armed with muskets, surrounded the elephants upon which
the officers were stationed. The people who were waiting round the
jungle, silent themselves, and busy in checking the noise and impatience
of the dogs, held in leashes, whose deep baying was occasionally
answered by a low growl from the outskirts of the wood, now received the
order to advance. Shouts and yells, mixed with the barking of the dogs,
were raised in deafening clamour on every side. The jungle, which
covered a space of fifteen or twenty acres, and which had hitherto
appeared but slightly tenanted, answered as if endued with life, by
waving its boughs and rustling its bushes in every direction, although
there was nothing to be seen.

As they advanced, beating with their long poles, and preserving a
straight and compact line, through which nothing could escape, so did
the jungle before them increase its motion; and soon the yells of
thousands of men were answered by the roars and cries of thousands of
brute animals. It was not, however, until the game had been driven so
near to the end of the jungle at which the hunters were stationed, and
until they were huddled together so close that it could no longer
contain them, that they unwillingly abandoned it. The most timorous,
the rabbit and the hare, and all the smaller tribes, first broke cover,
and were allowed to pass unnoticed; but they were soon followed by the
whole mass, who, as if by agreement among themselves, had determined at
once to decide their fate.

Crowded in incongruous heaps, without any distinction of species or of
habits, now poured out the various denizens of the woods--deer in every
variety, locking their horns in their wild confusion; the fierce
wild-boars, bristling in their rage; the bounding leopards; the swift
antelope, of every species; the savage panthers; jackals, and foxes, and
all the screaming and shrieking infinities of the monkey tribe.
Occasionally, amongst the dense mass could be perceived the huge
boa-constrictor, rolling in convolutions--now looking back with fiery
eyes upon his pursuers, now precipitating his flight--while the air was
thronged with its winged tenants, wildly screaming, and occasionally
dropping down dead with fear. To crown the whole, high in the expanse,
a multitude of vultures appeared, almost stationary on the wing, waiting
for their share of the anticipated slaughter. And as the beasts threw
down and rolled over each other in their mad caree