HOW I KILLED THE
TIGER.

PRINTED BY
SMITHS' PRINTING AND PUBLISHING AGENCY,

28-32, HUTTON STREET,
LONDON, E.G.,

AND
FLEET WORKS, ST. ALBANS, HERTS.

THE AUTHOR.

HOW I KILLED
THE TIGER

BEING

AN ACCOUNT OF MY

ENCOUNTER WITH A ROYAL

BENGAL TIGER

WITH AX APPENDIX- CONTAINING SOME
GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT INDIA.

BY
LIEUT.-COLONEL FRANK SHEFFIELD

Commanding 1st Cadet liattalion The Royal Fusiliers
(City of London Regiment).

SECOND EDITION.

PRINTED CORONATION YEAR, A.D. 1902.
PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR, TO WHOM ALL COMMUNICATIONS MAY HE

ADDRESSED.
HEAD QUARTERS—

IST CADET BATTALION, THE ROYAL FUSILIERS,
(CITY OF LONDON REGIMENT)

POND STREET, HAMPSTEAD, N.W
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Dedicated to

A. J. BAINBRIDGE, ESQ.,

BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE RETIRED,

THEN JUDGE OF MIDNAPORE,

AND

R. MATHEW, ESQ., M.D.,

THEN CIVIL SURGEON OF MIDNAPORE,

IN MEMORY OF MUCH TIMELY KINDNESS RECEIVED

BY THEIR FAITHFUL FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

HOW I KILLED THE .TIGER.

I'AGE

INTRODUCTION ix.

CHAPTER I. ... ... ... ... i

CHAPTER II. ... ... ... ... ... 3

CHAPTER III. i|

APPEND1X.

PAGE

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BRITISH INDIA ... 27

ABORIGINES OF INDIA — RACE — LANGUAGE 37

RELIGION — ABLUTIONS 52

STATE AND MODE OF AGRICULTURE 56

MAMMALIA 64

THE TIGER 67

BIRDS 72

REPTILE KINGDOM 75

ANTS ••• 79

THE COCOANUT PALM ... ... 83

MULBERRY AND SILK CULTIVATION

THE BANYAN TREE 94

RAIN AND HAIL STORMS 97

LETTERS AND PRESS OPINIONS . ... 101

M31 3832

ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE TIGER Frontispiece.

THE AUTHOR ... ... ... Facing Frontispiece.

PLATES.

WILL You SHOOT A TIGER? i.

WHITTLING DOWN BULLETS ii.

MUNDLE GIVING INFORMATION ... ... ... iii.

BOTH CAPS MISSED FIRE ... ... ... iv.

PRIMING THE NIPPLES ... ... ... ... v.

GOING UP AGAIN? vi.

FIRING vii.

TIGER CHARGING viii.

TIGER MAULING MY LEI-T SHOULDER ix.

TIGER ON THE TOP OF ME x,

TIGER AGAIN COMING TO THE CHARGE... ... xi.

TIGER TUMBLING OVER THE POGAH xii.

SITTING DOWN ox A SMALL MOUND ... xiii.

NATIVE WITH A BOWL OF WATER xiv.

GIVING INSTRUCTIONS TOR BRINGING IN Tin:

TIGKR

BRINGING IN THE TIGER...
MEASURING THE TIGER ...
GETTING INTO THE PALKEE

BEING CARRIED FROM THE DOCTOR'S HOUSE
TO THE JUDGE'S ...

MOSQUITO CURTAINS IN A BI.A/E

Tm FEAT DP WALKING WITH A CRUTCH

ACCOMPLISHED xxlt

WAI. KING-STICK IN I-I.ACE OF Tin: CRUTCH ... xxii.

FAC-SIMILE OF ONE OF THE CLAWS

THE AUTHOR AS in: NOW is xxiv.

CJK Cigcr.

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry ?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes ?
On what wings dare he aspire ?
What the hand dare seize thy fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart ?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand formed thy dread feet ?

What the hammer ? what the chain ?
In what furnace was thy brain ?
What the anvil ? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp ?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see ?
Did He who made the lamb make thee ?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Did frame thy fearful symmetry ?

—William Blake.

Introduction.

ON returning to England after a prolonged
residence in India, one is struck — and I
am sure all Anglo-Indians will bear me out in
this — with the abysmal ignorance of the average
Englishman upon everything concerning our vast
Indian Possessions and Dependencies.

Our Indian Empire is unique ; no other Euro-
pean power can boast of anything at all com-
parable with it. Yet so far from being a subject
for enthusiastic pride, and for careful study, it is
almost ignored. The British people, to take
them in the bulk, are not only ignorant, but
apathetic. This cold indifference was even more
noticeable some twenty years ago than now. The
modern Englishman has fallen into the rather
lazy habit of extracting most of his information
from novels. A brilliant romance will attract
attention where works of great labour and research
fail to achieve a remunerative sale. The modern

x. INTRODUCTION.

novelist has a great power and a great responsi-
bility. Not to the historians, or the compilers of
blue books, but to Rudyard Kipling, the poet and
novelist, the growing public interest in India is
due. He has " heard the East a-calling," and
has made his countrymen hear the seductive voice
too. I, with all Englishmen who have lived in
India, cherish the hope that the vast land, with
its teeming peoples, its mystic religions, its
wonderful resources, and its rich variety of animal
and vegetable life, will in time be better known
to the people who are responsible for its govern-
ment and welfare. For, without accurate know-
ledge, both legislation and philanthropy are often
more mischievous than beneficial. I therefore
make no apology for setting forth in the briefest
manner possible some general information com-
piled from authentic sources, respecting British
India, in an appendix.

My main purpose in writing this little book,
was to place in a permanent form a description
of my wonderful preservation from death in a
chance encounter with a Royal Bengal Tiger. My
life had been adventurous up to that time. I had
shot big game of various kinds. But this episode,
so marvellous in itself, so important in its
influence upon my after life and character, marks
the close of my career as a hunter of big game.

INTRODUCTION. XI.

A contributory reason of much importance
for the present publication of this volume, is
the hope that the profits derived from its circula-
tion may augment the fund being raised for the
erection and furnishing of suitable buildings, at
Hampstead, as the Headquarters of the ist
Cadet Battalion The Royal Fusiliers (City of
London Regiment).

The raising of such a Battalion has the cordial
approval of Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, Com-
mander-in-Chief; Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley,
late Commander-in-Chief ; and other high military
authorities ; and the author, having been appointed
its Lieutenant-Colonel in command, is anxious
that this work may attain a circulation that will
secure a good proportion of the sinews of war.
If in this way " Captain Pen " is enabled to render
a friendly hand to " Captain Sword," the public
interest will be the ultimate gainer.

T

Cfcapter I.

HE incident I am about to relate took place on
the 28th January in the year 1871, at Palaspai,
Midnapore. Midnapore is one of the largest and
most important districts of Bengal. The town and
station is seventy miles West of Calcutta. Its
largest river, the Cossye, is two hundred and forty
miles in length, and discharges itself into the Hoogly.
The Hoogly river is formed by the junction of the
Bhagaruttee and Tellinghee, two branches of the
Ganges. It runs South to Calcutta; South-West
to Diamond Harbour ; East and South-West into
the sea at Saugor roadstead, by an estuary fifteen
miles wide. In its windings it reaches a length of
one hundred and sixty miles. It receives the
Dummoodah, three hundred and fifty miles long ;
Dalkissore, one hundred and seventy miles ; and
the Cossye, two hundred and forty miles. It was
formerly navigable, for a line of battle ship, as far
up as Chandernagore, a French town, twenty miles
North of Calcutta ; now vessels, drawing more than
seventeen feet, are not safe in passing from Calcutta

2 HOW I KILLED THE TIG Eli.

to the sea by reason of the shoals, amongst the
largest of which is that known as the James and
Mary (Jahazmara, ship struck).

Calcutta is the capital of British India, and is
built on the left, or eastern, bank of the Hoogly river.
It is the seat of the Imperial Government, is a place
of great trade, and has a Mint, a Cathedral, a
Governor's House, a fortress, Town Hall, great
hospitals, schools, and colleges, a botanical garden,
customs office, High Court, and public monuments
of Sir David Ouchterlony, Warren Hastings, and
others.

Calcutta was the first concession to the British in
that part of India. When they obtained it, it was
only a miserable village known as Kalee Ghat, of
which some believe its present name is a corruption.
It is about eighty miles from the Bay of Bengal.
On the i8th June, 1756, it was taken by Suraj-
ud-Dowlah. Messrs. Drake and Minchin succeeded
in making their escape with the women and
children. Mr. Holwell held out for forty-eight
hours longer, and he, with a hundred and forty-
six other Englishmen, were imprisoned in a small
guard-room, eighteen feet high, eighteen feet wide,
and fourteen feet deep. On the following morn-
ing only twenty-three issued forth alive. The
guard-room was thenceforward known as the
Black Hole of Calcutta,

Charier II.

I HAD been out shooting all the morning, and
was wending my way back in a leisurely manner,
when, about a couple of miles from my quarters,
I came across a native, squatting on the river
bank, and calmly smoking his hookah (Plate i).
The native pipe and apparatus for smoking the
common hookah consists of u coooa-nut shell
containing water, in which an upright reed, or
wooden pipe, ornamented or otherwise, and about
twelve inches long, is fixed, to support the tobacco
holder and lighted charcoal. The perpendicular
tube is grasped by the smoker, who draws the
tobacco smoke through the water by means of a
second reed or hole in the shell.

On seeing me with my gun, the native asked
me if I would shoot a tiger, which he said was
couched in a mulberry field (Mulberry Cultivation :
see Appendix) about a mile distant. A little way
from the field a whole crowd of natives were
assembled. As it happened, I was only armed
with an old fowling-piece, a capital weapon for

4 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

shooting birds, but of course of little use against
such a formidable animal as a tiger. But rinding
that I had two explosive bullets in my pouch, and
thinking it very likely that the tiger would turn
out to be only a small leopard, I decided to go.
A friend who was staying with me was dandering
about a little further down the river. I therefore
signalled to him to come up. The bullets I found
were too large to fit the gun, so I began
whittling them down with my knife to the required
size. When my friend joined me we forded the
river, and proceeded towards the crowd of natives
(Plate 2). They were in a state of wild excite-
ment, the Mundle, or head man, taking a prominent
part in the tumult. The rivers in the East, I
may mention, have a harmless and peaceful
appearance in the dry season; but when the
rains set in they are raging torrents, overflowing
their banks, and sweeping everything before them.
The divisions, or aisles as they are called, in the
paddy fields (Plate 3) are for the purpose of keep-
ing in the water, without which the paddy, or
rice, could not grow. There are one or two kinds
of rice, however, which grow on table lands. The
aisles also serve during the rains as paths for walking
or riding. When a horse has slipped off the
narrow path a few times, and had an unpleasant
flounder in the mud? he learns wisdom by the

• >

vl.

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 5

things he has suffered, and soon becomes as expert
as the horse at the Covent Garden Circus that
walked the tight-rope. By the time I had shaped
the bullets to fit the gun, we had arrived at the
crowd of natives, who were in a condition of
febrile excitement, chattering like a lot of magpies.
I now loaded my gun, and by the time it was
ready, the natives had quieted down a little.
The Mundle was bursting with importance, and
eager to impart information as to the tiger's where-
abouts. It appeared that the tiger had been first
sighted by the man who had gone up the cocoa-
nut tree (Cocoa-nut Palms : see Appendix) to cut
some fronds for thatching. On looking down
from the top of the tree, he had espied the animal
in the mulberry field, and, being himself well out
of reach, he shouted with the full strength of his
lungs, so that the villagers turned out en masse.
I was still sceptical about the tiger, adhering to
my original idea that it would turn out to be a
leopard, as it is very unusual for tigers, unless
they are man-eaters, to take up their quarters
during the day-time in such an open spot as this,
especially as the mulberry was at this season of
the year destitute of leaf, and afforded very little
shelter. The mulberry fields are generally sur-
rounded by a Pogah, or bank, upon which
bamboos are planted, and grow luxuriantly, forming

C

D HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

splendid barriers against the inroads of cattle.
A few words here about the bamboo, the most
gigantic of grasses. There are many species,
which are applied to various useful purposes. In-
deed it would be difficult to point out an object
in which strength and elasticity are required, and
for which lightness is no objection, for which the
stems are not adapted in the countries where they
grow. These are some of the uses to which the
bamboo is applied — hollow cases, bows, arrows,
quivers, lance shafts, masts of vessels, bed posts,
walking sticks, the poles of palanquins, the floors
and supporters of rustic bridges, scaling ladders,
durable water pipes, rafts for floating heavy timber,
the frame work of houses, floorings of houses,
scaffolding, planking, uprights in houses, roofing,
bamboo ware, fishing rods, handles of parasols,
books, carts, musical instruments, paper, pencils,
rulers, cups, baskets, cages, crab-nets, fish poles,
pipe stems, sumpitan or blowing tubes, chairs,
seats, screens, couches, cots, and tables. Parts of
it too, can be candied, or used as pickles. The
bamboo flowers once in thirty to sixty years, and
dies. Its beauty when growing is as remarkable
as is its usefulness when cut down.

One villager, a little pluckier than his fellows,
volunteered to take me to a part of the field
where there was an opening in the bamboo fence.

/' I KILLED THE TIGER. J

My friend suggested that the fat man, who was
a noticeable figure in the crowd, should go; but
the fat man did not receive the suggestion with
enthusiasm. When I arrived at the opening, I
saw within thirty yards of me a most magnificent
Royal Bengal Tiger, of which the frontispiece of
this book conveys a pretty accurate impression.
He was lying down broadside on, his head slightly
raised, and his weather eye taking careful stock
of me (Plate 4). I took steady aim behind his
shoulder, the most vulnerable part. The cap
missed fire. The second cap also missed fire.
The villager, not liking the look of things, ske-
daddled with great precipitation. I then walked
off a few yards, primed the nipples, and re-
capped. During these operations my friend was
doing his utmost to dissuade me from going up
again (Plate 5). But the opportunity was too
good and too rare to be lost. I was afraid that
if I sent for another gun, the tiger might take
it into his head to slope. All being now ready,
I walked up again, my prudent friend going in
the opposite direction (Plate 6). The tiger had
not budged an inch. I took steady aim at the
same spot, just behind the shoulder, and fired
(Plate 7). Instantly the tiger was on his hind
legs, and uttered a terrific roar. My friend and
the natives, without waiting to see the result,

C 2

8 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

bolted in all directions. The tiger came to the
charge. Contrary to popular belief, tigers do not
spring, they charge down, and when close to their
prey rear up on their hind legs. I backed from
the pogah so as to have him on even and open
ground. When he was within five yards of me
I made certain of bowling him over with a shot
through the head (Plate 8). As ill-luck would
have it, the gun again missed fire. The next
second he was on me ; one paw on my right
shoulder, the other round my back, his enormous
mouth making for my head. I struck him a
heavy blow on the side of the head with the
barrels of the gun, which brought his mouth on
my shoulder (Plate 9). I felt his teeth crunch into
the flesh. I fell, with the tiger on top of me.
His mouth was touching my face, and every
moment I expected to find my head in his mouth
(Plate 10). I understood now how a mouse feels
when clutched by a cat. In fact I was almost
as helpless as a mouse. I was completely
jammed under him, and I felt unable to support
the pressure of his great bulk. My right hand
alone was free. I seized him by the scruff of
the neck, and struggled desperately to work from
under him, intending to get my gun, and try
another shot. But before I had succeeded in
improving my position much, the tiger got up,

HOW I KILLED TEE TIGER. g

and was going away. I rose also, and found my
left arm was hanging helpless. Now the tiger
turned very suddenly, and it looked as if he was
going to renew the attack. I still had a kick
left in me, and was fully determined to make a
hard fight for it (Plate n). The tiger passed
close to me, almost touching me in fact, and
made for the mulberry field. At that instant I
caught sight of my friend trying to get on a
small mound at the foot of a cocoa-nut tree.
Fright had so affected him that his legs seemed
to refuse their office. The sight struck me as so
ridiculous that in spite of my desperate condition,
I could not help bursting into a laugh. I noticed
a spot of blood behind the tiger's shoulder, and
as he went over the pogah he fell (Plate 12) but
managed to drag himself to the very spot where
I had shot him. I congratulated myself that I
had damaged him equally as much as he had
damaged me. I walked off to a small mound
and sat down. The reaction now came on, and
produced a profuse perspiration. I was soon
weltering in blood, too, from the bite through
my shoulder and the claw wounds in various parts
of my body (Plate 13). About two minutes after
the tiger had returned to the spot where I shot
him, the man up the cocoa-nut tree bawled out
the welcome news that my enemy was dead. I

10 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

then spied the natives coming towards me, and
sung out to the foremost to get me a drink of
water (Plate 14). By the time the water was
brought, my friend and most of the natives were
staring at me as if I was a stuck pig. I confess I
was bleeding like one. After a long pull at the water,
I considered my position, and came to the con-
clusion that the sooner I made tracks and got to my
bungalow, which was more than two miles off, the
better fcr me (Plate 15). I gave my friend
instructions about bringing in the tiger, then fisted
my arm, and started to walk home, with about
half a dozen natives accompanying me. The
ground was extremely rough, but I managed to
do the distance, and was able to ford the river
without any assistance. Arrived at my bungalow
I had my upper garments, which were pretty
well in shreds, torn off. My servants then set
to work swabbing up the blood and bathing my
wounds. When I had lighted a pipe and taken
a survey of my condition, I felt pretty sure that I
was in for a month's lay up. I had the satisfac-
tion of knowing that I had rid the community of
a dangerous pest. The tiger in India is looked
upon as a common enemy. All classes are in
mortal dread of him. He is in no way particular
and makes no distinction between castes, though
if he had his choice he would probably prefer a

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. II

good fat Baboo, something similar to the fat man
in the illustrations, to a poor, lean, charcoal burner.
There is, therefore, great rejoicing over the death
of a tiger, and my friend found no difficulty in
getting volunteers to bring the tiger in. Bamboos
and ropes were speedily supplied, and as the work
of slinging progressed, all the villagers from several
villages round about came with their musical
instruments to join in the Tamashah. When
everything was ready, my friend headed the pro-
cession, followed by the tiger borne by twenty
men, and swarms of natives tom-toming, blowing
horns, dancing, and making various noises (Plate
16). By the appearance of the Mundle, one
would suppose that he had not only shot the tiger
but had eaten him too. The fat man is also,
conspicuous in the front, and looks as if he had
taken an important part in the affair. Perhaps
he thought he had. Imagination is very strong
with some people. During the famine in Orissa,
when two or three millions of people died in
1865-6, a friend of mine, who held a high and
responsible office in the station, and his wife,
were making easy stages with me of ten or four-
teen miles a day through a district where the
famine was very bad. My friend and I rode on
horseback, and the lady in a tonjon carried by
bearers. Shortly after we had arrived at a place

12 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

called Gooteah, the bearers asked me if I would
shoot them some boglahs (paddy birds about a
foot and a half in height), which were on a large
bund of water (a bund is an immense bank of
earth put up to collect water, which is used for
irrigation and various other purposes). I walked
down to the bund, and took a raking shot, and the
bearers picked up eighteen boglahs. This evidently
struck my friend as being a remarkable feat,
for on arriving at the station, he related to every-
body the story of the wonderful shot he had made.
Just a year afterwards we chanced to meet at pre-
cisely the same spot. "The last time I was here,"
he said, " I made a most remarkable shot." "Ah,"
I said, " I think I remember the circumstance."
For a second he seemed to be struck all of a heap.
" By the bye," he said, " I believe it was you."

The humour of the situation was so irresistible
that we roared with laughter till the tears rolled
down our cheeks.

I quite forgot the mauling I had received, when
I heard the sound of the people rejoicing, and
caught sight of my foe. When he was deposited
at my feet, and laid out for measurement, I had the
pleasure of looking at one of the most magnificent
specimens of the Royal Bengal Tiger (Plate 17).
He measured ten and a half feet from the tip
of the nose to the tip of the tail. My friend

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 13

then superintended the operation of skinning him,
after which he was cut open, as I was very
desirous of seeing the effect of the bullet. I was
greatly astonished to see that the whole of the
tiger's inside was blown into a jelly. I never saw
greater execution. You will remember that my
gun was an old fowling-piece, and that the
bullets I loaded it with were conical, with
Jacobs's tube explosive shells inserted in the ends,
also that the bullets were too big, and I had to
reduce them with my knife. For Jacobs's shells
to explode they must strike a hard substance
precisely on the point. I have fired hundreds of
them out of the most finished rifles, and in cases
where they have not struck on the point, I have
seen the bullets and shells knocked into cocked
hats and all kinds of shapes, and no explosion.
You will therefore perceive that the explosion of this
shell was a perfect marvel. That the tiger should
have had the strength to maul me as he did, after
the terrible execution done by the explosive bullet,
will give you some idea of the extraordinary vitality
possessed by the'se animals. During my lay-up, an
account appeared in " The Englishman," a Calcutta
paper, of an Assam tea planter, who had shot
a tiger on the opposite side of a river, twenty feet
wide, clean through the heart. The tiger jumped the
river, killed the planter, and died on top of him.

Charier III.

MY position was serious. I was forty miles from
the station, the nearest place where medical
aid could be obtained, and my wounds required
immediate attention. I sent in all directions for
palkee-bearers to carry me to the station, but one
after the other the messengers returned, saying they
were all away, but it was expected that some would
return the next day. At 9 p.m., eleven hours after
the encounter, my wounds were still bleeding, and I
was feeling extremely faint. I was obliged to have
recourse to a primitive kind of surgery. I steeped
some strips of lint in brandy, and stuffed them into
the holes, when the bleeding stopped almost
immediately. I then had a sheet torn up into
strips, and my arm lashed close to my side. I then
turned in, and took one hundred and twenty drops
of laudanum, and was soon in the arms of
Morpheus.

That arrangement like a box in the verandah
(Plate 17) is a palkee. It has poles at each end by
which it is carried on men's shoulders. These men

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 15

are called palkee-bearers, who make it their pro-
fession from generation to generation. On what are
termed dak or (post) roads, relays of bearers are
stationed every ten, fifteen, or twenty miles, as the
case may be. But in the part where I was there
were no dak roads, so that the bearers you started
with had to do the whole journey. The same set of
bearers will easily do thirty or forty miles, and this
upon a diet of boiled rice only. We think it rather
a feat to walk forty miles merely carrying our own
bodies. What should we think of carrying a heavy
palkee that distance with a big man in it ?
Mentioning the palkee brings to my recollection a
night journey I was taking through a very jungly
part. When I awoke I found my palkee on the
ground. After waiting a bit, I slid back one of the
doors, and sung out to the bearers. No answer
came. " Darkness there and nothing more." I
thought it useless to put myself out, so turned
over, and went to sleep again. The bearers did
not return till daylight, when they told me they
had discovered that a tiger was following them,
so they put down my palkee, and bolted to the
nearest village. The tiger, I suppose, did not
much like the look of the palkee, and so passed
on.

The next morning when I awoke I felt horribly
seedy, and could eat nothing, barring a dry

16 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

biscuit, with a little weak tea. Up to the middle
of the day no bearers had arrived, but towards
evening the full complement of twenty-four came
in. At 7 p.m. the torches were lighted. I got
into my palkee, took another eighty drops of
laudanum, and fell asleep. Those boxes (Plate
18) contained my clothes. They are made of tin,
with wooden frames, and are called pittarrahs.
You will notice that they nearly go up to a
point ; that is to make them convenient for
slinging. The man who carries them is called a
banghy-dar. He keeps up with the palkee-
bearers, and carries eighty to a hundred pounds
weight.

I did not awake till we were close to the
station. I went to a friend's house, arriving at
about nine a.m. My friend immediately sent off
for the Civil Surgeon, who came accompanied by
the Central Jail Doctor. The Civil Surgeon said
I must go to his house, so that he might be
able to give me every attention. I got into the
palkee again, and on arriving at his house I was
laid upon a bed. The doctor being afraid to
extract the lint from the wounds, in case the
bleeding should recommence, put me under what
he called a course of irrigation, the object being
to keep down inflammation. Cold water was
poured over my wounds continually for three days

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. IJ

and nights, during which time I was lying in a
pool of water. I was then lifted on to my feet,
but I was as stiff as a poker. The lint was
then successfully extracted, and my wounds
dressed. From that time I became as if I were
paralysed, not having the power to move any
portion of my body, with the exception of my
right arm. Hectic fever also set in, and my
wounds suppurated extensively ; but for some few
days I was able to go through the performance
of being lifted out of bed morning and evening
to have my wounds dressed. In about ten days
time I complained of great pain across the lower
part of my back, which increased day by day.
The doctor probed the affected part, but without
any result. But it soon became evident that an
immense abscess was forming, supposed to be
from an internal bruise received in the fall when
the tiger came over on top of me. Bed sores
began to appear in various places on my back ;
several sinuses also formed at the wounds. A
water-bed was procured, but too late for the bed-
sores. I was getting worse daily, and could no
longer be lifted out of bed. The doctors pro-
nounced that in spite of my splendid constitution
it would be impossible for me to pull through.
The abscess increased rapidly, and extended all
down my right leg to my toes until the skin

1 8 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

became as tight as a drum, and appeared ready
to burst. I could only lie in the one position
on my back, and the pain I suffered from the
abscess was beyond all description. I can only
liken it to an immense hawser half eaten into
me. I begged the doctors to lance the great
abscess. They had several consultations, but were
afraid that if they did so the air would get in,
and cause it to mortify. Six weeks had now
elapsed, and the doctor's wife being unwell, he
decided to take her to Darjeeling. I was then left
in the charge of the Central Jail Doctor and the
assistant Civil Surgeon. Two or three days after
the doctor had left, the Judge of the station
dropped in to see me. Finding me all alone
and very low, he asked me if I would go to his
house, which was about two miles distant. I
gladly accepted his invitation, provided he could
manage to get me there. He then measured the
bedstead, and found that it would just go through
the door, so he went and prepared a room, and
came back with several bearers and two stout
bamboos. My bedstead, with me on it, was then
carried into the compound. The bamboos were
passed under it, and I was hoisted on to the
bearers' shoulders (Plate 19). It was a most
lovely morning, and I enjoyed the ride in
the fresh air immensely after my prolonged

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. IQ

confinement. This is about the prettiest station
in India, and on this occasion, as we slowly pro-
ceeded up avenue after avenue, it appeared to me
extremely charming. The room prepared for me
was about thirty feet by twenty, with three large
windows down to the ground, looking on to a
large garden full of magnificent flowers. But
even under these happier conditions I did not im-
prove. One night soon after my arrival, when
I was about at my very worst, I awoke in in-
tense pain. I felt as if all my wounds and bed-
sores were being punctured with red-hot needles.
I called out to my servant, asking him to bring
a light to see what was up. He lifted up the
mosquito curtains and found the bed swarming
with little red ants of a most rapacious kind
(Ants : see Appendix). He set to work vigorously
to brush them out, when the candle came in
contact with the curtains, and in a second they
were in a blaze (Plate 20). Fortunately my
servant was equal to the occasion, he frantically
tore them down, and so preserved me from being
considerably burned. It seemed as if fate was
not yet tired of persecuting me. This peril of
death by fire was rather a trial coming on top of
my other sufferings. To guard against another
attack from the red ants I had the legs of the
bedstead placed in brass bowls of water. That

20 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

apparatus over the bed is a punkah. There is a
rope attached to it, and it is pulled by what is
termed a punkah-wallah, and creates a splendid
current of air, without which we could not exist
in the hot weather.

Shortly after this the doctor returned from
Darjeeling. I took upon myself to tell him that
he must lance the abscess, no matter what the
result might be, as I could not bear the pain
any longer. The three doctors then had a con-
sultation, and the next morning I was put under
chloroform, and the operation performed. When
I recovered consciousness, the hole was plugged
up, and I was told they had drawn off three-and-
a-half soup plates of matter. The next morning
the doctor was round to see me early, he fully
expected to find that I had slipped my moorings
in the night. He was peering at me over the
head of the bed when he was electrified by hear-
ing me call out Choto Hazaree lao. (In India it
is customary to take tea and toast when we get
up, which is called Choto Hazaree, early or small
breakfast.) For three weeks a soup plate of
matter was drawn off night and morning from
the abscess. The discharge then turned into an
oily stuff, and it was only then that I was con-
sidered out of danger, so that up to that time my
life hung by a thread.

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 21

I now began gradually to recuperate; but after
another two months I was still in the same para-
lysed state. My feet were quite turned up, and
it was predicted that if I recovered I should be
a cripple. To relieve the intolerable lassitude and
tedium that I suffered from I amused myself with
carpentry. I got a carpenter to help me, and
made a reading apparatus to fix on my bedstead.
I then made an invalid couch — that is I planned
it in my head, and marked out every piece of
wood for the guidance of the carpenter. The
couch turned into almost everything, even to a
most luxurious arm-chair; by the time it was
finished, I had sufficiently recovered to be carried
out on it into the compound. 1 then made a
table to draw over the couch, which enabled me
to write, and lastly I made a crutch. I was still
almost helpless. I was propped on to my feet,
with the crutch under my right arm, and though
at first I had no more power to put one foot
before another than a baby, by dint of persever-
ing day after day the feat was at length accom-
plished (Plate 21). I made such rapid progress
that a walking stick soon took the place of the
crutch (Plate 22).

As soon as I had sufficiently recovered to take
the journey to Calcutta it was decided that I
should go home as the wounds did not show any

D

22 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

disposition to heal. My passage was accordingly
taken in a steamer going through the Suez Canal.
On arriving at Calcutta, Sir Joseph Fayrer ex-
amined me, and gave me some good advice.

The voyage home extended over two months,
and by the time I arrived at Holyhead my wounds
had just healed. I took up my quarters in the
north of Ireland on the coast, and as I had bene-
fitted so much by the voyage, I thought it advis-
able to go in for yachting and fishing. I could
not have done better, for in a few months I could
rough it with the hardiest native in that part.

I was obliged to take from sixty to eighty
drops of laudanum every night for six months.
The dose was then reduced to thirty drops for
about a week before it was discontinued altogether.
Up to the time of being mauled, though I had
had many hair-breadth escapes, and several heavy
chastisements, I was more irreligious than any
heathen. But that night, when weak with loss
of blood, I took that big dose of laudanum, and
turned in, I had a hazy impression that my
Saviour was close to me. It was the commence-
ment of my conversion, and throughout my illness
I had the privilege of being visited daily by the
American Baptist, and the Church of England
missionaries, from whom I derived great comfort.
Had I continued without Christ, I could not have

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 23

borne the terrible pain. Night alter night when
suffering intensely, I called upon Him until I was
relieved.

Words fail me to describe the extraordinary
kindness and attention I received from the three
doctors, the Judge, and his wife ; also from several
of the officials of the station. By the grace of
God and their kindness I was restored to health
and strength. I can only give expression to my
feelings of gratitude by saying that I would readily
undergo a similar mauling and terrible sufferings
to experience the same blessings, and that I owe
a debt I can never hope to repay.

D 2

APPENDIX.

historical Sketch of British India.

WHEN the British first set foot in India
the foundations of the old Moghul Empire
were crumbling away. Wars of conquest had
devastated the land. Robber chiefs had made a
practice of invading the territories of their
peaceful neighbours, carrying desolation with
them. But with the establishing of factories, and
the hiring of trained soldiers to defend them,
the formation of a central power was accom-
plished, which gradually grew in strength
sufficient to control the wild chieftains, and to
extend its power from Cape Comorin to the
Indus. The British administration in India has
been that of a purely military government, and
its entire policy has been conformed to military
necessities. Only since the middle of the nine-
teenth century has the state of the country
permitted its rulers to throw the energy of the
Government into the path of peaceful development
of its natural resources. .In the year 1664 a

historical Sketch of Britisb India.

WHEN the British first set foot in India
the foundations of the old Moghul Empire
were crumbling away. Wars of conquest had
devastated the land. Robber chiefs had made a
practice of invading the territories of their
peaceful neighbours, carrying desolation with
them. But with the establishing of factories, and
the hiring of trained soldiers to defend them,
the formation of a central power was accom-
plished, which gradually grew in strength
sufficient to control the wild chieftains, and to
extend its power from Cape Comorin to the
Indus. The British administration in India has
been that of a purely military government, and
its entire policy has been conformed to military
necessities. Only since the middle of the nine-
teenth century has the state of the country
permitted its rulers to throw the energy of the
Government into the path of peaceful development
of its natural resources. , In the year 1664 a

28 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

British force first came in contact with the
natives of India. Sivaji attacked and plundered
Surat. On this occasion Sir George Oxenden
won the admiration of Aurungzeb by an
extraordinary display of courage. Since then
wars have been almost incessant, and many a
name has become illustrious.

Since the conquest of the Punjab by Lord
Dalhousie in 1849, and of Pegu in 1852, the
boundaries of the British Empire in India,
excluding Aden and the Straits Settlements, have
been the Suliman range, the Karakorum, the
water-shed of the Himalaya, Nepaul and Bhootan
on the north ; the sea on the west and south ;
and a line marked by no natural features,
stretching from the Yoma range irregularly in a
south-east direction through Burmah to the tenth
parallel of latitude. Roughly, British India may
be said to be included within Lat. 8° and 37° N. ;
and Long. 66°44' and 99°3o' E., involving
eleven thousand two hundred and sixty miles by
external boundary. From Tenasserim by the
Himalaya to Cape Monze in Sindh, the "land"
frontier is four thousand six hundred and eighty
miles, while the " coast " line from the Straits
Settlements to Kurrachee is six thousand five
hundred and eighty. The length of India
from the Indus to Cape Comorin, on the meridian

HOW I KILLED THE TIGEE. 2Q

of 75°> is one thousand nine hundred miles.
The extreme breadth is one thousand eight
hundred miles, on the parallel of 28°. The
whole peninsula contains an area of about
one million five hundred and fifty-seven thousand
square miles, and a population of two hundred
and forty millions, or one hundred and fifty-four
to the mile. All this immense population is,
with the exception of small territories held by
Portugal and France, governed by Great Britain.

British India is administered, chiefly directly,
by British officials, under a Viceroy and Governor-
General, but to some extent indirectly through
feudatory Native Chiefs, guided by British officers.
British India, as it stood in the middle of the
nineteenth century, was won by the East India
Company, which had been established in 1599.
The beginnings of this colossal trading corpora-
tion were small. In the year 1636 Mr. Boughton,
a ship's surgeon, obtained the privilege of planting
factories in Bengal. The Presidency of Madras
was constituted in 1639 ; the Presidency of
Bombay in 1662 ; and the Presidency of Bengal
in 1682. In 1773 the Governor of Bengal was
made Governor-General of India, with certain
powers, chiefly political and financial, over the
other two. In 1784 a Board of Control was
created in Britain, composed of the King of

30 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

Great Britain's Ministers, who, in that capacity,
bore the title of Commissioners for the Affairs of
India, and this system continued until the year
1858, when British India was brought under the
direct control of the Crown. During that
interval, however, the Home Government of India
had consisted of a Board of eighteen members,
and was called the Directors of the East India
Company, and the President of the Board of
Control. The Directors had nearly all the
patronage as to appointments in their hands,
except the higher offices and commands which
were made in communication with the Ministry,
who likewise originated and controlled all questions
of peace and war. They also possessed the power
of reversing the acts of the East India Company,
and the Government of India, and of sending
out instructions on special matters to the
Governor-General without consulting the Directors.
Between the first formation of an English East
Indian Company and the year 1858 the following
were the chief historical events :

In 1664 the French East India Company was
formed. Their capital was built at Pondicherry
in 1674.

In 1667 the first mention of tea occurs in the
Company's records. In a despatch to their agent
at Bantam of twenty-fourth of January he is

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 31

ordered to send home one hundred pounds of
tea, the best he can get.

In 1667 the Charter was renewed, and fresh
authority was granted to establish a mint at
Bombay.

In 1681 Sir Joseph Child published a treatise
in which it appears that the Company then had
five hundred and fifty-six partners, thirty-six
ships of from one hundred to seven hundred and
seventy-five tons, and that the customs duties on
the Trade amounted to between £60,000 and
£70,000 a year.

In 1686 Sir Joseph Child's attempt to acquire
territorial empire in India proved abortive.

In 1693 a fresh Charter was granted. In 1698
a new Company was formed. (In 1702 the Com-
panies were amalgamated under the title of the
United Company of Merchants of England
trading to the East Indies.)

In 1698 the Company acquired a grant from
a grandson of Aurungzeb, of Calcutta, and two
adjoining villages, with leave to exercise judiciary
powers over the inhabitants and erect fortifica-
tions. These were given the name of Fort
William.

Now we come to an event which shines out
like a beacon light in the history of British India.
In 1757 Clive fought the battle of Plassey. With

32 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

only one thousand European troops, two thousand
Sepoys, and eight field-pieces, he completely de-
feated the army of Surajah Dowlah, consisting of
fifty-thousand foot, eighteen-thousand horse, and
fifty heavy cannon. By this victory Bengal, Behar,
and Orissa, were thrown into British hands.

The great East India Company continued to
thrive and grow in power till its dissolution in
1858, when all its rights passed to the British
Government. In its wars of conquest the Com-
pany had been almost continuously successful. A
severe reverse was sustained, however, in Afghan-
istan in 1841, when many thousands of soldiers
perished in the retreat. But their severest trial
occurred in 1857-8, in which years the native
army revolted, and many of the native races both
Hindu and Mahommedan rebelled. In 1857 the
number of British soldiers in India had been
allowed to fall very low, and it was supposed
that the disaffected soldiery of the Bengal Army
took that opportunity to mutiny. Various causes
have been suggested to account for that dis-
affection ; but there is a general impression that
our defeats in Afghanistan had made the native
troops think slightingly of British power and
prowess. Undoubtedly a great change had been
taking place in the temper of a naturally arrogant
oriental race, who respect (almost worship) might,

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 33

by introducing amongst them rules and regulations
suitable only for an army drawn from natives
in an advanced state of civilisation. The contest
for supremacy was severe and long continued.

In May, 1857, there were in India: European
soldiers, forty-five thousand ; Native, two hundred
and forty-four thousand ; Semi-Military Police,
eighty thousand.

About two hundred and fifty thousand Native
Soldiery were arrayed against the British power
in 1857. The British force was composed of
forty-five thousand Europeans, and some sixty-
thousand reliable native soldiery. These last were
increased to about one hundred and fifty thousand
native soldiers by the addition of the Sikh Army
from the Punjab, and before July, 1858, there
were over eighty-thousand British troops in India.
After the revolt was quelled there was a reduc-
tion of the Native Army, and by November, 1866,
it had fallen to one hundred and thirty-five
thousand men with only twelve guns, as against
one hundred and fifty in 1857.

The successive stages of the revolt, and the re-
establishment of British authority are detailed
below :

The revolt of the Bengal Native Army was
commenced at Berhampoor by the igth Bengal
Native Infantry, on February 26th, 1857.

34 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

Revolt continued by the outbreak of the Native
Cavalry at Meerut, on May loth.

The Delhi massacre occurred on May nth.

The Shah-Jehanapore massacre took place on
May 3ist.

On June 5th, the mutiny broke out at Jhansi,
the massacre occurred on the 8th June.

The massacre of the Futtehgur fugitives at
Cawnpore was on June i2th. Many other
massacres took place, at Cawnpore, by Nana
Sahib on June 27th ; on July i5th the women
and children were murdered at Cawnpore, by the
orders of Nana Sahib.

The capture of Delhi took place on September
2Oth, Brigadier-General Nicholson, who led the
assault, being killed.

On September 25th the columns under Generals
Outram and Havelock relieved the besieged resi-
dents and garrison in Lucknow.

On November I7th, Sir Colin Campbell, acting
in conjunction with the garrison, defeated the
rebels, and effected the second relief of Lucknow.
By the 22nd the whole garrison had left the
residency without the loss of a single man.
Before the end of the month he had also relieved
Cawnpore and severely defeated the Gwalior con-
tingent. Sir Colin Campbell now turned his
attention to the conquest of the entire city of

I

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 35

Lucknow. This was not accomplished until March
igth, 1858. The conquest of Lucknow was
practically the close of the Mutiny, but the war
still lingered on in Central India. The operations
were carried on by Sir Hugh Rose. Early in
the year he re-took Gwalior and restored Scindia.
With the death of the heroic Ranee of Jhansi,
who was killed in battle, the campaign came to
an end.

Tantia Topee, Nana Sahib's lieutenant, was
captured in April, 1859, and hanged.

The old King of Delhi was sent a prisoner to
Rangoon.

On May ist, 1859, the end of the Mutiny was
celebrated in England by public thanksgiving and
rejoicings.

The Government of the East Indies was trans-
ferred to the British Crown on September ist,
1858, and on November ist it was proclaimed
throughout India that its Government had been
transferred from the East India Company to the
British Sovereign.

The Bengal Native Army was re-organized on
November 9th, 1859.

On the 20th August, 1860, the Indian and
British armies were amalgamated.

The Governor was raised to the rank of Viceroy.
The supreme Courts of Calcutta, Madras and

36 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

Bombay were amalgamated with the Courts of
the Sadr Adalut of the three Presidencies, and
the united body was designated the High Court
of Judicature.

The native soldiers were reduced in number
as the organisation of the semi-military policy
progressed.

Many reforms were brought about by successive
governments. The Indian Civil Service and the
British Army were both thrown open to com-
petition. Patronage gave place to competitive
examinations. The India as we know it to-day
dates from the suppression of the mutiny.

-*!+•

Che Aborigines or India— Race—

THERE are large nations, and innumerable
smaller nations scattered all over India,
whose origin, and date of arrival in the country
is wholly unknown. It may be pretty safely
assumed, however, that the bulk of these immi-
grants came from regions beyond the Himalayas
on the north, at various times, ranging between
three thousand and one thousand years before the
Christian era. The small bodies in the N.W.
corner of the Peninsula appear to be of Western
origin, coming in all probability from ancient
Babylonia. There are people in the southern
parts of the peninsula of India and Malacca, with
marked negro features. These may also be found
in the Archipelago Islands ; there are traces of
them also in the valleys of Northern India. This
suggests the idea that there had once been a
great negro wave setting to the east. The great
bulk of the settlers in India — labourers, farmers,
foresters, shepherds, milkmen, artificers, and

3& HOW I KILLED THE

professional classes, seem to have come from the
N.W., by way of Kabul and Candahar, down the
valleys of the Indus, of the Ganges and Braham-
aputra, and to have streamed through the gaps in
the Himalayas, and from the practice rigidly
followed of living apart in castes, who neither eat
together nor intermarry, each of the immigrant
Hindu tribes and races are now as distinctly
marked in their isolation, as on the day of their
first appearance. Even the Mahommedans, who
have less of such strict caste habits, although
they also to a considerable extent follow the
ancient custom of marrying only amongst their
own people, are still readily distinguished ; tall,
powerful, fair men of the Afghans ; fair robust
Moghuls from Tartary ; fair slender nowaits from
Southern Persia ; the darker men of Arab origin ;
and the powerful, large-framed traders, known in
the south as Labbe. All these, amongst the
Hindus, Brahmans, Chetris, Vesyas and Sudras ;
and amongst the Mahommedans, Syeds, Shaikhs,
Moghuls, and Pathans, are in great nations. But,
throughout all India, in hamlets, in forests and
the plains, in towns, in mountain valleys, and on
the mountains, are innumerable smaller bodies or
tribes, with forms and habits, and following pur-
suits, quite distinct from each other. There is
no doubt, however, that the languages show two

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 39

great divisions, Arian and Turanian. Mr. Hodg-
son asserts that of seven of the southern tongues,
five belong to the cultivated class, viz. : Tamil,
Malayalam, Telugu, Carnataca, Tulava ; and two
belong to the uncultivated class, viz. : Curgi and
Todava. With regard to the cultivated tongues
of the south, Mr. Elliot observes that the apti-
tude of the people at present to substitute prak-
ritic words for aboriginal ones is such a stumbling-
block in the search for affinities, as to require
pains and knowledge to avoid ; and he instances
(among others) the common use of the borrowed
word rakta for blood, in lieu of the native term
nethar, of which latter alone we are enabled to
trace the unquestionable ethnic relationship of the
Gouds (even those north of the Vindhya) with the
remote southerners, speaking Teluga, Canadi, and
Tulava. The Himalayan languages form an ex-
ception to this assumed general prevalence of the
Tamulian type of speech. On the subject of the
local limits and mutual influence at the present
day of the cultivated languages of the south upon
each other, Mr. Elliot remarks that " all the
southern dialects become considerably intermixed
as they approach eacn other's limits. Thus, the
three words for egg used indifferently by the
people speaking Canarese (matte, tetti, gadda) are
evidently obtained, the first term from the Tamulian,

E 2

40 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

matta ; the last from the Telugi, gadda. This
intermixture, which is of ordinary occurrence in
all cognate tongues, is here promoted specially by
extensive colonization of different races, as of the
Telugus into Southern India under the Bijanagar
dynasty, where they still exist as distinct com-
munities — and of the followers of Raman uja
Achary into Mysore, where they are still to be
seen as a separate class, speaking Tamil in their
families, and Carnataca in public. The Reddis
also, an enterprising race of agriculturists, have
migrated from their original seats near Rajah-
mundry, over the whole of Southern India and
even into the Maharashtra country, where they
are considered the most thriving ryots, and are
met with as far north as Poona."

The pagan population of India is divided into
two great classes, viz : the Arian, or immigrant,
and the Tamulian, or aboriginal. The Tamulian
race, confined to India, and never distinguished
by mental culture, offers a humbler subject for
study than the Arian. But as the moral and
physical condition of many of the scattered mem-
bers of the Tamulian body is still nearly as little
known as is the (assumed) primitive entirety of
that body, this subject has two parts, each of
which is of interest to the philosopher and the
statesman. The Tamulians are now, for the most

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 41

part, British subjects; they are counted by
millions, extending from the snows to Cape Com-
orin, and they are as much superior to the Arian
Hindus in freedom from disqualifying prejudices,
as they are inferior to them in knowledge. In
every extensive jungly or hilly tracts throughout
India, there exists hundreds of thousands of human
beings in a state not materially different from that
of the Germans described by Tacitus. These
primitive races are the ancient heritors of the
whole soil, from all the rich and open parts of
which they were expelled by the Hindus. It is
a worthy object to ascertain when and under
what circumstances this dispersion of the ancient
owners of the soil took place, at least to demon-
strate the fact, and to bring again together the
dissevered fragments of the body, by means of
careful comparison of the languages, physical
attributes, creed and customs of the several
(assumed) parts. It is another object, not less
interesting, to exhibit the positive condition, moral
and material, of each of these societies, at once
so improvable and so needful of improvement,
and whose archaic status, polity and ideas offer
such instructive pictures of the course of human
progression.

The unity of the Arian race has been demon-
strated chiefly through lingual means, and much

42 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

has been done of late years similarly to demon-
strate the unity of the Tamulian race. But this
is difficult, for there is an immense number of
spoken tongues among the Tamulians, whereof
have already been ascertained not less than
twenty-eight in the limited sphere of Mr. Hodg-
son's inquiries ; and all these, though now so
different as to be mutually unintelligible to the
people who use them, require to be investigated
and criticised. The long and perfect dispersion
and insulation of the several members of the
Tamulian body, have led to an extremity of lingual
diverseness which, as contrasted with the similarity
of their creed and customs, is the enigma of their
race. In Hindu and Urdu, though the structure
is the same, vocables make a difference which is
broad and clear, owing to the evidently foreign
elements of the diversity. Not so, however, in
the Tamulian tongues, in which there is very little
of foreign element : all is homogeneousness in the
vocables, and from its sameness of kind is less
open to distinct separability. A summary com-
parative vocabulary was framed some years back
by the Rev. Mr. Brown, and it has been exten-
sively filled up with the dialects of the moun-
taineers round Assam. With regard to the deter-
mination of the moral and physical status of each
aboriginal people, none of the Tamulians have

1JOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 43

any old authentic legends, and being all very
uninformed, save in what concerns their immediate
wants and habitual ideas, it is exceedingly difficult
to learn anything of this sort from them directly;
their creed especially is a subject of insuperable
difficulty, through the sole medium of direct
questioning; their customs, again, are apt to afford
but negative evidence, because, being drawn from
nature, they tend to identity in all the several
nations; and lastly, their physical aspect is of
that osculent and vague stamp, that what it does
prove is general, not particular.

The great Scythic stem of the human race is
divided into three primary branches, or the
Tungus, the Mongol, and the Turk. The first
investigators of this subject urgently insisted on
the radical diversity of these three races ; but
the most recent inquirers incline more to unitise
them. Certainly there is a strong and obvious
character of physical (if not also of lingual)
sameness throughout the Scythic race ; and it is
remarkable that this peculiar character belongs
also to all the aborigines of India, who may be
at once known, from the Cavery and Vigaru to
the Casi and Bhagarati, alpine feeder of the
Ganges, not its Bengal defluent, by their quasi-
Scythic physiognomy, so decidedly opposed to the
Caucasian countenance of the Arians of India, or

44 SOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

the Hindus. Mr. Hodgson apprehends that there
will be found among the aborigines of India a
like lingual sameness, and that very extended and
very accurate investigation will consequently alone
suffice to test the real nature and import of the
double sameness, physical and lingual. That all
the aborigines of India are Northmen of the
Scythic stem seems decidedly and justly inferrible
from their physical characteristics. But, inasmuch
as that prodigious stem is everywhere found
beyond the whole Northern and Eastern
boundary of India, not merely from Attok to the
Brahamaputra, where these rivers cut through
the Himalaya, but from that point of the latter
river all the way to the sea ; and inasmuch as
there are familiar ghats or passes over the
Himalaya throughout its course along the entire
confines of India from Kashmir to the Brahma-
kund, it follows of necessity that very careful and
ample investigation will alone enable us to decide
upon the questions, whether they owe their
confessed Scythic physiognomy to the Tungus,
the Mongol, or the Turk branch of the Tartars
or Scythians, and whether they immigrated
from beyond the Himalaya (" the hive of all
nations") at one period and at one point, or at
several periods and as many points. Between
Gilgit and Chittagong there are a hundred passes

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 45

over the Himalaya, and its South-Eastern con-
tinuation to the Bengal Bay ; while from the
time of passage there are ages upon ages before
the dawn of legend and of chronicle. Mr.
Hodgson inclines to the opinion that the
aborigines of the " Sub Himalayas," as far east
as the Dhansiri of Assam, belong to the Thibetan
stock, and east of that river to the Chinese
stock — except the Garos and other tribes
occupying that portion of the hills lying between
Assam and Sylhet ; and that the aborigines
of the " tarai " and " forest " skirting the entire
Sub Himalayas, inclusive of the greater part of
the marginal circuit of the Assam Valley, belong,
like those last mentioned, to the Tamulian stock
of aborigines of the plains of India generally.
But what is this Tamulian stock ? What the
Thibetan ? And what the Chinese ? And to
which of the three grand and well-known branches
of the Scythic tree (Tungus, Mongol, Turk) do
the Tamulians, the Thibetans, and the Chinese
belong? Of the aborigines of Central India, of
seven of whos2 languages, the three first came
from Chyebassa, where they were prepared by
Colonel Ouseley's Assistant, Captain Houghton ;
the fourth and fifth direct from Colonel Ouseley
himself at Chota Nagpur; the sixth from Bhau-
galpur, prepared by the Rev. Mr. Hurder, and

46 HOW I KILLED Till'] TKiKR.

the seventh from Jabbalpur, where Colonel Slee-
man's principal Assistant drew it up, the affinities
of the tongues are very striking : so much so that
the first five may be safely denominated dialects
of the great Kol language : and through the
Uraon speech we trace without difficulty the
further connection of the language of the Kols
with that of the hill men of the Rajmahal and
Bhaugalpur ranges. Nor are there wanting obvious
links between the several tongues above enumer-
ated— all which may be classed under the head
Kol — and that of the Gonds in the Vindhya
whose speech again has been lately shown by
Mr. Elliot to have much resemblance both in
vocables and structure to the cultivated tongues
of the Deccan. Mr. Hodgson's hypothesis, in his
essay on the Koch, Bodo, and Dhimal, is that all
the Tamulians have a common fountain of origin,
like all the Arians ; and that the innumerable
diversities of spoken language characterising the
former race are but the more or less superficial
effects of their long and utter dispersion and
segregation, owing to the savage tyranny of the
latter race in days when the rights of conquest
were synonymous with a license to destroy, spoil,
and enslave. The Arians, according to Chevalier
Bunsen, who does not accept the ordinary calcu-
lation as to the age of the world, emigrated out

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 47

of the country of the sources of the Oxus and
Jazartes, B.C. 11,000 to 10,000, and about B.C.
7,250 to 5,000, they separated into Kelts, Armenians,
Irenians, Greeks, Slaves, and Germans. Accord-
ing to Bunsen the separation of the Arians was
prior to their leaving Sogd. The emigration from
Sogd to Bactria, after the separation, took place
B.C. 5,000, consequently before the time of Menes.
The immigration into the Hindus country about
B.C. 4,000 and Zoroaster's reform in Bactria
about the time of Menes or half a century later.
The Arian population of India descended into it
about three thousand years ago from the North-
West, as conquerors, and that they completely
subdued all the open and cultivated parts of
Hindostan, Bengal, and the most adjacent tracts
of the Deccan, as Telingana, Gujerat, and Mahar-
ashtra, or the Maharatta country, but failed to
extend their effective sway and colonisation
further south, are historical deductions, confirmed
daily more and more by the results of ethno-
logical research. We thus find an easy and
natural explanation of the facts that in the
Deccan, where the original tenants of the soil
have been able to hold together in possession of
it, the aboriginal languages exhibit a deal of in-
tegrity and refinement, whilst in the North, where
the pristine population has been hunted into

48 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

jungly and malarious recesses, the aboriginal
tongues are broken into innumerable rude and
shapeless fragments, but which may yet be
brought together by large and careful induction.
Of the history of the Arians while residing in
the Punjab, we must search the Vedas, which
furnish much information regarding the origin
and early state of the races who are now called
Hindus. The people among whom the Vedas
were composed had evidently passed the nomad
stage. They had no money, their wealth con-
sisted of cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and buffaloes,
and the cow was the medium of barter. By
the Rig-Veda it is evident that the cow was then
not reverenced and that the race who composed
these hymns were a cow-killing and beef-eating and
spirit-drinking people. Cow stealing was a great
crime. We find mention in their hymns of cities
of commerce, merchants, sailors, of weapons of
wood and iron, of chariots, of heralds, travellers,
and inns for their accommodation, and even of
the vices of a primitive civilisation. They had
roads and ferries ; bullock carts and waggons ;
they had carriages and war chariots drawn by
horses, and the carriage was made of wood with
brass wheels and iron rims and pillars. It had
seats and awnings, was easy-going, and some-
times inlaid with gold. Iron and steel were in

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 49

use, for there is mention of iron armour, of
arrows tipped with steel, and Porus gave thirty
pounds of steel to Alexander. They had a
knowledge of the sea; had halls of justice and
halls and chambers of sacrifice, but apparently
no temples or images. Women held a high social
position. The Rishi and his wife converse on
equal terms, go together to the sacrifice,
and practise austerities together. Lonely
maidens go in procession, and grown-up
daughters remain without reproach in their
father's house. But we read of drunkenness,
polygamy, cheating, gambling, abandoning of
children, thieves, courtesans, and eunuchs.

Kakshivat, an illustrious Rishi, marries ten
sisters at once, and polyandry seems to have
prevailed, for in an allegory, Kakshivat says,
" Aswins, your admirable (horses) bore the car,
which you had harnessed, (first) to the goal, for
the sake of honour, and the damsel, who was
the prize, came through affection to your
(husbandship) saying, you are my lords."

Mr. Wheeler says that the worship of the
Arians, in the times of their approaching the
Punjab, seems to have been simple, patriarchal,
and conducted by the father of the family ; to
have been a worship of fire, and subsequently
they personified the earth, sky, food, wine,

50 770 H* / KILLED TIJR TIGER.

months, seasons, day, night, and dawn.
Amongst the Arian Hindus, the sacrifice of a
horse, the Aswamed'ha, seems to have been
practised in their religious rites. There are two
hymns in the Rig- Veda describing the rite,
which leave no doubt that, in the early religion
of the race, this sacrifice, as a burnt-offering
to the gods, was had recourse to. It was even
then, however, falling into disuse, and was
existing as a relic on an antevedic period,
imported from some foreign region, possibly from
Scythia, where animal victims, and especially
horses, were commonly sacrificed. And in still
later times, the Aswamed'ha consisted of certain
ceremonies ending in the liberation of the horse,
as throughout Southern India is still practised
with a bull, freed or let loose in the name of
Siva or Vishnu.

At present in India the native Arian races hold
to the three great religions, Buddhism, Brah-
manism, and Zoroastrianism, and the followers of
the Jain belief are all of this race, many of whom
also in Cashmere, Afghanistan and Rajputana
have become Mahommedans. Amongst the Arian
races who went to the North-West, there are no
grounds for the belief that the Saxons continued
to offer human sacrifices after their settlement in
Great Britain, but in their own land the immolation

I KILLED THE TIGER. 51

of captives in honour of their gods was by
no means uncommon. The great temple at
Upsal, in Sweden, appears to have been especially
dedicated to Odin, Thor and Frea. Its periodical
festivals were accompanied by different degrees of
conviviality and license, in which human sacrifices
were rarely wanting, varied in their numbers and
value by the supposed exigency. In some cases
even royal blood was selected that the imagined
anger of the gods might be appeased. In Scan-
dinavia, the authority of the priest was much
greater than it would appear to have been among
the Anglo-Saxons. It was his word often which
determined where the needed victims should be
found. It was his hand that inflicted the wound,
and his voice which said, " I send thce to Odin,"
declaring the object of the sacrifice to be that the
gods might be propitiated, that there might be a
fruitful season or a successful war. The tendency
of the Arian race is to form national and political
communities, marry one wife, and worship one
supreme and spiritual Deity. The Turanian
tendency is to have little natural or political
cohesion, to marry one or more wives, without
much sentiment, to worship gods and heroes
without much idea of a spiritual existence, beyond
that implied in the notion of ghosts and devils.

Religion,

AN exhaustive account of the religions of
India would fill many volumes. It is one
of the largest subjects open to the investigation
of the student and the historian. The following
brief summary must suffice for the present work.
Among the religions of the South and East
of Asia, and the philosophies which take their
place, we find that the most ancient of all is
the demon and spirit and nature worship of the
ruder races ; the religion of the Jews, three
thousand years old, may be the next, followed
by the Buddhist philosophy, which seems to have
existed for three thousand two hundred years,
and to have more adherents than any other.
The Christian religion, first established in Western
Asia nineteen centuries ago, and early taught in
Africa, Arabia, and Central and Eastern Asia,
and at one time largely followed, has at present
in India but a comparatively small number of
professors. In India and South-Eastern Asia
three polytheistic faiths predominate, Buddhism,

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 53

Brahmanism, and Shamanism ; three monotheistic
faiths, Jewish, Christian, and Mahommedan ; a
mixed faith, the Sikh, partly monotheistic, but
believing in incarnations ; and, lastly, the worship
of fire as an element by the numerically small
but intellectual Parsee. The races occupying
India, which are now known to Europe as
Hindoos, have had three great changes in re-
ligion. The Vedic age was prior to the absorp-
tion of the Saraswati river into the sand. The
Brahmanic age extended from that time to about
B.C. 600. The Buddhist doctrine prevailed from
B.C. 600 to A.D. 800 or 1,000, from which date
the Brahmanic doctrines have again prevailed up
to the present time.

The first institution of Hindu Society which
forces itself upon the attention of the stranger is
that of caste. In the City of Surat, in 1827,
two hundred and seven castes were counted.
Each of them was more or less restricted from
private intercourse with all the rest ; they could
not intermarry, nor even eat the same food nor
drink the same water. This applies more or less
to all India. The date of the origin of caste,
and the objects which led to its institution, are
alike obscure.

Ablutions amongst the Hebrews, Hindus, and
Mahommedans are very rigidly practised, they are,

F

54 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

in fact, included as part of their religious ritual.
They are allotted to various periods of the day,
and are varied to meet particular forms of
purification. The Hebrew ceremonial, as still
practised by their Jewish successors, is laid down
in the books of Moses. The Mahommedan practice
is somewhat similar, both for men and women ;
the Mahommedans using the dry sand of the
desert as a substitute where water is not obtain-
able. The Hindu ritual is severe as to bathing,
and along the banks of the sacred Ganges crowds
of men and women may be daily observed per-
forming their ablutions. One of their most
superstitious practices consists in worshipping or
deifying the waters of the Ganges. Quantities
of the water are carried to all parts of India,
and are sworn by in Courts of Justice. The
Buddhists and Mahommedans are less stringent in
their observances as regards ablutions than the
Hindus. With the Hindus, as soon as a guest
enters, one of the first civilities is offering water
to wash his feet. A Hindu wipes or washes his
feet before retiring to rest. If called from his
bed, he often excuses himself on the pretext
that he might daub his feet ; and as he wears
no shoes in the house, and the floor is of clay,
the excuse seems very natural. In Leviticus
xiv. 8, 9, and 52, there are references to personal

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 55

cleanliness. There are similar customs prevalent
among the Hindus ; but in the Mosaical institu-
tions there is no law which rules that a Brahman
becomes unclean by the touch of a Sudra, or a
dog, or the food of other castes. The Hindu
food ritual is given in Mark vii. 3, where the
Pharisees and all the Jews, except they wash
their hands often, eat not, for bathing is an
indispensable pre-requisite to the first meal of the
day, and washing the hands and feet is equally
so before the evening meal.

Mahommedans use water or sand before prayers
and meals, and after many ordinary occurrences.

F 2

State and mode of agriculture,

A GRICULTURE in all countries the chief
*» branch of industry for the million, is in South-
Eastern Asia, almost the exclusive occupation of the
people, and the great source of revenue to the re-
spective governments, who are usually regarded as
the proprietors of the soil, and sub-let the lands to
tenants or feuers in perpetuity, so long as the
holder pays the established ground-rent, or tax,
or feu duty. The holder can sell or otherwise
dispose of his holding, and cannot be dispossessed,
provided his tax be duly paid, so long as the land
is cultivated. The craving of all eastern races for
their patrimonial inheritance is as intense as when
Naboth said to Ahab, I. Kings xxi. 3, "The
Lord forbid it me, that I should give the in-
heritance of my fathers unto Thee ; " and the
Hindus are as strongly attached to their home-
steads as ever the Jews were, though the heads
of the family may be employed in a distant part

HO ir / KILLED THE TIC1EK. 57

of the country, and though the homesteads may
be almost in ruins, they still cling to the family
inheritance with a fondness bordering on super-
stition, and it is the use and wont in India for
governments to allow proprietors or their de-
scendants to re-occupy lands long left waste.
Amongst the earliest notices of agriculture are
those in the Old Testament. How Adam lived is
not mentioned, but of his two sons, Abel was a
shepherd, and Cain had become a tiller of the
ground. In Noah's time the vine was cultivated,
and Noah's descendants in the time of Shem
appear to have followed the shepherd's life
(nomads), wandering over the extensive
countries to winter and summer quarters,
and taking possession of the available graz-
ing grounds. These do not seem ever to have
cultivated any of the grasses for food for their
cattle; and to the present day throughout South-
Eastern Asia, the natural herbage is exclusively
relied on.

The remains of the races who in some unknown
time came from the valley of the Indus through the
valleys of Beluchistan, attest the prevalence there
in pre-historic times of water tillage in the usual
form of the wet cultivation of India, where the
grounds are carefully levelled and put into small
plots or compartments, into each of which the

58 jrOTT" / KILLED THE TIG Kit.

water-courses are led in the manner noticed in
Proverbs xxi. i, where it is said : " The King's
heart is in the hand of the Lord : as the rivers
of water (rather as a water- course) He turneth it
whithersoever He will," an allusion to the practice
of the eastern farmer in irrigating his fields,
turning it with his foot or hand in all directions,
so that every part of the field may be watered,
and a good crop insured. Noah's descendants in
the line of Ham, who took possession of Egypt,
applied themselves to the tilling of the ground,
and with so much ingenuity, industry, and success,
that, owing to the inundations of the Nile, and
the consequent fertility of the soil, Egypt was
enabled in the time of Abraham, and still more
so in the time of Joseph, to supply its neigh-
bours with corn during a period of famine. Nor
were the inhabitants backward in assisting the
liberality of Nature ; they busied themselves in
banking, irrigation, and draining, in order to
derive all the benefits which the benignant river
was capable of affording them. These works are
said to have been carried on with particular spirit
under the auspices of Sesostris, one thousand
eight hundred years before the Christian era.
So sensible were the Egyptians of the blessings
which agriculture afforded, that in the blindness
of their zeal they ascribed the invention of the

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 59

art to their god Osiris, and the culture of barley
and wheat to their goddess Isis. The Pelasgi
who occupied Greece, were great agriculturists,
and the Romans had but two avocations, war
and husbandry. The Jews, whilst in Egypt,
seem to have been shepherds, but after occupy-
ing Canaan, in their respective allotments, cattle
grazing, agriculture and horticulture alike engaged
their attention, of which the Scriptures contain
many notices, and the modes of tillage still in
operation in eastern countries illustrate various
texts of the Bible. As in describing Canaan, it
is mentioned that the land whither thou goest in
to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt from
whence you came out. (Deuteronomy xi. 10.)
" Where thou sowest thy seed, and waterest it
with thy foot as a garden of herbs," which is
still everywhere seen, as the mode of watering
the lands in garden cultivation.

After ploughing, the farmers of India, in their
wet cultivation, form the ground with a hoe into
small squares, with ledges on either side along
which the water is conducted. Besides prevent-
ing the water spreading, these embankments also
.serve to retain the moisture on the surface of the
ground for a longer period. When one of the
hollows is filled, the ptasant stops the supply by
turning up the earth with his foot, and thus opers

6o JTOir / KILLED TILE T/f/A'/,1.

a channel into another space. An allusion to this
custom of the gardener changing with his foot
the channel of a stream of water, furnishes the
King of Assyria in his threatening message, with
a very appropriate image : " With the sole of my
foot," says he, " I have dried up the rivers of
besieged places." (Deuteronomy xxv. 4), "Thou
shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the
corn," refers to a method of separating the cereal
grains from the ear common in India. The wild
beasts are still as troublesome as in Psalm Ixxx.
13, where we read " the boar out of the wood
doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth
devour it," for the wild hogs, elephants, buffaloes,
and deer make sad havoc in fields and orchards.
The farmer races in India, except such gardeners
as are near towns, rarely use manure of any
kind, but trust exclusively to the water of tanks
in wet cultivation, or to the natural rains in dry
cultivation. The latter is analagous to the tillage
of England, with this marked difference, that in
temperate England the farming operations can be
carried on all through the year, and the crops
are long on the ground ; but in India, the rain,
being periodical, may last for two, three, or four
months, and the whole work of the Indian farmer
must be carried on with grains and plants that
come rapidly to maturity, so as to be completed

o

ITOW I KILLED THE TIC! En. 6 1

before the inclement dry hot season recommences.
In this respect there is a similarity to the range
of the cropping seasons of inclement northern
countries, where everything has to be suited to
the short-lived (though hot) summer, and where
the grains in use are of a kind that rapidly
mature — the two elements, inclement heat and
inclement cold, compelling the same procedure.
The instruments in use in India are of very simple
manufacture. The poverty of the people,
and the necessity of simplicity in articles for
countries with few artisans, and the fact that old
and young, man, woman, and child of the
household, are all employed in the farm- work,
necessitates the retention of implements of the
simplest forms.

The ordinary agricultural implements used in
simple tillage are often of the very rudest des-
cription. But the climate does not permit of deep
sowing, for the seeds must either soon sprout up or
rot, and the influence of the abundant rains and vast
electric forces on the soils of India are of a very
different character from those of England, and do
not require the same amount or kind of mechani-
cal treatment in order to produce the required
effect. The implements used are ploughs of
various sizes, and in some parts where the land
is heavy, eight, ten, or twelve bullocks are used,

62 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

but in most parts small ploughs are used which
can be worked with two bullocks or two buffaloes.
The mode of ploughing is lengthways and cross-
ways, the land being ploughed in this manner
three, four, and five times. The following imple-
ments are also drawn by bullocks : a heavy
harrow, drill for sowing cotton, weeding machine
to eradicate weeds between the rows of cotton,
drill for sowing grain, with extra tubes at the side
with which another description of seed or oil seed
is very commonly sown in every fifth row, weeding
machine for rooting up the weeds between the
rows of grain. A large cart drawn by eight
bullocks is not often seen in the Deccan, but is
very common in the Southern Mahratta country.
The tyres are commonly six inches deep; a pair
of wheels costs up to Rs. 120 (£12) ; they last
fifty or even a hundred years, and are handed
down as heir-looms in families. For rice cultiva-
tion the following implements are used : Plough,
clod-crusher, levelling machine, and a drill — these
are worked with two bullocks. The hand imple-
ments are : A weeder and Kodali or mattock
(Indian spade). These will show that the people
of India are well advanced in agricultural skill, and
that they are doing as much as their humble cir-
cumstances, the climate, the soil, and the required
crops will admit. Their aids, the buffalo and the

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 63

bullock, are chiefly employed for draft and for
pack carriage, carts with wooden or stone wheels,
or wheels of solid blocks of wood as the nature
of the country and the state of the roads demand-
In India nearly all the cultivators are Hindus,
and each village has a small number of hereditary
out-caste labourers.

mammalia.

MAMMALS are warm blooded, vertebrata,
viviparus animals, and are distinguished
from birds, as well as from other vertebrata
animals, by the possession of mammary glands,
secreting milk for the nourishment of their young.
Most mammals have four limbs, from which they
were formerly termed quadrupeds, but that term
has been discontinued, as it is not applicable to
the Cetacea. The leading peculiarity of the
mammals is their power of nourishing their new-
born young with milk. This is secreted by
mammary glands, and these vary in number and
position, being most numerous in the more prolific
races.

In cold climates several animals pass the winter
in a state of torpidity, and even in India certain
bats and hedgehogs, and perhaps some rats, are
more or less torpid during the cold season. Two
species of bears found in the Himalayas retire to

/ KILLED THE TIGER. 65

their caves, and are rarely or never seen from
the month of December till the end of March.
The following list shows the families, genera, and
general species of Mammals in the South and
East of Asia.

Order Primate : Various kinds of monkeys,
numberless kinds of bats, and several kinds of
moles, shrews, and hedgehogs.

Order Carnivora, or, Beasts of Prey : Tribe
Plantigrada, walking on sole of foot : The snow
bear; brown, yellow, grey, and silver bear of
Himalayas; Himalayan black bear; Indian black
or sloth bear (has a horseshoe mark on breast),
red-cat bear, badgers, weasels, and otters of
various kinds.

Tribe Digitigrada : These animals walk on the
digits, and are typical carnivora, being very quick
and speedy. Family, Felidae or Cat Tribe: The
lion, tiger, leopard, cats, pard, cheetah, clouded
leopard, marked tiger-cat, leopard-cat, large tiger-
cat, bay-cat, and the ounce. The Asiatic lion is
found in Allahabad, Jubbulpore, Cutch, Guz, and
Gwalior. The tiger is found all over India, and
as far up the Himalayas as six and seven thous-
and feet.

Family Viverridac Tribe : Hyaenas, civet cats,
tiger civet, toddy cat, hill tree-cat, Terai tree-cat,
black bear cat, and various kinds of mongoose.

66 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

The Dog Tribe : Thibet white wolf, black wolf
of Thibet, red wolf of Thibet, the jackal, wild
dog, Indian fox, desert fox, Punjab fox.

Order Cetacea, the Whale Tribe : Porpoises,
various species of dolphin, Gangetic porpoise,
whales.

The Gnawing Tribe : Squirrels and flying
squirrels, and marmots.

The Rat Tribe : Various species of rats, mice,
voles, porcupines, and hares.

Order Ungulata (feet with hoofs) :

Tribe Proboscoidea: Elephants.

Tribe Perissodactyla : Rhinoceros.

Tribe Lammigua: Tapirs.

Family Equidae : Horses, asses, and zebras.

Tribe Chaerodia : The pig and hippopotami.

Tribe Rhuminantia : Camels, deer, horned cattle,
sheep, antelopes, goats and cattle, bison, wild
buffalo.

Burrowers : Scaly ant-eater.

Che Cigcr.

TIGERS (Royal Bengal), when full grown,
measure from eight to ten feet from
the tip of the nose to the end of the tail.
The tail averages about three feet in length.
The weight of the animal varies, of course, con-
siderably at different stages of growth. A full-
grown tiger would turn the scale at five hundred
pounds. The reader will understand my helpless-
ness when assailed by a creature of this vast
bulk, and the inconvenience of the pressure when
he was lying on top of me. The colour of the
tiger is brightest when young and vigorous, the
colour becomes fainter with advancing age. White,
or rather cream-coloured tigers, though rare, are
not altogether unknown. It is stated in ''The
Royal Natural History," edited by Richard
Lydekker, that a specimen was exhibited in the
menagerie at Exeter Change in 1820. Major D.
Robinson, of the Lancashire Fusiliers, found
another at Puna; and Colonel H. H. Goodwin-

68 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

Austin vouches for a third specimen. It is on
record that a black tiger was found dead near
Chittagong, on the North-East frontier of India.

The tiger is almost exclusively confined to Asia.
It is found on the southern shores of the
Caspian, in North Persia, the Herat district,
Turkestan, Central Asia, Southern Siberia, and
all Mongolia. In China, Burmah, Siam, and the
Malay Peninsula. There are large numbers in
the Islands of Java and Sumatra. It haunts the
northern end of the Bay of Bengal ; in fact it is
found from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya.

The tiger is such a persistent scourge in India
that the natives employ many ingenious con-
trivances to snare and trap it. The Minipuris
have the courage to hunt it with a net and
spear. In the cold and wet seasons of the year
the tiger has no fixed abiding place, but wanders
over immense tracts of country in search of
food. In the dry season it haunts the banks of
rivers and patches of long grass. Tigers breed
at all times of the year.

The destruction wrought by these creatures in
India is enormous, the waste of human life due to
them is appalling. A Government return gives the
number of animals killed by tigers in the Madras
Presidency during the quarter ending 3ist
December, 1891, as follows : six hundred and

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 69

fifty-six bullocks, seven hundred and fifty-two
cows, two hundred and thirty-six calves,
one hundred and thirty-five buffaloes, one hun-
dred and five sheep, and one hundred and three
goats.

Government returns show that in six years
four thousand two hundred and eighteen natives
were killed. In the Central Provinces alone two
hundred and eighty-five were killed in 1868 and
1869. One tiger in the years 1867, 1868, and
1869, killed twenty-seven, thirty-four, and forty-
seven persons. It may be mentioned that one
of the most reliable authorities upon the Indian
tiger and its habits is Sir J. Fayrer, the author
of an exhaustive work on the subject, " The
Royal Tiger of Bengal."

Although the tiger is extremely fond of water, it
is able at times to endure thirst for a considerable
period in the hottest weather. Mr. G. P.
Sanderson gives a remarkable instance. " The
weather," he writes, " was hot ; the circle in
which the two tigers were enclosed was only
seventy yards in diameter, and the heat of the
fires kept up day and night all round was con-
siderable. Still they existed without a drop of
water for ten days, suffering from wounds half the
time. A tiger can go much longer than this
without serious inconvenience."

G

70 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

It is a popular delusion that tigers are in the
habit of springing upon their prey. Mr. Bland-
ford and other eminent authorities agree that
it is a rare thing for them to move their
hind-legs from the ground, except of course when
they are obliged to leap over some such obstacle
as a fence. That they are able to spring to a
great height is undoubted. It is on record that
a tiger once pulled a native from a tree at
a height of eighteen feet from the ground.
According to Mr. Sanderson, fifteen feet is the
most that a tiger can clear horizontally ; but
there are instances of this distance being exceeded.
"The tiger's usual attack," to quote Sir J.
Fayrer once more, " is a rush, accompanied by
a series of short deep growls or roars, in which
he evidently thinks he will do much by intimida-
tion ; when he charges home he rises on his
hind-legs, seizes with the teeth and claws, and
endeavours and often succeeds in pulling down
the object seized." I may say that I can
personally vouch for the correctness of Sir J.
Fayrer's description.

The jungle tiger relies for food upon such
animals as deer, antelopes, and wild pigs, but
domestic cattle are liable to be attacked, and it
will also eat monkeys, porcupines, and fowls of
various kinds. According to "The Royal Natural

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. Jl

History," full-grown buffaloes and gaur are
usually a match for the tiger, but young or
feeble individuals not infrequently fall victims to
its attack ; and instances are recorded of young
elephants being killed and eaten. Adult bull
gaur are, however, occasionally killed by tigers ;
the latter, if the reports of native herdsmen are
to be credited, inducing the bulls to charge time
after time, when they are wounded as they pass
by a blow from the tiger's paw. Old wild boars,
it is said, not infrequently succeed in wounding
and beating off a tiger ; and the herds of
buffaloes defend themselves by forming in a half
circle, with the bulls facing the foe. Moreover,
even when a calf or a weak or sickly adult
individual has been carried off, the old buffaloes
are reported to combine and follow the tiger, and
rescue the victim from its clutches. Much more
rarely tigers will kill and eat the Indian bear.

Birds.

THE birds of India are as beautiful as they are
numerous. There are hundreds of species, a
detailed description of them all is therefore im-
possible within the limits of the present work.
The Israelites divided birds into two classes —
clean and unclean, and in common life this
arrangement may be said to be still followed.

According to scientific arrangement, birds are
divided into eight different orders :—

i. — Scansores, or Climbers; 2. — Raptores, or
Birds of Prey ; 3. — Insessores, or Perchers ; 4.—
Gemitores, or Pigeons ; 5. — Rasores, or Game
Birds ; 6. — Cursores, or Running Birds ; 7. —
Grallatores, or Waders ; 8. — Natatores, or Swim-
ming Birds.

Perhaps the choicest of them all are those of
the Himalayan pheasant tribe — birds distinguished
for their very graceful and rich plumage, and
the beautiful paradise birds of the Eastern
Archipelago. The Himalayan bustard is remark-
able for its form and for its varied colours.

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 73

Peacocks, eagles, falcons, vultures, kites, cranes,
wild geese, wild fowl, snipe, bustard, parrots,
and parroquets, etc., abound in India at certain
seasons. In England on the return of Spring :

Every copse

Deep tangled, tree irregular, and bush,
Bending with dewy moisture o'er the heads
Of the coy quiristers that lodge within,
Are prodigal of Harmony.

But in the tropics generally, there are few
Europeans who will dare to face the sun's rays
for the sake of enjoying the beauties of Nature.
As a rule the natives of Eastern and Southern
Asia do not pay any attention to natural phe-
nomena, and comparatively little is known of
the song of birds.

Few can say with the rustic poet Clare :—

I've often tried when tending sheep or cow,

With bits of grass and peels of oaten straw

To whistle like the birds. The thrush would start

To hear her song of praise and fly away ;

The blackbird never cared, but sang again ;

The nightingale's pure song I would not try,

And when the thrush would mock her song, she paused

And sang another song no bird could do.

She sang when all were done, and beat them all.

I was one of those Europeans who often dared
the sun from day-light to dark, and I have
frequently been for many consecutive days in

74 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

heavy jungles, miles away from any human beings,
teeming with animals and birds, and the pro-
found stillness has struck me as something awful.
Not a note from a bird ; only an occasional
woodpecker tapping a tree, the buzz of insects,
the snap of a twig by a deer or some other
animal, and very occasionally I could hear the
noise made by a leopard, which resembles the
sawing of wood. On account of the perfect still-
ness the least sound is distinctly heard, though
at a great distance.

The Manikjor or beef steak bird, is a large
bird of the order of Grallatores or Waders. I
mention this bird as it was my target for
practising rifle shooting, and at the same time it
supplied the larder in the hottest weather with
a delicacy. A friend dropped in one day when
it happened there was a " beef steak " for
dinner. It being the hot season, and knowing
that beef could not be procured, as anything
killed must be eaten the same day, he was
amazed that I should have regaled him with a
feast of such excellent quality. He quite thought
I had killed a bullock for his benefit.

Reptile Kingdom*

I^HE reptiles are ovipants, or ovoviviparns verti-
braia animals, with red, cold blood, with
three cavities of the heart, breathing by lungs
either during the whole period or, at least, in the
Liter stages of their growth.

They consist of the Order of Tortoises : Land
tortoises, three kinds; freshwater tortoises, thirty
kinds ; freshwater turtles, nine kinds ; marine
turtles, four kinds.

The Order of Lizards : Crocodiles, five kinds ;
water lizards, four kinds ; land lizards, seven
kinds ; cordyles, one kind ; skinks, thirty-one
kinds ; acoubiats, three kinds ; sand lizards, one
kind; geckoo, thirty-seven kinds; agames, fifty-
six kinds; family of chameleons, one kind.

The Order of Snakes : Out of the twenty-one
families into which Indian snakes are at present
divided, there are four families of venomous
snakes. These twenty-one families include about
ninety genera, of which twenty are venomous, but
only thirteen of these are land snakes. The

76 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

species now number about four hundred, of which
about eighty are venomous, but as forty-three of
these are sea snakes, it reduces the proportion to
thirty-seven venomous land snakes out of a total
of three hundred and sixty species ; but by far
the greater number of these are either very rare,
or confined to some particular part of the East
Indies.

The Python : The two largest species of Indian
rock snakes are among the largest of living
reptiles ; there are statements on record of its
measuring thirty feet. Rock snakes from fifteen
to twenty feet long have the thickness of a man's
thigh. They feed on quadrupeds and birds, small
deer, sheep or goats, or good-sized dogs, and
attain to a considerable age. Python resticulatus
lived in the menagerie of the Zoological Society
of London for fifteen years. When brought to
England it was about eleven feet long, and in ten
years it had attained to a length of twenty-one
feet.

The Cobra, naga tripadian, consists of eight
varieties, but all the varieties form one species,
which is widely spread all over the East Indies.
The cobra is the most common venomous snake
of the East Indies. It is more a nocturnal
animal than a diurnal one, and ovoviviparus. Its
chief enemies are the jungle fowl, which destroys

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 77

the young brood, and the Hespestes or Ichneumon,
which will attack and master the largest cobra.

Cobra, the ordinary name by which Europeans
in India designate the naga genus of venomous
Colubrine snakes of the family of Elapidae. When
the cobra rises in play or for amusement, it spreads
out the skin of the neck from which it gets the
Spanish name of cobra di capello; in English, "the
hooded snake." Us bite is certain death. Only
about half the varieties have spectacles.

Hnccdoic or Snake ana

X/OU have no doubt often heard of the vitality
of frogs. One day one of my dogs was
barking at something under a shrub in the
garden. I took up a stick and went to see what it
was, when I found a snake about three feet long
with an unusual protuberance in the centre about
the size of my fist. I put my stick behind the
protuberance, and worked it towards the head;
when it got to the mouth out jumped a big frog
and hopped away quite lively.

IK*.

ANTS have attracted attention from the earliest
ages, on account of the singular economy and
extraordinary industry manifested by the different
species. This has been more particularly the case
in the colder climates of Europe, for of the
numerous races of the South-East of Asia, not one
takes any interest in natural history. It is probable
that many fresh species of ants will yet be
discovered. Forty -seven species have been de-
scribed in Southern India by Mr. Jerdon, a Madras
medical officer; and Mr. Nietner, of Ceylon^
has forwarded to the Berlin Museum upwards of
seventy species taken by him in that island, chiefly
in the western province and in the vicinity of
Colombo.

The term white ants is applied by the English in
India to species of termites. They are interesting
by reason of the great mounds of earth which they
erect. Those in India seldom exceed seven or
eight feet, but some ant-hills in South Africa are of

80 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

great size. On the banks of the Chobe, Dr.
Livingstone mentions them as being thirty feet
high, and of a base so broad that trees grow on
them. In the open fields the injury to produce
which they can cause is trifling ; but in gardens,
where, as with sugar cane, the crops are long in the
ground, much loss is sustained by their attacks.
They usually work under cover, and erect galleries
of earth, cemented as they progress. In towns, with
substantial houses of mortar and beams of wood,
the loss which they cause is often very great, for
they pierce the walls and tunnel the beams in every
direction. The best remedy is to destroy their cells
and dig up their queen. Their mounds are
tunnelled in every direction, and their queen, a
large, shapeless white mass, lies in the centre. An
effectual and permanent remedy is to remove the
whole mass. To protect the beams, the ends are
usually laid on the walls and the sides left unclosed,
so that the first approach can be detected, and this
opening also prevents dry rot. Teak, ebony, and
other hard woods are seldom attacked by white ants.
The earth or mud oils, so abundantly produced in
Burmah, are the -most effectual known preventatives
to their encroaches. The Greeks ate grasshoppers
and liked them amazingly ; the aborigines of New
South Wales eat them raw, first taking off their
wings. The Chinese thriftily eat the chrysalis of

HOW 1 KILLED THE TIGER. 8l

the silkworm, after making use of the silk; the
larvae of the hawk-moth are also much relished.
The negroes of Jamaica eat the Bagong butterflies,
after removing the wings, and store them up by
pounding and smoking them. The Hottentots and
the people of the East Indies eat the termites,
or white ants, boiled, fried, and raw ; the female
white ant in particular is eaten in India. The
natives mix them with flour, and make a variety
of pastry, or they parch them in pots over a
gentle fire, stirring them about as is done in
roasting coffee. They eat them by handfuls, as
we do comfits.

Dr. Livingstone says : — " The white ants, when
roasted, are said to be good, somewhat resembling
grains of boiled rice. An idea may," he adds, "be
formed of this dish by what once occurred on the
banks of the Zouga. The Bayeiye chief, Palani,
visiting us while eating, I gave him a piece of bread
and some prepared apricots, and as he seemed to
relish it much, I asked him if he had any food equal
to it in his country. ' Ah ! ' said he, ' did you ever
taste white ants ? ' As I never had, he replied,
' Well, if you had, you would never have desired to
eat anything better.' '

Rumboldt mentions ants as being eaten by the
Marivitunos and Margueratares, qualified with
resin as a sauce. Bees are eaten in Ceylon.

82 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

Mites in millions are consumed in cheese. The
grub of the palm-weevil, which is the size of a
thumb, is a favourite dish in some parts of India.
y£lian relates of an Indian king, who, for a dessert,
instead of fruit, set before his guests a roasted
worm taken from a plant, which was thought
very delicious.

Che cocoa nui palm.

THE cocoa-nut (or coker-nut, as it is sometimes
spelt) grows to the height of one thousand
feet above the sea, though it flourishes in greatest
luxuriance in the vicinity of the ocean. It rises
sixty to one hundred feet, its cylindrical trunk,
crowned with numerous waving, feathery leaves,
forms a beautiful element in inter-tropical scenery.
It is self-propagating. Its keel-shaped nut, pro-
tected from the salt water by its tough and thick,
though light covering, sails on the ocean to
barren spots, where it germinates and causes even
the smallest islet to become covered with clumps
of the cocoa-nut palm. The waving leaves on the
top are called fronds by botanists, and their foot-
stalks are often called branches by travellers.
The leaves are gigantic in size, being about
twenty feet in length, with a strong, tough stalk,
which forms the midrib, and has a number of
narrow and long leaflets ranged along the two
sides. It is a tree of great value to the people.

84 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

The wood is applied to various purposes, such as
rafters, fences, shears, laths, shingles, chairs, and
ladies' work-boxes. But during the period of its
most abundant bearing (which is between ten
and thirty-five years' growth), the heart-wood is
of so soft and spongy a nature, that it is then
merely used for fences, waterpipes, etc. The
wood is strong and durable ; a cubic foot weighs
seventy pounds, and its timber is said to last for
twenty-five or fifty years. It is used for ridge
poles, for temporary roofs, aqueducts; also for
small boats, for the beams, posts and rafters of
houses, for spear handles, palings, and walking
sticks ; for fancy boxes and furniture, for the
frames of boats, conduits, gutters and drains. It
forms one of the porcupine woods of commerce,
and is used for fancy articles. A farinaceous
substance is contained in the stem, which forms
a good substitute for sago. Each tree produces
annually from fifty to sixty cocoa-nuts. These
are enclosed in a thick, fibrous husk, from which
the coir of commerce is obtained by maceration
and beating. The husk is employed as a scrub-
bing-brush and polishing-brush. It is converted
into cordage of various kinds, used for the rigging
of ships, fishing-nets, and matting; and in India,
in its loose state, it is the usual material with
which mattresses, pillows, and sofas are stuffed.

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 85

Within the fibrous husk is the shell, which is
very brittle, though its structure is somewhat
fibrous. Cut in various shapes, it is formed into
cups, drinking vessels; into pitchers, funnels, and
admits of being turned in an agreeable manner.
Those shells which are tolerably circular are used
for the bodies of cups and vases, the feet and
covers being made of wood and ivory. Common
buttons are also made of the cocoa-nut shell, and
are considered better than those made of horn,
as they do not absorb the moisture like that
material — moisture causing the horn buttons to
swell and burst. The shell forms a valuable
charcoal. The hollow shells, called " gari " c r
"naryel," are used for the water holder of a par-
ticular kind of " hookah." Cocoa-nuts, both in the
raw and dried state, form a prominent feature
amongst the exports to various parts of India
and other countries.

In the Laccadine Islands, the heart leaves
of the tree, just before they unfold, are
cut off and plaited into mats of fine quality,
which are there used as sails for the smaller
boats, and are much esteemed when exported.
In India, the leaves dried, and called by
Europeans " cadjars," are plaited and used as
thatch, and for the outer and inner walls of
houses ; the leaves are also made into mats,

H

86 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

baskets (both fancy and plain), into fans, combs,
brooms, screens, buckets and lanterns; into arti-
cles of dress, and into leaf books, torches and
fuel. The foot-stalks of the fronds are fibrous
but brittle, and are used as brooms. The roots
of the tree are chewed as a substitute for betel-
nut. One of the beverages known to Europeans
as " palm wine " or " toddy " is obtained from
the flower spathes. Before the flowers have ex-
panded, the spathes — and these are themselves
astringent, and are used medicinally — are tied
with the young leaves, and then cut transversely
from the top downwards, and beaten daily with
the handle of the knife or a piece of hard wood,
and the sap, after a few days, exudes into a cala-
bash or earthen pot. In the early morning, this
is a pleasant, refreshing drink, but it ferments
towards night, and becomes an intoxicating
fluid.

The native method of making cocoa-nut oil is
very simple. The kernel having been removed from
the shell and dried, is subjected to pressure in a
mill, and the oil is expressed. Two quarts of oil
may be procured from fourteen or fifteen cocoa-
nuts. When fresh, the oil has an excellent flavour.
It is used as an ungent on the bodies of the
natives after bathing, and as an oil for the hair.
It is employed as a lamp oil, and is manufactured

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 87

into soap. It is said to have all the virtues of
cod-liver oil.

The poet, Herbert, writing of the cocoa-nut, has
justly said :

The Indian's nut alone

Is clothing, meat and trencher, drink and can —
Boat, cable, sail and needle, all in one.

H 2

rmilbcrrp and Silk Cultivation.

\ ^ULBERRY bushes are planted chiefly in rich
A VI black soil adjoining the villages, and require
continuous moisture, which is supplied by irriga-
tion. The fields are generally surrounded by a
pogah or bank upon which bamboos are planted
and grow luxuriantly, forming effectual barriers to
keep out cattle. The principal object in the culti-
vation of the mulberry for feeding silk-worms is
to produce the greatest quantity of young and
healthy leaves without fruit. With reasonable care,
the bushes last ten years, and yield fresh leaves
eight times a year; they are planted at a con-
venient distance from each other on the plan of
a quincunx [ • ] and are in perfection in about
three years ; the stems are periodically cut down,
and care is exercised that they are properly thinned,
with a view to giving plenty of light and air to
the leaves; they are not allowed to exceed five
feet in height. The young plants of course suffer
by being stripped of their leaves, which are the
lungs, and this is an additional reason for renewing
them after a certain time. Fresh plants are pro-
cured from cuttings.

Silk Cultivation.

'"T^HE moth usually lays its eggs in the evening,
and they take from ten to fourteen days to
hatch, after which forty days elapse before the
worm commences to spin its cocoon. In the
interval the worm becomes sickly about four times
for periods of four, five, six, and seven days re-
spectively, during which it remains for thirty hours
at a time without feeding. Fresh mulberry leaves
are supplied seven times a day at intervals of three
hours. Half of the worms perish during the
extremes of hot and cold weather. The moth
usually emerges from the cocoons in the morning
ten or fifteen days after the completion of the
cocoon. The male and female moths are allowed
to remain together till 5 p.m., when the males are
ejected, and the female commences to lay eggs.
When ready to spin, the worms arc placed on
a bamboo tray (exposed to the sun) in which are
raised numerous circular walls of matting, one
within another. The silk-worms which yield the
investments of silk are, ist. — The large annual worm

90 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

reared once in the year (originally brought from
Italy, now almost extinct) and yielding its produce
from only the middle of March till April. 2nd. —
The indigenous silk-worm of Bengal, of which the
cocoons are obtained throughout the year, that is,
there are eight collections annually; of these,
the worm of the cold weather, or November
breeds, are superior to the others from the more
nourishing nature of the leaves at those seasons.
3rd. — The China silk-worm, introduced into Bengal,
which are next in estimation to the annual and
country breeds. 4th. — The Choto Cocoon, which
gives a strong fibre, but the threads are nibby ;
of these there are eight collections.

The manufacturing treatment of the silk, when the
labours of the silk-worm are over, is as follows. When
the crop of cocoons is complete it is gathered from
the bamboo trays, and about one-sixtieth part is set
aside for the production of eggs, the finest cocoons
as to web and colour being selected for this purpose.
A difference, of weight generally determines which
are the cocoons of male, and which of female
insects ; the latter are heavier and rounder than the
former. The cocoons intended to produce eggs are
preserved in a very dry room, and in about ten days,
they loose in weight to the amount of 7^ per cent.
The main crop of cocoons is next sorted into nine
qualities, known in the factories as : I. — Good

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. gi

cocoons, which are strong, firm, almost equally
round at both ends, not very large, but free from
spots. 2. — Calcined cocoons, in which the worm
has died after having completed its work, and is
reduced to a powdery substance. 3. — Cocoons,
which are larger and less compact than good
cocoons. 4. — Cocoons in which the worm has died
before finishing its work. 5. — Double cocoons,
difficult to unwind, and often kept for seed. 6. —
Cocoons of so loose and soft a texture that they can
not be unwound. 7. — Pointed cocoons, in which
one end rises in a point which breaks off after
a little silk has been unwound and so spoils the
thread. 8. — Perforated cocoons from which the
moth has escaped. 9. — Bad cocoons, in which
the worm has died before finishing its work and
in which the silk is spotted, rotten and blackish
in colour.

The vitality of the chrysalis is destroyed pre-
viously to unwinding the cocoons, either by exposure
to the sun, or by placing them in hot ovens. The
rloss silk is removed from the cocoon by opening
it at one end and slipping out the cocoon. In
reeling the silk it is necessary to use cocoons of one
quality, as different qualities require different treat-
ment. The natural gum of the cocoons is softened
by immersion in warm water, kept at the proper
temperature by a charcoal fire. After they have

Q2 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

remained in the water for a few minutes the reeler
gently stirs up or brushes the cocoons with a short
birch rod, and to this the loose threads of the
cocoons adhere, and are thus drawn out of the
water. They are then taken, four or five together,
twisted with the fingers into one thread (as many
as thirty can be wound together) and passed
through a metal loop, which rubs off dirt and
impurities ; it then passes on to the reel, which has
a slight lateral motion, so that the thread of one
revolution does not overlay the other. If it were
allowed to do so, the threads would be glued
together before the gum had time to harden by
exposure to the air. When any single thread breaks
or comes to an end its place is supplied by a new
one, that the united thread may be of equal thick-
ness throughout. The new thread is merely laid on,
and adheres to the rest by its native gum, and as
the filaments are finer near their termination than
at the commencement, it is necessary to add other
cocoons before the first set is quite exhausted.
The cocoons are not entirely wound off, but the
husk containing the chrysalis is used, together with
the floss silk, under the name of waste.

The length of filament yielded by a single cocoon
is three hundred yards, though some have yielded
upwards of six hundred yards. Eleven or twelve
pounds of cocoons yield one pound of silk, from

1IO\V I KILLED THE TIGER. 93

two hundred to two hundred and fifty going to the
pound weight : thus about two thousand eight
hundred cocoons are included in that quantity.
The reeled silk is made into hanks or skeins for
sale and use. The entire length of a hank is not of
one uniform fineness. The assorting is made with
particular reference to the degree of fineness, or
coarseness of thread, and the process, which is
carried on also by reeling (a separate reel being
assigned for each quality) depends entirely on the
feel or touch of the silk on the finger of the person
manipulating it. A hank is divided into five
different sorts : i. — Tumbolia, 2. — Serika, 3. —
Takra, 4. — Wana, 5. — Koree, and the value of the
silk varies from Rs. 12 per Indian seer for the
superior sort, to Rs. 9 or 10 for the inferior
description. Nos. i, 2, and 3, are used almost
invariably for the woof, while No. 4 supplies
the warp, and no 5 is sold for making cords,
tassels, etc.

Che Banpati tree*

THE Banyan Tree is the Fiens Indica, the
Bar-Ka-Jhar of Southern India, the Arbor
de Rais of the Portuguese. It throws down
aerial roots, which support the large branches,
and these again throw down other roots, till as
Milton wrote (Paradise Lost IX.) the tree becomes :

Such at this day, to Indians known,
In Malabar or Deccan, spreads her arms,
Branching so broad and long, that in the ground,
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the mother-tree, a pillar'd shade,
High over-arch'd and echoing walks between :
There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
At loop holes cut through thickest shade.

Several of these trees have attracted attention
from their dimensions. Four miles distant from
Fort Saint David was one under the shade of which
Mr. Ives quotes Mr. Didge as computing that
ten thousand men might stand without incom-
moding themselves. Dr. Frayer saw one of those

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 95

admirable trees near Surat in the year 1673. In
the Botanical Gardens at Calcutta a Great Banyan
tree has been long the pride of the garden. Dr.
Falconer satisfactorily ascertained it to be only
seventy-five years old. People were alive a few
years ago who remembered well its site being occupied
in 1782 by a date-palm out of the crown of which
the Banyan sprouted, and beneath which a Fakir
sat. This tree has for the last thirty-four years
not increased in size, having been lopped under
some misapprehension. When paced by Dr.
Balfour in 1863 its dimensions were identical
with those of 1834, viz. : One hundred yards in
diameter, and three hundred yards in circum-
ference. The Banyan hardly ever vegetates on
the ground ; but its figs are eaten by birds, and
the seeds deposited in the crowns of palms,
where they grow, sending down roots that embrace
and eventually kill the palm, which decays away.
Had the Calcutta tree been growing in 1849
over the great palm-stove at Kew, only thirty
feet of each end of that vast structure would
have been uncovered. When the Banyan tree
embraces a date or palmyra or cocoa-nut tree,
and the latter are seen growing out of it, this is
called a marriage of the trees. These are
encouraged, and many are to be seen near the
Kistuah river. As the Banyan tree gets old, it

96 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

breaks up into separate masses, the original
trunk decaying, and the props becoming separate
trunks of the different portions. Lady Faulkland
tells us of the Western Coast, that about eight
miles from Waee is a Banyan tree, covering a
space of three and three-quarter acres. The shade
was so complete, she could sit in the middle of
the day without any covering on her head.
Several separate picnic parties might take place
under the tree without interfering with each other.
There were countless avenues, or rather aisles,
like those of a church, the pale grey stems being
the columns, which, as the sun fell on them,
glittered in parts like silver, and here and there
were little recesses like chapels, where the roots
from the boughs formed themselves into delicate
clustering pillars, up and down which little squirrels
were chasing each other ; while large monkeys
were jumping from bough to bough, the boughs
cracking and creaking as they leaped.

Rain and Rail Storms.

THE operations of nature in India are carried
on upon a scale of almost incredible vastness.
No description can convey to the mind of persons
born in these temperate latitudes the majestic
violence of an Indian storm. Dr. C. R. Francis, of
the Indian Medical Service, has described some
of the meteorological phenomena of India with
eloquence and scientific accuracy. " Throughout
the length and breadth of India," he writes, " from
its lofty mountainous tracts to the mouths of its
lordly rivers, in its skies and in its seas, the con-
vulsions (and ordinary phenomena even) of nature
either attain monstrous proportions or are remark-
able for their erratic tendencies. There, famines
sweep human beings from the surface of the earth
in thousands and in millions. The two greatest
pestilences which the world has ever seen find
congenial soil in India ; — nay, the very home of one
of them is there. There, cyclones destroy the
strongest and most elaborate work of men's hands,
as if the construction was of reeds and the
foundations of sand ; the heavens discharge, in

98 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

hail storms, missies of ice as large as full-sized cricket
balls, and rain falls not only in inches but in feet.

On the nth of May, 1855, Nynee Tal — I was
then in medical charge of the sanatorium — was
visited by a storm of hail which, as regards the
size, weight, and number of the stones, has pro-
bably never been surpassed by any in the world.
A calm, cool morning ; a hot, enervating noon ; a
cold evening and night, with the wind blowing
bleakly from the north ; had characterised the few
preceding days. The barometer had stood high ;
and the wet bulb thermometer indicated an
extremely dry atmosphere. On the loth, at 4 p.m.,
the dry bulb thermometer stood in an open shed
with thatched roof, at eighty degrees Fahr. ; on the
nth, at the same hour and place, at sixty-two
degrees Fahr. On the former date, the difference
between the dry and wet bulb thermometer
was fifteen degrees ; on the latter this difference
was reduced to four degrees. In the early part of
the day of the storm, clouds had been gathering
from the north and north-east ; in the after-part of
it others travelled up from south and south-west,
and appeared to coalesce with them. Towards
6 p.m. a small preliminary shower of rain fell ;
deep-toned thunder rolled and reverberated, and
vivid lightning streamed and blazed over the
devoted station. Innumerable bags of walnuts

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. QQ

seemed to be pouring out their contents in the
heavens, and men of science suspected that hail
was coming. And, presently, it came ; ushered in
by a few bright, lens-shaped stones as large as
pigeons' eggs ; then came more — larger still ; and,
while wondering Englishmen looked and thought,
and startled natives invoked " Purmesur, Narain,"
down fell a shower of more than cricket ball size.
Was it a delusion ? To rush out, and seize a stone,
to call for scales and tape, was the work of an
instant. Many were the weighings and measurings
of these monsters over all parts of the station.
Some weighed six, others eight, others ten ounces,
and one or two more than one-and-a-half pounds
avoirdupois : with circumferences ranging from nine
to thirteen inches. Men and animals fled for
shelter ; vegetable gardens became ploughed fields,
with " something green " turning up here and
there ; the lake looked as if it were being besieged
by endless batteries ; or as if innumerable whales
were blowing and sporting in the waters — so un-
ceasing were the jets d'eau cast up by the falling
balls of hail. And you sat in your house, listening
to the roar above you, calculating upon the strength
of beams and roofing ; you tried to talk, but your
neighbour couldn't hear you ; so you sat and
thought of Vulcan and the thunder-bolts of
Jupiter.

100 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

Men who, hitherto, would have turned away from
a story of bullocks killed by hail, with a " credat
Judaeus" smile and shrug of the shoulder, will now
tell a similar tale ; for though no bullocks were
killed, a monkey was; and three human beings
were knocked down. Birds were destroyed, trees
barked, and houses unroofed. Such was the storm
of the nth May, and it forms an epoch in the
meteorological history of Nynee Tal ; for though
hail is common enough here in the hot weather, no
stones (during the ten years that Sir W. Richards
has kept a register) of any size have ever fallen,
except once, and then they were only two-and-a-
half inches in circumference. Hail stones, as large
as pigeons' eggs and turkeys' eggs, have often fallen
in various parts of the world ; but, perhaps, the
severest storm of any recorded (and to which that
at Nynee Tal is a parallel) was one which occurred
in Hertfordshire in 1697, and which was mentioned
in the " Philosophical Transactions" for that year.
The relater says : — " I was walking in my garden,
which is very small, about three hundred yards
square, and before I could get out, it took me to
my knees, and was through my house before I could
get in; went through all like a sea, carrying all
wooden things like boats upon the water, the greatest
part of the town being under this misfortune. The
stones measured from one to fourteen inches about."

LETTERS FROM AUTHORS,

AND

PRESS OPINIONS.

tetters

from

B.R.U. Cfte Prince of Wales, K,6*

fie Id marshal b.R.b. Che Duke of Connauabt, KG.

7ieid=mar$l)al tfte Rt Ron. earl Retorts, VX*K.6.

YORK HOUSE, ST. JAMES'S PALACE,

igth Aug., 1902.
DEAR SIR,

The Prince of Wales desires me to thank you for the
copy of your Book " How I Killed the Tiger " which you are
good enough to offer for His Royal Highness' acceptance.

His Royal Highness trusts that success may attend your
object in publishing this work with a view to raising funds for
the erection of Buildings for the Headquarters of the ist Cadet
Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers.

I am, Dear Sir, yours faithfully,

ARTHUR BIGGE.
Lieut. -Col. FRANK SHEFFIELD,

CURRAGH CAMP, Co. KlLDARE,

2$rd Aug., 1902.
SIR,

I am desired by H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught to
acknowledge your letter of Aug. i4th, and the volume sent with
it, and to inform you that His Royal Highness has much
pleasure in giving his patronage to assist in extending the cir-
culation of the work.

I am, Sir, yours truly,

W. F. LASCELLES, Capt., A.D.C.

WAR OFFICE, LONDON, S.W.,

26th Aug., 1902.
DEAR SIR,

I am desired by Field-Marshal Lord Roberts to
acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the i4th instant, and
to convey his Lordship's best thanks to you for the little book
entitled " How I Killed the Tiger " which you have been good
enough to send to him.

I am to add that the Commander-in-Chief trusts the book
may meet with the success it deserves, and that the excellent
object to which you are devoting the profits from the sale of
your book may be materially benefited thereby.

I am, Dear Sir, yours faithfully,

H. STREATFIELD, Lieut. -Col.,

Private Secretary.
Lieut. -Col. F. SHEFFIELD.

tetters from HutDors,

BATEMAN'S, BURWASH, SUSSEX,

2.oth Sept., 1902.
DEAR SIR,

Your book, as you say, was overlooked in my removal.
I have to thank you for it, and have read it with interest ;
I hope the sale of it will help you towards the very laudable
object which you have in view. So far as my small
experience has gone, it is from the training of the boys that
we can best hope for an efficient citizen army in the future.

Yours sincerely.

RUDYARD KIPLING.
Lieut. -Col. FRANK SHEFFIELD.

LYON LODGE, ISLEWORTH,

25/A Aug., 1902.
DEAR SIR,

I certainly think your work deserves a wide circulation,
if only for the reason that it contains the most realistic
description of an encounter with a tiger and the sequela that
in a long experience I have ever read ; while, when I connect
the above with the admirable objects you have in view, the
advance of Cadet training, I certainly think your book merits,
and should have, a very extensive sale. I say this as one
who for long past has taken a great interest in national
defence, and who has felt the need for better efforts to
increase the Army than the dependence upon the recruiting
sergeant amongst the lower strata of society.

As an old volunteer, I naturally lean towards voluntary
effort, and should like to see the State foster this service to
a far greater extent than has ever been done in the past.

Nothing could be better than the effort you are making
to literally, as well as metaphorically, "teach the young idea
how to shoot." May the need for the services of our boys
and young men again be far distant ; but in these days of
the expansion of our Empire, "ready, aye ready" must be
England's motto, and if adopted to the full the need for our
services may never come.

I am, Faithfully yours,

GEO. MANVILLE FENN.
Lieut. -Col. FRANK SHEFFIELD.

THE DEANERY, CANTERBURY,

24/A Sept., 1902.
DEAR SIR,

I thank you for the kind present of your book, which
I am sure will be found interesting by many readers, and to
which I wish every success.

Forgive my not writing with my own hand, as I am no
longer able to do so.

Yours faithfully,

(for) F. W. FARRAR.

io4 HOW I KILLED Till*: TICKR.

AUTHORS' CLUB, 3, WHITEHALL COURT, S.W.,

26th Sept., 1902.
MY DEAR SIR,

I have read your little book ' ' How I Killed the Tiger ' '
with the greatest interest and pleasure. The story of your
adventure is written with great simplicity and force, and no
one who reads it can have anything but admiration for the
pluck and endurance it displays. As one who is much interested
in the physical training and development of the youth of Eng-
land, I trust it will have a large enough sale to help forward
the movement to which you are devoting yourself, and I hope
that it will put the ist Cadet Battalion Royal Fusiliers
on a sound financial footing. Any scheme which aims at turn-
ing out real men capable of taking part in the defence of their
country at a time when there is more talk than work, and
when there are more male creatures than men, commands my
sincerest sympathy.

Yours very Sincerely,

MORLEY ROBERTS.
Lieut. -Col. FRANK SHEFFIELD.

6, LITTLE CLOISTERS, WESTMINSTER ABBEY, S.W.,

• zjth Sept., 1902.
DEAR COLONEL SHEFFIELD,

On my return from my holiday, I ha*e found awaiting
me a copy of your book, describing your famous adventure
in Bengal, and I hasten to offer you my best thanks. The
story is fresh in my mind, and I have often told it to wonder-
ing hearers. I am much pleased to possess your own recital
of it, and I look forward with pleasure to reading it.

With kind regards, yours very sincerely,

R. DUCKWORTH.

SAVOY MANSIONS, SAVOY STREET, W.C.,

25/// Sept., 1902.
DEAR SIR,

I have to thank you for the gift of your book, which
I have great pleasure in possessing from your hands. I have
read the opening story with much interest, and look forward
to reading the rest of the volume soon. All success to it and
to the object to the service of which you dedicate it, and
towards which I have pleasure in enclosing my cheque £i is.
Yours faithfully,

ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS.
Lieut-Col. FRANK SHEFFIELD.

9, SYDNEY PLACE, BATH,

2Gth Sept., 1902.
DEAR SIR,

I have read your narrative of the shooting of the Tiger
with interest. The illustrations add to the curiosity of the book.
I hope its sale will help the end you have in view. But, unless
advertised, who is to hear of it?

Yours faithfully,

W. CLARK RUSSELL.

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 105

20, CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, S.W.,

26th Sept., 1902.
MY DEAR SIR,

I have read your very striking and characteristic Tale
of a Tiger and the accompanying chapters in your book with
the greatest interest and excitement. The Tiger tale is a very
thrilling account of a personal adventure such as falls to the
lot of few men who live to tell the story.

Your object in publishing it should of itself warrant its
sale, but it has that other claim to be read extensively by
the public, an engrossing interest.

I hope that the Fund for the erection of buildings for
the ist Cadet Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers, will benefit
largely from its publication, and I congratulate you on your
enterprise and philanthropy.

Believe me, yours very truly,
GILBERT PARKER, Hon. Col., ist K.V.A.

ROYAL YORK HOTEL, SIDMOUTH, SOUTH DEVON.
DEAR COLONEL SHEFFIELD,

Many thanks for the book, which I read with interest.
You have treated the Bengal tiger as the man in Pickwick
treated Chinese metaphysics — half about Bengal and the other
half about the tiger.

I enclose £i is. to help.

Yours truly,

ARTHUR CON AN DOYLE.

" ASHLEYDENE," ROXBURGH ROAD, WESTGATE-ON-SEA,

6th Oct., 1902.
MY DEAR SIR,

Your story ' ' How I Killed the Tiger ' ' has greatly
cheered and brightened for me some darksome days of
premature winter. You have told the tale with admirable
spirit and humour, and enabled even one like myself, who
knows very little of sport, to appreciate every situation and
event of your thrilling narrative.

The chapters of your appendix, which tell us in closest
compass the story of British India, its origin and its growth,
form a most instructive study.

The illustrations to the encounter with the tiger are vivid
and thoroughly artistic. Let me add that the benevolent
purpose to which the profits of your book are to be dedicated
must of itself commend the work to the attention and the
sympathy of the public.

Very truly yours,

JUSTIN MCCARTHY.

Lieut. -Col. FRANK SHEFFIELD.

HKATHERSIDE, WORPLESDON, SURREY,

ijth Oct., 1902.
DEAR SIR,

Since last writing to you I have been able to read
carefully and at my leisure the little book you so kindly sent
me, "How I Killed the Tiger." Your very graphic account
of the way in which you attacked and finally killed the

106 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

tiger, which very nearly killed you, interested me immensely.
Firstly, because I think that it was a very fine example of
pluck and self-confidence on your part, worthy of the best
traditions of Englishmen, to have attacked so dangerous an
animal as a tiger alone and on foot, when you were only
armed with a gun quite unsuited for such an encounter ; and
secondly, because my own experience with lions in Africa tells
me that every word you have written of that encounter is
absolutely true. I have seen several lions lying perfectly
still, quietly watching me, before I fired at them, just as
you describe the tiger watching you, but without moving
when you first approached it. I have also noted that when
a lion charges, it does not come on in great bounds, like
the lions and tigers of the picture books, but rushes along
the ground like a great dog galloping, and only rears itself
up and seizes its victim when close to him, exactly as you
have described the tiger doing, when it charged and seized
you.

Besides the story of how you killed the tiger, the
Appendix to your book, containing as it does a short
historical sketch of India, as well as an account of the
various races, languages, and religions of the country, has
interested me greatly, and I trust that your little book will
be widely read and bring you in many subscriptions to assist
you in carrying out the very worthy objects in the interests
of which you have written it. I do not myself think that
this country of ours will ever be invaded by a foreign army,
because I think that if ever any foreign navy, or combination of
navies, should defeat our own fleets, and so obtain command
of the seas, the nations to which those navies belonged
would then be content to cut our food supplies, and bring
us to submission in that way, rather than incur the heavy
losses and dangers of landing men on our shores to over-run
the country. However I think that every English boy ought
to be taught how to use a rifle effectively, and also that he
ought to be trained in physical drill and various athletic
exercises, so that, if the" need arose, he would at any moment
be useful to his country as a fighting man.

I therefore wish you every success in the patriotic task
you have taken in hand, and I enclose you a cheque for
two guineas to help you to carry it out, and remain,

Yours very truly,

F. C. SELOUS.

105, MOUNT STREET, W.,

list Oct., 1902.
D;:AR SIR,

I beg to acknowledge with many thanks the receipt of
the book which you were good enough to send me and which
I found very interesting.

I must apologise for not acknowledging it before, but I
have been absent from town for some time and only lately
returned for the session.

Yours truly,

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL.
Lieut. -Col. SHEFFIELD.

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 107

LEINSTER CORNER, LANCASTER GATE, W.,

22nd Oct., 1902.
DEAR SIR,

I thank you for the copy of " How I Killed the Tiger "
which I read with pleasure, and I hope it will have such a
sale as will materially help in the objects for which it was
published.

Yours truly,

J. M. BARRIE.
Lieut. -Col. SHEFFIELD.

GIVONS, LEATHERHEAD,

22nd Oct., 1902,
DEAR SIR,

My father, George Meredith, has asked me to write
in reply to your letter, as letters to him now are a considerable
effort and he is at present at work on a new book which takes
all his strength and energy. He read the story you sent him
and was much interested in it and thought it worth publica-
tion. He hopes you may be able to make the amount you
need for the building.

Believe me, yours truly,

MARIE STURGIS.

yoA, GROSVENOR STREET,

22nd Oct., 1902.
DEAR COL. SHEFFIELD,

I have read your book with much enjoyment, and
sympathise entirely with the object for which it is written.
Wishing all success to your Cadet Corps.

I am, very truly yours,

HELEN MATHERS.
Lieut. -Col. SHEFFIELD.

Press Opinions,

BROAD ARROW. — "By a happy coincidence the review of
this book has fallen to one who, shortly after the thrilling occurrence
of which it treats, became acquainted first-hand with its details.
We are therefore in a position to say that it is no fairy tale
or ' snake story,' but an interesting account of a desperate
hand-to-hand encounter (if we may so call it) between the author
and a full-grown tiger. Not less wonderful is the further fact
that the tiger was killed and that the author recovered, although
terribly mauled. The belated publication of his adventure is
due to Lieutenant-Colonel Sheffield's interest in his cadet bat-
talion, which is in want of funds to build headquarters and
to provide for their maintenance. To these objects the whole
profits of the book will be devoted, so we have a further pleasure
in recommending it for that reason. It is, however, not only
a well-told tiger story, but also a book which gives a large
amount of useful and interesting information about India, its

loS HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

peoples, and its fauna and flora. There are, incidentally, one
or two ' snake stories,1 but no book about India would be
complete without them. The book is published for the benefit
of boys, and it is chiefly boys of another class who would read
it with interest. Christmas is coming, and we gladly recom-
mend it as a gift book."

DAILY CHRONICLE.— "This little book has a ' way with it,'
like Father O'Flynn. It is a good and real tiger story, told in
the interest of the Volunteer movement. The author, Colonel
Sheffield, commands the ist Cadet Battalion Royal Fusiliers
which has its headquarters in Hampstead. He has written the
book in order to raise funds for the headquarters buildings,
and for the maintenance of the battalion. That is a capital
reason why people should read it, and, moreover, they are not
likely to be disappointed with the tiger story. The incident —
Colonel Sheffield uses a mild word for a throbbing experience —
took place at Palaspai, Midnapore, India. He had been a
great hunter of big game ; this affair dramatically rounded off
his career in that respect — and came very near to closing it
altogether. He had been out shooting birds with an old fowling-
piece, when a native came and asked if ' I would shoot a tiger,
which he said was couched in a mulberry field about a mile
distant.' Colonel Sheffield fancied it would prove to be a
leopard, but he whittled down two explosive bullets which he
had, so they might go into the fowling-piece, and went in
search of the beast. . . . ' I saw within thirty yards of me

a magnificent Royal Bengal tiger I took steady aim

behind his shoulder . . . The cap missed fire . . . The second
cap also missed fire.' This was getting lively — and uncertain . . .
The Colonel primed the nipples of the gun and recapped. The
opportunity was not to be lost ... So he went at him again.
1 1 took steady aim at the same spot and fired. Instantly the
tiger was on his hind legs and uttering a terrific roar.' ....
Colonel Sheffield fired at the animal, but as ill-luck would have
it the cap again merely snapped. ' The next second he was
on me.' . . . Now for some minutes there ensued a desperate
struggle. ... A long illness followed this exciting encounter with
a Bengal tiger, which measured ' ten and a half feet from the tip
of the nose to the tip of the tail.' "

UNITED SERVICE GAZETTE.—" Those who buy the book
before us will not only have the gratification of perusing an
exciting adventure, graphically described, but also of contributing
at the same time towards a fund well deserving of support.
The author, who commands the ist Cadet Battalion Royal
Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), is desirous of raising
funds for the headquarters buildings of his battalion and for
maintaining the corps, and proposes to devote the profits on
the sale of the book exclusively to these objects. Besides the
story of how the author killed his tiger — although it seems to
have been a toss up whether the position was not reversed and
the tiger killed his man — we are also given some wisely selected
general information about India — about the aborigines, the religion,
state and mode of agriculture, mammalia, reptile kingdom, etc.,
all of which cannot but be read with interest. As Colonel
Sheffield remarks in his introduction : ' Our Indian Empire is
unique ; no other European Power can boast of anything at all

HOW 1 KILLED THE TIGKH. 109

comparable with it.' Yet few, except those who have visited it,
really know much about it. It is, therefore, one of the merits
of the book that, while affording amusement by the perusal of
adventures, it at the same time adds materially to our stock
of knowledge of a most important part of our great Empire."

FIELD. — " For the purpose of erecting buildings for the ist
Cadet Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers (City of London
Regiment) a freehold site has been acquired at a cost of
£2,000 and presented to the battalion . . . and the cost of
the buildings has now to be considered. In furtherance of
this object Lieut. -Colonel Sheffield has hit upon the novel
expedient of raising funds by the sale of a book which he
has written detailing his experience with a tiger in India
('How I Killed the Tiger'). . . . The narrative is a thrilling
one, for the author, having been badly mauled, as nearly as
possible lost his life. In consequence of a misfire he failed
to stop the tiger as it charged, and in another instant ' felt
his teeth crunch into the flesh.' He fell with the tiger on
the top of him, its mouth touching his face, and understood
how a mouse feels when clutched by a cat. Fortunately,
after flooring him, the tiger walked away a few yards, and
fell, to die from the effects of the author's first shot. It was
a narrow escape, never to be forgotten, and as the gallant
officer was forty miles from the nearest station where medical
aid could be procured, it was marvellous that he did not
succumb before a surgeon could be found. As it was, his
wounds suppurated, and, an abscess having formed, a serious
operation was necessary. A robust constitution and pluck
fortunately pulled him through, and he has lived to tell the
tale which he has now published. . . The book has been
written with a praiseworthy object, and we wish it all the success
which it deserves."

DAILY NEWS. — "And now for the story. It is certainly
worth the telling . . . The tiger mauled the Colonel and
the Colonel turned the tiger's inside into 'a jelly' . . . Colonel
Sheffield is the only ' shikari ' we have ever heard of who
killed a tiger with a foxvling-piece. Perhaps he might not
have tried it had he felt sure that the beast the villagers
told him of was a tiger and not a leopard — though, of course,
one would hesitate before attacking a leopard with small shot
for birds. Our shikari, however, found he had 'two explosive
bullets' in his pouch, so went on the prowl. And the tiger
whom he saw, and who was quietly watching his approach,
was one of the most magnificent creatures in the Bengal
jungle. The shikari aimed ... It was months before Colonel
Sheffield recovered from his terrible wounds. The adventure
was an illustration of the wonderful vitality of the cat tribe.
The tiger's inside must have been torn into shreds when he
charged the huntsman. About the same period, in Assam, a
tiger, shot through the heart, leaped a stream twenty feet
wide, and killed the shooter. Colonel Sheffield corrects the
common impression that a tiger always leaps when he
charges . . . Colonel Sheffield is careful to explain to his
readers that he killed his tiger not merely for the sake of
killing. . . Many hundreds of natives are killed by tigers

no HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

every year in India. As to his springing powers, a tiger has
been known to pull a native from a tree at a height of
eighteen feet from the ground. The man who slays a tiger
haunting an Indian village does good service to the com-
munity. That's a sort of shoot not to be despised. It needs
cool courage and iron nerves. It means that the shikari
takes his life in his hand."

DAILY GRAPHIC.—" Lieut. -Colonel Frank Sheffield, com-
manding ist Cadet Battalion Royal Fusiliers (City of
London Regiment), has hit upon a novel method of raising
funds towards the building and maintenance of the head-
quarters of the battalion. Having had many and strange
adventures in India, he has, in a little book entitled ' How
I Killed the Tiger,' set down a detailed account of one of
his most daring encounters and one of his narrowest escapes.
He has also added other chapters on Indian subjects,
which in their way are of use and interest. The profits
from the sale of this little book are being devoted to the
building and maintenance funds. We understand that a free-
hold site has been acquired at a cost of ^2,000 and given
to the battalion . . . The incident described cannot fail to
interest every sportsman, and the book certainly deserves,
both on account of itself and of the object for which it has
been published, very hearty support. There are numerous
illustrations."

LAND AND WATER.—" With the laudable desire of raising
funds for the ist Cadet Battalion Royal Fusiliers, Lieut. -Col.
Frank Sheffield, the commanding officer, has written a book
entitled 'How I Killed the Tiger.' It is a volume of 100 pages,
illustrated by twenty-six full page drawings of the events described.
The author attacked and killed a very large tiger, with no better
weapon than a muzzle-loading shot-gun which he charged with ball
for the occasion, but was unfortunate enough to be most severely
mauled in the encounter. His restoration to health was, as he
himself contends, quite miraculous. The latter part of the
book contains a short description of India and its inhabitants,
for the author complains that in spite of all that has been
written and read upon the subject, we English folk are still
very ignorant about our great Eastern Empire. All who wish
to aid Col. Sheffield in the work that he is doing, by buying
the record of this remarkable adventure or by other means,
are requested to communicate to him at the Headquarters of
the Battalion, Mansfield Road, N.W."

EXAMINER.—" Without professing any great interest in
military or sporting matters, it is impossible to read the incident
here related without being affected both by its peril and pathos.
It shows the author to be possessed of exceptional skill, courage,
and physical strength ; not only in having ' Killed the Tiger,' but
in having lived through his terrible injuries and sufferings to tell
the tale. And he certainly tells it very well ; his style is clear and
manly ; our only perplexity being the account of his sudden con-
version on page twenty-two. While the last to doubt the power
of spiritual forces, the change from being ' more irreligious than
any heathen ' to full consciousness of Christ's presence, as the

HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. in

immediate result of this encounter with a tiger, is rather startling.
The larger half of this handsome volume' consists
of an appendix, containing much concise information about India,
and the book is embellished with a number of good engravings.
The author hopes by the sale of this work to provide buildings for
the Cadet Battalion of which he is Lieut. -Colonel ; and his
earnestness and industry certainly deserve their reward."

VOLUNTEER GAZETTE.— " ' How I Killed the Tiger' is
the title of a book to which we are glad to call the attention of
our readers. It is written by Lieut. -Colonel Frank Sheffield,
and in a brief but pleasant manner supplies a considerable
amount of general information respecting British India. The
author states in the introduction that his main purpose
in writing the book is to place in a permanent form a
description of his wonderful preservation from death in a
chance encounter with a tiger in Midnapore, Bengal.
There is, however, a contributory reason for the publication
of the story, which should strongly appeal to all who are
interested in Home Defence, and in the education, in the
true sense of the word, of growing English lads of every
class. The profits derived from the sale of the volume are
to be devoted to the fund being raised for the erection of
suitable buildings for the Headquarters of the Cadet Battalion
which Lieut. -Colonel Sheffield commands. The development
and maintenance of Cadet Battalions has so frequently been
advocated in these columns that it is almost unnecessary to
remark that this is in itself quite sufficient reason to express
a hope that the volume under consideration may have a rapid
and extensive sale. 'How I Killed the Tiger' is divided into
two parts. The first is an account of the adventure which
gives the title to the book, and is written in a straight-
forward style, absolutely free from attempts at embellishment.
Part II. supplies an interesting historical sketch of British
India, chiefly compiled from authentic sources, and short
chapters on miny subjects, which will well repav perusal. Amongst
thess may ba mentioned those dealing with Religio, Agricul-
ture, the Flora and Fauna, and the Meteorological Phenomena
of India. The book is well printed on good paper with wide
margin, and is extensively and well illustrated. We are
pleased to recommend the book, which should certainly find
a place in every library."

STANDARD. — "With the laudable intention of raising
funds for the headquarters building of the ist Cadet Battalion
Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), the Commandant
of the corps, Colonel Frank Sheffield, has written and pub-
lished a thrilling narrative, adorned with even more thrilling
illustrations, of Indian sporting adventure, ' How I Killed the
Tiger ' being his account of an incident that occurred in
Bengal. . . . Being of opinion, moreover, that the average
Englishman labours under ' an abysmal ignorance ' about
everything connected with India, he adds some chapters on
the past history and present condition of the country. The
English friend who accompanied the writer on his shikar may
possibly complain that his precipitous flight at a critical
moment is represented with more humour than charity ; but

ii2 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

it may be hoped that this will not restrict the benefit which
the Cadet Corps is to derive from the sale of the book."

ST. JAMES' GAZETTE.—" ' How I Killed the Tiger ' Being
an Account of my Encounter with a Royal Bengal Tiger ;
with an Appendix containing some General Information about
India.' . . . Published in aid of the funds of a London
Cadet Battalion, and much better money's worth than many
wares produced with a similar charitable motive. The course
of the narrative sprouts with references to the ' general in-
formation' in the index, and spirited . . . illustrations, thus:
' He lifted up the mosquito curtains and found the bed
swarming with little red ants of a most rapacious kind.
(Ants ; see Appendix.) He set to work vigorously to brush
them out, when the candle came in contact with the curtains,
and in a second they were in a blaze. (Plate 20).' Altogether
an unusual volume."

UNITED SERVICE MAGAZINE. — " ' How I Killed the
Tiger ' This book . . . devoted to the narrative suggested
by the title, and the remainder consists of instructive
appendices relating to Indian History, Religion, Zoology, &c.
. The story has one great merit, namely, that it is an
absolutely true account of a really terrible adventure, and
this, added to the fact that the book is published in aid of
the funds of his Cadet Battalion, should give the author a
strong claim upon the support of the public."

WORLD. — "Avowedly with the laudable intention of raising
funds for the headquarters buildings of the ist Cadet Battalion
Royal Fusiliers, Lieut. -Colonel Frank Sheffield has written . .
an account of a thrilling tiger adventure which befell him in
India . . . under the title 'How I Killed the Tiger.' The
volume is eked out with an appendix affording ' some general
information about India,' ranging from its history and religions
to its bird and insect life, and it is embellished with numerous
illustrations. There is much that is readable in this modest
little book, which, it may be hoped, will do something, at
least, towards fulfilling the excellent object of its existence."

SATURDAY WEEKLY CITIZEN, GLASGOW.—" Colonel
Sheffield's 'How I Killed the Tiger' is a good and real tiger
story. . . . The incident . . . took place at Palaspai, Midnapore,
India. . . . He had been a great hunter of big game. . . . He
had been out shooting . . . when a native asked if he would
shoot a tiger. ... He went in search of the beast. 'When I
arrived .... I saw within thirty yards a most magnificent
Royal Bengal tiger, his head slightly raised and his weather
eye taking stock of me. I took steady aim and the cap missed
fire.' . . . The tiger came to the charge. . . . The next second
he was on me. ... I fell . . . and every moment I expected
to find my head in his mouth .... for some minutes there
ensued a desperate struggle.' . . . Many interesting facts about
tigers are mentioned in the book, and there is an appendix of
information about India.

BOW I KILLED 77/A' TKiKIi. 113

HAMPSTEAD &• HIGHGATE EXPRESS.— - Our neighbour
Lieut. -Col. Frank Sheffield, L.C.C., is the author of a book
entitled 'How I Killed the Tiger" which contains an interest-
ing account of an encounter with a Royal Bengal tiger. The
incident took place at Palaspai, Midnapore. ... It is probably
in remembrance of the incident that the gallant Colonel's residence
is named Palaspai, and his numerous friends will be interested
in knowing how it came to be so called. The story is told in
the straightforward, modest manner in which the Colonel usually
goes about his work, and is all the more effective because here
and there he imparts little bits of information which not only
help the reader to understand the difficulty of slaying a tiger,
but also give some idea of the natives and their helplessness
in the face of dangers such as the one to which he was ex-
posed. In the encounter he was badly mauled by the wounded
animal and suffered a serious illness as a result. Happily he
recovered, and now looks upon the incident as the changing
point in his life, so much so that he says he would ' readily
undergo a similar mauling and terrible sufferings to experience
the same blessings.' An appendix to the book contains some
valuable general information about our Indian Empire."

GUARDIAN.—" 'How I Killed the Tiger ' by Lieut. -Colonel
Frank Sheffield . . . ist Cadet Battalion Royal Fusiliers (City of
London Regiment). Of this battalion Colonel Sheffield is com-
manding officer, and he has written the book in order to raise
funds by its sale for permanent headquarters buildings. A free-
hold site having been acquired at a cost of ^2,000, and given
to the battalion ... he wishes to begin building at the earliest
possible date. The story is one of a thrilling encounter with
a Royal Bengal tiger, in which Colonel Sheffield was terribly
mauled ; it is liberally illustrated, and some ' general information
about India' has been added."

DAILY TELEGRAPH.— "To raise funds for the erection
of headquarters buildings for the ist Cadet Battalion Royal
Fusiliers, Lieut. -Colonel Frank Sheffield, commanding this
corps, has written an account of his encounter with a fine
specimen of a Royal Bengal tiger, which measured loj ft.
from the tip of his nose to his tail. The book is liberally
illustrated, and is entitled ' How I Killed the Tiger.' In an
appendix is a variety of general information about India."

LADIES' FIELD.— " 'How I Killed the Tiger.' But it
was very nearly the other way, for the tiger wounded Colonel
Sheffield very severely. Writing at a distance and in safety,
we are inclined to think that his attack on the tiger, in-
sufficiently armed as he was and with no retreat open to him,
was foolhardy in the extreme. But, no doubt very few of us
would have resisted the temptation at the time. Such chances
of killing a tiger do not often happen. The little book is
simply written, probably, in the first instance, for the cadets
of Colonel Sheffield's battalion. It is just the sort of adventure
boys like to read of. ... The illustrations are numerous
and quaint."

1 14 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER.

NAVY A\'D ARMY ILLUSTRATED.— "• How I Killed the
Tiger ' is the title of a book written by Lieutenant-Colonel Frank
Sheffield, commanding the ist Cadet Battalion Royal Fusiliers.
The first part of the volume is an account of a thrilling adventure
experienced by the author in India, and the book throughout is
enriched by equally thrilling illustrations. Part II., termed an
appendix, really comprises about three-quarters of the volume, and
contains some very accurate and readable general information
about India. Lieutenant-Colonel Sheffield announces that the
profits derived from the sale of the book will be devoted exclusively
to a fund which has been opened in order to obtain the amount
necessary to provide suitable headquarters for the battalion he
commands. In consideration of the good purpose for which it is
published, therefore, it is hoped that ' How I Killed the Tiger ' may
have an extensive sale."

GRAPHIC.—" 'How I Killed the Tiger ' In this little volume
the author gives an account of a terrible encounter he had with a
Royal Bengal Tiger, at Palaspai, Midnapore. He was returning
from shooting when a native, seeing him with a gun, asked him if
he would shoot a tiger. The writer was only armed with an old
fowling-piece, ' a capital weapon for shooting birds, but, of course,
of little use against such a formidable animal as a tiger.' But
having two explosive bullets in his pocket, and concluding that the
animal would turn out to be a small leopard, he consented to go.
He was pointed out the spot where the animal was hiding, and to
the Colonel's surprise, he saw an immense tiger. What followed
was of a most harrowing description, which it would be unfair to
the author to tell here. Suffice it to say that, although the author
managed to kill the royal beast in the end, he was so severely
mauled, that he was laid up for many weeks, and then had to come
home to England. The book contains an extensive appendix, con-
taining much useful general information about India."

THE REGIMENT.—" ' How I Killed the Tiger " by Lieutenant-
Colonel Frank Sheffield, is a work which will be found of great
interest to lovers of sport. It is written in an easy and attractive
style, and contains many quaint side-lights of life in our Indian
Empire .... A contributory reason of much importance for
the present publication of ' How I Killed a Tiger ' is the Colonel's
desire that the profits derived from its sale may augment the fund
now being raised for the erection and furnishing of suitable build-
ings for the headquarters of the ist Cadet Battalion Royal Fusiliers,
of which Colonel Sheffield is Commanding Officer."

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