TIGHT BINDING BOOK

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UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

THE AUTHOR

MA-N-EAT'EftS
OF KUMAON

By
JIM CORBETT

With an Introduction by
SIR MAURICE HALLETT

!OR OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, 1939-45

and a Prefatp by
LORD LINLITHtfbW

VICEROY OF INDIA, 1936-43

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.j

GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON

BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI KUALA LUMPUR

CAPE TOWN IBADAN NAIROBI ACCRA

Jim Corbett 1944

First published 1944

FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE CHAMPAK LIBRARY 1947,

Reprinted 1949, 1952,

PRINTED IN INDIA BY V. D. LIMAYE AT THE INDIA PRINTING WORKS,

FORT, BOMBAY, AND PUBLISHED BY JOHN BROWN,
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD HOUSE, APOLLO BUNDER, BOMBAY 1

INTRODUCTION

np HESE jungle stories by Jim Corbett merit as much popularity
JL and as wide a circulation as Rudyard Kipling's Jungle
Books. Kipling's Jungle Books were fiction, based on great
knowledge of jungle life; Corbett's stories are fact, and fact is
often stranger than fiction. These stories should prove of
entrancing interest to all boys and girls who like exciting yarns;
they should be of equal interest to all who take any interest in
the wild life of the jungle; they should prove of great value to
any genuine sportsman who wishes to earn by his own efforts
the credit of shooting a tiger; they will be of interest even to the
so-called sportsman who feels some pride in killing a tiger when
all that he has done is to fire straight from a safe position on a
machan or on the back of a staunch elephant, when all the hard
work involved in beating up a tiger to his death has been done
by others.

Corbett's description of his campaign against the man-eaters
of the Kumaon Hills shows the qualities that a successful shikari
needs, physical strength, infinite patience, great power of
observation and power not only to notice small signs but also to
draw the right inference from those signs. To these must be
added great courage. I will not make quotations from the book
to prove this statement. Read the book for 1 yourself; you will
soon see the truth of it; these qualities were exhibited by Corbett
himself, by his friends who helped him in some of these cam-
paigns, by the villagers whom he went to protect, and by his
big-hearted and faithful companion Robin.

Jim Corbett's name is already a household word in Kumaon;
I hope that as a result of this bodk it will get still wider fame.

M. G. HALLETT

FOREWORD

HP HESE stories are the true account of Major Corbett' s
JL experiences with man-eating tigers in the jungles -'of the
United Provinces. I am most glad to commend them to all
who enjoy a tale well told of action and adventure.

The sportsman will find much to entertain and inform him
in Major Corbett's book. If every beginner would study it before
tackling his first tiger, fewer persons would be killed or seriously
injured when hunting these creatures. For something more is
required than courage and good marksmanship for the success-
ful pursuit of dangerous game. Forethought, preparation, and
persistence are indispensable to success.

Over wide areas of the United Provinces the authors name
is familiar to the village folk as that of the man who has brought
them relief from the great fear inspired by a cruel and malignant
presence in their midst. Many a District Officer, faced with the
utter disorganization of rural life that attends the presence of a
man-eating tiger or panther, has turned to Jim Corbett for help
never, I believe, in vain. Indeed the destruction of these
abnormal and dangerous animals is a service of great value both
to the afflicted population and to Government.

The reader will find in these stories many proofs of the
author's love of nature. Having spent in. Major Corbett's
company some part of such holidays as I have contrived to
take during my time in India, I can with confidence write of him
that no man with whom I have hunted in any continent better
understands the signs of the jungle. Very often he has told me
of the intense happiness he has derived from his observations of
wild life. I make no doubt that it is in large part the recollection
of all that his own eyes have brought him that moves him now
to dedicate this first edition of his book to the aid of soldiers
blinded in war, and to arrange that all profits from its sale shall
be devoted to the funds of St Dunstan's, the famous institution

viii Man-eaters of Kumaon

in which men who have given their sight for their country and
for the great cause of human freedom may learn, despite their
affliction, to lead useful and happy lives; and whose beneficent
ministrations are extended now to the armed forces in India.

Viceroy's House LINLITHGOW

New Delhi

CONTENTS

AUTHOR'S NOTE x

THE CHAMPA WAT MAN-EATER i

ROBIN 29

THE CHOWGARH TIGERS - - - - 41

THE BACHELOR OF POWALGARH - - - 95

THE MOHAN MAN-EATER - - - - 109

THE FISH OF MY DREAMS - - - - 139

THE KANDA MAN-EATER - - - - 145

THE PIPAL PANI TIGER - - - - 159

THE THAK MAN-EATER - - - - 168

JUST TIGERS 216

ILLUSTRATIONS

Photographs by the author unless otherwise stated
THE AUTHOR - - - - Frontispiece

'AN AREA OF 1,500 SQUARE MILES 9F

MOUNTAIN AND VALE ' - - Facing page 32

ROBIN 33

ROBIN BRINGING HOME THE BACHELOR - 33

THE BACHELOR OF POWALGARH 64

' IT WAS THE DUTY OF WOMEN 65

A VILLAGE SHRINE 65

' WHERE THE WATER RESTS ' - - - 160
THE STURDY, HAPPY AND UNSPOILT PEOPLE

OF OUR HILLS 161

EXAMPLES OF CINE-PHOTOGRAPHY - - 176-7
SKETCH MAP OF KUMAON - - End-paper (back)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As many of the stories in this book are about man-eating
tigers, it is perhaps desirable to explain why these animals
develop man-eating tendencies.

A man-eating tiger is a tiger that has been compelled, through
stress of circumstances beyond its control, to adopt a diet alien
to it. The stress of circumstances is, in nine cases out of ten,
wounds, and in the tenth case old age. The wound that has
caused a particular tiger to take to man-eating might be the
result of a carelessly fired shot and failure to follow up and
recover the wounded animal, or be the result of the tiger having
lost his temper when killing a porcupine. Human beings are
not the natural prey of tigers, and it is only when tigers have
been incapacitated through wounds or old age that, in order to
five, they are compelled to take to a diet of human flesh.

A tiger when killing its natural prey, which it does either
by stalking or lying in wait for it, depends for the success of its
attack on its speed and, to a lesser extent, on the condition of its
teeth and claws. When, therefore, a tiger is suffering from one
or more painful wounds, or when its teeth are missing or defec-
tive and its claw worn down, and it is unable to catch the ani-
mals it has been accustomed to eating, it is driven by necessity to
killing human beings. The change-over from animal to human
flesh is, I believe, in most cases accidental. As an illustration
of what I mean by ' accidental ' I quote the case of the Muktesar
man-eating tigress. This tigress, a comparatively young animal,
in an encounter with a porcupine lost an eye and got some fifty
quills, varying in length from one to nine inches, embedded in
the arm and under the pad of her right foreleg. Several of these
quills after striking a bone had doubled back in the form of a
U, the point, and the broken-off end, being quite close together.
Suppurating sores formed where she endeavoured to extract the
quills with her teeth, and while she was lying up in a thick patch

Author's^fote xi

of grass, starving and licking Her wounds, a woman selected this
particular patch of grass to cut as fodder for her cattle. At first
the tigress took no notice, but when the woman had cut the grass
right up to where she was lying the tigress struck once, the blow
crushing in the woman's skull. Death was instantaneous, for,
when found the following day, she was grasping her sickle with
one hand and holding a tuft of grass, which she was about to
cut when struck, with the other. Leaving the woman lying
where she had fallen, the tigress limped off for a distance of over
a mile and took refuge in a little hollow under a fallen tree.
Two days later a man came to chip firewood off this fallen tree,
and the tigress who was lying on the far side killed him. The
man fell across the tree, and as he had removed his coat and
shirt and the tigress had clawed his back when killing him,
it is possible that the smell of the blood trickling down his
body as he hung across the bole of the tree first gave her the
idea that he was something that she could satisfy her hunger
with. However that may be, before leaving him she ate a
small portion from his back. A clay after she killed her third
victim deliberately, and without having received any pro-
vocation. Thereafter she became an established man-eater
and had killed twenty-four people before slie was finally
accounted for.

A tiger on a fresh kill, or a wounded tiger, or a tigress with
small cubs, will occasionally kill human beings who disturb
them; but these tigers cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be
called man-eaters, though they are often so called. Personally I
would give a tiger the benefit of the doubt once, and once again,
before classing it as a man-eater, and whenever possible I would
subject the alleged victim to a post-mortem before letting the kill
go down on the records as the kill of a tiger or a leopard, as the
case might be. This subject of post-mortems of human beings
alleged to have been killed by either tigers or leopards or, in the
plains, by wolves or hyenas, is of great imporfance, for, though

xii Man-eaters of Kumaon

I rfefrain from giving instances, I know of cases where deaths
have wrongly been ascribed to carnivora.

It is a popular fallacy that all man-eaters are old and mangy,
the mange being attributed to the excess of salt in human flesh.
I am not competent to give any opinion on the relative quantity
of salt in human or animal flesh; but I can, and I do, assert that
a diet of human flesh, so far from having an injurious effect on
the coat of man-eaters, has quite the opposite effect, for all the
man-eaters I have seen have had remarkably fine coats.

Another popular belief in connexion with man-eaters is that
the cubs of these animals automatically become man-eaters.
This is quite a reasonable supposition; but it is not borne out
by actual facts, and the reason why the cubs of a man-eater do
not themselves become man-eaters, is that human beings are
not the natural prey of tigers, or of leopards.

A cub will eat whatever its mother provides, and I have even
known of tiger cubs assisting their mothers to kill human beings:
but I do not know of a single instance of a cub, after it had left
the protection of its parent, or after that parent had been killed,
taking to killing human beings.

In the case of human beings killed by carnivora, the doubt is
often expressed' as to whether the animal responsible for the kill
is a tiger or leopard. As a general rule to which I have seen
no exceptions tigers are responsible for all kills that take place
in daylight, and leopards are responsible for all kills that take
place in the dark. Both animals are semi-nocturnal forest-
dwellers, have much the same habits, employ similar methods of
killing, and both are capable of carrying their human victims for
long distances. It would be natural, therefore, to expect them to
hunt at the same hours; and that they do not do so is due to the
difference in courage of the two animals. When a tiger becomes
a man-eater it loses all fear of human beings and, as human
beings move about more freely in the day than they do at night,
it is able to secure its victims during daylight hours and there

Author's Note xiii

is no necessity for it to visit their habitations at night. A leopard
on the other hand, even after it has killed scores of human be-
ings, never loses its fear of man; and, as it is unwilling to face up
to human beings in daylight, it secures its victims when they are
moving about at night, or by breaking into their houses at night.
Owing to these characteristics of the two animals, namely, that
one loses its fear of human beings and kills in the daylight,
while the other retains its fear and kills in the dark, man-eating
tigers are easier to shoot than man-eating leopards.

The frequency with which a man-eating tiger kills depends on
(a) the supply of natural food in the area in which it is operating;
(6) the nature of the disability which has caused it to become
a man-eater, and (c) whether it is a male or a female with cubs.

Those of us who lack the opportunity of forming our own
opinion on any particular subject are apt to accept the opinions
of others, and in no case is this more apparent than in the case
of tigers here I do not refer to man-eaters in particular, but to
tigers in general. The author who first used the words ' as cruel
as a tiger' and 'as bloodthirsty as a tiger', when attempting
to emphasize the evil character of the villain of his piece, not
only showed a lamentable ignorance of the animal he defamed,
but coined phrases which have come into universal circulation,
and which are mainly responsible for the wrong opinion of tigers
held by all except that very small proportion of the public who
have the opportunity of forming their own opinions.

When I sec the expression ' as cruel as a tiger ' and ' as blood-
thirsty as a tiger ' in print, I think of a small boy armed with an
old muzzle-loading gun the right barrel of which was split for
six inches of its length, and the stock and barrels of which were
kept from falling apart by lashings of brass wire wandering
through the jungles of the terai and bhabar in the days when
there were ten tigers to every one that now survives; sleeping
anywhere he happened to be when night came on, with a small
fire to give him company and warmth, wakened at intervals by

xiv Man-eaters of Kumaon

the calling of tigers, sometimes in the distance, at other times
near at hand; throwing another stick on the fire and turning over
and continuing his interrupted sleep without one thought of un-
ease; knowing from his own short experience and from what
others, who like himself had spent their days in the jungles, had
told him, that a tiger, unless molested, would do him no harm;
or during daylight hours avoiding any tiger he saw, and when
that was not possible, standing perfectly still until it had passed
and gone, before continuing on his way. And I think of him on
one occasion stalking half-a-dozen jungle fowl that were feeding
in the open, and on creeping up to a plum bush and standing up
to peer over, the bush heaving and a tiger walking out on the far
side and, on clearing the bush, turning round and looking at the
boy with an expression on its face which said as clearly as any
words, 'Hello, kid, what the hell are you doing here?' and, re-
ceiving no answer, turning round and waiting away very slowly
without once looking back.. And then again I think of the tens
of thousands of men, women and children who, while working
in the forests or cutting grass or collecting dry sticks, pass day
after day close to where tigers are lying up and who, when they
return safely to their homes, do not even know that they have
been under the observation of this so called ' cruel ' and ' blood-
thirsty' animal.

Half a century has rolled by since the day the tiger walked
out of the plum bush, the latter thirty-two years of which have
been spent in the more or less regular pursuit of man-eaters, and
though sights have been seen which would have causfiiLa. stone
^ I have not seen a case where a tiger has been deli-

berately cruel or where it has been bloodthirsty to the extent
that it has killed, without provocation, more than it has needed
to satisfy its hunger or the hunger of its cubs.

A tiger's function in the scheme of things is to help maintain
the balance in nature and if, OJQ. rare occasions when driven by
dire necessity, he kills a human being or ^ehen his natural food

Author's Note xv

has been ruthlessly exterminated by man he kills two per cent
of the cattle he is alleged to have killed, it is not fair that for
these acts a whole species should be branded as being cruel and
bloodthirsty.

Sportsmen are admittedly conservative, the reason being that it
has taken them years to form their opinions, and as each indivi-
dual has a different point of view, it is only natural that opinions
should differ on minor, or even in some cases on major, points,
and for this reason I do not flatter myself that all the opinions
I have expressed will meet with universal agreement.

There is, however, one point on which I am convinced that
all sportsmen no matter whether their viewpoint has been a
platform on a tree, the back of an elephant or their own feet
will agree with me, and that is, that a tiger is a large-hearted
gentleman with boundless courage and that when he is exter-
minated as exterminated he will be unless public opinion rallies
to his support India will be the poorer by having lost the
finest of her fauna.

Leopards, unlike tigers, are to a certain extent scavengers and
become man-eaters by acquiring a taste for human flesh when
unrestricted slaughter of game has deprived them of their
natural food.

The dwellers in our hills are predominantly Hindu, and as
such cremate their dead. The cremation invariably takes place
on the bank of a stream or river in order that the ashes may be
washed down into the Ganges and eventually into the sea* As
most of the villages are situated high up on the hills, while the
streams or rivers are in many cases miles away down in the
valleys, it will be realized that a funeral entails a considerable
tax on the man-power of a small community when, in addition
to the carrying party, labour has to be provided to collect and
carry the fuel needed for the cremation. In normal times these

xvi Man-eaters of Kumaon

rites are carried out very effectively; but when disease in
epidemic form sweeps through the hills and the inhabitants die
faster than they can be disposed of, a very simple rite, which
consists of placing a live coal in the mouth of the deceased, is
performed in the village and the body is then carried to the
edge of the hill and cast into the valley below.

A leopard, in an area in which his natural food is scarce,
finding these bodies very soon acquires a taste for human flesh,
and when the disease dies down and normal conditions are
established, he very naturally, on finding his food supply cut
off, takes to killing human beings.

Of the two man-eating leopards of Kumaon, which between
them killed five hundred and twenty-five human beings, one
followed on the heels of a very severe outbreak of cholera,
while the other followed the mysterious disease which swept
through India in 1918 and was called 'war fever'.

THE CHAMPAWAT MAN-EATER

I WAS shooting with Eddie Knowles in Malani when I first
heard of the tiger which later received official recognition
as the ' Champawat man-eater ' .

Eddie, who will long be remembered in this province as a
sportsman par excellence and the possessor of an inexhaustible
fund of shikar yarns, was one of those few, and very fortunate,
individuals who possess the best of everything in life. His
rifle was without equal in accuracy and striking power, and while
one of his brothers was the best gun shot in India, another
brother was the best tennis player in the Indian Army. When
therefore Eddie informed me that his brother-in-law, the best
shikari in the world, had been deputed by Government to shoot
the Champawat man-eater, it was safe to assume that a very
definite period had been put to the animal's activities.

The tiger, however, for some inexplicable reason, did not
die, and was causing Government a great deal of anxiety when
I visited Naini Tal four years later. Rewards were offered,
special shikaris employed, and parties of Gurkhas sent out from
the depot in Almora. Yet in spite of these measures, the toll
of human victims continued to mount alarmingly.

The tigress, for such the animal turned out to be, had arrived
in Kumaon as a full-fledged man-eater, from Nepal, from
whence she had been driven out by a body of armed Nepalese
after she had killed two hundred human beings, and during the
four years she had been operating in Kumaon had added two
hundred and thirty-four to this number.

This is how matters stood, when shortly after my arrival
in Naini Tal I received a visit from Berthoud. Berthoud, who
was Deputy Commissioner of Naini Tal at that time, and who
after his tragic death now lies buried in an obscure grave in
Haldwani, was a man who was loved and respected by all who
2

2 Man-eaters of Kumaon

knew him, and it is not surprising therefore that when he told
me of the trouble the man-eater was giving the people of his
district, and the anxiety it was causing him, he took my promise
with him that I would start for Champawat immediately on
receipt of news of the next human kill.

Two conditions I made, however: one that the Government
rewards be cancelled, and the other, that the special shikaris,
and regulars from Almora, be withdrawn. My reasons for
making these conditions need no explanation for I am sure
all sportsmen share my aversion to being classed as a reward-
hunter and are as anxious as I am to avoid the risk of being
accidentally shot. These conditions were agreed to, and a week
later Berthoud paid me an early morning visit and informed
me that news had been brought in during the night by runners
that a woman had been killed by the man-eater at Pali, a village
between Dabidhura and Dhunaghat.

In anticipation of a start at short notice, I had engaged six
men to carry my camp kit, and leaving after breakfast, we did
a march the first day of seventeen miles to Dhari. Breakfasting
at Mornaula next morning, we spent the night at Dabidhura,
and arrived at Pali the following evening, five days after the
woman had been killed.

The people of the village, numbering some fifty men, women
and children, weire in a state of abject terror, and though the
sun was still up when I arrived I found the entire population
inside their homes behind locked doors, and it was not until
my men had made a fire in the courtyard and I was sitting
down to a cup of tea that a door here and there was cautiously
opened, and the frightened inmates emerged.

I was informed that for five days no one had gone beyond
their own doorsteps the insanitary condition of the courtyard
testified to the truth of this Statement that food was running
short, and that the people would starve if the tiger was not
killed or driven away.

The Champawat Man-eater J

That the tiger was still in the vicinity was apparent. For
three nights it had been heard calling on the road, distant a
hundred yards from the houses, and that veiy day it had been
seen on the cultivated land at the lower end of the village.

The Headman of the village very willingly placed a room
at my disposal, but as there were eight of us to share it, and
the only door it possessed opened on to the insanitary court-
yard, I elected to spend the night in the open.

After a scratch meal which had to do duty for dinner, I saw
my men safely shut into the room and myself took up a position
on the side of the road, with my back to a tree. The villagers
said the tiger was in the habit of perambulating along this
road, and as the moon was at the full I thought there was a
chance of my getting a shot provided I saw it first.

I had spent many nights in the jungle looking for game, but
this was the first time I had ever spent a night looking for a
man-eater. The length of road immediately in front of me
was brilliantly lit by the moon, but to right and left the over-
hanging trees cast dark shadows, and when the night wind agi-
tated the branches and the shadows moved, I saw a dozen tigers
advancing on me, and bitterly regretted the impulse that had
induced me to place myself at the man-eater's mercy. I lacked
the courage to return to the village and admit I was too fright-
ened to carry out my self-imposed task, and with teeth chatter-
ing, as much from fear as from cold, I sat out the long night.
As the grey dawn was lighting up the snowy range which I
was facing, I rested my head on my drawn-up knees, and it
was in this position my men an hour later found me fast
asleep; of the tiger I had neither heard nor seen anything.

Back in the village I tried to get the men who I could see
were very surprised I had survived the night to take me to
the places where the people of the village had from time to time
been killed, but this they were unwilling to do. From the
courtyard they pointed out the direction in which the kills had

4 Man-eaters of Kurnaon

taken place; the last kill the one that had brought me to the
spot I was told, had taken place round the shoulder of the
hill to the west of the village. The women and girls, some
twenty in number, who had been out collecting oak leaves for
the cattle when the unfortunate woman had been killed, were
eager to give me details of the occurrence. It appeared that
the party had set out two hours before midday and, after going
half a mile, had climbed into trees to cut leaves. The victim
and two other women had selected a tree growing on the edge
of a ravine, which I subsequently found was about four feet
deep and ten to twelve feet wide. Having cut all the leaves
she needed, the woman was climbing down from the tree when
the tiger, who had approached unseen, stood up on its hind
legs and caught her by the foot. Her hold was torn from the
branch she was letting herself down by, and, pulling her into
the ravine, the tiger released her foot, and while she was
struggling to rise caught her by the throat. After killing her
it sprang up the side of the ravine and disappeared with her
into some heavy undergrowth.

All this had taken place a few feet from the two women on
the tree, and had been witnessed by the entire party. As soon
as the tiger and its victim were out of sight, the terror-stricken
women and girls ran back to the village. The men had just
come in for their midday meal and, when all were assembled
and armed with drums, metal cooking-pots anything in fact
that would produce a noise the rescue party set off, the men
leading and the women bringing up the rear.

Arrived at the ravine in which the woman had been killed,
the very important question of ' what next? * was being debated
when the tiger interrupted the proceedings by emitting a loud
roar from the bushes thirty yards away. As one man the party
turned and fled helter-skelter back to the village. When breath
had been regained, accusations were made against one and
another of having been the first to run and cause the stampede.

The Chartipawat Man-eater $

Words ran high until it was suggested that if no one was
afraid and all were as brave as they claimed to be, why not go
back and rescue the woman without loss of more time? The
suggestion was adopted, and three times the party got as far
as the ravine. On the third occasion the one man who was
armed with a gun fired it off, and brought the tiger roaring
out of the bushes; after this the attempted rescue was very wisely
abandoned. On my asking the gun man why he had not dis-
charged his piece into the bushes instead of up into the air,
he said the tiger was already greatly enraged and that if by any
mischance he had hit it, it would undoubtedly have killed him.

For three hours that morning I walked round the village
looking for tracks and hoping, and at the same time dreading,
to meet the tiger. At one place in a dark heavily-wooded
ravine, while I was skirting some bushes, a covey of kaleege
pheasants fluttered screaming out of them, and I thought my
heart had stopped beating for good.

My men had cleared a spot under a walnut tree for my
meals, and after breakfast the Headman of the village asked
me to mount guard while the wheat crop was being cut. He
said that if the crop was not harvested in my presence, it would
not be harvested at all, for the people were too frightened to
leave their homes. Half an hour later the entire population of
the village, assisted by my men, were hard at work while I
stood on guard with a loaded rifle. By evening the crop from
five large fields had been gathered, leaving only two small
patches close to the houses, which the Headman said he would
have no difficulty in dealing with the next day.

The sanitary condition of the village had been much im-
proved, and a second room for my exclusive use placed at my
disposal; and that night, with thorn bushes securely wedged
in the doorway to admit ventilation and exclude the man-eater,
I made up for the sleep I had lost the previous night.

My presence was beginning to put new heart into the people

Man-eaters of Kumaon

and they were moving about more freely, but I had not yet
gained sufficient of their confidence to renew my request of
being shown round the jungle, to which I attached some im-
portance. These people knew every foot of the ground for
miles round, and could, if they wished, show me where I was
most likely to find the tiger, or in any case, where I could see
its pug marks. That the man-eater was a tiger was an estab-
lished fact, but it was not known whether the animal was
young or old, a male or a female, and this information, which
I believed would help me to get in touch with it, I could only
ascertain by examining its pug marks.

After an early tea that morning I announced that I wanted
meat for my men and asked the villagers if they could direct
me to where I could shoot a ghooral (mountain goat). The
village was situated on the top of a long ridge running east and
west, and just below the road on which I had spent the night
the hill fell steeply away to the north in a series of grassy slopes;
on these slopes I was told ghooral were plentiful, and several
men volunteered to show me over the ground. I was careful
not to show my pleasure at this offer and, selecting three men,
I set out, telling the Headman that if I found the ghooral as
plentiful as he said they were, I would shoot two for the village
in addition to shooting one for my men.

Crossing the road we went down a very steep ridge, keeping
a sharp lookout to right and left, but saw nothing. Half a mile
down the hill the ravines converged, and from their junction
there was a good view of the rocky, and grass-covered, slope to
the right. I had been sitting for some minutes, scanning the
slope, with my back to a solitary pine which grew at this spot,
when a movement high up on the hill caught my eye. When
the movement was repeated I saw it was a ghooral flapping its
ears; the animal was standing in grass and only its head was
visible. The men had not seen the movement, and as the head
was now stationary and blended in with its surroundings it

The Champawat Man-eater

was not possible to point it out to them. Giving them a general
idea of the animal's position I made them sit down and watch
while I took a shot. I was armed with an old Martini Henry
rifle, a weapon that atoned for its vicious kick by being dead
accurate up to any range. The distance was as near 200 yards
as made no matter and, lying down and resting the rifle on a
convenient pine root, I took careful aim, and fired.

The smoke from the black powder cartridge obscured my
view and the men said nothing had happened and that I had
probably fired at a rock, or a bunch of dead leaves. Retaining
my position I reloaded the rifle and presently saw the grass, a
little below where I had fired, moving, and the hind quarters
of the ghooral appeared. When the whole animal was free of
the grass it started to roll over and over, gaming momentum as
it came down the steep hill. When' it was half-way down it
disappeared into heavy grass, and disturbed two ghooral that
had been lying up there. Sneezing their alarm call, the two
animals dashed out of the grass and went bounding up the
hill. The range was shorter now, and, adjusting the leaf sight,
I waited until the bigger of the two slowed down and put a
bullet through its back, and as the other one turned, and made
off diagonally across the hill, I shot it through the shoulder.

On occasions one is privileged to accomplish the seemingly
impossible. Lying in an uncomfortable position and shooting
up at an angle of sixty degrees at a range of 200 yards at the
small white mark on the ghooral's throat, there did not appear
to be one chance in a million of the shot coming off, and yet
the heavy lead bullet driven by black powder had not been
deflected by a hair's breadth and had gone true to its mark,
killing the animal instantaneously. Again, on the steep hillside
which was broken up by small ravines and jutting rocks, the
dead animal had slipped and rolled straight to the spot where
its two companions were lying up; and before it had cleared
the patch of grass the two companions in their turn were slipping

Man-eaters of Kumadn

rolling down the hill. As the three dead animals landed
in the ravine in front of us it was amusing to observe the
surprise and delight of the men who never before had seen a
rifle in action. All thought of the man-eater was for the time
being forgotten as they scrambled down into the ravine to
retrieve the bag.

The expedition was a great success in more ways than one;
for in addition to providing a ration of meat for everyone, it
gained me the confidence of the entire village. Shikar yarns,
as everyone knows, never lose anything in repetition, and while
the ghooral were being skinned and divided up the three men
who had accompanied me gave full rein to *heir imagination,
and from where I sat in the open, having breakfast, I could hear
the exclamations of the assembled crowd when they were told
that the ghooral had been shot at a range of over a mile, and
that the magic bullets used had not only killed the animals
like that but had also drawn them to the sahib's feet.

After the midday meal the Headman asked me where I
wanted to go, and how many men I wished to take with me.
From the eager throng of men who pressed round I selected
two of my late companions, and with them to guide me set off
to visit the scene of the last human tragedy.

The people of our hills are Hindus and cremate their dead,
and when one of their number has been carried off by a man-
eater it is incumbent on the relatives to recover some portion of
the body for cremation even if it be only a few splinters of
bone. In the case of this woman the cremation ceremony was
yet to be performed, and as we started out, the relatives re-
quested us to bring back any portion of the body we might find.

From early boyhood I have made a hobby of reading, and
interpreting, jungle signs. In the present case I had the account
of the eye-witnesses who were present when the woman was
killed, but eye-witnesses are not always reliable, whereas jungle
signs are a true record of all that has transpired. On arrival

The Champawat Man-eater

at the spot a glance at the ground showed me that the
could only have approached the tree one way, without
seen, and that was up the ravine. Entering the ravine a hundred
yards below the tree, and working up, I found the pug marks
of a tiger in some fine earth that had sifted down between two
big rocks; these pug marks showed the animal to be a tigress,
a little past her prime. Further up the ravine, and some ten
yards from the tree, the tigress had lain down behind a rock,
presumably to wait for the woman to climb down from the tree.
The victim had been the first to cut all the leaves she needed,
and as she was letting herself down by a branch some two
inches in diameter the tigress had crept forward and, standing
up on her hind legs, had caught the woman by the foot and
pulled her down into the ravine. The branch showed the des-
peration with which the unfortunate woman had clung to it,
for adhering to the rough oak bark where the branch, and
eventually the leaves, had slipped through her grasp were
strands of skin which had been torn from the palms of her hands
and fingers. Where the tigress had killed the woman there were
signs of a struggle and a big patch of dried blood; from here
the blood trail, now dry but distinctly visible, led across the
ravine and up the opposite bank. Following the blood trail
from where it left the ravine we found the place in the bushes
where the tigress had eaten her kill.

It is a popular belief that man-eaters do not eat the head,
hands, and feet of the human victims. This is incorrect. Man-
eaters, if not disturbed, eat everything including the blood-
soaked clothes, as I found on one occasion; however, that is
another story, and will be told some other time.

On the present occasion we found the woman's clothes, and a
few pieces of bone which we wrapped up in the clean cloth we
had brought for the purpose . Pitifully little as these remains were,
they would suffice for the cremation ceremony which would en-
sure the ashes of the high caste woman reaching Mother Ganges.

Man-eaters of Kumaon

tea I visited the scene of yet another tragedy. Separated
ftoirn th6 main village by the public road was a small holding
of a few acres. The owner of this holding had built himself
a hut on the hillside just above the road. The man's wife, and
the mother of his two children, a boy and a girl aged four and
six respectively, was the younger of two sisters. These two
sisters were out cutting grass one day on the hill above the
hut when the tigress suddenly appeared and carried off the elder
sister. For a hundred yards the younger woman ran after the
tigress brandishing her sickle and screaming at the tigress to
let her sister go, and take her instead. This incredible act of
heroism was witnessed by the people in the main village. After
carrying the dead woman for a hundred yards the tigress put
her down and turned on her pursuer. With a loud roar it
sprang at the brave woman who, turning, raced down the
hillside, across the road, and into the village, evidently with
the intention of telling the people what they, unknown to her,
had already witnessed. The woman's incoherent noises were
at the time attributed to loss of breath, fear, and excitement,
and it was not until the rescue party that had set out with all
speed had returned, unsuccessful, that it was found the woman
had lost her power of speech. I was told this tale in the village,
and when I climbed the path to the two-roomed hut where
the woman was engaged in washing clothes, she had then been
dumb a twelvemonth.

Except for a strained look in her eyes the dumb woman
appeared to be quite normal and, when I stopped to speak to
her and tell her I had come to try and shoot the tiger that had
killed her sister, she put her hands together and stooping down
touched my feet, making me feel a wretched impostor. True,
I had come with the avowed object of shooting the man-eater,
but with an animal that had the reputation of never killing
twice in the same locality, never returning to a kill, and whose
domain extended over an area of many hundred square miles,

The Champawat Man-eater II

the chance of my accomplishing my object was about as good
as finding a needle in two haystacks.

Plans in plenty I had made way back in Naini Tal; one I
had already tried and wild horses would not induce me to try
it again, and the others now that I was on the ground were
just as unattractive. Further there was no one I could ask
for advice, for this was the first man-eater that had ever been
known in Kumaon; and yet something would have to be done.
So for the next three days I wandered through the jungles
from sunrise to sunset, visiting all the places for miles round
where the villagers told me there was a chance of my seeing
the tigress.

I would like to interrupt my tale here for a few minutes
to refute a rumour current throughout the hills that on this,
and on several subsequent occasions, 'I assumed the dress of a
hill woman and, going into the jungle, attracted the man-eaters
to myself and killed them with either a sickle or an axe. 11"
I have ever done in the matter of alteration of dress has been.
to borrow a sari and with it draped round me cut grass, '<&
climbed into trees and cut leaves, and in no case has the rusif
proved successful; though on two occasions to my knowledge
man-eaters have stalked the tree I was on, taking cover, on
one occasion behind a rock and on the other behind a fallen
tree, and giving me no opportunity of shooting them.

To continue. As the tigress now appeared to have left this
locality I decided, much to the regret of the people of Pali, to
move to Champawat fifteen miles due east of Pali. Making an
early start, I breakfasted at Dhunaghat, and completed the
journey to Champawat by sunset. The roads in this area were
considered very unsafe, and men only moved from village to vil-
lage or to the bazaars in large parties. After leaving Dhuna-
ghat, my party of eight was added to by men from villages
adjoining the road, and we arrived at Champawat thirty strong.
Some of the men who joined me had been in a party of twenty

12 Man-eaters of Kumaon

men who had visited Champawat two months earlier, and they
told me the following very pitiful story.

'The road for a few miles on this side of Champawat runs
along the south face of the hill, parallel to, and about fifty
yards above the valley. Two months ago a party of twenty
of us men were on our way to the bazaar at Champawat, and
as we were going along this length of the road at about midday,
we were startled by hearing the agonized cries of a human being
coming from the valley below. Huddled together on the edge
of the road we cowered in fright as these cries drew nearer and
nearer, and presently into view came a tiger, carrying a naked
woman. The woman's hair was trailing on the ground on one
side of the tiger, and her feet on the other the tiger was hold-
ing her by the small of the back and she was beating her chest
and calling alternately on God and man to help her. Fifty
yards from, and in clear view of us, the tiger passed with its
burden, and when the cries had died away in the distance we
continued on our way.'

' And you twenty men did nothing? '

'No, sahib, we did nothing for we were afraid, and what
can men do when they are afraid? And further, even if we
had been able to rescue the woman without angering the tiger
and bringing misfortune on ourselves, it would have availed
the woman nothing, for she was covered with blood and would
of a surety have died of her wounds/

I subsequently learned that the victim belonged to a village
near Champawat, and that she had been carried off by the
tiger while collecting dry sticks. Her companions had run back
to the village and raised an alarm, and just as a rescue party
was starting the twenty frightened men arrived. As these men
knew the direction in which the tiger had gone with its victim,
they joined the party, and can best carry on the story.

' We were fifty or sixty strong when we set out to rescue the
woman, and several of the party were armed with guns. A

The Champawat Man-eater 1$

furlong from where the sticks collected by the woman were
lying, and from where she had been carried off, we found her
torn clothes. Thereafter the men started beating their drums
and firing off their guns, and in this way we proceeded for
more than a mile right up to the head of the valley, where
we found the woman, who was little more than a girl, lying
dead on a great slab of rock. Beyond licking off all the blood
apd making her body clean the tiger had not touched her, and,
there being no woman in our party, we men averted our faces
as we wrapped her body in the loincloths which one and
another gave, for she looked as she lay on her back as one who
sleeps, and would waken in shame when touched/

With experiences such as these to tell and retell through the
long night watches behind fast-shut doors, it is little wonder
that the character and outlook on life of people living year
after year in a man-eater country should change, and that one
coming from the outside should feel that he had stepped right
into a world of stark realities and the rule of the tooth and claw,
which forced man in the reign of the sabre-toothed tiger to
shelter in dark caverns. I was young and inexperienced in
those far-off Champawat days, but, even so, the conviction I
came to after a brief sojourn in that stricken land, that there
is no more terrible thing than to live and have one's being
under the shadow of a man-eater, has been strengthened by
thirty-two years' subsequent experience.

The Tahsildar of Champawat, to whom I had been given
letters of introduction, paid me a visit that night at the Dak
Bungalow where I was putting up, and suggested I should move
next day to a bungalow a few miles away, in the vicinity of
which many human beings had been killed.

Early next morning, accompanied by the Tahsildar, I set out
for the bungalow, and while I was having breakfast on the
verandah two men arrived with news that a cow had been killed
by a tiger in a village ten miles away. The Tahsildar excused

14 Man-eaters of Kumaon

himself to attend to some urgent work at Champawat, and
said he would return to the bungalow in the evening and stay
the night with me. My guides were good walkers, and as the
track went downhill most of the way we covered the ten miles
in record time. Arrived at the village I was taken to a cattle-
shed in which I found a week-old calf, killed and partly eaten
by a leopard. Not having the time or the inclination to shoot
the leopard I rewarded my guides, and retraced my steps to
the bungalow. Here I found the Tahsildar had not returned,
and as there was still an hour or more of daylight left I went
out with the chowkidar of the bungalow to look at a place where
he informed me a tiger was in the habit of drinking; this place
I found to be the head of the spring which supplied the garden
with irrigation water. In the soft earth round the spring were
tiger pug marks several days old, but these tracks were quite
different from the pug marks I had seen, and carefully
examined, in the ravine in which the woman of Pali village had
been killed.

On returning to the bungalow I found the Tahsildar was
back, and as we sat on the verandah I told him of my day's
experience. Expressing regret at my having had to go so far
on a wild-goose chase, he rose, saying that as he had a long
way to go he must start at once. This announcement caused
me no little surprise, for twice that day he had said he would
stay the night with me. It was not the question of his staying
the night that concerned me, but the risk he was taking; how-
ever, he was deaf to all my arguments and, as he stepped off
the verandah into the dark night, with only one man following
him carrying a smoky lantern which gave a mere glimmer of
light, to do a walk of four miles in a locality in which men
only moved in large parties in daylight, I took off my hat to
a very brave man. Having watched him out of sight I turned
and entered the bungalow.

I have a tale to tell of that bungalow but I will not tell it

The Champawat Man-eater 15

here, for this is a book of jungle stories, and tales ' beyond the
laws of nature ' do not consort well with such stories.

ii

I spent the following morning in going round the very
extensive fruit orchard and tea garden and in having a bath at
the spring, and at about midday the Tahsildar, much to my
relief, returned safely from Champawat.

I was standing talking to him while looking down a long
sloping hill with a village surrounded by cultivated land in the
distance, when I saw a man leave the village and start up the
hill in our direction. As the man drew nearer I saw he was
alternately running and walking, and was quite evidently the
bearer of important news. Telling the Tahsildar I would return
in a few minutes, I set off at a run 'down the hill, and when
the man saw me coming he sat down to take breath. As soon
as I was near enough to hear him he called out, ' Come quickly,
sahib, the man-eater has just killed a girl/ 'Sit still/ I called
back, and turning ran up to the bungalow. I passed the news
on to the Tahsildar while I was getting a rifle and some cart-
ridges, and asked him to follow me down to the village.

The man who had come for me was one of those exasperating
individuals whose legs and tongue cannot function at the same
time. When he opened his mouth he stopped dead, and when
he started to run his mouth closed; so telling him to shut his
mouth and lead the way, we ran in silence down the hill.

At the village an excited crowd of men, women and children
awaited us and, as usually happens on these occasions, all started
to talk at the same time. One man was vainly trying to quieten
the babel. I led him aside and asked him to tell me what had
happened. Pointing to some scattered oak trees on a gentle
slope a furlong or so from the village, he said a dozen people
were collecting dry sticks under the trees when a tiger suddenly
appeared and caught one of their number, a girl sixteen or

16 Man-eaters of Kumaon

seventeen years of age. The rest of the party had run back to
the village, and as it was known that I was staying at
the bungalow a man had immediately been dispatched to
inform me.

The wife of the man I was speaking to had been of the party,
and she now pointed out the tree, on the shoulder of the hill,
under which the girl had been taken. None of the party had
looked back to see if the tiger was carrying away its victim
and, if so, in which direction it had gone.

Instructing the crowd not to make a noise, and to remain in
the village until I returned, I set off in the direction of the tree.
The ground here was quite open and it was difficult to conceive
how an animal the size of a tiger could have approached twelve
people unseen, and its presence not detected, until attention
had been attracted by the choking sound made by the girl.

The spot where the girl had been killed was marked by a
pool of blood and near it, and in vivid contrast to the crimson
pool, was a broken necklace of brightly coloured blue beads
which the girl had been wearing. From this spot the track led
up and round the shoulder of the hill.

The track of the tigress was clearly visible. On one side
of it were great splashes of blood where the girl's head had
hung down, and on the other side the trail of her feet. Half
a mile up the hill I found the girl's sari, and on the brow of
the hill her skirt. Once again the tigress was carrying a naked
woman, but mercifully on this occasion her burden was dead.

On the brow of the hill the track led through a thicket
of blackthorn, on the thorns of which long strands of the girl's
raven-black hair had caught. Beyond this was a bed of nettles
through which the tigress had gone, and I was looking for a
way round this obstruction when I heard footsteps behind me.
Turning round I saw a man armed with a rifle coming towards
me. I asked him why he had followed me when I had left
instructions at the village that no one was to leave it. He said

The Champawat Man-eater J7

the Tahsildar had instructed him to accompany me, and that he
was afraid to disobey orders. As he appeared determined to
carry out his orders, and to argue the point would have meant
the loss of valuable time, I told him to remove the heavy pair
of boots he was wearing and, when he had hidden them under
a bush, I advised him to keep close to me, and to keep a sharp
lookout behind.

I was wearing a very thin pair of stockings, shorts, and a
pair of rubber-soled shoes, and as there appeared to be no way
round the nettles I followed the tigress through them much to
my discomfort.

Beyond the nettles the blood trail turned sharply to the left,
and went straight down the very steep hill, which was densely
clothed with bracken and ringals. 1 A hundred yards down,
the blood trail led into a narrow and very steep watercourse,
down which the tigress had gone with some difficulty, as could
be seen from the dislodged stones and earth. I followed this
watercourse for five or six hundred yards, my companion getting
more and more agitated the further we went. A dozen times
he caught my arm and whispered in a voice full of tears that
he could hear the tiger, either on one side or the other, or behind
us. Half-way down the hill we came on a great pinnacle of
rock some thirty feet high, and as the man had by now had all
the man-eater hunting he could stand, I told him to climb the
rock and remain on it until I returned. Very gladly he went
up, and when he straddled the top and signalled to me that
he was all right I continued on down the watercourse, which,
after skirting round the rock, went straight down for a hundred
yards to where it met a deep ravine coming down from the left.
At the junction was a small pool, and as I approached it I saw
patches of blood on my side of the water.

The tigress had carried the girl straight down on this spot,
and my approach had disturbed her at her meal. Splinters of

1 Hill bamboos.

3

18 Man-eaters of Kumaon

bone were scattered round the deep pug marks into which
discoloured water was slowly seeping and at the edge of the
pool was an object which had puzzled me as I came down
the watercourse, and which I now found was part of a human
leg. In all the subsequent years I have hunted man-eaters I
have not seen anything as pitiful as that young comely leg bit-
ten off a little below the knee as clean as though severed by the
stroke of an axe out of which the warm blood was trickling.

While looking at the leg I had forgotten all about the tigress
until I suddenly felt that I was in great danger. Hurriedly
grounding the butt of the rifle I put two fingers on the triggers,
raising my head as I did so, and saw a little earth from the
fifteen-foot bank in front of me, come rolling down the steep
side and plop into the pool. I was new to this game of man-
eater hunting or I should not have exposed myself to an attack
in the way I had done. My prompt action in pointing the rifle
upwards had possibly saved my life, and in stopping her spring,
or in turning to get away, the tigress had dislodged the earth
from the top of the bank.

The bank was too steep for scrambling, and the only way
of getting up was to take it at a run. Going up the watercourse
a short distance I sprinted down, took the pool in my stride,
and got far enough up the other side to grasp a bush and pull
myself on to the bank. A bed of Strobilanthes, the bent stalks
of which were slowly regaining their upright position, showed
where, and how recently, the tigress had passed, and a little
further on under an overhanging rock I found where she had
left her kill when she came to have a look at me.

Her tracks now as she carried away the girl led into a
wilderness of rocks, some acres in extent, where the going was
both difficult and dangerous. The cracks and chasms between
the rocks were masked with ferns and blackberry vines, and a
false step, which might easily have resulted in a broken limb,
would have been fatal. Progress under these conditions was of

The Chnmpawat Man-eater 19

necessity slow, and the tigress was taking advantage of it tci
continue her meal. A dozen times I found where she had rested;
and after each of these rests the blood trail became more distinct.

This was her four hundred and thirty-sixth human kill and
she was qulfe' accustomed to being disturbed at her meals by
rescue parties, but this, I think, was the first time she had been
followed up so persistently and she now began to show her
resentment by growling. To appreciate a tiger's growl to the
full it is necessary to be situated as I then was rocks all round
with dense vegetation between, and the imperative necessity of
testing each footstep to avoid falling headlong into unseen
chasms and caves.

I cannot expect you who read this at your fireside to
appreciate my feelings at the time. The sound of the growling
and the expectation of an attack terrified me at the same time
as it gave me hope. If the tigress lost her temper sufficiently
to launch an attack, it would not only give me an opportunity
of accomplishing the object for which I had come, but it would
enable me to get even with her for all the pain and suffering
she had caused.

The growling, however, was only a gesture, and when she
found that instead of shooing me off it was bringing me faster
on her heels, she abandoned it.

I had now been on her track for over four hours. Though
I had repeatedly seen the undergrowth moving I had not seen
so much as a hair of her hide, and. a glance at the shadows
climbing up the opposite hillside warned me it was time to
retrace my steps if I was to reach the village before dark.

The late owner of the severed leg was a Hindu, and some
portion of her would be needed for the cremation, so as I
passed the pool I dug a hole in the bank and buried the leg
where it would be safe from the tigress, and could be found
when wanted.

My companion on the rock was very relieved to see me.

20 Man-eaters of Kumaon

My long absence, and the growling he had heard, had con-
vinced him that the tigress had secured another kill and his
difficulty, as he quite frankly admitted, was how he was going
to get back to the village alone.

I thought when we were climbing down the watercourse
that I knew of no more dangerous proceeding than walking in
front of a nervous man carrying a loaded gun, but I changed
my opinion when on walking behind him he slipped and fell,
and I saw where the muzzle of his gun a converted .450 with-
out a safety catch was pointing. Since that day except when
accompanied by Ibbotson I have made it a hard and fast rule
to go alone when hunting man-eaters, for if one's companion
is unarmed it is difficult to protect him, and if he is armed,
it is even more difficult to protect oneself.

Arrived at the crest of the hill, where the man had hidden
his boots, I sat down to have a smoke and think out my plans
for the morrow.

The tigress would finish what was left of the kill during
the night, and would to a certainty lie up among the rocks
next day.

On the ground she was on there was very little hope of my
being able to stalk her, and if I disturbed her without getting
a shot, she would probably leave the locality and I should lose
touch with her. A beat therefore was the only thing to do,
provided I could raise sufficient men.

I was sitting on the south edge of a great amphitheatre of
hills, without a habitation of any kind in sight. A stream
entering from the west had fretted its way down, cutting a deep
valley right across the amphitheatre. To the east the stream
had struck solid rock, and turning north had left the amphi-
theatre by a narrow gorge.

The hill in front of me, rising to a height of some two
thousand feet, was clothed in short grass with a pine tree dotted
here and there, and the hill to the east was too precipitous for

The Champawat Man-eater 2i

anything but a ghooral to negotiate. If I could collect sufficient
men to man the entire length of the ridge from the stream to
the precipitous hill, and get them to stir up the tigress, her most
natural line of retreat would be through the narrow gorge.

Admittedly a very difficult beat, for the steep hillside facing
north, on which I had left the tigress, was densely wooded and
roughly three-quarters of a mile long and half-a-mile wide;
however, if I could get the beaters to carry out instructions,
there was a reasonable chance of my getting a shot.

The Tahsildar was waiting for me at the village. I explained
the position to him, and asked him to take immediate steps to
collect as many men as he could, and to meet me at the tree
where the girl had been killed at ten o'clock the following
morning. Promising to do his best, he left for Champawat,
while I climbed the hill to the bungalow.

I was up at crack of dawn next morning, and after a sub-
stantial meal told my men to pack up and wait for me at
Champawat, and went down to have another look at the ground
I intended beating. I could find nothing wrong with the plans
I had made, and an hour before my time I was at the spot
where I had asked the Tahsildar to meet me.

That he would have a hard time in collecting the men I
had no doubt, for the fear of the man-eater had sunk deep into
the countryside and more than mild persuasion would be needed
to make the men leave the shelter of their homes. At ten
o'clock the Tahsildar and one man turned up, and thereafter
the men came in twos, and threes, and tens, until by midday
two hundred and ninety-eight had collected.

The Tahsildar had let it be known that he would turn a
blind eye towards all unlicensed fire-arms, and further that he
would provide ammunition where required; and the weapons
that were produced that day would have stocked a museum.

When the men were assembled and had received the ammu-
nition they needed I took them to the brow of the hill where

22 Man-eaters of Kumaon

the girl's skirt was lying, and pointing to a pine tree on the
opposite hill that had been struck by lightning and stripped
of bark, I told them to line themselves up along the ridge and,
when they saw me wave a handkerchief from under the pine,
those of them who were armed were to fire off their pieces,
while the others beat drums, shouted, and rolled down rocks,
and that no one was on any account to leave the ridge until
I returned and personally collected him. When I was assured
that all present had heard and understood my instructions, I
set off with the Tahsildar, who said he would be safer with
me than with the beaters whose guns would probably burst and
cause many casualties.

Making a wide detour I crossed the upper end of the valley,
gained the opposite hill, and made my way down to the blasted
pine. From here the hill went steeply down and the Tahsildar,
who had on a thin pair of patent leather shoes, said it was
impossible for him to go any further. While he was removing
his inadequate foot-gear to ease his blisters, the men on the
ridge, thinking I had forgotten to give the pre-arranged signal,
fired off their guns and set up a great shout. I was still a
hundred and fifty yards from the gorge, and that I did not
break my neck a dozen times in covering this distance was due
to my having been brought up on the hills, and being in
consequence as sure-footed as a goat.

As I ran down the hill I noticed that there was a patch of
green grass near the mouth of the gorge, and as there was no
time to look round for a better place, I sat down in the grass,
with my back to the hill down which I had just come. The
grass was about two feet high and hid half my body, and if
I kept perfectly still there was a good chance of my not being
seen. Facing me was the hill that was being beaten, and the
gorge that I hoped the tigress would make for was behind my
left shoulder.

Pandemonium had broken loose on the ridge. Added to

The Champawat Man-eater 23

the fusillade of guns was the wild beating of drums and the
shouting of hundreds of men, and when the din was at its worst
I caught sight of the tigress bounding down a grassy slope
between two ravines to my right front, and about three hundred
yards away. She had only gone a short distance when the
Tahsildar from his position under the pine let off both barrels
of his short-gun. On hearing the shots the tigress whipped
round and went straight back the way she had come, and as
she disappeared into thick cover I threw up my rifle and sent
a despairing bullet after her.

The men on the ridge, hearing the three shots, not un-
naturally concluded that the tigress had been killed. They
emptied all their guns and gave a final yell, and I was holding
my breath and listening for the screams that would herald the
tigress's arrival on the ridge, when she suddenly broke cover
to my left front and, taking the stream at a bound, came straight
for the gorge. The .500 modified cordite rifle, sighted at sea
level, shot high at this altitude, and when the tigress stopped
dead I thought the bullet had gone over her back, and that
she had pulled up on finding her retreat cut off; as a matter
of fact I had hit her all right, but a little far back. Lowering
her head, she half turned towards me, giving me a beautiful
shot at the point of her shoulder at a range of less than thirty
yards. She flinched at this second shot but continued, with
her ears laid flat and bared teeth, to stand her ground, while
I sat with rifle to shoulder trying to think what it would be
best for me to do when she charged, for the rifle was empty
and I had no more cartridges. Three cartridges were all that
I had brought with me, for I never thought I should get a
chance of firing more than two shots, and the third cartridge
was for an emergency.

Fortunately the wounded animal most unaccountably decided
against a charge. Very slowly she turned, crossed the stream
to her right, climbed over some fallen rocks, and found a

24 Man-eaters of Kumaon

narrow ledge that went diagonally up and across the face of
the precipitous hill to where there was a great flat projecting
rock. Where this rock joined the cliff a small bush had found
root-hold, and going up to it the tigress started to strip its
branches. Throwing caution to the winds I shouted to the
Tahsildar to bring me his gun. A long reply was shouted back,
the only word of which I caught was ' feet ': Laying down my
rifle I took the hill at a run, grabbed the gun out of the Tahsil-
dar 's hands and raced back.

As I approached the stream the tigress left the bush and
came out on the projecting rock towards me. When I was
within twenty feet of her I raised the gun and found to my
horror that there was a gap of about three-eighths of an inch
between the barrels and the breech-block. The gun had not
burst when both barrels 'had been fired, and would probably
not burst now, but there was danger of being blinded by a
blow back. However, the risk would have to be taken, and,
aligning the great blob of a bead that did duty as a sight on
the tigress's open mouth, I fired. Maybe I bobbed, or maybe
the gun was not capable of throwing the cylindrical bullet accu-
rately for twenty feet; anyway, the missile missed the tigress's
mouth and struck her on the right paw, from where I removed
it later with my finger-nails. Fortunately she was at her last
gasp, and the tap on the foot was sufficient to make her lurch
forward. She came to rest with her head projecting over the
side of the rock.

From the moment the tigress had broken cover in her
attempt to get through the gorge I had forgotten the beaters,
until I was suddenly reminded of their existence by hearing
a shout, from a short distance up the hill, of 'There it is on
the rock! Pull it down and let us hack it to bits.' I could
not believe my ears when I heard 'hack it to bits', and yet I
had heard aright, for others now had caught sight of the tigress
and from all over the hillside the shout was being repeated.

The Champawat Man-eater 25

The ledge by which the wounded animal had gained the
projecting rock was fortunately on the opposite side from the
beaters, and was just wide enough to permit my shuffling along
it sideways. As I reached the rock and stepped over the tigress
hoping devoutly she was dead for I had not had time to
carry out the usual test of pelting her with stones the men
emerged from the forest and came running across the open,
brandishing guns, axes, rusty swords, and spears.

At the rock, which was twelve to fourteen feet in height,
their advance was checked, for the outer face had been worn
smooth by the stream when in spate and afforded no foothold
even for their bare toes. The rage of the crowd on seeing
their dread enemy was quite understandable, for there was not
a man among them who had not suffered at her hands. One
man, who appeared demented and was acting as ring-leader,
was shouting over and over again as he ran to and fro brandish-
ing a sword, ' This is the shaitan l that killed my wife and my
two sons/ As happens with crowds, the excitement died down
as suddenly as it had flared up, and to the credit of the man
who had lost his wife and sons be it said that he was the first
to lay down his weapon. He came near to the rock and said,
' We were mad, sahib, when we saw our enemy, but the madness
has now passed, and we ask you and the Tahsildar sahib to
forgive us/ Extracting the unspent cartridge, I laid the gun
across the tigress and hung down by my hands and was assisted
to the ground. When I showed the men how I had gained
the rock the dead animal was very gently lowered and carried
to an open spot, where all could crowd round and look at her.

When the tigress had stood on the rock looking down at
me I had noticed that there was something wrong with her
mouth, and on examining her now I found that the upper
and lower canine teeth on the right side of her mouth were
broken, the upper one in half, and the lower one right down

* Devil.

26 Man-eaters of Kumaon

to the bone. This permanent injury to her teeth the result
of a gun-shot wound had prevented her from killing her natural
prey, and had been the cause of her becoming a man-eater.

The men begged me not to skin the tigress there, and
asked me to let them have her until nightfall to carry through
their villages, saying that if their womenfolk and children did
not see her with their own eyes, they would not believe that
their dread enemy was dead.

Two saplings were now cut and laid one on either side of
the tigress, and with pugrees, waistbands and loincloths she was
carefully and very securely lashed to them. When all was
ready the saplings were manned and we moved to the foot of
the precipitous hill; the men preferred to take the tigress up this
hill, on the far side of which their villages lay, to going up the
densely wooded hill which they had just beaten. Two human
ropes were made by the simple expedient of the man behind
taking a firm grip of the waistband, or other portion of clothing,
of the man in front of him. When it was considered that the
ropes were long and strong enough to stand the strain, they
attached themselves to the saplings, and with men on either
side to hold the feet of the bearers and give them foothold, the
procession moved up the hill, looking for all the world like an
army of ants carrying a beetle up the face of a wall. Behind
the main army was a second and a smaller one the Tahsildar
being carried up. Had the ropes broken at any stage of that
thousand-foot climb, the casualties would have been appalling,
but the rope did not break. The men gained the crest of the hill
and set off eastwards, singing on their triumphal march, while
the Tahsildar and I turned west and made for Champa wat.

Our way lay along the ridge and once again I stood among
the blackthorn bushes on the thorns of which long tresses of
the girl's hair had caught, and for the last time looked down
into the amphitheatre which had been the scene of our recent
exploit.

The Champawat Man-eater 27

On the way down the hill the beaters had found the head
of the unfortunate girl, and a thin column of smoke rising
straight up into the still air from the mouth of the gorge showed
where the relations were performing the last rites of the
Champawat man-eater's last victim, on the very spot on which
the man-eater had been shot.

After dinner, while I was standing in the courtyard of the
Tahsil, I saw a long procession of pine torches winding its way
down the opposite hillside, and presently the chanting of a
hill song by a great concourse of men was borne up on the
still night air. An hour later, the tigress was laid down at
my feet.

It was difficult to skin the animal with so many people
crowding round, and to curtail the job I cut the head and paws
from the trunk and left them adhering to the skin, to be dealt
with later. A police guard was then mounted over the carcass,
and next day, when all the people of the countryside were
assembled, the trunk, legs and tail of the tigress were cut up
into small pieces and distributed. These pieces of flesh and
bone were required for the lockets which hill children wear
round their necks, and the addition of a piece of tiger to the
other potent charms is credited with giving the wearer courage,
as well as immunity from the attacks of wild animals. The
fingers of the girl which the tigress had swallowed whole were
sent to me in spirits by the Tahsildar, and were buried by me
in the Naini Tal lake close to the Nandadevi temples.

While I had been skinning the tigress the Tahsildar and his
staff, assisted by the Headmen and greybeards of the surround-
ing villages and merchants of the Champawat bazaar, had been
busy drawing up a programme for a great feast and dance for
the morrow, at which I was to preside. Round about midnight,
when the last of the great throng of men had left with shouts
of delight at being able to use roads and village paths that the
man-eater had closed for four years, I had a final smoke with

28 Man-eaters of Kumaon

the Tahsildar, and telling him that I could not stay any longer
and that he would have to take my place at the festivities, my
men and I set off on our seventy-five-mile journey, with two
days in hand to do it in.

At sunrise I left my men and, with the tigress's skin strapped
to the saddle of my horse, rode on ahead to put in a few hours
in cleaning the skin at Dabidhura, where I intended spending
the night. When passing the hut on the hill at Pali it occurred
to me that it would be some little satisfaction to the dumb
woman to know that her sister had been avenged, so leaving the
horse to browse he had been bred near the snow-line and could
eat anything from oak trees to nettles I climbed the hill to the
hut, and spread out the skin with the head supported on a stone
facing the door. The children of the house had been round-
eyed spectators of these proceedings and, hearing me talking to
them, their mother, who was inside cooking, came to the door.

I am not going to hazard any theories about shock, and
counter-shock, for I know nothing of these matters. All I know
is that this woman, who was alleged to have been dumb a
twelvemonth and who four days previously had made no at-
tempt to answer any questions, was now running backwards and
forwards from the hut to the road calling to her husband and the
people in the village to come quickly and see what the sahib
had brought. This sudden return of speech appeared greatly
to mystify the children, who could not take their eyes off their
mother's face.

I rested in the village while a dish of tea was being prepared
for me and told the people who thronged round how the man-
eater had been killed. An hour later I continued my journey
and for half a mile along my way I could hear the shouts of
goodwill of the men of Pali.

I had a very thrilling encounter with a leopard the following
morning, which I only mention because it delayed my start
from Dabidhura and put an extra strain on my small mount

Robin 29

and myself. Fortunately the little pony was as strong on his
legs as he was tough inside, and by holding his tail on the
up-grades, riding him on the flat, and running behind him on
the down-grades, we covered the forty-five miles to Naini Tal
between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

At a durbar held in Naini Tal a few months later Sir John
Hewett, Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces, presented
the Tahsildar of Champa wat with a gun, and the man who
accompanied me when I was looking for the girl with a beautiful
hunting-knife, for the help they had given me. Both weapons
were suitably engraved and will be handed down as heirlooms
in the respective families.

ROBIN

I NEVER saw either of his parents. The Knight of the Broom
I purchased him from said he was a spaniel, that his name
was Pincha, and that his father was a 'keen gun dog*. This
is all I can tell you about his pedigree.

I did not want a pup, and it was quite by accident that I
happened to be with a friend when the litter of seven was
decanted from a very filthy basket for her inspection. Pincha
was the smallest and the thinnest of the litter, and it was
quite evident he had reached the last ditch in his fight for
survival. Leaving his little less miserable brothers and sisters,
he walked once round me, and then curled himself up between
my big feet. When I picked him up and put him inside my
coat it was a bitterly cold morning he tried to show his
gratitude by licking my face, and I tried to show him I was
not aware of his appalling stench.

He was rising three months then, and I bought him for fifteen
rupees. He is rising thirteen years now, and all the gold in
India would not buy him.

30 Man-eaters of Kumaon

When I got him home and he had made his first acquain-
tance with a square meal, warm water and soap, we scrapped
his kennel name of Pincha and rechristened him Robin, in
memory of a faithful old collie who had saved my young
brother, aged four, and myself, aged six, from the attack of an
infuriated she-bear.

Robin responded to regular meals as parched land does to
rain, and after he had been with us for a few weeks, acting on
the principle that a boy's and a pup's training cannot be started
too early, I took him out one morning, intending to get a little
away from him and fire a shot or two to get him used to the
sound of gunfire.

At the lower end of our estate there are some dense thorn
bushes, and while I was skirting round them a peafowl got
up, and forgetting all about Robin, who was following at heel,
I brought the bird fluttering down. It landed in the thorn
bushes and Robin dashed in after it. The bushes were too thick
and thorny for me to enter them, so I ran round to the far side
where beyond the bushes was open ground, and beyond that
again heavy tree and grass jungle which I knew the wounded
bird would make for. The open ground was flooded with
morning sunlight, and if I had been armed with a movie
camera I should have had an opportunity of securing a unique
picture. The peafowl, an old hen, with neck feathers stuck
out at right angles, and one wing broken, was making for the
tree jungle, while Robin, with stern to the ground, was hanging
on to her tail and being dragged along. Running forward I
very foolishly caught the bird by the neck and lifted it clear
of the ground, whereon it promptly lashed out with both legs,
and sent Robin heels-over-head. In a second he was up and on
his feet again, and when I laid the dead bird down, he danced
round it making little dabs alternately at its head and tail. The
lesson was over for that morning, and as we returned home it
would have been difficult to say which of us was the more

Robin 31

proud Robin, at bringing home his first bird, or I, at having
picked a winner out of a filthy basket. The shooting season
was now drawing to a close, and for the next few days Robin
was not given anything larger than quail, doves and an occa-
sional partridge to retrieve.

We spent the summer on the hills, and on our annual migra-
tion to the foothills in November, at the end of a long fifteen-
mile march as we turned a sharp corner, one of a big troop
of langurs jumped off the hillside and crossed the road a few
inches in front of Robin's nose. Disregarding my whistle, Robin
dashed down the khudside after the langur, which promptly
sought safety in a tree. The ground was open with a few trees
here and there, and after going steeply down for thirty or forty
yards flattened out for a few yards, before going sharply down
into the valley below. On the right-hand side of this flat ground
there were a few bushes, with a deep channel scoured out by
rain-water running through them. Robin had hardly entered
these bushes when he was out again, and with ears laid back and
tail tucked in was running for dear life, with an enormous leo-
pard bounding after him and gaining on him at every bound. I
was unarmed and all the assistance I could render was to ' Ho '
and ' Har ' at the full extent of my lungs. The men carrying M.'s
dandy joined in lustily, the pandemonium reaching its climax
when the hundred or more langurs added their alarm-calls in
varying keys. For twenty-five or thirty yards the desperate and
unequal race continued, and just as the leopard was within reach
of Robin, it unaccountably swerved and disappeared into the
valley, while Robin circled round a shoulder of the hill and
rejoined us on the road. Two very useful lessons Robin learned
from his hairbreadth escape, which he never in after-life forgot.
First, that it was dangerous to chase langurs, and second that
the alarm-call of a langur denoted the presence of a leopard.

Robin resumed his training where it had been interrupted in
spring, but it soon became apparent that his early neglect and

32 Man-eaters of Kutnaon

starvation had affected his heart, for he fainted now after the
least exertion.

There is nothing more disappointing, for a gun dog than to
be teft at home when his master goes out, and as bird-shooting
was now taboo for Robin, I started taking him with me when
I went out after big game. He took to this new form of sport
as readily as a duck takes to water, and from then on has
accompanied me whenever I have been out with a rifle.

The .method we employ is to go out early in the morning,
pick up the tracks of a leopard or tiger, and follow them. When
the pug marks can be seen, I do the tracking, and when the
animal we are after takes to the jungle, Robin does the tracking.
In this way we have on occasions followed an animal for miles
before coming up with it.

When shooting on foo't, it is very much easier to kill an
animal outright than when shooting down on it from a machan,
or from the back of an elephant. For one thing, when wounded
animals have to be followed up on foot, chance shots are not
indulged in, and for another, the vital parts are more accessible
when shooting on the same level as the animal than when shoot-
ing down on it. However, even after exercising the greatest care
over the shot, I have sometimes only wounded leopards and
tigers, who have rampaged round before being quietened by
a second or third shot, and only once during all the years that
we have shot together has Robin left me in a tight corner.
When he rejoined me after his brief absence that day, we decided
that the incident was closed and would never be referred to
again, but we are older now and possibly less sensitive, anyway
Robin who has exceeded the canine equivalent of three-score-
years-and-ten, and who , lies at my feet as I write, on a bed he
will never again leave has with a smile from his wise brown
eyes and a wag of his small stump of a tail given me permission
to go ahead and tell you the story.

We did not see the leopard until it stepped clear of the

Berko

Berko

'An area of i ,r )( x> square miles oi mountain and vale
where the snow lies deep during winter, and the

valleys are seoiehing hot in summer ' Sec p. 41

See p. 29

ROBIN BRINGING HOMI THF BACHELOR

See p.

Robin 3t

thick undergrowth and, coming to a stand, looked back'.OV^I
its left shoulder.

He was an outsized male with a beautiful dark glossy coat,
the rosettes on his skin standing out like clear-cut designs on
a rich velvet ground. I had an unhurried shot with an accurate
rifle at his right shoulder, at the short range of fifteen yards.
By how little I missed his heart makes no matter, and while
the bullet was kicking up the dust fifty yards away he was
high in the air, and, turning a somersault, landed in the thick
undergrowth he had a minute before left. For twenty, forty,
fifty yards we heard him crashing through the cover, and then
the sound ceased as abruptly as it had begun. This sudden
cessation of sound could be accounted for in two ways: either
the leopard had collapsed and died in his tracks, or fifty yards
away he had reached open ground.

We had walked 'far that day; the sun was near setting and!
we were still four miles from home. This part of the jungle
was not frequented by man, and there was not one chance in
a million of anyone passing that way by night, and last, and
the best reason of all for leaving the leopard, M. was unaaroed
and could neither be left alone nor taken along to follow .up
the wounded animal so we turned to the north and made for
home. There was no need for me to mark the spot, for I had
walked through these jungles by day and often by night for
near on half a century, and could have found my way blind-*
fold to any part of them.

Night had only just given place to day the following morn-
ing when Robin who had not been with us the previous
evening and I arrived at the spot I had fired, from. Very
warily Robin, who was leading, examined the ground where
the leopard had stood, and then raising his head and snuffing
the air he advanced to the edge of the undergrowth, where
the leopard in falling had left great splashes of blood. There
was no need for me to examine the blood to determine the

34 Man-eaters of Kumaon

position of the wound, for at the short range I had fired at I
had seen the bullet strike, And the spurt of dust on the far side
was proof that the bullet had gone right through the leopard's
body.

It might be necessary later on to follow up the blood trail >
but just at present a little rest after our four-mile walk in the
dark would do no harm, and might on the other hand prove
of great value to us. The sun was near rising, and at that
early hour of the morning all the jungle folk were on the move,
and it would be advisable to hear what they had to say on the
subject of the wounded animal before going further.

Under a nearby tree I found a diy spot to which the saturat-
ing dew had not penetrated, and with Robin stretched out at my
feet had finished my cigarette when a chital hind, and then a
second and a third, started calling some sixty yards to our left
front. Robin sat up and slowly turning his head looked at me,
and, on catching my eye, as slowly turned back in the direction
of the calling deer. He had travelled far along the road of
experience since that day he had first heard the alarm-call of
a langur, and he knew now as did every bird and animal within
hearing that the chital were warning the jungle folk of the
presence of a leopard.

From the manner in which the chital were calling it was
evident that the leopard was in full view of them. A little more
patience and they would tell us if he was alive. They had
been calling for about five minutes when suddenly, and all
together, they called once and again, and then settled down to
their regular call; the leopard was alive and had moved, and
was now quiet again. All that we needed to know now was
the position of the leopard, and this information we could get
by stalking the chital.

Moving down-wind for fifty yards we entered the thick
undergrowth, and started to stalk the deer not a difficult task,
for Robin can move through any jungle as silently as a cat,

Robin gfi

and long practice has taught me where to place -my feet.
The chital were not visible until we wer$ within a few feet
of them. They were standing in the open and looking towards
the north in the exact direction, as far as I was able to judge,
in which the crashing sound of the evening before had
ceased.

Up to this point the chital had been of great help to us; they
had told us the leopard was lying out in the open and that it
was alive, and they had now given us the direction. It had
taken us the best part of an hour to acquire this information,
and if the chital now caught sight of us and warned the jungle
folk of our presence, they would in one second undo the good
they had so far done. I was debating whether it would be
better to retrace our steps and work down below the calling deer
and try to get a shot from behind them, or move them from our
vicinity by giving the call of a leopard, when one of the hinds
turned her head and looked straight into my face. Next second,
with a cry of ' Ware man ', they dashed away at top speed. I
had only about five yards to cover to reach the open ground,
but quick as I was the leopard was quicker, and I was only in
time to see his hind quarters and tail disappearing behind some
bushes. The chital had very effectively spoilt my chance of a
shot, and the leopard would now have to be located and marked
down all over again this time by Robin.

I stood on the open ground for some minutes, to give the
leopard time to settle down and the scent he had left in his
passage to blow past us, and then took Robin due west across
the track of the wind, which was blowing from the north.
We had gone about sixty or seventy yards when Robin, who
was leading, stopped and turned to face into the wind. Robin
is mute in the jungles, and has a wonderful control over his
nerves. There is one nerve, however, running down the back
of his hind legs, which he cannot control when he is looking at
a leopard, or when the scent of a leopard is warm and strong.

S6 Man-eaters of Kumaon

This nerve was now twitching, and agitating the long hair on
the upper part of his hind legs.

A very violent cyclonic storm had struck this part of the
forest the previous summer, uprooting a number of trees; it
was towards one of these fallen trees, forty yards from where
we were standing, that Robin was now looking. The branches
were towards us, and on either side of the trunk there were
light bushes and a few scattered tufts of short grass.

At any other time Robin and I would have made straight
for our quarry; but on this occasion a little extra caution was
advisable. Not only were we dealing with an animal who
when wounded knows no fear, but in addition we were deal-
ing with a leopard who had had fifteen hours in which to nurse
his grievance against man, and who could in consequence be
counted on to have all his fighting instincts thoroughly aroused.

When leaving home that morning I had picked up the
.275 rifle I had used the previous evening. A good rifle to
carry when miles have to be covered, but not the weapon one
would select to deal with a wounded leopard; so instead of a
direct approach, I picked a line that would take us fifteen yards
from, and parallel to, the fallen tree. Step by step, Robin lead-
ing, we moved along this line, and had passed the branches and
were opposite the trunk when Robin stopped. Taking the
direction from him, I presently saw what had attracted his
attention the tip of the leopard's tail slowly raised, and as
slowly lowered the warning a leopard invariably gives before
charging. Pivoting to the right on my heels, I had just got
the rifle to my shoulder when the leopard burst through the
intervening bushes and sprang at us. My bullet, fired more
with the object of deflecting him than with any hope of killing
or even hitting him, passed under his belly and went through
the fleshy part of his left thigh. The crack of the rifle, more
than the wound, had the effect of deflecting the leopard suffi-
ciently to make him pass my right shoulder without touching

Robin 37

me, and before I could get in another shot, he disappeared into
the bushes beyond.

Robin had not moved from my feet, and together we now
examined the ground the leopard had passed over. Blood we
found in plenty, but whether it had come from the old wounds
torn open by the leopard's violent exertions, or from my recent
shot, it was impossible to say. Anyway it made no difference
to Robin, who without a moment's hesitation took up the trail.
After going through some very heavy cover we came on knee-
high undergrowth, and had proceeded about a couple of hundred
yards when I saw the leopard get up in front of us, and before
I could get the rifle to bear on him, he disappeared under a
lantana bush. This bush with its branches resting on the
ground was as big as a cottage tent, and in addition to afford-
ing the leopard ideal cover gave him all the advantages for
launching his next attack.

Robin and I had come very well out of our morning's
adventure and it would have been foolish now, armed as I
was, to pursue the leopard further, so without more ado we
turned about and made for home.

Next morning we were back on the ground. From a very
early hour Robin had been agitating to make a start, and,
ignoring all the interesting smells the jungle holds in the morn-
ing, would have made me do the four miles at a run had that
been possible.

I had armed myself with a 450/400, and was in consequence
feeling much happier than I had done the previous day. When
we were several hundred yards from the lantana bush, I made
Robin slow down and advance cautiously, for it is never safe
to assume that a wounded animal will be found where it has
been left hours previously, as the following^regrettable incident
shows.

A sportsman of my acquaintance wounded a tiger one after-
noon, and followed the blood trail for several miles along a

38 Man-eaters of Kumaon-

valley. Next morning, accompanied by a number of men, one
of whom was carrying his empty rifle and leading the way,
he set out intending to take up the tracking where he had left
off. His way led over the previous day's blood trail, and while
still a mile from the spot where the tiger had been left, the
leading man, who incidentally was the local shikari, walked
on to the wounded tiger and was killed. The rest of the party
escaped, some by climbing trees and others by showing a clean
pair of heels.

I had marked the exact position of the lantana bush, and
now took Robin along a line that would pass a few yards on
the lee side of it. Robin knew all that was worth knowing
about this method of locating the position of an animal by
cutting across the wind, and we had only gone a short dis-
tance, and were still a hundred yards from the bush, when he
stopped, turned and faced into the wind, and communicated
to me that he could smell the leopard. As on the previous day,
he was facing a fallen tree which was lying along the edge of,
and parallel to, the thick undergrowth through which we had
followed the leopard to the lantana bush after he had charged
us. On our side of the tree the ground was open, but on the
far side there was a dense growth of waist-high basonta bushes.
Having signalled to Robin to carry on along our original line,
we went past the lantana bush, in which he showed no interest,
to a channel washed out by rain-water. Here, removing my
coat, I filled it with as many stones as the stitches would hold,
and with this improvised sack slung over my shoulder returned
to the open ground near the tree.

Resuming my coat, and holding the rifle ready for instant
use, I took up a position fifteen yards from the tree and started
throwing the stones, first on to the tree and then into the bushes
on the far side of it with the object of making the leopard
assuming he was still alive charge on to the open ground where
I could deal with him. When all my ammunition was exhausted

Robin, 89

I coughed, clapped my hands, and shouted, and neither during
the bombardment nor after it did the leopard move or make
any sound to indicate that he was alive.

I should now have been justified in walking straight up to
the tree and looking on the far side of it, but remembering an
old jungle saying, ' It is never safe to assume that a leopard is
dead until it has been skinned ' , I set out to circle round the
tree, intending to reduce the size of the circle until I could
see right under the branches and along the whole length of the
trunk. I made the radius of the first circle about twenty-five
yards, and had gone two-thirds of the way round when Robin
stopped. As I looked down to see what had attracted his
attention, there was a succession of deep-throated, angry grunts,
and the leopard made straight for us. All I could see was the
undergrowth being violently agitated 'in a direct line towards
us, and I only just had time to swing half right and bring the
rifle up, when the head and shoulders of the leopard appeared
out of the bushes a few feet away.

The leopard's spring and my shot were simultaneous, and
side-stepping to the left and leaning back as far as I could I fired
the second barrel from my hip into his side as he passed me.

When a wounded animal, be he leopard or tiger, makes a
headlong charge and fails to contact he invariably carries on
and does not return to the attack until he is again disturbed.

I had side-stepped to the left to avoid crushing Robin, and
when I looked down for him now, he was nowhere to be seen.
For the first time in all the years we had hunted together we
had parted company in a tight corner, and he was now probably
trying to find his way home, with very little chance of being
able to avoid the many dangers that lay before him in the
intervening four miles of jungle. Added to the natural dangers
he would have to face in a jungle with which, owing to its
remoteness from home, he was not familiar, was the weak
condition of his heart. And it was therefore with very great

4Q Man-eaters of Kumaon

misgivings that I turned about to go in search of him; as I did
so, I caught sight of his head projecting from behind a tree
trunk at the edge of a small clearing only a hundred yards away.
When I raised my hand and beckoned, he disappeared into the
undergrowth, but a little later, with drooped eyes and drooping
ears, he crept silently to my feet. Laying down the rifle 1
picked him up in my arms and, for the second time in his life,
he licked my face telling me as he did so, with little throaty
sounds, how glad he was to find me unhurt, and how terribly
ashamed he was of himself for having parted company from me.

Our reactions to the sudden and quite unexpected danger
that had confronted us were typical of how a canine and a
human being act in an emergency, when the danger that threa-
tens is heard, and not seen. In Robin's case it had impelled
him to seek safety in sil'ent and rapid retreat; whereas in my
case it had the effect of gluing my feet to the ground and
making retreat rapid or otherwise impossible.

When I had satisfied Robin that he was not to blame for
our temporary separation, and his small body had stopped
trembling, I put him down and together we walked up to where
the leopard, who had put up such a game fight, and had so
nearly won the last round, was lying dead.

I have told you the story, and while I have been telling it
Robin the biggest-hearted and the most faithful friend man
ever had has gone to the Happy Hunting Grounds, where I
know I shall find him waiting for me.

THE CHOWGARH TIGERS

THE map of Eastern Kumaon that hangs on the wall before
me is marked with a number of crosses, and below each
cross is a date. These crosses indicate the locality, and the
date, of the officially recorded human victims of the man-eating
tiger of Chowgarh. There are sixty-four crosses on the map.
I do not claim this as being a correct tally, for the map was
posted up by me for two years and during this period all kills
were not reported to me; further, victims who were only
mauled, and who died subsequently, have not been awarded a
cross and a date.

The first cross is dated 15 December 1925, and the last,
21 March 1930. The distance between the extreme crosses,
north to south, is fifty miles, and east to west, thirty miles, an
area of 1,500 square miles of mountain and vale where the snow
lies deep during winter, and the valleys are scorching hot in
summer. Over this area the Chowgarh tiger had established
a reign of terror. Villages of varying size, some with a popula-
tion of a hundred or more, and others with only a small family
or two, are scattered throughout the area. Footpaths, beaten
hard by bare feet, connect the villages. Some of these paths
pass through thick forests, and when a man-eater renders their
passage dangerous inter-village communication is carried on by
shouting. Standing on a commanding point, maybe a big rock
or the roof of a house, a man cooees to attract the attention
of the people in a neighbouring village, and when the cooee is
answered, the message is shouted across in a high-pitched voice.
From village to village the message is tossed, and is broadcast
throughout large areas in an incredibly short space of time.

It was at a District Conference in February 1929 that I found
myself committed to have a try for this tiger. There were at
that time three man-eaters in the Kumaon Division, and as the

HUMAN BEINGS KILLED
BY THE CHOWGARH MAN-EATER

Village Number

THALI

1

DEBGURA

1

BARHON

2

CHAMOLI ......

6

KAHOR

1

AM

2

DALKANIA

7

LOHAR ......

8

AGHAURA

2

PAHARPANI

1

PADAMPURI

2

TANDA ......

1

NESORIYA

1

JHANGAON ......

1

KABRAGAON

1

KALA AGAR ......

8

RIKHAKOT

i

MATELA

3

KUNDAL ......

3

BABYAR ......

i

KHANSIUN

i

GARGARI

i

HAIRAKHAN .....

2

UKHALDHUNGA

1

PAKHARI ......

1

DUNGARI

2

GALNI

3

TOTAL -

64

ANNUAL TOTALS

1926 15 KILLED

1927 9 KILLED

1928 14 KILLED

1929 17 KILLED

1930 9 KILLED

TOTAL 64

The Chowgarh Tigers 43.

Chowgarh tiger had done most damage I promised to go in
pursuit of it first.

The map with the crosses and dates, furnished to me by
Government, showed that the man-eater was most active in the
villages on the north and east face of the Kala Agar ridge. This
ridge, some forty miles in length, rises to a height of 8,500 feet
and is thickly wooded along the crest. A forest road runs along
the north face of the ridge, in some places passing for miles
through dense forests of oak and rhododendron, and in others
forming a boundary between the forest and cultivated land.
In one place the road forms a loop, and in this loop is situated
the Kala Agar Forest Bungalow. This bungalow was my
objective, and after a four days' march, culminating in a stiff
climb of 4,000 feet, I arrived at it one evening in April 1929.
The last human victim in this area was a young man of twenty-
two, who had been killed while out grazing cattle, and while
I was having breakfast, the morning after my arrival, the grand-
mother of the young man came to see me.

She informed me that the man-eater had, without any pro-
vocation, killed the only relative she had in the world. After
giving me her grandson's history from the day he was born,
and extolling his virtues, she pressed me to accept her three
milch buffaloes to use as bait for the tiger, saying that if I
killed the tiger with the help of her buffaloes she would have
the satisfaction of feeling that she had assisted in avenging her
grandson. These full-grown animals were of no use to me,
but knowing that refusal to accept them would give offence, I
thanked the old lady and assured her I would draw on her
for bait as soon as I had used up the four young male buffaloes
I had brought with me from Naini Tal. The Headmen of
nearby villages had now assembled, and from them I learned
that the tiger had last been seen ten days previously in a village
twenty miles away, on the eastern slope of the ridge, where
it had killed and eaten a man and his wife.

44 Man-eaters of Kumaon

A trail ten days old was not worth following up, and after
a long discussion with the Headmen I decided to make for
Dalkania village on the eastern side of the ridge. Dalkania
is ten miles from Kala Agar, and about the same distance from
the village where the man and his wife had been killed.

From the number of crosses Dalkania and the villages adjoin-
ing it had earned, it appeared that the tiger had its headquarters
in the vicinity of these villages.

After breakfast next morning I left Kala Agar and followed
the forest road, which I was informed would take me to the
end of the ridge, where I should have to leave the road and take
a path two miles downhill to Dalkania. This road, running
right to the end of the ridge through dense forest was very
little used, and, examining it for tracks as I went along, I
arrived at the point where the path took off at about 2 p.m.
Here I met a number of men from Dalkania. They had heard
via the cooee method of communication of my intention of
camping at their village and had come up to the ridge to inform
me that the tiger had that morning attacked a party of women,
while they had been cutting their crops in a village ten miles
to the north of Dalkania.

The men carrying my camp equipment had done eight miles
and were quite willing to carry on, but on learning from the
villagers that the path to this village, ten miles away, was very
rough and ran through dense forest I decided to send my men
with the villagers to Dalkania, and visit the scene of the tiger's
attack alone. My servant immediately set about preparing a
substantial meal for me, and at 3 p.m., having fortified myself,
I set out on my ten-mile walk. Ten miles under favourable
conditions is a comfortable two-and-a-half hours 1 walk, but here
the conditions were anything but favourable. The track run-
ning along the east face of the hill wound in and out through
deep ravines and was bordered alternately by rocks, dense
undergrowth, and trees; and when every obstruction capable of

The Chowgarh Tigers 45

concealing sudden death, in the form of a hungry man-eater,
had to be approached with caution, progress was of necessity
slow. I was still several miles from my objective when the
declining day warned me it was time to call a halt.

In any other area, sleeping under the stars on a bed of dry
leaves would have ensured a restful night, but here, to sleep
on the ground would have been to court death in a very un-
pleasant form. Long practice in selecting a suitable tree, and
the ability to dispose myself comfortably in it, has made sleep-
ing up aloft a simple matter. On this occasion I selected an
oak tree, and, with the rifle tied securely to a branch, had been
asleep for some hours when I was awakened by the rustling of
several animals under the tree. The sound moved on, and
presently I heard the scraping of claws on bark and realized
that a family of bears were climbing sofne karphal L trees I had
noticed growing a little way down the hillside. Bears are very
quarrelsome when feeding, and sleep was impossible until they
had eaten their fill and moved on.

The sun had been up a couple of hours when I arrived at
the village, which consisted of two huts and a cattle-shed, in a
clearing of five acres surrounded by forest. The small com-
munity were in a state of terror and were overjoyed to see me.
The wheatfield, a few yards from the huts, where the tiger,
with belly to ground, had been detected only just in time,
stalking the three women cutting the crop, was eagerly pointed
out to me. The man who had seen the tiger, and given the
alarm, told me the tiger had retreated into the jungle, where
it had been joined by a second tiger, and that the two animals
had gone down the hillside into the valley below. The occupants
of the two huts had had no sleep, for the tigers, baulked of their

1 Karphal is found on our hills at an elevation of 6,000 feet. The
tree grows to a height of about forty feet and produces a small red and
very sweet berry, which is greatly fancied by both human beings and
bears.

46 Man-eaters of Kumaon

prey, had called at short intervals throughout the night, and had
only ceased calling a little before my arrival. This statement, that
there were two tigers, confirmed the reports I had already re-
ceived that the man-eater was accompanied by a full-grown cub.

Our hill folk are very hospitable, and when the villagers
learned that I had spent the night in the jungle, and that my
camp was at Dalkania, they offered to prepare a meal for me.
This I knew would strain the resources of the small community,
so I asked for a dish of tea, but as there was no tea in the
village I was given a drink of fresh milk sweetened to excess
with jaggery, a very satisfying and not unpleasant drink when
one gets used to it. At the request of my hosts I mounted
guard while the remaining portion of the wheat crop was cut;
and at midday, taking the good wishes of the people with me,
I went down into the valley in the direction in which the tigers
had been heard calling.

The valley, starting from the watershed of the three rivers
Ladhya, Nandhour and Eastern Goula, runs south-west for
twenty miles and is densely wooded. Tracking was impossible,
and my only hope of seeing the tigers was to attract them to
myself, or helped by the jungle folk to stalk them.

To those of you who may be inclined to indulge in the
sport of man-eater hunting on foot, it will be of interest to
know that the birds and animals of the jungle, and the four
winds of heaven, play a very important part in this form of
sport. This is not the place to give the names of the jungle
folk on whose alarm-calls the sportsman depends, to a great
extent, for his safety and knowledge of his quarry's movements;
for in a country in which a walk up or down hill of three or
four miles might mean a difference in altitude of as many
thousand feet the variation in fauna, in a well-stocked area, is
considerable. The wind, however, at all altitudes, remains a con-
stant factor, and a few words relevant to its importance in con-
nexion with man-eater hunting on foot will not be out of place.

The Chowgarh Tigers 47

Tigers do not know that human beings have no sense of
smell, and when a tiger becomes a man-eater it treats human
beings exactly as it treats wild animals, that is, it approaches
its intended victims up-wind, or lies up in wait for them
down-wind.

The significance of this will be apparent when it is realized
that, while the sportsman is trying to get a sight of the tiger,
the tiger in all probability is trying to stalk the sportsman, or
is lying up in wait for him. The contest, owing to the tiger's
height, colouring, and ability to move without making a sound,
would be very unequal were it not for the wind-factor operating
in favour of the sportsman.

In all cases where killing is done by stalking or stealth, the
victim is approached from behind. This being so, it would be
suicidal for the sportsman to enter dense jungle, in which he
had every reason to believe a man-eater was lurking, unless he
was capable of making full use of the currents of air. For
example, assuming that the sportsman has to proceed, owing
to th$ nature of the ground, in the direction from which the
wind IB blowing, the danger would lie behind him, where he
would be least able to deal with it, but by frequently tacking
across the wind he could keep the danger alternately to right
and left of him. In print this scheme may not appear very
attractive, but in practice it works; and, short of walking back-
wards, I do not know of a better or safer method of going
up-wind through dense cover in which a hungry man-eater is
lurking.

By evening I had reached the upper end of the valley, with-
out having seen the tigers and without having received any
indication from bird or animal of their presence in the jungle.
The only habitation then in sight was a cattle-shed, high up on
the north side of the valley.

I was careful in the selection of a tree on this second night,
and was rewarded by an undisturbed night's rest. Not long

48 Man-eaters of Kumaon

after dark the tigers called, and a few minutes later two shots
from a muzzle-loader came echoing down the valley, followed
by a lot of shouting from the graziers at the cattle station.
Thereafter the night was silent.

By the afternoon of the following day I had exploded every
bit of the valley, and I was making my way up a grassy slope
intent on rejoining my men at Dalkania when I heard a long-
drawn-out cooee from the direction of the cattle-shed. The
cooee was repeated once and again, and on my sending back
an answering call I saw a man climb on a projecting rock, and
from this vantage point he shouted across the valley to ask if
I was the sahib who had come from Naini Tal to shoot the
man-eater. On my telling him I was that sahib, he informed
me that his cattle had stampeded out of a ravine on my side
of the valley at about midday, and that when he counted them
on arrival at the cattle station he found that one a white cow
was missing.

He suspected that the cow had been killed by the tigers he
had heard calling the previous night, half a mile to the west
of where I was standing. Thanking him for his information, I
set off to investigate the ravine. I had gone but a short distance
along the edge of the ravine when I came on the tracks of the
stampeding cattle, and following these tracks back I had no diffi-
culty in finding the spot where the cow had been killed. After
killing the cow the tigers had taken it down the steep hillside
into the ravine. An approach along the drag was not advisable,
so going down into the valley I made a wide detour, and
approached the spot where I expected the kill to be from the
other side of the ravine. This side of the ravine was less steep
than the side down which the kill had been taken, and was deep
in young bracken ideal ground for stalking over. Step by step,
shadow, I made my way through the

Bracken, which reached above my waist, and when I was some
thirty yards from the bed of the ravine a movement in front of

The Chowgarh Tigers 49

me caught my eye. A white leg was suddenly thrust up into the
air and violently agitated, and next moment there was a deep-
throated growl the tigers were on the kill and tfere having a
difference of opinion over some toothful morsel.

For several minutes I stood perfectly still; the leg continued
to be agitated, but the growl was not repeated. A nearer
approach was not advisable, for even if I succeeded in covering
the thirty yards without being seen, and managed to kill one
of the tigers, the other, as likely as not, would blunder into me,
and the ground I was on would give me no chance of defending
myself. Twenty yards to my left front, and about the same
distance from the tigers, there was an outcrop of rock, some
ten to fifteen feet high. If I could reach this rock without
being seen, I should in all probability get an easy shot at the
tigers. Dropping on hands and knees, and pushing the rifle
before me, I crawled through the bracken to the shelter of the
rocks, paused a minute to regain my breath and make quite
sure the rifle was loaded, and then climbed the rock. When
my eyes were level with the top, I looked over, and saw the
two tigers.

One was eating at the hind quarters of the cow, while the
other was lying near by licking its paws. Both tigers appeared
to be about the same size, but the one that was licking its paws
was several shades lighter than the other; and concluding that
her light colouring was due to age and that she was the old
man-eater, I aligned the sights very carefully on her, and fired.
At my shot she reared up and fell backwards, while the other
bounded down the ravine and was out of sight before I could
press the second trigger. The tiger I had shot did not move
again, and after pelting it with stones to make sure it was dead,
I approached and met with a great disappointment; for a glance
at close quarters showed me I had made a mistake and shot the
cub a mistake that during the ensuing twelve months cost the
district fifteen lives and incidentally nearly cost me my own life.

5

50 Man-eaters of Kumaon

Disappointment was to a certain extent mitigated by the
thought that this young tigress, even if she had not actually
killed any human beings herself, had probably assisted her old
mother to kill (this assumption I later found to be correct),
and in any case, having been nurtured on human fltsh, she
could to salve my feelings be classed as a potential man-
eater.

Skinning a tiger with assistance on open ground and with
the requisite appliances is an easy job, but here the job was
anything but easy, for I was alone, surrounded by thick cover,
and my only appliance was a penknife; and though there was
no actual danger to be apprehended from the man-eater, for
tigers never kill in excess of their requirements, there was the
uneasy feeling in the back of my mind that the tigress had
returned and was watching my every movement.

The sun was near setting before the arduous task was
completed, and as I should have to spend yet another night
in the jungles I decided to remain where I was. The tigress
was a very old animal, as I could see from her pug marks, and
having lived all her life in a district in which there are nearly
as many fire-arms as men to use them, had nothing to learn
about men and their ways. Even so, there was just a chance
that she might return to the kill some time during the
night, and remain in the vicinity until light came in the
morning.

My selection of a tree was of necessity limited, and the one
I spent that night in proved, by morning, to be the most un-
comfortable tree I have ever spent twelve hours in. The tigress
called at intervals throughout the night, and as morning drew
near the calling became fainter and fainter, and eventually died
away on the ridge above me.

Cramped, and stiff, and hungry I had been without food
for sixty-four hours and with my clothes clinging to me it
had rained for an hour during the night I descended from the

The Chowgarh Tigers 51

tree when objects were clearly visible, and, after tying the
tiger's skin up in a coat, set off for Dalkania.

I have never weighed a tiger's skin when green, and if the
skin, plus the head and paws, which I carried for fifteen miles
that day weighed 40 pounds at the start, I would have taken my
oath it weighed 200 pounds before I reached my destination.

In a courtyard, flagged with great slabs of blue slate, and
common to a dozen houses, I found my men in conference with
a hundred or more villagers. My approach, along a yard- wide
lane between two houses, had not been observed, and the wel-
come I received when, bedraggled and covered with blood, I
staggered into the circle of squatting men will live in my
memory as long as memory lasts.

My 40-lb. tent had been pitched in a field of stubble a
hundred yards from the village, and I had hardly reached it
before tea was laid out for me on a table improvised out of a
couple of suitcases and planks borrowed from the village. I
was told later by the villagers that my men, who had been
with me for years and had accompanied me on several similar
expeditions, refusing to believe that the man-eater had claimed
me as a victim, had kept a kettle on the boil night and day
in anticipation of my return, and, further, had stoutly opposed
the Headmen of Dalkania and the adjoining villages sending a
report to Almora and Naini Tal that I was missing.

A hot bath, taken of necessity in the open and in full view
of the village I was too dirty and too tired to care who saw
me was followed by an ample dinner, and I was thinking of
turning in for the night when a flash of lightning succeeded
by a loud peal of thunder heralded the approach of a storm.
Tent-pegs are of little use in a field, so long stakes were hurried-
ly procured and securely driven into the ground, and to these
stakes the tent-ropes were tied. For further safety all the avail-
able ropes in camp were criss-crossed over the tent and lashed to
the stakes. The storm of wind and rain lasted an hour and was

52 Man-eaters of Kumaon

one of the worst the little tent had ever weathered. Several of
the guy-ropes were torn from the canvas, but the stakes and
criss-cross ropes held. Most of my things were soaked through,
and a little stream several inches deep was running from end to
end of the tent; my bed, however, was comparatively dry, and
by 10 o'clock my men were safely lodged behind locked doors
in the house the villagers had placed at their disposal, while I,
with a loaded rifle for company, settled down to a sleep which
lasted for twelve hours.

The following day was occupied in drying my kit and in
cleaning and pegging out the tiger's skin. While these opera-
tions were in progress the villagers, who had taken a holiday
from their field work, crowded round to hear my experiences
and to tell me theirs. Every man present had lost one or more
relatives, and several bore tooth and claw marks, inflicted by
the man-eater, which they will carry to their graves. My regret
at having lost an opportunity of killing the man-eater was not
endorsed by the assembled men. True, there had originally
been only one man-eater; but, of recent months, rescue parties
who had gone out to recover the remains of human victims had
found two tigers on the kills, and only a fortnight previously
a man and his wife had been killed simultaneously, which was
proof sufficient for them that both tigers were established man-
eaters.

My tent was on a spur of the hill, and commanded an
extensive view. Immediately below me was the valley of the
Nandhour river, with a hill, devoid of any cultivation, rising
to a height of 9,000 feet on the far side. As I sat on the edge
of the terraced fields that evening with a pair of good bino-
culars in my hand and the Government map spread out beside
me, the villagers pointed out the exact positions where twenty
human beings had been killed during the past three years.
These kills were more or less evenly distributed over an area of
forty square miles.

The Chowgarh Tigers 53

The forests in this area were open to grazing, and on the
cattle-paths leading to them I decided to tie up my four young
buffaloes.

During the following ten days no news was received of the
tigress, and I spent the time in visiting the buffaloes in the
morning, searching the forests in the day, and tying out the
buffaloes in the evening. On the eleventh day my hopes were
raised by the report that a cow had been killed on a ravine on
the hill above my tent. A visit to the kill, however, satisfied
me the cow had been killed by an old leopard, whose pug marks
I had repeatedly seen. The villagers complained that the leo-
pard had for several years been taking heavy toll of their cattle
and goats, so I decided to sit up for him. A shallow cave close
to the dead cow gave me the cover I needed. I had not been
long in the cave when I caught sight of the leopard coming
down the opposite side of the ravine, and I was raising my rifle
for a shot when I heard a very agitated voice from the direction
of the village calling to me.

There could be but one reason for this urgent call, and
grabbing up my hat I dashed out of the cave, much to the
consternation of the leopard, who first flattened himself out
on the ground, and then with an angry woof went bounding
back the way he had come, while I scrambled up my side of
the ravine; and, arriving at the top, shouted to the man that
I was coming, and set off at top speed to join him.

The man had run all the way uphill from the village, and
when he regained his breath he informed me that a woman
had just been killed by the man-eater, about half a mile on the
far side of the village. As we ran down the hillside I saw a
crowd of people collected in the courtyard already alluded to.
Once again my approach through the narrow lane was not
observed, and looking over the heads of the assembled men, I
saw a girl sitting on the ground.

The upper part of her clothing had been torn off her young

54 Man-eaters of Kumaon

body, and with head thrown back and hands resting on the
ground behind to support her, she sat without sound or move-
ment, other than the heaving up and down of her breast, in
the hollow of which the blood, that was flowing down her face
and neck, was collecting in a sticky congealed mass.

My presence was soon detected and a way made for me
to approach the girl. While I was examining her wounds, a
score of people, all talking at the same time, informed me
that the attack on the girl had been made on comparatively
open ground in full view of a number of people including the
girl's husband; that alarmed at their combined shouts the tiger
had left the girl and gone off in the direction of the forest; that
leaving the girl for dead where she had fallen her companions
had run back to the village to inform me; that subsequently
the girl had regained consciousness and returned to the village;
that she would without doubt die of her injuries in a few
minutes; and that they would then carry her back to the scene
of the attack, and I could sit up over the corpse and shoot
the tiger.

While this information was being imparted to me the girl's
eyes never left my face and followed my every movement with
the liquid pleading gaze of a wounded and frightened animal.
Room to move unhampered, quiet to collect my wits, and clean
air for the girl to breathe were necessary, and I am afraid the
methods I employed to gain them were not as gentle as they
might have been. When the last of the men had left in a
hurry, I set the women, who up to now had remained in the
background, to winning water and to tearing my shirt, which
was comparatively clean and dry, into bandages, while one girl,
who appeared to be on the point of getting hysterics, was bund-
led off to scour the village for a pair of scissors. The water and
bandages were ready before the girl I had sent for the scissors
returned with the only pair, she said, the village could produce.
They had been found in the house of a tailor, long since dead,

The Chowgarh Tigers 55

and had been used by the widow for digging up potatoes. The
rusty blades, some eight inches long, could not be made to meet
at any point, and after a vain attempt I decided to leave the
thick coils of blood-caked hair alone.

The major wounds consisted of two claw cuts, one starting
between the eyes and extending right over the head and down
to the nape of the neck, leaving the scalp hanging in two halves,
and the other, starting near the first, running across the fore-
head up to the right ear. In addition to these ugly gaping
wounds there were a number of deep scratches on the right
breast, right shoulder and neck, and one deep cut on the back
of the right hand, evidently inflicted when the girl had put up
her hand in a vain attempt to shield her head.

A doctor friend whom I had once taken out tiger-shooting
on foot had, on our return after an exciting morning, presented
me with a two-ounce bottle of yellow fluid which he advised
me to carry whenever I went out shooting. I had carried the
bottle in the inner pocket of my shooting jacket for over a
year and a portion of the fluid had evaporated; but the bottle
was still three-parts full, and after I had washed the girl's
head and body I knocked the neck off the bottle and poured
the contents, to the last drop, into the wounds. This done I
bandaged the head, to try to keep the scalp in position, and
then picked up the girl and carried her to her home a single
room combining living quarters, kitchen and nursery with the
women following behind.

Dependent from a rafter near the door was an open basket,
the occupant of which was now clamouring to be fed. This
was a complication with which I could not deal, so I left the
solution of it to the assembled women. Ten days later, when
on the eve of my departure I visited the girl for the last time,
I found her sitting on the doorstep of her home with the baby
asleep in her lap.

Her wounds, except for a sore at the nape of her neck where

56 Man-eaters of Kumaon

the tiger's claws had sunk deepest into the flesh, were all healed,
and when parting her great wealth of raven-black hair to show
me where the scalp had made a perfect join, she said, with a
smile, that she was very glad her young sister had quite by
mistake borrowed the wrong pair of scissors from the tailor's
widow (for a shorn head here is the sign of widowhood). If
these lines should ever be read by my friend the doctor I
should like him to know that the little bottle of yellow fluid he
so thoughtfully provided for me, saved the life of a very brave
young mother.

While I had been attending to the girl my men had procured
a goat. Following back the blood trail made by the girl I found
the spot where the attack had taken place, and tying the goat
to a bush I climbed into a stunted oak, the only tree in the
vicinity, and prepared for an all-night vigil. Sleep, even in
snatc