Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore: With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planterElliot, Robert H. (Robert Henry)
History
Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore: With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planter
Elliot, Robert H. (Robert Henry)
Caste -- India; Coffee; Karnataka (India) -- Description and travel; Karnataka (India) -- Politics and government
vitality a dying tiger has, and in the case previously alluded to I have
no doubt that the tiger must have died immediately after he made his fatal
attack on the party.
It is owing obviously to their great power of concealment that tigers are
so very rarely ever seen by accident, and Mr. Sanderson says that during
some years of wandering in tigerish localities he has only come upon them
accidentally about half a dozen times, and my own experience, and that of
other sportsmen to whom I have spoken, quite confirms this. But I am
persuaded that a native can see a tiger much more readily than a European,
and the former have, I think, much better distinguishing power. For
instance, a European has great difficulty in seeing a green pigeon in a
green tree till the bird moves, while a native seems to have no such
difficulty. My own sight is, or rather was, very good, but I found on one
occasion, when I was stalked by a tiger, that it was most provokingly
defective as compared with that of a native. The incident occurred in this
way. In cloudy weather, during a break in the monsoon, I was beating a
ravine for game, and had sent my second gun-carrier with the beaters. As
the beat was drawing to a close, I heard a sambur deer belling at the head
of a ravine, about a few hundred yards from the termination of the jungle
we were beating. As I thought I might get a shot at it, I went across the
grassland in the direction of the sound, and up to within about ten yards
of the edge of the jungle, the fringe of which at that point projected a
little. I could see nothing, but as the people were coming my way in any
case, I remained where I was. The first person to arrive was a very plucky
Hindoo peasant--a keen sportsman and splendid stalker--and when he almost
touched me he at once pointed and said "There is a tiger." I put my rifle
to my shoulder, and said to him "Where?" "There," he said, and as he put
his hand on my shoulder I could feel it trembling with excitement. Alas, I
could not make out the tiger; but, after all, that was not so very
wonderful, as the day was dark, and the underwood fringe rather thick, but
the tiger actually managed to back gradually away without my being able to
see him. He had evidently been stalking the sambur, which had uttered the
note of alarm I had heard, and no doubt seeing that there was something at
the edge of the jungle, had crawled to the edge, and there lain down
within ten or twelve yards of me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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