and shewed her teeth, and then with one bound went through the open
side of the tent. I fired two shots, which were answered with a roar.
The din that followed would have frightened the devil. It was a
beautiful clear night, with a moon at the full, and everything shewed
as plainly as at noonday. The servants uttered exclamations of terror.
The terriers went into an agony of yelps and barks. The horses
snorted, and tried to get loose, and my chowkeydar, who had been
asleep on his watch, thinking a band of dacoits were on us, began
laying round him with his staff, shouting, _Chor, Chor! lagga, lagga,
lagga!_ that is, 'thief, thief! lay on, lay on, lay on!'

The leopard was hit, and evidently in a terrible temper. She halted
not thirty paces from the tent, beside a jhamun tree, and seemed
undecided whether to go on or return and wreak her vengeance on me.
That moment decided her fate. I snatched down my Express rifle, which
was hanging in two loops above my bed, and shot her right through the
heart.

I never understood how she could have made her way past dogs,
servants, horses, and watchman, right into the tent, without raising
some alarm. It must have been more from curiosity than any hostile
design. I know that my nerves were very rudely shaken, but I became
the hero of the Purindaha villagers. I believe that my night adventure
with the leopardess did more to bring them round to a settlement than
all my eloquence and figures.

The river Koosee, on the banks of which, and in the long grass plains
adjacent, most of the incidents I have recorded took place, takes its
rise at the base of Mount Everest, and, after draining nearly the
whole of Eastern. Nepaul, emerges by a deep gorge from the hills at
the north-west corner of Purneah. The stream runs with extreme
velocity. It is known as a snow stream. The water is always cold, and
generally of a milky colour, containing much fine white sand. No
sooner does it leave its rocky bed than it tears through the flat
country by numerous channels. It is subject to very sudden rises. A
premonitory warning of these is generally given. The water becomes of
a turbid, almost blood-like colour. Sometimes I have seen the river
rise over thirty feet in twenty-four hours. The melting of the snow
often makes a raging torrent, level from bank to bank, where only a
few hours before a horse could have forded the stream without wetting
the girths of the saddle.

In 1876 the largest channel