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THE MOHAN MAN-EATER

EIGHTEEN miles from our summer home in the Himalayas
there is a long ridge running east and west, some 9,000 feet
in height. On the upper slopes of the eastern end of this ridge
there is a luxuriant growth of oat grass; below this grass the
hill falls steeply away in a series of rock cliffs to the Kosi river
below.

One day a party of women and girls from the village on the
north t f ace of the ridge were cutting the oat grass, when a tiger
suddenly appeared in their midst. In the stampede that
followed an elderly woman lost her footing, rolled down the
steep slope, and disappeared over the cliff. The tiger, evidently
alarmed by the screams of the women, vanished as mysteriously
as it had appeared, and when the women had reassembled and
recovered from their fright, they went down the grassy slope
and, looking over the cliff, saw their companion lying on a
narrow ledge some distance below them.

The woman said she was badly injured it was found later
that she had broken a leg and fractured several ribs and that
she could not move. Ways and means of a rescue were dis-
, cussed, and it was finally decided that it was a job for men;
and as no one appeared to be willing to remain at the spot, they
informed the injured woman that they were going back to the
village for help. The woman begged not to be left alone, how-
ever, and at her entreaty a girl, sixteen years of age, volunteered
to stay with her. So, while the rest of the party set off for the
village, the girl made her way down to the right, where a rift
in the cliff enabled her to get a foothold on the ledge.

110 Man-eaters of Kumaon

This ledge only extended half-way across the face of the
cliff and ended, a few yards from where the woman was lying,
in a shallow depression. Fearing that she might fall off the
ledge and be killed on the rocks hundreds of feet below the
woman asked the girl to move her to this depression, and this
difficult and dangerous feat the girl successfully accomplished.
There was only room for one in the depression, so that the girl
squatted, as only an Indian can squat, on the ledge facing the
woman.

The village was four miles away, and once, and once again,
the two on the ledge speculated as to the length of time it
would take their companions to get back to the village; what
men they were likely to find in the village at that time of day;
how long it would take to explain what had happened, and
finally, how long it would take the rescue party to arrive.

Conversation had been carried on in whispers for fear the
tiger might be lurking in the vicinity and hear them and then,
suddenly, the woman gave a gasp and the girl, seeing the look
of horror on her face and the direction in which she was look-
ing, turned her head and over her shoulder saw the tiger,
stepping out of the rift in the cliff onto the ledge.

Few of us, I imagine, have escaped that worst of all night-
mares in which, while our limbs and vocal cords are paralysed
with fear, some terrible beast in monstrous form approaches to
destroy us; the nightmare from which, sweating fear in every
pore, we waken with a cry of thankfulness to Heaven that it
was only a dream. There was no such happy awakening from
the nightmare of that unfortunate girl, and little imagination is
needed to picture the scene. A rock cliff with a narrow ledge
running partly across it and ending in a little depression in
which an injured woman is lying; a young girl frozen with ter-
jor squatting on the ledge, and a tiger slowly creeping towards
her; retreat in every direction cut off, and no help at hand.

Mothi Singh, an old friend of mine, was in the village

The Mohan Man-eater 111

visiting a sick daughter when the women arrived, and he headed
the rescue party. When this party went down the grassy slope
and looked over the cliff, they saw the woman lying in a swoon,
and on the ledge they saw splashes of blood.

The injured woman was carried back to the village, and
when she had been revived and had told her story, Mothi Singh
set out on his eighteen-mile walk to me. He was an old man
well over sixty, but he scouted the suggestion that he was tired
and needed a rest, so we set off together to make investigations.
But there was nothing that I could do, for twenty-four hours
had elapsed and all that the tiger had left of the brave young
girl, who had volunteered to stay with her injured companion,
were a few bits of bone and her torn and blood-stained clothes.

This was the first human being killed by the tiger which
later received recognition in Government records as ' The Mohan
Man-eater ' .

After killing the girl, the tiger went down the Kosi valley
for the winter, killing on its way among other people two
men of the Public Works Department, and the daughter-in-law
of our member of the Legislative Council. As summer
approached it returned to the scene of its first kill, and for
several years thereafter its beat extended up and down the Kosi
valley from Kakrighat to Gargia a distance of roughly forty
miles until it finally took up its quarters on the hill above
Mohan, in the vicinity of a village called Kartkanoula.

At the District Conference, to which reference has been made
in a previous story, the three man-eating tigers operating at that
time in the Kumaon Division were classed as follows in their
order of importance:

ist Chowgarh, Naini Tal District.
2nd Mohan, Almora District.
3rd Kanda, Garhwal District.

After the Chowgarh tiger had been accounted for I was

112 Man-eaters of Kumaon

reminded by Baines, Deputy Commissioner, Almora, that only
a part of my promise made at the conference had been fulfilled,
and that the Mohan tiger was next on the list. The tiger, he
stated, was becoming more active and a greater menace every
day, and had during the previous week killed three human
beings, residents of Kartkanoula village. It was to this village
Baines now suggested I should go.

While I had been engaged with the Chowgarh tiger, Baines
had persuaded some sportsmen to go to Kartkanoula, but though
they had sat up over human and animal kills they had failed to
make contact with the man-eater and had returned to their
depot at Ranikhet. Baines informed me I should now have the
ground to myself a very necessary precaution, for nerves wear
thin when hunting man-eaters, and accidents are apt to result
when two or more parties are hunting the same animal.

ii

It was on a blistering hot day in May that I, my two servants,
and the six Garhwalis I had brought with me from Naini Tal
alighted from the i p.m. train at Ramnagar and set off on our
twenty-four-mile foot journey to Kartkanoula. Our first stage
was only seven miles, but it was evening before we arrived at
Gargia. I had left home in a hurry on receiving Baines 1 letter,
and had not had time to ask for permission to occupy the Gargia
Forest Bungalow, so I slept out in the open.

On the far side of the Kosi river at Gargia there is a cliff
several hundred feet high, and while I was trying to get sleep
I heard what I thought were stones falling off the cliff on the
rocks below. The sound was exactly the same as would be
made by bringing two stones violently together. After some
time this sound worried me, as sounds will on a hot night, and
as the moon was up and the light good enough to avoid
stepping on snakes, I left my camp bed and set out to make
investigations. I found that the sound was being made by a

The Mohan Man-eater 113

colony ofjrogs in a marsh by the side of the road. I have heard
land-, water- and tree-frogs making strange sounds in different
parts of the world, but I have never heard anything so strange
as the sound made by the frogs at Gargia in the month of May.

After a very early start next morning we did the twelve
miles to Mohan before the sun got hot, and while my men
were cooking their food and my servants were preparing my
breakfast, the chowkidar of the bungalow, two Forest Guards,
and several men from the Mohan bazaar, entertained me with
stories of the man-eater, the most recent of which concerned
the exploits of a fisherman who had been fishing the Kosi river.
One of the Forest Guards claimed to be the proud hero of this
exploit, and he described very graphically how he had been
out one day with the fisherman and, on turning a bend in the
river, they had come face to face with the man-eater; and how
the fisherman had thrown away his rod and had grabbed the
rifle off his the Forest Guard's shoulder; and how they had
run for their lives with the tiger close on their heels. ' Did
you look back?' I asked. 'No, sahib/ said he, pitying my
ignorance. ' How could a man who was running for his life
from a man-eater look back?'; and how the fisherman, who
was leading by a head, in a thick patch of grass had fallen over
a sleeping bear, after which there had been great confusion and
shouting and everyone, including the bear, had run in different
directions and the fisherman had got lost; and how after a long
time the fisherman had eventually found his way back to the
bungalow and had said a lot to him the Forest Guard on the
subject of having run away with his rifle and left him empty-
handed to deal with a man-eating tiger and an angry bear. The
Forest Guard ended up his recital by saying that the fisherman
had left Mohan the following day saying that he had hurt his
leg when he fell over the bear, and that anyway there were
no fish to be caught in the Kosi river.

By midday we were ready to continue our journey, and,

9

114 Man-eaters of Kumaon

with many warnings from the small crowd that had collected
to see us off to keep a sharp lookout for the man-eater while
going through the dense forest that lay ahead of us, we set out
on our four-thousand-foot climb to Kartkanoula.
1 Our progress was slow, for my men were carrying heavy
loads and the track was excessively steep, and the heat terrific.
There had been some trouble in the upper villages a short time
previously, necessitating the dispatch from Naini Tal of a small
police force, and I had been advised to take everything I needed
for myself and my men with me, as owing to the unsettled con-
ditions it would not be possible to get any stores locally. This
was the reason for the heavy loads my men were carrying.

After many halts we reached the edge of the cultivated land
in the late afternoon, and as there was now no further danger
to be apprehended for my men from the man-eater, I left them
and set out alone for the Foresters' Hut which is visible from
Mohan, and which had been pointed out to me by the Forest
Guards as the best place for my stay while at Kartkanoula.

The hut is on the ridge of the high hill overlooking Mohan,
and as I approached it along the level stretch of road running
across the face of the hill, in turning a corner in a ravine where
there is some dense undergrowth, I came on a woman filling
an earthenware pitcher from a little trickle of water flowing
down a wooden trough. Apprehending that my approach on
rubber-soled shoes would frighten her, I coughed to attract her
attention, noticed that she started violently a*s I did so, and a
few yards beyond her, stopped to light a cigarette. A minute
or two later I asked, without turning my head, if it was safe
for anyone to be in this lonely spot, and after a little hesitation
the woman answered that it was not safe, but that water had
to be fetched and as there was no one in the home to accompany
her, she had come alone. Was there no man? Yes, there was
a man, but he was in the fields ploughing, and in any case it
was the duty of women to fetch water. How long would it

The Mohan Man-eater H5

take to fill the pitcher? Only a little longer. The woman had;
got over her fright and shyness, and I was now subjected to $
close cross-examination. Was I a policeman? No. Was I a
Forest Officer? No, Then who was I? Just a man. Why
had I come? To try and help the people of Kartkanoula. In
what way? By shooting the man-eater. Where had I heard
about the man-eater? Why had I come alone? Where were
my men? How many were there? How long would I stay?
And so on.

The pitcher was not declared full until the woman had
satisfied her curiosity, and as she walked behind me she pointed
to one of several ridges running down the south face of the hill,
and pointing out a big tree growing on a grassy slope said that
three days previously the man-eater had killed a woman under
it; this tree I noted, with interest, was only two or three hundred
yards from my objective the Foresters' Hut. We had now
come to a footpath running up the hill, and as she took it the
woman said the village from which she had come was just round
the shoulder of the hill, and added that she was now quite safe.

Those of you who know the women of India will realize
that I had accomplished a lot, especially when it is remembered
that there had recently been trouble in this area with the police.
So far from alarming the woman and thereby earning the
hostility of the entire countryside I had, by standing by while*
she filled her pitcher and answering a few questions, gained
a friend who would in the shortest time possible acquaint the
whole population of the village of my arrival; that I was not
an officer of any kind, and that the sole purpose of my visit was
to try to rid them of the man-eater.

in

The Foresters' Hut was on a little knoll some twenty yards
to the left of the road, and as the door was only fastened with
91 chain I opened it and walked inside. The room was about

116 Man-eaters of Knmaon

iien feet square and quite clean, but had a mouldy disused
smell; I learnt later that the hut had not been occupied since
the advent of the man-eater in that area eighteen months
previously. On either side of the main room there were two
narrow slips of rooms, one used as a kitchen, and the other
as a fuel store. The hut would make a nice safe shelter for
my men, and having opened the back door to let a current of
air blow through the room, I went outside and selected a spot
between the hut and the road for my 40-lb. tent. There was no
furniture of any kind in the hut, so I sat down on a rock near
the road to await the arrival of my men.

The ridge at this point was about fifty yards wide, and as
tjxe hut was on the south edge of the ridge, and the village on
ttie north face of the hill, the latter was not visible from the
former. I had been sitting on the rock for about ten minutes
when a head appeared over the crest from the direction of the
village, followed by a second and a third. My friend the water-
carrier had not been slow in informing the village of my arrival.

When strangers meet in India and wish to glean information
on any particular subject from each other, it is customary to
refrain from broaching the subject that has brought them
together whether accidentally or of set purpose until the very
last moment, and to fill up the interval by finding out everything
concerning each other's domestic and private affairs; as for
instance, whether married and if so the number and sex of
children and their ages; if not married, why not; occupation
and amount of pay, and so on. Questions that would in any
other part of the world earn one a thick ear are in India and
especially in our hills asked so artlessly and universally that no
one who has lived among the people dreams of taking offence
at them.

In my conversation with the woman I had answered many
of the set questions, and the ones of a domestic nature which
it is not permissible for a woman to ask of a man were being

The Mohan Man-eater 117

put to me when my men arrived. They had filled a kettle at
the little spring, and in an incredibly short time dry sticks were
collected, a fire lit, the kettle boiled, and tea and biscuits pro-
duced. As I opened a tin of condensed milk I heard the men
asking my servants why condensed milk was being used instead
of fresh milk and receiving the answer that there was no fresh
milk; and further that, as it had been apprehended that owing
to some previous trouble in this area no fresh milk would
be available, a large supply of tinned milk had been brought.
The men appeared to be very distressed on hearing this and
after a whispered conversation one of them, who I learnt later
was the Headman of Kartkanoula, addressed me and said it
was an insult to them to have brought tinned milk, when all
the resources of the village were at my disposal. I admitted
my mistake, which I said was due to my being a stranger to
that locality, and told the Headman that if he had any milk
to spare I would gladly purchase a small quantity for my daily
requirements, but that beyond the milk, I wanted for nothing.

My loads had now been unstrapped, while more men had
arrived from the village, and when I told my servants where
I wanted them to pitch my tent there was a horrified exclama-
tion from the assembled villagers. Live in a tent indeed!
Was I ignorant of the fact that there was a man-eating tiger in
this area and that it used this road regularly every night? If I
doubted their word, let me come and see the claw marks on the
doors of the houses where the road ran through the upper end
of the village. Moreover, if the tiger did not eat me in the
tent it would certainly eat my men in the hut, if I was not
there to protect them. This last statement made my men prick
up their ears and add their entreaties to the advice of the
villagers, so eventually I agreed to stay in the main room,
while my two servants occupied the kitchen, and the six
Garhwalis the fuel store.

The subject of the man-eater having been introduced, it was

118 Man-eaters of Kumaofi

now possible for me to pursue it without admitting that it was
the one object I had wished to introduce from the moment
the first man had put his head over the ridge. The path leading
down to the tree where the tiger had claimed its last victim was
pointed out to me, and the time of day, and the circumstances
tinder which the woman had been killed, explained. The
road along which the tiger came every night, I was informed,
tan eastward to Baital Ghat with a branch down to Mohan, and
westward to Chaknakl on the Ramganga river. The road going
west, after running through the upper part of the village and
through cultivated land for half a mile, turned south along the
face of the hill, and on rejoining the ridge on whigh the hut
was, followed the ridge right down to Chaknakl. This portion
of the road between Kartkanoula and Chaknakl, some six miles
long, was considered to be very dangerous, and had not been
used since the advent of the man-eater; I subsequently found
that after leaving the cultivated land the road entered dense tree
and scrub jungle, which extended right down to the river.

The main cultivation of Kartkanoula village is on the north
face of the hill, and beyond this cultivated land there are several
small ridges with deep ravines between. On the nearest of these
ridges, and distant about a thousand yards from the Foresters'
Hut, there is a big pine tree. Near this tree, some ten days
previously, the tiger had killed, partly eaten and left, a woman,
and as the three sportsmen who were staying in a Forest
Bungalow four miles away were unable to climb the pine tree the
villagers had put up three machans in three separate trees, at
distances varying from one hundred to one hundred and fifty
yards from the kill, and the machans had been occupied by the
sportsmen and their servants a little before sunset. There was a
young moon at the time, and after it had set the villagers heard
a number of shots being fired, and when they questioned the
servants next morning the servants said they did not know what
had been fired at for they themselves had not seen anything.

The Mohan Man-eater 119

Two days later a cow had been- killed over which the sportsmen
had sat /and again; as on the previous occasion, shots had been
fired after the moon had set. It is these admittedly sporting
but unsuccessful attempts to bag man-eaters that makes them
so wary, and the more difficult to shoot the longer they live.*

The villagers gave me one very interesting item of news in
connexion with the tiger. They said they always knew when
it had come into the village by the low moaning sound it made.
On questioning them closely I learnt that at times the sound
was continuous as the tiger passed between the houses, while
at other times the sound stopped for sometimes short, and other
times long periods.

From this information I concluded (a) that the tiger was
suffering from a wound, (b) that the wound was of such a
nature that the tiger only felt it when in motion, and that
therefore, (c) the wound was in one of its legs. I was assured
that the tiger had not been wounded by any local shikari, or
by any of the sportsmen from Ranikhet who had sat up for it;
however, this was of little importance, for the tiger had been
a man-eater for years, and the wound that I believed it was
suffering from might have been the original cause of its be-
coming a man-eater. A very interesting point and one that
could only be cleared up by examining the tiger after it
was dead.

The men were curious to know why I was so interested in
the sound made by the tiger, and when I told them that it
indicated the animal had a wound in one of its legs and that
the wound had been caused either by a bullet, or porcupine
quills, they disagreed with my reasoning and said that on the
occasions they had seen the tiger it appeared to be in sound
condition, and further, that the ease with which it killed and
carried off its victims was proof that it was not crippled in any
way. However, what I told them was remembered and later
earned me the reputation of being gifted with second sight.

120 Man-eaters of Kumaon

IV

When passing through Ramnagar I had asked the Tahsildar
to purchase two young male buffaloes for me and to send them
to Mohan, where my men would take them over.

I told the villagers I intended tying up one of the buffaloes
near the tree where three days previously the woman had been
killed and the other on the road to Chaknakl, and they said
they could think of no better sites, but that they would talk
the matter over among themselves, and let me know in the
morning if they had any other suggestions to make. Night was
now drawing in, and before leaving the Headman promised
to send word to all the adjoining villages in the morning to let
them know of my arrival, the reason for my coming, and to
impress on them the urgency of letting me know without loss
of time of any kills, or attacks by the tiger in their areas.

The musty smell in the room had much decreased though
it was still noticeable. However, I paid no attention to it, and
after a bath and dinner put two stones against the doors there
being no other way of keeping them shut and being bone-tired
after my day's exertions went to bed and to sleep. I am a
light sleeper, and two or three hours later I awoke on hearing
an animal moving about in the jungle. It came right up to
the back door. Getting hold of a rifle and a torch, I moved
the stone aside with my foot and heard an animal moving off
as I opened the door it might from the sound it was making
have been the tiger, but it might also have been a leopard or
a porcupine. However, the jungle was too thick for me to see
what it was. Back in the room and with the stone once more
in position, I noticed I had developed a sore throat, which I
attributed to having sat in the wind after the hot walk up from
Mohan; but when my servant pushed the door open and brought
in my early-morning cup of tea, I found I was suffering from
an attack of laryngitis, due possibly to my having slept in
a long-disused hut, the roof of which was swarming with bats.

The Mohan Man-eater 121

My servant informed me that * he and his companion had
escaped infection, but that the six Garhwalis in the fuel store
were all suffering from the same complaint as I was. My stock
of medicine consisted of a two-ounce bottle of iodine and a few
tablets of quinine, and on rummaging in my gun-case I found
a small paper packet of permanganate which my sister had
provided for me on a previous occasion. The packet was soaked
through with gun oil, but the crystals were still soluble, and
I put a liberal quantity of the crystals into a tin of hot water,
together with some iodine. The resulting gargle was very
potent, and while it blackened our teeth it did much to relieve
the soreness in our throats.

After an early breakfast I sent four men down to Mohan
to bring up the two buffaloes, and myself set off to prospect
the ground where the woman had been killed. From the direc-
tions I had received overnight I had no difficulty in finding the
spot where the tiger had attacked and killed the woman, as she
was tying the grass she had cut into a bundle. The grass, and
the rope she was using, were lying just as they had been left,
as were also two bundles of grass left by her companions when
they had run off in fright to the village. The men had told
me that the body of the woman had not been found, but from
the fact that three perfectly good lengths of rope and the dead
woman's sickle had been left in the jungle, I am inclined to
think that no attempt had been made to find her.

The woman had been killed at the upper end of a small
landslide, and the tiger had taken her down the slide and into*
a thick patch of undergrowth. Here the tiger had waited,
possibly to give the two women time to get out of sight, and
had then crossed the ridge visible from the hut, after which it
had gone with its kill straight down the hill for a mile or more
into dense tree and scrub jungle. The tracks were now four
days old, and as there was nothing to be gained by following
them further, I turned back to the hut.

122 Man-eaters of Kumaon

'. The climb back to the ridge was a very steep one, and when
I reached the hut at about midday I found an array of pots and
pans of various shapes and sizes on the verandah, all containing
milk. In contrast to the famine of the day before there was
now abundance, sufficient milk in fact for me to have bathed
in. My servants informed me they had protested to no effect
and that each man had said, as he deposited his vessel on the
verandah, that he would take good care that I used no more
condensed milk while I remained in their midst.

I did not expect the men to return from Mohan with the
buffaloes before nightfall, so after lunch I set out to have a
look at the road to Chaknakl.

From the hut the hill sloped gradually upwards to a height
of about five hundred feet, and was roughly triangular in shape.
The road, after running through cultivated land for half a mile,
turned sharply to the left, went across a steep rocky hill until
it regained the ridge, and then turned to the right and followed
the ridge down to Chaknakl. The road was level for a short
distance after coming out on the ridge, and then went steeply
down, the gradient in places being eased by hairpin bends.

I had the whole afternoon before me, and examined about
three miles of the road very carefully. When a tiger uses a
road regularly it invariably leaves signs of its passage by making
scratch marks on the side of the road. These scratch marks,
made for the same purpose as similar marks made by domestic
cats and all other members of the cat family, are of very great
interest to the sportsman, for th<ey provide him with the follow-
ing very useful information, ~{/L) whether the animal that has
made the mark is a male or a female, ^(4) the direction in which
it was travelling, (3^ the length of time that has elapsed since
it passed, (4)- the direction and approximate distance of its head-
quarters, (5} the nature of its kills, and finally \6) whether the
animal has recently had a meal of human flesh. The value of
this easily-acquired information to one who is hunting a man-

The Mohan Man-eater 123

ekter on strange ground will be easily understood. Tigers
leave their pug marks on the roads they use and these pug marks
can provide one with quite a lot of useful information, as for
instance the direction and speed at which the animal was
travelling, its sex and age, whether all four limbs are sound,
and if not sound, wjudx^particular limb, is.. defective.

The road I was on had through long disuse got overgrown
with short stiff grass and was therefore not, except in one or
two damp places, a good medium on which to leave pug marks.
One of these "damp places was within a few yards of where the
road came out on the ridge, and just below this spot there was
a green and very stagnant pool of water; a regular drinking
place for sambur.

I found several scratch marks just round the corner where
the road turned to the left after leaving the cultivated ground,
the most recent of which was three days old. Two hundred
yards from these scratch marks the road, for a third of its width,
ran under an overhanging rock. This rock was ten feet high
and at the top of it there was a flat piece of ground two or three
yards wide, which was only visible from the road when
approaching the rock from the village side. On the ridge I
found more scratch marks, but I did not find any pug marks
until I got to the first hairpin bend. Here, in cutting across the
bend, the tiger had left its tracks where it had jumped down
onto some soft earth. The tracks, which were a day old, were
a little distorted, but even so it was possible to see that they
had been made by a big, old, male tiger.

When one is moving in an area in which a man-eating tiger
is operating progress is of necessity very slow, for every
obstruction in one's line of walk, be it a bush, a tree, rock, or
an inequality in the ground capable of concealing death, has
to be cautiously approached, while at the same time, if a wind
is not blowing and there was no wind that evening a careful
and constant lookout has to be maintained behind and on either

124 Man-eaters of Kumaori

side. Further, there was much of interest to be looked at,
for it was the month of May, when orchids at this elevation
4,000 to 5,000 feet are at their best, and I have never seen a
greater variety or a greater wealth of bloom than the forests on
that hill had to show. The beautiful white butterfly orchid
was in greatest profusion, and every second tree of any size
appeared to have decked itself out with them.

It was here that I first saw a bird that Prater of the Bombay
Natural History Society later very kindly identified for me as
the Mountain Crag Martin, a bird of a uniform ash colour,
with a slight tinge of pink on its breast, and in size a little
smaller than a Rosy Pastor. These birds had their broods with
them, and while the young ones four to a brood sat in a row
on a dry twig at the top of a high tree, the parent birds kept
darting away often to a distance of two or three hundred yards
to catch insects. The speed at which they flew was amazing,
and I am quite sure there is nothing in feathers in North India,
not excluding our winter visitor the great Tibetan Swallow, that
these Martins could not make rings round. Another thing about
these birds that was very interesting was their wonderful eye-
sight. On occasions they would fly in a dead straight line for
several hundred yards before turning and coming back. It was
not possible, at the speed they were going, that they were chas-
ing insects on these long flights, and as after each flight the bird
invariably thrust some minute object into one of the gaping
mouths, I believe they were able to see insects at a range at
which they would not have been visible to the human eye
through the most powerful field-glasses.

Safeguarding my neck, looking out for tracks, enjoying nature
generally, and listening to all the jungle sounds a sambur a
mile away down the hillside in the direction of Mohan was
warning the jungle folk of the presence of a tiger, and a kakar
and a langur (Entellus monkey) on the road to Chaknakl were
warning other jungle folk of the presence of a leopard time

The Mohan Man-eater 125

passed quickly, and I found myself back at the overhanging
rock as the sun was setting. As I approached this rock I
marked it as being quite the most dangerous spot in all the
ground I had so far gone over. A tiger lying on the grass-
covered bit of ground above the rock would only have to wait
until anyone going either up or down the road was under or
had passed it to have them at his mercy a very dangerous spot
indeed, and one that needed remembering.

When I got back to the hut I found the two buffaloes had
arrived, but it was too late to do anything with them that
evening.

My servants had kept a fire going most of the day in th4
hut, the air of which was now sweet and clean, but even so
I was not going to risk sleeping in a closed room again; so I
made them cut two thorn bushes and wedge them firmly into
the doorways before going to bed. There was no movement
in the jungle near the back door that night, and after a sound
sleep I woke in the morning with my throat very much better.

I spent most of the morning talking to the village people
and listening to the tales they had to tell of the man-eater and
the attempts that had been made to shoot it, and after lunch
I tied up one buffalo on the small ridge the tiger had crossed
when carrying away the woman, and the other at the hairpin
bed where I had seen the pug marks.

Next morning I found both buffaloes sleeping peacefully after
having eaten most of the big feed of grass I had provided them
with. I had tied bells round the necks of both animals, and the
absence of any sound from these bells as I approached each
buffalo gave me two disappointments for, as I have said, I found
both of them asleep. That evening I changed the position of
the second buffalo from the hairpin bend to where the road came
out on the ridge, close to the pool of stagnant water.

The methods most generally employed in tiger shooting can
briefly be described as (a) sitting up, and (6) beating, and

126s Man-eaters of Kumaon

young male buffaloes are used as bait in both cases. The
procedure followed is to select the area most convenient -for
a sit-up, or for a beat, and to tie the bait out in the late evening
using a rope which the bait cannot, but which the tiger can,
break; and when the bait is taken to either sit up over the kill
on a machan in a tree, or beat the cover into which the kill
has been taken.

In the present case neither of these methods was feasible.
My throat, though very much better, was still sore and it would
not have been possible for me to have sat up for any length
of time without coughing, and a beat over that vast area of
heavily wooded and broken ground would have been hopeless
even if I had been able to muster a thousand men, so I decided
to stalk the tiger, and to this end carefully sited my two buffaloes
and tied them to stout saplings with four one-inch-thick hemp
ropes, and left them out in the jungle for the whole twenty-
four hours.

I now stalked the buffaloes in turn each morning as soon as 1
there was sufficient light to shoot by, and again in the evening,
for tigers, be they man-eaters or not, kill as readily in the day as
they do at night in areas in which they are not disturbed, and
during the day, while I waited for news from outlying villages,
nursed my throat, and rested, my six Garhwalis fed and watered
the buffaloes.

On the fourth evening when I was returning at sunset after
visiting the buffalo on the ridge, as I came round a bend in the'
road thirty yards from the overhanging rock, I suddenly, and
for the first time since my arrival at Kartkanoula, felt I was
in danger, and that the danger that threatened me was on the
rock in front of me. For five minutes I stood perfectly still
with my eyes fixed on the upper edge of the rock, watching
for movement. At that short range the flicker of an eyelid
would have caught my eyes, but there was not even this small
movement; and after going forward ten paces, I again stood

The Mohan Man-eater 127

watching for several minutes. The fact that I had seen no
movement did not in any way reassure me the man-eater was
on the rock, of that I was sure; and the question was, what was
I going to do about it? The hill, as I have already told you,
was very steep, had great rocks jutting out of it, and was
overgrown with long grass and tree and scrub jungle. Bad as
the going was, had it been earlier in the day I would have gone
back and worked round and above the tiger to try to get a*
shot at him, but with only half an hour of daylight left, and
the best part of a mile still to go, it would have been madness
to have left the road. So, slipping up the safety-catch and
putting the rifle to my shoulder, I started to pass the rock.

The road here was about eight feet wide, and going to the
extreme outer edge I started walking crab-fashion, feeling each
step with my feet before putting my weight down to keep from
stepping off into space. Progress was slow and difficult, but
as I drew level with the overhanging rock and then began to
pass it, hope rose high that the tiger would remain where he
was until I reached that part of the road from which the flat
bit of ground above the rock, on which he was lying, was
visible. The tiger, however, having failed to catch me off my
guard was taking no chances, and I had just got clear of the
rock when I heard a low muttered growl above me, and a little
later first a kakar went off barking to the right, and then two
hind sambur started belling near the crest of the triangular
hill.

The tiger had got away with a sound skin, but for the
matter of that, so had I, so there was no occasion for regrets,
and from the place on the hill where the sambur said he was,
I felt sure he would hear the bell I had hung round the neck
of the buffalo that was tied on the ridge near the stagnant
pool.

When I reached the cultivated land I found a group of men
waiting for me. They had heard the kakar and sambur and

128 Man-eaters of Kumaon

were very disappointed that I had not seen the tiger, but cheered
up when I told them I had great hopes for the morrow.

During the night a dust-storm came on, followed by heavy
rain, and I found to my discomfort that the roof of the hut
was very porous. However, I eventually found a spot where
it was leaking less than in others, dragged my camp bed to
it and continued my sleep. It was a brilliantly clear morning
when I awoke; the rain had washed the heat haze and dust
out of the atmosphere, and every leaf and blade of grass was
glistering in the newly risen sun.

Hitherto I had visited the nearer buffalo first, but this morn-
ing I had an urge to reverse the daily procedure, and after
instructing my men to wait until the sun was well up and then
go to feed and water the nearer buffalo, I set off with high
hopes down the Chaknakl road; having first cleaned and oiled
my 450/400 rifle a very efficient weapon, and a good and
faithful friend of many years' standing.

The overhanging rock that I passed with such trouble the
previous evening did not give me a moment's uneasiness now,
and after passing it I started looking for tracks, for the rain had
softened the surface of the road. I saw nothing however until
I came to the damp place on the road, which, as I have said,
was on the near side of the ridge and close to the pool where the
buffalo was tied. Here in the soft earth I found the pug marks
of the tiger, made before the storm had come on, and going in
the direction of the ridge. Close to this spot there is a rock
about three feet high, on the khud side of the road. On the
previous occasions that I had stalked down the road I had
found that by standing on this rock I could look over a hump
in the road and see the buffalo where it was tied forty yards
away. When I now climbed on to the rock and slowly raised
my head, I found that the buffalo had gone. This discovery

The Mohan Man-eater 129

was as disconcerting as it was inexplicable. To prevent the*
tiger from carrying the buffalo away to some distant part of
the jungle, where the only method of getting a shot would
have been by sitting up on the ground or in a tree a hopeless
proceeding with my throat in the condition it was in I had
used four thicknesses of strong one-inch-thick hemp rope, and
even so the tiger had got away with the kill.

I was wearing the thinnest of rubber-soled shoes, and very
silently I approached the sapling to which the buffalo had been
tied and examined the ground. The buffalo had been killed
before the storm, but had been carried away after the rain had
stopped, without any portion of it having been eaten. Three
of the ropes I had twisted together had been gnawed through,
and the fourth had been broken. Tigers do not usually gnaw
through ropes; however, this one had done so, and had carried
off the kill down the hill facing Mohan. My plans had been
badly upset, but very fortunately the rain had come to my
assistance. The thick carpet of dead leaves which the day before
had been as dry as tinder were now wet and pliable, and pro-
vided I made no mistakes, the pains the tiger had been to in
getting away with the kill might yet prove his undoing.

When entering a jungle in which rapid shooting might at
any moment become necessary, I never feel happy until I have
reassured myself that my rifle is loaded. To pull a trigger in
an emergency and wake up in the Happy Hunting Grounds
or elsewhere because one had omitted to load a weapon, would
be one of those acts of carelessness for which no excuse could
be found; so though I knew I had loaded my rifle before I came
to the overhanging rock, I now opened it and extracted the
cartridges. I changed one that was discoloured and dented,
and after moving the safety-catch up and down several times
to make sure it was working smoothly I have never carried a
cocked weapon I set off to follow the drag.

This word 'drag', when it is used to describe the mark left

130 Man-eaters of Kumaon

on the ground by a tiger when it is moving its kill from one
place to another, is misleading, for a tiger when taking its kill
any distance (I have seen a tiger cany a full-grown cow for four
miles) does not drag it, it carries it; and if the kill is too heavy
to be carried, it is left. The drag is distinct or faint according
to the size of the animal that is being carried, and the manner
in which it is being held. For instance, assuming the kill is a
sambur and the tiger is holding it by the neck the hind quarters
will trail on the ground leaving a distinct drag mark. On the other
hand, if the sambur is being held by the middle of the back,
there may be a faint drag mark, or there may be none at all.
In the present case the tiger was carrying the buffalo by the
neck, and the hind quarters trailing on the ground were leaving
a drag mark it was easy to follow. For a hundred yards the
tiger went diagonally across the face of the hill until he came to
a steep clay bank. In attempting to cross this bank he had
slipped and relinquished his hold of the kill, which had rolled
down the hill for thirty or forty yards until it had fetched up
against a tree. On recovering the kill the tiger picked it up by
the back, and from now on only one leg occasionally touched
the ground, leaving a faint drag mark, which nevertheless,
owing to the hillside being carpeted with bracken, was not
very difficult to follow. In his fall the tiger had lost direction,
and he now appeared to be undecided where to take the kill.
First he went a couple of hundred yards to the right, then a
hundred yards straight down the hill through a dense patch of
ringals (stunted bamboo). After forcing his way with consider-
able difficulty through the ringals he turned to the left and went
diagonally across the hill for a few hundred yards until he came
to a great rock, to the right of which he skirted. This rock
was flush with the ground on the approach side, and, rising
gently for twenty feet, appeared to project out over a hollow
or dell of considerable extent. If there was a cave or recess
under the projection, it would be a very likely place for the

The Mohan Man-eater 131

tiger to have taken his kill to, so leaving the drag I stepped on
to the rock and moved forward very slowly, examining every
yard of ground below, and on either side of me, as it came into
view. On reaching the end of the projection and looking over
I was disappointed to find that the hill came up steeply to meet
the rock, and that there was no cave or recess under it as I
had expected there would be.

As the point of the rock offered a good view of the dell and
of the surrounding jungle and was comparatively safe from
an attack from the man-eater I sat down; and as I did so, I
caught sight of a red and white object in a dense patch of short
undergrowth, forty or fifty yards directly below me. When one
is looking for a tiger in heavy jungle everything red that
catches the eye is immediately taken for the tiger, and here, not
only could I see the red of the tiger, but I could also see his
stripes. For a long minute I watched the object intently, and
then, as the face you are told to look for in a freak picture
suddenly resolves itself, I saw that the object I was looking at
was the kill, and not the tiger; the red was blood where he had
recently been eating, and the stripes were the ribs from which
he had torn away the skin. I was thankful for having held my
fire for that long minute, for in a somewhat similar case a friend
of mine ruined his chance of bagging a very fine tiger by putting
two bullets into a kill over which he had intended sitting;
fortunately he was a good shot, and the two men whom he had
sent out in advance to find the kill and put up a machan over
it, and who were, at the time he fired, standing near the kill
screened by a bush, escaped injury.

When a tiger that has not been disturbed leaves his kill out
in the open, it can be assumed that he is lying up close at hand
to guard the kill from vultures and other scavengers, and the
fact that I could not see the tiger did not mean that he was
not lying somewhere close by in the dense undergrowth.

Tigers are troubled by flies and do not lie long in one

132 Man-eaters of Kumaon

position, so I decided to remain where I was and watch for
movement; but hardly had I come to this decision, when I felt
an irritation in my throat. I had not quite recovered from my
attack of laryngitis and the irritation grew rapidly worse until
it became imperative for me to cough. The usual methods one
employs on these occasions, whether in church or the jungle,
such as holding the breath and swallowing hard, gave no relief
until it became a case of cough, or burst; and in desperation I
tried to relieve my throat by giving the alarm-call of the langur.
Sounds are difficult to translate into words and for those of you
who are not acquainted with our jungles I would try to describe
this alarm-call, which can be heard for half a mile, as khok,
khok, khofy, repeated again and again at short intervals, and
ending up with khokorror. All langurs do not call at tigers, but
the ones in our hills certainly do, and as this tiger had -probably
heard the call every day of his life it was the one sound I could
make to which he would not pay the slightest attention. My
rendering of the call in this emergency did not sound very con-
vincing, but it had the desired effect of removing the irritation
from my throat.

For half an hour thereafter I continued to sit on the rock,
watching for movement and listening for news from the jungle
folk, and when I had satisfied myself that the tiger was not
anywhere within my range of vision, I got off the rock, and,
moving with the utmost caution, went down to the kill.

VI

I regret I am not able to tell you what weight of flesh a
full-grown tiger can consume at a meal, but you will have
some idea of his capacity when I tell you he can eat a sambur
in two days, and a buffalo in three, leaving possibly a small
snack for the fourth day.

The buffalo I had tied up was not full-grown but he was
by no means a small animal, and the tiger had eaten

The Mohan Man-eater 133

approximately half of him. With a meal of that dimension
inside of him I felt sure he had not gone far, and as the ground
was still wet, and would remain so for another hour or two, I
decided to find out in what direction he had gone, and if pos-
sible, stalk him.

There was a confusion of tracks near the kill but by going
round in widening circles I found the track the tiger had made
when leaving. Soft-footed animals are a little more difficult to
track than hard-footed ones, yet after long years of experience
tracking needs as little effort as a gun dog exerts when following
a scent. As silently and as slowly as a shadow I took up the
track, knowing that the tiger would be close at hand. When
I had gone a hundred yards I came on a flat bit w of ground,
twenty feet square, and carpeted with that variety of short soft
grass that has highly scented roots; on this grass the tiger had
lain, the imprint of his body being clearly visible.

As I was looking at the imprint and guessing at the size of
the animal that had made it, I saw some of the blades of grass
that had been crushed down, spring erect. This indicated that
the tiger had been gone only a minute or so.

You will have some idea of the lay-out when I tell you
that the tiger had brought the kill down from the north, and
on leaving it had gone west, and that the rock on which I had
sat, the kill, and the spot where I was now standing, formed
the points of a triangle, one side of which was forty yards, and
the other two sides a hundred yards long.

My first thought on seeing the grass spring erect was that
the tiger had seen me and moved off, but this I soon found
was not likely, for neither the rock nor the kill was visible
from the grass plot, and that he had not seen me and moved
after I had taken up his track I was quite certain. Why then
had he left his comfortable bed and gone away? The sun
shining on the back of my neck provided the answer. It was
now nine o'clock of an unpleasantly hot May morning, and a

134 Man-eaters of Kumaon

glance at the sun and the tree-tops over which it had come
showed that it had been shining on the grass for ten minutes.
The tiger had evidently found it too hot, and gone away a few
minutes before my arrival to look for a shady spot.

I have told you that the grass plot was twenty feet square.
On the far side to that from which I had approached there was
a fallen tree, lying north and south. This tree was about four
feet in diameter, and as it was lying along the edge of the grass
plot in the middle of which I was standing, it was ten feet away
from me. The root end of the tree was resting on the hillside,
which here went up steeply and was overgrown with brushwood,
and the branch end (which had been snapped off when the tree
had fallen) was projecting out over the hillside. Beyond the
tree the hill appeared to be more or less perpendicular, and
running across the face of it was a narrow ledge of rock, which
disappeared into dense jungle thirty yards further on.

If my surmise, that the sun had been the cause of the tiger
changing his position, was correct, there was no more suitable
place than the lee of the tree for him to have taken shelter in,
and the only way of satisfying myself on this point was, to walk
up to the tree and look over. Here a picture seen long years
ago in Punch flashed into memory. The picture was of a lone
sportsman who had gone out to hunt lions and who on glancing
up, on to the rock he was passing, looked straight into the
grinning face of the most enormous lion in Africa. Underneath
the picture was written, ' When you go out looking for a lion,
be quite sure that you want to see him'. True, there would
be this small difference, that whereas my friend in Africa looked
up into the lion's face, I would look down into the tiger's;
otherwise the two cases assuming that the tiger was on the far
side of the tree would be very similar.

Slipping my feet forward an inch at a time on the soft grass,
I now started to approach the tree, and had covered about
half the distance that separated me from it when I caught sight

The Mohan Man-eater 135

of a black-and-yellow object about three inches long on the
rocky ledge, which I now saw was a well-used game path. For
a long minute I stared at this motionless object, until I was
convinced that it was the tip of the tiger's tail. If the tail was
pointing away from me the head must obviously be towards
me, and as the ledge was only some two feet wide, the tiger
could only be crouching down and waiting to spring the moment
my head appeared over the bole of the tree. The tip of the
tail was twenty feet from me, and allowing eight feet for the
tiger's length while crouching, his head would be twelve feet
away. But I should have to approach much nearer before I
should be able to see enough of his body to get in a crippling
shot, and a crippling shot it would have to be if I wanted to
leave on my feet. And now, for the first time in my life, I
regretted my habit of carrying an uncocked rifle. The safety-
catch of my 450/400 makes a very distinct click when thrown
off, and to make any sound now would either bring the tiger
right on top of me, or send him straight down the steep hillside
without any possibility of my getting in a shot.

Inch by inch I again started to creep forward, until the whole
of the tail, and after it the hind quarters, came into view. When
I saw the hind quarters, I could have shouted with delight, for
they showed that the tiger was not crouching and ready to
spring, but was lying down. As there was only room for his
body on the two-foot-wide ledge, he had stretched his hind legs
out and was resting them on the upper branches of an oak
sapling growing up the face of the almost perpendicular hillside.
Another foot forward and his belly came into view, and from the
regular way in which it was heaving up and down I knew that he
was asleep. Less slowly now I moved forward, until his shoul-
der, and then his whole length, was exposed to my view. The
back of his head was resting on the edge of the grass plot, which
extended for three or four feet beyond the fallen tree; his eyes
were fast shut, and his nose was pointing to heaven.

136 Man-eaters of Kumaon

Aligning the sights of the rifle on his forehead I pressed the
trigger and, while maintaining a steady pressure on it, pushed
up the safety-catch. I had no idea how this reversal of the
usual method of discharging a rifle would work, but it did work;
and when the heavy bullet at that short range crashed into
his forehead not so much as a quiver went through his body.
His tail remained stretched straight out; his hind legs continued
to rest on the upper branches of the sapling; and his nose still
pointed to heaven. Nor did his position change in the slightest
when I sent a second, and quite unnecessary, bullet to follow
the first. The only change noticeable was that his stomach had
stopped heaving up and down, and that blood was trickling
down his forehead from two surprisingly small holes.

I do not know how the close proximity of a tiger reacts on
others, but me it always leaves with a breathless feeling due
possibly as much to fear as to excitement and a desire for a
little rest. I sat down on the fallen tree and lit the cigarette
I had denied myself from the day my throat had got bad, and
allowed my thoughts to wander. Any task well accomplished
gives satisfaction, and the one just completed was no exception.
The reason for my presence at that spot was the destruction of
,the man-eater, and from the time I had left the road two hours
previously right up to the moment I pushed up the safety-catch
everything including the langur call had worked smoothly
and without a single fault. In this there was great satisfaction,
the kind of satisfaction I imagine an author must feel when he
writes FINIS to the plot that, stage by stage, has unfolded itself
just as he desired it to. In my case, however, the finish had
not been satisfactory, for I had killed the animal, that was
lying five feet from me, in his sleep.

My personal feelings in the matter are I know of little interest
.to others, but it occurs to me that possibly you also might think
and in that case I should like to put the

arguments before you that I used on myself, in the hope that

The Mohan Man-eater 137

you will find tlfem more satisfactory than I did. These argu-
ments were~"(6) ihe tiger was a man-eater that was better dead
than alive, (bf therefore it made no difference whether he was
awake or asleep when killed, and (of that had I walked away
when I saw his belly heaving up and down I should have been
morally responsible for the deaths of all the human beings he
killed thereafter. All good and sound arguments, you will
admit, for my having acted as I did; but the regret remains
that through fear of the consequences to myself, or fear of
losing the only chance I might ever get, or possibly a com-
bination of the two, I did not awaken the sleeping animal and
give him a sporting chance.

The tiger was dead, and if my trophy was to be saved from
falling into the valley below and rumeJrit was advisable to get
him off the ledge with as little delay as possible. Leaning the
rifle, for which I had no further use, against the fallen tree,
I climbed up to the road and, once round the corner near the
cultivated land, I cupped my hands and sent a cooee echoing
over the hills and valleys. I had no occasion to repeat the call,
for my men had heard my two shots when returning from
attending to the first buffalo and had run back to the hut to
collect as many villagers as were within calling distance. Now,
on hearing my cooee, the whole crowd came helter-skelter down
the road to meet me.

When stout ropes and an axe had been procured I took the
crowd back with me, and after I had secured the ropes round
the tiger, willing hands half carried and half dragged him off
the ledge and over the fallen tree, on to the plot of grass. Here
I would have skinned him, but the villagers begged me not to
do so, saying that the women and children of Kartkanoula and
the adjoining villages would be very disappointed if they were
not given an opportunity of seeing the tiger with their own
eyes and satisfying themselves tha

THE THAK MAN-EATER

PEACE had reigned in the Ladhya valley for many months
when in September '38 a report was received in Naini Tal
that a girl, twelve years of age, had been killed by a tiger at
Kot Kindri village. The report which reached me through
Donald Stewart of the Forest Department gave no details, and
it was not until I visited the village some weeks later that I was
able to get particulars of the tragedy. It appeared that, about
noon one day, this girl was picking up windfalls from a mango
tree close to and in full view of the village, when a tiger suddenly
appeared. Before the men working nearby were able to render
any assistance, it carried her off. No attempt was made to

The Thak Man-eater 169

follow up the tiger, and as all signs of drag and blood trail had
been obliterated and washed away long before I arrived on the
scene, I was unable to find the place where the tiger had taken
the body to.

Kot Kindi is about four miles south-west of Chuka, and
three miles due west of Thak. It was in the valley between
Kot Kindri and Thak that the Chuka man-eater had been shot
the previous April.

During the summer of '38 the Forest Department had marked
all the trees in this area for felling, and it was feared that if
the man-eater was not accounted for before November when
the felling of the forest was due to start the contractors would
not be able to secure labour, and would repudiate their contracts.
It was in this connexion that Donald Stewart had written to me
shortly after the girl had been killed, and when in compliance
with his request I promised to go to Kot Kindri, I must confess
that it was more in the interests of the local inhabitants than
in the interest of the contractors that I gave my promise.

My most direct route to Kot Kindri was to go by rail to
Tanakpur, and from there by foot via Kaldhunga and Chuka.
This route, however, though it would save me a hundred miles
of walking, would necessitate my passing through the most
deadly malaria belt in northern India, and to avoid it I decided
to go through the hills to Mornaula, and from there along the
abandoned Sherring road to its termination on the ridge above
Kot Kindri.

While my preparations for this long trek were still under way
a second report reached Naini Tal of a kill at Sem, a small
village on the left bank of the Ladhya and distant about half
a mile from Chuka.

The victim on this occasion was an elderly woman, the
mother of the Headman of Sem. This unfortunate woman had
been killed while cutting brushwood on a steep bank between
two terraced fields. She had started work at the further end of

170 Man-eaters of Rumaoii

the fifty-yard-long bank, and had cut the brushwood to within
a yard of her hut when the tiger sprang on her from the field
above. So sudden and unexpected was the attack that the
woman only had time to scream once before the tiger killed her,
and taking her up the twelve-foot-high bank crossed the upper
field and disappeared with her into the dense jungle beyond.
Her son, a lad some twenty years of age, was at the time work-
ing in a paddy field a few yards away and witnessed the whole
occurrence, but was too frightened to try to render any assist-
ance. In response to the lad's urgent summons the Patwari
arrived at Sem two days later, accompanied by eighty men he
had collected. Following up in the direction the tiger had gone,
he found the woman's clothes and a few small bits of bone.
This kill had taken place at 2 p.m. on a bright sunny day, and
the tiger had eaten its victim only sixty yards from the hut
where it had killed her.

On receipt of this second report Ibbotson, Deputy Commis-
sioner of the three Districts of Almora, Naini Tal and Garhwal,
and I held, a council of war, the upshot of which was that
Ibbotson, who was on the point of setting out to settle a land
dispute at Askot on the border of Tibet, changed his tour
programme and, instead of going via Bagashwar, decided to
accompany me to Sem, and from there go on to Askot.

The route I had selected entailed a considerable amount of
hill-climbing so we eventually decided to go up the Nandhour
valley, cross the watershed between the Nandhour and Ladhya,
and follow the latter river down to Sem. The Ibbotsons accord-
ingly left Naini Tal on I2th October, and the following day I
joined them at Chaurgallia.

Going up the Nandhour and fishing as we went our best
day's catch on light trout rods was a hundred and twenty fish
we arrived on the fifth day at Durga Pepal. Here we left the
river, and after a very stiff climb camped for the night on the
watershed. Making an early start next morning we pitched our

The Thak Man-eater 171

tents that night on the left bank of the Ladhya, twelve miles
from Chalti.

The monsoon had given over early, which was very fortunate
for us, for owing to the rock cliffs that run sheer down into the
valley the river has to be crossed every quarter of a mile or so.
At one of these fords my cook, who stands five feet in his boots,
was washed away and only saved from a watery grave by the
prompt assistance of the man who was carrying our lunch basket.

On the tenth day after leaving Chaurgallia we made camp
on a deserted field at Sem, two hundred yards from the hut
where the woman had been killed, and a hundred yards from
the junction of the Ladhya and Sarda rivers.

Gill Waddell, of the Police, whom we met on our way down
the Ladhya, had camped for several days at Sem and had tied
out a buffalo that MacDonald of the Forest Department had
very kindly placed at our disposal, and though the tiger had
visited Sem several times during Waddell' s stay, it had not
killed the buffalo.

The day following our arrival at Sem, while Ibbotson was
interviewing Patwaris, Forest Guards, and Headmen of the
surrounding villages, I went out to look for pug marks.
Between our camp and the junction, and also on both banks of
the Ladhya, there were long stretches of sand. On this sand I
found the tracks of a tigress, and of a young male tiger possibly
one of the cubs I had seen in April. The tigress had crossed
and recrossed the Ladhya a number of times during the last
few days, and the previous night had walked along the strip of
sand in front of our tents. It was this tigress the villagers sus-
pected of being the man-eater, and as she had visited Sem
repeatedly since the day the Headman's mother had been killed
they were probably correct.

An examination of the pug marks of the tigress showed her
as being an average-sized animal, in the prime of life. Why she
had become a man-eater would have to be determined later, but

172 Man-eaters of Kumaon

one of the reasons might have been that she had assisted to eat
the victims of the Chuka tiger when they were together the
previous mating season, and having acquired a taste for human
flesh and no longer having a mate to provide her with it, had
now turned a man-eater herself. This was only a surmise, and
proved later to be incorrect.

Before leaving Naini Tal I had written to the Tahsildar of
Tanakpur and asked him to purchase four young male buffaloes
for me, and to send them to Sem. One of these buffaloes died
on the road, the other three arrived on the 24th , and we tied
them out the same evening together with the one MacDonald
had given us. On going out to visit these animals next morning
I found the people of Chuka in a great state of excitement. The
fields round the village had been recently ploughed, and the
tigress the previous night had passed close to three families who
were sleeping out on the fields with their cattle; fortunately in
each case the cattle had seen the tigress and warned the sleepers
of her approach. After leaving the cultivated land the tigress had
gone up the track in the direction of Kot Kindri, and had passed
close to two of our buffaloes without touching either of them.

The Patwari, Forest Guards, and villagers had told us on our
arrival at Sem that it would be a waste of time tying out our
young buffaloes, as they were convinced the man-eater would
not kill them. The reason they gave was that this method of
trying to shoot the man-eater had been tried by others without
success, and that in any case if the tigress wanted to eat
buffaloes there were many grazing in the jungles for her to
choose from. In spite of this advice however we continued to
tie out our buffaloes, and for the next two nights the tigress
passed close to one or more of them, without touching them.

On the morning of the 27th, just as we were finishing break-
fast, a party of men led by Tewari, the brother of the Headman
of Thak, arrived in camp and reported that a man of their
village was missing. They stated that this man had left the

The Thak Man-eater 173

village at about noon the previous day, telling his wife before
leaving that he was going to see that his cattle did not stray
beyond the village boundary, and as he had not returned they
feared he had been killed by the man-eater.

Our preparations were soon made, and at ten o'clock the
Ibbotsons and I set off for Thak, accompanied by Tewari and
the men he had brought with him. The distance was only
about two miles but the climb was considerable, and as we did
not want to lose more time than we could possibly help we
arrived at the outskirts of the village out of breath, and in a
lather of sweat.

As we approached the village over the scrub-covered flat bit
of ground which I have reason to refer to later, we heard a
woman crying. The wailing of an Indian woman mourning her
dead is unmistakable, and on emerging from the jungle we came
on the mourner the wife of the missing man and some ten or
fifteen men, who were waiting for us on the edge of the culti-
vated land. These people informed us that from their houses
above they had seen some white object, which looked 4ike part of
the missing man's clothing, in a field overgrown with scrub thirty
yards from where we were now standing. Ibbotson, Tewari and
I set off to investigate the white object, while Mrs Ibbotson
took the woman and the rest of the men up to the village.

The field, which had been out of cultivation for some years,
was covered with a dense growth of scrub not milike chrysanthe-
mum, and it was not until we were standing right over the white
object that Tewari recognized it as the loin-cloth of the missing
man. Near it was the man's cap. A struggle had taken place
at this spot, but there was no blood. The absence of blood
where the attack had taken place and for some considerable
distance along the drag could be accounted for by the tigress
having retained her first hold, for no blood would flow in such
a case until the hold had been changed.
Thirty yards on the hill above us there was a clump of bushes

174 Man-caters of Kumaon

roofed over with creepers. This spot would have to be looked
at before following up the drag, for it was not advisable to
have the tigress behind us. In the soft earth under the bushes
we found the pug marks of the tigress, and where she had lain
before going forward to attack the man.

Returning to our starting point we agreed on the following
plan of action. Our primary object was to try to stalk the
tigress and shoot her on her kill: to achieve this end I was to
follow the trail and at the same time keep a lookout in front,
with Tewari who was unarmed a yard behind me keeping a
sharp lookout to right and left, and Ibbotson a yard behind
Tewari to safeguard us against an attack from the rear. In the
event of either Ibbotson or I seeing so much as a hair of the
tigress, we were to risk a shot.

Cattle had grazed over this area the previous day, disturbing
the ground, and as there was no blood and the only indication
of the tigress's passage was an occasional turned-up leaf or
crushed blade of grass, progress was slow. After carrying the
man for tw> hundred yards the tigress had killed and left him,
and had returned and carried him off several hours later, when
the people of Thak had heard several sambur calling in this
direction. The reason for the tigress not having carried the man
away after she had killed him was possibly due to his cattle
having witnessed the attack on him, and driven her away.

A big pool ot blood had formed where the man had been
lying, and as the blood from the wound in his throat had stop-
ped flowing by the time the tigress had picked him up again, and
further, as she was now holding him by the small of the back,
whereas she had previously held him by the neck, tracking be-
came even more difficult. The tigress kept to the contour of
the hill, and as the undergrowth here was very dense and visi-
bility only extended to a few yards, our advance was slowed
down. In two hours we covered half a mile, and reached a ridge
beyond which lay the valley in which, six months previously, we

The Thak Man-eater 175

had tracked down and killed the Chuka man-eater. On this
ridge was a great slab of rock, which sloped upwards and away
from the direction in which we had come. The tigress's tracks
went down to the right of the rock and I felt sure she was lying
up under the overhanging portion of it, or in the close vicinity.

Both Ibbotson and I had on light rubber-soled shoes Tewari
was bare-footed and we had reached the rock without making
a sound. Signing to my two companions to stand still and keep
a careful watch all round, I got a foothold on the rock, and inch
by inch went forward. Beyond the rock was a short stretch of
flat ground, and as more of this ground came into view, I felt
certain my suspicion that the tigress was lying under the pro-
jection was correct. I had still a foot or two to go before I could
look over, when I saw a movement to my left front. A golden-
rod that had been pressed down had sprung erect, and a second
later there was a slight movement in the bushes beyond, and a
monkey in a tree on the far side of the bushes started calling.

The tigress had chosen the spot for her after-dinner sleep with
great care, but unfortunately for us she was not asleep; and
when she saw the top of my head I had removed my hat
appearing over the rock, she had risen and, taking a step side-
ways, had disappeared under a tangle of blackberry bushes.
Had she been lying anywhere but where she was she could not
have got away, no matter how quickly she had moved, without
my getting a shot at her. Our so-carefully-carried-out stalk had
failed at the very last moment, and there was nothing to be done
now but find the kill, and see if there was sufficient of it left for
us to sit up over. To have followed her into the blackberry
thicket would have been useless, and would also have reduced
our chance of getting a shot at her later.

The tigress had eaten her meal close to where she had been
lying and as this spot was open to the sky and to the keen
eyes of vultures she had removed the kill to a place of safety
where it would not be visible from the air. Tracking now was

176 Man-eaters of Kumaon

easy, for there was a blood trail to follow. The trail led over a
ridge of great rocks and fifty yards beyond these rocks we found
the kill.

I am not going to harrow your feelings by attempting to
describe that poor torn and mangled thing; stripped of every
stitch of clothing and atom of dignity, which only a few hours
previously had been a Man, the father of two children and the
breadwinner of the wailing woman who was facing without
any illusions the fate of a widow of India. I have seen many
similar sights, each more terrible than the one preceding it, in
the thirty-two years I have been hunting man-eaters, and on
each occasion I have felt that it would have been better to have
left the victim to the slayer than recover a mangled mass of
flesh to be a nightmare ever after to those who saw it. And yet
the cry of blood for blood, and the burning desire to rid a
countryside of a menace than which there is none more terrible,
is irresistible; and then there is always the hope, no matter how
absurd one knows it to be, that the victim by some miracle may
still be alive and in need of succour.

The chance of shooting over a kill an animal that has in all
probability become a man-eater through a wound received over
a kill, is very remote, and each succeeding failure, no matter
what its cause, tends to make the animal more cautious, until
it reaches a state when it either abandons its kill after one meal
or approaches it as silently and as slowly as a shadow, scanning
every leaf and twig with the certainty of discovering its would-be
slayer, no matter how carefully he may be concealed or how silent
and motionless he may be; a one-in-a-million chance of getting a
shot, and yet, who is there among us who would not take it?

The thicket into which the tigress had retired was roughly
forty yards square, and she could not leave it without the
monkey seeing her and warning us, so we sat down back to
back, to have a smoke and listen if the jungle had anything
further to tell us while we considered our next move.

he seroii:! largest of the group of tigers passing within
leu feel of I he tainera

Tin 1 largest of (lit- I igers lifiitig OIK* end of the kill -
an old cart buifulo~-prcparutory to tarrying it away

EXAMPLES OF CINF. I'HOltHiRAlMJV

See p.

Five tigers watching while (he sixth descends on the kill

The white tigress si/ ing up a new arrival

EXAMPLES OF CINE-PHOTOGRAPHY

The Thak Man-eater 177

To make a machan it was necessary to return to the village,
and during our absence the tigress was almost certain to cany
away the kill. It had been difficult when she was carrying a
whole human being to track her, but now, when her burden was
considerably lighter and she had been disturbed, she would
probably go for miles and we might never find her kill again,
so it was necessary for one of us to remain on the spot, while
the other two went back to the village for ropes.

Ibbotson, with his usual disregard for danger, elected to go
back, and while he and Tewari went down the hill to avoid the
difficult ground we had recently come over, I stepped up on to a
small tree close to the kill. Four feet above ground the tree divid-
ed in two, and by leaning on one half and putting my feet against
the other, I was able to maintain a precarious seat which was
high enough off the ground to enable me to see the tigress if she
approached the kill, and also high enough, if she had any designs
on me, to see her before she got to within striking distance.

Ibbotson had been gone fifteen or twenty minutes when I
heard a rock tilt forward, and then back. The rock was evident-
ly very delicately poised, and when the tigress had put her
weight on it and felt it tilt forward she had removed her foot
and let the rock fall back into place. The sound had come
from about twenty yards to my left front, the only direction in
which it would have been possible for me to have fired without
being knocked out of the tree.

Minutes passed, each pulling my hopes down a little lower
from the heights to which they had soared, and then, when
tension on my nerves and the weight of the heavy rifle were
becoming unbearable, I heard a stick snap at the upper end of
the thicket. Here was an example of how a tiger can move
through the jungle. From the sound she had made I knew her
exact position, had kept my eyes fixed on the spot, and yet she
had come, seen me, stayed some time watching me, and then gone
away without my having seen a leaf or a blade of grass move.

'3

178 Man-eaters of Kumaon

When tension on nerves is suddenly relaxed cramped and
aching muscles call loudly for ease, and though in this case it
only meant the lowering of the rifle on to my knees to take the
strain off my shoulders and arms, the movement, small though
it was, sent a comforting feeling through the whole of my body.
No further sound came from the tigress, and an hour or two
later I heard Ibbotson returning.

Of all the men I have been on shikar with Ibbotson is by far
and away the best, for not only has he the heart of a lion, but
he thinks of everything, and with it all is the most unselfish man
that carries a gun. He had gone to fetch a rope and he returned
with rugs, cushions, more hot tea than even I could drink and
an ample lunch; and while I sat on the windward side of the
kill to refresh myself , Ibbotson put a man in a tree forty yards
away to distract the tigress's attention, and climbed into a tree
overlooking the kill to make a rope machan.

When the machan was ready Ibbotson moved the kill a few
feet a very unpleasant job and tied it securely to the foot of a
sapling to prevent the tigress carrying it away, for the moon
was on the wane and the first two hours of the night at this
heavily wooded spot would be pitch dark. After a final smoke
I climbed on to the machan, and when I had made myself
comfortable Ibbotson recovered the man who was making a
diversion and set off in the direction of Thak to pick up Mrs
Ibbotson and return to camp at Sem.

The retreating party were out of sight but were not yet out
of sound when I heard a heavy body brushing against leaves,
and at the same moment the monkey, which had been silent all
this time and which I could now see sitting in a tree on the far
side of the blackberry thicket, started calling. Here was more
luck than I hoped for, and our ruse of putting a man up a tree
to cause a diversion appeared to be working as successfully as
it had done on a previous occasion. A tense minute passed,
a second, and a third, and then from the ridge where I had

The Thak Man-eater 179

climbed on to the big slab of rock a kakar came dashing down
towards me, barking hysterically. The tigress was not coming
to the kill but had gone off after Ibbotson. I was now in a
fever of anxiety, for it was quite evident that she had aban-
doned her kill and gone to try to secure another victim.

Before leaving Ibbotson had promised to take every pre-
caution but on hearing the kakar barking on my side of the
ridge he would naturally assume the tigress was moving in the
vicinity of the kill, and if he relaxed his precautions the tigress
would get her chance. Ten very uneasy minutes for me passed,
and then I heard a second kakar barking in the direction of
Thak; the tigress was still following, but the ground there was
more open, and there was less fear of her attacking the party.
The danger to the Ibbotsons was, ( however, not over by any
means for they had to go through two miles of very heavy jun-
gle to reach camp; and if they stayed at Thak until sundown
listening for my shot, which I feared they would do and which
as a matter of fact they did do, they would run a very grave
risk on the way down. Ibbotson fortunately realized t the danger
and kept his party close together, and though the tigress fol-
lowed them the whole way as her pug marks the following
morning showed they got back to camp safely.

The calling of kakar and sambur enabled me to follow the
movements of the tigress. An hour after sunset she was down
at the bottom of the valley two miles away. She had the whole
night before her, and though there was only one chance in a
million of her returning to the kill I determined not to lose that
chance. Wrapping a rug round me, for it was a bitterly cold
night, I made myself comfortable in a position in which I could
remain for hours without movement,

I had taken my seat on the machan at 4 p.m., and at 10 p.m.
I heard two animals coming down the hill towards me. It was
too dark under the trees to see them, but when they got to the
lee of the kill I knew they were porcupines. Rattling their

180 Man-eaters of Kumaon

quills, and making the peculiar booming noise that only a porcu-
pine can make, they approached the kill and, after walking
round it several times, continued on their way. An hour later,
and when the moon had been up some time, I heard an animal
in the valley below. It was moving from east to west, and when
it came into the wind blowing downhill from the kill it made a
long pause, and then came cautiously up the hill. While it was
still some distance away I heard it snuffing the air, and knew
it to be a bear. The smell of blood was attracting him, but
mingled with it was the less welcome smell of a human being,
and taking no chances he was very carefully stalking the kill.
His nose, the keenest of any animal's in the jungle, had
apprised him while he was still in the valley that the kill was
the property of a tiger. This to a Himalayan bear who fears
nothing, and who will, as I have on several occasions seen, drive
a tiger away from its kill, was no deterrent, but what was, and
what was causing him uneasiness, was the smell of a human
being mingled with the smell of blood and tiger.

On reaching the flat ground the bear sat down on his haunches
a few yards from the kill, and when he had satisfied himself that
the hated human smell held no danger for him he stood erect and
turning his he'ad sent a long-drawn-out cry, which I interpreted
as a call to a mate, echoing down into the valley. Then without
any further hesitation he walked boldly up to the kill, and as he
nosed it I aligned the sights of my rifle on him. I know of only
one instance of a Himalayan bear eating a human being; on
that occasion a woman cutting grass had fallen down a cliff and
been killed, and a' bear finding the mangled body had carried it
away and had eaten it. This bear, however, on whose shoulder
my sights were aligned, appeared to draw the line at human
flesh, and after looking at and smelling the kill continued his in-
terrupted course to the west. When the sounds of his retreat died
away in the distance the jungle settled down to silence until in-
terrupted! a little after sunrise, by Ibbotson's very welcome arrival.

The Thak Man-eater 181

With Ibbotson came the brother and other relatives of the
dead man, who very reverently wrapped the remains in a clean
white cloth and, laying it on a cradle made of two saplings and
rope which Ibbotson provided, set off for the burning ghat on
the banks of the Sarda, repeating under their breath as they
went the Hindu hymn of praise 'Ram nam sat hai' with its
refrain, ' Satya bol gat hai'.

Fourteen hours in the cold had not been without its effect
on me, but after partaking of the hot drink and food Ibbotson
had brought, I felt none the worse for my long vigil.

II

After following the Ibbotsons down to Chuka on the evening
of the ayth the tigress, some time during the night, crossed the
Ladhya into the scrub jungle at the back of our camp. Through
this scrub ran a path that had been regularly used by the villag-
ers of the Ladhya valley until the advent of the man-eater had
rendered its passage unsafe. On the 28th the two mail-runners
who carried Ibbotson's dak on its first stage to T^jiakpur got
delayed in camp and to save time took, or more correctly started
to take, a short cut through this scrub. Very fortunately the
leading man was on the alert and saw the tigress as she crept
through the scrub and lay down near the path ahead of them.

Ibbotson and I had just got back from Thak when these two
men dashed into camp, and taking our rifles we hurried off to
investigate. We found the pug marks of the tigress where she had
come out on the path and followed the men for a short distance,
but we did not see her though in one place where the scrub was
very dense we saw a movement and heard an animal moving off.

On the morning of the 2Qth, a party of men came down from
Thak to report that one of their bullocks had not returned to
the cattle-shed the previous night, and on a search being made
where it had last been seen a little blood had been found. At
2 p.m. the Ibbotsons and I were at this spot, and a glance at the

182 Man-eaters of Kumaon

ground satisfied us that the bullock had been killed and carried
away by a tiger. After a hasty lunch Ibbotson and I, with two
men following carrying ropes for a machan, set out along the
drag. It went diagonally across the face of the hill for a hundred
yards and then straight down into the ravine in which I had
fired at and missed the big tiger in April. A few hundred yards
down this ravine the bullock, which was an enormous animal,
had got fixed between two rocks and, not being able to move
it, the tiger had eaten a meal off its hind quarters and left it.

The pug marks of the tiger, owing to the great weight she
was carrying, were splayed out and it was not possible to say
whether she was the man-eater or not; but as every tiger in this
area was suspect I decided to sit up over the kill. There was
only one tree within reasonable distance of the kill, and as the
men climbed into it to make a machan the tiger started calling
in the valley below. Very hurriedly a few strands of rope were
tied between two branches, and while Ibbotson stood on guard
with his rifle I climbed the tree and took my seat on what, during
the next fourteen hours, proved to be the most uncomfortable
as well as the most dangerous machan I have ever sat on. The
tree was leaning away from the hill, and from the three uneven
strands of rope I was sitting on there was a drop of over a
hundred feet into the rocky ravine below.

The tiger called several times as I was getting into the tree
and continued to call at longer intervals late into the evening,
the last call coming from a ridge half a mile away. It was now
quite evident that the tiger had been lying up close to the kill
and had seen the men climbing into the tree. Knowing from
past experience what this meant, she had duly expressed resent-
ment at being disturbed and then gone away, for though I sat
on the three strands of rope until Ibbotson returned next morn-
ing I did not see or hear anything throughout the night.

Vultures were not likely to find the kill, for the ravine was
deep and overshadowed by trees, and as the bullock was large

The Thak Man-eater 183

enough to provide the tiger with several meals we decided not
to sit up over it again where it was now lying, hoping the tiger
would remove it to some more convenient place where we should
have a better chance of getting a shot. In this however we were
disappointed, for the tiger did not again return to the kill.

Two nights later the buffalo we had tied out behind our camp
at Sera was killed, and through a little want of observation on
my part a great opportunity of bagging the man-eater was lost.

The men who brought in the news of this kill reported that
the rope securing the animal had been broken, and that the kill
had been carried away up the ravine at the lower end of which
it had been tied. This was the same ravine in which MacDonald
and I had chased a tigress in April, and as on that occasion she
had taken her kill some distance up the ravine I now very
foolishly concluded she had done the same with this kill.

After breakfast Ibbotson and I went out to find the kill and
see what prospect there was for an evening sit-up.

The ravine in which the buffalo had been killed was about
fifty yards wide and ran deep into the foot-hills. For two hundred
yards the ravine was straight and then bent round to the left.
Just beyond the bend, and on the left-hand side of it, there was
a dense patch of young saplings backed by a hundred-foot ridge
on which thick grass was growing. In the ravine, and close to
the saplings, there was a small pool of water. I had been up the
ravine several times in April and had failed to mark the patch
of saplings as being a likely place for a tiger to lie up in, and did
not take the precautions I should have taken when rounding the
bend, with the result that the tigress who was drinking at the
pool saw us first. There was only one safe line of retreat for
her and she took it. This was straight up the steep hill, over
the ridge, and into the sal forest beyond.

The hill was too steep for us to climb, so we continued on
up the ravine to where a sambur track crossed it, and following
this track we gained the ridge. The tigress was now in a

184 Man-eaters of Kumaon

triangular patch of jungle bounded by the ridge, the Ladhya,
and a cliff down which no animal could go. The area was not
large, and there were several deer in it which from time to time
advised us of the position of the tigress, but unfortunately the
ground was cut up by a number of deep and narrow rain-water
channels in which we eventually lost touch with her.

We had not yet seen the kill, so we re-entered the ravine by
the sambur track and found the kill hidden among the saplings.
These saplings were from six inches to a foot in girth, and were
not strong enough to support a machan, so we had to abandon
the idea of a machan. With the help of a crowbar a rock could
possibly have been prised from the face of the hill and a place
made in which to sit, but this was not advisable when dealing
with a man-eater.

Reluctant to give up the chance of a shot we considered the
possibility of concealing ourselves in the grass near the kill, in
the hope that the tigress would return before dark and that we
should see her before she saw us. There were two objections to
this plan: (a) if we did not get a shot and the tigress saw us
near her kill she might abandon it as she had done her other two
kills and (6) between the kill and camp there was very heavy
scrub jungle, and if we tried to go through this jungle in the
dark the tigress would have us at her mercy. So very reluctantly
we decided to leave the kill to the tigress for that night, and
hope for the best on the morrow.

On our return next morning we found that the tigress had
carried away the kill. For three hundred yards she had gone
up the bed of the ravine, stepping from rock to rock, and leaving
no drag marks. At this spot three hundred yards from where
she had picked up the kill we were at fault, for though there
were a number of tracks on a wet patch of ground, none of
them had been made while she was carrying the kill. Eventually,
after casting round in circles, we found where she had left the
ravine and gone up the hill on the left.

The Thak Man-eater 185

This hill up which the tigress had taken her kill was over-
grown with ferns and goldenrod and tracking was not difficult,
but the going was, for the hill was very steep and in places a
detour had to be made and the track picked up further on.
After a stiff climb of a thousand feet we came to a small plateau,
bordered on the left by a cliff a mile wide. On the side of the
plateau nearest the cliff the ground was seamed and cracked,
and in these cracks a dense growth of sal, two to six feet in
height, had sprung up. The tigress had taken her kill into this
dense cover and it was not until we actually trod on it that we
were aware of its position.

As we stopped to look at all that remained of the buffalo there
was a low growl to our right. With rifles raised we waited for a
minute and then, hearing a movement in the undergrowth a little
beyond where the growl had come from, we pushed our way
through the young sal for ten yards and came on a small clear-
ing, where the tigress had made herself a bed on some soft grass.
On the far side of this grass the hill sloped upwards for twenty
yards to another plateau, and it was from this slope that the
sound we had heard had come. Proceeding up the slope as
silently as possible we had just reached the flat ground, which
was about fifty yards wide, when the tigress left the far side and
went down into the ravine, disturbing some kaleege pheasants
and a kakar as she did so. To have followed her would have been
useless, so we went back to the kill and, as there was still a good
meal on it, we selected two trees to sit in, and returned to camp.

After an early lunch we went back to the kill and, hampered
with our rifles, climbed with some difficulty into the trees we had
selected. We sat up for five hours without seeing or hearing
anything. At dusk we climbed down from our trees, and
stumbling over the cracked and uneven ground eventually
reached the ravine when it was quite dark. Both of us had an
uneasy feeling that we were being followed, but by keeping close
together we reached camp without incident at 9 p.m.

186 Man-eaters of Kumaon

The Ibbotsons had now stayed at Sem as long as it was pos-
sible for them to do so, and early next morning they set out on
their twelve days' walk to keep their appointment at Askot.
Before leaving, Ibbotson extracted a promise from me that I
would not follow up any kills alone, or further endanger my life
by prolonging my stay at Sem for more than a day or two.

After the departure of the Ibbotsons and their fifty men, the
camp, which was surrounded by dense scrub, was reduced to
my two servants and myself my coolies were living in a room
in the Headman's house so throughout the day I set all hands
to collecting driftwood, of which there was an inexhaustible
supply at the junction, to keep a fire going all night. The fire
would not scare away the tigress but it would enable us to see
her if she prowled round our tents at night, and anyway the
nights were setting in cold and there was ample excuse, if one
were needed, for keeping a big fire going all night.

Towards evening, when my men were safely back in camp,
I took a rifle and went up the Ladhya to see if the tigress Iiad
crossed the river. I found several tracks in the sand, but no
fresh ones, and at dusk I returned, convinced that the tigress
was still on our side of the river. An hour later, when it was
quite dark, a kakar started barking close to our tents and barked
persistently for half an hour.

My men had taken over the job of tying out the buffaloes,
a task which Ibbotson's men had hitherto performed, and next
morning I accompanied them when they went out to bring in
the buffaloes. Though we covered several miles I did not find
any trace of the tigress. After breakfast I took a rod and went
down to the junction, and had one of the best day's fishing I
have ever had. The junction was full of big fish, and though
my light tackle was broken frequently I killed sufficient mahseer
to feed the camp.

Again, as on the previous evening, I crossed the Ladhya, with
the intention of taking up a position on a rock overlooking the

The Thak Man-eater 187

open ground on the right bank of the river and watching for the
tigress to cross. As I got away from the roar of the water at
the junction I heard a sambur and a monkey calling on the hill
to my left, and as I neared the rock I came on the fresh tracks
of the tigress. Following them back I found the stones still wet
where she had forded the river. A few minutes' delay in camp
to dry my fishing line and have a cup of tea cost a man his
life, several thousand men weeks of anxiety, and myself many
days of strain, for though I stayed at Sem for another three
days I did not get another chance of shooting the tigress.

On the morning of the yth, as I was breaking camp and
preparing to start on my twenty-mile walk to Tanakpur, a big
contingent of men from all the surrounding villages arrived, and
begged me not to leave them to the tender mercies of the man-
eater. Giving them what advice it was possible to give people
situated as they were, I promised to return as soon as it was
possible for me to do so.

I caught the train at Tanakpur next morning and arrived back
in Naini Tal on 9 November, having been away nearly a month.

in

I left Sem on the 7th of November and on the I2th the tigress
killed a man at Thak. I received news of this kill through the
Divisional Forest Officer, Haidwani, shortly after we had moved
down to our winter home at the foot of the hills, and by doing
forced marches I arrived at Chuka a little after sunrise on
the 24th.

It had been my intention to breakfast at Chuka and then go
on to Thak and make that village my headquarters, but the
Headman of Thak, whom I found installed at Chuka, informed
me that every man, woman, and child had left Thak immediately
after the man had been killed on the 12th, and added that if I
carried out my intention of camping at Thak I might be able to
safeguard my own life, but it would not be possible to safeguard

188 Man-eaters of Kumaon

the lives of my men. This was quite reasonable, and while
waiting for my men to arrive, the Headman helped me to select
a site for my camp at Chuka where my men would be reasonably
safe and I should have some privacy from the thousands of men
who were now arriving to fell the forest.

On receipt of the Divisional Forest Officer's telegram
acquainting me of the kill, I had telegraphed to the Tahsildar at
Tanakpur to send three young male buffaloes to Chuka. My
request had been promptly complied with and the three animals
had arrived the previous evening.

After breakfast I took one of the buffaloes and set out for
Thak, intending to tie it up on the spot where the man had
been killed on the I2th. The Headman had given me a very
graphic account of the events of that date, for he himself had
nearly fallen a victim to the tigress. It appeared that towards
the afternoon, accompanied by his granddaughter, a girl ten
years of age, he had gone to dig up ginger tubers in a field some
sixty yards from his house. This field is about half an acre in
extent and is surrounded on three sides by jungle, and being on
the slope of a fairly steep hill it is visible from the Headman's
house. After the old man and his granddaughter had been at
work for some time his wife, who was husking rice in the court-
yard of the house, called out in a very agitated voice and asked
him if he was deaf that he could not hear the pheasants and
other birds that were chattering in the jungle above him. Fortu-
nately for him, he acted promptly. Dropping his hoe, he grabbed
the child's hand and together they ran back to the house, urged
on by the woman who said she could now see a red animal in
the bushes at the upper end of the field. Half an hour later the
tigress killed a man who was lopping branches off a tree in a
field three hundred yards from the Headman's house.

From the description I had received from the Headman I
had no difficulty in locating the tree. It was a small gnarled
tree growing out of a three-foot-high bank between two terraced

The Thak Man-eater 189

fields, and had been lopped year after year for cattle fodder.
The man who had been killed was standing on the trunk holding
one branch and cutting another, when the tigress came up from
behind, tore his hold from the branch and, after killing him,
carried him away into the dense brushwood bordering the fields.
Thak village was a gift from the Chand Rajas, who ruled
Kumaon for many hundreds of years before the Gurkha occupa-
tion, to the forefathers of the present owners in return for their
services at the Punagiri temples. (The promise made by the
Chand Rajas that the lands of Thak and two other villages
would remain rent-free for all time has been honoured by the
British Government for a hundred years.) From a collection of
grass huts the village has in the course of time grown into a
very prosperous settlement with masonry houses roofed with
slate tiles, for not only is the land very fertile, but the revenue
from the temples is considerable.

Like all other villages in Kumaon, Thak during its hundreds
of years of existence has passed through many vicissitudes, but
never before in its long history had it been deserted as it now
was. On my previous visits I had found it a hive of industry,
but when I went up to it this afternoon, taking the young
buffalo with me, silence reigned over it. Every one of the hun-
dred or more inhabitants had fled taking their livestock with
them the only animal I saw in the village was a cat, which gave
me a warm welcome; so hurried had the evacuation been that
many of the doors of the houses had been left wide open. On
every path in the village, in the courtyard of the houses and in
the dust before all the doors I found the tigress's pug marks.
The open doorways were a menace, for the path as it wound
through the village passed close to them, and in any of the
houses the tigress might have been lurking.

On the hill thirty yards above the village were several cattle
shelters, and in the vicinity of these shelters I saw more kaleege
pheasants, red jungle fowl and white-capped babblers than I

190 Man-eaters of Kumaon

have ever before seen, and from the confiding way in which
they permitted me to walk among them it is quite evident that
the people of Thak have a religious prejudice against the taking
of life.

From the terraced fields above the cattle shelters a bird's-eye
view of the village is obtained, and it was not difficult, from the
description the Headman had given me, to locate the tree where
the tigress had secured her last victim. In the soft earth under
the tree there were signs of a struggle and a few clots of dried
blood. From here the tigress had carried her kill a hundred
yards over a ploughed field, through a stout hedge, and into the
dense brushwood beyond. The foot-prints from the village, and
back the way they had come, showed that the entire population
of the village had visited the scene of the kill, but from the tree
to the hedge there was only one track, the track the tigress had
made when carrying away her victim. No attempt had been
made to follow her up and recover the body.

Scraping away a little earth from under the tree I exposed a
root and to this root I tied my buffalo, bedding it down with a
liberal supply of straw taken from a nearby haystack.

The village, which is on the north face of the hill, was now
in shadow, and if I was to get back to camp before dark it was
time for me to make a start. Skirting round the village to
avoid the menace of the open doorways, I joined the path
below the houses.

This path after it leaves the village passes under a giant
mango tree from the roots of which issues a cold spring of clear
water. After running along a groove cut in a massive slab of
rock, this water falls into a rough masonry trough, from where
it spreads onto the surrounding ground, rendering it soft and
slushy. I had drunk at the spring on my way up, leaving my
foot-prints in this slushy ground, and on approaching the spring
now for a second drink, I found the tigress's pug marks superim-
posed on my foot-prints. After quenching her thirst the tigress

The Thak Man-eater 191

had avoided the path and had gained the village by climbing a
steep bank overgrown with strobilanthes and nettles, and taking
up a position in the shelter of one of the houses had possibly
watched me while I was tying up the buffalo, expecting me to
return the way I had gone; it was fortunate for me that I had
noted the danger of passing those open doorways a second time,
and had taken the longer way round.

When coming up from Chuka I had taken every precaution
to guard against a sudden attack, and it was well that I had
done so, for I now found from her pug marks that the tigress
had followed me all the way up from my camp, and next morn-
ing when I went back to Thak I found she had followed me
from where I had joined the path below the houses, right down
to the cultivated land at Chuka.

Reading with the illumination I had brought with me was
not possible, so after dinner that night, while sitting near a
fire which was as welcome for its warmth as it was for the
feeling of security it gave me, I reviewed the whole situation
and tried to think out some plan by which it would be possible
to circumvent the tigress.

When leaving home on the 22nd I had promised that I would
return in ten days, and that this would be my last expedition
after man-eaters. Years of exposure and strain and long absences
from home extending as in the case of the Chowgarh tigress
and the Rudraprayag leopard to several months on end were
beginning to tell as much on my constitution as on the nerves
of those at home, and if by the 30th of November I had not
succeeded in killing this man-eater, others would have to be
found who were willing to take on the task.

It was now the night of the 24th, so I had six clear days
before me. Judging from the behaviour of the tigress that even-
ing she appeared to be anxious to secure another human victim,
and it should not therefore be difficult for me, in the time at my
disposal, to get in touch with her. There were several methods

192 Man-eaters of Kumaon

by which this could be accomplished, and each would be tried
in turn. The method that offers the greatest chance of success
of shooting a tiger in the hills is to sit up in a tree over a kill,
and if during that night the tigress did not kill the buffalo I
had tied up at Thak, I would the following night, and every
night thereafter, tie up the other two buffaloes in places I had
already selected, and failing to secure a human kill it was just
possible that the tigress might kill one of my buffaloes, as she
had done on a previous occasion when the Ibbotsons and I were
camped at Sem in April. After making up the fire with logs
that would burn all night, I turned in, and went to sleep listen-
ing to a kakar barking in the scrub jungle behind my tent.

While breakfast was being prepared the following morning I
picked up a rifle and went out to look for tracks on the stretch
of sand on the right bank of the river, between Chuka and Sem.
The path, after leaving the cultivated land, runs for a short
distance through scrub jungle, and here I found the tracks of a
big male leopard, possibly the same animal that had alarmed
the kakar jLhe previous night. A small male tiger had crossed
and recrossed the Ladhya many times during the past week, and
in the same period the man-eater had crossed only once, coming
from the direction of Sem. A big bear had traversed the sand
a little before my arrival, and when I got back to camp the
timber contractors complained that while distributing work that
morning they had run into a bear which had taken up a very
threatening attitude, in consequence of which their labour had
refused to work in the area in which the bear had been seen.

Several thousand men the contractors put the figure at five
thousand had now concentrated at Chuka and Kumaya Chak
to fell and saw up the timber and carry it down to the motor
road that was being constructed, and all the time this consider-
able labour force was working they shouted at the tops of their
voices to keep up their courage. The noise in the valley result-
ing from axe and saw, the crashing of giant trees down the steep

The Thak Man-eater 193

hillside, the breaking of rocks with sledge hammers, and com-
bined with it all the shouting of thousands of men, can better be
imagined than described. That there were many frequent alarms
in this nervous community was only natural, and during the
next few days I covered much ground and lost much valuable
time in investigating false rumours of attacks and kills by the
man-eater, for the dread of the tigress was not confined to the
Ladhya valley but extended right down the Sarda through
Kaldhunga to the gorge, an area of roughly fifty square miles in
which an additional ten thousand men were working.

That a single animal should terrorize a labour force of these
dimensions in addition to the residents of the surrounding vil-
lages and the hundreds of men who were bringing foodstuffs for
the labourers or passing through the valley with hill produce in
the way of oranges (purchasable at twelve annas a hundred),
walnuts, and chillies to the market at Tanakpur, is incredible,
and would be unbelievable were it not for the historical, and
nearly parallel, case of the man-eater of Tsavo, where a pair
of lions, operating only at night, held up work for Iqng periods
on the Uganda Railway.

To return to my story. Breakfast disposed of on the morning
of the 25th, I took a second buffalo and set out for Thak. The
path, after leaving the cultivated land at Chuka, skirts along
the foot of the hill for about half a mile before it divides. One
arm goes straight up a ridge to Thak and the other, after con-
tinuing along the foot of the hill for another half-mile, zigzags
up through Kumaya Chak to Kot Kindri.

At the divide I found the pug marks of the tigress and
followed them all the way back to Thak. The fact that she had
come down the hill after me the previous evening was proof
that she had not killed the buffalo. This, though very disap-
pointing, was not at all unusual; for tigers will on occasions visit
an animal that is tied up for several nights in succession before
they finally kill it, for tigers do not kill unless they are hungry.

194 Man-eaters of Kumaon

Leaving the second buffalo at the mango tree, where there
was an abundance of green grass, I skirted round the houses and
found No. i buffalo sleeping peacefully after a big feed and a
disturbed night. The tigress, coming from the direction of the
village as her pug marks showed, had approached to within a
few feet of the buffalo, and had then gone back the way she had
come. Taking the buffalo down to the spring I let it graze for
an hour or two, and then took it back and tied it up at the same
spot where it had been the previous night.

The second buffalo I tied up fifty yards from the mango tree
and at the spot where the wailing woman and villagers had met
us the day the Ibbotsons and I had gone up to investigate the
human kill. Here a ravine a few feet deep crossed the path, on
one side of which there was a dry stump, and on the other an
almond tree in which a machan could be made. I tied No. 2
buffalo to the stump, and bedded it down with sufficient hay to
keep it going for several days. There was nothing more to be
done at Thak so I returned to camp and, taking the third buffalo,
crossed the Ladhya and tied it up behind Sem, in the ravine
where the tigress had killed one of our buffaloes in April.

At my request the Tahsildar of Tanakpur had selected three
of the fattest young male buffaloes he could find. All three were
now tied up in places frequented by the tigress, and as I set out
to visit them on the morning of the 26th I had great hopes that
one of them had been killed and that I should get an opportunity
of shooting the tigress over it. Starting with the one across the
Ladhya, I visited all in turn and found that the tigress had not
touched any of them. Again, as on the previous morning, I
found her tracks on that path leading to Thak, but on this
occasion there was a double set of pug marks, one coming down
and the other going back. On both her journeys the tigress had
kept to the path and had passed within a few feet of the buffalo
that was tied to the stump, fifty yards from the mango tree.

On my return to Chuka a deputation of Thak villagers led

The Thak Man-eater 195

by the Headman came to my tent and requested me to accom-
pany them to the village to enable them to replenish their supply
of foodstuffs, so at midday, followed by the Headman and his
tenants, and by four of my own men carrying ropes for a machan
and food for me, I returned to Thak and mounted guard while
the men hurriedly collected the provisions they needed.

After watering and feeding the two buffaloes I retied No. 2
to the stump and took No. i half a mile down the hill and tied
it to a sapling on the side of the path. I then took the villagers
back to Chuka and returned a few hundred yards up the hill
for a scratch meal while my men were making the machan.

It was now quite evident that the tigress had no fancy for my
fat buffaloes, and as in three days I had seen her tracks five
times on the path leading to Thak, I decided to sit up over the
path and try to get a shot at her that way. To give me warning
of the tigress's approach I tied a goat with a bell round its neck
on the path, and at 4 p.m. I climbed into the tree. I told my men
to return at 8 a.m. the following morning, and began my watch.

At sunset a cold wind started blowing and while I was
attempting to pull a coat over my shoulders the ropes on one
side of the machan slipped, rendering my seat very uncomfort-
able. An hour later a "storm came on, and though it did not rain
for long it wet me to the skin, greatly adding to my discomfort.
During the sixteen hours I sat in the tree I did not see or hear
anything. The men turned up at 8 a.m. I returned to camp
for a hot bath and a good meal, and then, accompanied by six
of my men, set out for Thak.

The overnight rain had washed all the old tracks off the path,
and two hundred yards above the tree I had sat in I found the
fresh pug marks of the tigress, where she had come out of the
jungle and gone up the path in the direction of Thak. Very
cautiously I stalked the first buffalo, only to find it lying asleep
on the path; the tigress had skirted round it, rejoined the path
a few yards further on and continued up the hill. Following on
14

196 Man-eaters of Kumaon

her tracks I approached the second buffalo, and as I got near
the place where it had been tied two blue Himalayan magpies
rose off the ground and went screaming down the hill.

The presence of these birds indicated (a) that the buffalo was
dead, (b) that it had been partly eaten and not carried away,
and (c) that the tigress was not in the close vicinity.

On arrival at the stump to which it had been tied I saw that
the buffalo had been dragged off the path and partly eaten, and
on examining the animal I found that it had not been killed by
the tigress but that it had in all probability died of snake-bite
(there were many hamadryads in the surrounding jungles), and
that, finding it lying dead on the path, the tigress had eaten a
meal off it and had then tried to drag it away. When she
found she could not break the rope, she had partly covered the
kill over with dry leaves and brush-wood and continued on her
way up to Thak.

Tigers as a rule are not carrion eaters but they do on occasions
eat animals they themselves have not killed. For instance, on
one occasion I left the carcass of a leopard on a fire track and,
when I returned next morning to recover a knife I had for-
gotten, I found that a tiger had removed the carcass to a dis-
tance of a hundred yards and eaten two-thirds of it.

On my way up from Chuka I had dismantled the machan I
had sat on the previous night, and while two of my men climbed
into the almond tree to make a seat for me the tree was not
big enough for a machan the other four went to the spring