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one, our cap'n was-I s'pose he guessed he felt it tightish work, tho' I don't think none on us did, for we were all comfortable among ourselves. He used to give us leave when the country people comed down to the shore, as they do at some o' the places, with eggs, and cheese, and such like. Well, he'd say, 'Go ashore, lads, and buy what you like;' and, if we brought a cask o' brandy back, he never said nothin' contrairy. We always locked it up, you know," said Jack, looking as serious as his usual expression of broad good-humor permitted," and served it us out in rations, extra, after supper; and then we used to have singin', and dancin', and jokin'-bless your heart, sir, we were as jolly-it was partickler so for me; for, you see, there was only the cap'n, the master, and a midshipman -both these last was boys-so, tho' I was only a petty hofficer (cox'en of the long-boat), the cap'n he looked to me for every think, you know, sir; not but what he was rare and kind to all on us, but I had a'most all the same as a quarter-deck hofficer. Well, one day we was at Wydar, when a missionary comes aboard and tells the cap'n if he'll give him forty pounds he'll put him in the way of a slaver-the slavers is mostly taken thro' the reports of the missionaries, sir. Well, the cap'n he sent for the hofficers, and they talked it over, and it was settled that the missionary-he was a black 'un-should be paid the money if the slaver was taken, and the contrairy if it wasn't. So then he told us that she was a brigantine sailin' under the Merrikin colors, and callin' herself the John Harris. She had only lately come in, and he knew she'd not loaded yet.

"Next morning we got orders from the admiral's ship to go up to Lagos; so off we goes, the risk being that the slaver might have taken in her cargo afore we comed back, you see, sir. Well, we wasn't long at Lagos. We'd left a boat to watch her, and, as soon as we comes back, there she was, sure enough, with the Merrikin flag flyin'.

"As soon as our cap'n sees this, he tells me to man a boat, and off he goes to have a parley with the Merrikin skipper. Only the cap'n and the midshipman goes on deck, and we stays below in the boat. Presently I looks up and I sees, peeping over at me, a face I knowed-a mate's I'd served with on board the Britannia.

666 Hullo, mate,' says I; 'I thinks I knows your face.'

"I knows yours, if you don't know mine,' he says, grinnin'.

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"Your name's Freeman, ain't it?' says I. 'Well, it is,' says he; what then?' and he grins at me again.

"What are you a-doin' here?' says I. "Oh, we'd only got a small cargo,' says he, and we've nearly got rid of it.'

"All ready to take in the live 'un, eh? '

"Well, I felt terrible oneasy because I was sure she was after no good; but, as the cap'n said, we'd no proof to warrant us in takin' any proceedings ag'in her. For, you see, sir, that was before this Merrikin war, and the Merrikins didn't allow no right of search; so, if the cap'n had opened her hatches, and she'd turned out no slaver at all, why, their government 'ud ha' brought a haction again ours, and our cap'n 'ud ha' lost his commission.

"Well, sir, on and off we went on cruisin' thereabouts for three months, never once losin' sight of the John Harris.

"She dropped down to St. Thomas's after a bit, and filled all her water-casks; but she seemed so quiet and take-it-easy about it that some on us began to feel terrible puzzled. We'd noticed that she'd had a lot o' planks aboard to make a slave-flat; but she'd sent all ushore now. You know, sir, if they don't ship the darkies as soon as old King Dahomey's got 'em ready, why, he claims 'em, and makes the skipper buy 'em all over again.

"Well, all on a sudden one Saturday evening we missed her. She was gone right clear, like a flash of smoke, from under our bows. The cap'n was terrible vexed; for, you see, sir, we thought she'd perhaps taken her cargo in and was off safe enough to Cuba. So he sends two crew-boys ashore to inquire of the missionary what give us informations. Well, sir, the crew-boys didn't come back, nor the boat neither. It was plain enough they'd been put in prison to stop their laying informations.

"We was precious wild to think we'd lost her after all; for, you see, supposin' she hadn't loaded up, we didn't know where she was a-goin' to take 'em in, so we didn't know where to look for her.

"The next morning was Sunday—it was a misty, hazy sort of weather-I was keeping watch while they was at church below, and I just thought I'd get up in the cross-trees and have a lookout. I'm blowed if I didn't ketch sight on her somewhere down the coast, at a place called Ambrosette. Down I goes, and whispers to the cap'n:

ris.'

"Cap'n,' says I, 'there's the John Har

"Where?' says he.

"Down at Ambrosette. She's a gettin' 'em in-she won't be there long, cap'n,' says I. "Well, the cap'n he cuts church precious short, and up he comes to the cross-trees.

"That's her, sure enough,' says he, after he'd taken a squint at her thro' the glass.

"But he wouldn't have steam got up at once because he wanted, you see, to let her ship her cargo. Agin' it was dusk we was all ready, and then down we steamed at a tremenjious rate.

"Well, we was looking forrard-it had come on a bit hazy all on us-bending our says I. eyes in one direction, and 'specting to ketch "That's nothin' to you nor me,' says he, sight on her ivery minute, for, you see, sir, quite short. we'd no suspicions as she was off, when, on a sudden, one of our crew who'd been ill, and was sitting for hair on a coil of ropes in the stern, he calls out: 'Hello, there she isthere's the John Harris!'

"I saw I should get nothin' more out of him. Presently the cap'n comes down and tells us to pull back to the ship.

"I can't make any thing out of her, Pembridge,' he whispers; 'she's not loaded yet, at any rate.'

"There she was behind us. Why, sir, we'd passed her in the fog, which had just

lifted off now, and, if that invalid seaman hadn't happened to be hill and to be looking otherways to what the rest on us was, we'd lost her altogether.

"Well, the cap'n he calls out, 'Ease her -stop her;' and our ship was soon swung round, within hail of the slaver. The fog had cleared off now-you see, sir, in them there seas it's never what you may call dark -and we'd soon got near enough to be sure of her.

"But the cap'n wouldn't meddle with her till daylight.

"Then he hails her: 'What ship's that?' "What ship are you?' came the an

swer.

"That's enough, sir,' says I—‘that shows what she is; and, look ye here, sir, the John Harris is painted out now.'

"How can you be sure of that?' says the doctor.

"Sure, sir,' says I, 'I sees the fresh paint.' I was always A 1 for long sight, so nobody said me nay.

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'Well, the cap'n sends the two officers and the gunner in one boat, and me and a file of marines in another; but I was not to go aboard unless Mr. Wilkinshaw-that was the master's name-signaled to me to do so. However, sir, as we lay alongside in the boat, I was sure we was all right, for I could smell 'em, sir-smell 'em through the timbers as plain- Well, after they'd had some palaver with the skipper, Mr. Wilkinshaw he comes and beckons me up.

"It's all right, Pembridge,' he whispers. "Yes, sir,' says I, 'I knows it. She's right full on 'em.'

"Oh, I think not,' he says, looking quite surprised, 'the skipper shows his papers all right and fair. I don't think there's any in.'

"Well, sir,' says I, 'I've got just upon four pounds in my locker, and I don't mind betting you that she's right full on 'em. Why, sir, put your nose down here-can't you smell 'em?'

"No, Pembridge, I can't,' says he 'no more can the others. What reason have you for suspicion?'

"I felt terrible wild, but you see, sir, they was hofficers and I was man, and, you see, they'd been having a cigar with the skipper, and he'd been making hisself pleasant— and those young gents are easy got over. 'Well, sir,' says I, 'when we went aboard at Wydar she'd got a lot o' crew-boys-where are they now? Then she's got all her watercasks on deck. Why's that for, but to find room below?-and, most of all, sir, I smell 'em.'

"Well, the man I named Freeman was one mate, and he looked black enough at me, for he saw I knowed what I was after; and there was another mate named Thomas-a most hawful character he was, to be surethe hoaths he used, when he saw me and the hofficers talkin' together, was tremenjiousthem Merrikins are terrible handy with hoaths, you know, sir.

"Well, Mr. Wilkinshaw he says something to the skipper about crew-boys-and says Freeman:

"Here they lies safe enough'—and he lifts up a sail on deck and reg'lar showed 'em

to us-a heap of darkies all lying huddled together.

"There they are, sir,' says I; 'now you see 'em.'

"Oh, no,' says the gunner, 'those are the crew-boys.'

"Well, sir, it was no use; I felt we was done this time, so over we goes and rows back to our ship, and the hofficers goes up to the cap'n with their story. Well, the men was rare and wild-them as had been with me in the boat had told the rest what I thought, and they all begins a urging o' me to go up to the cap'n and tell him my suspicions.

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666

"Sure enough, there was a hue and cry for me presently, and in I goes to the cap'n. "Well, Pembridge,' says he, 'and what do you say now? It seems all right and straightforrard.'

"Say, sir,' says I. 'Why, she's full on 'em.'

"Well,' says he, and he looks terrible perplexed, you're only a seaman, and these are hofficers. What's the reasons o' your suspicions, Pembridge?'

"Well, sir,' says I, 'I'm that sure that, with the cap'n's leave, I'll lay four poundsand that's all I've got left in the world—agin any o' these genl'm, that she's right full on 'em. I've three causes of suspicions. Why, sir, in the first place, didn't you notice, when you and me went aboard, or rather when you went aboard and I staid below, that she'd plenty of crew-boys?'

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Right well,' says our skipper. 'I've heard about that, and these gentlemen says the crew-boys was accounted for.'

.66 Cap'n,' says I, 'in course I can't swear to knowin' them darkies one from another, but my belief is, them weren't crew-boys as we saw just now. Then, sir, she's got all her water-casks on deck full-not below, sir. Why's that for? Then, sir, you remember as well as I do that she had two anchors when you went aboard-now she's got but one. Why's that, sir? Because she saw us a-comin' in the dark, and she slipped her anchor to get off quicker. Why did she do that for?'

"The cap'n he was terrible perplexed; | but, instead of going aboard hisself along o' me that same afternoon, he says, 'We'll go down to Ambrosette' (he knew there was a large Nova Scotia bark lying there, which must have seen all that had been going on, and he'd make inquiries). Now here, sir, was the folly. As it was, it was a dead calm. We could move along because of our steam, but she lay as dead as a log. But, thinks I to myself, as we steams off, 'If a breeze springs up in the night we sha'n't see no more of the John Harris.' By the time we gets down to Ambrosette it had got late, and the cap'n wouldn't let me go aboard the Nova Scotia bark. He said they would all be abed, and I must wait till daylight.

"It was an awful sort o' risk, as you know, sir, to lay alongside all night, and to feel if a breeze sprung up we hadn't the ghost of a chance left, for I knowed fast enough if once the John Harris got a fair start, the game was up.

"You may be sure I never slept a wink all night, and as soon as there was a glimmer of what might be called daylight down I goes to the cap'n, rouses him up, and gets his leave to go aboard. The cap'n said perhaps they might refuse to give informations, and in that case I was to overhaul their log-book, which, in course, as you knows, sir, they hadn't no right to refuse. Well, I goes aboard, sir, and there was no one up-only one seaman. I asked him if he'd seen the John Harris down at Ambrosette lately, and he said yes, till the evening afore yesterday; but when I comes to further questions he declines to hanswer, cos, you see, sir, the Dabomey people 'ud have nothink to do with them if so be as they gived informations. 'Well,' says I, 'can I see your log-book?' 'See it and welcome,' says he. And accordingly I looks, and I finds: 'Brigantine, name John Harris, had connection with twenty canoes.' 'All right,' thinks I; and perhaps I didn't get back quick to the Spitfire.

"All right, sir,' I says to the cap'n; and back we steams tremenjious fast, and after some time we catches sight on her. She'd moved a little, but the calm lay deader than ever.

"The cap'n he hails her again, and the skipper, I s'pose, he thinks as how it's all up

now.

"It's no good, cap'n,' says he; 'you can come and take 'em. I've got five hundred for you.'

"Now, the bo'sun and I had had a talk as we was steaming up from Ambrosette, and he said we should miss her after all, he was positive.

"Not a bit of it,' says I. 'I'll lay you a pound that we board her and take her by twelve o'clock.'

"Done,' says the bo'sun.

"The cap'n he tells us to man the pinnace and the long boat, and all the rest of 'em to come with him to the ship.

"Well, as soon as we goes aboard, the skipper he turns sulky, and he says:

"I don't know what you mean by all this work. You came aboard yesterday, and no fault found. What the doose do you mean by poking here again? You have been a-taking hinformations.'

"No,' says our cap'n, 'but our suspicions is strong agin you, and I must open your hatches.'

"Oh, if you'd seen the way the skipper stormed! And, as to that second mate, Thomas, he threatened to take my life if I staid aboard.

"You stop that,' says I, for he swore terrible hard; his hoaths was tremenjiousI never hear sich hoaths.

"Look ye here,' says he, with a string of 'em, 'I've got somethink as will settle you easy.'

"And he pulls out a six-barrel revolver.

"Now keep quiet,' says I. 'I'm not here to be threated by you-two can play at that game' (I pulls out my revolver, for we're allowed to carry 'em, sir, on such-like duty), and perhaps I shall get first chance.'

"Just then the cap'n he beckons our carpenter up out of the boat. 'Bring up your axe,' he says; 'we'll soon have the hatches

open for they fastens 'em down as soon as they've the darkies safe aboard.

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"I protest agin it,' said the skipper. "No need for that,' whispers Freeman to me; jest you draw them bolts.'

"Lor' bless you, sir, the minute I drawed the bolts and upped with the hatches there they was, poor creaturs, all with their mouths hopen, like so many young birds, a-cravin for hair, you know, sir. It's a terrible bad sight, sir, that sort o' thing-it cuts yer heart, it does.'

"So the skipper he gives up then, and he says:

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Well, I was for hauling down the flag, but the cap'n he says to me: 'You leave it alone; let 'em do it theirselves-we'll have it, presently.'

"Would you believe it, sir ?-they hauls it down on a sudden and rolls it up with a couple o' bolts in it and chucks it overboard, just to prevent our getting it!

"The skipper he says presently, 'What are you going to do with me, cap'n?' says he. "So the cap'n asked where he'd like to go to, and he says Sierra Leone-and they all says Sierra Leone.

Well, we left some men in charge, and, when we gets back to our ship (I ought to tell you, sir, that the flag was hauled down a quarter before twelve, so I won my wager fairly), I says to our skipper:

666

'Cap'n,' says I, 'you'll excuse me for speaking, but are you going to leave the skipper and them two big fellows o' mates along, and only three of us? Why, sir, they'd circumwent us somehow, for they've got the doose's own cunning.'

"You wait a bit,' said the cap'n. So he gives me and Corporal Belt our instructions, and the rest of the men who was to go with us.

"As soon as Thomas sees me a-coming up the ship's side, he begins foaming at the mouth with fury, swearing the biggest of hoaths, and a-goin' on terrible.

"We are a-goin' to Sierra Leone,' says he; your skipper promised. What on airth are you come after?' And he begins at me again.

"Marines,' says I, 'jest point your muskets this way. Now, Mr. Thomas,' I says, 'my cap'n he knew the sort of fellow you was, and he told you that to keep you quiet; and, look, if you're not quiet now, at once, we'll tie you neck and heels and set you adrift in one of those surf-boats.'

"He was pretty quiet, then, I can tell you, and we searched him and found a revolver and some doubloons; the orders was to strip 'em of every think but their clothing and one doubloon each; but Mr. Wilkinshaw he was with us, and he says, 'Oh, give him back his money,' he says. They're terrible soft, sir, those youngish gentlemin, when they are soft. But directly we'd done with him we didn't give Thomas time to thinkover he goes into one of the surf-boats, and so with Freeman, and with all the rest except the skipper and the darkies. Ah, poor creeturs, when we went down among 'em it was hawful, they was penned as close as bees

the men one side, the women t'other-and all of them as they was born, sir-women as well as men. There was a Spanish driver among 'em-a brute of a fellow-he'd got a great cowhide whip, and he'd been a-keepin' of 'em quiet with it while we was on deck the first time, for fear they should cry out. Well, sir, I looked about and I found there was some bales of calico below; you see, sir, they strips 'em when they send 'em aboard, 'case their clothes is all old King Dahomey's, and they takes these bales of calico to dress 'em up in before they lands 'em; so I whips out my knife, and I cuts off good-sized bits of the cloth, and I chucks 'em in among the women. Bless you! the poor souls, they wraps theirselves up as quick as you could say'knife,' and some of 'em dressed up their children in it, too. The men didn't seem to care much for it, but the women fell a-cryin' -I didn't know before there was so much human feelin' in them darkies.

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Well, sir, we got them all safe to Sierra Leone, except three, which died off. But bless you, sir, we took care of 'em; we had tubs of water on deck, and made all on 'em take a dip every morning, and we gave 'em plenty of food and fresh hair.

"Well, sir, the end of it was, the John Harris was given up to the proper authorities and sold, and my share out of that there job was forty-seven pounds and sixpence. But then, you see, sir, she'd led us a tremenjious dance before we catched her."

"Thank you, Pembridge," I said; "that's a very interesting story."

"Well, sir, the best of it is, it happened so; there ain't a word of faction in it."

TIGER-HUNTING IN CENTRAL INDIA.*

HOW

III.

OW the tiger marked down in the morning is to be hunted and killed at mid-day, when all life in the forest is still beneath the scorching heat of the sun, and the brute himself is least on his guard and most unwilling to move, will have been seen from previous descriptions. To read, the hunting of one tiger is like that of every other; but a different set of incidents marks each day's sport in the memory of the hunter, who pictures vividly the death of each long after the incidents of his sport with every other sort of game have faded away. The main features are the careful preliminary arrangements, the settling the direction of approach so as to cut off all roads of escape to inaccessible fastnesses, the posting of scouts to notify the possible retreat of the tiger, and the cautious, silent approach, the excitement gathering as the innermost recess of the cover, where the brute is expected to lie, is approached by the wonderfully-intelligent and half-human elephant.

A strange affection springs up between the hunter and his well-tried ally in the chase of the tiger; and a creature seeming to those who see him only in the menagerie, or labor

* Continued from JOURNAL of October 2, 1875.

ing under a load of baggage, but a lumbering mass of flesh, becomes to him almost a second self, yielding to his service the perfection of physical and mental qualities of which a brute is capable, and displaying an intelligent interest in his sport of which no brute could be thought to be possessed. No one who has not witnessed it would believe the astonishing caution with which a well-trained elephant approaches a tiger-removing, with noiseless adroitness, every obstacle of fallen timber, etc., and passing his huge bulk over rustling leaves, or rolling stones, or quaking bog, with an absolute and marvelous silence; handing up stones when ordered for his master to fling into the cover; smelling out a cold scent as a spaniel roads a pheasant; and at last, perhaps, pointing dead with sensitive trunk at the hidden monster, or showing, with short, nervous raps of that organ on the ground, that he is somewhere near, though not actually discovered to the senses of the elephant. Then the unswerving steadiness when he sees the enemy he naturally dreads, and would flee from panic-stricken in his native haunts, perhaps charging headlong at his head, trusting all to the skill of his rider, and thoughtless of using his own tremendous strength in the encounter-for a good elephant never attempts to combat the tiger himself. To do so would generally be fatal to the sport, and perhaps to the sportsman, too; for no one could stick to an elephant engaged in a personal struggle with a tiger, far less use his gun under such circumstances. The elephant's business is to stand like a rock in every event, even when the tiger is fastened on his head-as many a good one will do and has done.

All elephants intended to be used in hunting tigers must be very carefully trained and entered to their game. A good mahout, or driver, is very difficult to obtain. They dif fer as much in their command over elephants as do riders of horses; and a plucky driver will generally make a stanch elephant, and vice versa. The elephant should first be accustomed to the firing of guns from his back, and to seeing deer and other harmless animals shot before him in company with a stanch companion. He must not be forced in at a tiger, or at a hog or bear, which he detests even more, until he has acquired some confidence, though in some few cases he will stand to any animal from the very first. When they have seen a few tigers neatly disposed of, most elephants acquire confidence in their human allies, and become sufficiently steady in the field; but their ultimate qualities will depend much on natural temperament. The more naturally courageous an elephant is, the better chance there is of his remaining stanch after having been actually mauled by a tiger-an accident to be avoided, of course, as long as possible. It will occur sometimes, however, in the best hands; and then a naturally timid animal, who has only been made stanch by a long course of immunity from injury, will probably be spoiled for life, while a really plucky elephant is often rendered bolder than before by such an occurrence.

I spent nearly a week of this time in the destruction of a famous man-eater, which

had completely closed several roads, and was estimated to have devoured over a hundred human beings! One of these roads was the main outlet from the Bétúl teak-forests toward the railway then under construction in the Narbadá Valley; and the work of the sleeper-contractors was completely at a standstill owing to the ravages of this brute. He occupied regularly a large triangle of country between the rivers Móran and Ganjál; occasionally making a tour of destruction much farther to the east and west; and striking terror into a breadth of not less than thirty to forty miles. It was therefore supposed that the devastation was caused by more than one animal; and we thought we had disposed of one of these early in April, when we killed a very cunning old tiger of evil repute after several days' severe hunting. But I am now certain that the brute I destroyed subsequently was the real malefactor even there, as killing again commenced after we had left, and all loss to human life did not cease till the day I finally disposed of him.

He had not been heard of for a week or two when I came into his country, and pitched my camp in a splendid mango-grove near the large village of Lokartaláe, on the Móran River. Here I was again laid up through over-using my sprained tendon; but a better place in which to pass the long, hot days of forced inactivity could not have been found. The bare, brown country outside was entirely shut out by the long, drooping branches of the huge mango-trees, interlaced overhead in a grateful canopy, and loaded with the half-ripe fruit pendent on their long, tendril-like stalks; while beneath them short glimpses were seen of the bright, clear wa ters of the Móran stealing over their pebbly bed. The green mangoes, cooked in a va riety of ways, furnished a grateful and cooling addition to the table; and the whole grove was alive with a vast variety of bird and insect life, in the observation of which many an hour, that would otherwise have flown slowly by, was passed.

A few days of a lazy existence in this microcosm of a grove passed not unpleas antly after a spell of hard work in the pitiless hot blasts outside; but, when the lállá brought in news of families of tigers waiting to be hunted in the surrounding river-beds, I began to chafe; and when I heard from a neighboring police-post that the man-eater had again appeared, and had killed a man and a boy on the high-road about ten miles from my camp, I could stand it no longer. I had been douching my leg with cold water, but now resorted to stronger measures, giving it a coating of James's horse - blister, which caused, of course, severe pain for a few days, but at the end of them resulted, to my great delight, in a complete and permanent cure. In the mean time, while I was still raw and sore, I was regaled with stories of the man-eater-of his fearful size and appearance, with belly pendent to the ground, and white moon on the top of his forehead; his pork-butcher-like method of detaining a party of travelers while he rolled himself in the sand, and at last came up and inspected them all round, selecting the fattest; his power of transforming himself into an inno

cent-looking wood-cutter, and calling or whistling through the woods till an unsuspecting victim approached; how the spirits of all his victims rode with him on his head, warning him of every danger, and guiding him to the fatal ambush where a traveler would shortly pass. All the best shikárís of the countryside were collected in my camp; and the landholders and many of the people besieged my tent morning and evening. The infant of a woman who had been carried away while drawing water at a well was brought and held up before me; and every offer of assistance in destroying the monster was made. No useful help was, however, to be expected from a terror-stricken population like this. They lived in barricaded houses; and only stirred out when necessity compelled in large bodies, covered by armed men, and beating drums and shouting as they passed along the roads. Many villages had been utterly deserted; and the country was evidently being slowly depopulated by this single animal. So far as I could learn, he had been killing alone for about a year-another tiger who had formerly assisted him in his fell occupation having been shot the previous hot weather.

its pendent baskets, in which the holy-water from his place of pilgrimage had been carried by the hapless man, were lying on the ground in a dried-up pool of blood, and shreds of his clothes adhered to the bushes where he had been dragged down into the bed of the nálá. We tracked the man-eater and his prey into a very thick grass-cover, alive with spotted deer, where he had broken up and devoured the greater part of the body. Some bones and shreds of flesh, and the skull, hands, and feet, were all that remained. This tiger never returned to his victim a second time, so it was useless to found any scheme for killing him on that expectation. We took up his tracks from the body, and carried them patiently down through very dense jungle to the banks of the Móran, the trackers working in fear and trembling under the trunk of my elephant, and covered by my rifle at full cock. At the river the tracks went out to a long spit of sand that projected into the water, where the tiger had drunk, and then returned to a great mass of piled-up rocks at the bottom of a precipitous bank, full of caverns and recesses. This we searched with stones and some fireworks I had in the howdah, but put out nothing but a scraggy hyena, which was, of course, allowed to escape. We searched about all day here in vain, and it was not till nearly sunset that I turned and made for camp.

As soon as I could ride in the howdah, and long before I could do more than hobble on foot, I marched to a place called Chárkhérá, where the last kill had been reported. My usually straggling following was now compressed into a close body, preceded and followed by the baggage-elephants, and protected by a guard of police with muskets, peons with my spare guns, and a whole posse of matchlocked shikárís. Two deserted villages were passed on the road, and heaps of stones at intervals showed where a traveler had been struck down. A better huntingground for a man-eater certainly could not be. Thick, scrubby teak-jungle closed in the road on both sides; and alongside of it for a great part of the way wound a narrow, deep water-course, overshadowed by thick jámanbushes, and with here and there a small pooling, of water still left. I hunted along this nálá the whole way, and found many old tracks of a very large male tiger, which the shikárís declared to be the man-eater. There were none more recent, however, than several days. Chárkhérá was also deserted on account of the tiger, and there was no shade to speak of; but it was the most central place within reach of the usual haunts of the brute, so I encamped here, and sent the baggageelephants back to fetch provisions. In the evening I was startled by a messenger from a place called Lé, on the Móran River, nearly in the direction I had come from, who said that one of a party of pilgrims who had been traveling unsuspectingly by a jungle-road had been carried off by the tiger close to that place. Early next morning I started off with two elephants, and arrived at the spot about eight o'clock. The man had been struck down where a small ravine leading down to the Móran crosses a lonely pathway a few miles east of Lé. The shoulder-stick, with

A little practice suffices to distinguish the tracks of tigers of different ages and sexes. The old male has a much squarer track, so to speak, than the female, which leaves a more oval footprint.

It was almost dusk, when we were a few miles from home, passing along the road we had marched by the former day, and the same by which we had come out in the morning, when one of the men who was walking behind the elephant started and called a halt. He had seen the footprint of a tiger. The elephant's tread had partly obliterated it; but farther on, where we had not yet gone, it was found plain enough-the great, square pug of the man-eater we had been looking for all day! He was on before us, and must have passed since we came out in the mornfor his track had covered that of the elephants as they came. It was too late to hope to find him that evening; and we could only proceed slowly along on the track, which held to the pathway, keeping a bright lookout. The lallá indeed proposed that he should go a little ahead as a bait for the tiger, while I covered him from the elephant with a rifle! But he wound up by expressing a doubt whether his skinny corporation would be a sufficient attraction; and suggested that a plump young policeman, who had taken advantage of our protection to make his official visit to the scene of the last kill, should be substituted whereat there was a general but not very hearty grin. The subject was too sore a one in that neighborhood just then. About a mile from the camp the track turned off into the deep nálá that bordered the road. It was now almost dark, so we went on to the camp, and fortified it by posting the three elephants on different sides, and lighting roaring fires between. Once in the night an elephant started out of its deep sleep and trumpeted shrilly; but in the morning we couid find no tracks of the tiger having come near us. I went out early next morning to beat up the nálá; for a man-eater is not like common tigers, and must be sought

for morning, noon, and night. But I found no tracks, save in the one place where he had crossed the nálá the evening before, and gone off into thick jungle.

On my return to camp, just as I was sitting down to breakfast, some Banjárás from a place called Dékná-about a mile and a half from camp-came running in to say that one of their companions had been taken out of the middle of their drove of bullocks by the tiger, just as they were starting from their night's encampment. The elephant had not been unharnessed; and, securing some food and a bottle of claret, I was not two minutes in getting under way again. The edge of a low savanna, covered with long grass and intersected by a nála, was the scene of this last assassination; and a broad trail of crushed-down grass showed where the body had been dragged down toward the nálá. No tracking was required. It was horribly plain. The trail did not lead quite into the nálá, which had steep sides, but turned and went alongside of it into some very long grass reaching nearly up to the howdah. Here Sarjú Parshád (a large government mukna I was then riding) kicked violently at the ground and trumpeted, and immediately the long grass began to wave ahead. We pushed on at full speed, stepping, as we went, over the ghastly, half-eaten body of the Banjárá. But the cover was dreadfully thick; and, though I caught a glimpse of a yellow object as it jumped down into the nálá, it was not in time to fire. It was some little time before we could get the elephant down the bank and follow the broad, plain footprints of the monster, now evidently going at a swinging trot. He kept on in the nálá for about a mile, and then took to the grass again; but it was not so long here, and we could still make out the trail from the bowdah. Presently, however, it led into rough, stony ground, and the tracking became more difficult. He was evidently full of go, and would carry us far; so I sent back for some more trackers, and with orders to send a small tent across to a hamlet on the banks of the Ganjál, toward which he seemed to be making. All that day we followed the trail through an exceedingly difficult country, patiently working out print by print, but without being gratified by a sight of his brindled hide. Several of the local shikárís were admirable trackers; and we carried the line down within about a mile of the river, where a dense, thorny cover began, through which no one could follow a tiger.

We slept that night at the little village, and early next morning made a long cast ahead, proceeding at once to the river, where we soon hit upon the track leading straight down its sandy bed. There were some strong covers reported in the river-bed some miles ahead, near the large village of Bhádúgaon, so I sent back to order the tent over there. The track was crossed in this river by several others, but was easily distinguishable from all by its superior size. It had also a peculiar drag of the toe of one hind-foot, which the people knew, and attributed to a wound he had received some months before from a sbikárí's matchlock. There was thus no doubt we were behind the man-eater; and

ness, trumpeted a shrill note of defiance, and, rushing upon his prostrate foe, commenced a war-dance on his body that made it little less difficult to stick to him than when the tiger was being kicked off. It consisted, I believe, of kicking up the carcass with a hind-leg, catching it in the hollow of the fore, and so tossing it backward and forward among his feet-winding up by placing his huge fore-foot on the body and cross

I determined to follow him while I could hold | Sarjú, coming round with the utmost willingout and we could keep the track. It led right into a very dense cover of jáman and tamarisk, in the bed and on the banks of the river, a few miles above Bhádúgaon. Having been hard pushed the previous day, we hoped he might lie up here; and, indeed, there was no other place he could well go to for water and shade. So we circled round the outside of the cover, and, finding no track leading out, considered him fairly ringed. We then went over to the village for break-ing the other over it, so as to press it into fast, intending to return in the heat of the day.

About eleven o'clock we again faced the scorching hot wind, and made silently for the cover where lay the man-eater. I surrounded it with scouts on trees, and posted a pad - elephant at the only point where he could easily get up the high bank and make off, and then pushed old Sarjú slowly and carefully through the cover. Peafowl rose in numbers from every bush as we advanced; and a few hares and other small animals bolted out at the edges-such thick, green covers being the mid-day resort of all the life of the neighborhood in the hot weather. About the centre the jungle was extremely thick, and the bottom was cut up into a number of parallel water- channels among the strong roots and overhanging branches of the tamarisk. Here the elephant paused and began to kick the earth, and utter the low, tremulous sound by which some elephants denote the close presence of a tiger. We peered all about with nervous beatings of the heart, and at last the mahout, who was lower down on the elephant's neck, said he saw him lying beneath a thick jáman-bush. We had some stones in the howdah, and I made the lállá, who was behind me in the back-seat, pitch one into the bush. Instantly the tiger started up with a short roar, and galloped off through the bushes. I gave

the sand with his whole weight. I found afterward that the elephant-boy, whose business it is to stand behind the howdah, and, if necessary, keep the elephant straight in a charge by applying a thick stick over his rump, had had a narrow escape in this adventure, having dropped off in his fright almost into the jaws of the tiger. The tiger made straight for the elephant, however, as is almost invariably the case, and the boy picked himself up and fled to the protection of the other elephant.

Sarjú was not a perfect shikárí elephant; but his fault was rather too much courage than the reverse, and it was only his miserable opium-eating villain of a mahout that made him turn at the critical moment. He was much cut about the quarters; but I took him out close to the tents two days after and killed two more tigers without his flinching in the least. The tiger we had thus killed was undoubtedly the man-eater. He was exactly ten feet long, in the prime of life, with the dull-yellow coat of the adult male-not in the least mangy or toothless like the man-eater of story. He had no moon on his head, nor did his belly nearly touch the ground. I afterward found that these characteristics are attributed to all man-eaters by the credulous people.

him right and left at once, which told loudly; IS THE WORLD OVER

but he went till he saw the pad-elephant blocking the road he meant to escape by, and then he turned and charged back at me with horrible roars. It was very difficult to see him among the crashing bushes, and he was within twenty yards when I fired again. This dropped him into one of the channels, but he picked himself up, and came on again as savagely as though more slowly than before. I was now in the act of covering him with a large-shell rifle, when suddenly the elephant spun round, and I found myself looking the opposite way, while a worrying sound behind me, and the frantic movements of the elephant, told me I had a fellow-passenger on board I might well have dispensed with. All I could do in the way of holding on barely sufficed to prevent myself and guns from being pitched out; and it was some time before Sarjú, finding he could not, kick him off, paused to think what he would do next. I seized that placid interval to lean over behind and put the muzzle of the rifle to the head of the tiger-blowing it into fifty pieces with the large shell. He dropped like a sack of potatoes, and then I saw the dastardly mahout urging the elephant to run out of the An application of my gun-stock to his head, however, reversed the engine; and

cover.

NEAR

CROWDED?

EARLY eighty years ago the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, a quiet English clergyman, student, and traveler, put forth a little pamphlet which so startled the world that very many people have not even yet fully recovered from their fright. The reverend gentleman had, it seems, no thought of playing the rôle of sensation-monger; he had no wish to frighten people unnecessarily, or to attract attention to his book or to himself by factitious means. He thought he had discovered an impending danger, of which the public was wholly unsuspicious; and, with no other object than that of warning his countrymen while there was yet time, he stated his fears, and the facts and calculations upon which they rested. At a somewhat earlier date, Hume, the historian, had subjected a good many of the stories we receive as ancient history to a novel test, for the sake of ascertaining to what extent they were worthy of the credence commonly given them. His habit of mind was skeptical in the extreme, and, in view of the universal tendency of man to exaggerate numbers, in the absence of exact data, he was disposed to doubt |

the stories of vast hordes of men who lived

in particular places, moved from one given point to another, peopled certain districts, or assembled at the call of their chieftains ir enormous armies. He suspected, as every school-boy does, that the numbers given were in part a growth of the imagination; that the traditions from which the first chroniclers got their figures had previously passed through a good many careless hands; and that, by a process of accretion similar to that which every dweller in a village bas opportunity to see in operation to this day, they had greatly increased in their proportions. In the absence of any thing like an authoritative enumeration, Hume resorted to arithmetic for a means of testing the truth of all these stories. It was clear enough that the men constituting the hordes spoken of in ancient history must have got food from some source, and, as he could calculate with approximate accuracy the aggregate amount of food within their reach, it was an easy task to show that many of the stories which historians had accepted without question were greatly exaggerated or wholly false.

This application of arithmetic to the relations existing between population and foodsupply seems to have suggested the investigations upon which Malthus founded his phi losophy. Briefly stated, his idea was this, that population naturally increases in a geometrical ratio, while production can only increase in arithmetical progression. If there be ten persons living upon a certain tract of land which produces, say, one hundred bushels of grain annually, in thirty years the ten will have doubled, becoming twenty; thirty years later their numbers will have doubled again, and in ninety years the ten will have become eighty; one hundred and twenty years will see them increased to one hundred and sixty persons. Now, during the first thirty years it might be possible to double the productiveness of their land, but it would be quite impossible to double it again and again every thirty years, making their yearly hundred bushels of grain two hundred at the end of thirty years, four hundred at sixty, eight hundred at ninety, and sixteen hundred at the end of one hundred and twenty years. What is true, in this regard, of one acre or ten, must ultimately be true, he argued, of the whole earth; and his conclusion was that, unless restraint could be placed upon mar riage, England was doomed speedily to become a nation of paupers, and that the whole world must in time share a like fate.

The evil times predicted by this theorist have not yet fallen upon England-a fact which his followers of to-day explain by say ing that he failed to give full value to the fac tor commerce in working out his problem; but, while this has served and serves to postpone the worst, there are people in plenty who still think the world overcrowded, and who hold that this overcrowding is the suffi cient cause of much of the crime and misery with which mankind is afflicted. That they honestly believe this is clear, and it is no less manifest that the social doctrines they build upon this belief seem to them logical results of the premises. Like Malthus, they advo cate the checking of population merely be

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