ey are certainly
more graceful than the stiff unsightly solah hat.

Between every two howdahs are four or five pad elephants. These beat
up all the intervening bushes, and carry the game that may be shot.
When a pig, deer, tiger, or other animal has been shot, and has
received its _coup de grace_, it is quickly bundled on to the pad, and
there secured. The elephant kneels down to receive the load, and while
game is being padded the whole line waits, till the operation is
complete, as it is bad policy to leave blanks. Where this simple
precaution is neglected, many a tiger will sneak through the opening
left by the pad elephant, and so silently and cautiously can they
steal through the dense cover, and so cunning are they and acute, that
they will take advantage of the slightest gap, and the keenest and
best trained eye will fail to detect them.

In most of our hunting parties on the Koosee, we had some twenty or
thirty elephants, and frequently six or eight howdahs. These
expeditions were very pleasant, and we lived luxuriously. For real
sport ten elephants and two or three tried comrades--not more--is much
better. With a short, easily-worked line, that can turn and double,
and follow the tiger quickly, and dog his every movement, you can get
far better sport, and bring more to bag, than with a long unwieldy
line, that takes a considerable time to turn and wheel, and in whose
onward march there is of necessity little of the silence and swiftness
which are necessary elements in successful tiger shooting.

I have been out with a line of seventy-six elephants and fourteen
howdahs. This was on 16th March 1875. It was a magnificent sight to
see the seventy-six huge brutes in the river together, splashing the
water along their heated sides to cool themselves, and sending huge
waves dashing against the crumbling banks of the rapid stream. It was
no less magnificent to see their slow stately march through the
swaying, crashing jungle. What an idea of irresistible power and
ponderous strength the huge creatures gave us, as they heaved through
the tangled brake, crushing everything in their resistless progress.
It was a sight to be remembered, but as might have been expected, we
found the jungles almost untenanted. Everything cleared out before us,
long ere the line could reach its vicinity. We only killed one tiger,
but next day we separated, the main body crossing the stream, while my
friends and myself, with only fourteen e