ays, in
stalking bears, bison, and sambur in the Western Mysore mountains. Danger,
too, there was at times, and quite sufficient to give a pleasing amount of
adventurous feeling to the sport. Indeed, without this moderate degree of
danger the sport would have been of quite a different kind, for is it not
evident that all sport is to be divided into two widely different
classes--sport in which you are liable to be attacked, and sport where
the attack is all on one side? It is, in short, the danger, or the
possibility of danger, which is the vital elixir of big game shooting, and
which gives one, too, an opportunity of knowing oneself, and gauging one's
presence of mind, or the want of it, as the case may be. But what, after
all, is the amount of danger? That depends very much on the experience of
the sportsman. You may make big game shooting as dangerous as you please,
and by following up a wounded bear or bison in a careless manner meet with
an accident, but if proper precautions are taken, the danger of following
up these animals is by no means so great as is generally supposed. But,
though that is so as regards bears and bisons, I must caution the reader
against supposing that there is not considerable risk in following up
wounded tigers on foot, and there can be no doubt that, as Sir Samuel
Baker says, following a wounded tiger into the jungle on foot is a work of
extreme danger. But even this may be largely diminished if proper
precautions are taken, though it must be admitted that, from the great
difficulty of distinguishing a tiger lying amongst dried forest leaves,
there must be a considerable amount of risk, though the amount of it is
rather difficult to determine, but I may mention that though I suppose
upwards of forty tigers have been killed in the neighbourhood of my
plantation, only two natives have been killed when out shooting. Besides
these accidents, one man recovered from thirteen lacerated wounds, and
another was deprived of his ear and cheek by the blow of a wounded tiger's
paw. As regards the comparative risks to life of tigers, bears, and
panthers, I have only been able to meet with one return which throws any
light on the subject--a return which confirms the native view as to the
bear being more dangerous than the tiger, and the panther much less
dangerous than either. The return in question is to be found in the "North
Kanara Gazetteer," and was supplied by the late Colonel W. Peyton, who
wrote the