trees. If the elephant is firm, and you have a successful shot, the tiger is sure to turn and charge. Mad with pain, strong and swift, he throws himself upon the nearest enemy, springing upon the elephant, climbing its trunk, or, reaching for the poor shivering Hindoo driver, drags him from his seat. Even after the tiger has received his fatal wound, so strong is his vitality that he will have strength enough for a plunge. Then success depends upon courage and coolness, upon rapid firing from every available rifle in the hunting party. So far as I could

learn, in the many histories of tiger shooting, accidents are rare Occurrences. But the danger of the contest with so supple and bloodthirsty a beast, and the nerve required, combine to give, for those who are fond of field sports, a peculiar zest to tiger shooting. When the young Englishman comes to India he yearns for his first tiger as a young officer for his first brevet.

I have heard, however, of serious, and sometimes fatal, accidents. One of the kindest and best friends I made in India-brave, gentle, and gifted-is maimed in his arm and leg

accepting the invitation of his Highness and having one day in the jungle of Jeypore. Hunters are not less careful of their lives than other men, and the care taken to prevent accidentsthe use of arms of precision, skill in their use, and the fact that all wild animals, the tiger especially, are cowards, afraid of noise, fire, light, or any unusual sight-make the accidents of the chase less on the average than the casualties in fox hunting in the English shires. The only dangerous tiger is what is called the man-eater. The man-eater is generally an old beast, with bad teeth and gums, lacking in enterprise and en

Ani

durance. He has outlived his usefulness in the jungle. mals that ordinarily would be his prey avoid him without difficulty. Driven to despair because he cannot roam the bushes and seize what he fancies, he falls upon some poor belated Hindoo wood-cutter, or child at play, or woman carrying her pitcher to the well, and then he learns that, of all the animals given to him by a considerate Providence for food, man is the most toothsome, the most helpless, and the most cowardly. The buffalo, the wild pig, even the antelope, will not surrender without resistance. A wild pig has been known to kill a tiger

who was waiting for General Grant, before he left for the hills; and so the jungle was put aside.

Colonel Grant, however, was not disposed to allow our expedition to leave India without some experience in the field, and when the tiger proposition was dismissed the Maharajah proposed to have some pig sticking. The sticking of a pig does not seem to be a serious business to people at home, whose ideas of the animal are confined to its usefulness as breakfast bacon. The old hunters say that no sport in India is more exciting or more dangerous. The wild boar is a different animal from the homely, useful, lolling hog, whose highest function at home is lard. He lives in the jungle. His food is the sugar-cane, and a boar will ravage a large crop of growing cane in a single night. He is bold and brave. His tusks are sometimes eight inches in length, and as sharp as a razor. With these tusks he will charge any animal. A boar has been known

to rip open a tiger and disembowel him. The wild pig has great endurance. He can in the first rush outrun an Arab steed. He seems to be an honest, peaceable beast, who will do no harm, and spend his days on roots or sugar-cane, unless you assail him. He will throw dogs in the air, and, if a hunter falls under his tusks, cut him up as with a knife. Some of the most serious accidents in the history of sport have come from the wild pig. There are laws about hog hunting which no gentleman violates. You do not shoot him. You only attack the boar, never the sow. To kill a sow in the Jeypore country would be as serious a crime as to shoot a fox in Melton Mowbray. You do not kill the young. In warring on the tiger your enemy is the common enemy of mankind, who lives on prey; whose passion is blood; who lives on domestic cattle and useful animals, and in his old days takes to preying upon man. There is one quality about pig hunting that reminds you of the buffalo chase. You ride upon your pony in the jungle; you seek your animal out and fight him with sword or spear like a knight; you have a foeman who can only be slain by coolness and courage, who lives in the dominion of the leopard and the tiger, and holds his own with them, and whose death

VOL. II.-9