and his fleet racing elephants now left us, and our
jaded beasts took us slowly back in the direction of our camp. It was
a fine wild view on which we were now gazing. Behind us the dark
gloomy impenetrable morung, the home of ever-abiding fever and ague.
Behind that the countless multitude of hills, swelling here and
receding there, a jumbled heap of mighty peaks and fretted pinnacles,
with their glistening sides and dark shadowless ravines, their mighty
scaurs and their abrupt serrated edges showing out clearly and boldly
defined against the evening sky. Far to the right, the shining
river--a riband of burnished steel, for its waters were a deep steely
blue--rolled its swift flood along amid shining sand-banks. In front,
the vast undulating plain, with grove, and rill, and smoking hamlet,
stretched at our feet in a lovely panorama of blended and harmonious
colour. We were now high up above the plain, and the scene was one of
the finest I have ever witnessed in India. The wind had gone down, and
the oblique rays of the sun lit up the whole vast panorama with a
lurid light, which was heightened in effect by the dust-laden
atmosphere, and the volumes of smoke from the now distant fires,
hedging in the far horizon with curtains of threatening grandeur and
gloom. That far away canopy of dust and smoke formed a wonderful
contrast to the shining snow-capped hills behind. Altogether it was a
day to be remembered. I have seen no such strange and unearthly
combination of shade and colour in any landscape before or since.

On the way home we bagged a florican and a very fine mallard, and
reached the camp utterly fagged, to find our worthy magistrate very
much recovered, and glad to congratulate us on our having bagged the
tigress. After a plunge in the river, and a rare camp dinner--such a
meal as only an Indian sportsman can procure--we lay back in our cane
chairs, and while the fragrant smoke from the mild Manilla curled
lovingly about the roof of the tent, we discussed the day's
proceedings, and fought our battles over again.

A rather animated discussion arose about the length of the tiger--as
to its frame merely, and we wondered what difference the skin would
make in the length of the animal. As it was a point we had never heard
mooted before, we determined to see for ourselves. We accordingly went
out into the beautiful moonlight, and superintended the skinning of
the tigress. The skin was taken off most artistically. We