On the next day, therefore, we all took train and fared south-eastward toward Calcutta, as far as to Bhagalpur, where we left the railway, sending our baggage on to Calcutta, and took private conveyance to a certain spot among the Rajmahal Mountains, where the camp had been fixed by retainers on the day before.  It was near a village of the Sontals, which we passed before reaching it, and which was a singular-enough spectacle with its round roofed huts and a platform at its entrance, upon which, and under which, were ghastly heaps of the skulls of animals slain by the villagers.  These Sontals reminded me of the Gonds whom I had seen, though they seemed to be far manlier representatives of the autochthonal races of India than the former.  They are said to number about a million, and inhabit a belt of country some four hundred miles long by one hundred broad, including the Rajmahal Mountains, and extending from near the Bay of Bengal to the edge of Behar.  So little have they been known that when in the year 1855 word was brought to Calcutta that the Sontals had risen and were murdering the Europeans, many of the English are said to have asked not only Who are the Sontals? but What are the Sontals?

The more inaccessible tops of the same mountains, the Rajmahal, are occupied by a much ruder set of people, the Malers, who appear to have been pushed up here by the Sontals, as the Sontals were themselves pressed by the incoming Aryans.

[Illustration:  A TIGER-HUNT, ELEPHANT-BACK.]

As we arrived at the camp I realized the words of our English friend concerning the magnitude of the preparations for a tiger-hunt undertaken on the present scale.  The tents of the sportsmen, among whom were several English army officers and civil officials, besides a native rajah, were pitched in a beautiful glade canopied by large trees, and near these were the cooking-tents and the lodging-places of the servants, of whom there was the liberal allowance which is customary in India.  Through the great tree-trunks I could see elephants, camels and horses tethered about the outskirts of the camp, while the carts, elephant-pads and other impedimenta lying about gave the whole the appearance of an army at bivouac.  Indeed, it was not an inconsiderable force that we could have mustered.  There were fifteen or twenty elephants in the party.  Every elephant had two men, the mahaut and his assistant; every two camels, one man; every cart, two men; besides whom were the kholassies (tent-pitchers), the chikarries (native huntsmen to mark down and flush the tiger), letter-carriers for the official personages, and finally the personal servants of the party, amounting in all to something like a hundred and fifty souls.  The commissary arrangements of such a body of men and beasts were no light matter, and had on this occasion been placed by contract in the hands of a flour-and-grain merchant from Patna.  As night drew on the scene became striking in the extreme, and I do not think I felt the fact of India more keenly at any time than while Bhima Gandharva and I, slipping away from a party who were making merry over vast allowances of pale ale and cheroots, went wandering about under the stars and green leaves, picking our way among the huge forms of the mild-countenanced elephants and the bizarre figures of the camels.