, always quick of travel, met us before we descended from our elephants. The Nawab Moosvomoodowlah (uncle of the ex-king of Oudh) had that day beaten our swamp thoroughly, and got nothing. It was melancholy news, and a poor appetiser for our dinner. But when the next day dawned there was nothing for it but to try that swamp again, on the offchance that the tiger which had not come into it yesterday might be there to-day; and so, after break

fast, and an hour or two of office work for me, we started. The swamp was as to the greater part clear water, surrounded on three sides by open country; but along the edge next to the forest there was a strip of heavy grass, and that we beat from end to end without a glimpse of tiger. Then, acting upon information received (as the mysterious police constable observes), I formed the elephants into a crescent-line and made a cast through the jungle that aimed at beating down a certain nullah towards the swamp. It was not a very hopeful business, for up in the forest a tiger when started may just as well go one way as another. There was the possibility that the thick grass that was standing in the nullah might tempt a tiger to seek shelter there, and that possibility resolved itself into a certainty. There was a tiger in it: more than that, there were four tigers in it, all of which were driven out into a comparatively clear space, where cover of any kind was slight and scattered. Four a tigress and three cubs more than half grown. How the tigress got away immediately upon our sighting it I cannot say now, any more than I could then. It was as phenomenal an object to me as was young Jo Willet to his father. I looked at it, and there it was; and I looked at it again, and there it wasn't. Nor can I understand why it so promptly deserted its offspring-for mostly a tiger will fight for its cubs as long as they are with their mother, even though they be fully grown. But the maternal instinct was weak in that tiger: clannishness it felt nothing of. It disliked the situation, and left the scene and the cubs before a shot could be fired at it. The cubs did what they could to make things lively: they never