I decide on Fort Bower--Felling trees--A big python--Clearing the jungle--Laying out the post--Stockades and _Sungars_--The bastions--_Panjis_ and _abattis_--The huts--Jungle materials--Ingenious craftsmen--The furniture--Sentry-posts--Alarm-signals--The _machicoulis_ gallery--Booby-traps--The water-lifter--The hospital--Chloroforming a monkey--Jungle dogs--An extraordinary shot--An unlucky deer--A meeting with a panther--The alarm--Sohanpal Singh and the tiger--Turning out to the rescue--The General's arrival--Closed gates--The inspection--The "Bower" and the "'Ump"--Flares and bombs--The General's praise--Night firing--A Christmas camp. The month of November in Buxa brought the end of the Rains and the beginning of the cold weather. Once more we could descend into the jungles below, for work or sport, without risking the deadly Terai fever. Our open-air military training, which had to be laid aside during the long, weary months of the Monsoon, was resumed. The warfare which the Assam Brigade would be called upon to wage would generally be against the savage jungle dwellers along the north-east borders. Consequently the training of the troops composing it demanded much practice in forest country; for, in the jungle, wide extensions and thin lines suitable to troops attacking in the open would be replaced by close formations, and the bayonet more often used than the bullet. Timber barriers would be substituted for earthworks, and the axe for the spade. In a jungle campaign, as the fighting column moved forward, stockaded posts would be established on the line of communication, in which convoys of supplies going to the front or of wounded or prisoners sent back to the rear could halt for the night under the protection of the permanent garrisons. When General Bower announced his intention of coming to hold his annual inspection of our detachment at the end of November, I determined to build such a stockaded post in the forest below Buxa Duar for him to see, and as useful instruction for my men. Consequently, three weeks before his arrival, I moved the double company down into the jungle. While Captain Balderston and I took up our abode in Forest Lodge, the sepoys bivouacked a few hundred yards away on a high bluff over a broad river-bed now almost dry. Here I proposed building our forest fort.