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
After the beat was over the beaters rushed up, and one of the natives, who
had no doubt seen the tiger from a point on the hill above, said, "His
back is broken, and he must be dead; let us go in and drag him out."
Feeling that it would be better to wait a little longer to make quite
sure, I said, just to quiet them, "Stand the people in line and count them
for the division of the reward." I had not counted more than five when up
got the tiger close to us with a startling roar, and I then experienced
what Colonel Peyton has said, namely, that there are very few even of the
stanchest sportsmen who will not draw back a pace or two at the sudden
roar of a wounded tiger. On this occasion I removed more than that, for I
at once seized a rifle and ran several yards up the hill to gain the
advantage of the ground, and I need hardly say that there was a slight
scatter amongst the unarmed natives. But as the tiger did not charge out,
I saw that he was probably off, and at once ran down the side of the
jungly ravine to head him, and at the first break in the jungle got up
into a tree. The tiger almost immediately appeared on the opposite side of
the ravine, going steadily along, and showing no signs of being wounded
whatever, and I fired at, but missed him, partly on account of my awkward
position in the tree and partly from excitement. Then I ran on to the next
open break in the jungly ravine, and again got up into a tree. By this
time the beaters came up in the rear of the tiger, who refused to go
further down the ravine, or was unable to do so, and the natives sent to
me to go up and attack the tiger in the jungle, to which I replied by
requesting them to be good enough to forward the animal to me. However, as
he refused to move, and it was getting late, I went up the ravine, and
they pointed out the tiger, which was lying on its side. I fired a shot at
it, when it got up, then I fired another at once, and it fell and died
almost immediately. This was by far the largest tiger ever killed in our
district, and an old sportsman who had seen much of shooting during a long
residence in India told me that he was sure he had never seen a larger
skin, and did not know that he had ever seen one as big. As evidence of
size, he attached, I may mention, great importance to the width of the
skin of the tail just at its junction with the body. The paws of this
tiger, too, were remarkably larger than those of other tigers. I found
that the first bullet had taken effect in the neck, which it had no doubt
grazed with sufficient force to paralyze the tiger for a time, and Colonel
Peyton records a similar case where great risk had been incurred from
approaching a tiger apparently dead, but where the spine had been merely
grazed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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