An Indian jungle--The trees--Creepers--Orchids--The undergrowth--On an elephant in the jungle--Forcing a passage--Wild bees--Red ants--A lost river--A _sambhur_ hind--Spiders--Jungle fowl--A stag--_Hallal_--Wounded beasts--A halt--Skinning the stag--Ticks--Butcher apprentices--Natural rope--Water in the air--_Pani bel_--Trail of wild elephants--Their habits--An impudent monkey--An adventure with a rogue elephant--Fire lines--Wild dogs--A giant squirrel--The barking deer--A good bag--Spotted deer--Protective colouring--Dangerous beasts--Natives' dread of bears--A bison calf--The fascination of the forest--The generous jungle--Wild vegetables--Natural products--A home in the trees--Forest Lodge the First--Destroyed by a wild elephant--Its successor--A luncheon-party in the air--The salt lick--Discovery of a coal mine--A monkey's parliament--The jungle by night. From the dense tangled undergrowth the great trees lift their bare stems, each striving to push its leafy crown through the thick canopy of foliage and get its share of the sun. The huge trunks are devoid of branches for many feet above the ground; but around them twist giant creepers which strangle them in close embrace and sink their coils deep into the bark. Here and there a tree, killed by the cruel pressure, stands withered and lifeless but still held up by the murderous parasite. From bole to bole these creepers, thick as a ship's hawser, swing in festoons, coiling and writhing around each other in tangled confusion. Tree-trunk and bough are matted with the glossy green leaves and trails of mauve and white blossoms of innumerable orchids. The trees are not the slender palms that fill the pictures of tropical jungles by untravelled artists, but the giants of the forest--huge _sal_ and teak trees and straight-stemmed _simal_ with its buttressed trunk star-shaped in section with its curious projecting flanges.