a wounded tigress—­it was the cold weather season, when everything was still green about the edges of the jungle—­went into a ravine which was flanked by a great bed of ferns about five feet high.  The natives looked at this bed into which the tigress had disappeared with considerable doubt, and one of them said, “How is anyone to go in here?” “I will show you,” said Rama Gouda quietly, and he picked up several large stones, threw them into the ferns, and then plunged into them.  I afterwards killed the tiger on foot in the ravine, but of course he ran the risk of coming upon it in the ferns.  But the coolest thing I ever knew him to do was when a manager of mine wanted to fire at a tiger as it was approaching him.  It was in the days of the muzzle-loaders, and as Rama Gouda knew that to speak would be fatal, he quietly but firmly put both his fingers on the caps when my manager presented the gun at the tiger, and kept them there till the tiger had reached the proper point for action.  Then he withdrew them, and my manager killed the tiger.  It is contrary to all rule, on account of the beaters, to fire at a tiger till he has passed you, and as the manager and Rama Gouda were seated on the ground, if the tiger had been fired at face to face an accident might have occurred.  On only one occasion did I ever see him disturbed, and that was when he took up a position at a beat for big game.  Presently he heard a hiss, and on looking round found a reared-up cobra about to strike at his naked thigh.  He saved himself by a jump on one side, but he showed by his eye when he mentioned the circumstance that he had been somewhat commoved.

The natives have an idea that a tiger will not attack a group of from four to five people massed together, and in 1891 four or five unarmed natives proposed that I should sit on an absolutely bare piece of ground, and that they should sit round me, and that the tiger should be driven up to us.  But this offer, and more especially as I had only one gun, I declined, with thanks, unless they could find a small bush or piece of rock to sit behind, and as neither could be found, I took up a position on a steep hillside and on a scrubby tree, which I thought safe enough, as I assumed that the tiger would pass on the lower side of it, but it approached close on the upper side, and on rather higher ground, and could easily have sprung on to me, as it was not more than fifteen feet distant, thus again illustrating how difficult it is in a hilly country to get into a reasonably safe position.  Altogether, the risks of tiger shooting in a hilly country where elephants cannot be used, and where you may have to run to cut off a wounded tiger or follow one into the jungle, is attended with risk even to the most experienced.  The amount of that risk is difficult to determine, but I may say generally it is such that while bachelors, or married men of independent means whose families are well provided for, in short, people whose lives are