in company with two additional natives who had run after us, I got on a piece of rock about three feet high.  The man with the sword stood on my right, and the two natives—­who were unarmed—­on my left, and in this order we awaited the arrival of the bear.  Sore and angry, he presently emerged from the jungle at a distance of about twenty-five or thirty yards further down the slope of the hill.  I fired at and hit him, and he then turned round, took a look at us, and charged.  As he came on I fired my remaining shot.  Then the man with the sword struck the bear a tremendous blow on the back (which I think would have stopped the bear had the sword been sharp), and in a second more old Bruin had thrown the whole of us off the rock on to the ground behind it.  There we were then—­four men, a wounded bear, and a bull terrier, all mixed up together.  However, the man with the sword laid about him most manfully, and the bear, either not liking the situation, or being exhausted with his wounds and efforts (more likely the latter), retreated into the ravine out of which he had emerged.  Into this we presently followed him, and after another shot or two he expired, and I have the skin at homo with the mark of the sword-cut on the back.  It had cut through the shaggy hair, and only penetrated the skin sufficiently to leave a scar.  The man who had shown so much pluck was a young farmer from the adjacent village, and I at once offered him the sword with which he had defended me.  But he seemed to think he had done nothing, and positively declined it, saying that his neighbours would be jealous of his having such a fine-looking thing.  I had, however, a knife made after the native fashion, and afterwards gave it to him in commemoration of the event.

In Mysore there are two kinds of panthers.  One, the largest of the two, is called by the natives the Male Kiraba, or forest panther, and confines itself generally to the forest regions, while the smaller kind haunts the neighbourhood of villages.  The black panther, which is of rare occurrence, is merely an offshoot of the other varieties.  The panther, in consequence of its tree-climbing habits, and general aptitude for suddenly disappearing, is of all animals the most disappointing to the sportsman, so much so, indeed, that I soon gave up going out after them.  Though it has great strength, and from the amazing suddenness of its movements, great means at its disposal for making successful attacks on man, it seems, unlike the tiger, bear, and wild boar, to have no confidence in its own powers, and though in one sense showing great daring by attacking dogs even when they are in the house and quite close to people, is, when attacked itself, of all animals the most cowardly—­a fact which the natives are well aware of, and which is proved by the small number of people killed by panthers in proportion to the number of them accounted for.  The only way of insuring success when hunting panthers is to have a small pack of country-bred dogs